disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Emily, on her birthday.
notes: barfs.

title: feel it like a shiver
summary: Just a blue-eyed boy and a green-eyed girl. — Makoto/Nephrite.

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—for a root

The coal dust got into everything.

Mattie Keene wiped her hands on her apron. The West Virginia sun bore down hot on her shoulders, dripping wet heat that trickled down the back of her neck and turned the entire world into a golden summer mirage. She'd put her hair up in a ponytail at the back of her head to keep her long auburn hair from suffocating her in the heat.

She'd been working at Sally's for six months, now, and the cheerful yellow storefront did little to keep out the heat or the black coal grime from the miner's shoes. It wasn't a great job, but it was a job for a girl her age, her class. It paid the rent, and kept her food and clothed.

Regardless, it was still one of the less scandalous things Mattie had done.

(When the mines had first blown, both her parents had died. She'd been ten, no siblings and no family left—she lived alone. Mattie didn't think about it anymore, because it made her uneasy. Nath was down in the mines, these days.)

"Mattie, you done for the day?" Sally's daughter Selina bounced after her, all blonde pigtails and sky gaze. She was in white—the girl would be coming up to her first cotillion, and somewhere along the way had stopped wearing any other colour except pink.

Mattie grinned at her, nodded, tucking away flyaway auburn curls. "Yup! Going to see Nath."

"Are you gonna get married?" Selina asked, wide-eyed.

"I don't—I don't know. I don't want to—" Mattie flushed.

"Don't want to what?

"Jinx it," she said, red-cheeked and staring at her shoes. They hadn't really talked about it, but sometimes Nath looked at her like he was drowning, and she was the last life-preserver. Mattie didn't know much about love, but she did know that that had been the way her father had looked at her mother. Like she'd been his saving grace.

Mattie had forgotten a lot of things about her parents, but not that. Never that.

And so she waved goodbye to Selina, arm high in the air as she walked down Main Street. Her dress was the pale colour of spring limetree leaves, lighter than her eyes but just as lovely. Mattie smiled at passersby as she walked. The day was almost over, though the sun was still high in the sky.

The mine was a quarter mile out of town. Ten minutes, give or take.

And somehow, it wasn't enough time.

The world exploded.

Screaming smoke hissed from the ground, but Mattie was already running. She knew that sound, knew that explosion, knew the way the ground rolled beneath her feet like heaving ocean waves.

The mine.

Nath.

"Miss, miss, you can't go in there—!"

Mattie didn't pay the foreman any mind, because Nath would have found her by now if he was alright. Nath always found her, dark hair tied back in a horsetail, smiling with his eyes and his hands rough from working all his life. He hadn't come back up.

She would have to go down to find him. It was the only way.

Her feet hit the ground, and she ducked down.

The mine was dark.

"Nath! Where are you?!"

Silence.

Mattie set her jaw, and headed deeper. It was hot down here, hotter than outside, hotter than anything she'd ever felt in her life—hotter than the bakery's heavy wood-burning oven in the middle of the day, hotter than the sun baking the mud flats brown and dry, hotter than fresh-boiled tea.

It didn't stop her.

"Nath!" she called against desperately. "Can you hear me?!"

Silence, again. Then, from very far away, muffled by debris: "Mattie?"

"Oh, God, I'm coming—hold on, just hold on, I'll be right there—!" Mattie pulled up her skirts and shot down the mine shaft, one arm full of bunched fabric and the other over her head to keep the roof from falling on her skull.

It didn't take her long to find him.

His leg was broken, and her breath caught in her throat.

"That bad?" he asked as she settle down at his side. His fingers found hers, linked through. "It's going to—Jesus Christ, there's still gonna be another—"

"I know," Mattie said. She bent forward, to brush his hair out of his eyes.

And then everything imploded.

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—for a leaf

The clouds that crossed the moon hung in an orange sky, the evening they marched.

Mei-Hua wore her Red Guard uniform proudly, shoulders square and strong. She stood with her own; with Mi and her golden hair, and Ah-Lam's quiet-eyed grace. Her friends felt as she did—the world would not progress without the Chairman's leadership.

And they would prove it, here.

The cheering was an ugly sound in her ears. She cast a glance over the waves of people—the onlookers, the parents, the other civilians who did not wear crimson. As though anyone else would save them.

Mei-Hua held her head high, and walked like she owned the world. People were dying, and there simply wasn't the kind of food the country needed. They would only pull through if the government took control.

She was part of the Red Guard.

She was better than this.

"You look good."

Mei-Hua looked up and up and up, and found a boy with a wide grin staring down at her. She was not short by any stretch of the imagination, but he made her feel small. She jutted her chin up and out, straightened her spine. "Of course I do. I stand for the Chairman."

"As do we all," he grinned. "I'm Ning."

He was built like an ox. The name made sense. Mei-Hua was charmed despite herself.

(A year later, she would find him in a field with his guts cut out. Her heart hardened just a little more.)

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—for a branch

Marinella hadn't wanted to be married. She was only thirteen, after all. She didn't really have a choice—there was very little for a girl without family to do. She hadn't wanted to end up at the docks and the whorehouses.

So she got married to a man twice her age. She never met a blue-eyed man with a smiling mouth named Niccolò, nor did she ever fall in love.

She died before she turned fifteen.

It was such a pity.

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—for a tree

Lita went running in Central Park on a rainy day in late April, when it was still the kind of damp cold that sunk into the bones and chilled a person all the way into their soul.

But these were the days that she loved the best. The park was empty, this early—New York never slept, but once in a while, there was a little bit of time where the city pickled in the dregs of its lights and its last beautiful lovers. Those were the mornings that Lita went running, and she never regretted it for a minute.

She stopped in Strawberry Fields like every other time she went running, to catch her breath. Most of the time she had the tarmac to herself, but that morning there was a dark-haired man sitting on one of the benches, staring up at the sky.

There was something vaguely familiar about him—he looked like one of Amy's university friends, that was probably it. And he was very handsome, but she couldn't see the colour of his eyes.

She shrugged to herself. There were very rarely good times to say hello to random strangers. Rei would probably be offended. Lita was going to do it anyway.

"Hey," she asked. "You okay?"

"Shit, yeah, I—do I know you?" he blinked up at her. His eyes were blue, deep dark indigo and clear like the sky at night.

Lita smiled out of the corner of her mouth. "Yeah," she said, "I think you know Amy Michelson? She's my best friend."

He stared at her for a second, a little open-mouthed, and Lita could feel herself beginning to colour. She wasn't the girl that people looked at, like that—that was Mina, usually, or Rei (if Rei felt it necessary to grace the masses with her presence). But he gaped up at her, and Lita smiled a little helplessly because what else was she supposed to do?

He seemed to snap out of it. "Yeah, yeah, I know Amy! She's smart as fuck, not even Darien keeps up with the kid. You're—shit, I should know this, what's your name—"

"Lita," she said. "I'm Lita."

She didn't bother with her last name, because that would make things awkward. People with money were easy to come by, but the ones in the spotlight were usually the ones that the world liked to screw around with. Lita, regrettably, happened to be one. And really, she didn't want to foist something like that on him this early in the relationship. If it could be even called that.

But the knowledge of him slipped down her spine like a drop of dew, and she thought—I know you. I know you. I know you.

"Well, Leets," his eyes glinted with laughter as he pulled the nickname out of thin air, "if you're not busy, do you want to grab a coffee? You look like you could use it."

Lita knew she should say no. She really did.

But the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds to burn away the early-morning mists, and he was grinning at her the same way that puppies did. How was she supposed to resist that?

"Only if you're buying," she surprised herself by laughing.

"Let's go, then," he said.

"I don't think I got your name," Lita said.

"Nathan," he said, still grinning like an idiot. "Call me Nate."

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fin.