#he was always going to use sejanus's sweetness against him sejanus's vulnerability (his heart; his love for coriolanus; his loneliness)

[alisaint]

SNOWJANUS — PREDATOR x PREY; IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO END THIS WAY.

[1] Sejanus pulled up short. “You never miss a beat, do you? I remember that from school. Watching you watch other people. Pretending you weren’t. And choosing the moments you weighed in so carefully.”

[2] “I don’t have time for explanations. Right now the Plinth brat’s loose in the arena with a pack of wolves. If they see him, they’ll kill him on the spot.”

[3] Sejanus had arrived on the school playground ten years ago, a shy, sensitive boy cautiously surveying the other children with a pair of soulful brown eyes much too large for his strained face.

[4] [Coriolanus] thought of people putting a price on her. With her long, pointed nose and skinny body, Tigris was no great beauty, but she had a sweetness, a vulnerability that invited abuse.

[5] “You could send in some Peacekeepers,” Coriolanus said. “And have [Sejanus] bolt like a rabbit?” she scoffed. “Imagine that for a moment, the Peacekeepers trying to chase him down in the dark. No, we’ll have to lure him out, as uneventfully as possible, so we’ll need people he cares about. He can’t stand his father, no siblings, no other friends. That leaves you and his mother.”

[6] Maude Ivory bent over his ear and whispered, “Don’t let him around Sejanus. He’s sweet, and Billy Taupe feeds on sweet.”

[7] He padded across the dirt, channeling the circus wildcats he had seen here as a boy. Fearless, and powerful, and silent. [Coriolanus] knew he must not spook Sejanus, but he needed to get close enough to converse.

[8] As they passed him, Coriolanus locked eyes with Sejanus, and all he could see was the eight-year-old boy on the playground, the bag of gumdrops clenched in his fist. Only this boy was much, much more frightened. Sejanus’s lips formed his name, Coryo, and his face contorted in pain. But whether it was a plea for help or an accusation of his betrayal he couldn’t tell.

[9] Coriolanus buried his face in his hands. He had killed Sejanus as surely as if he’d bludgeoned him to death like Bobbin or gunned him down like Mayfair. He’d killed the person who considered him his brother. But even as the vileness of the act threatened to drown him, a tiny voice kept asking, What choice did you have? What choice? No choice.

[10] Poor Sejanus. Poor sensitive, foolish, dead Sejanus.