I'll Fly Away // (Kay) [AU 60th Reaping]

Some glad morning when this life is o'er
I'll fly away
To a home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away
I'll fly away

The sunshine is a thing of glory today, warm and radiant, the kind of weather that makes Schroeder want to take to the skies and tease me for my inability to follow. Someday I'll figure out how to fly just as high as you, Schroe. However, today is not that day. No matter how bright the omnipotent sun, it's not enough to burn away my worries as I take my place with the other seventeen-year-olds in the District square, staring up at the glass bowls that demand our collective attention. The Reaping. I don't have to look over at Cyg and Elon to know my brothers share my worries, there is no question about that, so instead I fix my attention on the chairs lined up on stage — where my other brother sits: Mace Emberstatt, victor of the 59th Hunger Games.

How he came back alive... I don't know. I didn't watch. My eyes were all but sewn shut while he was gone; I refused to look and no one was heartless enough to make me. Now and then I would glance at Elon (after the sounds of clashing swords and feral cries of pain echoing out the television set had switched to footage of that crazy guy from Six talking to snowmen or drawing houses in the snow, signaling the end of a battle and giving the Capitol a more frivolous kind of entertainment for a while) just long enough for him to shake his head and give me a raw, I-wish-I-hadn't-just-witnessed-that kind of smile that was enough to let me know that no, Icky, Mace isn't dead yet. There was no comfort in it, I saw too much of the awful truth reflected in his expression, but each one seemed to bring Mace a little closer to home and the importance of that remained permanently layered beneath every look.

When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird from prison bars has flown
I'll fly away
I'll fly away

The kneading of tiny feet on my shoulder pulls me out of my thoughts; Schroeder is getting impatient, fidgeting from foot-to-foot at his perch, back and forth while periodically craning his neck toward the clouds he'd prefer to be flying through on a day like today. Everyone tries to tell me that he's just a pigeon, Icarus, but he's enough of a brother to me in his own way that he senses that I need him to stay with me now. Still, this kind of understanding goes both ways with us and so I'm aware of his growing impatience as frustration sends his wings twitching with half-flutters that seem to open a little wider each time. "It'll be over soon, Schroe," I whisper to him, but maybe more to myself, reaching up to poke him in the chest and shoot him a grin that's lousy cover for my frazzled nerves.

With a sudden boom, a voice rings out across the square, ready to announce the names of two children who are about to be sent to savage deaths. The burst of sound is enough to spook Schroeder into flight — or maybe he's just using it as a selfish excuse — and although I reach up after him, I'm not fast enough and each flap of feathers brings him still further away. It's not just worry that sends my feet chasing after him as he soars toward the stage, not if I'm being honest, although I'm certainly not lacking fear for him should he come face to face with a peacekeeper's gun while looking for a landing spot. Abandonment tugs me forward as well, terror that yet another of my brothers is heading in a direction that I can only identify as bad. Not good. Stay away, Schroe, don't go that way.

Oh
How glad and happy when we meet
I'll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I'll fly away

Wooden stairs clatter beneath my feet as I rush up up up toward everything I'd rather be looking away from, climbing my way a little higher as Schroeder swoops down, seeming to have gotten it into his birdbrained head that it must be Mace's fault that we have to stand in this square and stare up at this stage instead of whiling away our day in the sunshine. Thus, he is clearly deserving of being dive-bombed in revenge. "Schroe!" The sound of the crowd grows steadily louder with every step I take, to the point where my own yell is lost in the din. Still, it manages to have the desired effect of catching the attention of my feathered friend, who changes course to land at my feet. Immediately I kneel down to protectively gather him into my hands, clutching him against my chest and the frantic heartbeat it cages.

Emberstatt, Emberstatt, Emberstatt trills from mouth to mouth throughout the square, like a piece of gossip that's steadily being reborn as a chant, and I impulsively turn to look up at Mace, fully expecting him to be standing on the seat of his chair with a sword raised in the air, rallying District Ten with the promise of another victory. Only, I can't see him past the people rushing toward me with something like pride written all over their faces. That's when someone pulls me up by the elbows, another slaps me on the back, and one of their hands plants itself on top of my head, sticky fingers splayed out across the leather surface of my flight helmet, and gives my skull an enthusiastic shake, as if to say: Atta, boy!

Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joy shall never end
I'll fly away
I'll fly away

My family's name continues to ring out, but the commotion on stage is so overwhelming that my senses are starting to shut down as I stop trying to find the logic in it all and just hold onto Schroeder in the hopes that he might be enough to keep me steady. It's not until someone directly in front of me says Emberstatt while gesturing at me with far more enthusiasm than I'm used to being greeted with and follows it with a sentence containing the word volunteer that I begin to make sense of it all. Suddenly he's staring me down — I'm beginning to understand why my own staring habit makes people so uncomfortable now — and repeating himself: "You volunteer?"

It's my turn to stare now, wide eyed with horror as I attempt to process the misconception I'm being confronted with. "I... volunteer?" Parroting the words back, I cock my head and study his eyes, trying to figure out why he's gotten it into his head that my life goals include dying before I've had the chance to live. Only, Emberstatt, Emberstatt, Emberstatt continues to jump enthusiastically from one mouth to the next and they're all too busy talking about the victor's brother to hear the too-subtle no, no, no of my tone. Panic is surging through my blood, enough to send even my abnormally clear vision into a blur, until I feel deaf and blind and dumb — haven't you always been dumb, Icky, isn't that why you've found yourself in this kind of mess? — and Schroeder is struggling against my iron-grip as my fingers clench tighter and tighter in silent hysteria. No, no no, I'm not Mace, Mace is over there continues to loop through my mind as the mayor herself comes to take her turn patting me on the back before ushering me toward the justice building. I swear she doesn't know her own strength, because (judging from the CRACK that splits the air the same time as her palm hits my back) she must have not only broken one of my bones, but has managed to paralyze both Schroeder and I into perfect, compliant stillness.

I'll fly away, fly away
Oh glory
I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away