Visitor. (oswald/jb one-shot trilogy)

mrs. priscilla, english teacher


You told me that I wasn't available
I guess I wasn't, I wasn't capable
I want to do better this time
But I guess you're better in the back of my mind

Neither of them had expected for her to be there, so much so neither of them could think of anything to say for a moment. Maybe if this wasn't about him, if this was some story he heard that had happened to another kid, he would crack a smile and snort: "What, was she trying to turn in his report card?" But he's all out jokes now.

None of her students know it, but Mrs. Priscilla has a "Messiah complex." A tragic one. There are some people who have the endurance to save others: firefighters, doctors, even some Peacekeepers. She does not. Her students break her constantly, because she knows deep down that she would never save them -- from their home lives, from the missed opportunities caused by their academic failure, from the Games. She sees them all as phantoms, drifting through the halls with a death-curse written on their foreheads. She can not resurrect any of them. Oswald especially. Oswald Tove, the dumb kid who never knows the answer to a question, would rather doodle in the margins than take notes, was thirteen and spelled "nation" as "nasion" and "you're" as "your." He had given her one of his drawings once. It was the only pleasant interaction they had. And then a few weeks after his gift, she had to confiscate one of his drawings for being too crass, and he never looked at her the same way again. In that moment, she had become the enemy. The usual dynamic between teacher and middle school student. Utterly without hope or salvation.

Now he looks at her as though he does not know her. But he is the first to speak. "Hi."

"How are you feeling?" she speaks suddenly, breathlessly, sweeping towards him and then stopping suddenly.

Oswald looks at her as though she were nuts, and doesn't respond.

This has never happened to her before. When she started teaching, Priscilla asked the other teachers how they dealt with the Games. She learned very quick not to mention the Games. They weren't supposed to think of the Games as a detriment to students, that would go against the Capitol's agenda, and the whole idea that the Games are supposed to ensure unity and order. Only one of them, one of the few among them with the guts to bend the rules, tried to give her an answer: "Just try to help them forget. That's all you can do."

That didn't apply in this situation.

What does apply?! Her heart pounds in her chest, her mind races. There was no way to save him, yet everything in her screams to save him. She has seen this kid every day for a little over a year, she has tried to cultivate his mind, his heart, in a sense she sometimes felt like she was raising someone else's kid, having to teach him right from wrong when the parents wouldn't -- part of her Messiah complex, she supposed. A constant tug-of-war between How do I save you and Let me save you, and having an answer to neither.

This is the peak of her career. Of what has become her life. Looking at a helpless child, and having nothing to offer them.

No. Not now. Not her. She is the "Messiah," after all.

She approaches. This boy who takes nothing seriously, and now must take everything seriously. She will make him take this seriously. Her hands grip his shoulders, holds him firm, holds him so his eyes look into her so he could face the truth as he faces her: "You are the kind of person who gives up."

He flinches back, stunned, probably indignant. Yet the glaze in his eyes is dream-like. Even now, he won't pay attention to her.

"You can't do that anymore," she speaks firmly. The way she used to reprimand him in the halls -- "You slammed into him because you were running in the halls! Can't you tell?" "If you don't read, how are you going to learn how to think, Oz?" "Do you think you can live like this for the rest of your life, slacking off, pretending nothing matters?" Yet now her voice trembles. Her hands tremble too, even as they hold him steady. "You can't give up on this one, do you understand? We need you here. You need to be here. You can't just throw your hands up and start crying about it, you can't say it's too hard anymore. You give it back to them, you fight them, you get home. You get this right."

His eyes are wide. Almost void-like in the dark irises. But he nods, stiffly.

Her hands drop. Her mouth's dry. She glances down in the bag that's been dangling off her shoulder. She doesn't need to rifle through it, she already knows where put it. She has to clear her throat as she draws it out. An envelope that she didn't had the time to seal. "For you."

She turns on her heel and walks out. The Peacekeepers closes the door behind her. A sob escapes her lips, she tries to muffle it, she doesn't know what's happening to her.

In that old musty room, full of dingy antiques, Oswald stands with an envelope in his hand. Blinking, he opens it. It is the doodle Mrs. Priscilla confiscated several weeks ago -- Why does she still have this? -- lumped and malformed, unfinished, but it would have been great if he had been given time to finish it. Beneath it, she wrote in red ink, the strokes of the letters violent, as though she had been hurrying furiously to finish writing: "This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”

He doesn't know why, but the quote angers him. Vaguely, he recognizes it, from one of the books he was supposed to have read in class but didn't "have the time to" (theoretically). He wants to crumple it up. Wants to spit, "Snob. Propaganda. Book ho." But he doesn't. Almost begrudgingly, he slips it into his pocket, and peers out the window. Staring down the world that goes on without him, with his arms crossed over his chest, unsure if he's still awake, if everything that's happened in the past hour is even real.