Side by Side With Me // {Elon's Last}

This is my December, this is me alone, and I just wish that I didn't feel
Like there was something I missed

Julian had known this was coming. The thought was sobering, grounding as I fiddled with the leather bracelet at my wrist. At least Mahlah knew what it meant as I tore at the knot, trying to set it free. He had known the moment he gave me this token, this connection. It was a goodbye; I just hadn’t been able to admit it to myself. I regretted not recognizing that moment, fleeting as all the others have been until now. I should have seized on it, told him what I wanted to say now and closed the door.

But I hadn’t been ready. And I’m not ready now.

The knot comes apart, dropping the bracelet onto the sandy floor. I wave my good hand at it, swallow down another bout of blood. I’m not sure I can speak, do anything more than wriggle and writhe. But surely my sister, my brother, they will know what I want – the same thing they will want, to be helped, to be loved and remembered. And this token is the best chance I have at that. Another gurgle and cough as I try to tell Mahlah and Jae I love them.

With the sea a stone’s throw away, I am drowning. It bubbles up from my heart, pulling me away from the sunlight, from Mahlah and Jae, from the Northern Community Home. But it had always been sunny there – well, except for that one prolonged, depressing winter. Why I remember it now escapes me. Perhaps it’s because I can remember it; I was almost ten, and settled in my relationships with my brothers, my sisters, with the routine of the community home, constantly disrupted though it was. And I remember the long streaks of rain on the windows, the hours reading to Reggie, watching Mace fix a leaking pipe. I wasn’t sure where I fit in then.

I haven’t been sure of many things.

But I’m sure now, of what’s to come.

And it is enlightening, freeing, the power of this knowledge. If only I could share it, to comfort Mahlah and Jae and Klaus and the others, but for now it is all mine. I don’t know if anything’s ever been mine the way this is, and I want to revel in it, hold it, but there is the pulling, this opening in the middle of me that I can’t get around.

The seaweed has lost its amour, and I tumble to the floor planks, still partially encased in the seaweed’s last grasp. The impact is bright, a pain all its own, the sort that reminds me that I am alive. I can barely feel the pulsing middle of me anymore; it has already gone beyond. But my shoulder, which hits first, and then my knees – those I can still feel, still want to draw close.

I do so carefully, curling into a ball, preparing to leave this world as I entered it. I find a pocket of energy work its way around the blood in my throat. I cough violently onto the planks, and in a great rush say the only thing that has ever mattered to me: “I love you.”

And I’m so very glad I thought ahead so I would not have to spend these moments remembering Val’s quick smile, or Reggie’s double-sneeze, or Icarus’ plans for flight, or Cygnus’ careful words, or Mace’s silent eyes. I don’t even have to remember my conversations with Julian, or the looks I traded with Klaus, or the warmth I shared with Mahlah, or the respect I had for Jae. I have known and remembered all these things so thoroughly I am sure I’ll bring them with me.

But it never hurts to have one more.

My fingers twitch as I stretch them, the rest of my body beginning to still. It is quite frankly a relief not to have to pay such close attention to it, to command my limbs which have never really liked to listen to me. I open one finger at a time for Mahlah and hope she will accept my offering, in addition to the fallen bracelet.

Fading, dimming. This is the sunset, come early.

I want to reach out and touch it, feel the flame on my fingertips. That’s something I haven’t done enough of. I’ve always known I was a kinesthetic learner, and yet, I’ve felt so little, other than the bite of the back of my brother’s hand, or the soft muffled affections of a cow, horse, pig. The only real touch I’ve known of late is Mahlah’s tiny hands, Julian’s swift kiss. I regret it. I let myself regret it. I should have touched more, connected palm to palm. It is easier now to regret things, now that a blade has tasted my heart. That was touch too, of the sharpest, truest kind.

I should have thanked him, Mr. Ripley. But he’s gone, now, I think. I feel fairly sure that I am not alone but my sight has dimmed, and my hearing failed. I can only hear the slow whoosh of blood beating in my open heart, the pulse leaving my body instead of filling it. I don’t want to die like this; I don’t want to die at all. But I’ve had an extraordinary life. I could have been left in a ditch as a babe, or sent to one of the other community homes and starved before I could walk. I could have been alone, locked in a basement. But instead I was loved by Ma, given brothers and sisters, and for the last two years I have lived better than I realized anyone could. That was a gift.

Mace’s gift.

I wish I had something better to give him now – something to show him how right he’s done by me. All those wonderful meals, a soft bed to sleep in, a horse to care for, phone calls to Two, and even a trip to the Capitol. Everything since the end of the Fifty-Ninth has been worth it, at least for me. Surely he knows that; he must. Someone will tell him. This is not how I thought I would die, at least before the Reaping, but it is not the worst death. I am not alone; I may even be remembered.

I cling to that hope as tears roll down through my shuttered eyelashes, my heart whumping out slowly, haphazardly. My thoughts drift to the mechanics of blood flow, of anatomy, something I spent relatively little time teaching. But what I do know is that an uneven heart beat is a danger. And then I realize I’m wasting time thinking about my body, my broken body, curled around a dagger and a cavern where my heart used to be.

There are some things I will see soon. I do not have to miss Walker, and I can promise Mace, even in silence, to hug Larae. And some tributes in this room, I don’t have to miss, because I will see them again. I can take more with me than I could have hoped. The memory of a song. The whisper of a kiss. Something else awaits me, beyond this room, this moment, this last breath. There has to be more.

I am ever hopeful.