62nd Reaping [D8]

~Bran Wolfe

It was as if the world had split in two, one side holding one Wolfe, the other side holding the other: Bran, who was seated amongst the pale, sweaty sheep for slaughter-but the Wolfes were being called out.

First, “Aria Wolfe.” A shiver, a gasp. The very ground was splintering.

Then, “Bran Wolfe.”

The morning was as it usually was on Reaping day: somber, dreary and dark. As Bran dressed himself, an art he’d learned to master, he would’ve liked nothing more than father’s strong arms, lifting him high into the air, his lifeless legs on his father’s shoulders, soothing them. But, instead he was alone in his room, buttoning up his best shirt with trembling fingers, seasoned with fear that today it would be Rajas or Sarita or Aria…or him. Bran shivered and placed a hand on numb legs. The legs that couldn’t move. Couldn’t walk, run, jump. No. If any of them were to be Reaped, it wasn’t about to be him. He’d had enough bad luck already.

Aria Wolfe. Bran Wolfe. The names echoed across the square, bitter resentment wavering on the outskirts of it, dribbled in between the spaces of unhappy muttering and in the center, wobbling uncertainly on the crevasse was Bran. Stock still. Bran Wolfe. Aria Wolfe. It swept over his skin, prickling down his spine, catching in his throat as if he’d hit the ground hard, as if the breath had been knocked out of his very lungs and he struggled for it, struggled for understanding…but he could see her now and he wanted to call out to her. Aria. There’s been a mistake. It’s not you. It’s not me. Come back. Don’t go up there. Don’t. Not to the wall. Not there and his entire body mimicked his legs. Numb. Numb. Bran Wolfe. Aria Wolfe. Not to the wall. Come back, Aria. But, before he could do anything, strong hands came down on his shoulders and Bran was staring up at his oldest brother.

“Come on.” And his words were a whisper, barely uttered from under parted lips, cracked with Father and Aria and Bran, cracked and bloody and Bran allowed himself to be lifted up from his chair. He was too limp, too dead to do anything else.

Because that’s what he was now. A dead boy.

There were dreams when he was in his coma, his great sleep, but many had faded away like medicine on the tongue, just leaving a bitter taste behind that tasted vaguely of familiar. Rajas told him that Mother had sat over his bed day and night. She never left. And Bran absorbed her. He absorbed her fidgeting fingers and he tasted her sweat and heard her cries and filled him up, salt in his mouth, wetness on his face. He woke up full to the brim with it. Fear. Deep, deep-rooted fear, more tentacles than he could count, gripping his bones, drinking his blood, digging deep into his skin and he wobbled with it sloshing inside.

But, now it poured out of him.

Bran’s hands tightened around Rajas’s neck. He could feel all the eyes on him. He could see the word forming on all of their lips. Cripple. That burning word that Bran was forced to carry around on his legs. Now, it rang unspoken through the air, buzzing around in his ears. Bran Wolfe. Cripple. His brother, carrying Bran, moved at a slow pace, navigating through the crowd that parted as if afraid they’d catch Bran’s disease. Afraid they’d be crippled and afraid they’d be Reaped. Over Rajas’s shoulder, Bran watched as Jon picked up Bran’s wheelchair and followed his half-brother. For a moment, Bran’s lips parted, wondering why this boy, this unwanted one, the one Mother turned away from, his dear Mother, was helping him, picking up the wheelchair of a doomed boy.

Because they were brothers after all.

Bran had never stopped to consider if Jon felt the weight of Father’s absence like he did every single day. He supposed he did. He was his father too. They were a family. And soon, very soon, Jon would feel another weight. As would Sarita and Ricky and Mother.

Maybe even two.

“Mother, I’m…nervous…” he whispered softly as Mother pushed his wheelchair a little ahead of his siblings. On days like this, she insisted upon pushing. “What if…if…I’m reap-sent to the Wall…?” The smooth rhythm of the pushing jarred slightly and became more erratic, slow then fast, lurching over cobblestones and Bran clung to the handles.

“Don’t be nervous, love,” Mother reassured him, her voice taking on the smoothness of the wheels, but still clinging to the rough edges of the stone underneath them. “It won’t happen. I promise. It won’t.”

And as they passed over some more cobblestone, loudly bouncing against the wheels of his chair, faithful Hodor, Bran swore he could hear her whisper, “It can’t. It just can’t.”

Though his stomach was churning painfully with this realization, the weight waiting to be released when the near-time came, Bran Wolfe didn’t have time to dwell, for a second later, stairs were being ascended and Bran pulled back to stare Rajas in the eye before the entire District. His brother. So brave. He loved Rajas. He’d always wanted to be just like him. Ricky probably felt the same. But, not if Rajas ascended these stairs. Not if he wasn’t there.

Swallowing hard, Bran stared deep in the eyes and shook his head ever so slightly, his lower lip trembling with the bravery he’d always hoped he could one day possess. The courage to accept. It would simple, yet straight, refusing to quiver in the eye and Rajas’s eyes would widen in what could only be pain and Bran would feel a knife twisting in his gut, but Bran uttered the word anyway. “Don’t.“

When Bran was six or seven, he played with sticks in the backyard. “I’m Rajas,” he would cry. “I’m strong. I’m big and strong.” And when he was ten years old, he would lie in bed and whisper with collected tears in his hand, “I’m Bran, I’m only Bran. Weak…” And they’d smirk at school.

“Cripple.”

And now, Bran was fourteen, he was Bran, only Bran. Weak, crippled Bran. In the arms of the big strong person who he wouldn’t let save him.

Rajas.

Rajas made to wheel Bran’s wheelchair towards the Justice Building, the ceremony was over and Bran was still sitting there as numb at ever, and Jon gripped his shoulder, and he tried to find Aria, tried to clear his fading vision, but they were overcome. Peacekeepers and one grabbed the handles of Bran’s wheelchair and when, startled, Bran turned to see where the white-gloved hand lead, up the arm and to the face, he gasped at the nose.

Flaring nostrils. The man had flaring nostrils and Bran felt his heart stopped beating as he clung to the windowsill. Everyone else in the room gasped, but the flaring nostrils overwhelmed him, holding his wrist tightly and then he heard the chilling words, the words that still haunted him today. “He saw.”

And as the man with the flaring nostrils pushed Bran through the doors of the Justice Building, his hand pushed into his chest and with it came the names, the realizations. Aria Wolfe. Bran Wolfe. His sister and him. Reaped. Aria Wolfe. Bran Wolfe.

They were going to the wall.

And Bran felt himself hit the ground once more.

{Bran Wolfe Accepts}