if you must {tiger jb}

The storm bade me a brief farewell, too-long hugs and proud words that felt foreign in their mouths filling the room. They've spent too much time yelling and screaming to know what kindness tastes like. kindness tastes like the sun on your skin and cherry-coloured lollipops and carrying arty all the way home when she fell off her bike and her knees ran red like scarlet this is not kindness this is an excuse i am not an excuse this is thunder and rain and cloudy days and all i want is the sun. I'll miss the thunder, as strange as it sounds. It's made me who I am. Before it reached our home Dad would teach me everything he knew about being a Career and he's why I stood with my head held high upon that stage because they'll seek out your weakness, every little slump, every little shift of your eyes, the moment the cameras find you. i always thought i would stand in the lines until i grew old enough to fall into the crowds instead and let the tides of age carry me away and pray for arty and grow older and maybe have one or two or five or sixteen kids and laugh and smile and not die i won't die i won't i refuse i'll win i'll win i'll win i swear it. 

She flies through the door and tunnels into me, clinging to my middle and almost knocking the wind out of me. I wrap my arms around her curly head and bury my head into her hair - my Artemis, my sister, my best friend. I can feel her shaking, holding back the fury that will surely soon spill from every opening and crevice and pore in her body. If it were her, I'd be exactly the same.

"Do me proud" she says oh arty i have always tried to make you proud not dad not even mom just you always you there's a hundred thousand people in this world and the only person i'd run or climb or jump or laugh or cry or hurt or kill for is you and I smile, refusing to let go. Not 'we', for my parents have always been disconnected from us. Just her. "Only you" I reply  with a smile and break away to look at her.

She breaks my heart, but I'll be okay. i'll be okay i'll always be okay the sun is up and i'm smiling and ive always been okay we've always been okay like two peas in a pod but just two girls in a house not a pod because we're not green we're pale faces when the fine china hits the wall and green when we walk past happy families and red-faced when we're arguing but we're okay. I tell her too, "I'll be back soon enough. You know that. They'll love my cartwheels, even if you don't."

Seeing my sister cry is a phenomenon I haven't seen in years, but as she laughs at my comments my heart swells. "Don't fall off the stage" she hiccups and our laughter fills the room they can't take this away from us they might take me away for a little while but i'll be back and our laughter will swim out of the victors village and through the district and right back home again twisting and turning and tumbling like my cartwheels and maybe our parents will learn to love and laugh again god knows we try and I smile, tilting her head up.

"Chin up Chautin" I laugh, our Father's words sweeter in my mouth than they ever were in his. "I'll be back. You know I will."

"Yeah," she says, stiffening her posture. Unclipping our necklaces we drape them over each-other's heads when i turned twelve we made a promise to do this if our names were ever called and her arrow-heart would fall across my chest and my pawprint would fall across hers so we'd never really leave if our hearts were still on chains and my fingers find the cool metal, entangling it in my hands. A Peacekeeper knocks on the door and the old Artemis appears, blunt and brash and hardened steel.  I kiss my lionheart on the head and let her go.

There's no need to tell her to be brave. She already is.

"I love you!"

Instead, I tell her that.

But she already knows.

if you must wait
wait for them here in my arms as i shake
if you must weep
do it right here in my bed as i sleep

if you must leave
leave as though fire burns under your feet
if you must speak
speak every word as though it were unique

if you must live, darling one, just live