You don't have to [hold your head up high] // Ele

She didn't know what she was doing back here, in the home that she had left nearly three years ago now. She ran her hand along the dusty table top of their kitchen table. The wood was pitted and old, it was antique passed down through the Earnest line for years and years. It wasn't because it meant anything, the table. It was because they were too poor to afford anything better. Her great grandfather had built it together with his grandad. If you reached around the sideboard you could feel their initials carved into the wood.

There in the corner was her mother's chair, a ball of wool and a half knit sweater still resting on the seat. It was probably meant to be for her father, the colour was his, a deep blue. It matched how his eyes were. On the opposite side of the room was the hearth and a neatly made bed beside the singular desk the home had. Her father had salvaged it from a rich family when she'd been nine and needed somewhere to do her homework. They'd been so proud of their daughter then, their genius.

She looked out the window that was above the kitchen sink and her gaze fell on empty fields. They would have been full of life once, at least if her little brother had anything to say about it. He'd never been as smart as her, never as quick. He'd known how to garden and make things grow. His smile had been like the sun and he'd been so warm that people had flocked to him. Nightshade was quite the opposite. Her smiles were cold, her eyes seemingly detached.

No one would flock to him now, he was colder than she was and long buried in the ground, left to rot and feed the plants that he had loved so much in life.

She left the house then and made her way out to the garden that he had always kept so neat and tidy. It was wild now, out of control. It needed the loving touch of someone who knew how to deal with plants, like Opal. Opal would never be convinced to come here, not again. Never again. The girl that her brother had married had become empty and devoid of everything.

With a soft sigh, she went back into the house and began to fill a bag with items. Some were just clothing items that she had been unable to take with her when she had first left the house, but a lot of it was the clothing Potato had worn when he was just small. His rattle went in her bag as well, along with the book she used to read to him when he was little. She took his little bowl and spoon, smiling softly at the careful way her mother had wrapped them up. Her mother had always saved everything, nothing had been wasted.

When she finished she left the house, locking the door carefully behind her. As of now she was the sole owner of this property. Perhaps she could find someone to work the land for her in order to gain some extra income. She couldn't see herself selling the place, despite herself she felt sentimental about it.

She walked swiftly down the drive, the next order of business being the churchyard where her family was buried. She couldn't visit her home and not her family. She had to check on the potato plant she had buried at Potato's grave too. She did not have a single green bone in her body but the priest said he'd keep an eye on it for her.

As she moved along the bag hit against her thigh and the rattle made a faint sound. It was odd but it made her eyes prickle with tears when nothing else had managed to as of yet. She could imagine it if she shut her eyes, her baby brother following her around, rattle in hand, giggling as he tripped over himself. It was odd to remember the memory so clearly, odder still to be living with a ghost. Sometimes she forgot that he was dead and sometimes the memory of watching him fall was so clear to her that it was all she could do to focus on anything else. She'd promised to protect him.

As she came over a rise in the road she saw a figure in the street that she barely recalled. He had grown a lot since they'd been in high school. She supposed that she had too. He was still recognizable, the District was too small for anyone to really be a stranger and they'd been in the same year. Her memory was too good to forget Damien Newton, older brother to Ari Newton, the boy who had volunteered in the sixty-sixth games.

Most might find this an opportunity to stop and have a chat but Nightshade was not most people. She hadn't come to spend time dwelling on the past or cry over a beer with an old acquaintance. She had a station back in One waiting for her, and a friend days away from giving birth to a very important child.

So she kept on walking forwards and past the boy taking his sad life out on the poor old dusty road.

It was true that Nightshade was not the sociable type, in fact most called her standoffish and cold. They weren't wrong when they said such things. It was true that she was not the type to greet someone or smile at strangers and that she was more likely to enjoy a good book than a good conversation. When she had been at school she had mostly kept to herself. She found the girls in her year too dimwitted and the boys to hold an intelligence quotient that was most likely less than a rock's. Most children in Eleven dropped out of school young in order to work the fields alongside their parents anyway, the land work was far more important than an education.

Nightshade had believed herself far smarter than all of them and had only really ever bothered speaking to her younger brother, finding everyone else to be dull. Needless to say she hadn't held many friendships whilst she had been growing up. In fact she had often gone unnoticed in class with her head buried in a book. She certainly wasn't popular, she was less than because she didn't very much care about said popularity. In her eyes, no one else mattered much.

That does not mean that she does not remember every last one of them and it certainly does not mean that she has not kept tabs on them. She's always had an odd habit of having to know everything about anyone and everyone. Her District has always been a special case, as if knowing about her neighbors would help her to protect them. Most of her graduating class has either passed away at this point or are pregnant with their first or second children. Some are neither. Some are in a constant state of grief due to their losses. She and one other are Peacekeepers.

AS the boy that she used to sit behind in maths nearly steps in front of her, she is surprised to find out that she does not mind this intrusion. Despite the fact that she is second-rate at beginning a proper conversation that is not about a mutilated body or a robbery, Nightshade is curious to know whether this boy has felt the same things that she is feeling now, how he deals with it.

In her case, she is not because it is too much to bear, the loss of everyone she loved and still does. Pretending to be strong has taken a toll on her these past months, it is evident in the way she stands so straight and tall, as if she is overcompensating for her grief.

She stops, bag coming to a halt against her body with a final thud. She waits a moment for the dust on the road to fully clear before responding. "We went to school together," she says, offering nothing else. It does not occur to her to offer him her name. She knows his. He should know her's. In Nightshade's world, poor memory does not exist.

It occurs to her that that small link may be insufficient for the Newton boy. She is uncertain as to whether his intellect had been good or not. He'd just been yelling at a road, she was categorizing him as below average as holding a conversation with an inanimate path seemed dim. "My brother just died in the games, like yours," she says, as if it is not a painful thing to speak of, as if the word 'brother' did not make her breathless with grief.

For some reason, his words make an impact. Perhaps it is because they are not the half-hearted emotions of someone who can not understand, perhaps because he does know what it is like to lose the little brother that you believed you would grow old with. She thinks of the winter nights they might have spent together, huddled beside the fire, laughing at the crows feet and sun-wrinkled skin they shared. Had life been different, kinder even, maybe that would have been their future. She wonders if Damien believed that too, that they would work their fields together, grow older, get married and have a house full of children.

That was the harder part.

The knowledge that he wouldn't ever have grey hairs or see another sunrise. The fact that he'd never plant the fields again or sing a song under his breath. He'd never smile that crooked grin at her again and he'd never kiss his wife or have grandchildren. He'd never toss a pillow at her head when she left the lights on too long at night or come home from the fields, covered in dirt and looking like a cat who's just had the cream. He'd never rest his chin on top of her head as she tried to study or get a swat on the back of the head for taking a cookie off of the tray too early. He'd never laugh again, he'd never cry, he'd never see snow again or make love or get arthritis or have wrinkled skin or a bad back or celebrate his ninetieth birthday.

He'd died at eighteen.

That was the hardest part.

He was still a child and he'd stay one.

Her had tightened around the strap of her bag and she bit her lip. His emotional response had opened up so many doors, things she didn't want to be reminded of, or think about. As a Peacekeeper, she'd had to renounce her family. Grieving for her brother had not been allowed. She was less a human being, more a tool for the government, a gun to be pointed and shot, nothing more, nothing less. Human emotion had to be pushed down and forgotten. She had not been allowed to feel this sorrow.

"Thank-you," she said, gazing across empty fields rather than looking at him straight on. It had nearly been a year now but the loss of her brother, the exact moment was so vivid. It was ingrained into her retina. "No, it really is not," she agreed, eyes flicking over the rows and rows of dirt as if if she looked everywhere, she might still find her brother out there. Sometimes she wanted to believe that he was just playing a trick on her, that they all were, that it really was just all for show as so many seemed to believe.

He was dead.

She hadn't put so much thought into that fact for a while. She was invested with Opal back in One, who was too sad, too far away to do much for herself. She had been working some pretty serious cases this year too, that took up a lot of her time and energy. She hadn't put much thought into her dead brother, had avoided his memory as much as possible actually. Being here, hearing those words somehow made the thought of him so intense that it ached. A gloved hand flew up to the place in her chest where her heart was meant to be.

Even the scent of him was strong here, her little brother.

"How can you stay here," she said, voice far away as her eyes looked over the fields, "Doesn't he haunt you."