where they once stood {barnabas and asa}

I'm good at this. Pretending. I know how to play with the food on my plate and take a couple of bites, make it look like I'm eating it. I know how to lift the fork up to my lips and then to lower it, letting the food fall back to the plate. It's all a show, one I'm good at. I don't have to perform it here, there are no parents watching to make sure I'm well fed. I guess they don't want us dropping from starvation before the games. Our escort seems very interested in what I'm eating, too interested. I smile, lips curling back bright and big as I drop a piece of meat into the napkin on my lap. I raise a glass, toasting them, appearing to be every bit the comfortable career that I'm meant to be, literally dying on the inside.

I need a cigarette badly. There aren't many to be found here. I asked an Avox for a pack and she brought me two. I've got one left but I'm trying to ration it. I know I'm going to want one before I enter the arena.

Eating is like a game. You try to figure out the smallest amount you can eat before someone asks if you're feeling alright. Once that happens, you can take the option they've given you to excuse yourself, or you can smile and eat another bite. You have the option of telling them to buzz off too but I can't do that, I'm not really the type. If someone confronts me I'm more the type to want to curl up into a ball and roll away. It's the reason I don't make a good career, I'm terrible at confrontation.

Kids eat up and down the long table, some of them smiling, laughing as if they aren't planning on murdering each other the first chance they get. I'm used to being a wallflower, the one unnoticed in any situation. My career status gives me a certain amount of popularity however. I am surrounded by people, all interested in what I have to say but I have nothing to say at all, I never do. I'm speechless as always. I smile at their jokes so that they'll consider killing me last. I sit here and pretend to eat because if I don't, my survival rate goes down. I can't die first. My father will hate me more than he does.

I have to pretend, I always have to pretend.

Weakness sits on my tongue, heavy and forlorn and the room spins. I shouldn't be drinking the glass of wine they have given us with the welcome dinner, there are far too many calories and my stomach is far too empty but the way the room is tilting is nearly pleasant. It makes this far more bearable. I can't stop sipping the wine an the Avox that stands behind me won't stop filling it. I'm going to be sick soon. The air is getting too warm, it's too crowded here, too many people calling my name, trying to talk to me, this doesn't happen often. I don't like crowds very much, they make me feel sick, like I can't breath at all, I need air or some water, or to just get out of here. All three.

I lean back in my chair, a slender hand reaching up to rest against my eyes, my breath quickening as I try to catch up with myself. Hunger claws at me and now it doesn't matter how much I weigh or how much muscle I don't gain. In a week I will be dead and I won't care anymore. I want to eat but the thought of it makes me sick. I can't, I've gone so long being afraid of food that I just can't. It's vicious.

”You really need to keep your strength up.”

The voice comes to the side and above. I lift my fingers away from my eyes, a question rising in them, wondering who this boy is who has stood himself beside my chair. It's that boy, Barnabas. I noticed him. I noticed all of the boys, but I'm a sucker for cute boys, and there's a quality to the way he walks that is sweet. I watched him walk up to the stage and accept. I watched all of them do it. I wanted to see whom I would be killed by.

Whatever he is, he's an escape.

I reach out, hand grabbing loosely at his shirt. "....p-p-please," I croak, trying to get the words out past my dry mouth, "Can we get out of here, I'm going to be sick."

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g

Bile rises in my throat; I gag, slapping a hand to my mouth to stop anything from coming out. It won't look good if I throw up in front of everyone here. The lights and doors are spinning round and around, blinding me. I swallow the acid down before it can come out but it makes me feel sick, like I'm fourteen years old again and Heracles is trying his poisons out on me. I'd get sick a lot then, spending nights wrapped around the toilet, shivering despite the heat. There was a night where the room spun so badly that I remember an oxygen mask and a hospital bed, lights flashing above me as someone held my hand, telling me to just hold on. They were going to make me better and then they'd get me home, safe and sound. The testing stopped after that even though no one had told Heracles off after that. My district operates on the ideology that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I feel a hand wrap around my wrist, pulling me forwards and up. I stumble into a body, the boy's I think. My eyes are muffled, my hearing blurred. The laughter of my fellow tributes burrows it's way into my skull, slipping down into my ribcage. I laugh weakly too, remembering my duty. I have to fit in so that they don't kill me, so that they think me strong and terrifying too. My arm is around the shoulder of the boy and despite my taller stature I can barely support myself. My legs have almost given out. They're tired, like me. We're so tired. I am not used to this much interaction, this much stress.

I'm used to being alone, it's what I like best, when it's quiet. It's too much, this is too much.

His hair smells like the mornings when frost has tipped the grass and the air is crisp with it. Autumn mornings. He's an Autumn morning. His hands are tough, callused. Not like mine, not like the calluses on mine. Mine are rough from holding the bow and the arrows that accompany it. Mine are rough from clenching an ink pen so tightly that it's left me ragged. His are different callused.

He says things that I don't quite hear, I dip my head so that I don't have to look at anyone anymore, so that they don't see how weak I am. they can't know how truly weak I am, how useless I am. They have to think I'm strong so my father will be proud.

The way he holds me stretches the scar that crosses my back, that makes it's way over my shoulder like the arm of a lover. A gift from my brother. He tried to cut me open once. I wondered why my mother never took me away after that, why she left me alone with my father and brother. Why she didn't love me enough. Then I remember why. I always remember why. The scar itches, the skin puckered and stretched around the cavernous ridges of it. It brings a grimace to my lips, I bare my teeth to the carpet that we pass over. It does not offer me one in return.

Then we are past the carpet and the doors out to the balcony are swinging open and the wind is blasting me in the face, air that is fresh, untested by many mouths before me forces it's way into my lungs. I cough, stumbling forwards as Barnabas releases me, sucking in huge mouthfuls of air as if it will heal me. My hand finds the barrier keeping me from tumbling over the edge onto the cement pavement far below and I clutch it like it's the only thing keeping me afloat.

I stay there awhile, my knuckles going white from holding onto the railing so hard. For a moment I think that I really am going to be sick but it doesn't come. All that's in there is wine and a few meager mouthfuls of food. There's barely anything left to give.

the sun sets in front of us, it is a ball of angry red furry slowly crashing down on the buildings that seem to spiral up and up into the heavens. They glint violently in the light, refracting the rays onto the buildings across and beside them. It is a strange, foreign beauty. District Two does not have buildings so tall. It is unheard of. Buildings like these are reserved for the gods.

"Idon'twanttobehereeither," I say, voice speeding up the way that it does when I'm feeling shy. I mumble too much my father says. I'm too quiet for a career, I should be proud and stand tall. I shut my eyes and press my forehead against the cool surface of the railing. It's refreshing in comparison to my skin. I stay there for a moment, bent and withered like a man at the end of his life. I am nearing the end of mine. I suppose it is an appropriate simile.

"....I..." I try, but my lips struggle against the words, knowing that they aren't very manly, not very good for a career to say. My mouth is dry again, the way it gets when I have to talk to strangers. There have been far too many strangers today, far too many new faces, far too much noise. "...I-I...I just, I don't, I don'tlikecrowdsverymuch."

I turn my head slightly, still keeping it against the railing but making it so that I can face him. I offer him a watery smile, trying to remain as calm as I can but it's difficult, the world is being stubborn, continuing to swim angrily. "Th....anks," I mumble, truly grateful. the fresh air is already making me feel better and I couldn't have even left my chair without him. "Barnabas? Right?"

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g

Maybe he didn't like his name. That was the only way to explain why he flinched so visibly when I said it. Or maybe he just doesn't like me saying it, I can understand that. I have experience with that. Kids can be cruel and surprisingly enough, the mental capacities of careers can understand the logic behind not only physical abuse but mental abuse as well. I like his name, it suits him. I mouth it, turning my face away first, disguising the movement of my lips by twisting and turning against the railing so that my back is against the glass panes and I am sliding down them to face the closed balcony doors. In the time that it took to do so, I was able to practice it three times. It's a nice name, it's different and it has three syllables. My name has two syllables. It takes a shorter amount of time to yell it across a house, a shorter amount of time to say, a shorter amount of time to have to bother remembering.

Barnabas is memorable. People will remember his name. I will remember his name. I've practiced it at least three times now. Four times.

It comes to my attention that I'm either having a mental breakdown on a random balcony in the Capitol with a strange boy intent on saving my life or I've finally gone insane. I'd like to go with option two, only because it's so much easier to explain.

He takes my hand, and I wonder if it's to feel my pulse again. I know it's slower than it should be. I can hear it in the back of my head sometimes, thumping away slowly, like the footsteps of a giant, deep in thought. I'm waiting for the moment when it just stops thumping and I'll be left hanging, listening for the next thud but it will never come. I would live in quiet suspense then, always so patient. I could wait for a century or two. Maybe forever.

I watch, mute as his fingers wrap around mine. His are strong, sturdy, slightly tan. Mine look like those of a wraith. I wonder when it was that I became so pale, when it was that I started to become so very transparent. I did this to myself. The thought is comforting.

"I meant it, you have to take care of yourself, Asa.”

I stare at him, slightly confused. He does not look at me, but past me, as if I am far away and he's speaking to me on the telephone. My mother says that sometimes, before she starts to put the tea mugs away and I know that it's my cue to leave. That phrase is a throw away phrase, one my Mother used to tell me that she knew what a Mother was meant to say to her son. She never told me she loved me though so I never really believed her. For a long time I believed that she was meant to take care of me, that one day she would look at me, would see what I'd become and she'd finally apologize for leaving all those years ago but she never did and I waited, but she never did. It's a throw away phrase for a throw away boy.

"You do it, or I will."

I don't understand his game, what his tactic is. It doesn't make much sense politically to make such a threat. In fact, it's the complete opposite of what a threat should be. I look away for a minute, trying to calculate what he means and my vision follows at a leisurely pace, the balcony sliding along beneath my gaze as I look away from the boy who has...I don't know what he has done. This is something that has never happened before. No one has ever said such a thing to me, threatened me with kindness.

Besides, I'm fine. I don't need it. I don't need to look like a weakling because I already am one. I don't need anyone to look after me. It's been seventeen years of being alone and I've made it this far, I've survived long enough to die and that's all I had to do. That's all I've got to do to make my father proud. If I can just hold on for one more week.

"Why?"

It takes a few seconds for me to realize that I have said the word myself. This is unprecedented. No words have ever escaped my lips so easily before. The gatekeepers did not even see the question coming, it slipped past their careful guard before they could lock my lips.

"W-why, why do you, whydoyoueven, why do you care?"

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g

His answer is not enough for me. It's a lie anyway, no one cares that much about anyone to put the lives of others before their own. I know from experience. Love is a fable, romanticized through the ages and doesn't really exist, not in Two, not anywhere. Love was equivalent to training. To show your parents love you trained. Your parents showed you their love by training you. That was it, how it went. Once I had thought that my mother had loved me but it wasn't true. She'd left me with my father and brother after all. She was like everyone else, self invested and conventionally removed. I see that now. I am a career raised by careers and I know this, everyone knows this, Barnabas had to know this too.

I don't speak, with no words ever at hand I often lose the will to. Instead, I study the hands that rest loosely in my lap. He was so interested in my hands, the way he pressed his fingers against mine. his hands had been warm, soothing. Mine are terminally cold, I can never warm them. They are often numb. They are pale too, it is because I am not feeling well. It's the excuse I often use. I am often not feeling well I suppose.

I've seen of course what I am becoming in the mirror. I choose to ignore it because the more weight I lose the happier my father is and the happier my father is, the more he leaves me alone. The more Heracles stays away, the more that woman my father married stays silent, the more my mother says she worries for me. "You're looking sick Asa, you need to eat more." she'd always say it but never feed me. She was like that, full of caring words with none of the care. I'm sorry that I ever believed that she even cared at all.

This kid can't convince me that he does.

He doesn't though.

He's made himself into a martyr I suppose, he thinks that if he fixes enough poor souls then maybe he'll have lived a life worth living. I can see it in the way he looks at me, like I'm his mother's favourite piece of china and he's just smashed me to smithereens.

He doesn't know the fact that I have been broken over and over and put back together so many times that I've lost count. One touch from him isn't going to make it any better or any worse. Believing that it's his job to take care of me just because he thinks he's going to die turns me into a project. I don't want to be just a project. I'm a human being.

His eyes are sad too. I see it when I look up from my hands. He's got a mouth that smiles but eyes that don't really match. I see it a lot where I come from, people pretending that life isn't really shit. I know it too, that's what I do when anybody cares to look my way. They don't often, I'm swept under the rug a lot, the new boy at school and far too quiet I barely stand out when I stand against the quiet wallpaper that I stand against, always at the back of the class.

Barnabas looks healthy but he's not.

I can see it in the way he stands.

I want to tell him that I wouldn't mind it. Him taking care of me. I'm a romantic at heart and the idea of someone caring enough to want to help me makes my chest heavy but I haven't made it this far by trusting people to stay by my side. I'm forgettable. People forget about me and I'm used to it.

I don't know why he noticed me from across the room in the first place. Sometimes when I glance towards him I see the traces of fear leaving his eyes, like he's trying to tame a tiger. I know that I have a fear factor simply because of my career status. If only they knew what a sad excuse for a beast I really was.

Maybe we're more similar than he seems to believe.

He must think that no one can see that pain but I have lived a life of so much empathy that the enormity of it is staring me right in the face.

I am scared, alone, half-mad with fear and I have been trained to be here, how must he feel?

"Then....thenthen....then I, I will take care of...of you," I say, voice as firm as I can make it. My body may be weak but my mind is sharp, strong. I am a watcher, a background noise. "Be-because, you don't."

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g

It is odd to watch the emotions that flow so freely across his face. I have been raised in a District that does not approve of feeling of any kind, to see it so openly is odd. Again I wonder what it must be like to live in a place other than Two. I wonder if it is possible to lead happy lives, if that concept has ever been accomplished somewhere else. Somehow it makes me feel bitter. With no competition in our lives it is possible that my brother and I might have gotten along, my father would not have been so intent upon our deaths. The thought that life could be different is nearly insane but there is something so sweet about the idea, I ache to hold onto it.

He apologizes.

I do not understand why. In my world apologies are useless, you either have meant what you have done or the other person should not be so weak as to be offended. A career never apologized, it was something my father had to get beaten out of me. I can barely form the words needed now without cringing. He's cringing already, tears rolling down his cheeks and I don't know what I have done this time to put him off.

I just shouldn't try to make friends, something always goes wrong and it's often my fault. 'you're too shy Asa, you're too weak, too fat, too sad, too ugly, too clumsy...' and the list goes on and on. The truth must be that I'm a plague upon humanity, a mutation, a virus. I can't get anything right at all.

I shut my eyes against his tears and the spinning balcony, focusing on the feeling of nausea that is there in the back of my head still. Leaning my head back, I try to ignore his tears and his apologies, knowing now that friendship is impossible. My father creeps through the back of my skull, shaking his head. He would want me to find stronger friends anyway, that look more capable of wielding a weapon, not those that freak out at the idea of anyone wanting to car-

Oh.

He's like me.

Maybe we're not exactly the same, I doubt he's led the same life as me but we're the very same none-the-less. We want to be cared for, we crave it but anytime someone comes close, we tuck our tails in and we run because it's scary. I know this well because even the thought of someone wanting to take care of me nearly made me sneer in disbelief.

I understand now.

I open my eyes and look at Barnabas Stroud, who is still freaking out. This is the part where I should try to soothe him, where I should tell him that it's alright. It's not really my place to do so. Who would listen to a guy like me anyway? I'm just some weakling from District Two, worth nothing except the glorious death I will succeed in for my father. That's what he's wanted this entire time I suspect, me to die in the games so that he can finally think of me with pride, so that he can finally learn to love his second son, his weakling.

I can't move, I can't speak because I am afraid.

What words could I offer Barnabas that someone better than me hasn't already?

Why should he care what I have to say to him.

He doesn't care Asa, why would he want to listen to the words of a guy like you?

He just looks so sad and so frightened I want to comfort him but I am just me and I've never had something worthwhile to say anyway, no one has ever been interested in really listening to me. My tongue is too heavy and my lips take too long to shape the words, by the time I get the first one out the listener often loses patience.

I'm scared to speak, scared to make it worse. I don't want to be alone here, I'm so tired of being alone.

"Shhh," I make the sound, lips parting and tongue slightly pressed against the roof of my mouth. My fingers reach out again, catching on his shirt, curling around the hem, tugging him forward. "...I, Iamsorry," I softly say, eyes falling to stare at the balcony floor, too embarrassed, too shy to actually look at him. "..It's al-alright. You can take c-care of me if...if you want." I don't mutter the unspoken part, that I'm still going to help him too just because I know what it's like to feel alone.

"You don't have to....youdon'thavetobeafraid."

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g

We don't do hugging back home.

The last time anyone held me with affection I was five years old and sitting in my mother's lap, she had her arms around me, I felt safe and warm. I started training though and that was trained out of me, the ability to reach out and ask for the warmth of my mother's love. I don't remember how, I just know that by the time I was six, it didn't even occur to me to wrap my arms around her legs anymore. It wasn't proper, I was training to be a warrior and warriors don't need their moms.

It's been years.

His arms wrap around me and it's tight. I stiffen on instinct, arms beginning to push to perform the counter attack for a hold. I catch myself just in time, stilling in his grasp, putting my life in his hands. It is an uncomfortable feeling, it's terrifying actually. People don't touch me unless it's to give me pain, I'm waiting for it, for him to wrap his hands around my neck and squeeze all the air out of me. Maybe he has a knife concealed in his sleeve and it's about to go into my back.

I raise my hands up, the fingers curling in towards my palms, relaxed for now but ready to fight, ready to attempt to save myself from him.

Over his shoulder I can see movement from inside, people laughing, eating. They're drinking in there. We're going to be killing each other next week. Do they think about that too or do they believe that like me, we'll by dying by the dozens in the first five minutes. There is going to be no winning in this, the loser is the last one standing. We've been given a death sentence just for living and everyone is acting like it's normal. It is. It shouldn't be.

I don't want Barnabas to die.

I feel his fingers wrap themselves up in my shirt and slowly, hesitantly, I lower my head, resting it on the top of his.

He seems like a good person, better than me.

I allow my arms to wrap around him, one and then the other, first resting lightly on his back and then holding tighter in turn as I settle myself into the mechanics of the embrace. Shutting my eyes, I hold him tighter, knowing somehow that it's the right thing to do, that this is the way to give him comfort.

In a situation like this, I should be embarrassed, eager to get away. When other people come near me it scares me because other people are dangerous things. I know it because of the way that they have been treating me for my entire life. My childhood was unhappy, cold, painful. There was no warmth.

I feel safe here.

"Me too," I say, voice steady, "So ally with me then. Let's be afraid together."

My father would be screaming at me if he could hear what I've just done. I'm meant to ally with the Careers, as in the strongest people I can find. Barnabas is from Seven and it looks like he's never lifted a weapon up in his life, let alone stepped foot in a training center.

His strength is terrifying in it's height.

you a r e so
b r a v e and q u i e t
I forget
y o u are
s u f f e r i n g