blitz; sit and wait \\ Mylee

It’s strange to stand in front of someone who’s seen my brother more recently than I have.

I don’t really like the feeling—or lack of—that it leaves hanging in my chest, and it takes a kick in the shin from Cody and a pinch on the shoulder to keep it from materializing into sobs and ragged breaths.

I close my eyes anyway, when his face comes on the screen.

But it’s the sound of another voice, one less automated yet oh so broken, that causes them to open again, and I gaze blankly at Leon Krigel until he speaks my brother’s name.

“Owen Bowers-Fox was—”

Then it’s salt in a wound again, tears shedding that promised not to because until his name was actually breathed—pushed into the air we inhaled—this had all been some sort of fanatical, something that awakens nightmares and steals sleep.

But this is no nightmare because I cannot wake up, and from the desperate look in Leon Krigel’s eyes, I know he cannot either.

And with the same, shaking steps that I climbed the stage with that morning of the 67th reaping, I walk back into the justice building, partially to seek out the comfort in a place where there was none and partially to spare myself from the terror that was Cody, and certainly he played the role well.

I follow suit as I see Leon Krigel’s frame pressed to the wall, sinking down until my hands clasp firmly in front of my knees, studying his face for a moment before speaking. And when I do finally speak some might call it irrational or poorly timed but he was already broken so what more harm could I do?

“Did you really love my brother?”

No, I can’t address him by name, because then it’d only be real.

♢♢♢