polarized ◀ denny&nobody ▶

Sleeping was easier that night, the word reaping sewn into the pale of his fourteen year old forearm. He was curled into his own stomach, moons and stars drawings on his skin with sharpie under strings of fairy lights - reaping nights were the easiest because he knew at least for once he'd be able to survive one thing thrown at him. Spider fingers drew names out of crystal jars, like fortune tellers spewing dreams of ruin, and Denny would stand smiling standing between Trylle and Maddox because he didn't love them, and they didn't love him like they loved glory. Even if he was reaped, destiny couldn't touch him without a selfish volunteer. 

And he smiled at the thought of laughing in fate's face because for a fourteen-year old with a fear of the dark and spiders and copper pans and teeth and pink roses specifically, Denny's never really had the chance. And it wasn't his name that day, a different career boy from a career family and Scout Fray but she wasn't him - Kaiser, Maddox, Kellan, Leon, he counted on slender fingers. He didn't get his chance to laugh, but he still smiled as Scout took the stage because at least that's one fear gone. 

("You're not needed.")

Of course, he was scared of Scout. She had sharp teeth and sharper tongue and she ripped the original polaroid Denny had taken of her, and he smiled as she took the stage and he took out a camera and snapped another one of her. Trylle shouted something irrelevant as he pressed felt to the developing photo, writing "take that fears," because it was the only thing he could conquer today as the reaping ended and the rest of them went home without Scout. 

Somewhere under the surface, Denny felt bad for not feeling bad - Scout wanted to die. Or she wanted to win bad enough, but Denny held hands with her polaroid as they walked back and she still scared him through clenched teeth in the photo while the rest of the boys laughed. He only felt he was like them because they could all say they were still alive, but he seemed to be the only one proud to be.

When they got home, he pinned the polaroid in the closet along between the one of a dead snake he found in the back yard with Styx and then the shot of a lake near the gym - he was scared of water - so that when he slept he could close the door and forget she was ever there. There were memories he didn't like to remember, but he didn't want to forget about either.

And after sliding the door shut, he grabbed his bag again and left the house that never stopped; he always has the bag on him, loose with a polaroid camera and a book to pin memories until he got home. Scout he wrote on his arm underneath fading stars and moons from a night ago, and he grabbed his bicycle leaving the house behind, his stomach churning.

Of them all, forgetting was the scariest being to him. 

Cricket legs and wooden axes and murky water and the thought of space eating away at him, he counted on thin fingers, they sat in the closet of his mind while he rode down gravel paths to wander like wanderers do. He'd rather box with a six-headed giant fire ant than forget Scout, even if she scared him. In a single timeline, he was nothing but a forgotten memory too, the other Frays never counting him and he never really counted himself either with them. But for people he never met, he never had a chance to hold hands with his parents or even learn their names, and fate knew this as well as he did. 

His parents didn't even know his name at this point. 

Hitting the bridge, he crashed the cycle against the hard rock as he ran into it like it was the arms of old friends - it was a small thing. Just a narrow walkway in the south of district one over a lake that could be jumped over but it was home for him, the homiest home he even could home and he ran his hands against the concrete of the bridge as he slouched under it. It was a forgotten old thing in a forest, the walkway and himself. 

Denny slid down and brought his knees to his face, his backpack sitting next to him vertical, the moons and stars still faded on his arms. ("You're not needed,") he smiled. 

"Fate always forgets about me, anyways."

table inspired by rook