[74th] The Reaping - District Four

M  O  R  D  E  C  A  I

His head breaks the surface and he draws air into his lungs as smooth as an artist drawing a line down the middle of their canvas. The sun is not yet up but it will be soon. the sky is a ominous blue, a warning for the day ahead. It's too dark but light enough. It's always light enough now.

Mordecai stands in the shallows, waves breaking his ankles into splintering echoes of a cold sort of pain. His chest heaves from the swim he's just had but in a good way, a strong way. The air that leaves him is controlled, thought out. It isn't stolen from him, taken like before when the fists of the men that had held him for three years would find the softness of his belly and push all the air out at once, over and over again.

He bends over, resting his hands on his knees to stretch himself out and let his lungs catch up with him. The sun is hesitant on the rooftops of Four and Mordecai can feel a dawning warmth on the back of his neck. He lives for the sunrise. The feeling of sand underneath his feet and the ragged way that the salt of the sea drags at the grooves in his skin are sensations that had made him ache in longing for three long years when he had been hidden away back in the beneath, in the sewers beneath the canals.

It's been six months since Tobias found him and Cai still can barely remember how to speak.

The nightmares are fierce, hot like fire on his skin, they make him sweat. He sweats through his pajamas and drenches his bed in the stench of his fear until he becomes an ocean. He dreams of the men coming back for him as they promised when they let him go. He dreams of them coming to his house and stealing away his brother Tobias to cut off his toes and put scars in his skin and he can barely bear the thought of it. Sleep doesn't come easy anymore, it hasn't for a long time. Where pain used to make his eyes roll back and darkness take his senses, it's no longer constant. There's nothing to force sleep on him anymore.

He opts out.

Mordecai slips out the window instead, bare feet searching for purchase on a quietly eroding roof. He waits to hear the sounds of Tobias asleep in the other room and then he goes hunting. Three years gone but he still remembers the way the roads in Four toss together, always heading to a certain point, a current that drags everything it touches towards the ocean.

She glistens at night with the moon kissing the tips of her waves and Mordecai knows that she's been waiting for him, always waiting for so many years.

He never knew that love could be between a boy and the sea until the taste of her had been cut off, the barkeep calling out last drinks for the night.

He looks up and there is a figure on the shore, knees drawn to his chest, still and waiting. Still waiting. Tobias is still waiting for him. Mordecai steps forward, towards his little brother. He knows as sure as anything that he'd have died if it weren't for him. If he hadn't had a Tobias to go home to, there'd have been nothing to keep him going. His toes curl up in the sand as he hits the shore and a grin stretches it's way across his lips, mirroring the sunrise. "Tobias," says Mordecai, "you found me."

He reminds him nearly every day, sometimes during the night too when Tobias wakes up in tears, standing in Cai's doorframe, trying to figure out if his brother was really there or not. "You found me Tobi," Cai would say, brushing his little brother's hair back, "It's okay now."

His brother shakes his head and hands Mordecai a birthday present that had been waiting for him when he got home. Cai takes it and slips it into his pocket, the vial of white sand a comforting weight. When he'd unwrapped it six months ago, Mordecai had tried to eat it, his addled brain unable to make sense of the gift. Now it is his most precious possession.

"Cai, your shoes," Tobias says, a note of something other than admiration in his voice. There's no time to go home before the reaping to get them. Cai looks down at his feet, counting all eight of his toes. He shrugs after a moment, "It'll be ok."

His brother sighs, tired. Always tired. Cai knows it's his fault.

Tobias takes his hand to lead him towards the Games Square and Cai wonders when it was that he became the younger brother and Tobias surpassed him. Somewhere in the three years of his disappearance, his carefree little brother aged ten years. He'd set out to protect him but hadn't.

The district wakes up around them as they walk and Mordecai notices the sun climbing steadily faster over the heads of the buildings. The sun paints lines across the back of Tobias' head and some strange thing stirs inside of Mordecai's chest. He loves his brother. Sometimes he wishes the ocean would swallow him up and never spit him out but he loves his brother and that is a strange thing. Wishing to be dead but loving someone, it's a bearable pain.

He has to stop for a moment, the thing in his leg that twinges every morning around the same time making walking too difficult. Tobias waits patiently but Mordecai feels a strange sort of shame anyway. When he went away, he was Tobias' older brother, an athlete, a career. Now he is a small crippled thing in constant pain and fear.

He smiles at Tobias and they continue walking. People come to join them, all of them swirling into the same spot, their district an eddy.

When they reach the square, Cai squeezes his brother's hand. "It'll be okay Tobias," he whispers softly.

"I'll see you after," his brother answers.

But something is strange in the air between them.

Mordecai remembers how his little brother used to look at him as if he'd invented sunlight. It had changed Often enough now that Cai only ever feels like a burden, a weight on Tobi's shoulders.

He was a weight on both of their shoulders.

It's been three years since Mordecai went to a reaping, since he felt the tension in the air, the calm before a storm. He'd known back then what he'd do if Tobias was ever reaped. He wouldn't have hesitated to volunteer himself for his little brother. He'd proven it that afternoon three years ago when the men had tried to take Tobias and he'd forced all their attention on him.

Now he still knew he'd do the same.

Tobias knew an older brother who had been a hero, he had returned to him much less. It was awkward between them now. The caretaker had become the one to be taken care of.

Mordecai watches as the escort steps onto the stage, a smile pasted across his lips, almost as painfully fake and happy as Tobias' smile had become since his older brother had returned home a shell.

Cai looks down at his missing his toes, at the scars on his bare feet. He thinks about two nights ago when he peed his bed in fear because he thought he saw the men outside, coming back for him. It wasn't fair for him to let another boy be broken when is perfectly destroyed already.

He looks up and sees the back of Tobias' head. He thinks about how much he loves him, how much he wants him to be happy.

He knows that if he sticks around, Tobias will spend the rest of his life taking care of him.

Names are called and Mordecai ignores them. He steps forward, resting a hand on Tobias' shoulder as he passes, squeezing gently. He wants to tell him that it will be ok, but maybe Tobias has always been right when he says it isn't.

He lets go of his brothers shoulder and walks through the quiet crowd, bare feet, missing toes and all taking him to the stage.

He reaches the mic and none of them remember him, the boy who disappeared for three years.

He finds Tobias' face in the crowd, blank and uncomprehending.

"We have to take care of each other," he whispers into the mic.

"It's important."