count your losses, wars, and fears; duncan

A divided household is only good as such when the chasm’s edges are not jagged.

Cody was a careful keeper of all things distant, never hesitating to expand the space between us when so offered the opportunity. I became so afraid of what I anticipated to be said that I learned to not speak unless spoken to. The only exception to this rule were the nights he would spend with Imogen Tarver, for then the house was left to Tweed and I and our unspoken promises etched into the walls.

I used to fear waking up to find the space she had occupied as vacant. After all, we had met in a back alley with our allegiances made with fingers crossed behind our backs. We stepped over borders and made treaties with the opposing nations of our minds to preserve key interests and resources. But like every traditional story, our strategy did not account for the dilemma of developing a feeling that ran deeper than mutual relations of a relationship dedicated to the strict outlines of business.

When she promised me that she would not leave my bones to fight the cold of winter alone, I found the wooden floors of this house to creak with a softer tone. I had made the premature judgment that safety was something humans could claim, but Elverum Troshaldr’s name becoming synonymous with the title of District Eight Male of the Sixty-Ninth Games stalled the lingering god complex in my veins.

“He won’t die, Tweed. You have to promise me he won’t.”

I discovered that she refused to make promises she was not absolutely sure she could defend to the extent of her own death.

I watched the last days of his life longer than I had watched those of Owen Bowers-Fox. Tweed would sit beside me for hours on end, insist that I eat or sleep or even get up and move for my own sake, but I knew that a second missed was a second gone and it only took one single second to lose it all.

The one time my body did give way to the temptation of sleep, I could not forgive myself for the next eight hours. I could not find the excuse for why I had deserved to rest when he was forced to do just the opposite— my life here was now luxury; my basic functions nothing more than my faults.

I had just found my own remorse to be enough the moment his cannon sounded.

When Owen died, I had felt nothing more than fear of Cody Bowers-Fox settle in the pit of my stomach, but Elverum’s death settled as something hollow. I watched the television screen until Tweed turned it off, but the sight of his blood had long etched its way into my memory as I stared blankly at the static, “We sailed boats together.”

--

To this day, his sister has never forgiven me, and I do not hold this against her.

I only visit his grave at night, so that she cannot be offended by my trivial actions that have never once brought her brother back and never again will. Standing now by nothing more than starlight and my own dimming perseverance, I cannot commit the crime of laying my hand against his tombstone.

Seldom spoken but often said— isn’t this what is to define a true friend?

“You always spoke your mind, Elverum.”

When we learn what it feels like to lose what we are supposed to love time and time again, why does it seem that the pain begins to subside? Is it simply that we learn how to handle the grief, or does the lack of an ache in my bones stem from death’s own hand weakening? Our family and those close enough to be called such had begun a tradition of having our name be heard publicly by one means only: being called in the same way my own had been prior to the Sixty-Seventh. Bowers-Fox, Troshaldr, Bowers— only one year we had been allowed to try our hand at what it meant to watch someone else lose what they loved.

How strange it had been to watch the ordeal from the other side of the glass.

Resumed with Elverum and Noah’s death the coming days were questions of likelihood and probability that no one dared to answer truthfully. Weight placed in names— to say that we had removed ourselves from the equation would be a lie no one was quite brave enough to tell. We still had enough traces on the family line to safely nestle ourselves in harm’s way.

When Cody Bowers-Fox’s name had been called, I was grateful that our family was for once safe from the possibility of dealing with loss.

The only way that we would be forced to grieve now was if he managed to come back in anything other than a casket.

But though my brother may have as outspoken as they came, he was a follower of every tradition set before his path, for he died before anyone could truly get concerned about setting up a room for his return.

I did not even watch his death.

Part of this was due to the fact that I knew he was destined to be dead before twenty-five and I had been simply watching him burn out since. He lost the part of his mind that made the world something other than fact, and when the world turns that black and white you’ll draw your own blood in an attempt to see color.

He was simply trying to see the world burn red.

I knew Cody Bowers-Fox better than most and when given consolation in public space I let the name linger in my mouth like a foreign language. Cody Bowers-Fox had not only shared my blood; he had attempted to spill it as well.

In the literal sense the worst he had thrown was a punch that left an eye black for a day or so, but in every sense of soul and mind he had murdered me so many times my body could no longer be distinguished.

--

For this reason, I had requested that his tombstone be left blank.

The puzzling look I had received was not met by any perceivable regret from my end. With careful hands they handed me a smooth stone, as plain and unrecognizable as the standard casket in which he would return home in just hours later.

The man had not even asked me to pay.

Perhaps it was because he had seen me in here before.

We did not hold his funeral because we felt that attendance would be too slim. Instead, we took the task upon ourselves, only to be joined by Imogen Tarver in the few seconds before covering the last visible piece of outer wood.

I never found it necessary to ask her if she had loved him.

Standing now at a distance that was at least fifty feet, I dared not venture any closer to the unmarked grave. I suppose that illogically, I was afraid of Cody Bowers-Fox coming back from death to place the fault on my shoulders one final time.

Logically, I knew that he would be right.

“You were hardly human, Cody Bowers-Fox.”

I wake up twice a night to make sure she is still breathing.

I have lost two brothers, a cousin, a close friend, and now a son to whatever lies beyond human reasoning, so what logic lies in believing that she will not be taken from me as well?

The promise made that first evening we met in the alley— (“I will always protect you.”) now seems more of a hope I wish to one day fulfill rather than a duty I was confident could be carried out. I am terrified that if I reach out and touch her— press my hand to her back to feel her body shift with each passing breath— she will be gone with the morning sun.

However, I am no longer afraid that she will leave by choice of her own, and I suppose that is what terrifies me even more.

So long ago it seemed that she might disappear because of her nature, of the way she was raised or genetics or whatever you wished to chalk it up to on the given day. And I may not be a man of much superstition, but now I am afraid that my blood, mind, and heart are carrying around some greater weight that is too much of a burden for any other person to bear.

I do not wish to hear her bones snap under the weight of my well-deserved guilt.

Turning carefully as though not to wake her, I always listen for the sound of her chest rising and falling and only cease holding my own breath when the sound of hers reaches my ear. Seeing nothing through the dark of the room leaves a sense of innocence and ignorance— to be one and the same, I suppose— hovering above us like moonlit cloud cover.

She is the last light that was still flickering, and I could not imagine a world in which I was left completely in the dark.

--

Tonight, I wake up to check for her presence, but my hand does not find its way to rest against her spine. I stay silent, listening for her breath through the dark and hoping that for once she had awakened along with me.

But there is no reply through the dark of night, and so I sit up and reach blindly towards the space she is supposed to be occupying.

Nothing.

My body attempting to lock itself to this fixed point in an attempt to prevent discovering the worst case scenario, I force myself from the bed and out into the hall.

Still dark; still terrified; still gone.

The light in the den shines bright enough to bring me back to consciousness, and I stumble through the doorway dazed and unware of any immediate presence in the room. When my mind and eyes have recalibrated and I am able to focus on one spot for more than a simple second at a time, I find her pressed into the corner of the couch. Her eyes focused on nothing and nowhere she does not seem to notice my entrance.

I think for a moment she is gone too.

Stepping quietly, as if not to frighten a watching deer or awaken a sleeping baby I bring myself to kneel in front of her. I do not speak, but simply reach out and run my thumb along her jaw— mostly for my own reassurance that she is still I am still we are still

Here.

I cannot convince myself that she is.

When she does not move under my touch, I sink onto the couch beside her, pulling her into my arms when she does not attempt to keep me away. I am still half convinced I am holding onto an apparition; that when I awake she will either be in bed beside me or she will be gone entirely.

“I am so, so sorry, Tweed.”

If there was a god, would it be his apology that raised the dead?