artemus leto | four | resub

Hope was a many-splendoured, yet quite fickle thing.

I had always welcomed it when it came my way, a shooting star that gave me seconds to close my eyes and make a wish before it was done and gone, only a bright memory of when I had it right in front of me.

My sisters would think me dull, or ill in the head, if I said some of the things I thought of, if I named the things I was grateful for. The list would have included things most would shy away from, ranging from Perdita's... phase, to Calypso's anger, even my mother's breakdown a few months before. Not because I enjoyed watching them suffer. Not because I thought it was better when things were bad. But because of hope.

Hope that Perdita would pull through. Hope that Calypso would try to relax. Hope that Mom would start smoking again. (Terrible, I know, but she was truly a less-tense person back in the day.) Hope for help. Hope for better.

Yeah, they'd think me ill for sure.

I had always been a bit out of step with them, with the world, too, I guess. And, though it was not my proudest quality, one of the things I worked hardest for was conformity. Always a step behind, always working twice as hard to stay afloat. Longer hours training to keep up with Calypso, more time in front of the mirror trying to mimic Perdita's charm. Calypso had Dad's pride; Perdita had Mom's empathy. Brains and Brawn were already claimed by the time that I came into the picture, so I lived my life in a gray area and hoped that it would be enough.

(It never was.)

---

Night time.

I was only just coming into my own when the peacekeepers came to our house. They didn't care to ask me any questions about what happened, and I couldn't blame them, because I didn't know anything.

Something about Perdita's boyfriend breaking the rules and Calypso snitching-- sister stuff, I guess.

I was still there when he was whipped, though. I should have held Perdita's hand or something, should have made her look away. Death, I had learned, could come in many forms: televised death was the easiest to handle. It seemed less real when it was happening on a screen, when I knew it was happening miles and miles from where I was. Next, there was death like the boy's. Up close, personal, so vivid that even someone like me, a complete stranger, would never forget.

And then there were deaths like Perdita's, where the heart never stopped beating but everything else did. Shut down, a shell of anger and resentment.

I brought her breakfast sometimes, and helped her with schoolwork. But I hadn't held her hand. If it were me, I would have wanted someone, but I had not been there.

"I'm sorry," I told her one day, "For everything. For him, for not being there."

She stared at the window, and I thought maybe she was trying not to say anything too hateful.

"Don't be," she said at last, and I almost missed the silence.

"Doesn't change anything."

---

I always viewed the world better from the other side of a camera lens, which sounded fake and pretentious, but it was true. I had a habit of over analyzing things, and pictures were solid proof that gave me the time I needed to form my opinions. Polaroids littered my walls, pieces of yarn connecting one to the next. A mad man's paradise-- my paradise. It was a place where my thoughts were safe, and it was a method of which only I understood the meaning.

Dad said I would make a good detective.

"You've got a different way of looking at things," He had said, "And it is all about perception and point of view." I looked back at him, into the eyes Calypso and Perdita had been given, and, for once, my stare held true. "I can't ever be as good as Calypso, though."

He just sighed, straightening out a picture of my unmade bed, plucking the yarn that connected it to a picture of a rain cloud.

"You're right. No one will ever be better at being Calypso than Calypso herself. Same goes for Perdita," I had become occupied with his studying of the wall, didn't think to reply. He kept talking.

"But I am not interested in having another Calypso, or another Perdita. I'm interested in--" Lie. Even before he said the words, I knew they were lies. Arty Leto was not good enough for his parents, for his District, and certainly not for himself. I was not interested in the fallacies of a man who had made his name on an uncanny ability to know the difference between true and false-- he would win every time.

Still, I let him say it: "I'm interested in having an Artemus. And if Artemus is photography and puzzles, then it is good enough for me."

I could have called his bluff, pointed out all the times he compared me to my sisters, pointed out all the times I knew I had failed him. But I've never had the guts to stand my own ground when there was someone there threatening to take it, so I just told him thanks so he would walk out of the room.

---

Calypso's breathing was rehearsed. Perfectly even, never off beat. Even with arrows flying up and down and left and right, even with fists jammed against punching bags and feet sprinting at high speeds, her breath was never labored.

Next to her, I questioned my ability to walk in a straight line.

Now, I wasn't incompetent. I could handle myself with a spear and I was already being asked to show the younger classes how to make traps and snares. Hell, if my last name were anything other than Leto, people might have considered me great.

Too bad I had wasted so many wishes on those shooting stars before realizing it would never change. Other things might have. Friendships and age, but not who I was born as. Besides, even if I changed my name, their blood still ran through my veins and that meant I would always expect too much from myself.

I was a Leto until the day I died, so I decided to surrender my arms and cease fire, and accept that I would be the middle ground and it was okay.

I sat on the floor next to her while she trained with throwing knives, reading Perdita's middle-school diary.

"Did you know she was sneaking out every Friday?" A ghost of a smile appeared on my sister's lips. "I had a feeling."

I started to turn the page, but found myself instead closing the contents shut, securing the lock back in place.

"What gives?" she asked between throws, "We were just getting to the good parts," Her mind on embarrassing Perdita, mine everywhere else. Usually, I would have been game to poke fun at my sister, particularly now that she had a blonde hurricane with more tattoos than sense to call her own. But when I thought about my memories with Calypso, the bulk of them involved humiliating Perdita, so I wanted to do something different.

"I think I want to be a peacekeeper when I finish with school. Like you."

Puzzled expression. Queens were not often challenged in their expertise.

"Are you sure you're doing it for yourself and no one else?"

No.

"Yes."

"Then do it."

---

I kept one picture with me at all times: an old Polaroid Mom had taken with my camera a few months after she bought it for me. In the photo, my sisters and I were walking on the beach near our house.

Story was, our beach used to be one of the most populated in the district, and then there was some kind of murder scandal that went unsolved and the beach lost all of its business. Currently, people must have thought it belonged to us, because they avoided the area all together. They would follow the shoreline until they started getting close to our beach and they would either go around or head back the way they had come.

Everyone was terrified of the place because one bad thing had happened to it decades before. I loved it. I remembered standing there, Perdita on my right, Calypso on my left. Everyone feared them because of one bad thing.

I loved them.

Mom was a god-send for taking the picture then, because now I would never forget.

Sometimes, when hope was hardest to find, when the tears were close to spilling over, when Calypso was angry and Perdita shut down and Mom started yelling and Dad checked out, I looked at the picture.

It made me feel better.

One bad thing, and everyone ran away. Even I had thought about it once or twice. But now I knew.

I was not going anywhere without them by my side.