blank slate // { cedar + nico }

By virtue of being neighbors in the Victors' Village, he's seen Nico Thorne around a little. Usually when Cedar's out tending the garden, or sitting on the porch buried in a book, and once when he was up on the roof stringing up lights for Ratmas. Cedar always waves and never expects any acknowledgement in return. Despite growing up surrounded by victors — his dad, obviously, and Aranica, and their friends in the Capitol — he could never quite grasp what to do with the new ones. In his head, victors are adults, are his friends' parents, are quasi-aunts and semi-uncles. They shouldn't be his age.

Days away from the end of everything, it doesn't matter quite as much that he can't quite reconcile the boy from the grade above him with the idea of someone who, in theory, is fully responsible for his life and his death. Small plate in hand, piled high with a generous slice of strawberry cake topped with fluffy merengue, Cedar sits down on the couch in the District Twelve lounge, facing Nico.

"I'm doomed," he remarks, digging his comically tiny fork into the dessert, shoving a bite in his mouth to buy him a minute to grapple with and detach from the statement. It gets easier to think about the more that he says it out loud. The more he reminds himself, the more unreal it feels. His voice becomes someone else's voice, and so his life becomes someone else's life little by little, and so his death won't be his death, either. "My dad —" someone else's dad, too, then "— and Aranica —" are both good, well-meaning people who have known me my whole life "— can you make sure no one forgets about Red?" Before he dies or after. Cedar Halt will die in whatever twisted world the Capitol has laid out for him, despite everyone's best efforts. But best-effort shouldn't be a birthright, and the girl who's come here to die — or not die — with him deserves as much attention as the Halt boy.