time and time again { elias & vasco

I guess I’m supposed to say that I stayed strong in the face of tragedy.

If you pay attention to the screens in the town square, you’re supposed to be steel skinned, and turn away from what cuts through you and tears at your heart. Weakness, they try to tell us, is not being able to stand on your own two feet. Courage is staring down death, and without so much as a blink, taking what you think you deserve.

Stand tall, go back into the breach, give every last ounce you have. Feel nothing and give everything.

At least, it’s what they try to teach our children. Be brave, stand tall, don’t break – tragedy will shape you into something better, form you into the person you were always meant to be.

When I found Emma through the smoke and ash, I was already crying. I wasn’t thinking about how I would look, Mayor of District Eleven, hands wrapped around my wife, crying into her shoulder as though I might’ve gone and lost her forever. I panicked at the thought that Yani was missing – in the commotion, set loose from her arms and swept up in the wave of people – for a moment I let out a curse and wish I’d never got the idea to run for anything at all. Let Ikaia be the one to sort out the mess, or Maya to govern with an iron fist.

But I’m the one who’s portrait sits in the justice building, for better or worse.

I looked back at the billowing black smoke, the scattered remains of the stage. Screeching peacekeepers with batons hammering away at the ones that crowded shop fronts, grabbing at what they could. Bodies that lay along the stone of the square. Whose mother sat, arms twisted behind her, legs akimbo, with blood running from her forehead? The boy that emerged from the dark cloud of smoke coughing, and screaming out for his brother. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

“Don’t leave me,” I said to her, hand in hers. We pushed through the crowd, frantic bodies shoving past us, out of the square, and through the streets.

My father had bought into the legacy of district eleven: teach your children that tragedy will cure us, that sometimes we must face pain to make us stronger. Bakar had it the hardest. I don’t fault him for how he was, not knowing how deep the scars run. You can’t expect a man to open his heart when his life has been spent having it broken over and over again. That sort of thing doesn’t breed strength, or wisdom.

It’s the sort of pain that teaches you to live for yourself, and to hell with the rest.

Do I hate Sampson for this?

When the peacekeepers have cordoned off the square, and the days following they lock us away to watch the finale in our homes, I have plenty of time to turn over the thought.

Before Yani turned up, I thought about finding him myself, stringing him up by his neck in the town square. He’s gone missing, and I wonder if the capitol has gotten to him first. He’d gone and made a fool of us all, but worse still, made it apparent that there were some things even they couldn’t prevent.

I spent the first few days sleeping in the Mayor’s office. Set up a little cot next to my desk with sheets that itched and a chicken feather pillow. Turning my body sent out a yell from the springs. I didn’t sleep the first night, and not much more the nights that followed.

There was no news from the capitol, just bits and pieces from peacekeepers that would trickle into the office. List of the missing, One of the younger ones would bring in the morning. Never mentioned the injured or the dead, because they weren’t supposed to exist (and so they didn’t). The games ended and there was a mix of celebration and demonstration – enough to be ordered back inside – and then, a settling that left the district too quiet.

When I’d gone home to Emma, it felt like the first time in almost a week that we were moving forward, not stuck still. I remember closing the door behind me, and pulling her close in my arms. I told her, “I’m never letting go of you again,” and she laughed, we both laughed, and then I started crying, and she cried, too. I pushed back her hair and kissed her forehead. I told her how I missed her, how the world didn’t make any sense but “at least you do.”

Yani crawled into bed with us. She’d been doing it each night with Emma while I was gone. She woke us up this morning, not an hour past midnight.

‘Tengo miedo,’ she whispered. Her little body wedged between the two of us as though we could stop anything that might’ve lurked in the darkness.

“Vale… si tienes miedo, estamos aquí, mija…” I felt the back of my throat tighten.

I pulled her close and rested my chin on her head. She fidgeted underneath and whined, then more concerned about my prickly beard than the darkness. She didn’t even notice the tears in my eyes. It was better than having to tell her it would all be okay. I didn’t like telling her things that weren’t true.

Morning comes and I’m off before sunrise. Emma stood at the door to the kitchen, white cotton nightgown cutting through the darkness.

‘Be home for dinner.’ It’s not a question, not quite a command. She watched, and reminded me that she could’ve seen the truth from a mile away.

“There’s a lot to be done.” I offered, cane in hand, struggling with my coat over my shoulder. She eased in, pulling away my cane and fixing up the zipper on my jacket. She laid a kiss on my cheek and moved to give me the cane again.

‘That’s okay. We need you here, too.' She pressed in a hug and we sat through the silence. I closed my eyes. They took so much from us but they’d never take this.

The early hours found men and women heading to the fields. Peacekeepers dotted along the road toward the center of town. Radio feedback cut through the march of feet, and sharp calls from overseers echoed a ways. When I made it to the old red brick town hall, I’m relieved to find it much as I’d left it. I set to putting a pot of coffee on, and made my way into my office.

There’s little touches of us everywhere. Magdalena’s collection of animal shaped coffee mugs (uncleaned, cluttering my desk). Druso’s old set of playing cards, tucked on the windowsill from when he’d last played with me. Emma’s post-it notes. I might have selectively ignored them, the yellow, pink, and orange slips of paper that dotted my desk or poked out of edges of books. Scribbled notes with short hand she had to remind me of, or notes that she made to remind herself to remind me.

Hard to forget, too, when a whole wall springs up overnight of notes (zoning of the second district, well inspections for the fall, council meeting dates, victory tour security…)

I was studying one that read Vasco, 25th, ideas??? when a knock came at the door.

‘Mayor Izar. Never thought I’d be saying that. Elias stood at the door, and I took a moment to shake the sticky part of the post-it from my finger. He looked as spry as ever, strong jaw, the regular handsome rogue that’d put on a few pounds and years from our days wrestling as kids. The years had been kinder to him, though the men that didn’t break their backs in the field tended to have that luck.

‘Laurel wanted me to bring you this, it's her cure-all, said you could add it to anything.'

When I took the jar from him, I tried to think if he’d been one of the many that had come through the doors when I’d been lying in bed, too sick to stand. I couldn’t place him as a well-wisher, but figured it was lack of sleep and not lack of the memory that made it so.

‘Figured we could all use some.’

If you checked out albums, there were a handful of pictures with Elias over the years. I think Emma may have pointed out he’d been at our wedding, and when we’d had a celebration for Raquel being born. I wasn’t one to peddle gossip, but he’d had a rough go over the years. I don’t know if we’d ever been the closest but – with as many cousins as we had, I didn’t think we could all be as close as we liked.

Or that we needed to be.

‘I'm proud of you Vasco, really, but all of this, it can't be easy.’ 

I couldn’t explain to you what it felt to have his hand on my shoulder. I stared for a second, stupid little grin spreading across my face.

‘How are you, cousin?’

“Thank you, Elias… that’s kind of you to say…” I waved to one of the chairs in front of my desk. “Sit, sit, eh?” I shook my head at his question and gave another smile. “Estoy hecho una mierda, to be honest.”

“All that’s happened I… it’s been hard. To see what happened. To be the one in charge, I just…” I closed my eyes. “You know, it’s a lot harder than I thought, and – I’ve been trying the best I know how. And now with…” I almost couldn’t form the words, and leaned back in my chair, “… the explosions, I want to do everything I can to make every feel safe again. If I even can…”

“Forgive me. You don’t want me going on about my troubles…” I sat forward in my chair and wrestled my elbows on the desk. “How are you, Elias? I don’t even remember the last time we saw each other…” How many years had it been? “Alfer and Mateo giving you any problems?”