The Monster's Keeper // [Mace, 92nd Oneshot]

It doesn't hurt me.
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know that it doesn't hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making?
You, it's you and me.

There are victors far older than he in the training center gym. And yet, seems to Mace, that every time he walks in, the others stop and stare. Maybe it's because he's fallen out of the habit. Maybe it's because Julian looks like he's twenty and Mace looks all of his fifty-odd years. But every day since the two giants from District Ten entered the Ninety-Second Games, Mace has made his way to the gym late in the day.

Once they get over their shock, the gym is comfortably impersonal. No one speaks to him. He doesn't hear anything but the static in his earbuds and the pounding of his aging heart.

The ninth day he doesn't need to hear anything to know.

The static between his ears spills over, racing to every corner of the center. This time when they stop to stare, Mace stares back. If they are surprised, he is in a state of deep shock. "Not possible," he mutters when a trainer nudges him. White shirt glued with sweat, boxing gloves dragging down his fists, Mace lumbers to the nearest television screen.

ANDAL SEARLEY, VICTOR

The text, small as ants, scrawls along the bottom. Now it isn't just static between his ears but the galloping of his heart. When Saffron won, he wept. Finally, he would not be alone. When Ansgar won, he'd nearly paid for it with his life in Arbor's drunken rage. Now Andal would be coming home with them.

And he isn't sure he has what it takes to be a monster's keeper.

And if I only could,
I'd make a deal with God,
And I'd get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
If I only could, oh


running up that hill
-placebo-

[dars]