The Mourning Fog [Sera x Dina] [97th Victory Tour]

I had lost count long ago of how long it had been since I had watched my sister die. Right there in the square, blown up large and defined on the big screen, where none of us could miss a single detail of the knife sinking its way into the eye of Safina Roy. It was through the haze of the aftermath that I had been vaguely aware of our parents gathering the rest of the Roy bloodline together and whisking us home through the throngs of staring eyes. Once we had been delivered to the safety behind the front door… that was that. There had been no talk of what we had seen, no addressing the permanent space left at the dinner table, or the room that seeped a chill from the door nobody dared to open. The precedent had been set without challenge: grief could not, would not, stop the Roys from carrying on.

So carry on I did, letting my body guide me through daily routine, autopilot catering to keeping me functioning. I ate, I slept. I went to school, pretending as if I couldn't feel the eyes that would burn their way through the back of my head, changing the topic brought up by concerned friends and teachers alike until slowly they left it to collect dust. Day by day I survived, until I lost track of how many days had gone by. I didn't much care to remember, either. The brief moments where the haze faded out left the pain crisp and clear as if it had happened only moments before, and soon I was willing myself to dive back into the façade and the numbness it brought with it. If it could've lasted forever, this shield I had so carefully crafted, I would've let it. But all things come to an end, eventually.

The beginning of that end came with a visit from the Mayor, about a week ago. At first I had thought perhaps she had some business to attend to with father or mother; it wouldn't have been the first time either of them had been consulted on some project or other for the District. This time, however, she was accompanied by one of the Capitolite escorts coated in exotic colours and styles, and she was requesting an audience with the entire Roy family. As seats around the polished wood of the table filled, I realized that this had been the first time since that dreaded day that our family had all gathered as a whole.

Mayor Fear explained the Victory Tour was fast approaching, and that as family to Safina we were required by the Capitol to play a special role. The Capitolite squawked out how we would be raised up above the crowd, where the Victor could see us and address us as she saw fit. As she rambled on about how we should dress our best, be ready for the cameras, etc., I couldn't help but feel as if I was watching some strange bird, calling out in a call from some far off place from a beak poking out of her otherworldly plumage. Before long the pair had bid us adieu and left us sitting around the table. The haze that had shielded me so went with them, and I was left out in the open to face the reality of our family without Safina for the first time in a long time.

Change slapped me in the face in the week that followed their visit. Mother and Father had buried themselves back into their work as usual the day after it happened, and having them around the house was still a rare sight to see. Only now I could see the dark circles lining under mother's eyes, and the greys that had multiplied in the hair and beard of Father. The guise of business was only doing so much to hide the sadness they wore on their features. Emon and Riyaad, who before had always found some reason or other to start a fight between them, left the house feeling emptier with the lack of their raised voices. Sadiya, poor Sadiya, was still more lost in her own protective haze than I had ever been. As I caught her staring off into nothing, or absently wandering around from room to room, I wondered if I was looking at a mirror of what I had been mere days before. Tevin was the only one who seemed to have been some semblance of normal, and yet it felt as if he had aged years as he was left to try and put the pieces of our broken family back together.

It was as if our family, despite its faults and imperfections, existed as a planetary system. Some orbiting far from each other, some so close together they could've orbited each other. We had always balanced each other out, the push and pull of each other's gravity keeping us moving steady around our sun. Not to say Safina was that sun, no. If anything Safina had been a planet like the rest of us, with her own orbit and differing distances from the other members of the family. Only now it was as if her planet had suddenly popped out of existence, and the space she's left behind was slowly throwing the rest of the solar system off balance. Maybe that's why it seemed to hurt me and Sadiya the most; Sadiya and Safina were like two planets in the same orbit always on opposite sides of the sun. The twins had been intertwined in each other's gravity whether they liked it or not. Now Sadiya orbited on her own, with no tug from the other end pushing her along. And I had always lived with a desire to be close to Safina, a planet so close to hers that I could bask in the warmth of her atmosphere. But now she was gone, and the world felt colder.

For a week I waited for the haze to return and bring its sweet relief from the pain, but it never did. As today drew nearer, I felt determination take its place inside of me, igniting from the smoking embers of my denial and building into a raging fire. It pushed me to start helping Tevin guide the rest of the family through routine, pull the splintered souls back together again. I could feel the thirteen year old release the tension he had been holding as gratitude for having some help shone through his smile. Or perhaps he was just happy to have pulled one of us from the fog.

Together we guided the family through breakfast, pushed the schedule of fine dress and cleanliness and travel back to the dreaded square in front of the Justice Building, so the show can go on. The crowd had already formed itself in front of the imposing structure, eyes already landing with recognition on our faces as we passed by. Some eyes were filled with pity or sympathy for the latest family to have lost in the Games. Others threw their disgust at the family that spawned the beast that Safina had turned into in her fight for survival. I ignored them all, moving us forward steadily toward the raised platform reserved just for a grand display of our misery.

I wouldn't provide them that misery, I had decided. Now that determination had sparked, I had begun to love its hot glow inside of me. I wanted to be able to stare into the eyes of the girl who lived at the cost of my sister, and hear what she had to say. The last living person to have ever gotten to experience Safina Roy. I needed to know if she understood the grand cost paid for her life.

Now, as the ceremony springs to life, I hold on to this determination as I stare out at the microphone. As the anthem plays, as the Capitolite squawks out her openings, I stare. I stare until my dark eyes lock on the light of hers. My heart skips a beat. This is it. This is the chance for her to speak to us. I realize Safina had once stared into these same eyes, not long ago. I wonder if Seraphine Keoch sees her staring out with all of us, out in the open, on display just for her. Maybe she can see how our planets are all out of orbit.

I wonder if her words can help pull us back together.

She opens her mouth.

I hold my breath.