suddenly, strangely still / andromache+flogust day 5

i find august exactly where i knew i would. he is bent over thompson's body when i enter the throne room, engaged in some sort of makeshift funeral procession which involves dressing a mangled corpse in a flower crown and muttering platitudes under his breath. i don't interrupt him, just wait by the door to ensure that nobody takes advantage of his stillness. there is a certain measure of alone time required when you lose something - i spent mine kneeling on the staircase below the chandelier, watching my mother's glittering shoes swing gently from side to side as though rocking her to sleep. august gets to be by himself until the body is swallowed up by the robots in the sky.

i sit so close to him that i can feel the warmth of his skin - it is clammy from tears - but i do not touch him. i get the sense that he might shatter and break if i do, so i treat him with caution, wary of the boy who could take any form beneath the shaping hand of grief. if he was angry, i would understand; after all, i am part of the whirlwind of knives and spears that walked the winding road to thompson's death today. he surprises me when he breaks the longest silence i have ever endured: i'm glad you're here, he says, and i feel the loss of a weight i did not know i had been carrying; it rolls from my chest and onto the floor and i can breathe again, although i didn't realise i had been holding my breath. 

i cannot stop myself from reliving the events of the morning. it happened so quickly - only in retrospect can i break it apart piece by piece, critically analyse each step taken by each player, consider what might have been meant by each spoken word. i keep getting caught on the moment when i turned back from the knight to find august and andromache facing one another. there was nothing i could do to stop him, nothing i could do to stop her. i could not have saved him, if she had decided that he would pay for his mistake. 

why did you do it? provoke her, i mean? i ask, when i can bear it no longer. 

he reels, clearly searching for the meaning in what i am saying, but then he lands heavily upon it, and i see the understanding click into place behind his eyes. at first, i thought you wanted me to. when you went for thompson, i thought we were... i don't know, doing each other's dirty work. i look at him in surprise. this was not a framework that i had considered. with eulalie gone, he continues, do you really trust andromache not to kill you while the two of you are alone? 

frustration blazes within me once again. i am impatient, expecting august to keep up with the complex rules of a game i have not explained to him, play along with something i cannot dare let him in on. once again, he fumbles, blundering around in the darkness. 

i'm pretty used to looking out for myself, i say, reflexively, thinking of the nights spend sleeping rough on the streets of four. from the age of eight, i was responsible for looking out for myself, providing for myself, keeping myself safe from those who might not have the best intentions at heart. andromache, on the other hand, despite all of her training, has been raised as a princess, waited on, protected and worshipped. she wouldn't stand a chance, i say, to reassure myself and august that i have not been stupid. 

august, however, does not seem to accept my adamant statement. just like that? he challenges, of course, thinking that the story i have presented about my life is true, that like andromache i have been coddled and smothered since the cradle. isn't there something about her that you'll miss, when she's gone?

this was not the question i was expecting from him. i suppose, seeing as we are the sole mourners at his own ally's wake, it's a topical discussion. i am about to brush off his suggestion, dismiss the idea that i would become sentimental at such a critical point in my hero arc: if andromache is gone, i hope it was my hand that did it, i hope she is the disgrace of her whole district, i hope the gamemakers are ashamed of her-- and yet all i can think about is her hand gripping my arm as the waves attempt to pull us away from each other, her elbow bumping mine in solidarity as we fight side by side, her voice, calling out 'flo' when she is afraid, and, finally, andromache placing a small round pebble into my hand, in case we lose one another.

two people could not be more different than me and she, and yet, sometimes i play my part so well that i almost trick myself. 

dead girls don't miss their friends, i say, in a tone that is supposed to make august laugh, but when i hear my own words i am struck by how decidedly un-funny they are. my sense of humour has taken a startling turn for the worse since my arrival here. none of this will matter, soon. 

i don't believe this, not quite - what i want to believe, what i need to believe, is that if i can just do things right, make enough of an impression on the right people, use this cursed platform to send a message, to say something important - that  all of this will be for something, and that when i die it will be as a brick in the ever-growing wall of change that has been building for years now. when i die, i want people to stand upon my shoulders and reach for something that the world could not offer me, not yet. missing andromache has nothing to do with it. her pebble sits heavily in my pocket, dissatisfied with my answer. 

_[DARS]