Momma's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird (standalone)

Another victor fell upon district ten, bringing with him the humid August rainfall. It clung warm and sticky to the back of their necks like a second skin and the air was heavy, muggy and always grey- felt more like moving underwater, making Scutcher long for autumn when he might finally be able to breathe again. Between Julian Bryze, Mace Emberstatt and now Klaus Goravich, squint hard enough and District ten could almost be respectable, a hot spot, the place to be for those lucky few. They’d cleaned the blood off the town square before Klaus had arrived- of course they had- removing all lingering traces with soap and water that a few people in district ten had ever cared about its fallen tributes. Gone were the swirling patterns smeared brown and red, their messages scrawled high on stone walls and though they hadn’t fixed some of the glass in the shops and the buildings, most of the windows had been boarded over or sealed up with newspaper that grew soggy in the wet, hot air. Scutcher couldn’t help but feel Noreen washing away too, her colours running in the heavy precipitation; whatever there was of her seemed to be slipping through his fingers, like trying to catch the rain in an open palm. He didn’t see ghosts of her, didn’t have long meaningful conversations with her in his memory though it wasn’t for want of trying, for willing it with all that he had. She was simply dead and gone, no stir of the breeze, or whisper on the wind to remind him that she was watching over her babies, over Jack, over him. There was no wind to break up the muggy grey clouds, there was nothing left of Noreen Lexington but ash. Take what philosophical musings you could from that, try to see some kind of sense in it all because Scutcher couldn’t.

How easily they were expected to forget. Supposed to come out now and celebrate the only one to have survived the carnage. The one who had taken Noreen’s place.

Not that he thought Klaus cared one iota; Scutcher had watched his final interview and they had glossed over Noreen Lexington’s death (perhaps as a punishment to the rioters) as though it were nothing. Elon Emberstatt he mourned for but Scutcher had watched with a curling, hot boil of anger in his chest- say her name, you bastard. Say her name. He reacted for his alliance, of course, for Fawn, for Pandora and even Stark but Scutcher had looked closely enough to see the pixels on the screen at home blur and found no trace of emotion when they’d replayed Noreen’s death- her lips still mouthing the words, and he could still see them whenever he closed his eyes, “Scutcher don’t leave me”. Never, Noreen, never. The killing, Scutcher could understand- knew it wasn’t his place to when there were others mourning lost children slain by the victor- but he understood it all the same. The memory of being seven years old and stood in their abattoir, his favourite pig in front of him and a knife in his trembling hands was one that would stay with Scutcher for as long as he lived. The world was cruel, the games were cruel and sometimes you had to kill your best friend to feed your family, sometimes it was them or you. Scutcher could forgive that- found it easier to because Klaus had never hurt Noreen, admittedly. But never once did Klaus say her name. Not then, not now he was here. And that, to Scutcher, was unforgivable. In fact, was getting to be so that Scutcher could barely stand, something hot with teeth and claws chewing at the lining of his stomach, dripping hot bile into his insides, up into his gullet. Just once and he might have felt- Scutcher didn’t know the word for it, but something likely akin to, but not quite- closure. Like she had mattered outside of district 10, like she hadn’t vanished away quietly into the night, passing unnoticed like the last leaf to fall in the autumn. It couldn’t be all in his head. She was special, wasn’t she? And still Klaus Goravich would not say her name. As if there was only one tribute to come from district ten this year.

Klaus would no doubt go to see Mace, want to stay with his fellow victors and the victors were keeping to themselves, shut away in the village with its sad, empty houses. Briar and Joshua would have liked a large house, a yard where they could climb trees, lining their boots outside the porch and Noreen would have hung their paintings from the freshly coloured walls inside. The sound of children laughing in the victors village would have been much needed life for a place which stood apart from ten as a graveyard with no graves, each house that stood empty almost marking another one of their dead.Standing outside of the Justice building where Klaus was staying-far and away one of the nicest looking places in the district- the rain making his curls stick together in heavy clumps, Scutcher could insist that he hadn’t been drinking this afternoon But that would have been a lie. His sister had gone out and left-in her drawer where she kept the lemon disinfectant to clean herself up after they had been together- jars of homemade drink. Travelling down his throat it felt thick and sticky like wallpaper paste and burned like bad news. Liquid courage they called it- though perhaps liquid bravado was more apt. This stuff was basically paint stripper. Stripping away at his defences, eroding his bones until Scutcher was a mess of skin and flesh, trembling jelly and bitterness. And the bitterness was like a cancer, rotting away his body, changing the core of him. Scutcher needed to get angry, to feel the fire inside of him that would burn everything clean. It’s what his sister would have done, only Scutcher didn’t see how Tallow could- the anger was exhausting.

Finishing the dregs of his drink, trying not to gag on the clumps of potato peelings lingering at the bottom, Scutcher sent it careening through the air, catching the light as though for a brief moment he had launched a star into the sky. The sound of a glass shattering when it at hit a wall outside of the building was strangely satisfying. So was punching the concrete and scuffing up his knuckles real good; Scutcher hated passing the justice building now, because he’d lurked outside of it when Noreen had been reaped, debating whether to go in, whether she’d even want to see him. He hadn’t gone, in the end, because he’d been frightened of what she would say, of what Jack would have done. And his fear had robbed him of a proper goodbye- he still didn’t even know if she’d heard him shouting at the Reapings, if she knew it had been him. I love you, he should have said. Wouldn’t have cared that she didn’t love him back- because it belonged out in the open, not clenched in tight like some sordid secret. “I love you,” he could whisper now, though there was no one around to hear it. Least of all the person who mattered. His voice was slurred slightly, breaking at the edges as though some ill thought was hanging from the edges of his vocal chords.

“You seen em, Klaus?” he started with a growl, finding a window in the justice building above them, not knowing if it was his or not, that hardly mattered. “I have.” Not that he was supposed to, Tallow would have lost her mind if she knew, probably thought it was as weird as the thing with the nameplate- but he had to. He’d promised Noreen he wouldn’t leave her and the babies were her, or at least a part of her though they would never fill that gaping hole, her in a way that was painful- because he didn’t dare get near, didn’t dare get too close in case he saw her eyes, her smile. But a promise was a promise. So he watched and he kept their garden well tended, Noreen Lexington’s nameplate pinned to a tree, the flowers blooming bright and cheery in all of this misery. Ensuring their legacy, making sure that there was a memory. “They’s so small. Tore em out of her real early they did. But they are strong too and growin every day. Just like their Momma.” Stronger and kinder than anyone. Scutcher felt dizzy, and ill, hoping in a way that no one could hear him. Hoping that the whole world could.

“You seen em, Klaus?” he began to shout, taking a step towards the justice building, staggering a little. “I felt em when she was still carryin’ em. One of the babies kicked an’ she smiled and said it must mean that the baby liked me. She was gonna take them out to our garden, to visit me. She was real kind like that.” Was, past tense. she was kindness and now she was dead it was all gone so there was none of it left in the world. The starchy, sticky alcohol made his chest ache, clenching his hands into fists to keep himself reined in, that voice in his head reminding him to stay cool, to take it easy and not to crash felt duller, droopier and drunk.

“YOU SEEN EM, KLAUS?” the rain was heavy, in his mouth and in his eyes, the ground below his feet a churning quagmire and Scutcher was sinking, sinking fast. “She called ‘em Briar and Joshua. There were briars all around our garden, see. She was askin’ after them when she died, never stopped thinkin’ about them. She woulda made a great Momma. Noreen Lexington would have been the best Momma ever. But you don’t know. YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT. You didn’t know nothin’ about her and now her babies won’t neither.”

Maybe he was one of the lucky ones, because he’d known her, the gentle touch of her hand, the way she smiled and how good it felt to say her name. It was worth missing her, wasn’t it? Worth the dull ache that could swell to an agonising crescendo that made the earth shake, his body tremble and the whole world seem shattered like the fine point of a star, like a shard of glass that drew blood as soon as it was touched, the kind of wound that wouldn’t heal over. “You seen em, Klaus?” died in his mouth, wrapped around one choking sob, a hacking cough, a piece of phlegm disposed on the earth as Scutcher bowed his head into his chest and began slowly to try and get his heaving breaths back to normal.

The minutes that passed by were torturous, a dagger on the end of a clock face and if he saw the rustle of curtains from up in the Justice Building then it might have only be imagined because nothing became of it. They called it the Justice Building but Scutcher wouldn't find any tonight, not for Noreen's children or her memory. Klaus didn't come. Didn't think of her or spare a thought for the babies growing up without their mother and nor did the entire world. She was just one of hundreds in the end wasn't she, the names of the dead. The community homes were filled with children without mothers. What did two more matter? Especially to a victor?

Scutcher would have to think of her for him, listen to the sigh of the wind in the boughs and whisper

"I tried, Noreen. I really tried."