four || leandros abaddon halle

She looks a wreck. She looks like she hasn't slept in months upon end, each night plagued with the inescapable callings of a distant dream but those whispers of promise must never have been answered. Here, before, lingers the ghost of a woman long since reached her end of the rope, gone mad in her own way. Frazzled beyond repair, she stares at me with wet, wide eyes, pleading silently for an answer as her unkempt hair falls forward into her gaunt face.

And then there is Andros.

He sits quietly, playing with the small doll I'd given him just before the nurse had administered his shots. Not even a flinch when the needle drove home, the usual reaction of sobbing hysterics and pleading for mercy in a babbled child language strangely absent from the room. His eyes are dry and his lip unbitten. He looks as if nothing had happened to him at all. In fact, by the end of the short ordeal, he looks up at me with his dark brown eyes and simply asks if we're done. I have half a mind to say yes, mark him off as my easiest patient to date, and send him home with that doll and a hopefully relieved mother. Andros stares at me for another moment before looking at his mother, the woman's mouth slightly open and shell-shocked, quite curiosity and discomfort traced along the heavy arches of her brows and the drooping of her eyes, the downward tilt of her lips and the sagging of her shoulders. It turns out that these are the first words he's spoken in a month and sixteen days. This is only becomes apparent when his mother finally breaks across the surface of my office, spilling her worries and fears into the sterile room, all while Andros sits calmly upon the table.

"Doctor, please. You have to help us. At first we thought it was a gift that he didn't cry, that he didn't speak too much, but this is wrong. It's all so wrong. He doesn't react to anything, he hardly talks, he won't even play with the other kids. There's something wrong with him, doctor. It's as if he doesn't feel anything at all!"

My eyes are fixed on Andros, his own brown eyes focused in on the shaking visage of his mother, glazed over with incredulity and disgust, emotions so complex that I hardly believe they can exist in a child of merely five years old. He doesn't move, save for the slightest of frowns ghosting across his thin lips before he straightens, his indifferent shell upon him again in an instant. His mother doesn't even take notice of his temporary discomfort, focusing on me and letting her withdrawn little boy pull himself back out of her life even farther. Only five years old. He was supposed to be such an easy case.

"She's never really liked me, you know. I was never loving enough for her, didn't hug her enough, didn't care enough for her, but you know that already, don't you, Doctor Yorin?"

His face is stoic, serene, a paradigm of indifference. There isn't even the slightest trace of emotion in his sturdy brow or his dull brown eyes or his posture. He looks as if he's at an interview, his button up shirt clean but relaxed and unbuttoned near the top, his pants crisp and well fitted. Even for a thirteen year old, he has himself figured out. I wish I could see into him just a little bit more, just beyond the tanned skin and rough exterior of a Career boy devoted to his education by the sword and spear. If he could just give me a little space to squeeze in, maybe I could help him see beyond that, help him grow beyond what he has molded himself to become. His mother wants so much more for him, more than a quiet boy who is drawn into his own world and ignores the one revolving below him. Andros has put himself above others, taken himself out of the equation of life and shut himself away. He speaks more now, but his tone is clipped, his words precise, and his confidence unfaltering. I hardly even know how to respond during our sessions anymore.

"Your mother cares for you, Andros. You know that. She loves you for who you are, despite your faults and your problems. You have to-"

"I don't believe I have to do anything, now do I, doctor? I can see what I am perfectly well, thank you. I know what I am. That is not the point, however. The point is that these sessions are merely continued as a placebo treatment for my mother's absence of love for me, but a desire to seem like a good mother, are they not?"

I've never quite been able to handle Andros like my other patients. He's always been a special case. He was supposed to be my easy case. That never quite panned out as expected. He was unresponsive to any treatments we gave him, whether they be simple shots or resetting a broken arm. It hardly took any time to realize what the real problem was. It wasn't that he had been injuring himself so often that he was used to pain, but he just simply couldn't feel it. Andros has congenital analgesia, a condition that literally makes it impossible for him to feel pain. He might feel pressure, but he doesn't associate that with the wrenching pop of a joint or the shattering break of a bone. Pain does not exist for him. I can't help but wonder if it is a blessing or a curse.

I don't know how to bridge the gap between us. The doctor-patient relationship has always been easy for me, but Andros is unreachable. He is so still that I can hardly even believe he is living and breathing before me. He is a machine boy, someone who runs out of necessity instead of want. I'm afraid I'll never cross that divide between us, not while he stares at me with cool eyes. For a moment, there is a challenge, a dare to take this farther, to delve inside and finally, maybe, figure things out. I want so badly to reach out and grasp it. In the next instant, his inky hair falls onto his face, obstructing the connection and terminating all contact, his posture releasing from its rigid hold as he stands up smoothly and regards me with a closed face. There are no more words. I wonder, looking back, if he was ever really given words to begin with.

I suppose he must be a golden child of the Training Center nowadays. He's leveled out at six foot, his limbs sinewy and perfectly coordinated within his spatial region. He towers above my mere five feet and seven inches with a curtain of inky night shrouding his face from view, head tipped down just slightly as he slips effortlessly through the door and into his usual seat. He's graceful, his movements effortless in everything he does and his manner of carrying himself refined to a T. There isn't a single action he performs without confidence, wrinkles smoothed out of his shirt with a firm flick of his wrist, hair forced behind his ear with a practiced flip, limbs folded neatly with careful precision. His foot taps the air before it, the rhythmic flow silently echoing through the room and straight down to my core. I can hear it clash with my quiet breathing, my chest falling quietly as I take a moment to glance over my notes once more.

Andros is patient, as ever, as I scan through the years of information I've compiled from our sessions, each one adding a word at most and removing entire phrases and worst. It has always seemed that whenever I get anywhere in our development, there is a blockage. Once there is a change, there is resistance. It's one of the few things I've learned about Andros over the years. He doesn't like change. When he isn't in control, that leaves too many variables to take into account. His cleverness knows no bounds, but it is tested by the multitude of situations that could potentially occur with the simple changing of one detail. Words pop out at me as I look one last time, my eyes raking over the sparse file the third time; boy, machine, emotionless, confident, strident, determined. Oh yes, he must be one of the up and coming Careers of our age. There's no doubt about that, no.

When I finally look up, Andros is staring has hands, tapping his fingers against his leg in quick, successive intervals and patterns, each one precise and holding little to no similarity to the last. His lips are mouthing out words, but I cannot decipher his meaning. I am so taken in by this art that I don't even realize when his eyes cut to me, glaring hard and continuing his routine before setting his fingers to rest and his eyes upon the file.

"If you don't have enough notes for your file, you can surely use that if you please. I was reciting the names of different common plants found in the wild and what their purposes are. Does that help you any, doctor? Or would you like me to do a little dance? Or maybe we could make this really interesting and I could talk about something I've never talked about ever before, maybe even get a little bit choked up for you? Like, maybe, my family? Oh, no, we've done them before, haven't we? Small, one child who refused to cry. You would think it would be a blessing, but no, I was hard to bond with. I didn't need comfort. Quite unfortunate, no? Poor little baby didn't need coddling. How sad," he drawls, his face animated with the remnants of emotions he must have once obtained and long since lost. His suggestions are punctuated with sharp jabs at the air and gentle weaving patterns in the air. However, his eyes are as cold as ever, just as dead as the day I met him.

"That little boy grew up and became something instead of wallowing in the want of affection. He made himself a man, no compassion needed. The end. Quite the ending, isn't it? I'm sure the story isn't over yet. There must be a sequel coming. Tell me, doctor, are you as excited for it as I am? I think it shall be quite a good Games..."

There's something in the way he hisses the last few sentences that makes a shiver lodge in my spine, keeping me constant on edge and wary of the nerves that tingle in my limbs. His bitter bite is harsh, each word poisonous and sinking into my consciousness with every flick of his dastardly tongue. The cruel boy, now a man of eighteen before me, is just as puzzling as the day I met him, each movement as shockingly insensitive and predicable as the next. However, it never ceases to surprise me. Something in me always expects more. I should know better by now. I shouldn't expect more of a machine. It will never be that easy.