♥-heartlines-{klaus&hopper}

You sit in the same place you always did, with your legs hanging over the edge of the bed exactly as they used to. The bookshelf, as always, sits to your left, piled high with an assortment of fairy tales and classics. Everything is seemingly how you left it. There are, however, great cracks in the edges of your memories that whisper to you, demanding that you open your eyes and notice everything that is wrong. Firstly, your feet no longer dangle an inch above the carpet, swinging innocently through the air. You've grown tall and lanky, suddenly more than the little boy you once were. The books are the same and yet past the shelf crammed with the novels your father gave you for each birthday leading up to your final reaping, there are many more. Every wall and every surface islined with shelf after shelf of tattered books, those that you religiously find at the bookshop on the corner. The room is different. The view from the wide window no longer shows a bare garden with a tall tree, a wilting flower bed and old treehouse. Now it opens to a village filled with people who have not yet come to stay. Imaginary neighbours that are supposedly just like you, only they do not exist.
Outside is empty, as are you.


It is only after you have spent countless moments prising every change in your surrounds from thedelicate, faded remains of your memory that you look up. No longer are you alone in your library - your elder brother stands tall at your side, and you smile. A gesture insists that he sit down, and he does. The silence is somewhat uncomfortable, no longer the long pauses of those who know exactly what the other is feeling. You cannot help but wonder if in those long days you spent away last year, you lost your brother. You've changed, yes, and now it seems as though fear rides in his eyes every time he glances at you. "It feels wrong here," you say gently, willing him to look up at you. Eyes glued to the pattern on the blankets, you let your fingers trace it. The ocean stole so much from your life - almost as much as it gave you. That, of course, is why the tiny television set blaring from the corner hurts so much to set eyes upon. Twenty four children following in your footsteps,and only one will follow you to the crown. It perhaps doesn't help that the smallest of these is Learna Libertine, with the faded red hair that never belonged to Penelope.


"Here, at home?" asks Hopper, and that is when you know that you were right. He doesn't understand. How could you expect him to understand, after all? He wasn't the one that stood by you as you killed and watched your friends die. He was helpless, stranded at home while you were free and strong in a nameless wonderland. You werethe King, Klaus Goravich. For once in your life, your elder brother was not the only one who could wind a story beautiful enough to put you to sleep."Well, it's not home anymore, is it?" The statement seems so obvious to you that you falter and wind a question into it's depths. How could it be home, when the people inside have changed? When the walls are different, when the man of the house no longer lives within. How is it home when you are the one who provided it, when countless people have moved in and when you are no longer the little boy with one shelf crammed with books and nothing more in the world? Perhaps to everybody else, home has an entirely different meaning.


They don't understand. It feels strange to think that the only two people who could ever possibly believe what you saw that week are dead. Died at your hands,, Fitz Ripley and Destiny Lenstil. "Why isn't it?" You take a deep breath, not angry, just trying to comprehend how someone can watch the Games on the flickering screen and not understand what it takes to come home again. "Sometimes, I think I'm not me anymore. Maybe that's more the problem." Your words come out sharper than you intended them - the soft edges all certain and sharp. "You're definitely you," your brother assures you, although you have no idea how he can be so sure of what he is saying, when he is acting as though he does not know you at all. It crosses your mind for a long minute that he is acting the same, which only brings you closer to the conclusion that you are not Klaus anymore. Certainly, little-boy Klaus could never be King.


"That morning, I thought it was going to be you- I really did." The words pour from your lips before you can stop them, but you do not regret them. Even now, you are the boy who lives his life upon the promise of a dead girl who was murdered by the best friend he slaughtered. Still hurts, doesn't it? It's true, though. Standing in the crowd on your brothers very last reaping, you could almost hear his name ringing in your ears. It wasn't even that you had imagined the scene in your mind a thousand times before. It was the way the camera shook in your hands, a comfort you barely ever turn to anymore. Just another notch on the tally of things that have changed. "Part of me wishes it was, but I can't do anything about it now." The wrong words echo around the room. To you, it sounds as though your brother is telling you that there's no point fixing what is already broken. You reach out behind his hollow voice for a promise, some regret. It seems that there is no underlying, deep-rooted will to turn back time and save you from everything. It seems, Klaus, that perhaps not everybody would jump into your shoes at the drop of a hat if only to save you from having to grow stronger. "What's the Capitol like?" Again, the question catches you unaware. An obvious attempt todrag conversation from the pitiful thing you've become. You oblige willingly, desperate to do anything but explain what you want from the past. It's gone, Klaus. Let go.


"It's big, and beautiful, and everything everybody thinks. But it's more, as well." Careful not to lie, you leave from your description all the things you cannot explain. The way the hairspray tastes, the pressure of the showers, the feel of the concrete beneath squeaky shoes. You don't mention the way the cloth doesn't scratch and the food never fails to leave you anything less than full. They're the kind of things you cling to, but can never tell. Words wont be enough to piece together an experience that went by in a purfumed blur. "It's a big show, where everything is about what it looks like and not about what it really is. It's easy to forget what you are." Just a show, just a ride.

"I'd imagine."