{m i s g u i d e d} ghosts :: noah [trib train]

i'm going away for a while, but i'll be back, don't try and follow me
'cause I'll return as soon as possible
see, i'm trying to find my place, but it might not be here where i feel safe
we all learn to make mistakes and run from them, from them with no direction
run from them, from them with no conviction

I stand at the window and watch as my last glimpse of the ocean slips from view, fading into a blue smear on the horizon. I was never fond of it, so to speak, not affectionate to the hulking blue leviathan that claimed my mother’s life and almost my own. But somewhere along that smear on the horizon is the stretch of beach where I met Fledger, and so the farther we move away from that place, the farther away I feel from home. I don’t give in to the hot, prickly tears needling at the backs of my eyes as I flatten a palm against the window’s surface. Tears have never helped anyone, and at this point they’d only serve to make me look weaker, which is the last thing I need. In the normal world, you give people an inch and they take a mile. In the Arena, you give them an inch and they take your life. So despite the fact that every atom beneath my skin is suspended in one long, silent scream, to the world I look as cool and impassive as the glass beneath my fingers.

The one small comfort in all of this is that no matter what happens to me, I at least know now that Brooke will be cared for. I traded my little girl for Jörge Libertine’s well-wishes and the tarnished compass clutched beneath my white knuckles, its needle wobbling and twisting as the train turns a corner and Four disappears for good. I didn’t realize that home had meant so much to me until it was out of my reach. There’s a sort of hollowness that settles in my bones as the train plunges into the open countryside at a million miles per hour the empty paces singing a mournful harmony with the Brooke-shaped hole that punches through my resolve and makes a single tear escape, falling with a tiny splash on to the compass’ smudged surface.

For once, Fledger’s absence doesn’t weigh me down quite so heavily. I’ll be seeing him soon enough.

There’s nothing left for me to see, standing here with my nose pressed against the window like I can slip through the glass and go running back to a world I never thought I’d long for. With one last glance in what I think is the direction of the sea, I sigh and turn around, walking careful through the narrow, steadily rocking corridor until it opens up to the most lavish space I’ve ever seen, velvet couches and crystal chandeliers and polished woods. There’s a little bar in one corner stocked with crystalline bottles of varying shades of amber, a glass-fronted freezer displaying dished of some weird-looking orange ice cream, a marble chess set and fresh new decks of cards for us to pass the time with as we’re shuttled to our doom. And in the middle of it all sits Noah Ripley, a hurricane in a hand-me-down suit that looks every bit as out-of-place as I feel.

Our eyes lock, and I’m struck with the horrifying thought that if by some miracle I manage to make it home, it will be at the expense of this boy’s life. The Arena’s already claimed one of his brothers, but that won’t soften the blow for the ones he leaves behind. I think briefly of the Libertines, of the two daughters claimed by the Capitol’s sick sacrifice, of the sadness behind Jörge’s smile and the aura of loss that haunts the corners of the pawnshop. Suddenly, absurdly, I’m almost glad that it was my name that came out of the ball. I’d rather watch this happen to myself now than watch it happen to Brooke in a few years. Did Noah’s brothers cry for him in the Justice Building? Did he promise them he’d come home, the way Fledger had once promised me a thousand lifetimes ago? Something raw and aching at the core of me whispers that I’d rather not know the answers to those questions.

Not wanting to startle him, I clear my throat to let him know that there’s someone else in the room, averting my eyes and awkwardly shuffling around the opulent space. My fingers brush across the surface of the counter, marble, satin-soft and cool, slowly traveling up and toying with the top of one of the bottles. After watching Dad on his downward spiral I swore I’d never touch alcohol (and this is probably meant for the ‘grown-ups’ on the train at any rate), but impending death has a way of re-ordering your priorities, and if anyone on this damn tin can hurtling into oblivion has earned the right to a drink or two, it’s us. A quiet spark of defiant fury pulls my lips downward into a scowl, and I twist out one of the crystal stoppers with a little more force than I mean to, filling up two elegant glasses halfway before picking them up carefully and making my way over to the couch.

“Hi, Noah.” My voice is softer and more uncertain than it almost ever is, all of the usual brash, brazen confidence sapped from it as I fold myself down into a seated position, setting one of the glasses on the coffee table in front of him. I was in class with Fitz, I realize with a jolt, sat behind him in District History the semester before I dropped out to have Brooke. We never really talked, but he’d always seemed so sweet, quick to smile and eager to help anyone that asked him for it. I don’t understand how the boy next to me could be his brother. Noah reminds me of an exaggerated version of myself, all simmering anger and brash indignation with a world that’s abandoned him to the cruel clutches of fate. He looks like if you were to touch him, he’d explode, a dynamite-boy with napalm in his veins ready to catch a spark and burn down the world. So I don’t touch him. I only sit there and watch the boy being sent to die with me, taking a sip of the stuff in my glass and grimacing as we languish here in our pretty tomb. “I’m so sorry.”

For his brother? For him? For myself? For everything, I guess.

'cause i'm just one of those ghosts, traveling endlessly
don't need no roads, in fact they follow me
and we just go in circles, and now i'm told that this is life
and pain is just a simple compromise
so we can get what we want out of it