63rd Reaping [D4]

spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams
'cause recently mine have been tearing my seams
i sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind
alone in the wind and the rain you left me
it's getting dark, darling, too dark to see

Reaping Day has a hateful way of making everything feel like it’s all one vicious circle that can never be escaped. Things are different now, so different, and yet a sort of chilling nostalgia paints the air I breathe and sticks to the insides of my lungs until I feel like I’m drowning in a grief that never really leaves. The other side of the bed is cold when my alarm goes off – no it’s not, Fledger’s mumbling about something and hiding under his pillow from a day that neither of us wants to face. The entirety of the tiny apartment creaks in protest when I roll out of bed, fingers fumbling with the rusty blinds to let in the sunlight –I live in a little whitewashed house by the waterfront, tiny but clean and always smelling of sandalwood. A few seconds of peace, and then Brooke comes running in, her hair flying behind her like a crimson flag as she latches onto my leg – my daughter is only a few months old, pretty as a rosebud and blissfully unaware of the unfairness of the world. The world shifts back and forth between those two planes, the realm of the here-and-now and the domain of the day Brooke and I lost our everything.

She doesn’t remember her father (I do enough remembering for the both of us, slipping into nightmares of blood and flying sand whenever sleep claims me, waking up reaching for a hand I’ll never hold again), but for a child raised by a single teen mother, Brooke is taking society’s low expectations for her and blowing them sky-high. Sharp as a tack and thankfully blessed with Fledger’s easy temper rather than my hair-trigger one, she’s more than anyone could ever ask for, the small speck of joy left in my life that keeps me getting up in the mornings. I know better than to think I’ll ever be happy again, but I can come to terms with that as long as Brooke continues to smile. She smiles now, giggles spiraling into the fabric of my pajama pants as she tugs on them to get my attention, freckled cheeks showing off dimples she got from me.

“Morning, Brookie!” I can only hope she won’t notice the tension in my voice that I try to cover up with an extra dose of manufactured chipperness, a plastic smile settling on my lips as I scoop her up and perch her on my hip. “You excited to wear your pretty new dress today?”

“Don’ like dress,” she pouts, and I have to laugh at the extent to which she’s her mother’s child. Already a tomboy at two and a half, a whirlwind of red curls and pixie-like features, all wrapped up in my trademark stubbornness when she gets her mind set on something. Those big blue eyes aren’t mine, though, and while most of the time they hold a sense of comfort and fond remembrance for me, I can’t bring myself to look into them as I sit her down at the creaky card table in our kitchen/living room/laundry room and get her started on her breakfast. Fledger’s ghost is close enough today without me having to see it in the flesh.

Multitasking comes second-nature with the business of mothering, so it’s not hard for me to keep an eye on Brooke as I’m getting ready, shimmying into a threadbare dress and throwing my hair up in a quick braid. Some girls around the District go all-out for their last reaping, springing a bunch of money on expensive dresses and imported jewelry. I am plain in comparison, with my tired eyes, years-old clothes and the anchor necklace that followed Fledger into the Arena settled in the hollow of my throat, but I’ve never cared about that sort of thing and in our world of barely-paid rent and generic clearance items, money is one thing I can’t waste. I’ve done everything I can to keep Brooke fed and clothed while at the same time keeping myself out from under the yoke of tesserae – my baby girl’s already lost one parent to the Capitol’s killing kindnesses, she can’t lose another – moving us out of our idyllic little house and into this crummy apartment with leaky ceilings and no air conditioning, picking up extra shifts out on the whalers that are possible thanks to the free babysitting that sweet old Mrs. Jenkins next door never hesitates to offer. Most of our possessions, clothes, and appliances are in a constant state of transience between the apartment and the Libertine’s pawn shop down the street. Jörge, the counter-boy that’s closest to my age, always jokes when I drag in another bag of items to trade or sell that I might as well be an honorary Libertine for all the time I spend in the shop. Sometimes when I have time, I’ll smile at that, but even then I always remind myself that I’m a Destin, because being Destin-tough is the only way Brooke and I are going to make it in this world on our own.

Despite the disenchanted frown on her face when I pull the dress over her head (she’d frowned like that a million years ago on a different Reaping Day in a different dress, and Fledger had laughed and said she’d grow up just like her Mama), Brooke still manages to look cute, if a little irritated, a tiny hand slipped into mine as we leave the apartment and emerge into the not-so-nice part of Four’s downtown. There are memories in these alleys that I’d rather not think about, eyes fixed forward and my grip tightening on Brooke’s hand as we weave through the already busy Reaping traffic down the familiar route to Libertine’s.

“Weren’t you just in here last week?” Jörge asks when the bell on the door announces our arrival, already dressed up for the Reaping even though he’s not done with his shift yet.

I smile even though the motion is a little rusty with all the ghosts flying around my head, setting a bag full of clothes on the counter. “The kid grows fast. I’ll take cash for those instead of trading them; there’s a sale at that little kid’s store in the square and I’m going to hit up the clearance rack after the Reaping.”

“May the odds be ever in your favor,” the Libertine boy says, pressing a small stack of rumpled bills into my palm and handing the bag off to one of his sisters – Nessie, I think.

“You too, Jörge,” I nod in response, stopping Brooke from playing with some expensive-looking glass figurines and ducking out of the shop. The odds have never really been in my favor, but I can hope.

---

“Mama, want down!” Brooke whines, the sound of it almost lost under the pressing crowds that buffer us around like a pair of pinballs as we make our way to the square.

“I know, baby, but there’s a lot of people around and I don’t want you getting hurt,” I explain, petting her windblown nest of vermillion curls back into place. “This won’t take very long, Brookie, I promise. If you’re a good girl we’ll go to the bakery after we’re done and get a cupcake, okay?”

As predicted, she immediately becomes better-behaved with the rare promise of a cupcake. Treats and desserts are usually an expense we can’t afford, but it is a special occasion after all, and Jörge was a little more generous with the payout for Brooke’s old clothes than he probably should have been. Everyone’s a little kinder when we’re all walking beneath the same shadow of death. It’s almost liberating, being able to stand in the crowd of eighteen-year-olds this year. The attitude here is so different from the rest of the crowd, all optimistic smiles and boundless hope. We are the ones who made it, who slipped through the Capitol’s clutches for seven years and finally have a future on the horizon. We are the ones who survived.

Fledger wasn’t.

I was standing in the group of sixteen-year-olds when it was his name that came out of Fate’s lottery of the damned, clutching a newborn Brooke to my chest like she was the last solid thing in the world as I watched my forever walk away from me. He promised to come home. He did, I suppose. In a box. Theron was long-gone by the time that happened, slipping back into the darkness like he’d never been here at all. Brooke and I were the only family Fledger had left, and we couldn’t even afford to bury him. That was part of the reason I sold the house, although I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t because he haunted every corner there, his ghost laughing and smiling and roaming the halls, and I knew my limits, knew that his presence would drive me insane in time. The Reaping Day the year after that was the second-hardest day of my life, forcing myself to get out of bed and go through the motions with all those memories pounding against the inside of my skull like a nightmare riot. Brooke was old enough at that point to realize that something was wrong, a tiny hand coming up to brush the tears from my cheeks as I stood and prayed and waited for it to all be over. That little touch was the only thing that saved me from losing it entirely.

It’s easier this year. Not easy, but easier. There’s still a hard knot in my stomach when the Mayor takes the stage, my heart pounding in my ears with a rabbit-paced drumbeat. I can tell that Brooke wants to fuss the longer we stand still, but that promised cupcake keeps her complacent. Introductions. Speeches. Treaties. My teeth clench around an infuriated scream as the Escort prattles on about ‘what we all owe the Capitol.’ Fuck you, fuck you nine ways to Sunday if you think I owe them anything. The Capitol owes me. The Capitol owes me my fiancée. The Capitol owes my daughter her father.

“River Destin!”

The Capitol owes me my life, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get it.

I hear a distant smear of sound, watch as one of the Ripley boys goes storming up to the stage, watch his brothers dissolve into grief at losing yet another piece of their family to the Games. But I don’t move. I can’t move. Everything is lost beneath the loud, wet thumps of my heart trying to climb out of my throat, lost in the feel of Brooke still wrapped in my arms. Some part of me wants to scream, to turn on my heel and run, to take Brooke and hop on a boat and take to the sea, never to return. I’ve always been afraid of the water, but I would sooner die as a sailor’s daughter claimed beneath the waves than as a lamb on the Capitol’s altar. Imposing figures in white are moving toward me through the pressing crowd, and a sob finally breaks through my numbness – just one. If I give into them now, I will never stop. I am going to go with them. I am going to walk up and stand on that stage because that is the only choice left to me, because despite the well-wishes of the whole world, the odds will never be in my favor. There’s a sort of closure at the prospect of death, anyway. It’s probably much easier than being alive.

Without thinking, I turn to the side, my arms loosening around the tiny form in my arms. I was moving to hand Brooke to somebody. But who? I have no one. Fledger is dead and Theron is gone and my entire family besides the little girl I love more than all the stars in the sky is lost to the shadows of time. Brooke and I are all each other have left. No. Brooke has nothing left now. The Capitol took her father, and now it’s taking me. Someday in a few years, it may even take her. But until then, what? Where will she go? I’ve heard the horror stories of the community home, seen the skinny children with bruised faces and sad eyes. That is the place people who have nothing left go to. So softly that I almost can’t hear it, I lean forward and whisper into her hair, “I’m sorry, Brooke. I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t remember her father. I wonder if she’ll remember me.

When the Keepers finally come for me, they don’t have it in them to rip my daughter from my arms. Good thing, too. The rapidly swelling hysteria boiling in my veins informs me that her presence is the only thing keeping me from dissolving into enraged, terrified screams. A murmur sweeps through the crowd as they watch a girl with a baby on her hip ascend to the proverbial chopping block, but the silence that follows is deafening. They all pity me, but not enough to take my place. I am nothing, an empty shell on the verge of shattering as I shift mechanically through the motions, wondering if this is how Fledger felt as I lean forward to shake Noah Ripley’s hand. The square empties. The doors of the Justice Building open. We are ushered inside. I am nothing, already a ghost, tethered to reality by Brooke’s vague interest in the rich decorations and blissfully ignorant smile as she tugs on my sleeve. “Mama? Cupcake now?”

Only when the doors close and the cameras stop rolling do I let myself clutch her to me and sob like my world is breaking.

It isn’t. It's already been broken for years. My world's not breaking. But hers is. She just doesn’t know it yet.

i begged you to hear me, there's more than flesh and bones
let the dead bury their dead, they will come out in droves
take the spade from my hands and fill in the holes you've made
plant your hope with good seeds, don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds
rain down, rain down on me