never had a heart to mend - klaus & the captain

When I was young, I was both right and wrong. I was right about the words that spilled from my lips; although I was quiet, I was always ready to provide facts and figures as people needed them. Word definitions, synonyms and antonyms came easily. Each letter value in Scrabble was a second language to me, and I knew the dates of any historical event my siblings could name. I was right about all that. I was incorrect, however, about why the children in the playground wouldn't speak to me. My self-drawn conclusions on my stutter, or on Marina's sadness, or on why my father always seemed so exhausted were false; the reasons for why humans did what they did eluded me completely. I was naive, too trusting, too loving, too easily lead astray. Reading faces and understanding the words between the lines - these were things that couldn't be learnt through the careful study of library books.

Today, as I stand with my hands pressed against the door of the carriage, I am wrong. (Daisy is not trapped inside, there are no faults in the system, the door is simply using the kind of technology reserved for the Capitol. I am not used to it, and I am wrong.) The man presses the button, and the entrance parts easily. His smirk burns into my flesh and I can feel myself blushing, despite my efforts to remain collected. I nod curtly at him, embarrassed. "Anything else I can help you with, sir?" The carpet is pattered with delicate swirls, and the window ledge my fingers rest on has grooves carefully knotted into it, perhaps carved by hand. I notice these things determinedly, a boy who once won the Hunger Games too afraid to look the Peacekeeper in the eye. I swallow, and shift my weight from one foot to another, stalling. "I, uh..." (Your eyes flicker upward, just for a moment.) "Thank you. Would you like a cup of coffee?" You sigh, defeated.

Being wrong is far easier than being right, and yet you've kept on trying for twenty-one long years.

The Peacekeeper doesn't know my name. He looks at me, vaguely recognising me, unable to place a finger on exactly who I am. From the blankness in his eyes, I can tell he isn't replaying clips of my Games in his mind. When he sets eyes upon my face, he doesn't see the man who killed Fitz Ripley, who brought his sword down upon Destiny Lenstil's heart even though she begged him to spare her. All he can recall is the last few fleeting moments - my blushing cheeks, shaking hands and panicked voice. I smile. I step inside, glancing at Daisy who is curled on the carriage floor, her chin propped up on the seat and her eyes closed. She sleeps with a crayon in her chubby fist and half a scribbled drawing in front of her. Breifly, I wonder what it's like to be so carefree that you can fall in and out of dreams in the middle of a picture, have so few worries that you call sleep sitting up. Afraid to disturb her, I sit down quietly, taking the seat beside her and pouring myself another cup before sliding a steaming mug across the table toward my company. He doesn't know my name.

Part of me aches to move on, change the topic of conversation without spending another moment on who I am. My name carries with it a history - it is rare that I find anyone who does not know me. Certainly in District Three, where I am the only Victor, there is nobody who does not feel as though they are woven into my story already. The Capitol is filled with the kind of people who tattoo other's faces into their skin and rush out to buy whatever suit my stylists forced upon me the moment the camera roll. It is only in this inbetween land - one of people who seem to reside neither here nor there, scattered throughout Panem, that I find the kinds of people with lives so rich and filled with their own hopes and dreams that they do not tune in to the live slaughter of their District's children. These people have better things to do.

"I'm Klaus," I say, biting my lip and hoping that triggers nothing more in his mind. "This is Daisy," I gesture to the toddler at my feet. "And what, may I ask, brings you aboard this train? Going anywhere nice?" Normal people do not travel by train. (Long ago I gave up trying to fit in with what is considered normal. My annual commute has fallen into place as routine for me, but I understand from the longing in my sibling's eyes that most people could only dream of stretching their legs so far as to step beyond the fences.) People who leave earn stories. People who catch trains are free.

He looks at Daisy and smiles. I didn't realise my shoulders were tense - and yet as I watch his features change from cocky and stern to the grin that can only grace a kind man looking at a child, they fall. I exhale, not heavily enough to attract his attention, and sink back into my chair, feeling considerably less worried than a moment earlier. The coffee scalds my tongue, and the numbness that lingers there is calming and familiar. The Peacekeeper appears to be lost in thought, and I watch him for a moment. He's handsome, certainly, with a defined jawline and unforgiving eyes. When he speaks, I startle a little, distracted. "I'm Kirk. James Kirk. Captain of the Hovercraft Enterprise. I'm on board to escort you and your fellow victors while my ship is in the Third District for repairs." I hide a smile. His title is so prestigious, so bold, that I think he cannot help but be proud of it. I have never head a Victor introducing themselves as such, and I think that speaks volumes about our accomplishments. (I'd much rather be simply Klaus than The Victor of the Sixty-first Annual Hunger Games.)

"So you could say I'm going somewhere nice, yeah. How about you? Where are you from, Klaus?" Despite myself, I feel myself faltering before I even open my mouth. Cursing internally, I look at him, too proud to let maintaining my gaze overcome me. Apparently, the Captain and I have the same destination set; and yet I cannot be sure that District Three constitutes somewhere nice, not anymore. Maybe once, when it was all I knew - when the real world seemed to extend only to the end of the garden and the world of my books contained many more perils - in those times, I might have nodded without thought. Now, though, I hesitate, pondering the question. "I'm from Three," I say, slowly. Three, where I was born to a mother who couldn't stay alive long enough to hold me in her arms. Three, where I was reaped and sent away, and not a single person raised their hand to protest. Three, that I returned to a changed man, a crown resting awkwardly atop my head, having been exposed to a universe I never knew existed before. My siblings greeted me at the station, and the Mayor handed me the keys to our new house. And yet even in those first few weeks, I was more than aware that the District I had grown up in was no longer home. Now, I am even more certain of this.


"I dread arriving home, in all honesty. Sometimes, the whole thing seems like a trap." I stop, unsure why I began to voice my thoughts and yet compelled to continue; there is something about the way the Captain speaks, the way he looks at me, the way he smiles, that makes me feel like breathing is alright, for now. (After all, he didn't know my name, and that is a good enough reason to trust a person today.) "Even so, the Capitol itself has it's own means of imprisonment. Being able to travel must be so freeing. Even the train journeys seem bounteous to me." I can hear the wistfulness in my voice and I despise it. Isn't my life far more than I deserve? The longing for something more is not something I ever felt in the years leading up to my victory, and now the idea is both foreign and dangerous. (So easily, I could become like the people I pity most.)

My father told us he loved us when he tucked us into bed at night. My sister, forever curious, asked him how we knew, for absolutely certain that he wasn't lying. Papa sighed, well aware that Marina was entangled in a 'difficult stage' (or so he thought - in reality, the phase never ended.) Carefully, he took a seat on the lone armchair in the corner and told us. "Because I'm here now, and when you're at school and I'm at work I think about you and hope you're all okay. Because always I do my best to make sure you're happy and fed and I am so grateful to watch you all grow up. Because you're the most important things in my lives and I'd do anything for you." Marina nodded, satisfied by this. I sat in silence, thinking if those things are what love is - presence, constant thought, worry, care - then our mother was notably failing this criteria. On my bedside table, the photo of her looked as though the shadows were eating it whole.

The next time I heard of love and what it might comprise of, a nine year old Jamarion was teasing Lyana. He stuck his tongue out at her and declared across the dinner table, "You love him!" She turned a magnificent shade of cerise and protested loudly. Jamarion didn't let up until our father instructed him to leave her alone or he would be getting no desert. It turned out that desert was only bruised apples from the market, but it kept him quiet for a while. Later, I found love hearts scrawled across my sister's literacy book when I was filling in her homework for her. "Do you love him?" I asked her of the boy who sat beside her in homeroom. She shook her head and frowned at her shoes.

When my name was called at reaping, my family told me they loved me. When I arrived home, they didn't seem so sure. Even so, their faces were filled with sadness and earnest hope on the eve of the 61st Hunger Games, and I do not doubt that they meant the words they spoke. I wondered if there are things you can see - like your brother committing murder on your television screen - that change your mind and change your still. Still, Lyana smiles at me in the hallway and holds my hand when she finds me crying. She doesn't ask me questions. I think that's love. My father, on the other hand, remains in our old family home, choosing not to follow me into our life of riches. I think about what he told us when we were five years old - about love being to do with being there and sadness swells up inside my chest. He is missing, absent, and as good as dead. (I should be the one who is dead, not he.)

"I can understand. I hate having to go back to the Capitol. It's hard to breathe there." This is what Kirk tells me as he sips at his coffee, and I wonder if it is possible to love a place. Do I love room I share with Daisy in the training center each year, or do I love Lethe and Opal and Peri and Saffron and the others who come to visit me there? "Are you not happy to return home to your wife? You must miss her at least?" The Captain puts forward a question I have never been asked before in my twenty-one years. He asks if I have anyone to go home to, in his way. If there is someone who I love left behind. Stupid love.

I blush again, crease my eyebrows in puzzlement, and then look up. "Oh! I glance at Daisy, realising that to anybody who does not know my story - did not read the interview I did for Victor's view when Daisy was born - she is a piece of evidence, proof of a life I do not lead. To have a daughter, I forget, means something to many that it does not mean to me. It's blood in veins, it's 'she has her father's eyes' rather than watching them grow up and pushing them on the swing and finding plasters when they scrape their knees. I shake my head. "I don't have a wife. No - I'm not so much the wife kind of person." The child beside me does not know where she came from, not yet. She is barely old enough to speak anything more than her immediate demands and a series of words that make little sense when strung together. Not yet has she questioned why Kieran has a mother and a father while she has none. Then, I will show her the picture in my back pocket and utter the words "Daisy Ripley Goravich-Darling - for the bravest boy I ever knew, and your Mama who loved you very much." I am glad time is still on my side.

I smile at Kirk, still feeling the warmth in my cheeks.