{The 69th Annual Masquerade Ball}

“Come with me,” Rum Tum whispers. He touches his forehead to mine, and electricity flooding through my insides. I smile at the invitation, because I know what I want now. This. Whatever this is.

“Freya,” Rum Tum says, and I tremble at the way he says my name and tremble even more when he moves to his knees, because we all know what comes next. I feel the tears at the edges of my eyes beginning to slide down past the smile stretched across my face, my heart beating at a rate it never knew before.

“I wasn’t born to live here, or as part of panem. The only time I’ve ever been happy is outside the walls. Where no one else ever thought to go. That’s all I’ve ever known.” I nod, because he’s right. He isn’t meant to be here, and I shouldn’t have kept him here for so long. All that time I spent curled up in bed I could have been searching for a way to free him of his enslavement to these people, to my parents, to me. And I didn’t. And somehow, he’s still here. Somehow, he’s on his knees before me. Somehow, he loves me despite all that sadness and pain.

“You never have to be lonely again, if you don’t want to be. I want you and I to be together, just like…like the way you make me happy. Like the way that I want to make you happy. I don’t want it to ever end.”

His words cause the tears to plummet down my face, across my smile, but I don’t let go of Rum Tum’s hands. I don’t ever want to let go of them. He can see all the tears if he wants. He can see the most vulnerable parts of me, all those parts that love him and love him and love him despite the pain that I’ve been taught to associate with love. I want him to see me. Because maybe there’s no shame in the fact that Rum Tum is written into my identity. Maybe there’s no weakness in that. I used to be so afraid of loving, of being vulnerable, of giving too much to someone just to see them stripped away from me again. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Rum Tum, it’s to be fearless. Because if you keep waiting in fear, the pain just keeps rewinding.

“Freya... marry me.”

I remember when I used to wonder about what Rum Tum’s future looked like. I imagined him finding someone out in the wild that was just like him: young, free, and curious. I imagined them getting married and seeing all the oceans and the mountains and maybe raising a family, living outside the lines of society. And it made me sad to think that I would never be that. I could never be as free as that, as unbound from society, as curious, as happy, as genuine. For a long time, I thought that Rum Tum and I were too different for me to ever belong to him, for him to ever belong to me.

But Rum Tum wants to spend the rest of his life with me. With me.

And I want that too.

I’m sobbing and smiling and laughing and there’s probably mascara rippling down my face in the same shape as the streams we will walk along again someday. I’m on my knees now too, both because I’m shaking in joy so much that I’m physically incapable of holding myself and because I want to be level with Rum Tum’s face.

Gosh, I want to tell Rum Tum how his big brown eyes make me want to smile forever, because they’re always there, always shining through the seas of sadness and crumbling realities that pull me down too often. I want to tell him that he makes me happy too, that his smile is as contagious as the flu. And I want to thank him for the eternities he spent waiting for me, waiting and waiting and waiting for me to learn how to love him back again, because I am so sorry for how long he had to sit in that waiting room watching me pile on more pain for him to carry through this strange world I kept him locked up in, so far from home.

And yet, Rum Tum is never waiting for an apology. Because even despite everything I’ve put him through, he wants to spend his entire lifetime with me. And I can’t believe that he can love me after all of this. But he still does. I don’t think there’s a soul on the planet that has the capacity for love that Rum Tum does. I don’t think there’s anyone as strong. I want to tell him that. He should know that. And I want to tell him that I love him too, because I don’t think I’ve ever told him before. Not out loud. Not really, no, because I’ve never been this vulnerable in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever let myself feel this happy, this helplessly in love.

So I try to say all of this, but it just comes out in sobs and laughs and the only response I manage to get out of my mouth is a whispered, “Okay,” and a wide smile and then my arms are wrapped around Rum Tum for dear life as I catch my breath, because he is my life. He’s a part of it. He’s a part of me now, inscribed into my identity since the moment I said “okay," even though maybe I don’t fully know who I am yet. To think that I swore that I wouldn't make the mistake my mother had made in committing her life to a man before she even knew who she was. And I know she doesn't love my father the way she thought she did when she was twenty. I know that most of what she does for him is just to keep the house at peace. But Rum Tum and I - we aren't like that. We won't be like that someday, will we?

Because I know that there are things in life that you have to reach out and grab with both hands before they slip away, even if that means that you have to risk falling forwards on your face again.

So I’m grabbing this; I’m snatching it even if that means giving up the place I’ve been taught to call home since the day I was born, even if it means risking loss again, even if it means giving up everything.

Because the past only leaves scars if you let it, and I won’t be a poor assemblage of pain any longer.

We are made of stars, not scars.