//this is the way the world ends// [victors]

Lethe Turner

Lethe had an appointment that evening.

She tread carefully behind the other Victors, counting her steps in counts of three. One, two, three, one, two, three. She was reminded of the rounds of gunshots that been counted off each night in the distance. One, two, three, one, two, three. She held her children close and counted until the fighting ceased.

It was no surprise that the Rebel President, as Lethe called her in her head, wanted to see the Victors. As talk spread through the camp Lethe was in that the rebels were closing in and the Capitol was about to fall, she began to wonder where she, a Victor, would stand in all this. The night before victory seemed imminent, she lay against her threadbare cot, heart racing, hand tight around her necklace, knowing they all had to play a part and desperately hoping Patricia and Klaus were alive.

Where was the little eighteen year old girl now? Lethe caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror as she walked. Her pale cheeks were filling in again, but her hair was already graying in some places. Though just midway her 30s, Lethe's insides felt as though she'd lived a hundred years, all hollow and hard, rough and tired, and it was no surprise her outward appearance was following suit. Where a sort of triumph and excitement should lie inside of her, all Lethe felt was an aching, hungry pain.

***

They came for him first. The message was clear. Stay quiet, don't fight. Or your children will be next.

She prayed that he went quickly as she lay against his chest, stroking the hair just above the bloody bullet hole. That they didn't torture him or hurt him in any way. Her chest was tight, but she could not cry. It was like she'd been hit in the stomach. She could barely breathe when she found him into the bedroom, barely speak, let alone scream. She wasn't sure how she got here, besides him. She brought his cold hand to her lips slowly and kissed his fingers, one by one, before closing them around her ring finger and resting their hands against his empty chest. Her children would be home any minute. Their father was dead. And they'd be next if their mother didn't sit quietly.

It wasn’t the first time in her life that she wished she were dead, but strangely, even considering the day she lay in pouring rain, blood thick in her mouth, eye punctured out of head, this day those thoughts of lying dead next to her husband were the most powerful. Maybe that’s because in the Games she had had even the smallest sliver of hope.

***

She took her seat around a table far too large for her petite frame and shrunk further into it, legs tightly pressed together, arms stiff at her sides. She had an appointment that evening. She wanted to make herself scarce as Rebel President, Alma Coin, began to speak.

“I’ve called you all here today to ask your help in making an important decision.”

A buzzing filled Lethe's ears. She stared straight ahead, cracked lips slightly parted, staring out a white window...staring into her husband's eyes.

###

As she lay with him, heart barely beating, ready to lurch once she heard the children enter the house, she knew she had choices.

The Capitol had given them to her. She could join her husband or be a good Victor and do nothing.

Her hair was warming Jasper’s chest, but even that couldn’t bring him back. How long would she have to lie against him until the cold took her as well? Was that what waiting was? If Lethe had waited around in the first place, she wouldn't even have this decision to make. She hadn't waited. She went and found Razor and met him in the boneyard. She wasn't quite like the other Victors; she knew she wouldn't join the fight, but she certainly wasn't waiting around, especially with her own life and the lives of her children in danger.

They left that night, Jasper's ring on a chain around Lethe's neck. She'd left a note and a bundle of food for Patricia, but had not invited the girl; she knew Patricia would see her as a deserter, believing that she was fleeing. Lethe didn't see it that way, knowing full well that Patricia was going to fight. They just had two different definitions of survival.

***

Outside President Snow's former advising room, the snow was thickening. Lethe remembered fearing that the light flurry would get worse the day they left as she held Phelix’s hand and Eden trailed nervously behind them. Her mind was already working like a gear. She would cut the children’s hair first, perhaps even shave their heads. She would dye her own. She might even take out her glass eye and wear an eye patch—unless that was a dead giveaway? What if cutting her children’s hair would give them away as well? Around and around her thoughts went as they crept under the fence and set out into the woods. Lethe remembered shouldering her backpack, filled with food to last them about two weeks as she surveyed the white landscape before them. The tall, snow-colored trees with their weighed down branches shielded them and a family of deer crept slowly away, eyeing them nervously as they walked forward. Lethe didn’t know the cold, but she’d survived one Games. Her eyes strayed to a few wet branches on the ground and then her ears pricked up, listening for the soft trickle of a moving water source nearby. She’d survived one Games. She would survive this. She had made her choice. The Capitol couldn’t hold her forever.

“I thought we could all vote on it.”

Coin had given them a choice. Lethe Turner held in her hands the power to turn the tables.

***

It was by pure luck that they were found by rebels, not by the Capitol, a week into walking. Her children were pale, emaciated and Lethe had frostbite on her toes. They’d made it by hunkering down in caves, abandoned shacks, even sneaking into the outskirts of Districts they came across. They were brought to a refugee camps on the outskirts of District 2. There Lethe Turner heard her name repeated to her several times. The Lethe Turner had arrived. The Lethe Turner that had turned and ran when the Capitol had come for her family. The Lethe Turner now with two less toes. She carried her son in her arms, her husband’s ring around her neck, tears in her eyes, a swollen pain in her heart. And it was there Lethe learned she was carrying something else, too.

***

She laid a hand against her lower belly to feel the heartbeat of her womb. She wasn't showing yet which was a good sign.

She wished her womb was dead, a hollow mass of dead cells, unable to carry life anymore. She wondered if the poison inside of her would poison future offspring and deliver them with the knowledge that that world was pain, the world had cruel rules, and that the world was relentless.

They'd be orphaned. No father and Lethe, herself, so absent, feeling nothing for whatever stirred in her womb whatsoever, but rather abhorring it, refusing to see the photos the doctor had offered when she first met him, refusing to even acknowledge that she was making something. She’d made a quiet appointment tonight. Midnight. No pain. No wakefulness. No memory. No nothing. Lethe felt nothing. She couldn’t do this alone anymore.

***

She’d received a letter from Eric a day ago, but she hadn’t opened it. She knew what it was going to say. I’m alive. Are you okay? Is our daughter okay? Can I see you? She held it in her hands, her finger pad pressing into the corner of the envelope, staring straight ahead. In front of her, her daughter was playing a card game with her brother. They were playing cards the day before their father had died and Lethe could remember her laughter, high and clear. She saw herself in her daughter, from her clear green eyes, to her long blonde hair. Her daughter used to be a fussy infant, who gurgled and cried, who was shy, but sweet. Her daughter used to be lively and used to love horses.

Eric knew a 19-year old Lethe, trembling in shock as she followed him to a bathroom, happy to be alive, but wondering desperately how. Eric was building a castle on the cobwebs of a girl he thought he knew, of a child he had fathered. She knew he would offer her his love, his home, his safety, his comfort, his everything. Lethe could re-marry and live comfortably with Eric who knew nothing of the 35-year old woman who slept besides him every night. Lying there, she knew she would constantly be haunted by his 16-year old touch.
Phelix made a face at his sister, but Eden barely cracked a smile as she laid down another card. Lethe saw a lot of herself in her daughter. And so, she decided to burn the letter.

***

Leon had spoke first, a yes, filling the silence with even more uncertainty. Lethe’s hands were tight on her lap, hugging the hem of her skirt. If this was Snow’s strategy room, it was very likely this was the place where he ordered the death of her husband. That achy hunger was welling up in Lethe’s stomach again, the heartbeat growing rapidly in her womb. Her lower lip trembled, a word trying to leap free from her.

Yet, as the overcoming support rose to her throat, her eyelids suddenly became very heavy. She was exhausted. Should she nap before her appointment tonight? All she wanted to do was wake up on the other side of today, new, whole, different. She wanted to wake as Lethe Turner, not Somerset or Rhodes, not one thing or another. She was exhausted with today.

And that’s when she said it: “No.” Her voice wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t a shout. It was a resounding, firm word. She drew her chin up, staring from Patricia to Leon to Alma Coin. “I want to start over. I’m tired. I say no.” Something tight and heavy, clenched up and crying in her stomach, was thawing.