{ half awake // [train] arbor + d12s

we're half awake
in a fake empire

More than anything else, it scares him: the boys who've opted to come with him are little bigger than Cedar. And with his son one year shy of the reaping pool himself, Arbor can no longer cling to his denial about the reality of the matter. They're going to take him. He knows it. Sooner or later, they're going to drag his son away from him. They're going to force him to watch, to participate — same as they always have. The stakes will be higher, but his probability of success will be the same as it always is: zero.

He'd had his fingers crossed for the same treatment that Twelve had received last quell: total lack of tributes. Nobody in their right minds wanted to watch a handful of starving Seam kids flail about pitifully with knives, not with so many Razor Creels running around, threatening to snuff them out in a matter of hours.

But faced with the threat of even less food making its way to the pitiful district that hadn't seen a windfall in damn near two decades, Arbor Halt shouldn't be surprised that the Capitol was able to entice a few suicidal — or suicidally stupid — kids to carry the coal-colored banner into the bottomless pit that has swallowed each of his tributes — all of them. No exceptions.

He can hardly believe he still has to do this. It's his fault, probably. Spent all his good mentoring and all his Capitol capital on the two most broken tributes he'd ever had the misfortune to drag through hell and back. They don't even look him in the eye anymore.

A year later and he still can't believe he got so close, only to lose it at the last second. His fault. He wanted it too badly. Selfishly, of course - as if Arbor Halt ever knew how to do anything that wasn't selfish. It went deeper than that, of course: another from-behind victory under the belt of District Twelve's Boy Wonder would certainly take some of the heat off of Katelyn Persimmon — and fuck knew his friend needed it. ("I think I did a bad thing and I don't know who else to tell.") Badly needed it.

He worries he'll break that promise to himself he made all those years ago when he gets to the Capitol - he's never hated a victor before, not for the things they had to do to win, not for the tributes they brought home in place of his.

Astonishingly, he doesn't even hate Cricket for her willingness - her enthusiasm - to run the damn spectacle this year. Envies her, if anything. He's given half his liver and still can't manage to detach from his tributes to that extent.

But shit, if he doesn't drive his meaty fist into Ansgar Todd's pious fucking eye socket the minute he crosses the old Victor's line of sight, Mace's new little babysitter will finally have a miracle worth thanking his god for.

He can't help but resent his friend from District Ten over the matter, even if only a little. Theirs was a bond always doomed to be a bit frosty - neither of the men ever had the words to relate to the other. Shared experience only bridged so many verbal gaps. Plus there was that one time Arbor fucked his ex-husband. But this? Shy girl or no, at least Saffron was there. Arbor had been coming to the Capitol unaccompanied for more than a decade. He'd done his duty early on - he was supposed to be done trying in vain to bring the woefully ill-prepared home by now. It wasn't fair.

As if anything that happened in the old Victor's life had been.

He plants himself in the high-backed leather chair in the lounge car, opposite his charges.

"It was brave of you," he tells his whiskey. He can't look the boys in the eye while he says it, not when he knows he can't help them. "For what it's worth, you won't be forgotten." That's a promise he can't help but keep. Dead first or dead last — Kale Forrest to Hyacinth Mortuus — their names, their faces are permanently burned in his brain. No matter what he tries to forget.

"I can answer any questions you have, but I can't do much more for you beyond that."