born again with each sunrise // Temple's Awakening

I come to with a desperate gasp for air. Eyes wide and unprepared for the sharp clinical lights hanging over me. Antiseptic stings my nose and panic swirls in my chest. The beeping in my head grows faster and suddenly a figure slides into my vision, flesh and blue scrubs taking over the white nothingness.

"Oh, you're awake." He talks for a while, a memorized speech that I don't completely understand. Words are being said but they don't have any meaning, not right now. He smiles and then leaves as if everything is understood.

I don't understand, not at all.

I move and every cell in my body aches with the motion. I bite back my pain and shove myself up until I'm sitting. I blink, eyes still adjusting to the unbearable brightness. Squinting I look around see dazzling white beds lined up. I'm sitting on one, thin tubes running from my arm to a machine. I can feel the pressure where it has entered my skin and I reach over to pull it out.

"Ah, don't." The young man from before says, sliding back to my side. Practiced hands decorated in delicate tattoos of red and blue lines slip the device out of my arm. He reaches around my head and I flinch. He gives a small smile before lifting another skinny tube off my ears. It pulls out of my nose and suddenly it's just a little harder to breathe. I hadn't even realized it was wrapped around my face. I reach up, looking for more devices and feel stiff plastic woven into the side of my face. The skin is tender, but I run my fingertips over the swollen flesh.

"Stitches," the man said. "You can look around but be quiet, everyone is sleeping."

He pulls away again and the bright white of death has faded into normality. A curtain is drawn across the edge of the room near the foot of my bed. I swing my legs around and shiver as bare feet meet cold floor. I'm clad in only a thin paper gown and a ragged scrap of yellow fabric tied around my wrist.

My fingers brush over it, stained with blood and dirt.

I look over at the bed next to me and see a familiar face framed by a mane of blonde hair.

Lex?

She was asleep and it felt wrong to be looking at her when she was the most vulnerable. I look away and slowly move to my feet. My skin strains against stitches hidden beneath my gown where blades had torn open my thighs. I hiss, gripping the side of the bed before slowly limping towards the curtain.

I need to know what's waiting for me.

I rip the curtain aside and find more concrete. The smell of cleaner is even stronger here. The lights are dimmed but I can see movement in front of me. There are rows and rows of beds, with people wrapped up in blankets on them.

I move forward slowly, unsure and afraid of what I might find. I inch closer, a find Yusei sprawled out on a cot, a leg hanging off the side. His chest is moving up and down as if he were breathing.

But I watched him die.

But.

But I died.

I remember Bette's face, and all the pain and blood. I remember...

"You’ve been unconscious since you fell in the arena. At that precise moment, the tracker in your arm administered a concoction to put your body into suspended animation. Once you arrived in the Capitol, we reversed the effects of the serum."

The words finally click.

I start down the row of beds, quietly tip toeing through the sleeping kids looking for faces.

And I find one. My eyes meet vis and it feels like being hit by lightning. Wander bolts up and I run to vis cot, kneeling on the cold floor.

"Is it really you?" my voice is hoarse and I don't know how long I've been laying on a bed unable to use it. My cheek stings and I make a note to be more carefully as not to disturb the plastic thread holding it together.

Wander simply leans over, wrapping me into a hug. Ve is warm, a stark contrast to the hard, frozen concrete around us.

My eyes sting and I wonder why in this moment of all moments I'd start to cry. Wander is alive, not dead! Tears are for the dead not the living right in front of you. Still the emotion is unstoppable.

I peer over vis shoulder and see Eve curled up on the cot next door. She stills looks impossibly small, but just like Yusei her chest rises and falls with steady breaths.

I feel myself start to shake in Wander's arms and there's nothing I can do to stop it. It's too much to handle. I watched Eve die, I saw her eyes go blank. Bette and I wrapped her in a flag and left her. Yet, she's here.

I'm here.

I finally pull away, wiping my nose on the shoulder of my paper gown. I move to the narrow aisle between Eve and Wander's cots and lay down on the floor. It's still cold, but no colder than the pasture on a November morning.

A screen in the farthest corner of the room flickers. Annie's face is staring up at a dark sky, it flickers again and Bette takes up the screen. There's a pain in her eyes. An exhaustion that I understand.

I wish she knew what was waiting for her.

There are figures on a deck across from the beds staring down at us like the way the Gamemakers had graded our private training sessions. They'll make me move eventually, you have to keep your zombie children in neat rows after all, but I'll wait until they do.

I slip my hand into Eve's, careful not to disturb her dreams if she's having them.

If this is a dream I'd never want to wake up.