Druso Izar d11 (fin)

Druso Izar
47
Male
District 11

When did he get so old, he wondered, looking down at hands callused and weathered from decades of working in the fields. There was a touch of grey starting to appear in his hair, just a sprinkle, but enough to remind him of how much time had really passed. What happened to the days when it was him and his brothers against the world? When they had laughed and played in the sun, running breathless from one adventure to the next, when they were invincible. Those days were long gone, he supposed. Life was a cold song that taught them not to cry, perhaps Bakar more than the rest of them, but all the same.

Those Izar boys are trouble. He could hear them saying. He supposed they had been, back in the day. Some more than others. But he was still strong, even if he was pushing fifty in a few years. Vasco was the smart one, the one that had a head for politics, Druso preferred working with his hands, driving tractors and other, hard earnest work like that. He’d found a wife, his darling Iris. Too good for him by far. He’d never been quite sure what she saw in him, but he was glad that she did. Life was good. But something had changed in the sixties, around the time that he and Iris had started having kids.

It had all started with Benat. Despite coming from a large family, Druso had been lucky enough not to lose any of his brothers to the reaping. His nephew was a different matter. The world had grown colder after that. Then his brother Jurgi had lost Iago. He’d always known there was something not quite right with that boy. But he was still saddened to have to bury him. A few years after that his nephew Levi had volunteered to save a boy none of them knew and took an axe to skull for his trouble. But wonder of wonders, his district partner, that Persimmon girl had come home alive and ushered in three years of plenty. Hell, Druso had even gained a few pounds during those years.

But all good things must come to an end.

The year of the quell he thought his heart would surely break. Salome had always been caring and kind. He’d encouraged it. She was the bucket of water that could douse the firecracker that was Magdalena. But he’d never anticipated that she would see volunteering as the ultimate kindness. Saving all the other eligible girls in the district with her actions. The damnable quell had sent so many children to their deaths, more than double the regular amount. But as her allies fell around her, as she survived day after day, he’d dared to hope that she might pull off a miracle.

Then that boy had broken her knee and she hadn’t gotten back up. He hadn’t thought he could feel a pain so deep, but he did. Losing a daughter was like losing a limb. He reached for her, but she wasn’t there. Iris had been his rock in those dark days leading up to her funeral. They put his sweet, summer child in the ground and he prayed that it would be the last loss the Izars suffered in his lifetime.

It was not.

Vasco’s daughter Raquel was chosen, and after they buried her too, Druso began to talk to certain people in the district. The kind of people he used to avoid, the ones with whispers of rebellion on their breath. Nieces, nephews, daughters, sons. Something had to be done. For too long the district had suffered under the heel of the government, and no one knew that better than the Izars. As he joined the growing network of people seeking to overthrow the Capitol, he hoped that his brother Aresti would at least be spared having to lose a child of his own.

He was not.

It was around that time that he started to wonder if he should’ve kept a closer eye on his remaining daughter. She made friends with the kind of boys that he had been one of as a child, earning a public lashing for her trouble.

It had taken her back weeks to heal from that lashing and for all her faults, he couldn’t see her attacking a peacekeeper unprovoked. Though he doubted he would ever get the full story out of her, he refrained from reprimanding her and took turns cleaning her wounds with his wife. This was his fault; he’d failed her somehow when he was raising her. That, or the Izar blood in her was just too strong. He’d been a bit of a troublemaker when he was a kid. Aresti and he had been the dynamic duo, and Druso had gotten into a fight or two, had engaged in a little bit of petty thievery every now and then. Unlike his daughter however, he made sure to never get caught.

Yeah, he’d been a little wild when he was a kid. It was probably where Magda got it from.
The eightieth Hunger Games was the last straw for him. El Presidente se esta jugando con nosotros! Diablo! He’d vehemently crowed to his wife, slamming his fist down on the table. The Capitol was mocking the natural order of things now, abusing these children for their entertainment and sending them home as bitter, broken things, like a toy that a child had tired of playing with.

Perhaps it was time to take a page from his daughter’s book and bite the hand that fed him.