the tree and the lightning that strikes it — nico.

You don't know exactly how you get there, but you do, and you suppose that in the end, that's really all that matters.

It's the middle of the night, you'd guess, or maybe passing by the witching hour, but you had a dream, a horrible one that you don't understand, and you couldn't possibly bring yourself to go back to sleep. You woke up in a cold sweat, forehead dripping and the back of your shirt flush against your frame. All over, gooseflesh rose up, decorating your skin in little bumps, tiny mountains that you may well never get over if they go like the rest of your life has.

"Hey Reg," you say, and for the first time in nearly a year, you don't crumble.

You don't know what it is exactly about your pain and your anger this time, but they feel impossible to get rid of, like they were the stone that sent the scales tipping, like you are never going to be able to be okay ever again. You have always been partial to the story of Sisyphus, and time and time again you can't help but think about him pushing a boulder up a hill from time until eternity and it feels like every day you're alive now is the same, pushing yourself over a mountain and over again.

You crumble every time.

You know that you could go and see Reggie in the Tribute Museum, sit in a grass field beside him if you wanted and actually get to talk to him the way that you still go and talk to Francis every so often. But seeing Francis in the arena is one thing—that's the place that you truly met him, the place that he healed you and protected you and loved you and died for you. That arena, in a field of sunflowers, was the place where you were Francis and Nico. Seeing him there feels natural, feels semi-real, even if he's frozen in time and you are not.

Seeing Reggie there makes your stomach roll.

You think that if his ghost was here and found out that you weren't going to see him in the museum but you were going to see Francis then he might be hurt, might be upset, but you don't know how to explain it other than that's not the place where Reggie belongs, don't know what to say except that the only place you can talk to Reggie anymore is in your head, laying on your back in that clearing in the woods out a mile or so past the northern border of the fence. You don't know what to say except that Reggie going into his arena was one of the worst things that ever happened to you, and the sight of him in that autumnal place stirs no nostalgia in you, no kindness, no softness.

There is only pain and anguish, and a crying to the sky.

His grave does something similar.

Your memories of this place are vague, and you're honestly not absolutely one hundred percent positive that you actually made it to his burial here. You've never bothered to ask Ten about it, but you have enough faith in her to believe that she made sure you made it, have enough faith in her to believe she slapped you awake and shoved your arms through a jacket so that the cold didn't kill you.

You haven't been back since.

You're here now though.

That has to count for something.

When you sit, the Earth is unforgiving, and you curl into yourself to find some comfort, pull your knees into your chest as best you can and wrap your long arms around the top of them.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," you say.

You know that waiting for a response is silly, but somehow it feels instinctual, like you know that if you took that long to go and see Reggie and he was here to tell you off about it, then that exactly the moment he would do it. He wouldn't let you make your excuses, wouldn't let you try and make any kind of wiggle room for yourself, would just chew you out before you got a chance to tell him why he shouldn't.

Because he was always, always, right—you were always failing him.

"I won't pretend not to know what you would say to me, won't pretend that you wouldn't say something like I told you so." You swallow. "We always knew each other too well to pretend like that." You say 'we' without really thinking much about it, but as soon as the word leaves your mouth it just feels right. Your heart isn’t in your chest anymore though, it's right there at the base of your throat threatening to choke you. It's too late for a lot of things, you can remember him saying, voice clear as day in your head. You had thought that might fade, that you might one day forget what his voice sounded like with the rasp of morning in his throat, but every day you took to the woods you could hear him talking to you through the trees, unable to see him but always able to hear.

Every beat of silence now cuts deeper.

These ones are worse though, you think, the moments after you have spoken something meant for him and yet there's no familiar oak wood tree to remember Reggie climbing up. Here there is only the cold, hard earth, and a stone with his name carved into it.

For years, you have lived with your anger, and for most of those Reggie was there to help you through it all, even when you didn't want him to be, even when you were trying to martyr yourself for a cause that you had no business being a part of. You've been angry more than you've been anything else in this life, more so even than you've been hungry, and that's a hard truth to bear. You've been angry with the Capitol for transferring a murderer to safety instead of punishing him for his crimes, angry with yourself for being more boy than man, angry with your mother for both stealing your life and for giving you purpose, and then angry with yourself all over again for having let yourself be manipulated by the woman who claimed she loved you in the first place. You've pounded your fists into walls and into flesh, had skin crack under your knuckles and felt what it was like when a skull cracks.

You've lived with this anger longer than you've lived without it, and you don't know who you are without it.

Anger never healed you though.

Kindness did.

It was Francis's enduring softness that made you realize what kind of a man that you could become, made you realize that your mother wasn't an apostle leading you towards your salvation; she was just a woman, sick and angry and unwilling to do anything if it didn't get her what she wanted, and all she wanted on this entire planet was for her husband to be alive again, and if she couldn't have that, then she'd see the man who killed him burned. She didn't care that it would get you killed, didn't care that the only way for you to get to him, to get to the Capitol, was to go through the Games, that you would have to kill innocent children just to see her justice brought to the light. Kindness healed you in more ways than you can count, and you're finally starting to learn that, finally starting to understand that you don't need to feel anger and pain for the rest of your life.

"I think about the night I showed you the Training Center rooftop all the time," you go on, willing your vision to clear, your voice to steady, your nerves to calm. "I wish that I hadn't spent the last couple of years making everything worse, not reaching out to you when I needed you the most." You swallow, drop your head. "That's not— It's not about me it's—" you shake your head and look to the sky, struggling. Words have never been your strong suit; you aren't someone for monologues, aren't someone who is going to write a sonnet for the one you love, but you'll try.

For Reggie, you'll try.

The truth that you've learned this last year is this: "I took advantage of you. Every time."

You wipe your nose, can feel it starting to drip as you hold in tears. You don't know why you're trying not to cry though, so you stop trying, let a tear fall. "I never gave much thought to what you wanted, to what you needed. I let you love me because I needed someone to, but I never let myself love you back the way you deserved."

You relax, let your shoulders drop, and sit cross-legged instead.

"I'm sorry for what that did to us, for what it did to you."

You're surrounded by only gravestones and the breeze, and no one sees when the anger that had been sitting in your chest grows wings and flies away towards the sun.


Now it's just you and the truth.