Oh Very Young (What Will You Leave Us?) [Asari/Vasco]

Four years ago, when Ping and Felix had been drawn from the reaping bowl, I’d done as we’d come accustomed to when one of our own hadn’t been drawn. I walked hand in hand with Emma along the dirt, Yani toddling at my left, with Sophia and Manu fast-stepping ahead. When the heavy wooden door closed behind us, it was as though a frost had started to lift. I’d put my jacket on the pole by the door, and Manu would take Yani to play blocks on the floor at the edge of the living room. Sophia took to strumming my old guitar in the corner to pass time. I’d open a beer from the fridge and start to take out the vegetables for the evening meal: a paella.

They’d linger like shadows in the kitchen – the kids – to stand over our shoulders as we sautéed the onions and prepped the rice. I don’t think we kept them from helping us, just – it felt better that we were the ones preparing the food, rather than our children. Somehow they seemed too weary those days to have to make something for us. Instead we set about to sprinking the saffron and just the right pinch of salt. I wanted the best for them, something warm and distinctly us, to share. Of course, each critic was ready with a tasting spoon for the broth, or to eye the socarrat, rice burnt at the pan’s bottom.

So it was that the world felt smaller, contained to our own history. One that fought back against darkness with what we knew and could share. We couldn’t help but trade glances with one another, knowing that we didn’t have to know the pain of watching another battle to the death. Another year without an Izar being called felt like a blessing. Raquel’s empty chair still sat fresh then. The first year I’d still made her a plate, half-awake in the kitchen. Years after there were the empty plates. By the fourth year, just a spare space at the edge of the table.

Men in white lead me up the steps and through the doors of the justice building. A pair brushes past as I move to the tribute holding rooms and, under the fluorescence, runs a hard shoulder into me as he passes. I can hear the snickering from a distance, the gleeful disrespect.

Sampson had called me a puppet, and lately, I was starting to feel like cutting off my strings.

Asari is the sixth Rhodes to be offered as tribute. It’s almost as many Izars that have come and gone (as many in recent memory, anyway). Of course, standing in front of the heavy wooden door, I know it’s worse that that’s how I think of her at all. She’s so much more another condemned to die; she’s the hopes and dreams the district has nurtured. She’s a part of a family that’s known for its kindness, if not its tenacity. I don’t know what I’ll possibly offer to her, save that she’s not forgotten, and that whatever may come to her family, eleven would be behind them.

I give a slow tap at the door before turning the knob to enter.

“Asari, I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to see you,” I say, one slow step in front of the other, “To let you know, that I’m – we’re – here for you.”