promises {alexander's epilogue}

He was happy. He spent his life swaying beneath the summer sun. A little soldier playing with swords of steel and shields of iron. He ran through forests flocked with freshly fallen pines and swam in streams of cool crisp water. He had brothers to chase after and parents with open arms to come home to. He even had sweetness in the shape of a girl who would watch him as he played. Alexander Chastmen was by all means a boy blessed with joy.

In the end, she doesn't even look him in the eyes. Like a coward she strikes from the shadows, scraping her steel across the back of his head. She can't bring herself to watch what her actions entail. Instead she escapes, whispers away towards another day. Meanwhile, he watches. He stares as his shoulders slump and his sword slips into the soil. He curses her cowardice as he crumbles to his knees. 

What comes next, Alexander's never felt before. When every ounce of strength is sapped from his body and he just... falls. His hands don't move to catch him and his blood-blonde hair simply sighs through the wind. His face falls flat onto the rocks and pebbles, into the soil and the mud. His breaths are barely breaking and his body has gone cold. It's as though he is a puppet whose been severed from his strings. He's just laying there, dying.

That's when it finds him, the fear. In the moment when every other option has been depleted, it is the only flame still burning within him. He's spent every second of his life preparing for any set of scenarios, all except for one. Alexander was never supposed to die. He was supposed to go home with a crown. He was supposed to kiss his Mama's cheek and hug his Papa's frame. He was supposed to lay flowers by Gala's grave and pray for her safe passage. He was supposed to be able to live. Has he traded it all away?

Gala is turning him over, but he's already halfway there. The shadows of his sight make the sun easy to stare at. It makes him remember the day under the oak tree when Gala had broken his wrist for even suggesting they go out for ice cream. He can taste between the metallic sludge slipping down his throat the special sweetness of that shared salted caramel treat. He can hear through his growing deafness the laughter they shared as the nurse stood stunned before his broken bone.

Oh, he realizes it.

He's going to miss her.

He wishes he could manage to move his arms to hold her. But her's are already around him and he is nestled into her lap. Her face is framed by the beaming brilliance of solar flares, and Alexander swears he can trace constellations through her stretches of freckles. There's nothing like dying to make someone realize how much they can't live without someone else. Does she feel the same? It doesn't matter, he needs her to be strong. She can still go home. It's always been a shared dream after all.

"Damn, what a bunch of bitches right?"

Alexander says lightly before breaking into a brief bout of bloodied laughter. He wants to see Gala's smile again, it always makes him feel stronger when he's uncertain. He wants his parents to think that he wasn't scared of what will take him in the next few minutes. He wants the District to remember him as someone worth looking up to. He wants to be someone worth remembering.

Straining every sense of his body, Alexander angles his head to lightly kiss one of Gala's hands. His lips leave a bloody mark from where they met her skin. Is it wrong of him to hope she lets it stay there for a little while? His head falls weakly back forward. That really was the last of his strength.

"These are your Games, G. Go out there and fucking win them."

Alexander's heart halts for a second and pure panic replaces every ounce of his blood. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to run into his Mama's arms and bury his head in her shirt. But he can't. All he can do is lay still stricken by shock praying that he'll have at least one more... beat! His heart starts again and breath rushes into his lunges in a gasp. The sixteen year old boy can feel his lower lip trembling, but he hides it in a bite.

"It's time to keep that promise."

Alexander confesses in a whisper as he loses sight of Gala's face to the blur. It was always meant to be this way, for everything they were to end in death. One was always meant to kill the other, now they finally know who. Alexander closes his eyes for her, she shouldn't have to do that once he's gone. He can't see or hear the sword she is setting over his heart, but he knows that it's there. Blades have a presence, and he's been around them for years. He just whispers something through the silence.

"Call me a kid, but I..."

The sword drives straight into his heart.

"... love you."