but they won't take me

There are no new cruelties in the Capitol's playbook.

That does not make them any easier to bear. Familiarity did not keep your heart from breaking twice over at the Reaping, and again as Alfonso reached for Sarina's hand, and again when you found Lordes and Aresti in the crowd, and again and again as the new wounds of watching Sarina and Alfonso tore old wounds open alongside them and your family could do nothing but grieve together; nor does it keep your heart steady in your chest as Peacekeepers call announcements. Some things, even age like yours cannot teach. But you recognize old refrains when people in power try to sell them as new songs, and the terror hammering in your chest solidifies into the same substance it always has, sooner or later: determination.

Question the Peacekeepers' conclusions, you tell your family, your friends, any open ear. There were explosions aplenty when you were a girl, set by both sides and by opportunists from neither; there were people hanged in the streets and on television for acts they committed, or for acts they were framed for, or for the simple crime of existing in ways deemed unacceptable. You were ripped from your home and told it was necessary by the same uniforms now announcing lockdowns and rationing for safety. Trust no one, you insist, who argues that having your rights stripped away is good, is normal, is right—but trust each other, you insist just as fiercely. Trust the people of Eleven, and Six and Eight, and Panem at large, who have been through too much together to turn away from each other; help others when they need it and trust that they'll do the same, because no person lives truly alone and none of you will make it through the months to come without help.

Every time you say these things you hear una mano lava la otra, y ambas lavan la cara in your mother's voice, threaded through your words the way you hear echoes of her reminding you and your sisters that you'd always be stronger together whenever Vasco speaks to the District about unity. Every time, you look at the snatches of memory pulled forth and wonder whether this winter heralds war; every time, you are a little more afraid, and a little more determined, and you lift your voice against the fear.

That voice and your mind are your best tools, these days. Your hands are old—you're old, and however you sometimes tease at refusing to believe it, you recognize every last one of your ninety-two years for the blessing it is. What tasks you can no longer take on you did not lose to an uncaring abyss, but traded to time for knowledge and experience; you can't sneak about to distribute supplies or spend hours long into the night on your feet or with needle and thread in hand anymore, but you can organize, urge, ask questions, answer others. You can reassure the children (insofar as you are able to without lying to them, which you could do but will not). You can—once wondering after Dario in Eight leads you to rummage again through the tucked-away stores of things your family is not strictly allowed to own, and once you have recruited younger eyes to help you pick good wires from bad and fit pieces together until three broken radios become a single working one—search the air for other voices to speak to, a faint and grasping hope but more of one than you can hear for now in the silent phone lines.

And you can pray. Dios aprieta, pero no ahoga, and you can pray.



Title song is "Last Leaf" by Joan Baez: there's nothing in this world that I ain't seen; I greet all the new ones coming in green / I'm the last leaf on the tree; the autumn took the rest, but they won't take me.