babe adroxis | d9m

Her hand on his chest brings him back.

The pad of each finger rests flat against his skin, slick with sweat and her voice is foggy with sleep. "'s k, Babe, justa dream, sleep," she mumbles and rolls back over. He sits up instead.

Moonlight paints the foot of the bed in a splash of silver and Babe holds his head in his hands, just trying to push the memories back out. It all comes flooding in anyway, an intense cold pain shoots through the twisted scar in his chest and he sees Cy's open, unseeing eyes behind his eyelids. The sound of that final gunshot whizzes past his ear followed by the resounding thud of his father's body falling right after. The memory always insists on fully playing out.

He won't sleep after that so Babe gets up and shrugs on a shirt. It isn't that early, maybe 3 AM. Nine is either just going to sleep or getting ready to wake up, he's hit the sweet spot. It doesn't mean much, for a couple of days now, the district has been holding its breath. Yeah, the wars have been over for a couple of years now technically but the Treaty is a whole new beast. The rebellion hadn't ended, they'd all just had to become tamers.

Babe grabs a handgun from his bedside table and tucks it into his pants before leaving the room. It's got three silver notches scratched into the black barrel and the metal stamp on the handle reads 'Adroxis Ammunitions'.

The kitchen is busy, a couple of guys sit at the table playing cards and there's a pot of coffee on, still hot. They straighten as he enters and he nods at them, beelining for a mug. Then it's out the back door and there's a campfire still going, some of the gang still up. They haven't seen him come out yet and Babe watches Tara Seraphim kiss Burma Flowers square on the mouth. They laugh at each other uncertainly right after and Babe smiles despite himself.

They have war planned for tomorrow but tonight, everyone rests.

He makes his way around the circle of light provided by the fire and walks out towards the edge of the property, fingers digging into his hoody pocket for a lighter and a cigarette. He doesn't need to sneak around, it's his place, but he doesn't want to talk and the mug of coffee in his hand is enough.

They'd all just sort of trickled in, the other kids. After the dust had started clearing, the Capitol had demanded more weapons from the Adroxis factories and somehow, it'd fallen on him, a kid still healing from a bullet wound who'd lost his whole family in the span of seconds.

He'd been okay with it, only because the idea of it is too large to comprehend. So the event exists parallel with him, a different timeline leaked into his. It happened but it did but it didn't.

And sometimes it visits him in his dreams.

At least his uncle had known what to do, so he was running the factories now. All Babe has to do is sign off on shit sometimes and he has access still to anything his little group of misfits might need. It's a pretty sweet deal. The ember of his cigarette lights up the night in front of him for a brief moment before burning out and Babe wraps his arms around himself. It's pretty cold.

They're technically a gang and he knows that. Smuggling guns to other Rebel holdouts around the district can hardly be counted as legal but somebody has to do it. The infighting has gotten worse though, last time they'd been trying to get through the Lion's Den, they'd had to pay a protection fee. The heart isn't in the fight anymore, after two years of the treaty, people have begun to give up.

Tara was the first to show up on his doorstep and after her, there'd been kids coming and going since. At first, he'd said no, that he didn't want any part of the rebellion anymore, but that first Bloodbath had changed things. Maybe it had been made to crush the spirits of the Districts but Babe had just felt the emptiness inside him finally filling up with something other than grief.

Years after his father's death, he still can't decide whether or not he hates him. Babe's trauma is just another story from the rebellion, nothing new. Every single person in the house behind him has lost someone that they loved. Maybe that's the dangerous thing about kids like them, they have nothing left to lose.

He does his part with a quiet acceptance every day knowing full well that he's weaving the rope for his own noose. It's a slow kind of suicide but hope is infectious and Babe still remembers the colour of it in his brother's eyes on the top of the wall that day. It was louder than the bombs at their front door, louder than the screaming of dying men and women around them and when Tara rang his doorbell two and a half years ago, it refracted off her like diamonds.

Babe stubs his cigarette out on the side of his coffee mug, half-inhaled. He knows full well that he should be nervous right now, that he should be feeling anything but the quiet acceptance that has sat in his gut for three years but he can't. Tomorrow they walk back into war.

Maybe his father hadn't missed his shot that day, maybe he'd hit exactly where he'd meant to.

Maybe he'd hit something vital.