tears and tomorrow :: district eleven

a r a b e l l a .

Remember all the things we wanted
Now all our memories, they're haunted
We were always meant to say goodbye

They weren't given long to say good bye, her family ripped away from her prying hands as the demanded that she embark on the train. She could still see there faces each time she closed her eyes. She could still hear Ellens sobs, her shirt still wet from where her tears had feel. Matthew bloodshot ones as she patted her on the back. He hadn't said anything, But Arabella knew that he was hurting. She didn't need to hear the words. He never was a man of words.

The situation reminded her of the times she had watch parents drop off their unwanted kids. They would tell the Matron that they no longer could care for them. Or that they didn't want them anymore. Like they were a toy that they could simply just pass along when they had gotten bored with it. The kids usually cried, begging for their parents to take them home. Some didn't even understand what was going on, and they would watch their mum and dad leave, patiently waiting for their return. Waiting. Waiting. But to Arabella she felt like she was the parent, leaving Ellen and Matthew behind as they cried for her to stay. As they were left waiting. Waiting. Waiting, for her to return.

She wandered how long they would wait.

Maybe they would wait forever.

She enters the train with her district partner beside her. He was an older boy. He had volunteered for his spot. She had thought that was very heroic of him. Until she had heard the cry in the crowd, the yelling of a child:

'Daddy! Daddy!'

Looking out into the crowd she had seen a young boy, struggling in the arms of a man. Tears had run down his cheeks. When Arabella had looked turned to face the boy beside her, she had seen the pain written there. Was he a father? Was that his child? The questions fought to escape her lips, but she held them back. Her brows were pulled together into a frown. Was he leaving his child behind? And for what? Arabella didn't know the whole story, but she did know what it was like to be an orphan. To grow up not knowing enough about her parents. To always have that hole in her heart, a hole that she knew would never be filled.

Had it been another day, she might have been infatuated with just how tragic his story was. She might have had to pull him to the side, to grill him with questions. To find out everything. But she found that more than anything else, she was mad. Fuming because if she had had the chance to know her parents, she would have given up everything. She would have laid down her life to just know their names.

But here stood Cyro Krane, a father, on a train which destination was a coffin, six feet under the ground.

"For what it's worth, I've been where you both are. Quells are drastically different, but I wasn't alone even without a District partner." Kirto meets us as we enter the car. Almost immediately Arabella peels away from Cryo, putting distance between herself and the boy. Her eyes turn to face the dark haired Victor, her eyes carefully studying his face. And just like most, it was his eyes that she noticed first. They always say that eyes are the window to the soul, and looking though his, she could see that he had demons, and ghosts of the past that haunt him. "And neither will you be. You've never been through this before, but we have."

Her eyes scan the room again. It was filled with experience, with warriors that she had filled her stories with. She recognise the ice princess immediately, she knew her stories off by heart. Then there was the Viking, winning his games in a four way finale. And there there was Kirito. The winner of a quell. That was quite the title. Not many Victors held that one. So many strong, fierce people on one room. It almost overwhelmed her. Her eyes skim over Cryo.

Quell. Arabella had almost forgot that this was no normal games, that this was a stop up from that, filled with twists that was bound to captivate- or repulse- its viewers.

"Do you think it could be like the last one? Oh, how horrible it would be to have to face the ones who had slayed you! Or the ones you had attacked, thinking that you would never have to see them again. I cant even allow myself to imagine it." Her hands move to cradle her face as she thinks back to it, and tries to put herself in the victors- the tributes- shoes. How would one go on about their normal life after experiencing everything that they had? She could understand the desire for a tragic ending, one that might be written in the stars. But it was almost like those kids had been cheated of that, instead sent back home to live out lives that would be full of nightmares.

"It would be so heartbreaking, would it not? To have gone through all of that, to have died, to have spilled blood. killed. Only to be told to return back to normal life. What if they had finally managed to find peace within themselves in the last moments, when they could feel their life slipping away... only to be dragged back into a living night mare. I... I don't think I could handle that." Arabella's voice trails off, eyes eyes looking out the window. So engrossed in her own thoughts that she temporarily forget that she was speaking with people who had gone through something very similar to that.

The train was moving now.

She was embarking on a new adventure. But the more time she had to think about, the quicker she came to realise that maybe this was not the adventure that she had dreamed of. But instead a nightmare, a nightmare that she would not wake from.