rebellion | [Delroy & Kass]

Mrs. Delores Wickersham had been on the teach Delroy to keep his heart open, even if he’d been hurt. That mending the distance between who he was and who’d hurt him wasn’t weakness, it was a sign of growth, and maturity. She’d tell him to turn the other cheek when he got heated and kicked up a storm about the way life was. She never stopped him from his anger, but instead tried to get him to recognize that in the brilliance of its power, he had a choice to do better. To be better for the sake of his cause, even if he felt betrayed by the whole world around him.

The apartment had never felt much like the front porch of the shotgun house back in eleven. It’d been missing the smell of fried plantains and fried breadfruit at breakfast. He refused any help from the avoxes. On his first day, he’d said that he was an abolitionist – that their freedom was as important as his, perhaps more so. Those without voices demanded a greater justice and freedom than the ones who could still speak. He’d ground his teeth at the thought so many casually accepted their servitude, as though the system could not be altered with as little as demanding the avoxes who stood watch over his room be removed from their service.

Nighttime was harder.

The victors all hovered overhead like vultures, ready to tear him apart about all that he’d gotten into that day. And while he couldn’t hate them for paying such an interest in his life, he could judge them for all that they lacked. The way that they would still be here and he would likely not, that was a lesson that should’ve had most on ther knees. Whether or not they’d been through hell and back. And yet there they were, soft smiles and encouraging words.

They’d given up whole parts of themselves in favor of forgetting the system.

When he looked at Kass, her eyes on him as he entered, he couldn’t help but wish she’d be cross with him. At least then he’d have a bigger reason to hate the youngest victor, the one he’d watch take down Jacob to come home.

Instead she asked for him to follow her, and in thinking a few moments (his outright refusal lost to his curiosity), he went after her.

They rose to the roof he’d been on just the other day, and looked out at another glorious skyline.

He was lost looking at the breadth of light when she asked about his token.

“It’s my great uncle’s enlistment pin. Taylor Wickersham. Signed up a year and a half before the war was over.” Delroy had heard stories from his great grandfather. That he’d been a hot head who’d traded a comfortable farmer’s life for weeks out in the wastelands between districts, carrying a rifle and playing at being a soldier. “He was seventeen when he signed up. Went off on his own and joined a mixed regiment – soldiers from eight and eleven – to try and liberate one of the upper districts.”

They’d disappeared somewhere outside of eight, at least, what one of the boys had said upon their return.

“He’d said that anyone who bought into how we were supposed to live was already a lost cause,” Delroy turned then to look at Kass. The girl who’d been selfish enough to kill her own district partner. She’d played the game and gotten a crown, and now what? “He gave it all up to try and take them down. Was engaged before he died, too.”

It hadn’t been enough to shake his resolve, though.

“Makes me wonder why you and all them seem so comfortable living as you do, when a man could give up his whole life knowing he was probably going to die. Especially when it was a question of freedom.”

Ayena, the Dean of Iris Gate, had warned him of how he came across talking to those he’d been better off trying to win over. She’d have asked if he was surprised at the way that Kass replied to him, and likely raised an eyebrow at anything he’d have to say (mostly that he didn’t care about the anger, because at least it meant he’d made her feel something).

Delroy waited for the storm to subside. He wasn’t hurt that she’d told him he could die based on his attitude alone. Touched quite the nerve suggesting that the victors lived a better life than most in the district could dream of. Dolled up and trotted out as they were, they still had the clothes on their backs and full bellies. They still got proximity to power, whether or not it was turned against them. Some of them even went as far as to marry into it.

“Taylor died Kass, because he looked around his district and saw that there was no future. You think you’re so oppressed?” Delroy sneered at the little woman – he’d call her girl, acting like a child but his eleven manners had kicked in – and saw her for who she was. Spoiled. “You grew up in the orphanage didn’t you? So now, you live in a big house, get on television, get to marry and have kids if you want and take them to the capitol, right?”

Maybe she just cared more about being called out for who she was and what she had, than ever raising her voice and making a difference.

“His death wasn’t honorable. They stole his life from him. But he knew that it was either he put his fucking heart out on the line so that people that looked like him and lived like him wouldn’t have to do that anymore or die trying. Not be a coward and think they can fix a system that won’t be fixed.”

Why would they ever take the risk? It was only the ones that had less to lose that risked their lives. It was his body, and bodies of boys like Taylor who fought for freedom not just when it was convenient. He wished Ayena were there to smooth all of this over or put it into words better than he had. She had the age and gravitas to shine a light on the truth.

For Delroy, he wasn’t having her bullshit.

“I know you were never afraid to do what it took to survive, we all saw that,” Delroy spoke, remembering the moment in the square when she’d ended Jacob’s life. He remembered, too, the explosions that had followed, the riots and the violence. “But tell me, with getting your life back, are you doing everything you've wanted? Must teach you a lot hanging around people that have only been through the same thing as you."

It was almost like playing bingo when it came to her response. When you called out the advantage someone else had, or held up a mirror to everything that they were missing, it meant either crumble and concede, or run away. He was the attacker, of course, for not understanding how much she had struggled under the weight of the world. That he didn’t understand her intentions was his fault, and if she was anything like Katelyn, her good intentions were what she should’ve been judged upon, whether or not they screwed people like Delroy time and time again.

He couldn’t help but smile as he watched the way her color changed. The little gears that turned in her head and the steam that was about ready to come out of her ears. He didn’t need to state his case any further because she’d already lost. But it was damn good to see that someone like Kass could be cracked so easily. He wished he could’ve been surprised being that she was from eleven, as though he expected more.

Kass acted as though he didn’t know her, but he knew who she was. He didn’t even have to watch television or keep up with the gossip to know she was a fraud.

He snorted when she said he could go off and die, because that was the only thing they ever said in return. Silence was all they ever grew up in, bathed in, drank up and fucked with, a crippling weapon that the capitol had struck them with for their lives. If he was dead, then she wouldn’t be able to hear him, to think about him, or have to ever listen to how she’d turned her back on her own people.

Bet he could still haunt her, though. 

“I never figured you for a runner. But I guess that’s what happens when you can’t face the truth.” Delroy sniped as she made her way to the exit. “Rebels never ran, because they believed they could live free, or die trying. Make the world equal. And not just have people like you act like the world hasn't done them all the favors.”

He gave a shrug and smiled wider. It’s not that he enjoyed being mean, but damn, it felt good when the girl across from him thought she could just shut him out and couldn't. Her tears? He wasn’t going to legitimize more bullshit.

“But go ahead and turn your back on us. We see who you really are.”

He didn’t mistake the tears for empathy. That much she’d have to prove, and as far as he could see, Kass was still clinging to the fear that should she lift a finger to help them, it’d threaten her own way of life. She wasn’t without merit in thinking it would be difficult, or that she’d struggled enough to want peace. But that was easy, wasn’t it? Getting a bigger share of the world and then doing nothing to help those around her. Effectively shutting the door on anyone that bothered to try anything different. She was a coward, but she said it as though the vast majority of panem weren’t, too.

There were stories of the rebels and what they’d done all those years ago. He’d heard about a regiment from eleven that’d been captured early on. They’d stripped flesh off their skin and torturing them for years in cells until the war was finished, and then burning them all alive in a bunker. The capitol hadn’t changed in eighty odd years, there was no reason to believe that they were any less horrific.

And at sixteen, he wasn’t sure that he had any of life’s answers for Kass, much less how to spark a revolution that could carry on as the first war had.

“We are one person each, aren’t we?” Delroy was quiet then, still curious as to whether these were crocodile years. She could’ve just wanted some sort of absolution for him (which she’d be waiting for hell to freeze over if that were the case). “Everything I’ve read and heard about the revolution is that it started with people who stopped focusing on the need to make it on their own. Isn’t that what the capitol teaches? To separate ourselves?”

He saw it as a weakness to go it alone. He’d spare Kass the lecture on seizing the means of production that he’d learned from Professor Fladgate, or the way an informed group of people could establish a more representative government. More important, then, was figuring out how she could see this was bigger than her, but so were stakes.

“But it takes someone to start. Someone to wake people up. Someone that’s willing to forget about a legacy or what might be waiting behind their back. And maybe that isn’t you, but maybe you know people that are. Hell, I’m here,” Delroy admitted. He wished he wasn’t. He wished he could’ve been stirring things up back in eleven. “It’s a shame of an existence if the whole time it’s spent living in fear.”