Snowfall came after sundown, when the skyline had shifted crimson to indigo and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. He’d welcomed the cold to help take away the sting of what he carried across his body. Battle wounds, as he’d once wanted to call them. Foolish as that was to think riddling his skin with scars for a revolution would ever bring him grace or wisdom. Instead he found an empty space, hollowed out by loneliness and nurtured by the weight of what he’d seen.

Dom had died a hero, to him, for fighting with Neysa and Shy and not backing down. Though he wondered now what that made him, still alive and twice a killer on the battlefield. She didn’t have to contend with the after – the slowly crystallizing guilt of striking done another child. He contended it was necessary to move forward. There were always casualties in war, and both sides had suffered losses. Beyond that, enough cannons had sounded throughout the day he imagined they’d made up for so many bloodless hours in the arena.

He could cling to the thought that their message survived. Both he and Neysa wouldn’t stand down from the fight to awaken the districts and have them recognize what complacency would bring them. Of course, he wondered now how many enemies he’d made in ten and twelve after compromising on violent ends instead of diplomacy and peace.

As he tended to his wounds and hissed at the thread that stitched up the wound on his bicep, he could only wish that his mother was beside him. Foolish for a soldier, he thought, but then Del pictured that Taylor must’ve wanted the same thing now and again. Not because he was afraid of how all this would turn out, or that tomorrow he could be spread across the snow as Dom had been.

He wanted someone to hold him in their arms and whisper that he’d be all right, that what he’d done and where he was going were a path worth treading. If Del closed his eyes tight enough, he could picture her face, every laughter line and wrinkle.

“Thank you…” He said the words while leaning against his bag, wrapped up in bandages and sorting through his winnings. He looked to Shy and Neysa and hoped that they saw him a fighter, and not just another foolish boy. “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

“Should we do something to commemorate Dom?” Del said as he turned over the thought of Dom’s empty space between them. “Maybe a word or two for who she was?”