the chorus of andorra's wake

She stood at the precipice.

"Hey, Bambi? I don't know if they're showing everything or not, but," it's time to come clean. She had slept beside Andy's body until the mutts came- two, three hours and he stopped smelling like himself thirty minutes in. Tugging to his body, too afraid to let go. It's hard to keep going after you've lost everything. Maybe it's just the snow up to her knees, but she can hardly will herself to go back north.

We could have made it, you big idiot. Boys are stupid, brothers are stupid -- she missed him already. The way he'd make this seem like a week away, how he tightened the blindfold over her eyes and let her believe it wasn't him or her. The wolves came before the crane did and she pulled onto his body, dragging him by the coat for as long as she could keep up. They don't want her, to kill her, just to claim what's their's.

The parka sleeve gives way and Andy falls again, laying on his side as the wolves keep follow. She runs to the Tundra, its holy blizzard and the sheer silence that follows. The cold bites at her skin and Caleb only runs because it's what she knows. Every single time, she fucks up, and she runs, and she no longer hears the hums of the trees. Eulogy spoken in empty rhyme that leaves her stranded in the fog, snow falls into her eyes and hands, blanketing all vision she could have had.

To nowhere, she believes, for a second, that she's made it.

The wolves don't follow and the hollow trees don't croak. Bodies don't show- not here. She wraps herself in his jacket and pretends he always smelled like blood, that kids from nine just smell that way. Musk and murk, gore and whatever else, a fourth cannon rings and she's shivering. He's dead.

Not just Andy, but the hope.

Everything she had held onto, the idea of trust, the belief that she knew what she was doing or she knew what she was. That she was invincible, a fifteen year old girl who'd never been in a fight; "Bambi," it carries on the snow drifts. Floating through the air back home, she barely knows how to talk anymore. It's just enough to breathe, turn the brain off and let it continue. Caleb lays down at night, when there's no more Andorra and there's no more brothers. Nothing but the restless mind and the binder in her bag, knowing was the worst part.

Knowing who was sent home in her place -- knowing who was left. Three of the other six were dead, completely. Simple as that. Kids were killed and she wasn't special, no matter how hard she tried to believe it anymore. She crumpled under the first stable object she could find, damp rock cold to the touch and hot by association. Warmer than anything she's held since Andy.

"It's day eight, Bams. I know I've played a bad game, a stupid game, but," it's coming to a close. "I'm still alive." She says it, almost as if she shouldn't be. Like she's realized she was never guaranteed just that- just to live. Teenage girls aren't given immunity just for having ambitions, for having people to love, "It's weird that that's the first thing I'm saying to you now. I never realized how hard this was." To be without you, especially here.

Bambi Mae gets to sit home and take sick days, cry in her bed as she watches television, and Caleb is on the other side. Trapped on the other side, where the fake snow is all too real and Andy's body won't leave her mind. The knife in his back and "I miss you so fucking much, Bambi, I do- I should have told them about you in the interviews." As if the capitol didn't already know, Lysander told Caleb that from the get go.

There are no secrets.

Just quiet.

"I love you bitch," she holds her hands together, gripping one another as hard as she can to keep the tears back -- she may not get another second to talk. To live under a rock and pretend it'll all be okay for the next five minutes. Bambi's on the other side and her life keeps going after this, and Caleb isn't exactly envious either. "I do, I love you so much Bambi," she's two days away max from it all being over.

Win or lose, like she's got any other options. It's just a waiting game, staying alive until she sees another face that might be the last one.

"You better be feeding my dogs too, or I'mma be pissed when I get home."

"You hear me, Bambi! I know you're watching!"

And she laughs, just enough to remember that this is all real. She had a life before all of this and it's just sitting at home, two days and a train ride home from here; she's so close to getting it back. To waking up from this entire thing and getting to pretend it's just a bad week.

God, help me.

"I'd kill for my mom's soup right now."

"Literally."