cain ellemore | four | fin

He felt completely, totally, utterly powerless to it. Not that he was complaining- he'd always had a flare for dramatics- but it was noticeable to others now. Which, yes, was a problem because Cain was two years younger than Beck and he also couldn't speak in crowds of four or more people. At least, not without stuttering. Beck was just... out of reach for people like Cain. Elio had spent the last twenty minutes laughing himself sick. Duke had spent them trying to convince him to go get laid. Fara had spent them trying to convince him to have a crush on anyone other than Beck Hailsham. She seemed to be making the most compelling argument, as it were.

"The older kids act like they aren't even allowed to talk to us," she said, which was true. Every time he spoke to the upperclassmen, there was... pause. Like, words that wanted to be said. He could feel them, he could see how badly they wished to show themselves to him, but he hadn't ever gotten to hear them. Which felt cruel. The worst form of ignorance, he'd learned, is when it is the only choice one has. He knew there was information to be learned. They all did. But, at least to his nerdy, not-so-popular knowledge, none of the lower classmen were ever brave enough to ask, and none of the upper classmen were ever brave enough to tell.

"And I heard rumors that he didn't really get food poisoning last week during cardio section. People are saying he was drunk! Where did he even find alcohol within the grounds? Ma would've skinned him alive if he'd been caught with it. She would've skinned whoever brought it, too."

He frowned. Fara was being entirely too rational, as always. Her wise eyes glowed with a seriously, Cain. Don't. from beneath the circular glasses hanging halfway down her nose. He decided to switch channels over to Duke before he got a headache. He leaned into the unfairly broad shoulder of his friend. "Hi," he said cheerfully. Duke had taken a break from describing- quite graphically- his personal suggestions for bedroom etiquette so that he could wolf down the second half of his sub sandwich. Duke smiled back with his lips forced shut due to the mound of sandwich currently occupying his mouth.

"You know what I think," he said after finally swallowing.

He turned to consider the boy, who sat almost all the way across the courtyard from them.

"He's definitely DTF."

Essentially, all Duke liked to think about was sex, though he was definitely in a different place developmentally than Cain was. He wondered why. After all, they'd all been born very closely together. Theirs was the year Ma decided to name them alphabetically. First had come Andy and Bree, neither of whom ever seemed particularly interested in being friends with the loser squad, which ironically is who came next in the line up: Cain, Duke, Elio, and Fara. To be fair, they were only considered the loser squad because they chose to include Cain. Duke had always easily been the strongest of their year. Fara was smart as a whip. Elio could've sold ice to a snowman. And every time it was time to pick teams, they always, no matter what, chose Cain to come with them. Because, for whatever reason, they all liked to pretend he was actually super capable and just had performance anxiety, or needed different glasses, or hadn't slept well the night before or any other excuse they could drum up. The reality was this: Cain was never meant to be exceptional.

They were.

"Dude, you're still a virgin."

"Not true!"

Fara scoffed.

"I don't think dry humping Gina in the attic for ten seconds counts."

There was a brief pause.

"Fuck off. It was at least two minutes."

Elio chose now to look up from his book, single brooding eyebrow raised with interest. He was like that, all mysterious and intriguing. Always had been. As if he'd somehow managed to create a life full of secrets, even though they'd all grown up together.

"Perhaps we should start by... talking to him?"

Cain didn't need any time to consider this.

"Absolutely not."

And so he didn't. He just kept his head down, and averted his gaze when he could feel Beck's cool stare on him, and he hoped his face didn't look especially punchable.

Things never seemed simple to him until they were no longer simple. He wished he could go back. He couldn't, though. He was forced to trudge forward, to watch as things got worse, and worse, and life got harder, and harder, and harder. The Hunger Games were inevitable. The truth of Hailsham came out. The end of the world came, and Cain was forced to watch.

When the culling happened, Duke was the first one from their year to be called in. Cain guessed it made sense: he'd always been the strongest. The plan was to only take his kidneys for now, and then they'd come back for more as they needed it. That's what they told him. That what they told all of them. Cain and Fara had spent hours decorating Duke's dorm room to celebrate his return, but he never came back. They waited and waited, watched daylight fall to dusk. Until the chirping of the birds ceased and the chirping of the crickets began. Complications, they'd called it.

And just like that, the best career of their age was reduced to a name on a plaque in the newly-erected graveyard that had once been their courtyard. It was sickening, seeing how quickly the rows of empty plots were filled. Cain figured if they were going from most to least impressive, then his own grave would be somewhere close to the back. Right there at the last row, not the very last because that was too special. But this one here. Next-to-last. That's what he was. That's where they would put him.

Elio went next. Took half his liver- apparently it can regrow itself, who would've thought. He recovered as expected, and also decided to develop a sense of honesty in the aftermath. He and Fara admitted they were in love, and it was rare after that to see one without the other. And then, for his second surgery, they told him they needed his eyes. Several times after the notice, Cain caught Elio staring. At him. At Fara. At the graves. At the clouds. Cain thought, maybe, he was trying to take mental images so he'd have them with him.

After that, it wasn't long before they told him they needed his heart. A human can survive without a lot of its organs, fun fact. Cain had seen people without part of their intestines. Cain had seen people living with single kidneys. They'd even taken both of Hale's legs- chopped them off right at the hip. But taking a heart meant forcing completion. Unlike with Duke, Cain knew this was the last time he would ever see Elio.

It didn't help.

"I can't do it," Fara told him, holding the official notice of her first surgery in her hand. Cain had seen it happen several times, people giving up before they started. He thought maybe they were already too broken to stand breaking off another piece of themselves.

"It's just a lung," he tried, hoping against hope to comfort her. He didn't mention that Ivan had only lasted inside a week after they'd taken his lung. It was possible to live with only one. But that was never a permanent solution, and also required all the proper post-operative care that the Hailsham kids were being denied. They needed as many of them dead as possible before the inevitable came.

They all said that if they wanted to live, they probably would. They all convinced themselves it was a test of wills. That they could simply refuse death when he asked them for their lives. If that were true, then this was the problem: he thought Fara might think it was just easier to give up and be with Elio and Duke. He hoped that the science would prove him wrong, but for a third time, he sat in a waiting room holding flowers he'd cut himself to give to a friend he would never see again.

He tried to cry, but he thought maybe he was like she had been now: too broken to fix. He'd probably complete on his first surgery, too. And honestly, that didn't scare him and he knew it should have.

But then two hours later, the hovercrafts arrived and the not paid off peacekeepers poured out of them like ants. They invaded like a plague, far more quickly than one could possibly imagine.

And just like that, Hailsham was no more.

Elodie Driscow.

That was the name of his mo-




That was the name of the woman who'd birthed him. Like many of the Hailsham birth parents, she was untraceable now. Likely living in a different district under a different name. Not much was found on file for her. She'd had him two months shy of her thirtieth birthday. She was an only child and her parents were dead. She hadn't been poor. Authorities believed it was likely she'd gotten pregnant on purpose, and had premeditated her escape using the funds she'd get from trading Cain.

They weren't good things, the things he knew about his birth mother, but he guessed it was at least better to know. Sucked that he spent so much time wondering, though.

The Ellemore family, on the other hand, were pretty good people. Cain thought this of them because they had, despite all the history in Cain's bio and warnings from the higher-ups, still decided to take him in. He'd lost too many things, watched as worse grew to worst. And for so long after, he was a husk of a human, a shell of one which carried his ghost around. Because, if he was being honest with himself, it did not matter if he had once been Cain Driscow. It did not matter if he was Cain Ellemore now. Parts of him- the biggest, most vital pieces of him- would always be prisoner to, not the name, but the label:

Hailsham.

One of the organ donors. One of the weaker ones, at that. One of the few who survived that awful place and, oh! The stories he could probably tell.




He thought maybe he'd died back there with the rest of them. He blamed himself for every beat of his heart.







He thought maybe he should have died back there with the rest of them.

Jasmine and Charles were honestly really decent people. When Cain's birthday came, he'd expected some sort of eviction notice, some kind of gameplan as to how, exactly, they could get him out of their hair. He supposed he was used to waiting until he'd extended his use. He'd grown used to knowing the worst could happen to anyone, and knowing that it would happen to him, but they'd surprised him with a party and Charles told him right there in front of everyone that he could stay as long as he wanted.

The kiddos were elated- they'd very, very quickly decided Cain was their super hero, which was sort of nice in a way. He'd never gotten to be the hero. They'd follow him around in those early days, peak at him from around corners, giggle at him while he drank a glass of water at the sink. He'd overhear them say they wanted to get a scarf just like his. More than once, at dinner, he heard them using turns of phrase they'd picked up from him, which Jasmine would laugh about while the two of them cleaned dishes after dinner.

"As long as they don't start cursing," she'd say, arching an eyebrow, "They look up to you, Cain. You're their big brother. To them, you hung the moon."


It had been three years since Hailsham. He was used to the few lingering looks that remained, but people were starting to forget. Some way, some how through the passage of time, he collected enough fragments of himself to rebuild. And the newer model was the same, but different. Weaker in some areas, stronger in others. Still fundamentally Cain, though. Still fighting to find his greater purpose, still so good at solving the problems of others while being completely ignorant about his own. Still helpless. Still hopeful.

Still here.