for thy parting neither say nor sing | prop & scrum

The rain is loud from the TV speakers and on the roof overhead, and now, as the last of Six’s last words drags a breath from the mire of his blood-drowned lungs, the camera cuts hastily away – but it is tardy. Already Scrum heard – he heard – he heard.

He stands in a single motion. The storm’s voice, doubled, rings in his ears. He can feel the blood pulsing beneath the skin of his throat, the beating of his heart in his chest like the beating of wings.

The quotation drifts through Scrum’s mind without his trying to remember it. On the screen, Le Roux’s spear drips bloodied rain.

Scrum turns. He leaves the room.

He leaves the house.

The cement of the front stoop is rough beneath the soles of his feet; his bare arms prickle with the chill of the air as he pulls the door shut behind him. The rain makes a gray curtain around him, strung from the lip of the overhanging roof. It wavers between him and the world, moved by the fitful breathing of the wind.

Scrum reaches out a hand, parts the curtain. Steps through.

At once he is soaked and shivering. Rain plasters his hair to his scalp, darkening copper to the color of rust; droplets course down his forehead and snare themselves in his eyelashes, heavy as tears. He takes another step forward, and another, black mud clinging to his bare feet. Rivulets of rainwater run about his ankles, carving pathways through the sodden earth to fill the footprints he leaves. He watches them for a little while. Then he raises his face to the rain.

“Lord –” he says, and cannot go on. “My God –” he says, and cannot go on.

Thunder rolls, not deafening; he thinks it distant until the lightning comes a moment later, a spear of white fire thrust jagged through the throat of the storm. Beneath the sound of the rain Scrum hears a noise from his own throat, a strange noise, and for a terrible moment he cannot breathe.

The moment passes. He sucks in air. A tickle of rain runs down his throat. He coughs, and coughs again – and then, very suddenly, he finds that his legs will no longer support him. He staggers backwards, mud dragging at his feet as he tries to lift them. The backs of his calves strike the edge of the front stoop, and he sits down hard on the wet concrete, throwing out a hasty hand to gentle his landing.

Six is dead. Scrum was right. These two facts hammer against the walls of his skull.

There is no doubt in his mind that Six’s final words were meant for him. Meant by Six for them all, of course – all their family, all their district, all Panem – but addressed by God directly to Scrum. His dream was true, and he is meant to share it.

His brother died to teach him this.

He lifts the hand he had thrown out to break his fall, laying his palm across his throat as though to put pressure on a wound. His palm stings sudden and fierce at the contact; he snatches it down, stares at the strawberry scrape he had not noticed until that moment. Pieces of grit from the concrete stoop are caught in the crevices of his torn skin.

He bites his lip, and then he is crying.

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*Genesis 4:9 KJV