I'm a Shotgun Running Away [Zori Victor AUs]

I'm a Shotgun Running Away [Zori Victor AUs] Jul 8, 2019 0:13:32 GMT -5

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Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Jul 8, 2019 0:13:32 GMT -5

Benat Izar
Victor of the Sixty-Third Hunger Games

***
We lift our eyes up to the hills
When will our help come
Lord we cry how long
We lift our eyes up to the hills
Even as we run
Hope is chasing us
***

“Faye Sinclair deserved a lot more than I could ever give her.”

He remembered the moment they’d shared. She was a blond whisp of a thing, smiles after a bloodbath that left them shaken. Snakes had hissed around them where they stood talking as though the world wasn’t about to fall apart.

Benat Izar stared out from the space on the hardwood stage into the district three square. They’re a sensible people, folks that logic out puzzles and know better than to fall to sentiment. But he knows too that they rely on the truth – whether argued or earned – and that’s about all he feels capable of giving. Feedback rings from the microphone attached to the podium, and he hears the rustle of the banners to his left and right. His flower crown, a mix of wildflowers and baby’s breath, with a few tigerlilies mixed in, shifts atop his head.

In the stillness of that moment on the first day, with Belle and Faye, Essence and Elodie, he’d stared into the eyes of the other kids to know the truth. And they were kids, even if knives took them, or fired burned flesh from their bones. Children torn from families to fight for a crown that no one should’ve wanted.

They were brought down by ugliness and anger. Attacked by those who saw them as prey, easy targets, people that stood in their way. All of them were dead now, though. Benat wondered how much of it was worth it, the tearing apart of one another. Lonely as he felt then, how much worse was it, sitting in a puddle of blood, knowing you’d only gotten so much further than the ones you’d ended?

“And Ezra fought as hard as he could, a boy that was as wise as he was.”

He didn’t know Ezra, not in the sense he could remember much more than his face. Benat sees his face reflected off the banners, and flashes of the night before the games come into view. A nervous boy, pale, playing truth or dare with the others. Quiet, but kind. He was another name splashed across the pages of the hunger games, left to be said with all the hundreds who’d fade into history.

Except there wasn’t a reason for him to disappear, not when he could be remembered.

“You’re a piece of all of us, together, even if they came home this way.” Cameras flashed and Benat fought to see out along the paths of people, to let them know that they were seen. He stood another moment, hands trembling beneath the podium.

There would be times when he would want to run, and hide himself from the faces. He’d stand there, and smile, and know that at any moment he might cry. Not knowing why. At least, not in a way that he could suss out for himself. Only that he hoped the feelings would pass. So he’d smile, and remind himself he was going home, to a great big patch of land. To a family that would welcome him in their arms, with shouts of his return, marinas and bocadillos, and fireworks. Enough that the neighbors would grumble that the Izars were at it again – lighting up the sky, loud and unusual – raising a ruckus.

“Was it good?” Benat asked Marsha. She’s dressed in a sea of sequins, golden against her dark skin. She never lied to him, not in the moments before the games, when she once told him he was too soft.

‘A little folksy. But you’re from eleven. It felt…’ She searched for a word, hand on her hip, paper fan wafting air to blow the hairs of her wig back. ’True. But you always do. Blessing and curse I’d say, telling the truth all the time.’

He walked alone from the square, peacekeepers set to control the crowds in front and behind him. Out along the streets of cobbled stone and buildings of gray toward the edges of the district. He came across the wrought iron bars of the cemetery around midday, and paused to stare at the birds that decorated the walls. There along the gates was the sight of a flock of doves scattering upward, out of iron and rust. He smiled, and trudge forward, ignoring the screech of metal in his grasp.

Faye got a white orchid, and Ezra an orange mum.

He lays the flowers on their graves, and kneels in the freshly laid grass. Sometimes the earth is still warm, and muddies up the knees of his pants. He takes in the quiet, always. For their sake but so that he can erase the world around him. He says it’s so that they can be honored, but it’s more that he doesn’t throw himself into one of the open graves for all the grief that passes through his head. It was a lot easier to think of them in a solitary form, a moment, frozen. Not for the time that marched ahead without them. For the families that had empty beds with sheets done tight, as though they were just waiting for them to return. Worse still, that one day they’d stop making them bed, or get rid of it entirely. Because it would be too sad to save the memory, to keep them alive, no matter how long they’d come and gone.

So he keeps them there, alive, for his own heart.

He weeps for them, prays, and weeps again. He tells them how much he owes them, or how much he hates them. He laughs at the thought of him being there, rather than in the ground where they are. But most of all he says they’re loved, even just a little, in case they hadn’t been loved by anyone at all.

He made a trip to all of their final resting places. Not with the fanfare of photographers, or with the ensemble that trailed behind him. This was one thing he was bound to do alone, to sit in the dirt in front of stone monuments, or simple wooden crosses, and let the moment be as it should’ve been: about them. It was in those moments he would open his heart to the pain and let the sobs take him. He’d spent hours weeping over Sampson Farron, a girl who’d been ripped from life cruelly, as though she’d never stood a chance. He closed his eyes and listened to the waves of district four when he visited Noah Ripley, a boy he seldom knew. Axel who he’d laid a blow to, that had gone and fallen in the bloodbath.

They were among the stars, then.

He knew he hadn’t figured out the answers to life.

Not in the brawl between himself and Cricket Antoinette for the crown of the sixty-third hunger games. Nor in the moments he’d stood on stage next to a bleary eyed President Snow (one that seemed to sniff at the thought the district eleven that had shat his pants in the bloodbath had somehow managed to win his games), when the capitol crowd had erupted in cheers. Not the least when he’d had to travel from district to district and face all the families that had lost more than they could bear.

But his youth didn’t mean he went without wisdom. Where others may have faltered at the weight of such a victory, he drew from what he’d always known. He was cracked all along his skin, ready to turn to dust if any more weight piled on his shoulders. That much was true. He never could roll up all the emotions in a ball and shove them down into his stomach for safe keeping. And he couldn’t fill the holes they made with alcohol, or morphling, or anything that threatened to keep the pain at bay. He was raised too well to let sadness cling to him, to drag him under its heavy embrace to darkness.

The white rabbit’s paw he carried around was evidence enough he was lucky. Few had what he did to keep going, to know that as much pain as he found there was love, and hope.

His family wove a spell more powerful than even the capitol could know; he could bring humility in space of his own fear so that the families did not go on suffering.

He’d taken to wearing a flower crown, one of tigerlilies because to him it was that quiet subversion (a classic Izar quality) that showed the rest of the world they could find beauty even in the pain.

There were the sneers of the first districts, careers that saw him as pathetic and weak. Benat Izar admitted that much was so. He didn’t take a life until he’d had to. Caught off guard by former allies at the lake, his blow dart gun had been true and killed Elodie where she stood. It hadn’t felt any less terrible than it sounded. Benat was ashamed he could do such a thing, much less to a girl that had once before been someone that fought alongside him to keep him safe.

Forgiveness, he learned, came from knowing he could do nothing with the feelings of sadness, nor hate that bottled up in his heart from what he’d done. Only that time proved a balm to his pain, and that he could only do as much for them as they’d given.

In each family’s hands, he’d placed a flower. All twenty-three received a different variety that best represented them. William had a poppy, Elodie a red rose, and Essence a sunflower. Cricket a hydrangea, and Belle a Daffodil. He wrote notes to all of their families to express his sadness, but mostly, to let them know he’d never forget who each of them were. There’d been the doors slammed in his face, of course – Kolo Osei’s father had spat on his forehead, with cameras flashing – and others simply refused the gesture altogether.

Benat didn’t imagine that any of them would have forgiven him then and there. That wasn’t the point. He gave them the notes, the flowers, he lowered his head and spoke a prayer to the stars for all of them because he knew that it was the first step, not the only step. To lose a child was to lose a light. He’d never be able to bring them that light, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t shine his own for them.

They fell apart, and stitched themselves back together, and somehow were all the more beautiful for it.

It wasn’t the cheers that moved him. Not the smiles on the faces from the district, or seeing his own face projected from behind him in the town square. He wouldn’t remember the words he said to all of them then, only that he wanted to get off the stage as soon as he was able so that he could rush into the arms of the little boy standing atop the podium at the back of the crowd. It’s that he does remember, the push through the crowd, brushing off handshakes and thanking the men and women but pushing past, moving faster and faster, waving off girls that wanted to be his (and boys, too), nodding to the mayor until at last, he ran headlong into Sampson, scooping the boy up into his arms in the tightest hug he could muster.

He won’t forget the smell of his hair, or their shaking whispers (te quiero). The rasping breathes they share as they shook, all the fear melting to the earth beneath their feet, circling into love. For one moment Benat sees only his brothers, Deval and Sampson, the light that had always been at the end of his horizon. And he is one with them and they are with him – no matter what future could bring to them – he can be a better man because of them. He was a better man because of them.

Where there should have been sadness he found only love dared to go. A mother that kissed his cheeks and a father, the same that had been so hard and so unkind all changed, heavy hands around his back. Cousins that circled, his bisabuela Marisol grabbing under his chin and wishing him a long life, faces upon faces that had always been there, between the sleepless nights and sadness. A soft place for him to land, one that caught him with each stumble. One that had been ready to love him no matter how his pieces had been rearranged.

Tears not for the pain, but for the promise.

He took the little plot of land, and the house along side the hill by the river, eschewing the victor’s village in favor of his family. Each stone on the path to his front door has the names of the tributes etched into it, with Essence having a special place too, on the star shaped door knocker atop his door.

They etched their names into the oak atop the hill overlooking the river. Sampson, Benat, and Deval. Nothing was perfect – Deval still feeling a part of his shadow, Sampson shy, and Benat silly – but each day felt like another chance. One that Benat would never spoil, not when he knew they’d been the ones to bring him home.

He celebrated them all, the Izars. His strength and courage was theirs, and as he learned there was no better feeling than living for them.

Benat liked to set off fireworks. There was something about the sulfer smell from the matches, the skittering flame as it crept along to the base of the explosive, and at last, the whistling as they took flight that drew him in. He said it was to remind his brothers that they could burn like the starlight above, amaze and astound even as plain as they might have looked.

Late June, the sixty-fourth games finished, he sat next to Sampson as bright flashes of light crackled overhead.

Sampson rested his head on Benat’s shoulder, tired from a long day of tilling fields in the heat. Asha and Deval were near, hand in hand, reclining against the soft earth. Deval is tangled with the girl from two farms over, caught up and too happy to be taken. Somehow, they all feel exactly as they should be, four kids watching the shower of sparks above them. He watched the pinks and blues fade away to let the stars continue their dance.

“Happy birthday, pequeñito,” Benat told Sampson with a grin. He’s not flashy with his money, but today he didn’t want to spare the expense. They’d started the morning with pancakes and eggs. Bacon and sausage. Sweet, sticky cinnamon rolls. Hash browns. Coffee for him and Deval, chocolate milk for Sampson. He was thirteen now – a man! – his father Bakar had said that morning, after ruffling Sampson’s hair until the boy let out a groan.

There was the usual parade of family. His father’s brothers and their wives start to stream in toward noon, when the sun settles overhead. Sampson gets a silver necklace from Aresti, and a woven little warrior figure from Druso. They pat his little brother on the head or knock a hand hard across his back before tending to glass bottles of beer (dipping into a few coolers full). Before the sun sets there’s coal on the barbecues, with smoke wafting, and meat sizzling. Vasco’s strumming chords on his guitar, with little Salome twirling around her mother’s knees. Emma bounces Raquel on her knee, and chatters away with Marisol.

These are the days he’ll remember when his time is close to the end. Faces of the men and women who did their best with what they had, ones that knew love was a balm to whatever sadness they could face.

He knows it is Deval who tells him he’s too hard on himself over Xavier and Nightshade’s death. That Vasco asks him to walk with him, and spends an hour jamming – he with his guitar, and Benat with his fiddle – until he was grinning from ear to ear (¿Qué guay, eh?). Nekane reminds him he’s getting long in the tooth for an Izar, eighteen and unmarried. And so it goes – the gentle sway of family under the crisp air of a summer’s night.

He does not stumble from the scars. The pain of broken bones has long since subsided, his world now filled with long stalks of corn and walks to and from the market. Celebrity comes easy to him because he believes that his return was because of them. The district, simple and good – a life of struggle and hard labor – they do the best they can, bad as it is. He knows that he must do something,

That night, when the fireworks had finished and the bonfires dying embers and circled with uncles talking of days before his time, he started a walk along the edges of the Izar land.

He weaved through the stalks of corn, humming to himself, until he stopped in a clearing to stare up at the full moon overhead.

Crickets broke through the silence, and fireflies dawdled in circles around him. He was heavy. With happiness, with hope. Leaves rustled in the distance, and he turned to face the sound.

At first he thought it was all the moonshine he’d taken with Druso and Aresti, or the dirty cigarettes he’d smoked with Vasco. Then he wondered if it was all a dream, and he’d passed out hours before.

But the truth is more powerful than any dream, and he stands, face to face with his twin.

And the world is quiet, save for the two boys that faced one another.

In another life, he knows he wouldn’t have met him – dead before the boy had a chance to set foot in eleven – Rum Tum Tugger would have known only stories. But that night they would learn the truth, and what had been split came together again.

“How…?” Benat whispered, and the boy said nothing, only shook his head and stepped forward, eyes already reflecting back the moonlight.

“Freya, we found him.” The boy who looked like him, if only covered in more dirt and in need of a shower, spoke to a blond haired girl that peeked out from the corn behind him.

“Who?” She whispered. She craned her head to see, eyes wide.

“My brother.”

He learned that there were few truths stronger than a family willing to sacrifice for one another.

Of course, Benat Izar was far from perfect. He didn’t like to wake early. He didn’t know much to tell his tributes how to train. He jokes didn’t always land.

But when he finally passed from one world to the next, he could be remembered for what he’d chosen to become. Far more than the title bestowed upon him – because he’d always grown up around those he didn’t need a title to do what needed to be done – he did as best as he could, better and better every day.

*Gravity of Love, The Brilliance*