grief is a woman too — vasco & samson

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

S   A   M   S   O   N

She died when he was walking home in the early morning, when the sky was yellow and bleached blue, moon fading between the slender branches of trees. The air tasted sweet. People stirred in their homes, smoking on doorsteps, turning over the signs on storefronts.

She died when he watched her from the kitchen, birds on the branches chirping. She looked grainy and small. The sunlight came in sheets of silver through the windowpane.

She died in the district square, bleeding into the afternoon when he walked past a row of shiny television screens, people pausing for a moment to look at replayed footage before returning to their work.

The softness of a body becomes a canyon and mountains and a landscape. He remembers her touch, the lines of her silhouette. She dies again, and he can feel a foreign object in his hands now, the metal of the cornucopia held in a fist when he wanders through a memory of her, over the valley of her hips.

There was a time when it howled in the night, when it bared its teeth, and whimpered at the warm glow from windows, hungry for a tender moment to chew on.

But faith had died in the backyard long ago, chained to the fence like a dog. There were the bones of all the love and trust scattered in the dirt, and a leather tether still strung up, shaking in the wind.

He is not stupid.

He knew, even when he held her in the Justice Building. He had given her the ring, felt something strange and slight as he pressed his palm to her stomach, a cry that felt like a bone caught in his throat.

When she had stood up there, it felt like the air had been sucked from his lungs. And his chest hadn't ever really felt the same afterwards, not even now, as if all the interstitial spaces had been compressed, crumpled into a paper ball.

He knew then, too. But when she died, he realized one more thing.

There will be no more room for longing, no more winters of holding her hand, tracing a path out of District Eleven on the lines of her palm.

There will be no place for them to sleep, no more canopies of leaves for them to hide under and dream.

There will be no more future.

There will never be another moment that would be theirs alone, untouched by death.

There will never be anything good from now on.

He hasn't mourned her yet.

His Celeste.

A day later, his aunt opened their door to peacekeepers, dressed in their ivory exoskeletons. A notice of a summoning, they said, and he gave his aunt's hand a gentle squeeze before leaving with them.

The Justice Building is as he remembers it, cool and dark, shadows in every corner. The peacekeepers open another set of double doors in the hallway, and there is Vasco standing in the room, turning towards him. He looks different in person, up close. Different without a sea of people before him, pressed towards his words like a tide.

A sunflower spills from the chest of the mayor.

It's funny – how his feelings have lost flesh and blood and soul, peeled down into reflexes. His fingers curl into a fist and he forgets what it means.

"What do you want?"

LIKE A CRY AT THE FINAL BREATH.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o

Like runaway horses
In a fever 'til the end
And every step is a silver prayer
In the face of a hard wind

They wouldn’t let me leave the steps of the justice building.

Ever since the speech in the sunflower garden, peacekeepers have been my shadow. Around each corner another carved white armored snake appears to remind me I will never be alone. Not so long as I draw enough breath against the capitol, as though a farmer from the farthest reaches of the district could have ever threatened them. But the people of the capitol, on the council, their guides had always been fear and envy – one, a course of black smoke that left them blind to the rest of the world, and the other constantly searching for what could bring life to their empty hearts again.

'If you wanted to send for the boy, you’ll need to speak to him here. For the official record.' 

I couldn’t see his eyes underneath the black of the helmet, but I imagined the young man informing me of my near house-arrest that they’d be recording every word out of my mouth.

I’d sent for him anyway.

He deserved what had been left for him, no matter the consequences to me.

I’d steadied myself under the fluorescent lights of the break room. I’d counted the tiles on the ceiling. Stared at the water stain that had expanded over the last year, despite the talk of it being fixed. And I’d tugged at the token in my pocket, fumbled in my jeans for the velvet box. I’d snapped it open more than once, twice, a dozen times waiting for his arrival.

A ring.

What had meant to symbolize forever, abandoned in violence.

How lucky I had ever been to fall in love, to have chased after a dream that’d spoiled a young man’s head. Those years had been wax wings and cut roses. A time where the slightest thing could have sent us tumbling back down to earth, and yet. Emma and I would be married thirty years on. Still waking up next to one another, her telling me I had been snoring the whole night before. The way she’d turn on the radio in the kitchen while I boiled the espresso, us steady in rhythm, still sneaking glances at one another.

And there are those who could not stand the thought of love, of soul mates. All fairytales and talk for a lonely world. Perhaps that is true, too. But my heart is open to the thought that we find another to nurture us, there to shield from the worst of our pain, or buoy us to joy. To love oneself alone is to understand, but to love another is to become free.

Our souls are untouched by the world’s weight when in the hands of another. Fear does not disappear yet stays a distance – when my love stands close to me. Emma has given her heart, and that has made me stronger a man than half of panem. And to have given mine to her is – to stand on the stars. To feel hope, and know that tomorrow, no matter the storms or darkness, I had a sword and shield, a person to fight for.

Perhaps I projected too much onto young love.

I poured another cup of coffee into my world’s best dad mug and blew away the steam. For all I knew, all of it was passion fizzled out. A tryst behind a set of oak trees and a swim at dawn. Quiet nights waking up in the dew that he could not forget but did not mourn. Love should not have been bound by tragedy; he deserved a future unburdened by grief.

'He’s coming up the steps now.' The radio clicks from the helmet of the peacekeeper standing in the doorway. He doesn’t ask me to follow before turning back to the hallway, and I know I’m to walk the length of the hall toward the reception room.

When he enters through the double doors, it’s a fox trouncing at the edges of the hills. A young man who could know the way but stuck to what he’d learned for himself. His balled fist a flash of what could’ve come at any moment.

“Samson. Ah. I see our friends went to help you find the way to the justice building.” Too many years since I’d said the name, my throat almost dry as it comes out. What did I want? “Right to the point. I appreciate that. How about, what could I do for you? I know this is a difficult time. I’ve been thinking about Celeste. I hope you'll accept my condolences.”

I shuffled the velvet box out of my pocket and placed it into the palm of my hand.

“This was sent back,” I looked from him to the box, “I believe this was yours. If you wanted it.”

elegant

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

S   A   M   S   O   N

His mother's ring comes back to him, with no spectacle nor ceremony but Vasco's attendance.

There's a moment where he feels like leaving and never returning to this place. There's another where he feels like light falling through trees, splintered by leaves until a body is no longer a body, his hands are no longer his hands reaching for the velvet box.

But he takes it from the mayor's outstretched palm, and opens it.

Things from the Capitol always look unearthly in District Eleven.

The moonstone blooms like a flower fallen from the spring coat of a god, petals of gold blown into the grain fields at twilight.

It looks delicate.

It looks perfect.

It's almost a joke.

In his throat, he feels the bone lengthen, a sapling of iron and mineral.

A few weeks ago, he thought he would never understand his father. His father – who'd left them before he was born, who had given a girl a ring, devoured her, and then let her die in the aftermath of all his love.

Maybe it had been a moment of softness, maybe as an afterthought.

Maybe he'd thought he could tie her to life with a ring. Or maybe, in selfishness, he wanted to be remembered like this – when he had still been kind, when she'd loved him and all had been sweet and good.

Now he can't understand himself either.

His mother's ring comes back to him like a body in a casket.

Closing the box, strange feelings tangle into each other on their way to the surface when he meets Vasco's gaze again, and when it spills from him, it becomes a smile, a laugh, a box clutched so hard in his hands, he thinks it'll break.

"A difficult time?" He hears his voice rise, swell with a temper that he had never been good at holding onto. "That's funny."

Here's Vasco and his sympathy again. He's got a field of them now – his condolences, his stupid fucking condolences, another one worn on his chest for show because he is just so so sorry. He grew flowers who were once people, who suffered and died and became objects of his sympathy, his gesture of consolation, another scrap of longing for the people to hold onto.

Who is Vasco but a tether to nothing.

"Celeste is dead." His anger feels consuming, his anger feels like a higher power.

"Celeste is dead," He repeats, "You know, after you told us to go fuck ourselves and die for your noble cause." He moves forward, another reflex, and the room comes with him, peacekeepers taking a step too. "You think she should've died? She should've said no and sacrificed herself for the greater good?"

Who is Vasco but a bird that only sings, that flies from danger and leaves the rest of them.

"So why are you alive and she's not?"

LIKE A CRY AT THE FINAL BREATH.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o

Like runaway horses
In a fever 'til the end
And every step is a silver prayer
In the face of a hard wind

On hard days, I remember Raquel’s voice, all of seven or eight, calling out on Saturday mornings for me to turn on the radio and dance in the kitchen with her. She’d wake up at dawn and drag me down the stairs no matter how tightly I’d cocooned myself in my bed. How we’d sing along to one of the records Marisol had sneaked to us while eating pan dulce and sipping tea. We’d dance a little while or scribble with wax crayons across a few sheets of paper to draw dragons or spaceships.

Fragments of memory that kaleidoscope through the back of my mind. Faded edges all crinkled now, but enough my heart lingers with a nostalgic ache all the same.

'So why are you alive and she’s not?'

It’s a punch that lands square in my gut.

A few years ago, I might’ve doubled over. Probably shed a few tears into a handkerchief.

Except it’s not for me to fall apart, not when I’m the one who’d convinced Celeste, right or wrong, to stand up on that stage in place of anyone else. I hadn’t a say in any of the others that’d boarded that train, but here, Samson wasn’t wrong. I’d gone and raised my voice and had to face what’d come from it.

“I don’t want any of you to die.” There’s a pinprick of sweat forming under my arms as I speak.

“They made the twist so that we’d turn on one another. So that you would decide someone else’s fate just like they do every year. And that’s…” I stared back at the door, wondering which of the men in white were listening, and chewed over my words, “… it’s monstrous. It’s everything they are that we aren’t. Sacrificing someone else… how should we live with one another if that’s the best of who we are?”

Peacekeepers be damned, he deserved to know the truth. Sometimes the world was bigger than us. Choices were harder than we’d ever want them to be. We blamed ourselves for what had been handed to us, stacked all of it like bricks across our backs. Because these kids had been told this was the way the world was, they took all of it and kept going until they got to my age and were crushed under the weight. 

“I’m sorry for Celeste. I’m just as sorry for Kareem, too.” I could still remember how Kareem thought of himself as deserving of being sent to death. What were we doing to boys like Kareem who’d only ever seen themselves as one step away from being sent to death with cause? “Why should anyone get to decide what mercy is? I used my voice. I just had hoped more would listen.”

elegant

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

S   A   M   S   O   N

Vasco spits out the word monstrous.

There's that thing Samson hates him for, that obstinate idealism, that laughable notion of justness. He says this like it's given them power, like they had a choice.

His pulse knots in his airpipe. He's focused on a shadow on the wall, branch thinning and thickening in the wind. He grapples with his temper without looking at the mayor because maybe if he does he might do something stupid.

But Vasco keeps going. He presses on about mercy and sacrifice and how so sorry he is and suddenly Samson feels like he's cracked in half from the effort of holding himself back from just fucking spitting in Vasco's face.

"I wish you'd shut the fuck up."

It's suddenly quiet. He'd laugh if he wasn't knee-deep in a thick, ugly rage.

It feels like he's being eaten alive. It feels like there's so little left of him now, whittled away bit by bit with each year that passes. He's bones of a person; he feels the scraping of teeth along his spine, to the marrow. His mother was taken from him. Celeste was taken from him. He's fucking hungry.

It's a wanting that feels uncontrollable, the instinct to take, to eat and be whole. He doesn't care about being monstrous. He doesn't care what was the right thing to do. She should’ve sent someone else. She should've sent half the fucking district if it meant she could be here right now.

Vasco wanted them to behave like saints. Vasco wanted to fight with his words. Vasco wanted this and that and he is so sick of it, all the nothingness, of talk that means nothing, of being good and getting nothing from it.

"You stand here and preen and feel good about your moral superiority, about how you aren't like them." His voice is shaking. "But she's dead. And being honourable didn't save her."

He thinks of the willow, dripping in the rain, the sound of shaking leaves like laughter. Her hands were knotted over her stomach when she said goodbye.

The mayor gives flowers and mourns for the past but not the future. He pretends like they had a choice. Like it was power to die at eighteen.

Who is he trying to fool.

"They got the death they wanted. They still treat us like we're nothing."

LIKE A CRY AT THE FINAL BREATH.