Future Past (Present) [Emma/Vasco]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

v a s c o 


And I will walk with the dead and the living where I used to live
And every time I see my parents in the prime of their lives
Offering their son the kind of love he could never put down
Part of me is still that stainless kid, lucky

Morning comes as sure as summer has faded with the last September sunset.

Frost met the grass and a cool wind crept across the district. Autumn brought rolling gray clouds and drizzle, leaves of crimson and gold, and the smell of smoke from the crackling logs set out in the hearth.

As much as I’d grown up loving the sun at my back, I couldn’t help but long for the short days of autumn. Crisp and clean, I could wake up in the dark of morning to find the whole world quiet, all of us comfortable when cocooned in blankets and steadying for dawn. Months past the reaping and far from another games on the horizon, we could rebuild the world as we saw fit. What the heat had drawn up over long summer days didn’t much matter now. That chill up my back was enough signal not to dwell in what’d been lost, at any rate.

Except that morning I couldn’t shake the memory of taking Yani for a walk up to Katelyn’s and how we’d first met. It’d been a chilly fall afternoon with me crossing the district. I’d been getting out the vote and knocking on doors in my first run for mayor.

Back then it’d felt like a longshot, something I’d been drawn to do but couldn’t realize. Not when there’d been a victor’s brother or the mayor’s right hand running.

Except none of that mattered now, no matter how much it had that day. Being mayor for so long I’d think about what these years would’ve looked like if I’d stayed in the fields. Would I hands covered in callouses like Druso? What would’ve happened to the Izars otherwise if I’d kept my head down, and never raised my voice?

I think about the people I’ve met because of this a lot, the ones who’ve lost touch or are too far away for me to rightly see. I wonder what Birdie Hope must be doing now, married and raising a little girl in eight. Or how Mace and Saffron manage in Ten. If it’s everything they’ve ever dreamed, year after year, when children and now grandchildren could be pushed center stage. Or if Seven’s just as lawless as it’s ever been.

Marisol’s still with us, god bless her soul. I wonder how many days she might have left.

And what about the sunflowers?

What had boiled up over the last ten years felt lukewarm now, as though all the anger and drive had been a burst of steam.

In the mirror I’m all of fifty, worn and weathered by panem’s march. I wonder if an old man like me could ever do much, especially with all that I haven’t been able to do.

But the sun still rises, after all.

The crickets sing, and as much as my knees ache in the dropping temps of the early fall, I’m out of bed and down the stairs as though it isn’t the thousandth time.

Because you get older and you start to realize, the little things that had been such slights, so painful to chafe your sides – they’re harmless now.

Now and again you’ll still feel all the pain and anguish of a slight, but somehow, the years have taught me to be kind. That to be gentle to myself is the greatest gift I could ever give; you have to be hopeful, and kind, to ever survive. Because it’s less about me now, all the years that have passed and that I’ve gotten to see, and more about them – my own children, my grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, too.

And I haven’t given up on a better world for them.

The fire in me may not burn as white hot, but it’s steady, and sure.

It won’t ever go out, so long as I can rise every morning.

“Cariño,” I call up the stairs, “You want eggs?” I didn’t wait for an answer and cracked two eggs onto an iron skillet. They sizzled across the heat and butter. I sprinkled a dash of salt and a flick of pepper. I turned to the boiling pot of espresso and soak in the earthiness of the coffee.

I used to believe I couldn’t have an empty house, and when Yani had gone to her first reaping, I’d swore up and down we needed to start having the nieces and nephews come around, if only to hear them stomping up and down the stairs. But three years past and I’m like a school boy waiting for when Emma and I could get a morning together, just ourselves.

Yani’s gone to her sister’s, and I’ve taken one of the few days not to head to the justice building and relax.

Can you imagine it? Me, not neck deep in whatever was going on in the district?

I shift the eggs with a flick of the handle and turn back toward the door to the hallway.

“You think we could head up to the hill today, out by the river?”

elegant