[.} take care, take care, take care {.]
Mar 19, 2011 23:40:59 GMT -5
Post by WT on Mar 19, 2011 23:40:59 GMT -5
Everything he is, everything he has ever been, centers around his hands.
He considers this as he makes his halting way through the shrunken trees because his only other options are sobering at best and terrifying at worst. There is always the option of not thinking at all, but then he has to focus on his surroundings. As it is, the forest disconcerts him. Trees loom up out of the gloom, then seem to shrink away as he reaches out for their support. Time and time again he almost falls, his feet gouging the ash as he lunges forward to grab at some pale branch. Thinking is infinitely better than paying attention to where he is. So he watches his ash-darkened fingers as they wrap around yet another spindly support line, and he contemplates the history written in his palms' creases.
As a child, he wanted to be an artist. During school he would sneak sketches onto his papers with borrowed pencils, because the supplies he had at home were too expensive to waste on anything but homework. He would ask for his assignments and take them home, tearing out the pictures and gathering them together, a years-long collection of pictures that did nothing but meant everything. He would flip through them sometimes; his fingers, long even then, felt delicate against even the thinnest papers, as though the pictures were somehow more real than him and could crush him with their meaning.
And yet his hands held up against everything, because they had to. When he grew up and gave up on the pictures, his hands stayed with him, adapting easily to the measured lines of architecture that were so unlike the natural, never-quite-even, not-quite-chaotic lines of the fingers.
And then adapting again, tracing Aisha's lovely outline with all the care of an architect, slipping a ring onto her fingers with all the love he ever poured into his drawing and more, almost buckling under her grip as she screamed with the effort of bringing Ayane into the world.
And then hoisting Ayane in the air, reaching out so as not to drop her, once more fragile beneath the weight of something so real and yet always strong enough to keep his beautiful girl away from the ground.
There has been more since then, his wonderful, loyal hands shaping themselves to unimagined purposes. Clinging to Aisha's hand with both of his, begging the universe to let his grip buy them a few more moments. Wringing Kima's hands because English has no words to thank her for helping Aisha and protecting Ayane. Clutching Jana's forearm, trying to make sure she understands his pleas. If I don't come back, please look after her. Please. Fluttering throughout his own interview in an attempt to tell the audience, "I'm open. I'm friendly. You can like me." Heaving a crowbar above his head and swinging it down—the harshest action he has ever taken, and yet somehow as natural as drawing a story or swinging Ayane in a circle, because they are all things he has needed to do.
But none of them has managed the importance of that last. Nothing he has ever done, nothing he will ever do, can be as important as Ayane. Once you have been a parent, there is nothing else in the world. You are no longer an artist or an architect or a killer or even a lover. You are no longer yourself. Your world revolves around a squalling mass of flesh and spit-up that slowly learns expressions and then words, worming its way into your heart so that you are as dependent on it as it is on you.
And oh, has Ayane ever found his heart. She is so beautiful. His sweet girl, so vibrant in the way that only young children can be, so like Aisha and yet so brilliantly unlike anything that has ever walked on this planet. He hopes that her hands are up to the task of supporting her. He can see them now, linked through his like they were so frequently, and he worries. Her fingers are already turning out long and thin like his, and when he holds them, he feels like he could snap them if he stopped paying attention. He knows that she will be fine, because she has Aisha's energy and because if her hands are like his then they are strong enough for whatever she will need. Even so, she worries. He is, after all, a father.
His train of thought is broken as he misses the branch he was aiming for and, crashing through several smaller twigs on the way down, collapses to the ground. Ash and dead needles cushion his fall, but it's difficult to feel grateful for small blessings when, lesser or no, the impact makes his body explode with pain all over again. A glance reveals that snagging twigs pulled off or ripped several of his makeshift bandages, but he can't bring himself to care. In fact, he can't bring himself to care about much of anything—not bandages, not moving. He flattens himself out, shifting from his side to his back, and lies there staring upward. It is not comfortable, not with ash in his wounds and pine needles pricking his skin, yet his muscles cry out with relief at not being made to walk any further.
He cannot stay here indefinitely, of course; wounded as he is, it's important to isolate himself from as many threats as possible. Putting distance between himself and his last fight is crucial, as is finding a clump of trees thick enough to shelter his long body. Finding such a haven will do him no good if he crashes into it dead, though, so he allows himself to rest.
Rather than let himself wallow in pain and stare uselessly at the sky, he allows his thoughts to wander again. This time, almost offhandedly, he wonders how Katie is. He had wanted to go through this alone, knowing that no tribute could matter as much as Ayane and not wanting to allow himself pain for deaths that need to happen, but he supposes that if he had to make one almost-friend here, the girl from District Three wasn't a bad choice. He hopes that the remainder of her arm stays free from infection, and that the missing portion does not trouble her too much. He hopes that she remembers how to use her switchblade and that she does not hate him in memory.
He hopes that she dies, because he does not want to face her again.
Moaning, he shifts to lie on his back. His shoulder screams in protest, but he lifts his bad hand and begins drawing small patterns in the dirt to distract himself. Small curves and angles start to take form. He is unfamiliar with abstract art, but it seems inappropriate to draw forms when his thoughts, usually so concrete and orderly, are wandering through abstract realms. Still, the occasional shape appears among the fluid lines. A switchblade. A baby. A dancing woman.
He continues, switching arms whenever one gets tired, until every patch of dirt within reach has been cleared of leaves and covered in lines. Feeling as though he has accomplished something monumental, or perhaps nothing at all, he closes his eyes and begs for sleep.
---------------
He wakes in bed, cold but content with the sweetness of some dream. Yawning, he scoots toward Aisha's side, then frowns and opens his eyes when his fingers don't find her. He sees nothing, of course—it is night, and they can hardly afford lights—but a muffled sound keeps him from worrying. Comforted, he closes his eyes again. Ayane must have woken up crying again, and Aisha must have slipped out to check on her. She'll be back soon, and they'll be together again, as they have promised to always remain.
---------------
He wakes to pain, and knows exactly where he is. Panting, he rolls onto his side, lifting his bad shoulder from the ground. It doesn't help, because at this point everything is hurting—his neck, his shoulder, his head. Oh god, his head. Moving opened the gashes on his forehead, letting loose a new burst of blood. He wants to raise an arm to brush it away from his eyes, but he doesn't think that touching his head is a good idea and he isn't even sure that he can lift his hands because both his arms hurt so much. His poor hands, his poor beautiful hands, unwounded but so constrained that they may as well not exist. His... his hands...
---------------
He wakes alone, and the dark makes him groan. He's tired of waking up before roosters; as badly as he needs this apprenticeship, the hours sometimes make him want to throw things at his employer. Some days, only his girls keep him from quitting. He knows that Aisha's music can only bring in so much money; as it is, he's the principal breadwinner, and the three of them will never survive on his wife's paycheck. So he goes to work on time, does what he's asked to, and never complains. Today, though, the temptation to slack on the first part of that is great. His entire body is horribly sore (what did they do last night?), and he feels as though he hasn't slept at all. Surely five or ten minutes won't make him too late...
---------------
He wakes alive, and knows that he will not remain so for long.
He does not panic. To call him calm would be a lie—he's panting and struggling to rise and overwhelmed with pain and terror—but he does not shriek or thrash, and his thinking remains clear. Hysteria only skirts the corners of his mind before succumbing to the knowledge that it will solve nothing and may even create problems. Even if she is not watching now (oh, Jana, Kima, please do not let her watch), someday Ayane will see this footage, and he wants her to be proud. Aisha might be watching him now from wherever she is, and he knows he needs to live up to her memory. Finally, in terms of his own personal well-being, panicking would waste precious energy. Some might call conserving that energy futile at this point, but he refuses to capitulate. Close as failure seems, if he has not given up before this, he cannot give up now. It would be a betrayal—of Aisha and her indomitable will to survive, of Ayane and his promise to come home, of the tributes he has attacked, of every moment he has spent in this arena.
So like a man possessed, he puts his pain out of his mind and forces himself to roll over. Once on his stomach, he scrabbles around in the ash until he manages a kneeling position. Merely bending his arms sends fresh blood trickling through his scabs, and pain almost blinds him, but he fears that if he lies down any longer, his body will give up for him. Moving feels like masochism, but stopping can only be suicide.
When he tries to push himself to his feet, his arms crumple and he falls face-first to the ground. Ashen spirals shatter and burst into the air, settling over his hands, wrists, and lower legs. The layer of grey—layers, really, since he didn't bother to wipe off that which settled over him while he slept—distort the color of his skin, giving it a ghostly pallor unlike any he has never seen.
Already too thin from years of undernourishment and a few days of starvation, now unbelievable sallow, his hands look like a dead man's.
Themba finally panics.
He does not have strength enough to lend any considerable volume to his wordless scream. Somewhere, though, his muscles find the power to propel him forward. Blood spurts unnoticed from his wounds. He wants to run, but can't. The best he can do is a sort of half-crawl that mostly involves throwing himself at random spots along the ground. All the while, his mind rings: Move move run fight move, anything to prove you aren't dead, run, live! Every time he slows down, the words in his mind build into a verbal scream and he tosses himself back into his desperate gait.
Eventually, pain grounds him enough to allow two more thoughts to push their way in: images of a singing teenager and a smiling toddler. He has no idea why these dark-skinned girls are important, but both--the child, in particular—captivate him. For fear that he will frighten them, he forces himself to calm down, closing his mouth against the screams and letting his trashing flight slow. As soon as he stops moving, he falls, his arms and legs remembering abruptly that they can no longer support this kind of movement.
He shouldn't mind—it isn't so bad to lie still—but for some reason, this worries him. He tries to move, but to no avail. The girls are gone; he looks for them, but all he sees is the landscape around him. Trees, and something that looks like ash. (Strange, that. Has there been a forest fire?) Their disappearance is even more worrying than his sudden inability to move. He frowns and tries to reach toward the spot where he first saw them, calling out as he does so for reasons that he does not understand. "A-"
The name—he feels sure that it was a name, though he doesn't know whose—dies on his lips before he has the chance to figure out what he plans to say. He doesn't have the breath for words; he barely has enough to lie still drag air into his tortured lungs. What has he done to his lungs? What has he done to any of himself? His pain is so great that it makes itself lesser, becoming so pervasive that it seems as natural as his skin or his fingers. That seems like it should be a bad thing, especially since he doesn't know why he feels like that, but his thoughts are fragmenting
Is he dying? That would make sense, except that he can't die. He can't, because... because... someone important needs him not to. Someone he loves. Someone who needs something from him. But what?
Knowing that he has to do something monumental, or perhaps anything at all, he closes his eyes and begs for life.
His wife's voice answers his plea. When his eyes open for the last time, he is reaching for her with his hands, unsure whether he should smile or cry.
He considers this as he makes his halting way through the shrunken trees because his only other options are sobering at best and terrifying at worst. There is always the option of not thinking at all, but then he has to focus on his surroundings. As it is, the forest disconcerts him. Trees loom up out of the gloom, then seem to shrink away as he reaches out for their support. Time and time again he almost falls, his feet gouging the ash as he lunges forward to grab at some pale branch. Thinking is infinitely better than paying attention to where he is. So he watches his ash-darkened fingers as they wrap around yet another spindly support line, and he contemplates the history written in his palms' creases.
As a child, he wanted to be an artist. During school he would sneak sketches onto his papers with borrowed pencils, because the supplies he had at home were too expensive to waste on anything but homework. He would ask for his assignments and take them home, tearing out the pictures and gathering them together, a years-long collection of pictures that did nothing but meant everything. He would flip through them sometimes; his fingers, long even then, felt delicate against even the thinnest papers, as though the pictures were somehow more real than him and could crush him with their meaning.
And yet his hands held up against everything, because they had to. When he grew up and gave up on the pictures, his hands stayed with him, adapting easily to the measured lines of architecture that were so unlike the natural, never-quite-even, not-quite-chaotic lines of the fingers.
And then adapting again, tracing Aisha's lovely outline with all the care of an architect, slipping a ring onto her fingers with all the love he ever poured into his drawing and more, almost buckling under her grip as she screamed with the effort of bringing Ayane into the world.
And then hoisting Ayane in the air, reaching out so as not to drop her, once more fragile beneath the weight of something so real and yet always strong enough to keep his beautiful girl away from the ground.
There has been more since then, his wonderful, loyal hands shaping themselves to unimagined purposes. Clinging to Aisha's hand with both of his, begging the universe to let his grip buy them a few more moments. Wringing Kima's hands because English has no words to thank her for helping Aisha and protecting Ayane. Clutching Jana's forearm, trying to make sure she understands his pleas. If I don't come back, please look after her. Please. Fluttering throughout his own interview in an attempt to tell the audience, "I'm open. I'm friendly. You can like me." Heaving a crowbar above his head and swinging it down—the harshest action he has ever taken, and yet somehow as natural as drawing a story or swinging Ayane in a circle, because they are all things he has needed to do.
But none of them has managed the importance of that last. Nothing he has ever done, nothing he will ever do, can be as important as Ayane. Once you have been a parent, there is nothing else in the world. You are no longer an artist or an architect or a killer or even a lover. You are no longer yourself. Your world revolves around a squalling mass of flesh and spit-up that slowly learns expressions and then words, worming its way into your heart so that you are as dependent on it as it is on you.
And oh, has Ayane ever found his heart. She is so beautiful. His sweet girl, so vibrant in the way that only young children can be, so like Aisha and yet so brilliantly unlike anything that has ever walked on this planet. He hopes that her hands are up to the task of supporting her. He can see them now, linked through his like they were so frequently, and he worries. Her fingers are already turning out long and thin like his, and when he holds them, he feels like he could snap them if he stopped paying attention. He knows that she will be fine, because she has Aisha's energy and because if her hands are like his then they are strong enough for whatever she will need. Even so, she worries. He is, after all, a father.
His train of thought is broken as he misses the branch he was aiming for and, crashing through several smaller twigs on the way down, collapses to the ground. Ash and dead needles cushion his fall, but it's difficult to feel grateful for small blessings when, lesser or no, the impact makes his body explode with pain all over again. A glance reveals that snagging twigs pulled off or ripped several of his makeshift bandages, but he can't bring himself to care. In fact, he can't bring himself to care about much of anything—not bandages, not moving. He flattens himself out, shifting from his side to his back, and lies there staring upward. It is not comfortable, not with ash in his wounds and pine needles pricking his skin, yet his muscles cry out with relief at not being made to walk any further.
He cannot stay here indefinitely, of course; wounded as he is, it's important to isolate himself from as many threats as possible. Putting distance between himself and his last fight is crucial, as is finding a clump of trees thick enough to shelter his long body. Finding such a haven will do him no good if he crashes into it dead, though, so he allows himself to rest.
Rather than let himself wallow in pain and stare uselessly at the sky, he allows his thoughts to wander again. This time, almost offhandedly, he wonders how Katie is. He had wanted to go through this alone, knowing that no tribute could matter as much as Ayane and not wanting to allow himself pain for deaths that need to happen, but he supposes that if he had to make one almost-friend here, the girl from District Three wasn't a bad choice. He hopes that the remainder of her arm stays free from infection, and that the missing portion does not trouble her too much. He hopes that she remembers how to use her switchblade and that she does not hate him in memory.
He hopes that she dies, because he does not want to face her again.
Moaning, he shifts to lie on his back. His shoulder screams in protest, but he lifts his bad hand and begins drawing small patterns in the dirt to distract himself. Small curves and angles start to take form. He is unfamiliar with abstract art, but it seems inappropriate to draw forms when his thoughts, usually so concrete and orderly, are wandering through abstract realms. Still, the occasional shape appears among the fluid lines. A switchblade. A baby. A dancing woman.
He continues, switching arms whenever one gets tired, until every patch of dirt within reach has been cleared of leaves and covered in lines. Feeling as though he has accomplished something monumental, or perhaps nothing at all, he closes his eyes and begs for sleep.
---------------
He wakes in bed, cold but content with the sweetness of some dream. Yawning, he scoots toward Aisha's side, then frowns and opens his eyes when his fingers don't find her. He sees nothing, of course—it is night, and they can hardly afford lights—but a muffled sound keeps him from worrying. Comforted, he closes his eyes again. Ayane must have woken up crying again, and Aisha must have slipped out to check on her. She'll be back soon, and they'll be together again, as they have promised to always remain.
---------------
He wakes to pain, and knows exactly where he is. Panting, he rolls onto his side, lifting his bad shoulder from the ground. It doesn't help, because at this point everything is hurting—his neck, his shoulder, his head. Oh god, his head. Moving opened the gashes on his forehead, letting loose a new burst of blood. He wants to raise an arm to brush it away from his eyes, but he doesn't think that touching his head is a good idea and he isn't even sure that he can lift his hands because both his arms hurt so much. His poor hands, his poor beautiful hands, unwounded but so constrained that they may as well not exist. His... his hands...
---------------
He wakes alone, and the dark makes him groan. He's tired of waking up before roosters; as badly as he needs this apprenticeship, the hours sometimes make him want to throw things at his employer. Some days, only his girls keep him from quitting. He knows that Aisha's music can only bring in so much money; as it is, he's the principal breadwinner, and the three of them will never survive on his wife's paycheck. So he goes to work on time, does what he's asked to, and never complains. Today, though, the temptation to slack on the first part of that is great. His entire body is horribly sore (what did they do last night?), and he feels as though he hasn't slept at all. Surely five or ten minutes won't make him too late...
---------------
He wakes alive, and knows that he will not remain so for long.
He does not panic. To call him calm would be a lie—he's panting and struggling to rise and overwhelmed with pain and terror—but he does not shriek or thrash, and his thinking remains clear. Hysteria only skirts the corners of his mind before succumbing to the knowledge that it will solve nothing and may even create problems. Even if she is not watching now (oh, Jana, Kima, please do not let her watch), someday Ayane will see this footage, and he wants her to be proud. Aisha might be watching him now from wherever she is, and he knows he needs to live up to her memory. Finally, in terms of his own personal well-being, panicking would waste precious energy. Some might call conserving that energy futile at this point, but he refuses to capitulate. Close as failure seems, if he has not given up before this, he cannot give up now. It would be a betrayal—of Aisha and her indomitable will to survive, of Ayane and his promise to come home, of the tributes he has attacked, of every moment he has spent in this arena.
So like a man possessed, he puts his pain out of his mind and forces himself to roll over. Once on his stomach, he scrabbles around in the ash until he manages a kneeling position. Merely bending his arms sends fresh blood trickling through his scabs, and pain almost blinds him, but he fears that if he lies down any longer, his body will give up for him. Moving feels like masochism, but stopping can only be suicide.
When he tries to push himself to his feet, his arms crumple and he falls face-first to the ground. Ashen spirals shatter and burst into the air, settling over his hands, wrists, and lower legs. The layer of grey—layers, really, since he didn't bother to wipe off that which settled over him while he slept—distort the color of his skin, giving it a ghostly pallor unlike any he has never seen.
Already too thin from years of undernourishment and a few days of starvation, now unbelievable sallow, his hands look like a dead man's.
Themba finally panics.
He does not have strength enough to lend any considerable volume to his wordless scream. Somewhere, though, his muscles find the power to propel him forward. Blood spurts unnoticed from his wounds. He wants to run, but can't. The best he can do is a sort of half-crawl that mostly involves throwing himself at random spots along the ground. All the while, his mind rings: Move move run fight move, anything to prove you aren't dead, run, live! Every time he slows down, the words in his mind build into a verbal scream and he tosses himself back into his desperate gait.
Eventually, pain grounds him enough to allow two more thoughts to push their way in: images of a singing teenager and a smiling toddler. He has no idea why these dark-skinned girls are important, but both--the child, in particular—captivate him. For fear that he will frighten them, he forces himself to calm down, closing his mouth against the screams and letting his trashing flight slow. As soon as he stops moving, he falls, his arms and legs remembering abruptly that they can no longer support this kind of movement.
He shouldn't mind—it isn't so bad to lie still—but for some reason, this worries him. He tries to move, but to no avail. The girls are gone; he looks for them, but all he sees is the landscape around him. Trees, and something that looks like ash. (Strange, that. Has there been a forest fire?) Their disappearance is even more worrying than his sudden inability to move. He frowns and tries to reach toward the spot where he first saw them, calling out as he does so for reasons that he does not understand. "A-"
The name—he feels sure that it was a name, though he doesn't know whose—dies on his lips before he has the chance to figure out what he plans to say. He doesn't have the breath for words; he barely has enough to lie still drag air into his tortured lungs. What has he done to his lungs? What has he done to any of himself? His pain is so great that it makes itself lesser, becoming so pervasive that it seems as natural as his skin or his fingers. That seems like it should be a bad thing, especially since he doesn't know why he feels like that, but his thoughts are fragmenting
Is he dying? That would make sense, except that he can't die. He can't, because... because... someone important needs him not to. Someone he loves. Someone who needs something from him. But what?
Knowing that he has to do something monumental, or perhaps anything at all, he closes his eyes and begs for life.
His wife's voice answers his plea. When his eyes open for the last time, he is reaching for her with his hands, unsure whether he should smile or cry.
