Some Nights: I stay up {cuddling in my hammock}

[florentine, d4b ❁]

KLAUS GORAVICH

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♕ DISTRICT THREE ♕

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For somebody so bright, you're awfully stupid.

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"'YOU SWORE YOU'D BE HERE 'TILL WE DECIDE THAT IT'S OUR TIME- "

"'-BUT IT'S NOT TIME, YOU NEVER QUIT IN ALL YOUR LIFE."

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When I was eleven, my father handed me a book. I was told with a stern whisper never to take the book from the house, never to show the book to anyone. It was a secret, my secret. So I held the book in my childish hands and stroked it's red leather cover, worn and tattered as it was. I raised the book to my face and breathed in it's heavy aroma - it smelled like heavily bound photograph albums and stiff parchment, like old pages and summers days, lying in the shade and inhaling words. I took the book to my room, my slight fingers shaking slightly as I pried apart the ancient pages. And then I lost myself. Lost myself in the spell bounding words and the story, lost myself in the character and the sky and the truth. I let myself fall completely into the sand and the sea and the world where everyone roamed free. I pictured it all wrong, despite the near-perfect descriptions. There is no way to describe waves to a boy who had never seen the sea. No way to show a child who has never felt sand between their fingers what a beach is like. It is impossible to describe a castle to Klaus Goravich, age eleven, having never seen anything beyond the simple structures of District Three. And yet despite my incorrect mental image, (I could never have imagined anything quite as beautiful as the reality of the arena) I have never read a book more perfect. Four children, quite by luck, stumbled upon a castle set above a flawless beach. The children explored the castle, intrigued by its splendour. Surely I do not need to add that the story ended with them discovering far more happiness than they could ever have imagined.

Now, I cannot help myself but think of that castle, that beach, the sand glistening and white. Almost every detail mirrors the tale, but we four are in terrible danger, only one of us can live, we have killed, everything is wrong. The seashells that lace the walls shimmer and shine, showing their uneven, imperfect beauty. Imperfect, yet stunning, glittering yet no more free from the arena than myself. Suddenly I am unsure whether I am thinking of the seashells, the story, or the boy. Still I struggle to admit what I feel to myself, still I cannot let myself think his name. Feeling is something I am lucky to do as it is - surely the right thing is to feel all of the pain and the guilt for the people who have fallen. How could it ever be okay for a monster like me to love? It hurts to do more than whisper it into the terrible, swirling depths of my tortured mind. Elon.

I can hear the rain outside, but only just. It reaches down to the ground, hitting the top of the castle with a slightly muffled tapping sound. Somehow the rain seems different to the rain back in District Three. Safer, softer, more filled with warmth. Almost like a blanket, reaching out and covering us. I know it is illogical - still we could be simply seconds from the end. For all I know, there are mutts hidden beneath the mounds of rainbow shells, their mouths laced with poison. They could be waiting to strike. Hoping to kill. Far more vicious than any of the however-many-tributes that still live. They are simply children wishing for a pathway home. Trying to cling to sanity for another fading moment, perhaps another day. Trying not to become the terrible things they have seen on the television ever since they can remember. Forced to do everything they do for every reason in the world, and at the same time no reason at all. These desperate people are so very different to the mutts who have never known kind and honest and sincere and love. I cannot work out whom I pity more.

When I was really young, I read hundreds and hundreds of books. Collected them, lined the walls of my bedrooms with their tattered yet irreplaceable souls. Never once wished I could live the lives of any of the characters - even the fairytales their lives seemed to be filled with pain, the world echoing with loss and terror. I never yearned for their lives because mine was far more perfect than anything I could imagine. How could anyone ever wish away their siblings if they had siblings as amazing as my own? Of course, they were not perfect - are not perfect. They teased me, were cruel to me, were selfish, even. But I could not look into a single one of their eyes without melting, without feeling my core grow warm with a love so pure I could burst. I knew every one of them inside out, back to front. We were born together, and once, when we were so young I am sure none of them even remember, we made a pact that we would die together. All grow old and live our lives, and we decided that each of us would die on our one hundredth birthday. I smile when I think of that memory, us toddlers all sitting solemnly in a circle, honestly thinking we had some sort of control over our lives and our futures. What fools we were.

"Let's explore, Fitz. Like the people in the stories, let's explore the castle." Maybe we will find happiness, too. But my life is not a story book and this is no fairy tale.

"SO JUST TAKE MY HAND, AND KNOW THAT I-"

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"'-WILL NEVER LEAVE YOUR SIDE."[/center][/b][/color]

Speaking
Thinking
Expression
Body
Headings

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[wimdy]

Once upon a different life, a life before the world of a sandy Arena, even before the times of sifting dirt and decaying faces of cold pallor, I had dreamed of places like this. I once had dreams that paved themselves in my imagination, carving out thick, rich plots for my mind to unravel every night. Each twinkling dusk would bring the promise of a new journey to unfold, a new world to discover, a new life to explore, all within the safety of my flimsy mismatched sheets that smelled of ocean and just a little bit of dirt. The thin cocoon protected me from the harsh realities of the world, blocking out all that could harm me and keeping the horrors of the truth that lay just beyond the bouncy surface of my bed. I lived in a cloud of contentment, untouchable. I was invincible.

I used to believe that my mother was a dream weaver of exceptional talent, a sorceress of untold fortune and power, locked away behind her doors with us to hide away her dangerous talents from the world. Dreams were a thing to be reckoned with, they were. They could shift the sands upon the shore, curl the waves in on themselves, flip out little house on its head and never let it right itself again. Dreams could change everything, if only they were harnessed correctly by the right people. My mother was one of those people. Her dreams carried us through childhood upon a silvery ship of tales waiting to be told. For hours, Noah and I would sit in out beds, dark and light curled together in a peaceful union as the mystery of mother’s art overtook us. “Little Ripples, did I even tell you the story of the cunning and beautiful mermaid who tried to swindle the Ferryman out of his payment?” With the simplest or words, should could spin the wildest of tales, full of daring heroes and helpless maidens and dastardly villains, rolling plains and thick jungles and sprawling shores, gleaming jewels and dangerous traps and bursting stars. Each story wrapped us up in the lives of those we could not be, even if it was just enough to have us tipping into the waters of our own imaginations at the genesis of sleep. Our eyes would shut out the world around us, just as the whispers of returning pirates flooded into our safe haven.

As Klaus and I step into the next room, I feel the air sucked from my lungs as if I’ve been thrown under the currents just beyond us. My entire body is flooded as I take cautious but unsteady steps forward. Brittle shells shatter beneath my booted feet, each crack sending a spike through my veins as I stare about in wonder. Shells of every color are piled upon the floor, the remnants of life gone wrong and beauty gone right. The walls are covered in them, creating a patchwork of colored spirals and stripes upon the walls and to the ceiling of the sand palace we find ourselves at home in, at least for the day. It’s like a vision straight from my mother’s old tales, the recollections of little shells traced into my as if they’d been burned into place. “Remember the story about the Magic Conch, little Ripple? You used to love that story when you were little.” I could have listened to her talk for hours about the tale of the greedy king who ransacked a castle to find a Magic Conch shell that would tell him the right decisions in life at the merest of requests. However, when he arrived at the castle, the owner had hidden the shell within a giant room of colorful shells and clams, forever hiding the Magic Conch away from those who wished to use it for evil. I had asked my mother to tell me that story over and over again, her rich illustrations bringing the fury of the king and the beauty of the room alive within my head. Now, standing within the room, I couldn’t help my eyes unconsciously searching for a conch shell myself.

"Let's explore, Fitz. Like the people in the stories, let's explore the castle."


I blinked slowly, my mind unraveling itself from the haze of dreamy reverie and focusing back in on Klaus. Stories. It seemed we both had a piece of our childhood that we had to cling to. Despite our soiled hands, forever stained with the cold reality of blood, we had the chance to be children for just a moment in time. For all I know, it could be the last moment I have to be a child from District Four, a seafaring boy with a heart riddled by wanderlust and curiosity and desperate to live. For all I know, it could be my last moment at all. My throat has closed in on itself, my body desperately trying to get past the wave of nausea that the though of death brings. In silence, I shuffle over the shells and slip a few times until I reach the wall, clinging to the protruding shells and looking up to the ceiling, my eyes catching on a small conch at the top. Maybe, just maybe, it can tell me what I need to do to save Penelope. Or maybe, just maybe, it can tell me what I need to do to save myself. Without even thinking, I lean down and scoop up a bunch of shells and shove them in my pack, hearing them clatter against everything else inside.

“I bet we could see the whole world from up there, Klaus,” I say, a mischievous smile stretching across my lips as I rest my weight on the shells cautiously. They don’t budge. I push myself up just a little, letting the shells lift me off of the floor before turning to look at Klaus once more, challenge in my eyes as I start to move. “I bet I’ll see it before you!”

Graphics credits to the wonderful South<3

[florentine, d4b ❁]

KLAUS GORAVICH

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♕ DISTRICT THREE ♕

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For somebody so bright, you're awfully stupid.

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"'YOU SWORE YOU'D BE HERE 'TILL WE DECIDE THAT IT'S OUR TIME- "

"'-BUT IT'S NOT TIME, YOU NEVER QUIT IN ALL YOUR LIFE."

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I can hear my own heartbeat from within my chest, pounding softly against my ribcage. Still it pulses, sending blood around my body, giving every last cell what it needs to function. I am filled with blood - moving blood, turning around and around in a circle of life. In all honestly I didn't believe I would still feel the comforting beating of my own heart at this point in the games. Surely I was one of the weak ones, the ones that died quickly and quietly. The children that left no real impact on the nation they died for, no impact on the careers who slaughtered them. That was who I thought it was. Who everyone thought I was - Jamarion and Hopper and the rest. Even hopeful little Marina, sending her beloved imaginary friend along with me, surely did not believe I would be coming home to her? Lyana, Tacara and the other people I once knew but have not even bothered to think of since I was reaped. So far my mind has not wandered to the sites I will never see again. I have been so focused on everything else, on the family I will never hold, the life I will never live, the innocence I will never hold again to even consider the rest. The butcher and the daughter of the man who ran the bookshop. My fourth grade teacher, the one who let me borrow extra books at the library. The dog I passed every morning when I walked to school. He would throw himself against the gate in a fruitless attempt to reach me. I was always afraid of the dog, just as I was timid of the butcher and shy of the bookshop owners daughter and timid before my school teachers. These are the little things you forget to think of. The way me and Lyana would count the daisies that grew in the backgarden every spring. Those rainy days spent inside with Tacara, gazing out the window and trying to mirror each other's thoughts like the twins in books used to do. People say twins have a beautiful connection, a way about them that makes their relationship more special than any other sibling, and I have that with Marina and Jamarion and Lyana and Tacara. Just four times over, four times as strong. I swear I feel four times more lost without their solid presence in my life.

It's funny, though, how quickly I have replaced every one of these tiny beauties in my life. Replaced my siblings with these makeshift friends who have my back exactly when I need them to. I've swapped the mornings spent reading with mornings spent marvelling at the beach, looking through my supplies, hearing the sound of the cannon. I've switched the amazing feeling I felt every time one of my siblings hand was within mine with the heavy heart I feel every time my sword pierces flesh. Smiles have become tears; tears have become bloodshed. Grass has become sand and life has become death. Yet somehow all this is still normal, still reality - just a different, shattered kind of reality. I never thought I could accept this fate, but in my own twisted way I have. This is real; and somehow I am still sure that the eyes I see through are sane. I figure the more desperate you are the harder you try and cling on.

I looked up my name in a baby names book, once. It means victory. More specifically - victory to the people. As I look around the room glittering with shells, I think about who I am fighting. The other children, the mutts? My sliding sanity? The ever-growing hunger and thirst combined with guilt that eats away at my insides? Or the Gamemakers, the President, the terrible war back in the depths of my history books that haunts our every move to this day. I think of all the tributes from my District that were reaped after my twelfth birthday. Some I knew. Some I did not. And every year, somewhere hidden beneath the sadness and deep-rooted pain that I felt watching them die, there was happiness. As long as none of my siblings names had been called, we were winning the war we blindly fought against the world. Even if we had never truly thought about who we were fighting, as long as we were alive everything was okay. I guess in a family so large it was only luck keeping us alive this long. Sometimes I forget that Hopper is still not safe. Just because he is too old to be brought to the arena to fight himself, he will still suffer the pain of the war year after year, battle after battle. Not just watching me die, but watching everybody else die after that. Perhaps Jamarion or Marina or Tacara or Lyana. Perhaps just the little details, the faces that bult his world yet he never really noticed. I want to remember the little things when I die.

When I was first reaped, I felt as though I was balancing on a sheet of glass that cracked beneath me. Nothing held me up, not really. I dreamed each night of it shattering; of tumbling blindly into the darkness of crazy that lay below. I saw the arena as hell in my mind, a terrible, merciless place with no good and no truth and no kindness a no beauty. I was wrong on both accounts. I have so many things holding me together it is a wonder I do not implode upon my own existence, strangled by the things keeping me Klaus. There is the eyes of my family watching me from our living room. There is Kofa, standing by my side although she cannot be seen by anyone other than Marina herself. Of course I have the three starfish that hold tight to my skin, reminding me that there is always someone who needs me to be there for them. There is Fitz here by my side, and Pen and Destiny in the other room. There is Elon. I let myself think the name, loud and clear. It echoes about the corners of my mind and I know I am growing stronger with every step. I can admit things to myself now that I never thought I would. I cannot yet say it to the world - that would make it real, mean I could never turn on my heel and run from the truth. But that doesn't matter, because as long as I can let myself think what I must, I can stay sane. A murderer, yes. But a boy who has been unlucky, been reaped, been forced into doing bad things in order to live. That is how the animal kindgom works, and not every predator goes crazy in the end. Do they, Klaus? Are animals sane? Is wild the same as mentally unstable? Are you really spinning out of control without even knowing it? They say that the only the sane believe themselves to be insane, and the insane think they are fine. I slide my sword into my rucksack and follow Fitz to where he stands by the wall made of shining shells.

He looks at me, and then slowly hooks his bloodstained fingers over the shells, testing their strength. Fitz Ripley. This is a boy I admire. He has volunteered for this nightmare not because he lusts for blood, for fame and glory - but because he wants to protect the girl he loves. I do not understand the way he loves her (does he love her as I love my sisters, or as I love the boy, or as I love Hopper? Perhaps some other way I will never experience) but I know he loves her truly and absolutely and completely. And not only has he lived for her and fought for her, but I know he plans to die for her. This boy looks at me, and I am so overwhelmed by admiration - he is so like myself, yet so much better. I see him thinking over my words, perhaps wondering about the stories I speak of. Maybe he is just wrapped up in his own world. "I bet we could see the whole world from up there, Klaus." Fitz has eyes as pretty as any girl I have ever seen. "I bet I'll see it before you." Even I, with my utter oblivion to the intent of the human race, can hear the challenge in his voice. Amidst the pain and suffering of my heart, I manage to find a smile. I lift my foot and attempt to get a hold on a low shell which protrudes from the wall. It sticks fast, stronger and sturdier than even Jamarion. My fingers reach upwards towards the sky we are aiming for. I don't realise how much my body weight hurts to hold until I am a foot above the ground, and I cannot stop. This, after all, is a race. A little bit of fun that surely I deserve.

Sometimes things happen, and the memories fade away into nothing until they have drowned beneath every other memory in your mind. You don't even know you remember them until something happens and they are dragged roughly to the surface of your brain. I forget how afraid I was of heights. Once, Jamarion decided that Hopper and I should be proper brothers. As always, the little five year old Klaus was so eager to please that he wrapped the bandana around his head and helped build the tedios platform in the treetops creatively christened 'The Pirate Ship'. And then he followed his brothers right up onto it, giggling and shouting pirate things. It was only then that I found my tiny legs frozen in place, shaking like a tree in the wind. My pupils grew wide with fear, my head spun, and sickness filled every edge of my consciousness. Even then, I knew the definition of the word phobia. Yet I was so shaken that when I opened my mouth to define it for Jamarion and Hopper, I ended up sobbing violently, overwhelmed with something far beyond fear. This feeling bordered on the insane, I believe. The desire to return to the ground was so strong it scared me in itself. I don't remember how I got down - only the paralysing fear buried so deep in my memory that I forget it existed. Until now. My fingers are shaking, as are my legs and my torso and my head. My tongue feels just a little bit too heavy in my mouth, and this seeping, heavy feeling spills from my stomach and into my bones. I am much too high, stuck fast here. Surely I will never be able to move, and I will cling to this wall with numb fingers for the rest of my life? Climb, Klaus, climb.[/i][/color] I wonder if these words are from the memory, or from Kofa, or from the midsts of my own frenzied head. Somehow I move one hand upwards, let a foot follow it, another hand, another foot. Shift my weight towards the roof, slowly. I screw up the courage to look down, and realise that I am only a couple of feet from the ground. You coward, Klaus. You fool. Just climb. Even if I fall I know it is not the worst way to die, not at all.

My fingers are bleeding. The sharp edges of the shells dig right into my flesh, not deep - more like billions of tiny paper cuts which keep me moving. Just lift another hand, it'll hurt less. Hold on again, Klaus, and then you can let go with the other hand. After instructing myself to stop arguing with nothing at all, I manage to clear another few feet. A trail of blood trickles down each shell I have touched - a mixture of my own and the blood of those I have slaughtered and helped to slaughter. I do believe that almost everyone I have consciously attacked in the last terrible days has died. Why is it that I am still living? Still clambering toward the roof of the castle, Fitz somewhere behind or below or to the side of in front of me. I cannot bring myself I look - if I do I will surely be frozen like the tributes in the icy arena. Right now I cannot even remember how many year ago that was. It doesn't take me very long to realise that to the tributes and citizens of the future, I will be just another part of history they don't care for, just one of hundreds who have perished in the games. I won't mean anything, wont be anyone. Even the starfish on my forehead is not enough to mark me as one of the few deaths that people really remember. I want to be remembered. So I keep climbing, exploring, suddenly knowing I wont find happiness anywhere near yet keeping on upwards anyway, in a false pursuit of something I will never know again.

[Klaus cuts his foot on shells and uses one of the Needle and Thread in his inventory to take his damage down to 0.5 damage.]

"SO JUST TAKE MY HAND, AND KNOW THAT I-"

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"'-WILL NEVER LEAVE YOUR SIDE."[/center][/b][/color]

Speaking
Thinking
Expression
Body
Headings

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[wimdy]

Somewhere within me, I can’t help but wonder if Jude and Nino and Noah are watching me now as I climb slowly but surely up and across the seashell wall, carefully balancing myself as I maneuver across the curved surface. A sick part of me wants them to be watching, wants them to see that I’m more than just a grave robber of circumstance and misfortune. It wants them to see that I’m more than them when it comes down to it, doing something more than mingling with the dead in my life. It burns within me until I find myself looking directly at a curled seashell, beautiful and faded rosey pink, with a small camera focusing in on my face hidden within. My breath is probably fogging up the feed, I know, as I exhale against it in a small sigh. It hurts to have my own heart feel so betrayed by those who could not help it. Lady Luck was my adversary, not my brothers. I smile weakly at the lense, blinking and letting the sadness wash from my every nerve. “Hey boys. Hope the business is doing well,” I murmur, the glass glazing over again before disappearing from my vision as I begin my ascent once more.

My brothers have always been there for me, all three of them, despite Noah being younger than myself. My memories can’t bring me to recall a time without even him. There were always four Ripley brothers and there always would be. My dying wouldn’t change that. It was inconsequential to the fact of the matter that I existed. Forever, I would be with them. Maybe the next time I would be with them they would be stealing away through the inky blackness of a graveyard, through the faded markers of time gone by quickly and life gone by sooner, beyond the grass grown thick over graves long since emptied, to reach the freshly laid soil of a grave not meant to be dug through and ransacked, but mourned over. There would be no need to steal from me. They held all that I was anyway, the remnants of my life passed through sandy shores and worrying waves all boarded up in a room made for two but only holding one, surely wrecked beyond repair in a flurry of fists and hoarsely begged prayers, for Pen though, for surely Noah calls for her life above mine. No, my life was with them. Nothing would ever change that. They’d just have to learn to replace it.

Thoughts are swirling so quickly through my head that I can feel my stomach clench in panic and my footing slips for just a moment. For that moment, I am falling. I am weightless. My hair flutters around my face in a crimson fray and for just that moment, I don’t feel a thing. Then, I feel everything. My hands catch on sharp shells and my freefall is stopped, my body hanging limp for only a second before I’m pulling myself flush against the uneven wall, groaning at the sudden rush of pain shooting up from every inch of my body. My breathing is labored as I begin to pull myself slowly back up the wall, letting traces of my blood smear against the once pristine visages of the many shells that adorn the mismatched curves. I’m almost ashamed of the trail I leave behind, my hands slipping and sliding against the sleek shells as I haul myself upwards little by little. I am ashamed of my imperfection, a stain against the whole of humanity as I fight for life in the worst way I can. I never fought for life back in my district, instead choosing to profit from its end, live thanks to the fruits of the most grave sin that we’ve ever been damned with; finality. My life has been made final by the inevitable closure of it, the sure promise of darkness at the end of the tunnel instead of light. Beyond the shores of my subconscious lies but a river of black, the Ferryman waiting to take me on.

The blood in my veins rushes harder as I push myself ever farther up, my cuts already sealing over a little in response. Red splotches color the wall below me now and I can’t help but notice the twin trail that Klaus leaves as well, our trek to the top of the world a bit more fraught with peril than I think either of us had intended. Klaus still hikes himself up again and again, his pace slow but sure and I can’t help but be grateful that he is by my side. We’ve hardly spoken in the days we’ve been running through the sorry shores of our desperation, our mouths more busy screaming in agony or whispering prayers of salvation or eating or drinking to do much else. It’s been his company that I’ve appreciated the most, the silent warrior that stands above me as we’ve walked across the island together. The presence of him is enough to make me let my guard down, even if only just a little, despite the fact that he could easily off me at any time. It’s no secret that I am not the strongest nor the bravest of tributes. All I have is a purpose, but purpose will get me nowhere without ability or charm. Klaus has a pull that is all his though, something that makes me feel like maybe, just maybe, I am safe. And maybe, just maybe, I could be safe forever.

I’m near enough to the top now that just a few more grabs at shells above could have me pressed against the roof. Now that I’m up so high, I can’t help but look down and feel that wave of nausea again, my hands staying firm against the shells that hold me so high up. I’m moving sideways without a thought, my hands grabbing for different shells and trying to continue this race on the horizontal because I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to end. I want to be infinite. I’m moving more and more, clinging to the curves of the wall and- “Ow!” I blink in shock, removing my hand from the pointed shell that has gashed me yet again, opening already open wounds and making my body quake in surprise. My eyes travel from the sharp point, widening as I take in all of the other protruding shells now, several of them surrounding the circular walled area. I don’t even stop to think before I’m clinging to the wall with only one hand and hoping my feet keep me steady as I awkward maneuver my hand into my rucksack and feel around for something I’d been reluctant to keep. What good could it do, really? My hand wraps around it and yanks it out, nearly jostling some of my other items in doing so. Once out of the pack the length unravels completely and spills down my side; a tarp. My brothers and I used to craft make-shift tarps in our backyard often, the tall trees lined up just perfectly that we could string up a tarp to make a large hammock to lay in on hot days. We’d sit for hours, soaking in the sun and peace until I had to go to work, Noah would wonder off for a fight, Jude would go off to talk to himself, Nino just dazedly taking in the heat. It was always a promise of peace, if only for a moment. Surely it still holds that magical property now. The tarp is large all around, just the right size that, with the effort, it would fit across the area perfectly. I tear into it with my teeth, wincing at the dull ache that settles in my jaw with the effort. In a few seconds, I’ve got a big enough hole to settle over the pointed shell, the opening just far away enough from the edges to be safe. The hammocks at home were never this hard to build. Climbing a tree was easier than scaling across a wall and ripping open fabric with only your canines and hooking it up to shells.

It takes a few minutes to complete it, my feet slipping more and more as my time on the wall builds up and my limbs begin to quake with the effort of keeping my lithe body aloft. For a boy so skinny, I sure felt fat. I can feel sweat sliding down my back, the sticky moisture making my shirt cling to me like a second coating of skin. The sweat doesn’t help with my grip on the shells either. Each second feels like agony as I try to slip the last corner over a shell, yelping a little as my grip falters and I’m left clinging to the wall again, eyes shut in terror at the thought of what I could have just become, the vague feeling that falling into a pool of razors might be better than landing on these shells. My eyes open one by one, cold relief flooding through my system as I carefully inch back up the wall, far enough up that I’m just above the makeshift hammock. My entire body shakes as I lower myself onto the tarp, the small squeak of movement from the four corners turning me stiff as my weight is released from the wall entirely and my body falls onto the hammock in completely. My lungs suck air in greedily before letting it out in a sigh of relief, body rolling to accommodate myself as I slip off my rucksack and harpoon, careful not to set them too close to the edge. Only when I’m settled do I look back over at Klaus, a shameless sense of victory welling in my veins until its splitting my lips open in pure triumph as I call out to him. “Can’t win a race, can you?” I tease, grinning from ear to ear in earnest. “What’re you doing in my castle then, huh? This is my throne! I’m the king!” Back home, I’d never won this game. No, Noah would usually punch me off of his throne. For once, I felt like I was on top of the world. For once, I would win.

Graphics credits to the wonderful South<3

[florentine, d4b ❁]

KLAUS GORAVICH

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♕ DISTRICT THREE ♕

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For somebody so bright, you're awfully stupid.

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"'YOU SWORE YOU'D BE HERE 'TILL WE DECIDE THAT IT'S OUR TIME- "

"'-BUT IT'S NOT TIME, YOU NEVER QUIT IN ALL YOUR LIFE."

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I have given much thought to the definitions of many things. Things like love and loss and pride, bravery and victory. I have always been known as they boy who is like a dictionary - able to define almost anything. I struggle now to piece together these final words in my mind. I want to give them my own meaning before I die. Know who I am, completely. Understand the workings of my own brain, the way I did (or believed I did) before my name was called at reaping. Regret seeps into my heart every time I think of that day - all the things I should have said, should have done. Instead all I had done was let the relief wash over me that the names of my siblings hadn't been called. Just like every other reaping before it, I had left smiling inside that they were safe. For another year. And then suddenly every feeling of pain and fear and sickening hope washed over me all at once, drowning out every happy thought that had lingered in my mind. And then came the guilt - I was supposed to be good, remember? Selfless and heroic. Dying to save everyone else. Not weak and worthless as ever, wallowing in self-pity and pain. Not the uncertain, clumsy boy who never understood the people around him. I thought dying to save my family for another year would make me a hero, like the people in the books I read. Instead, it has just make me hurt. Still the same Klaus, but aching deep inside. No stronger, no braver, not suddenly the person I always hoped I would be. Klaus Goravich.

Loss: the state of greif when someone is deprived from someone or something of value. Why do the words seem so stern, so emotionless? How could such a simple definition encompass loss? The emptiness that comes when something in your life is ripped away from you - not just the moment it is but every single moment after, over and over again. That burning, searing hole in your heart which aches uncontrollably, threatening to consume everything else you have left. Pain that makes everything else worthless, meaningless, useless. What good is happiness when you have lost what I have? A future, a past, a family, a home? Innocence. Truth. Everything you believed in and everything you thought you knew and understood and valued. Loss is when you feel so much that you feel nothing at all. Loss is a tide pushing against a barrier, and barrier you know will fall. A guilt which engulfs you, tells you that what you are feeling is not fair because others have lost more. Loss is where you take everything you thought you understood, and throw it away, because suddenly it is a tangled mess of tears. Loss - when facts mean nothing and equations forget their answers.

Love: an intense feeling of deep affection. But so much more. How could anyone look into Fitz eye's when he's talking about Penelope, and sum up love in six words? It is not intense. It is overwhelming and all consuming and just being. To love is to no longer be yourself, but to be one and the same. Loving is when nothing else matters but them, and your death would be just as terrible as theirs because if either happened you would be separated. And separation from the one that you love is like lightning flashing and lighting up the darkness for a fraction of a second. Just enough to remind you exactly how dark it is without the light. And then there is the roll of thunder and the splattering of rain to remind you that pain is so much deeper than darkness. Taking up every corner of your mind and engulfing each of your senses like a dark storm cloud. What right do you have to think of love like that, Klaus? The boy who never understood emotions, or people? The boy who has never loved and never will. It's not the same to love your family as to want to spend forever and a day with that one person.
Suddenly it being okay to grow up and face everything you were ever afraid of - because they are right there beside you. That is love.

And then - bravery. The one word on my list of undefinable words that I know I have captured. Because I do not need to drag the true definition from the depths of my reeling mind - I know exactly what it means. For a while I did not, and then I learned to be brave, and then I understood. Bravery is fear. But bravery is more than fear, because bravery is accepting that fear and then doing the right thing anyway. Bravery is when you're afraid of the dark, but you give away off the torch anyway so someone else can find their way to the bathroom at midnight. Bravery is not the fearless efforts of heros in fairytales, but the endeavours of the real people. Bravery is when someone with stage fright performs their first solo. Bravery is thinking you will fail, and yet doing it anyway. Bravery is fighting to the death in an arena full of other children so you can find your way home. To be brave is to let the fear take hold of you, consume your soul. To accept your place as tribute and to let yourself cry. To search for the beauty in a place filled with death. I am brave.

Iridescent shells glitter all around me, creating the illusion of being surrounded by soup bubbles. I used to pretend to have forgotten - but I do remember the baths we would have back at home. Grubby toddlers all in the tub together to save precious water. It's funny that this memory hurts to behold. It's simply a faded whirl of giggles and splashing and me sobbing because of the soap in my eyes. Not something that ever would have happened again anyway - you're only two years old once in your life. It was just a memory that I never really thought I had to cherish, but now I do, and that in itself hurts. Of course it's something I always should have held close. I have always been one for taking the beautiful things in life for granted, because everything in the storybooks was always so much better. Now I am happy to still feel my heart beating in my chest, my blood pulsing in my veins. I am glad to hear Fitz's voice calling to me. Pleased to be dragged back into reality from my tumbling, delusional mind.

"Can't win a race, can you?" Fitz is grinning, joking, his voice earnest and pure. I know he does not mean for his words to stab holes in my heart, but somehow they do anyway. It's true. I cannot win a race. Never in my life have I crossed the finish life first. It was something I kind of hoped to do before I died, right in the back of my mind. I guess I just figured I had more time to do it than this. Never have I, Klaus Goravich, won a race. The words echo about my mind, stinging. True. Fact. Hard to admit to myself. I have never been one for sports; my legs always just got tangled under me and I would lose control of my body and I would end up wondering why I even tried. My siblings made up for me, though. Just as I made up for them in the things they couldn't do. We fought, but us six, we were a team. Only they aren't here now, are they? Nobody can help me now. "What are you doing in my castle, then? This is my throne, I'm king." I manage to drag my eyes from the wall to look up. My stomach turns completely, and I feel an awful sickness rising within me. Fitz has strung his tarp across the gap in the tower and thrown himself onto the thing. A hammock, of sorts. I climb the six or so steps it takes to cross the distance between us, my fingers still bleeding and my foot stinging. Brave? Me? And then, cautiously, I try to climb into the hammock beside him, because suddenly where I am on the wall seems impossibly high and precarious. The hammock swings and I roll. A squeak escapes me and I roll over, landing right on top of Fitz.

I smile at him. The hammock swings again beneath us, lurching me forward. "Fitz," I say, trying to pull my words together before I say them. "I'm really, really sorry." I don't have to say what I'm sorry for. Surely it is clear enough that I'm sorry for everything? For Pen and Destiny and Elon and Jae and the others who's names I don't know. For the crazy, terrifying girl with the blonde hair. For the little one from my district. For all the ones that have died, for all the ones that will die. I am very, very sorry for the one of us that will live. I think Fitz understands. I stay where I am for a moment, until the hammock stops swinging. Then I realise that I am still lying on top of Fitz, and I make an effort to move beside him. We sit together in the makeshift hammock, looking down at the world. At the castle, at the walls we just scaled. Suddenly I don't feel so scared anymore - I feel as though I am right on top of the world.

Shells have spilled from somewhere or another into the tarp, and they dig into my legs. I pull one from beneath me, feeling the world sway. With all my might I toss it into the unknown. There is a slight noise as it reaches the ground. "Go on, throw it further!" I pass a shell to Fitz. I send another sailing into the air. This is bravery - I am afraid and yet I am smiling. This is love. Not in the way the viewers might be thinking, but a kind of understanding, a friendship, a burning desire to keep Fitz alive. This is pride. Perhaps for the first time I am proud of myself? Proud of myself, just a little, for making it this far? Not letting my family down, not yet. For not going crazy. This moment is all of those things. Sitting in the hammock with Fitz, sending shells flying forward (mine going much shorter of a distance than his).

So what, then, is victory?

"SO JUST TAKE MY HAND, AND KNOW THAT I-"

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"'-WILL NEVER LEAVE YOUR SIDE."[/center][/b][/color]

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