{it is a sin} scout's death post

[Rosetta]

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.

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It happens so quickly that I only have time to cry a soft, "Oh!" before my vocal chords are ripped from me entirely.

I know immediately that it's fatal. For the girl who has survived two poisonings, bands of tributes, fleas, and the bloodbath, it's only appropriate that the most harmless-seeming thing kill her: a teddy bear, reaching with its long claws to skewer her tiny neck.

Is this my retribution for casting my own tattered teddy bear aside? Is this what I get for casting my age down the drain? A teddy bear slitting my throat and taking me not as a victor nor even an adult, but a child. I fall to my knees, a little girl. Around me, the screaming has begun, but it has become fuzzy, drowned, like I'm underwater. I can already feel the water seeping in through the cut in my throat, filling my insides. My heartbeat is slowing, drowning. I have no need for blood anymore with so much watering the grass.

Scout lies on the feathery earth, tasting her own metallic blood, welling up in her throat. It doesn't hurt. She's growing numb, eyes concentrated only on what's above her: the green stem of a beanstalk, tearing up through the clouds. The sky ripples and shudders and wets her skin without feeling, without a second thought. Her mouth has opened involuntarily, cracked, pale lips falling into a neat oval, water and blood puddling on her tongue. She gives a soft moan.

I know my time is drawing near. I can hear the soft thundering of horses in the distance, come to draw me away. My heart is barely beating, the pocket watch clasped around my neck makes up for the lost beats, ticking on my chest. A shadow falls over me and I seize up. Is it death? Or Iago come to torture me like he did to Shadow and Hope? But, no, it's Ewe. The rest are gone and I feel him pull me into his lap.

Scout is lying in her bed, a teddy bear tucked under her arm. Ardal sits at the edge of it. He has a book in his hand. He says, “I’m going to tell you a story.” On the cover of the book it says: Matilde. There is a rose in full bloom illustrated underneath. He opens it and he begins to read.

When did we learn to do this to one another? He’s sobbing. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. It’s getting hard to breathe, see, my vision is fading and he’s just a blurred shadow above me. I can hear my own breathing: racking gasps, wheezes, spraying some blood into the air, spurted from my soaked lips. Is this my fault for punching Stanley Jones? But, didn’t he make a slight about my father? Wasn’t it all justified? When do I get to justify my Reaping?

I’m in my last moments now. My skin is growing cold. I shudder, my soul lurching against the confines of my body, dying to get out, to dissipate. I struggle to hold it in. Is the justification winning? To win, I’d be back in Ardal’s arms, feeling the sting of his stubble on my cheek. Bertie would throw me over his shoulder and Carlos would tackle me to the dirt. Carlos would smear mud in my cheeks, Bertie would wash me up and Ardal would tuck me into bed. I wouldn’t sleep though. I’d have survived twenty three young children.

Matilde Watson was a difficult child. She scraped her knees every day, split her lip every week and managed to get in at least one fight every fortnight. She could not be tamed. Her hair was a nest, her overalls were frayed. Despite this, her family loved her. Her father and two brothers, that is. Her mother was dead and though they’d never tell her, they’d love more than anything to see Matilde grow into her mother with her beautiful face and her restricted ferocity.

“You never told—”

[/i]

Who would I be showing up? The Capitol? No. Tears are rolling down my cheeks and into my hair. Ewe is just a vision now. I lie on the Capitol’s own grass, throat torn by the Capitol’s own creation, held by the Capitol’s own pawn. Their pieces have taken another one of our men. A king will be standing at the end, but it will only be a stalemate. There is no winner. My blood seeps into the grass. I am dying.

When did we learn to do this to each other? Maybe if I hadn’t chipped Stanley Jones’s tooth that one time, he would’ve made a slight about my father and then I wouldn’t have broken his nose. Maybe if for a second, I bit my tongue…Ardal had always told me to love. “Love your neighbor,” he advised me once as I stubbornly allowed Bertie to clean the blood off my knuckles following one scuffle, “even if it’s hard.”

“But—”

“No, buts, Scout. Maybe if you love him, he’d love you and if you’re loved, then you can love others.”

“Ardal, I don’t love him.”

“Just try, Scout. Please. You’ve made all of our rags bloody.”

It took a long time. They gradually tamed her. Matilde, don’t do this, act more like a lady. Cross your legs, Matilde, comb your hair. Don’t punch that boy, Matilde. She fought them. She struggled. But, Matilde loved her family just as much as she loved them. She felt disappointment creeping over her like a shadow and she beat it back with their demands. As she grew older, she retracted into herself. She became a lady. She flowered and blossomed and grew. She was fierce, but she wasn’t going up into trees in the pouring rain. She sat, crossed her legs, and watched.

“That’s not me—”

[/i]

Maybe I could’ve paused for a second, mouth hanging half-open, hand curled into a fist. I could’ve stayed myself. The snowball would’ve halted. My mother needn’t have died if that silly boy hadn’t climbed into that tree to escape the other boys chasing him. That boy didn’t have to insult one of their mothers. The gears in my head are failing me, whispering and shuddering now. Suddenly, in those last seconds, I do not Ewe to win. I do not to play this game anymore. How they have mocked us. Children. We’re just children, playing in the street, throwing each other to the dirt, laughing, jumping on one another’s backs, but they’ve made us play another game entirely. We couldn’t we just be children?

Ardal folds the book under his head. His laughter echoes like a heartbeat in her head. “There is no Scout. Scout died.” Died. Died. Died. It’s a heartbeat that slowing, slowing, slowing. “There is the story of Matilde.” No. No. No.

[/i]

Why can’t Ewe stay his hand when Iago comes to tear his tongue or eyeballs out? Why can’t they all stand down? Why can’t we win this game? Love him, that’s what Ardal told me. I can feel it beating through me. I love Ewe because he stayed with me because I walked with him. I want him to feel it. I want him to know that I love him and I want him to feel it. With my remaining energy, I reach up, the electricity in my fingers. He will remember that I walked with him. He will remember this touch. He must pass it on.

Scout stands up in the bed and clenches her fists. “No!” she’s screaming now, unrestricted fury. “Tell me about Scout! I want to know about Scout! Scout has a story! She can live! She can love!” Her words are now muffled. She is enclosed in the blank pages of a book. There is a red line drawn across her throat. This is Scout’s story.

[/i]

The colors at the end of the world are beautiful. I lie in Ewe’s lap, staring at a golden sunset. For me, the clouds have been torn open, letting the light in. The black of Ewe’s hair glistens a dark red. The beanstalk turns my favorite green: a deep, forest, pine-needles green. A little bubble of blood bursts on my lip, my lips trying to move, trying to turn upward. In the colors, swirling around me like a blanket, I find the strength to raise my hand.

Her heart is no longer beating. She no longer needs to breath. She stands stock-still, staring at the page. There are others around her and they whisper the stories of a lifetime. They will speak for an eternity. Scout’s hand is flat to the page and if she leans on the others, they lean back and whisper from between loose teeth. There is no story of Scout.

Write it.

[/i]

In my last second, my fingers scrap Ewe Saw’s face. A spark passes through us and with a crooked smile finally on my face, my hand drops to my side, never to move again.

A desk appears before me. A pen lies across a blank piece of parchment awaiting for me. The hands of fallen tributes swipe me gently across the shoulders as I walk towards it. Slowly, I lower myself into the seat. The first droplet of ink from my pen drops to the page and a smile flits across my lip. I write.

[/i]


The pocket watch against my chest stops ticking too.

I am Scout.

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One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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The poem is Birches by Robert Frost. I'd like to thank my allies, Cici, Zori and Shrimp. Shrimp especially because he was always there for me and wrote beautifully and Ewe was Scout's only friend. Thanks to Kay for advising me. Thanks to Thundy, Chaos and Aya and everyone else who sponsored me for anti-venom twice. Thank you, Lulu, for making these Games amazing. Thank you to everyone who participated in these Games in some way^^

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