mend thy bleeding heart }} niam

[semper]

[presto] t w e e d; district eight x seventeen [/presto]

The heart behind Tweed’s ribcage skipped a beat when she heard his name. Blood ran as cold as river water through her veins, chilling the extremities that tingled and twitched with sudden anxiety. Duncan? No, no, not my Duncan— The people around her were instantly too vivid-looking with their dull-colored dresses and brown hair wrapped in messy buns; fear held her the same way any intense situation did: legs shook with the anticipation of bolting, lungs heaved to gather oxygen, and her heart began to accelerate. She needed out, she needed out, and the neighbors standing by her were much too close— She could see Duncan’s head of unkempt hair bobbing up and down above the other boys as he moved, but then something else happened that caused beads of sweat to start trickling down her sticky skin. Owen’s voice rang out, speaking the single sentence that was capable of destroying lives. ++++ The crowd in the district square cleared out quickly. Duncan had disappeared and left no trace. Enveloped in panic, Tweed hitched up her little old sundress and ran, bare feet slapping against the compact dirt that led up to the Justice Building. Peacekeepers were already moving to block her entry by lowering their weapons, forming a barricade. She came to a quick stop in front of the gleaming metal. “Is there someone in there meeting with Owen?” “No ma’am,” came a voice behind one of the reflective black helmets. “The visitors have already left. Visiting is done.” As much as she yearned to fight to speak with Owen, she knew that poor Duncan needed her more. She turned and took off, sprinting in the only direction she knew that he would have traveled. Trees whipped past, extended branches reaching like rough, flakey fingers that grabbed and snagged her dress. The path was wide and well worn; she knew the placement of each large stone and easily avoided them by leaping or swerving, also darting past any person that happened to be using the trail as well. A withering sheep pasture flashed by on her left, and then the Bowers-Fox home came into view. The door was unlocked and she did not hesitate to enter. Tweed flung it open with anxious force, leaping over the threshold and looking around with wide eyes. Cody sat in the living room, looking mournful and grave, yet she felt uncomfortable even trying to string together weak words of sympathy, so she kept quiet. The atmosphere in the house was abnormally heavy and Tweed felt the negativity like thick humid air; she closed the door and hurried down the hall, heading to the one room that her friend would retreat to. When she opened the door, she was not disappointed. She exhaled quietly, somber. “Duncan.”

table by anzie <3

[Deleted]

duncan {♔} bowers-fox -journal entry #9 start time 1:03 on the afternoon of June 6th The walk home is deafening, each and every previously unheard sound shouting as it tries to make itself heard. The steps that I’ve precisely counted for the walk home are off from its usual number, but I can’t bear to focus on where the extra steps come from, so I stumble up the three steps and push the already unlocked door open. It slams against the interior wall, and the noise causes me to shy away before pushing it shut. Cody’s cries can be heard from down the hall, but as soon as my feet make any notable noise the cries cease. Cody’s going to hate me more than he already did, and Owen’s not going to be here to be the peacemaker. The door is still ajar, and it strikes me as odd, for Cody’s never left the door open. I push my way in tentatively, and I only manage to get my head around the corner before his words come flying like bullets, each one striking at my heart harder than the last. “You’re the reason he’s going to die, and you didn’t think he cared. Did you? Did he even matter to you? Do any of us mean anything to you, or are you so lost in your damn imaginary world that you forgot you had family?” He falls silent for a moment, expecting me to answer again, but before I can muster up any kind of an answer he cuts me off, “No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear it, Duncan.” Before I can process the chain of actions that’s taking place, he’s pushing past me, his shoulder bumping into mine, causing me to stumble backwards and listen for the sound of the front door slamming. However, it doesn’t come, so I quietly push my—our door shut and sit in the middle of the room. It’s apparent that Cody’s taken out his anger on a few of the things at our desk, a ripped textbook and a broken pencil being the most obvious evidence. I had, for the most part, stopped tears from falling after I had made my way out of the justice building, but all thoughts of self-control are now lost as I bury my head in my hands, sobs racking my body even more violently than they did earlier. Maybe its realization, maybe its guilt and being so ignorant for so long, but I can’t help but grab the nearest journal and fling it open to a random page in the middle. There’s no use in trying to read anything, as my vision is blurred by the tears that sting my eyes and roll down my cheeks. The page is smooth to the touch, and I skim my finger across it before grabbing it at the top and pulling backward as hard as I can, causing the page to rip apart, much to my satisfaction. I toss it aside without a second thought and pull at another page, not bothering to read the contents scrawled across each one. Before I know how much time has passed, the notebook is left as only a cover now, all the pages that once filled it strewn about me. My head throbs violently as my breaths continue to be only shallow heaves and hiccups. The tears are still falling, but not as quickly as before, mostly because of the lack of tears left to cry. I toss the empty notebook cover aside, not even flinching as it clatters against a shelf and falls to the ground, bringing a couple of stray pieces of paper with it. One page lands nearby, so I pick it up and run it over in my hands before turning it over, instantly regretting the decision as soon as the realization hits that this is one of Owen’s unfinished pieces of art. It’s from the view of our window, and it portrays the night in all its glory and mystery. I push it away quickly before fumbling around the room for another notebook and tearing into its pages again. Cody’s words reiterated themselves in my mind as I tore each page apart, and above all else, I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream for Owen, who had given me something I could never repay; I wanted to scream at Cody, who had placed his undying anger upon my shoulders and expected me to carry that burden as well; and I wanted to scream to Tweed, wishing that she would sit with me and hold me, her voice would be the only one that I could bear to hear at the moment. The noise of the door creaking open brings alarm to my heart, and I instantly become terrified at the thought of Cody coming back and striking me with his words again. However, I’m not met with Cody’s harsh words or his menacing stare, but the soft eyes of the one I had been screaming out to. Her single word causes the tears to start streaming down my face once again, and as much as I’d like to fill the following void of silence with a sarcastic comment, I can’t muster up the oxygen to do so. I rub at my eyes in a feeble attempt to clear them of tears, but new ones quickly take their place. Each breath is getting shallower, and my chest heaves up and down as I desperately try to force air to fill my lungs. I assume she knows what I need without one of us saying it, but I manage to let three words escape my lips before every sense of composure melts away into tears that soak my flannel, “Tweed, help me.”

[semper]

[presto] t w e e d; district eight x seventeen [/presto]

Duncan was obviously devastated. His brother had just taken his place in the games, sacrificing himself, and the only way anyone could even begin to cope with something like that was with tears, which he already had running steadily down his face. Tweed had seen her friend sad before, but none of it was to this degree. He had always been the one to keep himself composed perfectly; he had always been the one to calm her down whenever her fuse got a little too short; he had always been the one providing the optimistic view, balancing out her neutral or even pessimistic outlook. Never had he fallen in this emotional way. The heart in her chest ached deeply. She didn’t have siblings but she understood loss and the pain that came with it; she had seen her mother die of a broken heart and now Duncan was on that same path, coping with the possible imminent death of a brother. ”Tweed, help me.” Without hesitation she moved, sitting down beside him and quickly taking him into her arms. She held him close and pulled his body into her lap, despite the fact that he was much bigger than she was. He needed comforting and she was not about to abandon him like the world had done to them. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.” The threat of tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back, forcing herself to be strong for his sake. His world had taken a massive hit and the repercussions were still ricocheting, jumbling up anything still deemed even remotely stable. In the wake of a trembling earth, Tweed was determined to be the safe harbor that shielded Duncan from the terrors that jumped to gnaw at his heels. Her hand moved in slow, gentle circles on his side. The homely musky scent that belonged to him filled her nose as she rested her head against his, feeling every small shake his body made when new waves of mourning hit. Tweed’s own tears began to fall and she shut her eyes tightly, tucking her head into the crook of his neck. “I promise.”

table by anzie <3

[Deleted]

duncan bowers-fox

-journal entry #10 start time 3:16 on the afternoon of June 6th

I can hear nothing but the shaking of my own breaths as each one caught in my throat and hitched, and small whimpers and hiccups escaped as she pulled me into her lap, her smaller frame buried beneath the mess of tears and mumbling and disheveled hair that was my pathetic self. Her words break the terrifying silence and fill it with a comfort that breaks down the caliber of the incessant sobbing and muffles it slightly. “I’m here. I’m always here.” And though first instinct would tell me to see the broken promise that lay at the end of that word—always. ‘Till the end of time and space and matter, she promised to be there, and though I would scoff at the thought of anyone, even my family, telling me that they would give me something for forever, I believed her. I latched to her every word and locked them away in the back of my mind to dwell on later, for the time being (especially these exact moments) I would need them. I would need the fabricated idea to hold myself above a pit of utter despair that let flames lick at my heels as I hung helplessly above it. So for the time being I put away the comfort of materialistic mechanisms, of shortened lives and fresh graves, and I hung to the thought that she would hold me to the end of time. Until Owen came home and Cody quit having the urge to murder me every time the chance was made available, and even past that, she would be there.

I can’t manage to reply, so I only bury my head in the crook of her neck after resting it against hers momentarily. Her eyes are soft and gentle, speaking with tenderness as one might after losing a relative to the hands of death itself. Owen was as good as gone, and she knew it, even if it wasn’t voiced in soft speak and sugar coated words. I suppose I knew it too, that somewhere buried in the back of my mind I realized that there was no chance of my brother walking back in the door, but I couldn’t seem to pull it out and process it at the moment. It was all a blur, from realizing that I could have easily been the one caught in the clutches of an imminent death instead of my selfless brother, and every word he had spoken, every action he had taken sent a wave of guilt washing over me and left my body in the form of a racking sob.

The sudden touch of her hand against my side causes a shiver to shoot through my body, and I bury my face even further into her neck at the feeling of a gentle touch as her nimble fingers trace gentle circles along my ribs. The thin shirt that clings to my body lets every movement of her hands be known, and I crave the tenderness with which she comforts me. And for a moment, every thought of each dreadful night to come fades away into some sort of oblivion and ignorance; it almost seems as if everything might be okay—nothing more, nothing less. Maybe our adventures in the cover of night and our early mornings spent sprawled out in dimly lit alleyways didn’t have to stop completely, that I could still come home at the brink of dawn and not be afraid of getting pegged in the head by whatever object was nearest to Cody’s hand. Maybe nothing would change (but oh it would; how my entire world would be turned upside down and the only stable factor would be the girl who refused to let me fall).

So I curl my hands into the fabric of her dress as I hold to her tightly in fear of losing her if I even loosen my grip at all, and I mumbled into the crook of her neck, “Could you—could you stay the night?” And I hold my breath as I wait for her answer because I can’t bear to hear the word no fall from her lips, for if there’s anything I cannot stand now, it’s solitude. All those nights spent wishing that people didn’t care, that their thoughts and opinions didn’t matter because they could never define me or my words or anything I did crumbled at my feet because now, on the night that my brother walked to his death voluntarily, I needed someone. Not my mother, who would only be a sobbing mess, not my father, who wouldn’t speak for days on end in hopes that something would change if we only ignored the facts long enough, and not Cody, who’s vision would be tinted red at the anger that pumped through his veins and bit at my skin in every word he spoke.

But I needed her. I needed her like the air I breathed and the words I wrote on stained pages that now littered the ground around us, ripped and torn from the frustration of a boy whose world was indeed, ripping apart itself.