Safe, But Still Sorry [Scope Standalone]

[Kire]

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S C O P E O 'L E A R Y
Z i n g L e e r

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Says, Thinks

He left again, damn it all. Soap was gone again, off to the fucking Capitol with two more kids who were probably on a march to death. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping they're going to die - I know what kind of effect it has on my brother - but I am not optimistic about this. The girl seemed like a bit of an airhead and the boy, well I didn't really know him but, if he was anything like most of the kids from this District then he wouldn't know a damn thing about fighting. One of them at least was going to die, and that prospect must be haunting Soap right now. I can't imagine how hard it is for him, though he hasn't been at this as long as the other victors. Does time make it easier, watching tributes stream past you, seeing them die over and over and maybe in a blue moon manage to outlast everyone else? I feel like it sucks no matter what. Seeing someone die, someone the Capitol forces you to get to know, to try to help, has to be the same kind of pain no matter how many times it's happened. It's no wonder so many victors lose themselves, they want to because it means that they're putting aside the person who watched all this horror happen.

I think the only reason why we don't find victors dead in their own homes is because the Capitol deems them too important.

This was my last year in the reaping, and I don't know whether I thank Ripred or not that I wasn't reaped. The anguish I would have put Soap through is unmistakable. I have seen him in pain from two kids he had never known until they were thrown into the Games, but if he had to watch me - or any of our siblings for that matter - go into that arena... Soap is strong and yet I don't think anyone is strong enough for that. I think of Mace, who had to watch a brother die, and Opal, who has lost a brother and a husband. I don't care what kind of selfish son of a bitch some people think they are, it hurts. My brother shows me that it hurts, exposes to me what kind of pain he's in without words, without even addressing me. I see his limp, he's had a slight one since he lost toes in the arena, and I see the ragged look in his eyes as the Reaping draws near. We all know what's going to happen, and we can only be thankful that our own little miracle had happened. It won't be this way for everyone else. We were the lucky ones.

Even so, as I watch my brother get on that train for the Capitol, I know that this is still hell in its own right. Only this time, we're watching from the outside in.

I wrote him a letter, slipped it onto the train, prayed he'd find it. I skipped formalities, he'd know it was me - we'd known each other's writing for so long that I wouldn't even have to sign it and he would know without a shadow of a doubt - so why waste the time and the ink.

Soap, I have a confession. I tried to get onto the train with you, to sneak on and go with you to the Capitol so maybe you wouldn't be alone when the world came crashing down on you again. The peacekeepers didn't see me at first, but damn it all to hell because when they did I was nearly whipped. If my last name hadn't been O'Leary I probably would have been found dead in the street. I miss you when you're away, and I know how hard it is on you. Fuck it, one of these times I will make it onto that Ripred forsaken train and give you a hand, because I know you need it.

Don't try to deny it either, I know you. Remember that you can talk to me. I get it, I get all this shit, you can tell me whatever as long as it makes you feel better. Don't try to take all this shit by yourself, it's too much even for you. This is not an easy thing and I would be more scared if you found it easy so just give me the fucking word and I will walk to you from here to the Capitol if I have to.

I'm your brother, man, let me help. You know I can fight, let me fight your battles with you.

You don't have to do this alone.

Too late I remembered his distaste for his old nickname, but I left it in because he would be able to see it anyway. I sealed it and wrote "Colgate" on the front in big letters, being as neat as I could. Even if I couldn't be with him this time, maybe my words would help. Or damn it all to hell they may actually get me whipped.

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[Kire]

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S C O P E O 'L E A R Y
Z i n g L e e r

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Says, Thinks

In all honesty I wasn't surprised that the girl was dead. I had known that she was certainly the weaker of the two District nine tributes, and the one who was less hardy-looking. From the moment I had taken her in I realized she had signed herself to death, and I was sure that my brother had seen it too. She had been clobbered in the bloodbath, something that had been set out the moment that the first person had struck her. It was as though her speed off the plate had been nothing but a signature on her death contract. I couldn't lie and say that I didn't think that the fact that she had dropped after her foot was stomped wasn't the littlest bit funny, because it was, but I also knew that even if everything had told him she was going to die my brother would still feel horribly about her demise. Right now, I was sure, he was holding his head in his hands and wondering how he could have saved her.

The boy was still alive, and as I watched he fought against another alliance with his three friends by his side. I winced as a fish leapt up from the water to close its jaws around part of his hand, my eyes narrowed as the shape fell back into the white river. Blood followed, and there was a surprised announcement from Claudius that the boy was now missing two fingers. A sick sense of humor gripped me as I remembered that my own brother had lost digits, though it was his toes and not his fingers that had been bitten off. Thinking of Colgate was a wishy-washy thing for me because I was constantly being bombarded by a bunch of different feelings. The most prominent had to be how much I wishes he didn't have to leave us behind year after year. It was hard to think that he was being subjected to a repeating movie about the deaths of a boy and a girl from his own District.

The story started with a happy family, eating some food and all together saying silent prayers to Ripred that they would remain whole and happy for another year. Cut to the next morning when everything is tense and strained, there are no smiles on their faces because they don't know whether they will be able to smile after today. They're dressed really nicely, all groomed and perfected because they need to look their best in case the horrible thing happens. Of course, like all movies, you know the horrible thing is going to happen but you don't know quite when, and you don't know quite how. I remember just from this last reaping, it was still like that because except for Soap we were all eligible. I can't even protect my siblings now because I'm too old, I can't volunteer.

The camera focuses on this fancy stage, with a whole bunch of people who look like stuffed peacocks and then they turn to take in the square filled with terrified faces. The contrast is ugly and harsh and makes the truth of the horror all the more real. What music is playing is overly jovial and makes a bile rise in your throat because it's a plain mockery of what's happening. There is nothing happy here, right now the square is only death and loss. The whole day is death and loss. The most stiff of the stuffed peacocks steps forward and speaks what is almost a foreign language into a microphone, everyone forgets how to breath and now the whole audience is on edge because it's about to start. Some gaudily dressed hand reaches into a giant glass bowl and pulls a simple piece of paper from the thousands that it rests among.

A name is called, someone cries out. A girl steps forward and the female sea parts before her like she is a goddess, except she has never felt more like a mortal than now.

The hand claps, a smile rising on painted lips as it slinks to the next bowl because ruining just one family's life isn't enough. No, it has to be two, and this child has to be a boy. And so in the hand goes, searching for the name of the next condemned. It pulls it out, unfolds the paper and eyelashes bat gloriously.

The next name causes a boy to freeze. He can't move, he can't speak, but that's okay because another voice calls over him and some other family starts to wail because their son just took that poor guy's place.

That family was my family, and the volunteer was my brother. I had felt my heart fall out of my chest and my head clouded up so much that I thought someone had punched me in the head. It wasn't right, it couldn't have been like that but it had and then Colgate was walking away from us and I felt sure that I would never see him again. People even started to talk about him like he was dead, right at the moment that he disappeared from our view. It was so hard for me, but I had somehow managed to keep up hope. And then he came closer and closer to the end, losing toes, friends, allies, and even himself, until he was the only one left in that arena. I didn't know how he managed it, but I didn't care because in that moment I fully realized just how important he was to me. It was then that I knew I had to be there for him. I had always thought it was Crest that I had to watch out for, to protect against the assholes who teased him, but now I know that it's actually Soap who needs me.

Or maybe I just need him.

I wondered if this boy had a family like mine. Did he have a younger brother waiting desperately for him to come back? Or maybe an older one? What was his mother like? Did he believe he had any chance? Did he have any chance? I wanted so badly to talk to Soap because maybe he knew the answer to some of these questions, or maybe he didn't. Really, I just wanted to be back by my brother's side so that I could support him. When he can home from the Capitol last year he looked as though he had gone into the arena himself again, and that scared me. I had known he had invested himself into his two charges, and also into the girl from District four - she had been so close to coming back and being something for his brother to lean on, but fate left him with her male equivalent - so in all truth I wasn't as shocked as I could have been about his state. It worried me all the same, and I had made sure to stay close to him in the case that he did something.

Now he had lost another one, one that I knew would be lost but didn't want to say because it was too hard to tell my brother he would lose her. Maybe I should have, maybe then it would have made it a little bit easier for him to just distance himself from her and not feel very much. I could only hope that he was putting more thought into his other tribute now, because the dead don't matter when there are still the living to think about. The boy was still kicking, and kicking strong. The battle before my eyes moves slowly but I'm sure it's just some trick of the cameras. I see promise in the skill on both sides, but for the sake of my brother and that boy I hope that Animus' group can pull through.

I dig my elbows into my knees and push the base of my palms into my eyes. Massaging my face I let out a tired sigh but I refuse to get up and stop watching. If Colgate has to watch this whole damned thing then I would do it too. Soap, I'm here for you.

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