fear can hold us in :: [ denali + lethe ]

[L△LIA]

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[attr="class","Denali1Title"]

I'm a jagwar calling
I make a bad, bad prisoner

[attr="class","Denali1Content"]

The world has gone strange. It's a hell of a thing considering Denali's definition of normal this past week. This past year. Her entire life. Nothing makes sense. She died. She knows she died. She felt it. Ripred. She remembers it — the feeling of knives and javelins shredding her arms and hands; the smell of her own flesh cooking, smoke filling her lungs as her stomach turned with disgust and a hint of confused starvation. On the edge of infinite darkness, she refused to close her eyes, starring at the bloody earth where Lex had bled out the day before because as terrible as that was, it was better than dying. Burning alive was agony, but death was more terrifying still. So she breathed in and she breathed in and she breathed in, because the idea of breathing out was too much. Mud filled her mouth as she heaved with desperation and she couldn't spit it out — she's convinced she tastes it between her teeth, even now.

Still she breathed.

Still she refused to let go.

Still she begged Lex's ghost to help her, despite what she had done. Maybe because of what she had done. Yes, she murdered Lex... but Denali ran her hands through her friend's hair as she died, Lex's head resting on her leg, and the colder her body went as the blood drained freely from the severed artery in her leg, the warmer Denali's hands must have felt against her skin. When Lex died, she was not alone. She was held close as she shivered. She was cared for, comforted.

Denali's death was nothing like Lex's. She thought she had won their duel, but as she sank into the mud the following day, burning and burning and burning and so horribly alone, she realized she was wrong. She hadn't lost her life in that fight, but she had lost the opportunity to die with kindness — for her life to end with one last memory of compassion. Shy was dead on the ground with her, because of her. Bette had more important things to worry about than a girl she had hardly known, despite their hugs and well wishes. Annie —

Annie fucking killed her.

Seething despite the hypocrisy, Denali tries to blink the memories away so the avox changing the bandages on her arms won't see her fighting to breathe, won't see the way her eyes water with every turn of her thoughts. Being in the present moment isn't any easier than struggling with yesterday's memories, her hands and arms just as raw as her heart. Still she breathes in. Still she refuses to let go, no matter how hard it is to look at what's in front of her. Still she begs for Lex's ghost to comfort her, because even with people in the room, she feels so alone. Lex's ghost —

They were only ghosts for the smallest of moments — twenty-three hearts suspended in time, nowhere and everywhere, here and gone. Lex was there when Denali woke, trying to make it up to her as if she actually owed her murderer something, paying back the kindness of Denali killing her. It was wrong... wasn't it? A lie. The way her heart beat or the way it deceived both of them about that. Whether or not it was really Lex... whether or not anything was real at all... whether or not Lex owed something to Denali or if Denali owed something to Lex... it hurt. Ripred, it fucking hurt. It was too hard for Denali to attempt to sort out which of them might have done the other wrong or if the whole thing — dying, resurrection, the Vault — was a sick joke. It was easier to reject it all, to refuse kindness she feared might just be a new kind of torture in disguise.

The bandages protecting Denali's skin transplants are unwound and she does not recognize herself. This new flesh is even paler than her own, perfectly pristine and unmarred by freckles or scars. The wound where Lex's axe hacked through tendons and veins is gone, although Denali still feels the ache somewhere beneath the surface. Nothing is charred black from flesh-melting tar and fire that burned and burned. The gash on her forearm is nowhere to be seen. There is no evidence of scratches from a lifetime of worries, no bite marks from worrying at her knuckles as she sat in front of the television and watched her brother slaughtered for the Capitol's petty entertainment, no pock marks on her palms where her nails tried to cut as deep as her frustrations. There is no scar from the splinter she got when she opened the casket, the unsanded shipping crate Zion's corpse was sent home in... the scar she high-fived the splinter in Lex's thumb with, declaring them splinter buddies.

There was a lifetime of history written on her skin and it's gone. Denali doesn't know whose hands she wears, but they are not her own. The abrupt seam of the skin grafts meeting the freckled flesh at her elbows is surreal, as if she is wearing gloves. As if this is a horror film instead of something so much worse. The avox changing her dressings begins applying some type of ointment to her arms and Denali gives up trying to pretend she isn't crying, her lower lip trembling as she quietly weeps, unable to be thankful that even after losing her life yesterday, it turns out there's still more that can be taken from her.

She can't even pull her hands into fists to fight back.

Unable to bear it any longer, she turns her face away, only to meet eyes with Lethe Turner. The Victor watches her from across the room with an expression that Denali can't translate through her blurred vision. Many of the tributes with younger mentors were met with declarations of happiness and relief this morning — Denali openly staring as Lex and Angel were released into Mackenzie's care, her heart a riot of confusion. None of this should be possible. It's too much to hope for and too much to regret all at once. She opens her mouth to say something, to fill the horrible silence that's beginning to feel like dying all over again, but nothing comes out. She tastes dirt in her teeth. All she can do is breathe in and refuse to close her eyes and give in to the darkness, no matter how difficult it is to look at what's across from her... or how difficult it is for Lethe to look back.

jagwar shells

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[Rosetta]

~Lethe Turner

The lizard’s body was already hard when Lethe found it.

For years she wondered when the day would come that the speedy lizard she managed to pluck out of the Arena would die. Somehow, Camalia lived on, touching her soft tongue to Lethe’s skin when she held her and skittering over to her food. Perhaps she was some kind of Capitol-engineered lizard. Or maybe she had something to live for her. And that’s why, year after year, Lethe clutched her as they boarded the train yet again to the Capitol and for days, woman and lizard would sit in Lethe’s compartment, listening for Patricia’s biting commentary to whichever unfortunate tributes were accompanying them.

But something was different that year. It was the 80th Games and Camalia was slower and slept longer. Lethe felt it, too. Her fingernails had grown more brittle over time and when she rubbed moisturizer over her skin at night, they slipped into wrinkles and crevices under her eyes and around her mouth. Jasper would never comment on them, except to call her “still beautiful,” but she rarely let him touch her nowadays. Like the feeling of her own hands, his touch felt hollow and cold and reminded her of how much time had passed.

Lethe felt older when she arrived at the Capitol this year. Her stylists offered to do a face-lift, which she graciously declined, and they spent a long time weaving newer, fresher blonde strands into her thin, graying hair.

But, like every year, Lethe sat perfectly still in the Victor dining room, listening to Patricia talk, watching twenty-three children die. Camalia nibbled on her croissants. The Games wore on and Patricia dug her fingernails deeper into Lethe’s wrist each day, watching her muses fight for their lives. It irritated Lethe to a point, especially when her fingernails drew blood as the boy from District 5 died, blood spilling the earth, the lover of the girl from District 5 swooping in to deliver the final blow. Lethe unhinged Patricia’s fingernails as the girl from District 5 went up in flames, right at the very end. It was brilliant and horrifying, ribbons of flesh and strands of hair twisting up into black smoke. And like that, like a sigh of relief that came with the sizzle of the fire and the boom of a cannon, it was over.
But, it wasn’t. Lethe immediately stood to return to her room to pack.

Two surprising things happened: Lethe came back to her Capitol-issued apartment and found Camalia stiff, lying on her back with his eyes glassy. And the tributes woke up. They were alive.

Lethe sat with the body for hours, as Avoxes scurried around her, cleaning and preparing the room for visitors. A Capitol official would be along shortly, she was told, to explain the situation. When he came, he took one sweeping look at the dead lizard in Lethe’s hands, the scales flaking off between her fingers and drifting to the floor, and spoke haltingly to the wine glass in his hand. The District Five tributes would be returned to the care of Patricia and Lethe. They’d return home. They may look different, but, and he smiled, thinly, like they were able to patch her back up, they’d be able to patch up the tributes.

Later, wordlessly, Patricia and Lethe dug a small grave in the garden on the roof of the Training Center and lowered Camalia in. Patricia looked at her like she was about to make a joke and Lethe could hear it already in her head – “Maybe the Capitol can resurrect your lizard, too,” but neither woman spoke.

Patricia left, mumbling about going to bed, as Lethe dropped dirt over the grave, relishing in the feeling of the cool soil on her burning, trembling hands. They were alive, but beneath the dirt lay Lethe’s pet, lay Lethe’s daughter, lay Lethe’s brother. She tried to slow her breathing, just as Jasper suggested when she pulled a shirt out of the laundry and realized it was Eden’s. The heavy breathing began when she pressed her nose to the armpit and realize, with a breath, she could no longer smell her.

She laid a hand gently against the makeshift grave and thought of the babbling river Camalia had crawled out of and into Lethe’s life. She thought of the rain and the white outlines of massive bones and the way huge, cold droplets filled Lethe’s bloody eye socket and mouth agape in pain. The way her muscle stretched and tore as she raised her hand once more to deliver another knife blow. How, at the end, as Lethe lay besides Razor, unable to stand in her agony, her limbs packed into the mud, licking the salty blood off of her lips, she remembered his last friendly words to her – “Get yourself killed by someone else.” She wasn’t alone though, even as her fingers strained to scrape the back of his cold hand, to really make sure he was dead, there was Camalia.

But, now she was gone. Like Razor. Like Saskia. Like Anya.

It was all of them. It gnawed away at her as she lay in bed at night, with silent tears rolling down her face. Jasper’s snores filled the empty spaces in the room as she counted them off on her fingers. They were all gone.

She dug her hand into the dirt again, letting it fill the crevices of her fingers. A cricket chirped nearby. Many floors below her, the streets of the Capitol were ablaze. A cheering crowd, bathed in the electric blue street lights, was drunk, celebrating the end of the Games. Their shouts and cries bounced off of Lethe’s ears, against hardened skin. She felt bloated, like she could burst if just one scream of, “HAPPY HUNGER GAMES,” managed to penetrate her. And so, she hummed.

It was an old song she sang for Eden and then for Phelix. Her last babies. She’d made sure of it.

Was it really just five years ago that her last baby left her? She remembered lying in a hospital bed, wires pouring out of her like veins, with drips of blood and medicine moving in and out. She imagined they were taking the blood of her and replacing it with something else; Something that would make her feel less. But, when she came to, and less medicine moved in, and when Patricia snapped her fingers above her head, impatiently, she jumped, she knew that wasn’t the case.

Now came the pain, but it was no longer physical or tangible. It was like her womb was collapsing. The little part of her that held Eden close for so long would shrinking, deepening into her body. Late at night, Lethe clutched her lower belly, trying to feel something, anything, that would tell her Eden was still there. But, there was only the tiny, little heartbeat of her own fingers.
That’s when Lethe decided they wouldn’t leave her again.

In the darkness, lit only by the glowing machine hooked to Lethe’s heart by the side of her bed, Lethe tapped her fingers against her womb and promised to never let another heartbeat fill it again.

In the garden, Lethe eased back onto her butt from her knees. She stretched her pale legs out in front of her, sitting with the grave neatly between her legs. A slight breeze fluttered the front of her dress.
Jasper didn’t know why she was rejecting him.

He was gentle in that first year. Lethe arrived home, beaten and empty. Jasper had already tidied up Eden’s room and, at the behest of a Capitol doctor, he kept the key to it. That was the start of one of their ugliest fights. When she saw that white door, she wanted to run to it, but she walked, forcefully. Tried the handle, but it was locked. “I hate you, mom,” was echoing in her ears. The last thing Eden had said before she slammed that white door shut and now, Lethe began to bang her fists against it, trying to get to Eden, just to say, “But I love you, Eden.” Jasper grabbed her shoulders, he was shouting about the key, how she couldn’t have it yet, but now she was in their own bedroom.

Her hands grabbed pillows, rooted around in pillowcases. When the key wasn’t there, her fingernails split them in two. Showers of feathers everywhere, inhaled down her throat as she screamed, throwing drawers of clothing across the room, “SHE IS MY DAUGHTER. SHE IS MINE. SHE ISN’T YOUR DAUGHTER. GIVE ME THE KEY, JASPER.”

Glass lamps shattered. Her voice began hoarse. Jasper slept on the couch that night and gave her the key. It was in his front chest pocket and, with a hint of wickedness, Lethe heard herself scream that she would split that open too, anything to find the key.

Patting the dirt in front of her, packing Camalia down further and further, Lethe did the same with Eden in her head. In front of her eyes, scenes of Eden’s messy room came and went. Clothing on the floor and a dusty picture of mother and daughter next to the bed, but none of it yielded her daughter. Lethe took a few of her shirts, the ones she wore to go on runs and were still cold with sweat, and locked it back up. She locked Eden back up, too.

After that night, Jasper was careful. For a year, he kept his distance. He kissed her cold forehead and made dinner at night. He helped Phelix with his math homework. He put on the birthday parties. Lethe began to spend more days with Patricia. Nearly silent days, full of Patricia’s sharp glances and biting comments, but at least those made her feel something.

It was after she came back from the 76th Games, tribute-less yet again, that he finally turned to her in bed, fingers dawdling at the drawstrings of her pajama pants. “No,” she said quietly, turning away from him.

“Lethe,” he began, but she slowed her breathing, patronizingly slow. And then, she pretended to sleep. There were more nights like this. “Lethe…,” like a sigh. Then, there were tears.

“Please, honey, I love you. I won’t hurt you. I have needs. Please, I can help.”

And night after night, Lethe turned away and kept silent. She felt Jasper slipping away, too, further from her. Finally, he stopped asking. And eventually, she let him hold her in their bed, but that was all. It was the only time she felt the familiar panging of their love, the same warmth rising in her chest that she felt on their wedding night, but there was a hard rock in the middle of it now. Some nights, she’d let it overcome her, basking in the warmth of his chest, but in the morning, she’d awaken and it would just be him and Phelix and the hole inside her was empty again.

In the garden, she finally stood and patted the dirt off of her knees. Her bare toes now dug into the soil.

It was five years now. Lethe now walked to the edge of the garden and peered over the railing of the balcony. If she pushed her forehead out too far, she might feel the gentle pulsing of the force field keeping her there. It was the same pulsing she used to push thoughts of her daughter, the love for her husband, and the anxiety about her 11-year-old son back down deep inside of her.

It was five years now and Lethe was no different, but her entire world was. Eden’s door remained locked. She pinned Phelix’s As in math up onto her fridge and her mother snuck extra sweets to him when she wasn’t looking. She kissed his head and truly felt something when he snuggled under her arm on the couch. But, then he left to throw a ball with his dad. It was five years now, but about to be six, and the pain was only pulsing louder in her ears. It was about to be six and Phelix would then be 12.
It was about to be six and Lethe hadn’t touched her husband since.

It was about to be six and Lethe knew there was someone else. One night, when Jasper stretched his arms around her, she smelled the perfume. Jasper, ever the charmer, even at his age, she thought bitterly, inhaling it.

Lethe imagined that she was younger, just past reaping age. She worked behind the counter of the bakery that Jasper liked so much. He was the only one who could afford her cinnamon rolls that her mother told her to stop making, but she made them anyway, just for him. Lethe was starting to wonder why he no longer brought home one for her. She imagined that the girl’s thin frame had not begun to sag and when Jasper reached for her blouse, she giggled.

“Does your wife know? Are you guilty, just a little?” -- (and this, Lethe imagined, was with a sly smile) – “Do you think she’d be mad?” Yes, and yes, she was sure of it. And maddeningly, even when she found her earring under their bed while sweeping, Lethe wasn’t sure about the last question. The perfume stung her nostrils and she hastily bit back the tears and yet, a sense of relief passed through her. Bitterly, she understood. But she swept up the earring, which had probably cost Jasper a lot for this girl, anyway.

It was about to be six and Lethe’s fingers curled tighter around the balcony’s railing, and if they all were going to leave her, why don’t they leave her already?

It was about to be six years and Lethe’s lizard, brother and daughter were dead. She’d pushed her husband into the arms of someone else. Her son would write his name onto a little slip of paper in preparation for the 81st reaping. It was about to be six years, but somehow in these five, Lethe had managed to shake everyone, but two tributes she couldn’t care less about.

Returning to her room, finally, to sleep, she wracked her brains for their names. Minx and Denali. Their names swirled around in her vision line as she stared at the ceiling and then scrolled across her inner eyelids when she slept.

Minx and Denali. Minx and Denali. Minx and Denali.

Somehow they were alive, but Eden wasn’t.

---

In the morning, Lethe actually brushed her hair. She let an Avox dress her and press a warm cup of coffee into her hands. “Thanks,” she muttered and began to ask for some cream, but the Capitol official was suddenly in the doorway. Denali was back, at least. She was in her own apartments.

Lethe allowed herself to be led down the intricate hallways, her mind drifting to the train that was surely waiting at the station to whisk her back home, back to her Phelix, who she was aching to see, and back into the arms of Jasper – who would act like he’s been nowhere, but home since she left.

The door opened and there she was, swarmed by another Avox who was patting white bandages over – were that her arms? For a moment, Lethe’s stomach dropped and she was transported back to a sterile white room, hours after her own Games. Flashes of doctors in masks, a glass eye being passed between hands, skin grafts draped over her face.

There she was, Denali, not the burning husk Lethe last saw. The ribbons of flesh that disappeared into the air had been replaced with marble arms and Denali, having not seen Lethe yet, seemed fascinated with them as well. A patchwork girl.

The door shut behind Lethe and it was then that the girl looked up, expectedly.

Lethe paused, a few steps into the room, still clutching her morning coffee. She knew what Patricia would say (where was she, anyway?) – “You look like shit.”

But, Lethe didn’t say that, her voice had caught in her throat, hot acid behind it. Denali was alive, but where was Eden. The mother inside of her wanted to rush back to that Vault she saw all of the tributes wandering in. Like a womb, like a belly, Lethe wanted to tear it open, search every bit for her little girl. If they were in there, they all had to be there. Razor. Saskia. Anya. Eden. She would hold her baby girl’s cracked skull back together, glue it with the same hot glue gun she used to make Eden’s winter recital dress. She would take her home. Not Denali.

Lethe took an uncertain step forward. Her voice came back, rising into her mouth before she could stop it – “Was she in there? Was Eden there?”

And then – “How are you back?”

[L△LIA]

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[attr="class","Denali2Title"]

I'm a bird free falling
Wasn't born just to please you

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It was no secret that Denali was the sister of Zion Lyons. (... is?) From the moment her sister’s name was called at the Reaping in District Five, identical visions of the boy in — or out of — pink bunny pajamas passed through the mind of every person who heard the announcement. A watchful eye might have noticed the way he and Denali have the same nose, he and Seville the same turn to their mouths, he and the twins the same dark tousled hair, he and Rio the same eyes, their collective faces a game of genetic tag. Lethe Turner herself must have glanced down from the stage at Denali grabbing her youngest sister by the collar of her dress — screeching with horrified panic that the Little Imp might ever go anywhere near that stage — and frowned slightly at the idea of last year repeating itself. Maybe from empathy for a family called upon to sacrifice twice. Maybe from disappointment because the last Lyons never had the will to survive, so why waste hope on more of the same? Maybe because it didn’t matter who ended up fighting; death is death. (...is death is death is death.)

One mention of the Turner name or glimpse of Lethe’s face and Denali sees all of the same things people see in her... and more. Loss is an inevitable human experience. The longer anyone lives, the more death they’ll witness, but a Victor even more so. Everyone, especially in Five, remembers the year Erebus Turner was killed. Or Eden Turner. Even children too young to have seen those Games as they aired are sat down at some point and made to understand, like a lesson in public safety. This happens even to the greatest among us, even to those who have already endured it. Here, child, is where the truth lies. It’s treason to speak much more.

As the weeks pass, the Lyons girl will think back on her conversation with Lex about Top Eight interviews. Denali will contemplate how she screamed and cursed so they couldn’t use the footage of her — because taking her brother wasn't enough, they wanted his most beloved sister too — how she damaged Capitol property in a fit of anguish, and how it didn't feel like a coincidence that Seville’s name was called up for death. She will think of all these things and then suddenly catch herself wondering if Lethe ever lashed out, ever found herself dwelling on fears that her brother was killed as petty punishment for her own actions.

In the same way, Denali will think back on today, trying to recall the emotional details of her mentor's voice as she asks: "Was she in there? Was Eden there?" She will hold her breath and ponder the implications of desperation and how sometimes having hope is worse than accepting that it's gone. The nights she spent curled up against the locked door of Zion's bedroom — digging at the floorboards with pilfered kitchen knives because it wouldn't be locked if there were nothing inside — felt so much like Lethe's voice must have sounded as she spoke those words to a girl too confused to translate the complexity.

All Denali can do is stare mutely, her mouth still hanging open. It's difficult enough to attempt to wrap her head around the past twenty-four hours, let alone to call to mind the time before these Games when locking eyes with Lethe Turner would have struck her momentarily mute out of compassion instead of being trapped in the numb silence of an existential crisis. She would have searched her heart for words better than the disingenuous ones people have given her — we're sorry for your loss — and attempted to figure out a way to way to tell her that there's too much bullshit in this world and not enough justice; that it's not her fault a boy who snuck around at night setting off the mouse traps in the kitchen wouldn't fight to save his own life; that self-defense is not a sin; that the lives of Lethe's family are worth more than any property she might have damaged in fits of tragic rage; that it's okay not to be okay. There are some things so wrong they can never be made right. Lying to themselves won't make it any better.

The brutal truth is that Eden does not live in the Vault any more than Zion does. Eden lives in Lethe's throat, her voice haunted as she speaks. The Denali from the time before she was brought here or the Denali she'll remember how to be some time after she leaves this horrible place would suck in a rattled breath, her expression breaking in perfect time with her far-too-empathetic heart as she shook her head no, I'm so sorry... Eden wasn't there. She would attempt to comfort Lethe the way she tried to soothe Lex as she died. She would realize that this moment isn't about herself. She would be understanding. She would be kind. Instead she looks away, glancing back down at the hands that are not her hands. "How are you back?" Her lip quivers.

"Am I?" She asks with desperation that matches Lethe's, part of Denali knowing she's hoping for something impossible, but unable to stop herself from breaking down the locked door between her and the truth... just in case. Denali Lyons died yesterday. She woke up in Hell or, at least, a Very Bad Place surrounded by demons meant to torture her. Some of them wore the faces of people she despised and others wore the faces of people she —

None of them were real. They couldn't be. She had made certain of it, killing several of them herself. There would still be blood crusted beneath her fingernails if not for —

The avox finishes wrapping Denali's arms with fresh bandages and she doesn't know what to do with these strange hands she's being forced to carry around. They don't move when she tells them to or comfort her with familiar constellations of freckles and scars that might help to guide her wandering mind back to itself. How are you back? Denali shakes her head, shoulders hunching as she tries to curl into herself before remembering her other wounds. "I don't know," she murmurs breathlessly, brow furrowed as she rocks on the edge of panic because nothing is adding up like it should, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't think... I am." She wants to bite her knees or scratch at her neck. She wants to sink her fingernails into her palms until her thoughts stop spinning and she remembers how to focus on one thing at a time. Instead she dies. Instead she lives. Instead she curls up against an invisible door that she doesn't know how to open, terrified with the worst kind of hope as to what might be on the other side.

jagwar shells

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[Rosetta]

~Lethe Turner

Capitol money could buy luxuries, even the kind other people in District Five could never dream of.

When Lethe returned home from the Games before these, Jasper had a surprise.

It was a car. A rusted, little piece of junk, something he’d probably plucked from the junkyard far from the Victor’s Village. Few people had cars. Peacekeepers, the Mayor, the wealthier people in town, but most just walked miles and miles each day. But there was Jasper, sitting up eagerly with Phelix in the front seats, which were some sort of rubber, punctured with scratches and little holes. As Lethe approached, helped with her luggage by an entourage of officials from the Mayor’s office, he jokingly pretended to drive it, swinging he wheel around and around. Luckily, Phelix was growing too old for such Dad jokes. He rolled his eyes and leaned his head out the open window. “Mom!”

When he reached her arms, she scooped him up and held her lips to his forehead for a long time, while warily watching Jasper over his shoulder.

“Why?” She asked him once she asked Phelix to help unpack inside and he had gone, casting a suspicious look over his shoulder at his parents.

Jasper’s goofy smile faded slightly and he leaned, uncertain, against the hood. “I figured this would make things easier for your mom,” he offered. “She’s been using the cane, but we can take her to Phelix’s meets. He’s become a really great runner, Leeth, she’d love to see him.”

“Gas is expensive,” Lethe said quietly. “And I can’t drive. Can you?”

“I’m learning,” Jasper said defensively. “Steven has been teaching me,” he said. Steven transported the mail and parcels between shops. Lethe sighed.

“Fine. Teach me.”

And so began a trying several months that both spouse relished in, guiltily. Inside this metal beast, they could freely scream and argue with one another. “NOT THIS WAY! THAT WAY! BRAKE!”

Their voices broke the longer they spent in the car. Lethe sometimes stomped her foot too hard on the brake, just to send him lurching into his seatbelt, and occasionally he ordered her out of the driver’s seat so he could take over. When Phelix was in the car, which was rare, because gas was truly very expensive and they did not drive often, they were angels. “Do you see, baby?” Lethe would peer into the rear view mirror where Phelix sat besides his white-knuckled grandmother, rubbing the back of her hand around his wrist. “I’ll teach you one day.”

With so few cars, it was easy to drive in the District and it was easy to be noticed. It was perhaps what Jasper wanted. His hair had given way to a salt-and-pepper look and his face, though wrinkled, was as chiseled as ever. Age suited him even as it ate away at his wife.

Lethe, on the other hand, hid her eyes under sunglasses as she considered the crowd. She imagined she could pick out the woman that Jasper was with, somehow. She had to be the girl who looked on most adoringly, whose chest heaved whenever they drove by, imagining SHE were the one inside the car with Jasper.

She secretly enjoyed the speculation. It gave her something to hate rather than fear. The faceless girl tempting her husband over the fear of losing him, too.

When Lethe looked upon this girl in the Capitol apartment, back from the dead, a pang of fear filled her, too. How whole could she be? And the girl didn’t seem to know either, readily admitting she wasn’t sure how she was back.

And no, Eden wasn’t there.

Something hot filled Lethe’s chest. In the Capitol, you could make food appear with the push of a button. In District Five, a car was magic, but in the Capitol, it was outdated. In District Five, children succumbed to coughs and disappeared at the whisper of the name out of a glass ball. In the Capitol, they could reanimate those same children, patch them up with new skin, new guts, new artificial blood.

Bile filled Lethe’s mouth. If this girl could come back, surely Eden could have, too. But, no. Instead, Lethe got this husk of girl. She stepped another few feet into the room, sinking down into a chair across from her, swallowing the vomit back down. She eyed her, the patchwork done to her body, tempted to touch it. The heat was back, now in her hands. She could rip it apart again and see how long it took the Capitol to put her back together. Surely they could do that, but not bring back her daughter.

But, she stayed her hands, curling them around her thighs, watching her suspiciously. Perhaps this girl expected to hug her, welcome her back. Lethe Turner, the mother, would welcome back one daughter and one son. The gears were turning in her head. The Capitol tabloids would love it. “Devastated Mother Adopts Zombie Children.” Perhaps they were watching her now. They ripped away her daughter and replaced her with...whatever this girl was.

Her eyes drifted to the girl’s face, trying to read her. Was she even happy to see Lethe? Lethe, the mother, who chronically abandoned the children she was meant to mentor.

Lethe knew the reason she was brought before her. She was a testament to the Capitol’s kindness. They’ll rip your children from your arms, force you to watch them brutally murdered, and then breathe life back into them.

It was the same generosity they showed her when they saved her life, cleaning her bad blood and fixing the hair she’d yanked from her head.

But, it was with a pang of cruelty, Lethe knew that Denali would be the last. The same hand would never be so kind again.

After all, it was the same hand that delivered her daughter back to her in an unmarked box.

That same hand could pluck up her son in just a year’s time. Take him far away from her, murder him, and bring him back in a box with the full knowledge that he, like Denali, could be saved.

And Lethe, like she had been no help to Eden, would be no help to him either. Her fingers curled tighter around her thighs, knuckles turning white.

The car proved useful on Phelix’s eleventh birthday. The paper crown crinkled on his head as he leaned forward to blow his candles out. Before they went out, Lethe watched his soft cheeks fill, his blue eyes widen, his chubby fingers tap the table before him, her heart filling with warmth, before it went dark. Jasper and her mother cheered and moved to turn on the kitchen lights, but Lethe did not move. She wanted to savor that image in her mind forever. It would be the last birthday Phelix would relish with such joy for a long time.

Later, she left her bed, as Jasper snored on, and got into the car. Headlights off, she drove to the lake near Eden’s grave, parking on the hilltop overlooking both the body of water and the cemetery. Somewhere, she was there. Lethe leaned her forehead against the ripped steering wheel, breathing in the smell of rubber deeply. Her hand firmly held the stick between the two front seats and her mind fast forwarded to a year from now. There would be a cake. There would be smiles, all fake.

Phelix would give his parents a toothy grin. His hand would ball around the little slip of paper he was expected to return to City Hall in the morning, to be added to the list of other unfortunate children who might be sentenced to death.

Lethe’s fingers twitched against the stick. She could easily put the car into neutral, slide down the hill. The car would slip into the lake. The car would fill with water. She could drift away. Sleepily, she pressed a cheek to the steering wheel. It wouldn’t take long, she imagined. She could take Phelix on a drive. Tell him they were visiting his sister. The thought gave her start, her heart pounding against her chest. Hastily, she put the car in reverse and drove down off the hill.

Later, she would slide beneath the hood, cut wires, puncture tanks, break everything she could. In the morning, Jasper would call for the junkyard to come take it away, a hint of disappointment in his voice. He and Lethe wouldn’t mention her bloodied, bruised hands.

The day in the future still might come though, Lethe realized, considering Denali and she would shut down again. She would disappear. She would finally drive down that hill and Lethe couldn’t let it happen.

Not while a girl who had survived so long in the Games until she couldn’t anymore, had come back from the dead, sat before her.

Burning hatred gave away again to fear and now Lethe was leaning forward earnestly. “You are here. You are here. We’ll go back, but,” and her hand creeped from one to the other, twisting her wedding ring, “I need your help. With my son.”