Do You Really Want to Know? [Damaris/Saturn]

[Deleted]

 

- Saturn RhoDon -

I am starting to see stars and moons
(it's an awful sham, but I follow suit)
This is how it ends, a courageous boom

His sheets were drenched entirely through by the time he had awoken. He was still shaking when he turned over and awake in the dark of his bedroom. Had he cried out a name in the dark, or was it the remnants of a false memory itching at his lips? His dream had now been replaced with a single bed draped in white sheets, a wood desk and silver chair, and a window that looked out onto an empty street. He had caught glances of folks as they edged along the walk in the morning – likely those with some connection to the games that found the blond boy staring out at them of no consequence.

Saturn doesn’t remember walking the length of the hallway out of the tribute apartments, or hitting the button of the elevator. He thinks that maybe he was still picturing his dream – encroaching darkness that covered up the lightness he’d created about himself. He hadn’t needed to take it a single floor down to the training center, but then he didn’t need to be abandoning the idea of sleep all together, either. Still, he paced along the corridor, avoiding the entrance to the sparring floor, and passing the flora and fauna station.

Instead, he pressed through a clear set of double doors and into a room with white walls and wooden floors. Lining the center of the room were black pews – seats for one to rest, and stare at the images of the capitol lining the walls. In the center of the front, atop a small stage was a single large podium with a bowl containing a flame burning fire and smoke. The place was foreign enough to Saturn that he debated turning around and heading right back to his room, and forcing his eyes clothes and calling on sleep.

He liked the way the pews felt, cold to the touch. The sound of the fire crackling kept his heart from racing, too. Emptiness should’ve been disquieting but – he felt that he could spend a moment here, away from whatever had chased him out of his room. And so he took a seat toward the front, his seat creaking and echoing across the walls. He stared at the symbol of the capitol and thought about how quickly the games were approaching. He thought about Snow, and how there were plenty that were placing bets on the careers to tear apart the rest of the boys and girls (after all, a twelve-year-old had advanced in the 80th, what would these boys and girls do?).

Saturn hunched forwarded in this seat, elbows atop the wood in front of him. He closed his eyes and just tried to think about nothing – only the sound of the flame crackling. For a good while he waited, and tried – even if his mind kept returning to the dream.

The sound of the door swiping open and footsteps had Saturn turn, and stare at the girl from eight. For a moment he wondered if he should get up and leave but somehow, he willed himself to stay.

“Can't sleep.” He doesn’t ask because he didn't care; he didn't care because they have nothing between them. “Think this place is supposed to clear your head.”

*Star & Moons, Dizzy

JUNIER of GS + Adox

[goat]

damaris hope

Another night of being unable to sleep. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but it seems like it’s always going to be. Maybe if I asked for drugs, some sort of sleep aids, they’d give me some. I’m in the Capitol, after all. They have everything here.

I creep out of my room as quietly as I can. I don’t know why, there’s nobody monitoring me. I mean, I’m sure there are cameras planted everywhere, but I haven’t been stopped from leaving my room at night yet. I’m sure they love the drama of it.

I take the elevator down to the first floor of the building, where the training center is. There’s a cool breeze inside the empty floor. I tug my cardigan closer to my body. Maybe I should have changed out of my pajama shorts. I wasn’t thinking much before I left. I wish it was easier to find the line between overthinking and barely thinking at all. I’m either too irrational or too impulsive.

There’s a room in the training center that I haven’t been in before. The doors leading into the room are clear, but it’s hard to see what’s inside. Well, I’m not doing anything better with my night. May as well check it out.

When the doors slide open, I see that somebody is already inside, and he’s staring right at me. It’s the boy from One, Saturn. I’ve never spoken to him before. To be fair, I haven’t spoken to most of the tributes, but I’ve never interacted with anybody from the upper Districts before. I wonder if I’m supposed to be intimidated. We’re all in the same terrible situation here, so I’m finding it hard to be. He’s just another boy.

“Can't sleep,” he says. “Think this place is supposed to clear your head.”

“Neither can I,” I say to him. “There must be something in the air here.”

It’s not a very funny joke, but I made it anyway. I turn away from Saturn and look around the room. It’s unsettling and calming at the same time. There are white walls, black pews, a bowl with a burning flame in the middle. The walls are plastered with images of the Capitol, in case we forget where we are and who we should be pledging loyalty to.

I go and sit in the pew across from the one he’s in, drawing my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I feel like I should say something, something to fill the silence.

“Does this place make you feel small?” I ask. “Or is it just me?”

[Deleted]

 

- Saturn RhoDon -

I am starting to see stars and moons
(it's an awful sham, but I follow suit)
This is how it ends, a courageous boom

Does this place make you feel small? Or is it just me?

He sees her as he does all the rest, a collection of bones with sinews and arteries and veins, pale skin on top – not quite human. Less so because she is a woman, and for him the element of desire is gone, and even less still because she comes from a lower district. She’s dangerous, something alien and that which Saturn doesn’t think he understands; a tinge of jealousy, too, seeing fragility worn so easily, rather than masked under muscle and buried away. He knows what she is, a Hope. Footnotes in games history, amusing anecdotes that serve as answers to quiz questions, but never quite memorable so much as filler for editing storylines pushed by the gamemakers.

She speaks to him as though they’re familiar and he feels the hair rise on the back of his neck. He remembers her reaping, the way she’d held her head up. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Even after knowing what pain was, she was strong enough to step forward and accept her fate. He could admire someone like that, someone that did not look like a porcelain doll ready to be smashed. He mirrors her, knees up to his chest, head tilted forward.

Did he ever feel small? Aside from some of the older men and boys in district one, it had been years since he felt as though the word applied to him. He was always big, or big enough. That was the point, wasn’t it? To take up as much space as possible in life, so that when you went missing, someone would take notice. Except he didn’t much feel as though he was doing much with his space, rather than existing. Well – aside from the boys he managed to take to his room, or to the roof top. He would make them take notice, because there was power in being visible. In setting an imprint in someone’s heart, he could last just a little while.

“It makes my skin crawl,” Saturn finds himself admitting to her, a lower districter, an unknown. But somehow – whether through the grace of what the room was bringing to him, or the nightmare still lingering – he felt that he could. “But maybe it’s better that I do. The world is about to get a lot smaller than it ever was.” He looks at Damaris and sees her for the first time, not just a face in a line up, or someone to disappear. And he thinks, does she see me?

“Do you ever feel like you took a turn somewhere? Like, you were going the right way and everything was fine, but then you got – ” He pauses, twisted a few fingers around his calf and shin in a grip. “Lost?”

*Star & Moons, Dizzy

JUNIER of GS + Adox

[goat]

damaris hope

Saturn looks at me again, and there’s something in his expression that I can’t place.

“Do you ever feel like you took a turn somewhere? Like, you were going the right way and everything was fine, but then you got—” He pauses, and I wonder if he’ll finish what he’s saying or deem me too unworthy to hear it. “Lost?”

It’s strange to hear that coming from somebody like him. Then again, I’m not sure what I expected his answer to be in the first place. I don’t know him, but I know what careers from One are supposed to be like. Tough. Strong. Confident. I suppose it’s my fault for assuming. I’m sure people assume plenty of things about me, it isn’t fair to do that to somebody else.

“I don’t know if I was ever going the right way to begin with,” I say. “But I get what you’re saying.”

I fidget with the hem of my cardigan, tugging on one of the loose threads. Funny. It feels like loose threads on clothing shouldn’t exist in a place like the Capitol. I thought everything was supposed to be perfect. “Sometimes I feel like I was just predisposed for a life of tragedy, you know? My cousins were going to die, and then I was going to get depressed, and then I was going to die, and nothing I could have done would have changed that path.”

A short laugh escapes my throat. “That’s a little morbid, isn’t it?”

[Deleted]

 

- Saturn RhoDon -

I am starting to see stars and moons
(it's an awful sham, but I follow suit)
This is how it ends, a courageous boom

I don’t know if I was ever going the right way to begin with, she says and he smiles. It’s the first time he can remember having felt lighter, as though the words between them are just their own. He thinks that when he speaks to boys and men alike, it’s a sparring match, as though one must win even when nothing’s at stake. But I get what you’re saying. He shifts his hands over his sweat pants again, and listens to the pew creak. He hears the sound of the fire fluttering, and the emptiness between them.

Sometimes I feel like I was just predisposed for a life of tragedy, you know?

“Oh.” It’s all that comes to him then. He chews the bottom of his lip and listens, for there’s nothing to say.

My cousins were going to die, and then I was going to get depressed, and then I was going to die, and nothing I could have done would have changed that path.

She’s heavy, he thinks. A sort of weight dragged around by the shadows of folks behind her. A family of ghosts, those that won’t let her forget she’s just like the rest of them. He thinks that life has been particularly cruel to girl like her, from a lower district, taking away so much from someone that already had so little. Yet here she was, still standing, and solid. Stronger than she might’ve known, even if the rest of world had told her she should’ve been ground to dust by now.

That’s a little morbid, isn’t it. He likes the way she laughs at herself. And he laughs too, still smiling. Maybe it was from lack of sleep, but everything she said made perfect sense to him.

“Life sucks and then you die, or so I’ve been told,” Saturn says, still smiling. He gives another laugh. “A few years ago I might’ve thought this was all I could’ve ever wanted.” He pauses, and looks down at the hardwood floor, counting the lines. “Well that was the idea, right? Be the type of person that could win this.” Except he can’t, so long as he’s just pieces stitched together. He looks up at her again and shakes his head.

“You feel like they took something from you that you can’t ever get back, right?” He’s cold, face of stone. “You’re too young to figure out how to feel, so you push it down, and – it’s not like it goes away.” Saturn knows her, he thinks, or maybe just himself (it was always about himself, wasn’t it?). “But you carry them with you, scars and all. So it’s sink or swim – and you can’t just choose to sink. At least, you haven’t yet. You’re still here.”

He puts his chin atop his knees. “We’re still here, whether we like it or not. And if we die, whatever truth you had dies with you.” He pulls his knees a little tighter against his chest.

“Nah. Not morbid at all.”

*Star & Moons, Dizzy

JUNIER of GS + Adox