there's so little late at night // {arbor + katelyn | day 9}

[aya]

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you were simpler, you were lighter when we thought like little kids
like a weightless, hateless animal, beautifully oblivious before you were hid
inside a stranger you grew into as you learned to disconnect
now he hangs your mirrors separately
so one can’t show you what the other reflects

If only he were one of those people who wakes up unshackled to reality. If he were one of those people whose first few bleary blinks serve to decide who they are and where they are and what their life must be like upon waking. There's so little he wouldn't give for a few seconds of peace each morning before the world comes rushing back in — not that he's got anything left. Uncertainty must be so full of possibilities.

Despite the daylight, he'd go back to sleep if he could. Burrowing under the pillows is enough to block out the light but nothing else. After an hour he gives up.

Cloaking himself in a throw blanket, he braves the journey to the common room. His glasses remain on his nightstand; he can't bring himself to look anyone in the eye, just as he can't bear to see the place on the couch where Cedar lounged just last week, just as he can't bear to see the faint red splotch on the end table where the marble drank in he grape juice Cedar spilled a decade ago, just as he can't bear to stare into the doorway to the dark bedroom where he'd woke his son up for the bloodbath and gave him one last hug goodbye. The spectacles would just get foggy, anyway.

The tablet says that it's the ninth day, that he's been asleep for thirty-six hours, that four tributes have died since he last looked. Two are left. One is his. He shouldn't be surprised. It's hard to say if he is. He guesses not. The other tribute is from District Eleven. Any other year and this sort of final matchup would unsettle him; he knows better than anyone the cost of refusing to fall into line, of Capitol-forsaken districts calling too much attention to themselves, of repeated odds-defying victory. Nihilistic and numb, he skips over the desperate stages and straight into acceptance.

Almost anyone. Better than almost anyone.

He pulls the throw blanket tighter, armoring himself in the impossibly soft knit fabric, concealing the full state of his dishevelment: the wrinkled shirt he'd put on two mornings ago, not bothering to correct the misaligned buttons; slacks, one leg hiked up over his knee from sleep; mismatched wool socks pulled up to different heights; no shoes. Then he slips out the door and down the stairs.

He thinks he might've pushed past someone on the way into the District Eleven suite, but it's so hard to be sure, the way his absent mind no longer feels tethered to his unfeeling body.

"I missed yesterday," he says, as though this explains everything. Maybe he will someday, but he doesn't know what to say about Cedar, and he doesn't know how to hear anything about him either. "This is..." He waves the tablet, a recap of Red burying that sabre in the chest of the girl who'd killed him playing side-by-side with a recap of Katelyn's tribute shooting her district partner in the heart. "This is bad, right?"

Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's no difference between bad things and good things. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.

palace - the antlers

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There is a pot of coffee keeping warm on the counter. The suite smells like french vanilla and hazelnut. Katelyn Persimmon sits at the table, her legs crossed and her hands folded in front of her. She has always been a morning person. Today is no exception. Not when one of her tributes has actually made the finale.

She has been up since the crack of dawn, making peanut brittle and fudge. Her apron is well-worn, well-loved and still very capable of protecting her black jeans and light blue t-shirt. She has opted for slip-ons and thinks she has gotten some corn syrup on them.

“It’s a rather well-known fact that you are one of the victors who hasn’t always had the Capitol’s best interests at heart. So I’m going to ask again. Do you know anything about the explosion in district eleven?”

She does not.

But the man in front of her thinks otherwise. She does not like the way he cannot hold her gaze. She does not like the questions or the way he shuffles the papers in front of him.
She does not like the way he has interrupted her carefully scheduled day.

“This is all a formality of course. I don’t think I’m going to get anything out of you. But here are the facts. In the late morning yesterday, around the time that Jacob Fel and Kassandra Nerys were concluding their fight, the stage in the district square exploded due to person or persons unknown. Illegal contraband was used…”

Katelyn knows this. It is the fourth time he has repeated this information and she is starting to get annoyed.

“You’re what, twenty-three? Fresh out of the academy?” The words slip out unbidden as her frosty eyes latch onto his.

“Twenty-two, actually.” He begins, but Katelyn talks over him.

“You want to understand how this happened? I’ll tell you why. It’s because our district is built on the pillars of togetherness. Of community. Family. Morality. Because the game makers forcing Rex Antilles and Arianna Taylor into killing each other broke our collective hearts. And doing it again has pushed someone or some people to the limit. Our tributes killing each other is not something that has happened in living memory. Not until last year."

Katelyn’s legs uncross. Her hands unfold. She leans forward on her elbows to look at this peacekeeper. This man. This boy. Katelyn Persimmon is a patient woman. But not for people like him. Her lip curls in disgust.

“I don’t know who set explosives under the stage and I have nothing to do with it. If you don’t have anything new to ask me, you need to either leave or shoot me because I have no intention of answering anymore questions.”

There is an uncomfortable pause for a few beats, and for a second, Katelyn considers the distance of the coffee pot and whether or not she’d be able to scald him with it before he pulls his gun.

But the young peacekeeper does not. He only sits back in his chair and stares at her curiously. She is not sure what to make of it.

She is always waiting for the next disaster to strike.

“I must have been nine or so when you won,” he begins, and Katelyn raises an eyebrow warningly.

"I remember thinking, “What’s so special about this gangling girl from eleven?” She’s boring. Sickeningly sweet and innocent. All doe-eyed and idealistic. Acting tough when she needs to. Like, come on, people don’t stay that nice do they?” he shakes his head ruefully.

They don’t, she thinks.

“Some victors though, it feels like they go off-script, you know? Like they don’t fit the narrative that the game-makers were crafting. But they make the story their own. They win.” He chuckles, and Katelyn’s fist starts to clench involuntarily.

“I thought you were so lame. But then there was that fight you and the girl from six had against those boys.”

Get away from her! Her voice is shrill, horrified eyes darting from Lexi’s severed leg to the boys in front of them. The throwing axe in her hand is already lit.

“I think that’s when I started to take you seriously. That kind of loyalty— I don’t think it can be faked. That was the real you there.” He gathers his papers and makes ready to leave. She can feel the bile rising in the back of her throat. It grates on her for him to make remarks about her life, about her so casually.

“I will be making a note of your last response in my report, but for what it’s worth, I think you’re telling the truth. Subterfuge doesn’t seem like your modus operandi. You’d stab someone in the face. Not the back.” He exits, and the last she sees of him is the curious look on his face as Arbor Halt brushes past him.

***

He looks about as terrible as she feels. Her clothes may not be as chaotic as his, but her mind is. Her soul. It’s the eyes that get her. The defeat. The acceptance. He is someone she has looked up and he is downcast. She had wanted to check in on him earlier, but there had just been so much on her plate.

In the arena, the fight hasn’t begun just yet. The final two tributes are beckoned forward by the mist. Arbor is not in a good place. He wears the blanket as if the fabric can shield him from the rest of the world. She pities him. The pain he must be going through is not something someone should ever have to deal with. She wonders if that’s why she can’t remember the last time she heard something about Lethe Turner.

Perhaps because the victor from five couldn’t deal with it.

She’s not sure if he’s spent the last few days crying, or if he hasn’t been able to because it doesn’t feel real.

“This is bad, right?” he says blearily, as Nell and Jacob die a second time on his tablet. She is quiet at first, all of her concerns and worries struggling for dominance. There is an apology to be made to Maya Fel for failing her son. Kassandra is so close to home; she doesn’t know if she will be able to bear it if she doesn’t make it.

Kirito has one foot in the grave and she still doesn’t understand why he kept it from her. There was a time when they were as thick as thieves, and now she feels like she doesn’t know him. Or Harbinger for that matter. They’ve grown apart, as people often do, but she can’t help but feel a sadness for the brotherhood they once shared. Things were so much simpler then.

Or maybe she only thought they were, because she remembers Arbor telling her to let Harbinger die.

After a moment she gets to her feet and finds her voice as her hands are starting to wring.

“Yeah. It’s bad. Snow must be popping a blood vessel.”

She wants to ask him what they— what anyone ever did to deserve this, but she leaves that thought unsaid.  Before the day is out, one of them will have a new charge to look after.

“Arbor, look I—“

don’t know what to do. There’s so much happening at once and it feels like I’m drowning.  It’d be so much easier not to care, but then I wouldn’t be me. It’s too fucking much sometimes. 

“—I’m so sorry.” She pulls him into a bear hug, ignoring what the musk of two days in bed smells like and clutching his back tightly. Right now he is a friend in need, and she has never turned those away. “Kass and Red are about to put the cherry on top of the shit sundae that has been these games, but— “she breaks the embrace and leans on the table behind her.

“I’m here for you, if you need to talk about someone other than them.”

She has always wanted to help people. But some things cannot be fixed with fudge and peanut brittle.

[aya]

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hid a part of you that’s so invaluable
the part of you unsellable at any amount
left the tallest peak of your paradise
buried in the bottom of a canyon in hell

He blinks.

"Yeah," Katelyn confirms, "It's bad. Snow must be popping a blood vessel."

Still in a fog, it takes a moment for the words to reach all the way into his brain. "Huh," he observes after a long pause, like he'd never considered the possibility before. Voice flattening the regular wry humor into a simple statement of fact, he reassess the situation: "Maybe it's good, then."

Absent, his eyes fall back to the tablet in hand. The girls — girls, his tribute is Cedar's age and Katelyn's is even younger — emerge from the mist, a laser show backing in neon, scenery melodramatic like some Capitol concert. A symphony of suck, he supposes.

"Arbor, look, I —"

He looks.

"— I'm so sorry."

He swallows the lie he told to Cedar, over and over on loop last nigh— three nights ago. It's okay. The instinct to lie is ingrained, ingrown, swollen and too painful to touch today. Neither of them would believe it, anyway, and not in the way that Cedar wouldn't have believed it when he'd heard. His whole life, Arbor Halt has never known what makes lies hurt less than the truth sometimes and not others. He can't bring himself to reciprocate her tight hug, but it is a comfort and he doesn't fight it, either. "Me too," he finally mumbles.

There's so much to regret, but he can't feel any of it anymore. He should regret that, too.

"Kass and Red are about to put the cherry on top of the shit sundae that has been these Games, but —"

There is always a shit sundae. There has always been a shit sundae, there will always be a shit sundae, just like there will always be someone poised to make it worse. The cherry could be named Kass or Red, just like it could be named Nico or Harbinger or Ansgar fucking Todd. Twenty-eight years ago, he was the cherry on top. There have been shit sundaes as long as there has been ice cream, and he doesn't know why it's taken him so long to realize — wasn't he supposed to be clever? — but it doesn't matter if it was smashed in his face last year, if it's Katelyn's mess this year, if it's someone else's duty the next.

"— I'm here for you, if you need to talk about someone other than them."

It's kind, he thinks, the way she dances around saying Cedar. He nods — thanks — and then shakes his head. Today isn't the day, but maybe he'll be able to stomach it tomorrow. And if he wakes up in the morning and tells himself the same thing, well, at least he'll still be looking toward the future.

His voice is quite when he asks her: "Are you going to be okay?"

He doesn't know whether he means if Kass wins or if she doesn't. It's so fucked up, the way he isn't sure which kid's death he should be hoping for. The way he isn't hoping for anyone to win. Rooting against and not for. The way he doesn't flinch when one arm drops in microgravity, followed by another. An arm and a leg, a pound of flesh, there are children paying for the sins of their parents and their parents' parents and their parents' parents' parents, and... someone will be forced to put the cherry on top and start the cycle over again.

If Red wins... if Kass wins... big picture, it doesn't matter, does it? Everyone who was in that arena has someone who misses them now that they're gone. District Twelve, District Eleven, doesn't matter — there will be other losses over this. Jobs. Families. Heads. The Hunger Games are presented as zero-sum, but it's an open secret that it's a net loss for everyone involved. For everyone on the sidelines. If he'd known twenty-eight years ago that cutting down District Eight would doom a good-hearted boy who hadn't even been born yet, he'd've dropped the knife before the last cannon fired. (District Eight. Jared Strahan. Nell Cyprus. He hadn't even realized.)

Why did Arbor ask her that? No one's ever told a lie more boldfaced than it's okay.

palace - the antlers

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Anything that’s bad for the Capitol is a good thing. In her younger days, she would have been more gung-ho about his response. But that was before she learned how the world worked. Me too, he says, and she bites her lip.

Arbor Halt is the strongest man she knows. But he can’t see it. And he won’t see it, as long as his brow is beaten in, as long as his shoulders are weighed down by the world. He asks her if she will be okay and her heart skips a beat.

He has proved her point. In the depths of his sorrow, he is thinking of someone else.

Her hand brushes his fingers, and for a split-second, she feels—

something.

Built up static from the blanket he’s wrapped in. Must have been.

A pair of arms gets cut off and she feels a dull ache in her stomach. It’s horrible. As terrible as when Harbinger’s leg was cut out from under him. As horrible as Wyatt taking Kirito’s eye. But for a moment it feels unreal and so very far away.

Instead of taking his hand, she puts her hands on his shoulders and looks at him. Really looks at him. Seeing the pain curdling into numbness because it’s just too much and he can’t let himself feel anymore. He deserved better than this. They all did. Somehow, the bitter acceptance in his eyes is worse than a thousand Cricket Antoinette’s. Worse than a thousand laughing Chaske Parks.

Icy blue eyes lock onto cloudy grey and between them a storm is brewing. The question means more than he knows. For all the help she’s given. For all the parts she’s played. It is a rare thing for something to ask her how she is. She cannot remember the last time someone asked her what she wanted.

The kicker is that she does not know the answer.

“No. No, I’m not going to be okay. No matter which way this shakes out.” She looks down at her shoes and the smear of corn syrup and then back to the man, the mentor she should have listened to a decade ago. He’d looked out for then, hadn’t he? Gently trying to nudge her in the right direction. Kind of him.

Kinder still when the world has never been kind to him.

There is something building in her chest. What it is, she is unsure of. Injustice. Anger. Her heart breaks for him. Perhaps they are more alike than she has ever taken the time to see. He has Aranica and Heron and Stella and Nico to worry about. They have taken his son. His nephew. She thinks there must have been a family member or two of his fellows.

“You’re not okay either, Arbor.” She leans forward, her lips almost brushing his. She can feel the roughness of his beard on her face and it sends a shiver down her spine.  She bites her lip. She is unsure if this is what she wants. If this is appropriate. But the weight of the last few days is bearing down on her and she thinks it might crush her if she watches this fight alone.

“Do—do you think I can hold onto you? And as this finale concludes, we—

We can be not okay together?”