Did You Say That She Loved You? [Leland/Damaris]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Leland Durrow

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
Well, I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

I sat in the dark of the living room on the old beat up plaid couch, hands between my legs. I hold a little fat white porcelain horse. It was one of your favorites, I think.

I was all dressed, beanie on my head, jacket on, boots tied, but I couldn’t move. Just kept on looking at that door, kept thinking about how I could walk right out and see you again. And it’s all fucked up, you know? Thinking about how I could see you again, but it’s not you. It’s what they thought you were, put together with all the bits and pieces they broke off of you. Not the Dam that I knew.

Not the girl that used to like to dance with me or play cards until the sun went down. The one who climbed up on my shoulders and hopped the fence into the park. Or the one that used to have that little smirk when I said something stupid. You weren’t the happiest kid and I know that, but you still could make me happy. And I – I never told you that, I don’t think. Not before all the fighting took over. All the times that we’d have a good day, and then it felt like it just, disappeared, because me and Birdie would have it out about nothing at all.

And all the time that I spent on myself because I wasn’t ready to love you.

Fuck.

I wasn’t ready, you know? I feel like it takes a man to admit that.

What does an eighteen-year-old know about being a dad? And I got shitty parents, and they had shitty parents. We live in a place where it’s hard enough to have running water, you think we have time to learn what it means to take care of each other? You were always running around and crying about everything. You once cried because I wouldn’t let you drink bleach as a toddler. You know that? You wanted to drink from the big white jug in the kitchen and I said no, and plop on the floor, wailing.

Arg was the one that said it was going to ruin my life. Being a dad.

I put my head on my palm, and set my elbow down on the corner of the couch. I didn’t have to go and see it at all, you know? It was just something they put out to make folks forget about their own shitty little lives. Getting to talk to dead people that they saw on the television screen, and gawk at how they could get up close. Something almost gross about it all, digging up the dead.

But I sit there in the dark, waiting for the sun to come up. Thinking about how I’ll still have to go to work at the diner in the morning. How Birdie’s still in that big house all alone. And I wonder when my life is supposed to get any easier.

Birdie’s told me enough to know it’s not getting any easier. That I wasted a whole hell of a lot of time on me, instead of spending it with them.

I wish I could say I wanted to. That it was worth it.

But it’s not that I didn’t love you. It’s that every time I looked at you it reminded me –

It reminded me that this whole world’s just fucked up, and that the only good thing we ever made together was you. And then we broke that too.

Not all at once. But like it always happens, bit by bit. Me forgetting your eighth birthday. Me getting drunk and getting you back too late. Me helping you do a science project on mold that smelled so bad you got in trouble. Me, moving from one thing to another, half-assing it when I had to do the hard parts.

I could’ve just gone to work, clocked in, said hey to the boys on the line. Left it for another day. And if I left it for another day, I probably wouldn’t have done it at all.

I turn the white horse between my hands.

I don’t do it for me. And it’s maybe one of the first times in a while I can say it.

When I get to the doors of the Justice Building, street lights are starting to turn down. Sun’s coming up and they’ve just unlocked the door. I think about turning around, but the little horse in my shirt pocket hangs heavy over my heart.

I get into the little room they have squared away, all concrete and devoid of anything but the machine and projector. I key in your name, and wait for the lights to start.

“D-Damaris?” I say, and it’s all I can bear, then. "Is it you?"

“I missed you.”

I follow you down until the sound
Of my voice will haunt you
(Give me just a chance)
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the woman that loved you

*Silver Springs, Stevie Nicks

[goat]

damaris hope

She is not Damaris Hope. She was her, once, maybe, or maybe she will be her in the future, but for now, she is not. She is an amalgamation of light and static, of human created colors. She does not exist for herself, but rather, to be called upon by others. To spit pre-programmed knowledge and advice. And for what reason, exactly? To make people in Eight bear the guilt of her death? Trust me, they bear that guilt and much more already.

It looks like her, well enough. It has the same stringy dark hair, the fine lines around her eyes, the sunburnt cheeks. You can cycle through her outfits like she’s a doll— reaping day florals, opening ceremony dramatics, arena cowboy chic. If you turn the dial all the way to the right, you get her death look— thick blood dribbled down her front and her left eye gored out— but she’ll still speak to you as if she’s never been more alive. It’s sickening, it’s beautiful, it’s a marvel of technology, it’s an invasion of privacy. You can say whatever you want about it but you cannot make them uninvent it.

When a name is entered into the computer, it takes a moment for the lights to flicker to life. Capitol technology always runs a little differently in the Districts. Seems their power grids weren’t designed to support holograms of murdered children. After Leland typed out his daughter’s name, there was a brief silence that felt loud enough to deafen.

And then, it was like Damaris was alive again.

She observed the room, taking note of the exit, trying to decide which would be the best corner to curl up in. If she were flesh and bone, she would feel the uncomfortable chill of the building and wish she had a blanket. She felt like the world would be better if it were socially acceptable to wear a blanket cape everywhere.

Leland stared up at her. “D-Damaris? Is it you?”

A pause. “I missed you.”

“Dad,” she breathed. When they’d spoken in the Justice Building, moments after the reaping, it had been the first time they’d spoken in a while. She wasn’t really sure how to talk to him then. She still wasn’t. It was easier when she was a child, even though it felt like she’d been a miserable adult forever, because they didn’t have to have the hard conversations. “You don’t have to miss me. I’m right here.”

She smiled, that crooked, sad smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I tried. I know you probably never thought I was trying, but— I tried so hard. All the time.” She blew out a sigh and crossed her arms. If she were alive, she would try to get out of this difficult conversation, but she was dead, and at the whim of whoever pulled her up on the computer. If Saturn were there, he would probably try to facilitate the conversation with a dumb joke or two, because he could read her better than anybody. Maybe someone would pull them up together, eventually.

She rocked back on her heels. “Did you come with Mom?”

A stupid question, but she’d asked it anyway.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Leland Durrow

Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
Well, I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me

And there she was.

Fuzzy, pale and golden, my girl.

Breath catches in my throat and I choke, her light bathing me. There’s her eyes, curious as the day I held her in my arms, staring back at me. Hair a sort of mess that said she couldn’t care to be bothered, or that she’d just woken up from another depression nap at four o’clock in the afternoon not knowing where she was. But there, lights cascading her to life, was Damaris.

And I want to hate what they’ve done to my little girl, you know? I want to say, this is a fuckin’ abomination, treating her like some kind of carnival ride. Except here I am, standing in front of what’s the closest thing to the girl I never got to say goodbye to, and I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

I remember the day she died. Standing in front of the tv when the kids attacked her out of nowhere, cheering on the oaf she’d made friends with every time he lit one of those fuckers up for getting close to her. But he didn’t save her.

Seemed like her life ended just as it’d been written, with another person letting her down, even after all the faith she’d put into him.

You can’t say what kind of tear losing a child puts into you, until you have to see it, have to know that they’re never coming back. And I know I sure as shit didn’t hold a candle to some folks out here but I know that me? I loved her. All the nights that I got to cradle her in my arms when she fell asleep as a baby? The times we played cards, we danced, we sang, we hopped fences into parks after hours, the days when she would sit in her room and I know I should’ve said something about how sad she was, they – you fall apart, when you think about how all of those things are memories.

Memories.

Little pieces of fiction in your head, collecting dust now that you don’t have a chance to ever make new ones.

‘Dad,’ She cuts through the silence and it’s ice in my veins, but I’m gritting my teeth to hold it all back, and not start bawling. She’s fuckin’ beautiful, even made of light, maybe more so. I half expect her to tell me to get the hell out of here, but Damaris would’ve never, she would’ve been quiet, just let me coil the rope to hang myself with.

‘ I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I tried. I know you probably never thought I was trying, but— I tried so hard. All the time.’

“I know, I – you did good, kiddo,” I try to fill the room up with my voice and cut through the cracks, but the back of my throat is dry. I cross my arms across my chest to press back the tightness grinding through my ribs. There’s a lump in my throat, too, stopping up all the things I could have said. Like, no one ever asked you to try so fucking hard, and you fought harder than every other goddamn person in there. Fuck the kid who came home, fuck the games, fuck Kharon.

‘Did you come with mom?’

“Birdie wanted to…” I started to lie to her, because it’s me, it’s what I’ve learned to do after all this time. It’s what put Damaris up in a box, it’s what had Birdie fall down the stairs, it’s me living like I’m eighteen and not thirty-six. And here it has me lying to a fucking low-lit projection of Damaris, as though telling her that her mother wanted to come, really, that we were going to come and see her together, she just wasn’t feeling well, was somehow saving the not-Damaris from some sort of heartache.

And part of me thinks that this Damaris would see through the lie, too, and just smile the sort of sad little smile that told me she knew it all already. But she wasn’t going to make both of us feel bad about it, which only meant both of us were going to feel worse about it later.

“I came by myself.” I say, and I step close enough to her that it doesn’t feel like I’m hiding anymore, but bathed in the white of her light. “She doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t know if she’d want to be. I wanted to see you for myself.”

I let the silence speak for both of us, but I can’t ever let it last too long.

“What would you have told me, Damaris? What should I have known?”

I follow you down until the sound
Of my voice will haunt you
(Give me just a chance)
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the woman that loved you

*Silver Springs, Stevie Nicks