Lyrics from O' Sister by City and Colour
Oh sister
What's wrong with your mind?
"Cashmere, open the door. Please?" Gloss' voice was strained as it came through the solid wooden bedroom door. The pain was clear in every syllable and every bang of his fist against the barrier between him and his sister. She had locked the door forty hours ago and he was well and truly worried now. It didn't help that between the pounding beats against the door only an aching silence answered him. "Please, Cash, please," he begged, resting his head against the wood. He lifted a hand and pressed it flat against the surface, wishing that it could be as simple as reaching out and touching her.
He would do anything in his power to take away her pain but he knew from his own experience of victory that it was a battle that had to be fought in her head. Still, he would hold her together while she battled the demons if only she'd let him but instead she was locking out the world and locking him out with it.
You used to be so strong and stable
My sister
"Gloss, you're safe. They're not real, it's okay." Cashmere's gentle voice seeped through the fog of panic in his brain and eventually the haunting shapes of dead tributes surrounding him faded and the bedroom of his house in the Victor's Village of District 1 materialised.
The sensations of familiarity seeped back one by one. The warmth of Cashmere's arms pressed around him, the scent of blossom that he always associated with his sisters' childhood bedroom, the distant sound of the wind ripping through the trees outside. Storms always made his memories of the Arena worse, he'd find himself straight back in the howling forest filled with eerie screams and screeches that he couldn't pick as human or animal.
"Their eyes, Cash, they look at me," he gasped, his voice breaking as a sob caught in his throat. He pressed his face to the silky fabric of her shirt and her arms tightened protectively around him, her fingers stroking rhythmically through his hair.
"It's not your fault Gloss," she murmured in his ear and just like always her voice lulled his heartbeat back to a steady pace. "It's not your fault, you had to come home to me, no one blames you."
"I came home to you," he repeated in a trance, nodding slightly. She'd begged him in the Justice Building and he'd promised that he wouldn't leave her. He'd kept his promise even though it had cost him his soul. He'd done it for her and now she was here, pulling him back together again just like she always had.
What made you fall from grace?
I'm sorry that I was not there to catch you
They hadn't let him be her mentor even though he had fought them tooth and nail. As soon as her name had been called out on Reaping Day he had been at their throat, demanding that they let him replace Sheen as her mentor.
"No one else is going to want to get her out of that Arena more than me!" he shouted at the mayor in his office while his sister had her final meeting with their family somewhere else in the Justice Building. He refused to say goodbye to her because she was going to come home again but no matter how much he yelled, persuaded, threatened, begged, they refused too.
"It's a conflict of interest," was all they would repeat blandly at him, the blankness of their eyes telling him they didn't give a damn that his heart was breaking.
He was there for her Victory party but it was too late, the ghosts already haunted her eyes.
"Cash, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry but I'm here now, I'm not leaving you I promise," he whispered in her ear as he held her to him, his little sister who he'd never seen without her fighting spirit but who now collapsed into him like she couldn't handle the weight of the world that had been placed on her young shoulders.
What have the demons done?
What have the demons done?
With the luminous light that once shined from your eyes
What makes you feel so alone?
"They're cheering for you, Cash," he said softly, trying to pull her back to the present. Outside their district was celebrating their second win in a row and the party in the Town Square was well underway, waiting for their beautiful new victor to make her appearance on the steps of the Justice Building. He watched her closely, trying to find her where she had disappeared inside herself.
"What?" she said, blinking and turning to look at him. She'd been so far away. He sighed and walked over to her, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face the window, lifting her chin to direct her gaze out to the crowd below them.
"They're happy you're home, Cashmere." He tucked a strand of her golden hair behind one ear, curling the tip around his finger like he used to when they were children. "I'm happy you're home." He was. He'd never been so glad of anything in his life than he was that she had kept her promise too and returned to him. He only wished that he could have had the sister who had laughed while she sparred breathlessly with him in the training centre, who would climb fearlessly up onto the roof to rescue Taffy's doll when the boys had stolen it, the girl whose eyes gleamed with happiness every time she looked at the delicate silver sword that had belonged to their mother and now belonged to her. The girl standing next to him now was a shadow of that other girl, but he would wait patiently, and do everything that he could till she came back to him.
Is it the whispering ghosts
That you feared the most?
He knew the panic that could leave you weak and shaking as the faces of dead people materialised in your nightmares. He knew how their reaching fingers wrapping cold as ice around your body would try and tear terrified screams from your throat. He knew how it felt to find yourself unable to scream, unable to move in your own head as they crept up on you. So when he would walk uninvited into her bedroom and find her tangled in her sheets like she was tangled in her nightmares, pale, shaking, gasping for breath like there really were hands gripped tight around her throat, he knew that all the gentle, soothing words and reassuring caresses in the world couldn't make it better, even if they came from him.
But the blackness in your heart
Won't last forever
I know it's tearing you apart
But it's a storm you can weather
It took three months before he allowed himself to hope.
"Gloss, the leaves are changing," she said suddenly one day, emerging from her deep silence that she had barely broken since returning. He had been standing at the kitchen counter, filling their glasses with the spicy, scented tea of District 1. Hearing her voice his head flew up, his eyes flying automatically to where she was curled in the bay window, arms wrapped around her knees and gaze fixed hazily on the rippling tree tops out the window.
He tried to stop his hands shaking with hope, tried to suppress the desperate anticipation he felt at hearing her voice for the first time in months, not heavy with despair or numb with shock. Slowly he filled the glasses and carried them across to the window, placing them lightly on the surface at her feet. He climbed into the window opposite her and followed her gaze out to where the brilliant emerald leaves of summer were beginning to turn fiery crimson, gentle burning orange and pale yellow.
"They are," he agreed softly.
"It's beautiful," she murmured. He looked back at her, his eyes running over the delicate features of her face and tumbling, golden curls that were just as beautiful as the view out the window.
Oh sister
My sister