Note: So I just can't get away from this. It's amazing practice for my original work, and I'm definitely learning by writing this stuff. Most stories now-a-days are trilogies right? So why shouldn't mine be? :P As always read and review, take another look at Keep Fighting/Stay Strong.
As I stood in front of 174 Lyle Avenue, I seriously started to wonder what I was doing here. Nothing would come of it, and rehashing painful old memories wasn't something I enjoyed doing. After all, it had been twelve years. I started to doubt that Victoria Clarke was even here. Maybe some old man would answer the door when I knocked, shoo me away, and I could go home without finding any answers, back to my life. Back to what was easy.
This definitely was not easy. Not only had I lied to Katniss about where I was going and why, but I hadn't told her anything about what I had found in the diary or what it could possibly mean. All of it was for nothing. Even if Victoria Clarke answered the door, it wouldn't bring Sydney back. I knew when I stepped out of my door this morning that it couldn't lead to anything, yet here I was. There was no use turning back now. I raised my hand and rapped on the door, my mind flashing back to how I even got here in the first place.
It had started after Gale's wedding. We were cleaning the place up, putting away chairs and tables and boxes of left over decorations. Gale and Grace had gone on their honeymoon, and it was up to the Mellarks and Everdeens to make the spacious expanse of grass in front our houses look like it had before the festivities.
"Last box." I said, lifting up the fairly heavy black case with relative ease. It was the one my son had brought out. The one that held all of the old memories. As I hefted it off of the table, it tilted and something fell out onto the ground.
"Thank god." Katniss said, wiping sweat from her forehead.
She bent down to pick up what looked like a leather bound book. She turned it over in her hands several times, then put it back inside the box I was currently trying to balance.
"What is that?" I asked as she replaced the lid.
"It's a journal." She answered. "Sydney's journal."
"Why do we have it?"
Katniss sighed a little, shifting in place. I knew that I was one of the few people she could talk openly to about her dead best friend, and even twelve years later it was hard for her. For a second I thought about dropping it, but she answered me.
"After her funeral, they let me go to her apartment to pick up her things. There wasn't much. Basically everything she owned was official thirteen property, as she never had any of her own money. It was all Coin's. The only thing she had to her name was this journal, and they told me to take it. Her belongings were supposed to pass to an immediate relative, but Sydney didn't have any."
"What does it say?" I didn't want to push her, but I couldn't help but be curious.
Katniss shrugged. "I don't know. I've never read it. Or opened it. It was too hard. It is too hard."
She smiled at me and clicked the lid in place, then walked away. I headed towards the basement to put the box away, my mind stuck on the journal. It was so hard to get inside Sydney's head. She had always hidden her emotions so well, and the thought of finally getting to see her true thoughts got the best of me.
I set the box down in a corner on the basement floor. Popping the lid open, I saw the journal in its place on the very top. It was clearly expensive, probably a gift from one person or another. A strange symbol was emblazoned on the front. It took me a second, but I eventually recognized it as the logo of the Academy, an elite private school in district thirteen that Sydney had attended.
When I cracked it open, I found the leather worn and bent, clearly from over use. The first page was a dedication of sorts, indicating the journal was a gift for the graduates of the academy to capture their future adventures in. The second page made my stomach twist. Sydney's scrawled handwriting, slightly faded from years in the box, decorated the entire page.
I hesitated. Reading this would be painful, and I wasn't sure I wanted to put myself through that. And what if I didn't like what I found? What if Sydney was someone different from the girl I remembered? The thought of tainting her memory almost made me pack up the box, but I knew that I wouldn't rest until I knew what was hidden in those pages, so I read on.
I guess this is supposed to be some sort of coping mechanism. They say we'll have a hard time once we get out of the academy, but I honestly can't wait. Maybe people in the real world will actually have more to them than pointless drama and overly inflated egos.
A gasp escaped my throat. I could hear Sydney saying the words inside my head. The sarcastic lilt to her voice, a roll of the eyes as she thought of the ridiculous notion that she would need help coping. Sydney Harper didn't need help. At least she didn't think she did. It was eerie, like seeing a ghost in my basement. I pushed away the small part of me that was actually afraid and continued to read, soaking in Sydney's words like it would somehow bring her back.
And it did, at least for a little while. For hours I sat on the basement floor, pouring through Sydney's words. She wrote often at first, then once she got assigned to the squad it became less frequent. She talked about me, about Katniss, about finally feeling like she belonged. There was a large gap while she was in captivity, and after that her voice changed.
She became much more self-deprecating. It was clear that Sydney had suffered more from PTSD than any of us realized. Her thoughts were jumbled and dark and unsure, so unlike the Sydney Harper I remembered. It wasn't a bad thing, it just hurt me to know that she was in so much pain and I hadn't done anything. We were supposed to be her friends, but I couldn't remember anyone trying to pry through her hard exterior, except for maybe Gale.
There was a lot about him in the journal. Almost immediately after entering the squad she talked about liking him, then she talked about missing him, and finally about realizing she was in love with him. The most painful parts were when she talked about purposely pushing him away, because I knew what it felt like to be that guy.
It finally got to the part of our lives where Katniss had her accident. Sydney's words were all about her fear for my wife's life, and nothing about having feelings for me, until the entry where we kissed. I felt relieved and awful at the same time. That had been such a strange time for me that I sometimes even forgot about it, as a result of trying to push the memory away for so long.
After she got back to district thirteen, things began to get interesting. The first entry that struck me was one where she talked about her mother.
I saw one of my mother's old friends today. Not Coin. My actual mother. He seemed to suggest that I look into her death, as he mentioned a lot of things I didn't know. Tomorrow I'll go to the archives. Not that I'll find anything. But how can I let that go?
The next day she wrote about how she had read in her mother's file that she hadn't died in childbirth, but had gone missing and been presumed diseased. Sydney resolved to find her, and the next few entries of her journal suggested that she was on some sort of trail. It slowed down when she went to prison again. The final entry caught Peeta's attention more than any other. It was the only one that wasn't dated, and it had only three lines.
Victoria Clarke.
174 Lyle Avenue.
District Four
I turned the page eagerly, but it was blank. As was every page after that. The journal entries stopped. They must have left for the mission, and Sydney had never returned to finish what she had started.
My heart fell into my stomach. For some reason, the thought of something Sydney was so invested in going unfinished tore me up. Maybe it was because I knew that if she hadn't died she wouldn't have rested until this was done. Maybe it was because I felt like I owed her something. Maybe it was even that I still missed her, even after all this time.
So I had made the executive decision to do what needed to be done to find whatever Sydney had been looking for. This had to be where she thought her mother was, and I assumed she had never managed to go visit her. So I would do it. For Sydney, and for myself, because I had just read through her thoughts, and I felt like I knew her better now than I ever did, and I was invested in this mystery.
The next day I told Katniss I was going on a business trip to do some stuff for Haymitch. My main job was for the bakery, but sometimes Haymitch had me run political errands for him because he considered me such a people person.
I stopped by his house to ask him to cover for me.
"Is this going to hurt Katniss?" He asked.
"Haymitch, come on. I wouldn't do that. It's just something I can't tell her, ok?"
He peered at me through narrowed eyes, gauging whether he felt like trusting me or not. Then he shrugged and said he would, but made me swear that if this hurt her I would agree to having my ass kicked.
One train ride and a short walk later, and I was standing in front of 174 Lyle Avenue, knocking on the door and wondering what the hell I would find. After a few tense moments, a heard locks turning, and the door opened to reveal a woman with graying hair and a wrinkled face. She stood with great dignity, and I could see Sydney in her sparkling green eyes. Maybe it was hopeful to think that I had come to the right place, but I smiled to myself.
"I'm not interested in whatever you want to sell me. They invented phones for this so I could ignore you people." She said. Her face was cross, and I almost laughed at how Sydney-like her words were.
"I'm not selling anything, ma'am." I let out a nervous laugh. "Are you Victoria Clarke?"
Her face softened a little, and she did a double take to the house behind her, then spun back to face me. "I am. And who are you?"
"My name is Peeta Mellark. This is going to sound crazy, but I need to talk to you about an old friend of mine. She was searching for her mother, but she passed away twelve years ago. I found the remnants of her search in a journal, and your name and this address were the last thing she found out. Her name was Sydney Harper."
Victoria Clarke's face turned pale. The sky above us rumbled, and I felt a raindrop hit my shoulder. It started to rain a little harder, and she sighed, waving me inside.
I stepped through the door after her and followed her down a small hallway and into an expensive looking kitchen. The house was small enough, but small decorations here and there indicated that this woman came from some sort of wealth.
"Would you like some tea?" She asked, pouring water into a kettle.
"Please." The rain had chilled me, and hot tea sounded wonderful. Plus I needed something to calm me down. My nerves were on end, and I wasn't totally sure what I had gotten into. This woman clearly knew something, or she wouldn't have let me in.
The water for the tea was set to boil, and Victoria Clarke turned back around to face me, uncrossing her arms and leaning against the kitchen island. She looked tense, and she was nervously tapping her finger on the counter. I noticed her glance at the clock, but shook it off.
"You were a friend of my daughters?" She asked.
"So you're her mother." I whispered. "I thought you were dead."
"So did Sydney." Victoria was silent for a moment. I didn't want to push her or judge her prematurely, but I couldn't help thinking about Tim and Marley, and wondering how someone could just abandon their children. "I can see the judgment in your eyes, you know." She said.
"I just don't understand."
The tea whistled, and she headed over to pour it into two mugs. Tea bags followed, and she set one down in front of one of the island seats, urging me to sit. When I was settled, grasping the warm mug in my hands, she spoke again.
"You will find, Mr. Mellark, that when you have children, you will do everything you can in their best interest. It may not seem like it at first, but every move you make will be for them."
"I have two kids of my own." I took a sip of tea.
"So you understand." She said. "When I left, I did it because I could see my husband, Sydney's father, for what he really was, a monster. He is the cruelest man I've ever met, and I didn't realize it until it was too late."
"So why would you leave Sydney with him? And Coin? I mean have you met her?"
"I have, and if I had known that was going to happen, I wouldn't have left. I didn't leave Sydney by choice. After I had Sydney, her father had no further use for me. He saw that I had no money or power being married to me was pointless. A good friend intercepted a conversation with between my husband and another man where he planned to have me killed."
I choked on my tea. "Why not just leave you?"
"Because that would've been bad for his image." She let out a fake laugh, but I could see the pain behind the smile. "So naturally I had to leave. The plan was to take Sydney and run away. A friend of a friend would hide us here, in district four."
"So what happened?"
"My husband figured out our plan. I took Sydney from her crib and started to sneak out, but he was waiting in the living room. He told me that if I left right then and took Sydney with me, he would find and kill us both, or rather kill her while I had to watch, then kill me. If I left alone, he would never pursue me, and he promised to never harm my daughter. So you see Mr. Mellark, I did what was best for Sydney, even though it destroyed me."
Taking another sip of tea, I tried to let this sink in. When I came here, I had hated Sydney's mother for leaving her. Now I thought she was a hero. Sydney's family had been so screwed up, but her mother truly loved her, and that much was obvious now.
"I'm sorry I misjudged you. I just didn't think—"
"Anyone would marry someone so awful? Me neither." She took a sip of her own tea. Her hands shook and she glanced at the clock again.
"Mrs. Clarke, if I'm the one who broke the news to you about Sydney's death, I'm so sorry."
"You didn't. I've followed my daughters movements since the day I left. Friends in thirteen who knew I was alive helped with that. Then when she got older and the rebellion began, I could follow the news. I saw the Hunger Games, saw her save that little girls life, and I knew that my daughter had become an amazing woman, despite her upbringing. I've never been prouder, and I know how she sacrificed herself to save Panem. I can't imagine how hard it was for her to kill her own father."
Something stopped me. For a moment I wasn't sure, but the nagging feeling materialized, and I asked, "how did you know that?"
"Know what?"
"That Sydney killed her father. It wasn't mentioned in the mission report that he was even there."
Mrs. Clarke took another nervous sip of tea. Took another glance at the clock. Tapped her fingers. Shifted her weight. She wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Mrs. Clarke, why did you invite me into your house? I'm a stranger. Just because I said I was friends with your daughter? You didn't owe me this. There was no reason for you to let me in, especially if you knew Sydney was dead."
She sighed. "Do you remember how I said that as parents we always do what's best for our children, even if it isn't necessarily what they want?"
A clap of thunder sounded outside, then I heard a key jingle in a lock. Mrs. Clarke's face had gone pale again, and she sipped her tea. The warmth had slipped out of mine, and I turned towards the hallway.
"Mom?" I heard a voice sound from the doorway.
"In here." Mrs. Clarke answered, her voice shaking.
There was no way. I had heard the voice, but it must have been some sort of mistake, or maybe I was just hearing things. It had to be this environment, this house. Because I was with Sydney's mother, I had heard something that wasn't actually there.
"I brought you some groceries." A girl stepped through the hallway door. When she saw me, her smile dropped. A smile I would know anywhere. A voice I would know anywhere. Because Sydney Harper was standing five feet in front of me.