Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own The Hunger Games. This is a Christmas present for my bestie Noah, who requested a fic of Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen meeting. Merry Christmas, Noah! :)
Hot dragging summer turns to crisp, unrelenting fall and winter. Leaves drift and dance and get in the way. Miners wake at the crack of dusky grey and pink dawn with puffs of clouds for breath. Dust rises when they kick it into the waiting plates of coal colored snow.
The Seam smells of smoke and silence. Looks of cracked house logs and sounds of low dog howls. Dark leafless woods mark the edge of the Meadow, full of pale yellow grass.
The merchant area, full of shifting feet hurrying into warmer orange-lit houses. Wind blowing around the Square. The Hall of Justice dusty grey and hard marble white. Grey and white and cold exhales and harsh breathing.
Beatrice, straggly blonde hair, seventeen-years-old. Behind the apothecary's shop counter, mortar and pestle in her trembling hands. Fresh from an anxious day at school. Margaret wasn't there today. Maysilee's ghost and hers are gone, one to a grave full of red punctures and the other in bed, blinding headaches plaguing her. Beatrice spends many an afternoon by the faint light of a dim light bulb wiping wispy hair out of her friend's hair, worrying. Experienced in illnesses and their cures, Beatrice knows when something is incurable. And Margaret's headaches and Maysilee's death are somethings like that.
Grinding lamb balm into a gritty paste for tea, in some inane hope for a cure for her friend, Beatrice looks up. The apothecary's shop bell rings, signaling someone. Someone with desperation and heartache burdening their shoulders, begging for an answer and a cure with nothing to give except empty promises and a hope for mercy.
A boy with dark hair, a pale grey pall to his olive skin. Ragged clothing, strong muscles well used to chip hopelessly away at the Capitol's mines for the Capitol's coal for the Capitol's energy. Determined look on his strong, worn face, with lips curved into an inquisitive pucker. Surprised by the proprietor being a young merchant girl.
She holds his gaze, putting down the rough pestle someone had made to pay her father back for a week's worth of arthritis pills. Next to her, beside the sparse candlelight trying to outlive the afternoon, is a bronze, chipped cage. A small yellow bird stops its incessant chirping and stares at the store's invader as Beatrice does.
"We don't take credit here," she says.
The thought "'Course she's going to say that" owns his face. Then he blinks and walks forward with his lips pressed firm. No twist of amusement to him now as he lays his palm down on the scrubbed clean counter. Lifting it up, showing a palm's worth of old well-used coins. "Immune system strengthening pills, please. As much as this can purchase. Don't expect credit from me, Miss Chatham," he says.
She meets his eyes quickly before she sweeps the money into her palm and enters the combination of keys into the ancient cash register. The drawer springs open and she sorts the money in, trying as she can to not look ashamed of her treatment of this Seam man.
The canary's head cocks and the young man smiles a little. Crosses a step or two towards the cage. The twitty thing takes a step back or two, never blinking.
The young man cracks the faintest of ironic smiles. "People in the Seam can barely afford to eat, never mind provide something for minute pets," he says.
"I was given it," Beatrice says defensively. She looks up and watches him as he wiggles a dirty finger at the bird.
"Merchants and the Capitol; they all like their little pets, don't they? Their little dots of care, while the people on the outskirts starve in their poverty-stricken backyard," he says softly, to himself.
"He was Maysilee Donner's," Beatrice pipes up.
The young man's grey eyes pass over to her fearful, quiet blue. "How'd you come by it?" he wonders in a softer tone. Everyone knows Maysilee Donner; one of four tributes killed in that year's Quarter Quell, pecked to bloody death by pink killer birds. Any relation to her proves a want for sympathy.
"She was my friend," Beatrice says, not wanting to speak to this dirty boy but wanting him leave her father's shop set right. "After she . . . died, her sister, Marge, got sick." He nods. He's noticed, as everyone can't help but, that after the Hunger Games, the Donner twins were gone from school. "His chirping didn't help her headaches. So her mother gave him to me."
Beatrice turns quickly and begins to pull down mason jars marked with scraps of white tape and black chalky pencil: searching for the right pills.
The young man focuses his attention on the trembling, curious bird. The canary gives a faint chirp.
"Does he sing?" The young man asks.
Beatrice puzzles over the question, wondering why this Seam guy wants information surrounding a tiny bird, as she goes on tiptoes and replaces the mason jar: laxatives, not immune system building. "Not a lot," she says. "Not since he came here."
"Hmmm." Then as she pulls out the right jar full of expensive little green pills, she stops. A whistle, low and seasoned, practiced and expert, fills the small shop. A-roo, a-roo. She turns slowly and watches the young man try to instigate the bird's voice. The whistle escapes the young man's dry, cracked lips. It is the most unexpected and beautiful of things to escape from such a dirty, unpromising social reject.
"C'mon, little guy," the young man says, intonation in his voice lending to urging and laughter. "I'm giving you a weapon and a tool, and you're ignoring me."
Beatrice turns away, trying to appear uninterested. But her ears perk up as she measures a little metal scoop full of the medicine to feed the top of her father's balancing scale. She aches for words to this haunting, daring tune, and then, without a word from her, he lends some.
Are you, are you, coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say mur—
He stops, swallowing back the words with a look of realization over his face. Beatrice pretends she didn't hear the words and she doesn't know he can sing as she pours the little pills into a square of parchment paper. Her heart pounds as he comes over to the counter.
"Were you two very close?" the young man asks.
Beatrice nods. She and the twins hung out all the time. Then she and Margaret bits and pieces when Maysilee died. Then she walked the school's halls by herself.
The young man nods sympathetically, and that's the first time Beatrice has ever seen someone from the Seam give a scrap of empathy to a Merchant's daughter.
He grasps the top of the twisted bag and says, "What's your name?"
"Beatrice," she says quietly, her voice cracking.
"Travis Everdeen," he says. He nods and says, "See you at school." He disappears into the snow-covered dirt roads of District 12 and trudges away. Beatrice watches after him, leaning on the counter. She ignores the mortar and pestle calling her back to work. She ignores the resumed chirping of the lone canary. She tries not to think of how Travis Everdeen attained enough copper coins to afford a few weeks' worth of pills, what illegal activities he might be involved in to get them. She's too caught up in the thought of him being a sympathetic Seam teen, empathetic to her. Despite her being from the merchant area, her grieving the death of her sacrificed friend caught at him, and she is amazed by that, that tiptoeing and crossing of the social lines between the town and the Seam.
And she's caught up in the thought of somehow seeing him, alone, without any listening ears, again.
Thanks for reading! Merry Christmas! God bless you!