Note:

Warning for thematic reference to suicide - if that's something you'll have trouble reading about, skip over Xenita's backstory. Nothing explicit, but it's your call.

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Divine Being

Dion Cayes

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Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

'I Too Sing America', Langston Hughes

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I wonder if these are the happiest years of my life. In a dingy loft above a canteen in the warehouse sector of District 3, I am more content than I ever thought I'd be.

When I was young, my dad used to come home late from his shifts at the factory. I'd be pretending to be asleep, of course, because my mom wouldn't have tolerated my five year old ass bouncing around in the middle of the night as I waited for him. But though I kept my eyes pressed tight together, even propped my folded hands under my head like a picture-perfect angel, I was aware the second he walked into the house.

Late, always. Smelling like oil from the machines, sharp like steel. And he would check up on me, still curled up angelically. He'd kiss the top of my head, gentle as you like, and take a moment to judge whether or not I was awake.

Now that I'm older, it's pretty clear that I wasn't fooling anyone with my act – but he'd pretend that he didn't see my eyelashes fluttering and softly sing a protest song from his time with the rebellion – back when everyone in District 3 was in the rebellion.

It was a District 12 work song. And they're long gone, but the song – about a man hauling coal as he sinks deeper and deeper into debt – was the sort that sticks with you. Some folks say a man's made out of mud, but a poor man's made out of muscle and blood.

My mom wouldn't have tolerated him singing that sort of nonsense during the day, but in the dark of night, after what must have been an exhausting day, I guess I can sort of see why he'd want me to have those comforting moments – my father singing me to sleep – even if it was a song for rebels.

And it's stuck, the lesson – working hard makes you human, even if the folks you're doing the work for aren't human at all. I work now so I can better my own life and the lives of those around me in the future. For now, I'm content with my own exhausting workdays. My father, when he'd come back late and sing, also taught me that it's the people you come home to who make it worth it.

Xenita makes it worth it. There's something about her that makes the sun shine brighter. Living with my girlfriend, under my own roof, is really all I ever could have hoped for in life. And it's rough, yeah, there were some early months where we couldn't always pay the power bill and our food would spoil and our lights would go off, but everything was okay when she was with me. That girl shone brighter than any of the bare lightbulbs in our flat could have.

I understood why my father kept going out and exhausting himself to come home to our increasingly crowded home – love for your family keeps you going, keeps you going out and coming home no matter where you live or what you're doing to pay for it.

Xenita and I don't have much in the way of furniture or space – a fold-out bed tucked into the wall, a threadbare couch, a television set precariously atop a cheap end table, and a scant kitchen all tucked into the same room.

It sort of fits our situation – both of us working, me full-time, her part-time in addition to her studies. We're young, yeah, but I grew up very low-class in District 3, and that matures you pretty fast. She's a few months older than me, had the benefit of an upper-class upbringing, and still managed to reach middle age by nineteen.

The vast majority of District 3 is just trying to get by. That includes us – but I guess it's lower stakes when you don't have kids, when you're young enough to work jobs that other people don't want. For now, we're making do. Tomorrow, though, I've got my eyes on better things. Good jobs, a safe neighborhood, utilities that don't go off every so often. Making our way through our lives the way we do – working hard, not complaining – is very human.

If we have kids – and it's still more of an 'if' than a 'when' – I want them to have more options, more education, feel safe and cared for. I'll have kids when I know I've got a better life to give them. I think Xenita and I can get there.

At very least, between the two of us, a loving home is a guarantee.

"Were you at the rally earlier?" Xenita asks conversationally, referencing the third-page news story that has nonetheless been something of a hot topic among her fellow student friends. None of the guys at the factory have all that much interest – big surprise.

"Nah, I wasn't feeling it." I shrug. "Gotta love that fake activism, though."

She laughs, almost in disbelief. "You're the last person I'd expect to hear that from – didn't you get arrested for protesting the Games the month before we met?"

A friend of mine, Auden Michaels, tried to coordinate a walkout of the reaping about four years back. Only got about twenty people on board, mostly close friends. The majority of us were out of jail in a week, but only once they'd gathered enough evidence to convict Auden as the one who'd organized the protests.

He was released from prison three years later, having been sentenced on charges of conspiracy to commit an act of domestic terror – just in time to be reaped in the 88th Hunger Games. Go figure.

"I'm just saying, Xe," I tell her. "It's one thing to go down protesting the Games, but a Center? I don't get it. There's real injustice to go after if you're gonna put your neck on the line."

She leans over from where she sits beside me on the couch and presses a quick kiss to my neck.

"Well, I'm glad you're not planning on doing anything stupid. I worry about you enough."

"You don't gotta, though." I flex dramatically – knowing full well how impressive it is.

Xenita whistles softly. "Lookin' good, babe. You know that's not what I mean, though."

For the last year or two, I've been employed on the clean up crew for a factory that produces the equipment for hydraulic fracturing. Not production – they've got egghead engineers like Xenita running the machines that actually make the product. Just making sure the space is regulation-compliant and you're not tripping over hunks of metal when you go to check the cooling vats.

I was never really cut out for factory work or for actual engineering stuff – I'm a bit too big, a bit too physical, not especially talented with machinery as my father was. Clean-up crew has been a lot better suited to my strengths. On the night shift, I'm the guy who packs up all the dangerous mechanics and gets the important stuff out of the way so we can scrub the metal dust out of the tile and run the filters to get rid of particulate matter in the air.

Hard work, but it'll make you pretty damn strong. A poor man's made out of muscle and blood, my dad used to sing.

"You don't have to worry about the Games, Xe. We've got over a hundred thousand people living in District 3, and a lot of them lack my good sense."

She scoffs. "Okay, you don't get to 'I have good sense' me when you're the only one on this couch who's done time."

"-only a week of time," I interrupt.

"Regardless," she presses, "you're just eighteen. That's the riskiest year. Your name's in there a lot, Dion. I sometimes just get a bad vibe about things."

"Remember when you got a 'bad vibe' about the guy who sold us this flat?"

"He turned out to have been butchering raccoons and selling their meat from the flat, and you wouldn't even help me clean up the bloodstains in the shower, so I'm gonna say yeah, I remember, and yeah, I was right." She's got that slightly joking glint in her eyes, but there's something very serious in the way she's got her arms crossed and her lips pressed together.

"In my defense, I was working overtime so we could afford the flat," I tell her. "And we got a really good deal on account of those poor raccoons, God rest their tiny souls."

"Don't just be shaking this off, Dion," she says.

"Xe, don't get all serious with me. Reaping day's gonna be bad enough without you going all dark cloud about the whole thing."

She looks even more unhappy. I pull her close to me, press kisses to the side of her face until she smiles.

"Fine," she says. "Are you working tonight? I have an early shift at the restaurant tomorrow, since I'm the only one working who doesn't have reaping-aged kids. But nothing this evening."

We both work, but she generally has fewer hours than I do and spends her spare time working towards her industrial engineering certification. Xenita is a fabulous cook, though she mostly does waitress-work at the little eatery downstairs, which primarily caters to laborers like me looking for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to break the monotony of long shifts.

For now, it looks like my girlfriend is going to be a lot more upwardly mobile than I am – though I've got my eye on a shift manager post, and then eventually I figure I might take some classes in management and see if I can't tighten things up at the factory. That's the way to make things better, really, for real people – none of this fighting about a Center business. Hard work, up the ladder, until you've earned enough power to change things for the better.

I'll get there, though. It's motivational, knowing I've gotta be looking out for Xenita, too. God only knows how someone making barely minimum wage, offering her a life in the worst part of the district, managed to get the smartest, kindest, most beautiful woman in the entire world. But that worked out, somehow. And now we have each other,

"I'm working the night shift again," I tell her. "They're always short on hands the night before the reaping – and I have a shot at some overtime pay, which sounds amazing."

"We could celebrate by getting our own washing machine," Xenita laughs.

"I was thinking, you need a nice dress, right? Something really nice, for once you're a big-shot engineer, networking and stuff. We could go find one, might be fun," I say offhandedly.

She looks at me with wide eyes. "You sure 'bout that?"

"Yeah, I mean, we're doing okay – things have stabilized with the flat, right? We're living inside our means."

"Dion!"

Xenita is ridiculously smart, but her background isn't as stable as mine. I've got four younger brothers and sisters still living with my mom, dad, three grandparents, and one uncle back at home. It's a full house – and I could do a lot more to help out by removing a mouth to feed from the equation than by doing childcare, what with the hours I work. Most of the time, when I have a little extra left over at the end of the month, I kick it back to my family – both to help out and to give me a chance to stop in and see the kids.

Meanwhile, her father kicked her out of the house when he found out we were seeing each other. My family is pretty dirt poor, which isn't the death sentence in District 3 that it might be in some of the outer districts. But it complicates things a lot, since richer folk tend not to be all that sympathetic.

We've got our flat together, and we've been working really hard to build a better life. No one's saying anything about marriage yet, since we're awful young for that, but in the long term it seems like a given.

I really love Xenita.

"What do you want to do for dinner, Xe?" I ask her.

"I brought home leftovers from the restaurant last night, they're chilling in the fridge."

"I can dress the table if you're good to heat those up," I suggest.

"Deal," she laughs. "Damn, all the practice I get around here, they should have me in the kitchen, not working waitstaff."

"Problem is, you're an incredible waitress, on account of your personality."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, folks just want to eat you up since you're so sweet. But they settle for the food, since you're all mine."

"Dion," she scolds. "No need for that possessiveness here."

She rolls off my chest, sitting up.

"I'm going to get that food started," she declares. "You wanna keep me interested, set the table."

"Yes, ma'am," I say smartly, and she laughs.

"None of that funny business!" I hear her call from the kitchen as I take our plateware from the little cupboard near the bed.

"Of course not, ma'am!" I reply.

My parents met in the aftermath of the Mockingjay Rebellion – I think most did, actually. The vast majority of District 3's lower class was mobilized in the form of rebel forces, obviously most like my dad producing arms. A lot of our factories got blown up pretty badly, though protocol let most workers make it out alive. My mom was one of the impromptu nurses trained by the District 13 forces – as her patient, my dad claims he charmed her into accepting a dinner invitation.

"Don't believe a word he says," she used to tell me and my siblings. "I took a special interest in him because he was half dead, and I accidentally got too attached, like you would with an injured alley cat."

"But," my dad interrupts, "You can't deny you said yes to dinner."

"Who's gonna deny a handsome, charming rebel missing a chunk of his ribcage?"

This is my dad's cue to live up the hem of his shirt, proudly displaying the black scar tissue that mottles the entire left length of his side. His skin is so dark that you can scarcely see the scarring if you're not looking for it.

"Wow," you've just gotta say when you're confronted with the extent of the damage.

"If he ever says I never did anything for him, just remember I saved his life that evening," my mom reminds us every so often.

The repartee I share with Xenita is very similar with that I've observed whenever my parents are together – they're still terribly in love, which is really comforting. The family I come from is poor – not dirt poor, but like, the first concrete layer on top of the dirt, still close enough to be reminded every so often. But I hope Xe and I can keep building on top of it. I think we have enough love and enough hope and enough fortitude to get it done.

My children probably won't have many scars to look at on my body, but I'll be able to show them the callouses on my hands and sing them the same song my father did. It's not a hopeful song unless you choose to take it that way – but I choose to hope.

"What sort of plateware do you need for the leftovers, Xe?" I ask.

"Just grab me a spare plate – it's mostly breakfast for dinner, spinach omelet and fried green tomatoes."

"Mm," I say, taking an extra plate out of the cabinet and beginning to straighten out the rickety two-person table.

"Yeah, Gearney is a real pro with a frying pan – she was on this morning, so you know it's gonna be good."

"I trust you, not Gearney."

"Well, I'd hope you'd trust her too," she laughs, "but it's a nice sentiment. Bring that spare plate over, it's ready."

I'm not sure if you can call reheating someone else's food an art, but if it is, Xenita is DaVinci. He's one of the few pre-Panem inventors they bother teaching us about in District 3 schools – his ideas turned out to be that important, especially with hovercraft design. And you gotta inspire the little ones to greatness – District 3 is a mind factory as much as a mechanical one.

"It looks perfect," I tell her as she scoops the steaming eggs and spinach from the single pan on what is essentially a camp stove and adds a little oil before sliding in the cold fried tomatoes. "How do you bring it back to life so flawlessly?"

"Flattery isn't gonna cook these tomatoes any faster," she insists, but I catch her smiling and I press a quick kiss to her forehead. "Is the table done?"

"Yeah, I've got nothing to do but stand here and bother you."

"Could be worse," she says, "at least the view's nice."

"No way yours compares to mine," I whisper.

She laughs as she adjusts the pile of curls atop her head. "You're sweet. Bring over our plates, there's enough for each of us to have three."

Dinners aren't usually silent affairs in our home, but I get the sense that the reaping is still weighing heavy on her thoughts. We start quiet, her glancing up at me every few seconds and averting her eyes when I notice.

"Something wrong?" I ask.

"I'm just scared something's gonna happen to you," she says. "If not the reaping, at work, in the factory, in the street on the way home. I just have…"

"…a bad feeling," I cut in, finishing her sentence.

"Well, yeah. You know my house was never this happy. Nothing's ever this good. It… sometimes it doesn't feel… real, you know?"

"What, being happy?"

"Yeah. Being loved. Being happy. My dad, he never… never hurt me or anything, but I don't really know what was going on with my mom. And she was just gone one day. And everything fell apart. And I got this same feeling, you know, that everything's gonna fall apart. I can't live off just my salary part-time, Dion. I need you just to live. And beyond that…"

"You're fond of my company too, I hope."

"I love you. I can't lose you. It can't happen again."

Xenita's mom was an electrical engineer. It was seen as bitterly ironic, but tragic, when she was found dead, having apparently electrocuted herself working late one night. A tragic accident.

"Nothing's an accident," Xenita insisted the first time we talked about it alone. "We don't live in the kind of world that has accidents."

"It's not gonna happen again," I tell her. "You know me. Work hard, don't make any more waves. Move on up. Both of us, side by side."

"You can't just work your way through everything, things happen, the reaping–"

"What, don't you think I'd win?"

"Dion!"

"Worst comes to worst, what, guess I'm just gonna have to be a little late coming home," I tell her, almost laughing. I'm no shrinking violet wannabe engineer – the Capitol wants a fight, I could very well give them one.

"It's not that easy," she insists.

"It's also not that likely," I retort.

We're silent again.

"I don't ever want you to feel helpless, Xe. I'll always find a way home, you know that. I love you. You're worried over nothing."

She doesn't reply, just stares at me like she's scared I'll disappear if she blinks.

The song my dad used to sing ended with a line more menacing than uplifting – 'Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.' The indebtedness would never end, the work would never end.

But I look at Xenita, the woman I love, and I know she's the only one to whom I owe my soul. Heaven can call me if it wants, but this little flat and this woman are the only thing the pearly gates could offer me that would come close to paradise.

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Sorry, for whatever reason the AN I added didn't go through the first time I uploaded this chapter. Just as a quick update: I lowkey forgot how hard college goes and have been turning up a lot in addition to hella coursework. Check back for reasonably frequent updates (3-4 days) as I attempt to get my lifestyle under control.