Chapter 24: You're My Better Half
It's the sweet love that you give to me
That makes me believe we can make it through anything
'Cause when it all comes down
And I'm feeling like I'll never last
I just lean on you 'cause baby
You're my better half
-Keith Urban
"I made some eggs." I didn't want to wake him; there was some sort of solid tether to the world by watching his steady breathing. Some sort of way to remember he truly was here, that we were going to make it through like he always said when he was awake.
Darren rolled over, raising a hand to block the sun coming in between the curtains. "How long have you been up?"
"A few hours." At least, that was what I thought. My eyes would close, and I couldn't judge the distance between when they opened again except to know it hadn't been very long. Maybe I hadn't even slept at all.
"December," His eyes met mine and I switched my gaze to the floor. "I told you to wake me up."
"I'm alright. You need sleep too. I don't want to be the reason that you're exhausted." I was sick of being the fault for everything, the one that everyone threw things down for. I wasn't worth it.
"You're my favorite reason to be exhausted." He threw back the covers and I sat on the edge of the bed, running a hand down his bare chest. The bones didn't feel as sharp anymore, but I still struggled to look at him in fear that it may be just as bad as before.
"Let's go eat. Your breakfast is getting cold."
He slid from my touch, lifting my hand to his lips. "It doesn't matter how thin I am if you can't even sleep anymore."
"Being awake is better, honestly. It keeps me from living in the past." It wasn't nightmares, just memories that had changed now that I knew the truth of things. I just wanted them to be the old way, where things just were. They weren't lies, they weren't secrets. Or at least I could perceive it that way.
"I wish I was enough to keep you here."
"You are." I rested my head on his chest. "Don't you see that now? Every time I wake up, every time I see this ceiling instead of the one back home I want to scream, to cry. And then I feel your warmth, your touch as I never knew it before back then and I remember that we've changed, that the world changed and it doesn't matter anymore. I've my decision, they've gotten me here and there is no going back." I didn't tell him how much I still wanted to, how much I wanted to wipe clear my memory and forget the truths. How much I still wanted to go back to Thresh and I under that open sky.
"You and I, December, we're going to make it."
My laugh was weak, but the smile seemed to function as intended. "Not if you don't eat your breakfast." He smiled and pushed me off the bedside.
"Let's go taste these deliciously cold eggs then." Darren only paused at the dresser drawer to grab a shirt that he slipped over his head as we walked downstairs.
We could be happy. We will be happy. What a mantra, but I guessed that is what people like me needed. A mantra, some glimmer of hope to latch onto before the thoughts went dark again. Aurelius had marked me healthy, hadn't he? Said I was mentally healed that last time he came to visit with all the cameras. Better marks then Katniss anyways I think. I couldn't risk letting him get word he was wrong.
What was wrong with this picture? My husband at the breakfast table, smiling and joking that I was a master chef all with a smile while we ate cold burnt eggs. A clean kitchen, with a few rose pots Haymitch, I guess, remembered to tell the cleaning woman to bring in. It was our clothes in the closet, our things in the drawers. Whatever it was, it was our own sense of comfort, of peace.
I could be happy with him. He loved me, just like Thresh had. He found me beautiful and funny, he held me tight when I cried, all just like Thresh. He knew how to brush my hair behind my ear with the softest touch, just like Thresh.
But Thresh was right, as usual. Be happy with him. He'll give you what I can't now. It was more then life, then someone to hold me in the night. Darren was my memories, my person to understand my mind. That wouldn't have been Thresh. He never would have understood. Nothing could have made him see that there was more to my father then the monster the districts overthrew and how much I still needed that bit of him.
This moment, with my husband's hand clasping mine and a smile was the best I could ask for when so much else was lost. And that, somehow, I decided I could live with. Yet, like with all perfect moments, we live in an imperfect world that refuses to let them last.
Haymitch didn't bother to knock, just opening the front door and shouting for us before following voices into the kitchen.
"Get the screen on already. It will all be over soon." The reaping list announcement. That was today. Where it became official who was possibly going in. How did we forget? It must have been apparent on our faces. "Too busy lovemaking to keep a calendar these days?"
"Too busy dealing with your collateral damage." Haymitch only grunted while dragging us to the living room and hitting the button. I didn't want to look, focusing all my attention on how Darren and Haymitch attempted back and forth banter until Plutarch came on.
I knew I would be listed as Plutarch unrolled the list in his hand. It was simple; reap all the surviving children who were enrolled in Capitol Prep. It was as if the school was created for that purpose alone, to gather all the children of parents they wanted to punish together.
"The names will be read in descending order of grade level and in each grade alphabetically. The year that was age 12 during the rebellion will each have one entry; age 13 will have two and so on up to the age of eighteen. Reaping pools will be based on the five beaches of service in which these 79 jobs came from; Politics, Gamemakers, Peacekeepers, Media and Mutation Development. From each, five tributes will be chosen creating a total of 25 tributes. Those who should have enrolled in Capitol Prep and either were homeschooled or attended the other schools by choice are also entered." In my head I was trying to count how many fell in our branch, calculate our chances with six entries each.
Plutarch began reading through the names, obviously using the old roster. The level above us was small, only a few remaining since most others joined the forces. Yet he still read each name, following the dead ones with unenterable. I wanted to puke.
"Darren Blake Broderson. December Snow Broderson."
"Abernathy Broderson." Darren grabbed my hand to keep me silent as Haymitch spoke. No, today wasn't right for a fight. Plutarch just continued reading on the list, yet the gleam of mischief gone from his eyes now that his main targets were announced. Macey. What had happened to her? And she was supposed to marry Charlen. They killed her father, just like mine. Made us a generation of orphans.
"May Vanessa Snow- unenterable." He moved on to the next name simply, as though my sister was only out of town instead of cold stone buried deep in the Capitol graveyard. I cringed as he read more names, hearing the word repeated constantly, through all the grades until they got to the lower classes.
"Coriolanus Snow Jr, unenterable."
"Because of you! Because that Rebel hovercraft killed him!" Both Darren and Haymitch grabbed my arms as I flung towards the television set. Tears poured from my eyes and Darren rubbed them away.
"Ember, calm down. They killed him, but it saved him from these games."
"Get me out of here, Darren. Get me away. I can't do this anymore."
"That's what my mother said before they locked me up, the last time I saw her." Hadn't I once thought that it would have taken my mother-in-law strength to kill her self? I was right; I wasn't even worth that freedom.
I couldn't listen, only seeing my brother on the backs of my eyes. My nails scratched on my arms, yet too dull from gnawing that they didn't leave marks.
"December, stop thinking that!" He pinned my arms down and I just sat there and cried. "We could declare her unhealed mentally. She can't go into the Games like this."
Haymitch stood, slamming the screen off and Plutarch continued to make announcements. "I already told her how I'm getting her out. They'll take a DNA sample and find there is nothing to enter her on." I was sick of it, them talking around me like I wasn't even there.
"No." My voice was weak but I was desperate to be heard. "No. I deserve to be entered just as much as any of the others. How much did anyone honestly do that I didn't?" I ripped my arms from Darren and collapsed my head into my lap.
His touch was warm on my back, voice soft in my ears. "I made choices in the very end. If any of us should be in there it's me, not you."
"So? You stood by your father as I stood by mine! You didn't come down and hear them screaming in the cells! You didn't tell my father what to do to Peeta!" He still wouldn't look at me the same, not the same smile of comfort around me that he had after I told him about Thresh. Now he just pitied me, for all I chose to do to him.
"It doesn't matter. They are entering you on blood that you don't have!" Haymitch wretched my hands from my face as I frantically tried to wipe away my tears. "Look at me! I made precautions to avoid this but they died with Coin. Now I just need to make new ones."
"Can't you hear that I don't want you to? For once I want to do the right thing in my life and shying away isn't fair!" I needed to give into their revenge, make the scales balanced to restore my sanity. "I may carry your blood, but my father etched himself on my soul whether you except it or not."
Haymitch swore under his breath, grabbing a bottle from the liquor cabinet. "Haymitch, she's just distressed. If you drink..."
A loud knock pounded on the door and before any of us could move a team of the new peacekeepers knocked it in. "December and Darren Broderson. You are hereby in government custody." We were right, they had been hiding in the shadows just wanting for a moment to strike.
Haymitch lunged for one of them. "Under whose damn orders?"
"President Taylor and Mr. Havensbee have ordered all children to be entered in the games returned to the Capitol. These two are prime suspects to run for it and will be locked in the Presidential Mansion."
Home. I was going home to be locked up as a prisoner.
"Fine. Then to the Capitol we go. Let me just pack my bags." Haymitch swung the bottle and it broke on the side of the bookshelf, all the while a sneer on his lips. "I need to speak with Plutarch anyways."
"Mr. Havensbee ordered that you, Haymitch Abernathy, are to remain in District 12."
I expected him to lash out, or at least reach for a bottle. It was his out of character cold nod that sent shivers down my spine. "Then let me say goodbye to the children in private." The Peacekeepers looked around uncertainly. "We will stay in this room and feel free to stand outside the windows if you must to keep us in." Their chief officer nodded, all the white uniforms disappearing from the room.
"You won't have to go in. You won't be in the reaping bowl."
"I will. I'll tell Plutarch myself if I have to."
"You are stubborn and a fool."
"I'll take care of her Haymitch. If she gets reaped I'll volunteer. She won't go in alone."
"She won't go in at all. Leave us Broderson, take a pair of those white coats upstairs and gather your things. Pack as many of her clothes from the old days, especially the furs. The public will mostly see the two of you outside and that's your moment to look powerful. Be good to her, boy"
Darren nodded, shaking Haymitch's hand as if it were all a business deal. It was so much like before, Papa promising Darren to watch over me for him. He hadn't failed yet and I warmly smiled at the thought while I watched my husband motion for a two to follow him upstairs.
"Little one," Haymitch's touch was too gentle, as though he was afraid of breaking me. "I've been slow to tell you this but you need to know."
"Like how slow you were with the fact that you're my father?"
Haymitch didn't respond, just glancing off in the distance, speaking words not meant for me. "I'm trying darling, I'm trying." He had done the same so many times, and now knowing that in these moments he convinced himself my mother as in the room I couldn't take it.
"Haymitch..."
He jolted back to alertness, taking my hands in his and softly kissing my forehead. "I love you, little one. That's what you should know. You are going to be safe."
"December, I brought you a coat, and hat and gloves." It was one of my mother's, Maribelle, coats. Long enough to hide the pajamas I still wore underneath until we could change on the train, and pure white. The hat and gloves were the set Haymitch had given me for a birthday so long ago, green and embroidered with roses.
"Put your hair down and pull the red forward. Don't let it be hidden." I couldn't tell if Haymitch's advice came from the fact that that was how the Capitol would recognize me, or the genes he was suddenly desperate to prove. Darren reached up and traced the rim of my gem by my eye. I hadn't realized that I left it in since the interview. "Little one, don't forget to be proud, don't show them any cracks, got it?"
I knew the cameras, if I knew anything at all. That I could manage. We walked into the hall, and I stopped by the mirror for a moment. Yes, all I was missing was my usual pride, and how hard could that be to bring back? I was an elite by training, and about to return to my circus ring.
The image in the mirror moved, and as I stepped away I felt my old footsteps clink in the hall.
"She's back. December Everett Snow is back to be reckoned with." I smiled at Darren's voice until I realized what was missing.
"December Everett Snow Broderson. Don't take that from me, love."
"You sure?" His arm wrapped around my shoulder and I could see camera flashes through the door window. How had we let them sneak up on us so much? But one thing I knew was that no one else was better suited to be at my side for those lights then this one boy.
"I'm sure."