Chapter 57- Terra Coppersmith
"Bring her home."
Mags's words, and the pain they bring, drag me out of the sleep haze I've slipped in and out of for hours. For a moment, I don't remember why my chest is tight or why my head is pounding like Mags's words are beating against it over and over. And then I remember, and the pain drives itself down into me more sharply than ever.
Iry's dead.
All the air's left my lungs, and I'm gasping to catch my breath, like I'm the one who's drowning instead of my sister.
I couldn't save her. I couldn't save my little sister from dying, and that means it's my fault she's dead. The Capitol's to blame too, but if I had mentored, if I had died, if I had done a thousand things differently, Iry would still be alive, and so it's my fault.
Slowly, I start to breathe again, and the dark room comes into focus as my eyes adjust to the dark. The Capitol lights outside shine in through the window, giving me enough light to see Shuttle's still form beside me, kneeling next to the bed with her head and arms draped across the blankets, and her hand in mine.
I sit up, careful not to wake her, and pull my hand out of hers. Shuttle. She's still here; she didn't leave me to face the dark on my own. My mentor, my friend, and my protector. She loved Iry too; we all did.
There won't be another District 8 victor. Not this year.
The pain tightens around my middle again, and I curl over myself, willing myself to breathe through it and not let it drown me like it did earlier. But I keep seeing her disappear underneath the water, seeing the station turn black. Hearing Aulus Buteo say that she's dead, that she's really dead and it's not a mistake.
I should go and punch him for good measure.
It hurts, it hurts. I'm going to go home to District 8, and she's not going to be waiting there. She won't be there to dance and play with her cat, or to run up and down the grassy hill of the cemetery, the only green place in the whole district. She won't be on the train drinking hot chocolate and laughing. I lost her to the arena, I knew I wouldn't get the same girl back as the one that went in, but it wouldn't have mattered.
I would have taken any Iry that came out of that arena, but I can't now. Not even the girl with the hardened eyes and unsmiling face that I saw through the screens. And it hurts.
Suddenly, I can feel her everywhere in this room; sitting at the end of the bed laughing; crying next to me; begging me not to let her go into the arena.
My room seems to have had all the air pulled out of it; I have to get out of this room right now, before I suffocate under the weight of all those memories; of thirteen years worth of memories of my sister.
Grabbing a blanket, I pull it around my shoulders and push myself off the bed, stumbling towards the door on my legs that are still clumsy after five years. At the door I look back; Shuttle hasn't moved. I can see her hand outstretched, as though it's still holding mine, and even that drives a shooting pain through me.
Everything's my fault, and I keep hurting the people I love. Everyone I've ever loved has been hurt; my parents are dead and gone, Fletcher is dead and buried along with them; Iry's drowned and gone. My mentors are in pain because I didn't fight enough to come here and play by the rules like the Capitol wanted. It's because of me.
Somehow I get through the door and stumble my way towards the living room, keeping one hand on the wall to steady myself. This place, this apartment that was so beautiful the first time I saw it, is suffocating me. It's a prison that I can't leave until the Capitol says I can.
I hate them. I hate them all so much, because it's because of them that everything's happened. The factory that my father died in, these Games that took so much from all of us, everything. And I hate every single person in this city that sat by and watched my sister die.
Even Aero Carter. He tried to help me, but all the money in the world wouldn't have stopped Iry from drowning. Some deep part of me knows that it's not his fault, that he's the one decent person in this whole city, but I don't have enough room to forgive anyone tonight.
I bump into an end table and nearly topple over, but manage to right myself at the last minute, still clutching the soft and bulky blanket around my shoulders. The apartment is quiet, but once I get to the window and sit down in it, I can see that the Capitol is still alive and moving, even this late at night.
Did it hurt? Was she in pain when she went back under the water, or did she slip away quietly? These are the questions I have to ask myself, sitting in the window looking over the Capitol, at the people who have forgotten the fact that my sister died today already. Did Iry suffer when she died? I know she was scared; she screamed my name. She needed me, and I was trapped behind a screen a thousand miles away.
What a sorry excuse of a sister I am.
The pain shoots through my chest and stomach again, curling me over until my head touches my knees and I have to gasp to get any air into my lungs.
Iry, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I can't ever be sorry enough, and I don't deserve any forgiveness from her. I good as killed her by letting her go into that arena alone. She could have had an ally who would have taken her away from the water, but I said no, just hide. I did everything wrong, and she's dead.
It hits me and hits me and hits me. Iry's dead, my sister's dead, she's dead. Dead. Iry Coppersmith, age thirteen, died on Day 6 of the 41st Hunger Games. Day 6. Now it registers why Day 6 means so much. I won five years ago exactly yesterday, and the irony isn't lost on me. I won, and five years to the day later, Iry died.
The wave starts to pull me down and drown me in a suffocating pool of grief; I can't handle this. I can't, I can't, I can't-
"Terra."
I pull air into my lungs, making myself breathe through the pain, then turn to see Woof standing just a few feet away by the couch.
"I'm sorry," I say, the only thing that comes to mind.
"For what?"
"I woke you up."
Woof half laughs, but it dies away quickly. "As if any of us sleep."
I don't know what to say to Woof; we're never alone together, and I don't think I've had a proper one on one conversation with him, ever. He keeps to himself, and Shuttle, Woven, and I have been a group for the past five years.
"You can go back to bed. Don't wait up for me," I say, looking back out the window at the brightly lit Capitol. I can't sleep; I doubt I'll ever have a full night's sleep again.
"I'm sorry about your sister," Woof says, awkwardly. This is a man who doesn't express much emotion at the best of times, but he's trying. Still, it digs into my stomach and twists; he knows that Iry's dead too, and that means that it can't be a nightmare. It's real.
"You tried."
"She was a beautiful little girl."
Somehow, these simple words are the ones that make the pain unbearable, and I start to sob into my blanket. Vaguely I can hear Woof moving closer, but it doesn't register until he's sitting on the floor next to me, awkwardly patting my shoulder.
"She's dead," I choke out. "I should be dead too."
"No. You shouldn't," he says firmly, still awkwardly patting. "You were supposed to win your Games, so don't throw it away."
"There's nothing left for me in District 8 without her."
"There is," Woof says. "You still have people there, and don't you forget that."
"But, Iry-" I start, but he cuts me off.
"You still have that friend of yours, what's her name, and her family. The amount of work we put in to get you out of that arena, don't put that to waste either. You cost a lot of money," he says, chuckling slightly. "And you've got that cat of your sister's."
"My family is gone," I whisper, and bury my face back into my knees.
"You're not the only one, you know," Woof says. "We're all missing somebody if you haven't noticed."
"You're not making me feel better," I mutter, muffled by the blanket.
"I'm not trying to. She's gone, but you're not, so you're going to have to get on with things."
"That's harsh, isn't it?"
"That's the life of a victor," he says. "You would think you'd be used to it after five years."
"Mags said that it's easier to die as a tribute than to live as a victor," I say. Lots of her words are coming back to me tonight, and it hurts every time I think of them.
"The woman knows her stuff, that one," Woof says. "Haven't known her to be altogether wrong in the whole time I've known her."
"Maybe her boy can win, since Iry's- Iry's gone," I tell him. If Iry can't win, I want Mags's boy to win, because she helped Iry.
Woof rubs his face, like he's waiting to say something. "You missed it, didn't you?"
"Missed what?" Alongside the pain, a stone seems to be settling in my stomach.
"Mags's boy got killed by his runty little allies this afternoon."
So Mags has lost this year too. We've lost, even though she tried to get both Iry and her boy home. It didn't matter in the end, did it?
"Poor Mags," is what I get out in the end.
"She got one last year," Woof says. "Can't win them all."
"District 2 is still in there?" I ask, and Woof nods.
"Both of those ones. But the boy from 6 is dead."
"Good," I say. I hate seeing the tributes die, but the boy from 6, he should never be a victor. Not after what he did to Azlon. "I don't want 2 to win." I hate the District 2 mentors; all of them. Especially Aulus Buteo.
"Nobody does," Woof says, leaning back on his arms. "We don't need to add another one of them to their little pack."
"So who's left?" I don't really care; I don't have any stakes in these Games anymore, but focusing on them is loosening the pain in my middle. And for a moment, I just want to forget.
"District 3, District 2, and the girl from 7. It should be over in the next few days."
"Good."
Suddenly the way Iry slipped under the water flashes through my mind, and the pain rebounds so severely that I gasp.
"Terra?" Woof asks, but I shake my head.
"It's my fault. It's all my fault she's dead," I get out.
"No. It's not." I start clutching my head again, trying to distract myself from the grief, but Woof grips my shoulder. "Look at me, Terra."
"What?"
"It's not your fault," he says seriously. "It's not any of our faults. You know whose fault it is, and don't lie to yourself. You know whose fault it is."
I do. I know I do. But the guilt of letting my sister die in front of me is overwhelming, and I can't shake it off.
"Nothing you could do. Or any of us. You're forgetting that we all were there. None of us could help her," Woof continues. "We're a team, we're the District 8 team, and that's that."
A thought occurs to me, slipping up out of the blur I lived in right after the station went black. "What happened to Postumius?"
Woof laughs, a real laugh this time. "You broke his nose."
"So where is he?"
"Capitol people hauled him off to get his nose redone. Doesn't matter now; I finally got the Game organizers to transfer him. Some other district can deal with him next year."
"Good," I say, and it is. It's the one good thing that's happened today, and I can't say I feel bad about breaking his nose. "It's about time."
"Seven years overdue," he agrees.
Another silence, where I try to get my breath under me again. "What now?" I ask.
"We wait."
"When do we go home?" I don't want to go back to District 8, not now, but I don't want to stay in the Capitol either. I don't want to be anywhere; I just want to slip away and leave everything. But I don't know where I'd go where the pain would stop.
"After the Games," Woof says. "That's when we pack up and head back to 8."
"I don't want to go back," I whisper, and another sob catches in my throat and chokes me. "I don't want to."
"I know."
Woof doesn't say anything else, and neither do I. Instead, we sit by the window overlooking the Capitol, and watch the stupid little people go by on foot and in cars, while I fight the wave of grief that threatens to drown me over and over and over.
The pain tightens in my stomach; the knowledge that I'll never see my Iry again drives through me again and again, until I'm suffocated under the weight of it all. And still, Woof doesn't leave; he sits by and stays quiet. Shuttle and Woven can say he has no manners; he can be too honest and too to the point; he can stay in his house until the Games start up again next year. I don't care. I'm just glad he's here with me tonight.
And as the grief threatens to bury me alive, I reach out and Woof takes my hand with his, with the hand that's missing the finger like mine, and it reminds me that we all lost things to the Games. Legs, fingers, selves, sisters.
"It'll pass," he says quietly, and I nod.
And still, I'm glad to have my mentor hold my hand while I cry for my sister.