Chapter 67- Terra Coppersmith

The sunrise is beautiful, but I'm too numb to appreciate it, both inside and out. The breeze is cold up high on this hill, making me wrap my shawl around me tighter and tighter. I hate the cold, and I have to dig my nails into my arms to keep myself from disappearing back into that snow filled arena, where I lost him. Where I lost Fletcher, and then my fingers and my legs. Where I killed Calypso.

And inside, I'm too numb to feel grief or anger or anything else. I can't feel at all, because I've lost everything. Not Shuttle. Not Deecey, or Woven or Woof or Mrs. Underfall.

But I've lost Iry, and she was my everything.

"I tried to keep you safe," I whisper, digging my nails into my arm harder. It hurts, but I need it to hurt. The wind is too cold, and blows past me, pushing my curls into my face. I wouldn't comb my hair or do anything but sit and stare out the window if I had a choice, but Shuttle hasn't given me one. Every morning she makes me get up, she makes me eat, and she combs my hair.

"It was my fault. I'm sorry," I say, louder this time. My hands are stiff from squeezing my arms, and it takes a few seconds to work the blood back into them. I press them desperately into the ground around me, pulling at the grass and digging my fingers into the cold and hard dirt. Like I could pull her from the earth if I wanted to, and I want to so badly. I need her to come home.

Iry's dead and buried, and I'm sitting on her grave.

"When you were a baby, you were so sweet," I say, leaning back against the headstone. Shuttle chose the words on it, because she knew when my sister would come home and I didn't.

Iry Coppersmith, age 13.

Loving and Loved.

"Mother didn't know you, but she loved you anyway. She called you the most beautiful girl in the world, and I didn't mind, because I agreed with her. And you smiled at that rainbow. I'll always remember that. I'll remember everything about you forever."

I take a deep, shaky breath in, and hold it. I'm fighting too many demons at once; the cold is biting at my face, Iry is dead and below me, and it's too much. I can't, I can't, I can't-

Birds flying at her face, attacking my little sister. Woof can't send anything in to help her; she's going to die in front of me, destroyed by those mutts, and I can't help her. I can't do anything but scream at the screen and beg Woof to do something.

Then the sword drops, and saves her, saves my sister. I didn't save her. I couldn't.

The water rises up and takes my sister with it, dragging her down to drown; and I'll never see those brown eyes again, because she's gone, she's drowned-

"Iry!" I scream, kicking out; my hands are clamped over my ears hard, too hard, and the pressing pain brings me back to this cemetery hill. She's dead, she's dead. She's been dead for four months; I haven't seen her in four months.

I let my sister go into that hovercraft, I let them take her into the arena. My sister, who I had to keep safe above everyone else. Who I killed and almost died for in my own arena; who I traded Fletcher's life for, and now she's gone too.

Suddenly I jump to my feet, keeping my shawl wrapped around me tight, and stumble my way along the rows of simple wooden crosses. Some marble headstones stick out here and there, and each one digs into my stomach and twists, not letting go. Tributes. Row upon row of tributes; forty-one years of tributes. Jessa and Terron. Azlon, cold in his coffin six feet below the ground. Now Iry's joined them. I could have been a grave and a marble headstone too, but I'm not. Neither are Woven or Woof or Shuttle. Somehow we survived but sometimes I think we shouldn't have.

It's easier to die as a tribute than to live as a victor.

Then shouldn't I be happy that my sister doesn't have to live through what we have?

Veering to the right, I come to the marble headstone I was looking for, where someone has left a wreath of roses on the grass covering the grave. This time it wasn't me.

"It's me, Fletcher. I'm sorry I haven't been here in a while," I say, pulling my shawl tighter again against this cold October wind. "It's been a long time."

The frozen arena is threatening to come back, and I'm already shaking, so I press my nails into my arms and will myself to stay in this cemetery among the lost.

I don't fear the desert I walked through, because life was so beautiful. It was the place where I fell in love, but when the snow fell, I lost him. I lost him too and now that ache of missing him settles into my bones. It hasn't left in five years, and now I doubt it ever will.

"Shuttle's taking care of me, so you don't have to worry. But, Fletcher, did you, did you know-"

My words hitch in my throat, and I almost choke. "Did you know that Iry's dead?"

I'm still so numb that the words almost have no meaning anymore. Iry's dead. I've said it too often for it to make sense. "She's dead. She died in the arena and I couldn't save her. She drowned, Fletcher. She-"

I might be bleeding from the nail marks in my arms, but I don't care. My throat is closing up; if I don't speak now, I won't be able to at all. I have to finish.

"You loved me; you died for me. And I loved you too; I won for both of us, remember? If you can hear me, please, please!" I say, almost shouting. I'm too numb to cry, but my words are tight anyway. "Take care of her for me; she's dead too, so can't you take care of her for me? Please! Because I killed her, I killed you both!"

I know, I know, I know the Capitol is the one that killed them, because they put us all in the arena in the first place, but if I hadn't loved him, if I had mentored for her, they wouldn't be under marble headstones now. I'm shaking, staring at the words on Fletcher's headstone that will never describe who he really was.

Fletcher Wellrock

Age 17

Tribute, Son, Friend.

He was so much more.

"Please, just take care of her," I whisper, then turn and run, through the markers of the District 8 dead, and push my way through the gate of the fence around the hill; I hear it clang shut behind me. I feel nothing of the run, because my legs can't feel anything now. I remember when every step was felt; hard cobblestones, soft grass, wood floors under my feet. The Capitol took them, and now they're as numb and unfeeling as I am inside.

The sun's risen completely, giving the buildings around me that queer early morning tint of golden light. The old Terra might have thought it was a beautiful fall day. I used to love the fall because of the crispness in the air and the feeling that the year is winding down, like the pattern on a cloth almost finished being woven. A day that would hold school and then the factories after; where I would help to carry the finished bolts of cotton to the transport cars. It feels like a lifetime ago, and I guess in a way it is. I'm not a schoolgirl or a factory girl anymore. I'm a victor, and I'm always going to be set apart.

I know that it's five-thirty when I reach the gates of Victor's Village, because the first shift bells ring out over District 8; a cacophony of all the factories waking up their workers. I'm still shaking when I walk up the long lane towards the twelve houses, set in two lines. Four of them have victors; the others are empty. Iry could have had one of them.

Then, without thinking, I walk to the fourth house in the row, and push the door open, like I did in my house on Engineering Road. My house.

As soon as I step over the threshold, my ears ring with the silence; the bells are muffled, and all I can hear is the ticking of a clock. I haven't been here since July; a light film of dust has settled on everything I see. Slowly I make my way into the living room, dragging my fingers along the furniture as I go and gathering up the dust on them, leaving streaks behind me.

I don't feel anything as I turn slowly around this room. Five years, that's how long I lived here. I can see five years of her ghost flitting from seat to seat, dancing around the tables, playing with her cat with a length of ribbon. Her laughter rings in my ears until I can't stand it anymore; I run for the stairs and pull myself up by the bannister, made of smooth, wide, flat wood; satiny to the touch.

The hallway at the top is just like the one at Shuttle's and it doesn't hurt as much to be here. I hate the silence; I can hear every one of my footsteps as I make my way to the door of the room that used to be mine. Still is, I suppose. If I still lived here.

It's just like I left it on the morning of the reaping. Half made bed, the curtains open. The room smells stale, but I don't feel like opening the window to let the air in. Just like the rest of the house, it feels like a tomb. She's a ghost in here too; I see her everywhere I look. Fletcher isn't a ghost to me here, because I never knew him in District 8. His memories haunt the Training Center apartments instead, and now Iry's will too.

That last morning, she came in and helped me wake up from my nightmare. She made me tea, we discussed what she was going to wear. What happened to those clothes? That blouse and plaid skirt? The Capitol probably took those too. I loved her so much, and I've been barely holding myself together for four months without her. How can I be the girl I used to be without my sister?

I haven't been that girl in a long time. The Capitol stole her too, just like they stole Iry before they killed her. Those weren't my sister's eyes. They were hard and shiny, because they forced her to kill, and attacked her with their mutts, before they drowned her and forgot about her. Gave her a marble headstone and moved on to their new victor. Iry didn't matter to them, but she was everything. Everything. And now she's gone.

Mags said she was in the ocean, and I can imagine her washing up on the beaches there with Mags to look after her. If Mags and Fletcher both take care of her, then she can rest easy, and maybe I don't have to worry about her. But how can she be the same thing that killed her?

There's nothing in this room for me; every object holds a memory that's too painful to remember. I close the door carefully behind me and walk, step by step, to the door that will be the most painful to open. But I push it open anyway.

Oh god it hurts.

Everything in here was hers; the bed with the canopy, the dolls strewn across it, the mirror on the wall. Pictures she drew and hung next to her bed. I can see one from here, a portrait that is really very good, of Shuttle and me together. And that's what breaks me.

I sink to my knees, burying my face in my hands. If I wasn't already broken, this has shattered me into a million pieces. I keep my ruined hands over my eyes, and cry until I can't breathe; I'm drowning again and I can't pull myself out of the water. My sister is dead and she'll never see her room again. I've lost her; it hits me again and again, and there's nothing I can do to stop the pain.

Everything she did, everything in this room, is what I have left of her. But she left her mark; they can't take that away. They can't take away that she lived and she created and we loved her. I loved her so much, and now I've lost her.

Fletcher, take care of her. Please. Wherever you are, take care of her.

In my head I can hear her laugh, hear her voice, just like I've heard Fletcher's in my dreams for the past five years. Her ghost is everywhere in this room, and in this house. I'll never be able to live here again, I know that now. I can't live in the silence now she's gone.

Still crying, I manage to get to my feet and pull the portrait off the wall, take a doll off her bed. Clutching these two items I leave and shut her door behind me; I can't ever go back in there. This house is suffocating me with memories, and it's going to bury me alive if I don't get out now.

The cold air whips at my face as soon as I slam the front door, but for once I don't care. I just run towards Shuttle's house and burst in the door, gasping for breath.

"Terra, what's wrong?"

I should have expected Shuttle to be up. None of us sleep, and if we do, it's not for long. She's standing in the kitchen with red eyes and dark circles under them, a white mug in her hand.

"She left these," I say, holding out the doll and the portrait, then I break down again, curling over myself trying to get air into my lungs. "She left these and I brought them back." I'm crying so hard I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I'm still drowning.

Shuttle takes the doll and picture from me and wraps her arms around me tight. "Breathe, Terra. Breathe."

"He's got to look after her," I choke out.

"Who has to?"

"Fletcher. I told him to; he's got to look after her."

"He's going to," Shuttle says. "If he can, he will."

"I can't handle it, I can't handle it, Shuttle."

"Look at me. Look at me Terra," Shuttle says fiercely and forces me to look her in the face. "Iry wouldn't want you to break because of her. Remember, she was more worried about you than about herself. We all have to live with the people we lost. My sister is dead too, but we have to keep moving forward because the second we stop to think is when we break."

"I don't know if I can keep going," I whisper.

"Listen to me. I've lost too many tributes; don't let me lose my only victor that I've brought home. We got you out of that arena, and that was damn good luck that we did. We all worked together, Woven, Fletcher, and me, and we got you home. Don't you dare throw that away. You've just got to mourn her, then keep on marching forward, because that's what life it. It's not fair, but we have to go on. We can't stop to pick up the people we've lost along the way."

"So I'm just supposed to forget about her?"

"I didn't say that," Shuttle says fiercely, her fingers tightening on my arms. It hurts, but I don't care, I don't mind it. It's keeping me here with her, and it hurts less than the pain inside me. "I know what it's like, Terra, to lose everyone you love. But we're victors, and we're the ones who can take whatever they throw at us. You survived the arena, you're going to survive losing Iry."

Shuttle's voice breaks, and she has to take a few shaky breaths in. "We loved her too, Terra. We've all lost her. But we're still a team, and we're going to be one for the rest of our careers as victors. Okay?"

"I'm the only one left, Shuttle," I say, and I feel like I sound eight years old again, when I lost my mother.

"No, you're not. You've got us, and Deecey, and Alex and Eli, and her mother, and us. We're not going to give up on each other because Iry's gone."

"What about Woof?"

"Woof can do whatever the hell he wants; if he wants to come for supper, he can, or he can stay in his solitary confinement. I love him, but you can't control him. But you don't want to end up like him."

No. I don't.

"And you're not taking the Fabian route, or the Jass and Orna route. Maybe they're too damaged to come back to reality, but you're not. The Capitol's taken a lot from us, so don't let me lose you too. For me, Terra," Shuttle says. "And the other victors; they're going to look after you next July when we go back for the Games. I promise. We're all in this together, and don't forget that."

"I can't go home," I say, and Shuttle shakes her head.

"You're going to stay with me; I'm sick of living alone anyway. And Woven's going to come over every day, so none of us are going to be alone like Woof is. Hell, if he wants to come over, he can too."

"I can't stop thinking about her," I say, and that pain redoubles again.

"So we're going to distract you. It's about time we pick up some hobbies, so that's what we'll do. Pick up flower arranging or book collecting or something idiotic like that. We'll get distracted, and we'll see if we can get Woven and Woof involved too. Like to see Woof arranging flowers."

I wrap my arms around Shuttle and hug her so tight I think I'll break her. "Thank you. For everything." It hurts, it hurts, but I have Shuttle, and Woven, and everyone else too. I'm not going to be alone. Even though I've lost the one person in this world who meant more than anything else.

"We're in this together," Shuttle says, hugging me back just as tightly.

"I didn't know you had a sister," I whisper. Or if I did, I've forgotten.

"She's been gone for a while." Shuttle's voice is quiet and distant. But if she survived losing her sister, then maybe I can too. For some reason I never really pieced together that none of us in Victor's Village has family. We're alone, except for each other.

"It's going to get easier, I promise," Shuttle finally says. "You know why?"

I shake my head as Shuttle pulls away and actually grins. "We're not going to have to deal with Postumius anymore."

Then I do something I thought I would never do again.

I laugh.