TW: minor references to suicidal thoughts & attempted rape of a minor

the quiet gets stifling
when you can hear every little noise
every little whisper in the world
the quiet's a little too loud
doesn't fill the void

Abilene Malloy (16)

District Twelve

a week ago

Every second she was at Markus's house, cleaning up every corner of the place, Abilene remembered the lessons she'd learned from the scars racing up and down her back. She kept her head down on instinct now, even though it hurt, like she was tearing the scars open again. But what was the alternative? Lose her job? Lou-Lou's face was always in the forefront of her mind when that didn't seem like such a bad idea.

Somtimes, starvation seemed like a lesser price to pay than to bow down to Markus. But that would be letting Lou-Lou down.

At least he'd stopped saying things that seemed all too flirtatious. He was still malicious, a goddamn disease creeping up into every corner of her life, but that was the only reason she still had her job, really: he didn't want people finding out that he sometimes tried to force himself on the scrawny little maid girl. Otherwise, that punch she gave him when it became too much to bear would've been the end of her.

She swept up the kitchen and cleaned down the counters after the Peacekeeper's wife's cooking mess, and when she was done, she let out a breath. The clock had told her it was time to go half an hour ago, but she wasn't totally finished. Even though she had an ounce of leverage on him, she didn't want to push her luck. And Markus was having some kind of dinner with another Peacekeeper's family that day, or something, so everything needed to be absolutely spotless. Like a spotless house for a fancy dinner was really a priority in the ruins of District Twelve.

She locked up the house behind her and walked away from the town, heading toward the Seam. Much of it really was in ruin, although the houses that had been there before had supposedly been so run down that it was hard to tell by lingering piles of stone and occasionally burnt stuff that it wasn't just a really useless scrap pile. Not the houses that occupied the new Seam now were much better.

The worst part was going through the woods. She'd been told that there used to be a fence that cut the woods off, but some people would slip beyond it for the solitude of being out of the Capitol's view, or for finding just about anything out there to eat. The boundaries for the district had been extended in rebuilding, as there were survivors crammed into a space that was brought to rubble and unfit for living. Now houses crept out from behind trees, and the canopy in some places blocked most of the light so it seemed like early evening in the middle of the day. Her house was back on the edge, far away from the nice places like the town and the Victors' Village, and every trek home from work, she saw another person leaning up against a tree, or hidden in patches of old rubble that doubled as shelter for those who couldn't afford to put up anything more adequate.

Walks home were what stripped the life out of her. She'd been grown up for a long time, but it was when she started working two years ago that she really saw the world for what it was. When her eyes were opened to the stark contrasts between those who could live comfortably and those who could hardly hold their heads up, weak from hunger—and the even starker contrast between District Twelve's average citizen and the people from the Capitol.

By the time she got home, she was bone tired and too angry to talk to anyone, but she had things to do. She checked on Tobias and Lou-Lou in their rooms to make sure they'd gotten home safe after being off all day while she was at work, and then she went to the kitchen to make sure her mother had been able to get out of bed and make supper that day. A lot of times that was questionable.

It wasn't her fault she'd gotten sick after Louisa was born, nor that it made her so weak she couldn't work anymore, but Abilene sometimes resented her anyway. Resented her for unintentionally forcing her into a life of being a mother to siblings only two and five years younger than her. Resented Lorcan for being in the mines, where he worked an awful job at worse hours than she did, but at least he didn't have to take care of an entire family.

No, she didn't mean that one. She didn't even really mean it about her mother, although she did a little bit, but that wasn't really fair. Her father was never home either, always off in the mines, so the only difference was that her mother's inability to contribute to the house didn't bring money home, and her dad's absence did.

She was just angry that day. She shouldn't be taking it out on her family, even if they weren't there for her to be directly angry at.

There was some bread and cheese leftover from dinner, and the remnants of a mess from her mother making it from the tesserae Abilene took out. She must have made it much earlier in the day, but wasn't able to clean it up entirely.

Tobias came into the room after a minute, going to the sink and grabbing one of their ragged pieces of cloth that worked as their dishcloths. "I'll clean it up," he told her. "I meant to earlier, but—"

She shook her head, not wanting to hear excuses. She wasn't mad at him, just mad at the world, and she hated it when her siblings thought they had to make excuses to her so she didn't explode. She hated it when the tears at her seams became evident. "It's okay," she said. "I wouldn't even have minded."

He paused for a minute, like he was making sure she was being honest, and then nodded slowly. "Okay," he said. He started wiping down the table pushed against the wall that they called a countertop as Abilene tore off a chunk of bread and pulled the cheese out of their makeshift fridge, which wasn't more than a big cooler that they put in the back of the kitchen where it would at least always be cool and kept out of the light, but they didn't have anywhere to make ice for it so nothing stayed for very long.

"How was Lou-Lou today?" Abilene asked as she swallowed a piece of bread.

Tobias threw her a glance that made her chest feel tight.

"What did she do?" she asked, turning toward him. She needed to know, she needed to keep up with them. But he seemed like he wasn't willing to say. It couldn't be that bad; Louisa was the smartest person in the family, and she was well-behaved.

"Nothing bad," he reassured her quickly, waving her off, and she felt the pressure on her shoulders compressing her into one tiny little package dissipating slightly. "She just— Well, I guess her friends were all pressuring her to go through the rubble, up by the Dead Meadow."

The Dead Meadow was the place of impact in the Seam, where it seemed that the area had just been eviscerated, scooped up and swept away, and all that was left was soot and a place where grass wouldn't grow anymore. No one really went there, and when there was once a half-ass cleanup effort, a lot of the shit just got piled up there. So most of it was just barren and depressing, except the huge pile of scraps of wood and metal, broken glass, everything that kids shouldn't play around but always did given the opportunity.

Abilene nodded, letting the idea of little Louisa playing with all that sharp metal and broken glass as if she didn't know better, and her mouth was set in a line. She hated it, though, hated it the moment she could feel it, because she knew the exact look. Her mother used to make it all the time, when she was still too little to be the mom, when Lorcan may as well have been their second parent before he slipped off into the mines. God, she didn't hate her mom, of course not. She loved her mom to death. She did. But she didn't want to be making her faces, pursing her lips and setting her brow so it was raised disappointedly. She didn't want to be the one considering how she should talk to Lou-Lou about fucking up by going to the Dead Meadow. She just didn't want to, she didn't want to, and it was such a bad day that all she could think of was the didn't want tos, and the tired ofs, and the wishes that never came true.

"Well, she knows better," she breathed out, and took another bite of her supper.

Tobias nodded. "You're not— I mean, there's no point talking to her about it," he pointed out. It was all about no points with him. No point in talking to Lou-Lou, no point in trying at school when he was just gonna end up in the mines. He was only fourteen, so he didn't get how no points one day turned into a reality, where you survived day in and day out but didn't live, and sometimes the thought, There's no point in this, crossed your mind, and it fucking terrified you. He didn't get it yet, and she wished she could tell him before it was too late, since no one ever bothered to tell her.

"I want Lorcan to get home," she said quietly, and took her handful of bread and cheese into her room.

She caught up to Elise on the way to work the next morning, the two of them walking down the path to the Peacekeeper district early as always. Sometimes the only time the two of them found relief in the day was walking down together to go clean their Peacekeeper's house.

"Abi," Elise greeted her with a smile as they started going in stride together. She smiled back and pushed aside the thought that Elise maybe had a crush on her. She was too tired after not sleeping well that night to really sit on that one this morning. Ever since she'd started to get that idea from Elise, she'd been avoiding thinking about it, afraid that she would have a crush back on her. She'd only mess it all up by overthinking, by stressing out, by not wanting to get too close to her. "Oh," Elise added when she saw Abilene's hollow greeting smile. "What's wrong?"

Abilene shook her head. "It was just a rough night," she said. "I'm tired."

She paused for a moment,not quite believing her. It wasn't like they weren't always tired, but Abilene was still usually in a better mood. But then she nodded, letting it go.

They walked a few moments in silence before Abilene said, "I haven't seen Henri in over a week."

Elise looked at her, unsure how to respond to that. She knew that Henri was Abilene's best friend, but she didn't know the guy personally. He was part of a life that Abilene didn't let overlap with her work. Nothing about her family or her friends overlapped with work—she couldn't afford that.

"It's just weird," she said, hanging her head and walking a little further again. Elise was softer, sweeter than Abilene—kinder than she could ever be, despite all the same weight on her shoulders. A smaller family, maybe, but the same pressures of work and life and poverty. Elise was good and strong, and sometimes maybe she was a little too strong. Her edges weren't ground down into points, and sometimes she didn't know how to react to Abilene being angry and hardened.

The day was the same as any other day. She hid away from the Peacekeeper and his family, milling around the house as she cleaned and cooked for them, and every minute she thought about going home. Not even to see her family. She wanted to—of course she wanted to—but it was always the same. Hungry bellies, sad eyes, problems with no solutions.

She wanted to see Henri. Maybe she'd go to his house tonight, see if he was free. He would be, if he was home.

She was so tired. She was so, so tired. She couldn't remember when that became such a pervasive thought. She'd always wanted to go back to bed as soon as she woke up in the morning, but it was more than that. It was a weight dragging her shoulders down until she felt like she was slumping to the floor. It was bags under her eyes so heavy she felt her whole face sag.

When she left work that day, she stumbled outside on a branch as she walked through the wooded area toward Henri's, and for a moment she didn't know if she'd ever get back up. She didn't feel weak or sick. She didn't feel any more hurt than an average scrape on her knees and prickle on her hands. But she didn't know if there was anything out there to tug her back to her feet. She laid there and peeked up at the sky through little clear spots in the canopy.

Eventually she was on her feet again, and the time in between there was kind of fuzzy to her. She was sleepy as well as tired, and felt her eyes blinking closed slower and slower as she searched for a sign of the stars through the leaves.

And then she was walking to Henri's house again, and felt her heart start to rise off the ground a little bit as she saw him sitting out on the porch.

"Abi," he said, scooting over on his rickety wooden steps that were practically mashed into a tree. If it ever toppled over, it would crush his house, and probably the neighbor's too. She slipped into the spot next to him and leaned into him like he was the only thing that could hold her up.

Neither of them felt anything romantic for each other. Never, not even a little bit. But there was no one she could curl up next to like Henri. There was no one she could pour her heart out to like Henri.

"I've been so busy," she started off, like they were finishing a conversation they'd just had a few moments before. Slipping back into it like everything was easy. Like she hadn't just been glued to the ground for no reason at all, wondering if she'd ever leave.

"Who isn't?" he asked, wrapping an arm around her.

"Never see Lorcan anymore," she told him, yawning. She could fall asleep here, in his arms. It was the safest place in the world, simply because nothing else existed when they found time to see each other. "Or you."

He nodded and leaned his cheek into her hair on top of her head, fitting in like puzzle pieces. Sometimes she wondered how her mother and father found romantic love together, if she ever would in this shitty world. And other times it didn't feel like it mattered so much. She was pretty sure if she and Henri never managed to go off and fall in love with someone else, they'd just keep fitting together like puzzles for the rest of their lives. Not in love, but loving each other so deeply that they couldn't be pulled apart.

"One of these days it'll get better," he promised her, like he could really know. "It has to."

"Or worse," she pointed out.

He shook his head, and he could feel the smile against her hair. "It doesn't go from bad to worse."

"Then I guess we're lucky, aren't we?" she said, twisting enough to look up at his face.

He smiled at her, like she'd said something funny. She guessed she had to mean it a little jokingly, to look at all of this and call them all lucky. Or maybe he just really believed that they were, that this was all something salvageable, something to grow off of. And maybe it wasn't a laughing smile at all. She didn't know. She didn't understand every little think Henri did, she guessed.

She nuzzled her face into Henri's neck, her eyes squeezed shut.

sorry for the long wait! i've been super busy lately but i'm still here and working on finishing these intros!