Wednesday, 3rd week of November, 73rd Winter Anno Nix
Rory - Day 1:
From the moment Leevy arrives in the school yard, standing on tiptoes to scan the cloud of school children kicking up ash, Rory knows something is wrong. It's in the way Leevy holds one hand above her brow, the other gripping her coat tightly against the windswept snow. Or the way she searches a little too frantically for siblings he knows she doesn't have. When she catches Rory's gaze across the school yard, he sees it in the way she beckons him with dirty, trembling hands, stained a criminal crimson. But most of all it's in the way she refuses to meet his eyes thereafter, ignoring the questions gleaming there.
He isn't so much troubled by the fact that Gale and Katniss are nowhere to be found. It happens sometimes – they'll get held up trapping or trading. On those occasions, Rory marches Prim and Vick by the Hob entrance, where Sae sends out little cups of broth to ease their waiting. Only once Gale and Katniss have emerged with bags full of barters do they ramble home together, scampering like blackberry brambles around the strong stems of their providers.
It's an unspoken rule that they never go home without the other. In the same way that the wraith-white egrets feel an instinctive pull to Twelve's smoggy mires, Rory and his siblings, Prim included, suffer a similar devotion to their surrogate parents. It's not optimal. The obvious effects of tragedy pollute the once sparkling fens of family structure as much as the district's toxic runoff muddies the surrounding everglades with slag. Still, they wade knee-deep in boredom and Hob-haze just to savor the reassuring gaits of their caretakers guiding them home. It's an illness of sorts, Rory's sure, but Mrs. Everdeen doesn't seem to have a cure-all for orphaned chicklets. They're hatched with long legs for a reason.
Naturally, it's when Rory begins to wonder at their excessive length that mire floods their corner of the pond with rampant force. But it's not the first time, so he reels just a little against the wave breaking over them before he catches Vick's hand in his, towing him towards their escort and calling to Prim, "Come on, she's waitin' for us."
He knows Prim tastes the bitter ash floating in the snowfall, the little sour note that whispers, wrong, wrong, wrong into the crackling winter air. But Prim has never questioned things as strongly as he. She only nods softly and clasps her delicate fingers over Vick's elbow, anchoring herself to their little tugging knot.
Leevy shoves her hands in her pockets as they approach, tall and boyishly lanky just like her sister. The two Gannen sisters grew up in the Everdeens' sector. When their father grew too hunched for minework, they were reassigned a shanty next to the mule shed, damp and suffused with animal pong. Rory doesn't think he could stand living in the smell, but the coins that Mr. Gannen brings home each week for tending the mine mules barely feeds his family. Sometimes it's the smaller evil over the biggest evil. And the biggest evil in District 12 is starving.
Besides, Mr. Gannen's smell is the least of his peculiarities. Rory helps him water the cart beasts every morning, filling rusty troughs with dank, sometimes moldy, hay. A persistent pandemic of rats always swarm out of the straw bins and Rory takes to sticking them on the sharp prongs of his pitchfork. Afterwards, Mr. Gannen gathers the corpses and slips them into his pockets, their twisting tails dangling out at such conspicuous angles, Rory can't help but wonder what he does with them. He's a hungry boy, so it's not hard to imagine.
Despite Mr. Gannen's eccentricity, Rory looks forward to working each morning, waking red-eyed with Gale – even before the miners. It makes him feel useful, grown, to be striding beside the strong, broad shoulders of his brother in the dark of dawn, nodding to the lamplighters swinging their sparks. And the solid reminder of a week's half-coin is almost worth the graveyard hours. In truth, the pay is paltry – a meager portion of Mr. Gannen's seven coins that Rory always feels guilty taking. But he has mouths at home, too. Surely, he understands, even if a half coin won't buy more than a single sprouting onion. Really, it's Mr. Gannen's tender prattle as he tugs each mule's ear affectionately, his warm hands ruffling Rory's hair after each shift, that recompense his grueling work. He's a good man, Mr. Gannen. A good father.
And yet. The Gannen girls grate his nerves. Rory will admit readily enough that his daughters inherited the same warm demeanor. It just fits differently on girls, women, like a man's work mitt that's been embroidered and edged with lace until all practicality is gone. They talk incessantly, invade personal space, and dote on whomever they can find. Rory doesn't like being treated as a child.
Vick, however, has taken quite a shine to Bristel. Ever since she moved two shanties down, he heckles her incessantly for new spelling words while she helps Ma with the wash. Sweet, gentle, clueless Vick, who, for all his love of words, has never spelled danger, or threat, or death. At times, Rory feels like that is the extent of his vocabulary. Then again, he's never been good at reading or writing.
"Where's Gale?" Vick asks, wet-nosed, "And Katniss?"
"Nothing," Leevy says distractedly, "I mean, nowhere. Katniss just asked me to walk you home so you wouldn't have to wait in this storm." She hunches her shoulders against an icy gust, "It's cold, ain't it?"
Vick's cough rattles wet gravel in reply. Leevy crouches down to wrap his coat securely around his ribs, matching glossy-eyed buttons to their well-worn holes.
"Let's get you home to your ma, hon." She gives a maternal wipe under Vick's nose. "How does that sound, hmm?"
Vick nods doubtfully. Prim gives him a sweetly reassuring smile and takes his hand firmly in hers, as if nothing was wrong and the acrid lies went down easy like sleep syrup. As if the crusts of rust under Leevy's nails were irrelevant.
But Rory knows that stain anywhere, half-circles of blood lining the nail bed – leftover evidence of butchering meat. No matter how hard she scrubs, Katniss always misses a few spots, leaving slender crescent moons, ruddy like the harvest phase, that linger under her nails until the next bath night.
Admittedly, Rory likes the signs of hard work put into a meal – whether it be the knotted rheumatism of hands plucking rat tails from dank straw or the ory scent of blood on long, calloused fingers. But the writhing coils of his gut attest to Leevy's absence in her family's kitchen. The wandering waterways of dried blood along her forehands seem more consistent with a mass butchering: something that could feed the whole Seam.
Only Leevy doesn't handle meat.
Vick coughs again, brittle and sickly. Leevy grabs his free hand and turns to the west side of town, where the Merchant homes stand two-tiered, stooping over grassy yards and garish gardens. She pulls the chain of Hawthorne and Everdeen at a quick pace, determined, brisk. The wrong way.
"Hey," Rory calls out, deep-rooted in his spot. "It's faster down the free-road. We keep on the paving and cut through the square, trims ten minutes off our –"
"We're going by the Merchant Quarter, you hear? No arguin'." She keeps walking, hauling Vick in her bow-legged wake. Prim looks back and gestures earnestly at Rory, urging him on, but he scowls mulishly at the rebuke.
"I'm not goin' by those fancy Townie homes. It's faster the other way."
"Trust me," Leevy turns and feigns a mother's indifference, "it'll feel a lot longer after your brother learns 'bout your disrespect and whoops you into tomorrow."
"Why?" he demands, "Where is he?"
Prim stares imploringly at him. "Please, Rory, just come on so we can get home."
"No. Something's happened and she's not sayin'. Where is he? Where's Katniss?"
Leevy props a hand on her hips. "Listen, Katniss told me to walk you home and that's what I aim to do. But I won't freeze my fingers off tryin' to drive you like a broken mine mule."
It takes two rounds of placating from Prim before he relents, glaring sump holes into the slush underfoot. They walk in strangled silence, four soiled souls among the angelic hordes of blonde Town children, making their pilgrimage home.
At the end of the Quarter, Leevy slinks into an alleyway and crouches in the dim-lit passageway, surveying the street ahead. Faults forgotten, Rory glances over the flats of her shoulders towards the bands of Peacekeepers strung along the dividing line of Town and Seam. Aching echoes toll out in the muffling snow. The Peackeepers work quickly in the cold, driving nails into wooden slats forming an infinite string of barriers.
"What are they –"
Leevy clamps an icy hand over his mouth as a troop of Keepers rage past, dragging a miner by the end of a long rope. His screeching wafts ethereal notes that linger afterward, haunting the cramped alleyway.
For a chilling moment, no one says anything. Then Prim looks to Leevy, her blue eyes a frozen lake riddled with black ice, creaking and cracking under the weight of her concern. Rory feels his own paper-thin resolve melting alarmingly fast. It's all he can do to hold his breath as he plunges into the glacial deeps below, gasping watery petitions on the banks of it, Please, please. Just say they're alright. Say they made it out. Say anything at all, as long as they're alive.
But Leevy just shakes her head and grips her coat with bloodied hands.
It's a long time sitting there, listening to the tink-tockering nails and tricking himself into believing it's only Posy playing around the corner, tapping ants along the side boards.
He's good at that – tricking himself. He's become a master in the art of lying when necessary, fooling his stomach after meals, making faces at Posy during Reapings, pushing the hot-brick towards Vick's side of the bed, I'm too hot, you take it. Some mornings, when it's only Gale creaking in the kitchen chair, he convinces himself his pa is home, if only for a moment. That one took years to manage.
He's not particularly proud of this skill, if you'd call it that, but Gale won't tolerate cheating, stealing or idleness, so lying became his poison of choice. The frequency with which Rory drinks it has nullified its effects on him, but he offers it to Vick, now – a saccharine syrup so sweet it'll make you sick.
"Don't worry," he lies to the young boy's quivering chin, "Leevy knows the way home. We'll be alright."
A stewing look from Leevy indicates that this was, in fact, the way. She stands, flapping her arms with hapless frustration and causing her last remaining coat button to break from its tenuous threads. It clatters to the cobblestones.
"How are we gonna get through that?" Vick shivers at the wooden barricade swarming with busy Peacekeepers.
Bending down to retrieve her button, Leevy catches her warped reflection on its burnished convex. She studies it, straightens slowly, and lets the outline of a plan embroider her face.
"Vick, how many words can you spell in five minutes?"
Vick looks up from the tear in his trousers, confused. "All sorts. I can even spell arithmetic, and that one's hard 'cause–"
"The longest words you know." She tucks the button into her pocket. "Start there."
She smooths her hair, pinches her cheeks, bites her lips. "When you've spelled them all, look to see that no one's there, then run under the blockade. Quietly. Don't let anyone see you."
She doesn't look at Vick's knobbly knees ripping runs in his pants, nor Primrose crouched beside him. She doesn't meet Rory's eyes.
"Five minutes," is all she says, "I'll see you on the other side."
They watch, the three of them, as she steps into the street-light, swirled in snow drifts. By the time Vick starts spelling, she's reached the border, heckled on all sides by the pack of Keepers.
Encompass. E-n-c-o-m-p-
She jaunts boldly up to the overseeing Peacekeeper lounging against a half-stripped shanty wall. The calls and hoots of the other officers swallow her whole.
Beset. B-e-s-
She says something privately to the Peacekeeper, pulling her hands out of her pockets, head cocked coyly. He leans closer.
Barter. B-a-r-t-
The Peacekeeper shoos his officers away, beckoning Leevy brusquely with two fingers. He pinches her coat sleeve and pulls her out of sight. The road stands white and empty.
Quietly. Q-u-i-e-t-
They run, long-legged.
"She said to wait for her." Prim's argument takes flight in soft woolly puffs, curling around the wind.
Rory grabs Vick's wrist and starts wandering deeper into the Seam, away from the stilted barricade. "She said she'd meet us on the other side. Never said nothin' 'bout waitin' for her." He puts a gangly burst of conviction into his stride. "Besides, it's been heaps more than five minutes. For all we know, she's up and left us to fend for ourselves. I'm not standin' around to see what happens when the Peacekeepers come back and catch us standin' around like fools at the fence line."
Prim attempts a scowl, but barely manages a prettily worried wrinkle between her eyes. "I just think we should follow instructions. Katniss is relying on her to get us home – that should count for something." Her arms fold over her skinny chest.
"What are you, scared?" Rory stares at her until she blushes.
"I'm not scared," she answers, "But we don't know what's going on or where anyone's at. What if something bad happened to them? There's big trouble going on that we don't know about."
"Well, whose fault is that?"
It's a rare thing that Prim loses her temper, but the cold and adrenaline of their immediate surroundings are eating at everyone's good graces.
"Will you for one moment stop trying to prove to everyone how mature you are and think about more important things than yourself?" She shudders with unfamiliar rage.
If her words didn't ring so painfully honest he might have held back his sneer. "I am. You're the one who's hellbent on getting caught." Rory yanks hard on his brother's coat. "And somehow, I don't think that's what Katniss had in mind… Come on, Vick, let's go home."
But Vick stumbles away from him, spluttering between coughs, "I'm gonna stay with Prim. I wanna wait for her."
Rory considers the duo before him, two youngsters looking for all the world like a pair of dropped stitches in his mother's knitting, feebly trying to hold the structure of their world together with sloppy uncertainty.
He shrugs using practiced nonchalance. "Fine, suit yourselves. But those white coats are coming back eventually and when they do, I don't plan on being anywhere near here."
Over the crunch of his footsteps, he can hear the panic bubbling in their eyes.
"You can't just leave us," Vick whines, "Ma says we shouldn't ever walk home alone."
"I'm not leaving you, you're just choosing to stay behind. It's got nothin' to do with me."
"Rory. Just stop." Vick grabs at his arm, "Don't go, please."
"Who's gonna stop me?"
"I'll tell Gale!"
"You have no idea where he is, bugger. 'Less you read it in your books, somewhere."
"Well, I'll tell – I'll tell Kitty –"
"STOP IT!" Prim stomps over to meet them, "The both of you! You're not helping. We can't just go off on our own – we have to stay together, so play nice or don't speak at all."
Rory glares at her. "When did you become our ma?"
"Since you started squabbling like infants." She juts her chin and Rory can see her sister in her, bold and stubborn, resilient. It lasts only a moment before she buries her head in a sweetly apologetic manner and lowers her voice. "If you're going to go, then we're all going. We need to stick together."
Rory turns on his heel, withholding a retort, and skulks towards the grey of their sector. The timid pitter-patter of footfalls behind him gives him all the confidence he needs to stall the aching arrhythmia of his heart.
He can do this, he knows the way home. He certainly doesn't need Leevy Gannen's hand-holding to cross the street. They'll keep to the backways and privy paths and be just fine. Here's one alley gone by, empty of Peacekeepers. Now… thirteen… no, fifteen… well, some streets more. He can do this.
Silently creeping forward to another lane – empty again, home is ten paces closer than before. A stray mutt barks behind a trash pile as they pass through the connecting street – barren, blank. Rory looks over his shoulder to grin at Vick and Prim trailing behind him, long enough to walk part-way into the next alley…
And stop short at a Peacekeeper's broad, bent back as he buckles his belt. Beyond him, up against the wall and brushing grunge off her skirts, Leevy looks bird-thin in the murky lighting.
There is a suspended cleft in time, akin to jumping into deep water, when the air hovers miles above your head and your body drifts weightless in the water, going neither up nor down. Rory entertains the possibility that the Peacekeeper will keep his back turned, that maybe they can just fall right back out of this well-hole they've stumbled into. But Leevy looks up when the officer spins to the trio of runny-nosed children, and the look in her eyes spurs the slow-motion ascent towards air, painful, acutely suffocating, drowning in despair.
Prim gives a startled whimper beside Vick as realization dawns bright on the officer's face. He glowers at Leevy, pining her closer to the wall with a menacing step.
"You bitch!" he spits disgusted at her feet.
Leevy recoils from his gaze, but when he turns again to the petrified children she mouths frantically –
Run!
Suddenly, Rory's pushing at Prim's back, sliding around the corner and pelting down the snow-banked road. He hears the thundering pursuit of the Peacekeeper's boots pounding in time to his heart. Vick wheezes as he struggles to keep pace.
"HEY! Jackin' guttersnipes, I'll beat you dead!" The metal rattle of a cudgel clanking at the officer's waist sets fire to Rory's feet.
"Go, gogogogo," Rory urges with gasping breath, "Around the corner – go!"
He takes up the rear, following Prim and Vick into an alleyway and out onto a worn privy path – head-to-hip with Leevy. They fall in a heap, winded by exertion and collision.
"Is he gone?" Prim pants, her legs pinned under Rory's shoulders.
Silence rings ominously, then, sighs of relief. They painfully collect themselves off the ice and stand, stinging.
"I thought I told you to wait for me," Leevy winces as she straightens, "What in Snow's nose were you doing there?"
Rory bites back hotly, "What were you doing? Cause it looked to me like you was getting' some and leavin' us to be found out by the 'keepers."
"How can you –" Leevy clamps her jaw and for once in his life, Rory watches her flounder for words. "I wasn't – if you had followed my directions…you have no idea what you saw."
Her tone quiets at the end, matching her downcast eyes and fluttery fingers. Rory almost feels guilty for having called her out, for making it sound like a game, what she was doing.
He knew, of course, what they were doing. Gale had had that talk with him ages ago when one of the Town wives, with particular zeal, came-on to his brother on their walk home. But he'd had an inkling before that of what what was. It was hard to ignore the flocks of tramps crossing their morning route, sleepless and battered from their night with Cray. Early birds, his mother calls them, because no one pulls worms for a living unless it's the only way to survive. Most of them have families back home to feed, a fraction always being Cray's red-haired, hazel-eyed brood.
There is what of all kinds throughout the district – brazenly on the slagheap at night, secretly on Town house doorsteps before the first light, illegally in the Hob's backrooms round the hour. It's a livelihood for those who partake, a trade for money, food, supplies, or sometimes just a reprieve from district life.
Yet, in the Hawthorne and Everdeen households respectively, what is considered a hazard, one far greater than trading at the Hob, or owning weapons, or poaching outside the fence. Rory is sure neither Gale nor Katniss have ever availed themselves of its resources – even as a last resource. From what Gale has outlined in scant details, love (or not) leads to what, what leads to babies, and babies lead to bad. And all it takes is one what.
So, it's a surprise, yes, when he ascertains exactly what Leevy and the Peacekeeper were doing in the alleyway. Not that she bribed the officer with it – that in itself is rampantly common, but because he knows her. Leevy Gannen, the neighborhood girl who's always eager to watch your children and fantasize roles of motherhood. Rory's spent his life dodging doting hugs and gooey kisses, enraged by her nerve for thinking she could ever deputize a parent's role.
A good girl, they call her, sweet. He's lost count of the times his mother has cuffed him for the things he calls her. Even within hearing, Leevy's too busy mooning over Gale to care.
She's a nice girl, Rory, she'd scold him, you can't dislike a girl for being nice.
She's right, of course. Rory can't hate her for being nice. But Leevy Gannen, he's discovered, is nothing but a surreptitious tart. And he can hate her for that.
It's not that he's a prude – certainly not. Only, he's had such a strong model of principle from his parents and proxy-parents that to unearth this fault, so craftily concealed under a seamless façade, and in someone he knows nonetheless, is intensely disappointing. Katniss would never have resorted to this. She would've thought of a dozen different options, would've even fought the officers hand to hand if need be, before she thought of this. Of that he is sure.
Leevy is spitting with justification when she stops frozen. "Do you hear that?"
Everyone's ears cock forward, listening: a faint jangle moving quick and fast, a thudding of heavyset boots aggressively sucking the street slush.
"Quick! In the privy!" Leevy starts pushing them towards the shambled outhouse, putrefying with all manner of rank smells and fetid fluids.
"What? No piffin' way. I'm not –"
Rory doesn't finish his protest. In an instant, he's choking on the cloud of flies that flood up from the three-foot privy pit. The door just barely shuts with the four of them pressed up against the walls, holding their breath in the stale air. Leevy holds the rotten plywood shut by the broken lock chains, face pressed up to the ventilation holes, peering out. Rory closes his eyes against the stench of urine and fear.
"Do you hear him?" Vick whispers from the corner.
Leevy shushes him. Slowly, gradually, the crunch of ice comes sauntering to the pathway. He seems to pause, taking in the trampling footprints, the crisp ridges of solid mud, the ramshackle outhouse. Then, steadily, his footsteps retrace the road to Town, unhurried.
Rory releases a little laugh, puffing out flies on each heave. When Leevy cracks a tentative smile, Prim joins in, nearly buoyant with relief, and Vick, blushing, peels himself from her side, pouting.
"I wasn't scared. Just tryna make sure Prim was al-"
He slips suddenly, bashing his head into the moss-slicked wall behind him, then sinking feet-first into the pit with a viscous slop. The lean-to walls judder and jolt from impact, squealing with dampened age.
Foul gases billow up in clouds from the pit. Like a wash tub on winter mornings, the contents of the privy had formed a thick protective layer overtop, suppressing the worst of the smells. But the instant Vick's feet shatter the brittle sheet of ice, it's suffocatingly sharp. He looks up, green-faced.
"Don't panic," Leevy instructs, "We'll get you out of there, just hold on…"
She trails off as the warning sounds of crunching ice return, bearing resolutely towards the shuddering shack. Holding a finger to her lips, she returns to the door, hands curling around the deadbolt once more.
The officer circles their hideaway in long, menacing strides. He arrives at the front, pulls on the door, rattles the bolt. All the while, Leevy grips the green-rotted chains with white knuckles. Flies settle spindly legs on Rory's face.
Hot puffs of air seep through the wall joints as somebody leans in close to the ventilation grate. "Cragging mutts…" a baritone mutters next to the crack by Rory's ear. The shack is stone-still.
Finally, finally, he pounds one fist angrily on the decaying door, nearly knocking it in, and clomps off towards the main road. Leevy's eyelids flutter in relief and a long crease of silence enfolds them, around the squelch and frost and bug-flutter. From a distance, the Peacekeeper's boots chew at the rivulets of ice caught between the gravel, growing further and farther away. Safe.
Leevy cracks the door open trembling, peers about, and nods at Rory to help Prim extricate Vick from the pit. They brush the worst of the muck from his pants and shoes, wrinkling their noses at the stench. On the way out, Rory pauses to catch Leevy's eye, because he's desperate now for a sign, a hint, a clue as to what is going on, even if it hurts him. His hunger for the truth is so extreme that he'll brave the biting fire to retrieve even the smallest breadcrumb of a loaf, no matter how charred the crust is. And if it lingers ashen in his mouth, all the better. Bitterness is a formidable motivator.
But Leevy evades his gaze, unwrapping the scarf from around her neck to wipe sewer sludge off Vick's face, tenderly, apologetically; nothing at all reflective of her prior deeds against a neighboring alley wall. So, Rory saves it for another time, when the sins of the past have aired their fetor and mellowed in the wind. The streets are flooded with countless other concerning smells, besides:
The roiling storm quick approaching, clean and crisp, bright and biting.
Gun powder thickening the air, hazy with grit, stinking of weed ash.
Blood on Leevy's scarf, caustic in his nostrils similar to snuffing metal shavings.
And above it all, the virulent stench of hidden truths, like a shoal of rotting fish trapped under an ice sheet.
No one says a word. Instead, they run, hands over noses, slipping on the frozen road.
With time, the ice will melt, and only then will they realize their mistake was fleeing. As if distance alone could clear the air of those toxic contaminants defiling the grey, slurried streets. For after every winter, a new spring will come and the waters will dissolve with snow, flooding over. It's inevitable, really, that this should pass. The surging current always carries what winter has tried to bury, things that best remain unknown.
Their house leans small and unassuming in the swirling snowfall, soft light streaming from the shattered kitchen window. The brown papering Gale had used to patch the missing panes has been stripped away by the blustering storm. Now, a familiarly flowered bed sheet hangs in its place.
It feels strange to be walking up the front steps with Leevy in tow, the positions that Gale and Katniss take up in the rear blowing cold and empty. For a terrifying second, Rory is afraid that he'll open the door and find someone else's life inside, puttering merrily oblivious to his tumultuous day. But then he hears Posy's chattering within and he opens the hollow door and smells the sharp fumes of soapberries and lavender sprigs simmering over the fire. Just as quickly, Rory is convinced with feverish certitude of his belonging here – in the smell of it, feel of it, warmth of it. In the way Posy tangles in his legs and Ma looks up with a smile, soft as worn-out leather. He thinks if even the mule sheds smelled like this he would live the rest of his days there.
Ma pulls her hands bright red and blushing out of the hot lye solution in her wash bin, wringing them dry on her faded apron. She holds the door open to usher them in and for her part, doesn't bat an eye at Gale and Katniss' absences, nor Leevy's alerting presence. She only tucks some straggling hair into her kerchief as she does before Posy throws a fit, when she is expecting the whole world to turn upside down in the blink of an eye.
"Leevy, dear, what a wonderful surprise. I just sent your sister to pick up some laundry for me, I hope you aren't here looking for her."
Leevy folds easily into Ma's hospitable hug, shaking her head. "I saw her in town already, thanks."
A probing silence chokes the room while Posy wades through their legs searching for two pairs of mud-caked boots tangled in chickweed. Ma looks to Leevy expectantly.
"I, uhh…" Rory watches Leevy's throat bob as she swallows her tongue. "Actually, I saw Katniss in town, too. She asked me to walk the kids home from school, you know, so they wouldn't be waitin' in this storm."
Ma nods slowly. "Well… bless your heart. I'm sure we all appreciate your help." She eyes the soggy, dripping children clustered at the door. "Don't we?"
Prim responds with charming promptness, "Yes, thank you, Leevy. It was very kind of you to walk us home."
Vick complies with similar meekness and commences a coughing fit that disguises Rory's lack of gratuitous comment. Ma peels the frail boy out of his jacket and pushes him towards the hearth. "Take your homework in front of the fire, Vick. You shouldn't be splashing in puddles with your cough, you know better."
Turning to Leevy, she whisks away her sodden coat and hangs it on the clotheslines running wall to wall.
"You're soaked to the bone, love. Let me pour you some tea – I have a pot boiling right here. Rory, look in the cupboard above and see if we don't have a bit of bread somewhere."
Rory doesn't budge from where Posy peers barefoot out the open door, into the white wind.
"Did you hear me – Posy, shut that door! You're letting all the heat out! Tend to your sister, Rory."
Posy kicks and whines when he scoops her up, handing her to Prim while he latches the door shut. Her wailing only escalates.
"Nooo! Don't lock him out! He wants to come in! STOOOOP!"
Ma seats her sternly on a chair and grips her cheeks with one hand. "You stop this now, young lady. I won't have you misbehaving with company here."
Posy takes in shuddery gulps of soap-scented air, "B-but Rory shut the door." She points an accusatory finger. "He's being mean!"
Ma bats her finger away. "Don't you point fingers in this household. I'll put you in the corner, I will!"
At this, Posy floods with tears, flinging herself into her mother's arms. "No, not the corner, I don't want the corner."
"Then stop your crying and sit quietly with Vick."
Posy nods shamefaced and scoots off the chair, glancing furtively over her shoulder to pout at Rory, "If he knocks, you must let him in. He will whip you if you don't."
Rory shakes his head baffled, "Who, Pose?"
She answers with the certitude of nearly four years living and many years unlived, l's slurred with an infantile drawl. "Gale."
Leevy's cup clatters noisily to the table. "We'd better be off. Mrs. Everdeen has some new patients she needs help with." Her voice is too loud for the small house. "I promised I'd have Prim home to help."
"You're barely dry." Ma objects, "Finish your tea and warm some before you venture into that storm again, otherwise it'll be you who are the new patients. Oh, and Prim, sweet, don't let me forget to send you with the soap your mother was wanting –"
"Actually, Mrs. Hawthorne, Bristel mentioned needing your help carrying laundry back from the West Sector… You wouldn't mind walking Prim home, would you? Seeing as it's on your way?" Leevy glances up quickly from her cup, "I'm happy to stay here with the kids, of course."
Leevy's request hangs lucid with unease, more transparent a cover than the bedsheet tacked over the window, whipping in the wind. Even Vick, hunched in the far corner by the fire, pulls his head up from his school slate skeptically. Amidst the anticipatory hush, Ma pauses with her hand in the soap bucket and withdraws it slowly.
"Of course," she nods and plasters an unconvincing smile on her face, "Of course. I would be happy to. Let me just – my shawl…"
Prim presses the fraying pink homespun into her lye-blistered hands, searching her face with anxious eyes. Fondly, Ma smooths the honey-glinting flyaways from Prim's face before she unties her apron and wraps herself in the tattered tassels of her shawl. Her hand rests gently on Prim's shoulder.
"Right-oh, have you got everything? School pail? Mittens? Good." She nods once. "Rory, you'll make sure Vick drinks his tea? He knows how to brew it. And don't forget to bring in the wood so it doesn't soak –"
Rory stands, screeching his chair back on its hind legs. "I'm coming, too."
"You are not. You'll stay and help Leevy with Posy – she's in a mood, today. And don't let Vick skip his tea, he'll be coughin' all night otherwise. There's turnips and jerky in the cupboard – y'know how to fix a meal. I'll be back before this storm worsens."
"But I –"
"No arguin', y'hear, or I'll have you doin' chores to pay for your headstone."
Drawn by the scuffle of boots near the door, Posy comes running around the corner with wild exuberance. Her face falls at the sight of her mother bundled to depart. Quicker than a pit prop's collapse under the coal seam above, and with equal devastation, a multitude of tears stream from her eyes, fleeing the earth-shattering destruction within.
"No, mama, don't leave! I don't want you to go! Stay, please!"
Ma swoops her onto her hip, tracing her thumb through the deep, wet runnels down her face. "Hush, lovey, I'll be home to tuck you in. Be a good girl for Leevy, won't you?"
Posy buries her shaking head in Ma's neck with toddler dramatism.
"Now, none of that. If I hear you threw a fit for Ms. Leevy, your brother will be sitting you down in the corner himself. You don't want that do you?"
Posy kicks her feet half heartedly, but picks at the raveling fringe of her mother's shawl. "I wanna play with Gale an' Kitty…" she whimpers through tear-drunk hiccups.
"Well, you won't be playing at all if you misbehave tonight young lady. Find it in your heart to spare Leevy the worst of your mischief, will you? Here, Rory, take her." Hazelle holds out his fussing sister and dumps her unceremoniously into his arms. "Don't forget Vick's tea!" she calls to him over her shoulder, following Prim out the door.
And just like that, Rory Hawthorne, with all his thirteen years prevailing, stares modestly uncertain at the door, a screaming toddler in his arms and a reeling, whirling mind.
He's relieved for the first time that day for Leevy's company when she takes Posy with a woman's sureness and bounces her jauntily in her lap, distracting the four-year old with silly rhymes and nose rubs.
To this day, he remains mystified as to how Gale adapted to fatherhood overnight – all those long, colicky nights, Posy howling and Gale soothing her while Ma slept. He changed diapers, ran bath night, helped with school work, clothed them, fed them, supported a family in every way. Rory's sure there was many a night he never actually slept, only handed the baby to Ma come morning and walked Rory and Vick to school before trudging to the woods. But he never complained. Not even when Vick woke him up one night with the stomach flu and hurled all over him. Or when Rory stuck his head through the crawl space lattice on a dare and Gale had to cut him out.
He doesn't know if it's gotten any easier now that they're older. Sure, they don't cry nearly as much and Rory isn't as stupid as he used to be. Despite Vick's fragile health, life seems to have leveled out somewhat – as much as it can in District 12. But Gale's nearly eighteen now, and Rory catches the late-night conversations between his brother and mother, about the mines and a new house and future family.
"Do you ever think of having a family, Gale?" Ma's voice drifts dreamily between Rory and Vick's entangled limbs, crammed onto their shared twin bed. Candlelight leaks through the door, pulsing.
Above Vick's soft snoring, Gale's voice comes abashed and laughing, "I don't know, ma. Maybe. Not yet."
"You could, you know, you're allowed to. Blackness knows, you've done more than your fair share for this family. You deserve one of your own."
Gale hesitates. "This is my family. I promised Pa I'd take care of them no matter what and I'm not going back on that."
"Gale, love, your father would understand if you finally decided to start a life of your own. He never wanted this for you. You retain the right to choose your own path. Always."
A snort. "No, I don't. The Capitol has made damn sure of that."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah…I do."
The room quiets, then:
"Do you want children, ever? Or have your own siblings turned you well enough off of that idea?"
Gale exhales a soft chuckle, "No, they haven't – as much as they pain me, they haven't discouraged me any. I just – it's complicated, living here. Maybe somewhere else. But… I don't know. Besides, Rory just got into the bowl, and Prim and Vick follow in a couple years. I won't be able to think of much else until they're safe, all of them. After…maybe."
"But you'll be an old man by the time Posy gets through with her Reapings. Surely you'll want a family before that?"
"Nah, I'll be fine, ma."
A lull stretches through the house, long and terminal so that Rory is almost asleep when his mother's voice hums again.
"And Katniss? How does she feel about the future?"
"You know."
Rory translates the ensuing silence as one of Ma's upturned eyebrows asking difficult questions.
"She's Katniss. Doesn't want a family, doesn't want kids, would rather never fall in love. I have no idea what she'll do once she's out of the Reapings. Probably just worry about Prim – that's what she does best. Unto her dying day." He gives a light laugh.
"She'll find love. A girl like her doesn't stay lonely for very long. And let me tell you, with marriage, there's no waiting when it comes to kids. Those 'family planning' figures the Capitol swears by are far from accurate, and you're the damning evidence."
A pause.
"Not that I regret it, of course. You're one of the best things that's happened to me, Gale. I mean it."
"Thanks, ma."
"I still think Katniss will end up married like the rest. Just you wait. She's a natural with Posy."
"She doesn't think so. Says she hates kids."
"And you believe that? She discredits herself a lot of her talents, but that doesn't make it true. She's wonderful with Vick and Rory, too."
"Well, she's had a lot of practice. Prim's barely known a mother other than Katniss. I can't imagine stepping into that role at eleven."
"You were young, too. And you've both done fine jobs, better than most."
"We try."
"You do. I know you do."
It bothers him on some private level that Gale might have a family of his own someday. He knows, of course, that Gale won't always be there to wake him in the morning, ruffle his hair, wrestle him teasingly, shelter him from the street whores. He doesn't always see eye to eye with him, because that's who Rory is and that's who Gale is. Rory's been a maddening thorn in Gale's side ever since Pa died and he's been nothing but patient with him.
The truth is, Rory doesn't want his status as younger-brother-younger-bother dealt to anyone else. There was a brief time during which Rory worried that Katniss had replaced him. Gale had just met her – a skinny, sullen twelve-year old who never spoken and never smiled. It was a good three months before anyone else had the pleasure of meeting her in person – she was skittish, too, but Gale had painted her well enough with his grumblings and complaints.
"She follows me like a lost dog but won't answer a single question."
"Do you know, I caught her giving out crappies for a quarter piece each? She would've saved more chucking them at the Community House."
"She's an open book. Everyone knows when they're getting a bad deal."
But then one day, she was there, skulking on their front steps with dark eyes and braided hair and a steady, confident glare that cut right through you. Rory understood, right then at nine-years old, that Katniss Everdeen would never outplace him. No, she had a claim entirely of her own that no one else could ever touch. She wasn't going anywhere.
And neither was he.
They've forged a peculiar bond out of the years, Rory and Katniss, over this untouchable hold they have on Gale – he as a brother, a son, a purpose to keep working for, striving for, and return to each night, she as a partner, an equal of some sorts who can match him pace for pace, word for word, beat for beat. They're irreplaceable, as they are. And there's some comfort in that.
Others have tried to take their place, but none have shone a candle's flicker to what he and Katniss offered. Perhaps that's why he so distrusts Leevy Gannen: because she's taken her turn on the front steps, too, and as sweet as she is, she's even sweeter for Gale. Not as blatantly as some, there's been a steady stream for sure, but fairly obvious if Rory's noticed it at all. He's not sure whatever came of it, but she still stops by with her sister and blinks those pretty grey eyes at him endlessly. Womenfolk remain a mystery to him.
She's puzzling, still, when she knocks on the bedroom door wearing Ma's yarrow yellow dress, fresh-faced and smelling of cedarwood soap. It's small and cramped with all three boys cohabiting the closet-sized bedroom – a single pine dresser and a wire bed, the extra mattress pushed underneath during the day. Their father's old texts line the wall proudly.
"We've all run through the bath. Thought you'd like a go at it 'fore the water turns cold." She adds gently, "Dinner's almost ready."
"We never eat without Gale." He studies a knot in the floorboards, ties his fingers in knots, unties them.
She sighs, crossing over to the bed gingerly. "Rory, Gale isn't coming home. Not tonight, at least."
"Why not." He doesn't raise his eyes. His fingers become tangled in their own ropes and still for a moment, silently strangling.
"I, uhh…" She takes a seat on the edge of the bed and tenses at the coils creaking. "Well, there was a riot in town – things got intense, sulphur bombs and the like. Peacekeepers started shooting, I think."
"He was in town?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Leevy's forehead creases. "To trade, I think. Probably hunted this morning."
"You're lying." Rory rises from the bed and turns to her. "He never trades in Town except at the public market on Saturday. Why was he there?"
Leevy sighs, shrugging. "I don't know, I don't keep tabs on your brother. It's his own business."
"I know you know. I'm not stupid! What was he doing there, Leevy? Why won't you tell me what's going on?"
"Because –" Leevy flounders briefly. "Listen, he had a turkey!" she cries finally, "He had a turkey that he was selling and he got caught in the riot. That's all, Rory."
He shakes his head vehemently. "No, that's not right. He would've sold the turkey to Cray, not a Merchant – he would've been at the Peace Quarters, nowhere near the square. And what about Katniss? They wouldn't separate in Town – it's too dangerous."
He glares at her as she trembles and sniffs on the groaning bed. He hates her distress almost as much as he hates its implications. "Rory, please, don't…"
"Don't what? Ask questions? I have as much a right to know as anyone else."
"I can't –" she sobs into her hand, "I can't tell you. I don't know what happened, just…they caught him and tried him for poaching and possession, 'long with a lengthy list of misdemeanors. There wasn't anything anyone could do. It was too official."
The air is stodgy with tears and disbelief. Rory stiffens, too.
"Is he in jail?" he asks with wide, wet eyes. He's heard of people serving time in the district jail. Archer Browman's pa was imprisoned for unsettled debts and given a sentence pending their payment, but he died from hunger and cold prematurely. A poacher's sentence would be much shorter, and just as permanent. "Keeper Cray could get 'im out, couldn't he?"
Leevy swallows a cry. "He isn't in prison, you goose. They whipped him. The Peacekeepers whipped him." She scrubs at her face with one yellow sleeve. "Cripes, I thought – I thought he was going to die." Her face crumples tearfully.
Rory stands awkwardly facing her, unsure if he should comfort her or shake her or leave her be. Thirteen years doesn't feel quite old enough to have decoded the separate worlds of women and grief, much less their combined realms.
"I'm sorry," she rubs her eyes red until the tears stop. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. It's alright, really. Just come sit down, Rory, I'm sorry." She reaches out for him blindly, but he twists from her grasp.
"Don't be like that. There's nothing to worry about. Come sit, Rory, everything's okay. Please."
Rory retreats from the bedside warily, eying the soggy stains down his mother's dress and Leevy's swollen, weepy gaze. He edges towards the door. Outside, Vick diverts Posy's attention from the pealing racket with a careful citation of the dictionary, word by awful word.
"Rory," Leevy cautions, "you can't tell them. You can't let them know, okay? They're too young."
Rory shakes his head, fumbling for the door knob.
"Rory, wait –"
Before she has a chance to finish, he's stumbling past Vick and Posy in the living room, two spring peepers peering up at him with wet hair. He bursts into the frigid darkness of his parents' bedroom and undoes the solid pine doors to his mother's armoire. It's cool and calm and quiet nestled between the rows of soapy aprons and mending piles, but he continues crawling till he reaches the back panel, even as the doors swing shut and the light evaporates. He stubs his fingers on a square chest stashed in the corner and opens it with reverent hands, snuffing soothing lungfuls of musty cloth to his face. The garment's broken buttons clack together in the restricting blackness.
It has been a while since Rory last visited his father's dwindling reserve of clothes – many have gone to Gale over the years, others sold for a night's worth of paraffin during those first hard months. But in unspoken agreement, a few were preserved, folded neatly as the day they lost their immediate worth, and tucked away in his mother's hope chest at the back of the wardrobe.
Rory can remember each shirt in perfect clarity on his father. After work, he would come home blackened head to toe in coal smut, and it was their game to guess the true colors of his attire that day – a nearly impossible job, as his father was a blast miner assembling delicate explosives in the belly of the mine. He was the best in the district. Besides his family, his ten prevailing fingers were his biggest source of pride. Not once in his fifteen-year career had he made a single fault – it seemed preposterous that the day he finally did, it was the biggest Panem had ever seen.
Rory tucks the fabric to his chest, resting his head against the sap-scented walls of the armoire and shutting his eyes against Leevy's entreating calls, Vick's inquiring questions. The bedroom door opens briefly while Leevy searches the area, then closes for the remainder of the night.
Throughout the evening, he catches the clink of spoons from dinner, and later, bedtime stories in the boys' room. Leevy's lilting voice slides between the layers of walls and wood and wool. Unwittingly, his eyes seal shut against the day, lulled by the monotonous scrape of laundry against the washboard.
He startles awake hours later, a tally of every second spent cramped on the armoire floor etched on his body. Soft voices drum against the house's thin timber.
"…he alright?"
"He's in good hands, now."
"And Katniss?"
"Won't let anyone else tell her otherwise. She's a strong one, she is."
A chair croaks as someone sits, sighing forcefully.
"I put Posy in bed with Vick. She wouldn't sleep without you."
"She didn't give you a hard time, did she?"
"She was sweet as honey. They're good kids."
"Well, we do our best. Rory asleep already?"
"No… he, uh, he wheedled the truth out of me and ran off. He's hiding somewhere in the house, I couldn't find him. I'm so sorry, I know I shouldn't have –"
"Hush, don't apologize. I swear that boy causes more drama than Posy on a bad day. He's alive and unharmed thanks to you, that's more than enough to be grateful for. I really can't thank you enough, Leevy, for all that you've done." A whisper of a gasp. "And the laundry, too - Leevy, you shouldn't have."
"It was nothing. I wish it was more."
"Nonsense, at this point, I'm not sure how we'll repay you. You're welcome to stay the night. The storm near swallowed me comin' home."
"I'm not going far. I'm staying at Bristel and Field's place, two shanties down. I'll be fine."
"If you say so. Take care, dear."
"I will. Let us know? How they're doing?"
"Of course."
A gust of wind clicks the door shut firmly. Footsteps scuff wearily into the bedroom. The wardrobe handles rattle noisily and then late-night candle blaze streams in as the doors open, framing his mother's wistful face in waning shadow.
"Rory Hawthorne. Just what are you doing on my closet floor?"
"I just –"
"Pick yourself up, boy – this instant! I won't have two sons laid low in the same day… Now, young man."
Rory gathers himself hurriedly, ducking under the curtain of skirts and aprons. Standing in the light, he winces at his senses returning: bones straightening, light piercing, cold seeping. And the overwhelming scent of vinegar on his mother's dress. She smells clinical, not at all herself.
"I just wanna'd be alone, Ma, that's all."
She gazes down at him reproachfully. "I need you, Rory, now more than ever. You can't be only thinkin' of yourself. You have a family to help care for. And today is as good a reminder as any that you can't rely on Gale or myself to always be there."
"Is he –"
"That's enough. We've got our work cut out tomorrow and I expect you to shoulder your load, y'hear? Now off to bed."
Rory ducks his head contritely and shuffles to the door, pausing once to look back.
"Ma. I'm real sorry."
She nods and something within her wilts as she looks at him with heavy eyes.
"I know."
The bedroom floor is woven with his siblings' sprawling limbs. Rory skirts their sleeping sighs and clambers atop the brass bed, remembering when he would dream of much smaller things than the past, of simple things, of air - enough for Vick to breathe and Gale to laugh, for his father to fill with stories. Laying in Gale's sheets, wrapped in the scent of him, it hurts how much they smell of his father's shirts. Like wet loam and dark green and something solemn and strong, like smoke.
Floating from his parents' room, Rory listens to the scraping of his mother's hope chest scour the floor. Its hinges moan, yawning wide. Then, quietly, faintly, bitter sobs drift through the shared wall.
It hits him with sudden breathlessness, the realization that his mother is crying. He can't remember the last time she wept. Even when his father died, there was never any time for grieving, what with Posy due any day and the laundry coming in mountains. Vick was so sick, he couldn't breathe most nights – the accident had made the air tacky with ash. The possibilities of something truly terrible nauseate him.
Gale's death cuts painfully sudden through his thoughts, gnawing an icy pit in his stomach. But no, Ma had told Leevy he was alright, hadn't she?
Not exactly. She said 'in good hands'. And with a roiling mind, Rory imagines Purnia Meadowfrey's crooked hands preparing a cold, stiff body.
In the faintly glowing light of Ma's candle, he clutches a handful of Gale's sheets to his cheek, smelling again that familiar musk, warm, comforting. Safe. Yet, not enough to soothe the growing ache as his remaining crumbs of childhood are pecked to pieces. Slowly, painfully, he feels it leave him. The dull, numbing weight of responsibility straddles him by the ribs and cracks them one by one.
With a gasp, Rory whispers to the chasming black. Stop. As if one word would reverse the day entirely – reverse time itself.
In union with his mother's grief, his father's fault, his brother's beaten back. Stop.
Beneath the candle's sputtering breath and the suffocating night. Stop.
And in the darkness, a whisper back. You're going to kill him. Stop.
AN:
Ooookay... longtime-no-see. I'm sorry I didn't manage a chapter for February, but I promise a chapter a month from now on.
In other news, I've set up a tumblr account (theoryofmice . tumblr . com) where I post chapter previews and story/writing related goodies. If you like, go visit me and pile up my inbox with questions and/or annoying update messages. I might actually consent.
I hope you all have a lovely week! Thank you for reading, and as always, let me know in the comments what I could be doing better. Improvement is the only way forward!
Much love,
theory of mice