Erwin Jackson- District Five (18)
To the Capitol, I was a trophy. To Colette, I was her husband, damaged in ways she couldn't understand and didn't want to make worse. To my children, I was just Daddy. They didn't remember the things I'd done, and they didn't see the pain I foresaw as they grew closer in age to the children I'd killed. I couldn't protect them from Capitol corruption when we lived so entrenched in the spotlight and in the culture. They weren't scared of me, but they should have been. They should have been horrified by what I'd done, but it was normal to them. That was even worse.
I tried to stay away from children. I was a danger to them. Yet somehow, the Capitol always found a way to bring us together. There was Yasmine, there were the others in the Capitol everywhere, and then there was Kanu. Poor Kanu, always shoved back into the limelight and dragged back out so the Capitolites could tell each other how generous they were to welcome him to their city and to give him basic necessities. They never mentioned that the reason he was there was because they killed his father. After was Galba did to him at the Victory Tour, I couldn't imagine what he felt.
I was there the day the boy watched his father die. The others were always telling him what a great actor his father was. I knew Kanu wasn't stupid. They were only building up hope that wasn't there. Kanu didn't cry for a long time. He looked so old, like life had worn him down.
"It's not pretend, is it?" he asked. We were watching with my children, Tillo's boy, and Kanu's adopted parents. The other children clammed up and his parents stepped outside to discuss what to say. Kanu was left looking at me.
"No," I said. "He's dead." Kanu was pale.
"I want him to come back," he said. That's when he started to cry.
"No one really comes back," I said. Watching him mourn, I thought of twenty-three families that did the same because of me.
"If it wasn't pretend, why did he kill those people?" Kanu asked. He wanted me to say it was all a trick, or that it didn't really happen. He wanted me to tell him his father was the hero he knew him as.
"He did it because he loved you," I said.
"I didn't want him to kill anyone," he said.
"He loved you so much there wasn't room for anyone else. I knew Shogo enough to know he never wanted to hurt anyone," I said.
"Was he a bad guy?" Kanu asked.
"He was a great man. He would have done anything for you, and he did," I said. I watched Kanu's face shift from slack sadness to taut hatred.
"They made him like this. I hate them," he said. I knew what I wanted to say, and if I was alone I would have, but I had a family to protect. Is this how they all start? They learn to hate when they're little children and cut off everything but their own desires?
"Then you have two choices. You can keep hating and you can be one of them, or you can remember his love and be who he was," I said. After that I could only watch. It was his choice.