Chapter 9
A rain of tears

Part one

"It's so fucking cold here we should ask for a raise."

Clydas sucked greedily on his cigarette. What was left of it. He blew out some smoke and looked at the ramshackle houses around them.

"Place is dead. Nothing ever happens."

They were supposed to patrol but the icy night air kept them by the burn barrel. The helmets lay tossed at their feet and the fire danced over their young faces.

"We should have us a girl," Titan grinned, revealing his two front teeth that overlapped. His parents had named him Titan but he didn't live up to it. He was scrawny, rat like with a head that seemed undersized, poking up from the peacekeeper's uniform. "That'd be nice wouldn't it? A girl. Hehe, we could have us two girls! So we wouldn't have to wait in line!"

"Yeah, keep dreamin'."

"What? Cray does it. I've seen them coming to his door!"

"Cray's second in command! Shit, you really wanna dip your wick and see what you catch?" He stamped his boots against the ground to try and get some life back in to his toes.

Titan rubbed his nose surly.

"Well, sorry I like it better when girls keep it warm for me," he said, even though Clydas knew and everyone in their squad knew the only thing keeping Titan's genitals warm was his own right hand. "I have to pee," he muttered.

Clydas flung the butt of his cigarette into the flames while Titan left the fire for the backside of a nearby house.

The iron maiden and all her peacekeepers got to feast on whole roasted pigs and goats and wild boars with dark ale to wash it down with. And here they were, freezing their nuts off. Who knew when this stupid district would win again? If ever. By Spring they'd be back to the same old food packages shipped in from District 10 and 11, weighed and counted to the last grain of rice.

You'd think the Capitol would be more generous to the ones who protected their country.

"Pointless," he muttered. "Pointless."

A cry pierced the stillness and it was so sharp and unexpected Clydas jumped.

"What the hell?"

"No! No!"

He fumbled to get his flashlight out, both alarmed and eager that something finally happened.

"Hello?" He aimed the torch beam in the direction of the sound. "Anybody there?"

"Clydas!" He whipped around just in time to see Titan stumble back into the light. "I got one, Clydas! I got one!" The ends of his belt clinked and dangled as he dragged with him a dark-haired woman. "She's out after the bell, Clydas! It'd be her own fault, right? We can do what we want with her!"

"You're insane." Clydas couldn't help but grin. "We have to report her."

"Oh, come on!"

Clydas crossed his arms over his chest, taking a proper look at the girl. There was something familiar about her but he couldn't remember where he'd seen her before. Probably a reaping. How old could she be? 18? Her lip were busted, red and swollen.

"Someone's already been at her, it looks to me," he said. "Someone punched you, little darling?"

"Didn't you hear the bell?" Titan shook her and her pony tail down her back flipped back and forth. She stared at nothing, her face a mask. Just stood there and let it happen. The two boys grinned at each other.

Had they been smarter maybe they'd noticed that behind it there was something else, smoldering.

"If you gotta have one you could at least have picked someone pretty," Clydas said. "This one's all bones. Go hair like a horse tail."

"She's warm," Titan cackled. Still gloveless on one hand from earlier he dug his dirty fingernails into her cheeks. "Let's have a feel, eh?"

Faster than a fox trap snapping shut, the girl jammed her teeth into his hand.

Titan howled, jumping up and down. The girl dashed for freedom. Clydas caught her in the flight and almost snapped her skinny arms off when he locked them behind her back.

"She bit me! She bit me!"

"What's all this noise?"

They turned as another peacekeeper appeared. The visor on his helmet was pulled back, a pair off well-known mud-brown eyes looking between the two of them.

"She tried to get away, Peacekeeper Cray sir," Clydas said, his mouth agape. "We caught her, sir."

"She bit me!"

Blood had colored the ground at Titan's feet. In a heartbeat Cray's baton was in his hand and at her face.

"You try something like that again, girl and you'll end up with no teeth left", he said. "Who are you? What's your name?"

The girl didn't say a word. The only sound to be heard was the crackling fire and Titan's sobs. He cradled his hand and snot dripped from his nose. Cray gave him a look of utter disgust. He tore the hand cuffs from Titan's belt.

"Quit the weeping!" he said and shoved them into his hands. "Do something right for a change and throw her in one of the hunger cells."

Neither Titan nor Clydas lay another hand on the girl. All they wanted was to be rid of her. That was clear to anyone peering through the shutters when they took Helena away.

Of course Titan and Clydas didn't know that was her name. They wouldn't know for many years.

Without a word they brought her to the Justice building. The monstrous structure which towered higher than any other. The frozen ground crunched under their boots as they pulled her to the door on the backside. Clydas had to put his heels in to make it open on creaking and wailing hinges. Inside was only darkness. Like looking into a passage to hell.

Clydas turned on a switch, revealing the steps that took you to the dungeons. The further down they went, the colder it got. Broken spider webs hung from the one working bulb by the bottom of the steps, illuminating the rows of cells.

Helena stumbled over a metal grate when they pushed her inside. The cell was completely bare. No bed, no toilet, not even a window. Clydas locked, uncuffed her through the iron bars and Titan slammed his baton against the metal, cursing at her now that he was safely on the other side.

"Lets go," Clydas muttered and they disappeared up the steps. They switched off the light with a bang, leaving her in a cold, complete, paralyzing darkness.

Her teeth clattered. She lowered herself onto the ground, using her hands as guidance. She felt the metal grate and scooted away from it. She waited for her eyes to adjust. To make out forms and shapes. There was nothing. With slow movements she tied her loosened hair back in its usual ponytail and clasped her arms around her knees.

Did they get away? Did they get home safely?

Not ten minutes passed before someone turned the key again and the dungeons bathed in light. She knew who it was before she saw him.

Peacekeeper Cray had taken off his helmet. The naked lightbulb flickered over his features when he came down to her. He was in his mid-thirties but his hairline was already receding. With a completely round face, ruddy cheeks and constantly wet lips he looked like a large overgrown baby.

"Be glad it's me, girl," he said. "If the Head Peacekeeper knew you bit the idiot she'd have you whipped in the square. Or put you in the iron maiden. You know she enjoys that."

He wet his already wet lips and rested his gloved hand against the iron bars, tapping something against it.

"It's cold down here even in mid-summer", he said. "We don't get to use these cells often enough. Sometimes we forget we have someone down here. Until a few weeks later when we have to collect the body. What the rats left behind anyway."

He clanked his fingers against the metal once more. Helena realized it was a coin.

"You don't have to be here," he said. "I'm generous, girl. Just say the words and I'll let you out. I could use someone to warm my bed tonight."

Helena looked away, her face like cut in stone.

"Or maybe," he said, "I'll just come in and take one for free."

He paused, as if to let the reality of his threat sink in. Then his lips curved into a smile.

"But why all the trouble?" He put the coin back in his pocket. "You stay here and enjoy yourself. I've got plenty of takers."

Helena stared up at him, right into his mud-brown eyes and all at once it wasn't Cray she saw.

It was Sophie.

"Can you hear them, Helena?" her voice whispered in her memory. "Do you hear them? Do you hear the stars?"

"If you change your mind, you know where I live," Cray said. "If you get out."

Rot in hell.

She wished it so badly it was strange he didn't hear her. Cray disappeared and darkness consumed her once more.

Rot in hell.

xXx

The 12 hour shift was finally over. Dom relished those first breaths of clear night air when he and all the other coal miners walked out the big doors.

Glenn was by his side like he had for the past four years. Ever since they turned 18 they'd walked these black cinder streets together. They were all like a trail of black ghosts and light spilled out on the snow covered ground around the Seam as people dissapeared inside to their waiting families or their waiting beds.

On a normal day they'd talk but tonight Dom's thoughts were elsewhere.

"See ya tomorrow," Glenn said once they'd reached his house.

Dom was exhausted. He barely even manage a nod goodnight to his old friend and his wife when she appeared in the doorway.

"Dom," she said, before he'd go on. "Helena's back."

When they got news of Helena's imprisonment he'd wanted to go talk with the Head Peacekeeper and Cray and the others and he wasn't the only one. But Harold said no. There was nothing they could do but wait and see. If they tried anything it would only make it worse for her.

The lights were on in Helena's house, he saw from afar but he'd come almost all the way up to her door before he heard voices.

"It's none of our business," Harold said. "You should never have gone up there!"

Helena answered back. Words he couldn't make out.

"Because it's already too late!" her father said. "You'll stay away from them, Helena!"

"Pa, please just…" but she cut herself off mid-sentence when she saw Dom through the window. Harold gave him a hard stare and disappeared out of sight. The next moment she appeared at the door.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi."

She kept her hand on the handle to keep the wind from slamming the door shut. And, maybe, to keep him outside.

"I just wanted to see how you were," Dom said. "Ask if there's anything I can do."

"I can't really talk right now," Helena said. He watched her bruised lip with concern. "Please, just... just go."

"Will I see you on Sunday?"

"I don't know. Please, Dom."

She tried to close the door and he took a step back.

"I'm sorry, Helena," he said. "I'm so sorry."

Two days passed. The snow began to stick, for the first time that year. In less than a week it would have buried the whole district.

The wind rattled the trees around the Meadow. It had been their favourite meeting place ever since he started courting her. Somewhere where they could be alone.

Of course, he didn't know if she'd come at all today but he didn't mind waiting if it meant he could see her again, if only for a moment.

He crossed his arms over his chest, warming his hands in his armpits. He was a large man. Broad-shouldered. With his sharp jawline and swelling arms he could have come off scary or intimidating if it wasn't for his eyes. They betrayed his gentle soul.

"You sure you weren't switched at birth?" Glenn often joked about his light hair and his eyes that were more bluer than they were gray, "Handsome bastard."

"My grandma was merchant, bright head," Dom answered back and they both laughed.

An hour passed. A light snow began to fall and he'd just accepted that she wouldn't come, when he saw her.

Helena always looked like an old person when she walked. A hard life had lined her face even though she was still young. Thin and bird-like she came towards him, wrapped in her old, gray shawl. Her dark hair and olive skin stood out against all the white.

She didn't believe him when he said she was beautiful so he didn't say it but it didn't make it any less true. They sat back against their old, frozen log. He pulled off his jacket. It was so threadbare it didn't make much difference but he put it around her shoulders. He saw she had a package with her, wrapped in used brown paper.

"This is for you," she said. "I finished them last night."

It was the pair of mittens she'd once promised him. They perfectly matched his eyes. Dom smiled and put them on. Thick and warm and functional. Like those mittens she sold on market days along with socks and underclothes and other garments. That's where he first started to really notice her. When she wouldn't cave to the will of a peacekeeper when he tried to beat down the price of a pair of fur lined long underwear pants.

"Thank you," he said. And that's when he saw there was something else in her hands.

His mother's old wedding band. The ring he gave her when he proposed.

He looked up at her.

"Did Harold…," he began. The old man had given them his blessing but if he'd changed his mind this could very well be the last he ever saw of her. Her father's opinion meant a great deal to her.

But Helena shook her head. She looked so tired and down-hearted.

"I care about you, Dom. More than you know, even if maybe it doesn't always seem like it, but…"

"Is it because of Sophie?"

Like everybody else in Twelve he'd heard rumors of that night.

Her silence was enough for him to know he was right.

"What if we have children," she said. "What if it's your son or daughter's name they'll call out at the reaping?"

"It won't be," said Dom with a heat behind it that she seldom heard in his voice. "I won't allow it. Not if I'll so have to work myself to death in the mines."

Helena didn't respond. She was no fool and neither was he. They both knew that at the end of the day it was out of their control.

Dom hesitated and then he said,

"We don't have to have any. If that's what you want. It could be just us. I know I don't have much to offer. But I would love you. I'd never do anything to hurt you. We could build a home together."

xXx

And they were married. On the first warm Spring day they all gathered at Helena's for a quiet dinner before they walked across the Seam to Dom's house where she would now live, as Mrs. Abernathy.

Pa placed a scratchy kiss on her cheek. The first time he'd ever done so.

He was a short man, Harold, especially next to his daughter. Thin as a hung up suit with white hair and wearing the same clothes Helena's mother had once made for their wedding day.

He'll be all alone now.

The thought pinched her heart. He'd still live in their old house where she grew up but she wouldn't be there anymore to take care of him.

"You're a good girl", he muttered. "You'll do fine."

"Thank you, pa," Helena mumbled. She took her husband's hand and as the others sang District 12's wedding song she stepped over the threshold to her new home.

Dom had promised he'd never hurt her but it hurt when he put it in her. She knew what men looked like between their legs but this was something different. And when she watched it, in tangles of dark curly hair, she couldn't see how it would even fit inside her.

It hurt. But pain wasn't something Helena was unfamiliar with and there was something else there too. A tenderness she did not expect. Dom was all muscles. He was lean and hard and golden in the light from their first fire. He looked like he could crush you like a bug but his kisses were soft and tender.

"I wish I could stay here with you," he said the following morning when he had to be back in the mine, newly-wed or not.

Glenn and some other crew mates already waited outside. Dom pulled on his mittens and kissed her.

"I'll see you tonight," he said before he left. She heard their voices disappear down the path. Against her will she pictured Dom, packed tightly together with the other coal miners as the elevator creaked deeper and deeper into the earth. And they wouldn't be released from the mine until their daily coal quota had been achieved.

"The Abernathys are made out of strong stuff," her father used to say. People loved to share tales about them. They were poor but everyone respected them. And they'd mined coal for generations.

"Only thing I know I'm good at," Dom said. He always joked about his job. Perhaps he had to, to be able to stand going there every day. "I couldn't sew in a button to save my life."

Ma had been an amazing seamstress. When other children Helena's age were out playing on the Meadow or by the school Violet taught her young daughter how to sew. It wasn't always easy for a small child but if she whined her mother always said the same thing,

"You'll learn it now, so you never have to work in the ground."

She'd always be grateful to her for that.

Most of her mother's clients had been merchants, people who could afford textiles and have their clothes sewn from scratch, and after she died Helena inherited some of those families when she got older.

People in the Seam had to make do with what they had. When your children outgrew their clothes it was handed over to a younger sibling. Kids running around in their father's old shirts were a more common sight than not. If something broke you mended it but still, when the need for new garments was unavoidable Helena was mostly the one they went to.

Dom's house,"Our house,"she had to remind herself, didn't look much different from the one where she's lived all her days. Especially now when ma's old loom stood in the corner. It was the same creaking floors. The same thin walls where cold air seeped in through the cracks.

The wooden sofa bed that pa had made them for a wedding gift had also been carried into the kitchen along with the rest of her few possessions. In the weeks that followed she made rag rugs with the help of ma's loom. She scrubbed the floors, cleaned the windows, washed the cabinets until they shone. She washed some old pots and when summer came she grew new potted plants with the flowers Dom dug up for her.

When he got home in the evening after those endless shifts, black with coal dust, Helena washed the long hoursfrom him, relaxed the aching muscles in his body. His lips tasted of soot when they kissed.

They grew closer together and within their four walls existed peace and happiness. As much peace and happiness you could find in a place like Twelve.

When her period was late she thought nothing of it. Not at first. She'd accepted the risk when she married Dom but her period had always been irregular. Secretly, when the first year came to a close, she'd thought, hoped maybe, that she wasn't able to have children.

Dom wanted the baby. Even though he shared the same fears and worries a she did, as every parent in the districts did, he wanted a family. Had probably always wanted one. So when he gathered her close in bed and touched her belly she didn't pull away.

But long after he'd fallen asleep Helena lay awake, wondering if she'd even make a good mother at all. And when she closed her eyes all she saw was Sophie. Her small form under the blanket. Her eyes like black pools as she fought the sleep syrup. And how she'd gasped, like a fish out of water.

"Don't let them take me, nana. Don't let the bad men take me!"

Sophie, who died anyway.

When her water broke Dom wasn't home. And even if he'd known there was no way for him to get to her before his shift ended.

She thought the pain would kill her. Rip her open and it would be the end of it. Old Mrs. Hawthorne later told her she heard her, on her way into town.

Sae was with her. She always came when the women in the Seam gave birth. She saw her through the hours and when the sun set she pulled the baby from her body.

Someone must have told Dom what was going on. He barged into the house just as Sae wrapped the baby in a blanket. Out of breath from running half across the district and with eyes so white in his black face he stood next to Helena when Sae placed the little boy in her arms.

It was the first time Helena saw him cry.

It was strange. This new little person in their lives. So small and wilful with pink, round cheeks and tiny hands that would tear out a fistful of your hair if you didn't watch out. He was always hungry and he kicked and screamed angrily if he didn't immediately get what he wanted. When she put him to her chest he latched on with such intensity you'd think he was afraid someone would take it away from him.

But after a while he always came to a rest and looked up at Helena with his round, gray eyes, at peace with his world. Yes, they were Seam gray but in every other respect he looked just like Dom. He had his nose, his chin, the same smile, the same disarray of dirty blonde hair.

They named him Haymitch.

to be continued…

Author's note: I know Taste of Strawberries hasn't been updated in a crazy long time. Sorry about that. I've had a crippling writer's block. This chapter has by far been the hardest for me. I chose to split it in parts both because it's so damn long and so you'll know that the story isn't abandoned even if it may have seemed like it.

The wait for part two won't be as long.