Impavid

A jacket kept me warm. I sat in the very corner of the bed, my back pressed into the metal corner. It was cold in the room, but I didn’t care. I felt tired, worse than when I had first come out of the games. I also felt dead inside, if it was possible. People were talking to me and trying to explain things to me, but I was irrational. It had taken three men to hold me down and a swift syringe to the back to knock me out.

When I woke up, I was back in a medical room. Finnick was not in the room. I didn’t have the energy to be angry. All I could do was ache, like a slow fire was burning through my veins and turning everything to ash. My mouth tasted like rust from biting my lip and my head was pounding with the pain of crying.

For years I had lived perfectly fine. I never had a problem with my parents. They were good parents, always making sure that I had what I needed and making me laugh as I grew up. And then Cain came, and I saw the full picture of just how amazing their parenting skills were.

They woke up without complain to sooth his crying, they laughed without exhaustion as he spit up on them, they cradled without aching limbs when trying to get him to sleep. My parents had been the core of a loving family, and I adored that about them, I had admired that about them.

This? This was no longer anger echo of what they had been. After my games, they abandoned me to the oncoming darkness that was swallowing my whole, that was pulling me at the ankles deeper and deeper into the freeze. They left Finnick to drag me out. It was never his job.

Now, they had let Cain be taken. I blamed them just as much as I blamed myself. Myself I blamed because of what I had done. No good act went unpunished. It was an uprising, a rebellion, and there had to be consequences, and through my ignorance and my obsession with protecting Finnick, I had never dreamt of a life where Cain would suffer at my own deeds.

A soft knock sounded on my door. I didn’t move. I simply stared at the door, wondering who could possibly be wanting to come near me in this state. Wasn’t it bad enough that my little brother, the boy who I wanted to save more than anything was taken from me? Wasn’t it horrible enough that Mags was gone? A woman who I felt an instinctual, maternal love for?

When the door opened, my mother stepped in. Instantly I felt tears threatening to well in my eyes. Closing them, I turned my head away from her. I didn’t want to talk to her, I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t even want to talk to myself, for that matter. We were both just as guilty, me for my actions and her for her lack thereof.

“Lana, can we please talk?”

“Sure,” I said, my voice raspy and torn. “Talk. Tell me how you got out and he didn’t. Describe to me the fiery scene in which your son was torn from your arms and which you could in no way shape or form retrieve him.” I opened my eyes. She was staring at me, her face blank. “Tell me how you bled for him, and you were almost killed in your savage attempt to save your youngest child while your oldest child almost lost her life trying to save thousands of people in the long run.”

“I’m not a hero,” she whispered. She folded her hands together and leaned on the opposite wall. “I don’t know how to fight, I don’t know how to do any of the things that you do. I don’t know how to win a war, or how to defend myself, and I didn’t know where to run when they came. I didn’t know where Cain was, and I didn’t know where to look.”

“How could you not?”

“I’m not you!” I had never heard my mother raised her voice, but she did then. She looked at me with an equal amount of anger that I had, which surprised me. Why was she angry with me? What had I ever done to her?” I don’t know Cain like you do, I do not have a bond with him that is that of a sibling. I am his mother, and he is a young boy. He hides from me, hides where he goes and his friends, but he shows me his homework and he asks for me help. I don’t know where his secret hiding spots are. I didn’t know where to look.”

I put my head in my hands, crying. “You should have tried harder! Why didn’t you save him, how could you not-"

“I never even saw him, Lana! I was running, screaming for your brother, trying to find him anywhere. I couldn’t see him, all I could see is the smoke in my eyes, turning my mouth to ash, and I could see the flames that were burning everything I had ever known. And in it, I could not find my own son.

“I see how you’re looking at me now, but I tried. They came in so fast, and they were setting everything on fire and they were hurting our people because they knew it would send a message. They took my child because it was sending a message to you.”

It was a slap across the face. At least, it hurt like it had been one. My heart stung with the words, the accusation. Because she was right, they were taking him from me, not from her. “But the difference is,” my mother said quietly, “Is that I don’t blame you.”

“Why?” I demanded, sliding off the bed. She flinched slightly, like preparing for me to strike. I wanted to hit her. I did, I wanted to wrap my hands around her neck and to choke her until she admit that she didn’t care. “Why don’t you blame me? I did this, I was a part of this? It’s my fault because I didn’t play by their rules. I survived- twice I survived, and this is the payment. It was him or me, and they couldn’t take me so they took him. My hands are dirty.”

“I don’t blame you because I love you.”

The words hung in the air between us, an invisible barrier pressing down. I opened my mouth to say something nasty but she it again. Saying something mean wouldn’t bring Cain back. It would feel better, to attack her and to rip her down until I stood above her. But I shut up, I closed my mouth and I stared at her.

“Are you done?” I asked, turning away from her and running a hand over my face. “I’m tired and I want to see Finnick.”

“You aren’t allowed to leave the sick bay until you’ve been evaluated further.”

“Where is Finnick?”

“I will tell them you want to see him.”

I sat down on the bed. She was waiting, looking at me. I gave her a harsh expression. “You can leave now. I have nothing else to say to you.”

With a single nod, my mother walked towards the door, opening. She paused, looking at me. I realized how much we looked alike, my mother and I. She had dark brown waves and eyes bluer than Finnick’s. Her cheekbones were high and despite the exhaustion in her face and the silver in her hair, she was beautiful. “Try and remember that I’m not a hero, Lana. You’ve always been that for our family, not your father and I.”

The door shut quietly behind her. I stared at it, not able to feel a reaction. I wasn’t a hero. I never tried to be a hero. A hero did things for the good of the people and did things to try and save everyone. I was simply doing what I was told and most of all, I was trying to make sure that Finnick was alive. How many times in the arena had I been willing to turn on Katniss if it meant saving Finnick? Plenty. Those weren’t acts of heroism. They were acts of predatory survival.

For a long time I remained alone. I didn’t cry anymore, I didn’t have it in me. I lay there, staring at the pale, flickering light, wondering what they could be doing to my brother. I hoped deep down that they would see Cain for what he truly was, an innocent child. That hope was smudged out like a burning coal when I remembered that the Capitol sent children to a fight to the death for fun and for an ‘example.’ Youth would save Cain no more than it would be a weakness.

Once more there was a knock on the door before it opened. I didn’t move; there was no where to go. I continued to stare at the ceiling until I saw two people enter from the corner of my eye. Finnick was standing behind Dr. Marlin, who was watching me with a careful eye. “You have an hour,” he said dryly. “After that, you must going to psycho-evaluations- separately.”

Neither Finnick nor I said anything. Dr. Marlin nodded once before leaving the room, closing the door abruptly. From the moment the door clicked into place, Finnick was next to me, pulling me in. I barely responded, letting myself melt into him as his lips were on my hair, my forehead, his arms holding me tightly around the shoulders. Finnick’s embrace should have healed me.

It didn’t. Not from this.

“Tell me what to do,” he whispered, his lips against my hair again. “Please tell me what to do, Lana, how can I help you?”

“You can’t.” I leaned in then, letting him hold me. The brokenness in his voice drove me forward, his audible fear that he couldn’t help sent my face into the crook of his neck. “I don’t think anyone can help this. I think I died.”

“Don’t say that.”

I felt the tears coming then. “They have him, Finnick. They have him, and I don’t know how to save him, I don’t know how to get to him. I have no idea how I can get them away from him, and I think that I’ve died inside because of it.”

He was shaking his head, I could feel him. “Don’t say it because it isn’t true. Don’t say things like that, this is Cain and Mags, Lana. You’re not going to let them go, and neither am I.”

I hesitated before nodding. “I’m sorry about Mags,” I whispered. “I know- I know she’s your family.”

“Our family.” I nodded again. He smelled clean, like some sort of soap. He didn’t smell like himself, but he felt like it. That was enough. “They are our family. Do you understand what that means?” I shook my head no. “That means that we are going to get them out of there alive, understood? We are going to do whatever it is we have to.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We’re going to fight, we’re going to burn the capitol down, we are going to get them back because they are ours. They are not the capitols. We will have them, Lana.”

Finally moving, I loped my hands around his middle. I squeezed tightly, pressing every ounce of my body into his. I felt the beat of his heart, rapidly pounding. Mine picked up speed. “We will have them. We will be heroes.”

“Not heroes.

“Then what?”

He kissed my head. “We will be impavid, Lana. We will be without fear, and we will kill for those who belong to us.”

“We will be impavid,” I agreed.

Somewhere someone had ‘build it and they will come.’ They weren’t wrong. But what they didn’t understand was this: Build it and they will come. Take it and they will coming running.

I was running straight for the capitol. An eye for an eye.