Death is Patient

You Are Not Without Hope Yet

Neither of us slept much that night, nor did we speak. We'd settled on a pair of chairs in the living room, overlooking the Capitol. I found myself missing the grey and concrete high-rise buildings of district eight. The buildings here were high, too, but it wasn't like home. It was awake, even now. We could see cars driving along the roads, people small like ants walking along. Some of the houses were blinking in different colored lighting even though it was late. It was like someone was always awake, the city always thrumming with a close to hysterical light.

"What do you think the arena will look like?" I ask. My voice sounds hollow. It doesn't fit into the room, like my tone and accent never were made to grace these rooms.

"I don't know", he mumbles, and I can hear the fear in him. I can feel it too. A never-ending nausea settled in the pit of my stomach, the ugly sensation of electricity beneath my skin making my fingers tremble even when I sat still. I couldn't relax, my shoulders tense, making me tremble as if I was cold. I draw the plush, purple blanket closer around me as if it will help. "Maybe it'll just be a forest. That's what it's been for a while now. Audience favorite, I suppose", he says.

I sigh and move in my chair. We've pushed them as close to each other as we can. I look at his profile. His nose is sharp from here, his hair messy. His stylist didn't like the mark the hair ties left in his hair, so it's flowing over his shoulders. It clearly annoys him, proven by the way he fusses with it, blows it out of his face and puts it behind his ears.

We sit there for a while. I wonder, briefly, if we should be talking about stuff. Our lives. Have one last discussion or something, but it feels unnecessary. Everything that needs to be said is said. We swore on blood not to hurt or kill each other, we know we'll protect each other. I don't need to tell him or hear him say he loves me, because I know.

Once we return to our rooms for the night to catch even a couple hours of sleep, I do nothing but cry. I sob, and sob, and sob, my snot and tears sinking into the silk of my pillow. I run to the bathroom to throw up, I scream and I cry, as if the sound and the tears will expel the dread that's taken root in me. I'm scared of death. I'm scared of Fedya's death and I'm scared of mine. I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die-

*

The next morning, I'm quiet and feel like a zombie. Once I passed out the night before it was like the emotions inside of me had turned into a hard block of concrete. I felt apathetic, the only resemblance of an emotion I had left the little creature of anxiety in my stomach. Fedya looked about the same, and we walked hand in hand as far as we could, until we were separated. They had to pull us apart in the end, peacekeepers pulling at us until we let go. None of us cried or fought back, but we held on until we couldn't any longer.

Tigris dressed me in my clothes. A pair of grey cargo pants, a shirt made out of the active material that peacekeepers' inner shirts were made of to wick the sweat away, and a black hoodie with a zipper. Proper boots. I tried to analyze something out of it all, but I was drawing a blank. I came as far as considering that it wouldn't be too cold if we didn't get a jacket, but that was almost more of a reach than just a guess. Tigris puts a headband in my hair to keep my bangs out of my eyes. She doesn't speak and neither do I.

I step into the tube that's meant to lift me into the arena. I don't know where we are. We were driven in small cars through an underground tunnel before we arrived, everything looking so similar that it'd been impossible to guess how far we'd travelled.

"Fight, Freya", Tigris says before the door closes. "You are not without hope yet."

I don't know what to think, and I don't have much time to do so, either. The door closes and the platform I'm stood on starts moving upward.