The Third Annual Writer's Game: Roots

Familia Supra Omnia | QF | Males

District Five - Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy bit his lip until the familiar metallic tinge of blood began to fill his mouth. The paper which he held in his hand had become crumpled from the pressure he had placed on it, his fingers almost tearing through the delicate material as he read the message that had been scrawled onto it in a familiar hand. Although he did not cry, there was something about his posture that suggested he would have done if he had been alone in his room rather than watched by the whole of Panem as he sheltered in a dim, cold cave.

Eventually, the letter was nothing more than a ball in his hands as he tightened his grip around it and hid the words from view. He quickly regretted it, wanting the words that were written there to be the District token which he had never taken from home, but he was able to sit up straighter once he was no longer able to read the message that was there. He dropped it to the floor, watching as the ball of paper rolled gently in a breeze across the stone floor.

Sighing, Leo leant back against the wall and rested his head on the jagged rock. He waited until his eyes stung before blinking, desperately hoping that no tear would fall down his cheek – Leo would hate to be seen crying, but the message had dragged him closer than he had ever been before. Death was not something he was unfamiliar with, but it was harder when the death had not been your choice.

"She would have been proud of you."

The words burnt on Leo's tongue as he went to speak them out loud, before stopping himself with the thought of how haunting they would sound when echoing emptily off the cavern walls. The letter had simply been love and desperation poured onto the page by Leo's father all the way back in District Five, but the sentence that stood out to him the most was definitely that one. The yellowing paper, decorated in scrawls of blue ink, could have said anything and Leo would still only remember that one line.

His father had spoken of missing him, of course. He had recalled tales of his mother crying herself to sleep after standing in the doorway of her son's empty room and staring at the bed which had not been touched in several days. "You'd have thought you had already died," he had written, his small streak of humour that Leo remembered still shining through his father's writing. "If you could see her now, you'd tell her to stop pining. I know you would."

Through every emotion he had experienced since the Reaping, homesickness had not been a part of them. Leo had never even considered his house back in District Five, or his parents waiting for him to come home. As if he had known it would have hurt to picture the image of his mother waiting desperately in his bedroom whilst it grew orange from the setting sun, he had completely blocked it from his mind. His mother had always been far more sentimental than him, clinging onto heirlooms and memories to keep herself moving forward. If she was certain that her son was gone, Leo knew exactly how she would be acting – desperately keeping everything tidy, trying to hold onto a routine that reminded her of some old normality. He did not need a letter from his father to tell him exactly how she was.

Leo would have hugged her, if she had been there. He was not usually one for such displays of affection but he knew exactly when his mother needed comforting and, if he could, Leo would go out of his way to do so. His father was different. Just like Leo himself, his father was a quiet man with a streak of something darker and a sense of black humour. He would do his work diligently in the factory but speak to no one, greeting his wife at the front door of his home with a hug but with no words. He had poured his heart into the letter he had written for his son, but Leo could still sense the lack of wonder and concern. He had hidden his emotion behind short tales of daily life interspersed with comments on how different it was whilst Leo was not there. He did not mention fighting or the chance of not coming home – Leo's father was either completely confident that he would see his son again, or had completely given up on Leo ever coming home.