The funeral seemed like it was years ago.
I was not in the cemetery, but a place that was close enough: the crumbling ruins of lives before mine. It was the Old Sector, as they now called it, the one I'd brought Cato to. It felt like ages ago. I knew it hadn't been that long.
It was a cold night, because April was always cold in District 2. My breath fogged up above me. The cold of the marble fountain beneath me soaked into my back and my legs, chilling my bones and making my jeans stiff. Even my hair felt cold, though I couldn't find it in me to be bothered by it; the cold wasn't something I'd ever get used to, but it was something I unwillingly dealt with anyway. It was part of my home.
I felt asleep, or maybe half-dead. Usually, the cold made things feel more real; that night, it made everything feel more like a frost-coated dream. My legs felt the urge to get up, to stretch the cold from them and walk it off. My memories wanted me to go to a place like another home. My heart wanted to curl up under dark blankets, to feel warm arms wrap around me just as I drifted off to sleep. My head knew that these things were impossible. It's pointless to sneak into a vacant room, knowing that its occupant will never return.
I missed falling asleep next to someone that cared about me. I missed having a person to keep me warm on cold nights like that one. I missed having someone to talk to when I sat up in the middle of the night, sweating, heart still hammering, mind still in the wiry trappings of a nightmare. I missed it so much I ached.
I drifted in and out of full consciousness. I tried to focus on other things, like the fast approaching Reaping and the country's turmoil, but my thoughts always slid back to him. I tried to figure out why I would only think of him so much, why I often unfairly pushed her from my mind, but the introspection was in vain. I could only conclude that there was no closure with him, and that it hurt, and that I couldn't move on unless I got that closure. It didn't make me feel any less awful.
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A Knife in the Dark | ✓
Fanfiction{the rewrite of "District Two", the story of Cato and Clove; entered in the 2017 Wattys} ✗ If there's anything Atala Shields should be used to, it's pain. Two dead parents caused it. A changed last name, one that she hates to acknowledge, caus...
