the sun has faded

in my next life i want to be a flower

Tyler's eyes are crusty and red with dried tears when he wakes up. He looks small and uncertain as he stares up at Josh trustingly.

"We're going out!" Josh tells him briskly. He's already showered and dressed, having woken several hours ago from a terrible nightmare.

"Where?" Tyler asks him in confusion.

"You'll see," Josh says brightly. "You're not a tribute anymore. We're not obliged to stay in training headquarters. We can go wherever we want." Which was not strictly true, but close enough.

"So we're going out into the city? For real?"

"We're going to do something...Happy." Josh knows that he can't do much to make Tyler's life better. He's always going to be traumatized from his games, his life will always be under the capitol's control, and he will continue to watch children die for as long as he lives. But doing one thing on this one day to make him happy seems plausible enough.

Tyler smiles at him slightly, "That sounds nice."

"Course it does. So, get dressed!"

Tyler slowly gets out of bed, clearly weak from the previous days traumatic events. Josh scrambles to him, helping him stand up and walk over to his closet. "Thank you," Tyler murmurs, embarrassed. Josh only smiles at him, his heart breaking as he watches the boy pick out clothes.

Tyler pulls on a pair of skin tight skinny jeans and a grey sweater. "Look okay?" he asks hesitantly.

Josh nods, "you look cute."

Tyler grins, "I've been told they make my legs look amazing by every girl in District 7. I'm pulling out all the stops to impress you."

Josh finds himself laughing. In all the grief and madness of the games it is sometimes hard to see that the people there used to and can be funny, smart and charming. "You're a flirt Tyler! Who knew?"

"Only for you, Josh."

Josh realizes in horror that his cheeks are growing hot. He had thought he had lost the ability to blush over the last three years. Apparently a charming Tyler Joseph was all it took to break past his practiced layer of indifference and actually make him feel flustered.

He's Hanna's boy. Josh reminds himself. In a different, better world, Tyler and Hanna would have lived happily after together. You're just looking after him for her.

"No time for chit chat now, Tyler," Josh reaches up to ruffle his hair. Tyler leans into it his touch slightly. "We're on a tight schedule."

He leads Tyler out of the training quarters. They collect metal bands at the gate that are locked onto their wrists by a grumpy capitol attendant.

"What are these for?" Tyler whispers.

"They're trackers," he answers. "Obviously less intense than having them injected into your arm like during the games. They basically just tell the capitol where we've gone, and if we try to take them off or disengage them in any way peacekeepers would come collect us."

"That's not too bad. I still can't believe we can just leave and go wander like this!" Tyler is giddy as they walk through the streets. He can't stop spinning his head from side to side, taking everything in, clearly relishing the freedom.

"There's some pretty cool stuff here," Josh admits. "Once you get past all of the terrible bits." He turns into the doorway of a fancy cafe. "This place has the best hot chocolates."

"What's that?" Tyler's wide eyed and eager as he follows Josh in. "Is it a drink?"

"Two hot chocolates, please," he tells a woman standing behind the counter. She has hideous red hair, just like him. Red really is in. "And two red velvet cupcakes as well."

"What are those?" Tyler is bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet. "I mean I know what cupcakes are...they're like muffins sort of, right? But how are they red velvet? Are those the hot chocolates? Are they supposed to be brown? What's the foamy white stuff she's putting in the cups?"

Josh laughs slightly shoves a cupcake in Tyler's face. "Just try it. You can eat while we walk."

Tyler is preoccupied for the rest of the walk. He demolishes his cupcake in a couple of seconds and then sets his puppy dog eyes on Josh until he gets half of his cupcake as well. He then spends a few perplexing moments giving the whipped cream on top of his drink little kitten licks, before he decides he likes that too. "I like hot chocolate," Tyler informs Josh. He has whipped cream on his nose. Josh decides not to mention it.

"Okay, close your eyes. We're almost there." Tyler hesitates before closing his eyes and links his arm with Josh.

Josh leads Tyler to a patch of springy grass and pulls him into a sitting position. "Alright, you can open your eyes."

Tyler's eyelids flutter open and he lets out a gasp. They are surrounded by every colour imaginable. Reds, and blues, and purples and every shade in between, as far as the eye can see. Only in the capitol, Josh muses, would there be a park that contains every single beautiful flower in existence. He suspects that at least half of them are genetically engineered, because colours that vibrant cannot possibly occur randomly in nature.

"I like coming here," he tells Tyler quietly. "There's hardly ever anyone else, probably because all the capitol citizens are busy with their fashion shows and dinner parties. It's always quiet and peaceful."

"It's amazing," Tyler breathes. "Everything is so still. Even in district seven things are hardly ever this still."

They don't really talk much after that. Instead they lie back on the grass and doze in and out of consciousness for a while. Tyler rests his head on Joshes lap and lazily points out his favourite flowers while Josh fiddles with his free fingers. When they get hungry they delve into the sandwiches and lemonade that Josh had packed early that morning.

The sky eventually begins to darken and the ground beneath them becomes cooler, but still they don't move. "In my next life, I'm going to be a flower." informs him.

"Which one?"

"Whichever one smells the best. I still have to find out which one that is."

Josh closes his eyes and nods. "Well we have plenty of flowers to look through."

Tyler's wrist band flashes suddenly and emits a loud buzzing sound. He looks at Louis anxiously. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're wanted for something back in our quarters," Josh says dully. Abruptly, he feels cold.

"No." Tyler goes from calm and happy to terrified in an instance. "Not again. I can't do it again." Josh can see him begin to panic, his lower lip trembling and his eyes tearing up. "P-please, I can't."

Josh inhales shakily and presses his forehead to Louis's. "Yes, you can. That's why I brought you here. No matter what you're being forced to do, I want you to pretend you are right here, sitting in the middle of thousands of flowers with me."

Tyler is crying silently now.

"They can do whatever they want with your body and you have no way of stopping them," Josh continues firmly, "But they do not have control of your mind. That's the one thing that is not their's. Mentally, you can be anywhere in the world."

"So I can just go somewhere else in my head?" Tyler asks in a small voice. "My body will be there but I'm going to be with you?"

"Yes. You're going to be with me. And we're going to be having a lovely day. I'll buy you hot chocolate and take you to a flower garden."

"A lovely day," Tyler repeats through his tears. "We'll be having a lovely day." He allows Josh to lead him back to headquarters, back to Snow.

Josh wishes with everything inside of him that he could be leading Tyler in the opposite direction.