Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I know I know I know I know I know I know—

I wrote these things down.  They’d call me crazy if they knew.  But I wrote them down in a notebook that I keep underneath my mattress.  It doesn’t make me feel any better, but seeing those words written out in my own handwriting makes them seem less real, if that makes any sense.

If it doesn’t make sense, I don’t blame you.

Nothing really makes sense anymore.

Can I tell you something?  Let me tell you something, please.

I wish they’d stop talking to me.  Even when they try to make me feel better, it doesn’t work.  The sympathy is there but the empathy is lacking entirely.

It will start out nice.  “Hey, Basil, I’m sorry that you’re struggling so much.” But then the moment that I try to reach out for them to let them know what I need—or what I think I need, rather—they then shove a dismissive statement at me.

I should be lucky.  I should be grateful.  I should be happy.

I should be _____.

I should be _____.

I should be _____.

But you know what?  I’m not lucky, I’m not grateful, and I’m not happy.

I’m fucking dead inside, and no one seems to care about it.

The fact that I’m alive is enough to override any concerns, any feelings, that I may have. 

Why?

Chapter Text

Is that supposed to make me feel better?  Do people not understand what the hell they’re saying when they open their mouths?

I killed two kids.  I took their lives away.  Ended everything they were.

And you know what?  It was terrible.  Fucking terrible.

But please don’t make me think about it.

Please don’t make me remember it.

Okay, I’ll try.  I’ve written John’s words down, and now I have to come to terms with them.  I think that’s how this goes.

It was a week after I’d been back in District 11.  During that time, I’d barely left the new mansion they gave me, and I think my family was genuinely concerned for me.  No, I know they were.  How could they not be?  But I could see the pity in their eyes every time I looked at them.  (I tried not to look at them.)  So my older brother Mason urged me to meet up with my friend, John.  I agreed, but I wouldn’t let Dad drive me to the park.  That’s too much.  No matter which way you cut it, we’d have to drive through town to reach the city park.  Too many banners with my name on it.  Too many posters with my face.

I’m a hero.

But I sure as hell don’t feel like one.

So John drove a couple hours to our new town just to meet me inside an old dilapidated barn.  Dad offered to stay with me, but I said I’d be okay, and I waited for John to arrive.  I think Dad stayed close by, at least that’s what I told myself when my skin prickled and I cursed this stupid idea of meeting in a damned barn in a remote field.  At least John didn’t make me wait more than a minute.

It was almost the way things were before I was reaped.  I was skittish and on edge, but we were able to chat about how things had been for John since I won.  What school was like, how he was thinking about dating a new girl, when our classmates had done to celebrate my win.  I liked hearing everything he said, and I felt at home in his words as he painted this picture of our lives as they had once been.  Except, I realized, I was no longer in the picture.

The conversation fell into a lull, with neither of us knowing how to pick it back up.  He watched me squirm, and I tried to pass off my uneasiness as a fidget.

In hindsight, I probably should have invited him over to the mansion to meet up.

“It’s been . . . rough,” I said.  I shrugged and added, “But I guess you already figured that out.”

He nodded and told me that it was obvious.  He cleared his throat then as he realized that maybe he should have been a little more sympathetic.  But I just shrugged again and leaned back against one of the rickety support beams propping up the torn ceiling.

“At least you only had to kill two people,” he said.  “Some victors have to kill a lot more.”

My brain turned off.  My body slumped against the rotting post and I stared at the dusty ground beneath my feet, eyes filling with tears.  My chest ached as though my lungs had squeezed around my heart.

And then I started crying.

I’m fifteen years old, and I just start fucking crying in front of him.

I get that people don’t always know how to make others feel better, but really?  John had been my friend my whole life, and that was the best thing he could say to make me feel better about everything I’d gone through?

Damn, it hurts even thinking about it now.  Even my eyelids have started to prickle.

John stared at me blankly before apologizing, but I barely heard his words.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and said, “Their names were Violet Snyder of District 8 and Kennedy Steeplejack of District 2.  They aren’t alive anymore because of me.”

John had no response to this, and we spent the rest of our time in silence.

Chapter Text

Dad found me behind the sofa in one of the living rooms.  I don’t know how the hell I managed to wedge myself into the small space beneath the window, but there I was—drawn up into a ball with my arms wrapped around the back of my head and my forehead pressed against my knees.

He crouched down beside me and reached out a hand.  I could see his fingers if I turned my head a little.  But I was frozen.  It was like I was stuck here, but not because my body was trapped in this small space but because I was trapped inside my body.

The tips of his fingers touched my arm.

Electricity shot through my body, suddenly jarring me free from my position.  I scrambled to my feet, but bashed my head against the lip of the windowsill and my shoulder into the back of the couch.  It barely dazed me as I thrashed around, slamming my fists into the couch in an attempt to pull it away.  It slid aside—in hindsight, I know it’s because Dad moved it—and I threw myself over the back and onto the cushions.  Rolling off the couch, I smacked against the floor and gathered myself together in a crouch.  My knee ached from where it hit the rug too hard.

Dad tried to console me.

“Shut up!”

He tried to ask me to calm down.

“I can’t!  Fuck!  I can’t and I won’t!”

He tried to talk to me.

My heart beat quickly and my rapid breathing burned the back of my throat.

Or maybe it was my screaming.

“Stop!  Stop it!  Just stop it all!”

“Listen, son, I know you’re having a hard time,” he said.  “But you can’t get yourself worked up like this.”

I can’t help it!  Doesn’t he see?

My fingers dug into the couch cushion.  I ripped it off the couch and chucked it across the room.  Screaming, I latched onto the adjacent cushion and heaved it towards my father.

Doesn’t he see?

I’m not in control of myself.

I’m not me anymore.

I broke a window with my fists.

Dad tackled me to the ground.

Blood splattered across the room—across the furniture.

It was only fitting for a house that had been purchased in blood.

Not that I had the mental capacity to appreciate that irony at the time.

Mason ran into the room.  Julia cried when she saw us.

I don’t remember what happened after that.  I woke up in my bedroom awhile later with little recollection of the room I had completely destroyed.

All I can say for certain is this: I can get myself worked up like that, so don’t tell me what to do.

Chapter Text

I had been moping around the house.  I heard them whisper it amongst themselves that morning: moping.  Sure I wasn’t exactly upbeat, but I don’t think that word really captures the experience.

It’s like this:

For the past three days, I had slept a total of five hours.  Every time I tried to fall asleep, I’d think about Violet, the little girl from District 8.  She was fourteen.  She was in an alliance with the District 9 boy, but he was killed in the Bloodbath.  She was a quiet girl with dark hair, brown skin and bright eyes, and we could have been friends had we met under any other circumstances.  But it was the third day, and the cannons had been firing nearly constantly since the Hunger Games began and I just wanted to go home.  So I killed her.

And now I dreamed of her.

Every night.

So I hadn’t slept much, and I don’t even really want to admit this, but I had actually seen her that morning.  Just a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but I had been so certain she was there.  It sounded crazy, so I kept it to myself, and I tried to keep myself to myself so that no one had to deal with whatever weird stuff was going through my head.

Not wanting to actually be by myself, though, I ended up in the kitchen where Mom was preparing lunch for us.  There are seven of us children, and I think Mom appreciated the larger kitchen and filled pantries more than she let on.  But what she didn’t appreciate was her third oldest child standing numbly in the corner, arms wrapped around his chest as he stared with blank eyes across the room.

She sighed and came over to me.  Putting her arm around my shoulder, she hugged me against her side.  And I know she said what she said with love, but—

“It’s been three weeks, Basil,” she said.  “You need to think about your future and if this is how you want to live your life.”

It’s not how I want to live my life.

But it’s also not like I can just flip a switch in my head and start functioning again.

I’m not sure how to describe it even now, and I certainly couldn’t while I stood there next to Mom.  She was so warm and loving, and she said it with the best of intentions, and yet it only made me shrivel as I thought about the future.  Or the lack of a future.  I don’t know which.

Before I was reaped, I had planned on graduating high school and going to trade school.  I didn’t have the brains for university, but I wanted to get a leg up so that I wasn’t the one plowing fields or harvesting orchards because I did that stuff last summer and had no desire to repeat it again and again for the rest of my life.  There were other things I planned, but I don’t remember them now; they didn’t really have any purpose when all was said and done because it was clear I wasn’t going to be following the path I had imagined.

Now, though, I just . . . existed.  One day led to another which led to another.  I think if I had a goal for my future, it would be to stop the nightmares.  (That still hasn’t happened, by the way.)  That would be the big goal.  The second goal after that would be to figure out a way to come to terms with killing Violet and Kennedy.  But I didn’t know that those were my goals, and even if they were, those weren’t the sort of things I could say to my own mother about how I saw my future.

So I just kind of . . . shut down.  Mom went back to her cooking and food prep, and I stood there hollow and aching, wishing that I could just vanish into the bowels of the house, never to be seen again.

Chapter Text

Back before I was reaped, Ginger always asked me for homework help even though I wasn’t really great at it, but at least I knew enough about fifth grade math to squeak by.  We’d sit together working on fractions and word problems until Mom called us to set the table for dinner.

This day, however, was different.  It was the first time she’d asked me to help her with her homework.  Since I came back, I mean.  We sat side-by-side at a table in the study that we’d turned into a homework room.  Textbooks and notes lay out in front of us.  Ginger held her pencil between her fingers and tapped the eraser end against her sheet of paper.

She reached out and tried to touch my face, but I flinched.  I had a tic, she told me.  She’d noticed it when we were playing with her dolls the other day, and previously when I’d been helping Dad in the garden.

“Please don’t touch me,” was all I could say.

She shrugged and turned back at her homework.

Then she asked me what I was doing.

“Huh?”

She told me I was on the other side of the room.

I looked around me.  She was right.  No idea how I got there, but I was no longer in my chair.  Instead I stood near the bookshelf filled with giant novels and texts.  Shuffling back to my chair, I lowered myself in the seat.

“Alright.  Math.”

We continued working.  She wasn’t half bad at what she was doing, and I began to wonder if she had asked me to help her just for old time’s sake.  It was flattering to know that she still wanted me to work with her.  At any rate, she did most of the heavy lifting, and as my thoughts drifted in and out of the present, she explained things to me as though I were the pupil and she the teacher.  That was fine because at least it meant that she understood it.  I ran my fingers over the smooth tabletop and fiddled with the edges of the scrap paper she’d given me.

And then she suddenly coughed and—

I threw myself out of my seat, knocking my chair over in the process, and tripping face-first onto the ground.  I caught myself with my palms and collapsed onto my stomach.  Flipping over, I snatched up the nearest item I could find—one of those big pencil sharpeners—and held it up, ready to throw it.

Ginger stared wide-eyed back at me.  Still in her place at the table.

“I know you’ve been through a lot but you never used to be this weird,” she said after a moment.  With a sigh she turned back to her paper.  “I can’t wait until you’re back to normal.”

She’d be waiting awhile then.

Waiting forever, more likely.

Somehow I managed to keep the tears back as I climbed to my feet and took my spot at the chair again.  A heaviness in my chest dragged me down, and I laid my head on the table with my hand as a pillow.  For a moment, I watched Ginger work on her math.  I felt the vibrations of each rhythmic pencil stroke through the solid wood table.

My little sister once looked up to me.

But now she doesn’t.

The realization tore at my chest, and, no longer able to look at her and see that I had failed her, I closed my eyes.

I guess I somehow figured that my younger siblings wouldn’t care that much.  They were different from Mason and Julia who, like our parents, understood that there was now something wrong with me.  But the kids didn’t have that same perspective, and I had hoped that they’d still see me as me.  Someone had to, right?

They were all old enough to understand that I went to the Hunger Games.  They had watched me struggle and they had watched me kill.  Our parents didn’t want to coddle them or pretend like I’d gone away somewhere special as we’d heard that some families tend to do.  Ginger couldn’t grasp what I was going through, and in a way I’m glad for that.  But that didn’t make what she said any less painful.

I tried to forget it.

I tried to be less weird.

I tried to not be so jumpy.  If I could just keep myself alert enough, nothing would surprise me.  If I prepared for everything, I wouldn’t have such an exaggerated startle response.

I didn’t know that I was only making things worse for myself.

Chapter Text

We sat on the back porch steps.  I hunched over, my arms around my legs.  Slouched against the railing, I stared down at the toes of my shoes.  This was the fifth pair I’ve worn today.  There were so damned many clothes in the house.

“Did Mom send you out here to talk to me?” I asked.

Julia shrugged.  She fiddled with the various rings on her fingers.  She, like me, wasn’t certain how to handle the overabundance of shit we had in this house, so I guess she was trying out everything all at once.  Which would also explain why she had several bracelets and necklaces on, too.

She told me that our mother was pregnant again.  I thought Mom was too old, but what did I know?  Not much these days, honestly.  It was probably an accidental baby, but Julia didn’t tell me that part.  Remy was the youngest at 7, and that seemed like a pretty substantial gap between children.  And when Julia told me the due date, I really didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that the baby would be born about nine months after the Hunger Games.

I didn’t think of it then, but I wonder now: were they trying to replace me?

Probably not.  Let me focus on the task at hand.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I finally said.  “Everything in my head is so damned messed up.  It was only four days. . . .”

My older sister shrugged again and told me that I was still in a really terrible place regardless of length of time I was there.  The heaviness began to lift from my chest ever-so-slightly, and I thought that she could see that it had all been eating away at me for the past several months.  Each night felt as terrible as the night before, like something had gnawed its way into my skull to shit out nightmares in my brain.

Then she followed it up with, But it could have been worse.

I scoffed.  “That’s not going to help.”

She told me that the family needed me back.  There were so many changes going on and with Mom now pregnant, I had to start being functional—at least semi-functional, she clarified.  The more she went on, the bolder she grew, and the more I shrank into myself.  I already felt like shit for being like this but I didn’t need to have the guilt trip layered on.

“Look at Terra Woods,” Julia stated.  “At least your arena wasn’t like that.”

My arena: four days—one of the shortest Hunger Games on record.  Plenty of supplies.  I was never hungry.  I had a good weapon.  My injuries weren’t as bad as they could have been, and I wasn’t in the arena long enough to really suffer from them.

Compare that with Terra of District 12, victor of the 129^th Hunger Games: nearly two weeks in the arena.  Starving.  Dehydrated.  Had to resort to drinking human blood.  Ended up in some pretty nasty brawls with whatever weapon she could get her hands on.  Substantial injuries.

Oh and she was also fifteen at the time.

I gritted my teeth.  My fingers twitched.  My eye twitched.  “Thanks for making me feel better,” I snapped.

She rolled her eyes and tried to tell me that she hadn’t meant it like that but it didn’t matter.  I stood up and stomped off into the backyard amidst her attempts to call me back to reality.

But reality was nowhere near me.

They found me in a field five miles down the road.  I don’t remember how I got there.

Chapter Text

I came home from my victory tour a fucking mess.

I paced

Back and forth

                        And back    

        And forth

Up and down the hallway

                                                It was twelve midnight

                                                One thirty

                                                Two fifteen

There was a clock and I could see the time

                        Back      

        Forth

                        Back      

        Forth

I dug my nails against the walls

Pressed my nails into the wallpaper as deep as I could, then walked down the hallway

                Back and forth

Didn’t notice I was bleeding from two of my nails, at least not at first

                                        .Violet.

I killed her

I saw her mom and her stepdad

Her little brother

They cried when they saw me

I almost had to leave the stage prematurely because my legs shook so hard that I was going to fall

I actually pissed myself up there

Me, sixteen years old now

I pissed myself as I stared at her family but no one said anything because I had a podium in front of me (thank God) and Demeter assured me that they’d edit out the wet spot in my pants for when they aired it on television, and that nobody noticed and it wouldn’t be reported in the papers

Fuck!

                Back and forth

                        Back      

                                        .Kennedy.

I tried to pretend like his death didn’t bother me because he was a Career and all, but I threw up the moment I got backstage

All over myself too, this liquid bile with chunks of something Demeter convinced me to eat that morning, all of it splattered down my shirt and dripping onto the floor

At least I didn’t shit my pants or something stupid like that

Throwing up is bad enough

        Forth

                        And back    

        And forth

I screamed

Violet

Kennedy

Only two deaths

Only two deaths

Why does it bother me

Why am I letting it bother me

Why can’t I just be better about this

Why can’t I just be a real victor and deal with this shit

It wasn’t that bad

It was only four days

I wasn’t maimed and starving

I wasn’t even the least bit dehydrated

It wasn’t even that bad of an arena, either

Ruins

It could have been a cool place to explore were this not the Hunger Games, and I am certainly glad that it wasn’t a desert

I didn’t have to forage for roots or use snares to catch rabbits or find a water source or build myself shelter in the cold or cook a fire

But all their dead faces

Even the ones I didn’t kill stared back at me from the screens, judging me for what I had done

        Or for what I hadn’t done

        Or for getting out of the arena

        Or for not suffering enough

I didn’t suffer enough

I sure as hell was suffering now

But I shouldn’t be doing it now because I didn’t back then

In the arena

I hated being there, of course, and I hated that constant fear that fills you up and propels you forward with a buzz and a zip

It tries to keep you alive and in my case it worked but now I still felt it

                        Buzzzzz – back          

        Zzzzzip - forth

                        Back      

        Forth

The hallway stretched on and on, and each time I turned around it only l e n g t h e n e d more

I couldn’t slow down

I couldn’t stop

My legs ached

Am I now or am I then

Past or present

My little brother came out of his room

I passed him several times

And then:

“You’re kind of freaking me out a bit”

Yes I am

I’m freaking me out, too

I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this I don’t want to be like this

But I keep going back and forth and back and forth

Up and down the hall

My fingers hurt, my legs hurt, even my chest hurt from breathing heavily

                        Violet   

        Kennedy

                        Back      

        Forth

                        Violet

                                Back      

                Kennedy

        Forth

My brother’s bedroom door closed quietly—so quietly that I could almost not hear it—but I heard all the things

Over

And over

And over again.

Chapter Text

They finally convinced me to go to church again.  I used to attend every Sunday with my family, but once I came back from the arena, that wasn’t an option.  It wasn’t an option for any of us, honestly, but over time my parents and siblings started going back.  Not necessarily all at once, but there was always a representative from the Gonzalez household present at the Sunday service.

That day, all nine of us were there: Dad, Mom, Mason, Julia, me, Meg, Cyrus, Ginger, Remy.

Despite the stares from the congregation, I fell asleep in church.  No one bothered to wake me up until it was over.  But I figured I got credit for going anyhow.  If God had a mind to forgive my sins, that was.  Otherwise that credit doesn’t mean a damned thing.

Anyhow.

Grandma and Grandpa (on Dad’s side) and my Aunt Gracie joined us afterwards.  I guess they were feeling rather divine and decided to impart some wisdom on me because out of the complete blue Aunt Gracie looked over at me and said, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”

To which I replied without a second thought, “Yeah fuck those tributes who couldn’t keep God’s high standards.”

Mason and Julia hauled me away while Mom and Dad apologized profusely to Aunt Gracie and the grandparents.  Once we were under a big shade tree out of earshot of the others, Mason chewed me out for my behavior as Julia paced around with her arms crossed over her chest and stole nervous glances around us.  Then once Mason finished, she turned on me and told me that we were in a new community and had to behave appropriately because everyone was judging us.

Good, let them judge.

Because apparently God does, and why not follow in his footsteps like we’re supposed to?

Alright, I get it.  Aunt Gracie didn’t mean any harm by what she said.  It’s just that it’s one of those statements that make some people feel good and some people feel bad.  She was in one camp and I was in the other.  And I really shouldn’t have been an ass about it, but I just couldn’t help it.

So I just stood there and listened to my older siblings rant between gritted teeth to keep anyone from overhearing, and then when my parents caught up with us, younger siblings in tow, they made sure to give me an earful, too.

My thought in hindsight: I’d like to think that God—if he still exists—actually loves us and wants to help us, not to just layer us with shit until we collapse.

Chapter Text

I stood in a corner of the laundry room unable to remember what I was doing there.  I had come downstairs to accomplish some task or another, and here I couldn’t recall what that task was or how I had come to be in this specific room.

It had been awhile since this happened.  I thought of it as teleporting.  But despite the alluring name, I hated the sensation of finding myself in a completely different part of the house without any recollection of how I got there.  Things had been getting better one day at a time, and this had taken me off guard.

Granted, I had also been trying to stay away from others as much as possible.

I heard my youngest sister Remy call out to my parents that I was just standing stupidly in the laundry room, and then a few minutes later, Dad appeared and shooed my sister away.  He sighed heavily when he saw me pressed into the corner, half-hidden by a pile of towels on the counter.

He walked over to me and asked me what was wrong.

I shrugged, unable to put it into words, but finally managed to mumble, “I dunno.  I just feel weird, I guess.”

Dad studied me for a moment before setting a hand on my shoulder.

I flinched.

He told me that I needed to keep my mind busy, a line he’d told me dozens of times now as though it would somehow magically free me from this heaviness inside me.  I didn’t respond right away because now my words had all but evaporated up, and I had no idea how to proceed.

What Dad said made sense.  What everyone said made sense.  If I just did X, then I’d be able to move on.  If I just did Y, then I could get over what I’d experienced.  But it all started to jumble together in my mind just as much as Ginger’s math homework did these days, and I kept wondering what the hell I was missing that would allow me to achieve freedom from my nightmares and weird behaviors.  Keeping busy, cleaning up the house, minding my little siblings—it sounded good and all except that it never really helped anything, not when I couldn’t focus well enough to complete a task or I kept jerking every time someone moved too close or I screamed whenever someone spoke my name too loudly.

“You’re alive, okay?” he said to me as he studied me carefully.  I wasn’t a corpse, not like the other twenty-three kids who returned from the arena.  But despite this, I heard the exasperation in his voice as he continued, “Please just help your mother out for once.”

My throat clamped up and my body felt heavy but I managed to nod.  Yes of course I’d help Mom.  She was going to have another kid soon, and the rest of my siblings had been helping her out so much that it seemed like I wasn’t needed at all.  But I had to stop acting like this and get my shit together.  I had to actually do more than just lurk around in random parts of the house or lock myself away in my bedroom. I was lucky that I was alive, and I needed to take advantage of this.  I wasn’t like those other tributes.  I couldn’t waste away my life knowing that I could be one of them, dead in a grave somewhere.

Dad left me to my own devices, and I stood there for another minute trying to talk myself out of the heaviness.  I could have done with some of that buzzing energy right then, but it never seems to be my choice whether I get the internal weight or the jolt of electricity.

I folded some laundry.

And then I went upstairs and hid under my bed where I could write another sentence down.

Chapter Text

My little brother, Chrys, was born that spring.  The house erupted into a flurry of excitement and movement, but I lingered on the edges as I watched my father and siblings cater to Mom and Chrys’ every little need or desire.  They fell into a steady stream of bottles and diapers and naps.  Chrys barely touched the inside of his crib since everyone was so eager to hold him.

Everyone except me.

I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t bring myself to do more than watch him from across the room as my parents or siblings cradled him in their arms while my stomach ached for reasons I couldn’t understand.

I just—

I don’t know.

There was a great emptiness inside me that I can’t put into words, and seeing Chrys bright and alive and happy just kicked open some wound within me.

But one night, I somehow found myself outside of his bedroom door.  He was still too young to sleep alone, maybe, but sometimes he did.  I don’t know.  All I know is that my little brother lay in his crib, so completely alone and vulnerable.  Moonlight streamed into the darkened room from the large windows on the far wall.  I lingered in the doorway for a moment before daring to tread inside and peer down into the little crib.

My brother stared right back at me.

I don’t think babies smile at that age, but even if they did, I wasn’t offended that he could only stare wide-eyed into the darkness at my nightmarish shape looming above him.

“Why are you alone?” I asked.

Before I knew what I was doing, I reached down into the crib and picked him up.  He was warm.  Heavy, too, or at least heavier than I expected.  I held him against me, folding my arms under and around him as I had seen the others do, and I lowered myself into a chair by the window.

There was something weirdly okay in that moment.  Not good, per se, and definitely not normal.  But as I cradled my newborn brother in my arms and stared out into the horizon where moonlight glimmered on the distant trees, something within me lifted.  The heaviness didn’t leave, but I could finally breathe.

It was like it suddenly occurred to me that Chrys had no idea who I was before.  He would grow up knowing me as I am now, and he would not mourn the brother that was lost in the arena.

I wasn’t aware we weren’t alone until I heard my mother’s voice: “You used to be so happy.”

My stomach tensed, and that weight came crashing right back down inside me.  As Mom came closer, I bowed my head.  My heart throbbed at the pain in her words.  She lowered herself into a chair across from me, and we sat together in aching silence as we thought of what used to be.

I did used to be happy.  I used to be full of life and dreams and promises.  And now I was—

I was nothing.

A void where a teenager used to be.

Four days in the arena and two murders was all it took to smash any hope of a future out of me.  I’d become a ghost of who I was, a sliver of a living person, and we couldn’t pretend otherwise.

I drew in a shaky breath.  “Mom—”

An apology sat on my tongue, but I couldn’t speak it.  How could a meager apology begin to cover all of the shit we’d dealt with?

Mom shook her head.  She looked like she wanted to say something else, but for several long seconds, she wordlessly watched me, Chrys in my arms.  Chrys lay content, his eyes now closed and his breathing even.

Finally she said, I see you there with your brother, and it just makes me think. . . .

Her voice drifted off, and the tension that held my body together tightened, twisting my organs.  I half expected her to ask me to give my brother back to her because she had only stepped out of the room for a moment and didn’t trust me with him.

But instead she smiled.

A genuine smile.

I hadn’t seen one of those in a long, long time.

I won’t say there was no pain in it, but there was something else mixed in there.  I held Chrys tighter to me, not sure of what to make from her expression, so full of love and—and . . . hope. . . .

“You are still our lovely Basil, and one day you will find yourself again.”

My pulse thumped in my neck.  I . . . I wanted to find myself.  I wanted to be myself.  I didn’t know who I was anymore; I didn’t know what I’d become.

I licked my lips and clung to her words.  I could barely shove out a single word of my own. “How?”

“You’re strong, Basil,” she said. 

“I don’t feel strong,” I muttered.  “And I’m certainly not like how I used to be.”

“You are you, but a different you,” she said.  “I’m sorry we didn’t recognize it sooner.  Your father and I, and your siblings—we all love you, and I know you love us.  We tried to help but . . . we didn’t listen enough.  We are here for you, Basil.” 

My heart pounded.  Could I really be hearing this?  Could she be speaking these words, or had I wished them so much that I now imagined this conversation?

But no.  My brother was in my arms.  He was heavy.  A weight.  Not like the weight inside of me.  That internal weight began to dissolve—ever so slightly, just around the edges of the bulging mass holding me down—as my mother smiled at me.  As my brother sighed.  As I stared towards the bed my mother must’ve been sleeping in before I walked in.  She hadn’t abandoned Chrys.

She hadn’t abandoned me.

“He needs his diaper changed,” Mom said with a nod towards my baby brother.  “I’ll show you how to do it, and if he wakes up, you can rock him back to sleep.”