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“The District 2 male tribute is…Marcus—”
Of course, Sejanus thinks to himself, of course it was Marcus. Nervous anticipation of the reaping of his tribute over (and how wrong it felt, to call another person, someone he’d known so long ago, his), he can see the Capitol’s and the Academy’s machinations all over this. More importantly, he can see his father’s.
In that bowl, held up by a marble plinth, of all things, within which there were supposed to be thousands of names, they just happened to pick the name of his former classmate? Not likely. He wonders whether if he were to reach into the television screen and dig his hands among those slips of paper, there would be any that weren’t children he’d grown up with. It was a farce. And Marcus would probably lose his life, be killed, because of some stupid lesson of his father’s.
Because that was what this was, after all. A lesson. He may have told Coryo he was part of that District 2 litter, but his father had orchestrated all of this to remind him that, thanks to him, he wasn’t, really. Whether it was just his father, Dean Highbottom, or the damn President himself, he was being forced to remember where he was now, and to actively participate in it’s most gruesome attack on his old home.
And kill the person who was once the closest thing he had had to a friend in District 2.
***
Sejanus Plinth was not his friend.
Marcus wasn’t sure if the other boy had any friends. On his first day at school, when he’d come home to tell his mother about the boy in his class that he knew from TV, she had warned Marcus to be careful around him. Not cruel, his mother couldn’t tolerate bullies or anyone who hurt others, but careful. She didn’t know Sejanus, she’d said, but she knew of his daddy, and he was bad. Since then, he’d run the other way when Sejanus tried to join him and his friends on the playground, and if the other kids teased Sejanus for crying on TV or wearing an ugly shirt from the Capitol, Marcus laughed along.
On one winter’s day, as their teacher brought the students in from the cold to eat their ration lunches, one of Marcus’s classmates waited at the entrance, hidden by the strong wooden door, until Sejanus, the last straggler as usual, was making his way in, removing his woolen scarf. When the time was right, the classmate slammed the door and ran to join the table Marcus was sitting at. This wasn’t the first time one of his classmates had staged an “accident,” and Marcus thought little of it. He turned his back to Sejanus and carried on talking about the latest news on the war.
When they were summoned back to class, his friends turned their attention back to Sejanus. It seemed he had caught his hand in the slammed door, as he held a swollen hand to his chest and failed to hold back tears. Marcus heard his friend Jovian laugh at Sejanus, share some story about the big brother he never stopped bragging about, who’d broken his hand in the quarry with a sledgehammer and not complained a bit, but Marcus found it hard to follow along. He could only think about his mother, hear her voice in the back of his head. She couldn’t bear to see another person in pain, and as a medic in one of the District’s largest factories, she helped people with all kinds of injuries, big and small. Even with the war going on, and most medical supplies going towards the war effort, she always did what she could. And she’d begun teaching Marcus some of her tricks.
***
When he finally comes face to face with Marcus again, it is difficult to reconcile the hulking figure in front of him with the boy of his youth. Even after going without food for so many days, he still looks strong and imposing, with a quiet dignity in his posture. At eighteen, he’d probably already begun working in a quarry or a factory, possibly even one of his father’s. He cannot imagine what he looks like to Marcus, with his crisp uniform the rich color of blood, the steaming plate of food in front of him, his freshly washed face and hands. He must seem so soft, so pampered.
So guilty.
He punctuates the excruciating silence with pleas that Marcus eat, but much like at the zoo, he is steadfastly ignored. He avoids discussing the Games entirely. Coryo and Lucy Gray, he can see, are talking animatedly, probably about some kind of strategy but, try as he might, Sejanus cannot do the same. Marcus will win or he will lose, and there is very little Sejanus can do about it. At the very least, like Coryo said at the Reaping, Marcus has size and strength on his side, and the only way Sejanus knows to help him is to keep up the other boy’s strength with food. When he’d asked his Ma to make something he could bring, she’d gladly prepared some sandwiches and small cakes, filling food that was also relatively portable, if Marcus was able to bring it back with him to the zoo. She’d even prepared something special, something she hadn’t made in years.
“I know you won’t talk to me, Marcus, and if I were you, I wouldn’t talk to me either. But, please, you haven’t eaten in days, and my Ma made something special for you.”
He reaches into his bag, where the last treat lay wrapped in a cloth napkin, keeping it warm.
“She doesn’t make it too often, can’t always find the right flour, and, for better or for worse, it reminds me of…” He pauses, almost too afraid to finish the sentence, “of home.”
Saying nothing else, he delicately lays the bread right in front of Marcus, who remains silent, though Sejanus can see his words have hit home as Marcus clenches his jaw and blinks away a faint trace of tears.
“Sorry,” he adds quietly, ducking his eyes away.
Too soon, and yet not soon enough, Professor Sickle comes and whisks him and his classmates away. He debates leaving the food, just in case Marcus or any other tribute decides to snatch something, but one of the Peacekeepers points at the spread and orders him to take it with him. Wrapping each morsel delicately back into his bag, he realizes that the bread is no longer on the table. He glances back at Marcus, who now avoids his gaze. Smiling slightly to himself, Sejanus Plinth walks away from the other boy a bit more hopeful than before.
***
Neither boy said anything as Marcus cupped the small handful of snow on Sejanus’s finger.
“For the swelling,” was all he could mutter before he dashed back to his seat, keeping his head down for the rest of the day’s lessons to avoid the glares his friends gave him. No matter what they said, he knew he’d done the right thing, and that his mother would be proud. He wouldn’t let them get to him, make him think that just because of his father, Sejanus Plinth deserved to suffer. That anyone did.
Each morning, he and his friends liked to gather in the field around the school to play before their classes began. None of them mentioned the events of the day before, nor did Marcus think much of it either, until he saw Sejanus Plinth. Usually, Sejanus was one of the last students to arrive, hopping out of his father’s car and quickly scurrying to his seat, like he wanted to avoid everyone else. After yesterday, Marcus didn’t blame him. Yet today was the earliest he’d seen the boy arrive at school. Not only that, but there was no car in sight, and the boy was accompanied by a grown-up wearing a clean but plain coat, holding Sejanus’s hand in one of hers, a bundle in the other.
Sejanus pointed at Marcus and the woman, Sejanus’s mother clearly, handed the bundle to Sejanus. The boy headed over to Marcus, and once his peers noticed they gave the two a wide berth, though not before they let out a few chuckles and comments. Marcus ignored them.
“My Ma asked what happened to my hand. I told her it was an accident, and what you did yesterday. She, we, wanted to say thanks, and give you this.” The other boy was blushing slightly as he passed the brown paper package to him. Marcus opened it, his stomach growling at what was inside. A sweet bread, a District 2 specialty, one that he hadn’t seen, let alone eaten, since before the war began. Even for the Plinths, this was extravagant. Part of him wanted to to eat it all right away, before his friends or his siblings could take some away from him, but he quickly ripped it in half, put one part in his bag for his family, and took the second half, eager to dig into it. He usually didn’t eat until lunchtime these days, and he was ravenous. Before he could take his first bite, he realized Sejanus was looking at him silently, intensely. He hesitated a moment, much like he had the day before, before he ripped off another chunk and handed it back to Sejanus.
“It was nothing,” he told Sejanus, and they shared their bread in companionable silence.
***
These tunnels have probably never been cleaned, Marcus thought to himself, but they still smell better than the damn zoo. Free from his chains, free from violent Peacekeepers, and free from the hungry eyes of his fellow tributes, but he isn’t free yet. After hours of roaming the cavernous tunnels, he has no idea how far he’s gone. For all he knows, he’d gone in a circle the entire time. There were no distinguishing features, no signs that might lead him out, if there even was a way out. It didn’t seem like these tunnels had been used since the war. It was entirely possible the Capitol had blocked them off years ago. Even if he did find an exit, what good would it do him?
He is a fugitive, and there are probably scores of Peacekeepers looking for him, if they hadn’t just left him for dead. And if (even now, he still hopes it is an if, not a when) they find him, he is dead, and even in death would know no peace. He’d seen what they did to the District 10 girl. He’d suffer the same fate—or worse.
Yet for all that, a part of him still said, better that than the arena. Better that than die on screen, with his family, his mother, watching his final moments.
Better that than die to entertain the Capitol, to punish the Districts. Even if he was caught, he could die knowing for at least one day, he’d defied them, and the entire Hunger Games.
As his hatred of the Capitol festers, he thinks of Sejanus Plinth. Of his mother’s bread, still sitting in his pocket. The same bread he’d eaten all those years ago. He isn’t sure what to make of him. Though he remembered that day after the war, when Sejanus, teary-eyed and grasping his mother’s hand, boarded the shiny train to the Capitol, never to return, he hadn’t thought much of him since. Years of school, taking care of his siblings, helping his mother with her patients, then getting work in the factory after his father died and he couldn’t study for medic training, all had kept him too busy to think of a boy he had once barely known. He certainly hadn’t expected Sejanus to harass him at the zoo, to be his so-called mentor, whatever that meant.
He’d felt such anger, seeing him wave food in his face, like he really was a zoo animal. It would have been humiliating to take scraps from a spoiled Capitol boy, and so he ignored the gnawing in his stomach, and ignored the other boy. When they’d taken Marcus to that room and forced him to listen to Sejanus’s guilty ramblings, that was worse. He was numb to hunger then, and the sight of the spread Sejanus had brought had only made him even angrier.
When, then, when stupid, spoiled Sejanus had brought out the bread, had he taken it?
Perhaps it was like Sejanus said, the bread reminded him of home—was home. It was a District 2 recipe, after all. Even if he’d denied it before, avoided thinking about the home he could never return to, he missed it, and the weight of the bread in his pocket was a physical reminder that home was real, and even now the Capitol could not take his memories of it.
A clang reverberates through the tunnels, and he would have chalked it up to old pipe,s or a rat, had it not been for the sound of footsteps that followed it. Peacekeepers, finally catching up to him. He couldn’t be sure, but who else would be in the tunnels?
He reaches into his pocket, pulls the bread out, studies it. It is an exact replica of the one he’d eaten as a child, the flour a perfect shade of beige, powdered sugar sprinkled on top. He can imagine how it would have tasted warm. He pictures Sejanus’s mother, scurrying across the Capitol looking for flour and sugar and eggs, sees her huddled over marble countertops, the best the Capitol has to offer, kneading the bread, making it especially for him, a boy she met once. There is love in this bread, he realizes, the same love he sees in his mother’s eyes when she treats her patients. Love and effort for people that are almost entirely strangers.
He can hear the far-off echoes of footsteps on both sides of the tunnel, and Marcus knows he is dead. The Capitol would never let him go home, would never even entertain the possibility he died in the tunnels, he realizes that now. All that is left for him is the bread in his hands, but the bread is home.
Idly, he remembers the customs for the dead. Normally he wouldn’t care about following it, especially with how scarce bread can be, but he suddenly realizes the significance of it. Dedicating even a small amount of your resources, when you don’t have to, especially when you don’t have to, to show that person was, is, loved, and will be remembered even in death, is paramount. It is all that matters. That is what Sejanus’s mother did, what his own mother does, what she taught him when she told him to always take care of others.
He rips a chunk off of the bread, sprinkles it over himself, then shoves the rest in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, even as the footsteps get louder.
“Sejanus Plinth, maybe you’re not so bad.”
***
It is only a few moments, a few agonizing moments, before the final blow is dealt to the boy. He is outside of himself, hardly notices his last agonizing cry, the last face he sees, his last savior and his last doom. It all blurs to a faraway memory. When he feels the snap of his neck, it isn’t of arenas or guns, bombs or money that he thinks of.
It is his mother. His district. Homemade bread, shared between two people, despite their differences.
Home.