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Marcus got out, thinks Sejanus.
His heart skips a beat at the sight of the bullet-ridden bodies of the District One tributes who hadn’t managed the same. That could have been Marcus. Seconds slower, and that could have been him. It could still be him, Sejanus knows, because the hunt will not end here. Peacekeepers would be looking for him once they were given a chance to recoup. Peacekeepers would likely find him, too. Sejanus could not allow that to happen.
Which meant he needed to find Marcus first.
Sejanus hears word of an offset sewer cover, and takes to packing a bag of supplies that night. He imagines Marcus traversing the darkened tunnels, and his heart breaks over the state he must be in. Sejanus hadn’t been injured too badly, but those burns had only recovered quickly because he had medical treatment. Marcus had no such luxury, and the clock was ticking on his survival.
If there was one thing Sejanus knows about search parties, it is this: If the missing individual is not found after a week, they are more than likely dead.
So he wastes no time slipping out of the house, searching the Transfer with a flashlight and a silent call of Marcus’s name. He tries his best to convey that he intends to help, but has little faith that Marcus would believe him. Marcus had spent the short times that had been allocated to them facing him with a stony silence, and at the zoo, there was no acknowledgement.
Sejanus could hardly blame him. It wasn’t like they had been friends, necessarily. Not back in Two, and certainly not now. It makes Sejanus feel foolish, thinking upon the memory that he held so dear, of Marcus’s gentleness, of his kindness, of the snow from the windowsill and the care in his steady hands as he scooped it onto Sejanus’s injured fingers.
It makes him feel more foolish when he tries to recount it to Marcus in a fruitless attempt to connect, and Marcus shuts him down with an expression so harsh that Sejanus quiets immediately. There was impassiveness, there was loathing, and then there was that—a look so intense that there wasn’t a word that needed to be spoken, because Sejanus felt it. So he had bitten his tongue and tried to push the bread and cake he’d brought during that interview towards Marcus’s bound hands, begging him to take it in the same silence that Marcus was treating him to.
He doesn’t find Marcus that night.
Sejanus returns home nearing dawn, and collapses into bed like he could pretend that he had been there the entire time. He has mere hours of sleep before he needs to be up for the Academy, and they are filled with unrest. His mind conjured Marcus’s image, and though the boy of his dreams and nightmares does not speak, the injuries scattered across his wounded form tell their own tale.
This is your fault, say those horrific burns.
And Marcus’s eyes are empty and accusing in one.
Sejanus arrives at the Academy the following day, unfocused and exhausted. He has the marble heart that Marcus had gifted him so many years ago in his pocket, and he wonders if Marcus even remembers it. He remembers Sejanus certainly, even if it was far from a positive light. Sejanus remembers the curve of his smile when they had shared cookies baked in class, and the hesitance in his shoulders when Marcus had offered the marble heart to him, as though he feared Sejanus would dislike it.
Far from it. It has been his light, all these years.
His mind drifts during classes, and Sejanus holds the marble heart in his palm and tries to imagine a path that he can follow, like the heart could act as a compass that will lead him to Marcus. He has less than a week now, and that night is no more successful. He carries around a full bag of supplies that remains full when he is forced to return home once more. Marcus remains unfound by him, and Sejanus can only hope that, at least, that holds true for anyone else seeking him out.
Marcus plagues him this night as well.
It is a different image than the injuries of the daybreak prior. It is Marcus as a child, both of them as children, both of them happy, chasing each other under bright skies and rocky soil, bound by a red string that shines like a promise. Then, the string snaps, and Sejanus wakes, and the pleasant fantasies fade into bleak reality. He rises for classes and cannot make himself speak past the tangle in his throat.
His search grows more desperate with each passing night, and his weariness grows with each passing day. His hope frays in tandem with the energy being sapped from his bones. Not-Marcus visits him every night, plaguing (haunting) him with the could-bes and might-have-beens. Sejanus does not want to think about hauntings because that would mean Marcus is dead, and he is not ready to accept that.
Marcus can be saved. Sejanus just has to find him.
He sneaks out with his supplies and prays that Marcus will be found tonight.
Where are you? wonders Sejanus.
He returns home with nothing to show for it.
There is no sleep, not even briefly, this time.
It is the day of the Hunger Games, and Marcus has not been found. But Sejanus will still be expected to attend, and he will be there to watch children die. Sejanus thinks, with a heart in his palm and a damnable red on his uniform, that he never quite knew what he was looking for in all these desperate, restless nights. He wants Marcus safe but—a selfish part of Sejanus had hoped he could find safety in Marcus, too.
It wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps it never was.
So there Sejanus sits, in a front-row seat to the broadcast, and he cannot stand it.
On the screen, the image pans to—oh.
By the mountains, that’s—that’s.
I found you, thinks Sejanus, hysteria rising in his chest.
Because there was Marcus.
Strung up for dead, but refused even that mercy.
Sejanus is shaking in anger, in horror, in grief at the very sight. He suspects no one really cares when he throws the chair at the screen—shame it didn’t break—and confirms as much when he faces his classmates to scream at them. Call them monsters. All he gets are blank faces and accusing eyes, like he is the one who is insane. He escapes the hall as quickly as his legs will take him.
He reminds himself that the thing about search parties was this:
If the missing individual was not found within a week, they were more than likely dead.
But the thing about hunting parties was this:
To be found meant a much worse fate.