Timeframe: Year 117, December.
Winter in the agriculture district rarely deviated from the established norm. The fields were barren after all the soil produced had been gathered, empty of plant life and humankind alike. Citizens donned hefty jackets and fuzzy boots as they went about doing their off-season jobs. The heavy-lifting laborers did maintainence on tractors. Women recruited their children and their small fingers to stitch new harvesting bags and comfortable clothing that didn’t wear easily. The pink orchids in the pots surrounding the Thornley’s home in the Victor’s Village were covered by large blankets to save them from the chilly winds. Drake too was often cloaked in a blanket when he walked around the house.
Being kept in the dark about what the next Games would demand had everyone on edge. With his dad, things were great, probably the best they’d ever been. Peater Thornley showered his sons in love and was massively supportive of their every move. He’d even started to make surprise appearances at Drake’s rehearsals (which he couldn’t bear to tell him was more embarrassing than it was supportive.) Rosemary Thornley hadn’t shown her scars from nearly losing her son until only recently. When Drake was about to board the train for the Victory Ball, she broke into a hysterical, crying mess. Apparently she’d been supressing her emotions for the sake of everyone else and reached a point where she couldn’t play the part anymore. “Every time you get on that train it’s like the first time,” she cried. “It’s like not knowing if you’ll come back again.” Drake reassured her, but didn’t feel entirely confident in doing so. He didn’t like boarding the train either.
What remained was a hot-and-cold relationship with Phoenix. When the family was all together, everything was at it had always been. No tension, no lingering doubts, no awkward silence. Only when the identical boys were left alone did all the aforementioned come to into play. Wondering why was all the boy could do aside from failingly trying to make eye contact with his best friend. Phoenix shared several characteristics with a brick wall and was stubborn through and through. However, the patient pacifist was fed up with the winter powered cold shoulder.
Their parents were out at a friend’s home and the evening was quiet aside from the gusts bending naked branches outside. Drake, working up the nerve, stared at his reflection in the mirror for several minutes. In all their time of Earth, the boys had only fought twice. Once when they both wanted the next turn riding on their father’s shoulders and the second time when Drake accidentally flattened Phoenix’s football after stepping on it.
“Why won’t you talk to me anymore?” The question shattered the silence and he shuddered at the realization that he couldn’t take it back. The younger Thornley brother glanced up from the video game he was playing, pressing pause with a solid click.
“What are you talking about? We talk all the time.”
Drake shook his head. “No, we don’t. We talk about the weather and with mom and dad, but we don’t talk to each other. Or really...you avoid saying anything to me.”
Phoenix immediately sprung to his feet with a pointed finger and a scowl forming on his eyebrows. “You’d better stop accusing me of stuff right now, Drake. It’s not my fault.”
“What isn’t your fault?” The dancer asked with sincere curiosity. He was already trembling terribly. He loathed confrontation of any kind. Phoenix didn’t seem to mind as he drew closer.
“I didn’t know!” he shouted loudly enough to startle his dog slumbering in the corner. “Entering you in the talent show was supposed to be a fucking fun. You wouldn’t have entered yourself and you’re a good dancer. I didn’t know it would end up so messed up.”
Drake was thrown for a loop. He didn’t understand why the talent show was being brought up and thought the subject at hand was being avoided. Stupidly warm tears sat on on lashes, but ran clean off when he recognized the huffing frustration emmiting from his brother. “Phoenix, what are you talking about?”
Cheeks bright red, his brother paced between in the range of two feet. Silence returned to the house very briefly and they both shivered for reasons other than the cold floor beneath their feet. “I’m the reason you got sent into the Games, stupid,” he spat. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for something like that.”
The dancer still found himself lost on how his prompt and his brother’s responses fit together. Ironically, this was the most they’d spoken in months and none of it made a lick of sense. It was unlike Phoenix to be so blantantly vulnerable and apologetic. Especially when Drake didn’t place blame on anyone.
“It wasn’t your fault, man,” he whispered softly. “Nobody knew what was going to happen.” Drake took a deep breath and collected himself. “I’ve never blamed you.”
“Still, I don’t want you to remember any of that happened to you,” Phoenix defended. “If we don’t talk, it won’t come up. Then you’ll be alright. You won’t have to think about all the shit from the Games. I won’t have to think about the fact you almost died.” The last bit seemed to pain the boy the most, like the idea of it was immensely unbearable.
Drake waited a moment and stared at his toes wiggling on the wooden floor. Being barefoot was a liberating experience, on the dance floor especially. Natural as how the human person was intended to be, as highlighted by the most recent arena. Never again would he be able to enjoy it fully, though, as each precise move reminded him of Carina and how beautifully she could do the same. Remembering Carina made him remember their castle, how it crumbled acround them, and all the people who died to leave them as the remaining pair. The domino effect his memories fell in made Phoenix’s effort a mute one.
Then, the victor laughed. A chuckle that filled the room for the first time with bliss instead of angst. “Phoenix...what happened to me in the Games will never go away. I think about it all the time, every day. I dream about it, I have nightmares about it. Sometimes ones that seem so real I wake up with the same dread in my heart.” He grabbed hold of his brother’s wrist and miraculously held back tears. “I’m still me, though. I didn’t...die. I know we all probably though I would. I did. But I didn’t. You don’t have to worry about helping me forget. I won’t and that’s ok.”
Phoenix’s face clenched with unreadable emotion, although it was clear he internally wrestled with something.
Drake pulled the boy in for a hug, their first since he arrived on the train back from the 119th Games. “Now I’m mad at you. You were so afraid of losing me, you kept yourself from me. I missed you.”
Another moment of silence passed in the shared room of the twin boys, a new chapter ushered in with a gust of wind sounding from the outside and the rusting off jackets rubbing against each other as a hug was returned.
