Alder walked a long while after splitting from Marino, letting the tears fall once he was sure he was out of sight and the cover of darkness would keep the worse of his humiliation away from the cameras. He wept silently as he moved, but kept putting one foot in front of the other. Just a little further. Now just a little further more. To that tree. To that rock. Until the mountain peak disappeared behind this line of trees.
He walked until the blisters on his feet were screaming and the last of his tears had long since dried to his face. Alder still felt raw, every emotion of the past two weeks sparking across his skin, his ribs, his heart, but his physical self could not possibly keep up any longer. He could not possibly continue to be contained by his weak body, the sorrow and rage might tear him apart, cell by cell.
Once the moon had long-since dipped below the trees, he let himself climb into the relative safety of a tree to rest. In a way, it was comforting- the rough bark at his back and smell of pine needles and sap reminded him of home. He wished he could have showed it to Memphis. He would have probably had some stupid song about trees to sing about it or a thousand comments about the height of the trees. In a different life, he supposed, but Alder could hear Memphis’ ever-optimistic twang in his head.
Alder wondered how long before that would fade. Before details about Memphis would begin to fade, leaving a blurry afterimage behind in the shape of him.
Maybe if Alder had done anything different, Memphis would still be here.
If he hadn’t wandered up to the ninth floor in an anxiety-spurred panic. If he hadn’t been clumsy as hell and hit his stupid head, maybe they would have never bonded. Never been around each other. Maybe if Alder had cut it off in training, when he started to think he wasn’t going to play along.
Or what about after his training? His interview? When he’d unleashed his tongue without abandon and solidified that he was going to die, but he’d die with his truths. Alder had never intended to be around anyone else, to cause collateral damage. When Memphis came to visit him in the cell, he could have cut it off there. Said he operated alone, that he wasn’t looking for alliances.
At the Bloodbath. At the spring. At the beach. After the lizard attack. All those times he was always thinking about how he was endangering the entire group, but never left under the pretenses of them needing him. But they didn’t, did they? What had he done for any of them? Star was dead because of his paranoia. Memphis was victim to the Gamemakers because of his mouth. Marino was the only one smart enough to walk away from it, to realize that Alder was a death sentence in here, the human personification of the “T’s” branding the skin of the failed rebels all those years ago.
Memphis was dead. It was his fault.
Alder rested his head back against the trunk, tipping his head up to the stars. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t sure to who, exactly. Memphis. Star. His parents. His grandmother. All of the people who were working so hard out there to keep him breathing, and he continued to run his mouth against the Capitol. Perhaps they should abandon him in here, it would be what he deserved.
Alder closed his eyes, starting to drift off. At first, the beeping seemed far away, a part of a dream he was floating into. But it drew closer, jolting him awake, and he cracked his eyes open suspiciously. What now?
A parachute was caught in the branch above him. Surprised, he straightened and carefully detangled it from the twigs, balancing the box on his lap. It was big. He hadn’t been sent anything big, and he’d assumed that what little sponsor funds he’d managed to garner had been long since spent.
Tugging the top open, he caught the glint of sleek, modernly crafted steel sharpened into the only thing near a weapon he might consider familiar: an axe. He lifted it out, mouth agape, weighed it in his hands- far higher quality than anything he was used to back in Seven, and it surely must have costed a fortune.
A whiff of warm, rich food wafted out from the box, and Alder’s mouth immediately watered, the axe forgotten. There was something else. He opened a square tin, finding in it a meal the likes of which he’d never seen all at once back home, but foods staple to Seven all the same. Bread baked with rosemary. Blackberries, juicy and plump, like the kind that grew in wild, untamable bushes around the barbed wire boundaries of Seven. Cedar smoked salmon, a host of roasted hazelnuts. Home. It smelled like home, like better times, like sitting around a fire in November with his mom and dad as the rain pummeled the windows, his father reading aloud from one of the few cherished books they kept.
The note was at the bottom, a little damp from the steam of the hot meal, but readable all the same from a whole list of people. From, all of us.
It wasn’t forgiveness for what he’d done. It wasn’t a promise of what might come. It certainly did not cut the grief of Star and Memphis’ loss. But it bore no judgement both in note and timing, and tears pricked again in his eyes, this time with a swell of gratitude. He was not alone. There were still people who cared that he lived or died, who shared his truth.
He looked to the sky, speaking to the stars for the second time this evening. “Thank you.”
