CESIL TAPROSE
District Nine
TRIBUTE
Sleep never came to the weary, something Cesil had learned long ago and now understood to be inevitable. It seemed that insomnia haunted him religiously, in a manner of absolutes and routines that caused such great bouts of stress for Cesil that sometimes he simply just wanted to scream. Yet he dealt with it, he always did. He had managed to do without sleep during the days when his father had died, and when his mother had abandoned them, and when Onyx went mad and the twins got sick, and he had even managed to suffer listlessly through the 27th Hunger Games.
Thoughts of the previous games were a mistake, and Cesil found himself hugging the covers tighter than he had been before as images of
her plagued him, and he was forced to remember where exactly it was that he was headed. He was headed to hell, the place of countless murders, of Amira’s murder, and quite possibly soon to be his own. The thought put a lump into his throat, and he attempted to swallow it to no avail. He didn’t want to die, he understood that now. There had been times, lots of them, and so very long ago, when Cesil had wished for everything to just end, but now that he finally stood underneath the threat of death, he realized he quite liked his life, valued it even, and he wasn’t going to just throw it away, not without a fight, and a damn difficult one at that.
Such revelations made him uneasy, because it placed him in competition with 24 other people, all sharing a mindset similar to his own, and one of them was even on the train with him, down the hall and to the left, he’d taken notice and committed it to memory the instant they had been shooed from dinner to bed. He didn’t know why at first, perhaps simply because he longed for his home, and she was the closest thing available, but maybe he had for some other reason, a darker and more cautious reason that Cesil didn’t want to believe he contained within him.
It was eerily silent, which set Cesil on edge more than it soothed him. He would have thought that such a massive machine moving at such a fast speed would have at least caused some upset to itself that would result in some amount of audible trouble, but there was nothing, simply and utterly nothing. If it hadn’t been for the tracks that flickered rapidly across the ceiling, Cesil could have believed that he wasn’t really moving at all. It was raining outside, from what he could see, with little droplets splattering across his window, and he fought the urge to throw the glass pane upon wide and stick out his head or his hand, to catch the drops of water on his tongue and with his eyes and palms, as if somehow they might make things okay, but he knew the notion was ridiculous. The windows there didn’t open, and the speed of the train would probably suck him from the car should he attempt to reach the outside.
And so he lay still, silent, the picture of ease, and allowed all the turmoil he felt to play out within him instead. He allowed for no physical display of his panic, nothing but the clench of his fist around the blue covers of his blanket and the unruliness within his eyes. He did not relax his stiff posture, and it didn’t really matter to him in the first place, because the bed in itself was rather uncomfortable in his opinion. If this was what luxury was, he would much rather have the soft of the grass under him and the endless expanse of the universe above, and the smell of sweet and pure things in the air instead of a stale, artificial odor that irritated his senses. The only slight comfort he had he took from the clothes he had been provided, which had been surprisingly soft and well fitting. It was nothing fancy, just simple black and white checkered felt bottoms and a black t-shirt that clung to him in a way one of his own shirts might have done had he been recently doused with rain. It wasn’t uncomfortable however, and the way it hugged him admittedly made him fell a little better about himself and a little less alone. In fact, he was actually feeling a little better, and even slightly cozy, and his eyes had just drifted down in some form of content when it happened.
Cesil nearly hit the ceiling at the scream that sounded, so loud and painful and anguished it was that he thought someone had been in the room with him. The change in sound was laughable and violent, setting Cesil’s heart racing as a strangled gasp of surprise escaped him. He had sprung to his feet with the cry of alarm, and stumbled uncertainly at suddenly being upright, his balance failing as he teetered to one side and crumbled, falling into a mass of limbs by his door. He stayed where he landed, instead simply moving to a sitting position, the back of his head moving to rest against the door frame as he closed his eyes in resignation. A weariness had come over him, one he had been fighting since he left District 9, which now crashed over him as he let his walls down.
The source of the scream had honestly left Cesil’s mind, and he wouldn’t have thought more of it had a door down the hallway and to the left not have opened. Yet it did, and he paused for a moment, his mind flashing with images of the girl that had been reaped with him. He knew her name, had heard it loud and clear as it was announced to the world, Achlys Trifon, District 9’s female tribute for the 28th consecutive Hunger Games. And what an honor it was. Cesil grit his teeth at the thought, anger flashing through him hotly as his fists clenched by his sides. God, he wanted to hit something, to break it, wreak it and mangle it beyond any repair. Instead, he found himself once again cooled off at the sound of a closing door, and of pattering feet that came closer and closer toward his door, until they passed by him completely. He heard another door then, as it opened and slammed shut, and then there was silence again.
Cesil frowned in curiosity, his mind once again returning to that of the girl as he debated what she could possibly be doing out of her room at such an hour of the night. Had it perhaps been a different time within another life, Cesil probably would have already gone down to check on her, to examine the source of the scream and why it had occurred, but Cesil was a different person than he had been in that other life. He maintained a distance now, kept space between himself and other people. Simply put, he didn’t really trust anyone anymore. He protected himself, and he liked it that way. Still, though, he was rather bored, and the prospect of sleep seemed far off and too foolish to hope for. So, with nothing better to do, he found himself sliding from his room as well, moving in the same direction he had heard the girl move along in.
He was rather bored with the train cars, more focused instead on what it was that she was doing, but he didn’t rush ahead, instead he took his time, allowing her the adequate amount of time herself to accomplish whatever it was she wanted to do. Yet minutes strayed onwards and still he did not come across her as he continued throughout the train cars, giving unimpressed, disinterested gazes at the luxuries around him. It wasn’t until the last train car that he came across her, curled up on the couch by a window, and he would have missed the fact that she was even there, had he not caught the glint of red that was her hair. Cesil froze then, suddenly uncertain, and he realized that he hadn’t really thought his actions through. How the hell would he justify following her through the train cars. He debated leaving again, as silently as he had entered, but the better part of him simply refused. All that waited for him back there was a cold bed and a sleepless night, and in all honesty, Cesil was a bit in need of some human interaction, and the real kind, not the fake act that the Capitol people put up. So instead he took a step in, and cleared his throat as softly as he could, attempting to make his presence known in as unstartling a manner possible. Then he simply stepped in, allowed the light of the moon and the dimly lit lamps to wash over him, and shifted a bit, uncertain at first until he found his way over to the large window, threading his way around the couch in a slightly awkward manner until he came to rest, slightly sitting on the edge of the couch with his back to her, his body facing the window as he allowed himself to press a hand against the smooth glass. He sat silently for a long time then, simply watching the forest move by around them and yearning for some sort of escape. He knew none existed of course, but he still hoped, deep inside of him, that the entire scenario was just something he had imagined up, a horrifying idea that he had somehow managed to draw from the depths of his mad mind. Of course, he knew it wasn’t.
It was after a long time that he finally turned to her and observed her, the blue of his eyes stormy in the light of the moon, and he gazed at her with a surprisingly calm expression compared to the rather hostile demeanor he had thought he would present himself with. He understood now though, why it would be impossible to hate her, and to hate all of them. After all, he already knew that there was no way he could hurt her. In the end, she was just a girl, and he was simply a boy, they all were, and anything besides those three simple facts were simply too tiring and too complex for Cesil to attempt to try and understand at the moment. He eventually stopped staring at her, not caring how she perceived his gazes, and once again turned back to the window, his eyes settling on the moon this time as he pretended he was somewhere, anywhere else.
“Sleep well?” He questioned, a rather unpleasant and cruel smirk settling on his face as his eyes flashed to her sardonically. His question was rhetorical, he already knew the answer, hell he was surprised that no one else had heard the shrieks and screams coming from her room. Some escort that insane man claimed to be. He simply sat then, the same arrogant expression on his face as he waited, rather impatiently, for the girl beneath him to formulate some kind of response.
