Chapter Thirty-Eight
Clark was restless after the discussion with his mother, and soon after she fell asleep, he slipped out of the house and flew slowly around District 9. Everything was peaceful, the fields and buildings covered with snow in the starlight, giving him plenty of time to think without being distracted.
It was Martha’s revelation about Jonathan’s long-ago involvement with a group that opposed the Capitol that occupied Clark’s mind. Did the group still exist? If it did, who was in it? What about the other groups that Martha had implied existed? Were they just in District 9, or were they elsewhere?
Clark wondered why his father had ended his involvement in the movement against the Capitol. Was it just because his parents had moved far from where Jonathan had grown up, or was there another reason? Might it have had something to do with the baby Martha had been carrying when they’d moved, a desire to protect the child by keeping himself out of trouble? Or had it been something else — disillusionment, perhaps, or an inability to trust — or perhaps even find — potential rebels close to his new home?
Clark knew that his father hadn’t trusted the Capitol — that distrust was a large part of why Jonathan had wanted Clark to keep his powers hidden. He had wanted to keep his son safe, and had known that Clark’s unusual abilities would attract the wrong kind of attention from the Capitol if people caught on to what he could do. Still, in spite of the fact that Clark had proven that he could keep a dangerous secret, Jonathan had never even hinted that there was any sort of movement against the Capitol, let alone told his son that he had once been involved in it.
The biggest question in Clark’s mind was whether he should try to follow in his father’s footsteps. He knew from personal experience how damaging the Games could be, both to the families that lost children in them and to the survivors of the Games. He also possessed immense physical strength and power, which would be invaluable if there was a rebellion against the Capitol.
At the same time, Clark also realized that there was a lot he didn’t understand about the Games. Before he had been a participant himself, he had thought the Games were mostly about entertaining the shallow, vain Capitolites, but now that he was a victor, he knew that the Games were about far more than that — they were about power and control, from who was selected for the Games to who survived.
Clark understood enough to know that he hadn’t been meant to survive — he’d defied the Capitol with his insistence upon helping Becky, and that was why the venomous rats had been sent after him at the feast. If not for his invulnerability, he almost certainly would have been killed by them, probably leaving either Lumen or Mayson as the victor. Lois had been a strong fighter, but alone against two Careers, she most likely would not have stood a chance.
There was more to the Games than just entertainment, but how much more? Every year, at the Reaping, they were reminded of the Dark Days and told that the Games were necessary to ensure that those days did not come again, but was it really true? What had the world been like before the Dark Days? What had caused Panem to descend into civil war, and what was it about the Games that kept such rebellion from happening again?
If another rebellion occurred, would it change anything? Would it make things better, or would it leave the people of the districts worse off than they already were? District 13 had been destroyed during the Dark Days — or so he’d been told, though he now had reason to question that assumption. Would the Capitol destroy another district in order to maintain the status quo?
Clark didn’t have answers to any of his questions, and the more he thought about things, the more questions he had. The answers had to exist somewhere, but where? Who had the answers, and how might Clark, who had grown up far from the Capitol, learn what those answers were?
The more Clark learned, the more he wanted to know, but he didn’t know how to go about gaining that knowledge. He knew that getting caught asking questions or looking for information would bring serious consequences, but there were consequences to remaining ignorant, too.
Though Clark spent hours flying slowly around District 9, lost in thought, he didn’t come to any conclusions. All he knew was that he had a great deal to learn — but no real idea of how to find the answers to the questions that were now going through his mind.
*****
Early the following afternoon, Clark walked into town for his friends’ wedding. Martha was already there and had been for hours, using the kitchen at the Community Center to prepare the food she and Clark were bringing to the reception.
Clark had been there earlier, carrying the food, but had left when he had seen Rachel there, not wanting to risk a confrontation with her. This was their friends’ day, and he didn’t want to risk spoiling it by quarreling with Rachel. While they had been civil to each other when they’d met before, the wedding brought up thoughts of what might have been, and it was potentially a sore subject for both of them.
Instead of hanging around, Clark had gotten the horses and gone to help Pete move his and Lana’s belongings to the Kent farm. Pete, who had tried to help with the wedding preparations but had been summarily pushed out by the arrival of Rachel and of Lana’s mother and sisters, had been grateful for the help and the loan of the horses.
Since both Pete and Lana had packed up most of their belongings the day before — neither had much — it didn’t take long to collect everything and take it to the farm. Clark knew the vagaries of the house better than Pete did — where it was drafty, where it was warm, where the most sunlight came through the windows — he had helped him choose the best places to put the few pieces of furniture the Kents had left behind, as well as the items Pete and Lana had brought with them from their old homes.
When Pete had gone to put away the food supplies the Rosses and Langs had given them, he had seen the food Martha and Clark had left for the newlyweds and had given Clark an exasperated look. Clark had shrugged and tried, somewhat less than successfully, to look innocent — and then had made sure he was nowhere to be found when Pete discovered the supplies of chicken feed and coal.
When they’d finished moving the couple’s belongings to the farm, Pete had thanked Clark briefly for the supplies, as he was still uncomfortable with accepting so much. He didn’t try to object, though — he and Lana had discussed the issue the evening before, and had resolved to find ways to pay the Kents back for their help. It was a lot of help, but Lana was more willing to acknowledge their need for it than Pete was — she did, after all, have two babies growing inside her, making her hungry and tired and willing to accept assistance that would help her bring them into the world successfully. Pete acknowledged the babies, but they still seemed like something of an abstract concept to him, since he wasn’t the one enduring the symptoms of pregnancy.
Now, Clark stepped into the Justice Building, remembering the last time he’d been there — just before he’d been taken away to participate in the Hunger Games. This was a much happier occasion, but he still shuddered inwardly as he glanced down the hallway in the direction of the rooms the tributes were taken to before they left for the Games. In a few months, he would have to wait in yet another room with his fellow mentors while two more kids said what would probably be their last good-byes to their loved ones.
Resolutely, Clark turned his head and walked in the direction of the courtroom, refusing to think about the Games anymore. Today was a day to celebrate. Two of his best friends were getting married, and he wished them all the best. It wasn’t a time for brooding over things he couldn’t change.
The courtroom was the largest room in the Justice Building, where most important legal matters were taken care of. It was the room where the judge sentenced persons accused of crimes, but in the sparsely populated, mostly quiet district, it was more often used for weddings, which were also presided over by the judge.
Lana, her mother, and her sisters were standing near the door inside the courtroom. A set of faded curtains separated them from the rest of the courtroom, in keeping with the District 9 custom that the bride and the groom should not see each other at the Justice Building until the actual wedding. It was an old custom, dating back to before the Dark Days, and one which no one quite knew the origins of, though some Capitol visitors thought that it was related to an older custom and prevented the bride and groom from running from each other. Why an engaged couple would suddenly decide to run from each other was anyone’s guess, especially since most couples had known each other for years and had often been friends before their relationship became a romantic one, and that theory was mostly regarded as one of the strange notions of the Capitolites.
It was commonly thought that it would be bad luck for an engaged couple to see each other in that last hour before the wedding, so most brides stood well to the side of where the guests went through the curtains and into the main part of the courtroom so that the groom would not accidentally see them. When the custom was violated and things subsequently went wrong, people would blame it on the couple bringing bad luck upon themselves.
Lana stood where Pete couldn’t see her, but it was obvious that luck, bad or otherwise, wasn’t the first thing on her mind. She kept hugging herself excitedly, then resting a hand on her still-flat stomach, bringing stares and knowing looks from the girls and women surrounding her. They wouldn’t confront her about what she was inadvertently revealing — at least not publically — and would maintain the fiction that her babies had come early. Sex outside of marriage was frowned upon in District 9, but in actual practice wasn’t that uncommon, and quite a few married couples preferred that no one look too closely at the time between their wedding days and the births of their first children.
Lana was so excited she was almost walking on air, and Clark thought that if she’d had powers like him, they would have had to pry her off the ceiling of the courtroom. She grinned at him as he handed her the greenhouse carnation he’d bought from Vena — at most weddings, the guests would bring edible flowers, fresh or dried, to make a bouquet for the bride to carry up the aisle. The bouquet usually became part of the newlywed couple’s first meal at home, with the non-edible parts pressed between stones or other heavy objects, then carefully wrapped in paper and saved in memory of their wedding.
“Thank you, Clark.” Lana took the flower. “Your mom brought me one of these, too, but a different color.” She took the red flower her friend had brought and added to her bouquet, arranging it so it was on the other side from the white carnation Martha had given her.
There was a rose in Lana’s bouquet, too. Clark winced slightly at the scent of it, natural though it was.
Lana saw him looking at the rose and smiled, not understanding his reason for staring at it. “Mom and Dad gave me the rose. They’re expensive at this time of year, but they set some money aside for it. I’ll probably press and dry it instead of eating it.”
Rachel chose that moment to step into the courtroom. “Lana, I have some better-looking grain stalks for your hair …” She saw Clark and fell silent, her expression not really hostile, but not terribly welcoming, either.
“I … ah … I think I’ll go see how Pete’s doing.” Clark pushed his way through the curtains and into the main area of the courtroom.
In spite of his efforts to not listen in on Lana and Rachel, he still heard them clearly.
“Can’t you be nicer to him, Rachel? It’s not his fault he wound up in the Games.”
“I know that, and I’m over … whatever we might have had. I’m seeing Sten Reis now. Clark is just a friend.”
“Well, you sure don’t treat him like one.”
“I’ve hardly seen him since his dad’s funeral. I haven’t treated him like anything.”
“You’re still mad about Lois, even though she’s dead.”
“I am not! I was never angry about
her. Besides, how would you feel if Pete fell for someone else?”
“He wouldn’t dare.” Lana’s voice was firm and certain.
“I didn’t think Clark would, either.”
Clark walked up toward the front of the courtroom, resisting the temptation to use his X-ray vision to look through the curtains at his friends. He hadn’t realized just how strongly Rachel felt about him. He’d thought there might be something between them, but hadn’t been sure. Even before the Games, marriage was something he’d been unsure about because of his powers. He’d never meant to hurt Rachel, but he was realizing now that she’d felt far more strongly for him than he had for her.
Pete was near the front of the courtroom, pacing back and forth and casting occasional glances at the curtains.
“Lana’s making sure you don’t see her,” Clark told him. “Rachel is helping her with her hair and her mom and sisters —“
“Is that why you came rushing in here like something was chasing you?” Pete asked. “Rachel’s been avoiding the subject of you all week.”
“I … um …”
“Every time someone mentioned you, she changed the subject. She says she’s not mad at you, though.”
“I … uh … I don’t know.” Clark quickly changed the subject. “I think the cat’s out of the bag where your babies are concerned. Lana keeps putting her hand on her stomach, and her mom and sisters look like they’ve figured out why.”
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t already know. I thought I’d kept it a secret from my parents, but they told me this morning that they knew … not that it’s probably twins, but that Lana’s pregnant.”
“When you’re young, you think the adults don’t know anything. Then, as you grow older, you find out they know a lot more than you thought,” Clark told him.
“We’re still young,” Pete pointed out, “and I have no idea how they figured it out.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you two kept disappearing after dinner during the harvest and coming back with hay in your hair.”
Pete turned red. “Nobody was supposed to know about that!”
“Then you should have combed your hair,” Clark told him. There had been very little that had happened in the weeks following his return from the Games that had escaped Clark’s attention, mainly because he was instinctively looking for signs of danger. His hyperawareness of everything going on around him had also led him to notice some things that were none of his business.
At that moment, Lana’s mother and sisters came through the curtains, Rachel following them, signaling that the wedding was about to begin. As the guests stopped milling around and took their seats on the hard wooden benches of the courtroom, the judge went to stand at her podium and looked at Pete to see if he was ready. When he nodded his assent, she signaled to the fiddler who was standing off to the side, ready to play the traditional wedding march.
When the music started, Lana stepped through the curtains and started up the aisle toward Pete, a wide smile on her face that was matched by her groom’s expression. Everyone watched as she moved quickly up the aisle, almost skipping. The grain stalks that had been braided into her hair — a common look for brides in District 9, especially first-time brides — swung around her shoulders, catching slightly on the new lace collar she had sewn onto her dress before she shook them free.
Lana handed her bouquet to her mother, who was sitting on one of the front benches, before stepping forward and taking Pete’s hands. Facing each other, they waited for the judge to speak the words that would make them husband and wife.
As Pete and Lana repeated the judge’s words, Clark felt Rachel’s eyes on him. He looked at her, sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the room, but looked away almost as quickly as she did. He could almost read her thoughts.
That could have been us.
It could have been, he acknowledged to himself. Though he realized that Rachel had felt more strongly about him than he had about her, his feelings for her might have grown under other circumstances — especially if she’d been accepting of his differences. If he hadn’t taken part in the Games, if he hadn’t met Lois, things might have been very different.
If Clark hadn’t been Reaped, he would never have met Lois. She would have been just another face on the television — one who caught his attention, perhaps, but not someone he would have gotten to know. Without Clark in the mix, Lois might have been able to outlast the others, become victor, and gone home to District 3.
Instead, she had stuck with Clark and been poisoned by the muttation rats meant for him. Because of him, whatever future she might have had was gone.
Clark couldn’t forget Lois, but even if she hadn’t been in the Games with him, he wouldn’t have subjected Rachel to life as a victor’s wife — not after he found out what that meant. He wouldn’t give her children who would inevitably be placed in the Games, and he wouldn’t let her be in constant danger from Snow, who would use any woman he married as leverage to get Clark to do what he wanted. It was dangerous enough for Rachel to be his friend, let alone anything more.
A few minutes later, the brief ceremony was over. Pete and Lana walked back down the aisle hand-in-hand, the judge following. There was some paperwork they had to sign to make the marriage legal, and then there were a few more papers to sign so they could take possession of the Kent farm.
Clark followed the rest of the guests out of the courtroom, then went outside the Justice Building to wait for Martha, who had to sign the last of the papers turning the farm over to her son’s friends. When he stepped out the door, he saw Rachel leaning against one of the pillars, shivering in the late-November chill as she waited for her friends.
“Rachel.” Clark walked over to her, taking off his coat as he did so. “Here.”
Rachel stared at the coat as though he’d offered her something disgusting. “I don’t need it.” Her chattering teeth belied her words.
“You’re freezing.” Clark tried to put the coat around her shoulders, but she threw it back at him.
“Go away, Clark.”
“Rachel …” Sighing, Clark put the coat back on. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You’re just a friend — just like you always were.”
“Then why won’t you take the coat?”
“It’s yours, and you need it more than I do.”
“No, I don’t.”
Rachel gave him a disbelieving look, then turned her back on him.
Clark tried again. “I hear you’re seeing Sten Reis. He’s as nice as Halm was.”
“I don’t need your approval, Clark.” Rachel’s voice was as cold as the snow covering the building.
“I know. I just … I want you to be happy.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
Clark was silent for a moment, then said, “Rachel … thank you for coming to my dad’s funeral. It meant a lot to me.”
“He was practically family. Of course I was there.”
Clark gritted his teeth. Rachel wasn’t making this easy for him.
“You came to the wake, too, and stayed after the rest of your family left.”
“I was worried about your mom. She’s like an aunt to me.” Rachel hunched forward, hugging herself against a cold gust of wind.
Clark took his coat off again and wrapped it around her shoulders. This time she let it stay there.
“Rachel, I told you my reasons for breaking things off …”
“Yes, but you never stopped to ask how I felt about it.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“Well, maybe I don’t need protecting!”
“Rachel, you don’t know what President Snow is capable of!” Clark glanced around, realizing that the outside of the Justice Building wasn’t the best place to discuss Panem’s president. More quietly, he said, “Come with me. Please.”
“I’m waiting for Pete and Lana.”
“And I’m waiting for Mom, so we won’t go far.”
Rachel stared at him for a moment, then walked toward the town square, which was empty on the cold Sunday afternoon. “Are you coming?” she asked after a moment.
Clark followed her, standing well away from anyplace where a listening device or camera could be concealed. When a quick look with his X-ray vision showed nothing hidden under the snow, he turned to Rachel, beckoning to her.
“Rachel, I do care about you,” he started.
Rachel gave him a disbelieving look, turning her back and walking away. Clark followed her.
“Rachel, please … just listen to me.” Rachel stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Snow is a dangerous man. If I married you, he’d use you as leverage to get me to cooperate. Even if I did everything he said, he still might —“
“He had you flogged for something you did in the Games. I know. The whole town knows.”
“Better me than you — or anyone else,” Clark told her. “That’s not the only thing, though. Our children, if we had any —“
“— would be guaranteed a place in the Games. You already told me that.”
“It’s more than that. They could be snatched away from us at birth to punish me — killed or given away. That’s what happened to the Teigs’ baby.”
“I heard it was stillborn.”
“Maybe not. Snow might have had it killed.”
Someone might have taken me from my birth parents, he thought.
They might be wondering even now if I’m dead or if someone took me in.Rachel didn’t answer for a moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was choked. “I understand all that, Clark. I’ve seen the victors here in District 9, what a mess they are. I’ve seen the victors on television during the Games and the Victory Tour. I believe you when you say victors’ children get Reaped … I’ve heard the commentary during the Games, talking about legacy tributes. I didn’t think about it much until you came home, but I did understand when you told me that you didn’t want me to watch all of my children taking part in the Games. I even understand that Snow might use me to get at you. If it had just been those things, I could have accepted it.”
“This is about Lois, isn’t it?”
Rachel turned to look at him, wiping her eyes. “Yes … in part. I always knew you weren’t as interested in me as I was in you, but I kept hoping things would change. I was angry when I saw you with Lois, but I could have accepted it if you’d just been honest with me when you came home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“Rachel, I don’t. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were in love with her, and yet you insisted you were just friends. Everyone knew how you felt, but you lied about it to me.”
Clark looked down. “I wasn’t lying, Rachel, when I said Lois and I were friends. You were right when you said I was in love with her, too, but … I hadn’t figured out how I felt yet. Or maybe it’s more that I couldn’t let myself acknowledge that I loved her. After what happened in the arena … it was too hard to think that I’d lost someone I loved. It’s hard to lose a friend, too, but … it’s not quite the same.” He stopped, knowing how bad that sounded, even though it was the truth.
He looked up when Rachel came over to him, stopping just out of reach. “You know, Clark, strangely enough, I do believe you. You’ve always had a hard time seeing what was right in front of you.”
“What?”
“Remember when we were thirteen and you and Pete both had crushes on Lana, and got into a shoving match over it?”
Clark nodded, not sure where she was going with this. He remembered the incident clearly — fortunately, he’d learned to control his strength well enough that Pete hadn’t been injured — but he had no idea why she had brought it up.
“You two were such idiots — and Lana wasn’t interested in either of you. She liked that high school boy who never even noticed her.”
“She changed her mind about Pete eventually,” Clark said. “It took her a couple of years, but she came around.”
“She liked
you when we were fourteen, but when that didn’t go anywhere, it gave me hope.”
“You? But … I thought you only started liking me — you know,
really liking me — over the past couple of years.”
“I started really liking you when I was thirteen, but you thought Lana was so great that I never said anything. She was my friend, after all, even if she thought both you and Pete were being morons.”
“Did Lana know you liked me?”
Rachel nodded. “Yes. I was really mad at her when she decided she liked you — she knew I had a crush on you!”
“Is that why you didn’t speak to each other for practically all of ninth grade?”
“Yeah … stupid, wasn’t it? I wasted most of a year being mad at my best friend over a guy who hardly noticed me.”
“I noticed you, Rachel. I just didn’t know you felt that way about me.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
Clark shifted uncomfortably. “I … I don’t know. Maybe.” He’d had a lot on his mind then — it seemed like strange new abilities appeared every day, and he’d had no idea why he had them or what he was. Sometimes he’d been afraid he’d turn into something inhuman, and that fear had colored his brief relationship with Lana, who had gotten annoyed at the way he always seemed to be preoccupied or trying to hide something. Most adolescents found the process of growing from a child into an adult awkward at times, but none had to deal with the changes that Clark had.
Rachel gave him a knowing look, then went on. “When we were sixteen, you finally seemed to notice me. You shared your coat with me, even though it meant you would be cold, and you shared your lunch with me at school when I didn’t have any food. When you took me to the dance at the end of high school, I thought that maybe you were … were starting to see me the way I saw you. Then, when you were Reaped, I was devastated. I knew the odds weren’t in your favor — they never are, for District 9. Still, I thought you might have a chance. You’ve always been strong, and fast … and smart, too. I promised to wait for you because I hoped you would make it home.”
“And then you saw me with Lois in the arena.”
“Yes, and I hoped it didn’t mean anything, that she was just an ally, but the commentators kept going on about the star-crossed lovers, and people here looked at me with pity and whispered behind my back — or not so behind my back. I was angry, and humiliated, but I knew that what I saw in the arena wasn’t necessarily real, and I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself. When I talked to you the day after you came home, I could tell by the look on your face how you felt about Lois, but you insisted you were just friends, and that hurt most of all. I thought, if nothing else, we could always be honest with each other. After all, we’d been friends for a long time.”
“And that’s why you didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
“Yes.”
Clark looked down, scuffing at the snow with his boots. “Rachel … I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. All those years, I never knew how you felt about me. When we were older, I started figuring it out — and I did think about marrying you after our last Reaping. But then my name was called, and suddenly … everything was different. I wasn’t the boy you knew anymore, and …”
“And there was Lois,” Rachel finished for him.
“Yeah.” Clark looked up at her. “Rachel, you’re a wonderful person, and one day, you’ll find a man who’s right for you — someone who sees how great you are and who you can build a life with. I’m a victor now … and that path is closed to me. You deserve the best. Maybe it’ll even be Sten.”
“Maybe. I’ve only been seeing him for a couple of weeks.” Rachel had already had her heart broken once and wasn’t eager to have it happen again.
“I wish we could be friends again,” Clark told her. “We can’t be anything else, but …”
“I don’t know, Clark. I don’t know if things can ever go back to the way they were before. Things have changed.
You’ve changed.”
“I know. I’ve tried to go back to the way things were before —“
“You can’t, though, and we all have to grow up sometime. I don’t know if we can ever really be friends again, Clark, but … I won’t avoid you, and I’ll try to be friendly when we meet. That’s all I can promise right now.”
Clark nodded. He’d hurt Rachel badly, and he knew it, but if there was any way to get back what had been lost, he was willing to try.
They looked up as Martha and the newlyweds came down the steps of the Justice Building toward them. Martha saw that Rachel was wearing Clark’s coat and raised an eyebrow, but Clark just shook his head slightly, begging her with his eyes not to say anything.
“Everything’s done,” Lana said. “Clark, Mrs. Kent —“
“Call me Martha. You’re an adult now, Lana.”
“All right, Mrs. … uh, Martha. Thank you for all you’ve done for Pete and me. We will repay you somehow.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Martha said, Clark echoing her words. “You’re practically family.”
Clark glanced at Rachel, remembering how she’d said much the same thing. She looked away from him.
Lana noticed the slight redness of Rachel’s eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What did Clark say to you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Rachel said. “We were just talking out here in the cold. Clark even lent me his coat.”
“I gave it to her, actually,” Clark said. “She needs it more than I do.”
“Clark …” Rachel looked uncomfortable.
“I want you to have it,” Clark insisted.
Rachel touched the thick fabric. It was a good quality coat, much better than anything she could afford, and almost brand new — Clark had only bought it a few days earlier, and had worn it just for show.
“Thank you, Clark,” she finally said, buttoning it up. It was too big for her, and she was a little puzzled that he didn’t seem cold without it, but she’d decided to accept the gift, recognizing it as a peace offering.
The others looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out what was going on.
“We should get going,” Clark said. He nodded to Pete and Lana. “You don’t want to miss your own party.”
“Sten is meeting me there,” Rachel added. “He’s bringing the bread I baked.” When the others continued to stare at her, she gave an exasperated sigh. “Clark and I are going to try to be friends again — but nothing else.”
Lana hugged her best friend. “Good. I miss the days when the four of us were a team. Just because things change doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.” She took Pete’s hand. “Now, let’s get going. I’m hungry.”
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