Hunger Games One-Shot: A Mother's Scream
Title: A Mother’s Scream
Author: downbythebay_4
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Troy Women adapted by Karen Hartman from Euripides’s The Trojan Women.
Summary: Cato’s mother mourns.
Notes: For E, M, B, and all of the Troy Women. Credit is also due to Alexander Ludwig, who opened his mouth, spoke Canadian, and made me care.
“You murdered this baby. That’s illogical. Because when his father Hector had the strength to wave his shield like a fan, the wit to know your every move, and the heart to fight forever, it was not enough. When our male nation stood behind him united, graceful and fierce as a mother’s scream it was not enough. We fell.”
-spoken by Hecuba, mother of Hector, in Troy Women
They returned his body in a narrow, pine box, which seemed too slight for the broadness of his shoulders and the grandeur with which he had carried himself in life. What remained of her shattered family, sisters, cousins, her mother-in-law, waited beyond, in the soft parlor of the Justice Building. But her son was a great man, he would not come to her; she would go to him.
She met him in the vestibule, the sun glinting golden off the white marble. The Peacekeepers laid the box at her feet. Three of them she knew; they had lived nearby, had waved to her in the marketplace, had on occasion offered to share an umbrella or call her a cab. All of them retreated, like dogs with their tails between their legs, from the look of death in her eyes.
The last guard lingered. If he had ever been of District 2, he had gone stupid during his time in the Capitol, bullying children. In District 2, not even little Clove would have paid him heed; cowardly Clove, who had carved pretty pictures into the fishmonger’s boy at the Cornucopia and screamed for Cato the moment she found herself in true danger.
“Clove!” He had echoed in the arena, running to her. The look of determination on his face as he went to her, without knowing what dangers awaited him; all of District 2 knew then, the man he was, kingly. Magnificent. Had this simpering Peacekeeper watched the Games, as required of all citizens, he would have known this too, and so she was certain that the simpleton had never before laid eyes on the mother of a great man.
“Open it,” she commanded, sinking to her knees beside the box.
“Ma’am,” he replied, half-confused and half-clinging to some shred of imagined authority.
“Show me my son.” Her voice rose, the words rolling, serpentine, from her lips. They had taken enough from him: his innocence, his freedom, his life. He had given them willingly, to honor his family and his District. They would not take his homecoming, a hero’s burial.
The Peacekeeper took a tool from his belt and pried the nails from the lid of the coffer. She placed her palm on the lid to keep him from moving any further.
“Leave.” It was no more a word than the howl of a wolf and the Peacekeeper fled from the vestibule of the Justice Building.
She pushed the lid away, looking down at her son, and suppressed a bleat of grief.
The wolves had been neither kind nor merciful. Both Cato's legs were torn nearly to ribbons, his hands and feet gnarled, belly gaping and hollow, a great mouthful of flesh missing from one hip, his chest clawed so that she could count his ribs along the place where his heart should beat. His right arm held in place only by an impossibly thin bit of sinew. One collarbone exposed, but his throat remained intact.
His face was almost untouched, so that the audience could be treated to every bead of sweat that pooled on his noble brow. So that every cry of agony, every whimper could be heard, and that the tears that streaked his face could run without meeting the blood and puss which flowed so readily from the rest of him.
There was one small bruise under his left eye which has been covered with makeup. She took the hem of her dress to wipe it away and pressed her lips to his forehead and to his cheek. She breathed against his hair, holding the air in her lungs, and tried to memorize the smell of him.
She remembered the scraped knees and broken bones, the lost pets and fallen friends and neighbors. She remembered his father’s ignoble deathbed. All the moments when she had fought back tears, masked her grief and set it aside, in order to give her boy a strong foundation, a firm place to stand. There was no one left to benefit from her bravery. She placed her hand on the crown of his head and screamed until her grief echoed in the golden hall.
There were no coffins in District 2, no hungry-mouthed graves. In District 2 one learned never to take up space, not without merit. It was no different in death. She washed his body and wrapped him tightly in white linens, his youngest sister helping to spread the pall with shaking hands. Still two years too young to hear her name in the Reaping and already little Polyxena knew the look of a man’s insides. His uncles laid his body on the bier at the heart of the Justice Building, among the ashes of the fallen tributes of years past, and Clove’s shining black urn waiting in the seventy-fourth niche for her mate.
The wolves were the reason they had wrapped him so carefully, tight enough so that nothing would be left behind in the blaze. But it was the one from 12, the so-called Girl on Fire, who had ended his life. Mercifully, perhaps, but that knowledge hardly eased her bereavement. It was nearly unbearable to watch the mayor set the torch that consumed his remains. Watching the flames flickering in the crypt she discovered a fire deep in her belly which she knew no drink could quench. The longing for revenge upon the girl with silver arrows and her plump lover with his school-boy charms, and against the vile Capitol sponsors who doted upon them.
She thought she had lost the taste for bloodshed when she became a mother. Through nine long months of confinement and hours of labor, at last to feel the tugging in her chest, his small hand gripping her finger as he mouthed against her breast. She thought then, that she was capable of giving life as much as taking it, but with the heat of the flames against her cheek, she knew that she had failed, and longed once more for the slickness of blood on her hands.
If the world would not have her as a mother, it would have her as that feral, bloodthirsty thing who had killed with laughter ringing from her lips. She would give them excess of it. In the flames of her child’s funeral pyre she saw the promise of broken stone, all of Panem burning, and the heart of Coriolanus Snow on a charger.
Author: downbythebay_4
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Troy Women adapted by Karen Hartman from Euripides’s The Trojan Women.
Summary: Cato’s mother mourns.
Notes: For E, M, B, and all of the Troy Women. Credit is also due to Alexander Ludwig, who opened his mouth, spoke Canadian, and made me care.
“You murdered this baby. That’s illogical. Because when his father Hector had the strength to wave his shield like a fan, the wit to know your every move, and the heart to fight forever, it was not enough. When our male nation stood behind him united, graceful and fierce as a mother’s scream it was not enough. We fell.”
-spoken by Hecuba, mother of Hector, in Troy Women
They returned his body in a narrow, pine box, which seemed too slight for the broadness of his shoulders and the grandeur with which he had carried himself in life. What remained of her shattered family, sisters, cousins, her mother-in-law, waited beyond, in the soft parlor of the Justice Building. But her son was a great man, he would not come to her; she would go to him.
She met him in the vestibule, the sun glinting golden off the white marble. The Peacekeepers laid the box at her feet. Three of them she knew; they had lived nearby, had waved to her in the marketplace, had on occasion offered to share an umbrella or call her a cab. All of them retreated, like dogs with their tails between their legs, from the look of death in her eyes.
The last guard lingered. If he had ever been of District 2, he had gone stupid during his time in the Capitol, bullying children. In District 2, not even little Clove would have paid him heed; cowardly Clove, who had carved pretty pictures into the fishmonger’s boy at the Cornucopia and screamed for Cato the moment she found herself in true danger.
“Clove!” He had echoed in the arena, running to her. The look of determination on his face as he went to her, without knowing what dangers awaited him; all of District 2 knew then, the man he was, kingly. Magnificent. Had this simpering Peacekeeper watched the Games, as required of all citizens, he would have known this too, and so she was certain that the simpleton had never before laid eyes on the mother of a great man.
“Open it,” she commanded, sinking to her knees beside the box.
“Ma’am,” he replied, half-confused and half-clinging to some shred of imagined authority.
“Show me my son.” Her voice rose, the words rolling, serpentine, from her lips. They had taken enough from him: his innocence, his freedom, his life. He had given them willingly, to honor his family and his District. They would not take his homecoming, a hero’s burial.
The Peacekeeper took a tool from his belt and pried the nails from the lid of the coffer. She placed her palm on the lid to keep him from moving any further.
“Leave.” It was no more a word than the howl of a wolf and the Peacekeeper fled from the vestibule of the Justice Building.
She pushed the lid away, looking down at her son, and suppressed a bleat of grief.
The wolves had been neither kind nor merciful. Both Cato's legs were torn nearly to ribbons, his hands and feet gnarled, belly gaping and hollow, a great mouthful of flesh missing from one hip, his chest clawed so that she could count his ribs along the place where his heart should beat. His right arm held in place only by an impossibly thin bit of sinew. One collarbone exposed, but his throat remained intact.
His face was almost untouched, so that the audience could be treated to every bead of sweat that pooled on his noble brow. So that every cry of agony, every whimper could be heard, and that the tears that streaked his face could run without meeting the blood and puss which flowed so readily from the rest of him.
There was one small bruise under his left eye which has been covered with makeup. She took the hem of her dress to wipe it away and pressed her lips to his forehead and to his cheek. She breathed against his hair, holding the air in her lungs, and tried to memorize the smell of him.
She remembered the scraped knees and broken bones, the lost pets and fallen friends and neighbors. She remembered his father’s ignoble deathbed. All the moments when she had fought back tears, masked her grief and set it aside, in order to give her boy a strong foundation, a firm place to stand. There was no one left to benefit from her bravery. She placed her hand on the crown of his head and screamed until her grief echoed in the golden hall.
There were no coffins in District 2, no hungry-mouthed graves. In District 2 one learned never to take up space, not without merit. It was no different in death. She washed his body and wrapped him tightly in white linens, his youngest sister helping to spread the pall with shaking hands. Still two years too young to hear her name in the Reaping and already little Polyxena knew the look of a man’s insides. His uncles laid his body on the bier at the heart of the Justice Building, among the ashes of the fallen tributes of years past, and Clove’s shining black urn waiting in the seventy-fourth niche for her mate.
The wolves were the reason they had wrapped him so carefully, tight enough so that nothing would be left behind in the blaze. But it was the one from 12, the so-called Girl on Fire, who had ended his life. Mercifully, perhaps, but that knowledge hardly eased her bereavement. It was nearly unbearable to watch the mayor set the torch that consumed his remains. Watching the flames flickering in the crypt she discovered a fire deep in her belly which she knew no drink could quench. The longing for revenge upon the girl with silver arrows and her plump lover with his school-boy charms, and against the vile Capitol sponsors who doted upon them.
She thought she had lost the taste for bloodshed when she became a mother. Through nine long months of confinement and hours of labor, at last to feel the tugging in her chest, his small hand gripping her finger as he mouthed against her breast. She thought then, that she was capable of giving life as much as taking it, but with the heat of the flames against her cheek, she knew that she had failed, and longed once more for the slickness of blood on her hands.
If the world would not have her as a mother, it would have her as that feral, bloodthirsty thing who had killed with laughter ringing from her lips. She would give them excess of it. In the flames of her child’s funeral pyre she saw the promise of broken stone, all of Panem burning, and the heart of Coriolanus Snow on a charger.