A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Faint - Hugh

Patricia, unhappy at being left out, sneers with the kind of cynicism that a child of ten should not know. Her dress is Emilia's old party dress and it's too big for her and she doesn't like it and wanted a dress of her own, only we couldn't afford it, and that's part of the reason why she's in a bad mood. The rest is just her basic Patricia-ness. She'll be a monster once she gets to puberty.

"I'll be fine, Mother," she mimics cruelly. "There's hardly any chance at all."

Patricia is a good mimic, especially for high voices like mine - Zoran's voice broke at thirteen but mine hasn't gone yet and it's embarrassing - and she knows it, and even Emilia gives me a little smile. She's been at Mother's make-up case and her eyes, bright blue like mine, are ringed with faint smudges of orange. I grin back at her and sweep Patricia up, regretting it immediately. She's heavier than she looks.

"Nice try, shrimp, but I said 'I'm fine', not 'I'll be fine'," I say, and I make sure I'm laughing so she knows that I know it's just a joke. She squeals with genuine pleasure and wriggles away as soon as I put her back down, darting on a few paces ahead and making sure she avoids treading on the cracks in the sidewalk. Rosie pulls at my sleeve again, clamoring to be carried. I hoist her onto my hip and she shuffles until I'm giving her a piggyback. She's cute, like someone knew that she'd be Mother and Father's last child so they took the best features both and created little Rosie, delicate and sweet and quiet. If I had a favorite sister, it'd be Rosie.

Roselyn Labodie. Patricia Labodie. Emilia Labodie-Vern. Zoran Vern. Hugh...what?

"She's five, she can walk," Emilia says. She's the serious one and I can tell that although she's pretending not to be bothered - Emilia pretends a lot and one of her favorite things to pretend is that she's a cutting-edge designer who doesn't have to care about her family - she is worried about Zoran and I. She keeps sneaking little looks at me, checking I'm still here. Thinking about what might happen if I'm not brings tears to my eyes.

Rosie wipes them away, gives me her cute little dimpled-grin and rests her head on my shoulder, watching our reflections in the mirrors that the buildings here are made of. This street is quite close to the sector center and to live here you have to be rich. Most of the people who live here have designed Capitol-famous buildings. The descendants of the person who designed the Presidential Palace live here. So do the people who did the decoration around Capitol Square. One day, I promise myself every morning, I'll design some building so amazing, so useful and incredible and revolutionary, that I'll be able to afford a house here for everybody.

Including Father? That's what Emilia said when I told her this. "That's nice, Hugh, but you've got to remember that just because they don't live with us doesn't mean Father and Zorr aren't family anymore." And of course I said nothing, because I'd forgotten that they didn't live with us, and Emilia the most grown-up twelve year old in the Capitol had patted me on the back and given me her sketchbook to have a look through. She's good, is Emilia. She designs clothes, and she's as good as any of the Platinum lot. Remember the name: Emilia Labodie-Vern.

If she gets reaped, if any of my sisters get reaped, I feel like I'll fall apart. Luckily they're safe for now. There's only me and Zorr for Mother to worry about.

Still with Rosie on my back, the girly half of my family and I make our way towards the Sector Center. It isn't hard. Even if we didn't know where it was, all we'd have to do would be to follow the streams of other people appearing from under the walkways of the Architecture Educational Facility, a huge building an entire street long with windows at irregular intervals and that actually breathes. Well, it doesn't breathe as such, but the material expands and contracts throughout the day so people say it breathes. It's a mark of what is possible. People said it couldn't be done and yet Constantina Daciel did it. Designed it, anyway; a bunch of others (including my great-great-something-grandmother, another Labodie who did something useful) built it and now it is the building the rest of the Capitol knows us for. If I want to be a top architect, I'll have to go there. And I will. My designs are first-rate, according to my teachers. When he wants to be cruel, Zoran says that's because I don't let reality get in the way. And then I tell Zoran that at least I can draw and he says that he doesn't care, he wants to be out of this sector anyway and maybe he'll go to Gold or even to Steel, see how Mother likes that. And then I give in, because I don't want Zorr to go to Steel and train as a Peacekeeper because the twenty-year service period rule still stands and even going twenty days without talking to him over the holochat is hard. And if he got reaped, it'd be forever, and...