The room I was in was all white. There was a window over my head, though. I spent what little time I was awake watching the sun cast shadows on the blank wall. There didn't appear to be any doors, but I knew the doctors had to be getting in and out somehow.
This was how I spent the first three days out of the arena. Barely conscious, trying to hold on to the fact that I was free now, although it definitely didn't feel like it.
I also kept remembering being in the arena. Not so much the bad parts, killing all those people or watching my friends die. I remembered the last few moments most of the time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Twenty-fifth Hunger Games, Noah Albedo!" It came from some mysterious voice in the sky, telling not me but the people of Panem the good news. I had won.
Winning felt different than I expected. There was no rush of relief, no dream of the future. Deep down I knew that this couldn't be what I truly wanted, because it if it was it wouldn't feel like this.
I told myself that maybe I didn't care if I was a victor, I cared about seeing everyone I loved again. That part was what I was expecting to feel.
But instead of giving me what I wanted as soon as the hovercraft got me, they made me wait three days, trapped in a blank room with nothing but tubes in my arms and machines by my sides. And that window.
I had only seen one or two doctors come in the short time I had been awake. None of them would tell me how I was doing or what was going on. I tried to remember what usually happened back home at this point, but nothing happened. We weren't given an update on the victor. Most of us didn't care about them, unless they came from Two. In the time between the end of the Games and the victor interviews, we simply returned to our usual lives, no questions asked.
Now I had a lot of questions.
The first and most prevalent was where was Sariel. There was no way he wouldn't be here if he could. Why were they keeping him out? Didn't they understand I needed to see him?
It didn't quite surprise me that they didn't understand, actually. I hadn't vocalized it to anyone. I was still afraid to, afraid they would see right through me.
And here I thought the fear ended when the Games did.
By the end of the day, I felt conscious enough to get up. If only that were my choice. They let me feed myself, at least. I didn't want to know how they had been feeding me before, but I had yet to wake up hungry.
Finally, a pair of doctors came in. They ignored any questions I asked, so naturally, I stopped asking them. They stuck lights in my eyes, tapped the screens of nearly monitors and, just before leaving, pulled a needle attached to a tube out of my arm.
And just like that, they were gone.
Without the tube, I could stay up a lot longer. Long enough to get another meal. While I was awake with nothing to do, I recounted my own physical condition. Just after fighting Ciruss, I had a broken rib, a ton of cuts and bruises, some sever burns, and at least three gashes on my lower body and one on my cheek that would've needed stitches. Now, it was like they turned back time to thirteen days ago. I was healthy enough to go back to training. No physical imperfections, including overgrown leg hairs and dirty finger nails. The only real difference was my lack of hair.
I guess it shouldn't have been a big deal, as I was still alive, but it looked like they had cut off nearly six inches of my once long blonde hair. They didn't exactly do a great job with it. If I had to take a guess, I'd say someone was told to simply cut off the burnt pieces. It was short, uneven and unnatural, at least for me.
And then, without my consent, my body decided it was time to sleep again.
When I woke up that final time, I instantly knew things were different. The room was almost completely dark. I glanced at the window behind me and realized for the first time, someone had pulled the shade down.
I also took note of the fact that I could move my body enough to not only look at the window but pull the shade back up. The sky indicated that it was probably mid-morning.
Another difference: there were clothes lying at the foot of my bed. All machines that had been there yesterday were gone. The room was completely empty. The clothes signified what I had to do.
It was time to get out of here.
The moment I took a good look at the clothes, I knew what they were. The exact outfit I had worn going into the arena. Of course, these weren't ripped, burned away, wet or covered in sweat. A perfectly new outfit to embrace my new life.
As soon as I changed, a door at the far corner of the room slipped open. I was very conscious of the fact that someone was watching me and knew when to open that door. I hesitantly went through it, unsure of what would be on the outside.
"Noah!" the first voice to say it was very high pitched, perhaps a few octaves up from her normal tone. As the lighting adjusted from mid-morning sunlight to ultra bright overhead lighting, I could hardly tell who it was.
In a second, Angeline was hugging me. And for that same second, I was ready to break her back.
Then the feeling of her warmth set in, and I remembered where I was and what was going on. My old team was here to greet me as their victor.
I managed to hug Angeline back, letting the fact that she had hugged me first set in. That might've been a surprise to the both of us.
After she let go, I was faced with Varina. She also offered me a warm smile and instead of pouncing on me, opened her arms as if offering the hug. I gladly accepted, remembering how kind Varina had been just before I entered the arena. I owed her at least this.
"We couldn't be prouder of you, Noah," Angeline cooed.
"You were tough out there, that was for sure. Beat out all of the odds," Varina agreed.
I nodded numbly, their compliments not really sinking in. "Thanks, guys. It's good to see you."
Even as I carried on this conversation, I was very aware that someone was missing. I didn't dare utter his name, but the possibilities shot through my mind. Had something happened when I was in there? It had only been a few days since I had heard from him. Was he just avoiding me altogether? Had I misread all of the messages he sent me?
"Hey," Varina said, catching my attention back, "Sariel is waiting for you in there."
She motioned toward a wooden door, different that the automatic style of most the other doors in this place, that was cracked open. I looked at her in confusion, but she only rolled her eyes. "He wanted to make it special."
The thought of it made my heart flutter with a strange mixture of longing and hope. I tried not to run over to the door, carefully pulling it open. Inside, the room was dark and small with a sweet scent emerging from it. I could only catch sight of a candle flickering in the back of the room.
"Sariel?" I asked in a voice that came out shaky and quiet. For the first time in a long while, I was scared when I had absolutely no reason to be. This was where I was meant to be, after all.
The flickering flame grew a little bit more and a realized that, for the sake of the mystery, Sariel had been covering it. Now the room was much better lit and I had a full view of Sariel.
A view that almost made me want to cry.
In my mind, Sariel had been the man I met on the train that very first day. The one I sat with the night after the Chariots when he begged me not to speak of death. The man who had given me advice time after time, only wanted me to succeed. The man whose ring I had worn the entirety of the Games.
This man looked very different.
Sunken in eyes that reminded of Ciruss, though Sariel's were still a glistening brown in the candle light. Messy hair that looked completely unintentional, more from days of trying not to pull it out than lack of washing it. He didn't look any thinner, but something told me he had had a hard time eating recently.
Still, the smile that shone through his dull face was enough to say it all. Whether or not he had truly been with me through the hell that had occurred these past few weeks, he had been suffering every bit that I had.
"Noah." It was hard to describe his tone. Not quite in pain. Not anymore. Not in a loving sort of way either. Like the exact word he spoke was the ailment to all his troubles, like after that moment, everything was right in the world. Right in his world.
In that moment, I understood what he meant by wanting to be that thing, be the very person that the other fought for, lived for, died for. The words he spoke the night before I entered the arena carried so much more weight now that I could stand in his shoes. A weight I didn't know what to do with.
All I could really process was that as much as I wanted to jump into his arms, I knew if I did, all that weight was going to be thrown back onto him.
Instead of letting me respond to his greeting, something I had no idea how to do, he fished something out of his pocket. As soon as he got it, he held the chain out for me to see.
On it, two rings, one silver and one gold, hung. I knew them both very well. How they had gotten off my neck and into Sariel's hand, I had no idea. I was too happy to even care.
"My rings," I said, though this was not completely true. One of them had been a gift from Sariel himself.
Despite the error, he grinned and nodded. "They had to take them off when you got to the hospital. I made sure to take good care of them."
In that moment, any doubts I might have had about this moment vanished. It was exactly as it was meant to be, every piece of it. How could I ever believe he wouldn't be there for me, wouldn't be watching over me?
I mentally laughed, reminding myself again that this was his job.
Without my consent, though I wouldn't have minded giving it, Sariel took two steps forward and appeared very close to me. No more than a heartbeat away, he reached his hands around my shoulders, stopping at my neck. I was so caught up at looking at him so close, I didn't even realize he was trying to fasten the latch of the necklace.
He finally got it and let his hands fall back by his sides again. He didn't move away from me.
"One of these is yours, you know," I finally had the courage to say. "I told you I would give it back." At the time, I thought it was impossible that would ever happen. Now I wanted to follow up on my promise, to achieve the goals of a simpler version of myself. Then it wasn't about winning the Games, it was about bringing this ring back.
Sariel smiled at that. "Hold on to it for a little bit. I told you we could get your own."
I nodded, also remembering that. I doubted that any other piece of metal could manage to mean what Sariel's ring had meant to me out there. I was thankful I could hold onto it for a little bit longer.
There were a million things I wanted to say to him in that moment, but none of the right words would come to my mind. I was too caught up in all of this, in having him back. Luckily, he saved me from talking when he leaned in a little closer to me and pressed his lips against mine.
The act reminded me just how overrated words could be.
After kissing me gently for no more than a matter of seconds, he moved away from me again. Opening my tear stained eyes, I managed what I hoped was a quizzical look. Either that or severe longing.
"I'm sorry, I just--" Sariel was at a loss for words, and I was at a loss for understanding.
I wiped away the tears out of my eyes, trying to stay focused on him and not my ever-fluctuating emotions. "What is it?" I asked, needing him to tell me what he was really feeling.
"I don't know. I didn't mean to kiss you. But I couldn't help myself. I feel like everything has changed since you went into the arena."
To me, it felt like everything out here was exactly the same. Maybe it was his way of saying I had changed.
"I sent those letters and notes and gifts. I tried to tell you how I was feeling. But all the while, I knew you didn't have the ability to say anything to me. And now you're here again, and I could have just asked you, but instead I go ahead and kiss you, and, uh, I don't know. I'm sorry."
"Sariel," I said, snapping him out of his tangent. "In there, I didn't want anything more than to be able to talk to you. Getting those notes was the one thing that kept me going. I'm shocked you couldn't tell. You were the only reason I was able to do all of that--able to win. Because you kept pushing me forward. You don't need to ask me anything," I added. "My feelings are exactly the same." If not stronger.
He looked more than a little surprised at my answer. I don't know if he expected a full transformation after I came out, but the truth was, I couldn't see any. Then again, I hadn't bothered to look in a mirror. Maybe I did look different. Could I possibly sound different? Maybe it was just in his eyes, after everything he watched me do on screen.
"I love you, Noah. That, I'm sure of," he whispered. He reached up and played with a piece of my cut hair, looking at it intently. Meanwhile, it was my turn to be surprised. I didn't know what to say, though I had practically just told him the same in different words. "I don't need you to tell me the same. We can take it slow, let you recover. I know what those Games can do to someone."
His words served as a hard reminder that I wasn't the only one that had to kill people. He had been through it too. "Okay," I agreed.
"We've got our whole lives ahead of us now. Nothing else to be afraid of," he was still talking in a low voice, still toying with the torn ends of my blonde locks.
"Yeah, that's right," I agreed. I pulled myself closer to him again, but this time only to wrap my arms around his neck for a hug. That was really what I needed right now, I told myself. Just someone to hug.
"I do, you know," I whispered, holding on for what was probably too long. Sariel said nothing. "Love you. In case you were wondering."
"I'll keep that in mind," he said with a laugh.