Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Martin’s son was given two months to live.

The diagnosis came in what felt like a sudden blur. It seemed like just a few days before he was a normal kid, maybe a little odd, but what children weren’t? Then suddenly he’s sick– no problem, it was just a fever, kids got those. He’d be better in no time. But weeks passed and he didn’t get better, pediatrician’s offices were replaced with hospital rooms, the words Stage 3 Burkitt lymphoma were ringing in Martin’s ears, and before he knew what was happening half of his paychecks disappeared into chemo and surgeries and nights were spent praying at bedsides in desperate attempt to just make his child better. All for naught, it seemed, when despite everything the checkups confirmed that the treatments weren’t working; the cancer kept coming back, kept moving, kept spreading. His heart didn’t just drop, but fully disappeared when the advice came to transition Marty into hospice. “It’d be easier on all of you if we shift focus to just make him comfortable.” They gave him two months, at best.

Not even a week later, the Reaping came, and Marty’s name was drawn.

Martin was just about ready to go to the Capitol himself and raise hell– certainly there was some kind of protection in place that would prevent his son from being sent away (there had to be– they wouldn’t send a kid with terminal cancer to the Hunger Games, right?). Marty had stopped him. When the announcement was made, he was smiling, smiling wider than he had in months. He’d practically begged his father to let him go.

“Don’t kids like me get wishes or something like that?” he’d said. “I wish to go to the Games.”

He didn’t know why he’d want that so badly, why he wouldn’t want to spend the time he had left with his family. But the time came nonetheless for Marty to depart for training, and their last words to each other were an exchange of “I love you”s.

Martin watched the broadcast. He watched every day, every moment, and for nearly every waking hour he prayed incessantly for a miracle. Marty was a menace in the Arena, with more energy and vigor than Martin had seen from him since he’d first gotten sick. He often thought back to the story of Isaac; this must’ve been the same. God was testing him, testing his faith, and the Arena was his altar. Marty would come home. The prize money could get them better care, better treatments, maybe even more time.

The death was unceremonious. A sudden camera cut to his son’s body. Martin didn’t even have it in him to complain about that; of all the terrible things on his mind, the cinematography of his son’s death didn’t even break the top ten. He wondered how he would tell his wife– she deserved to hear from him before whatever media-publicity bullshit reached her first. He felt guilt for not being present in his final moments. A part of him he didn’t know was there was relieved Marty didn’t hurt any of the other kids (Why would he? He was a mean kid at times, downright violent in his short time in the Games, but surely he would’ve never actually hurt someone). Not that it mattered, he supposed. Mostly, he felt empty. An emptiness he knew was coming, yet had come all too soon.

His prayers that night had been much different than before. He’d long believed it wasn’t his place to question God; that His tests were meant to be passed, not understood, and as long as he had faith, everything would be fine. But now, he needed answers.

He was told his son had two months to live. Why did he only get a week?

– –

For as long as he could remember, the night of his parents’ deaths played in Bruce’s mind like a broken videotape. It had grown a bit fuzzy over the many years since, but it was always there, on a constant loop in the back of his head. It backed nearly everything he did in life, as major traumatic events tended to do to people.

The morning he watched Robin die had since joined that memory.

Of course he’d been watching. That was his sidekick (and ward) out there, after all. Watching him was his job. It was brutal, far more vicious than any of the crimes he’d worked on, and the image immediately took its place in high-definition video next to the grainy film that had been there for decades.

He didn’t do much in the following days. He stopped watching the broadcast, didn’t follow the updates that would come from outside sources. He sat in the comforting darkness of the den, staring into the reflection from the darkened television screen. Occasionally, he would fiddle with the sorely unused Xbox (its purchase the result of a frantic “What do twelve-year-olds like for Christmas” Google) or with Robin’s grappling hook, the one he’d given him when they started fighting crime together that Robin had always complained was too small. What he wouldn’t give to hear those complaints again.

On the second day of this routine, a shadow darkened the doorway. “Bruce–”

“Fuck off, Alfred.”

A sigh. “At least turn the lights on.”

“Why would I do that?”

Alfred, with a practiced level, moved to stand between the television and Bruce’s armchair. “Sitting here in your own sorrow won’t help you forever. What you’re going through is extremely difficult, but it’s a disservice to yourself– to him– to not move on. You can’t change what happened; you can just try to move past it.”

“You think I don’t know that?!” It’s not like he hadn’t been here before. Except back then, he was only a child himself, unable to do anything but watch helplessly. What he couldn't accept was the thought of being in that position again. “I should’ve saved him.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done–”

“Bullshit! There has to be something I could’ve done! I’m fucking Batman!” He’d traded sitting for pacing. “I’m a protector–! I don’t just let people die like that– it’s not justice!” The words tasted bitter and metallic in his mouth. “Who’s brilliant fucking idea was it to even have these games, anyway?! Who sat down and thought it was a good use of time and resources to build a whole week around innocent children killing each other?! How are so many people just fine with it?! It isn’t justice– none of this is justice!”

Alfred didn’t respond.

With an exasperated sigh, he collapsed back into the chair. “It’s all a fucking waste, it is.”

Bruce had made two vows in his adult life: keep all the people of Gotham-slash-Glasgow safe from harm, and never allow his family to be taken from him again. He’d failed both in one day.

“Bloody pointless fucking waste.”

Chapter Text

The Xaviers didn’t watch the broadcast. Something about the idea of seeing what those children were going through was simply too much for any of them. Of course, they still followed what was happening– out of sight certainly wasn’t out of mind, especially not for them. The stress was intense enough to enable their family gift, and having a direct family member in the Arena meant they could hear what was happening, whether they wanted to or not.

So the Xaviers didn’t watch the broadcast, but every day Samantha and her mother would listen in, and every night Egbert would scan the recaps and updates provided by the third-party outlets, keeping most of the tributes in his peripherals but always looking for one specific name.

On the third day, something shifted. The family was sitting at the kitchen table, idle conversation between the men filling the gaps of silence created by the women concentrating on their astral projection. “Something is wrong,” Mother said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can hear…” Then she gasped, her eyes glassing over as she clamped a hand over her mouth.

Samantha’s heart sank. Her chest grew tight as she sharpened her focus, pushed her hearing as far as it could go, trying to find her. Immediately, the sounds weren’t good. Running footsteps. Sharp, panicked breaths. The growls and snarls of some kind of animal. Screams. Screams in a voice she recognized.

“Oh, God.” She could hardly get the words out with the weight they carried.  “That’s Sally.”

It was Egbert who turned on the broadcast for the first time, and that evening’s recap confirmed their worst fears as Sally’s final moments lit up the screen.

Late that night, long after the broadcast had ended for the day, Egbert found his wife sitting alone on the couch, bent over into herself like she was just barely managing to hold herself together. In all fairness, she was, both emotionally and physically. A migraine had taken hold of her in full force, worsened by hours of sobbing. The pain in her head still didn’t hold a candle to the pain in her soul. How could it?

He sat next to her, taking her hand and squeezing it gently. “Darling?” Egbert spoke softly, like she was a glass figure that his voice would break if he was too loud. “Please talk to me.”

She took a shaky, shuddering breath. “Mother heard more of what happened. She sacrificed herself for that girl from District One. The really little one.” More tears threatened to spill in place of words. “Do you think she’ll make it?”

He was quiet. “I don’t know.”

The silence that followed only deepened the cracks that threatened to shatter them whole. Neither knew quite what to say, and neither expected the other to.

“We fought,” Samantha muttered, “before she left. I don’t even remember what it was about.”

“You always fought. That’s just how you were.”

It wasn’t comforting. “Do you think she knew I loved her?”

“Of course she did. You were sisters.”

Samantha could hear across the astral plane, but she couldn’t hear beyond the veil, and she couldn’t read minds. All she could do was hope he was right.

– –

The house at the top of the hill was too big and far too quiet now. Nearly dead silent, save for the incessant, never-ending ticking of clocks.

It was funny (weird, not ha-ha) how a sound that used to bring comfort could now border on painful. The ticking used to be grounding, a gentle, steady rhythm that provided structure in times of uncertainty. Now it served as a crushing reminder that everything happening was real, this wasn’t some horrible nightmare, and that despite what felt like a world-ending tragedy, time was moving forward and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

It simply wasn’t the sound John wanted to hear. He wanted to hear the shuffle of tiny feet upstairs, laughter from the backyard, cartoons on the television, excited conversations at the dinner table, gentle creaking in the attic.

But his boys were gone, and they’d taken those sounds with them.

Whatever universal forces were in power must’ve really hated the thought of him having a family.

They didn’t last a day. They didn’t even make it through the Bloodbath. John didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Better, he supposed, because it meant they wouldn’t have to suffer through whatever horrors were sure to come next, given where they were. Worse, because he couldn’t help but feel as though their lives were over before either of them ever really got a chance.

Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Was from next door came over the night it happened. Brought food and offered company, just like he did on their first night in the house two short months ago. That seemed to be his answer to any form of social disruption– food and presence. John didn’t let him stay. The food still sat in the fridge. He couldn’t eat. He wouldn’t even have taken it had the older neighbor not insisted. Perhaps that was how he intended to make his sympathy clear, because his words definitely didn’t. Barely anything that man said ever made sense on a normal day, much less when there was too little mental energy to focus on it.

A braver man might’ve forced himself to keep moving. Do something practical– sink into work, organize the house perhaps, prepare for… whatever was supposed to happen now, he wasn’t sure. John had never been a braver man, and he wasn’t about to start. He instead sat outside the closed door to Junior’s bedroom, unable to bring himself to actually go inside. He couldn’t bear the idea of displacing even an inch of the room; at least for now, everything needed to stay exactly as it had been left. A last reach of faith that he’d wake up the next morning and find him safely back in there. The same went for the attic: that was Jim’s space, not to be disturbed, not when it still felt as though his presence could return at any moment.

He wished Alice were there. She still wasn’t due to join them until the end of the month, and they hadn’t spoken since the night after the Reaping. Surely she had to know what had happened by now– even if you didn’t watch, knowledge of the happenings of the Games wasn’t exactly easy to avoid. He wondered if she’d even seen the broadcast. For her sake, he hoped she didn’t. Oh, what if she didn’t? What if she didn’t know?  What if he had to be the one to explain to her what happened to their son? He didn’t think he could.

You’re spiraling, John, a voice in the back of his head echoed.

For the third time that week, he closed his eyes and focused as hard as he could, hoping beyond desperation to hear anything. The house was dead silent, other than the never-ending ticking of clocks.