[ the letter/ornament combo surprises him, so much so that it nearly tumbles to the floor when he opens his door from the inside, heightened reflexes catching the wooden piece. he doubles back for the paper to read it within the privacy of his room. ]
hey tim thanks for the letter. my handwriting is not great, so i’m gonna go back to texting you, but you don’t have to respond to this either.
i appreciate you saying all that and explaining why you feel the way you do, when you don’t owe me anything. sorry for how i handled stuff too. i basically always make things worse when i try to explain myself, so i know i didn’t help anything.
[ a throughline from his father to walker, from game start with august to the trials, where he couldn’t even muster a word to defend himself. now with tony and stephen and tim in the aftermath. saying the wrong thing and falling into a fight or purposefully opening the wound. ]
and that telling you more now might backfire again, but i didn’t want hawk because he was hurting himself or spinning out. i was really trying to make sure he and embry both did not do that, especially when the diamonds were suspecting them.
i liked him because he was good to me. i’d only been here two weeks when the murders started and everybody treated me like dirt for being a tender. i panicked and tried to quit in the diamonds group, but hawk helped calm me down. he checked on me after i found adrian carved up by saber. and after stephen accused me, he let me explain myself the way i couldn’t in front of everyone.
i am what i am now, all the dangerous stuff stephen said, because nobody looked for me when i went missing back home. nobody was ever going to. i dropped out before we got to ap us history, so i don’t know if you know that america has been experimenting on people for like a really long time. they tricked or recruited guys like me to be test subjects so they could make cures and diseases and weapons.
i think it’d be pretty hard not to like someone who made sure you didn’t feel that expendable again, but maybe i’m as easy to win over as i am to upset.
anyway, it’d be cool if we could start over. we don’t have to be friends or anything, but i really don’t want to be the reason you feel bad about hawk or how you acted when people were literally dying.
[ a second text, one minute later. ]
sorry that was so long and it probably didn’t even make sense and thanks for the ornament he’s really cute
[ another minute later. ]
i forgive you obviously i don’t know why i didn’t say that first
Thanks for writing me back and hearing me out. I really appreciate that. No hard feelings about not writing it out – back in my day, the cursive was practically beaten into us.
And thank you for explaining a little more. It’s a relief to hear some good reasons, instead of you just being a landing pad for him to crash and burn on like I’d assumed. If it’s worth anything, I’m glad he could be there for you. Even though I was in favor of considering you, going through that “game” twice has taught me that it’s hard for everyone, the attacked, the accused, the wolves, and everyone in between. It isn’t something that can be endured alone, no matter your role in it. I came close this year, and it was...
Well. Bad. Worse than last time, and I almost died back then. I was like Jake, saved by a doctor. Hawk, actually.
That’s not to dump all my traumatic stuff on you, just to say that in the game, everything is so terrifying and urgent, it’s hard to see too far beyond yourself and the task at hand. I’d like to start over too, without death looming over us. Thank you for being open to that. Maybe we can even be friends.
P.S. - I say this with love, because he’s my friend: Embry can’t be stopped from spinning out. You kind of just have to wait until he’s finished and then remind him that you don’t hate him no matter how bad he wants you to.
i think knowing this stuff just helps us understand each other better, maybe so i don’t mind hearing about it
[ like — walker’s memories of his kid and olivia. yelena’s, of her first task as a widow. it’s better that tim tells him those things because he wants to and not because the void or the house pulled it out of him, too. ]
sorry that all happened to you staying the obvious but it seems like this place has a real dark side
[ as for embry, well, no comment. bob’s pretty sure people letting him spin out untended is how he ended up as prone to spiralling as he is. and maybe bob didn’t help, when he followed embry out into the forest that day — but danny johnson didn’t die in that cage, so maybe he did. ]
have you finished your christmas shopping? i could help carry stuff if you’re braving the market tomorrow i’m really bad at haggling and holding onto the coins though
It isn’t all bad. I've learned a lot that I would have never known back home, and met a lot of amazing people. But when it's bad...well, you saw the games.
I've got a little bit left! a second pair of eyes on things could be a big help, since mine aren't so good to begin with.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@bob — text.
hey tim
thanks for the letter. my handwriting is not great, so i’m gonna go back to texting you, but you don’t have to respond to this either.
i appreciate you saying all that
and explaining why you feel the way you do, when you don’t owe me anything. sorry for how i handled stuff too. i basically always make things worse when i try to explain myself, so i know i didn’t help anything.
[ a throughline from his father to walker, from game start with august to the trials, where he couldn’t even muster a word to defend himself. now with tony and stephen and tim in the aftermath. saying the wrong thing and falling into a fight or purposefully opening the wound. ]
and that telling you more now might backfire again, but i didn’t want hawk because he was hurting himself or spinning out. i was really trying to make sure he and embry both did not do that, especially when the diamonds were suspecting them.
i liked him because he was good to me. i’d only been here two weeks when the murders started and everybody treated me like dirt for being a tender. i panicked and tried to quit in the diamonds group, but hawk helped calm me down. he checked on me after i found adrian carved up by saber. and after stephen accused me, he let me explain myself the way i couldn’t in front of everyone.
i am what i am now, all the dangerous stuff stephen said, because nobody looked for me when i went missing back home. nobody was ever going to. i dropped out before we got to ap us history, so i don’t know if you know that america has been experimenting on people for like a really long time. they tricked or recruited guys like me to be test subjects so they could make cures and diseases and weapons.
i think it’d be pretty hard not to like someone who made sure you didn’t feel that expendable again, but maybe i’m as easy to win over as i am to upset.
anyway, it’d be cool if we could start over. we don’t have to be friends or anything, but i really don’t want to be the reason you feel bad about hawk or how you acted when people were literally dying.
[ a second text, one minute later. ]
sorry that was so long and it probably didn’t even make sense
and thanks for the ornament
he’s really cute
[ another minute later. ]
i forgive you obviously
i don’t know why i didn’t say that first
no subject
And thank you for explaining a little more. It’s a relief to hear some good reasons, instead of you just being a landing pad for him to crash and burn on like I’d assumed. If it’s worth anything, I’m glad he could be there for you. Even though I was in favor of considering you, going through that “game” twice has taught me that it’s hard for everyone, the attacked, the accused, the wolves, and everyone in between. It isn’t something that can be endured alone, no matter your role in it. I came close this year, and it was...
Well. Bad. Worse than last time, and I almost died back then. I was like Jake, saved by a doctor. Hawk, actually.
That’s not to dump all my traumatic stuff on you, just to say that in the game, everything is so terrifying and urgent, it’s hard to see too far beyond yourself and the task at hand. I’d like to start over too, without death looming over us. Thank you for being open to that. Maybe we can even be friends.
P.S. - I say this with love, because he’s my friend: Embry can’t be stopped from spinning out. You kind of just have to wait until he’s finished and then remind him that you don’t hate him no matter how bad he wants you to.
no subject
so i don’t mind hearing about it
[ like — walker’s memories of his kid and olivia. yelena’s, of her first task as a widow. it’s better that tim tells him those things because he wants to and not because the void or the house pulled it out of him, too. ]
sorry that all happened to you
staying the obvious but it seems like this place has a real dark side
[ as for embry, well, no comment. bob’s pretty sure people letting him spin out untended is how he ended up as prone to spiralling as he is. and maybe bob didn’t help, when he followed embry out into the forest that day — but danny johnson didn’t die in that cage, so maybe he did. ]
have you finished your christmas shopping?
i could help carry stuff if you’re braving the market tomorrow
i’m really bad at haggling and holding onto the coins though
no subject
It isn’t all bad. I've learned a lot that I would have never known back home, and met a lot of amazing people. But when it's bad...well, you saw the games.
I've got a little bit left! a second pair of eyes on things could be a big help, since mine aren't so good to begin with.
🎀
a friend date, i mean
which is just called hanging out
[ this is why he said he was bad at talking. ]
thanks for giving me a third or fourth chance, anyway