《No Apocalypse Needed》

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We take turns perpetuating the silence between us as we walk, Lilly taking deliberately long strides to maintain her distance. It's like she's trying to win a race, one I hadn't been made aware of. Still though, I'd rather have this atmosphere, stifled and oppressive as it was, then the conversation that awaited us once we got wherever it was we were going.

Overhead, central air blasts down in us, rousing a few strands of my hair into disobedience. Beads of sweat form on my skin only to be wicked away before they can fall into my eyes. Windows on either side of us allow for sunlight to seep in from the outside, its warmth snaking around my skin. 

"They've opened the dome again," I say, shoving my hands into my pockets.

Lilly's shoulders tense, and she stops mid-gait, like my words had sprung a trap that left her foot hovering in the air. She doesn't bother to face me when she responds, though she remains frozen, affording me enough time to catch up with her. "I'd thought the air would stink," she says, wrinkling her nose. She side-eyes me as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Why's that?"

The ghost of a smile lifts the corner of her mouth, but before it can fully materialize, it's gone, and she's speeding ahead of me, about to round a corner.

I begin to sprint, light and darkness playing across my skin as I pass under a row of windows.

"Because everything outside the Aviaries withers and rots." Lilly stands a few feet away, pointing at a window beside her. I'm cautious to sidle up to her, but the curiosity sparked by what she's pointing at pulls me forward.

The window frames Central Sect's immense city where a cluster of skyscrapers look ready to pierce the dome. Behind them, runs a slit, where the glass dome has been opened, exposing us to a patch of pale blue sky. A cloud dips in front of the real sun, shrouding the city, and Lilly, in shadow. "Or at least," she continues, her voice lifting me out of my own head, "it should, but," her fingers clench around the edge of her blazer as her eyebrows knit together, "It doesn't reek."

I stop beside her, taking a few seconds to catch my breath. Lilly turns to me, a frown on her face even as the sun reemerges in the distance.

"What?" I say, wiping my bangs from my forehead. "You can't be that disgusted by my poor health." Her lips purse. Straightening, I add, "Besides, the motivation here is different. You have a lot less endurance when your life's not on the lin--"

"Beyond the dome doesn't smell like freedom either." Her words free fall out of her mouth, and at the end of it all, I'm left reeling.

"Ah," I say, feeling as though the ground had given away. My gaze settles on the rotating sign, floating overhead. A map of the Capitol's guts is displayed in flickering blue lines. Two red dots blink where Lilly and I stand. Other dots roam the building's labyrinthine corridors, their color a muted, unimportant beige.

Lilly snorts and stamps her feet. I whirl to face her. To my amazement, she's sporting a Marava-level scowl. "That's really," her brows pull nearer, forming an equator of anger across her face. "That's all you have to say? After everything?" She juts her chin. "What you said back there, how could you be okay with dying," her eyes dart toward the floor, "like that?"

The seconds pass between us, the anger on Lilly's face transforming into an anger trench as I blank on what to say. Thankfully, the oppressive moment between us is broken as two workers dressed in powder blue appear around the corner.

A fed-up shade of crimson blotches Lilly's skin as she huffs and storms down the hall, disappearing under an archway of sculpted marble. The man and woman exchange glances. I bare my teeth, snapping at them like a rabid beast which prompts them to scurry back to the rock they crawled out from under.

Once alone in the hall, I sprint toward the direction Lilly had gone, hoping some words would form that could offset how pissed she was at me. I hadn't been the best person to be around these past couple of days, using all sorts of snark to cut down those closest to me, so I expected some outrage, but not because of voicing my view on expulsion.

To have her anger stoked by my complacency, my resign to dying outside, that had thrown me, had caused my words to shrivel before I could speak them. It'd been a level eight shock by DEC standards, which feels much the same that day Marava had offered me something to mop up my blood after we'd escaped the Facility.

As I pass under the archway, I find myself in front of two enormous glass doors. Triggered by some sort of sensor, they pull apart. Warm air, scented of lavendar and pine flood my senses. Lilly stands inside, back toward me, surrounded by a verdant forest of pine, maple and oak. She looks at home surrounded by so much flora, like a fairy who'd finally found their storybook forest.

Trepidation comes in waves as I step over the threshold, my shoes squishing on what looks to be some kind of moss.

"Have you ever seen anything like it?" Lilly turns to face me, a smile replacing the anger I'd caused moments earlier.

I shake my head, marveling at a nearby maple tree whose red leaves shiver in the cross breeze. At the tree's massive base, lemon-yellow daffodils bend and sway. "No," I say, pausing for breath.

My skin's dappled in what little light filters through the intersecting canopy of gnarled maple and oak branches overhead. I reach up, and tug a star-shaped leaf free. Turning it over in my palm, I examine its veiny underside. "Are these real?"

Lilly nods toward a bench situated underneath a blossoming cherry tree. I make my way to it, drinking in the kaleidoscope of color - the drooping bluebells, nests of pale pink and cream roses, vibrant starburst tulips.

"How does this exist?" I plop beside Lilly.

She smiles, letting her hand fall over the bench's railing to graze a pot of cascading ivy. "Remember learning about the Council's Environmental Preservation Act?"

I nod, watching as a cherry bloom twirls toward the ground. "Yeah, for that series of tests, I wrote all my answers as couplets." I crane my neck upward, tracing the winding branches with my finger. "Drove Mistress Ramona crazy." Lilly chuckles and I turn to face her. "It made her even crazier that all my answers weren't wrong enough to warrant expulsion."

Lilly nods. "I remember." She sets her hands in her lap and stares at the copse of bluish pines a few feet from us. "You got 90s," she smirks and rests her back against the tree's trunk. "I sulked for a whole week when I only averaged a 97%."

I snort. "And how are you and Tujo related again?"

She chuckles. "He gave me his pudding that week to cheer me up." Her face tenses, the smile wiped away. "When one of the Nutri-hawks got wind of the that, he got sent to the Reflection Room." Her hands tighten around the folds of her uniform."He always got in trouble protecting me."

Suddenly she bolts to her feet and makes her way toward a patch of flowers pregnant with bell-shaped flowers. Kneeling before them, she brings a bloom to her nose and breathes in. The scent coaxes a smile to her face, though this one too seems faint, ghostly, distant. "I never imagined such a place would exist in a Capitol building." She turns to me, letting the flower fall from her grasp. "They grow all sorts of plants here. There's an arid room," she points to the left, "for desert-type plants, and one with higher humidity for tropical ones." She stands and brushes off the front of her uniform. "I've dragged Tujo here every day since I found out about it. We're both fond of plants."

"So the twins do have shared interests." I nod. "Makes sense, though. Given your name and all."

Lilly blushes and grapples with her jacket sleeve.

I raise my eyebrow. "What?" Her brow furrows. "What is it?"

"You haven't called me by my name in awhile." Whatever excitement she'd felt, drains from her face. Christ, when had I become the one who spit on someone's happiness? That was Marava's job, one she could do in her sleep and in spades.

I reach up and find myself scratching at the base of my neck, my finger grazing the edge of Izzer's chip. "I didn't think you'd want me to--"

Lilly's head shoots up, her gaze defiant. "Why would you!" Her nose scrunches, her eyebrows knitting together. "You just--" her shoulders slump. "You just withdrew from everyone after--" her gaze darts toward a fountain grandstanding in the center of the room. Three marble doves perch on each other's shoulders, water pouring from opened beaks. "Nol." Her voice is barely a whisper.

I stride toward her, but she puts out a hand to stop me. She blinks, and I get the feeling she's trying to stem the flow of tears before they fall. "I've--" she bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. "No. We have decided to--"

"I know," I say, hoping my voice sounds as kind as I mean for it to sound.

Lilly gapes. Her fingers go to her pin. "You do?"

"Yeah," I shake my head. "Had a feeling that would be your choice."

A tear runs down her cheek which she hurries to wipe away. "And you?" She takes a step toward me, breaching the gap between us, doing something I should have done days ago. Thirteen and more adult than I was, stronger than I was.

I turn around and take in a deep breath, let the fragrance of my surroundings fill me up. "I don't think I have a choice." Lilly sidles up to me. "Honestly?" I reach out and this time, let my hand land on her head. I give her hair a little ruffle and sigh. "I think my choice was made for me the moment Dove aimed that gun."

Lilly nods. "Did you love him?"

This was a question I'd obsessed over since Nol's death. If I said I didn't love him, it would make me look like an asshole, feel like one too. But the truth was, I hadn't been able to properly define my feelings for him before Dove had shot a bullet into his gut.

Settling on the only answer I knew to be true, I say,"Don't know." I shrug, attempting to stifle back the tightening in my chest. "I cared about him sure. Much like I carry about all of you." Lilly raises her eyebrows. "Yes," I say, grinning. "Even Marava."

Suddenly, my mouth goes dry, the words I want to say a jumbled mess of nonsense. I try to piece them into something coherent. "I...knew him," I continue. "In a way that you guys hadn't. And--" I ball my hand into a fist. "And nowadays, I feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of his--" my voice trembles and cracks, "death."

I slap a self-deprecating smile to my face and snort. "Under the weight of everything, actually. Each corpse. Every single decision. From the moment I stepped outside of the Facility, I've felt everything pressing down on me."

More tears trek down Lilly's face so I give her a little nudge. She didn't need to shed tears for me, when I was capable of doing that myself. "I breathe the air because I know I need it to exist, but every time, my breaths feel a little more shallow. I'm left gasping." I drop my head. "Everything's so, so hard."