shenevermisses | 3rd Throw - [ action/written ]

[Residents who see her around will notice the change in Clove starting on May 26th. She walks with more certainty, lingers less in doorways before entering shops, and rarely checks the knife up her sleeve.

It's still there, but she relies on it less. She is calmer, still hesitant around non-humans, but she doesn't flinch when someone larger than her approaches from behind.

She also looks about two years older, closer to nineteen than seventeen.

It only takes her until May 27th before she has to write in the Journals.]

Malnosso:

I know of no other way to contact you, so I write this here in hopes that you will see it.

My name is Clove. I reside in Community House #2, room #3.

If you are able to bring us here, you are able to send us back. Perhaps it is difficult. Perhaps it is dangerous. Perhaps it is expensive.

I am willing to risk the dangers. I will also do anything you ask of me to pay the debt this will incur. Send me to your worst battlezone, ask me to retrieve information-- anything. Name your price, and I will pay it.

Just send me home.

I need to return to District Two.

Thank you for your time, if you will grant it to me,
Clove

[She will be around town in her altered state through May 29th.

...After June 5th?

She'll spend a few days half hiding at her lake-side camp, avoiding the town.]

(ooc: From 5/27-5/29, Clove has been AUed into a world in which she won the 74th Annual Hunger Games with Cato as her co-victor. Feel free to, if you'd like to reply, have your character either respond to her written entry or do an action post of running into her around town. Dated replies are wonderful!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's a frown when she reads this. A look of confusion. Why would Clove ever post something like this? She has even less to return home to than Katniss does. If that's even a possibility for the Career. What happens to the dead when they leave Luceti? It's something she hasn't liked dwelling on, for Rue's sake.

Seeing this, almost hearing Clove's insistence in the words -- it makes her uncomfortable. And for the first time since the girl's arrival, she actually dares to speak to her.]

Don't be stupid.

[No one's ever said she'd be very nice.]

Katniss.

[Because it would appeal more to the Capitol viewers-- and viewers across the districts-- to call the fallen District Twelve tributes by their names rather than by calls to make them easier to kill, she has learned to do it. Talked at length with Caesar about the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers and how difficult it was to strike them down.

Yet how it had been facing them and seeing their intense bond that had cemented the slow-growing ties between she and Cato, that had culminated then and there, with Cato kneeling in front of Clove before a captive audience and proposing.

Out of the ashes of the doomed lovers, a new romance had captivated Panem.]

It's not stupid to want to go home.

[But she's careful about her words. What does Katniss have to lose here? Nothing. She has a family to make it back to.]

I need to find a way home. Whatever they want from me, I'll give them. Anything so I can get home to... [Well, if the name gets too bad a reaction, they're separated by space, at least. This is just over the Journals.] to Cato.

[Eyebrows raise first when she hears her name – her real name – spoken. She can’t recall a single moment when the girl hasn’t called her District Twelve. She understands. At least, she thinks she does. It’s not much different from her need to ignore the chatter between the animals, isn’t it? Whatever makes the kill easier. And nicknames help.

Their truce is barely one at that. No reason for niceties. No reason for Clove to be… almost polite to her.

She shakes her head again, unable to stop from scowling again. Giving the Malnosso anything? Maybe it’s to be expected of a Career. Anything to play the game. To win. But maybe… maybe after meeting Finnick. Meeting some of the other Victors of the Quarter Quell, she had hoped for different here. Here, where as far as Katniss could tell, the only way to truly win is to remain aloft from Malnosso plans. Not to be a piece in their games.

And just to return home to another dead tribute? Perhaps when Thresh had hit the rock against Clove’s head, he had caused irreparable brain damage.]

But he’s dead. [She’s not trying to be mean. Not really, not this time. Has Clove not adapted to Luceti? It had seemed otherwise in the girl’s last post.] So are you. There’s nothing for you to go back to.

...What's wrong with you?

[She sounds... worried. Not about Katniss. She died once in the Arena, Clove is willing to kill her again if she's lost it. But she is worried about how much work that would take. How dangerous it would be for her if District Twelve's fallen female tribute has snapped in this place.

Because... her dead? Cato dead? Something's gone wrong wit the girl's head to provoke saying something like that.]

I have everything to go back to.

[Pushing her point might be looking for a fight, but... Clove decides she doesn't care right now. She can be ready for a fight before the girl finds her.]

House, husband, kid.

[Minutes pass before Clove receives an answer. Maybe the fellow tribute meant to bait her into a fight, asking what's wrong with her, coming up with some family scenario. Because the idea of Clove with a family - of fighting any tribute with a family. It makes her think of District Eight's tribute in the last games. Cecelia saying goodbye to her family during the reaping.

That kind of guilt. That kind of guilt is almost impossible to live with.

But she remembers this kind of behavior. Peeta's hijacking. More importantly, her own here. The way she really thought Rick was her uncle. It makes her turn the page, look for other people she thinks she knows.

There's a lot of strange things happening right now. And she feels surprisingly calm when she replies.]

Did anyone explain the shifts to you?

Edited 2012-05-30 17:50 (UTC)

I read about them in the Guide.

Our captors exercising their Gamemaker skills. [The cynicism and distaste she speaks with comes from the security of a Victor, someone who survived the Games and could retreat to their home and won fortune.

It's an easy and confidence and bitterness Clove has not really displayed here in Luceti.]

Let them do their worst. I will get home eventually.

[Little does she know that one has already ensnared her.]

They already have.

[Her voice is quiet, oh so quiet, when she says that. Because Katniss wouldn't even believe Rue, little Rue, her trusted ally. How many times had Rue insisted that there was no Uncle Rick until she finally gave up and just went along with it? How many times had Katniss just ignored her? And if she had heard it from someone like Clove? Someone who had tried so very hard to kill her?

No. She wouldn't blame the girl from District Two one bit if she thought that Katniss was lying to her. Not at all. If she hated her now, more than she ever did before.]

Threy've hijacked you. Replaced your real memories with ones that they've made. I've seen it before. [Experienced it herself.] You're not going to believe me. Not until the Gamemakers are done with this shift. But you did die. Thresh killed you. And I killed Cato.

If they have [perhaps it was a credit to Clove or her hijacked state that she would consider it at all possible] then it isn't me they've done anything to.

[Was it so easy? Could they really alter a dead tribute's memories to make her think she had lived? Even one with so focused as Katniss?

She sounded so sure about Cato's death. It is almost amazing. And very terrifying.]

I'm sorry, Katniss.

Cato and I aren't the ones who died.

[It almost sounds sincere, her sympathy.]

[No. She doesn't think Clove is sorry at all. But Katniss is. Though she doesn't say it aloud, but she feels it. Feels it as strongly as she feels guilt over Cato's death. Is this what would have happened? If she and Peeta had died and the tributes from District Two were allowed to have lived? It's easy enough to put the pieces together. No revoking the rule change. And why would they? No need for District Two, the Capitol's pets.

Marriage... and a child? A family. Safe enough to prevent a fate like Finnick's. The Capitol citizens loved their romance, their show and entertainment, far too much. Oh, sure, she's certain Snow would find some way to strike back. Some day. Victors are his to do with as he pleases. But there'd be no spark. No flames, no fire catching. No horrible Quarter Quell, no rebellion.

And all those people who died... died because of the Mockingjay, died because of her, Katniss Everdeen? They'd live.

And not for the first time, she recites quietly in her head: My name is Katniss Everdeen. I'm eighteen years old. I should be dead.

The odds were never supposed to be in her favor.]

3rd Throw - [ action/written ]

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