shenevermisses | 11th Throw

[There are too many nightmares. Too many nights spent thrashing herself awake. Sometimes she fully wakes Cato, sometimes she just has to assure him she's okay before he fall back asleep. She's tried to run, she's tried to just go as far as she can, she's tried to roll over and go back to sleep. She can't ignore it, she can't escape it, she can't get over it.

So, late at night or early in the morning, she opens her journal.

She's tired but wide awake. It's a kind of exhaustion, really. She doesn't know how many people will see this, but she wants to ask.]

The Malnosso are always fighting their war, right? There's always battles and killing.

Is there any way to volunteer? To join them? I want to. There has to be a way, so I want to know.

As long as I'm fighting, I don't have nightmares.

[After about two hours, she'll strike out the entire last sentence. It's too private, too personal. It was stupid to ever write it, but at least it will be gone. Some of them have seen it, but she can deny it later. Sort of.]

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Zombies, right?

[She remembers what Teddy had told her about them. How so many people had been infected. How they had only come up with a cure towards the end of the draft. She had kept her opinion to herself. That those infected needed to die before they could harm the others. It would be a mercy, a kindness. Especially here in a place where death was not permanent.

Otherwise, they might have to live with the guilt of killing a friend or ally. However accidental that death might be, she knew the guilt haunted you all the same. It never stopped. No, better to be haunted by your own death than the death you inflected on others.

Except, she can't bring herself to agree with Clove on everything. It's that second sentence that brings a frown to her face. Clove had died in the 74th Hunger Games. Clove hadn't been forced back into the arena in the 75th. She never had to fight in an uprising against the Capitol.

They view fighting as something very different.]

I think we are forced to fight. The drafts don't give you an option.

You have to go.

[There's no disagreement that far. There is no choice about going with the droids. The metal Peacekeepers. But it's not what Clove sees as fighting. She has only the Games, has never seen war.

And from Katniss? She accepts the opposing opinion. She doesn't agree, but this is a girl who knows what Panem is. And has seen more of it than Clove ever will. This is the girl who told her that there are no more Hunger Games.]

It's not the Games, though. [That tells her how to phrase her feelings better. She's not used to talking about things, or even writing them. To having to try and figure out how she feels about things. She's usually told what to think and what to feel.

Independence is a slow process.] They don't have to kill.

War is different from the Hunger Games.

[Not entirely, but just enough to count. People fight, people kill, people die. The arena is bigger. The jobs more numerous. The tactics more complex. Not everyone has to fight. Like Clove said, not everyone has to kill.

But when on the battlefield, when faced with defending yourself and your own, killing is the simplest solution. Like in the Hunger Games, it's the only way to ensure that you'll see tomorrow.

And that's only the beginning of the similarities. For her, the list becomes much more personal.]

But we're still just game pieces in the end.

[She listens. She thinks. From everything she's heard, every person, even Katniss and Lover Boy.

There's one simple question.

A question she doesn't know if there even is an answer, much less if there's an answer Katniss will know.]

Are we ever not?

[Probably not. The time here with Peeta had made Luceti seem like a different world. One where she wasn't known as the Mockingjay, one where she had lit no sparks. Where she was just a girl good with a bow and arrow, a hunter, who had friends. Who, more importantly, had a boy she loved and who loved her in return.

But now he's gone. And she's no longer looking at this world with the same optimistic view as before.

They are game pieces here. Every single one of them brought to this town. She's been a game piece her entire life.

Are we ever not?]

They didn't know what to do with me after the uprising was over. So they sent me back to District 12 until they needed me again. I think, maybe if I had stayed, I might've had that chance. At least for a while.

[For a while.

Clove doesn't liken it to Luceti sans experiments and sans draft, but that's what it makes her think of. So they're pieces in a game. She was raised and trained to be exactly that. She was taught that there was no higher ambition. When her name was called and no one stepped forward, everyone called it an honor.

The Malnosso? Are no worse than that.]

What do you plan to do when you go back?

[What was she planning to do? It was a good question, one she hadn't ever given thought to. She didn't know if she'd ever get back. Or if the Malnosso would keep her here forever and ever, finding new ways to manipulate her.]

I don't know. [There's no reason to lie. There hasn't been, not in this entire conversation.] I was still trying to find something that had meaning again.

You'll find something.

[She won't return to the point they'd discussed in the woods. That Katniss will still have Lover Boy. Different, from all she's said, but it's still him. It's still a life with him. A life with him and no more Games.

That's a little more steady, isn't it, than any sort of patched together life here, where anything could end in a blink and where, apparently, it's a bad idea to have kids.]

[She'd shrug if this conversation was in person. Look doubtful at the words. She's not so sure, not nearly as positive. She wants to be but she doesn't know how.

It's not like the odds had ever fully been in her favor.]

Maybe. If I ever get back.

You won and made them crown two victors. You ended the Games.

[She wouldn't manage all of this if they were actually speaking. Her admiration is too great, especially in this moment. It can be dampened when written, but it would show plainly if they were face-to-face.

She's supposed to be loyal to the Capitol, to consider the Games an honor. Yet, she is relieved to know there will be no more. That, should her mother get the second daughter she always wanted, the sister she would never know would not have to fear the Arena.]

If anyone who wants to get out of here can, it's you.

[The written words make it sound like she's capable of anything. That she's the Mockingjay once again. The source of inspiration for a whole nation, the spark that lit the fire of rebellion. She had been something more than herself then. Had done it not as a self-sacrifice but as a selfish ploy to be able to kill the man she hated. And save the boy she now loves.

How people never seemed to see through the disguise, never noticed that she was a selfish, desperate girl determined just to survive, puzzles her. Even Clove, Clove who had tried to kill her in the arena, who had killed her here seemed to believe it. And she had never seen the Mockingjay propos. Not a one.

Maybe it's a good thing that this conversation is written. Katniss can't trust herself to speak aloud right now.]

I didn't do any of that for Panem. I did it for myself. I'm not some hero.

Which is why you'll get out.

It's not for them. It's for you. And for him.

[Clove could see the selfishness, yes. But that. That was what made her so certain that Katniss... could survive almost anything thrown at her.

She toppled the Capitol. She can escape the Malnosso. Since she wants to.]

[She can feel the anger bubbling up inside of her, an almost uncharacteristic hatred of the other girl right now. She shouldn't feel like this. Clove has done nothing to provoke her ire. Not really. She just... believed in her. Believed in her like every other idiot that Katniss got killed.

In a way, she had been responsible for Clove's death in the arena. If the other girl hadn't been so intent on killing her, hadn't been so intent on making the kill hurt by bringing up Rue, maybe Thresh wouldn't have gone after Clove right away. Maybe she wouldn't have been distracted. Maybe she would have been able to run.

She won't be responsible for Clove's death again. For any reason.]

Luceti can find a new Mockingjay.

[And with that, she closes the journal before she says anything she might really regret.]

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