15th Throw - [ written ]

[shenevermisses]

[It's a question that's been on Clove's mind.

Okay, she's had a lot of questions lately. Valentine's Day and that whole week... It wasn't unkind, but it made her think too much. There were too many uncertainies. The ones with Cato... She didn't feel like thinking about.

But Katniss. She can talk about some of that.]

What do you all do for a living, where you're from? Or what were you going to do? Does everyone in your area do it?

In Panem... your district says a lot about what your job will be. Not always, but probably. Like me... If I hadn't gone to the Games? I'd probably have been the foreman in a factory. Or an overseer of a quarry.

And what you do... When did you learn to do it? And from who?

Comments

[savedtheworld]

Well... this is gonna sound weird, but I got lost in a storm, and I got frozen in an iceberg. When I woke up, a hundred years were gone. The war I was supposed to stop had started. And... and I found out my people had been the first targets. [It was a very sensitive matter to him. But it had gotten easier to talk about over the years.]

[shenevermisses]

[A hundred years. She won't call it impossible. Not with the things she sees in Luceti every day.

But war. A war that was supposed to be stopped came anyway. That sounds familiar enough. Not from her experience, no, but what she's heard from Katniss. The Hunger Games were supposed to prevent war, and yet...]

We're taught there's nothing worse than war.

[War. Terrible war.]

[savedtheworld]

War is the worst thing. Along with everything that makes it up: violence, hatred, cruelty.

[shenevermisses]

My world doesn't have war.

...Or didn't.

[savedtheworld]

S-so it might? Or... it's going to?

[shenevermisses]

It came later. A couple years after I died.

[savedtheworld]

[And there's quick gasp at that.]

You... Y-you...?

[shenevermisses]

...
Oh.

Yeah. At sixteen. I was the nineteenth to die in the Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games. [Simple, straightforward.]

sorry I was waiting since he was learning about the Hunger Games in a diff thread and then lost trac

[savedtheworld]

[There's a pause, color draining from his face, as he remembers hearing about the Hunger Games from Katniss at the spa. All those emotions that he felt just from hearing about it, which had almost provoked the Avatar State, came boiling to the surface.]

N-no... [He quietly gasps.]

I heard about them. The... The Hunger Games. I still can't believe... that anyone would do something like that. You - no one that young should have to...

No problem!

[shenevermisses]

[Someone has to defend Panem. And the Academy. And the Games.

Those were her life. For eleven years, she had eaten, slept, and breathed the Games. Every activity was designed to make her a tribute, to make her proud.]

Where I'm from, attending the Games was an honor. You represented your district, and you were proud to do it.

[savedtheworld]

[He had gotten some idea of how it was from Katniss. As much as he wants to respect another culture that he's sure he doesn't fully understand... it's too much to accept conditions where people so young are made to kill each other.]

I see. I've heard some things about the Hunger Games. It's just... hard for me to imagine people so young having to... do things like that.

[shenevermisses]

We were raised with it, and it kept the country from war for seventy-five years. It's just normal to us.

[Normal... but never easy. But she won't talk about that, not to anyone but Katniss. The life she led? She's not going to let anyone judge or insult except someone who lived a similar one. Someone who knows Panem.]

[savedtheworld]

I see. I wish there were other ways to avoid war, safer ways. [After all, he and his friends were able to make it through the trials of their own war and bring peace without requiring such bloodshed. But he knows not all worlds could be so lucky.] But I know there's nothing I can do about it here.

[It does hurt him. After all the work he put into making his own world better, so see the pain and death prevalent in so many other worlds through Luceti. And for the most part, he finds himself helpless in doing anything about it.]

[shenevermisses]

Everyone has to do what they think's best. The Games were Panem's solution, and it worked for a long time.