shenevermisses | 22nd Throw

22nd Throw - [ voice ]

There are some things you just can't teach. Not after a certain point.

[She doesn't sound frustrated or upset. Just... interested, in a way.]

It's weird, in a way. Trying to teach someone to be like me and finding out that's not possible. I mean, we're doing good. Great student.

[For Rue's sake more than anything, she's not going to name her over the journals, not going to divulge what they're doing.]

But there's just something different. How we were brought up. You can't teach that.

Which I guess is why they start us young. Start training us when we're five, where I'm from. Parents who think their kids have potential agree to send them off to the Academy, where they'll only see them maybe every weekend.

Usually less than that.

From there, they weed out the undesirable. The weak, the emotional, the nervous. Every year, there are fewer students your age. By the time we're sixteen or seventeen, there's only the best left.

At that point, only the girls who are stupid enough to get pregnant get sent away.

I guess I never really thought about it, but trying to teach someone else what I grew up with? You realize that some things just can't be taught. Not after a certain point.

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A bit more than a year after I died, there was a revolution. To my knowledge.

[Died. Hmm.]

Does it change what you thought of things? Knowing that things could have changed?

Yeah, no. I'm not making that kind of a promise to anyone.

They get killed, that's their own fault, not mine.

[She's learned a lot in two years. Learned to care about people, learned... little by little... how to be human. But she's still a Career, under it all. There's no one she feels responsible for except herself. No one she will sacrifice herself for. No one she wouldn't kill if it meant she lived another day.]

Crossbows are pretty good.

[But they lack speed.

Small, barbed shots for the slingshot have promise. Especially if the barbs could be poisoned. A good paralytic, maybe. Something that, in case friend were mistaken for foe, wouldn't have a death on this girl's conscience.

She goes to the blades and picks up a stiletto. As long as her palm but as thin as one of Rue's fingers. Sharpened to a lethal point.]

Here.

[Clove shifted her hold, offering the small wooden hilt to Rue.]

Hold it in your palm, one finger on the shaft to control it.

It's a close-quarters weapon, but I think your best bet would be to incapacitate first and then, if necessary, go in for the kill.

No. Because they wouldn't have changed in my lifetime.

Fair enough. You can train them, but they have to be able to use what you've taught them.

[When to run, when to fight, how to stay alive, it's all things to learn but it's different out in the field. When every situation is different and can go south in a second. And maybe whoever is being taught will never have to use those skills, never have to fight or kill or do what it takes to stay alive. Maybe. Maybe not.]

Hey. You once gave me advice about staying useful here. [About staying here, staying alive.] Thanks.

[Which is what makes the training so hard. She's dealing with a girl who, really, should run every chance she gets. She shouldn't kill. She hasn't been raised to kill without remorse. But Clove knows nothing else. She knows how to run... if you're leading your pursuer into a trap. If you're going to suddenly turn and throw a knife into his chest or throat.

She doesn't know how to fight -- she knows how to kill.]

I can't promise it'll work. They're pretty temperamental here, but it's advice I got from one of them, sort of. So... Not like they've said anything about there being limited room.

[Rue takes the blade and holds it as directed. She feels the smooth wood of the hilt in her hand, grips it tight. The blade is thin, easily hidden, better for stabbing than slashing, but the point could open up a person's throat in a pinch.

She's still not sure if she can. If she could. If things came down to it.]

If they can't see me, they can't kill me, right?

Right. And that's what you've got.

[A pause. A smirk. A correction.]

That's what we've got.

You have to be invisible and have strong friends.

[It was why she'd blended into the pack, done nothing to stand out in it. Let them all underestimate her among the Careers, overlook her. And why she'd come between Cato and Peeta early on, right after the bloodbath. Why she'd argued that he was their best bet for finding Twelve.

Because Peeta was strong enough to take on Cato directly. Something she didn't have on her side.]

Let them -- like me and Cato and Katniss -- do the hard work. Use your allies. Never hesitate on that point: use your allies.

I figure nothing is guaranteed here, but there's logic behind the idea at least. We're dead [And there's a pause as Ginia looks at the words because it's the first time she's attributed it to herself without hiding her identity.] so we have nothing to go back to, not like everyone else. But if we make ourselves useful for the cause, then it benefits them.

Heard from someone else the housing situation has adjusted itself according to the population size so it doesn't seem like space is an issue.

Yeah. Buildings altered. It's weird, but you kind of get used to it here. Which is even weirder.

They start limiting space, though? And it's every person for themselves. Which I think you'd at least get, unlike most of the bleeding hearts here.

[Use your allies. Rue nods. It was what her mentors had said too, to find strong allies and hide by them for as long as she could, then run fast and far once things had thinned out.

And it worked, hadn't it? She'd survived far longer than she would have at Katniss' side.]

I've been making good allies. People that can fight, people that are smart.

[Katniss. Clove. Laura. Loki. Thor. Johanna.]

I guess there's a lot you get used to here. [For better or worse. It's too comfortable here, too quiet, too nice. Sometimes Ginia can feel the edge of tension and caution slipping from her and it scares her as much as it relaxes her.]

I get it, but honestly I don't fault those who think otherwise. Different mindsets, different lives.

[And once in awhile, Ginia wishes she could have a different mindset and different life too.]

I read in the guide there was a food and water shortage and refugees from another enclosure here. Were you around for that?

If you can, leave the dirty work to them. But always have something on you that you can use. Something that is right at hand and you can kill with if you're trapped.

[Like the stiletto.]

I think what we'll want to do is commission barbed shot for you. Maybe see if we can find a poison to coat the spikes in. Something that'll act as a paralytic.

[It doesn't work well with knives, and she has no mind for poison making and that kind of thing, but it's a good strategy. Especially for a small girl who is fast and young. Someone who Clove isn't sure she could ever teach to be a killer.]

Yep. I'd learned to hunt, though, and have a camp near a lake. So food and water weren't a problem for those of us who'd thought about it.

And it'll happen again. People here? Like to defy them -- the Malnosso. Sooner or later? They're going to want to regain control, maintain order, and they're going to do it by limiting the food. They bring it in; they can make it stop.

The people at the smithy could probably make the shot, but do you think any of them would know about poison? Or anyone in the village? It sounds like something you have to be careful asking about.

[People getting the wrong impressions and all. Or asking too many questions and not understanding the answers.]

[Water supply Ginia isn't too worried about with the close proximity of the river, though bottling up water wouldn't be a bad idea. And food she's begun stocking, but learning to hunt isn't a bad idea.]

It's the classic way to enforce control. The question is was anything learned from the situation? Emergency stockpiles or food or supplies around the village, people stocking up in general?

[And if there are stockpiles of food and supplies around, who is watching them? Who is responsible for rationing everything out in times of need?]

Jesus. They just toss 'em in there and hope for the best?

...At least tell me the bastard who came up with this had to participate.

[Or was slowly beaten to death.]

Your brain - and body - are still developing when you are so young. Your environment drastically influences how they grow.

[So, he agrees, basically. :|b ]

What does your Academy teach?

How to kill.

[Simple enough. And it's all she really needs to say. They'd been trained from the time they were five until seventeen or eighteen. They knew best how to kill.]

What's with the secrecy? You're not doing anything wrong, are you?

Lot of people don't like me or my way of thinking around here. Knowing some of them? They might give them a hard time for wanting to learn.

I'll see about figuring that part out.

Enough of them already don't like me, so the worst that can do is make them like me less.

Only the districts offer up tributes, not the Capitol.

People here don't learn. Especially in situations like that. None of them even thought "Hey, we should learn to provide for ourselves" or anything like that.

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