shenevermisses | 22nd Throw

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nope. Two tributes from each district -- boy and girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Only one lives.

Twelve? And your parents sent you to that school?

In District Two, it's an honor to go to the Games. To be good enough.

I've seen some screwed up shit in my life, but that tops it all. Why the hell would you send kids off to die?

The Capitol holds the Games every year, it was part of the Treaty that ended the war.

Must've been a special sick bastard who came up with that.

It was a long war, painful. The Capitol wanted to make sure it never happened again.

So they kill some kids. Makes perfect sense, eh? People just go along with this?

It went on for seventy-five years.

[He tries to sound less aggressive:]

Do you think it's right?

I died in the Seventy-Fourth Games. What I think doesn't really matter.

[Oh. She doesn't sound like she's even that old...]

Gives you a pretty unique perspective.

On my world and this one.

And is that what you were talkin' about tryin' to teach?

How to fight like I do. How to think like I do. I died in the Games, but I made it pretty far.

No offense, but I hope whoever's learnin' this is luckier than you and never needs to use it.

[At least they couldn't be from a crappier world, right? Hers has to be as bad as it gets.]

I wouldn't call them luckier.

...Huh. Here I woulda' thought you'd won that lottery. Lost it. Whatever.

Anyone from Panem draws a pretty short straw in that.

So they're from your world, they just missed out on school?

[Sorry, he's slow. And even slower when he's as rattled as he is from hearing all this.]

Does that make life better or worse, where you're from?

They're from a poor district. Life is a lot worse. No training for the Games, no way to prepare.

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.]

Only the districts offer up tributes, not the Capitol.

[So they'll take other people's kids, but they draw the line at their own. Of course.]

...Pretty nice of you to be givin' away your secrets to somebody from another district like that.

[Especially given that she had to pay for all that training.]

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