22nd Throw - [ voice ]

[shenevermisses]

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.

Comments

[Action]

[shenevermisses]

[...Ah. She didn't know.

Well. No one said she has to be totally honest. Sometimes it's okay to lie. Especially to a kid.]

That's what the new government decided. They'd abolish the Hunger Games after taking one more year. One more reaping. But just of the Capitol kids. Since they'd spent seventy-five years not having to deal with it.

[Action]

[rutagraveolens]

[One last game, with kids from the Capitol. Kids that had been safe for seventy-four, seventy-five years. Kids that watched other kids die for entertainment, who never had to know what it was like to fear or starve or suffer.]

...That's wrong. Even if they never knew what it was like, no more games should be no more games.

[No more kids dying.]

[Action]

[shenevermisses]

[Clove shrugs.]

And after 76, there weren't.

They deserved it.

[Action]

[rutagraveolens]

[Did they deserve it? Did they deserve it any more than the innocent kids through all twelve districts did?

Rue's not sure, but there's no changing what's already happened.]

Is there anything else here?

[Action]

[shenevermisses]

Look around.

[It's, really, the best advice Clove's got. She means well, at least.]

Anything that catches your eye? That you think would be a good fit?

[Action]

[rutagraveolens]

[Rue slowly moves off into the store, looking at the shelves for anything that catches her attention. She wanders back a few minutes later with a collapsible grappling hook connected to some rope.]

This. They had them in District 12.

[Action]

[shenevermisses]

Huh. Cool.

Can't say I've seen anything like that, but it definitely looks useful.

[Action]

[rutagraveolens]

It's a grappling hook. The ones in District 11 aren't as nice, but they're used for climbing and pulling things.

[Action]

[shenevermisses]

Definitely sounds useful, then, yeah. They probably used something like this in the mines of Two, but I never saw anything of those except the offices.