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Post by ƤαƖƖαѕ ✧ on Jul 25, 2019 16:04:39 GMT -5
I know there used to be a time where people had something to look to. Gods and heroes and great warriors. Hercules, whose great strength and cunning earned him a place among the immortals. Perseus, Theseus, Odysseus. Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons and a daughter of Ares himself. Athena, Ares and Artemis from the Greek pantheon. Freya, Odin and the Valkyries from the Norse.
Symbols of war and rebellion but also of valour and strength and bravery. Formidable warriors and givers of hope and divine inspiration. But we have long forgotten the gods and heroes we knew so well thousands of years ago.
Perhaps if we knew them still the hopelessness and dejectedness that has covered our land for as long as I can remember might not be here.
Maybe that is why the stylists who would later plan our escape from the arena tried to mould me into some kind of symbol of strength. Something I would not consider myself. The shieldmaiden, they called me, no doubt to call forth images of warriors on the battlefield.
I’d thought it was dumb, another attempt to try and make it seem like the Games were at all like a real war. Now I know the simulated war of the Games was not the war they were envisioning.
They knew the rebellion was coming, and that the people needed warriors and heroes again. In me they could see strength, in Holly intelligence and resilience, in Ari kindness and perseverance, in Burton optimism and laughter, in Macaria ruthlessness and determination, in Alessandro bravery, in Halina cunning and curiosity, in Everest the ability to stand up for what one believes in. In all of us they could see friendship, love and loyalty. The stylists knew what the people needed, and they gave it to them through us.
I considered all of them my friends, apart perhaps from Macaria and Alessandro, though I hold no bad feelings against them now. Most of the Careers I had gotten to know pretty well in the Arena, and when I later met Burton and Holly I got to know them too.
Somehow, though, as I sit in the Capitol, far away from most of my newfound friends from the Arena, I could not feel less like a hero.
I was much changed after a period of torture, but I’d really rather not discuss those changes because nobody really needs to know about all of my injuries or about how much weight I lost. The Capitol, though, clearly not satisfied with the results they had been getting from Everest, Holly and I, had come to me with an ultimatum. Louden himself had personally come to see me, as I lay awake with Holly and Everest sleeping in adjacent cells.
“No,” I’d said tiredly the moment I had seen his stupid face looking at me from outside my cell, interrupting him before he could even speak.
“At least pretend to listen to what I have to say first,” Louden had responded, sounding a little amused
“I don’t really need to,” I had sighed “I really can’t be bothered to be tortured right now, but if you come to me after a few hours of sleep you might have better luck.”
“Actually, my dear, I’m here for...let’s call them diplomatic discussions.” Louden had answered
“Okay, well I don’t see the point in those. I have absolutely nothing to lose and no desire to come to any agreement with you, so I really don’t see this conversation going well for you.”
“Well, you would be right if it were in fact true that you didn’t have anything to lose. But you have everything to lose, Amadrya, and your everything is sleeping in the next cell.”
My voice had turned fiery then, as I spit out my words like crackling flames.
“I really wouldn’t be threatening Everest if I were you. Don’t you dare touch him.”
“I don’t intend to,” Louden had said lightly “provided that you help me out a little in return for his continued safety. He can have a much more peaceful time here in the Capitol, all I need is something from you.”
And that is how I got here, the opposite of the warrior for the rebellion that they intended me to be. Instead of being a symbol of strength, I have become one of betrayal as, to protect the boy I love, I have become a traitor to the rebels.
I appear on screens across Panem once every day or two, saying whatever the Capitol want me to say. I always said I wasn’t a pawn to be used by someone else, and I had always thought I had been stronger, more principled than that.
But Everest is my greatest weakness. I had never anticipated that love would be my downfall, but time and time again since the Games began it has been.
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Post by 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕠𝕨 on Jul 25, 2019 17:49:47 GMT -5
That is, I think it was Tuesday when I lost the ability to apparently properly think.
Now, I don’t see myself as someone petty, someone selfish, or an idiot, but....my flaws and faults definitely add up. Angry, sarcastic, sardonic, apathetic, you name it, and I most likely possessed such a mood, but I never thought I could be so jealous.
Especially in a situation that put me within a cell of the Capital, tortured. And no, my jealousy wasn’t about some roundabout way of saying ‘I want to be free’, that was human and understandable.
I was jealous of them. Amadrya and Everest, who had one another. They loved one another, and I never could have that.
And no, this isn’t about some boy either. I like Burton, but I know he likes me too, as a friend, but even then, I’m not certain of my own feelings. It’s not like I can wish for something I’m not giving back, that would make me a hypocrite, and no offense to the Capital, but I’m not the Capital.
No, this ran much deeper. They had each other, someone to lean on in their darkest times. Someone who would protect them. Even if they would die, most likely, within a few weeks, they had comfort in one another. They loved each other, even if they skipped around those emotions.
Who did I have?
No one but my overalert imagination and a callous man who tortured me for all of Panem to see. Which is unbelievably enjoyable and not at all a living hell.
My parents were dead, and afterwards, unlike Amadrya, I didn’t have any uncles or cousins to help me out. Unlike Everest, I didn’t have victors for parents, if I had, I would have been better off, covered by their earnings form the winning of a Game years past. But no, I had neither, and no one cared when the girl with black hair that looked like charred embers and striking green eyes that almost resembled emeralds lost her family. She was just a girl, a girl who may die. I was just a girl.
I said so in my interview for my games, and I meant that. It held a deep meaning, maybe one only I could understand. I was just some girl, another girl, an unlucky girl, who unluckily had her name called, just like 89 girls from her district had before her. Most of them died, a select few lived with haunting memories.
I didn't win nor die, thanks to Amadrya, and somehow my mind was even sour about that.
Everest betrayed his group just to be with her. But who would do that for me? Who would risk death just to save some random girl. I wasn’t Amadrya, I wasn’t brave, even with my facade. I was a coward. I didn’t stand up for those I loved, President Louden mentioned my mother once and I hadn’t uttered a word in weeks. Granted, the first week I was withheld, I was healed after I was shot, just enough to live, but enough to feel the pain. Gladly, though, Louden was in a tough spot, with my injury it was constant torture without morphine or pain killers, but he couldn’t beat me daily unless he wanted me dead.
Unluckily, the punishments went on to Everest and Amadrya, and somehow it felt worse. They had someone who genuinely loved them, and they had to watch that person suffer. Who would miss me?
But his threat loomed over me, reminding me, and his words haunted me. You wouldn’t want to be hung like your mother, would you?
Of course I didn’t want to live like this, but despite my brave words and anger at the time, I was scared, like a hurt animal. It brought me back to that day.
Everest, to my left, was softly chatting with Amadrya. The first day I returned, they tried their best to get me to talk, to tell them about what happened. But at this point, I wondered if I even could. I hadn’t talked in weeks, and I didn’t have the motivation. Depression and anger clung to me like a disease.
“Do you think she’s okay?” I picked up, the masculine voice of Everest looming over towards me, and I glared at the ground. My mind was putting in a Yes, I’m fine, we’re not stuck in hell or anything, but I didn’t talk. I didn’t flinch, or move, Amadrya answered with something I didn’t pay attention to or care for.
They should worry about themselves. Yet of course Amadrya would never settle down, she seemed selfless, and even if she hated herself for obeying Louden, I saw this as more powerful and strong then I could ever be. I wasn’t a shieldmaiden, not like her. My name going into those games was ‘The Hollow Heart’ or simply, by some, ‘Hollow Heart’ or ‘Hollow’, due to my distant and closed off behavior. I was, for lack of better terms, the apathetic type, and as terrible as it sounded, the cries from others didn’t touch my heart in the way it should.
It fueled my anger, but one could say that witnessing the events of my mother’s own death made me immune to seeing others in pain or die.
Everyone lives, everyone dies.
And yet I would wince when Louden came and beat them, but I would never speak, much to his joy.
Silent was never a talent I considered myself as being, but I was sure getting good at it.
“Do you think they hurt her?” Amadrya asked Everest then, and my head swung to glare at her, raising my eyebrow in a condescending manner, a question of what the hell else would Louden have done.
He surely didn’t teach me tricks and feed me treats while saying ‘Good Puppy!’
Amadrya picked up my point, rolling her own eyes, “Sorry, I guess that was a dumb question.”
I nodded, I may not speak, but I sure as hell could still get my point across easily. I’m sure I wore something akin to extreme annoyance at her, I would apologize, but that’s a waste of time and air, especially when I didn’t mean it. But they were talking still, so it didn’t really matter.
That’s how I usually fell asleep, I had no idea whether night or day was current, my guess was night, for that’s when the only true feeling of peace came. The conversation carried on softly, and lulled me to sleep, as it had many times before.
I dreamed of two lovers and a child, a lightly tanned girl with brunette hair and bright blue eyes running through a forest with two figures walking slightly behind, words a softly calling to her. Lovers that were the ones she was near.
But a storm came, a man, who the parents feared and the child paid no heed to, and just like that, the sweet child was taken by him, forced into an arena, killed by others, and the man sat grinning all the why.
I had no idea why Louden was in my dreams, or why Everest and Amadrya had a child, both were obscene, and the latter would never happen, I was sure.
But a dream is a dream no less.
—
I was dying. Or maybe I’m dead and this is hell?
Yeah, I change my guess, option number two is more fitting for my torment.
I had to be, there was no other explanation for the pain I was feeling. Not just emotional no longer, but not quite physical either. It reached my core, my heart, writhing around it like a snake, tightening in my lungs until I could longer breath.
Going from the rebellious and loud girl I was, to silent and haunted, was simply like reliving a memory. But seeing her break was the equivalent to bleeding out in a slow and miserable way.
The warrior, the hero, the strongest and bravest girl I had known, who shared my sentiments, was standing on a stage, dressed up like some doll for the Capital. She spoke their words, scripted and pristine.
Louden stood to me, and it occurred that he struck some deal with Amadrya nights back, when Everest and Amadrya lulled me to sleep due to their soft words, hidden in the invisible moonlight. That had to be when, I didn’t know how, but the dream was all too real.
He was in my dream for a reason, and I hadn’t dreamed of him before. He was the menace, the storm, the true enemy.
Everest was gone, not gone gone, but he wasn’t there, perhaps under Amadrya’s suggestion to Louden. Though I knew a TV set was waiting with him, just to watch this exchange.
Me breaking, or well, seeming to break, was one thing. My glances, expressions, my outward reluctance to ever speak for him, those all marked me as silently rebellious, Sure, I was careful. But Amadrya’s defiance was broken down to this. I knew it was for Everest, and yet it broke to even see it with my own eyes.
I felt betrayed, and the jealousy was consuming me again. She had someone, and yet she was betraying them by trying to save them.
Would she have done the same if it was just me and her?
I hoped not, but a part of me was upset, as a child, after losing my family, I only had one friend, Catastrophe, as I so-fittingly named my cat, was the only friend or family I had. I wanted that, family.
I came to think of the other’s as family, excluding Macaria and Alessandro, but even now that was shifting.
“I am-“ Amadrya’s voice rang out, an obvious disgust, perhaps only one Everest, Louden and I would recognize, rang in her words, well-disguised from anyone who didn’t know how she responded to torture. This was Amadrya’s new torture, Everest’s was watching it.
Mine?
It wouldn’t hurt, I would like to say, to break my silence, but it would.
That would hurt a lot.
“I am glad to be with the Capital, finally understanding Louden’s point of view,” she said, a fake smile on her face, and Louden straightened his posture, grinning from beside me.
I flickered my gaze to him, he hadn’t noticed my movements, and I let off a hollow laugh.
That got his attention, his eyes questioning me as Amadrya’s voice droned on.
“You think you’ve won?” My voice rang out, surprising both him and myself, I hadn’t spoken in weeks, I had been silent, not speaking since he mentioned the threat towards me. But now I was rekindled, my flame no longer felt as drenched, and fornthe first time in weeks I felt a purpose. For once in my life.
He remained silent, eying me with a gaze full of warning, challenging me. Well, challenge accepted.
“You’ll never win,” I added softly, my laugh falling away as my face set in a grim line, staring at Amadrya, and surprisingly, he didn’t move. He just remained, like we were two people just chatting up a storm.
“You’re mistaken-“ He began, careful not to make a scene, and as I had learned, unbelievably curious about my intentions.
“I am not,” I assured, as if trying to comfort some old friend, of course, that was my seething sarcasm, already laced in my newly used voice. “And no matter how much you torture me, us, in the end it will not matter,”
To my surprise, he didn’t interrupt me, he only waited for me to finish, and so I did, taking my chance to calmly speak.
“What you do not understand, Louden, is that we do not matter, this torture is an example, but since when have the people of Panem followed an example? Every set of new games brings a new strategy from the tributes, every stylist had their style. Here, in the Capital, and out there, in the districts...” I paused for a moment, taking notice of his hand clenching, before I grinned slightly, “it doesn’t matter. If people want a revolution, they will stop for nothing to get one.”
He contemplated my words for a moment, turning them around in his mind, he didn’t reply angrily, just as calm as myself, “So none of this in the end will matter to you? If you somehow lived, you think all this pain would fade?”
“It doesn’t matter, pain is only pain in the present, but only a memory in the past, I may be traumatized but what happened here, but life doesn’t stop for broken hearts and shedded tears.” I commented in reply, almost automatically. I believed the words, I wanted to, anyways.
“Just like the ‘trauma’ of your mother’s death?” He asked, a callous smirk on his face.
At first, I was overcome with boiling rage, but my gaze flickered to Amadrya on the stage. She could no longer fight in my place, and if I kept letting a simple mention of a dead woman bring me down, I was doomed from the start.
“Funny,” I commented blandly, my eyes still on Amadrya, “You know what makes us tick,” I added, before smirking myself, “But I know what makes you tick.”
He looked curious, and I stared ahead, letting my feelings clash with one another. A soft tide, soaking calm, tethering me to my spot, refusing to let me run.
“And what’s that?” He asked when I never finished my statement, and I clicked my tongue in reprimand.
“Obvious,” I commented simply, “You don’t know whose going to kill you first, the rebellion or your own people here in the Capital.” He knew I was referencing all those who turned on him, but also those who stayed on his side, those who were blamed him for the growing rebellion.
He froze, glaring at me, and I laughed slightly again, “Sorry,” I claimed, “I should know that’s obvious, of course it’ll be poison, perhaps mixed in your food tonight, or maybe tommorow, or even a month from now.” the shrug I gave was noncommittal, “Either way, I guess I’m trying to say that you need to watch your back. Who knows when it’ll be you, and not me, in that cell.”
Of course I got a beating for my words, but then again, you could say I beat him to the finish line.
I don’t think he noticed the echoes in the halls, or the unique uniforms masking silhouettes that snuck behind them during their chitchat.
Though, that wasn’t a surprise, I was always one to pick up on the little details.
And the next was a tiny token laying on the ground, just enough glimmer to catch my eyes. I little coin, that’s all it was, but I smiled at it all the same. A coin of District 8.
They’ve come.
(Warning, warning, this isn’t exactly canon to the fic.)
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