A/N: My first Hunger Games fanfiction and it is angsty, how typical. Favourite and review, please, if anybody is even reading this.
Warning: Mentions of death and depression
You are eighteen when the world erupts into a fiery explosion around you. You've never believed in fairy tales but this has to be the last cut to the strings of any optimism still left inside you. All your hope is drained and all you can think about is a girl, with lights dancing in her eyes and a smile like an angel. A girl who was kind and generous and everything you weren't and never would be. Someone who was so good that the world could not contain her. Could not keep her within its damaged self. So she was killed and you were left. A fake revolutionary. A perfect example of damage for damaged people. A Mockingjay with no wings, the Girl on Fire with no spirit and the Panem-famous defender with no sister to defend.
It is flabbergasting that she is dead, while you still breathe. She was always much better, much more alive than you ever were.
You know that she was always bound for heaven though, with her starlit hair and a soul as radiant as the sun. You still believe, that with all the sins you've committed, you are destined for eternal torture in hell.
You think both of your destinies are rather accurate, after all.
#
The country rebuilds itself because that's one of the only things it is capable of. You resent it for its submission to all the miserable deeds of humankind and slightly envy it for its easy resilience. Its ability to get over all the agony, all the death is admirable and also appalling. You can see the meadows built upon bones and the rivers and oceans of blood if you look carefully. The residual ash covering the Capitol like a grease stain, stubborn and impossible to remove. They try to cover it, the people, with pretty, bright buildings that hurt your eyes and artificial, forced beauty. The loud, omnipresent noise tries to camouflage the cries and the screams but all anyone can hear is the sound of the dead falling and the terrible humming before the last explosion. Nobody likes to talk but everyone thinks about it. You can hear it in the silence and in the vacant eyes and fake laughter that envelopes all conversations nowadays.
#
You try to keep your head down and not draw attention to yourself. People still notice you, though, it is hard trying to be alone when you are the face of the rebellion that changed the whole world. You can see the questions dying on their lips, their gazes lingering on the bags under your eyes and their wonder at the fact that you, the fearless victor of the Games, are nothing but a bag of patchwork skin and fragile bones, your almost-anorexic form obvious and terrifying.
You pass the days, sitting on your bed and staring blankly at the white walls of your home (it doesn't feel like one without her, never will), thinking about the war and what it has made of you. You rock back and forth and try to not think about her and happy days and the warm afternoons spent laughing and comforting each other. The nights bring you back to PrimFinnickCinnaBoggsRueMadge and all the friends that you lost and will never meet again. These nights, they are the absolute worst, Rue's whistle rings in your ears and Finnick's eyes and smile are burned into back of your mind. Cinna's soft voice sends shivers down your spine and the sound of Madge's fingers splayed on the piano rattles in your ribcage. Boggs's last words shake your mind and bring up suppressed memories. And Prim….Your beloved sister glides into your nightmares and smiles at you and all you can think is you could not save her you did not save her you failed you failed.
These nights your ghosts, your monsters haunt you, terrify you, scare the life out of you and all you can do is watch and shiver and cry like you're running out of tears.
These are the nights you regret ever volunteering in the first place. It's a vicious thought, but it's a true one.
#
"It will be okay" Everyone keeps saying and you do not have any idea how, when you failed at the one thing you swore to always do.
Peeta slides back into your life too and his light is a great comfort in your dark world. Your nightmares soften and your heartbeat eases when you are around him. The stars in his eyes calm you down and it takes you a while to figure out why. He is a friend and he loves you and he resembles Prim and Finnick and Madge and Rue and Cinna in ways you never thought anyone could. His soft voice and a smile too bright for your world and eyes as blue as the sky and his endless hope and courage and gentle hands give you a sense of familiarity, a sense of belonging that you never thought you would have and it soothes you, he soothes you. You never wanted, never needed anyone to fix you but it is nice anyway, being coaxed out of your mad, mad world.
You sustain yourself and you survive. You heal too but the scars that hurt the most aren't curable. Or physical.
#
You meet Annie's son. Finnick's son. He is lovely and you try not to cry as you hold him in your arms for the first time because he reminds you of his father so much and you miss him. Miss all of them. And the boy's eyes are sea green and a perfect imitation of his father's and his hair is the exact same colour of the boy with the trident and it makes you want to see him even more and it's been seven months since he died but you can't believe it you can't believe it.
You wonder if it makes you horrible to have a smile on your face after ages and ages as Annie pronounces you Godmother but you do not think that you can be even worse than you already are.
#
It has been a year since the revolution ended and you are as good as you will ever be.
You still have episodes, sometimes. Peeta is wonderful and you think you can almost see the beating of his heart and his blood, tainted with tracker-jacker venom humming in his veins as he holds you in his arms after one and runs his hands through your tangled, messy hair. It is at these moments you realise why you have stuck with him so far, having nothing in common except the Games and even that is not something you like to talk about. Your fire has burned the world once and even though you've believed earlier that it has extinguished, that the cold water of grief has doused it irrepairably, a spark will always be there inside you.
You know that you cannot escape the fire, of course. It is a code etched into your bones. And even though living is terrible, you live because they would have wanted you to and she would have wanted you to. You think that this is the least you can do, after they gave away their lives for you.
Escaping was never much of an option for you, anyway.