They all say that I am very much like my sister. They all say that I am very much like Rue. I am not. I am not very much like anybody at all, not myself or my mother and certainly not like Rue.
They tell me that I look like her, and that I hold myself like her, and even that my voice is like hers, which is actually one of the most ridiculous things a person could say and the reason I tend not to listen when a conversation reaches that point.
Because we are—we were—like family, and that was all. Similar enough.
But they want be to be like her very much. They want me to be her even more. I want to be her. It would be better if my name had been drawn out of the reaping ball, even though I am only ten (and only just barely) and therefore not eligible.
She was kind and clever and a lovely singer. A hard worker and brave and very patient.
I am not. I am curious. And even that is not a trait all my own, a natural quality. It is stolen from Rue as well, taught to me by her, just as her four-note tune that I so clumsily try to imitate each day in the fields.
I have taken her place there, perched in a high branch, where I can catch the first signs of the end of a workday, if I pay close enough attention.
But the notes she so carefully produced-in my own mouth they are foreign, distorted, hideous, echoed only by a few until someone picks it up correctly. I am secretly glad that it takes so long. I do not like hearing those notes, not since the Games, which, in truth, were not so long ago—no more than a few months.
I am still not used to it, still taken by surprise each time someone mentions her in the past tense, still feel awkward and out of place so very high up, where she should be.
And I am not yet comfortable with the comparisons, especially not with the sad looks people will have when making them.
And maybe because I am almost always thinking of another way in which we are different.
Another way in which we will be different. Our deaths.
I know it is coming. There is no doubt in my mind it is coming. The people are stirring. I see it. Their glances toward each other, their nervousness around Peacekeepers. Even actions... Ever since. Ever since Rue died and the girl—Katniss Everdeen, the victor, the girl on fire (how could anyone forget?)—sung a lullaby I had never heard before but now know by heart, even having heard it but twice. Ever since she wore the crown of flowers, since Katniss Everdeen held out those three fingers-a gesture, even though it is clearly from Twelve, that so quickly became our own.
And it's coming soon, I think. It's going to get much worse, I think. More than the occasional riot. They scare me, so much, and I will be scared then, I think.
(Maybe we will be the same in that way. Maybe she was scared too. I'll never be able to ask her, but she was brave, even if she was scared.)
There will be fire, I think, bombs and bodies and so much else. And I will not live; there is no possibility that I will live. (Because I am not like her, because I cannot even hold onto the shred of hope, I cannot say that I'm quick enough or clever enough stay alive.) And I will be cloaked in ash, not in flowers, and there will be no kind girl from Twelve to sing me to sleep.
Maybe, at least, there is one good thing, one good difference.
At least a will die at home.
AN: (Because I still owe Kelly a birthday fic.) Happy Hunger Games! Bit short, but I sort of felt I had to do something. Thanks for reading.