I am still working on this story. I hope you enjoy.
(Gale P.O.V.)
I watch as the bomb explodes. Rubble erupts around me and fire leaps onto my clothing. Soot and dirt clog my eyes and screams erupt in the air around me. My vision burns and blurs. I am helpless as fire licks up Katniss' arm and side, too far away and too paralyzed with fear. Wetness coats my face and neck. With blinding pain, I drag myself across the square, scraping off my own seared flesh, making my way towards her. A girl next to me screams over a blackened body. Katniss is still too far away. My blood stains the dirt as I crawl. A severed arm lies in front of me, I knock it aside, increasing speed. I hear her screams now. My eyes sear into the blackened skin which has taken her over. From nowhere, Peeta appears, collecting her in his arms. Through the chaos, I hear her scream one word over and over. Peeta rocks her and as the black flows over me, lulling me into emptiness, I make out the word which rips her apart. Katniss is screaming Prim's name.
I fall out of the darkness, fighting for air. The chaos threatens to choke me. Breath drags in as flames lick my lungs. For a moment I'm sure I will suffocate. Another moment passes before the shadows recede. I entangle my shaking hands in the blanket, pushing the memory away.
My best efforts alone will not banish this recall altogether. The dream is merely one of the many which plague my mind, no matter how hard I ache to forget them. Her screams seem to be etched into my memory, as if a Mockingjay lives there. In the daylight I'm able to repress them. I am not forced to think of the burns that now mar Katniss' skin or worse, Prim's smile. When the dark comes, I find there is no escape from the trappings of my own personal demons. A hell which is well-deserved on my part.
Not willing to wade further into the shadows, I find myself outside, running toward the wood. The fence of Old Three still lay in ruin- a reminder of how far and yet how little we've come. As I run, it is easy to imagine I am in 12, running my woods with a bow strapped to my back. I can picture my childhood home just beyond the next hill. I picture my mother standing outside it, smiling as Rory hangs upside down from the nearest tree.
The thought easily enough shatters what solice I may have found in the moment. I am not in 12. My mother no longer smiles so freely, nor does my brother laugh.
They do still live in the shack beside the hill, having returned after the resistance won. Old 12 is the only home they know and it is where my father's body lies. My mother could no more easily abandon him than one of us. Of course, my family is not alone; many other's also returned, for many of the same reasons my family did. Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch are among them. It is both her hate and my own self-loathing that kept me from joining them. I have ruined so many lives.
The words only fuel the memories. I run faster.
After the war- after Prim's death, I decided to stay a soldier along with many others. We were tasked with keeping peace among the more volatile Districts. After refusing to design weapons, I was sent to the District once known as Three, now named Grinda. Grinda is warmer than twelve, the game wilder and the terrain soiled with rock rather than soot and coal.
There are days I regret my decision to stay; the days I long to be held in my mother's arms or when I catch myself reaching behind me as game steps into my path. I remember how free I once felt in 12.
But most of my days, those when I am ripped apart by dreams and plagued by my own guilt, I am grateful for my choice. No one pretends I am anything other than a soldier in Grinda. My experience and skills have qualified me for top instructing positions. I train others how to fight and survive. I teach them how to feel free now that I no longer know how.
Back in my grey-walled room, the most recent of my mother's letters lays innocently on the nook. No doubt it is the reason for the aching within me. Her happy words of a wedding have left my insides raw, more damaged than the ugly burns which mar my left side and back. A knock, followed by the creak of my opening door relieve some of the storm. Ryder peeks his head inside. Ryder is one of the few friends I have retained in Grinda. He is arrogant, smiles-too-easily and incapable or uncaring of gageing my foul mood. This naiveness is partly why we've remained so close.
"Up' and 'attem, you're late."
"I still have twenty minutes."
"No, you had twenty minutes, twenty minutes ago." His smile showcases the scar I awarded him our first meeting. "Elder Banks has been yelling at his poor secretary for the past ten minutes to find you."
I suppress a sigh. "That man is an old coot. He said fifteen hundred."
Ryder coos, as I push past, "Give Banks my love!"
Banks' office is small, full of colored rocks and useless bobbles. I manage to suppress my scowl at one glass bird colored in resistance red. He sits across from me, made solidly of mass that was once muscle. His shock of brown hair is as greasy as his black mustache. The smell of spirits linger between us.
He begins to speak and I work to keep a blank expression. He stutters on about the newest Grind. This one will be a woman, near my age. Banks instructs me to her training personally. I have never before done private training, preferring to teach in group format. The surprise must show on my features.
He shifts. "She is important to the President."
It is an explanation that might soothe any other. President Paylor is the glue of the New Order. His image has overtaken what Katniss once was- the spark of hope. I can't fathom why some woman's training would interest him. However, I am not like any other- I have learned the importance of asking questions first the hard way.
"What importance is she?"
"She's a tool to keep peace with the capitols."
A tool. Naturally, Banks would find the word acceptable. His power of manipulation is perhaps how he has rose so highly at Grinda. The man loves to pull strings. I often find myself imagining him stuffed into a puppeteer suit, plucking at each of our strings.
"What does training a girl have to do with politics?"
"She needs to be strong, capable. We need the Districts to like her."
I scowl. Another manipulation. Pluck. Pluck.
"There's one more thing I shoul-" Elder Banks is interrupted by a knock on the door. Moyra, his slender aid, sticks her head into the room. Her face is lined with anxiousness. "She's here, sir."
Banks nods and we make our way out of the small office. Each room in Grinda's base is coordinated with a different color than the last. This is to keep things orderly and to give structure, a trait adopted from 13's philosphy. We pass yellow, blue and purple, before we come to the green section. Banks enters ahead of me, making a production of the introductions.
"Soldier Hawthorne. Meet your new Grind." He motions toward the girl across from him. She is average height, no older than me. Her lips are tightly mashed together, as if she's just tasted something bad. Tufts of short pale hair stand in disarray, framing her face. The white hair seems to clash with her thick dark eyebrows.
She nods once, drawing attention to a glint on her left ear. Three gold hoops lie there, the last holds a stone the color of blood. No other color stands out on her. Her clothes are the color of soot and fit poorly.
Something about her stance seems wrong. Her face is made of sharp plains in her face and pale skin. Some blue ink peeks out from the sleeve of her wrist. Her look and the color of the tattoo snap together an easy realization. She is Capitol Blood.
So much time has passed since Banks has introduced us, I fail to realize the girl has said nothing. Silence stretches, and I feel hesitant to break it. "What's your name?"
Her mouth twists but the girl makes no indication she has heard me. Elder Banks lifts a hand as if to intercept. "We call her Vox."
He says it with such smugness I'm not sure It's true. Her eye's shift toward him. I try again.
"Where are you from?"
I'm sure she is about to say the Capitol but still no sound escapes her lips. Again, Banks supplies the answer i'm looking for. This time the spirits on his breath, burns my eyes. I ignore the bafoon.
"What's your fighting experience?"
The white-haired girl continues to stare toward me. Her eyes tilt down over my body, as if she is trying to remember some great detail. Her mouth settles into a line. She says nothing. My patience begins to wear.
"Answer the question."
"No experience." The Elder chuckles. "Start her at a full Grind level."
Her eye's are stuck at some spot on my jacket. The way her lips pucker together make her look a petulant child. She disapproves of something she has seen on my lapel and stupidly, I wish to swipe at the spot, feeling like a small child under her gaze. Anger sears my blood.
This spoiled girl probably ate off silver and anticipated The Games each year. Those in the Capitol looked forward to the games above all, loving each drop of blood which was shed. I imagine this girl among them, sheathed in some ridiculous bright smock with feathered up hair. My mind watches as she petulantly calls for tribute's blood. This girl is nothing.
Now angry, I snarl. "Is the girl too good to speak for herself?"
"She doesn't speak."
"Capitol brats are taught three languages." I admonish, somewhat bitterly. School was not a luxury many received in the outer Distritcs.
"Aye. And she probably knows more than three. Wont do much good, without a tongue. Vox here, is an Avox."
I stare stupidly, unable to process the words. An avox is are those who've were punished for rebelling before the resistance. It was a common practice and perhaps the most barbaric Capitol policies, second only to the Games. For a citizen's insolence, their tounges would be savagely cut out, rendering them speechless. Of course, this loss of words was only the physical aspect of the life of an Avox. The change in status required a severed connection with all former life. No citizen was to speak to an Avox unless giving an order. They merely became fixtures around us, individuals who had once used their voice unwisely, and now have no voice to give.
This girl is an Avox. Vox. It now made sense.
Capitol-born citizens are rarley the normal build for an Avox. In fact, I have never before heard of a capitol-born Avox. Capitol brats weren't known for their insolence or bravery. Loud looks and teenage debauchery were more their token. I look again at the girl. Her mashed lips have now formed some grimace-scowl.
"I see."
A slim cuff hangs around her left wrist. The band, like a communicator cuff, was created for convenience. Unlike Com cuffs, this band shines like the hoops in her ear. Small speakers line one side, distinguishing it.
Despite, the technology, she is silent. Is it faulty? I motion toward it. "What's wrong with her VCuff?"
"She refuses to use it." Banks supplies.
The cuff was created after the Resistance to mollify the Avox who sacrificed for the cause. It was built to detect vocal chord vibrations through an implanted chip. The signals pass down to the cuff and transform into words, spoken from a recorded voice.
"Who is she Banks."
"She's a daughter of the Capitol, as I'm sure you've surmised," he says vaguely. "And she is important to us."
Her lips pucker.
He leaves and the smell of spirits wafts slowly away as we stare at each other.
Sick of her silence, I bark out. "If you want to learn, you'll have to use the cuff. I wont be a mind bender."
She shrugs and I am convinced she is a true capitol brat. I step closer. "Use. Your. Cuff."
The girl stiffens as her eyes drop. A mechanical chime erupts from the speaker near her wrist. The words sounds wrong to my ears and I can't help but wonder if the program was designed to do so.
"Fine," it says.
I am satisfied. "What," I ask, thinking of Bank's ill humor, "would you like to be called?"
She meets my eyes and I notice for the first time, hers are quite large. They are the same brown as the forest floor back home. "Vox," the alien voice answers. I cannot fathom why she sticks to the name, but I say nothing.
"Fine. We'll start with endurance. Running is what saves lives. Its probably the hardest thing we do. It takes courage to run." I fight away memories of the past- the heat from the hospital on my back, the rocks digging into my boots. My stomach flips.
"Go change out of those clothes."
As she leaves, some image pops into my head of a girl. I fight it back and find I am unable to. It is in some other time, in some other place. The pale blonde walks ahead of me, framed by glass buildings and people dressed in color. It is in this memory, I watch as the fire burns her to nothing.