Beetee - Working in Silence

by xen0n

Another short Beetee fic, this time an insert into Mockingjay where Beetee has thrown himself into his work designing and building weapons in order to temporarily avoid focusing on his recent loss.

Working in Silence

I've been moving between various design rooms and the weapons factory for months now, the constant workload probably being the sole thing keeping me functioning. Ever since we made our desperate escape from the arena and arrived in District 13, I've thrown myself into my work – research, design and ongoing refinement of 13's arsenal of weaponry to wage war against the Capitol. There has been no time to sit and properly grieve for the fallen, even Wiress, and I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by avoiding the issue.

The design and creation of any technology, even weapons of mass destruction, has always managed to focus me, to direct and channel all my resources in a single objective. Whenever I needed an escape while growing up in District 3 and during the hard times after I returned as a 'victor' from my games, I could find a measure of solace in throwing myself completely into my work.

I don't think the same is true of Gale though – often, I catch him glaring off into the middle distance, nothing but anger and thoughts of vengeance running through his mind. I really don't think it's a healthy way to be but I can't think of a way to approach the subject with him. He has a keen mind, especially when it comes to pitching creative ideas for new weaponry, but I worry about the factors that drive him. I don't feel that he's driven by a need to create or to refine a design so much as he feels a strong need to hit back at the Capitol in the strongest and bloodiest way possible.

Despite our different reasons for being here, it is nice to be working with someone again. I'd never fully considered how much I'd miss working with Wiress by my side and, now that she'd been cruelly felled, I could only lament what might have been and try to keep thoughts of what I, what we'd, lost out of my mind. Every time I felt the darkness descending upon me, I'd force myself to refocus my attention on the task at hand. I didn't want it to be a mission of vengeance for the loss of Wiress but often it was truly hard to keep such thoughts at bay. It's hard to keep a rational head when designing devices that are capable of leveling a city block or that are intended to inflict as much bloodshed as possible on a group of people.

I tell myself that it will all be worthwhile in the end, when the Capitol falls. All the loss of life, all the destruction, all the potential wasted – and personally, the loss of a close companion and kindred spirit.