a/n [Written for Caesar's Palace Monthly Oneshot Challenge.]
If there was one thing my mother was good for, it was gardening. She could grow anything from acacias to wormwood, and she knew what each one stood for. It was a secret language that had fascinated me since she first spoke of it: the language of the flowers. We would steal away and hide in the shade of an oak tree, and slowly she taught me the symbolism of each flower she knew. I learned how buttercups symbolized riches, and how orange poppies meant imagination, while yellow ones were for success.
I hate to say it, but I became obsessed with flowers; a being so fragile and small I could crush it under my foot.
Eventually I came to my senses and grew out of it. Flowers were flowers, and I started refusing my mother's offers to go back to the tree. I watched her smile gradually fade away, and her eyes turn from a bright blue to a clouded gray. Bit by bit, the garden faded away, overcome with weeds. I thought nothing of it. Good, maybe she'll learn some sense, I told myself every time she walked past me with those haunted eyes. Though it crushed me, seeing her so broken inside.
She died only a few short months later from what I can only assume was heartbreak. The funeral we had was small; just me and my dad, who really couldn't care less, and my friend Marie, who was only there because I begged her to come.
I was devastated and guilt ridden, but what could I do? I had already killed her.
So for weeks I walked in circles around District Five, searching for the one flower I needed to place over her grave: something to mark where she lay, something to show that someone cared. Although the more circles I turned, the less I seemed to care.
Different voices in my head all shouted at once. Who cares what the flower symbolizes, just pick a pretty one and place it down!
She cares, I would whisper back.
I found it by the fence one evening. Crouching in the tall grass, hiding from the Peacekeepers who were stationed in huts every fifty feet or so, I watched the little bush of flowers sway back and forth with the breeze. The guards talked loudly to one another, yelling sometimes, their words slurring into one another. Drunk. It made me angry, for no reason at all, to see them laughing, having a good time. They had enough money, enough food, and happy families—though I doubted they cared. I was irrationally furious, so I took a risk.
I stood up in the open with my spine straight, my shoulders back, as I marched forward like I was supposed to be there. I walked right to the flowers unseen, picked a few, and turned around. A Peacekeeper, who must have been sober enough to sneak up on me, draped a heavy arm over my shoulders. He bent toward me, his beady eyes narrowing on mine, his breath reeking of alcohol. After a few moments of wondering if he could feel how fast my heart was beating, he turned around and walked away, mumbling something about the new night shift. I didn't give myself enough time to be thankful; I ran home.
The next day, I dropped the flowers onto her grave. Pink carnations: meaning I'll never forget you, always on my mind.
My mother always found negative emotions… well, negative. You could always count on her to be the most optimistic person in Panem. She never really saw the bad side of things, and if she did, then there was always a happy side.
When I was seven, I would always sneak onto our roof when I was supposed to be sleeping. I'd climb out of my window and land in a small heap on the ground outside. Then I'd tiptoe over to the wooden ladder that my dad kept propped up against the side of the house. The ladder was the worst part. It was covered in splinters, and only one side of it was actually touching the ground. I would go up it slowly, so slowly I hardly moved at all, but every night I made it to the top and would curl up in the small and frayed blanket that I had brought the first time I came up there. That's where I would spend most of the nights, waking up just in time to sneak back into my bed before my parents woke up.
The last night I went up there was the time the ladder finally fell. I kicked it with my foot as I climbed onto the roof, and it hit the ground hard, cracking in half. Surprisingly, fear wasn't the first thing I felt; it was sorrow. I sat up there and cried because I knew I'd never get to climb up there again. Then I was scared, because if I couldn't come up again, how was I supposed to get down? So I spent my last night on the roof curled up in my blanket and watched the stars. At dawn I got up with my blanket and jumped off the roof after just a moment's hesitation. I landed on my feet first, but then I tumbled forward, thrusting my hands in front of me to break the fall.
As soon as my hand hit the ground, I cried out. Pain shot up my arm, intense and persistent. I cried out again, this time trying to get my parents to wake up. It worked, and I didn't even think of the consequences of being on the roof at night or the broken ladder; I just thought that they'd make the pain go away. My mother probably knew of all the flowers that would help.
My dad held my wrist in his hands. Broken, he had said. Could flowers fix bones? No.
My mother came over to me, kissed my head, and wiped away my tears.
"It hurts, Mama," I whined.
"I know, baby, but at least you look better than the ladder," she replied.
My attention turned solely to the ladder. I never thought of that. My childlike brain was immediately worried for the pieces of splintering wood. My fault, I thought wearily. The ladder was like that because of me.
"Will it be all right?" I asked.
"Of course," my mother answered. She was lying of course. I never saw that ladder again. Then again, my mother used to be happy and cheerful, and she was always all right. And I'll never see her again, either.
The small pink petals seemed to glow against the dark dirt. The dirt, which covered my mother, encasing her in earth; a tomb that provided the very thing she loved so much. "You're welcome," I muttered. Then I left her and the flowers to their own demises and returned to the warmth and safety of my house. Only I didn't feel warm, and I sure as Hell wasn't safe.
—
The first thing I noticed about President Snow was the white rose pinned to his lapel. Roses were always the most interesting flower to me. There were eleven different possible colors I knew of and a different meaning for each, although white roses just confused me. They could mean so many different things, and none of the things were really that similar to each other at all. The second thing I noticed was how he couldn't care less about each of us as individuals. His eyes lit up at the mention of the Games, and the thought of our deaths, but when it came to each of us as individual people, he looked at us like we were toys.
I disliked him more when I saw the Careers. They were made by The Capitol; little devil spawns treated better and with more respect, less rules. Snow's order, of course, but surely there would be some contest to make sure those made into Careers were smart. I could baffle these guys any day. In fact, I already had. Since the beginning of this year's Hunger Games, I've been watching them. It all came together when I saw them use the boy from District Three. They were so dumb they needed someone else to be smart for them. Still he wasn't smart enough, apparently, and that was proven when they snapped his neck.
The Games were almost too easy. I got what I needed, I hid, I slept in the trees, and I spied. And I watched the Careers count on their fingers as they named off each tribute except for one. I was disappearing, dead before dying. Nothing. I didn't exist, so I could have what I wanted and no one bothered me. It was a good plan, so I stuck with it.
There were five of us left, and only one was a stupid Career. Two were the love struck kids from Twelve. One was Thresh, the only smart opponent from what I could tell. One was I, defying the odds I had stacked against my own self a while ago.
I could already feel the hunger eating away at me, filling my stomach with a sharp pain. It was then that I heard the boy. He was so loud he would have never been able to sneak onto his roof late at night to watch the stars. He'd wake up the whole district. It was too easy, and I couldn't help but feel that something was wrong.
I followed him all the way to the creek, his lover having ditched him for some peace and quiet. I wished I could do the same, but I needed food desperately, and the cheese I recently stole from their small stash was only just enough to dull the pain. The boy sauntered up to a bush with dark berries. Poisonous. I recoiled immediately from the area. He would kill himself being that oblivious. Someone needed to teach him to not eat things he wasn't sure of. I peeked back around to look at him again. Why wasn't he dead yet?
I watched him stand up and walk away, two handfuls of berries in his grasp. Once he was gone, I crept over to the bush. I played with a berry, rolling it between my fingers. Across the creek was a different bush, this one with flowers. I recognized it, but not from Five, only pictures my mother found in old medicinal books.
Hyssop: meaning sacrifice.
I walked through the shallow water and kneeled next to the bush, my fingers caressing the leaves. My other hand still held the berry; it seemed to laugh at me. In the distance, I could hear the girl frantically calling. He hadn't died, though. There wasn't a cannon. Would they realize the berries were poisonous if I died from them first? Was that the sacrifice the bush suggested?
No, it's a bush; it doesn't mean anything.
I don't know why I raised the berry to my lips. I like to think it was because I was doing it for a non-selfish reason, like to save the two lovers. Really, I was probably trying to escape being a victor, if I made it that far. This was an easy way to die, a painless one. And if I won, then I would never escape Snow's power. I'd always be stuck playing his games.
I know why I picked the flower, though. That was for my mother. She would know what it meant, even if no one else did. Using my last minute of life, I walked away from the creek. I didn't want to die on stone; I wanted to die on grass. I managed to get to a pine needle covered dirt ground when the flower slipped past my fingers and fell in slow motion, bouncing slightly when it hit the packed dirt. I watched it quietly, just standing in the open, under a canopy of dying trees. It was the last thing I ever saw.
White rose: meaning silence, innocence, wistfulness, virtue, purity, secrecy, reverence, humility.