Eternal
A/N: Beta'd by the lovely WiseGirl1999. I don't own anything but my insanity.
Most of the time, she doesn't mind those quiet evenings basked in soft, yellow candlelight when the electricity goes out. Candlelight gave everything an ethereal glow, as if everything was just replaced with something from another world. It was just like from those stories her father used to tell her little sister, where people were always happy and smiling. It is at these times, with her sister playing with her hair in the partial darkness, and their father humming a soft tune, that Katniss feels free to think and to wonder about new, and better, tomorrows. Where there are no people whose lives depend on hurting others. Where there is no cruel, insatiable hunger for violence. Where there is no poverty and judgement based on social status. Where there is only infinite happiness.
Katniss hopes she can find such a better world one day, as even in her childish mind she knows that her life now isn't well. She knows danger looms and leers around every corner. But, the 11-year old still dreams for love. Just look at her parents! Look how happy they are, and that's just because they have each other for support and motivation to keep on surviving. Not living, not really, no. Not while the threat of death and starvation is there every single day of their lives.
She is at least wise enough not to voice these wistful thoughts aloud. Either the government will come shoot her for treason, because apparently she would be saying that the government is bad, in a 'veiled comment' (at least that's what her father once said), or she would be lectured by her mother for thinking of useless things that won't ever help her in the future and that she should focus on more important things, such as school.
One particular evening, however, she does mention her thoughts, for she hopes to hear from her father that, yes, she has the right to hope. And she waits for the response, whatever it may be.
But she is not met with a soft smile from her father, or an exasperated look from her mother, or not even simple sweet silence. No. She is met with the loud crack of a gunshot, breaking through the unusual peacefulness of the Seam. And then there are several more after that and people scream.
Her father immediately jumps up, and heatedly whispers instructions to a confused Primrose and Katniss, and their startled mother. They move to the cramped bedroom and sit quietly in the darkness. She hears the front door burst open, hears her father tell her and her sister to run, but all she really hears is her pounding heart as she runs, and runs, and runs with her sister clutching her hand. But then she hears her sister cry and she stops, and she looks back, and she screams. She watched as her sister slipped limply to the ground, the front of her nightdress splattered red, before she broke out running. Running away from the gunshots, away from the screaming, away from her family.
It is that unassuming night that Katniss loses all of her hope. It is the next week, when she stands in front of three wooden boxes, in the grey wasteland of death and sadness, and weeps, that she stops to wonder at the world. It is when she is sent to the communal home that she forgets how to love, and how it feels to be loved by another. It is when she relives that fateful night while she sleeps that she loses the lingering remains of thoughts of better tomorrows and infinite happiness. She becomes a shell of the cheerful, young girl she was before, and she stops to speak, because what's the point if no one cares. She sees other kids play and laugh but she seizes to make noise. She doesn't scream when that cruel man hits her, or cries when other orphans tease her, or even laugh when that old drunk they have as a victor throws up on that barely tolerable escort's wig on Reaping Day. She has become a cynical, unhappy person who feels so guilty for living when her family couldn't. That she didn't try hard enough. But really, what could she have done?
She now hates candlelight, because it symbolises the end of her bliss.
But she does go on. She doesn't have companionship or love or need for survival, but she does go on. Although she has no will to live, she has no hope, something wills her to keep on going, just maybe for a little longer. She goes on for four, five years when it comes. Her new tomorrow has arrived. And it is in the form of a blue-eyed, blond, blushing boy and (most) of his family.
A/N: Reviews are love y'all.
