a/n [For Brookie. For some reason I always write you things centered around stars.]
The city lights fade as the sun rises, and it amazes her how the bright the sky was lit up at night. She'd never known the exhilaration of gazing out the window in a tired haze and being met with oranges and pinks from skyscrapers instead of the midnight stars. It's so beautiful, and it shouldn't be, because this is the land of cold and darkness, not hopes and smiles.
She whispers goodnight to the sky, and when she sleeps, her dreams are filled with monsters and starlight.
(Is the correct response to weep or grin? She doesn't know. She doesn't know.)
It's the next afternoon, when they're sitting across from each other in white plush chairs—his eyes are too tired and hers are so bright—planning and strategizing for the interviews and Games to come, when she mentions it. She tells him how magical the Capitol is at night and how she wishes it would never end, and he smiles back with a quick nod of his head because she just has no idea of the darkness that lurks behind corners and jumps out at you when you've finally let down your guard. It's a horror that no one should ever know, especially not the girl who smiles so kindly.
"You don't love it." It's not a question because she can see the answer in his eyes.
But he answers, "I'd rather be at home," anyway, and that's just that.
So she talks about the ocean with him instead.
That night, after she'd answered Caesar's question about the Capitol with a story of lights, she looks out the window and her stomach churns. The lights are still bright and beautiful, but she remembers a time from years ago when her father pointed out the constellations to her and gave stories of each one—as a little girl her favorite was always that of Pegasus and she'd imagine to ride him over the moon in her dreams. She notices, now, that the city lights have swallowed the stars and cast them away from the sky. It's a terrible thing, a night sky without stars, because how else can you make wishes and sail north and find your way home?
(You can't. You can't. You can't.)
Her escape is in the main room, and the training center floor is extravagant and otherworldly, but if you sit in the couches you can't see the windows, so how would you know if the stars were visible or not?
(You can't know. So you pretend.)
It's there, curled under the comforter she dragged from her assigned room, that he walks in—he doesn't look perfect as usual, he just looks defeated. Behind him, the glass windows shine, and it hurts her eyes, because is it too much to ask to be back home already? She wants to wish to be home, but there's nothing to wish upon, so she turns back around to stare emptily at the wall again.
"What are you doing up?" He sounds defeated, too.
"Can't sleep," she says, but her answer doesn't cover half of it. She misses the moon pulling at the waves and saying hi to the stars and being kissed by the sun and—oh, she's never go to see it ever again, isn't she? Homesick, she thinks the word is.
(But, oh, darling, you're starsick.)