For The Hunger Games: Fanfic Style III. Luckily the prompts were optional because I didn't use them.


Drip. Drip. Drip.

The rain leaks through the cracked stone. Little puddles form in the craters of the crumbling, filthy floor. I could see myself in them if I wanted to.

I don't.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The chill reaches through these prison bars like invisible decaying hands beckoning for me. I can feel them take hold of my throat, my voice, my lungs. The Dementors never truly leave me. Not really.

Drip. Drip…

Drip.

The night you left, I think I heard your heart break. It was gentle, so subtle, not an explosive shattering, but glass merely cracking. It broke slowly out from the center, and then suddenly, you were gone.

You bore your burden quietly, and I didn't know then that when you called me love, you really meant goodbye. But looking back, I know I heard it. I heard the pulse quicken and then slow. Heard the war drum, placed a hand over your heart and felt its fists beating in protest against a cage of bone designed to keep people like me out. It makes me sick to think that, at the time, I took it as a compliment.

If I'd known your death grip for what it was… If I'd seen the hurricane in your eyes, what could I have done?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I'm sorry I wasn't enough for you, Reg. Sorry you felt like you had to go. Sorry I still call your name sometimes when the Dementors come back around.

You see, there was a time when you were my happy memory. There was a time when they would have sucked the life out of me and your image would no longer come to mind at all, and yet, I find myself back in that courtroom and it's all fog and shadow, and I hear my father's voice, but I see only your face in the mist. You. The boy who taught me how to love so desperately. Tell me, did I hold on too tight? Did I strangle you? You could have told me, you know.

I see you wave goodbye with a trembling hand and then you smile. You smile at me the way you did after the first time we kissed in the courtyard with your broomstick over your shoulder. Remember you taught me how to fly? Yes, you taught me that too. It seems the only things worth knowing I learned from you.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

And here comes the ice. It crawls down the bars and spreads across these stones like a spider web of frost. They won't take me just yet. They aren't allowed. I've wondered though… I've wondered what a soul might taste like. I wonder if it's bitter or sweet. Or both.

I bet mine tastes like you.