All Fall Down

Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games. That belongs to Suzanne Collins. It is on my Christmas wish list, though… Well, on the list that I'll never get. On that list, there is also the ability to fly and a magic wand.

A/N: Happy holidays, everyone! Not that this story is happy…

My first thought is that of the fire. It is around me, a sort of strange inferno amid the blood-stained snow piles of the square. Fire. It consumes everything in its path. It scorches life. It burns. It reduces forests to cinders. It reduces villages to ashes. And, before my very eyes, it reduces my sister to dust.

My name has just passed her lips when the bomb explodes. She doesn't even seem to notice, though only for a split second. For a moment after the fire breaks out once again, Prim is still shouting my name, smiling in that way only she can. Then, her face suddenly contorts with the awful realization that she is on fire. And, at that second in time, I feel as though all the rivers and seas on our dreadful planet are aflame. Then I'm on the ground, my fingers digging through the white-stained-crimson of the ice crystals beneath me. I am on auto-pilot; it takes me a while to realize what I am doing. That's when I realize that I'm looking for flowers. I want to sing Prim to sleep, like I did Rue, and cover her in wildflowers. But of course, there are no flowers beneath the snow. There is only blood and tears. That is the foundation of the world. A world that is breaking before me.

A strange song seems to twist its way into my head. They told us once that it was a song from some place long ago. They said it was about a sickness, something called the Black Death. To be quite honest, that doesn't sound too bad to me now. The words override my very being. I am the song. The song is me. My mission is to get to the flowers, the ones that do not exist.

-Ring around the rosy,

They were both rosies. Rue. A lone flower stuck in the ring of the arena, forced to bow down to the cruel, unbending winds. Made to stand in the dead of winter and face the frost. Knowing that a frozen flower is a dead one. Prim. My sister. A flower on fire, burning, burning, burning, burning to cinders and ash. It seems that someone is intent on making her die, on destroying all of her chances of survival, burning up her seeds. Who? Who hates flowers so much? The Capitol? Gale? As Mayor Undersee put it, "What does it matter?" He's dead now, too. Just like the flowers of our world… My fingers twist deeper into the snow. Rue. Prim. It's all the same thing. Flowers and snow; only one of these things exists here. Guess which.

-Pocket full of posies,

I want to fill my pocket with posies. Unfortunately, that isn't one of my options. Not here. Not now. I had flowers in my pocket, so to speak, when Rue died. But there are none now. Not under the snowy world that Snow controls, not above it. Hell, I haven't even got a pocket, unless you count the one in which I have the nightlock pill. Is that what the poem means? Is it like the "Hanging Tree?" I would gladly take the pill now. But I have got to find a flower. Even one would be enough. I could tuck it behind my sister's ear. I just need a flower to remember her by. With Rue, there were the wildflowers. Every time that I now see a wildflower, I think of her. I need a flower for Prim. If only there were evening primroses beneath this royal carpet of white…

-Ashes, Ashes,

Around me, there are ashes. Ashes of a world that I used to think I knew. But in my world, this did not happen. It got no worse than the Hunger Games. I had volunteered. And here she is, dying. The very thing that I would have given my whole life to stop is happening before my very eyes. There is no longer talk of the odds. The Games have begun, but there are no odds now. They have turned to cinders. They are ashes, nothing more, like everything else. We have burned, so has the Capitol, and so has everything we held dear. Three words exist; 'death,' 'inferno,' and 'ashes.' I can see a fireball racing towards me, falling from the sky like some deadly rainstorm. I remember when it rained, really rained, when the sky opened its sorrowful eyes and cried. I remember Prim's face, as we watched the lightning split the sky, watched the water falling from the endless grey of the heavens. It was…content. I'd come home from my Games, the first ones, and nothing else mattered. Let the sky split, let the clouds play out their drum roll. It didn't matter.

I wish for rain. I wish that the sky would take pity on us. It doesn't understand me. I never expected it to. Primroses and Rues, all transformed to ashes. Burning, burning, burning…

-We all fall down.

I think that someone has set fire to the rain. Meteors of Man shower down on us in the form of parachutes, exploding in an act of horrid violence. No one was willing to cease the fire, and now it burns. Peeta was right; we are going to destroy ourselves. How awful to see the fragility of the human race. It is like we are glass figurines. We are so easy to shatter, to break apart. It doesn't take much. Just a little push and we crash. It always has been this way. BOOM! and people shatter. BOOM! and our society shatters. BOOM! and our lives shatter. BOOM! and our world shatters.

I see fire flying towards me. I don't even want to move. The mockingjay will burn in a last act of defiance. But no longer is it defiance of our Capitol. It is defiance of war, of everyone who wanted us to fight. Of our society, because it caused this. It has, in the indirect sense, broken us. A ring of fire closes in on me. My fingers continue twisting into the melting white-stained-crimson, but they do not really try. Why should they? There is nothing there. Never was, never will be. Before me, my sister falls to the ground, just a pile of cinders. Her pyre is over; mine is about to begin. Just as the flames reach me, my lips form her name, but my mind forms other words. Four words, four syllables; it doesn't seem like much, but it is the truth. 'We all fall down.' Not for some noble reason. Because we do.