"She's corrupted" the woman said. "But not entirely so."
Somewhere between the lines, I had caught on. The "she" they spoke of was most definitely myself. I sank a little further onto the floor, wanting to cry at the woman's 'diagnosis', but knowing not to make a sound as I shouldn't have been listening from the outside.
"I'd just like to think her innocence was corrupted," she continued, seemingly very sure of herself. "However, you must understand what a complex girl we're dealing with. She might be way off, The Games have sharpened, maybe even simply just prompted her ability to see beauty in everything. But she isn't stable enough or determined enough to turn it into anything. And it makes you feel terribly bad for her, because she has so many layers to herself that she isn't revealing. It almost makes you forget that she's a murderer."
Upon hearing the very word I dreaded, I covered my ears and gritted my teeth, willing myself not to make a sound as I wasn't supposed to be listening to the conversation in the first place. I fell harder against the wall, trying to push my head far back into it, knowing the steel wouldn't budge.
The words of this woman who didn't know me, who couldn't possibly understand my ulterior motive, who didn't understand me in general, had dug deep, ringing in my ears and blurring my vision.
Murderer.
I always thought myself to be a lot of things, but I never thought I'd be sitting there, in the Capitol, next to the crack in the door as a meeting about my mental stability took place, tagging me a murderer. But what they were leaving out was that yeah, I was a murderer, but I murdered against my will.
That doesn't mean a thing to them, Acacia, it doesn't mean a thing to anyone. Fluff up the term all you want, Victor, warrior, fighter, survivor, at the end of the day, you're a murderer.
And no one has forgotten. Not even years later, as I sit before my television in this big, lonely house, which is beyond uninviting despite the amount of dusty throw pillows and faded dark wood furniture that had decorated it. I had long since stopped caring about the interior design of my house, which I could barely call a home at all.
President Snow is speaking. His words loud and strong. A thick black amongst crowds of candy-like color. "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."
My heartbeat picks up. Fear.
No one forgets. No one forgets a murderer, and no one forgives them, either.
The fear is overwhelming. The feeling hurts, strong and overbearing, threatening to take over every sense in my body. But not before I do as I have been doing for years since I saw my first pair of tributes die. I pull the syringe and vile from a pocket in my boot, remove the warning plastic and the cap from the syringe. I stick it through the tiny hole in the cap, with expertise and watch as the clear, harmless-looking liquid is drawn into the syringe. Then I place the empty vile down on the dusty coffee table before me, watching the dust pick up and swirl around. Without hesitation, I push the syringe into my arm, and push down on the end. I fall backward onto the couch and the last thing I see is the remaining dust from the coffee table swirl into a pattern. I close my eyes and imagine all else. A beach with blue water. Mountains decorated in snow-dusted evergreens. A young innocent girl stepping out of a crowd. And dark crimson blood decorating her hands.
Murderer.