(Mayor Undersee)
District 12 is dying.
Madge wasn't wrong when she claimed the people were still being slaughtered even if it was happening slowly. We are the Coal District, and coal is not something we can use to bring aide to the starving. The scattered goats and pigs and the carefully saved for the winter odds and ends that were scraped out of the pitiful little attempts at gardens are not enough to sustain a District that deals only in coal.
We have been cut off from the things that are shipped in on the Capitol trains (which is pretty much everything). There are reasons above and beyond simplicity of classification that the Capitol confines each District to a specific industry. We quite literally need them. Without the flow of traffic of the goods that they allow from one District to another, we cannot take care of ourselves. All it takes is a combination of delays and cancellations of shipments to bring us to our knees. They wouldn't have even needed the extra Peacekeepers.
It is part of my paperwork in my capacity as mayor to sign off on each death certificate for a citizen of District 12. The Peacekeepers bring them already filled in with whatever cause of death they feel will reflect best on the official District record. They do not determine a cause of death; they do not investigate. They decide. We can't escape Capitol directives - not even when we die.
I dutifully sign my name knowing full well that the words like "sudden illness" and "exposure" cover for other answers - answers that are not allowed to be. (I wonder, at times, who it is they are actually lying to with their forms that no one believes.) I read the name of each person who passes. I know the story (both official and the real one that I have learned to piece together from reading between the lines) of every child whose name is passed across my desk. The names come more quickly with every passing week.
I find myself wondering (morbidly) when it is that they will have decided that they have won. This can't be to curb the unrest in the other Districts - most of their residents will never know of anything that happens in 12. Is there a percentage that they are looking to thin our numbers by? Is there a set point of suffering that they wish us to reach? Do they want District 12 to survive at all?
What would they do with an empty District? They may have decided to forego having 13, but can they really do completely without coal? Will they bring in settlers to take our place? Will they find an alternative that allows us to remain a barren place - a newer reminder to the others not to challenge them (even unintentionally)?
At first glance, the District we starved to death doesn't seem to carry the same sort of factor for intimidation as the District we bombed into oblivion. I imagine most of the residents of most of the Districts have at least a passing acquaintance with the concept of starvation. It's easy to get a little bit callous and think that the idea of someone starving is the lesser of the two when you are comparing the fear of them both. It's when you can't get away from it; it's when you are still reading the names in your sleep that it seems a more terrifying proposition than the quicker end that they chose to provide to 13.
What will they do next time (and one look at my daughter tells me that a next time will always come back around)? In fifty years or two hundred when someone messes up their Games? In three generations or five when someone stands up and says no more? Will it be District 11's turn to be sacrificed? 10? 9? 8? Until they've dwindled down to nothing with nothing left to hold?
District 12 is dying, and my wife is dying as well. She knows. Madge knows. I know. None of us say it out loud. We don't need to say the words. We don't need to acknowledge the inevitable. None of us want to waste her lucid moments talking about things that we cannot change. She is becoming less lucid with every passing day. I am losing her at the point that I am the most lost when it comes to taking care of our daughter on my own. I don't know what to hope for anymore - whether she rallies enough that some semblance of her remains with Madge and myself until the end or whether to hope that she continues to sink so that she is spared the realities around us.
Which do I want more? Her comfort or our child's? Some days that answer is easy. Some days I'm no longer sure. I should be used to missing her. Our life together has always been riddled with holes when she couldn't be present with us. There have always been the times that she was lost in her own head with the pain and the things that haunt her. I shouldn't be so unready to do without her entirely. All those years should have gotten me ready, but they didn't. They just made me rely on the times that she was really, truly with us even more.
It may not matter; the entire District may go with her. We may not have to do without her presence, Madge and I. One wrong move, one wrong sentence, or one wrong choice might have a Peacekeeper ushering us on our way. I wish that I could be sure that wouldn't happen to Madge, but I no longer exist in a world where I can make guarantees. There is no sensible rhyme or reason any longer. They could kill her to punish me because the District they are so angry with is my responsibility. They could kill her to punish Katniss because two socially isolated little girls found their way to a lunch table together so long ago. They could kill her for no reason at all - because she's a part of the Districts and the Districts are all under their control.
(Hazelle)
My oldest would brand me a traitor if he knew what went through my mind when we first realized that the fence was being powered full time. I was relieved. It was one burden taken off of my shoulders. I couldn't bring myself to think of it in any other way.
I may mourn for Gale that his feeling of being trapped is complete. I may sympathize with Rory that his dreams of things settling down and him spending days in the woods with his brother are crushed. I may miss the help that the land on the other side has offered my family over the years. I may even allow myself an internal flinch at just one more move from the Capitol designed to tell us how helpless to resist them we are.
I am still relieved.
They may think that they have done something extra to crack down on the "lawlessness" of District 12. They may think that they have masterminded some crushing blow to the ones who breached the fence in the first place. Maybe they have. I'm not of the mindset to notice.
All I can think of is how relieved I am.
Gale has not ventured beyond the fence since he was caught with the turkey by the new Head Peacekeeper. He hasn't been back since that man whipped him in the square. First, it was because he was too unwell. Then, it was because it was too dangerous. He couldn't get caught again. There is something in my child that is enamored with the woods and the freedom that it offers. He wasn't meant to live his life in a cage. But, as much as he loves the woods and all that they offer him, he loves his brothers and his sister more.
So, he stayed away from the woods. To get caught again was for us to lose him completely, and he wasn't going to risk that. The mines may be awful with pay that is meager, but he goes and faces it for them. He would not take a chance on leaving them behind without his contribution to their care. It was difficult, and there were days when it wasn't enough. He resisted the temptation of the woods because it still wasn't worth what would happen if they didn't have him at all.
Then, Rory came home and announced that he had taken out tesserae. My Gale broke in that moment. I saw it in his eyes. He thinks he failed him. He thinks that he let Rory down. Gale hates to fail nearly as much as he hates change. The goal of his life was to protect his siblings from the choices that he had to make. I see the admiration in Rory's gaze even if Gale can only see the anger. He's too broken right now to see that Rory isn't angry at him. He's angry at a lot of things, but his older brother isn't one of them.
He is angry that it didn't work. He is angry that Gale doesn't think of him as grown up enough to help do what Gale has always done. He is angry that he knows I don't approve of his decision. He is angry that he is still "one of the children" when he so desperately wants to be one of the adults. But, he isn't angry at me, and he isn't angry at Gale. He only wants to be allowed to help.
Gale is too enmeshed in guilt to see anything but that there is anger, and he believes that it is directed at him no matter what I say. He tends toward brooding, my Gale, and there is only so much that I can do with a brooder until he is ready to listen. I've dealt with a few in my time.
Just because he isn't listening doesn't mean that I am not listening. I hear the things that he mutters. I hear the thoughts that escape in undertones from his lips. I know what he is thinking. He is telling himself that he was being selfish. He is telling himself that he should have taken the risk. He is telling himself that he would have been careful, that he wouldn't have gotten caught, that he could have kept going to the woods and saved Rory the extra slips. He is telling himself that every time Posy or Vick or Rory go to bed hungry is another sign that he failed.
He's wrong. He didn't fail them. I would have tried to my last breath, but I don't think I could have kept them alive on my own. There were years and years and years where Gale was the difference that kept them alive, and it kills me inside that he can't see beyond the way things are now.
He didn't bring the Peacekeepers down on us. He didn't ruin the Parcel Day shipments. He didn't burn down the Hob or change the conditions of the mines or make the tesserae rations worthless. None of this is his doing, and he couldn't have stopped it. He's been angry at the Capitol for years, and I know he'll go back to being angry at the Capitol again - when his head clears, when he isn't so caught up in being angry at himself.
It's what he'll do in the time before his head clears that I'm worried about. It's what chances he might take and what risks he'll decide aren't that risky that keep me watching him so closely. I've been afraid that he'll decide to go. I've been afraid that he will be caught.
That's why I'm relieved. That's why I can think of nothing but how much better I feel when I find out that the fence will stay on all the time. They've taken away his temptation. They've taken away the chance that he'll do something desperate. They've cleared his head for him; he just hasn't realized it yet.
