Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.


a little bit

He's back. It's like the whole District is a little bit brighter, her nightmares a bit dimmer, the screams a bit softer. She watches him move into his house in the Victors' Village with boxes and furniture and everything else a person has wherever they live. She meanders across the lawn, standing there, just looking.

She can tell he's not happy. It's in his eyes and in the way his shoulders hunch and the way he doesn't always hear when someone calls his name. She wishes she could help. Could tell him it'll get better after a while, only that would be a lie. Because it won't.

He notices her and fixes her with such a penetrating stare that eventually she runs back to her own house, and his eyes remind her only too well of another boy from a distant nightmare, and maybe nothing's any brighter after all.