Spotlight

We watch every year. We see you die. We see you win. We bet and cheer on our favorites. It's called the Hunger Games. It is a game to us.

Many of us thought it wasn't real, that at the end, all of the competitors went home to their families.

We didn't know how much it hurt you.

We didn't know.

We promise.

You don't believe us. You never do, just like we never believed you when you tried to talk.

It is this disbelief that is our enemy - everyone's enemy. We cannot get along because we blame each other instead of working together.

We're sorry.

It's too late now, but we are.

Sorry for the pain. Sorry for our ignorance. Sorry that we didn't care. Sorry that we never spared you a thought in the hiatus. Sorry that we thought you stupid and ignorant.

We see now that we were wrong.

You are smart. You are brave. You are strong. You are creative.

We have lost these things, or twisted them.

The pressure we put on you has turned you into diamonds. We are just fat lumps of coal.

Worthless, like we thought you were.

When we see our own children in the Games, we understand. We are glued to our seats, horrified. We do not want to watch now. It is too real, too close, like it was for you all those years.

But we cannot look away, as you could not when it was yours.

You cheer on the deaths of our children. Not all of you, but enough.

You breed the hatred that put us here. You blame us all for the sins of a few. We understand. We did the same, for generations, without knowing.

You do not understand, as we did not, that you are dooming yourselves to repeat the past, unless amends can be made.

We must forge a treaty. Accept each other. Rebuild our broken country and begin anew.

It is not possible while the Games rage on.

In the quiet of after, we are all horrified, you and us alike.

We all cry, or stand stoic.

We are all in shock.

How could we have done this to ourselves? We all wonder it. Some are loathe to admit it. But every one of us is complicit. We have all contributed to the fall. To the horror. And now we must forgive, forget, move on.

We all know that is easier said than done.

When we are old, and you are old, and most everyone now alive does not remember Before, we tell them. We tell them the whole ugly story.

They weep. They do not understand the evil that was in our hearts. The evil of indifference.

You and we are glad. That means that we, united at last, have taught our children and grandchildren what we were not.

Indifference, not our differences, is the greatest enemy of all.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference." ― Elie Wiesel

This chapter wasn't planned, but I wanted it to be said. I wanted to really capture the Capitol citizens as a whole, and first-person-plural came a lot easier than anything else.

Thank you so much for sticking with this fic until the end.