06 - RED
Plenty of things make Indigo Arnett mad, but the Capitol above all else enrages her to the point of no return. The way the silvery towers scrape the heavens while the District people live in rotting tenements, the way the people paint their skin garish colors and revel in the bloodshed of the Games, the way they never face hunger or pain. There's plenty to despise about the gleaming metropolis in the clouds, and every rebel has different reasons for their never-ending hatred. For Indigo, there are exactly seven times the Capitol has made her so angry that she sees red and almost, almost spins out of control. Every time, she thinks she cannot hate them more than she already does.
Every time, she is wrong.
Her stylist clucks his tongue when he walks into the remake room, his eyes roving freely over her naked body. She shivers as he surveys her, and it isn't just from the cold. His stomach is large and jiggling, barely contained in his flowing maroon robe, and he wears a sculpted blood-red wig that gleams under the fluorescent lights. His eyes are hawkish and incising, and she can feel him quickly judging her body and her attractiveness as if she's an animal at the market. It makes her skin crawl, and she shudders at the feeling.
Finally, the man clucks his tongue again and shakes his head slowly. "Better than the boy, but barely. She's all skin and bones, can they never give me a tribute with at least a semblance of curves? No matter. We'll just give them the reserve costumes, and save my new idea for a pair that's more...enterprising."
"Yes, Attila," one of the prep teamers murmurs with adoration in her voice, but Indigo feels rage building within her as she stares at her blood-red stylist. As he walks out of the room, he doesn't bother to say goodbye or even look at her, having already dismissed her as dead. She knows she has little chance, but he's supposed to help her, and the flagrant lack of care about her fate makes her want to scream. He's ready to see her blood fly like all the others, ready to jeer at her when the arena or the other tributes claim her life. She's nothing to these people, she's useless, and if they're all so sure she's going to die, what makes her think she actually has a chance?
When Attila returns to zip her into a striped conductor's uniform, she almost punches him in the throat when he talks about her lack of an appealing figure. He bemonas her unremarkable face, and still she holds herself back. As she walks to the chariots, she feels the anger bubbling in her veins and she almost falls from the heady feeling. Her prep teamers keep her upright, though, and she says nothing. They all think she's going to die, and she's going to prove them wrong. She's going to do whatever it takes to prove them all wrong, anything. She promises it to herself as the chariots start moving and she rolls out onto the promenade, the anger swirling with the adrenaline as a million people scream for her and all the others that will be dead in a few weeks.
These creatures will regret underestimating Indigo Arnett, she swears it over and over as the sounds of the timpani overwhelm her and drown out every feeling expect for her unrelenting, red-hot anger.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Arnett," Coriolanus Snow purrs, his thin lips breaking into a cruel smile.
Indigo says nothing, staring right into Snow's snake-like eyes as hatred sears her every nerve. He's about the same age as her father, and she sees the same wickedness in both of them. He is dressed in a white suit with a red rose tucked in his breastpocket, and he smells faintly of flowery perfume and blood. This is the man that put her into an arena and made her kill five children and pretend that she actually enjoyed it. When he put the crown on her head during her coronation, his reptilian eyes glittered and his smirk made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her senses have been half blurred from the morphling drip she's been on since she emerged from the arena, and the shadows of her nightmares are still haunting her in every corner of the room. Yet they've kept her sober for hours now, and she knows it's because of this meeting. The President won't want her high and dazed while he speaks to her. The man narrows his eyes when she continues to remain silent, his harrowing gaze boring deep into Indigo's soul.
"Not even a hello? You Sixes are so unkind," the President chuckles, shaking his head slowly.
"Hello," Indigo whispers, biting her lip as she looks at the man that could kill her right now if he pleased. She knows she should be scared, but she's looked death right in the face and survived it a dozen times over. She feels hollow and empty now that she's won, and if this man kills her, well, it's just another death and more pain. Every murder in the arena was like a knife digging into her heart anyways. Still, she doesn't antagonize him, the survival instinct that helped her emerge from the arena Victorious making her hold her tongue.
"Good, you'll at least be civil with me," Snow nods with a small smile. "As your Mentors must have told you, a meeting with me is compulsory for every Victor after their Victory. You may have won the Games, but you are still under my control, and I have special uses for every one of my Victors, yourself included."
Her throat grows dry as she sees the intention in his eyes. No...she never thought...but...but Mercedes said it was mostly for the Careers. She isn't like the sensual girls from One and the hulking brutes from Two, no, no, no, no, he can't, hasn't she been through enough already?
"I'm not beautiful," Indigo gasps, feeling as if the world is collapsing on her as she thinks of the implications of his words. "I'm thin and ugly and broken, sir, please."
"I personally don't see the attraction, but certain close friends of mine seem to," Snow sighs tiredly, shrugging. "I see that you understand what I am speaking of, and you must also understand that this is not an offer you can refuse. If you choose to avoid your duties, there will be consequences, Ms. Arnett. However, I do also know you have no one in your life you care for. Your father is abusive, your mother is dead, and you have no friends. The only life I can threaten is your own, and I would never do that."
Indigo stares at Snow as he continues to speak with wide open eyes. Where is he going with this? The breath leaves her lungs as he stares at her, shaking his head again with the smirk still plastered on his face.
"You see, Ms. Arnett, I may not hold any power over you now. You are alone, and there is no one I can wipe out that will make you follow my bidding," Snow growls. "However, I intend to make sure that you remain alone forever, if you refuse my offer. Do you understand my meaning? No spouse, no children, no close friends. If you don't lend my friends your services, why...you'll have no one to share the bounties of your Victory with, Ms. Arnett. Wouldn't that be a shame?"
The words hit her like a wall of water, swallowing her and almost drowning her in their grasp. No spouse, no children, no close friends. Wouldn't that be a shame? She's never been the type of girl to dream of a husband and a bunch of little kids of her own, but...she always thought the option was there, if she found someone. And with a Victor's salary, she could certainly find someone if she wanted to. She understands what Snow means, though. No one in Six believes that Mercedes' high school boyfriend was part of a gang, and yet he was still hung in the city square when she was a little girl. Mercedes warned her that Snow was vicious, that he'd do anything to get what he wanted from her, but she never imagined that he would take away her whole future if she didn't follow his wishes. That he'd force her to be alone until she dies.
Snow stares at her frightened face like he's won, and suddenly the emotions inside of her shift. So what if she has to be alone? The only men who will marry a half-crazy Victor from Six are gold-diggers and con-men. Any of her children could still be swooped away into the Games. She's never been good at making friends either, not even decent. So what if she's alone forever? She's been alone her entire life. And before she can stop herself, the words come flooding out again, propelled by her spite towards this man who thinks he's pinned her into a corner.
"I won't let you use my body like it's a toy," Indigo snarls, her shoulders shaking in indignation. "I've been alone all my life. It'll be nothing new."
"Well then," Snow sighs after she finishes speaking, the glare he gives her betraying his anger despite the way his posture and voice are relaxed and carefree. "You have made your choice, it seems. You are excused, Ms. Arnett. Have a splendid evening."
Indigo can feel the venom dripping in his voice, and she can see the hatred in Snow's eyes as she walks out of his office. She's pleased that she's been able to get under his skin enough to make him bristle with indignation. She's just an insignificant, ugly little Victor from District Six, and she feels proud to have made Snow hate her even if it is for a deadly price. Soon, the pride fades into anger and sadness as it sinks in that she is going to be truly alone for the rest of her life, however long that is. No one will ever get to know her or love her or understand her. When she gets back to the apartment in the Tribute Hotel, she flings herself into Mercedes' arms and stays there without moving or speaking, and her Mentor just strokes her hair without even trying to ask her what went wrong.
When she walks into her new house in the Victor's Village a week later, there is a bouquet of red roses on the kitchen counter with a small note stamped with the Presidential seal. She picks it up with trembling fingers, the rage surging within her as she scans over the handwritten message.
Quite a shame that one girl gets six bedrooms to herself for the rest of her miserable years. Enjoy your new home, Ms. Arnett.
She can almost hear Snow purring the words in her ear as she throws the roses to the ground. The anger consumes her, and she screams as loud as she can as her vision swims and it truly sinks in that she is going to be alone for the rest of her life. She should feel sad, but she is just angry, and it makes her even madder that he has won, he will always win, and her words to him were inconsequential in the long run. She will be all alone, and he will still rule the country, and he won't even remember her name within a couple of years. The very idea makes her blood boil.
He sends her roses a half dozen times after that, each time she gets close to someone outside of the Victor's Village. She knows what they are, a threat, a reminder, and she cuts off contact with the stranger starting to enter her life. She burns each bouquet in her fireplace and screams into her pillow until the fury fades and she can breathe without losing it again. The rage still remains, though, the rage she feels about the fact that no one will ever love her like she's always wanted.
It is her second time Mentoring and she is desperate for sponsors. Her tribute is 17 years old and decently pretty with freckles and coppery red hair, but none of that matters because of what happened at the parade. Attila has gotten bold since Indigo's Victory, trying elaborate costumes in order to impress the Capitolites and bring him home another Victor so he gets promoted. She knew it would happen when she saw their outfits, the massive towers of scrap metal pulled from the wreckages of old hovercraft from the Dark Days. Art, Attila called it, ingenuity and innovation. He said it would bring the Capitolites flocking, that they would all salivate and open their purses for the two children dressed in the most avant-garde parade outfits to date.
At the parade, her tribute tumbled from the chariot due to the gigantic weight of the sculpture on her frail body, and the scrap metal sliced open her arm. She sobbed on the promenade, blood pooling around her, as the chariots kept rolling by and the entire Capitol shrieked with glee at her misfortune. She's the laughingstock of the country now, plastered on every TV screen and in every tabloid as "The Klutz of Six." Usually such exposure would be great; no Six tribute has earned this much airtime in the Pre-Games ever. But it's all negative, and it's even become sport to bet on if she'll fall from her platform or not in the opening minutes. The girl, Megan, hasn't left her room since the parade, skipping training out of pure shame and embarrassment. Indigo's convinced her to go to her Private Sessions, but beyond that the girl acts like she's already dead and sobs from dawn to dusk. Indigo can't blame her. It's all so terrible, and the way the Capitol treats her makes her veins course with rage. She won't give up on Megan, not yet. She's usually high more often than not, but after embarrassing herself in the Capitol last year being high the whole time, she refuses to make a fool of herself again and let her tribute down.
It might all be bad exposure now, but if Megan can manage to make it out of the Bloodbath, there might be enough shocked people who will start rooting for the Klutz of Six, the underdog of all underdogs. The Capitol loves a redemption storyline, and Indigo knows if she can cinch one or two key sponsors before the Games, she might be able to build enough of a following to get Megan far. She's new at the Mentoring business, but Mercedes has given her all her contacts, Capitolite citizens who root for Six every year and business tycoons looking to blow their hordes of cash. Most aren't interested in meeting with her; she's already an infamous morphling addict, and Megan is the clumsiest tribute in Games history according to Caesar and Claudius. However, there is one man who is willing to meet with her, one man who could help Megan come home.
Indigo takes deep breaths in her nose and out of her mouth like Greason taught her as the Games car pulls up to the fancy restaurant where she'll be meeting her potential sponsor. It's called Ramsey's, and it's private and for the upper crust only. It's perched in the highest reaches of the Capitolite mountains, with the expansive mansions where all the richest of Panem reside. Some of the more famous Careers even have houses here. She lets an Avox lead her out of the sleek black car and into the restaurant. Some of the patrons wave to her or ask for autographs, but already the attention towards her is starting to wane. She's an addict and plain and hates the spotlight, and the public is returning their attention to Career Victors. Everyone agrees one of them is going to win this year. Indigo doesn't think about that, she just thinks about the man she is going to meet and how she is going to convince him to become Megan's premier sponsor.
It isn't hard, really. They sit through a long meal of lamb stew and pickled radishes, and Indigo is worried because the man has gleaming rubies embedded in his cheeks and she doesn't know what they'll speak about. However, Herrod Knaughtley loves District Six to pieces and they have plenty to chat over. He grew up there, as his dad was the Capitol Liaison when he was born, and he fell in love with the city. He lived in the Carousel, of course, but it's still the city. He loves Six's Victors and tributes too, and they spend half of the dinner recounting Indigo's own Games. The memories flood into her mind, but she keeps them at bay, constantly thinking of Megan locked inside her hotel room and sobbing because she thinks she is going to die. She has to do this, for her.
She continues to think about Megan as Herrod leads her to his penthouse in the heart of the Capitol after their meal. Once they've shared an entire bottle of red wine, the rubies in his cheeks are glistening like droplets of wet blood as he tells her his offer. He murmurs that he'll sponsor Megan if Indigo takes off her top and puts on a ruby-encursted bra instead. Indigo refuses to think about what happened after that, although her body aches and the thought of rubies makes her nearly vomit in her mouth. All she thinks about as she is taken back to the Tribute Hotel is the signed sponsorship form tucked into her purse, and the fact that Megan might actually make it out alive if she follows the plan.
Megan does everything right when the gong rings for the 43rd Annual Hunger Games. She tries to run without any supplies and find a place to hide. However, the arena is a cruise ship in the middle of a lagoon. Popular sentiment begged for a new Career Victor to lust over, and the Gamemakers caved. There's nowhere to go unless you can swim, and Megan can't, Indigo knows that. The anger builds inside of her as Megan bleeds out on the deck of the cruise ship with a trident buried in her chest barely five minutes after the Games began. Her glassy eyes are full of fear and confusion, not knowing what to do in an arena that was designed for her to die in. Indigo's body shakes as she leaves the Control Center, but she keeps the rage inside.
When she gets to the Tribute Hotel, she receives a package from Herrod Knaughtley expressing his condolences over Megan and thanking her for their wonderful night. She hesitantly opens the package, already knowing what's going to be inside as she opens the cardboard flaps.
She throws the ruby-studded bra and panties from the roof of the Tribute Hotel and watches as they flutter dozens of stories to the ground, screaming obscenities as loudly as she can since no one but the security cameras can hear her from all the way up there.
"Don't do it Odele, don't do it, just hold out, please hold out."
She's talking to herself in the Control Center, her pleading voice making the other Mentors look at her worriedly, but she can't help herself. The arena this year is a giant shopping mall, and while her girl is one of the weakest she's ever had, it's an ideal arena for an Outlier. There's plenty of places to hide and an endless supply of food and water. Odele's made the Top Six, the farthest any of her tributes have gotten yet, but she's losing it. She's been hiding in a bookstore since the beginning of the Games, reading two or three novels a day and sleeping in the backroom. However, the door handle of the backroom has gotten jammed and broken off, so her tribute is trapped in there. As Odele wails and pounds her fists against the door and begs for anyone to help her, Indigo remembers her talking about her fears when they were strategizing in her bedroom the night before the Games. She knows Odele's biggest fear is claustrophobia, that being stuck in a tiny room is her worst nightmare. She knows the girl is half-crazy from her time in the arena even though she hasn't seen another tribute yet, and she knows what she is going to do the moment that Odele starts sifting through the brass shards of the shattered door handle with tears streaming down her face.
Indigo screams, loud and guttural, as Odele slashes her wrists. Her blood sprays across the white tile, and Odele gurgles and gasps and spasms. Greason and Mercedes are out trying to gather sponsors for Odele, but the Eights rush to Indigo. Organza and Woof's boy died an hour ago, and they both hold her and stroke her hair as she screams and screams and screams. She isn't particularly friends with either of them, but they know the weight that such a violent death has on a Mentor whose tribute is so close to the end. They hold her as she sobs and sobs, and then Mercedes arrives and carries her back to the Tribute Hotel. There, Indigo shoots a whole vial into her bloodstream and lets the morphling dreams carry her away from her terrifying reality.
When she returns to District Six, she's high as hell and unwilling to speak to anyone. Her front doorbell still rings, however, and on her doorstep is Odele's family. Her mother is a mess and her two younger sisters are shocked, not understanding how such a thing could happen. Indigo wants to tell them to go away, but instead she gives the girls muffins and introduces them to Greason's grandkids so they have someone to play with. She then talks to their mother on her back porch for hours. They cry together and hold each other, reliving their joint terror over what has happened to the little girl they both cared for. Odele's family visits almost every day after that, her little sisters eating muffins in Indigo's kitchen and her mother becoming the closest thing she's had to a friend outside of Mercedes and Greason in years.
Indigo receives a bouquet of red roses two weeks after the Games are over, and she knows it is Snow warning her to back away and let go of the family. She does, sending a final shipment of a month's worth of muffins to their home with a lovely note saying she can no longer visit them due to personal complications. It tears her apart, but she can't let them get hurt just because she craves the attention and company. She sends the shipment, and they never visit her again, a thing she is deeply happy about as it means they should be safe.
When Odele's family goes missing in the night two months later, Indigo knows it's not her fault, but it still makes her seethe and scream. She shoots up vial after vial of morphling, but nothing sends the pain away for long enough. She thinks of the little girls smearing dark red jam on their muffins, of Odele's mother sobbing about the nightmares of blood splashing across white tile. She screams that Snow decided to punish them for Odele's desperate plot to escape her demons when her family did nothing at all but cry for the little girl that they lost. Their disappearance is a reminder to everyone in Six that no one can escape the Capitol's little Games their own way. No one.
Indigo calls Snow choice names as she sobs in the bathtub the following night, knowing the bugs littered around her house will pick up the slurs. Yet nothing happens, even when the rage seeps from her bones bit by bit and she waits for the Peacekeepers to come and apprehend her. Instead of arresting her, Snow just sends her the shattered remains of a brass door handle, caked in dried blood. Indigo knows that whatever treasonous words she says, it won't matter, because Snow knows that Mentoring the Games is more of a punishment for her than death. She screams curses until her voice is gone and then almost overdoses on morphling, but it doesn't matter anyway because the anger is still hot and heavy in her veins and the Capitol has still won.
She's mad when Titus kills his own District partner, because he doesn't have to. Six isn't known for its loyalty, but he could at least let the thirteen year old go. She knows Jolie would never have won, but she still had hope maybe she'd be the one to finally come home. As Jolie struggles underneath the burly boy, dying from the slashes of his knives, Indigo sees something change in Titus's eyes, something that makes her believe something revolting is about to happen before it actually does.
When the first glob of Jolie's flesh touches Titus's lips, she's as outraged as everyone else in Panem with half a mind. And yet the Capitolites allow it, and why is anyone surprised about that? Of course they'd let something like this happen. They allow him to feast on Jolie's corpse and then several more, letting him slaughter and gnaw his way to the end. They laugh at it like the deaths of all the other kids, cheering him on as he slices up children and slurps up their guts. They're already fine with televised murder, of course they'll enjoy cannibalism too. It's just part of the show, it's all a big show to them, and they throw popcorn at the screen while people in the Districts weep at the defiled corpses of their children. There are marches in the Districts, and as the number of tributes dwindles, some of the more aware Capitolites call for him to be taken care of. Even Titus's own parents beg for it to end during the Top 8 interviews, pleading for the Capitol to destroy the monster that was once their son.
The Capitol finally takes him down with an avalanche when there's three tributes left, unwilling to let a cannibal sit on the Victor's throne although they've cheered for him the entire time. They love the murder and the gore and the drama, but they want a Victor to lust over. No one lusts over a boy who's sucked the marrow from other children's bones. He's just another discarded tool for the Capitol, another shocking turn in their favorite entertainment program that's run its course.
So many people are shocked that Titus was allowed to go on as long as he did, even a few in the Capitol, but Indigo isn't. She's known the Capitol is the center of all evil in the world for years, and she buries the sizzling rage with too many vials of morphling to count until she's so numb she can't even feel her own skin. She learned long ago the Capitol was full of monsters, and she also learned long ago that there's nothing in the world you can do to stop them. Everyone is powerless to stop the Capitol from doing what it wants, and Indigo decides to just drown out the world and stop dreaming that things will ever change.
It takes sixteen years for them to bring home another tribute, and it isn't even hers, but she can't be mad. Her tribute is fourteen and less than a hundred pounds sopping wet, and the fact she makes it out alive from the Bloodbath is a surprise to everyone. No one's surprised when the Careers hunt her down the next day, however, or when Indigo gets high for two days straight after her death. It's common knowledge to everyone by now that girls from Six don't do well in the Games, and that their Mentor gave up years ago trying to remain sober during her stay in the Capitol.
People are surprised by Six again, though, when the boy, named Dirk, keeps hiding and hiding as the Careers slaughter the other Outliers and then the girl from Four poisons the rest of the pack. The arena is a medieval village, and Dirk camouflages himself perfectly into the cobblestone streets and thatched huts, stealing food from the other tributes and going completely unnoticed. It's a fun game of hide and seek to watch, but everyone knows he will die in the end. Coralie has killed a half dozen tributes already, and Dirk will just be the last notch on her belt.
On the sixteenth day, it's over, the last three tributes being herded into the center of the village. As Coralie tortures the tiny girl from Three with her daggers, taking her sweet time in order to put on a show for the Capitol, Indigo watches Dirk slink from the shadows of the Horn with bated breath. He has no weapon except for a hunk of stone he's ripped from the road. She knows he's going to die, but the tears sting her eyes anyway because none of their tributes have ever gotten this close since her. Greason's hand is tight in hers, and he's sobbing already. It's been forty seven years for him, forty seven years without a boy coming home, and Dirk is so close but he's still going to die anyway. Indigo closes her eyes as Three's cannon booms and Coralie hears Dirk's shoes scuff on the cobblestones behind her. She doesn't need to see this, no way in hell does she need to see this.
She opens her eyes again when the trumpets are sounding and Greason starts screaming next to her, but it's not screams of terror, it's screams of joy. Over at the Four station, where all of their Victors have collected in anticipation of their newest addition, there are gasps and tears. Mags wails loudly as her best chance at Victory in over a decade lays dead in a pool of crimson blood, her head bashed in grotesquely. The lanky boy from Six stands over her, screaming madly as the bloody stone in his hand drops to the ground with a clatter and the trumpets keep singing their song. Greason is weeping, Indigo is weeping, and Mercedes bursts into the Control Center and wraps them both in a tight hug. One of their own has made it, and it doesn't even sink in as they link hands and walk together to the hospital to wait to see Dirk. One of their children has finally come back. Their little family of Victors has finally grown.
Over the following weeks, her joy and shock turns to fury and rage. It takes them a week to admit Dirk from the hospital, as he's so haunted from the Games that he can barely open his eyes without screaming in terror. They gingerly bring him home to Six, where the only thing that keeps him from screaming all day and night is a morphling drip or a heavy dose of sleeping pills. Indigo watches from her house as the boy loses his mind over and over every day that he wakes up, screeching and flailing as Mercedes and Greason fruitlessly try to help him. She trembles with rage at the fact that the Capitol has broken this boy so much that he can scarcely bare to be alive, that they have dared to hurt someone from her tiny little family this badly.
"You're going to regret this one," Indigo whispers to Snow with a dangerous edge in her voice even though she knows they stopped listening to her years ago, even though she knows there is nothing she can do to touch him or hurt him or even worry him. "You're going to regret hurting my family so, so much."
Beetee tells her that she'll be going into the arena a month before the Quell announcement, and she screams in the abandoned factory where the rebel messengers give her his letters. Dirk is beside her, too high to understand the impact of the words, but she understands. The Capitol is breaking their only promise to the Victors, that they will get to live their lives in peace without ever fearing the Hunger Games again. Snow has stepped too far this time, but she's believed for so long that her anger has nowhere to go and the Capitol will never fall, so she doesn't believe it will change anything. As she keeps reading, though, she feels optimism starting to snake its way back into her veins.
She screams in rage again after she finishes the letter because she has hope again, hope that the world might fix itself and the Games might end, and that's the most dangerous thing to have. It makes her angry because she knows the hope will lead to nothing but tragedy like it has all her life. She hasn't hoped for something like this for decades, even as she's intertwined herself with the rebel network. She's always been pessimistic, never expecting it to go anywhere, dabbling in the rebellion on the off chance the country implodes. But she feels the hope now, and it pounds through her veins clearer and faster than anger, making her begin to dream again of a world where she can burn the Capitol to the ground and show them that she is more than a broken old woman that they destroyed in their horrid Games.
When President Snow reads the Quarter Quell card aloud with a smug look on his face a month later, all of the red hot anger that has been bubbling inside Indigo for fifty long years solidifies. She melds it all together, lets all of her rage fuse until she is pulsing with energy, with utter hatred for the Capitol coursing through her body at a feverish pace. She lets it all run through her and then lets it dissipate, knowing that within the next couple of weeks, she will have a hand in finally bringing the Capitol down. All of the times the Capitol has made her scream or cry or shoot up morphling, it'll make up for all of it when the Girl on Fire brings Snow and his accomplices to their knees.
Six months later, Indigo arrives in the Capitol for the Third Quarter Quell. She doesn't feel anger or fear or shame or anxiety as she stares at the silvery city full of painted peacocks that don't know what's about to hit them. All of those feelings, long buried and long repressed, have merged with her hope to create something she has never truly felt before in her life.
She finally feels freedom, and she can't wait for the rest of Panem to feel it too.
A/N: Sorry this took a bit to come out but this chapter was just massive! I'm sorry if it's a lot to read or too much, but I just was writing this and I was on a roll. I had all these ideas of when the Capitol makes Indigo angry, and I really wanted to fill in the details of her life between the Games and why she was willing to die for the rebel cause in Catching Fire. I hope you enjoyed this despite it's length; next chapter we're going to be going through her first Games so that chapter's going to be long too and I hope you're excited! Thank you all for reading it means so much to me!