I can smell it.
That sickly scent which haunts my conscious and unconscious thoughts, slithering into my brain, finding ways through the cracks of the solid walls I have put up around my mind.
Around my soul.
I used to love flowers, their beauty, in my eyes only outshined by the ethereal grace of the sea.
The sea is a force of nature. Never to be controlled, capable of both giving life and taking it away, tearing apart hopes and dreams and loved ones. As a girl from District Four, I had been taught to fear the ocean.
But always to respect it, care for it, love it.
Until I won the Hunger Games I thought that the beauty in flowers, unlike the sea, was pure, untouched, innocent. After all, how could such a delicate, beautiful thing provide anything but the joy someone feels as they gaze upon it?
And as I look back on my thoughts from years ago, I wonder how I could have been so naive. How could I have thought that in the cruel, unforgiving world I call home that anything could not be destroyed and corrupted by darkness.
The envelope I hold tightly in my hands smells of roses. Years ago, when I was at the innocent age of sixteen, confident that with only four slips in the reaping bowl I couldn't possibly be chosen... the smell of roses had brought my nothing but happiness.
Now whenever I smell roses, I cant breath. I can't think. My mind is taken over by darkness, memories of terrible, terrible things that I had been forced to do for the safety of my family...
And for what? Even with all my efforts, my father and older brother had been murdered anyway, reducing my mother to hopelessness, staring at everything with dead eyes. And my sister, my sweet, energetic little sister...
She hardly ever spoke anymore. She was shy, kept her head down, and I know she is afraid.
What happened to my brother and father could easily happen to her, after all. But I would give my life and soul to make sure that doesn't happen.
I don't think I could take that happening again.
My father was killed when I refused to do what Snow asked of me right at the beginning of... everything. I didn't understand that his threats weren't empty. They weren't hollow promises, meant only to instill fear in me. I still remember the body-freezing terror I had felt at the realization flooding through my mind as my sobbing mother told me over the phone that my father had been crushed underneath a collapsed building.
Apparently, the Peacekeepers had failed to notice the "weak foundation." They came to my house in Victor's Village to give their condolences.
It was all I could do to not slam the door in their faces.
My brother was killed when I missed an appointment because I was trying to keep my sweet, young tribute from starving to death. I had managed to charm enough sponsors to send her a small meal. I knew it was worth it, I would face the repercussions for my actions, but this innocent little girl would have just a little bit higher chance of survival.
She died the next day.
And later, as I lay slumped on the couch with silent tears streaming down my eyes, my sister called and told my that my brother had drowned after being caught on his boat in a storm.
How odd, seeing as my brother made it his number one goal to never go on a boat, despite living in a district where over half the jobs were spend on the sea.
My sister knew this, of course, but the phones were bugged and there wasn't much she could safely say to me. We cried together.
Theo was afraid of the water. Sadie and I had mercilessly teased him about it, loved how his cheeks darkened in embarrassment when we mentioned his little phobia.
We never would have said a word if we knew that eventually water would be the cause of his death.
Because while he didn't die on a boat, he was killed by water.
The day after Theo died, I came home to District Four, and found a bucket laying on my bed.
I connected the dots pretty easily. I do not lack for intuition.
That was the bucket they used to drown my brother.
I burned it, stomped on the ashes, threw them into the ocean.
I screamed curses at Snow, at the Capital, at the world.
It didn't make me feel any better.
It didn't bring back my brother or my father.
It didn't fill the gaping hole left in my soul.
The only thing standing between me and letting myself slip away and join my brother and father...
was Finnick Odair.