Dreamers Live to Die
I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
Published 2020.02.17
Edited: 2020.07.05 (lol sorry for the hiatus)
A/N: Starting here, this story will be rated M, alongside possible trigger warnings and/or explicit themes.
Warning: includes suicidal thoughts, adult language, thoughts of sexual activity (nothing actually happens don't worry), and possible mental health triggers (depression/anxiety)
"President Snow requests your presence," a mechanical voice hummed from outside the front door. It woke me up with a startling rolling off the couch. Last night's final Capitol victory party had been wild, only ending until the next day's - today's - sun peeked out from behind the mountains. Perhaps not sleeping during the entire train ride from twelve to the Capitol, knowing a part was going to be held in my honor, was a terribly mistake. My makeup had to be beyond smudged and dress akimbo, but I still opened the door to bark at whoever thought to wake me up before noon.
"Good morning," I hissed.
The man rose an eyebrow at my appearance. He was tall and extraordinarily blue. Blue hair, blue eyes, tinted blue skin, blue suit. If his name wasn't also blue related I'd eat a shoe. "President Snow requests your presence," he repeated. "I am your driver."
"Give me ten minutes," I said, then slammed the door in his face.
Ten minutes later, I emerged out my apartment wearing a shimmery gold dress, matching earrings, and somewhat combed back hair. If I wasn't so tired, I'd apologize to the man for rudely slamming a door in his face. It was a testament to my own fatigue did I not question why Snow would want to see me until I was well out the Victor's Spire and stumbling into his sleek black car.
He responded with, "I am nothing more than a driver."
"Do you have a name?"
He paused to look at me through the rear view mirror. "Indigo."
Ah, so I didn't have to eat a shoe.
He dropped me off in front of a grand restaurant in the center square of the city, near Snow's mansion. Someone outside the restaurant ushered me inside, away from the curious paparazzi snapping pictures as soon as I left the car. Inside, I was led into a private room by one of the waitstaff - a pretty brunette avox - where Snow dined alone, an empty seat across from him.
"Good morning," he greeted, wiping his puffy lips with a napkin. "What a wonderful party last night. I hope you're not too tired for brunch?"
I sat down and began piling food onto my plate. "Even after the feast, I still have quite an appetite. Growing girl and all that," I said with a laugh.
He stretched his lips in what might have been a smile, if his mouth wasn't so mutilated by all the poison. "Good, good. Very good. It's important to be healthy. For your fans."
"My fans are amazing," I gushed emptily. "I auctioned off my work last night at the party for two million - wonderful, right? - which is just amazing. I love their dedication to me."
He leaned forward. "Speaking of fans, one of yours is very adamant about meeting you. Quintius Bast was your strongest sponsor during your games. He's expecting a visit from you tonight at eight in his house."
I dropped my glass. Shards smashed against the ground and a few sliced shallow cuts around my foot. "I'm only thirteen," I managed to choke out.
Avoxes rushed out from hidden corners of the room to sweep away the glass shards. I numbly registered an unknown face lightly dabbing away the tiny blood drops around my big toe. Snow's soft words of attempted comfort - "he's enamored with your performance, nothing untoward" - floated into one ear and out the other. Adult comfort was only to be sought out between two adults, not an adult and a half-child half-dead monstrosity.
I don't quite remember what I said after that, but it must have been a satisfactory filler response because the rest of brunch was spent dizzy in my own thoughts and reflexively picking up little tidbits of unessential pleasantries.
Quintius Bast was a medium height man with an unusually bland, square jawed face in the throng of the Capitol. He wore extravagant glittery coatsuits, however, that negated any amount of normality to him. Without all the tell tale stretched out skin medically enhanced over his body, I'd place him at around fifty years old. Older than Haymitch. Older than my mother. Older than what my father would have been, if he had been able make it this far.
He rented out an entire rooftop garden for us. The lush green leaves smelled too artificial and chemical for any sort of comfort, for any distraction from the man who sat across from me on the stiff metal garden chairs.
Bast smelled so strongly of honey to the point where the little teacakes we snacked on had little comparable scent or flavor. It was thick, sickly sweet, and as fake as everything else in the Capitol.
His words were also as syrupy as his scent. He spoke with no pompous flair I'd grown to associate with the residents, but instead with long dragging vowels and a warm breathy undertone. "I do hope you're not thinking of removing your commendable battle scars," he said after we finished all our teacakes and pleasant greetings.
I stared at my fists curled up in my lap, flowy sleeves covering them both up to the fingertips so the burns didn't show. "Don't worry," I said, still pretending to be busy examining the little lace patterns in my sleeves. "I've grown fond of my 'battle scars.'"
It took all my willpower to not flinch when he dragged his chair up right next to mine, the scratching of metal legs against brick floor ringing in my ears distracting from the equally disorienting pain of feeling a heavy arm rest on my back. The syrupy honey intensified with rising goosebumps. Neon pink fake flowers, blooming little pockets of luminous grass in obsessively prim pot arrangements, the overbearing stench of honey, the ringing in my ears... I didn't realize I was holding my breath until my vision blurred and my throat started burning.
"I'm sorry," I said, before my throat could close up and release pitiful cracked noises.
He made little shushing noises, the sugary undercurrent of his breath against my ear. His arm wrapped around me suddenly felt warm and comforting, so I leaned against his shoulder and cried.
In the moment, he felt soft and safe. He felt like a nice adult rubbing soothing circles into my back as I cried over absolutely nothing and stained his expensive coat lapel with snot and salty tears. I hated him for being so comforting, but I hated myself even more when I gathered my senses after a few minutes and Bast continued to hold onto my limp body. Of course I knew he didn't actually care about me, only what I represented to him and what I would be in three years.
But he was there. He was someone who was honest with his intentions and knew exactly what he wanted without leading on. At the end of the allotted two hour meeting just grazing in the man made gardens soaking up sunlight, he kissed the top of my head and pressed a glittery diamond brooch into my hands. He was so there that I couldn't help but find silly comfort in the idea of him. A sick man and a sick girl.
Two weeks after returning home, when the snow finally began to recede and hordes of hail and slush replaced it, mom died.
It was an accident, they said. She made weekly rounds around the small mines at the far eastern border of the district, where the coal mine that killed so many of our men had recently been reopened. The lovely Hazelle Hawthorne loved donating loaves of bread to hungry workers, they said. And then something, maybe a squirrel, knocked down an oil drum supply canister onto her skirts. Embers from the miners' fire gallons spread from a sudden chilly breeze and then...
And then she burned alive.
"It was an accident."
They were the first words I heard when Gale and I stepped into the Hob to trade his game. He never stopped hunting, needing to provide the meat for the desperate people of twelve. He donated the money to his favorite vendors and probably slipped a little something to Katniss. I didn't really care what he did in his personal time, but today was a day where I accompanied him to the factory market for some economic flow using our money.
Our faces blanched to white when a few more haggard, slightly burnt people stumbled into the Hob's entryway.
"I'm sorry for your loss" was another popular sentence used by the people. Everyone knew our names and faces, Gale being the hunter and me a victor. Vendors and buyers alike turned their heads to hear the situation unfolding.
Mom died. Fire. Burned alive. Never stopped screaming until she was little more than charred bone.
I took off after Gale, who finally cleared his head from the shock of the news. At first, I thought he was darting towards the graveyard of a mine, but then he took a left turn and headed to the school.
In the mindless chaos, he dropped his game bag on the ground, but now wasn't the time to ask citizens to not raid at the free meat. Strangely enough, my mind still felt clear and collected. The world shone brightly with a resounding and surprising clarity. There was no angry red haze. No emotions. No tears. No nothing. Nonetheless, I ran to catch up to Gale to tell him I was heading home to get Posy.
He didn't say anything, just ran faster.
I was completely out of breath and my sides were hurting from the exertion, but at the sight of Posy sleeping in the babysitter's arms in the living room seemingly vanished all the pain.
Mrs. Cartwright was a thirty something year old woman with a daughter two years younger than I. Delilah or Delly or something. The first bout of emotion erupting through me was frantically reaching out for my sister, needing her in my arms as physical reassurance. Mrs. Cartwright deftly handed over the toddler.
"Is everything alright, dear?" She asked, curling a wisp of caramel blonde hair behind her ear.
"There was an accident," I told her in a steady monotonous tone. "She's... gone. Mom's dead. She's dead."
And then I broke down, the dam finally bursting open. Posy never woke during my fit of tears. She sighed calmly and hummed peacefully through her sleep, contrasting so heavily with the ugly sobs and snot running down my puffy red nose. Mrs. Cartwright never took my sister from my trembling arms, knowing that even with my weakening grip, I'd never ever drop her. Never hurt a hair on her head.
Because there was already too much hurt. Mom was gone. Dead. Away. In a better place, I wanted to imagine. Far, far away from the politics and games of Panem.
Away from President Snow.
"It was an accident."
No, it was not. I made a mistake and this was how I paid for it. Only because I came back to my senses with Bast did Snow spare my siblings.
The people of twelve loved mom. The first rich person to actually use their wealth for good. While twelve's first victor apparently died from a morphling addiction, Haymitch drank his days away, and I spent most of the day cooped up inside with paint fumes and splinters, mom became a productive member of society. She made her rounds around the town buying products, donating food baskets, and turning a blind eye to Gale's hunting habits. They loved her. They really did. So how could absolutely no one prevent her from burning away into a crisp?
Because Posy was only three years old, I didn't doubt that eventually, she'd forget what mom looked like. We had a few pictures on the living room mantelpieces of her and dad on their wedding day and a few more after, but it wouldn't be the same. Posy wouldn't be able to look at her pictures and associate the memory with the smell of fresh lavender, a sunny smile, and the warm tingly feeling of her embraces. The utter guilt from not being able to fully satisfy Snow's customer weighed heavily on mind as I meandered down the path to the eastern mine. The freezing air whipped my overgrown bangs into my eyes and chilled my extremities, but I gave all my body heat to my sister wrapped up in a shawl in my arms. My toes felt like ice in my slush soaked boots by the time I reached the scene of the crime.
The smell of burnt flesh hit my senses first. It was an awful, putrid thing that seeped into my nose and blindsided me for a full second. Before I could digest the image of a soot covered miner covering the black and red misshapen form on the dirt with a dusty white blanket, two men emerged from my sides and quickly blocked the view.
They said something about going home or that I shouldn't be there, but all I wanted to see was my mom. Hazelle Hawthorne. She felt more of a friend than a mom, considering we were about the same age, mentally. She worked to the bone providing for her family, and this was how the world treated her? Nothing but burnt flesh on the soggy ground. I called out her name several times, but the words rang empty yet disorienting in my head. And then Posy began to cry as the screams dried out in my throat. She didn't understand what was going on, but felt everyone's pain. I told the miners I wanted to see my mom, but then one of them scooped me up into their arms like a baby, Posy still wailing against my chest. The rest of the day was a blur of pain. Going home. Gale, Vick, and Rory sitting silently at the fireplace. Posy's endless tears triggering Vick's tears and Rory to quickly storm outside.
The next day was slightly better. Exhaustion cleared overnight from regretful sleep (thinking about how mom now sleeps forever), so the rushed funeral procession made underlying, mature emotions come to light.
Both our parents were dead. That made Gale the oldest. The mayor provided him with a medal of valor during the funeral, for now being responsible for our family, but he all but yanked it off and tossed it to the ground. Rory picked it up and placed the shiny metal into my skirt pocket. Gale and I were still thirteen. Thirteen and responsible for three kids, not including ourselves.
A dark part of my mind murmured how it was good I had been selected for the games and won. With the money, neither my twin nor I had to worry about providing food on the table anymore. We were devastated, but still would be able to head back home and cook a mouthwatering stew for dinner. What of the other kids? The other orphans? Ones whose parents died or could not otherwise work? Many people in our district suffered from undeniable loss, but we were the ones able to still mourn in relative silence, away in our rich home and bathtub of coins.
Maybe this was what mom had been getting at, making all those rounds around the town. Providing to the poor, the weak, the needy.
In the following days, all five of us cooped up inside, not talking. Rory spent a questionable amount of time throwing sticks and stones at the malformed seven foot tall oaks in the backyard. Posy wanted mom to sing her lullabies before sleep because she didn't understand what I meant by "gone." So instead I warbled out a few old songs from a lifetime ago to soothe her cries. She was old enough to not sleep in a crib anymore, and I didn't want to enter what used to be her and mom's room, so she slept against my chest in Gale's room. Everywhere in the house smelled of her lavender soap and warmth except for his bedroom, from the amount of stray pine needles and dirty outside boots with earthy undertones he brought into the room. We just kind of all dog-piled onto the queen sized bed, pretending everything was okay while the world crashed above us.
It was a strange thought that now thirteen year olds had to raise a three year old toddler. Our brothers were too old for us to parent them, but Gale and I couldn't just be siblings anymore. With our financial situation fixed until the day I myself kicked the bucket, we couldn't even be considered their caregiver. At best, we were role models, for Vick and Rory to look at the older, more mature person in the house and try to emulate them.
But who was I kidding? I was a terrible role model. Gale, while only six minutes older yet twenty years younger, was the better twin. He never killed anyone. Never killed innocent children. Went outside for more than ten minutes at a time. Actually successfully socialized with more than one peer at a time. Still went to school. Had more than one friend. Where did that leave me? The opposite of him. I couldn't raise my sister. I couldn't be the role model my brothers needed. All I did was win a stupid death battle by sacrificing my grip on sanity.
So I hired Mrs. Cartwright full time.
I was weak. I was supposed to be there for my siblings, not receding further into my mind. I felt ashamed that I paid some stranger, someone else's mother, to take care of my two eight year olds and toddler. Gale even sacrificed a lot of his hunting hours to raise our siblings, while I just increased my hours away from reality. In the studio, when Peeta's presence wasn't around to motivate me to whittle, I just sat in the corner next behind his canvas stands, feeling twitchy at odd noises that really couldn't be all there and having tears come and go for no apparent reason.
Peeta reduced his visits to every Sunday morning. Even though I enjoyed his presence, my heart clenched with dread whenever his time of arrival neared. Nervous. Afraid. Terrified that he'd come up to the studio, see the dirty skeleton of a person rocking on the floor humming a children's song and whittling hundreds of flowers, and then decide it was time for him to leave. One time I found my hands carving a hazel plant before realizing what I had done. All the strength had seeped out my limbs and I dropped the piece on the ground and sobbed uncontrollably. Peeta left the room - I feared for good - but came back a short time afterwards with a blanket and a mug of hot tea. He tried to say something all nicely, but his voice tuned out in my ears until all the tea disappeared from the mug.
I became eternally grateful of his patience and him willing to look over my lack of mental functionality for us to continue hanging out. The boy with the bread, my hero. Perhaps out of thanks for the money from our sale in the Capitol (he wore very smart, well tailored clothing now), but that didn't matter. He still came over and that was what mattered.
The last dregs of winter disappeared from the ground in April. Every night, I dreamed of seeing mom's charred body, the boy from eight's wide open eyes (were they blue? brown? green?) after his electrocution, a blanket of wool trapping my siblings to a golden trident during a lightning storm, and Quintius Bast's hot sugary breath on my neck. I barely slept, barely ate, barely went outside. I didn't like looking into the bathroom mirror to see protruding ribs and much too angular collar bones, so I did try to eat. Honestly. But meals never seemed appetizing anymore, even though my senses registered them as tasty.
And then when I floated down the stairs one awfully sunny morning, a great shock eclipsed.
A few boys sat around the kitchen counter, piling an assortment of pastries and egg dishes into their plates from a fancy glass multi-tiered server. They all appeared vaguely familiar, in the way that third cousins did. The brain recognized them from family photos and such, but never actually created the connection of relation.
"Hey, Blaire," Gale greeted, coming in from the living room with an armful of extra glass plates and a wiry teenage boy right behind him. His voice was tentative, as if he were speaking to a scared, injured animal.
I breezed through the kitchen, plucking a cheese danish from the table, ignoring the stock-still strangers. "What's going on?"
My voice felt light and whispery from having not spoken a great deal in the past months. Soft spoken. Girlish. Delicate.
My brother - when had he grown so tall? - stood awkwardly next to the open mouthed boy behind him. "It's May seventeenth, Blaire," he said.
The date seemed unfamiliar. Far off. Garish. Made no sense to have a spectacle about it.
"It's our birthday today. We're fourteen years old now."
Fourteen. Today we turned fourteen. May seventeenth. I nodded, not really understanding his words. Birthday. Our birthday? My birthday? I flitted back up the stairs, pastry in hand. I enjoyed the sensation of ghosting over the floorboards, feeling like a fairy with my light steps and noiseless walk. I thought about whittling a fairy, a miniature Tinkerbell, now, but someone stood in front of my studio, peering through the crack in the open door. One of Gale's friends he had over, I assumed. Because confrontation sounded much too energy consuming, I instead turned back to a different hallway, where my bedroom was.
The door creaked noisily open from weeks of disuse. A small layer of dust coated parts of the room, but that wasn't what made me feel so disconnected to it. Perhaps it was the unused bed, the clutter of unfolded clothes on the desk, the musty smell. But no - in my pounding heart, I knew it to be because I could barely recognize it. I hadn't been in here for more than a few minutes at a time ever since...
Ever since... when? I scrounged through my brain, conjuring up the times I had needed to enter my bedroom. Change of clothes? Gathering neglected hygiene materials? When?
I felt scared. Terrified, even. I raced to the adjacent bathroom before my breathing became louder, then drowned out the noise under a rush of the shower. The water scalded my scalp and skin, but the burn felt almost justified. When was the last time I had cared to shower? A week? Two weeks?
By the time my fingers pruned and everything felt squeaky clean and shiny, the date Gale mentioned rang true.
What day was it? May seventeenth. My birthday. Today was my birthday.
I pulled on a crisp new blouse, skirt, and thin stockings. My hair grazed the tops of my shoulders, so I found a pair of scarily sharp scissors in my bathroom and sheered the tips off, leaving the rest to spike out at just below my jawline. My bangs were also dragging annoyingly into my eyes, so they were pulled back in a puffy half ponytail with a bright turquoise ribbon that I couldn't recall ever buying.
Even though I looked better than I had for the last few months, my mind still raced chaotically. May seventeenth. Seventeenth of May. Birthday. My birthday.
I dropped the hairbrush, barely registering the clatter of wood meeting the bathroom floor tiles. "It's my birthday today," I croaked out to the mirror. "I'm fourteen."
The girl in the mirror was a stranger. Too thin, too pale, ugly purplish bruises under her eyes from a lack of sleep. Clothes practically hanging off her frame in a comedic manner. Wouldn't someone as rich as that girl be able to purchase clothes in her size? But they were her size, back when she bought them.
Registering that the girl in the mirror was, in fact, me was a hard pill to swallow. A year ago, back in the Seam, I looked better fed. Where did that put me? Last year, a thirteen year old bordering eighty five pounds. Right now, a fourteen year old who couldn't be anymore than seventy pounds.
I was sick.
Very sick.
What was this? Depression? Anxiety? Psychotic break? PTSD? All the above? Whatever it was, my physical health declined heavily ever since the moment Quintius touched me with his ice cold hands.
Running from my problems wouldn't solve anything, but at the moment, it appeared to be the best solution. I scarfed down the rest of my cheese danish laying on the cold, unused bed, more out of fear that if I forgot another meal I'd waste away into a skeleton than actual hunger. Downstairs, all the boys left, leaving only a scant few half eaten plates out by the sink. A melody of shouting and laughter echoed from the backyard. I laced up a pair of worn leather boots and strolled right out the front door.
The warmth of the summer sun radiated intensely. A fine layer of sweat beaded at my forehead, but it soon evaporated once I walked down to the Seam, to the meadow, under the wire fence, and reached the cool shade underneath blankets of tall pines and oaks. When was the last time I had gone past the fence into the forest? I couldn't remember.
Half forgotten trails and paths sprung back up in the haze of relearning everything. I plucked dry strips of bark and weathered vines along the way to the lake I yearned to visit again. My hands crafted two yards of strong braided rope by the time the lake became visible. This wasn't Katniss' foretold spot of safety, no, but I didn't care if this lake had empty concrete houses along its banks or not.
I stripped down to the nude and sank into the refreshing waters after the two hour walk. The lake hid behind huge craggy rocks and shaggy twenty foot tall willows, and I recalled the time when Gale and I first discovered it. During a climbing contest, to see who could climb the highest alongside the thick vines of the rocks. Naturally, I won, but a squirrel jumping from a tree right in front of me scared me senseless, so I dislodged my hands from their grip and flailed straight down the other side of the rocks. Gale had shouted in worry, knowing futilely no one else was around for miles, but I hadn't ended up injured. A little bruised, but I had ended up splashing into the shallow part of a water lily and cat tail infested lake. With my helpful instruction, Gale had ended up climbing over, too, and laughed at the amount of mud in my hair.
Little fish nipped my naked behind in the icy freshwater as I paddled around on my back. The sun heated up as the day dragged on, so I wove together a makeshift hat of sorts from water lettuce and loose reeds. I stripped down my rope from earlier to create a small net to carry gathered clovers from a little beyond the banks alongside a pleasant surprise of a patch of wild rhubarb growing just by the enclosing trees. Clover and rhubarb. Would make a nice pie.
I lazed the whole day away outside swimming in the lake, climbing dangerously tall trees, and gathering wild plants into my little net. Most of the edible plants out here tasted quite bitter, but the nostalgia of doing this with Gale when we were younger was just too much for me to ignore. The sun verged its end by the time I retraced my steps back to the meadow south of the Seam. Although tired, I had enough sense to hide the net of wild plants under my skirts passing through the district. The Peacekeepers, primarily the mildly likeable Darius, weren't the type of inflict typical punishments. They wanted the outside meat and wild plants as much as the rest of the people who shopped at the Hob did. But just dragging it out in plain sight? Not the smartest way to result in flagellation. Not the the head Peacekeeper Cray would bother with that, luckily. A vague memory of a new Peacekeeper after the seventy fourth games trickled into mind. What was his name? Some guy who caused a ruckus to Katniss' mind in the books, something about...
I stopped right before entering the iron wrought gateway to Victor's Village. Stopped. To think. That the new head Peacekeeper caused a ruckus in the district by whipping Gale. The first intense emotion I had felt in months other than sadness and depression: anger. Pure, unadultered anger. Justified madness. Someone was going to hurt my brother and oh, how was it described? Dozens of lashes, marring his back into ripped open, raw flesh. So painful the only medicine that could help him was morphling. Pain killers. Morphling, unlike most other painkillers, didn't have anti-inflammatory medicinal aid. The drug had only one purpose - to relive people of their pain. While an addiction caused serious cognitive blocks after a long enough use, the drug was otherwise rather harmless, if disorienting.
The sun poured out warm reds, soft oranges, and mellow pinks once I calmed myself enough to continue walking back home. I swung the door open, noticing the slight hum of people chatting inside. In the cozy dining room, lavender scented candles adorned the fireplace mantle. Gale and four unfamiliar boys - friends, perhaps - sat alongside a simple feast of tomato stews and meat pies. I set my net of plants down on the table, next to a pot of broth.
In the high of having had a lustrous day outside, I hummed the Happy Birthday song from Before as I took a seat besides one of Gale's smaller friends. He didn't look fourteen. He looked twelve, at most. And so did the one in front of me.
"Hello, Blaire," the one next to me said.
I smiled brightly. "Hello."
"Do you remember what day it is?" He spoke all calm and smooth in a practiced tone.
May seventeenth. "It's my birthday," I chirped. Birthday girl and birthday boy.
His smile wore an unusual amount of relief, as if he expected a different answer. I refused to frown thoughtfully, wanting to continue on with my good mood as long as possible.
Gale, off at the head of the table, chuckled. "She's humming her made-up birthday song from when we were younger."
The wiry teenager at his right with a head of dark curls and brownish olive skin gasped. "Oh! I remember - you sang that under your breath at school whenever someone told the class it was their birthday. Remember?"
Even if I squinted, the boy didn't look the slightest bit familiar. He noticed my silence. "Remember me? I'm Thom. We sat at the same table in school."
Thom. Thom? Not wanting to be rude, I nodded politely, not wanting to tell him I barely even recognized his name.
"And I'm Bristel," a tan boy with a close shaven head to Gale's left added. "I used to play hit the can with your brothers at recess time a lot."
That caught my attention. "My brothers? Where are my brothers?"
The table fell utterly silent. I stopped humming.
"Blaire," the boy to my right said carefully. "Do you remember me?"
"Of course she doesn't - she's been in loony town for the past few months!" Hissed out the one across the table.
The two boys were also twins. They had wild black curls, iron grey eyes, and golden olive skin. They also looked very much like Vick and Rory, if a bit older.
Vick and Rory.
My little brothers. They were... almost ten, by now?
The realization hit me like a bag of bricks. Instant shame fled through my system. I didn't want to apologize, say sorry, tell them everything was going to be alright. Because everything wasn't alright. For I hadn't been able to recognize Vick by my side and Rory across the table. I hadn't been able to recognize my own brothers.
Tears unwillingly leaked from my eyes and a small wail escaped my lips. I raced out the room, but not before I heard Vick mutter tiredly: "Maybe you're right."
I locked myself in my bedroom and slipped under the blankets. Throughout the spring, I had only rested in a small nook in my studio, under the window. Such comforts of a mattress and silky soft sheets, if dusty, felt unreal. Like I was swarmed in a fluffy cloud. But the soft sensations escaped me when I retraced the previous conversation in the dining room.
Vick. Rory.
Rory. Vick.
Brothers. My younger twin brothers. They looked so much older; so much more haunted.
Where did that leave the youngest? When was the last time I had seen Posy? Mrs. Cartwright? Where were they?
My anxiety crept up and built over what felt like an eternity but could only have been hours. The moon shone brightly through the windowpanes overlooking the bedroom and I stared at the dust molecules falling up and down through the pale light. And - without thinking - I slipped out of the all too consuming blankets and tiptoed downstairs and out the door. My bare feet crunched rough bits of dirt outside, but I ignored it in favor of what the little voice in my head ordered.
Haymitch's lights were never on - but then again, he never was awake long enough to justify using electricity - but I knew he'd be awake eventually, if not by now. Perhaps even before the rest of the town. He always woke up at around three a.m. for a starter drink. I quietly slipped into his house and heard the man groaning in his kitchen. Good. Maybe he'd sober up.
I didn't want to speak. To talk. To do anything but lay down and cry. Thus, I did the one thing I was best at - showing everything with my hands. I ripped off a ragged faded pink curtain off one of the front windows, hearing Haymitch startle with a shout. My wandering into his kitchen to the more livable lounge area made him stumble on after me to take a seat on the couch across from mine. He said something, but I paid no attention to his words and only to the three by six feet curtain. In almost meditative motions, my hands stripped off cords of fabric to braid a durable rope. Then, using the bare knowledge from ten minutes at the rope tying station from the Training Center all those months ago, I fastened it into a loose noose.
And then I looked up.
Haymitch sat still as a statue. His eyes zoomed in with intent on the noose tie for an uneasy few minutes before he broke the silence.
"Since when?" He said simply. A bottle of white liquor at his side settled gently onto the coffee table between us.
"Since..." I paused. Since when? Everything. All the time. Always. "Today's my birthday, did you know?"
His face showed no emotion.
"I didn't," I prattled on. "Gale told me this morning, at breakfast. He had a bunch of friends over, too. And they all just looked at me with of a mixture of pity and worry because... because I'm - I'm a mad one. The poor, mad girl from twelve. And I'm so far gone I can't even recognize what my little brothers look anymore! Who am I? Who are they? I don't know what's going on anymore. I just... I don't..."
He interrupted me by shifting the bottle to my direction. I grabbed it, took a whiff, then gulped down a long, burning drink. It was horrible, yet the woozy pain in my brain and throat was better to focus on than everything else.
"If you die, then what'll happen to your family?" Haymitch proposed, extending his arms over to table to snatch the drink out of my hands. He took a huge swig before continuing. "See it this way: a victor, unhappy with their success. The Capitol devastated over the tragedy. An angry president. An unlucky family, right there as the scapegoat and example."
"No," I refused. "It's not being rebellious against anyone. It's the want - no, the need - for freedom."
He sighed. "What happened to whittling, sweetheart?"
"There's a way, isn't there? To make it all stop?!" I demanded. "You and your stupid rebellion uprising isn't going to work if everyone dies in the end!"
I realized what I spilled out right before finishing the sentence. But I couldn't help it. After years of bottling everything up, it felt so natural to tell someone. Someone who would understand. A key player in the scheme of things.
He dropped his bottle to the ground, unknowingly letting dozens of shards of glass and sharp smelling liquid soak the carpet. "Blaire," he choked. "Repeat what you just said."
I thought of the Capitol forcing dad to work in unsafe conditions, resulting in his untimely death. Of mom's agonizing demise. Of my siblings going without a mother, without a sister. Of Gale's best friend's life going to be ruined by the games. Of the death of thousands. Of the entire district twelve being razed to the ground, leaving behind only a mass graveyard of broken in skulls and scurrying rats. Of Quintius Bast's hands rubbing gentle circles into my back when I so desperately wanted him to stop and continue at the same time. Of the disgusting things done to my body by the Capitol. Of the murder of twenty three innocent children every year, broadcasted on national television like sport. "To spark a rebellion, you need a flame. Find your flame. Until then, get the fuck over yourself you sorry little shit! Yeah, you've had it bad. So what?! If you're gonna be a bitch don't take it out on me, you coward."
And then I stormed out the house. Unbeknownst to my irrational self, I had left my noose in Haymitch's house without thinking. That was probably what saved me that day - utter rage.
The weeks following, I tried remedying the relationships with my family. Gale welcomed my mental return with open arms, saying everything ever so delicately in a forced casual tone, just as mom had done when I had returned home from the games. I made a point to eat every meal downstairs at the table next to at least one sibling. Posy spent a lot of time with Mrs. Cartwright and at the Cartwright home ("better suited environment, with other children her age," Gale said with a hint of sorrow), but she did welcome me with exciting fervor. It was like I had never left her. The twins were a more difficult story. They were old enough to understand why I was such an absent sister, but not mature enough to digest it and correlate it with my behavior. Vick still made an effort to know me again. Rory, however, shunned everything. I deserved his hatred. I deserved to be hated - I wasn't a good person. And he realized that fully.
It still hurt to see his brows furrow in my presence, though.
Mrs. Everdeen provided a list of special medicines that treated mental health. There were none in district twelve, but a special shipment from the Capitol came after a few calls (in my time during the victory tour, I had finally figured out the numbers to call for buying special items or other). The cost was hefty, but practically nothing could burn through the copious amounts of money under the Hawthorne name, anyway.
Life took a turn for the better as summer approached.
But then the seventieth games struck true.