AN: this chapter contains violence and mentions of suicide. Please do not read if it may trigger you.

District One Female: Alouette Mazarine Delmonte

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is wish I was still asleep, still locked within the safe, warm grasp of dreaming. The light that filters through my bedroom curtains only make my chest tighten with fear and anxiety about facing the day before me. But light is better than the darkness, because the darkness is when my demons feel free to surround me as though forming a metal box, the metal box. I swallow, closing my eyes halfway, trying to regain control of my mind. The room bends and blurs around me, soft pinks and blues melting together to create a relaxing and confusing collage. Things don't seem so real and difficult when their outlines are bended and refracted in this way.

There are prostitutes in this town. There are motherless children, starving bodies begging for food. Everywhere you turn, if you look hard enough, there are remnants of the war that concluded just a year ago now. And then there is me.

My path to the bathroom is difficult, the doors still not wide enough to encompass the wheelchair my father bought for me. Despite being the mayor of a wealthy district, we don't have the kind of money that allows us to completely redesign the house to make it safer for Minerva and me. Instead, once I'm up, everyone knows it. The wheelchair bangs against the walls gently, and I occasionally bump into door frames and various objects that are littered around the house.

"Ettie?" my mother's soft voice sounds from her bedroom as I pass. "Did you want to shower this morning?"

"Yes, mother," I reply, pausing at her cracked door. "Should I wait for you?"

"No, go on then," she calls. "I'll be along in a second."

I continue wheeling myself down the hall, entering the marble bathroom. The glass shower stands at one end, a special seat installed for me. We used to have a bathtub, but Father got rid of it a long time ago. He said it took up too much space and was old, but the rest of us knew he took it out because it reminded him too much Victoire, of the long, hot baths she used to take on Sunday nights. Her pampering time usually bled into the history lesson Mother was teaching, but no one truly minded. She was a hard person to get mad at.

I lean back against the chair as I wait, head touching the marble. If I try hard enough, I can imagine that I'm sinking into a world where I also am marble, a seamless part of the wall. Nothing around me exists, and nothing around me will hurt me. But I'm almost always jolted back to reality within seconds.

"Ready, darling?" Mother is in the bathroom, already fully and elegantly dressed, hair carefully swept up, nails polished and face impeccable. As I nod, she carefully wheels me away from the wall, to a place where I can easily see my reflection in the mirror. I wince. I look as though I haven't slept in weeks, which I suppose is, for the most part, true. Insomnia medication is no help.

She carefully pulls off my nightdress and then my underwear. It is now that I can truly get a good look at myself. The slashes and burns and cuts and two stumps I have for legs are often enough to send me into a tailspin, triggering screaming, memories of children in boxes and red hot knives and voiceless tormentors. Today however, I am strangely calm. I peer at the tattoo on my back. Crudely done by one of my captors, it depicts a fallen angel, one of the more violent rebel symbols, and it covers my shoulders to my waist.

My mother helps me into the seat in the shower, turning on the water. It is cool, rather than hot, and she always keeps the glass door open. She rubs honey lavender shampoo into my hair, her hands delicate and soothing. I close my eyes, but open them as she steps away briefly, searching for the conditioner among the countless bottles of hair product and potions.

The shower door slowly creeps shut.

And suddenly I. Can't. Breathe.

The world around me disappears. A metal box is all I see, not a glass shower door, and my feet are contorted and chained to my neck. I can feel my own acidic breath bouncing off the narrow iron walls that trap me but do nothing to muffle the screeches of pain and torment that echo through these halls.

The cold water suddenly becomes scalding, and it is not water but knives red with heat, slicing through the flesh of my legs and instantly cauterizing the wound. My mother's humming becomes cello music, the melody bouncing around in my head until it becomes the one I heard as They dragged me away from the concert hall, a simple trip to the bathroom turning into the ruination of my life.

"Alouette! Ettie!"

On some level, I can hear my mother's panicked voice, but her touch to me feels lethal, gloved, as though she's wearing a black hoodie and plans to add both physical and emotional scars. I can't respond to her, but I cry out for my sister as though we're both still locked away in that place, as though she's still alive.

"Victorie!" My own voice is cracked, like chapped lips that begin to bleed. I can barely hear it over the roar inside my mind. The roar grows louder, like a tidal wave nearing the shore, and I'm suddenly everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

-:-

"It happened again," I am lying on Bellamy's bed, and he is sitting on the floor, knees to chest. He regards me silently as I speak for the first time, breaking more than an hour of utterly comfortable silence. "The shower door closed. I called for her."

He nods slowly. Though he says nothing, I know he understands. He and the other handful of survivors are the only ones that truly understand the PTSD and the flashback and the losses and the scars.

All of us had influential, rich, Capitol loving parents. Though most captives were taken from the Capitol itself, Bellamy and I were the exceptions, born and raised in District One, the diamond district, luxury locale. The rebels tortured us and videotaped it, sending footage, sometimes live footage, to our parents and government officials, with demands for money and concessions from the Capitol. When I can, I like to think that the rebels who did that to us were a particularly violent sect of revolutionaries, driven by hunger and sadness and a need for more, rather than simple cruelty. It's nearly impossible to think like this everyday, however.

"Did you tell the others?" Bellamy asks finally. Out of the 40 children who were taken, only eight of us remain, each one with their own scars and stories. Carisa has no tongue, Pallas was whipped within an inch of her life, Ryker is missing all four limbs, Nathaniel had teeth pulled, Hermann still doesn't speak. My own sister's wild intelligence has all but disappeared. Bellamy lost his right arm to save my eyes.

"No," I say quietly, gazing at him. "I don't think I'm going to."

Out of all of the survivors, Bellamy and I understand each other best, better than even Minerva and I, despite her being my sister. He knows how to avoid my triggers, and I know how to manage his. His room is the only place I can sleep, and I often come here and just pass out, waking hours later with a blanket over me and Bellamy reading a book in the corner. He doesn't own anything black, because he knows it reminds me of Them. He is my legs when I need them, and I am his other arm.

"That makes sense."

"Yeah."

We fall silent again. Normally I would be asleep already, but today is not a normal day. Neither of us acknowledge it, however.

"What time do you have to leave?" He asks.

"Before eleven fifteen." I don't say why, and he doesn't inquire. We both know the reason we have to be ready and in the town square at twelve. I try not to think about it too much. It sounds like another form of torture.

I half close my eyes, allowing the room to bend around me, pretending once again that maybe, just maybe, I can sink into his wallpaper and become snow white and pale yellow, disappearing from the world around me and the worlds inside of me.

Before I know it, my eyes are drooping all the way closed, and I am left in soothing darkness, not the horrible sharp black that terrifies me so much.

"I'll wake you up then," Bellamy's voice is soft, and it's the last thing I hear before sinking into a dreamless sleep.

-:-

There are many things I regret in life. But perhaps my biggest regret is the inability to have saved my twin, to protect her, like a sister should. I touch my neck, staring into my vanity mirror and then down at the stumps I have for legs. They are smooth to the touch but look strangely textured and uneven, as though hacked off in a fit of rage, which, in a way, I suppose they were.

My reflection is hard for me to stare at, because it reminds me so strongly of Victoire. Fair skin, small, refined features, dark hair. After not sleeping for several nights, I look like her legless ghost.

-:-

"The video is live today, girls," the gruff voice of the captor dragging me and Victoire blindfolded down a dark hallway invades my ears, worming its way into my mind. Fear is like a parasite gnawing a hole in my heart. I can barely breathe, but try to stop trembling so hard, focusing my scattered and starved mind on staying strong for my sister, for the parents and government officials that are about to see us tortured.

I stumble and fall as the man holding us shoves us down onto the concrete floor, ripping off the blindfolds. My eyes squint, taking a moment to adjust to the bright lights, to the cameras and video recorders that surround Victoire and I on all side. We clasp hands, helping each other to our feet.

"What are you doing to us?" I intend to sound fierce, but my voice comes out small and weak and broken. Victoire nudges my arm, and we look up, staring at the ceiling, where two twin identical nooses are hanging. My heart drops in my chest.

"We're live in three… two… one…" the cameraman points a finger at us as the red light starts blinking. Two masked men drag two step ladders over to the nooses, forcing my twin and I to climb them.

"Please, please," Victoire is sobbing. She stares at the men, rather than the camera.

"That's good," a rebel says. "Keep that up." He turns to the camera as our necks are placed in the nooses. I close my dry eyes, my breathing shallow. I almost did it last night; killed myself, I mean, like Elena did just a week before. But I didn't, wanting to stay strong for my parents, for my sisters.

Maybe, I think, eyes closed. I'd be better off dead right now.

The rough rope cuts into my throat, irritating my dirty skin and slowly beginning to cut off my air flow. I have to stand on my tip toes to continue to breathe, and can't even look over at Victoire or at the camera. Below us, a rebel begins to speak.

"These two girls," he begins, "Twin daughters of Mayor Delmonte of District One, are about to die. They have suffered extreme torture, but have survived, and are now nearly their fourteenth birthdays."

Two years. It's been nearly two years.

"In order to save the lives of these young children, we, the patriots fighting for freedom from a tyrannical government, wish for an agreement to be drawn up in which the Capitol soldiers retreat from District Eight and allow us to gain their lost ground. You have twenty seconds to concede."

That's when the shouting begins. Fierce sobs and shouts from a tinny computer audio. I don't know what's happening. All I know is that it's getting harder and harder to breathe. My head pounds from a lack of oxygen, and my tied hands scrabble at nothing. When I can imagine my face turning a purple and blue patchwork, I'm suddenly alleviated from my pain. The rope is cut and I tumble onto the floor.

I cough. "Victoire," I mumble, turning my sore neck to find at my sister's body, eyes open, mouth agape, face blue.

"No," I mean to scream it, but my voice is too far gone, lacking oxygen, lungs crying still for air. "No!"

I hug her lifeless body tightly for a second before I'm ripped away from my sister, my twin and other half forever.

Of all the tortures I've endured, this is by far the worst. This is the one that breaks me.

-:-

My father drives me and Minerva to the town square, taking the back roads to ensure we avoid the masses of people commuting to where the reaping will be held. I hold my sister's hand as we drive, though she doesn't hold mine, her mind gone as she stares out the car window.

"There will be cameras," my father says quietly. "Will you two be okay?"

"I'll manage," I respond, though my insides clench at the thought.

There is no response from my sister.

"Minerva?" my father repeats, voice strangely gentle. Before all this happened, Minerva used to watch me practice my ballet steps, applauding constantly, even when I did something completely wrong. Now, she scarcely communicates with the outside world, trapped in her own head most of the time. Though two years older, we are both eligible for the reaping, her 17, and I 15.

"You know, video cameras actually use a light sensitive microchip called charge-coupled device that converts what the lense sees into numerical format. Each frame is… is…" Minerva's sudden outburst of knowledge ends, and she returns to staring out the window.

My father, who is normally so distant and unemotional, has to turn away, tears forming in his eyes. I reach out a hand before pulling it back.

"We'll be okay, Father," I whisper, and I know he knows I don't just mean in front of the cameras.

-:-

The Capitolite standing on the makeshift stage bares her teeth down at us before reciting the costs of the war. She is tall, in five inch heels, and from my seat in my wheelchair, is utterly intimidating. Fear clenches in my gut as I spot cameras, and it takes a good deal of counting and deep breaths before I can get my emotions under control.

Nothing, however, compares to the next moments.

"Alouette Delmonte!"

For the second time today, I can't breathe. I'm clawing at my throat, screaming silently and trying to fight the voices that shout in my mind when I feel hands on mine. Bellamy.

"Ettie," his voice fights through his own panic, calm and rational to my ears. "Ettie, you're safe. You're okay."

It's a lie, and he knows it, but the soothingness of his tone allows me mind to focus for a few moments. I breathe. I breathe again.

"Bellamy," my voice breaks, and his hands leave mine as peacekeepers gently escort him away.

"I know," he calls, his own voice cracking and shattering into a million pieces. "I know."

I am going to be tortured once more.

Hello! LOOOONG chapter here. Please read and review! I love you all!

Some questions lit yuh bet yuh

1) Favorite and least favorite things about Alouette?

2) Favorite tribute thus far?

3) Anything I can do to improve?

Y'all sum lit readers thanks!

xo Ethereal