Katniss Everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stillplaying) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
itinere2015-09-19 11:31 am
stillplaying) wrote in itinere2015-09-19 11:31 am
[open] deep in the meadow, under the willow
[Warnings for murder, violence, and suicide.]
She doesn't think twice about the nightmares that haunt her at night. Rarely a night passes where her dreams are even the slightest bit decent. They're almost always bad. Almost always, her dreams are comprised of a horrible mix of memories and what-ifs of everything that she's ever lived through. Tonight is no different. Why should it be?
Tonight, she's back in the arena. She's in the arena but it's not the forest or the clock arenas in her memories. Instead this arena takes place beneath the streets of the Capitol. She finds herself trapped in the sewers that had cost so many people their lives when she had thought to play assassin. It's the 76th Hunger Games. She and Finnick had joked about that. Joked that they had found themselves within the new Games as they had raced their way through the city. She's not surprised that it's come to past. It's only a matter of time. Always only a matter of time until her life falls apart again.
She hears the lizard mutts' hisses echo in the caverns. The sound of explosions occurring every now and then. But drip, drip, drip of the water from one of the empty pipes and the foul smell that reminds her of blood and roses rather than actual sewage. It overwhelms her, threatens to make her give up and curl into a ball and sob until the nightmare is over. She doesn't have any weapons to her name. She lost her bow a while ago as she had scrambled up a ladder to escape another tribute. A tribute that had looked too much like her father rather than a nameless boy or girl from another District.
It's like that with all the Tributes. Every face is one she's recognized. One she loves. Rather than killing children to stay alive, she has to kill the very people that she'd sacrifice everything for. Her father, Peeta, Gale, Rue, Madge, Finnick, Cinna, Prim... The list goes on and on. She's done her best to hide from them all. Keep her distance so she doesn't have to see the faces of the living and of the dead. Running and hiding hasn't been nearly as successful as she hoped. They keep knowing where to find her, one big Career pack desperate for the hunt.
And though she's tried again and again to take her own life, she never seems to die.
She doesn't think twice about the nightmares that haunt her at night. Rarely a night passes where her dreams are even the slightest bit decent. They're almost always bad. Almost always, her dreams are comprised of a horrible mix of memories and what-ifs of everything that she's ever lived through. Tonight is no different. Why should it be?
Tonight, she's back in the arena. She's in the arena but it's not the forest or the clock arenas in her memories. Instead this arena takes place beneath the streets of the Capitol. She finds herself trapped in the sewers that had cost so many people their lives when she had thought to play assassin. It's the 76th Hunger Games. She and Finnick had joked about that. Joked that they had found themselves within the new Games as they had raced their way through the city. She's not surprised that it's come to past. It's only a matter of time. Always only a matter of time until her life falls apart again.
She hears the lizard mutts' hisses echo in the caverns. The sound of explosions occurring every now and then. But drip, drip, drip of the water from one of the empty pipes and the foul smell that reminds her of blood and roses rather than actual sewage. It overwhelms her, threatens to make her give up and curl into a ball and sob until the nightmare is over. She doesn't have any weapons to her name. She lost her bow a while ago as she had scrambled up a ladder to escape another tribute. A tribute that had looked too much like her father rather than a nameless boy or girl from another District.
It's like that with all the Tributes. Every face is one she's recognized. One she loves. Rather than killing children to stay alive, she has to kill the very people that she'd sacrifice everything for. Her father, Peeta, Gale, Rue, Madge, Finnick, Cinna, Prim... The list goes on and on. She's done her best to hide from them all. Keep her distance so she doesn't have to see the faces of the living and of the dead. Running and hiding hasn't been nearly as successful as she hoped. They keep knowing where to find her, one big Career pack desperate for the hunt.
And though she's tried again and again to take her own life, she never seems to die.