stillplaying | 7th Game [action/voice]

[Action]

[The bakery is a mess. She never meant for it to end up that way. It just sort of happened. Flour covering hair and body, the smell of something burning from the kitchen, flecks of pink frosting teasing her cheeks. Peeta's normally presentable window displays are less than ideal; a poor attempt at recreating the alluring cakes that always caught her attention back in District Twelve. The frosting's melted from the summer heat on one that's sat out since Friday. Another is poorly covered with a grey color -- an attempt at mixing food dyes gone horribly wrong.

Ingredients for various baked goods have somehow escaped the kitchen, piled up on the counters, half covering the note cards Peeta had left for her. Cookbooks borrowed from the library lie open elsewhere, pages now far from pristine. Half baked pretzels stock the shelves along with burnt chocolate chip cookies. Deformed cheese breads and crumbled brownie bites still in their trays sit nearby. Even Buttercup, easily pleased by any free food, ignores the easy pickings.

She tried. She had tried so hard. Peeta had left her recipes. Had tried to teach her how to bake on lazy days when she was more content to spend time with him in the bakery than go about her own thing. It seems that every lesson has been forgotten. Any skill she might have had in the kitchen, utterly gone.

The rain pours outside as she plucks at the rock hard shortbread cookies she's recently retrieved from the oven, trying her best to peel them from the tray. It's a halfhearted effort as she leans her head against her hand and stares out the window. She'd rather be hunting. But it's been raining ever since Peeta left for his mission, raining so hard, all she's been able to do is check a couple of the traps in the river behind their house. And she had promised, hadn't she? Promised she'd look after the bakery?

Look how miserably she failed, the worry making it hard to breathe, harder to concentrate. Shouldn't he be back by now? Shouldn't he?

Every few minutes, she checks the journal for signs of life. Ignores Buttercup begging for real food. Glances at the door to see if Peeta's finally return. No luck. No luck at all. He's supposed to be back today. Why isn't he back yet?]

[Voice]

Why do you bother? [The words aren't meant to be recorded in the journal, but they are, anyway. It barely processes to Katniss that she's left it laying open, close enough to pick up any mutterings.] Going on these missions? Being a piece in their games?

It's stupid. This is all stupid.

[ooc: timed to after mission is over, when people start arriving home. but if you want to tag during -- feel free to have katniss in the bakery making a mess from friday on!

also, edit for warning of sexual content in the Peeta thread.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's true, but it doesn't solve the problem. Even when you head for the forest, the mountains, the beach. You're still trapped in an enclosure. Go too far and you're going to hit a wall eventually.

A giant cage is still a cage nonetheless...

And the missions are just a part of that.

[Aren't they? They might leave the cage, leave the arena, but they're still trapped. Still under the watchful eye of the Malnosso. And worse -- they could be killed on those missions.

Because even if the dead can come back, even if Rue was here and Cato and Clove presently are, dead is dead in her eyes. That one thing that you have to work so hard to avoid. To survive. Because if you die, you really do lose the game, don't you?]

That's always one way to look at it...

[And really not that far from the truth honestly...]

But here's another way: you can keep your self-respect, not play their "game", not really contribute anything. But at the end of the day... what did you really accomplish? Once you get sent home you'll forget you were ever here, and the time you spent in this place would be meaningless. You're not winning a prize just because you didn't do anything...

I mean-- look around you. This isn't a game, these are people. People who have sometimes had their lives toyed with for years. They don't care about pride, they want their presence here to mean something. Even if it's just saving a friends life on a mission or finding out more information about this world to share with others.

[He's telling this to her? Her, who saw children die for the sake of the entertainment of others. Her, who killed because there was no other way to not just win, but stay alive. A playing piece in so many games. In too many games.

Too many times.

She doesn't want her time here to mean anything. She just wants to survive. To make sure Peeta survives, too. And Haymitch and... well, now that Doyle's gone, too, there's not many more people she cares about.

Angrily:] I'd rather be left alone.

I'm sure most of us would rather be. Myself included...

[...]

I'm not really trying to say who is right or wrong here... I'm just trying to see things from some of the villagers point of view.

[Her tone softens a little. Not a lot, but some of the anger disappears, leaving just stubbornness and hardness instead. There's even a note of sadness in her voice.

She just doesn't get it.]

You're risking your life for people who don't care about you.

As uh... as terrible as this might sound I don't think a lot of people view it that way.

No one here really sees death as a permanent thing. I guess they figure if they die, they will be brought back to life. Not them whole selves but... still alive nonetheless.

[Even if she's seen it herself, she doesn't believe it. People dying and coming back. It doesn't work like that. And it doesn't last. Rue was here, alive and well, but it didn't last. She disappeared. Went back to being dead.

And even if you do come back, if you lose something of yourself, that's just as bad. It's too, too much like hijacking.]

I don't like it.