stillplaying | 12th Game [voice/action]

[There are some nights where she can't sleep. Can't fall asleep to begin with, can't stay asleep once she's there. The nightmares become too intense. She awakes crying, screaming, gasping for breath. Curled up in a ball, clutching her knees to her chest in as tight a fetal position as she can get. And alone. So very, very alone in the dark, dark room.

Those kinds of nights have grown more and more common since Peeta's departure, since her death. Even Buttercup's plaintive mewling in the night hasn't made it any better. The pain and fear doesn't fade. It lasts long, long into the morning on the nights she's unable to go back to sleep. Turns into another fitful nightmare otherwise.

In one short month, there's been a lot to think about. Too much to think about. She's been stuck here a year now. Seen various shifts and experiments. Fallen in love and then lost that love. Died. In the most recent shift, while she hadn't been forced to fall in love against her will, she had watched it happen, even observed it first hand in once case. All of it, more than anything, had made her think of Peeta.

Think and mourn until she thought that she would burst from all the heartache.

During the early morning, she awoke screaming, thrashing in her bed as her nightmares played Prim's death out for her again. Prim's death followed by that of Rue's. And Peeta's electrocution in the clock arena. How she had screamed and rushed forward, how he would have been dead if not for Finnick's quick thinking.

So, so many deaths. And all because of her.

As she moves about in the bed, screaming and crying, she knocks the journal down on the floor. Buttercup mews and she just screams again, a wordless, animal scream. Whimpering and sobbing, she does eventually come to her senses. Her body remains cocooned in the sheets as she reaches for the journal, face tear-stained and lost.

She misses him. Maybe more than that, she misses having someone to comfort her in the night when the memories get to be too much.]

Gale was right. [The words are whispered, an acknowledgment to words long past that she once overheard. It's never going to be about love for her. It'll only be about who will extend her longevity in the end. Who'll make her life easier to bear. And if Peeta's not here, how could it possibly be him?

She stares at the journal a few minutes more before clearing her voice and finally speaking, wiping away any lingering tears.]

I know that when you die here, they'll take things from you. And they'll change things during the shifts. Hijack you and alter your memories.

Can you get them to do that even outside a shift? How would you contact them? I-- I want them gone. The memories of Peeta being here. I don't want to miss him anymore, miss--

[Being in love. Being loved. But she doesn't know how to say that part aloud. She wishes for a brief moment she had kept some of that candy from the spa. The stuff that made her open up more. It'd make this all the more easier.]

Is there a magic? Please? Something, anything? I don't have much to offer, but I am a good hunter. I'll trade game and pelts. Anything you want.

I want to move on. I want to forget. And I don't know how else to do it. [Richard's advice comes to mind. She's already thrown herself in hunting, thrown herself in anything and everything she can think of to distract her. It hasn't worked. Not at all. So that leaves only the other thing he recommended: moving on.] He might never come back. I might never go back. I-- I don't want to be lonely anymore. I want to move on.

[With that, she closes the journal to go get dressed. Her hair is pulled back in a messy braid before she heads out. Not to hunt. Not today. Instead, she goes to the library. She has research to do.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Easier. Don't know about better. Trust me, there are plenty of things I want to forget or I wish hadn't happened.

But, in the long run, if they hadn't happened, I wouldn't be me.

Besides, the easy way makes a person lazy. Don't get me wrong, I like the easy way too, but it's the hard way that shows us who we are.

_{[ God that sounded philosophical for him. He was channeling Captain Pike right now and he knew it, and a part of him hated it, but... well, it was sort of sad, hearing someone as young as Katniss talk about things like this, want something like this. So he was going to play Captain Pike for a bit more. ]}

[He's not the first to say that were he to forget, he wouldn't be who he was if he forgot. To imply that much the same would apply to her. But she still doesn't like who she is. Has been. And that, she suspects, is where the differences between her and the others really stem.

Maybe if she actually liked herself, she might think otherwise about her desperate early morning pleas. But that's not the case at all. She sighs in frustration]

I already know who I am. [A girl that would kill in a heartbeat to survive. A girl good at being manipulated. A girl more than willing to lead others to their deaths. Not very nice, not very pretty, not really worth all this attention.] I don't like it.

Well, you can't change what you were, but you can change what you will be. That's how I look at it. I could have been some derelict, always throwing punches and ending up in jail. Could have. Now, I'm a Star Fleet Captain.

[A Star Fleet Captain. She thinks she vaguely remembers him mentioning something similar before. Something about spaceships and planets and all those strange things that she can't even imagine. For now, it's easier to presume that it's something like being a Captain in the Peacekeepers. Or some rank similar to that of Richard's army.

So he went from someone who could have been in jail to someone with some sort of authority. She tries comparing it to her own life and fails. There's nothing left for her to do. Nothing left that she wants to do aside from live her life in peace.]

There's nothing I want to do. I just want to be left alone.

So be left alone. It's called being a hermit and a social recluse. Go and keep thinking on things out in the woods, in a little hut. Keep thinking, and never do anything with those thoughts.

[She scowls at him. Does he really consider this helpful? Mocking her like this?

Because it's anything but. And it makes her want to reach through the journal and strike out at him. Punch him or shove him. Take all her fears and frustrations out on this man just for annoying her.]

Sounds better than talking to you.

_{[ Sometimes tough love is what you need. He doesn't particularly like being ass, but he spent a long time being angry. Not in the way Katniss is, and he won't pretend that, but he doesn't want to see a young girl spend her life angry and depressed either. Especially not here. ]}

Hey, all I'm saying is you have options, I just highlighted one of them for you.

[Really, she's not certain that she has much left to say. While maybe a part of her recognizes what it is that he's trying to do, she's not really in the mood to care. Not right now.

And so she scowls at him and shakes her head.]

You're right. I do.

[And with that, she closes the journal.]

12th Game [voice/action]

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