stillplaying | 12th Game [voice/action]

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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.]

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[He lifts a single finger to his bare throat, pressing the edge of a long nail to it - though not hard enough to break the skin - before slowly dragging it across in the way his dagger had opened hundreds in his time.

He'd be lying were he to claim he hadn’t considered that escape before – but contemplating and carrying it out are not one and the same. It wasn’t a fear of pain or death or of hurting others that had stopped him; there was no one to wound, he muses, for his death would surely come as a relief rather than as sorrowful news. Who would mourn a devil's passing?

In his steadier moments, to fall by his own hand would strike him as a fate worthy of vicious self-contempt after having struggled and fought to live for nearly all his existence. It would be admitting defeat to the world, his last words a pathetic croak when they should be a defiant roar to the Heavens that even the Almighty Himself would hear.

Letting his hand drop to his side, his smile broadens just slightly, grim and mirthless.]

tis not quite as… permanent… as you might like, I’m afraid.

[He falls silent, carefully gauging her reaction without the characteristic glint of roguishness in his eyes.]

[There's no flicker of surprise or shock on her face. There's no look of disgust or revulsion at the thought. If anything, she almost looks disappointed. That? That was his big, desperate idea? She almost has to laugh. Almost wants to. She had been that desperate once. More than once.

Even if it was a complete contradiction to her normal survivalist instincts.

The first few times, she hadn't be successful. She had bit down on Peeta's hand rather than the nightlock pill that would mean instant death. Gale refused to shoot her despite her pleadings. And her attempts at starvation hand't been given enough time.

That raw desperateness to just end everything had died away for a while. At least, until Peeta had disappeared from Luceti. And then? Then she had finally given in.

Quietly, head tilted, she responds:] I've tried that. It didn't work.

[He raises a hand, palm-up, wearing a grimly amused sneer as if he believed she were better than this wretched state into which she had spiraled.] Then you may wish to have your head beaten in, and pray you lose hold of your memories before you die a second time. [A laugh bubbles out of him, humourless and ghoulishly low at the thought, his eyes glazing over as his gaze turns inward.]

Life... is fraught with suffering that ends not for as long as you draw breath; there is always more awaiting you. Far more. And when you begin to believe you have reached your very limits –-

[Eyes narrow, his voice dropping to a hiss between gritted teeth.]

-- that there is no agony more unfathomable than this eating you alive every waking moment of your life… it worsens still. It finds a way.

[A soft scoffing noise of bitter incredulity punctuates his silence after a long moment, his pale smile opening.] ...And God laughs.

Edited (Sorry, typo was bugging me.) 2013-03-18 20:39 (UTC)

[She had been following him until the very end. As grim and despairing as his words had been, they had made sense. He had described the last three years of her life immaculately. Ever since Effie Trinket had pulled Prim's name from the reaping bowl, Katniss had felt life had been synonymous with tragedy.

And just when she had thought life could maybe return to normal, when the war seemed almost over, the worst had happened. Prim had died. Her little sister. The girl she had easily sacrificed everything for to protect.

This man's right. Life does worsen still. It finds a way. A way to knock you back down once you've gotten up again.

But that last bit...]

You mean like in faith, don't you? Like in religion? [Her nose wrinkles and she shakes her head.] We don't have that in Panem.

[Lowly, a shadow passing over his brow:]

All the better that there should be nothing in which to blindly place your faith, and more... as will so many.

[Faith. He spits the world like a thick, black poison swirling in his mouth.

One had to take control of one's own life, not throw themselves onto their knees and turn wet, desperate eyes heavenward, begging and pleading that things might change for the better, he muses darkly. It had done him no good. What had He ever done to help? What had He ever cared?]

[She nods in agreement. Placing faith in another person is difficult enough. It's next to impossible to picture placing any kind of faith or trust in an invisible, imaginative construct. Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond her. It's ridiculous, even pathetic.

The scowl on her face says as much, all the thoughts and words she won't speak aloud.]

[The disapproving frown is a refreshing response, he finds.] I have seen the faith that has ‘saved’ a man bring ruin upon many others.

[He huffs the faintest laugh as if it’s reason to be amused, though his eyes darken in thought. When he speaks next, his tone has been hammered flat into a sheet of steel, cool and cutting.]

Give into your pain, let it crush you under its heel, and you shall be naught but a weak, pathetic being for all your existence. But a gentle breeze shall have in hysterics.

[Breaking off, he looks to his open, empty palm, leather squeaking as his gloved hand doubles into a tight fist.] ‘’tis why you shall take this anger burning inside you and give it focus. Use it. 'tis your weapon. ...And in it, you shall always find the resolve to live… and to destroy your enemies.

[It doesn't matter now, whether he’s still addressing her or someone else.]

[Though her face scrunches up some in confusion, she doesn't stop listening to his words. Is he talking to her, about her, about himself, or maybe even about someone else entirely? Katniss can't tell. But she finds it not so important, either.

Because she understands everything he says. Understands and even feels a bit empathetic. She has so much fire in her. Fire and anger and wrath. She's taken those steps. She's allowed her anger to get the better of her, that fire. Watched as the sparks she lit consumed a nation in rebellion. Fire had caught.

And where had that left her?

Horribly burned. Bereft a sister.

Reluctantly, she shakes her head.] It's not always that simple.

[This, he acknowledges, is an unfortunate truth. So long and so often he had dreamt of revenge, plotting it out to every last detail – and then, the times he had seen it through without complications, there had been no overwhelming sense of relief washing through him. The past could not be changed, the harm undone. And after, always, came the question, ‘What now?’ What am I to do with myself?’ Still, that bitter, short-lived sense of triumph offers him the closest thing to a taste of happiness, to a taste of inner-peace he is certain he could ever have – and he will take whatever satisfaction he can wring from life.

He snorts softly, the corner of his mouth pulling into a lopsided smirk. Indeed, it's never so simple. Nothing ever is.]

[His brief laugh alone is answer enough. Despite his words, he knows better. He knows better than to think revenge or war or anger could ever be so simply utilized. Good. That's good. Maybe then he won't be so eager to lecture her on such.

Still, despite already being given an answer, she asks anyway:] You've tried it?

...Slitting open my own throat? [He asks, the question tinged with disgust. Though not at the thought of the mess.]

[She shakes her head. That's not something she particularly wants to know. While she doesn't exactly regret her own suicide or any of the previous attempts back in Panem, they're not something she likes thinking about. Nor feels comfortable discussing in any detail with a stranger.]

I meant about the anger.

[His voice drops to a breathless whisper, as if the thought stirred his blood in ways more intimate.]

Oh yes.

[There’s a thread of cold, bitter satisfaction running through the words. So much of his life has revolved around fantasies of revenge and exacting them; even here the desire burns strong, his work unfinished. Anger has always given him purpose.]

[There's something in the way he responds, something in that breathless whisper and that look on his face that makes her own tinge red. Anger isn't something she's ever considered remotely sexual. That he seems to is... confusing. Even a little unsettling.

She ducks her head, hoping that he doesn't notice a reaction that she really can't help.]

Was it successful?

[That little sliver of a smile might have broadened just slightly.]

Those most deserving... did not go unpunished.

[In that regard it was successful. Luceti, however, has presented him with a few challenges and his plans are very much works in progress.]

[She's not so certain herself if it had been worth it anymore. If the cost of her anger, her fire, didn't just outweigh the reward. There's no denying that it had felt good to silence Coin. To know that President Snow was also dead, never to threaten her and those she cared for ever again.

But at least, in her case as well, the deserving did not go unpunished.]

Good.

[Oh, how fucking delicious a little tit for tat could be. A snarling smirk of bitter satisfaction curls his lips at the thought.]

My, such a fierce young thing you are.

[She shrugs in response to what she takes to be a simple truth. Did she ever have much of a choice in her life? Sure, she could have given up. She could have let her family starve, could have given up in the Games and died. But her own survival had always come before anything. And then, the survival of those closest to her.

To survive in Panem - to survive the Hunger Games and to survive an uprising - you had to be fierce. You had to let that fire burn. She's not proud of that. Nor is she ashamed.

It's indifference that colors her features. Indifference and determination.]

So?

[It's not the answer he had expected, but his own comes without him missing a beat.]

In the end... 'tis only the fiercest who survive.

[His mind drifts back once more to the castle and the brutal pecking order among beasts.]

And the weak grovel at their feet.

Edited (feckkkkin' typo... >:I) 2013-03-31 20:47 (UTC)

[She had never been tempted to have anyone grovel at her feet. Never been tempted to rule. She had been happy with her exile to District 12, content to live the rest of her life in relative solitude and anonymity. Let the others decide the fate of Panem. She had done enough.

She can't keep from making a face at the thought of having others grovel. No, she'd much rather kill her enemies. In the end, that would be the key to ensure her survival. To keep from being made a piece in any more games.]

What if you just want to be left alone?

You have a tongue, don't you?

[There's a sharp, mocking note in his voice.] Use it.

[That gets an angry scowl in response.

Oh, she had used her tongue. Had used her wits. All to survive and ensure others she cared for would survive, too. And what had it gotten her? The destruction of her home. The blood of far too many on her hands. Whatever affect she might have on others, she doubted that it was worth it sometimes.

For a game piece, she had been awfully influential.]

They don't always listen.

[Strictly speaking of Luceti, he has much to say on the subject. Otherwise, back home, he finds it terribly easy to be alone when having no place within human civilizations. Experience has long since taught him that the mere sight of him would provoke terror and violent defensiveness - and his sharp tongue and former affiliation with Lord Dracula only fuel the fire in every wary villager.]

Indeed. I have noticed... that there are several here whom are fiercely opposed to leaving a man... or a woman... [He adds, disinterestedly.] in peace, thinking themselves the answer to a question no one asked. And then have the utter brainlessness to wonder how it is one might find them annoying. If they haven't yet thrust their noses up your backside... they will.

[The imagery inspires a mirthful snort after the fact.]

[She can't help but snort in amusement at his words. It's true. It's very true. And the majority of replies she's faced today just supports that. Some, some she hadn't minded so much. People she had spoken to before. Those willing to offer sensible solutions. A few that came to visit that she actually cared about. But the rest? Especially those that dared to call her stupid?

How damn hard would it have been for them to just mind their own business?]

It's too late for that.

[He chuckles softly, himself.]

My condolences.

12th Game [voice/action]

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