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

Complicated, huh? You know, that's sometimes the best kind of friendship. Those do affect you in ways you probably wouldn't even be able to think of.

I'm not going to tell you what you should do, but if it were me, I think I'd be scared of the kind of person I'd turn out to be if I forgot someone like that to me.

[And ironically, he knows what he's talking about without even knowing it himself.]

It hurts every day when I think of the people I've lost in my life, but I don't want to ever forget them because I wouldn't want to be forgotten either.

[It had been a good friendship. One of the best she could ever ask for. And it had been more. It had been so much more than friendship. Her first time being in love. Her first time being in a real relationship and not one manufactured for the sake of survival.

But she still can't think of any way she can say this aloud to a stranger. How she can explain this kind of mark he left.

Thinking on it, she nearly misses most of his words. Doesn't really tune in until the very end of his sentences. She hesitates again before replying.]

I wouldn't mind that. Being forgotten.

Really? It sounds like a pretty lonely life and way to live to me.

[It would make for a lonely life. But sometimes she still thinks that that's nothing less than she deserves. A killer, a poacher, a girl that had never been all that good at being nice to others. But then, at other times, she does remember to stop and think. To wonder if an uprising would have been successful without her assistance.

She doesn't know yet if it had been worth it. If all the deaths would be made up for by the end of the Hunger Games, the end of the Capitol's tyranny. And as long as she's here, she might never know.

But with the lingering nightmare, with the feelings of self-hatred and doubt still plaguing her, she can't bring herself to stop and think.]

Maybe.

...at least I'd be alive.

I'm sorry, I didn't know you were dead back home.

[That hadn't exactly been what she had meant and for a moment there, she's confused by the man's response. A lonely life, in her eyes, would still be a life. She'd still be alive. Unlike so many others she knew. So many who died within the past couple of years of her life. In part because of her actions.

It was guilt she doubted would ever go away.]

I'm not. [She paused, attempting to think words through before saying them aloud.] I died here but I'm not dead anymore. I just... I know a lot of people who've died.

[He listens quietly. He too knows the weight of having to watch those around you die. It's never easy. Even after nearly a hundred years of it.]

I'm sorry. I know it's not easy, but for me, for those I've lost, I've always tired to live a good life. In their memory so that they would never be forgotten.

[And that was not an easy way to live. He knows it, but he feels the need to try to give this girl any advice he could think of to keep moving forward.]

It's all I can do for them now. Make sure they're not forgotten and can live on, even if it's just in my memory.

[The response makes her uncomfortable. It's a little too much like something Dr. Aurelius would say. Too much like something Peeta would have said. They're the sort of words that some part of her knows she ought to be told right now. Ought to acknowledge. But right now, she doesn't really want to hear it.

Because it is so, so much easier said and done. Especially when there's no one to help you through it.]

Maybe.

You don't have to agree with me, but it's what helps for me.

12th Game [voice/action]

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