stillplaying | 17th Game [video]

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17th Game [video]

[It had almost come as a relief when the droids had appeared on her doorstep the day after the shift ended. She hadn't wanted to see Prim. Prim, that darling sister that meant the world to her. The girl that she would have died for. Nearly had on multiple times. Prim, who she had forgotten all about during the shift. It hadn't ever been that bad when Peeta had been here. The Malnosso had been kind in that regard, always let them know each other in some form. Would it have been so much to ask to keep Prim her sister regardless?

Apparently.

It would be easy to say she deserved that. Deserved to experience love again - real love like she had had with Peeta - only to discover that it had been as imaginary as her last relationship. Jim didn't love her. She didn't love him. The whole idea of an engagement had been a lie. Everything had been fake. Nothing real. Maybe, maybe under other circumstances, it would have been easier to accept. If matters hadn't ended with Sokka the way they had, if those wounds hadn't still been so raw, maybe...

There had been no argument when the droids appeared. Going meant avoiding those encounters. Meant not admitting she had forgotten her sister or an awkward discussion with Jim. It meant maybe trying to find Effie, make certain that she was alright. It was the closest thing short to going on a mission that she could get to leaving Luceti.

Prim would be alright. She'd have Richard and Teddy. People who hadn't forgotten her the way Katniss had.

But time with the Malnosso came to an end all too soon. And as she stared at the familiar walls of the painted room, the trees of her beloved forests outside of District 12, she felt almost tempted to run away. Go on one of those missions. Not have to see anyone here. Pick up the pieces of the mess she had made her life before the last shift. Or the mess that had come as a result.

She had never been good at running away though. Not even when they should have before the Quarter Quell, before Panem went insane. Damn it. Damn, damn, damn.

Sighing, Katniss picked up the journal and turned on the device. She brushed a stray strand from the braid out of her face and quirked her lips a little to the right. It would be better this way, announcing her return through the journal rather than being brave enough to seek them out.]

For anyone who might care, I'm back.

[Dare she even ask what more she might have missed?]

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It was what she needed. She had spent so much of her life standing on her own two feet, being the supporter instead of the supported. For a brief while, she had had that with Peeta. Even more briefly with Cinna. If there was anything Katniss feared aside from losing her sister, it would be losing Richard, too.

She shrugged a little within his embrace, reluctant to let go quite yet. "I'd have said the same, if you were here and I wasn't."

He kissed the top of her head -- an impulsive sort of affection, born best of quiet moments and thoughtless action. And then he held her at arm's length so he could see her face again.

"Whatever it was, it's over now. And now that it is, is there anyone I need to thrash?"

Were you hurt, lass, in any way? And can I blame someone else for it?

She reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair from her face. He still accepted her despite everything she had said and done. Despite being absent for so long. And that meant the world to her. More than he probably knew. The father she had in Jack during the shift wasn't real. But this? This was.

"You can't thrash the Malnosso." Not anymore than she could. And when it came down to it, weren't they to be blamed for everything? The experiment, the kidnapping. "What happened... none of us could help it. They altered our memories again. I thought I was someone else again."

"And who did they turn you into, this time? Spit it out. Say it and bury her and be done with it and go back to being who you are."

Who you're supposed to be.

"Someone's daughter. Someone's sister." But she had been all that before. It was something more this time. something almost unforgivable in her eyes. She could live with memories of a family that wasn't real. It wasn't the first time the Malnosso had forced her into that sort of situation. She doubted that it would be the last.

"Someone's fiance," Katniss continued, not meeting his gaze anymore. "Someone's stepmother-to-be."

"Stepmother!" He cradled her cheek with one rough hand. "What a step, lass. What a step. The engagement I can well believe -- them scientists like playing with that idea, they do. My own...Faith -- she..."

Sharpe's confidence stumbled. He frowned. And then he found his way back to an easier topic: Katniss. "But stepmother, bloody hell. Who?"

She wondered for a moment what had happened to Faith. That was the sort of thing she ought to have remembered. But she hadn't known Faith in that other life. Hadn't known of the emotions Richard felt towards the woman. She's about to ask, ask more too the point if matters between him and Faith were okay, when he beats her to a question.

Her cheeks flushed a little in embarrassment at the memories his question bring up and she leans her cheek deeper into his hand. Comfort. Reassurance. She needed that.

"Loki. The younger one? Jim Kirk thought he was his father during the shift. And Jim and I..." She pulls her head up, shrugging, all of the sudden awkward. It felt more real using names. More vivid. "...I lived with them both."

A slight widening of his eyes: "Before the marriage?"

If anything, Sharpe was teasing her. Making light of what was certainly an awkward occurrence. "Bloody scandal, that."

He would know.

Her cheeks deepened in color and she ducked her head quickly. Even though the further embarrassment made her uncomfortable, she recognized the teasing voice. And it made her feel... more at ease with the situation.

Whatever happened, whatever she did, he had her back. She hadn't had that in years.

"Is it really?"

"Absolutely," he laughed. "Co-habitatin' before wedlock! Only the most unscrupulous scoundrels get up to that kind of behaviour, cheeky thing."

She had to duck her head, unable to look at him for fear of blushing even more. It wasn't that big of a deal back home. At least, not in the Seam. Space had been limited. But she remembered how scandalized Effie had been at the thought of her and Peeta sharing a bed. And they hadn't even been engaged in anything remotely sexual.

"That wasn't me," she protested, finally daring a peek up at his expression. "The girl in that shift? She wasn't me."

But signs of Peeta had been all around the house when Richard had moved in. And that decision, to live with Peeta and to eventually share a bedroom, had been entirely her own.

"Oi, you," he tapped her cheek. "I know it, don't I? I'm only teasing. After all, if it were truly a sin then I wouldn't want to be virtuous. I've been so scandalous myself, love."

"Me too," she said quietly, still thinking of Peeta and how wonderful it had been to wake up in his arms every morning. Back in Panem and here. Maybe even more so here, after she had allowed herself to truly love him. She had yet to find a feeling quite like that.

At least, a feeling that was real. What she experienced with Jim was far from real when it came down to it. Then: "I never plan on getting married."

Ah, they'd had this argument before. So Sharpe saw fit to duck his head and acquiesce and not push the girl's patience -- but he did at least offer a teasing blow: "But you'd look so sweet in a wedding gown, I'd bet."

"I did."

Sweet, maybe, was putting it lightly. She had looked beautiful. As beautiful in Cinna's wedding gown as any of creations. Absolutely radiant. She couldn't imagine any other dress looking as good.

But that was Cinna for you. His creations were always one of a kind.

"Hold yer horses. Did, lass?"

How much had she told Richard of what she and Peeta had been to each other before ever arriving in Luceti? The bond forged during the Hunger Games. That need to survive somehow changing into a need for the other to survive more. It had been love on his part and something else on her own. Either way, they had needed each other.

"Cinna designed them," she answered quietly, remembering. "The citizens of Panem were going to vote on which dress I would wear to the wedding. Peeta had proposed during the Victory Tour. It had been meant as a distraction, a way to keep our people happy, to keep them from uprising."

But in the end it didn't matter. Snow decided to throw them all back in to the arena. Being a Victor didn't matter. Appeasing Panem didn't matter. And the uprisings had happened.

A shrug. "If we married, maybe, it would have kept people we loved safe. Would have preserved my efforts to keep Peeta alive in the arena as the acts of a girl desperately in love. But President Snow never gave it a chance to work. And the Districts rebelled."

"...A marriage made in a desire for safety." His eyes dropped. Sharpe had always admired the young woman, with her pluck and quiet strength. Her capability and the way in which she could put success over and above her own feelings. He wished a different life for her, certainly, but there was no harm in admiring what could not now be changed. Even in this, he felt a tricky kinship with Katniss Everdeen. A cresting familiarity. And that familiarity was why he'd lowered his gaze -- remembering how, hours before arriving in Luceti, he'd blurted out a clumsy proposal for a woman he'd not yet so much as mentioned to a single soul in this town. Pretty Jane Gibbons, beaten by her uncle and soon to be beaten by a crooked husband-to-be who also happened to be top of Sharpe's hit-list. Colonel Girdwood. Sharpe had promised to ruin him, and thereby ruin the man's chances for marrying Jane. And perhaps, in the heat of the moment, win Jane's hand for himself. Not because he loved the woman. He knew that, now. But because he loved the idea of protecting her. Perhaps Katniss, he mused, had felt that same drive -- to marry for safety.

"Which dress, lass, was yer favourite?"

That was a succinct enough summary. A marriage mad in a desire for safety. Not so much for herself but for everyone she loved. People who never ought to have been at risk of Snow's wrath. But were. All because they had been an easy way to control Katniss. Coin had seen that, too. And had used it more effectively than anyone else.

She considered his question for a moment. It wasn't one expected. A favorite? She hadn't really thought about that in a long time. Did she ever give it thought? No. She didn't think that she did. Not when the Quarter Quell was announced so shortly after.

"None of them. Cinna's creations were amazing but..." She shook her head. "That wedding wouldn't have been real. Not for me, not like it would have been for Peeta."

"You like the lad, don't you?" That much he knew. That much was evident. Obvious, really, even if Katniss hadn't told him herself. "I figure there ain't much else more what you need for realness in a wedding."

"I love him." There were few she could admit that to aloud. But Richard was one of them. He knew. He knew how much she loved him and missed him and how no one, not even what she had had with Sokka, could compare. Still, her eyes were clouded, facing slightly downward as she spoke. "Now, I love him."

But she was a horrible person who had used Peeta's once love. Used the idea of star-crossed lovers to keep them both alive. She knew how much it had hurt him then. If she had her way, she'd spend a life time making it up to him. "I didn't then."

"You grew into it."

You're still growing. He allowed his hand to dropped, suppressed the half-smirk at the thought of who she'd one day be if his imagined ideal was even halfway to accurate, and busied himself with a glass of milk. The nails on the table were temporarily abandoned.

She snorted a little quietly. Maybe she should have realized it from the start. How she had so much fire in herself already. She didn't need Gale's to add to the flame. She needed Peeta, that reminder that things could be good again. He was still what she needed. The reason that the heartbreak she felt when Sokka revealed the truth about his death penalty hadn't been nearly as bad as the heartbreak she had felt when Peeta left.

"Maybe." She shrugged a little. "Maybe I finally grew smarter."

Sharpe cleared his throat, but no words came. He wanted to tell her he was proud -- that she was smart, that she was clever, that she was resilient. And all without the fancy education others kept harping on about. He wanted to explain to her that love was a reason to smile, not to look so damned sad. But he didn't know how to say it. He didn't know how to access those parts of him that wanted only to help, support, and shore up her youth.

So he took a long chug of milk, wiped his stubbled chin with the back of his hand, and rather awkwardly changed the subject: "Won't be proper smart until I've had you out learning how to fire a proper rifle, lass."

The awkward pause didn't bother her. She had grown used to it. With Richard, it wasn't the words he said or the actions he took. It was enough for him to simply still be there for her. Without hesitation and without question. To be a father to her and Prim without either of them ever having to ask. She loved him for that. She'd always love him for that.

But an eyebrow does raise at the comment. Hadn't they gone over this already? "I'm good enough with a bow."

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