❝They won't ask you why

[ off network thoughts ] and [ audio ]

2011-09-27T03:36:02Z

I wonder how strange it is that the longer I'm here, the more unreal it seems. Things have been disturbingly quiet but I'm not going to be the one to say it out loud. It's still warm and when I'm not in Cinna's shop I'm usually in the woods but a year doesn't make a big difference here. They would feel foreign whether I was here for five or ten years, because they are; everything here is.

When Rue left some part of me thought we would leave too. Wanting to go back to what I know isn't surprising since it's what I've wanted since getting here, but lately I've been wondering what 'getting back' means. As far as I know, all of us are still alive except Rue, but that's just it. As far as I know. Rue had no heartbeat, was cold. It would be impossible to forget that. But nothing is for certain, as far as I can tell. I gave up finding out what Cinna (and I think Finnick) aren't telling me, aren't telling Peeta either, but maybe I should ask again. I've been saying to myself that it won't make any difference to find out, but maybe it would.

Cinna is busy right now and I don't trust Finnick to tell me the whole truth. October is almost here. I guess I should ask before then, knowing that month's track record.

September was so tame I wonder if they'll try to make up for it. I wouldn't have cared at all about the color disappearing, if it wasn't for the paintings that Peeta has done and Cinna's designs.

. . .

Does anyone know why the City has a graveyard?

Even the dead walk around, so I don't really see the point.

open action ||

2011-08-30T06:11:25Z

[ Walking barefoot through the fountain but staying along the railing, Katniss has left her shoes at the nearest set of steps and this may be what qualifies as asking for trouble, but she can't sleep and though there was nothing obviously sinister about what she saw before, she finds herself searching for another glimpse to prove it further to herself in either direction. ]

audio .

2011-08-25T20:12:42Z

The things the fountain shows.

Does anyone know if...they actually mean anything?

backdated to 8am, placeholder (replies once home if livejournal works ;-; )

2011-07-26T18:00:33Z

][ o f f - n e t w o r k ][

It still seems weird to me the way we've all grown used to being here. Over a year ago I would have said nothing could make me drop my guard but I have. I can't say that I like it.

I try to keep busy, but we don't have to hunt here and motionless targets aren't a challenge. Making bows isn't any easier than it was before but I'm finally getting better at the craft of it. They feel more like the one I have in the woods at home, at least.

What we've been told is that this is a world between worlds. It's ridiculous and unbelievable but we've been here for so long and the only explanation for the things we've seen is that we've been told the truth or we've been drugged - along with hundreds, and hundreds of other people - so out of our minds we can't tell the difference. That implies the Capitol is still at work though so it falls flat. Where the Capitol's reach extends, it's palpable. I don't sense any of that here. Where President Snow is a politician, the Deities seem more like puppet masters and it's funny because I would have told anyone over a year ago that those two were the same things, but I guess not. It doesn't make it any better, being pulled and prodded for someone else's entertainment but a good percentage of the time it's not broadcast and it's still true that almost no one knows who we are.

That's what really drives it home - that we're not in Panem, that we aren't anywhere that would ever make sense to people like us except for the power dynamics.

It's better than home in a lot of ways, almost every way.

I think of Prim and though I've seen some people claim they can't wish this place on anyone, I do. I want her here with me.

. . .

But some days I know that that's not what I want either. Some days I know, deep down, I just want what I wanted before coming here - for the Games to have been a long, bad dream and to wake up in our one room house on the outskirts of District 12 with ugly Buttercup inching his way into Prim's arms between us.

I don't know what Peeta thinks of it and none of us really talk about it so there's no way to.

I've never been big on sharing and that hasn't changed, but I still wonder sometimes about Cinna and Finnick too - what they've been keeping to themselves for a long time, what they don't want to tell us. It's impossible to miss or it's because I'm just not very trusting and that's why I notice, but I haven't pursued it either. At this point, I'm not sure if I should.

Rue does remarkably well here but what's remarkable to me is probably normal for her. I keep thinking about finding a way to give her back her life, at least here, the thing I could never do at home, but I would need a way to keep Peeta or Cinna from involving themselves. Peeta especially.

I know the woods here as well as anyone does, I guess, but sometimes I think it moves around on me. That doesn't seem impossible in this 'City' but it's not like I've asked. The curse today seems redundant. Maybe not for everyone, I guess.

m u f f l e d ][ a u d i o ][

[ There's the clattering of the device and a startled sound that seems a little far from said device, also muffled. That's followed by leaves rustling and something that sounds like a weight dropping down, footsteps... ]

Testing...does this thing still work?

[ Not that anyone can see it but the light that's usually indicative of it working is defective now, but obviously the recording/transmission is still in operation. ]

[ooc: all replies after get home later ;; please work lj please....orz ]

open action ||

2011-07-15T08:37:27Z

[ She's out and walking through the City despite the obscene hour. ]

TAKES PLACE ~4PM [ a u d i o / action ]

2011-07-01T03:35:23Z

[ THE SOUND of three arrows in quick succession being released and the far-off thunk of them hitting the target. ]

This is stupid.

We should at least use real arrows.

[ooc: tags may be put off until tomorrow, i apologize. still backtagging on a bunch of other entries too scream the month...... X_X;;;]

open action ||

2011-06-29T05:58:45Z

[ Outside at the lake, after cabin curfew of course. But she's so quiet it was easy to sneak out. Katniss doesn't like camp but that doesn't change the fact that she's stuck here just like the rest of them, so she takes her liberties where she can. ]

[ooc: felllow campers wandering past lights-out and risking penalty welcome to stumble on her but she'll hear you coming very likely....counselors feel free to bust her too etc.]

aimandfire @ 2011-06-08T23:21:00

2011-06-09T03:09:57Z

Prim. Gale. Peeta.

➝ (accidental) ａｕｄｉｏ。

2011-05-09T02:25:28Z

[ After being nagged by what is distinctly not a good simulacrum of her mother at all, Katniss took her bow and quiver of arrows - not the one she'd borrowed from Presea, since returned after the harpies' exodus - to the shooting range for some venting. Whereas in the Seam she had hunted by necessity, here she doesn't have to do that, and she's not in the habit of wasting, so to the range it had been rather than the woods. It's still strange, reminds her of the training grounds and for that alone she dislikes it, but it's also reliable, which she can appreciate.

Mostly on a day when she has 'her mother' telling her to do all of the things Katniss did do, has done already. It's every time she mentions Prim that Katniss snaps, breaks her concentration and her arrows fly wide or completely off.

In her pocket, the device has shifted to on but it only picks up the audio, the echo of the fair distance the range provides emphasizing every landing arrow and, also, every time Katniss says as she does now: ]

Shut up. You're not even real.

[ On better terms last she was home - a year ago more or less - Katniss doesn't appreciate the throwback of irritation that she gets not based so much on her mother or what her mother wasn't but by the manipulation of something so particular. And really behind that, there's the dread of what happens when that other day comes up, the one for fathers; maybe that's what's really getting to her, but Katniss has never been too good with sorting out her feelings. In fact, one might just cut to it, might just say she's really bad at it, save for the occasional exception.

Another resounding thud of the arrow point finding the center of a target, followed in quick succession by several others, then footsteps as she goes to retrieve them.

Some birthday.

But it could be worse.

She thinks of Peeta's mother and gets angry doing so, wrenching an arrow free with unnecessary vehemence, which causes the device to get jostled and dropped to the floor. Seeing it on, she of course turns it off and all the audio cuts out with it. ]

[ooc; open to action at the range if you want, otherwise it's all audio, apologies for slowness, the Universe of backtags etc ;; eopfjlsdoefkdls;.]

BACKDATED to ~10 AM this morning [ network sections audio ]

2011-05-01T03:03:40Z

In eighteen days, that's a year - a whole year in this place. What am I supposed to think? A whole year. I wouldn't believe it if we didn't wake up here every day and have to deal with the things that happen. If anyone told me about this at home I'd laugh at them, or assume it was some new kind of Game thought up by the Capitol, the illusion of thinking we're free.

I was afraid of that for the longest time, that somewhere, here, there were cameras, that everything we did was being held against us. I almost wish I still felt that. It's what I know.

Some things are still the same. Peeta gets up at four in the morning even on his days off. I went up to the roof to see what he was working on. He has a job, he even has Finnick with him there, Finnick who I keep forgetting to distrust on the basis that he's still not telling us everything. These are things that should set me off but lately they don't.

Lately I don't know what to make of any of this. Rue is positive, in spite of her situation. Prim, that means it should be easy for me, doesn't it?

I hope that stupid cat is keeping you company.

Though I guess the theory is you don't know we're missing anyway.

][ filtered away from Cinna][

Tonight Cinna is having the official opening for his shop. His specialty is in design - for men and women. But there's a cafe and salon area too.

~~He's~~ It's worth your time.

. . . . .

][ public ][

Sometimes I wonder just how random the 'curses' here are.

[ OOC; mulling over those mockingjays, yup. HERE BE THE LOG for Cinna's opening of the shop! Go, tag, mingle, be well styled, etc, etc, etc! ]

➝ (thoughts off the network) & ➝ a u d i o.

2011-04-02T00:42:01Z

IN less than two months one year will have passed. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up, even after all this time. Lately the things that have changed are the things I imagine will be there when I do wake up, if I wake up. There isn't a lot here that makes sense the way thinks make sense in Panem. Even the things I don't agree with make sense. They're what I know.

Here I feel more and more like I don't know anything. Rue is planting a garden, or was. The harpies are making it hard for people to go outside without being attacked. Peeta has his job but I don't like him going out either. The only one I'm not worried about is Finnick. He didn't win his Games on charm alone. It tipped the scale, but it would have meant nothing if he didn't know how to string up the other tributes the way that he did. Cinna went out the other night. Without everything going crazy around us, I can tell it's the kind of thing I'm supposed to be happy about for him - because he's my friend and because while I have Peeta and Rue and even Finnick (because we're Victors, because of what we've done) Cinna is kind of on his own. I've had time to think about that too. It makes me wonder if he feels alone at home too. He has Portia and I know they create things together, have since they first decked me and Peeta out in flames, making us unforgettable. It gets to where I don't even know what I'm feeling bad about anymore and I hate it. The rules here aren't rigid like Panem. There might not even be rules.

With the barrier down and the ticking so quiet, I guess I'm supposed to be afraid. I'm not. I'm restless and I hate being useless and it's not that I love anything about Panem. It's that Panem is where Prim is and things that are still hanging over my head. And Peeta's too, I'm guessing. We can't seem to do anything separate, even if we wanted to. Part of me does. The other part I'm not sure, but he keeps the nightmares down or helps them leave and he says that gives him something too. And Peeta doesn't lie to me, not like that. It's one of the dozen other things that make him better. I know it. Haymitch knows it. I figure the whole country knows it but that doesn't really mean anything here.

I need to focus on something. Being here hasn't made me like people more than home. I knew I wouldn't, even if there was a short amount of time where I thought maybe I was wrong. It turns out it's not the other people most of the time; it's me. Again, I'm not surprised. Normal people would probably be bothered. Am I bothered? I guess not. I haven't changed. But something to do would be good and the problems lately are familiar. The harpies aren't but the violence is. Fighting is something I can do, even though I didn't always know it.

My arrows work on the smaller game in the forest, or have, but the harpies are weird, metal and something else probably. I don't know. I haven't gotten close enough and I don't really want to. What I do want is a weapon that isn't useless. Finnick took me once to see this woman, Presea, but when he left I just walked away and stuck to the bow I bought off a dealer in the underground - decent but not mine. He said something about materials but it sounded more specialized than that.

I've gone into the woods here, lots of times. I always give the kind of call a mockingjay would reply to, but none ever do. I don't know why I keep trying. It's not like it means anything. But Rue might be happy to know something familiar is here, something that isn't bad or terrifying.

And part of me thinks if I wander in, maybe I'm going to wander out and it's going to be freezing cold and the chain-link fence will loom in front of me like it always has; I'll be home even if home isn't a good place to be. It's not good. I haven't known Panem in a time when it was good. Before the mine accident, I know it was better. That's about it. Now what I know is that Prim is there, and that makes it the right place to be either way.

I miss her and then I feel awful, selfish. I am. I know.

It's the hardest thing about being here though - not being able to see her and know how she is. They say time stops. I can't imagine that and I couldn't imagine this place either. What am I supposed to do with that? It's pointless to think about, that's what I tell myself whenever these thoughts crop up, but they crop up a lot recently.

It's just another way I know that having a few harpies to take down isn't a bad thing. I don't know the people here. I don't generally care. But there are kids here and kids I can care about without knowing. It's automatic, the same way I don't trust anyone is automatic, and I know I have Prim to thank for caring at all - Prim (she gives me everything good even when she's not around), and Rue in her own way, and Gale's siblings, and the boy who got shot in District 11 just because he didn't know any better (the one Rue told me about), and Thresh's siblings, and...

The list gets overwhelming when I let it. Here is where I usually cut it off. When I try to think of Peeta and me as kids too, it doesn't work any more than it would with Gale or Madge whose pin is iconic in a way I'm pretty sure she never meant it to be. How could she?

If I think about people like Madge though, or Peeta, or Cinna, people who I'd protect it's easy to justify killing things that I don't understand anyway. I wonder how hard they are to kill, what kind of bow and arrow could pierce. Here of all places I'm sure there's something and Finnick would be picky with the trident; it's impressive. Presea is at least a good place to start.

~~I just want...~~

It's like they're moving in.

][ PRESEA. ][

Someone I know commissioned a weapon from you. I'm interested in doing the same, specifically strong enough to fight the harpies, other things too I guess.

But I use a bow. How much does that limit me?

[ She's really not sure beyond the norm. ]

aimandfire @ 2011-02-27T12:12:00

2011-02-27T17:02:48Z

[ A click on of the device and a pause, a hesitance really. She's not the kind to announce her whereabouts out of the heightened appreciation and - back home - a rarity of privacy. Still, if there's anyone about, she'd rather know - enemy or friend, each for their own reason. ]

Is...is there anyone here from Panem?

[ooc; taken from Catching Fire BEFORE she knows she's going back into the Games with Peeta, that said no spoilers beyond that point for her and no doubles please. ]

[ a c t i o n. ] (oh here it goes again)

2011-02-12T23:04:21Z

[ Katniss dislikes the City, but this is nothing special. She's aware. Today however, she dislikes it with an exceptional concentration of loathing. It seems no matter where she ends up, people find her, and when they do they ask her things she doesn't care to answer, things from what's your favorite color to how far do you go on the first date to how do you feel about lasers, so on and so forth. Having little patience as it is for people in general, Katniss and the City alike are fortunate she did not take her bow with her today. She might have actually used it by now and not on forest game, unless one counts People in the Forest, in which case, okay, maybe it would have been.

As things stand, she knows she could go back to the apartment, but Katniss hates being cooped up only less than she distrusts (and thus the dislike) people, and it's a close thing either way, so she doesn't return, not yet at least. Instead she finds a corner table in a cafe and does her best to embody the contrary epitome of not here. A record to be sure, she has successfully gone approximately ten minutes and forty-six seconds without being approached by a stranger. She doesn't even begin to think herself home free, however, glancing at the clock on the wall. Six. Great.

She rolls her eyes and slouches in her chair, fingertips tapping a nonsensical timing across the tabletop as her gaze shifts to the picture through the window - this being more or less an en masse version of what she herself has been going through.

If she was a different kind of person, Katniss might find it funny, but Katniss is Katniss is Katniss, so all the outside action garners from her is a look just this side of bored-but-grateful-it's-not-me. ]

[ ooc: open action...... /_\ ]

this is a placeholder. ][ video / audio ][

2011-02-01T04:31:01Z

[ Katniss does not like talking to people. Katniss does not like people in general. Stealing from them, however, has never been a goal outside of the arena. That said, yesterday WAS a curse, so the panning video now displays about two garages worth of things. Then there is the sound of a throat being cleared and a stifled sigh. ]

If any of this is yours, come and get it.

[ The video goes dark but the sound is on. There's a pause. ]

Sorry.

[ And then the audio goes too. ]

[ ooc: sorry for the placeholder guys. things....many things.

feel free to have your character go 'HEY THAT'S MINE' if you so desire....she can probably lift a number of things based on stealth, though not so much er...thieving prowess :/ curse empowerment perhaps. ]

ACCIDENTAL VIDEO...... ][ it's a bird, it's a plane....no wait, it's a bird....yeah

2011-01-16T07:31:38Z

[ When the video knocks on there's audible flapping...yes, well you heard and then into view a blur....and then more panicked flapping and fluttering and then the less than graceful sound of a mild crash that involves the device being hit.

Once it steadies, the focus sharpens on a mockingjay.

Somehow even the mildly distressed sounds escaping her seem just this side of musically inclined.

Go figure.

She taps the screen with her beak...which is a miss.

Then she tries again, not succeeding this time either in anything but turning the device on its side. ]

audio ][ filtered by the grace of ...copying other people AWAY from hunger games folks ;-;

2010-12-28T19:41:44Z

Is there anyone here who can tell me about deal-making, firsthand?

I mean, someone...who's made a deal before.

...I'd appreciate it.

[ That last part was soooo forced lmfalkfjsdf.... ]

15 ◊]]thoughts]][ ✗ [[ audio]][ action ][

2010-12-07T17:09:02Z

The first thing I'm aware of is how cold I am, how the hard angles under my shoulders seem to be trying to push through them. I think: a nightmare, it's a nightmare, because it's always a nightmare. But this one has no screams, doesn't smell thick with blood, and there's something jarring about the way opening my eyes reveals sleep-crusted darkness. That kind of ordinary detail isn't usually there, so I try and pay more attention, sitting up in what looks like a cave that someone ripped the ceiling off of. Everywhere: jagged rocks, scattering dust, and a dryness in the air that reminds me I'm thirsty. I reach my hand out to curl around the bow I invested in. Not one of Presea's, I never did talk to her, but now I'm regretting it.

Not that it matters.

My hand closes around nothing and I don't know why I thought it would be there anyway.

This isn't my room. This isn't my room anywhere.

Where am I?

Standing, I crack my neck and my shoulders, feeling popping sensations trip down my spine.

Panic is slow for some reason right now. It's like getting my bearings, or not being able to, is acting as a kind of wall between me and this swell of things: anger, fear, distrust amplified, and a mental radio silence I get lost in for a second. Then I force my eyes and ears and nose and even my mouth to tell me what's going on. Or I try.

Looks like: a wasteland, though there looks like there might be a forest a distance away. Sounds like: no water, no animals, just keening wind and dust and rocky echoes of pebbles; maybe someone else is around. (The thought has me crouching out of instinct, not willing to be spotted first.) Smells like: thick dust, dirt, a drought and a little like the mines because everything feels clouded. Tastes like: bitter, dry earth, soil turned over too many times and stone.

Feels like...

In my pocket -- thank you Cinna, I remember he makes everything I wear now in this place between places -- there's a familiar weight.

Why is it familiar?

Katniss. Where are you?

It's a familiar weight.

The device.

My device.

Peeta has a device just like it.

Peeta.

Still crouching, I yank it out and press it near to my mouth, thumb flicking the recording option to on.

In my arm there's a phantom feeling: a tracker that isn't really there.

I hope.

~~I need it not to be there.~~

This isn't happening again. It could be anything. Don't panic. You can't panic. This isn't what you think it is. You don't know. Breathe.

Open your mouth. Find out. I order myself.

And it helps. A little.

][ a u d i o ][

[There's a crackling kind of wind that muffles itself against the receiver, sounds like a mic scraping over fabric, but it's not. Then a voice that cracks a little then clears itself before trying again.]

Hello? Can anyone hear me?

Peeta? ~~Tell me you're there.~~

Rue? Cinna?

...Finnick?

[And a pause that's littered with more of that wind that kind of funnels itself in a way that anyone who's been in a wide, cavernous sort of area could guess: this at least doesn't sound like anywhere well known in the City's confines.]

Answer, if you can, I---

[ ---the connection ends abruptly, as if she's slammed the device into the nearest rock...which she has though not with that intent...only to push herself away before ironically an arrow nearly finds her, courtesy of someone else dropped into this section. ]

][ a c t i o n ][

Eventually she reaches those woods, feels a contradictory sense of relief and suspicion. This could be the biggest kind of trap, the place she feels safe and so the place she is in the most danger if the Gamemakers know her so well. Nightmares tell her they do and she hates them all the more for it. They're not 'Gamemakers' by government, by necessity from what she can tell; they're 'deities' but what's the difference really? They control. They trick. They hurt. They do whatever they want and everyone else is just supposed to deal with it.

Fine.

Katniss steals her way into a tree like a trick of the light, waiting for it to fall down beneath her or something equally predictable in how a cover can be used against the hider. When nothing happens, she allows herself to breathe a little more evenly before scaling to the top.

Around her she can't be sure but she swears it looks like the environment has changed. She can't see the rocky wasteland anymore. The direction she knows she came from has become nothing but water and she thinks she can smell the salt from here.

Something in her chest tightens and she slips back down through the branches, feet finding solid footing on the ground.

Others are here. She has to find them. The right to just cower in a tree is something she gave up without really understanding why. She still doesn't understand. But she won't hide.

Not with Peeta and Rue out there, somewhere.

I'll find you.

It's as silent a run as any person can manage as she takes off through the denseness of trees she continues to expect treachery from at any moment, and it would seem ridiculous of course, except for the realm they're in. Nothing's impossible except, apparently, leaving the Games behind for too long.

Her mind flicks back to the secrets, the Quell, and her own uncertainty but she steers it back on track.

There's no affording for that right now.

So don't, she tells herself, and does her best to adhere.

[ooc; placeholder. I have...to go to work. I'm sorry ;_; but because I get out late it felt wise to get it up beforehand. Audio can be replied to by anyone -- other fighters, sponsors, friends, WHATEVER, seriously.

Action is open to anyone as well though if you've any uncertainties just e-mail me at loveinmypocket@gmail.com, whether it's about how to run into her in the forest or running into her elsewhere in another kind of environment. Anything is doable. I just didn't have time to come up with multiple scenarios right here ;; Um. Any other character tags likely gotten to tomorrow after more finals, or latest Thursday. Apologies for backtagging and the longest ooc notes in the world. <3333 dsfkldsfj ]

audio ][

2010-11-30T07:12:54Z

[ a short sigh ]

~~I'm almost glad for the noise. Almost.~~

No sleep tonight. I forget how long this lasted the first time.

13 ◊]]off the network]][ thoughts]][ & 010][ ✗ [[ audio

2010-11-29T01:27:19Z

We arrived here on what the archive tells me was the eighteenth of May and in that time I we have seen Gale and Haymitch from home. This is important to remember because things here are real even if they don't seem like they should be. I remind myself that I have seen Gale bloodied within an inch of his life twice now and I dream that I might see it again, but that's nothing new. I remind myself that Haymitch knew we were here before we knew about him and how like him that was -- how like him that is back home. It's funny because when I think of home I think of sleeping across the room from where Prim sleeps nestled with our mother and the way the cold used to slip over us more effectively than our blankets. I don't think of the house in the victor's village though that is where I last lived in District 12, all of us with plenty of room to spare, rooms to spare, and all the money we will ever need. Except that when I left I had decided it wasn't going to be money we needed. It was a plan.

Months later, now I'm just trying to keep that in mind. Peeta is still here, but even with Gale gone I try not to go to him with my nightmares. He has his own, but if he wants to come find me, he knows where I am. I keep thinking terrible things. What if one day one of us has to go without the other completely? I think of Haymitch, alone, aged beyond his biology and I admit I hate it. I don't want to become him even though we are already so much alike.

I don't want Peeta to go but I don't want to go to him and I'm not sure what that says about anything.

Rue and Finnick are something else.

Rue, who should be able to live in a place where that's possible, but I don't know what I could offer.

She deserves to be alive though, more than most people.

I'm still stuck and it's stupid. It's stupid and it's not fair and I can hear Gale's voice in my head, saying all the things I used to brush off but can't ignore anymore even when he's not really here.

And Finnick. I don't know still. He saved Peeta's life. He lives with Peeta and Rue. That's a vote of trust from me if nothing else is, and he is dead-set on something even though I can't tell what it is. There's still that secret and it feels a little like it's waiting to swallow me up. Spitting me back out seems like it's possible, but maybe I wouldn't be recognizable after that. Depends on the secret.

. . .

Cinna died.

His blood was everywhere and I don't know how he'll be able to go near scissors again except that his work is his life and if that's not irony I don't know what is. I've seen plenty of dead people at this point but Cinna has been different from the moment I met him.

He would be that way even dead, I guess.

To see him walking around, I can brush past him and know he's warm, know he hasn't gone all cold like Rue but the fact is that he died. And we couldn't do anything for him.

I couldn't do anything for him, when he has done everything for me.

The tally I'm working on for shame is enough that I figure I should be the one dead, but I'm sure other people feel the same way for their own reasons. The families of all the tributes that didn't make it back (that's everyone, except for me and Peeta), and President Snow to name just a handful. The families' opinions matter to me. President Snow's opinion matters to me on that survival-of-the-fittest rule that says if I don't take it into account then I'm not just a sitting duck, I'm a sitting duck at point-blank.

Lately when I wake up I have a scream in my throat that scratches through and up behind my eyes, but I hate crying, even if I'm alone. The things anyone sees at night aren't in the sleeper's control, right? I just have to handle it, learn to handle it, and sometimes I'm sick with relief for not being at home after all. I don't want Prim to see me like this more than she already has.

I keep a bucket close by because vomiting helps sometimes. The bile is, true to its name, disgusting, but it's exhausting too and sometimes then I'll hit a dreamless sleep for the last three hours of late-night/early-morning. Because everyone eats well here it's not a problem but I don't eat a lot anyway. All that zeal on the train to the Capitol forever ago was the reaction anyone who has had next to nothing would have, and then we felt sick afterward anyway.

Cinna died.

The thought keeps coming back. Because it's a fact. Because he's burying himself in his work and maybe that's the best thing for him, but for once I'm sure I want to help and as usual I have no idea how to. This isn't like anything I've known before.

At home the dead stay dead and from what I hear that's the standard.

I guess that's why they changed it here.

They say the City runs on misery.

I wonder if I'm even miserable though. Ashamed. Bitter. Angry. Helpless. And stupid with it.

Not miserable.

What should I do?

. . .

This has become a waiting game and I hate it. I hunt. I eat. I sleep a little. I see the others here and there but not as much as I owe. I think -- a lot more than I used to and I'm beginning to start to see the downside of it. I dream a lot. Repeat.

When I start to get lost in the routine of not knowing I remind myself of Peeta and that first day at the river, and then I remind myself of Gale in the hospital, and then I remind myself of Cinna who is very much alive at home, though I know the truth is the way things are going that's not something I should count on. But I want to. I want to protect the people I care about.

Getting to that old tune puts me back in place, more or less.

I know that when I go home that much won't have changed, because at home nothing changes either.

Or nothing has.

Not yet.

. . .

Cinna died.

And I can't stop dreaming about it.

Rue, before it gets too cold [ barring having to go out, in which case there is no such thing ] want to do some tree climbing?

[ muttered to herself, but audible ] Does it snow here? Stupid to assume.

[012][ ✗ [[ video [accidental][

2010-10-31T01:58:02Z

[ When the feed clicks on it is with the clatter of the device itself because it has just fallen onto the chair next to Katniss Everdeen, sitting cross legged at the foot of her bed. Stacked on the chair there is a pile of guides but the network can't see that because specifically it is on top of those books that she dropped the device. As luck has it, she doesn't notice that it has turned ON of course. Her expression can be called neutral or vacant but in short intervals there is the crackling of plastic as she pulls candy corn after candy corn out of a bag sitting to her right, eating them one by one. Notably her room is tasteful if rather bare, looking more like no one has lived there at all rather than the opposite. It's a little too clean, too brand-new hotel. Just in the back corner of the shot there are a few arrows on the bedside table.

And things are quiet except for the eating of the seasonal treat, uneventful, and one wonders why the City's timing is wasting its network on this.

The answer to that wondering soon becomes apparent as a tanned hand--which is attached to the sleeve of a stylish men's shirt, which is itself attached to one Finnick Odair--sneaks into the bag of candy corn and pilfers a few of his own, which he proceeds to pop into his mouth as he leans over Katniss's shoulder to peer at what she's doing.]

Mm, these are great. You weren't going to keep them all for yourself, were you, Katniss?

[ Katniss, accustomed to hearing people coming a mile away so that sneaking up tends to be almost impossible, feels her voice jump up in a tangle in her throat, but she stays rather still on the outside, gray eyes narrowing. ]

Hello Finnick.

[ In additional answer, she twists the bag of candy corn shut. Unfortunately, neither her greeting nor her closing of the bag seems to deter Finnick, who shows no sign of moving from his current position anytime soon.]

Hi, Katniss. What're you up to?

What do you want?

[ She cuts to the chase, still not even deigning to glance up at him, which would be hard anyway considering how close he is already. If she sounds annoyed...it's because...she is. ]

To know what you're doing. The candy's a nice perk, though.

[And he aims for the bag of candy corn again.]

Being stolen from.

[Yes that's her answer, but notably she doesn't hold the bag away.]

And now I'm leaving.

[True to her word, she sides off the edge of the bed, sets the bag down in her place as if that might keep him occupied, and then walks out of the device's camera view. Finnick, for his part, pauses only long enough to retrieve the bag and twist it open, popping more candy into his mouth as he follows her out of the shot, his voice coming through slightly quieter due to his distance from the microphone.]

How about after you're finished leaving?

[ There is further muffled conversation, which eventually becomes a distinct silence that is broken by the distant crunching of candy corn as Katniss' head tilts into the view of the camera, frowning...before she tilts back out of the perspective and the device disconnects.]

[ 0 1 1 ][ ✗ [[ are you hurting the one you love, and was it something you could not stop?

2010-10-22T07:45:42Z

atniss is no stranger to nightmares. Even before the Games she had them, though these consisted largely of her father dying in the mining explosion and watching Prim waste away into nothing but her skeleton. The spin that experiencing and surviving the Games gave to her dreams always manifests differently with the key things of note being that, however ironically, the nightmares are not always in darkness--as they were before or shadowed--and what makes them so terrible tends to be the false sense of security that plays into them. In her waking hours she thinks she can trace the blame for that back to Snow, but then, so can everything. Political ultimatums. You can live. They can live.

If.

If.

But her dreams know she has never been a good actress. They know that she has failed to convince the people that matter that she loves Peeta Mellark and that she meant no inciting of rebellion by pulling out those poisonous berries. The really sick thing of it is that even though she doesn't entirely know what she was thinking then, there is some truth to it; she only wanted the both of them to live. At nearly any cost. That was all that was clear.

It's too good of a break to think things could have ended there.

Now her nights ricochet back and forth, different shadows and lights chasing each other.

This night, for example, the chasing is literal and it's not a comfortable familiarity knowing that ninety percent of the time this ends up being the case both in her sleep and outside of it.

I.

A fast runner, the forest blurs around her, and it is a forest she knows perfectly--the forest that she associates with a rare feeling of home--but the smell is alien, terrifying in a way it never was before that meeting in the study.

Roses. Metaphor isn't always lost on her. Snow is everywhere, or at least his reach is. She recognizes that. But it's not the smell alone that drives her on, a dogged creature too frantic to be as effective as she might ordinarily be. What strikes her over and over are the sounds of a whip and Gale's voice in the distance with each fall. His screams punch through her but instinct keeps her from calling out to him; telling him that help is coming though she isn't a prime candidate for it. The forest itself manages to creep with a sinuous speed around her, death-like in its quiet because there should be other noises. Animals, even terrified ones, wings flapping, small feet scrabbling, and the like. But there's nothing except for Gale who seems increasingly impossible to find even though she should have reached him by now. The whip gets louder the longer she fails to locate him, the longer she fails him, period. The rose scent too proliferates, overwhelms as time drags itself on in front of her until suddenly she knows she's close. Dizzy with that knowing, she makes to dash into the sudden presence of the town square when an arm jerks her back, crushing against her windpipe with the kind of brute force that makes her eyes sting and her heart spasm. Somehow, wherever she's been pulled back into, it's pitch black, which only makes the voice louder.

"Did you think you got rid of me?"

Clove. That's all Katniss has time to register before an explosion throws them both back. What happens to Clove after that, she doesn't know, but her own body lands in a heap where the next part of her nightmare picks up.

II.

That explosion knocks what feels like everything out of her except for her bones, which rattle around and against each other like fragile hammers. She can't move but she knows that moving is imperative. This means nothing to her physical capabilities however and for long, still moments she remains where she was thrown, bleeding from somewhere or multiple somewheres, and half sure that this may have been a bad idea even if it was her only idea, which left no room for debate. Moments continue to pass and she more feels the gravel and dirt underneath her curled palms as she drags herself in any direction that constitutes away. Any kind of mobility means living just that little bit longer. The scene is familiar but the footsteps in the too-near distance are not. They are too heavy and too many for Cato and Clove, and without seeing them she knows; those are Peacekeepers, Peacekeepers like Thread.

What they are doing in an arena setting is beyond her, but the goal is to evade them, not figure them out. Not yet.

Less and less fond of the 'girl on fire' title she's been given, Katniss is aware of the ground scraping against her skin and how it too seems to burn. Not what anyone was imagining when the whole thing came about, she knows, but it's what she is focusing on right now as too slowly she manages to get herself into the first shelter of the trees. Minutes pass and the ominous footfalls suddenly cease, replaced instead by a sound Katniss can't place, not only because she can't hear with both ears but because it is so completely strange to her.

It takes until the water is seeping through the short, dried-out crab grass for her to realize.

She clings to a thin sort of aspen, opening newly scabbed cuts and making just plain new ones to join them as, inexplicably, water continues to flood in. This isn't how things happen. There was only a lake, wasn't there? It doesn't make any sense. Frantic facts rush through her brain as she pulls herself to the lowest branch, but this won't do. As soon as she settles the water is already nearing her dangling heel, and it's not that she can't swim. It's just that she doesn't think she can swim for long in this state. Are there going to be animals in the water? Blood attracts. Though she knows this applies to people sometimes too.

Bad luck makes her next decision for her as the branch nonsensically snaps. She doesn't weigh much and even as she twists out of the way to avoid being hit by it she knows it shouldn't have. Another thing she knows is that she should hit the water with a loud clap in less than seven seconds but when she hits the water the thing is that she doesn't stop.

III.

There is a scream but this time she thinks it's her, because for all that she can swim, what she can't do is fight this invisible force pushing her down through the water faster and faster. Again, that feeling of fire, of burning, crushed up into her lungs like all of Clove's knives sticking her from the inside out. If this is on camera, broadcasting to every citizen in Panem, she must look a mess, wild, and half-dead but the idea of going down without a fight--even running away is a form of dissent--has never been strong with her.

Things go dark again for a second. Maybe she passes out. Maybe not.

But the next thing she knows is that dually cold and hot rush of air as she breaks the surface and down becomes up with that way that only dreams can account for. Vision blurred and faculties mostly indisposed, she collapses onto the bank of the river. What heat filled her chest dissipates, and everything is cold, soaked, sharp--the kind of striking exhaustion that looks like an incurable sickness.

She tries to reassemble coherency by way of thoughts. Simple thoughts. Thought.

Who is left?

Only Peeta's name comes to mind right now.

This time she must lose consciousness. Her last clearer thoughts are that she has to find him, that the blood on the rock near to her belongs to him, and that she has this nasty habit of recognizing things for what they are far too late in any game.

IV.

When she opens her eyes the crust at the corners itches against her skin so that they tear again, and it takes a moment to focus on anything. This is made even more difficult by the fact that the room she is in is dark with a single, gray-white spotlight that blows up every highlight and shadow until she looks grotesque, inhuman, and she knows this because she can see herself on all of twenty-plus monitors seemingly suspended around her. Capitol technology, though why they feel like showing her herself she has no idea.

A voice from what she guesses must be an intercom slithers in, unwanted.

"Miss Everdeen. We hope you slept well."

Something like a sarcastic laugh tangles itself in her chest and coughing fits ensue instead. Snow has decided to be patient or that he has enough time not to care because all around the choking noises there exists only perfect silence. She isn't going anywhere. Something binds her to the metal chair and from the digging sensation, sharp into her wrists and ankles it's some kind of metal. Rope would be too primitive, she guesses, and too potentially problematic: rope she could undo, after all.

"While you were resting, we've been quite busy. It seems only right to inform you of the various goings-on, considering that so many of them involve the people you know."

Her attention drops into her stomach and threatens to come up like bile.

And they haven't even shown her anything yet.

But she can't tell them no, can't tell him no. It's not as though he'll listen, and to break early feels like surrender. Instead she lowers her gaze to the floor, or where she assumes the floor continues in the unnaturally opaque darkness around her blur of light.

A minute passes and she doesn't dare to think he's given up on her; that's not how this works. The thing now is that she doesn't even know what she's done wrong, so wrong that she is the only one here, but then Peeta was never the problem was he? Maybe...maybe they left him alone.

It would be too bizarre to have both of them go missing...right?

Crackling static fractures the quiet and then silence again before she hears a door open, and then it's that smell again. Roses. But this time she isn't in a forest, and this time it's the man himself who nears, so with the roses there is the trademark additive of blood. It feels thick and Katniss guesses that if she really does vomit she can at least aim for him as he enters her peripheral vision.

"Miss Everdeen. Surely the darkness isn't all that entrancing. You're being rude, when we've gone to such work." A pause and then his hand is under her jaw, channeling too much strength to be the hand of a man as old as Snow, but Snow is strength of a kind, is power as all of Panem knows it, and some of that matters now as he pushes her head back, every monitor within her range of vision now. He whispers something, and he's so close, too close, so that she should know what it is, but she can't hear him clearly. The only thing she can do is watch.

Monitor one startles her. It is an image of her father, healthy and kind and so there that she thinks for an instant she can hear his voice. Katniss. Monitor two shows Prim, and the others after follow similar suits---her mother, Gale, Gale's family, Madge, Rue, Cinna, a handful of people from the Hob, and anyone who in her memory was ever kind to her. It's unnerving, to know how closely they have been watched, but what it means hasn't made it to her mind yet, and she can feel the look of knowing from Snow that says, you still don't understand.

The last monitor, the last of at least twenty, can only be for one person. Peeta.

His hair seems sun-touched in this shot and his skin a healthier shade than it ever was in the Games, even at the beginning. He seems a little older too, but maybe that's just the distance between a flesh-and-blood person and an image on a machine. Reflex has her scanning over all of the faces again---people she loves or likes or feels more than a responsibility to, all people she would protect.

Snow's words, gone from her mind until now, return like a shot.

...we've been quite busy.

The attempt to swallow sudden and renewed fear fails, which probably shows because that's when the monitors all change. This switch is instantaneous, and she doesn't know what it means to her at the moment that even seeing people who she knew to be dead unravels her all over again. Ordinary faces, strong faces, kind faces, clever faces distort into variations of slow deaths. Broken limbs, bodies bent back into unnatural positions, blood maximized by the smell of it that seems to stick to her tongue and the back of her throat, burn marks, weapons bigger than their forms, the remains of what once must have been a body to represent her father, and everywhere else bruises, cuts of all kinds, many with machines she has never seen before. Worse, each kind of torture must have been prolonged, for these people on the screens are splinter-thin, skin sinking and sallow against their bones where skin still exists at all. It occurs to her that death itself was the only mercy afforded them.

Words won't come, and maybe worst of all there isn't enough rage to do her any good in the here and now. Because it won't change anything.

Snow's hand threatens to become a permanent fixture to her chin for a few more seconds before she finally feels him let go. Something about that motion snaps her from hollowed out to the sheer act of being incensed.

Everyone she ever cared for, everyone she might care for.

Dead and not quickly.

And all of it?

Her fault. Breathing ceases but this isn't the same as having the wind knocked out of her. It's a pale mimicry of what she wants to be.

She can taste the guilt, thrashing against whatever chains her to the chair until the whole thing goes sideways and when she and said chair hit the floor she discovers the ground must be some kind of metal too, reinforced. It has the same effect as hitting an iron bar against an iron door too hard--shakes through her head, down every notch of her spine, curling in her toes and triggers the nausea from before sharply enough that she throws up in her mouth, gagging on it because the reflexive response isn't what she expects. Her control is often better than this, but everything is all wrong with no room for redemption, no potential for rebuilding. Minutes pass where she knows she isn't breathing because where silence until now has simply been an absence of crying or screaming, it has now become the absence of any sound at all.

This isn't real. Part of her tries to claw through to that truth but her bravery is small without someone else to be brave for. She has no direction, no purpose.

There have been times when Katniss thought she knew what being at the bottom was, but at any of those times the reality was that there was a chance. Maybe she didn't always see it, and people along the way have still died, people she will always miss and at least one she will always feel responsible for. But there was some kind of give to the situation. When her father died there was still Prim to live for. When Rue died there was Prim, Gale, and though she had a harder time accepting it then, Peeta too joined the rank of reasons to win.

And winning, as ever, meant one thing: living.

Here, she can't find any of that though, and she knows how disgusting she is when she begins to cry.

Crying won't do anyone any good.

But that's the thing now. There's no one to do any good for.

They shut the light off at some point when sobbing has made the shift into shivering words, names, and promises that will never be kept, apologies that will never properly be made. A pooling warmth under her side, the part touching the floor, sinks against the side of her face, the tang of blood not as horrific as it might be otherwise. At this point the only thing she registers is that the blood is warm. It won't be for long, but something about it pulls her under.

Metaphor for all the people she is responsible for? Lost on her. If that's what Snow wanted.

But it still makes for an interesting show on the other side of the immaculately lit two-way mirror.

[ ooc; people can come in at any section (you don't have to read each part to get the gist really, and in a way it's more likely they would come in confused right? but you can if you want, it's just really long, for which I apologize), and at any point that they feel works for them within those sections, the only exception being the last segment which can be entered but 1)only from the end and so that leads to 2)your character would have to feel around in the dark for a while before, eventually as in video games or something, the setting of that point of the dream can shift---thus making it easier to log from thereon out. If you've any questions/concerns/etc please feel free to e-mail me: loveinmypocket@gmail.com. I realize this isn't me presenting you with a situation in which to find your character, which would probably be easier...but this is how I did it last time and I already had most of it written up by the time I saw other people doing it the other way T-T. Thus I understand if there are a lot of ?_? at it and will be happy to explain or clarify anything to facilitate interaction happening!

Any and all backdating is welcome, especially since I'm tossing this up at a silly though IC hour and have to skidaddle for work soon :/ lmfff! ]

◊]]off the network]][ thoughts]][ & 010][ ✗ [[ accidental audio

2010-09-25T05:31:17Z

Rue is here. When they said that the dead walk around I didn't believe it at first, not until I experienced it firsthand and even that just seems like a part of a nightmare sometimes. It doesn't feel like it could have been real but I know that it was.

Rue is real. The spear that came with her is real too. I wanted her to leave it but I'm not about to tell her what she should and shouldn't do. Maybe she'll need it someday. Probably. The flowers came too, fresh as when they were picked. All of it.

But her death was real too. Her hands are cold and there's no pulse.

What could I do to change that? Do I believe that I could do anything at all? With Rue right in front of me I guess that I have to.

But what can I offer in exchange? I shouldn't even be considering it. They can't be trusted.

...but Rue deserved to live. I couldn't give that to her in the Arena. If there's a chance here that I can...

Still... how would I keep Peeta or Gale from trying to fix it? Or Cinna for that matter?

How do I fix this so that it works.

She has been staying with us even though I know that Peeta offered for her to live with him and Finnick. That might be better for her ~~the way things are in this apartment already with Gale and myself staying with Cinna~~ if I trusted Finnick more. It isn't all Finnick's fault that I don't trust him completely. I can name the people I trust that much on one hand and it's not something that applies all of the time, even for them. Cinna I feel like I can trust but that doesn't mean the same as actually telling him things, and when he's obviously keeping things from me even if it's for my own good it's harder. Gale and I have our disagreements. Prim I don't tell everything. Peeta...

...

I do trust Peeta to look out for her if she lives with them.

...

I keep thinking of her like she's alive though and I'm disgusted with myself for forgetting that she isn't sometimes, but the dead just don't walk around, talk to you, hold your hand. They don't. Ordinarily. But the living aren't so cold, aren't...So I'm quick enough to remember she isn't and even that doesn't change the fact that I view her as someone I want to protect, someone I want people looking out for. She's spent her whole life, I guess, looking out for her siblings. Giving them what could have been hers, and more, and what did she get for it? A spear through her stomach.

Things still hurt here when you're dead. I found that out. The least I can attempt is to help keep that kind of thing away from her...and help her to help herself.

Which is where the shooting comes in.

Everywhere you go there's some kind of need to be able to defend yourself, even here where there isn't the same kind of urgency or the same kind of...unrest.

Am I going to take anything from here back with me?

Nightmares? Skill sets?

Different people tell me different things. Not helpful.

The most honest answer I've gotten is that I have to wait and see for myself, but I don't like that either. There might be no pleasing me, but I keep asking.

And what am I going back to? Months have passed and I keep having to remind myself, because whether or not I go back to the same point doesn't matter right now. I need to remember for myself. Gale. The change of Peacekeepers. A choice to stay and not run.

What that means.

What do I want?

My voice is the only one in my head usually, which is a relief, but I can almost hear Haymitch laughing at me when I realize exactly what that thing is---what I want.

I want to start an uprising.

Not here, even if there are people I've noticed who want to challenge the Deities---Gale among them. What's the point? I'm sure Gale would explain it to me the same way that---

But we'll disagree on that as long as we're here, I'm sure.

There are things to get done in the meantime.

I need to get him a bow. Him and Rue. I should probably invest in one specifically for myself too while I'm at it.

...and Rue should live with Peeta, maybe.

His nightmares...he doesn't wake up screaming. It's so normal for me but I need to think about---

---should I at least move into the flat next door? Would that be better?

I don't know.

[ First there is the tumble of the device into leaves on a forest floor and it turns on mid-tumble so a little muffled sound before it lodges itself between some conveniently placed rocks, recording.

And this is the sound of wood snapping and then a short sigh of frustration that precedes the kind of tone clearly made for Talking to Oneself, tinged with disappointment. ]

This is no good.

[ ...and thus the sound of going back at it---which involves further sounds of paring down acquired wood for drafting a small bow---because she wanted to try for herself first...and it kills time before going to actually see where this Presea person works---- various forest sounds interspersed---birds, the rustle of leaves, etc.

And this is forward-dated to a normal hour of the morning---ten or so, which is really very late by some people's standards. Some People includes Katniss but she had other things to do beforehand today. ]

[eta; sreepku.....must...will tag back all after work ;; ! <3 ]

◊]]off the network]][ thoughts]][ & 009][ ✗ [[ action

2010-09-09T08:29:55Z

I only know what time it is based on the way faces change as they come to ask me if I need anything. I've been here long enough that when they ask me I can feel myself trying to smile but I don't know how effective it is. I stay out of their way when they come in to check on him, to do whatever it is that they're doing. Days of watching and I still have no idea. Everything here is so different and with all of these machines available to ordinary people I find myself wondering how we ever got by with just my mother and Prim.

Then I remember it's my mother and Prim who saved Gale. No, who save Gale.

Any doubts I had before are mostly gone now, about how we come from different times, about how we are trapped, because the way Gale looked in the square days ago is the same way he looked in the square in District 12, minus the snow and Thread shaking his whip out to scare anyone who wasn't terrified already. I thought it was bad the first time, but it's been worse this time around even though I knew as soon as the team arrived that he would live. It was still worse; to see him broken like that, and even now to see him like this. He hates it here. I don't like it myself, but I'm no healer. Neither is Peeta, nor Cinna. Finnick I don't completely discard even though some survivalist insistence says I would do better if I could.

If only he hadn't stopped by.

I still can't figure him out----the Career from District 4 who knows my fiance in a way that seems to do with more than the broadcast of the Games---but he isn't a priority.

The boy in the hospital bed is.

Gale.

My cousin.

The lie doesn't get any better the more people I tell it to. They say lying is supposed to get easier but it's not working out that way for me. Maybe I'm just that bad at it. Doctors have told me Gale will probably be released tomorrow and the only thing I feel decent about is that I know I have enough to pay for it myself. Months of unspent money because I didn't need it comes in handy now after all. I know that Peeta would have offered. Cinna too even though he's still getting settled.

But the man with the cane---House? I think that's what someone called him--was right.

Gale is my responsibility.

He was punished because---

Changes of---

And I know that's just one more reason I can't leave.

Katniss sits in a chair beside Gale's hospital bed, elbows on either arm of said chair and head bowed slightly enough that a passerby could tell easily enough that she isn't asleep. The distinct quietness of her, however, can seem standoffish at best, and the slight wariness in her eyes--like an animal evading a trap only by the most cautious of steps--is enough to keep whatever polite inquiries by nurses and so on to a minimum. The last person who was in, whoever it was, was maybe trying to match the silence underneath the sound of the machines and hallway din by closing the door as such, but this has resulted in it actually being a little ajar.

Lack of sleep and an old combination of aversion and fear to hospital settings costs her the usual alertness and observational skills she has honed over years, however, and Katniss sits up a little straighter only to fold her hands restlessly in her lap, not noticing the door at all. Her gaze--her everything really--right now is for the patient in the bed who she tries not to lose sight of, because when she blinks or nods off for even a second he reverts to the bloodied body he arrived as, so gray eyes stay trained on him as if he might disappear at any moment. For all she knows at this point he could, but she can't decide if that's something she wants or not.

[ooc; more than placeholder-ish but open action at the hospital, quiet-like of course though...patient bedside and all....and yes this is the real time of it ._. craaaazy y but can apply to other hours of the day too since she's not leaving...mlfdlsk....just specify somewhere in your tag if it's a different time please! <3 ]

[008][ ✗ [[ audio

2010-09-03T18:12:27Z

I need a doctor, maybe a ....stretcher.

We're in the square, near the fountain.

[ She stops, stilted, sudden.

How much should she say? She has no idea. It makes her nervous still to broadcast anything that matters on purpose but how else does she get a hold of someone? She hasn't talked to any doctors here before, a mistake she realizes, even though not for a reason people would think. Prim and her mother aren't here. She was a fool for not being more prepared when she knew anyone could show up from any point.

Get it together. She keeps thinking she has a grasp and then it slips away.

Focus though. Focus. Gale.

Healer. ]

They carried him on a board before. There were a few of us.

[ Her voice is firm but a lower level all the same. ]

[007][ ✗ [[ thoughts -private || audio -public

2010-08-30T17:41:23Z

We are moving into September. That's a little more than three months since Peeta and I arrived in the City, and almost a month since Cinna showed up. I try not to think about the Quell, the implications of having to train someone--a girl, maybe younger than me--for an almost certain death sentence. How do you do something like that? How has Haymitch done it all these years? Well, I guess he hasn't. Hard to do from the confines of a liquor bottle. Then again, he did save us, sort of.

Sometimes I try to imagine how Peeta will get through it, but I don't wonder too long. I come back to the answer I have for him with most things. He'll do it out of kindness, because it's no good to train someone telling them they're going to lose and it's even worse to train them into believing it's going to be easy. Peeta will be honest not just about the training, but the caring too.

I care, but some of it isn't about the tribute. I know some of it is spite for the Games where the "odds" have never been in our "favor" before, where the closer you are to the Capitol the closer you are to winning because nothing is actually fair. I'd want her to win...but it wouldn't be enough. I would want both of them to come out alive. I can't get my head around committing myself to one of them the way Haymitch chose me.

That's two betrayals, both to Peeta, and it figures that he's the last person who deserved it.

He does much better here than I do. His talent is useful. His experience with baking is useful. Hunting keeps me busy but no one really needs the takes--not even us, with the City allowance and all that Peeta brings in. I realize I don't like being obsolete, not knowing where I fit in. It seems sick to say I prefer Panem with its life-death politics and laws that result in good people being punished for bad reasons. I didn't even know exactly what I was doing there. But I was figuring it out. Here, Panem only exists in Peeta, Cinna, and the nightmares.

Well that's not completely true. I have had dreams about Rue. I think about Prim and Gale enough that home exists there too. It goes almost without saying though, that it's not the same. Here the choices I make don't matter. Protecting Peeta matters. Cinna too, though I don't really know from what. It's as impossible as they say to avoid the 'curses'. But other things...the choice to stay instead of run. To figure things out instead of pretend they aren't there or can be blocked out...that doesn't make any difference in this place. I'm no closer to fixing the mess I made, the mess I somehow continue to make. I didn't know what I meant to do with those berries when they called for a single victor, and I still don't know, but the placement of Thread as Peacekeeper shook something in me. Gale almost dying shook something, even though it shouldn't have taken something that bad to do it. I want to move forward, but that's not happening right now.

I feel stopped, like I can't get to what's behind me or in front of me.

It's the nice way of putting it to say that I don't like it. Even when I do go home it's like sinking back into a trap, but it's a trap that I recognize. More than this place, at least.

][ a u d i o ][

Peeta, I'll meet you after your shift.

Some of these things are just weird looking. But some of the others...

...I don't want to take any chances.

[Ooc; First, place-holder between classes!

Second, offside note to say that there will be some big backdating / catch-up coming into some of your inboxes from Sora, Peter 1, and Peter 2, Emma, and for Chelle from Conrad. That said, if you get a reply and don't want to tag back I totally understand ;; hard to get back in the frame of mind sometimes when the backdating is so...very....back dated. ._.;; <3]