Darkness, Ever After (Hunger Games Fan Fic)

Tragic Love Story

The square disappears from my sight as the heavy wooden doors of the Justice Building slam shut behind me. The sound reverberates throughout the spacious lobby, echoing back and forth between the blank walls. Once inside, the peacekeepers let go of us, and my hands immediately cover my eyes, staunching the flow of the tears.

Virgil and I are lead through the large, high-ceilinged lobby, passing shiny satin chairs in a myriad of colors and expensive, carved wooden tables. Glass vases also adorn the room on pedestals in some corners, practically begging to be knocked from their precarious resting places. Their colors swirl around inside the glass, like the thoughts do in my jumbled head.

We are closed in separate rooms, awaiting our final goodbyes with friends and family members. For a few minutes, I wait alone, taking in the finesse of the circular room in which I sit. The fancy furniture is curved slightly to match the shape of the wall, and each piece is aligned perfectly. A rud in the shape of a star embellishes the center of the room. It gives a sort of optical illusion that this office is a clock, forever reading the same moment in time--this moment of terror that I am in.

As I rub my hands back and forth on the soft couch, it's undeniably soft fabric smooth against my hands, the door opens. My father. He says nothing at first, and I do not, either. What is there to say to someone you've loved since you were born and you may never see them again? And then, as if he read my mind, which he often seems to do, he says, "She's okay." He means Rozada. An image of her body, lying crumpled on the ground, stays stuck in my mind.

He wraps his arms around me, combing his fingers through my hair. "Will she be here?" I ask him. I can sense the desperation in my voice.

"I'm afraid not," he says quietly into my ear. He has not let go of me. "But as we took her to the healer, she told me to tell you something."

I pull away from him, leaving nothing but my hand in his. "What, dad?"

"That she loves you." I already know that. But now I realize how seldom we told each other it was so. There is not time for words of love when you are living in fear each and every day. What has this world become?

My father leans down and kisses me on the cheek. I wrap my arms around him one more time. It will be my last. He opens the door and cold air seeps in. "I love you, too, Cora." His voice carries the strained sound of someone who is in pain. He is.

No sooner than the door has closed and I take a sobbing breath alone does the door open once more. A girl in a plain, blue dress that falls just short of her knees walks in. I recognize her braided blonde hair, her icy blue eyes, and pale skin. She is a friend of Rozada's. She simply says, "I'm sorry." I remain silent as she lingers in the doorway. There must be a message within those words that she does not want to say aloud, but I struggle to find it.

I do not thank her or accept her kind words, afraid I will have said something wrong. Does she mean Rozada is dead? I think of my father, just a moment ago, telling me she was okay. That if I came back she would be able to hug me and never leave my side.

After a moment where our eyes are locked, she ducks out the the room, satisfied that I understood. I did not. Those may happen to be the only two words she has ever spoken to me; I don't know why she said them, but I am glad she did. Maybe she just feels bad for me about Rozada. Maybe she feels bad for me about Virgil, or just about my whole predicament in general.

I am waiting for a long time for my best friend Marien to visit me. I know she will come, but I cannot help feeling anxious that I will never see her again. The door remains motionless, and I wonder about Virgil. What did my father say to him? Is he in the other room, weeping, weeping for me and for mother and for Rozada? Weeping for freedoms he will never have? Because that is exactly what I feel like doing. I don't think that if Marien enters the room I will be able to hold them in any longer. And there is so much I wish I knew how to say but I don't. I am hopeless with words.

When the door finally opens, I feel an immediate rush of happiness. Then I see it's only Virgil, guided by two peacekeepers on either side. I stand up, sad to leave the fanciest room I have ever been in, but happy at the same time to be free of the clock on the floor, that held me captive in the worst moment of my life. Or perhaps the second worst. Or perhaps I do not even know anymore what moments have been the worst, for there have been so many misfortunes in my life lately, that there are too many to count.

I leave the room behind. The door shuts; my last view of the room is of the circular couch where I can almost see my fingerprints on the shimmery apholstery. When we exit the Justice Building, the square is practically empty. A small pool of dried blood catches my eye, threatening to make me faint all over again.

The few people who linger in the square watch us, most from only the corner of their eyes. They do not dare look the peacekeepers here in the face; my sister was the very example of what a simple act of unruly behavior could surmount to. It makes me sick to see the pitiful bystanders, going about their business as usual, until the recap of the reapings around dinner time.

I imagine my father alone in our small house, his eyes on the shabby television with wires sticking out of it and a blurry picture, seeing the reapings. Rozada is either dead or hurt. She will not be home. Virgil is here with me, and I am approaching my certain death as we speak. It makes me wonder what I look like onscreen, collapsing, then waking up and shouting over my sister as the peacekeepers attack her.

I probably look like a pathetic little girl, practically being carried away in a fit of hysteria, to the Justice Building. But what more am I, really? The Capitol makes fools out of nearly all the tributes, and even the Victors sometimes. What more am I, than a helpless girl from District 4?

It is a short ride to the train station, during which the peacekeepers yell at people to clear the road. Cars are about as uncommon as miracles here, because the entire district end to end is only an hour's walk, and nobody goes that far anyways. The cobblestone road feels bumpier in a car. In fact, everything feels bumpier in the car. Every little crack and crevice in the ground brings a jarring jerk to the vehicle.

Virgil holds my hand in the back seat, while two peacekeepers sit in front of us, one driving and the other simply gazing out the window like me. Streets it takes me ten minutes to walk fly by in seconds, trees and houses strolling past the windows as we seemingly glide along on thin air. It is actually a magical feeling, almost like what I imagine flying would be like, if humans could have wings, like Mockingjays.

I twist the word around in my head. Mockingjay. I remember stories of a girl who called herself the Mockingjay. I've watched recaps of the year she won the Games, and I've watched her hold out small, dark berries to herself and her lover....for the sake of never being without him. That was seventeen years ago. I have also been forced to watch, in school, hoverplanes dropping bombs on districts, and the smoke rising....people dying. I have watched so much suffering during my life....

Yet it remains forbidden to know the end of this tragic love story. So forbidden my father wouldn't tell me it, not even when I became old enough to know. When I was eleven, he said I could hear when I was older. I waited. I waited until I was twelve, and preparing for my first reaping. But he still would not tell me, and he changed the subject often, when I would bring it up.

He always said it was like the Dark Days, only worse. He also said there used to be thirteen districts. I cannot comprehend this particular fact, as today, eleven still stand. No more, no less.