Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Epilogue - The Sea

Adrienne

The sea never changes. Sometimes it glitters in the rising sun, sometimes it spits under purple clouds, but it always comes back.

Today it is calm and steady. Plenty of ships bob out in the ocean; the Games are in full swing but today they're interviewing the mentors in preperation for the tribute interviews tonight and I don't want to look because none of them really know. They say we've been through the same but that's not true and they know it.

The Capitol designed this house for two. A cruel joke, perhaps, though they couldn't have known how it was going to turn out. Perhaps across the districts there are Victor's Village houses built for two. Is there one in Two? If there is, it's empty.

This is worse. Half the empty space is filled. The rest is a gap that will never be.

They planned it right down to the smallest details. Even now I keep finding things. A pair of plates in a tucked-away china cupboard. Red, blue, white, tiny little flowers snaking around the edges. Exactly the sort of thing Crispin would sneer at - he doesn't like pretty things - and yet secretly admire, glancing back every time he thinks I'm not looking.

When I remember this, my fingers itch to smash them again. To hear the noise as they shatter against each other, the sound of destruction ringing in my ears over the noise of the screen. I could turn it off but silence feels so empty and the waves don't help.

I suppose a clifftop is a nice place for the Victor's Village. Very District Four. But it means that I can never escape the sound of the sea, crashing into the rocks under my feet come storm or shine. You could never hear it under the water, but there was always that moment where your head broke the surface and the noise of the waves would rush at you from far away. I used to love that.

My head has well and truly broken the surface now and too late, much too late.

They wonder why I don't go back home. I did once. Back before my joints hurt when I moved, back when the wound was still raw and pulsing. I thought that I'd be fine, that I had to go and smile and look like I was fine anyway, because surely I'd suffered all that I was going to when I was sat on-stage watching...

They did what I'd always known they would. They made a love story from it. There was the reaping and I saw myself sauntering up the stage; I'd made a speech. I can't remember what it said and it didn't matter. I sat on a different stage feeling numb and watching myself, shoulders thrown back and oozing confidence, sign myself up for the Hunger Games. And they cut straight to Crispin in the crowd. I should have known that he was the one whistling.

The memory of it stabs as hard as ever.

Someone was filming the moment in the canteen. They pan around showing everybody; the girl from Nine with her hat, Claymore looking at the letter he'll never read and me, looking down at my locket. And they catch the exact moment that Crispin and I see each other and...I don't blame them from drawing their own conclusions. I should have seen it myself.

It wasn't a joke, the locket. To Ade, the light of my life. He'd meant it all along.

I cup it in my hands, the same delicate chain and the tiny oval hanging from the end of it, exactly as it was when I'd sat on top of the Cornucopia with morning dawning and laughed at the very idea that it was serious.

He'd never said it wasn't.

Far away, the door rattles. Sometimes I think it'll just open - because he wouldn't bother knocking - and he'll stride in with a massive grin, hair damp from the water, and ask if I missed him. And I'd laugh and say of course not, I was enjoying the peace, just to hide the fact that the peace is only peace to everybody else. To me it's only emptiness, the gap where love should be. Where I let it go.