White Rose: A Hunger Games Continuation

Chapter One

I unlock my door for the first time in months. I hear mutts sometimes banging and even scratching on the door. I will let them in, if they want me they can have me. They can have me. I don't care about life anymore, anyway, I think. Why not end it?

I wish Peeta loved me again. I remember how he used to hold me, as if I was the only thing in the world. I took his love for granted, and now it is gone. Just like everyone I have ever trusted. Peeta is dead to me now. As is Gale. My lover is now an empty shell of fear, not the boy the Capitol tormented out of Peeta Mellark's body. Not my boy with the bread. And Gale killed my sister. Moved away to 2 and never came back. Never looked back. Never noticed how much I actually needed him.

I collapse onto a chair in the kitchen. Curling up into a twisted ball of agony, I cry softly into my patchwork knees. Some of my cell grown skin breaks and bleeds. I don't want to even do anything about. And I don't. I don't.

Buttercup circles my feet. His mucky coat flickers around the kitchen tiles while I watch him from in between my legs. He meows as I weep. "There is nothing." I say through my tears. "So just go away. Go away." I get up to find some mournful quiet and leave him making those cat sounds in the kitchen.

Later I find myself meandering up the stairs to my bedroom. The night is youthful and fresh. My stomach burns as it has been for weeks out of hunger as I climb step by step. I am thinner than when I was eleven. I even feel like I am dying. As if my head is a warped feeling of only pain, and my body floats achingly. Yes, yes. I am finally cutting my ties with the pitiful, painful world of humanity

I stumble up the hall and into my room. My bloodstained bed lies scattered with sheets that I spent weeks in, not even having to use the bathroom as a result of not putting anything into my wasted body. I lay down on the twisted sheets and struggle to fight the nightmare forcing my eyes shut. And I lose.

I am in the study room again. I don't know how or why. Snow is holding her. My screaming little sister. Tied to a chair, I struggle to break free of my bonds. Snow smiles a terrible grin. And then she explodes. I scream her name, but the only one who hears me is Snow and her ashes. Roses grow on the ash beneath me. White roses. Spotted with blood. And beneath the ash, she is screeching my name. I yell hers, but Snow comes toward me with a knife. He cuts my tongue. I am an Avox.

And then I wake.

My eyes fly open to white light. It is morning. I think of my horrible dream. I can feel my tongue in my mouth, assuring my mind that it was, truly, just a dream. It was not true. None of it was real. Except one part. Prim is still dead. Still ashes.

Prim. I want Prim. My fingers rake the empty sheet twisted around me for her as they did two years ago on the morning on that first reaping. The morning that changed everything. The morning where against all probability, her name was picked out from that reaping bowl. The morning that brought her death, although a year later. Death, the thing I thought I saved her from when I volunteered to take her place. And obviously I didn't, because she is dead. Dead.

Buttercup yowls mournfully in the hallway. He is thinking of the same thing. Primrose. Primrose Everdeen. Gone forever, because of Gale's stupid bomb. Was it Gale's bomb? He said he wasn't even sure. My best friend. Gale. Prim. Prim......

As I grasp my fingers on the sweaty bedsheet, I give a low moan for her. I think of her little untucked shirt, her ducktail she was wearing when she became ashes. That the last thing she ever said was my name. And now I'm saying her name, over and over, wishing I was dead instead of her. No Prim, no Peeta, no Gale. No mother. Nothing.

I find myself on the floor, my sheet draped around my body as I begin to scream, not caring what others would think of me. I bet all of District 12 can here her name right now. I think of the people I have left. Haymitch. Drunk, staggering around his house, oblivious to the pain of the world. Gale, who killed my sister, working in District 2, probably married already and with kids, restarting his life. My mother, working as a doctor in 4, fighting depression again. And Peeta. Who would have thought he recovered? I don't know where he is, what he's doing, but I hope he's doing better than me.