𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

nine

☆ CHAPTER NINE! ☆
009. Mother figures

|| NOT TODAY ||
❝There she goes, in
front of me,take my
life, set me free again,
we'll make a memory
out of it.❞

➳➳

DEATH WAS THE largest misconception about the Hunger Games.

When the Titan name's were first picked, the sheer force of death was so strong that a part of me couldn't remember what it felt like to breathe without it- without the constant fear that hung around my neck as if even the thought of it was enough to kill me if I pushed too hard. Like a noose has been etched into my skin so that it couldn't ever be removed, no matter how much I pulled
the coarse rope, or like the last crumbling stone that was about to fall away to cause my untimely death.

No matter how I described that feeling, or the one that filled me from that moment until the last cannon sounded, it always ended in death. Every analogy, every example that I could pluck from my small amount of life experience could be twisted into something threatening- because that was what the Hunger Games was supposed to be.

Threatening, but over swiftly.

But then I lived, which was something that nobody could ever really be ready for. The misconception came in the fantasy that after you survive, that noose would somehow untangle itself from around your neck, and the stone would suddenly find a way to glue itself onto the perfect bridge. I thought that the weight would be lifted as soon as I knew that death wasn't a hold of me anymore; when it didn't, that was almost as shocking as the moment my name echoed around the square.

Instead, everything got impossibly tighter, until I had the choice to learn how to lift the weight forever or to let it crush me for good.

That was the only thing that I could think about; Evelyn was the one reminder I had that there was a world outside of my dreadful feelings as she hovered outside of my room's door. She didn't talk at first, when she was too stunned by the small amount she had heard to even bother to wade through the tense air's imaginary quicksand, but I knew she was there because of the shadows that danced under the door every time I glanced away from one of the white walls. I watched them dance from my king-sized bed every now and then as time passed as fast as one of the Capitol trains when they needed fixing. I hated the bed, it was too big for just one person to sleep in; why would the Victors need such a big bed when they knew we would all be alone?

It became apparent quite quickly that the Capitol didn't really think about the little things like that, or maybe they did, and it was a cruel form of mental torture just to poke fun at how alone we had all become. Like another embodiment of my Victor's home- just something overly large that couldn't ever fill the space of something small and real.

Although, it was obvious that this room wasn't like my District 5 home. In my real room I could feel a sense of comfort in the art on the walls that were beautiful enough to distract a wandering eye, and I could feel that little bit safer knowing that Lillian was just next door.