This is my truth, this is what I've come to accept.
I've come to accept the warm drizzle of a shower in the morning. I've learned to accept and appreciate the grass under my feet and the breeze that tickles my soft skin in the afternoon. I'm still trying to accept the nightmares that come with the trauma, the endless nights where I live and die, and live all over again. But, I can say it's made me passionate, honest... and I still have a lot of healing to go, but I am here, and this is me.
This is my truth.
"Mom?" Lucy asks me from the porch swing on my front lawn and I answer with moving in a little closer to her, resting my head on her shoulder. It was strange at first, seeing my children after so long. Years had past, years I wish weren't taken from me – years I wish I hadn't taken from myself. My hallucenations, or at least what the Capitol had been showing me in the Games were right, Lucy had grown into a young lady with eyes like the sky and hair the colour of my own. The age difference between Lucy and I is biologically sixteen years but the Capitol resurrected me to the same age I was when I jumped off that cliff so now, that number sits at just seven years apart in appearance.
"Do you think you'll get back together with Dad?"
I smile at the thought, listening as the breeze whistles past my ears, carrying with it whispers of words long forgotten and words that have yet to be said. Packard is an older man now, one that I would have loved to grow old and grey with. But, he took my advice in the Justice Building when we were eighteen, the first time I went into the Games:
"When you move on, choose wisely. That lady will be the mother that Lucy remembers."
But of course, Lucy hadn't forgotten me like I had thought. She remembered the smells, the puddle jumping, the warmth my body used to give her during the nightmares and, the song I used to sing her to sleep with. I don't sing that song anymore. But now, she's referring to the night I spent with Packard a few weeks ago, how she saw him tiptoe out from my bedroom, careful not to wake our kids in the next rooms. It was like we were a family again, living under the same roof, eating the same meals... except we aren't.
"No," I say with a heavy heart. "Your father loves Oona now." The name is like a burden on my tongue and weighs it down. Packard and I had spent a night together, and little to Lucy's knowledge, it was not the first time since I've been back from the Games. The kids moved in with me, the last house of the Victors village backing the forest of District 3. At first I thought they'd live with me for just a week, but as the days turned into months I came to realize I meant more in their life than I could have ever imagined and hoped for.
I'm not too sure I believe in fate or destiny. I still love Packard, with all my heart, and I know I did something unfair to him, again; I came back into his life after he had already learned to live without me. But now, here I am, accepting this truth that my one love moved on without me, and he's living the life I told him to lead if I was killed in the Games... but I wasn't, I always come back, never to die in that arena.
The stars are out tonight, seeming to give me a final send off before I make my way to the Capitol in the morning for a mandatory mentor meet up. It's something I've done before, and not exactly something I wish to do again but I've never had a choice in the matter. There will be cameras, and there will be a broadcast, one as the Victor of this year's Hunger Games I'll have to give.
"Mom, can I ask you a question?"
"Yes, anything."
The swing rocks back and forth, the hinges squeaking on its post as it does. This is the kind of life I've always wanted, a life far from the Reaper and of those who I have killed, some in self-defence, and one other in cold blood.
