'Sometimes I wish I died that day. It would have spared me all this trauma.'
In which Calla Forte wishes she wouldn't have made it through her games. A girl who never forgets, faces her worst memories every day.
She can't sleep at night without see...
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——— two ———
Calla first fled into the dark, after she won - or rather survived - her Games, the 72nd annual Hunger Games. It happened shortly before her interview with Caeser Flicker.
She thought of it as cruel to make her watch a three hour long recap of the most horrible two weeks of her life. The girl had seen enough people dying already and was rather sick of death. Attending the interview and watching the Games - encountering death once more - terrified her to the bone. It was truly the last thing she wanted to do that day.
She was grateful that there was almost a week between her last day in the arena and her first interview. After all, they had to make her look desirable again. Before Calla Forte had sat a foot into the arena, she was a beautiful girl with her big ocean blue eyes, silky dark brown hair and soft curves.
But after those two weeks of pure terror the girl was a mess. Her eyes had lost every spark of joy they once possessed, her brown hair resembled a bird's nest, her skin and lips were dried out and most notably she looked like a skeleton, like she herself had just risen from the dead.
Of course the Gamemakers could not present her to the Capitol looking like that. It was not what the crowd wanted to see. They wanted a strong and desirable victor, not a shell of a person. Thus, Calla went through the same routine all the victors before her had to go through.
Days passed till the most skilled surgeons of the whole Capitol had perfected her body. All her scars were removed, her hair was untangled and most absurdly they surgically made her thicker. It was as if they had just erased a part of her history.
The only thing that still reminded of what she endured, were her now dull eyes. They could not magically make them sparkle again. Though the the shallow citizens of the Capitol would not take notice of that anyway.
On the day of the interview, it seemed like the whole Capitol wanted to talk to Calla. Her prep team and stylist constantly talked to her about the Games.
What they felt like at certain events. How they were heartbroken when they saw Bentley dying. How anxious they were when the careers hunted her. How they cheered for her as she killed Titan, the one who drove a spear through her cousin's heart.
It angered her how self-absorbed they all were. None of them even considered asking her about her feelings. They were much to occupied with their own. As they prepared her for her first public appearance after the Games, it took her all the self-control she had not to scream at them to shut up.
What had driven her to the roof of the training centre all along was the promise of peace and quietness. Two things she didn't have inside the building. There weren't all those obnoxious people whose presence she could not bare any longer. It was their presence slowly suffocating the girl.
On the roof she grasped for air. After hours she could finally breath again. The chilly evening air welcomed her with open arms. It was the first time in weeks Calla felt welcome. That feeling had left her as soon as she left District 6.
