(sawyer) a modern day warrior, mean mean stride

[burnwithus]

Back home, all of the Victors had ways to deal with the things they saw, both in the arena and outside of it. Haymitch drank, Peeta baked, the Morphlings lost themselves and I...

I tie knots.

What I used to do was hunt, but without any arrows and no way to make more until I learn how, the prospect's pointless. So instead, I wear my fingers down on a length of rope, my hands automatically fashioning the knots that Finnick taught me and a few of my own devising. Most are just beautiful to look at, but many are functional as well, until I finally tie one that would be familiar to anyone : a noose.

The familiar strains of 'The Hanging Tree' begin to float through my memory. It's appropriate, because I'm sitting on a tree branch - and once I'm sure there's no one around I sing a few lines to myself.

❝Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
if we met up tonight beneath the hanging tree.❞

My voice is scratchy at first, but I know the song well - and my father had one that could silence every mockingjay within ear's distance.

I hear a rustle of movement - it's slight, but it's definitely there. "If you tell anyone you heard that I'll have to kill you."

Comments

[confidenceman]

"An apology," I repeat with a nod, although the taut sensation in my jaw reminds me of the fact that it isn't nearly as nice of me to say so as it sounds, that I sure as heck ain't someone who lets getting slighted by with a single five letter word. So I elaborate. "But it ain't 'cause I think sayin' sorry means a damn thing; it doesn't fix anything. It's just..."

I breathe, slowly, in and out, just to keep the thudding in my chest from overcoming me altogether. "I ain't any better, Catnip. You saw what happened in that nightmare of ours. I've become the same damned person as the man I'd been meanin' to kill all my life. All I wanted as a damn apology because maybe then he'd know that it was a mistake, what he did."

After I pause, I add, "He just laughed, though."

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"Did you shoot him afterwards, too?" Somehow, ridiculously, I hope the answer is no, even if I've come to expect nothing else from people. Even if it wouldn't be my answer. If I could fully name a culprit that killed someone in my family, there wouldn't be a limit on what revenge I would take.

I shot Coin on the basis of my suspicions and President Snow's words, after all.

He wanted an apology after he shot the first man, wrongly. He says he became the person that he hated. And he admits all of this to me. No, I can't pretend to understand this man.

[confidenceman]

Yeah, I'm not expecting that question. I mean, it's a natural question to ask, and it makes me wonder how I'm taken so aback by it. Maybe it's 'cause people, they don't generally ask things like that without some sorta warning. Hell, a lot of people never ask at all, prefer to sweep everything unpleasant about the world under the rug like it was never there. I guess that's something I can easily appreciate about Katniss. Life would be easier if more people just bucked up and put it all out there like she does. Too bad, my life doesn't let me get even a taste of easy.

"No," I reply first, plain and simple. I've long since come to terms with what I did to Anthony Cooper, after all, if not the man before him. "No, I didn't shoot him afterward. 'Cause I didn't have a gun."

Hopefully the tone of my voice makes it clear enough what I mean. I doubt I'd enjoy telling her that I strangled the man to death.

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

He killed him anyways. I don't pretend to understand people the way that Gale does, but that much I can figure out. Without a gun, it was probably messy. Probably with his bare hands. That's why he isn't telling me.

I honestly don't know what to think of it. Of course, I'm hardly one to judge, but I've almost always had my bow, and I can't even imagine what it's like to not have the same level of detachment.

"So after you killed him was when you started wanting to do the right thing?" they're his words, not mine. His reason for helping me that day. Even more confusing now that I know he's a killer.

[confidenceman]

I don't know what she's thinking right now. Probably nothing damning. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that it's hard for killers to fully condemn other killers. Even now that Sawyer's made me one of his number, I just... wonder. How much of it was an act. None of it seemed like it, of course, but then again, this is a man who made a living out of being someone else, right? Either way, though. Either way, he damn needed to take me seriously and he didn't, he needed to apologize and he only laughed, so I can't regret. Not too much.

"No," I shake my head. "No, I started wantin' to do the right thing years before that, but wantin' and bein' strong enough to, those are two different things."