burnwithus | (sawyer) light up, light up as if you have a choice

It's late when she crashes through the forest, which is good considering how little care she's taking to be quiet. At least there's no one around to hear or see her. Katniss was told that there were animals here that were worse than the occasional boar, but she doesn't care. It's hard to care about things like that when there's still alcohol and god-knows-what rushing through your system and bad memories cemented in your brain.

She nearly trips twice over tree roots but keeps going deeper into the forest, not knowing what she's running from but crying and screaming until her lungs hurt, until her voice feels raw and rough. It feels good. Cathartic, almost, even if it doesn't change a thing.

Katniss stops in an empty clearing, laying down in the piles of fluffy white snow that reminds her of comfortable beds and duvet covers, but that only makes it worse. The Capitol had beds like that. Her fingers trace lines in the snow as her tears hit the piles but don't melt the magically pristine substance.

It doesn't change a thing.

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The point of no return. If she could hear those thoughts, Katniss might say that she reached that point a long time ago. That yes, it is very possible, because she's seen it in so many others. Peeta. The darkness she saw in Gale. Annie Cresta's madness. They're all broken in unique ways yet broken nonetheless.

"He was right to remind me. But I still don't agree with him," she exhales, fingernails digging into skin. "I give up on mankind. We should all die and let some decent species take over." The words tumble out before she can stop them, painting a particularly cynical, jaded picture - but she doesn't take them back or look ashamed. Katniss dares him with her eyes, to judge or scorn her or tell her that she's terrible for saying such a thing - yet somehow, she doesn't think it'll come. Not from him.

He levels her with a long gaze and no small amount of irritation, not so much directed at her, but instead at the fact that he keeps on getting smacked with things like this, right in the face, attitudes that he's given up on ever since the previous island. Everything still seems geared on trying to make him take what little amount of faith he's built up back. Finding Anthony Cooper on the other island with no hint of remorse in his eyes. Michael Dawson being idiotic enough to kill two people and give up another four, just out of his insane need to get his son back.

But he's refusing himself to let things slide back to the way they were before, so he reaches out instead and smacks Katniss lightly on the back of the head.

"Well no wonder he started yellin' at you, with you talkin' like that," he presses his lips together. "How can you live on a friggin' hippie island and not have at least some of your faith restored in people right here? Ain't anyone here even steals from anyone else."

She lashes out before she can help it when he touches her, hitting him in the nose before she realizes what she's done. Instantly, Katniss is defiant, thinking that he shouldn't have touched her, but she chases that thought away. She's breathing hard, every muscle tensed as though she's about to bolt at any moment.

"Sorry," Katniss mutters under her breath. She rarely apologizes for anything, so this in itself is a miracle.

"My fault," Sawyer replies just as quietly, brow raising, willing to admit to himself nonetheless that it was probably rather unfair for him to hit her like that, when he knows some of what she's gone through. Or at least, what she's gone through that's left a lasting impression in her nightmares, which speak more for a person than practically anything else. "Didn't mean to startle ya."

Pressing his lips together, he shakes his head.

"Give up on mankind in general, that ain't my issue, but there's gotta be at least one person out there. One person who matters, who you wouldn't just toss out with the rest. Else you would've turned hermit already."

"Peeta," she says it before she has time to think about it. "He's - he was my fake fiancé at home," that was a long time ago, but the idea of making her appear as something she was not was hardly new. In the same way that her prep team and Haymitch had sought to make her into a symbol of romance, the rebels of 13 wanted her as their symbol. Unwavering and dedicated in the revolution. But such symbols don't normally exist in real life.

It's a long time since Katniss Everdeen was able to be herself.

"I trust him. I'd die to save his life. But I also ruined everything."

She's kind of young to have a fiancé, Sawyer thinks, real or not. Even younger to have one that matters enough for her to be saying all of these things about him, to mention concepts like trust, things that Sawyer isn't sure that anyone understands until they've been through a rough decade or two. Then again, he shouldn't be surprised by now. She grows too much, too soon; he wouldn't be surprised to find that the boys leagues behind in that type of jadedness, perhaps. Hopefully, anyway.

"Fake fiancé, how very scandalous," he notes first, trying for a touch of lightheartedness that doesn't quite make it fully across. "So, what'd you ruin? Take on a dirty mistress on the side while being 'married' to your beau?"

Of course it can't be that. But it's easier to suspect the lighter things.

"I lied to him about the fact that the Capitol firebombed our District," even saying that out loud sounds terrible to her ears, and she winces a little bit. She had once remembered saying that everybody else knew her secrets before she did, but that was forced to change once the people whose side she was supposed to be on changed the rules of the Game and she was forced to hold her own agenda. No, not forced. Chose to do so. That part cannot be forgotten, for the sake of Finnick and Boggs and everyone else led to death by her lies.

"Because it was partially my fault and I didn't want him to hate me," does it need any further explanation? She can't find anything that paints her in a better light, but then again, she's not looking either. Even if it were possible.

Frankly, Katniss Everdeen could use some sugarcoating.

Edited 2011-01-21 01:12 (UTC)

Maybe Sawyer's never experienced anything quite that grave, that overarching, but it still isn't hard to picture. His own world has been metaphorically razed down before, and even if it isn't in a way that's quite as grave, one man instead of many, somehow Sawyer wonders if that might be worse. That a single person can unhinge a child, make his world feel hopeless, like he can only grasp at straws. He breathes and peers at Katniss, this girl who's rough around the edges, tries to picture her doing that to someone.

Doesn't work. She wouldn't. Not intentionally, not knowingly.

"So, you're sayin' you lied 'cause you're only human," Sawyer concludes with a slight shrug, pushing further back and leaning against the wall. "You didn't want someone you love t'hate you, and you didn't want him to hate you 'cause of somethin' you weren't totally responsible for. Human."

(sawyer) light up, light up as if you have a choice

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