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

[burnwithus]

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.

Comments

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"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."

[confidenceman]

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.

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"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.

[confidenceman]

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."