burnwithus | they won't ask you why (they'll just watch you die) ➴ homeplot

they won't ask you why (they'll just watch you die) ➴ homeplot

I taste ash on my lips, heavy and choking. It's in the air, along with the smell of coal fires that only remind me of District 12.

District 12.

My eyes snap open, face pressed against the fallen ash. Trying not to breathe it in. There was a disease that all the miners got after too many years of working, a cough that no amount of salve could take away. Black Lung Disease, my mother used to call it. I already feel the burning begin in my lungs as I pick myself up from the floor. This was District 12, and it didn't feel like a nightmare. After a year and a half of fighting them repeatedly, I knew all of my nightmares.

This was something else. This was...focus. I press a hand against the scar on my temple, the one I automatically associate with confusion in hopes that it will help me think. It doesn't. After a minute I give up on trying to figure out why and focus more on figuring out where I am. In the distance, the red flames of the slag heap are still visible. With all that residual coal dust, it might be burning forever. Still burning, I think numbly, reaching automatically for the quiver at my shoulder, except it isn't there. Just the knife I sleep with underneath my pillow.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something beginning to move. Someone. Multiple people whose faces I can't quite make out. How is this even possible? There was no one left alive after the firebombing, except those that Gale managed to get out.

Maybe it's the dead. It sounds ridiculous, but if this is a dream, if it's my dream...it's entirely possible.

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There's nothing familiar about the vista that he opens his eyes in. There's nothing but the taste of ash, the smell of burning. Every breath too shallow in a way that reminds him of being down the minds; an awareness that every breath could be your last. He lifts his head, wiping his face, ash already smeared on his cheek.

"Katniss?"
There are other people here. Her's is just the first name on his lips.

Gale. Even through the haze of it all, I would know his voice anywhere. What is he doing here? And almost more importantly, which version of Gale is it? I slide down to a crouch, head held in my hands, breathing slowly. District 12. Gale. Already I can feel the crunch of bone underneath my feet, because the skulls of the dead are everywhere.

I killed you. And you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm- it's not enough, though. It's never going to be enough.

"Gale," I'm sure he'll be able to hear me. Everything seems louder in the complete stillness of 12. There used to be other sounds; the chatter of people trading in the Hob. Most people kept their heads down on the ordinary streets, but every once in a while there were strains of conversations. The clang of machinery from down in the mines. Shopkeepers selling their wares. There was always something.

Now there's nothing but the occasional whistle of the wind.

Edited 2011-02-22 16:35 (UTC)

She speaks and he finds her in the murk. His head turns towards her. He pushes to his hands and knees and then up, to his feet. The ash is thick around the toes of his boots. The first step he takes, he stumbles but he doesn't fall.

"...Fuck, Katniss," he mumbles. "This is it, isn't it?"

It's a while before I can answer him, because it feels like I've been in this exact position before, with Gale's voice here. Except this time, it's even harder to keep everything together. I take deep breaths, tugging at my braid in hopes that the pain will orient everything like it often does. "This is it," I tell him, breathing in ash. "This is District 12. What's left of it."

There is no District 12. It doesn't exist anymore.

I can't stand up. My knee hits the floor but there's no moisture left in the earth anymore. Just flakes of ash that flutter upwards now that they've been disturbed. I take care not to breathe them in as well.

Walking towards her, he instinctively knows not to breathe deeply. There's nothing left; there's nobody left. There are bones littered all around them. He holds his hand out to her.

"C'mon," he says, quietly. "I'll help you."

The bones are the worst. District 12 was not a big place, compared to all of the other Districts and the Capitol itself. I see a face on every skull on the ground, wondering how many of them I knew. How many of them I would pass every day on the way to school or the Hob in the evenings.

Gale's hands are calloused in the same places as mine. I pull myself to my feet, eyes stinging. First the music from the jukebox, and now this. It can't be a coincidence.

"I did this," he might as well know the truth.

When he nudges a skull with the toe of his boot by accident, it goes skittering away from them and Gale has to swallow down hard on the urge to vomit. He closes his eyes and tries to breath. He keeps her hands in his.

"You didn't do this," he says, voice low and tight. "Snow did this."

Yes. Snow did this, I know that without a doubt. But I can't exactly absolve myself either. District 12 was guilty of nothing except having the misfortune to have me. Objectively, I know that there were few choices and I did what I thought was right at the time, but it doesn't matter because they're still dead. Finnick. Cinna. Boggs. Prim. It's becoming a list, a number that I can't count on my fingers.

But Gale doesn't understand. He doesn't even know about the Quell.

"Snow's dead," I breathe through my hands, trying not to inhale more ash than necessary. "I saw him die," but it's hard to feel satisfaction, even surrounded by the remains of 12, because his death didn't change Prim's fate.

"Good."

It's all that he can say to that. It's not happiness, not exactly; it feels more like relief. His eyes go to the fence and he reaches out, taking her by the hand.

"Come on," he says. "There's no buzzing. We're going outside the fence. You can stay there and I'll..."

He just needs to go home...just...for a bit.

Of all of Harry Potter's nightmares, not one had been about fire. They either made no sense whatsoever or were cold, cold and dark and lonely and terrifying, Voldemort tugging at that part of Harry's soul which he owned. Harry might awake drenched in sweat, but never because of heat. He never smelled the cloying scent of burning heavy in the air nor felt ashes falling on his cheek, lighter than snowflakes.

So it was a kind of morbid curiosity that made Harry wake now without screaming, without jerking away from the unfamiliar softness coating a hard ground that was definitely not his hammock. He opened his eyes slowly, unsurprised to find that everything blurred into a wall of varying shades of gray, something redder, bloodier in the distance. Groping for his glasses, he found them roughly where they should have been and popped them on. The scene around him certainly looked like something that would have fit in his nightmares, only it was entirely unfamiliar and flecked with ash. Frowning, Harry sat up and tried to wipe his glasses off with his shirt, only succeeding in smearing everything to a more transparent film.

Scrambling to his feet, Harry's survival instincts kicked in. He reached for the hawthorne but of course found no wand. He only had himself in completely unfamiliar territory, what looked like a war zone.

Harry cursed under his breath, feeling something inside him start to vibrate with panic. No Ron, no Hermione, not even bloody Draco. Just... Katniss. Other people, too. Gale, he thought the one bloke's name was. But the others were strangers to him.

So it was to Katniss he made his demands. "What the hell?"

He's not supposed to be here. Gale, I could understand if only for a brief moment. He didn't even come from this world, because Harry came from a world where things like justice still existed and people fought with magic. Not here, because there wasn't any of that left in District 12, or in all of Panem. Just ashes.

If Harry is here, then the island must be doing something. Like Halloween, except it's him rather than Sawyer in the middle of my nightmares. Honestly, I would have preferred Sawyer.

"This is my home," it's hard not to show emotion in front of him, but I don't want to let him see. "Or...it was."

Home. Harry broke his puzzled gaze away from Katniss to take a look around again, eyes wide as they took in everything in a new context.

Home? It was destruction. It wasn't anything. Harry shook his head without realizing the action, denying what his mind wouldn't take in.

"But.. why am I here?" he asked, gaze finally returning to Katniss. He didn't want to be there. He couldn't believe Katniss wanted him to be there either. And yet when he shuffled his feet, he kicked up tiny bits of charcoal and dirt.

"It's the island," I'm not sure where the certainty came from, but I'm sure of this if nothing else. The island was playing us, too, like the Capitol and the rebels and I'm tired of it. At least then I knew the reason and the end goal, but this doesn't have one that I can see.

The last time I was here, President Snow left a white rose for me. I wonder if it's still there. Just the thought of the scent of blood and roses is enough to make my stomach heave and the skulls around us do not help. He's dead. I saw him die with my own eyes, but it was too late to change anything.

I feel tears slipping, sobs forming, and it's a surprise. If only because I thought I was past feeling like this, or anything at all. "Like on Halloween. Except this time it's not nightmares, this isn't my nightmare."

"I wasn't here for Halloween," Harry pointed out. But he knew what she was talking about well enough. The strange things the island did, seemingly without reason. That sort of magic that was used to terrify and harm. Harry disliked it immediately on principle, but more so because it left Harry in this very awkward position, standing on the charred remains of Katniss' life, watching her cry.

How could this not be a nightmare?

He stepped forward uncertainly, not nearly moved enough to reach out and comfort her, knowing also that his hand would probably be slapped away. But he moved for something to do, something that might help. "Can we get out of here?" he asked. "Is there anywhere less..."

He remembered standing in front of his parents' home, his childhood home, and for a while it had felt cathartic. But to see it in shambles would have driven him away before long.

"The forest," I blurt immediately, needing to get away from the stink of ash and burning coal. The one place untouched by the flames, other than the Victor's village and I can't go there anymore. Gale must have done something to the fence, broken it down somehow to get everyone out in time. And it won't be electrified now. Why would it? There's no one left here.

I wipe my eyes. He's already seen, so it feels useless but I don't want him to pity me, because he won't understand.

"It's behind the fence, there," the fence is just in our line of sight from the center of town, hidden by some of the leaves of the meadow. But it was unnecessary; everybody knew what the rules were.

The question as to why the forest was fenced off sat poised on Harry's lips, but he let it go unasked. Why else do you fence off a forest? To keep people out and to keep whatever was in it in. A fence wouldn't have worked against most of the creatures in the Forbidden Forest, but it would have been a nice, reassuring sight some days (and nights).

Harry headed towards it without question, keeping in step with Katniss. He didn't want to wander off in her own home without her. No matter how much they didn't get along usually, poking around in the wreckage of her home felt rude and deeply wrong even if it were innocent.

"So if this is the island," he said, to break the silence and to keep their minds off their surroundings a little, "then it won't last, right? We'll be back eventually?"

"Eventually, yes. But not before-" something bad happens. The words are taken out of my mouth when I hear the tromping of heavy boots against the ash. It's an ominous sound and I don't know what it is yet, but it can't be good.

"Run," the fence is close. There's a stretch that should be loose underneath where we can slide through and before I know it I'm pushing him towards the fence, panic settling into my gut.

It sounds like Peacekeeper's boots. Coming towards us. I don't pretend to admit that it makes sense.

Though much better at flying than doing anything on the ground, Harry Potter could run. He took Katniss' command without question, the world around them too dire to think about second-guessing her. Harry was out of his depth here, not in his world.

He did spare a glance over his shoulder, unable to help his curiosity. Soldiers of some kind. Perfect, just what he wanted to see when he didn't have a wand that worked.

He took off at a sprint, the ashes slipping under the toes of his trainers but not enough to make him stumble. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he expected to feel the heat and whizz of spells narrowly avoided flying past him, but none came. This didn't ease his panic though, which only doubled when he saw a fence in front of them with no break that Harry could see.

She wakes up coughing for breath, and considering how things went down the last time this happened to her, Buffy is none too thrilled. Nothing is recognizable, everything dark and quickly going up in smoke, nothing at all like the island, or even Sunnydale. Strangely enough, that comes as a comfort: at least her loved ones are safe from this, whatever this may be. If she didn't know better, she might mistake the ash falling from the clouds for snow, but those are clouds of smoke, and the only way cold could be used to describe the scene has nothing to do with the temperature.

Rising to her feet, she tries to wipe the soot from her clothes but soon gives up, the endeavor pointless. Whether this is another dream or not, she can't just stand around, she has to do something. She just doesn't know what.

Edited 2011-03-03 04:59 (UTC)

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they won't ask you why (they'll just watch you die) ➴ homeplot

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