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

[burnwithus]

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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[seek-to-end.livejournal.com]

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.

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"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."

[seek-to-end.livejournal.com]

"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.

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"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.

[seek-to-end.livejournal.com]

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?"

[burnwithus.livejournal.com]

"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.

[seek-to-end.livejournal.com]

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.