.:|Love Me Not|:. (Ink, Day Four)

You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
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I forced myself to watch last night.

For her. Not because I care about her- I hate her just as I hate them all for lengthening my life and my family's suffering. Can't they just end it fast and let that be that? She even had a chance. She could have taken one moment while fighting the ancient beast to just aim a blow my way, and that would have been it. No, it certainly wasn't any sort of friendly feeling toward that girl that made my eyes rise to meet those of the dead and gone. Rather, it was curiosity. Was she one of the cannons fired? I actually knew her, and that gave me some reason to look up instead of only seeing strangers and feeling horrible about myself.

Curiosity. Hardly an emotion, but at least it is one step away from this nothingness I have banished my heart to. There was once a time when I could only hope for this kind of emptiness, this kind of numbness. But my mother always said to be careful what you wish for and now I think I understand why. In this absence of all emotion, there is absence of life. I am breathing and my heart is beating but I'm not really alive. I simple am, my mind cold and calculating, a simple being who has lost her heart and perhaps her mind. And there's got to be more to living to this. For as much as I'm feeling, they might as well just say there are seven tributes left rather than eight.

They might as well just fire my cannon now.

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The tower offers a large surprise to me. As I step into it, I am shocked to find the thing I least expected to find in this place of horrors- familiarity. Trees. Good, honest, real trees. Not giant or pink or anything of that sort- while these may not be exactly what I would find outside District Five, they are normal. And normal is beyond what I could have hoped for. First I am walking and then I am jogging and then I am racing, feet pounding against the ground as I breathe in deep because this isn't false. This isn't some facade. This isn't a fantasy world. This is real. A piece of home put here just for me. I can't help it. I laugh. Sure, there is no sun or wind, but this is good enough for me.

And the second good part is food. Sure, it's no feast like the ones back in the Capitol, but it's something to fill my empty stomach. Pinecones. I pluck a few off the verdure and then a fiew more off reaching branches, smiling at the way these movements seem so automatic. Back in District Five, when I hid out in the forest to avoid my family and friends, I often ate pinecones and other edible plants. There was this book they had in an old shop that I read, memorizing what I could and couldn't eat because though it was tedious work, I know it would all be worthwhile in the end. They weren't delicious, but they were something to eat and another way to avoid dinner with my family. My smile now gone, I slowly sit down with my back leaning against the unforgiving trunk of one of the pine trees, eating but now absentmindedly.

Remembering was the wrong thing to do. Because those memories are accompanied by other ones- memories of a flicking lightbulb, laughter, piano music, icy lemonade, and Queen Anne's lace. Some happy, others as cold and hard as ice, and others still so seemingly pointless that one wouldn't think they mattered. But they do. Any memories of the other life matter. I remember going out for ice cream, putting on plastic smiles for my friends, and my sister's screams. My stomach goes cold. What must it be like for her, all alone in our room at night with the other bed cold and empty? I can't imagine it if she was gone. Nighttime was our time to be together- those moments spent quieting her screams were the only ones during which I actually felt like a sister after Luke's leave taking. And Luke... has he kept his promise? Or has he already forgotten?

The more I remember these small things, the more I wonder about home as it must be now. They should be interviewing my family, since I made it to the final eight. I do not envy who ever was put in charge of this, for I am sure that they are facing difficulties beyond belief. Imi probably isn't even out of the Detention Center yet. Luke most likely isn't anywhere to be found, or if he is he is so far gone that one wouldn't be able to get a straight forward answer from him for a thousand dollars. And my parents... well, I doubt they've gotten out of bed since the night of the Reaping. No, my family certainly isn't in the best shape right now, is it? The Marlings have never been the luckiest of families- when we were together, we faced financial crisises. After Luke left, we faced family problems. Now, we face our own insanity, always creeping too close for comfort when we let our guards down. And this is when I realize that even if I do, by some miracle, win, it won't do anything. It won't help anything. That crown won't make things better. The reaping took away any chances we had of becoming a family again. Of ever healing. The day my name was called, things changed for good.

We are broken beyond repair now.


((OOC: Ink has gathered pincones, eaten them, and fled.))