The Last Hurrah {Birch Family Oneshot}

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"Whatever you came here to say, I don't want to hear it." My voice snaps like a whip as I rise from the crumpled throne I created upon the floor that I had fallen onto on my arrival to this accursed tomb. Its attempted air of majesty and glamour felt like nothing more than a fake hope to my already angry soul. Tattered, rotting curtains with moth stains and pools of blood would be a much more welcome sight in a place such as this. It painted a more accurate photo of what this room truly represented. What death it held in its falsely pretty hands.

They begin to speak in a low drone, but I had learned to tune it out many years before. Cassius had taught me that. I was supposed to think about the things I liked, and the things I wanted. A hot bath with lavender-scented bubbles, a run through the woods, a comforting song strummed on my guitar late at night, but most of all the cigarette embrace of him just one last time.

I had been able to give him that wish and hold him through his violent sobs, so why was he too selfish to return the favor? Why wasn't he here to stop the tears that so quickly threatened to battle their way from my broken eyes? He left me alone with these monsters, as they spoke of things like honor, and winning, and using my training well. Like they thought I cared about their expectations and their reputation. I had given up on those desires long ago, when they had given up on my crying, tortured brother as The Capitol shipped him off to his death.

They did not care for him, the greatest joy in MY life, so why should I care for their dreams? Why should I care that Mrs. Suri said this or Mr. Wizodingle advised that?

"I don't give a fuck." I whisper, but they pretend to not hear me, caught up in the hope that I will just shut up and conform like a good little girl. What was I supposed to do? Walk up to The Capitol with my tail tucked between my legs, ready to let them move me in whichever direction they saw fit? "Fuck, no." My words echoed louder, and then louder as I began to shout, "No! No! No! No! Hell fucking no! How many times do I have to tell you? No!"

Damn't, Cassius Birch, where are you? Why did you leave me here to be tortured by these words? Why did I have to stand here alone?

"Language, Beatrice!" My mother scolded, her mouth forming a tight line of frustration, "What the hell do you mean by no?" What a hypocrite.

"What I mean," I said, the venom so clearly dripping from my voice as I took a step forward, "Is no. No I will not conform to your fucking standard and go into these games as your little pawn. I am sorry that Cassius was such a fucking disappointment, but I have no control over his actions. Have you... have you ever stopped to think that maybe the reason that Cassius let himself die so early is because he didn't want to... want to come home to... to..." My voice broke. If I finished that sentence it would have meant that Cassius not only did not want to come home to them, but he would have also not have wanted to come home to ... no, I couldn't say it. I could only make her feel bad while I still could. "You, mother, are a conniving, heartless, using facade of a maternal piece who doesn't give a flying fuck for her own children but instead pushes them to the point of their own death. Frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of you pushing me around like I am some puppet you have control over. Well I am not, I have my own dreams too, and so did Cassius! But you never cared enough to ask us about them, did you? You just wanted us to be reaped so you could have a little bit of honor to your name! WELL HERE YOU ARE MOTHER! WE'VE BOTH BEEN REAPED. DO YOU FEEL HONORED YET? ... that's what I thought."

The beast said nothing, she just stood there with all the color drained from her face. It would have honestly looked comical if I hadn't been so mad. I watched her swallow her words over and over again.

"Uh...err...well, we should go," She would never face her problems, would she? The pair of them turned to leave, and began to walk cautiously towards the door as if I was only a ticking bomb, ready to explode with one wrong move. I was almost free of their cowardly faces forever, until she spun on her heel and looked me square in the eye. "Beatrice...um...there was something we've been meaning to tell you for a while now. I know this isn't the best time."

The glare I threw her could have made President Snow cry.

"What?"

"Well, um... Cassius, um.." How dare she say that name to me. I clenched my dress in a tight fist, "Cassius, sweetie. Cassius was a twin. His brother lives in the Capitol." And then they were gone, safely behind locked doors and I was throwing myself with all force towards the wooden gate.

My hands slammed against the door over and over with enough force to make them bleed. I only wanted enough pain to forget what they had just told me, to go back to my former state where I could be angry at Cassius for abandoning me and mad at my parents for not loving him. Not this. Anything but this. Everything but this. I rather walk into my own death but this.

I began to scream, for real this time, loud echoing screams that rang across every surface of the entire room. It was a good thing they did not allow cameras in this part of the process, or I would forever be known as the crazy chick of the sixty-fifth annual hunger games. But boy did I scream.

Soon the men in the white coats forced their way in and pumped me with some kind of drug. An attempt to make me shut up, I assume. And it worked, for a time. I fell into a chair in a powerful haze and just let their power overtake me for a while, a goofy grin spreading across my now lopsided face.

My last thought as I drifted from a state of active consciousness?

I am not alone.

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