Memory// DandyOneShot

A gust of wind drags leaves across the dirt that covers the graves of District Twelve's past tributes. They've tried to nurse some grass in patches, but nothing can grow in this ground. Death rules here and nothing can sprout with his cold hands around their throat. That is how the girl kneeling in the dirt felt, as if she could not age past this moment and would eventually wither into the soil like everything else in the graveyard. Shifting her weight, the girl's knees crunches the orange leaves underneath them. Eyes were focused at the point in front of her, the tombstone that seemed to consume her every thought.

After finally meeting the victor of the 64th Hunger Games, you would think Dandy would gain some closure and maybe begin to move past the death of a boy she hardly knew, yet here she was huddled in the cold clutching the lemon slice pendant. The girl had hit every point in the grief spectrum. She had thrown a vase and cut herself while picking up the broken shards. She had sobbed in the corner and she had wandered the district like a corpse herself. Yet, why couldn't she just accept the fact that the Strauss boy was never coming back. She was never going to drink lemonade with him again and she was never going to get to tell him how she felt.

Life isn't fair, it is challenging and as cold as the winter that is approaching the districts at a rapid pace. Pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders, Dandy tried to think of what she could do to finally let her demons rest and move on instead of being choked out like a regular old weed in the graveyard with death's fingers dragging it down to hell.

She really thought he'd come home, yet she been here with the true victor not even a week ago. All of them standing over Erik's bones like vultures. Yet there was nothing left to pick off of them- no kind word, no grand explanation of his philosophies, no love- nothing. He was no longer with her, he was beyond any living creature could fathom and that scared her. It was frightening one smack to the head, or the simple motion of a blade across a throat could send someone out of this world. Some thing just as simple could send her out as well- but no. Not today. Not this week. She couldn't quit until she was peace- at the very least.

What could she do to put all this pain to rest? To lift all this weight from her shoulders? Her eyes gazed over the etching in the stone again. Erik Strauss. He wanted this. She kept telling herself that over and over- he wanted this. Well, it wasn't truly the Games he wanted was it? He wanted to be remembered. He didn't want to be just another coal miner that dies of hunger and exhaustion while his children are dying of the same things. He wanted something special. Dandy would give him that, she'd fulfill his wish.

"I will remember you, Erik," she whispered, her voice nearly carried away on the wind that tossed the fallen leaves around, and whipped her dark hair across her face. "I promise."