misery my old friend [opal; reaction]

I’d been on the train for almost an hour now. The reaping had gone as smooth as ever, the tributes stepping up to claim their places. I don’t know how I felt about them, I was still numb towards it all, especially after Argonite’s death. Part of me wanted nothing to do with them, but that wouldn’t happen until another district one tribute claimed the victor crown. I don’t know if I wanted it to happen or not. I was more than ready to step down from the spotlight, fade into the background and be forgotten. But I wasn’t ready to watch some young child take my place and face the terror that I faced every year, every day of my life. I would put myself through the arena a hundred times before letting someone suffer this way. I wish I could prevent it from happening again, because I wouldn’t wish the pain, nightmare and terror upon even my worst enemy.

The hills rolling as it swiftly moved by. My mind had not even been focused on the television, but my eyes watched the drama unfold, each reaping for each district going by. There were so many volunteers, more so then I had ever seen, more so then I had believed there should have been. Why were so many lower district people volunteering for their counterparts? Was society falling to shit? Everyone oh so very excited to waste his or her own lives. It was ridiculous, absurd even and it pissed me off. They couldn’t even begin to fathom what they would be going through in that arena; they had no clue what they were going to suffer. Stupid, suicidal idiots. It made me so angry, why did people want to put themselves through that? There was enough suffering in this world already. Not a month ago I had left district eleven once more. How long had I spent in that district watching and trying to fix all the pain and suffering there?

How much had it hurt to see Potato suffer how he had? It had killed me on the inside. I would have done anything to have made all that pain away. I’d have walked the length of Panem a million times over to see him well and good and not in the way I had found him. Anything.

People were so callous with their lives. They were so–

My fingers tightened around the glass in my grasp momentarily. The ice clinked gently against the sides. And then all at once it slips from my grasp, tumbling to the ground, and shattering into a hundred pieces. My chest tightens, my eyes widen, and the pace of my heart seems to exceed all possibility. It hammers against my chest like a thunderstorm raging within my body.

No. Ripred no.

Please be wrong. Please. No, no, no.

Standing on the stage of the district eleven reaping was Potato Earnest. My sweet, kind, caring Potato. My breath was caught in my throat and then all at once I was up on my feet, a strangled cry tearing itself from my lips. I leap forwards and slam my fist into the television screen. Pain springs through my arm and then I grab the television in my hands before chucking it onto the ground with a scream of anguish.

”Fuck you! Fuck you.“ I scream, and then I’m crying, legs slipping from underneath me as I fall into the glass and shattered mess.

Potato.