here we stand | { i & m } day 1 | Hunger Games: The RPG

here we stand | { i & m } day 1 Feb 25, 2015 21:09:05 GMT -5

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Post by dars on Feb 25, 2015 21:09:05 GMT -5

{lex rondhal}

To put it lightly, it had been a long day.

I wondered about the others that we had met up with, wondered where they'd all scampered off to. At least a few of them must have decided to stay somewhere close-by. If Hedvig were still here, I imagine she would have wanted to go and see, and for those unlucky enough to have done it, she would have wanted to attack them.

But she was gone.

Even as tired as I was, I dreaded stopping because at this point the adrenaline I had from running was the only thing that kept me from realizing how pathetically cold it was, but eventually I could hear Margaret's breathing morph into pleads for even a bit of oxygen that wasn't immediately thrown out into the frigid air in a quick huff, her chest rising and falling so quickly I feared her heart would explode if we continued. (And hell, I wouldn't have been too far behind her.)

Once we had stopped and I had managed to catch my breath, the events of the day began chasing me through my own mind to the point that they clawed at the inside of my skull trying to gain my attention, but I couldn't think about them. I couldn't think about how I had not reached Hedvig in time. I could not think about seeing Riot's, of all people, blade driving itself all the way through the district two girl. I could not think about how I had reached the blond-haired boy just in time, and how pretty soon his face would light up the sky because of me. I could not think about what my little sister was probably doing right now, if she was even alive. Was she as cold as I was? Was she in worse condition? Was she somehow perfectly fine?

Because of this place, District Four seemed to be some kind of perfect dream I had once in my deepest slumber. Here, sand was replaced by snow, the sun with painfully dry wind, gentle waves of water with jagged icicles hanging from every dead tree within sight and I couldn't let myself think about any of it. And sicne running wasn't in the equation for the time being, and I was sure she was just as desperate to escape her own mind as I was, I turned to face her fully.

"We've run a pretty fair distance since the meet-up. I doubt we'll have to worry about them finding us in our sleep." No -- not good enough. I needed an escape from this place, and talking about it wasn't exactly a good way to do it. "So, why do you only go by Magaret?" I asked. Yes, much, much better.

here we stand | { i & m } day 1 Feb 26, 2015 22:16:56 GMT -5

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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2015 22:16:56 GMT -5

My dearest Margaret they’ll never see,
What you’ve hidden so carefully,
So do what you may,
And do what you must,
But remember when push comes to shove,
Your guarded heart will not display trust.

I can hear nothing more than the strain of our breaths as we run, sprinting for shelter in a place where there is none to be found. We do not pause, do not break pace until the sound of terror and disbelief can no longer be seen or heard, and when we do come to halt we do not find silence, caught unwillingly in the rhythm of our pounding hearts.

And as I struggle to find a slower change of pace I pull the coat tighter around my body, clinging tightly to it as I begin to pace. Lex does not do the same, instead sinking into the snow with hands clasped tightly together. But as I take the same path—six to the left; eight to the right— I dig myself deeper and deeper, snow threatening to burn numb against shivering skin.

“We’ve run a pretty fair distance since the meet-up. I doubt we’ll have to worry about them finding us in our sleep.”

I chuckle, if only amused by the thought that he thinks sleep is a probable action, for I cannot imagine either of us drifting off, not with the cold as a constant prod or the possibility of an anthem threatening to weigh down our minds with the image of a girl whose name I cannot bear to speak aloud.

My pacing is disrupted by his second statement, and I almost lose my footing as I whirl around to meet his gaze, “So, why do you only go by Margaret?” It takes a moment to process the question in its entirety, for the answer it desired was past a boundary further than he had previously crossed.

(There’s little but trust here, with a girl standing over the shoulders of boy who had much more than her to lose.)

And so I take a place beside him, pulling my knees to my chest before turning to meet his gaze again, though this time it’s tinged with an edge of softness rather than the harsh lines of an angered censored by years of screaming, speaking, and whispering, “it’s just Margaret.”

Just Margaret without rhyme or reason.

Just Margaret because there’s nothing more to it in its simplicity.

But now there has to be, for before the phrase had been replied to with a pat on the head or a reprimanding chastisement, that heritage was all we had behind the lines of our family, that we were to be proud, to be willing to defend a title which held no reputation at all, but he had toppled the usual spectrum of responses and played a different card in whole.

There’s a reason we ask why when we have nothing else to say.

I take a breath that settles deep within my lungs, and I watch as it dissipates into the air around us before managing to speak at all, before managing to formulate an answer to a question I’ve previously never been asked, “Because what follows it means nothing at all.” And here I pause for a moment, watching for a reaction I wouldn’t be able to read before continuing, “I can’t leave what’s happened behind, but I can try to forget about it.”

But woven within that past are things I wish to commit to memory, and at the thought of Garrett, Draco, Ratteria, and Quill, I pull the flower crown from my bag and hold it lightly between my fingers before laying it in my lap. I cannot wear it now, for I am the queen of a kingdom in mourning, crying at the loss of one of her greatest.

Lex and I were to follow Hedvig down if fate came to pass in the way I believed it would, and I could only hope I’d be buried with my crown.

MARGARET
DUBOIS

DISTRICT 7

FEMALE

THE 69TH GAMES

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