hannah o'leary {district nine} |. re-sub

{prologue: before}

Thunder shook the skies the day I was born, a few seconds after the stroke of midnight, and heavy rain poured down from the raging slate gray mass of clouds. An onslaught of lightning tore through the sky and sent flashes of menacing white light throughout District Nine. The tension and worry could be felt in the room as my mother's screams pierced the air.

When I emerged into the world, I was greeted by smiles. I did not see them (and if I did I would not remember), because I was too busy kicking and screaming, upset and confused by the lack of warmth and the cruel strange world I had been thrust into. But my mother always told me that the moment I was born, all around the room, lips burst into grins of joy. The ambiance in the room was the opposite of the ambiance outside.

My mother held my tiny infant body in her gentle arms, sturdy despite the agony that had ripped through her body prior to my birth. I was wrapped in a soft white cloud of a blanket, still crying out in bewilderment. But the tears and banshee-like shrieking ceased when I opened my eyes, as blue and beautiful as the sea. (Though they later left behind their lovely blue shade and turned green like the ferns in the woods during springtime.) And I looked up at my mother and giggled, my laughter like the soft ringing of silver bells.

I was only the fourth O'Leary child to be born, and following after me two short years later was Marvis. My parents were blessed—or, given their poor financial state, cursed—with six children. We lived in a cramped house, though it was more like a shack, that appeared as if a big bad wolf from an old folktale could blow it to pieces with just a single huff. And there were some days that our empty stomachs growled like lions as hunger viciously clawed at our insides, and went unsatisfied. We would try to be happy anyway despite our impoverished life, try to smile through those ravenous nights and long, grueling days. I always envied how my parents stayed grinning through the worst weeks. All they needed was their love and family, not pockets full of coins or even endless food.

I have heard the story of how my parents met numerous times. It is a story that seems as if it was taken from a fairy tale book filled with fables of true love and prince charmings. The first time I heard it, I was five years old, but despite my young age, I remember clearly. I was sitting on my mother's lap when she told me how my father accidentally shot her in the arm with an arrow while hunting. (Truly the pickup line of the century.) I remember giggling at the tale and then making sure that my mother's arm worked properly.

They smile lovingly each time they tell it, and it slips off their tongues like it is a timeless story that will never wear out, a story that no matter how many times they tell it, will always be cherished the same. It is their perfect memory to treasure between them forever.

(Sometimes I wish I had something like that to hold onto.)

rivers of sand

unentwined through my hands
to know what they've seen
well, my burden's all pale

❧

{ table: zoë }

{part ii: wrath}

Armor came with a price, one I paid begrudgingly in the beginning of my winding path to who I became. But there is a gun buried within everyone, some deeper down than others. It all depends on how far you dig and how strong your shovel is.

When the flames died and the smoke, black like tar, dissipated into the air, the ashes twitched ominously, a new life slowly forming beneath them. And what was born was another phoenix, with daggers for talons and steel feathers colored a darker shade of red. This newborn phoenix was blazing on the inside with a raging darkness and spite that can only be characterized as

WRATH.

It was a rage that took years of pushing pushing PUSHING me over the brink until I finally fell, my feeble fingers slipping from the edge at last. At eleven years old I was so hurt and there was a hole punched through me. It swirled and swirled and swirled with anger until it became a vortex that demanded retribution.

My tormentors and I switched places.

Call my anger abnormal; that it is something I have heard before, something I have thought before myself. I was not the child I should have been—that was ruined for me—and loneliness and sadness and insecurity are only the frame, the foundation of wrath. It was a foundation that began construction at just eight years old, at the hands of children with words too powerful for their own mouths.

I started with listening. With my light stride and and quiet breaths, I would hang by the sidelines, my ears open for whispers of secrets, from little crushes to dark family pasts. And I would let them spill in rivers of shame and humiliation, drowning my victims in the black water that I sent running their way. When all I had was happiness to hold onto while locked in poverty, they snatched it away out of pure spite, not because they needed to but because they wanted to. And for that, I made them pay.

Revenge left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. But there was still an emptiness that sat so depressingly within me, a heavy weight that only seemed to become heavier, adding the guilt of my horrible actions to the pain and insecurity. These things all have a burdensome weight that could crush someone with arms too feeble to support it all. I became Atlas holding up the sky, only I was not holding the sky, I was holding all of the weight in my heart that just kept building up. And slowly, it began to press on my shoulders.

(The worst moment I remember is looking into the mirror and shuddering when I saw that my green eyes, like summer grass, had gone cold. Their former kindness light had receded and ice chipped right off of a glacier was gradually creeping in.)

But the moment I walked through the door of my tiny house, my titanium armor melted away and my anger was extinguished by the steady tide of love for my family that would wash over me. Colgate's toothy grin warmed my heart and my mother's gentle bear hugs made me feel like a five-year-old again, sitting on her lap and listening to stories, either fables fabricated by herself or other minds in the past or true events in her life. No family could have been more at peace surrounded by poverty than ours.

I always thought family was the only thing I could not lose.

(Stupid.)

But I had to be proven wrong, didn't I?

The bleak shadow of my first Reaping, the Reaping of the Sixty-Sixth Annual Hunger Games, hung ominously over me. I knew that even if my name was scarce in the bowl, the escort could still delve deep into the bowl and out of thousands upon thousands of poor souls, grab my name with her glittery fingernails that remind me so much of feline claws.

I was twelve years old, and clutched by terror.

I remember the day as if it happened hours ago. I wore an old blue dress that hung on my thin body as if I was a coat hanger. My chestnut brown hair, which had been washed the night before, fell down to my chest in soft, lazy waves. There was no grime to mar my rounded childish face, not even the slightest smudge of dirt.

Colgate had cleaned up, too. He was wearing a white shirt, slightly yellowed with age, passed down from generation to generation. (We have always been poor and lanky, I suppose.) Despite his cleanliness, I was not stopped from playfully teasing him.

We were watching people file out of their houses from the window, when I asked him, "Col, what's your secret?"

"My secret? What do you mean?"

I rolled my eyes at his stalling. "I meeeeeaan, how do you keep from, you know . . . being picked?"

"For the Reaping?"

And after stalling and messing around—I was teasing him about his hygiene—he finally gave me a serious answer.

"Think of it like you're in school, right? And the teacher just asked a monster of a question that nobody in the class understands. Nobody except for, well, you know the one. That one kid who always seems to know what to say, always seems to be kissing the teacher's ass?"

(I interrupted with trying to tell him not to swear.)

"Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. What matters is this: you know how the teacher almost never calls on the annoying know-it-all kid? Noooo, she's always looking at the ones who don't know the answer, the ones who look like they're kinda squirming in their seats a little. Today, you have to be the one with all the answers. You gotta make yourself big and tall, hold your chin up, and make it so no one on this earth would ever dare pick on you. You got that?"

And when my head was low, weighed down my worry that still lingered, Colgate said, "Nuh uh, none of that. Chin up, remember?"

(But it is hard, Colgate, to keep your chin up, when there is so much pulling you down.)

I remember standing in the crowd in the District Square, my heart beating like a wild, unsteady drum in my chest. It was so loud, it roared in my eyes, and I was almost certain that some of the girls around me could hear.

Colgate met my eyes, and I could read their blue depths so clearly. I could hear his voice ring out in my head, "Chin up." But I do not smile, even if I wanted to. My mouth was gravely plastered down into a line of vexation.

My blood blazed in my veins as the escort approached the first bowl and pulled out a name. She hesitated, slowly unraveling the slip, prolonging the crushing suspension.

"Magenta Ryker!"

And my worry slipped so smoothly right off my shoulders. But I was still holding my breath for my brothers, praying that none of them would be called. Each of them had such a slight chance, but even one percent can make the greatest difference. I was conflicted. Half of me was still alive with fear, but half the other was relaxed and uplifted with relief that Promise nor I was Reaped.

"Kovu Luzell!"

The second and final wave of relief washed over me. I was safe, we were safe. And then the joy came a sudden, blinding flash of warm light, and I wanted to start laughing and scream, "Fuck the Capitol!" and shout until my lungs burned. (But I knew better.)

And then my world stopped spinning, the moment Colgate squeezed my hand and said, "I need to volunteer."

We began to protest, Mom, Dad, and I, but there was no changing Colgate's mind. We were rendered powerless. His decision was set in stone and I could see the certainty in his eyes, a determination that would not fade. There was a part of me that did not—could not—register that he was volunteering, that he was . . . that he was going out there in that dreadful Arena to kill or be killed purely by choice. Perhaps it was because I did not want to believe it. (But how could I deny what was plainly before me?)

But the horror set in the moment he kissed my forehead, and said his final goodbye.

"Remember: chin up."

I did not stop calling after him, "Col? Col?" But he did not turn back to answer my frantic calls. He left me, us, in the crowd, submerged in utter terror for him, for his life. My body had gone cold; the ice had taken over in the blink of an eye. My heart stopped beating, just for a few seconds. (But it felt like an eternity.)

"I volunteer."

His words echoed grimly throughout the District Square. They were knives in my ears. I felt like someone was mercilessly stabbing me from the inside of my chest. I felt my body tremble as if a fissure had struck. And then came the desperate screaming as the horror finally sank its fangs all the way through my flesh.

I screamed frantic words laced with betrayal, "Col! Col! Colgate! COLGATE!" I did not stop until my lungs ached and they felt scorched with flames. It was not the burning ache in my lungs that stopped me. It was a Peacekeeper, who nudged me back into the crowd, back into silence. Excruciating silence. Words I wanted to say were choking me and tears that I didn't want to fall kept threatening to spill over the edge.

One finally did. It was like a little crystal of sorrow and horror gleaming in the light on my cheek.

I did not wipe it away.

+ + +

I would sit in utter silence, my fists clenched so tightly, my knuckles were white, around the television. I spectated the Hunger Games more closely than I ever had in the past. I hung on desperately to each word that left Colgate's mouth during his battle nightmare in the Arena. My lips were sore and cracked from biting them so hard as I stared at the television, watching Colgate cut down tributes that stood in his way of returning home to us. Every heartbeat of mine was heavy with worry and my mind was plagued by the terrifying thought that Colgate would perish in the Arena as his victims before him. And I could not imagine nor bear a world without my eldest brother and his ridiculous crooked grin.

Worry turned to despair, and despair to anger. I was enraged at the Capitol for putting these brutal Games in the first place, for refusing to help the suffering economies of the districts and for refusing to alleviate citizens who were in need of help. No one gave a damn if people in the districts were dying of starvation left and right. No one gave a damn if every single person with a pulse in every single district was drowning in poverty. As long as everything was well in the Capitol, problems were nonexistent.

And I was angry at the people around me, who would give me stares of pity when I brushed by them, who would tell me how sorry they are. It was as if Colgate had already died and his funeral had just passed. But he was not finished fighting for the crown and he had not been sentenced to the ground beneath the land of the living quite yet.

The anger, kindled by my swirling mess of vexation and onslaught of grief, raged and raged until it burned through to the surface,

igniting me.

(Once more.)

All I felt was agony searing my skin, and I was burning and burning and burning,

until there was nothing left to burn.

The only thing remaining was shell of someone who felt powerful.

A scared little girl.

{dialogue used in this post was taken
from thundy's post in the 66th reaping}

i don't want to pretend

that the sadness is gone
'cause i want to know
that i'm standing on my feet

❧

{ table: zoë }

{part iv: ashes, ashes, we all fall down}

Ash was what I remained, just remnants of the blaze that had torn me down a third time. There was no glorious rebirth or redemption. Just a pile of despair and terror and bleak gray dust.

It began with a single tear; the first drop of rain before a hurricane. And then came the hopelessness, crawling into my bloodstream and freezing me until I could barely move. My hands curled into fists as I glared at myself in the mirror. Everything had built up, and now it would all come bursting out of me, in the form of frustrated yells and tears.

I was so tired. Tired of vying for the approval of people who did not matter, of people who would rot in their graves just as I would, of people who were not higher than me. (They only pretended to be.) The weight of insecurity finally crushed me to rubble. I was missing something - something that had caused me to collapse over and over again, something that had struck the match to light the flame that would end me again so many times.

Identity.

That was the missing piece to the puzzle of happiness.

And it left a devastating, vast hole of despair through my chest.

In my purest state, before any influence could adulterate me, I was boisterous. I was brave - there was no fear that could shake me. And I was always laughing or cracking a joke. But I was fourteen, halfway to fifteen. I was not a little girl anymore.

And people change.

That left me with nothing. Not a single hint of who I could be. The childish innocence has long faded within me - who I was, when I knew who I was - is dead. Hannah O'Leary has died one two three four times, and I was not certain she would ever resurface. Perhaps I would live as a hopeless shell of the girl I once knew.

I was nothing, or at least nothing more than confusion.

I thought nothing could be worse.

And then came the nightmares. I did not see them approach. They crept towards me with the grace of a lethal panther, and struck when I least expected them. And once I was locked their jaws of steel, there was no escape. I could not so much as squeeze my hand in the spaces between their daggers for teeth.

It all began at fourteen, and has yet to subside.

I am utterly submerged in an icy blackness of terror. It is like thick tar; I cannot lift a finger against it. I am confined to a prison I built myself with my own dwelling on thoughts and anxiety. It is made up of heavy cinder blocks and cement, material I could not punch through, even if my arms were not twigs. I am left caged and helpless. Never before have I felt so devoid of power. And I hate the feeble feeling.

The Reaping looms over me, as it has for years - ever since it crossed my mind that my name remained on the white slips and I was vulnerable to the Reaping. It is a well known fact that the Capitol loves the shed the blood of Victors' families on the Arena ground. There are whispers of rigged Reapings, rumors I can only pray are not the truth.

The first nightmare, the most mild of them all, took place at the 69th Reaping. My name, "Hannah O'Leary," echoing like a death sentence throughout the District Square, chilled me to the bone. My fate rested - rests on the cursed "odds" - odds that can be tampered with by sinister. Following the first nightmare, a week later, was the second. But it was not me I saw in the Arena. It was Scope, my second eldest brother - four years my senior.

The nightmares gradually became more frequent, and their slashes of razor claws became more and more effective, creating deeper gashes. They would vary night to night, week to week. Some of them included me in the Arena; others only included my siblings. (Scope. Promise. Platius. Marbles. None of them were safe.) But no matter what it was or who it involved, I would jolt awake with purple shadows and torrents of tears under my tired green eyes.

I remember the worst night terror clear as day, like a memory as solid as the day Colgate volunteered, one that I awakened with screams grabbing at my throat, was not of me or my Reaping-age siblings. It was Colgate, standing before a pile of bodies - twenty-three mangled bodies stained with crimson. Red rivers ran wild on the ground he stood on, but he did not seem to notice - or care, for that matter. And his blue eyes held nothing, not even triumph. They were just cold, dead sieves.

I recognized their faces, each and every one of them. (Savannah Carey. Lyric Woulf. Anni Dorst. And those were just among many children who deserved life just as much as Colgate does.) I never forgot a single tribute from the Sixty-Sixth Games - how could I, when I was watching them so closely, drinking in every terrible detail and every horrific moment.

It's just a dream, I always repeat in my head before pulling the covers over my quivering body. But I could never convince myself that any of them could not become reality.

The nightmares have not faded - they never will, at least not until every single O'Leary is exempt from the Reaping. (But will they return, when younger O'Learys roam District Nine?) Not even now, when I am sixteen and braver and stronger than I have ever been.

But one thing has returned.

Identity.

I found it at the bottom of a shot glass.

It was the chaos of wild teen parties that I loved to drink in and feel the adrenaline of rebellion rush through my veins and hear the roar of wrongdoing in my ears. The amber liquid that burned white hot in my mouth washed the fear down my throat along with it, catching it in the current. "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was the battle cry of rebellion, one that spilled from my lips with ease.

In the raging crowds, I felt order. I felt a sense of belonging. It was the first place I had felt comfortable in my own skin - a skin that was still forming. And I would laugh with teens that I met; once more, I was jokester, I was the shining ball of laughter and energy. I could dance until my legs were numb, I could scream until my voice gave out.

I was the fire, flickering and dancing, blinding light exuding from my flame, kindled by chaos, in the darkness that still hovered over me. I was the fire and I could not be tamed out extinguished. I never stopped being the phoenix; that was a part of me that could never leave. But when I emerged from the ash a fourth time, I was already ignited once more. But my feathers were eternal flames

and I would burn no longer.

each rise and retreat

will scrub the blood away
i'll make an hourglass from my fingers
i know i'm only passing through

❧

{ table: zoë }