helena haskell | d3 | fin

I'm scared.

The day both District Three tributes fell, there was a riot near the town square. It started out innocently enough - workers heading home after their shift catching eye of the screen and expressing disappointment at the results. Then someone smashed a window, Peacekeepers stepped in to try to calm people down, and it all spiraled out of control.

That's what I've heard happened, at least. I always avoid the town square on my way home and take a less crowded route.

But ever since then, there have been swarms of Peacekeepers patrolling the streets. Every time I spot the boarded-up windows of those storefronts, the tell-tale white uniforms are not far, guns at hand and ready to shoot anyone suspicious.

They tell us that the Peacekeepers are here to keep all the citizens of District Three safe, but the more of them there are the less safe I feel.

It's not that I've done anything wrong, or that I have something to hide - well, no more than the average citizen. It's the knowledge that any one of those faceless enforcers could kill me on a whim without so much a slap on the wrist.

And yet even then, there are those who still defy, who refuse to become puppets of the Capitol.

"What do you believe in?" they whisper to me, softly between the cracks of the authorities' attention.

The murderer of District Three's boy tribute will come and give his victory speech. He will talk, as they always do, about how generous the Capitol is, how we must play our part to make Panem strong, how honorable the tributes were to have fought so bravely. I know it is all a lie.

"What do you believe in?" their whispers echo.

They are the sort to begin the chanting, to sabotage the festivities; amongst us as co-workers it's a bit of an open secret who the most vocal opponents of the Hunger Games are.

Most of us just keep our heads down. We wouldn't go out of our way to tell on them to the Peacekeepers, but we never quite say we agree with them, either.

"What do you believe in?"

I believe in a world that does not select its children to kill each other every year. I believe in a world where I never have to worry about my younger sister losing her life to a Peacekeeper for some frivolous reason. I believe in a world where I do not have to fear my child being Reaped. I believe in a world where we can have a government that benefits us, and not just the people in the Capitol. I believe in a world where children are taught truth instead of lies, a world of empathy instead of callousness, a world of tolerance instead of scorn.

I don't say any of that. However strong I believe all of it, I don't say it.

Is that prudence or cowardice?

The victor will stand on stage, smiling like a teddy bear and saying words that our tributes will never get to speak again. And I'll sigh at yet another year of this and slip out quietly, heading home to my husband and children, letting the comfort of a warm house distract me from the continual injustice.

And hopefully, the riots will happen after I leave. But there will be riots. And the Capitol will point at them, and send more Peacekeepers who glare at us even more suspiciously, and don't they see that rioting will only make everything worse?

I mean, we've all got a right to be angry. And maybe nothing will change unless the Capitol sees the riots, the strikes, the shortages, sees their own perfect vision of Panem slowly falling apart. No matter if we speak out or stay silent, the Capitol will twist our actions to justify their oppression. In that sense, there's no real difference.

But I'm selfish, and I have a family to go home to and children to raise.

I don't want to make myself a target of the Capitol. Even worse, I don't want to make my family a target. I married my husband at nineteen not because we shared ideals or a common cause or anything so high-minded, but because I love him and he matters to me and I want to spend our lives together. That hasn't changed.

And I believe in kindness, too, but it's not that simple. I could smile and offer a hug to the coworker who's feeling down, so that we can both go back to work making circuits that catch wanderers in Eleven and chips that arm landmines in the Arena. Even just by our own efforts to survive, we contribute to the pain of others.

It almost seems silly, worrying about what might happen within the next year, or what happens to far away people I'll never meet, at least compared to when I was a child and was happy as long as we had a year I didn't have to take tesserae.

But I don't remember the district being so unstable when I was a child.

Things are changing, and I'm scared.

After all, the older I get, the more I have to lose.