violet neptune ♆ district six { fin }

She’s always seen a certain beauty in destruction.

At five years old, she managed to drop a loaf of bread into a fire whilst curiously peeking over her mother’s shoulder to see what she was doing. The loaf tumbled down, its edges blackened, and her mother turned to her and screamed. All she remembers of that day is the fire, the way it so beautifully darkened the perfect loaf, the recklessness of its destruction. Fire takes no prisoners. It destroys, and destroys, with no care as to who or what it is destroying.

Later, she had held her hand over the flames, feeling them tickle her skin and the heat spreading over her hand. She had thought about how dangerous they were, how something so destructive and beautiful was at her disposal at all times. How easy it would have been to have shoved her own mother into the fire, had she gathered the will and courage to do it. That is, if her will was even hers – which, as time goes by, she believes less and less. She knows she wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing, even if she theoretically could. It was too much for a five year old to think about, so she had withdrawn her hand from the flames and quickly shoved it into a glove to hide the burn marks from her wary mother.

~

At some point in time, there was some kind of certainty to everything she did. A purpose, a meaning behind every movement, even when she performed meaningless tasks. She was naïve, blinded to the true nature of her world – of her own existence. Within the closed confines of District Six’s territory, she made her home, settling in the bakery alongside her siblings and her parents, living out her days in blissful ignorance.

Maybe she’s always been the ‘good’ kid. The kid who never complained, even when work stretched out for longer than eight hours, even when drenched in sweat and unable to breathe properly. In the foulest of conditions, she found some sort of motive within her to keep her going.

She wishes she could find it now.

~

Life becomes bleak when Leticia Neptune leaves home. For some reason, as subtle as it could be, her presence was the driving force for everyone’s work; her energy filling the room gave everyone the motivation to keep going. Only when it was too late did Violet realise why it was she never complained about working at the bakery – because she wasn’t alone.

She isn’t as alone as Leticia is. Imagining her younger sister curled up in a plush Capitol bed on her own, afraid and alone, kept her up more nights than she cares to count. But the bakery feels empty, everyone’s movements lacking purpose, the skies of Six dull and barren.

Nobody speaks much in her absence. Work proceeds as usual, with some of the more regular customers offering their condolences for a girl who hadn’t even died. Within her, she felt anger – how dare these people not believe in the toughest little girl she had ever known? But of course, no one knew Leticia like her family, and even then, Violet’s not sure if anyone truly knew her other than Delia.

She wishes she could have been a better sister.

It’s all she ever seems to be able to think about, nowadays.

~

Sometimes she becomes so wrapped up in other people that she doesn’t realise how prone she is to losing herself. It’s always about someone else; their feelings, the little quirks in their mannerisms, every aspect of their personality, she hyper focuses on everything to such an extent that it’s no wonder she doesn’t have any friends.

The transition from the strange girl at the bakery to the girl with a dead sister is an uncomfortable one, to say the least. She thinks she hates the staring the most. Curiosity trumps all, and she’ll often look up from where she works to find a customer’s eyes trained on her, unspoken questions gleaming wildly behind their eyes. She wishes they’d let her keep to herself.

Delia hasn’t returned to the bakery since the day Leticia died. Well, ‘died’ is too peaceful of a term for what it was, but ‘murder’ leaves an unpleasant taste in her mouth and she’s not sure if she can handle using all the sugar-coated terms people around her use.

Words are tricky things. She’s never been the best at using them, earning her the trophy of being the quietest Neptune child, living in the shadow of her twin brother. She’s certain that people only talk to her because of Hunter’s oddly charming personality – whenever he’s around, she is ignored in favour of him, and it suits her perfectly. She despises idle chatter, finding the right words to fill the empty air. She prefers it when it’s empty. Silence suits her nicely.

Violet remembers the fire. The fire she had once held her hand over, the fire she had the choice to step away from. Leticia didn’t have a choice to step away from the flaming axe that struck her down. It riddles her with guilt for something she did over ten years ago, while Leticia was just a baby with no concept that one day she will perish. It wasn’t meant to be like this. She curses the reaping bowl every day for signing her little sister’s life away, her name joining a list of over a thousand others. She wonders if people will remember her. She can’t remember all the names of the tributes, having spent very little time actually looking at the screen.

She hears her name. She looks up.

~

“I thought I’d find you here.” It’s Hunter, the familiar bags under his eyes showing that he’s just as sleep-deprived as the rest of them.

“Why?” she asks, her voice feeling hollow and croaky. She’s been using it a lot less lately.

He shrugs, the ghost of a smirk illuminating his face. He looks more alive than any of them have in the past few days. She clutches the sleeve of her shirt, images of Leticia’s corpse forcing themselves into her head against her will.

“You always come out to look at the stars when you can’t sleep.”

The stars don’t judge. Her days are filled with scrutinising gazes and curious glances, people asking her questions about her little sister and others just expressing condolences she doesn’t want to accept. At night, they rest, safe in the knowledge that their loved ones are alive and well, and she is kept awake by the cruel hands of Fate. At least in the presence of the stars she knows their eyes can’t follow her the way the people of Six’s can. She never feels the stars' gazes boring into her back, never hears the ushered whispers between them. There is only silence, and the gentle twinkling of the stars which seem to understand her.

She thinks Hunter might understand, even just a little. There is a similar pain to his eyes that she can see in the eyes of anyone who’s lost someone dear to them. The families of Six’s deceased tributes always have the same look to them, no matter their differences in personality. No matter how much they may try to conceal it. What she can’t understand from words, she understands from eyes, and behind Hunter’s is nothing but pain and fabricated resilience. He acts like he’s holding up, but he isn’t. He’s about to crumble, just like the rest of them are.

“Is that why you’re here?” she questions him. Hunter and herself are alike in most regards – the same sharp jawline contrasting against gentle features, the same dark hair, the same deep sienna eyes. Leticia had most of these features, only instead of dark eyes, hers were the most striking blue she’d ever seen. She was the only one of them to inherit her mother’s eyes.

Hunter is reluctant to answer. His presence is enough to show that he’s having trouble sleeping too. Leticia’s death, Delia’s disappearance – there is no justification for the pain the family of simple bakers have been through.

“I guess it’s something along those lines.”

Hunter stays with her until, eventually, she falls into slumber. Except instead of falling, it’s more of a plummet, a descent into a land where her thoughts can’t bother her.

She dreams of something to do with cookies and laughter, and wakes in her own bed, tucked under three layers of blankets.

~

At thirteen years old, she had scraped together all she had in order to purchase a guitar. Having shown an instant aptitude for music, her hobby had grown from a pastime to something more serious. It seemed as though the only thing that could calm her from the hectic day-to-day life at the bakery was the gentle strum of the guitar strings, releasing melodic tunes to the empty air of her room. Often, Hunter would listen, but he’d always be estranged from the music. He was not a musical soul, and as much as he tried to fill the air with compliments and praise, she knew he did not understand music in the same way.

Her father detested noise. Still does, to this day. She had etched a line into the underside of her bed each day she owned the guitar, and had made it to fifty-seven before she found her guitar was missing from its usual spot. She never bothered asking where it had gone. It was obvious.

Lacking any particular hobbies or things to do, she took her work more seriously, which greatly pleased her parents at the cost of her own individuality. The guitar had been what made her unique, what made her more than just a Neptune clone. It was like Hunter’s charisma, or Leticia’s stubbornness, or Jack’s determination or Farida’s wisdom. Defining traits that separated them from one another, so that instead of all being dark-haired baker’s children, they were people. Her father destroyed hers when he took her guitar, and to this day, she has never forgiven him for stripping her of the foundation of her identity.

She misses those fifty-seven days. She hasn’t counted since then, the marks on her bed cutting off abruptly. Days seem to blur together after that, incongruous and indistinguishable. Occasionally there will be a particularly troublesome customer, or someone will drop something or Hunter will say something comedic that separates that day from the rest, but for the most part, it’s business and school and no time for pleasure. Not that she thinks she can find joy or satisfaction anymore.

The reaping of the eighty-first Hunger Games was not a welcome interruption to the usual dreary day-to-day, but it was an interruption nonetheless. A turning point. She doesn’t know why she didn’t just volunteer in place of Leticia, a girl with so much light in her eyes compared to her own melancholy gaze, a girl with dreams that extended far beyond what she could have ever imagined even if she’d kept her guitar. She doesn’t know everything about her little sister, but she’s heard snippets of her conversations with Delia, seen the way she eyed customers leaving the bakery as if she was jealous that they didn’t have to stay, slaving away behind a counter that separates them from the rest of the world.

Leticia deserved to live, far more than Violet ever could.

Yet it’s the youngest Neptune who returns home in a body bag, and not her. She holds herself accountable for her sister’s death each day, willing the Violet in the past to move and volunteer and save the girl’s life. Now the vitality of the bakery has gone, disassembled, crumbled into dust, and she can only blame herself above everyone else. Delia would have volunteered, had she been of age – and even if she doesn’t say it, she can see in her eyes that she wishes Violet had gone too.

She’s beginning to understand why Delia ran away, now that she allows herself time to think.

But Violet Neptune doesn’t run from problems. She only creates more, attempting to fix them before failing and making more mistakes. It seems as though her entire existence is a web of mistakes and regrets and wrongdoings, and there’s no way to break the cycle unless she is made to suffer the same way her sister had to.

She repeats the same path, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before she falls.

♆