the princess diaries vi ♔ diana

Dear sponsor,

There is something else to add to the whatever was in the air, to the shadows that swallow whole, to the whistles of the winds. And though it sounds so strange, though I do not want to admit that I am capable of the same strengths and feats as those things, today proved that I can, and that I have. To take a life is not something I had anticipated when I saved Lenox Lachance, something that feels like forever ago now, and though I have seen it happen around me... nothing compares to the act itself.

Part of me thought that I might have died before this ever happened. It happens almost every year, apart from Mackenzie and Jacinta, and we wait patiently, holding onto each other's hands as a sign of hope, only for it to slip quickly from our fingertips, leaving us no time to catch it before it falls to its breaking point. I knew that I was different in the sense that I did not leave my heart at home in favour of turning to stone for the sake of survival—but when there can only be one victor, there is a part of you that is deep within your body that accepts it will never be you.

It is the part that is under strict lock and key. That part that you dare not think about because it may will something into the world you do not want, it may compromise a promise you have made because even your own thoughts cannot be trusted in a game of life and death. It is the middle ground that is neither light or dark, the seams of the shade that hold the nothingness everyone is scared of. Perhaps it is the part of us all that is most realistic, and in my eyes, the part of us that is most dangerous to listen to.

I'd ignored it so long. I had done for so long, so well, and I held onto a scene that did not involve me standing with the weight of other tributes futures on my shoulders. But of course, as the sun rises, shadows are cast on the ground behind me. In the Hunger Games, I suppose it is impossible to breeze through the course of the arena without taking a life, it may be a losing game, but someone still has to win.

You may be thinking that I am insane for even questioning why I killed someone. In the Capitol, you don't see it like we do—when you lead with your heart for the entirety of the games and it puts you in a position where you have somebody else's life in your hands, and it forces you to squeeze it, to get every last droplet of every last dream out—that's hard. You only see it through a screen, you are not made to live through it, and I think there's a desensitisation that comes with that. You see life and you see death and they are not two sides of a spectrum, they are hand in hand.

And I do like to think that because you sponsored me this diary, that you value my sanity to some extent. That perhaps you are not like the rest of the people in the Capitol who feed in to what the game wants from you, that there is an ounce of you that understands what it is like to think one thing, but be made to do another.

I had hoped a starless sky would align, and when it did, the starless sky created a darkness to match death. There was nothing in the air today, no shadows, not anything else to blame for what happened—only me.



It is so fitting that I cannot take a good picture of myself with this camera, because I'm not sure I'd want to see if I have that same darkness in my eyes that Jessica Braun did when she killed Berlin. And I have not done any clowns any favours at all—love has only turned me into a killer clown which is why everyone was so afraid of clowns in the first place. Nobody else understands how it is to put on a smile like it is just another item of clothing, to wear your heart to try and hide the tears in your eyes.

And of heart... I swore that I would lead with it. It is a light that is able to scare darkness into the corner of the largest of rooms. To feel the world's love in a way that is so brutal, that makes you act so irrationally, against everything you believe in... it makes me question whether I am truly a whole human or not. I had always thought of myself as one of the good people; I had given so much to try and save everyone else but what if the cost of that is being unable to save myself?

I still don't like thinking about that. I have come so far, now, seen the sun six times in the sky and if I were to stop, Seven wouldn't forgive me. They, after all, are the world that delivered a love so strongly through my fibres that saved me from potential death. And I should not see miracle in murder, I shouldn't, it's cruel, it isn't right—but I would be a liar if I did not say I am glad that love finally came around.

There's a realisation that I was right to never let go of my faith in being safe in the world's arms. Love and life are an echo, it is a fact now, not just a philosophy.

Safety comes with that. Sick as it is, but it is safe.

I have come to the conclusion that every ounce of love I have ever put out into the world came back today. Because I felt something so strongly within me, when I lifted that weapon and it came down, it was like I could tell it would be fatal. If I am to think that taking a life so simply and easily is only a fraction of what the world has to give back to me... I do not know where I stand.

Of course, I can look to my heart to lead the way. And my heart is reminding me to think of the people in Seven who have felt darker things than I have felt. There is security in thinking what I have done offers them peace of mind, even if it only for a moment or two. My cause at the beginning was to loop love back into Seven any way that I could, though murder did not cross my mind when I selfishly put my love before Lenox Lachance's potential death wish.

I cannot lose sight of that goal... if I die without completing it, I will have died a murderer. If I get to live, it gives me time to try and make things right. I can talk to the people who need to be listened to, I can send flowers every week to the family of Francisco Bloom so that they know I still have a heart and it aches, I can be a champion for the people who so desperately need someone to fight their corner.

But not literally—if I made it out of here alive, I'd steer clear of any weapon that was not words.


I am trying desperately to take my mind off what I have done. I am trying to justify it with love, to say it is mercy, just so that I can still feel myself. Perhaps that, too, is wrong. Perhaps you are not supposed to feel like the person you used to be after you kill someone, and that when you take a life, you lose a part of your own person too.

I think I am mostly confused. One part of myself is pulling me in one directions, the other in another. One is thinking good and the other is thinking beyond bad.

Is it possible to come back from this? I am thinking about Mackenzie Pryce and how he told me I should not feel sorry for everyone else, I should essentially put myself first and deal with everything else when I'm back home. But what if those words are from a broken person? Am I to believe what he has told me and just take it and run? For all I know, his words could be just the trauma talking.

I do not want trauma to talk for me. There is still so much for me to do, because wherever I see suffering in Seven, that is where I want to be. I cannot be silenced by my own head, and ultimately that is why I chose my heart. Abandoning logic was a good idea, I am certain, because no strategy could ever outplay the logistics of perfect disaster—especially when love has a hand in orchestrating it.

I think I may cry myself to sleep tonight, but that is okay. I've come down with heartache, but at least that tells me I still have my heart, even though I have stopped someone else's.

I still have heart.