not gruesome, just human :: [ denali + maxwell / hg museum ]

It's as haunted here as the room where she hugged her brother for the last time, smoothing the cowlicks in his hair as they repeated the only words that were worth the effort, over and over: I love you. I love you. I love you. There was no false hope in either of their hearts that he would come home. Neither of them bothered trying to convince themselves that the end wasn't happening right there, right then. They knew. The knowing might have been enough to kill them both if their fates didn't have other plans in mind.

That room is too nearby and Denali does her best not to think of it, even after all the times she has gone back since, by force or forced sympathy. She sucks in a deep breath and clears her head, trying to recall a calming mantra. Fuck, is the only thing that comes to mind, fuck fuck fuck. It was a bad idea to come here from the beginning, but when she first stepped into the line for museum entry she had convinced herself that it would be worth it — this emotional agony — to see Zion's smile once more and to hear his voice. Whether it's fake or not, she still misses him too much to care... right?

The halls of the museum are filled with faces she recognizes from both school and television, familiar and strange in turn. She catches a glimpse of an image of her brother in his pink bunny footie pajamas and sprints around a corner before anything more comes into focus. "I'm not ready," she blurts aloud suddenly, catching a nearby museum attendant off-guard.

"That's... alright," the man replies, blinking rapidly at an awkward tension that he has no explanation for. "Are you waiting for someone?"

"Am I?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sure. Whatever you need to do. Don't mind me."

"I —" Utterly baffled, he gapes openly until his eyes catch on one of the displays behind Denali. It's a still frame from the Eightieth Bloodbath, agony glinting off her teeth as she screams after being stabbed in the chest. The blood is even redder than her hair, her freckles, her pain. "I'm sorry." He means it, she can tell he means it, but that doesn't mean she knows what to do with the words.

"You didn't do anything."

"Exactly," he mutters and it's her turn to look confused. No one ever does. It's too weird being in this place filled with the Capitol's interpretations of all this totally messed up history, but most of the people who work here are just people who took a lousy minimum wage job to pay their bills and survive their own struggles. Exactly. She turns the word over in her head and wonders what it means.

"I just need to —" She doesn't know how that sentence ends.

"This is a private room?" The man offers the statement as if it's a question because he doesn't know what to do with the patron ghost of disaster standing in front of him any more than she knows what to do with herself right now.

Gesturing to a door that Denali hadn't noticed before, it's empty and dark inside and looks enough like a hiding place that she walks in with a mumbled, "thank you," before the dots connect and she realizes she's entered a place far scarier than any of the images she just passed by. "This is —" but the door has closed behind her and she is alone in a room full of her worst hopes and best fears.

"Welcome to the District Five branch of the National Hunger Games Museum," an automated voice fills the room, smooth and almost relaxing as a ten foot tall version of the Capitol's seal spins hypnotic circles around Denali as if caging her in. "Please select a tribute or arena to continue." Standing there, her feet suddenly too heavy with dread to move, she shakes her head at the dark, but the dark does not acknowledge her refusal. "Please select a tribute or arena to continue," the voice repeats.

"I—" The sound dies upon her lips.

"Request not recognized," the system responds in that enviably calm voice, "please try again."

Denali swallows and balls her hands into fists until fingernails dig into the soft flesh of her palms. There will be blood beneath her nails after this. "Z—" She tries to say his name but that one letter falls right back down the empty chasm of her throat and she cannot bring herself to save it.

"Request not recognized," it repeats as she whines softly, helplessly to herself and wishes she hadn't come here alone, "please try again."

Zion Lyons, she wills her tongue, but it is numb and useless within her mouth.

Silence.

Zion Lyons, she tries again, more insistently, but also doesn't try at all.

"Please select a tribute or arena to continue," the voice pressures as Denali's face flushes red with frustration, her eyes watering and nose turning hot enough to run. Her arms itch. Her legs itch. Her back itches. Maybe she's breaking out in hives. Maybe she's burning alive all over again. Maybe. "Please sele—"

"Maxwell Temple!" She screams abruptly, gasping and sputtering, as if she would have said anything to appease the machine. Anything except what she actually wanted to say. As soon as the name has left her mouth her eyebrows furrow in confusion. That's not at all what she came here for. "No, I didn't mean t—"

It's too late. Denali blinks and somehow the Capitol seal has transformed itself into a familiar face, just her and someone she murdered staring at each other as if she can't count all the ways she knows he's dead. There's an unsettling brightness to him that she doesn't remember, despite the fire-coated weapons that ravaged their encounter and despite the utter darkness of this room. Her breath comes in short bursts and she blinks twice as much as is necessary, her cheeks damp and her head suddenly aching.

"You're dead," she says defensively, as if a statement of the obvious might protect her from everything she just summoned. "I killed you. You killed you." As if this isn't a museum full of dead things. As if she isn't just like him. "No," she cuts her own thoughts off and scrambles for sanity, "I'm not like you. I wouldn't —" She tries to turn away, to stare at the ceiling or a distant wall, but the room itself has faded away. There are no corners to hide in, no places to look for avoidance. "Did you want me to kill you? So you wouldn't have to do it yourself? So I could live with the kind of guilt you didn't think you had the guts for? Or did you..." Her arms are wrapped around herself, fingernails tensely clawing at her biceps. She doesn't remember moving. "I don't know. I don't know who you are any more than you knew me." This wasn't a ghost she wanted to summon, but that was never going to stop him from haunting her anyway.