all time has tarnished [Ryan / jb blitz]

The Peacekeepers dump you unceremoniously in one of the waiting rooms of the Justice Building, with a single unremarkable metal chair perched in the middle of the room on the plain gray carpeting, cold white light bearing down on you from the fluorescent light in the ceiling tiles. Boring. Bureaucratic. It almost disappoints you not to instead get some kind of dungeon cell, with cold stone flooring and rough-hewn walls illuminated by dim candlelight. This room almost has an air of guilt to it, like when you're in trouble and you're just waiting for the principal to come out from her office to give you yet another do-you-understand-what-you-did-wrong lecture.

You walk over to the window, peering down at the swirl of the crowd as it peels away in ten different directions from the reaping stage, as workers move in and begin unplugging microphones and lifting the mayor's podium onto their cart, to be carried away to wherever such things were stored. The question almost prickles at your curiosity, but you tamp it down before that curiosity could turn to hesitation, and hesitation to regret, and - you look around the room that was not an office, but there's little to distract you from the lingering doubts in your mind except the activity in the bustling town square.

Well. Regardless of whether you're a hero or an idiot, it's too late to take back the past, and so you press forward, pacing in circles, too many imaginary conversations playing in your head as you try and imagine how you'll explain yourself to your sister if - when, you remind yourself, it's not like she's going to abandon you - she shows up to say goodbye.