Fleur Lionette, District 7

Fleur Lionette

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Female | District Seven | Eighteen[/b][/color][/font][/center][/size]

Dangerously beautiful.
Beautifully insane.

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People keep telling me that I'm on the brink of womanhood. What the hell does that even mean? The brink? Like, I'm about to fall into some great big pit of womanhood. Great. Utterly fantastic. The image that that prospect sums up is certainly interesting, to say the least. Actually, scratch that. It's horrific. The way that people can give you a line, and once you pass it you become something else. Nineteen. Once I pass that mark, I will have grown up. Just like that. Some freaky overnight transition from heartbreaker to mature and sophisticated woman. I hardly think so. Look, it's not that I don't want to grow up. As much as I cannot wait to outgrow the annual nightmare that is the reaping, I do not wish to enter the world of adults and jobs and families just yet. Actually, the games wouldn't be so bad. I can imagine it now, seducing each and every male tribute before slitting their throats. It mightn't get me in the good books of the district, but at least I'd get to kiss a bunch of almost-rich and famous boys before they died. It really depends on how you look at it.

Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain't like you to hold back or hide from the light.

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People say a hell of a lot of things that they don't mean. Or are lies. Or are lies that they don't mean. Whatever. I could list these things for hours. Growing up is never easy, for one. I mean, how hard is it to grow up? If you just sit there and wait around, after twenty years or so you'll be all grown up. Here in Panem they don't wait around for you to be mentally ready, mature and experienced before they want you to be 'all grown up', get yourself a family and start working for them. District Seven is certainly no exception. Another thing people lie about is people. I mean, no matter how many people tell you that every person has some good inside them, you're not going to believe them. Not if you've met me, anyway. Look, I'm not saying I'm some cruel sadistic player. I'm not saying I'm not, either. All that I'm saying is that just because someone decides to kill someone in their sleep and then, I don't know, frame their best friend, it doesn't make them a good person on the inside. In fact, I happen to know a psycho-manic, and, having spent a great deal of time making out with him, I can confidently conclude that he did not possess one shred of goodness. Full stop. And quality over quantity? Who cares if you can have some good chocolate, when you can have three tonnes of chocolate.

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Maybe chocolate is not such a great example. Maybe wherever you live you can have as much bloody chocolate as you like. Maybe you have a special place in your cupboard, or fridge, or wherever you keep your chocolate, just for the stuff. But I don't. And as much as I would like to spend the rest of the night bribing you into giving it to me, I don't have time. Because I live in District Seven. And even being rich here doesn't give you such luxuries. Anyway, it doesn't matter - because I'm not rich. I'm not even middle-class. Anyway, where was I? I'm not sure. You probably don't even care, so I'm going to start with telling you about my life. Am I self-centred? Maybe. Do I care? No. Here's it straight. I hate an awful lot of stuff. The world. The people in it. The Capitol. Panem. District Seven. Onions. Most of those things for the same reason. Maybe not the onions, but the rest. They're controlling and messing everyone in all of the districts about like rag dolls - tossed back and forth in a washing machine, unable to hold themselves completely together. No matter how hard they seem to toss us, we never get any cleaner. And holding ourselves together is hard without the washing-machine simile. I guess the world might be a happy place for some people. You know, the people with a special place in their fridge for chocolate and a special place in their heart for their family. But I am not one of those people. I lie. I betray people for the smallest of ransoms. I care not for those around me. I don't really have a family to place in my heart. I can't afford anything - never mind chocolate. So for me, the world is a sick and twisted place. I mean, I have my faults, and many of them, but even I would not be so heartless and cruel as to force people to watch their children slaughter each other for fun.

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To be fair, most people here in District Seven don't like the games. They tolerate them, yes, because what else is there to do? You can't go against the Capitol - unless you actually want your head chopped off, in which case you where never much help to the poor kids anyway. Some call me merciless. Some call me fierce and heartless and sick. But not that sick. Not that heartless. Never that merciless. When I was little, my father used to tell me stories of long, long ago. Not just of the rebellion, but of a time when people lived differently to now. Some parts of the world were prosperous and free, and the government had almost no hold over them. There was a law, but in these good, free places you could speak against the President and live to tell the tale. You could flee your hometown and remain in one piece for longer than a day. When I was young and stupid, I believed those stories. They gave me hope that when I grew up my children could be safe. Always, I told myself, when I grow up, but now I very almost am grown up. Yet somehow I still feel as though I know just as much and am as ready to be grown up as when I was a tiny child. Something has changed though. When I was young I had a family. When I was young, I was that little blonde-haired blue-eyed smiling child with the hand-axe that everyone knew and loved and looked out for. The town sweetheart.

"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,
Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

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I know, it's hard to believe. You look at me now, and you see - what exactly? Someone who's spiralling out of control, just beginning their life yet knowing exactly to what degree it is over. You've heard rumours of me, I am sure. Of the way I mess around with every boy I can find, seducing them and luring them into my traps. You know, I myself am surprised that each and every one falls for it every single time. They think that they're different, or special, yet I still manage to chew them up and spit them out and put them in their place. Show them exactly who's in control. Ugh, look at me. I sound like a monster. I guess that's exactly what I've become. But, like I say, I wasn't always this way. Shall I tell you, then? How I came to be what I am now? This fiery and charming and illusive monster you see? Alright. Where shall I begin? How about I begin when I was born? That's the ultimate beginning, right? Wrong. I shall begin nine months before I was born. It was summer. The hot height of summer. My parents stumbled upon each other in some crazy, weird party having never met each other before. I mean, I guess they must have seen one another around the District - there are only so many people here and they had both lived on lumber farms their entire lives. Yet, out of the blue, nine months later, I appeared.

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My mother was eighteen when she became a mother. This is what I am afraid of. I, Fleur Lionette, am never afraid of anything. Yet in the last year I have found two things I am terrified of. The first is growing up. I cannot fathem a world where responsibility rests on my shoulders. Children, a weighty job, a household, other people. I can't even seem to entertain the notion that at my age my mother had a baby to care for. A whole other person who depends on you. Relies on you. I am quite known for my reliability, or lack thereof, around these parts. The other thing I am afraid of I can't say. But growing up is the first. Anyway, somehow I keep managing to draw this back to my self and my own insecurities. My mother. With a tiny baby with a halo of golden curls and bright blue eyes. It was ironic, really. My mother was the most reserved and cautious person you could meet - not at all the kind to get herself pregnant with a stranger. It was the only time she had ever done something so reckless in her life - and here I am carelessly being reckless every other night - yet nothing has happened to me. Yet. Anyway, my mother was left with a tiny baby with golden curls and bright blue eyes, and she hurried around to tell my father what he had done. She expected him to close the door in her face, to turn her away and leave her alone, but instead he opened the door and let her and I move in the very next day. My mother, you see, had nowhere to live. I never met my grandparents, but I honestly don't want to. They might be dead by now, anyway. I wouldn't know.

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So my mother and father lived together for years, with me. I grew up wondering why the leaves changed in the fall rather than why my parents never really spoke and why my grandparents on my fathers seemed to be so religious. I watched the sun shine every summer and the leaves fall every autumn. I saw the wisps of snow flutter to the ground and coat the forests just before Christmas every year. I loved how the trees grew new shoots and the flowers came to life in the spring. Yet somehow I missed that my parents marriage was in turmoil, my father was seeing another woman, and my religious grandparents refused to let them divorce the way they had forced my father to accept the responsibility he had befallen on himself that night long ago. In fact, not a single troubling detail of the whole ordeal presented itself to my ignorant mind until the day I turned twelve. The lady my father had been messing around with had fallen pregnant and suddenly he decided it was all too much for him. That morning, he told me he loved me; and I believed him. He had, after all, dedicated his precious time to keeping me fed, spent hours helping me with homework and taught me patiently to ride a bike. I looked up to that man with every bone in my body - let him hold me when I cried as people I knew where reaped, and helped me get through their deaths when they killed each other on the flickering little box in out lounge-room. I trusted my father with all of my heart, and on the morning of my birthday, when he told me he loved me, I made the mistake of believing him - and loving him back.

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My father never returned. He promised, just before I left for school, that he would have my special present waiting for me when I arrived home. Granted, I may have forced the promise out of him in my eagerness, but all the same when he closed the kitchen door behind him I never saw him again. Good. It's for the better. He left me, left us. Betrayed us. No, he didn't leave for the other woman. He left for the woods. I have suffered with distrust and abandonment issues ever since. I guess it kind of contributes to my personality disorders. Brash, insensitive, fearless, untrusting and suspicious are all things I have been accused of many times. I prefer sarcastic, witty, charming and dangerous, but whatever floats your boat is fine with me. I'm beyond caring, I guess. That's all it is. So that morning, the morning the day before my very first reaping, I had nobody left. Actually, I had my mother and my controlling and overbearing grandparents, as well as my baby half-sister, who is now six and a totally loveable brat. But I felt alone. I remember the tears streaming down my face when I picked the lock on my fathers valuables draw, the one he never opened, and found it empty. The forest was dark already - this was the dead of winter and night had already fallen with the snow.

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I must tell you now that it is near-impossible to burn down a forest soaked with snow. But, surprisingly, it's actually possible. I sat there, rocking back and forth and feeling the teardrops freeze on my long eyelashes and held the full box of matches to my chest. That was when I knew what I was going to do. I do not recommend becoming an arsonist, but I have to say it is quite useful for reliving yourself of stress. At the time all I felt was anger at the flurry of broken promises my father had left us with. Now I understand a little more. He was only a little older than me. I could never deal with that responsibility - yet I could never leave a child - two children, in fact - alone in the world, fatherless. Nobody there to lean on while you watch your friends get reaped. Nobody to help you through it when they kill each other on the flickering television box in your lounge room. Actually, we sold our television weeks later. Our income had more than halved in the space of a day, and we needed the extra money to get by. A lot of people in this situation may have taken over the role of breadwinner. Maybe their mother suddenly becomes helpful and they have to take on the work and the food and their five smaller siblings one-handedly, at just twelve. Well, I can tell you now that I didn't. I broke down, completely and utterly. My hopes and fears and ambitions drowned in the flames that took out an incredibly small percentage of the districts forestry. In the snow it was quite easy to out out. Yet I had made my stand - I was broken. My mother, however, had apparently seen the whole thing coming and was steeled and strong. She was my mother, after all. It was her job to help me through it, to slowly do her best to fix me - no matter how broken I had become. So she did, and I let her. She cared for me, even on those days when I felt as though I could burn the whole of Panem. She even managed to save me from the tesserae, however she couldn't support us without getting me working on a neighbours farm which had managed to avoid the blaze. So from twelve I spent days flinging axes at trees while she worked in a lumber-wares shop in the town. She held me together when I fell apart and from that I never learnt how to hold myself together.
Maybe this is why, even on the brink of womanhood, I am not ready to face it all. Maybe not. Whatever. What does it matter, anyway? What's done is done. I'm reckless, impulsive, seductive, heartless player who cares nothing for all the hearts she breaks. I guess, in my own twisted way, it's a way of proving that men are worthless. Heck, people are worthless. They'll all abandon you to save their own skins, after all. That is why, with the exception of my dear mother and my little sister,

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For a while after my fathers sudden absence from my life, I watched. That was all I did, when I was not working, or having food shoved down my throat, or sleeping. When I worked I got sore and tired, when I ate I felt sicker and began to hate myself, and when I slept I was plagued with nightmares. So watching was best. I watched people - just hid and watched and waited for something to happen to them and see how they would react. I spent a great deal of time feeling sorry for myself, although nobody seemed to sympathise. Apparently the entire District and most of the rest of Panem knew that my home was unstable and my father was bound to leave at some point. Everybody except for me. So I watched and I waited for my life to better itself. For my father to come home and explain that he was off saving the world and now we could live free like the people in his stories. He was not. The truth fell on me hard one day as my little sisters mother died and she was left all alone in the world. I was faced with the bitter reality that nobody ever comes when you cry; the world only gets harsher; and people are always fighting a fate which will come to them anyway. The world is a terrible place - and it wasn't about to get any better. So I pulled myself together enough to convince my mother to let little Starlit move in with us when her mother died, and got to grips with the way the world works. Nobody comes when you cry.

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So I became tougher, a shell of iron that was unbreakable, even if I had fallen apart inside. People who know me don't see how much of a mess I am. To them, I am a girl with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. A girl with a luring rose-red smile and pale complexion. A girl with long legs and a large forehead and a sarcastic tongue that was quick to put anyone and everyone in their place. A girl who, when not working chopping down trees and lugging lumber about the place, wears pretty dresses and skimpy nightgowns and ribbons laced into her locks. Some think I'm sweet and quiet - others see me as biting and mean, witty yet teasing, yielding rather than giving. People don't confuse me. I sorted them out long ago. I understand. I understand everyone except for me. The way the world works - man and woman have a child, man or woman doesn't care for child, child is left in the cold. But there's something else I'm very afraid of. Something I can never say.

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