You Already Know What You Are //WonderVT//

I watch the leaves flap blissfully with the wind sweetly singing it's gentle song, twisting and tossing after every couple of bars of the melody. The step on the train towards Seven was one of the hardest things that I'd had to do ever since leaving the arena, it was leaving family of a family, and it was letting go, letting go of Aria, letting go of a sister, a best friend, and someone I hardly even knew - though I thought I did. There was only so much you could learn about a person in two and a half weeks, not enough to really write a story, or paint a true picture of someone - but I could try, I could try to piece together the pieces of what was Aria Wolfe as long as I lived. As long as the stars looked down on me, and I dreamed each night of the words scribbled along her tombstone, I would not forgot, I would not give up - for there are worse things to live for than a girl who died too young.

Beautiful green tree-tops swept across the vast landscape of the district as the train chugged along rhythmically, thick with leaves and pines, green as anything I'd ever seen. Trees, a forest, so dense and so dangerous, yet so appealing in so many ways. It wasn't gated off, that was a first, there were no boundaries to where any of them could roam, it was freedom. The ability to walk through the shadows, stick to the trees, lay in shadows, work among the large rooted plants day in and day out without having to worry about how far you went, that was magic - a sort of magic that wasn't granted in the five previous districts I'd visited - how convenient it was, this whole place, after two districts of family upon family of Argos, of the true family of the alliance I had called brother and sister, to find a place where I could break free, where everything was broken free.

Screeches erupt as the whirling of the wheels come to a sudden halt, we're here. Fresh air wafting in through the open windows and Carmel's shrill screams echoing through the cabins, "Peridot, are you ready?" No, not truly. I wasn't ready to eat another meal with flaming intensity dancing through the end, waiting for a single spark to set my world on fire. I was not ready for the disheartened empty cheers as I stepped off the train, nor would I ever be. There was nothing worse than false cheering, the people wishing to be somewhere else as they pretend that they're excited for the boy who came home - no one was excited when their own children had been brutally murdered. I imagine, should they have had the opportunity, they would take bats and maces, they'd take Kiera's bloody sword and pierce my heart, but these days I was Capitol-sweetheart Peridot Myler, and I didn't have any choice. Which is why I ran, with feet pounding beneath me, touching the soft foreign grass, with my hair flying about in a tussle, coat unbuttoned and flying loose pushing back with the wind and found a tree to lay beneath until the time would come, and they would find me. But I spent the time, the fifteen minutes, free and relaxed, listening to the wind and watching the leaves, without a single care - for once without a single care. I did not know the children of District Seven, Bran did, and I'd met the boy once or twice on the field, even thrown my weapon at him, but I didn't have the weight of an allies family for the first time in days. "Who do you think you are?"

It didn't take Carmel to find me, hidden underneath the brush of the largest tree available, the woman could smell his golden cuff links miles away whether for better or worse was completely undecided. Yet, she was a mother of sorts, dragging him by the ear when he was disobedient, kept him in line. She was nothing spectacular herself, but there was no guide for victors on how to survive. Rule 1: Figure it out yourself, seemed to be what it came down to in the end. "You have family who requested to see you, now you are not to keep them waiting, do you understand me?" I nodded in agreement and had the frazzled woman drag me off to the justice building, the most exquisite building in the town, yet district seven had a sort of marvel in itself, the log town, with building made of wood, and factories a mile high with cranes towering above them - it was a sight to behold when coming from a town made of purely stone.

Carmel's mutters of disapproval seemed to echo down the empty hallways as her black heels clanged against the floor, I dared not look back at her subtle head shaking as her steps pushed me more and more forward towards the door at the end of the hallway - she hadn't briefed me, who was there, which family member, was she sad, angry, happy? Figure it out yourself, Little Boy. Pushing through the wooden door, I didn't know what to expect. "Sorry," I said while entering. "I got a little distracted on the way here." I smiled towards the girl sitting atop the leather couch, her face seeming to be twisted into an angry grimace. "I'd like to formally apologize for what happened to.." Shit, who was she? A sister, a friend? A cousin - shit, how was I supposed to give the same old song and dance if I didn't even - "I'm sorry." Shit. That was the best I could do - apologize over and over again until my lips went blue and I flew up to the stars, back to my family, back to my friends, but that was a long way coming, and people had bats and swords, and words - people had words that they could toss so easily, and that made this all so much harder.