The Younger Generation (Marek/Opal)

I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything
You held me down, but I got up
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, you hear that sound
Like thunder gonna shake the ground

District six. She had heard a lot about the district. She had, in fact, also heard that a great deal of the Capitol technology was thanks to this tiny, poverty littered place. It was astounding to think that the Capitol relied so much on the districts, when they tried to create the idea that they were so much better than them. And yet the more Opal thought about it the more she came to realise that without the districts they probably would not last very long at all. It was an interesting though, but one she would never dare voice, not even to someone she trusted, like Topaz or Peridot. Since the victory tour had begun Peridot and Opal had spoken a lot. The two were growing closer with every conversation they had. She loved talking to him; he was the first person she had willing opened up to since the arena. He was also the second – no third, Erik had been a friend as well, and now she had Topaz, regardless he was one of the few people that had become a friend to her and the more she thought about it the more she realised just how hard it was to be given that title.

Today she did not wear anything fancy; instead she wore a simple pair of black jeans that covered her legs completely. She wore a set of flat shows; her fake foot had fit into them comfortably, just as well as her old foot. For a shirt she wore a simple plain white T, covered with a thing cardigan that hung long at the sides and dangled down to her thighs. Her hair was down, falling around her face. When she looked left and right she found herself staring at a beautifully constructed district. Every district she had visited was uniquely its own, each of them different in their own way, and yet similar in some way. All of them had the tall barbed wire fences. She had not been able to glimpse the ones that surrounded district eleven or ten, the districts having been far too big for them to appear in her eye sight. But she assumed that they were the same, seeing as the rest of the districts were like that. And then there was the justice building, each of them as identical as the next and perhaps the only place in the lower districts that were very clean and new.

She finished off her speech, her words an echo of what Caramel had suggested she say. She had not known either of the tributes from this district. But her feeling for one of them had been anything, but polite. She had never seen or met Mikhail Ivashkov, but her dislike for him was growing with every thought of him. He had, after all, been the one to end Locust Lovelace’s existence, and that was a crime that she would never forget. He would forever be in her heart as a cold hearted, murderous bastard that deserved every bit of pain he got when he had been killed. Those were gruesome thoughts for her, but she couldn’t help it. And after visiting district four she was struck by the pain she had suffered all over again and she couldn’t just forgive the boy for taking something as precious as Locust away from her. It would have happened in the end, if Opal wanted to go home. But Opal would have wished with all her heart to be there beside her when it had happened. She hated how it had happened when they had separated; she hated how she had stumbled across her battered, bleeding and dead body. It wasn’t fair. She’d never gotten to tell her half the things she had wanted to say.

Sighing she stepped off of the stage, before slipping down where the crowds were. There she would let anyone come up to her and she’d speak with them. Answering their questions and responding with a few of her own. It was tiresome work, but Opal took delight in it. Talking to knew people was always a lot of fun.

You held me down, but I got up
Get ready cause I’ve had enough
I see it all, I see it now
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar