Raging sea {Meghan}

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I try to sit somewhere different each day. To pick another person to torture. It makes the time go faster if I can just get to know my victims a little bit better. Don't mistake my intentions here, I hate all of them. We're all useless, and I've given up on being nice ever since the fiasco in the training hall on the first day. But the least I could do was introduce myself.

It was funny how much being condemned to your death could change you. Two years ago I was just as nice as these people tried to be, just as "normal" so to speak. I had a friend, or maybe two, and I didn't constantly sit in corners and make sarcastic comments about everything. Heck, I even had a favorite color, and it wasn't the color of something ill-fated. I loved the purple of wildflowers in the mountains and in the grassy field. I loved the golden sunsets above the distant pine-trees while the nightbird chirped its harmonic tune. I liked the smell of mint rubbed on the palms of your hands after a long run in the woods, a scent mixed with sweat, laughter, and hard-work.

These memories were all that I had left of my old life. Of him. We were content, Cassius and I, to simply live our days together in peace and without interruption. He had only two years left and he would have been safe from their tyranny, from their enslavement. Yet, they took him anyway. Gave him seventeen hard years of hope before changing the ending and destroying the evidence.

He didn't have to die, none of them did. Maybe eventually, after a well-earned and happy life, but now? After the daily torture of training? A life so strict he reduced himself to drugs and near homelessness?

No, nobody deserved that. Especially not my sweet Cassius, who cried himself to sleep at night just because of words spoken by fools. He was more sensitive then they would ever realize. Sure, he may have put up a front, but he would never fool me. He could never fool me! I, who dressed his wounds and rocked him to sleep. Who comforted him in his tears.

I who missed him most of all. And they wondered what made me so angry. They felt curious as to why I so easily flew off the rocker. Well, they would never understand. How could they? Only a couple of them had lost their siblings in the games, and really, at what cost? How had it affected them?

I sit across from one of them now, my brow furrowed in deep thought. Does he know? Can he feel my pain, or is he ignorant of what it means to lose somebody as I have? He seems weak. So very weak, and I don't trust it. He's not like Iago, who despite his losses still marches through the center with his confidence upon his shoulders. This boy only seems to be afraid, a quality I do not take well to.

I cluck my tongue and narrow my eyes, "I bet you think it's easy to just do nothing, yeah, Jay? Did you learn that from your brother? He seemed to be pretty good at it." Harsh, I know. But the kids' gotta learn reality somehow.

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Thanks to Onyx for help with the header and dreams for fixing the table!