here we stand | { i & m } day 1 | Hunger Games: The RPG

here we stand | { i & m } day 1 Feb 26, 2015 22:16:56 GMT -5

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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2015 22:16:56 GMT -5

My dearest Margaret they’ll never see,
What you’ve hidden so carefully,
So do what you may,
And do what you must,
But remember when push comes to shove,
Your guarded heart will not display trust.

I can hear nothing more than the strain of our breaths as we run, sprinting for shelter in a place where there is none to be found. We do not pause, do not break pace until the sound of terror and disbelief can no longer be seen or heard, and when we do come to halt we do not find silence, caught unwillingly in the rhythm of our pounding hearts.

And as I struggle to find a slower change of pace I pull the coat tighter around my body, clinging tightly to it as I begin to pace. Lex does not do the same, instead sinking into the snow with hands clasped tightly together. But as I take the same path—six to the left; eight to the right— I dig myself deeper and deeper, snow threatening to burn numb against shivering skin.

“We’ve run a pretty fair distance since the meet-up. I doubt we’ll have to worry about them finding us in our sleep.”

I chuckle, if only amused by the thought that he thinks sleep is a probable action, for I cannot imagine either of us drifting off, not with the cold as a constant prod or the possibility of an anthem threatening to weigh down our minds with the image of a girl whose name I cannot bear to speak aloud.

My pacing is disrupted by his second statement, and I almost lose my footing as I whirl around to meet his gaze, “So, why do you only go by Margaret?” It takes a moment to process the question in its entirety, for the answer it desired was past a boundary further than he had previously crossed.

(There’s little but trust here, with a girl standing over the shoulders of boy who had much more than her to lose.)

And so I take a place beside him, pulling my knees to my chest before turning to meet his gaze again, though this time it’s tinged with an edge of softness rather than the harsh lines of an angered censored by years of screaming, speaking, and whispering, “it’s just Margaret.”

Just Margaret without rhyme or reason.

Just Margaret because there’s nothing more to it in its simplicity.

But now there has to be, for before the phrase had been replied to with a pat on the head or a reprimanding chastisement, that heritage was all we had behind the lines of our family, that we were to be proud, to be willing to defend a title which held no reputation at all, but he had toppled the usual spectrum of responses and played a different card in whole.

There’s a reason we ask why when we have nothing else to say.

I take a breath that settles deep within my lungs, and I watch as it dissipates into the air around us before managing to speak at all, before managing to formulate an answer to a question I’ve previously never been asked, “Because what follows it means nothing at all.” And here I pause for a moment, watching for a reaction I wouldn’t be able to read before continuing, “I can’t leave what’s happened behind, but I can try to forget about it.”

But woven within that past are things I wish to commit to memory, and at the thought of Garrett, Draco, Ratteria, and Quill, I pull the flower crown from my bag and hold it lightly between my fingers before laying it in my lap. I cannot wear it now, for I am the queen of a kingdom in mourning, crying at the loss of one of her greatest.

Lex and I were to follow Hedvig down if fate came to pass in the way I believed it would, and I could only hope I’d be buried with my crown.

MARGARET
DUBOIS

DISTRICT 7

FEMALE

THE 69TH GAMES

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