{ star maps || roger + scout || train blitz

The stage in front of District Four's town hall looms. He is a marionette, shackled by his strings, some unknown hand of god dancing him in an anxious zigzag towards the platform, two glass bowls filled with paper and fit for drowning in flanking the blurry faces on display for the whole country. He tries to shout, but his "I volunteer!" is cut off by a different voice — one he recognizes, but cannot place. His poor puppet mouth is papier-mâché shut, cementing his silence as the strings wrap around his arms, his legs. He runs for the stage — but his sister gets there first, puffed with pride and stare set in stone as Roger tumbles tangled to the tarmac, helpless to watch as Brig stubbornly storms off into the point of a spear. He forces his mouth to open —

and he's up with a yelp and a curse, disoriented and tangled up in the silk sheets of the... the train. The train to the Capitol, to the Hunger Games, to his death. The compartment door slams open, jarring him from his post-sleep nightmare-haze. A silhouette stands against the golden backdrop of the hallway's incandescents, swearing and sniffling.

[attr="id","rSpeech"]"...baby Krigel?" he asks the shadow. [attr="id","rSpeech"]"Scout?"

He sits upright, kicks the covers down to his feet, drags himself out of bed. Even though he knows the answer, he probes: [attr="id","rSpeech"]"You doing okay there?" With an implicit no — because how could anyone dragged off unwillingly toward their death be okay? — hanging in the darkness between them, he wraps a hug around her before she feels the need to lie about it.