thick skin ||d3 train blitz||

In five years, he never felt the urge to approach someone and talk to them about the Swamp. He let it brew within his head, hoping that one day he would just stop caring. Atticus was too afraid to approach people to talk about it, too afraid to sit down with someone, even the other victors. He felt too embarrassed, especially now, five years later, to admit that he hasn’t forgotten a single moment that happened over the course of that month.

Atticus remembered when Danny Brooker and he walked into the train without any guidance from Klaus, and in fact, he was never even present. He felt as if there was no person to ask questions to, no shoulder to lean on afterwards.

If he couldn’t move on he might as well just hope that he can get his next pair of tributes to.

Alice Sullivan and Bruce Clayton were their names. To him from first impressions, they seemed like polar opposites. Bruce Clayton, brother to a girl he mentored two years ago, Ave, was upon the stage with tears welling in his eyes. Alice Sullivan? She wasn’t sad. She was angry, feisty, rebellious. Night and day they were, sad and mad.

He sat in same spot he did last year, and the before, and all the other years going back to the 72nd when he and Danny sat in silence. He was too afraid for the small talk.

(Maybe that was his issue, confrontation. After all, he did mask himself with the face of Glamour Kinkade for the first day of his games.)

He let his fingers walk back and forth on the table. Atticus expected to either be intimidated by Alice or feel obligated to comfort Bruce.

Who knows, though, maybe they’ll surprise him.