I Dream You're Still Here {Catherine Spark Oneshot}

[googlefont="Fredericka the Great:400"]Catherine Spark

Numbing the senses,
I feel you slipping away

District Three hasn't had a victor since the seventy-second Hunger Games. Sure, we've come close, but close isn't quite enough. Sure, the two tributes we had in the eightieth Hunger Games came home alive, but all the tributes did that year. Before the reaping, the thought that was most prominent in my head was that I needed my children to stay safe this year. That was always my most prominent thought when it came to the reaping. The second most prominent thought in my head, however, was that we needed someone who could come out as a victor.

It's difficult, every year, watching two innocent children die, whether or not you know them. I root for them throughout the entirety of the Games, and not just because they're from my District that I call home, or because I'm the mayor. I root for them because I know what loss feels like, and I hate to see other people around me feeling that same pain that comes along with it. I've gone through it a few times. First, I lost my husband, then, one of my sons, followed a few years later by one of my daughters. I knew what the pain that came along with that felt like.

It was a pain that would never go away.

My children had been stolen from me at the reaping of the seventy-fourth and seventy-ninth Hunger Games. They'd been taken against their will and against that of me, their mother. They were forced to go into a vicious environment known as an arena and fight to the death with other children selected to do the same. There was only one survivor, and my children weren't the lucky ones. They both made it quite far. They both made the people of District Three quite hopeful, but in the end, they both died deaths that were early and unfair.

This year, like every year, when I arrived at the reaping, my first priority of protecting my children was very prominent in my mind.

I failed.

I couldn't tell you what prompted my own, young, thirteen-year-old daughter, Industria Opal Spark, to volunteer for the eighty-second Hunger Games. She'd seen how brutal the Games were. She certainly wasn't blind to all of that. She'd lost two of her siblings, Bolts and Florence. She knew what it would do to her family if she didn't make it out. She had never met a victor, but I was sure she knew what it would do to her if she did make it out. These Games would break her, and I couldn't protect her. I couldn't save my daughter, no matter how much I wanted to.

She had volunteered for this.

Unlike Bolts and Florence, she didn't have to do this. She wasn't reaped for the eighty-second Hunger Games. She wasn't being forced into this. She had decided to take the place of Plunder Theft when the girl's name was called at the reaping. This year, I may be losing another one of my children, and I wasn't prepared for it. I also wasn't prepared for how much it would break my daughter to go through the Games, and how much it would break her if she killed someone. How broken and changed would she be if she did make it home alive?

All I wanted to do right then was run to her on the stage to protect her. I wanted to sweep Dusty into my arms and carry her away. I wanted to tell them to take Plunder Theft instead. What kind of terrible person does that make me, wanting to tell them to take another person's child to their death? I'm the mayor of District Three. I'm supposed to be responsible and respectable. I'm supposed to be a role model.

I had to stand my ground, but that didn't mean that teardrops wouldn't fall down my face as they took my daughter away from me.

The rest of the reaping went all too quickly for me to really register in my brain. Larceny Theft was chosen again. Someone else volunteered for him again- the boy who was originally reaped for the eightieth Hunger Games before Larceny volunteered for him. I didn't realize that Orion Starcrest was the boy Larceny had volunteered for two years ago until a while after the reaping was over, though.

As soon as the reaping concluded, I gathered my children who were still with me, and we started to make our way to the Justice Building to say goodbye to Dusty. Joseph ran up ahead of all of us, going in first by himself.

I wasn't ready for any of this.

I wasn't ready to lose Industria Spark.

Industria's spark wasn't ready to go out, but she'd started to douse her own flame the moment she volunteered.

Fighting to hold on,
Clinging to just one more day

789 words
lyrics: "Still Here" by Digital Daggers