interlude | [Jade & Bette JB]

Nervous. Jade Morin was nervous and for a few seconds she just paced the small room they'd put her in. No matter how many times she went through things in her head, she couldn't fathom why she would be nervous. Isn't this what she'd always wanted? To Volunteer, to get one over her brother - and he hadn't been quick enough to volunteer just as she'd thought! What right did she have to be nervous? She had been training her whole life for the Games, and she didn't grasp what there was to be nervous about. In the back of her head, she saw images of death. Rather than her victims, she saw herself limbless, bloody, mangled. She shut her eyes, and shoved those thoughts away, because they had to be insane. She couldn't die in the arena. She'd been training too often for that, and only her older brother was her equal in a fight. That was true, wasn't it?

The day she volunteered, it was a day she'd played in her head over and over again through the many years. Whenever she stood in wait, watching the Reapings she would imagine herself being one of the girls who stepped up to volunteer. She imagined herself strong, confident, and she'd wave at the cameras eagerly. She'd put on a good show, and that had happened, of course. She'd done well in front of the cameras, she was naturally charismatic when the time asked for it. After all, image was all a part of the Games too and if she hadn't trained for that, then she couldn't really consider herself prepared. However, she had never once accounted for the fact that she'd be sitting in a room nervous. No, the images she'd seen in her head had always displayed her as confident, eager, and so very strong. Powerful, a warrior, a survivor, a winner. In her head she'd be the perfect image of a Victor, but reality was different. Reality proved that she was nervous, and if she was completely honest with herself she was even afraid.

Jade wouldn't be the only Career in the arena. District 2 had no winners in such a long time that she almost felt confident counting them out - almost, but she couldn't completely. She'd still seen their shows and some of them were powerful too, they'd just been unlucky. No, she scolded herself. They hadn't trained enough! It was easier to think that way, rather than to face the truth. Jade wasn't completely ready for that yet. She didn't want to fully realize that in the Hunger Games no plan was full proof. There was no way to be 'trained' well enough to always win, and because no matter what luck played a part, and there was always someone stronger waiting out there. No, she was not ready to face any of that, because if she was going to come back home in one piece she needed her confidence more than she needed anything else. And she wanted to come home. If she was shipped home in a body bag, how was she going to protect Gunner or Dagger?

Her heart raced against her chest. No, she needed to protect Gunner and Dagger at all costs! That's one reason she went into these Games! Oh, she wanted the glory too, of course, but she needed to protect her younger siblings. She knew that Gunner had no interest in the Games, and she found it cruel of her father to push it anyway. The only way to protect Gunner and Dagger was winning, because if she were dead then her father would have just seen her as useless. Jade was well aware of the way her father thought: his children were only worthwhile if they volunteered and won the Hunger Games. He wanted each and every one of them to win, and that was the only way to worm their way into his heart. Nothing else mattered to their father. Whenever they went out to meet other families, they'd all sit properly and formally at a table and he would boast about his kids futures. He would tell the other families how his kids were going to win.

He'd been ashamed when Onyx had failed to volunteer. He'd been so angry at his favored child then, and would humiliate him often for it. Which just made Onyx more violent than he'd ever been before, of course.

Jade Morin needed to return home a Victor. She'd then have high status in the family, and what she hoped for more than anything: her father's love and recognition. Of course, she didn't actually realize that yet. All she really knew was the glory that had been beaten into her since she was a little girl. Beaten into her so often that she'd begun to believe that's what she wanted, and not just what her father wanted. Oh, she was competitive by nature, that was true. However, if left with a doting family rather than the one she was born into, she would have never imagined entering the Games. She would have been competitive in other pursuits, not in life endangering ones. She didn't realize this. She didn't realize the only reason she really wanted the glory was to gain her father's love.

That wasn't to say that she didn't want to be famous. She wanted that too, but in normal circumstances she could have found other means. She could have been a fashion designer, a writer, a Gamemaker, but instead the only thing she could think about was the Hunger Games, because she'd been forced to think about it.

Only now, for the very first time, was she greeted with the fact that this isn't what she actually wanted. She just didn't understand that yet.

The moment she heard the cane clack against the floor, her heart sunk to her stomach. Her family. She didn't know why she heard that noise, but that's the only thing that made any sort of sense. Who else would come to see her off? She'd been expecting them, after all. Even if her father and mother weren't close, they'd come here to save face if for no other reason. She wiped her now sweaty hands on her dress and made way over to the cream colored couch. She sat there properly, ankles crossed. Oh, she'd look the part of a well raised, proper girl. It was obvious by the fact that her parents marriage was all prearranged that she was born into a proper high class family, and she was raised to act like it.

Jade didn't know that there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. That her nervousness would be so obvious. She only hoped that she looked like a proper lady. If she had known how nervous she looked, she would actually have been relieved when it wasn't her family that showed up. If her father and mother had seen the sweat, the look of nervousness on their daughter's face, they would have been disappointed in her. However, she wasn't aware that she looked so bad, so she wasn't relieved when she saw the figure wasn't her family at all. She only felt disappointment, and she glanced behind the other girl to see if her family was somehow behind her. They weren't, and she was left confused.

For a moment, she didn't know the girl. It took a little while before she realized it was a girl who'd been inside the arena and came back home alive. A girl that shouldn't be alive, because she wasn't a Victor at all. She'd just been the leftovers of a quell. It was a cruel way to think, but with a District obsessed with glory and winning, it was probably something that many people thought. Her eyes had widened, but that was only momentary. It was just seconds before her face took on that cheerful appearance. Was she somehow related to the Games? If so, Jade needed to act her part! She listened to the girl, who hadn't taken long to speak at all.

As much as Jade hated to admit it, the girl still did have experience. Oh, she was a failure, of course. If Jade had been in the other girl's position she'd have no doubt that she'd be kicked out of the house and disowned. That's how the Morin family worked. You go into the Games, and you win, or you get disowned. You fail to get into the Games, you get disowned. If she died, she had no doubt whatsoever that her name would be scratched out of the family registry, which had been kept for many, many generations and followed even after the family name had been changed on more than one occasion to match where they lived.


"What's something they don't teach us here that we'd need in the Games?" She'd wanted to ask why the other girl died, but she restrained herself. She just couldn't see how a Career from One lost. Not when they trained their entire lives for it. So, instead, she asked something simple. Jade wasn't Gunner, though. He was the smart one who'd know the right questions to ask.