this is where i leave you. perdita.

This is where I leave you.

When I'm just a child, and I'm terrible, and brave. When I'm not what you want me to be, and you see it with every year that passes. When I don't listen to you, and I don't tell you what's wrong, and you think I hate you. And I think you hate me, and I sneak out the window each night. I feel sad. I don't tell you why. I just blame you, and you blame me, too.

And you're good parents, or at least you try to be, and I'm an awful daughter. I never try to be anything else. You leave me to myself, and that just hurts even worse, but I'm the one that put the blade in your hands. I told you to cut the thread, I begged you to let me go, I said we'd both be happier when it was all said and done. A girl without a family. I wanted to be alone.

Then you had her, and somehow I was still trapped there, like a ghost, pacing the halls and still sneaking out the window, but now the scar just goes deeper. Because I could hear the laughter as I left, the sounds of a happy child with a happy childhood and a father that couldn't be more proud; and I never heard my mother crying in the room just upstairs. I should have.

I just kept walking. Leaving.

Until I wore a path in the sand, until I knew every route of escape, until I could stand five miles away from my house and still hear everything. Until I was still sad, and lonely, and wicked, and I tried to fill all the empty spaces inside of myself. And it never worked. Not really. Not when my sister asked me to come play and I always refused; not when my baby brother didn't understand why I couldn't look him in the eyes.

Not when the world kept passing me by, and I blamed it. Even though I was the one moving, the one that wouldn't stop, the one that put a gun in the hands every stranger and loved one and made an enemy out of them. Because Calypso didn't hate me until I gave her a reason to, and Artemus didn't give up on me until I forced him to. I made my own monsters.

My mother still sobbed. I still left.

But then there was a boy, and I let myself believe it was real. Because he didn't run when I pushed him away, because he let me be cruel, because I needed something and he was there. Because I am the villain in this story, but for a moment, it was nice to just be the girl holding his hand. Staring out at the sea. Whispering gentle things his ear. Pretending like it could last. The happiness.

I don't think we would have been forever, I don't think there was anything inside of me that was ever destined for eternity, but I never imagined how it would end. That jealousy would rot a hole in everything pure, that there would be lies and mistakes and an arrow cutting through the night; sisters at war and silly little toy soldiers caught between them. The boy dies at the end of this story.

His story.

But we all do, I do, but it still affects me. It gives me an excuse. Suddenly I'm allowed to hate her, suddenly I can lock the door in her face, suddenly I can leave her in silence; and it hurts her, it always has, but now it's real. Now I'm more than just the sister who never stays around for long, now I'm more than a shadow, now I'm a thing that truly and terribly hates the people that love her.

And my mother keeps crying, and I keep my mouth shut, and I replay the image of a young man dying until all I can see is myself in his place. Because I'm the victim. Because I'm the bad guy. Because there are so many things I don't understand, and I don't try to learn, because I go where I have no right to belong. Like in his arms.

Like I'm doing it again, like I've found another boy to hold me in place, to hate me and love me, to brush the tears away from my face and look at me so softly. To tell me that he'll stay, when we both know that I can't, that it's okay if I've only fallen for him because in his story my sister is the villain, too, because he hasn't made it to the last chapter.

Because he doesn't realize he should hate me. Because I do. And I'm not sure if I ever truly let myself fall in love with him, even though he builds a house for me and considers burning all of his dreams to the ground, even though I'm holding the match, even though I'm sobbing and he's holding me and I do love him. I do.

But then one morning I feel that terrible itch again, and I leave our bed, and I walk away and I don't come back. And I give him a reason to rip up all the photographs of me, to realize that I was never good for him, that his dreams are more important than a girl that was only looking for a moment, just one, where she could stand in the sun.

And not fade, and scream, without making a single sound.

I tell myself I'm the hero when I set Brentley free, but I'm just playing pretend. Again, like always, saving face to my family and telling them that I want to heal. Holding my sister, never saying I'm sorry, drinking with my brother and learning all these things about him that I should have already known. Not thinking about him.

Ending up in another man's arms, leaving again, staying with him, making another house my own and still hating all of the sounds inside. But this story is my own, he knows nothing about me, nothing about Calypso, there are no cruel or hidden intentions in this. He simply saw a girl, with a stranger's face and a stranger's name, and he wanted to dance with her.

And I let him, and I'm glad, and I fell for him in a way that was my own. And I told myself I was getting better, eighteen years old and so close to another kind of freedom, but I still saw that gun materializing in his hands. I still felt the fire moving up my legs, telling me to go, just asking me to burn everything down again.

His name was Roland, and he was good, and he had a sister, and she was the sweetest thing, and I was happy. I was a happy in a way that wasn't as difficult to force, happy in the way that I didn't feel numb when I was laughing at one of Arty's jokes, or secretly bitter while I was helping Caly with her hair before her big interview. Like I was myself.

Like I knew who that was.

But I was still terrible, and there still someone else I loved, and there was still so much I couldn't accept, about myself and the world, so much I still hated and so much that still hurt and so much I didn't want to hear again. He kissed me, and he promised me everything, but I'd heard it before. I wanted it to change me. Because it hadn't the last time.

Because I still end up in the same spot, with my hand in the air, playing the false hero again, pretending like I care about saving sisters. It's all just one big tragedy. I try not to make excuses, I try to go along with the new narrative, I throw salt into every wound and force them to close. I tell them to let me go. I have always told them to let me go.

When he's holding me in that room, and he doesn't judge me, and I love him. His name is Roland, and he's like the sun rising on me. Like everything is warm, and safe, and I can be brave enough to look. And then I'm standing there with him, with the wind at our backs and in our hair, hearing a trigger click. And I'm holding the gun now. And he'll still take the bullet if I only ask it of him.

And his name is Brentley, and I love him, too, but the equation never goes back to me. So I walk ahead, across all the glass and the memories, like I'm in a train and eighty miles away but I'm alone in my room, and I'm sobbing, but all anyone sees is the hateful girl slamming doors, making threats, being every horrible thing she pretended not to be.

I stop playing a part. I try to find myself, I start building myself, I wrap myself in the most terrible armor and dare anyone to challenge me. And I don't let anyone love me, not this time, not with rage in my eyes and cruel words on my tongue, burning through the Capitol and the arena and refusing death with every arrow and blade and killing blow. And it doesn't stop until everyone sees. Until they know me for what I am.

Like when I let myself get drunk to not think about the boy that reminds me of my brother, the boy who had his throat slit right in front of me, like when I dropped Niko into the water and let his skull split against a rock, like I heard him drowning and kept walking. Like I still let myself be upset, like I had any right to, like I still begged them to come back to me, like I wasn't ready to kill them to make it out.

And then Kahinta was standing there, and it was like a mirror, and I saw all of my wickedness and all of my hunger and I smashed it. And I ruined us. And I told her I won, and she told me not yet, but I was still wearing black. I was alone, and I was alive, and no one loved me. Not in that moment. I was just a source of food for the cat, a few scratches behind the ear.

Niko wasn't looking down on me, Emmett didn't even have the chance to know me, my district partner didn't trust me, every alliance I ever formed was dead and gone and I was always holding the knife. Always saying I would not go, that I couldn't go, only to say I wanted to be free. Until I was standing across from her, and the end was at my throat, and I refused it. I refused. I refused. I refused.

I said I would not die, I said everything in my path would fall, I ruined everything and dragged myself through the ashes, I loved three boys and destroyed them all, I abandoned my family, I tricked my allies, I was terrible, I was horrible, I am. I was every forsaken thing. And then her sword met my neck, and I didn't have to think anymore.

About the sun, or the moon, or the loving and the hating; the staying and the leaving. And I would like to say I went gracefully, that my life was complete and the meaning was found, but it was only a thud and a shiver and the hot hiss of blood. I lived my life like a warning. Like a gunshot in the dark. Like a flare. Like I was always telling everyone to go.

Or maybe I was telling myself.

The thing about a corpse is that she can't be a villain, or a hero, not even the victim. She's just dead, and gone, and the world keeps moving. Boys keep falling for the wrong girl, and families keep falling apart, and her blood stops running. The arena stops moving, the sky goes dark, the victor is crowned. She's in a casket.

Some people show up, others don't, everyone and everything is mourning, and cheering, and the world is all so beautifully split. Between the loving and the losing, and the promises that went unfulfilled, and the questions that went unanswered, and the purpose that wasn't found. The reason. A girl in a white dress, standing by a glass sea, skipping rocks.

For just a moment, for a long time, for a quiet and peaceful blur.

And no one needs to know. No one has to ask. Who was loved, and who was lost, and who was left, and who stayed, and who was the villain and who was the victim and who never had their place in the story. Until it's just a memory, and it all stops hurting. For her, at least.

Gone.

All of it.

Perdita.