.Forest Fire (Johanna Mason X F.OC).

-District 7-

Empty.

It felt empty.

It felt like there was no one in district 7 even if they were all gathered by the peacekeepers to see her arrival back home.

Paige didn't see them as she walked through the parted crowd.

She didn't feel like anything was real, the silence heavy.

The day cold.

The heart dead.

And now.

The house that stood before her was like a tomb.

The floorboards creaked as dust floated through the light rays streaming in through the curtains.

A shadow cast in the home, the cold and lonely home.

She closed the door, the distant sound that was once familiar bur had become an unfamiliar sound filling hear ears: The safety of a lock clicking in place.

And then came the tears.

Sinking to her knees and falling forwards.

Alone in such a cold home, letting herself fall, barely bracing for impact.

The ground smacked her head but she didn't feel it, covering her head with her arms, crying onto the thick scratchy carpet that still smelt of dirt and tree sap.

She sobbed into it.

She lost everything to these stupid games.

Her brother was supposed to come home, victorious, to her father and now she had neither.

She felt like she'd throw up if she kept crying like that and she almost wished for it, it would be a reason to think of something else but she couldn't.

All their faces.

Julia, Nelson, Kai, Josh, Jasmine, Marcus and all other tributes, the boy from the Cornucopia or that girl that pissed herself in terror, all etched deep in her mind.

Marcus, he should have lived.

But he didn't.

He didn't and thinking was agony.

She dragged herself to her knees, using the wall to pull herself up, walking as she leaned on it for support.

With heavy legs, making her way in the kitchen and leaning on the counter.

She knew he hid it somewhere, he tried to stop and he did, but there were those nights, nights when horrors came whispering when his resolve broke. She was a teen, she had snuck out, had fun but now she'd use that past fun thing to forget terror and pain.

Paige had seen it, smelt the booze and seen the consequence, he thought he hid it well but no.... And now he left her alone to deal with this.

"AAAAH!!" She screamed, dragging her arms across the counter and sending piles of dished and pots crashing on the ground and falling against the cleaned counter, arms crossed under her head as she cried into them.

"SHUT UP!!" I screamed, grabbing a knife in her reach and threw it at the clock that dared to signal the o'clock.

Gasping as when she saw the back of Julia with the hatchet instead of the knife in the wood, stumbling back against the fridge at the image, choking on her breath.

She sank down in a crouch, holding her head in her hands almost as if she wanted to crush it.

She started at clock, she wished tears blinded her but her vision was never clearer then it currently was.