where i love you

1

i start with the basics. what i know to be true.

"my name is katniss everdeen," i whisper, the careful words escaping through my trembling lips. "my home is district twelve. there are no hunger games. snow is dead. coin is gone," silently i curse dr aurelius' ridiculous, desperate attempts because still, it begins. and when it does, it feels like it will never end. images reel through my mind as it rapidly flashes between reality to misery, the difference slowly becoming faint. i watch behind my eyelids as cinna shovels dirt over my pale body. finnicks sea green eyes staring down from six feet above, his glare almost relieved. disgusted. dr aurelius's voice circles in the background throughout the contrasting voices and images of prims burnt body, my mothers nod of dismissal. haymitchs sigh of regret, of giving up. the nothingness in peeta's unmistakably blue eyes. out of nowhere, dr aurelius appears again. "repeat the words back to me," his bored voice continues, over and over again. "listen to my voice. focus." for a split second, i see the exhausted lines that mark his forehead, the hopelessness that stains his eyes. i hear him repeating my name, each time the distant memory of his voice fading more and more. then he's gone.

suddenly bolted back into reality when buttercup softly brushes his head against my shoulder, i quickly bring my hands to my face where dried tears blot my cheeks. the rough cotton of my cardigan scratches my skin as i cover my face with my arms, hardly hearing buttercups ceaseless meows through the constant buzzing and unbearable noise.

with so much empty time to analyze things, i have easily put the pieces together even through the constant daze of morphling. people were promised safety, closure. revenge. freedom. the second i saw peeta emerge from the rover on the outskirts of the capitol, with war raging not 5 miles away, i saw past the pale emotionless eyes, the flawless grey wig. a cold woman hiding behind a mask, willing to murder people fighting in her favour in desperate and immediate attempt to seize power over the weak.

i'll admit, she has us all fooled. even me, although i didn't really have a choice in the matter but to obey her and everyone else. not that it's any different than my past years of being a pawn for both the rebels and the capitol, but that didn't make it sting any less. the realization that i'd been deluded. that i could've plotted something much more worthwhile and planned out during those horrid grey and endless months confined underground in the nothingness of district 13. that i could've saved her. that woman eliminates people when they are no longer of use to her or her sick desires. just like she tried to use a broken, traumatized boy to her advantage to rid herself of the weight of katniss everdeen. i hate myself for not realizing early enough to stop a woman who waged war for one reason, herself. 

my sister, who was not yet fourteen, who i had fought for to protect with my life so many times over just for her to be gone. "why was a thirteen year old girl on the front lines," is a question i have been asking myself for months. i know the answer, but i continue to deny it, for the sake of my sanity even though most of it now ceases. i cannot accept that my sister died for nothing, even though, because of her, she did. someone very high up in the authorities of district thirteen would have to had made a decision to send an untrained medic into combat, someone such as the president herself. and considering the amount of doctors and healers they had in that cave, my sister would have been the last choice among anyone smart, or anyone with mere common sense. she was the leader of the rebellions sister. sacred. safe. what i thought to be protected. and now, gone. she sent my sister to her death. she killed my sister, and she died for it.

the phone begins to ring continuously, but of course, i ignore it. moaning, i cover my ears in attempt to drown out the unbearable, ongoing noise. my ears are no longer used to the commotion, so the noise kindles a sudden jolt within me. for only one moment, i allow myself to question the possibility that it's him on the other line. that somewhere, somehow, he has a phone raised to his ear, waiting, wanting to hear my voice. peeta, whose face displays months of torture and agony through bruises and bones that still stick prominently out of his burnt skin, skin so similar to mine. whose eyes no longer sparkled with hope and recognition when they met mine. i stretch my hand out before me as if i'm reaching to him through the miles and miles between us, yearning to feel his touch on my skin again. but he's gone. and i don't want him here. the further away he is from district twelve and from me, the better. i bring nothing but destruction, and he knows it. district twelve carries nothing but traumatic recollections of his family, his friends, a life where he was the boy with the bread. a life where his family's remains lay in ashes blown away with the wind somewhere far from here. a life where he had hope and love in his tormented heart. love for me, love that i could never return. love for so much and so many. i still see him every day. i hear that hollow tone of his voice in the blinding white of the hospital room that really resembled more of a cage. more like he was an experiment. just like he was in the capitol but in a different, cruel, still masochistic way. anything for the benefit of the same greedy people, in different forms. i see his impossibly thin body strapped to the bed. i hear words of excruciating truth escape his lips. i feel his hands around my neck, the anger and fear in his clouded eyes. and i watch myself die. i should have died. there  are so many times i should have died.