CHAPTER 1

"Always."

A memory resurfaces, one of being under a deep haze of sleep syrup. A memory. It's all I have left. For nothing could be farther from the truth.

I jolt upright, awakening to darkness. I find myself in my living room, when I hear a crash from, I assume, the front porch. Probably that darn cat. As if in answer to my previous notion, there's a knock on my door. After a few stretches and rubbing the drowsiness away from my eyes, it hits me. Cats can't knock. I stumble my way to the clock, almost stepping on a glass shard barefoot. I look a little closer, and I see it's that plate I threw at the wall some week ago, out of misery. Brushing off the increasing urge to clean it up, I squint my eyes, trying to figure out the time. It's not even five o'clock in the morning. Who'd knock at this hour?

To be terse, people generally welcome to come in don't knock. They just stride in, for whatever purpose. Case in point, Greasy Sae and her granddaughter provide food. Haymitch occasionally asks for liquor whenever the train from the Capitol is delayed. The postman, well, he used to knock but he eventually learned to just leave the mail on my doorstep. Anybody else can screw off.

I sigh, trudging up the stairs to my room. Halfway there, there's another knock, this time with more urgency. I halt, frustrated. Go away, I think, inwardly groaning. The knocking intensifies, and I reason out with myself that I could pretend I'm asleep since no one sane enough would be awake at a time like this anyway. Oh, that's right. I've never been considered sane since.. a long time ago. I shake off the unwelcome train of thought beginning to form in my mind. I'm already miserable enough, even without those wretched memories.

After a few minutes of pondering at the staircase landing, the knocking stops. Finally. He gave up. I'm suddenly put up short, trying to take in the meaning. He? How'd I know it was a 'he'? Or was it just a silly guess? Curiosity surges through me, and I feel an irrational impulse to open the door. I tread down the steps and slowly through the accumulating mess on the floor, as silent as a pebble. I find myself smiling, in spite of myself, remembering who walks as if participating in a stomping competition. The time we were hunting in the woods in the first Games, and how irritated I was because he was scaring off the game… Dammit. That's the third time I thought about him in a quarter of an hour.

My hand rests on the table, supporting myself, while the other clutches my stomach, as if to ward away the dull ache threatening to return. I take deep breaths to calm myself. This wasn't supposed to happen. Forget, forget, forget, I chant to myself, as if I'll end up convincing myself once I've said it enough times. When I'm more or less composed, I continue to the door. The cold, harsh wind hits me the second I open it, and I feel so exposed with only a robe to clothe me.

There's no one there.

I bend over to pick up the mail scattered on the doorstep, and I can't remember the last time I collected them. There's a thick stack once they're all in my hands, and I can't help scanning through them. Mostly from Dr. Aurelius, several from Plutarch, one from my mother, and some occasional bills. I catch sight of one near my feet, one I must have missed. The handwriting hits me in the gut with its familiarity. The dot above the i's, the curve of the e's, the slight fancy tail of the p's. And I can't help it. Next thing I know I'm seated on the porch, breathing raggedly. I clutch tightly to the letter in my hand, crumpling it. I only realize I'm freezing once I hear my teeth chattering. But I'm numb, whether from the cold or the shock, and I'm left motionless.

I'm going frantic in my head, but I'm helpless, really. Nothing but a broken mess of a person, trying to recover from wounds that will never heal. I can't exactly comprehend why something as simple as this letter caused a breakdown, but now that it has happened, I don't know what to do. The logical part of me is telling me to go back to my house before I freeze to death. But I can't go back there. It's not home; it doesn't provide that comforting feeling. More like a prison really. A place to be alone with my desolate thoughts, and nightmares that I can never run away from.

An escape. Is that too much to ask for?

For who knows how long, I sit there, my despair at its peak. Eventually my breathing's even, and I can feel my fingers, never letting go of the its hold on the letter. The letter. The letter that has already caused me so much grief, without so much as a look at its contents. I notice the sun's already rising, but it doesn't take away the dread I feel, not like how it used to when I was a child and everything seemed right.

It's just a start of another day for the district. It amuses me to see them going about in their normal lives, as if nothing bad just felt like I was screaming the whole time, writhing in internal agony. It was all in my head, I think. Easy enough to not as easy to forget.

Rising, the rest of the letters fall from my lap to the porch, adding to the clutter. I sigh. My house is becoming increasingly similar to Haymitch's, tidiness-wise, and that's saying something.

Suddenly, an idea hits me. An escape. I want an escape. And I know exactly where I can get one.