jottings: okay. let's try this again. i originally posted this in february, but there were some issues, so i'm reposting it now. i've changed pen-names twice since then too, just to clear up any confusion that may cause.

so yes, it's a bit late, but i've thrown myself onto the THG bandwagon. this came about while listening to the Sucker Punch soundtrack (which, seriously, is amazing writing-inspiration music). the song/title is Asleep by the Smiths. i don't own the Hunger Games, and the lack of capitalization/grammar is intentional.

sing me to sleep

i don't want to wake up on my own anymore

don't feel bad for me, i want you to know

deep in the cell of my heart, i really want to go.

;;

tell me a story, she says, all garbled vowels and sloshing consonants. her body spasms and she coughs up red. it flows down over her lips, staining her skin like paint.

and him, he's not a story teller. he thinks of himself somewhere along the lines of realist, but in reality, he's just an arrogant fucking bastard with a heart blackened with coal dust. yet he swallows back protests, clearing his throat around the knot effectively lodged behind his adam's apple.

okay, he says. okay.

once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. their lives were shit, and they met in hell.

maysilee smiles. this is an awful story, haymitch.

shut up, he laughs sorely. i'm getting there.

right.

boy, girl, hell.

the girl, she was beautiful, the most beautiful in all the land. and everyone wanted to kill her because of it, right? because none of them could be as pretty as her, even though they kept trying to make themselves. right?

right, answers maysilee.

and the boy—um, the boy was her protector. but not always. see, she saved him once from a pack of-of wolves, right? wolves that wanted to kill him. but she killed them instead, so he had to stick around for her. y'know, to pay her back.

they fought long and hard to keep her safe from the evil human beings in the world. and once they defeated all of them, they were free to live—

(maysilee, keep your fucking eyes open.)

—to live happily ever after, right?

she coughs meekly. right.

she's bleeding sososo much and her hand is clenched so tightly in his.

the end? she asks.

he nods, the end.

(only not quite).

that's not the ending i remember, maysilee tells him. her voice is reduced to a gurgling whisper. blood bubbles at the corner of her mouth.

he says: i know.

i like it better, she says, lips curving into the trembling ghost of a smile.

he looks down at their hands. intertwined and stained red with hemoglobin. it kills him.

me too, sweetheart, he says.