Sacrifice

It is the second time District Twelve has had a victor. It is the second time when the male has won. It is the first time the winner is viewed as a criminal.

["And may the odds be ever in your favour!"]

Almost no one has come to the victor's party. The victor himself is absent. It lasts two, three minutes before all the guests depart, though not without pocketing as much food as they can carry.

[odds…favour…ever…Everdeen…]

Nobody can bear to look at the little girl with blue eyes and blond hair, standing next to a woman who is obviously her mother as the victor gives a short, curt, dead speech. Nobody locks eyes with the olive-skinned boy with the gray Seam eyes and who is trembling with sorrow and rage, rage at who he thought was good, was pure, and was someone who would never ever do such a thing-

[never ever ever ever as long as he was alive]

His family are the only people who rejoice, yet even they are ashamed, because they know what their son did, what he did after all she did for him, because it was all fake-

[fake, play-acting, not real not real not real-]

A dead bird is found nailed to the baker's door, a mockingjay, a beautiful beautiful mockingjay who would never fly, never sing, never live again, and nobody is unsure who did it

[dead, dead, dead, like she is]

and every morning a sweet, sad voice sings at the top of a hill, a voice so sweet and pure but filled with rage, promising vengeance on the boy who killed her sister.

[killed her, killed her, made her dead, and now she is the only one left singing]

It is the talk of the Capitol, and all the Districts, and they play the same tape over and over again, of the two star-crossed lovers from District Twelve who fought side by side until one killed the other, in the arena, plunging his knife into her body once, twice, three times, and nobody notices the small smile on her face except a girl and a boy who knew her better than anyone else.

[and the little girl knows that she truly loved him, loved him so much that she would die for him, and this fills her up with so much rage at the boy who let her sister die. And the boy know this, too, knows why she smiled, and he hates him for it, because of the love which he never got, because of the love the baker's son stole from him]

In his victor's cottage, he spends his days in bed, drinking bottles of alcohol and hurling his possessions at the wall. His dreams are plagued by a dark-haired girl with gray eyes, a girl from the Seam who can sing sweeter than a nightingale, a girl who goaded him into killing her, the girl he loved and still loves, the girl he murdered. Because he didn't see the smile. He doesn't know, will never know, that that girl wanted the best for him, wanted him to live

[truly live, happily, enjoying every moment, laughing and running and painting and doing those things he loved to do]

and now, above the clouds, far, far away from those she loved and who loved her the most in return, she cries her heart out for the boy she gave her life for.

[she cries because she gave him opportunities, she gave him a way to escape death, and he abuses her gift, drowning in depression and self-blame. She cries because she knows, deep down, that this boy died with her in the arena of the 74th Hunger Games.]