Work Text:
I must go on standing
You can't break that which isn't yours
I must go on standing
I'm not my own,
It's not my choice
(Regina Spektor, "Apres Moi")
The conversation we had on the roof is still so vivid to me, as if I’ve been living the moment a hundred times, re-playing it over and over again, right down to every single detail. Bright eyes, full lips, skin that looked so incredibly soft.
The words, spoken so clearly into the night. “I want to die as myself.” I am not their tool. Not a willing participant in this twisted game of chance and death. “Show them that they don’t own me.”
No, I wasn’t their tool. I had fooled the Capitol, made them sigh and hope for my chance, hope that I would survive, finally a victor of District 12. I had risen above it, had done exactly what I had wanted to do ever since those fateful words left Effie Trinket’s lips.
I’d gotten to feel exactly how soft the skin I had been so enchanted at by the roof really was. I’d pressed much desired lips to my own, had been held and held a loved one in return. Even if I knew it was a lie, I still clung to the hope that maybe… just maybe, the game wouldn’t ruin everything. And I felt stupid and slightly disgusted with myself, because all it took for me was to remember those moments in the cave, and I wouldn’t care how helpless I really was, wouldn’t care that I technically hadn’t meant to live through all of this and that it was the choice of someone else that had saved me. I had been a willing participant to all of this.
Katniss Everdeen owned me, body and soul, and that would never change.