Chapter Text
To my Dear Lucy Gray,
It has been about forty years since we first met and let me just say…
I do not think about you at all.
Really, I mean it. Just who would be foolish enough to linger and yearn for a girl who betrayed him so long ago?
So why must you haunt me every now and again? I swear I can still hear you humming those nonsensical songs of yours when I’m out by the gardens. Every time I go outside, I feel like I can see you everywhere and I HATE IT. It’s bad enough that the Capitol evolved to take after your eccentric and colorful style (not that they’ll ever remember or know that they used to make fun of the Covey girl from District Twelve who dressed less ridiculously than they did), really, it is. But now I have to deal with the never-ending warbling of your oh-so-bonafide birds. Don’t you dare lie to me, Lucy Gray, I know you sent those mockingjays out to my window this week. I’ve had three near-heart attacks from hearing them in the mornings.
I hate them. I never told you, but I’ve always hated them, ever since I heard them at that Chance man’s hanging all those years ago. They’re unnatural. Sowers of discord aiming to rebel and dismantle the perfectly calibrated control that I have on my Panem. What I hate most is that they remind me of you.
Do you remember that day, Lucy Gray? That day in which you betrayed me and wished me dead and gone? I trusted you with my mother’s shawl like the naïve fool I was and you just threw it onto the mud and grime of the forest floor like it meant NOTHING to you, like I meant nothing to you. Even worse, you used one of my most treasured items against me when you planted that snake in it. I still have the scar from when its vicious fangs pierced me.
I called out for you, but instead, I heard those birds making a mockery of your voice as they drove me mad. I had to shoot them, you understand. I couldn’t handle hearing them with your voice all twisted for their benefit of making me look like a fool.
I should be over you by now. I AM! You deserve none of my attention and time.
So why won’t you just LEAVE ME ALONE?!
I don’t know why I even thought about writing to you. You are an insufferable little songbird, my Lucy Gray. I wish you nothing but the worst in your…old therebefore or whatever.
(It was the old hereafter, wasn’t it? The place you Coveys believe is after death? The old therebefore was your word for the here and now, not for the realm post-mortem, am I right?)
The fiftieth Hunger Games are coming up. It’ll be the second Quarter Quell. Instead of the games going on as usual, we like to add in a little spice every twenty-five years. The last Quell had each district voting for who they will send in as tribute, and for this year’s game, we’ll have double the tributes per district, making it a total of forty-eight with only one to be the victor.
You may think it cruel, songbird mine, but you must know it’s for the betterment of Panem. Fear is the guiding hand that’ll keep everything and everyone in check, both Capitol and District. Everything I do, I do to make sure my control is implemented, lest we fall to the chaos and devastation of the Dark Days.
I think my presence is needed elsewhere, my dear. Until the next.
-Coriolanus