all I know. Katelyn/Flynn

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Darker times will come and go
Times you need to see her smile
And mothers' hands are warm and mild

After the bloodbath had concluded, Katelyn had known exactly who she wanted to seek out. And seek she did, a plastic wrapped plate in the crook of her arm. Flynn was sitting by himself in the cafeteria, looking forlorn. She knew what he was going through. But she’d won when she was seventeen and hadn’t lost both tributes until she was twenty. And she’d had Kirito and Harbinger there to support her when the cracks started to show. Right now, Flynn was fifteen and in pain, bearing a burden he never should have had to hold in the first place.

Twenty years of burying tributes and it had taken her most of that to make her peace with it. To lose both of your tributes in the bloodbath was devastating. Moreso, if the rumor around the training center was right, and he’d known Aurora beforehand. It was only his second year mentoring too. Perhaps she felt of responsibility to look after the young tributes; Mace and Arbor had looked out for her after all. How could she not pay it forward?

“Heya Flynn.”

God. He looked so young. He was young. Hell, he’d been born the year Ansgar Todd won. It was something that took some getting used to. Tributes. Victors that had been born after her games. All that pain and suffering in the snow was nothing but history to them, if they knew anything about it at all.

That was fine with her. She’d laid those ghosts to rest, despite the Capitol dredging them up for her twentieth anniversary. Mace’s thirtieth and Mackenzie’s tenth. She’d known it was coming, despite wanting to ignore what they did with Lethe, Patricia and Stella the previous year. They were going to make an extravaganza out of it, comparing their arenas and seeing what they’d done after winning.

They had an outfit for her too, one she was currently ignoring. She’d have to wear it eventually though.

She took the seat next to Flynn and put the plate down on the table gently, unwrapping it and then sliding it towards him.

Every kid liked a nice warm chocolate chip cookie, didn’t they?

“We haven’t had a chance to talk before. I’m Katelyn Persimmon, victor of the 69th.” Was it odd for her to be carrying glass bottles of milk in her purse? Maybe so. But she’d stopped caring what other people thought of her when she’d finally admitted her feelings to Opal. She set one in front of him and the other in front of herself.

“How are you feeling?”

[d6a georgie cham 🐢 frankel]

FLYNN GARNER
YEAR OF THE 89TH

She was sat in here just yesterday, both of them, filling their gut ready to preserve the energy for…for nothing. All those hours of training, all those hours of strategizing. For nothing. Two years of a friendship, for nothing. Now I am wasting my own hours, moping about. Trying to escape the entourage of District Six with their words of wisdom such as ”That was just bad luck” and the best one yet, ”They are in a better place.” I guess anywhere is a better place than Panem but now Aurora is away from her parents. She is away from me.

I have never known the canteen to be so quiet before. A room at peace at last but the same cannot be said for my mind. It replays, the moment the District Two guy does it. There was no point in him killing her anyway for he is dead too. What waste! All of their lives are just a waste.

Ahh! I can’t take this anymore.

I bury my face into the table, my hands over my head but the darkness of my closed eyes just brightly projects all the images. What am I meant to do with myself now?

“Heya Flynn.”

Now that sounds like someone different, probably entering the room with another try at spilling words of comfort that that will bounce straight off me. I want to be alone, but I can’t be alone with these thoughts. I want to be far away from here but where am I meant to go?

An intense aroma of warm bubbly chocolate tempts me to peel my face from the table. It is another victor, of course it is. An older one, not that any of them are younger than me at the moment. District Eleven was always welcoming on my victory tour and seeing Katelyn Persimmon with a tray of baked cookies and two bottles of milk is just how I picture an average day in District Eleven. “How are you feeling?”

It is the same question I have heard a dozen times in the space of an hour, as if they do not already expect what the answer is. All I can do is just look at the food on the table, right now my stomach will easily reject anything. I think. Maybe I can tempt myself later when I get over the fact that Aurora will never be able to eat a cookie again and I am just sat here indulging myself…the thoughts are never going to go away.

”I just can’t stop thinking about all of it and I want to be alone.” I sound just has frustrated as I feel, I was already sour to Avriel earlier on, I can’t keep up with acting like this. ”But I can’t. I know I can’t. I don’t know what to do.”