shawna quinn | district thirteen | fin

[dars]

shawna quinn
district thirteen
twenty-five
s p y
---
odair

[dars]

Of four girls, she was the oldest. Of four girls who were supposed to grow up and be just like their parents, she was the one everyone knew was straying from the path. Her mother was perhaps the most disappointed with her when she was growing up. She worked as a gamemaker -- never the leader, but always good enough to be one of the people sitting at the table when the tributes came in for their Private Training Sessions. Her father was a concept designer. It was his job to help suggest what the landscapes of the arenas should be, and everything in them from flora, to fauna, to potential plot twists that would make the audiences gasp and scream at their television screens. While it was all very vivid and exciting, it wasn't the life she wanted for herself.

Her sisters used this power their parents had to gain popularity. They told their friends of the things their parents let slip at the dinner table, even though it was dangerous, and they were viewed as royalty in a sort, as was she. The only difference is that when people came sniffing for answers from her, she was quick to scare them off. Mostly, her parents didn't know anything concrete. Her mother watched the private training sessions, which had always been something people have been forced to wonder about but ultimately, it had nothing to do with the real-life experiences of the arena. Dummies were frozen in their place. Tributes were out for blood.

Though she was just like her sisters with their father's blonde hair and easy blue eyes, their mother's squared jaw, she didn't feel as if they truly shared blood. They were like friends she had lost touch with long before that, background noise when she drove them to and from school every morning. "Turn on some music!" Veela might have said. In which Lyla would have replied: "No. It's too early." and little Mina would yawn and whimper, "Yeah... Too early."

She was quite a bit older than Mina; She was ten when the last of the Quinn family was born. She was eight when Lyla was born, and five when Veela was born. She'd always been older. She'd always been more mature and didn't really connect with them in a sisterly way.

If anything, she simply felt the need to take care of them. The proper way. Not by showering them with gifts so they didn't notice her absence. That was a job her parents already did too well for their own good. She tried to teach them how the world worked, how things were not quite the fairy tale they had been led to believe they were. None of them listened, of course, which was fine. She knew eventually they would all learn.

What better way to show them all what the world was really like than becoming a peacekeeper? She had her own reasons for wanting to do it: namely travel, travel, and travel. And even more so, escape. She found herself ashamed to admit it, but she'd always felt as if she were a prisoner in the land so many sought to live, so many were happy to be a part of. She knew there was real pain and real suffering somewhere, and it didn't scare her that she was going to be thrown into it. It scared her that it was happening in the first place. She was glad she was going to get to help. So, in a way, even if becoming a peacekeeper was for her own selfish reasons, it was also to help her sisters understand.

And it worked.

She would come home and, being careful not to let any important details like names or districts slip, tell them of the awful things that were occurring within Panem. Death, destruction, hunger, the very things that broke them in the first place were now shattering them beyond repair. Her blues eyes had seen it all first hand. And her red lips had told about it.

But that was a mistake.

Never, once, had she mentioned the existence of District Thirteen to her sisters or her parents. But the Capitol still pointed its fingers and before she knew it she was looking at potentially being avoxed or even murdered for leaking official information. It was an outrage, a blatant lie that she told her sisters some of the things she was being accused of. She knew she wouldn't have anything after that: not her job, maybe not her tongue, possibly not even her life.

But just like that, it seemed to vanish. All the trouble was gone, people acted as if it never happened, and she got a promotion. Her first assignment under her knew role was undercover work, and it was definitely ironic: Gather information of District Thirteen from the inside. She had to undergo immense survival training. Hunting, cooking, building shelter, she had to learn how to do it all on her own in order to create an authentic image to the officials, to prove to them that she had truly ran away, that she was seeking help from them.

She was supposed to gather as much intelligence as possible and be on her way within only a few months. But all of her contact with the Capitol had gone silent just as soon as she was underground, and it never regained a connection after.

She was left with quite the set of questions:

"Did they really plant me here to gather information?"

"Will they try and call me a traitor if I return?"

"Would they believe me if I said this was all an accident?"

"Will I be stuck here forever?"

And unfortunately, none of them would be answered. The only truth she knew was that she was, indeed, trapped within the walls of District Thirteen, and no one had come to save her. She wondered if she would ever see her sisters again. She missed them most out of her old life, which was actually surprising. Other than trying to steer them away from living the lives planned out for them, she thought they were just annoying. In the end, she supposed they crept up on her, latched themselves to her heart, and now that they were gone they had taken with them the pieces they latched onto.

Thirteen was worse than the Capitol in some sorts. It held stricter rules and stricter punishments. They weren't allowed to dress how they wanted or eat as much as they craved. Their lives were planned for them: their jobs, their housing, their daily schedules, every aspect was decided for them and that was exactly what Shawna fought against her entire life.

The only difference was that at least in the Capitol, she was not always aware of just how little power she had.

In ways it was better, she had to admit. People didn't tend to brag and bloat, though she knew it was because none of them had anything to brag and bloat about. No one there knew who she was or what power her parents had. To them, she was just a girl that, like many of them, had been found wandering through the woods, starving half to death and fighting to stay alive. To them, she was just the same as they were. So, in a way, she did feel more at home. Perhaps, she sometimes wondered, if she had her sisters there with her, things wouldn't have been as bad. No, she knew it would have been better with them.

But she was supposed to live a life in solitude. For she was no longer Shawna Quinn: The Special Agent, or Shawna Quinn: The Heroic Sister. She was something worse. She was something that made her heart beat with agony every time the thought crossed her mind:

Shawna Quinn: The Forgotten.

[dars]

done? rushed? gross? done though???

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

beaut

accepted!