lungs [day 5 reaction] [open]

[pearl mcclain d4 [ryan]]

She is a painting in the rarest form.

She is the Mona Lisa, but she does not smile, because she doesn’t know what it means to be happy.

She doesn’t hang in the Louvre, she doesn’t find her home in museums or mansions, none of that.

Anatalia Morrisen is too common to be sought out by rare collectors.

She is nothing more than carbon.

Nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

She constantly holds herself to a standard that she doesn’t need to, because at the end of the day, she knows that she will never amount to nothing more than the girl who won the 80th Hunger Games.

She is not loved in the conventional sense. She is frayed at the ends, little pieces of her falling through the sieve that is held under her. Becoming a microcosm of what Panem truly is.

She is a monster who has no fangs.

Not anymore at the least.

---

She lost them the moment she came home from her games. She was fierce competition till the very end, at least that is what she was told the moment she got back to the capitol. She took down the world around her because she had something to prove, and while she hated the label they attached to her, there was no lie in what she was.

She was a career, a monster, an enemy, a girl who had no remorse, a daughter, a burden, and most important, untrustworthy till the very end.

Her very nature would always be frail, because she knew that people had an expectation of her. She wouldn’t back down from a fight. She was ferocious, baring her teeth the moment she could smell blood in the air.

She was a carnal being, her teeth the knives she carried and her words the extra punch that sunk into the skin as she spoke.

She spent so much time alone most days, and she knew that was mostly by choice. She had no reason to be around people unless it was required anyway. She didn’t want to see that side seep out of her again.

She was cautious at every turn, realizing that there were always going to be people who wouldn’t see her as a person. She knew she had to embrace the other side of her. The people that the capitol fell in love with. The duality that she hated. It would take time for her to do so.

It had been almost a year since she had been out of the arena, and she still had nightmares of what transpired.

---

And it didn’t help that she had to watch the games as close as she had too.

After all, this was her first year as a mentor, and she didn’t know how to gauge any of this. It was hard to lean on Leon’s shoulder, as Glamour had stolen away most of his time. She spent ample time by herself, a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

Tick.

She could barely handle two tributes.

Tick.

She watched one of them die the day before.

Tick

She didn’t know how the feast would go. She was spared such a thing in her games, but with a twist like the one she was involved in, she realized that there was a reason for that.

Losing her friends each day was hard enough anyway.

Parson.

Stabbed in the neck.

Hellion.

Stabbed in the eye.

Angel.

Ended by her own hand.

All of them, helped shaped her journey towards the finale, and while she went through hell the first two days in the arena, she fell under the radar until the finale.

After all, Angel’s death came quicker than anyone probably expected.

---

This time she sat in public, not hiding in her room with disparity because the last time she did that, she realized that loneliness was not the way to experience watching death.

The glass she dropped when she watched Berlin die was more than enough proof for that.

She didn’t even pay attention when she stood in the mess, blood dripping from cuts she sustained that mixed with the thick red wine that pooled onto the linoleum tile.

However, she didn’t wince, not a single moment. After all, she was used to being cut up and stuck into.

She headed right to the one of the doctors after pulling the glass out of her feet. The amount of blood that soaked the cloth she placed under her feet.

The soles of her feet felt like her soul, wounded, but numb. She didn’t even complain as she walked gingerly on the tips of her toes.

They patched her up, rather quickly actually. The pain in her feet felt like it was extracted seamlessly, and she couldn’t help but take long deep breathes, trying to count each moment she felt like she was going to explode.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

---

This time she did not have a glass of wine in her hand, she spent more than enough time drinking the day before after all. The hangover was starting to creep up on her, but that was pain she was used too. She sat back on the couch she was occupying, watching the games closely as she tried to keep a close eye on Finley.

She was holding out for hope after all.

The amount of tributes in this fight made Annie’s anxiety flare up, but she clutched the cushion of the couch tightly, feeling her fingers almost pierce the leather interior.

She held back though, realizing that she did not own anything in this building, including herself.

However, her nails dug deeper and deeper into the leather sofa, each attack seemed calculated from the tributes before her. She had no clue how they all seemed so experienced. It was like they all knew that there would be no repeat of Annie’s games.

There was no going back.

No light at the end of the tunnel.

No second chances to undo their swan songs.

No tears they can take back.

But her eyes stayed on Finley.

And she watched as she was hacked away slowly, limb by limb. Hands, then her foot, the group that won the wealth had no time for anything she had to say.

And then the girl from three went in for the killing blow.

There would be no parade this year in four. No chance for Annie to rest easy. Finely O’Hara was snuffed out before her eyes.

And Annie could feel her stomach flip.

---

She stood up, not paying attention to anyone else in the room, ready to scream at the top of her lungs, however, the moment she opened her mouth, nothing came out. She was inaudible, like someone had stolen her voice from her.

She moved towards the balcony, fresh air would be the best medicine for her after all.

She could feel her face flush with anger, but also with sadness.

She could not live up the high expectations that were placed on her after all.

Annie pushed open the windows, stepping onto the balcony and letting crisp air envelop her. The chill felt comforting, but bile began to rise from her stomach.

Her eyes fell on a potted plant, and she moved quickly, her head lurching forward and a sour concoction spilling out of her mouth and into it.

Her face felt hot, tears running down it.

She took a deep breath, crossing her legs and resting her back against the granite railing.

She wanted to punch something, but she knew that wasn’t the best choice for her in a place like this.

After all, she didn’t know her own strength.

She wiped her mouth clean of any residue left behind, and looked up into the sky.

She hoped that Finely would rest well.

She was going to miss her.

Finley and Berlin both.

When she looked back down, she realized that people were staring at her, and Annie couldn’t help but try to hide her face. Burying it into her knees.

There was no way for her hide anymore.

All eyes were going to be on her.

[✨ zozo.]

S A F F R O N

Sometime in the past two years - though she cannot put her finger on exactly when - Saffron Lowe came to bloom.

It happened gradually. A slow burn. The victor had drifted from Mace for a while, but naturally, they found each-other again. She had learned how to give instead of take, how to reach out and ask for his hand instead of demand it, how to watch her daughter walk away from her protection on her first day of school. She'd even learned how to let go of Paige, safe in the arms of Kieran - left to create her own branch of family.

Letting go of Myara and Emberly and Clementa and August Lowe was the most difficult thing of all, but she knew - like Mace - that they would find each-other again.

Instead of burying the box underneath her bed she had opened it, sifted through its contents, hung up photographs and trinkets. A corner of her home held pin-tacked memories and she lifted her daughter into her arms and pointed each one out one by one, telling Quinn all about the children from her past.

The sun had smiled that day, and so had Saffron. Finally, finally, she had let herself be okay.

And it was easy. So, so easy. The Capitol would always be watching, of course. Quinn's first year of school served only as a reminder that the time would come for her to hold her breath at every reaping again - but not now. Not for a long time yet. It was easy to drift from the tributes, to hang her head silently for a moment then raise it again and carry on with her life. It was easy to be Saffron Lowe for the first time in her life.

She'd almost forgotten how hard it was to be a victor.

Shattered glass and breakdowns may have been a thing of her past, a heavy memory of winter not meant for spring years. But although Saffron was okay, the others certainly weren't. Newest dead girl walking Anatalia came from District Four and she remembered what she had written, aged 16 with shaky writing, to Leon Krigel a lifetime ago.

You'll be okay.

With age came wisdom she only understood now - Anatalia would, perhaps, be okay someday. But she wasn't okay now. And might not be for a long, long time.

Call it motherly instinct, call it a reflex, but something within Saffron Lowe pulled her toward the girl cowering into her knees and rested a hand on her shoulder, shielding their latest victor from prying eyes and judgement.

"Anatalia?" she asked softly, remembering Opal Shore's kind smile and Colgate's friendly hugs that had gotten her through her early years. 

"Let's get out of here, come on," she encouraged.

She'd be okay, with or without Saffron. But that didn't mean the 65th Victor wouldn't try and speed up the process, lest it take her 17 years of suffering before she found some sort of peace.

"Only if you want to, though. No pressure."

[pearl mcclain d4 [ryan]]

She slipped into limbo.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

She felt numb, but not because she was sad, or angry about the outcome of being a mentor on her first try.

Somewhere in Annie’s mind, she had, some sort of inkling that she wasn’t going to impress on the first round out.

After all to live up to the standards that she had set for herself, albeit they were scattered the moment Snow had announced the Quell twist of her games, was nearly impossible.

Berlin Batalanto was not Anatalia Morrisen.

Finely O’Hara was not Anatalia Morrisen.

There was no reality either where they would equal her, no equation that you could plug them into and out would come the solution that was known as the girl, who after 13 years had brought back the crown to four.

Annie was not x.

In any equation that Pythagoras could come up with.

No one could solve for her, because she did not have an answer. She only had what was left of her the moment she walked out of that arena, and as much as she was told that it wasn’t her fault. That she did what she had to do in order to go home, that she was just a girl, through and through.

That she would be okay.

She hated that phrase the most.

---

She tried her hardest to make sense of something like that.

The word okay.

Wander Sibley had used that word with her, as did Katelyn Persimmon. However, there was a key difference when Annie thought about the gravity behind the word from two very different people. They both had gone through what Annie had gone through, but Wander, dazzling in seafoam starlight, was someone that she cared about. Who had been by her side the moment they walked through the train together.

Katelyn Persimmon on the other hand was a victor herself, but she was a sole survivor. The word okay meant something completely different coming out of her mouth as to Wander Sibley.

One was grounded in history, and the other was grounded in regret.

Her reaction to the word still made her wince, even after spewing chunks of ripred knows what out of her mouth into the garden plant to the left of her.

Her eyes felt puffy as she sniffled into her knees and tried to count to three.

However, each time she started, she thought about the tributes that she failed.

Not just Berlin or Finley.

But Wander and Angel and Parson and Hellion and Lex and Denali and Bette and Temple and Eve and any other tribute that was in her games.

She wondered what her mother would say to her right now if she saw her.

---

"Let's get out of here, come on.”

She heard through the noise of the party, cutting through like a hot spear ripping through her cheek. Her face lifted from her knees, noticing pairs of eyes piercing through her countenance. She tried to count them at first, but she gave up after the fourth pair she saw. No barrier could keep out the eyes of the capitol after all.

They lived for such a thing.

Then her vision realigned and found a fair maiden staring at her like she was a painting in the Louvre.

Annie recognized her, but not her exactly. She recognized her sisters before her, which probably was what she was used too. Saffron Lowe was kneeling in front of her, and Annie had no clue what to say.

The sound of her voice is soft, inviting, but not something that Annie hadn’t heard before. Annie wasn’t ready for another pity party, at least, that is what she told herself almost every day she had walked out of her living arrangements to do the simplest of tasks. She was never taken seriously, because she was damaged goods. Held together by stitches and glue, but somehow still here.

She didn’t know why people gravitated towards that so much.

"Only if you want to, though. No pressure."

Annie looked up and her eyes met Saffron’s. Of course Annie wanted to get out of here, but no matter where she went, she would still feel the gaze of the public on her shoulders. After all, her failure would be recorded in the books for years to come. Anatalia Morrisen could not bring home a victor her first games. She had a feeling that this was going to be a reoccurring thing in her life, a motif that wouldn’t disappear for years to come. Maybe it would be another 13-year curse that would befall on her home.

Maybe she was no good anymore.

After all, they pieced her back together, just like the rest of them.

”Annie.” she stated quietly, realizing that she truly did hate going by her full name. The only people she would ever let call her that without flinching would be her mother or Angel Mer.

Maybe that would change in years to come, but for now, she was still the broken girl who had no clue how to behave in a public setting.

She wiped tears from her eyes before realizing that this would be the best time for her to retreat. She had lost a battle, a war that she entered without consent. This was her time to try to regroup, because they next war wouldn’t be forgiving either.

And the one after that.

Or the one after that.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

”Anywhere but here. Please.” She nodded to Saffron, knowing of her but not being formally introduced. She opened her clutch, almost forgetting that she had it and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the tears from her eyes.

She offered her hand to Saffron, a woman who did not know her, because it was clear that Saffron was willing to offer hers in return.

And maybe that was what she needed in this time of need.

”Just lead the way, I’ll follow.” she spoke softly, accepting that this was now her life.

A life she would never be able to fully embrace.

---

OOC: feel free to move Annie around, I give ye permission <3.