CHAPTER sixty-five|CAN'T ESCAPE

Bring me the horizon~ follow you
❝cross my heart and hope to die, promise you I'll never leave your side.❞

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I HAD HEARD the story of Pandora's box so much as a child, I believed it was real.

How could it not be? Who else was there to blame for the terrible things that I had seen before I turned six? What else could of caused such a rut of poverty and hate that only seemed to circle the outskirts of District 5 and the big city? There couldn't of possibly been an actual fault in humanity so severe that people got away with murder, and children had to starve so that their older generation could live in luxury and splendor. It had to have been Pandora, and that terrible terrible box.

I imagined it was a box coated in solid gold, with diamonds taking over every corner of it to weigh it down when the girl caught sight of it's expensive glimmer in the light. It would of whispered to her through the wind, only to silence itself the second that her perfectly manicured fingers actually touched it's cold surface. It might of made Pandora still with dread, or maybe it filled her with an euphoria that seemed foreign in her life.

Whatever it was, it must of been tempting enough to cost the world a fair sense of justice. I never changed how grand the box became in my mind as I grew, because it was supposed to be something that nobody could refuse, and even I wouldn't of refused enough gold to fuel my family's fire in the winter with warm bread and soup.

I guessed that was the point- Pandora wasn't ever to blame. She was just doing what the entireity of her kind would of done if they were given the chance, and in doing so she took the torment of releasing unspeakable pain on the rest of time.

I didn't have the heart to think that people could be monsters- not when all the humanity I knew at that time were my parents and siblings that were as good as unrefined diamonds in the middle of a coal mine. And then I grew up; my father killed himself so brutally that not even the monsters could of done a job to match it. Only he could have made himself hang so low, to bleed so deeply, that it stained the floors of our makeshift house to the point where we couldn't look at it the same. He was the sorrowful cause- not some fairytale.

That was when I realised that monsters weren't some fantasy animal that could never of been real, and that Pandora couldn't of changed the world with just one box. We were all monsters, which meant that none of us could really be pinned to the name without damning the whole of humanity.

I was a monster that pulsated on the floor by a single word. Peeta was a monster that was twisted from one strand of DNA into an entire other being. Katniss was a monster that stood her ground so much that the whole surface fell from her heavy weight, and Finnick clawed from desperation into a light like Heaven to escape his own darkness.

We were all monsters, but I believed wholeheartedly when I woke to see the bruised baker that Remy had become a monster worse than us all. He had never been violent- he couldn't kill in the games- and yet as I saw an array of different things I could of focused on, I could really only catch how harshly Mercy had to hold him down. Every now and then she would whisper in his ear, and then he would let his knuckles turn a normal human shade for one beat of a stale heart.

It wasn't his fault either. The President was a monster that grew taller than all of us.

I also caught how tense the air had become from my seat beside a floor that wasn't filled with thick black residue, but instead a hologram screen and many plush Capitol seats. I was lying on one, Finnick stood beside me with his eyes trained on the open window that caught everyone's attention so adamantly that it was impossible for them to even hear it as I took my first shallow puff of clean air.

My tongue hadn't been bruised, but I still tasted the usual iron scented blood when I swallowed the dryness that had infected my mouth. Then, as a large explosion rendered my freshly intoxicated ears useless, Katniss Everdeen glanced towards my fumbling attempt to sit up as quickly as I had fallen. When she looked, it brought my husband back to my side is seconds.

"What-" I tried to ask before he placed his hand over my lips, an intense warning flowing out of the usual waterfall enclosed inside his eye sockets.

It was enough to shut me up, but it didn't seem to be anywhere near good enough to push Remy's hand away from my freshly battered arm. He was over before the gunshots sounded, and yet when the noise stopped suddenly, he seemed to have moved away once more to glance out at the scene I couldn't yet see. He looked sorrowful, like the weight of another part of him had become far too much to bare.

When I stumbled up, into the blonde man that had become a crutch almost as if he already knew what I wanted to do, I caught sight of tens of Peacekeepers that had lost their lives as quickly as we had saved ours.

An alarm rang then, loud enough for it to make Peeta jump a little bit higher when he caught my slightly deluded gaze.

Mandatory viewing, the screen read as Ceaser came up once more. He looked the same as always, and yet I had never felt like more of a stranger to his usual confidence after seeing how uncomfortable he had been with me up close. Finnick grasped my waist when I took a step back into a fallen coffee table, even though I was perfectly stable on my feet. It was my knees that wanted to buckle any moment, even if the idea of needing to be dragged around by him made me feel even more lost around the Victors.

I had been so strong in the Hunger Games; I had been able to take care of myself without anyone's help. And now, I felt like a liability to those that got sent to Thirteen to fight while the rest of us didn't get a chance to escape. I was once again somewhere, only this time it was a somewhere that seemed to tell me just how useless I was to them all.

"-here with our continuing coverage of the defense of the Capitol." I just about caught the end of his introduction as the liquid inside my head swayed from side to side. Even Peeta looked strong against me- even with half his body left as bones.

"Today, as our Peacekeepers valiantly hold off the rebels, our story takes a surprising twist. Katniss Everdeen, our once favourite daughter, has infiltrated the city with some of the Victors, who's names are all too familiar. Finnick Odair-" I glanced to the man in question as Ceaser said his name, but his jaw was set as firmly as his arm around me.

"- Peeta Mellark, and even faces that some would point out as Remy and Lorna Titan, who has already taken back her side with the rebels after abandoning them once before."

Katniss glanced to us all as the tapes replayed our scramble to safety, specifically when I pulled her off of the ground with enough strength to lead both of us away. When I looked at myself, face unwavering from its statuesque nothing as I looked exactly like I had in the games, I didn't see the panic that I felt. I couldn't catch an ounce of the trauma that threatened to spill over with each passing wave of tar.

I looked determined- I looked like the white hair was only there to contrast the amount of assured colour in my actions.

"Hmmmm, clearly some alliances don't last forever." Ceaser continued as it showed the fight I only witnessed with half of my senses. "Take a look at what happened just a moment ago, when our Peacekeepers cornered Katniss Everdeen and her band of foolish rebels. Whatever arrogance brought this treacherous girl, and her traitor, back to us- you are about to witness a great victory not only for the Capitol, but for Panem."

It showed the Peacekeepers exploding the building next to ours with a fire large enough to destroy the entire square- the same explosion I had heard when consciousness first came to life. The footage lasted barely a second, but it was enough for the lavender man to use feverishly.

"So there you have it. Katniss Everdeen, the Girl On Fire, the girl that inspired so much violence because of a family that wanted to save each other, seems to have met a violent end in that same company."

I couldn't hear anymore- not more lies as they cut to my body being carried out of the building by my own brother. The video cut as a gunshot sounded, in an attempt to prove that we were both dead as my relaxed face was stuck on the screen one minute too long, no doubt before another spasm that Peeta caused. He didn't look me in the eye when I glanced his way.

"So now that we're dead what are we gonna do?"

"Isn't it obvious." Peeta cut in as he glanced at his hand. It was a voice that lead to so much uncertainty that I couldn't look him in the eye, or the monster that had come out of his seemingly innocent skin. "The next step is to kill me."

Nobody dared to speak, but we all moved a little closer.

"I murdered one of our squad members, I caused Lorna to-" he didn't finished, but the sorrow and hatrid that filled his weak body as he tried to shuffle to the edge of his seat was enough to see the regret. "Katniss was right; I'm a mutt, and it's only a matter of time before I snap again. I'm not in control, I need a nightlock pill so I can die when I need to."

"If it gets to that point, I'll kill you myself."

••••••••••
1752 words.

I didn't know how to end this but duh duh duh, everyone saw Lorna dead. Yikes. This is an important mental chapter for you all, because it's showing you that the stuff you've read so far hasn't gone away like in the last two books. Instead, her self doubt and worry is still alive just like all her trauma. This will change how she acts, and how she tried to prove to herself that her trauma is all in her head instead of the real world.