☆CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX! ☆
036. letters

|| NICO AND THE NINERS ||
❝Dema don't control
us, East is up, they
want to make you
forget.❞

➳➳

THE LETTER WASN'T supposed to be a metaphor for her chances of regaining a life beyond the room she was left in; not one bit.

It wasnt supposed to be anything other than a letter- a simple piece of paper filled with ink shaped to resemble a language known by almost everyone in the city she'd woken up in, and the occasional scribble from where the pen ran out of ink or she made a mistake on the page. It was just a smooth white surface that everyone seemed to take for granted until they needed it a bit too much, with barely enough space to write out half of the things needed on it when somebody who really had to write took hold of the edges that creased under the weight.

It was the kind of thing she wasn't supposed to think about ever again if she couldn't help it, but actually, it was the only thing that made her heart spike and stomach flip when she considered where it went.

Or if anybody actually read it. When she really settled into the feeling of starvation and sickness that overcame her each time she remembered how slowly she had written it, she often wondered who even knew she was in her small room at all. TR730 hadn't known until his instincts told him to go inside, and yet Lorna thought she was well known enough for somebody to wonder why she hadn't been around for some time.

She was a murderer after all.

She'd killed, with hands that looked identical to hers and sharp objects that could've cut through skin without the sheer force she put into each one- there wasn't anything else that entertained her heart when it needed to beat swiftly like the hazy story that replayed itself in her head. Numbers in the sky illuminated by projectors instead of stars, and an icy blue projection of the mangled bodies she'd thrown into the ditches at any given time amongst the deep dunes of her surroundings. Only these projections she remembered; if not the names, the faces and screams that piled out of their mouths when she caught a glimpse of their organs seaping towards the sand she hated so much, and the blood that drenched the ends of her hair red.

In the darkness her long ponytail almost looked brown instead of the ice white that fell in front of her eyes. She put it down to a lapse in judgement, but it seemed that it only made her see darkness when she caught the tips that had begun to split as they grew, or the same tacky liquid that filled up every breath she took.

But the letter. The letter with her apology written in disgust to nobody in particular was an example of her future; ignored even when it was filling up with enough horror to never be forgotten.

Who knew she'd taken a life? Did TR recognise her evil, or did he stop coming to see her because he read the piece of paper and discovered just how horrible she really was? She had no answers, but Lorna was well aware as her door slid open and more than one Peacekeeper walked in with heavy feet that she wouldn't be able to ask.

She could barely speak- even when unkempt women began to pull her blonde hair back and force a similar red colour on her cheeks.

Had they read the letter?

She wanted to ask; Lorna spent half her time with the women glancing around for TR730 in the heaps of chaos and chatter that sounded almost foreign to her unaccustomed ears. But he'd gone, left her to the masses of people she didn't know until they dragged her out of her home and towards cameras she'd only ever noticed in the corner of her room.

Maybe they realised just how unforgettably bad she was, and this was her execution.

➳➳

It confused her, how quickly she'd gone from her room to one almost identical.

If she was asked, Lorna would say the same about the people that didn't spare her a glance as they worked on covering up loose cables and fixing the fake flowers placed on a table by her feet. And the bright colours in their hair and on their clothes; the dress they pushed her into when they finished that was so close to white she worried people wouldn't be able to see the difference between the straps and her hair. It was all increadibly confusing when nobody explained what was going on- or when a man she almost couldn't look in the eye with lavender hair sat across from her.

He didn't look her in the eye, and she wondered then if she should have written the words down at all.

"Did you-" Her tiny voice was overshadowed by a middle aged woman behind the camera. It made her clamp her mouth shut as her eyes turned to stare, and yet her mind continued to ask the question anyway, just incase he could read her mind.

"There'll be preplanned explanations on the screen over here for you to follow. Just read them out and we'll let you go back to your room as soon as possible ma'am."

"What-"

This time she cut herself off. Perhaps it was the weight of the truth that fell on her shoulders when she realised she didn't know anything about where she was, or that TR730 still hadn't shown himself in the cluster of soldiers guarding the doors and equipment from a possible attack. Was that what they thought she was capable of? There were at least five of them; from how closely they watched Lorna take a sip from the water placed in front of her she assumed they knew exactly what she was capable of. So she shut her mouth until the world around her became silent.

"Ladies and gentleman, I'm here to bring you an urgent announcement." The man's voice was strong, sturdy as he looked into one of the cameras that swung around to catch his every word.

"With me today is a girl that we all know very well. After her full recovery from the 75th Hunger Games disaster, she was adamant on speaking to all of us about what really happened that night, and it is our duty as avid fans to listen."

He talked with so much power that it almost scared Lorna. When he turned to look at her, with eyes reflecting the large words rolling behind the camera that seemed to go just as fast as her breath, the blonde could feel the intensity burn her skin red.

"My darling Lorna, thank you for joining us."

Perhaps he thought Lorna would begin straight away, because he seemed to set his jaw a little tighter every second she spent looking around the group of people so set on watching her fumble with the hem of her dress. With eyes wider than the pan on each camera which watched as she opened and then closed her mouth like a fish. It was stupid; she hardly knew what was going on around her until the man prompted her forwards once more.

"It's ok, I know this must be very hard for you. Lucky for the whole of Pamen, a nurse wrote down your confession before the disaster rendered you unconscious. If you want, you could read directly from it?"

Even before the man was done, one of the women set on curling the ends of Lorna's almost silver hair carried over a new letter. This one wasn't like the one the girl had written just a day before, it was older- with tears in the page and an entirely different style of writing decorating each line that covered almost the whole page. But at the top, addressed with a signature she almost recognised as her own, Lorna saw her first name scribbled on with an obviously weak force.

When she was given it, her voice trembled with anticipation of speaking out when she hardly recalled talking to large groups of people at all.

"I want to apologise for what I said in the arena." She read slowly, as if she was afriad of the sounds that came from her and how uneven they were to the rest of the room. One of the camera men who held a long pole with some kind of fluffy rectangle on the end of it moved closer as the interviewer shuffled in, right as she glanced up from the page.

She expected somebody to gesture for her to continue, but they all seemed far too worried to actually prompt a response.

"I'm even more sorry for the things I've caused, I want to take it all back."

Without being able to remember what she'd done, it was hard for Lorna to really mean the words that she supposed she once thought were more important than her own health. Were these people related to the people she killed, or were they part of the team set on making her spill blood?

She continued. These people had kept her fed and safe for weeks- they had no reason to lie when they knew she didn't know a thing about the truth.

"Since that time I've been stripped of those horrible thoughts. It was our President that changed my mind. He helped me see the truth, he showed me all of the children that'd been killed because of my rash actions and opened my eyes to the violent reality that stands before us all.

A rebellion isn't what will stop the death; the only person that managed to keep all this senseless violence at bay is our President, and his Peacekeepers sent to stop those who want us gone. I see that now."

Lorna stopped as she skimmed over the next couple of words. It was about the games; suddenly she recalled all the things TR730 had told her about the people set on stopping the Hunger Games, and the badge placed in the sky above her that read out Districts instead of names.

It was the Capitol that controlled these Hunger Games, but she hadn't heard a single thing about why the rebellion wanted them gone, beyond the obvious horrors she had faced in her memory. But what if the outside world was worse than what she faced?

She didn't know; it seemed the letter had put Lorna in a corner. This was when she just had to remember.

What if TR hadn't been trying to help her at all. What if he gave her fake memories about places she'd never been just to keep her on his side, or hypnotized her with slow conversations made up to make her remember certain things that weren't even real. The letter was never given to anyone who could explain what the numbers meant; the soldier hadn't bothered coming to see her again once he knew she'd come around to see his version of the world with blood and cruel murder.

Maybe she wasn't even a murderer; it was simply what the Peacekeeper wanted her to be.

"The Capitol must remain in control, or the world will destroy itself."

•••••••••••••••
1936 words.

MY BABY I'M SORRY.
How do we think our
BBY Finnick will feel
about this?