#AND ULTIMATELY I AM SIMPLY HECKITY DELIGHTED WE'RE WRITING IT

[mythvoiced]

Maybe he does do it on purpose.

Appear like a whole person stuck behind so many walls of glass that María can only assume her perception of him to be somehow distorted.

She envisions them in a room - similar but different to this one, mutilated by the same rich smooth walls but not quite as glimmering not quite as feigned not quite as stuck in its play-pretend to not reveal its ugly reality - all the Victors, all the Survivors.

She envisions them in a room most eerily similar, if not a direct copy, of the training halls. The same coloured walls, the same echo to a footfall, the same smells (sweat turned putrid with the acrid scent of fear, anxiety, desperation, hopelessness, cowardice mixing with the ferocity of an animal ready to fight its last fight, to gnaw at its own leg to escape the trap and to maul at anything set in its path).

None of the equipment, or the boards, or the chatter of gamemasters, the scents of their rich food wafting over until it reached even María's nostrils and made her sick, the hollowing pit of her stomach when she'd refused to eat a few days just to be defiant curling and coiling and twisting on itself every time she heard the sound of fish meat giving or pig skin sliding off its back.

Just them, just the Victors.

In a dark grey, blue-ish room full of bright, white lights.

Patrick stands, prim and proper, somewhere miles away from María. She doesn't connect with what she looks like, how her hands feel, but she sees the others. And she sees the distance, she sees the vague silhouette of a gentleman, backlit to cover his face with shadows.

Glass upon glass upon glass between him and the others.

Devora, Devora appears in a similar manner. Terrifying, and somewhat clearer, closer, but even though no shadow blocks her face, her features are hardened like a stone mask, and María can't read them any better than Patrick's.

She starts pulling at a string coming lose where her dress tightens around her waist. Capitol garments are the finest among the finest, imported directly from... from her...

Home.

María's gaze flickers up. It stills on the smile on his face and one of the glass walls sizzles away. Irrationally enough, the answer displeases her. And pleases her to lengths she can't hope to begin to describe. She's glad. Someone important is someone who can keep you alive.

A sense of responsibility towards another, towards their feelings, is perhaps the most violently effective reason to stick around.

That, and María's sense of... cowardice? Or the metaphorical stomping of her foot on the ground, petulant and loud and wailing like a child who doesn't understand how to express her hurt and lashes out?

Her frown deepens a little at the choice of words.

"You sound like you're talking about... a kid or a pet," she honest to fucking god hopes it's not the former. She'd assumed it was a woman. The way of the world, always assume it's... that kind of love. She can't tell if it's because her parents valued it like no other form of love or because of the stories they teach young girls, about how little else matters.

Funny thing to teach kids still, when at least one girl will get brutally killed each year.

Or be forced to brutally kill.

She thinks of Victors' personas, thinks of herself, thinks of Devora.

She scoffs, her head turns away like she can't move it far away enough. Out of her peripheral, out of her entire vision, half intended to pretend she can't still feel him nearby, hyper-vigilante as they all are.

Now she wishes for some extra walls of glass.

Why does he get to ask- why does he have the guts, and she doesn't?

"Only parents who blame me for winning," she twists the string around her forefinger and pulls until it threatens to slice into her skin, and snaps. Fine garments. María is just particularly good at destroying fine things.

No, that's not quite right, though, is it? They don't blame you for winning. They beg you to stop acting like you lost.

"They want me to go home and be grateful. They want me to be grateful," she takes a deep breath, fills her lungs until she wants them to burst, and exhales in one sharp breath.

"Nothing to look forward to about that. I imagine... Sun doesn't ask that of you, hm," she glances and turns her body to face him. "I don't want to... keep having to figure out how to make it easier. I want it to stop," her features contort, a grimace dragged and yanked at by helplessness, by the visual representation of screaming into the dark to have somebody, anybody hear her. "That makes sense! It makes fucking sense, who the fuck... I don't get it, I don't get you, with your... correct answers and correct way of appearing and correct way to act and... how you don't burst."

maría. ➜ Victors, at their core, are always sharp edges pressed against soft insides. Patrick would take it a step further, however, and like cherries left out for too long, they’re all ROTTEN to the core.

There’s a reason they all survived their games.

No one wins just by coincidence.

So it’s no wonder most of the victors never return to the lives they held dear once before. No wonder their loves ones fall away from them, one by on like flies in the dead of the summer. It’s safer for both parties. Easier that way too.

But María doesn’t accept that, does she? With how she went mute during the 74th Games, one would think her time in the arena would have forever silenced her.

But it didn’t. She didn’t- like the martyr herself, or at least what Patrick has been able to glean from the figure- the Capitol has always been stingy about providing information about the Time Before- she picked up her ‘sword’ and hasn’t stopped swinging since then.

Even if María, alone, is the only one to shamelessly express her hatred of the games, she’s truly not that much different from the others. Once the fanfare dies down, they become eyesores to Panem. Victors, ephemeral figures to be worshipped become survivors- ugly, scarred, but alive. Heroes and monsters simultaneously.

Neither the Capitol nor the District knows what to do with people like that. And María makes sure that neither can ignore her. And people like her- the truth that has built the foundation of Panem itself. She won’t be silenced.

Her sharpness, however, is unexpected. With the way she flings herself into danger, you would think she’d do the same in one-on-one interactions. But she’s wary here- scared and vulnerable, but curious and brave all at once. She’s still so young. Sometimes he forgets she’s not even twenty.

He takes a deep breath before smiling a tad more genuinely this time.

“Yes.” He answers. “She is.” I wouldn’t be here if not for her, he doesn’t add. They don’t need to dwell on the suffering, not today. “Sun doesn’t like being alone for long periods of time, so it would be her preference too.” It makes going home easier, he also keeps to himself. “Do you have someone at home too? It’s easier to get through the Games when you have something to look forward to.”