[ ficathon ] the girl on fire

Cato/Clove He doesn't know the difference between an angel and a devil. Sometimes he thinks she's both.

glimmer - my skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel

this ♥

peeta/katniss. at the time that we met, we were whole. then we peeled off piece by piece of our souls.

He doesn’t know what’s real anymore.

She smiles at him, grabbing at his hand, and for a minute his eyes are discs, he thinks he’s dreaming, but then he remembers, and they narrow, looking for the cameras (he never finds them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there).

He doesn’t know what’s real anymore, and it’s harsh, he tells himself, to think like that, to think that anything could be so cut and dry after the Games. But he does anyway, and he can’t stop it, and a part of him, he knows, will always be dissecting, will always be taking apart and gluing back together.

But he’s still him, still him under all the scars and bruises and false leg, so he’s there for her. They sleep curled together on the train, and he likes to imagine that they’re clattering along at a speed that matches their heartbeats (they’re not, of course, but what does it matter? he needs this, he thinks, needs this even as it’s small and fleeting and it’s too late to grab at it). He’s there when she wakes, screaming, eyes burning, and he wonders at what nightmares could break her, this girl on fire, this victor who outsmarted them all. They can’t be about the Games, he thinks, and then, remembering again, they can be about the Games, but still, he wonders at what else is filling in the cracks.

Her skin feels like a fire under his, and he imagines scorch marks searching onto his palms as he steadies her, as he brings her back to a world where he’s there, where he’s there waiting for her. He wishes it could be enough, wonders at how much longer this game has to run its course.

It won’t be long, he thinks, and then she’ll be gone too, and he wonders how he’ll feel then, this boy on fire, this victor who stumbled through on love, with nothing left to fall back on (he has nightmares too, of course, but his are about losing her, about waking up in a cold sweat to find she’s disappeared, burned away into a pile of ash; he never speaks of them).

But she’s turning over and her hands are grasping at him for an anchor and he’s done wondering at the future, done wondering at ashes and empty hands, because she’s here, and she’s murmuring his name into the crook of his neck and this, he thinks, is real.

haymitch/peeta. he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night.

annie/finnick pockets full of stones

gale and peeta live unbruised, we are friends

cato/clove i wish that every time you touched me left a mark.

Glimmer, Cashmere/Gloss (or Glimmer/Cashmere/Gloss) - the beautiful ones always smash the picture

PRINCE!!! I might do this one.

Cinna/Seneca Crane -

and there was trouble
taking place

Astrolabe, Cinna/Seneca Crane, pg (1/2)



It begins before, when neither of them knows how quiet it is on the inside.

In school Cinna is a beautiful boy with a girlfriend who sings his name Cinna, Cinna, Cinna-a-mon. And Crane is a boy they call Stork, with wild eyes and a full set of gangly limbs.

Ethics in Art, two years in at Unitas Academy is where, in time, they meet. It's a popular class taught by a madman. Professor Snow waxes about beauty as the compass of the soul, about good and evil measured with the eye. In the background fleshy photos flash larger than life, clean-lined buildings, a miner's unwashed children, a manicured hand, potatoes gone to seed behind a cellar door. His beard is trimmed just so, his eyes a violent green.

"What is good is beautiful," Snow says the first day with a soft look for the nearest row that is end to end with striking young women. And Cinna. "Goodness, light, truth, purpose," he says, voice contagious. "Beauty is the star that fixes the compass of the soul."

Their eyes meet the second day when Cinna, so quietly, takes a seat one row back. Crane sees the move, he sees the choice behind it. The class may be taught by a madman but he resolves to stay sane.

The year is half gone before they speak, neither shy but both involved, other people, other passions. Fashion was just beginning to blunder extreme so Cinna's work, always clean and sure, didn't yet smack with the thrill of revolution. Cinna never chose rebellion, Crane thought later. His mind, like his art, was relentless and steady. He didn't become a rebel, he came one.

Crane, for his part, worked late into the night on horrors best kept there. His art had always been the Games.

Foxface - you have to know your name

Ouch. What an excellent prompt.

Effie Trinket - and all the king's horses and all the king's men

She thinks the woman Effie Trinket died a long time ago.

Was it the moment she first realized that she was sending children to die? Innocent children? Children that had no hope of going home, of seeing mothers and fathers and siblings ever again?

Or was it after she decided she couldn't go on caring, couldn't go on crying after every tribute from 12 died? Was it the moment she stopped even wanting to know these childrens names?

She thinks those things didn't kill Effie Trinket. Only hurt her deeply, changed her, maybe they would have killed her eventually.

Did she die the moment those Peacekeepers dragged her from her apartment?

Did she die when the first fist hit? When the first shock raced through her? When they asked questions and questions and questions all night, all day, but she didn't know the answers?

(Was it when she realized Haymitch had abandoned her? Had left her behind knowing what would happen?)

People have told her she is safe now.

District 13 has told her she is safe now (after calling for her death and being swayed only by Plutarch and Haymitch's desperate assurances that she is useful...they don't like to waste in District 13.)

But what good is being safe when you are already dead?

Haymitch tells her she looks broken. Octavia doesn't like to look her in the eye because she says she looks empty. Strangers mumlbe as she passes. She wonders how they know who she is, it's not as if she looks anything at all like the woman from before. She doesn't look anything like Effie Trinket. She is no one.

They say she will get better. But all she has to do is look at Haymitch to know that there is no 'better'. And even if she could get 'better' (she didn't even know she was sick), she doesn't know why she should.

Ummmmm, this sort of fills your prompt?

Thresh & Rue - I can't protect you, but I swear I'll avenge you

gale/madge
i caught his words in my open mouth
i gagged and choked and spit them out

AU Katniss/Foxface (where Foxface grew up in 12) - What were you aiming for when you missed my heart?

katniss/peeta
she is a tornado.
he is a man. he is solid and humble.
she tells the story three times, convinced
he does not understand. he is trying.

aksldjasd LOVELIEST.