The last message

Chapter eight: Guilt.

Not that I have before, but I feel I should start doing trigger warnings and add them to earlier chapters.

- Suicide ideation if you squint.

- Regret at being not tortured?

- Survivors complex

- Complex relationships

- Aftermath of capital treatment generally.

Also, I'm trying to fix an error in this chapter, so basically, in the earlier chapters I had mentioned having good careers, which they are. Then proceeded to make a writing error that Gloss attacked their group. So here I'm trying to fix that, explaining almost why that would have happened? I Dunno; I might go back and fix my error if this doesn't explain anything.

Peeta had it worse.

Peeta had ot worse, she would say.

Peeta. Had. It. Worse. She would in near chanting as anyone asked her how she was doing. Therapists would sit and wait and watch and write. Wrote in their little notes something. Something.

Peeta had it worse, and it's her fault.

Theo was tortured for hours on end, and it was her fault.

She. She was... Treated well. To an extent. They wanted her to help and only mistreated them when she rebelled. It's her fault that Peeta was used. They wanted her. Ita her fault that people are dying; if she had complied, they might have stopped killing innocent people; it's her fault Theo was tortured, for many reasons.

He, who was only in the games to save her, he who was punished as a result of her actions.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

When asked how she feels, that's her answer. Shame. It fills her pores, consumes her with each breath she takes.

She was needed, and she caused others death and pain in her refusal. They left the children from her district and others in her cell to rot. Never buried, never allowed to go home to their family (if they had such)

Spark, her old mentor died. That pain will remain with her to the end of her life. Or, more accurately, the end of the war, as she fears the two may coincide with one another.

Shame is all she can feel; Peeta is worse. Theo is in contact pain from his own injuries. Finnick

dutifully at his bedside all that he is allowed to be. Peeta locked in a room alone due to his own substantial trauma suffered. No one has told her what, just that Katniss is insured, Cashmere is revelling in it, the golden girl "getting what she deserved for hilling my brother" She herself won't hear that her brother broke rank and

She is allowed to roam free, passing all the tests allowed on her. Allowed freedom, she deserves not.

Rowell hasn't felt this alone for a long time. Cannot be with people yet yearns for the contact that her friends can provide.

***

"I don't want to talk to you", Rowell states, shaking her head viciously and speeding up her pace down the small corridor. Wishing her new capture would allow her the small gratification of freedom to leave this underground base so similar to her old cell. Yet it seems a wish like that is too far for her to wish.

Speeding up her once did little to remove herself from the company of the other. A presence she wishes to welcome more than anything in her life yet knows that she cannot. Lest she brings more harm to those around her again. She already has a room on her own, doors that only lock on the outside, in case of what she didn't know. Was not allowed to know. Even asking would be pointless when all Rowell would be met with would be black stars and pitying looks. Their attempt at empathy for her situation, "It's for the best" she imagined they would say. For the best, those words were also screamed at her in the capital.