Writer Games | Death Wish & 51

Task Eight: Ever After /F - Aya Brandley [4]

Aya had expected the end of life as she knew it.

Living had meant nothing  to her at first. Winning had been enough, winning had been more than  enough for her, but life itself had meant nothing after her victory.  What could a life like hers be worth, anyways, if it had cost the lives  of innocent people? Aya had found no meaning in her life when it was  first given back to her by the citizens of Panem. Her victory was a gift  to her country but her life was worthless.

Her friends told her  that she had done a good thing by wishing for the end of the Games. Her  brother was proud of her and her parents were relieved that nobody else  would ever have to know the fear they'd felt when she left. The  Districts praised her. Even the Capitol citizens admired her courage.  But it meant nothing to her. Her hallucinations of the future had  started this way and they had ended in more death than the Games had  ever caused.

Aya's life wasn't worth the twenty-seven it had cost.

While the world around  her focused on the freedom they'd been granted, Aya was more caged than  she had ever been. She was trapped by her own guilt, her own paranoia.  The President wasn't happy with what she'd done. Anyone important in the  Capitol was displeased with what she'd asked of them. They'd had to  give her what she'd asked for; that was the bargain they'd made. That  didn't mean that they had to like it.

The rest of her  childhood was spent drowning in fear. Aya waited for the consequences of  her wish to catch up with her. She waited for the Capitol to punish her  for breaking their laws, for breaking their hold on the Districts.  These people were capable of terrible things, they were capable of  atrocities that plagued her in her nightmares, but they hadn't yet  punished her for her wish and that scared her more than anything else.

Aya had made her wish so  that the people of Panem would no longer have to live in fear. What she  hadn't realized was that in doing so, she had granted herself a  lifetime of it.  She had always considered herself to be brave. This  bravery had been useful against twenty-seven teenagers, most of whom had  been just as inexperienced as Aya herself. It meant nothing when her  only enemy was herself and her wish.

She went on every trip  to the Capitol thinking that it would be her last. She wouldn't fight  back if someone tried to kill her; there was no point in doing so. They  could do what they wished with her, kill her or torture her or turn her  into an Avox if they wished, but she couldn't fight back. They still  owned her. The Games were over but the President had made it very clear  to her that she would never stop paying for her treasonous wish.

She returned from every  trip to the Capitol wondering when they would put her out of her misery.  Aya had never been optimistic about her debt to them but she had never  expected such humiliation. What would her family think if they knew why  she boarded the train every few weeks? What would her friends think? Aya  Brandley had gone from a budding rebel to a lifeless puppet and the  Capitol pulled her strings.

Aya hated herself. She  was disgusted with herself, with the things that she was forced to do.  The only thing that kept her going was the freedom that she'd granted to  the rest of Panem. Though she was chained and bound by her choices,  they had set her people free. She gave them their freedom at the expense  of her own. Aya reminded herself of this every time she set foot on the  train, every time she found herself being given away like a prize.

She told herself that she had done the right thing.

Everyone got something  out of the wish that she'd made when she was fourteen. The Districts got  freedom and the Capitol, a new celebrity. Her family got their daughter  back. Her friends were given the revenge they'd wanted for Hannah and  Alec. The President had a new puppet and new strings to pull. The  Capitol elite got a new toy to play with, one that couldn't fight back.  It seemed to Aya that every citizen of Panem had benefitted from her  victory except for her.

All Aya had gotten out of her victory was an unwanted pregnancy

She was terrified when  she realized that she was going to be a mother. While she knew that her  child would never know the dangers of the Reaping, of the Games  themselves, the name Brandley would put a target on their back from the  moment they were born. Other children could grow up free but Aya's son  or daughter would be just as caged as their mother. Not for the first  time, Aya wished that she had died in the Bloodbath.

She was only nineteen; she was still a child herself.

After Piper was born,  Aya tried to bury her feelings of loss and regret. She buried her fear.  Aya buried the feeling of worthlessness that she'd carried with her  since she woke up, bloodied and bruised and begging for death, on the  day that would forever mark the end of an era. Piper mattered more. Aya  had realized early on that living for other people was keeping her sane.   Her daughter kept her alive.

The next twelve years  made a recluse out of her. They made a ghost out of her. Aya had never  been a social butterfly but the next twelve years were spent in a  solitary confinement of her own making. She made her trips to the  Capitol, she said her speeches, and she played the part of a Victor.  Nobody could say that she wasn't trying. But her life had taken on a new  meaning and that was protecting Piper.

She watched her daughter  grow up with a mix of horror and fascination. Aya would never  understand how the worst thing in her life had created the best thing.  Being the Capitol's puppet had given her a reason to break the strings.  All that mattered to her, all that Aya's life was worth now that Panem  was free, was protecting Piper from the evil that still lingered in  their world. Aya was prepared to do anything for that.

She envied Piper's  naivety. At twelve years old, she would never know the fear that every  generation before her had. Aya had created a safer place for the  children of Panem and she was jealous of how clueless they were. They  had never known the oppression and fear that had controlled the  Districts before. When Aya was twelve, she had lost one of her best  friends to the Games. Piper would never know that fear.

Aya spent the first  twelve years of Piper's life going through the motions. She played her  part, she did what the Capitol wanted of her, but she knew now that she  was only doing it as a means to an end. Anything to keep Piper safe. Her  trips to the Capitol were riddled with a new kind of fear, one that  kept her worrying about what she left behind. It was one that kept her  from studying her companions too closely, lest she find something of  Piper in their face.

Aya's daughter was  fifteen when she confronted her mother about the things that had  happened in Panem's dark past. These things often went unexplained in  the bubble of safety that Aya had created for them but she knew that  Piper would find out what she'd done. She was a smart girl, even more so  than Aya had been at that age, it was only a matter of time before she  figured it out. Aya had just been hoping that she'd have more time.

Piper's generation  wasn't one that knew the horror that Aya's had been through. Describing  the world she had lived in was like describing a nightmare. Terrifying  and vivid but no longer believable. Aya had buried her fears and her  grief beneath her hope for this new Panem. Digging them back up was more  painful than Piper would ever know. Describing this world to Piper was  like confessing her sins.

When Aya was her  daughter's age, she had been a saint to the nation of Panem. What she  had done in the Games had freed them from their fears and chained her to  her own. At fifteen, she had been an enemy to the Capitol's hold on the  Districts. She'd been a hero and a villain at the same time. When she  was fifteen, she had spent her time wondering when her wish would come  back to haunt her.

Piper would never truly  understand what Aya had lived through. She would never know the  oppression that her mother fought against. She wouldn't understand the  pain of watching her friends die, of being responsible for the deaths of  innocent people. Piper would never know real loss, real pain. Her  naivety was a simple gift but it was one Aya and many others had been  willing to die for. Aya had suffered for the greater good.

And only twenty years later, when Aya looked at her child, did she stop regretting it.