CROSSPOSTS |FROM MY AO3|

UNFORGETTABLE | HUNGER GAMES

Told ya there would be other fandoms.

There is a hardness to her face. It has always been there, but it has been sharpened like rock to a chisel's scrape. Her eyes have blades that you could cut yourself on. She is like ice, untouchable, because if you touch her, she could shatter.

She sees the sunset, but she doesn't feel the warm wind. She can hardly see the colors, because part of her will always be in the arena. She will always feel the people lying in wait, in the shadows. She will always smell the faintest trace of blood. She can hardly touch the knives that were her survival. All she sees in them is the stains of the arena, and the beet stains become blood in the moonlight.

There is a part of her who loves it, knows that there is power in being able to hurt people, and she craves it, but she also hates that part of herself because she knows it's the part of her that's the most broken.

Her whole life had led up to this. Winning the Games. For as long as she could remember, this was all she knew. She had molded her heart around it, and it turned her into stone. And stone cannot melt. It cannot yield. It only can stay or shatter.

...

His face is a mask, and the mask is marble. He has learned to shore up the cracks, to let nothing crack the paper-thin casting. He is a statue, and statues do not laugh, do not cry, do not feel.

He is not allowed to feel.

She was so good at it. Only her eyes betrayed her, eyes that are green like the forest, and within which hid anger and pride and fear and just the tiniest bit of happiness. She could set her face and never flinch. He's never seen her cry. He almost believes that she can't cry, like she's a creature from some other world where everything is sharp and harsh and washed in moonlight.

He is not like her. The trainers say so. He is too impulsive. He lets fear and anger and rage blind him, and he can forget himself in a red-tinted world of rage. He can break down, and he is too scorched, too tired to put himself back together again. In spite of the mask, he feels.

He is fire. She is ice. He is uncontained. Unobtainable. Nothing can tie him down. She is unobtainable too, but she obtains herself. Every word she says is baited, barbed, and carefully considered. He knew he would sit on the victor's chair someday, but he never dreamed it would be with her.

Winning the games for him meant nothing and everything. A shiny plaque, scars that would fade and scars that would never heal. A smile and a thank-you and a silent train ride home. A cheering crowd that he didn't know how to hear.

It had taken everything from him.

...

She jumps at his approach, turns around, bristles like a startled bird. He does not touch her, does not assume she isn't lost in her own world. But he looks at her and she doesn't quite smile, but there is almost something in her eyes. They hurt each other every time they collide, but they are like a whetstone to a blade, growing stronger and sharper each time. And they are empty. Empty because the arena has taken everything from them but each other. They know nothing of soft sunlight or laughter or tears that fell freely.

But it takes time. They see monsters in themselves already. They look at their hands and see weapons of murder. They are not alive, and not dead. A foot in each world.

They have seen so much.

He sees the smiling girl collapsing to the ground surrounded by venom, and there is nothing he can do.

She sees the horror in the boy's eyes as the arrow enters his throat.

They see the little girl fall with a spear in her stomach, the boy with the limp caught in a forest fire. The screams and the cries and the hissing of something almost snakelike. The crystal cameras and the empty smiles.

But they can break and heal and fall apart and fall back together.

They are human, and they are surrounded by stone and rock and blades, but they did not become them.

Cato. Clove. District Two. Unbreakable not because they cannot be broken, but unbreakable because they can heal.

Victors not only of the arena, but of themselves.

They are many things, but above all else, good and bad and scarred, they are unforgettable.