It's a symbol without meaning.

[justoutrunyou]

Who: Sandy and you
What: She's back from the arena and doesn't like what she sees
Where: District 12 common area.
When: After the arena
Warnings: TW: Self harm, child suffering, mentions of violence and death...all pretty standard hunger games.

The District 12 suite may have had plenty of residents but without Effie it seemed cold and empty.

Sandy had awoken to a clean room as she always did. Her paintings were removed from the walls and ceilings again.

Normally she would start painting right away, to get all the demons and nightmares out of her head. But today felt different. Today she rose and shuffled over to the mirror to see who would be looking back at her.

Pale and thin, the same way she'd arrived. Brushing back her bangs she saw the brand as clear as day. The Capitol logo, the perfect circle. A mark of ownership and weakness.

She hated it. It made her stomach twist with self loathing.

She brought her hands up and scratched at it leaving deep red marks through the middle. Something about the way it burned felt good to her. It felt like defiance. She scratched again, and again till the red grew darker and her forehead felt like fire.

She needed something more. Something that would really disfigure the symbol. Before she knew what she was doing her arm lashed out knocking a gaudy looking lamp from the desk. When it shattered her desperate fingers groped through the wreckage and found a long thin piece that came to a point.

Perfect.

With trembling fingers and wide eyes she pulled back her bangs once more and attacked her forehead with the glass, slicing clean through the circle from the top left to the bottom right. Then the opposite side making a perfect X. Then down the center of the X. Then across.

By this point blood and tears were running down her face and dripping onto the vanity. She had to grope for tissues to wipe it from her face but the thin paper wasn't enough though and she grabbed for a shirt out of her wardrobe.

With her tools at hand she resumed her work while her breathing became ragged and her skin darkened with flush. A shine of sweat mingled with the tears and blood as evidence of the effort it was taking her to continue. When the pain became more then she could handle the glass fell from her fingers and she let out a pathetic whimpering cry.

Looking into the mirror she saw blood and fear. She was looking into the eyes of the monster Penny as blood gushed from a stomach wound. She'd learned how painful and deadly a stomach wound could be, but once she'd buried the knife in Penny the first time she couldn't stop herself from doing it again and again. By the time she'd stopped stabbing penny she was covered in the woman's blood.

The memory faded and Sandy realized she was looking at her own blood, not Penny's.

She's gone...she can't hurt anyone ever again.

She would take a shower, clean her fresh wounds and pull a hat on to hide it from others.

She didn't deserve their pity or worry after so many failures.

Comments

[justoutrunyou]

Ah yes, nothing like counting down the list of people you'd lost. Sandy's grew more every month to the point that for awhile she considered just not introducing herself to new people.

"Well it's not like it's your fault they died." Sandy objected "You may be their mentor but you're not all powerful. Even the gods they brought in are just people now." She presumed Mindy was feeling guilty about all those lost tributes because...well the guilt was inevitable.

It still didn't excuse the fact that Mindy had gone after Pruna pointlessly but clearly that argument was lost.

[hit_girl_mindy]

This was pretty much becoming a normal thing for Mindy too, although it made it worse for her, knowing that she wasn't the most social person in the world.

"They were in my stead, and think about what my line of work was. If you're the mentor, the most experienced person, and you have a crew, you feel responsible anyway. So when you start seeing them dying around you, and you KNOW what you do, its not something you duck responsibility out of."

Let it go Sandy, that argument was going nowhere.

[justoutrunyou]

"Sounds like alot of pointless guilt to me." The younger girl commented closing her eyes and feeling exhaustion creep down her neck. She being hypocritical in a sense but Mindy wouldn't know about the real guilt she was carrying with her like a backpack full of rocks.

"If you did the best you could to protect them then that's all there was to it. You didn't cause the things that got them killed. And none of them blame you. Aren't you the one always pushing me to move on?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I thought about that," Mindy said, and here a little of her exhaustion showed. "I mean, its just another run in the Arena, right? They disappear, I go on, which I did, sort of, and eventually got picked off just like one of them there. It didn't feel pointless, though. If they were, say, sidekicks running with me, I'd feel a little responsible too. I kinda feel like that until I train 'em myself. That way, if they die, its on them."

It was Chibi Usa's that hurt the most, of course, but that was better left unsaid.

"Yeah," she said, "and I did. Granted, even I know when too much shit drags you down. I wasn't in the best state, after everything. Glad to know that I can last as long as I did."

[justoutrunyou]

"Yeah obviously you haven't gotten lazy or let your skills drop." Sandy rolled her eyes with her head turned to the ceiling so Mindy wouldn't see.

"That's a pain in the ass too having to rebuild my muscle every time I die. It feels like all this work we're doing is pointless if we can't even change anything big."

Except she had changed something big. Something that still had the Capitol pouting apparently if the brand on her forehead was any indication. They could have taken it off her but they'd opted to leave it on so clearly they were still mad.

Closing her eyes Sandy decided she wasn't ready to leave her room yet after all. If she fell asleep Mindy would understand.

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy looked at Sandy, hard, a moment. "I spend every day I can training. I bust my ass at it every time, and if I lose, I just go back and train harder, because that was never an option home. If you lose, you die, final death and everything. With this, its like, maybe you won't die for real, but maybe they don't bring you back. So you have to think 'well, good shit, means I don't have to see them suffering every time.' Another part of you though, you think you're slipping."

Whatever tragedy Sandy was going through(a lot, of course), Mindy held herself to higher standards, and when she failed she was hard on herself.

"We don't even age, I bet. Probably an offset to bringing us back to life. It messes with your psyche that way. Helps to keep us in line too."

She sighed. "I hate feeling depressed and not having an outlet for it, like breaking shit."

[justoutrunyou]

"Plenty of shit to break in the training hall." Sandy pointed out, not particularly ruffled by Mindy's views on life, death and training. Yet another miscommunication that would go uncorrected.

"It's not as much fun as breaking something outside the training area but it might do for now." Everyone had their coping methods she supposed. She tried the breaking stuff method but it left her feeling empty inside.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"There's not enough things I can break, and they'd just stop me anyway." Seriously, those bastards stopped Mindy from doing any REAL damage, and that was really starting to piss her off. Maybe if there was an undercover fight club, SOMETHING that at least killed some of the aggression, she wouldn't have to keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. That was pretty much all this damn place did for you anyway.

"BUT," she said, looking casual, "I might also not just be content with resting. Lines in the sand are already there, its just a matter of choosing where to go next. If I didn't, I'd be pretty fucking uninteresting, wouldn't I?"

[justoutrunyou]

"You're not the one who has to worry about how interesting you are." Sandy countered in a grumble. "I'm the one who stops getting brought back to life if I get boring. You're the one who'll get spirited away in the night or thrown back into the arena if you act up too much."

The way she saw it, being a mentor was only marginally safer because most mentors could simply lay low and wouldn't have to worry about any more horrible deaths.

"Don't do anything I would do." She finished seeing as between the two of them somehow Sandy had become the more reckless of them.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I don't think you were ever boring," Mindy said, looking amused. "You've stuck around this long, haven't you? By now you're probably a crowd favorite, and considering what you've done, I'd say you're at least as vigilant as any mentor. Better to have that fire than be done with the Arena and be content."

Which, obviously, Mindy wasn't. She'd done her best to play the game, so to speak, on mentoring and keeping her head down, and they'd found a way to get to her anyway. So at this point, appearing to keep her nose clean was important.

"There's a lot I would do," Mindy said, grinning, "that you're starting to do yourself. It's just starting to piss me off you beat me to it!"

[justoutrunyou]

That was enough to get Sandy to open an eye and peer confused at Mindy through her eyelashes.

"What do you mean? What am I doing that you can't do?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"They're watching ME, for one thing, more closely since I'm a mentor. If I were to have conflicting interests, I doubt they'd want me mentoring people in the district. Eva's 'betrayal' is likely to put Harley and I both on a 'to be watched' list. You can at least fly under the radar."

If Mindy had been smart, she knew, she wouldn't have gone to Eva's funeral, she would have immediately shunned what she'd done and had no part. That, though, was not something she'd be willing to do.

[justoutrunyou]

She had a point and Sandy nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah I guess the cameras never turn off. You just don't have to worry as much about being boring. Alot of Mentors just sort of fade away after awhile because they can't do much else."

She'd seen it happen before and she couldn't imagine Mindy would ever fade away, but the option was there.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I'm not into fading away even if that's a good idea," Mindy said. "I couldn't even if I wanted to anyway: its not like having a co-mentor like Harley is going to calm things down. That, and there are more people coming into our district. Spots...to be filled."

She looked a little pained at this: after all, one of her favorite people were gone from her district now.

[justoutrunyou]

"That's a whole lot of extra work on your plate." Sandy observed sounding at least respectful that Mindy was helping out where she could.

"Do they yell at you as much as I do?" Sandy couldn't imagine having Mindy as a mentor with how often they clashed on what was right and wrong.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I'm glad for it," Mindy admitted "To be honest, I'd rather the thrill of the Arena than being that person just staring at you guys from the sidelines, like some coach or whatever. I can do it, of course, but its still fucked up."

She grinned. "When they can, sure. I am a trouble maker, after all. I piss them off when I get into all of these fights. They think I'm trouble. You can tell how broken up I feel about that."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy was glad that Mindy observed how fucked up her being more comfortable in the arena was. Because even if some of Sandy's respected mentors were like that.

"Sheesh, the way you say it, it sounds like your tributes are more worried about the Capitol then themselves." her blond brows knitted in confusion. Was that how it was like in the other districts? Were mentors just there to take up space and cause trouble for their own tributes?

If so, Sandy lucked out with Peeta and Katniss.

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy didn't like the idea of being comfortable in a place like this. Senseless killing was awful, but actually being complacent in this fucking place was way worse of an idea to her.

"I don't know what you mean. My tributes are worried about dying, like any of the other tributes. A mentor is going to be different depending on their temperament. My way of doing things will be different from, I don't know, Azula's, and down the line. They'll take to being a mentor different too, of course."

[justoutrunyou]

Well that made sense, but it still left her questioning Mindy's methods if her tributes were yelling at her as often or more then Sandy did.

"Least you can't get fired if they don't win." As if that was any small comfort.

"If you could go back and do it differently would you? Or would you still win to prove Eva wrong?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

Obviously only Sandy did that. Her tributes needed Mindy's encouragement, not the other way around.

"Considering its a thankless job, doesn't really register."

She looked over at Sandy. "Nah, I don't think so. Even if I know what I know now, I'd still go whole hog. It was never only just about Eva. It was about me too."

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy thought about pointing out the least she could have done is say she wouldn't have messed with Pruna and by proxy Sandy, but that was just another in a long line of never ending arguments that they would never come to terms on. Maybe Sandy was learning to let things go...or maybe she just didn't have the energy for it.

"I'm sure the rest of your tributes appreciate it. Without you'd they'd only have Quinn."

[hit_girl_mindy]

It WAS better that they didn't go down that road, if only because when it came down to it, Mindy respected both of the girls for different reasons. In any case, she was long since tired of arguing herself. It tended to divert attentions from the real sons of bitches in power to begin with.

"Harley is...a good mentor, but she's also unpredictable and crazy. It's kind of her thing. It's probably why we work so well together: I'm that way in a completely different way. You'll appreciate it yourself if you ever become a mentor one day. Hopefully things will change before then."

[justoutrunyou]

"Not exactly high on my wish list. The only reason I'd want that job is to be out of the arenas."

And as far as mentors went, what could Sandy do that Katniss and Peeta weren't already better at?

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I figured that would be the case. But think about it: someday there might be some tributes in your district younger than you. I'm sure Katniss and Peeta are great, but having someone closer to your age always helps."

Not that she was hoping they ever sent anyone as young as Chibi Usa again.

[justoutrunyou]

"Pretty sure Pruna is already younger then me." Sandy countered but Mindy's point was made.

"It would be nice though if I just didn't need to." She fell into silence because what more was there to say on the subject? This entire situation sucked hard and they were caught up in the current for now.

All Sandy could do was drift along till the next time she found solid ground to plant her feet on and challenge the flow.