Just close your eyes, you'll be alright

[etcircenses]

Who| Everyone.
What| A reunion.
Where| District 12, the meadow.
When|10 years later.
Warnings/Notes| Mentions of death. Please warn for anything in headers.

It seems an odd place for a reunion but someone must have decided it. Really, it’s not so bad at all.

The meadow stretches out far and wide into a forest up ahead and a town back the other way. The breeze flows gentle through here, rustling the daisies and dandelion, the katniss and primrose, the rue and bacopa, the tansy and chicory. A single willow grows at the top of the hill, and everything can be seen from there. The sun settles everything in a beautiful hazy gold. The air is sweet. The crickets are just beginning their songs and the birds are ending theirs.

A tent has been put up some ways down, close enough to walk to but far enough that the sound and clamor doesn’t all reach. The tent is tall and welcoming, chairs, tables, and open spaces for dancing set-up all within. It is here the reunion is hosted, offworlders and other friends of the rebellion invited here from all over Panem.

Food and drink is lain out, brought by the guests from all over Panem including Peeta’s bakery in the town. Musicians have been recruited to play the songs of the Districts, the old Capitol, even things from other worlds as best they can be duplicated. Dancing is encouraged and welcome in all shapes and forms. Few other performers are needed with a bunch like these; everyone here has been through much and come out the other side to know having learned and done amazing things. There are stories to be shared, jokes to be had.

Everyone is dressed in a casual best, whatever fits their comforts. Children are given toys, bubbles, and sparklers. Guests are invited to play only the most harmless of games. Painting is done, gifts are exchanged, all is kept light and merry, at least for a little while. There will be a memorial soon.

The party takes its sombers turns sure enough as memories are called up. For every step forward is the shadow of the past. Toasts are had, to losses, to victories, to freedom, to the future, and ever to those who didn’t make it, the names muttered one after another like a procession. Katniss Everdeen makes an appearance, seemingly having been called to sing. Peeta and the rest of the family are not far off.

The sun eventually starts to set. Much has changed in ten years. The Arenas are gone, replaced by monuments to the fallen. The Rebellion is over; the Capitol has been replaced by a more progressive government. All over, Panem and its Districts are slowly, but surely, being rebuilt for future generations untainted by the Hunger Games. But one thing hasn't changed: everyone’s presence here. You are all still here, even all these years later. And the memories of those gone are still here with you. Even if the nightmares still linger, even if some of those memories still dig deep, things work out in their ways.

The war is over, everyone is free. And so, for every terror hidden behind eyelids, the dawn still comes. It just takes a look around, to see who’s still with you. To see, that in the end, we will all be safe and sound.

Comments

[cigne]

She looks up when he speaks, and her face splits into possibly the biggest smile she's had for anyone outside her little family since she left. Even when the new government took over, her faith in Gus stayed strong, and it wasn't exactly a secret that he was being forced to work for them.

But she'd forever hold on to the belief that he was still as steadfast a believer as she was, that their shared, elite blood keeps them elevated no matter how small their houses or how closely they're being watched. She's sure they're being watched now, and it doesn't stop her from setting her baby down in his carrier, a moses basket with a hood and comfortable bedding, handsewn while she was pregnant.

"My inability to catch the big kids, maybe," she says, standing up and running to Gus, arms open, her skirts bouncing like she's still barely out of her twenties. "That's Asher, the older one, and Beau. Beau Ilar. I wish Daddy were here, and Eta too."

[whittlingnickels]

If Sinclair doubted that Swann would ever betray her origins, like some other Capitolites, this cemented where her true alliance was. They didn't forget who they were and held onto those memories like lifelines.

"Strong-willed too, good," he replied, embracing Swann just as he did so long ago. They came into his property for protection and these were the remnants of a once-powerful government. "I'm not sorry they're not here now. Did Asher ever meet his grandfather? Or Eta?"

Capitolite or not, it was heart-wrenching to convince Ilar not to pursue his daughter and reunite them. They had to keep their distance, letters and care packages funneled by bribed guards. Even in the new government, money speaks and people listen. Hell, it was hard enough to secure Eta in the mess that came with the Avox liberation but Gus stood to be surprised.

[cigne]

"It'd have been a miracle if he was anything else," and literally everyone who's ever met them could attest that the mixture of Swann's determinedness and Jason's stubbornness was going to create a bull-headed little monster of a child. She clings to Gus for a moment, touches his face. "No. I sent pictures, when he was a baby, but who knows if they got through."

Everything had been so secret, even from her husband (they still aren't married, but they've lied about it and lived together for so long that it hardly matters), though the care packages, the money, had been the nest egg she'd been able to combine with Jason's money to make their lives easier. Let them own a business and let her stay home during the days. She could never express enough gratitude toward those who made it easier.

"Look at this beard, you look like a farmer." She laughs. "They're not making you grow potatoes in the vaults, are they?"

[whittlingnickels]

"Goodness, no," Sinclair immediately rebuffed that notion of working in the potato fields. He wasn't about to admit that he started as a farmer, under the threat of being sent to solitary confinement, but built himself back into a modest fortune with contracts and agreed-upon procedures. It's how he's been able to keep up those care packages for the growing family.

"It's better to blend in...and for what it's worth, they did come through."

He made sure Ilar could keep in touch with his princess through the dismantling of the Capitol.

"Did Jason ever find out about the gifts we sent?" he asked in a whisper, as to allow Asher the virtue of keeping the breadwinner image on his father not the nameless benefactors.

[cigne]

She laughs again, finding humor in his mild indignation. She and Jason have never farmed, but they've done a lot to make their way across the country. Swann had been a waitress, Jason a service station attendant before they managed to take ownership of the station. They'd done work for Districters, helped with labor and chickens and things like that.

"I'm glad. Here." She trots the few steps to her bag and takes out a small stack of pictures, the newest ones of Beau, still red-faced and potato-like, and then returns to hand them over. "Give these to Daddy. Tell him I wish I could visit, but..." But Jason is unwelcome, is the unspoken end of that sentence, and if she was unwilling to leave him before, having two children has certainly solidified her utter devotion and attachment.

"No, he never did. I added it to what I made while I was working."

[whittlingnickels]

There's an undeniable smirk in Sinclair's lips, as selfish as it was to know he'd helped Swann while undermining Jason in anyway. It's terribly petty, and self indulgent but it gave him peace and satisfaction. But the pictures softened that poisoned heart, if for smile Ilar would haveto see his second grandson.

"I'll make sure he gets these. He couldn't come but I betcha he'd move hell to see you all." Again, the unspoken word stuck their conversation like tar. Jason had done plenty to provide for his family but his betrayal would always haunt their conversations.

[cigne]

"It's okay. It's probably for the better if he stays where he is anyway." Not only because of his age -- he's getting up there -- but because there are certain people who are still targets for certain others, hence the new government's guards and monitoring that doubles as protection as well as enforcement. "I'll... I'm going to figure out how to visit, someday. What's left."

She probably never will. She knows it; it's too far, and it would mean a huge fight with Jason. But it doesn't hurt to think about, if only because it's what she's always wanted, to go back home, even if it isn't home anymore.

Beau fusses and she flies to him, gesturing for Gus to follow after her to the blanket as she crouches down and scoops up her son, sitting down with him in her arms. "How much is left, of the Capitol? You know they only like to print the carnage now, show how good they showed us all."

[whittlingnickels]

Sinclair followed Swann and for a moment, he smiled in his old way, watching her tend to Beau like he was made of glass. The children were probably the only good thing to come out of that war, and in his age, he learned to appreciate the gift of survival more and more as his rage dissipated into deep resentment for the new government.

"There's enough left of the structures to know wha' the buildings were. They've repurposed it all t' their needs, as if wantin' to erase what was once ours," he responded, mourning the loss of his Solutions Towers and the Honeymead Holdings that once made their mark in their respective sections.

"We'll be footnotes to them."

[cigne]

Beau settles as Swann looks out toward the crowd of kids, Asher among them. She snorts disdainfully, her face filled with barely masked disgust. "We won't be footnotes. We'll be villains, forever. You should hear what they tell kids in school, even in preschool. It's sickening, having to explain to your own son that you aren't a criminal and that his family never slaughtered anyone."

In some ways, she's glad that the buildings, at least, still stand, even if it doesn't make much of a difference. Beau grabs at her fingers weakly, making little mewling noises. "It's easier for them to keep blaming us than to accept that things are how they are. Nothing's better. They made the whole world worse, and we're still the bad guys."

[whittlingnickels]

Sinclair couldn't outright admit those words, lest his "escort" for the event to be trigger happy in a time of forced peace. "They don't understand that sacrifices were needed, but to each their own. We ain't going to be much help for them if we get imprisoned," he rambled as he offered Beau a worn out smile. "They think they can just sit down an' sing songs over the fire, but what'll happen if old disputes come back?"

Snow's presidency was perfect but it held the nation together and reminded the Districters that they needed order and control. What now? Ten years was a blink in time compared to the Dark Times.

[cigne]

She looks back at Gus sharply, and then her eyes slide to the man in the background, lurking; he'd blended in well enough that she'd mistaken him for part of the crowd, but now she sees. Capitolites, they'd always made who they were clear: Avoxes, Peacekeepers, guards and bodyguards, they all wore uniforms for the world to see. But Rebels and this new reign, they hide like cowards and lie about themselves to always be ready for betrayal.

Swann had moved far enough away to forget that. That she rarely had to see regular police officers, let alone the kind who escort people like Gus around.

"You mean when." She mutters it less for Gus's sake (she doesn't think they'd shoot him in broad daylight over the words of someone else) and more for her father's, still back in the ruins of the Capitol. "They'll never be happy. They don't have the civilization in them to understand that things need to be a certain way to work. They're still under the delusion that they're equal to us, that they have the breeding to keep the world in order."

Her voice raises when she adds, "That doesn't mean they have to lie to children about who did what, though!"

Fuck that guard.

[whittlingnickels]

If there was something that brought comfort to Augustus, it was Swann's fire to defend her origins and her children's right to not be shunned. But she was right: old disputes survived the Dark Times and into their previous golden age, they can sure as hell come back. It was in their blood to dispute and Capitolites were put in Panem to make sure that peace and prosperity. Never mind that the Capitol enforced the conflicts, they were necessary as the Hunger Games were.

"Let them try. I give it another five more years and they'll come up with something familiar," he said with some strength in his voice. "They claim t' be above us but they ain't foolin' no one. They've got the itch to fight, we're just the patsies."

The guard doesn't waver in his position, he was used to Sinclair's own disparaging comments about the new order. Didn't help none that he was from District 10, a District that long suffered under the old ways. He doesn't lie to his children now spared from the reapings, but he silently wondered if Swann and Augustus' pretenses would hold up as the peaceful regime continued.

[cigne]

The problem with questioning their pretenses is that it assumed they didn't wholeheartedly believe them. Swann believes with every inch of her tiny being that non-Capitolites are less evolved, have battle in their blood and not enough brains to know what's good for them. And as long as proper Capitolites like Augustus and her father are slaved under the regime to keep things running, she'll keep believing that these usurpers only stand because they're forcing others to prop them up.

She almost looks forward to the day her father dies, if only because she knows he'll destroy the country's media circuit before he lets it fall into their hands completely. She longs to see their reactions, their panic, the way their inferior DNA will slap them in the face.

Capitolites built a world while Districters dug in the dirt for potatoes. They'll do it again.

"They didn't even make it to the city before they killed their original precious leader," she says, bouncing the baby in her arms as he tries to focus his eyes on either of the adults swimming in his vision. "I was down there. I saw the fallout. It's in their bones, they can only last so long without attacking each other."

[whittlingnickels]

"I'm sure, but like I said, we can only stand and watch, let them writhe in the mud they've made."

Augustus would agree with Swann and Ilar, but what was once a passing thought in the history of Panem, now became outright disdain. Swann never had to see her father putting the good fight to keep Honeymead Holdings during the new regime's takeover, and the sacrifices the others made to keep whatever semblance of civilization.

"Your baby will see the world fix itself if it's got a headstrong mother like you and a...tenacious father like Jason."

The words felt like the acid some of the Districters threatened him with should he have kept his mouth shut. Peaceful nation, his entitled ass.

[cigne]

Swann can't help but laugh. For many years now, her whole world has been isolated only to Jason and their very Jasonlike son, so she can see the humor, knows what he's really like. But she also knows the truth -- that Jason's spite and rage are part of what got them out of the Capitol, what helped them set a life back up, because it takes a certain level of hate-fuelled fire to keep going through the things they'd encountered.

"Don't kill yourself trying to be nice, Gus. I know who Jason is, I'm not... blind or stupid or something. But maybe it's not the worst thing if they're a little bit like him, right? I mean, he is the reason I'm alive."

[whittlingnickels]

"I'm a hardy enough man to know that bein' nice to Jason won't kill me," Sinclair wasn't about to give Jason the satisfaction of dying, not when there are reasons to care about the living. "He kept you safe an' made you happy, ain't more than me or yer dad can ask for."

Fathers may know best but to have let Swann run off with Jason might've saved their lives and livelihoods. Necessary evils had loved ones too. And with two children, Jason might as well carry Swann's bloodline alive.

"Sooner or later, these imbeciles will have to find a way to run their institutions an' it ain't going to be any of us."