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She had always yearned for freedom, not only her own, but that of every living being in that world and in any that existed before or after death. Ironic, especially when she herself was locked in a prison cell and her boy, her beloved and sweet Haymitch, locked in an arena where he had to survive 47 other tributes.
She didn't know how many days she had been locked up there. Her stomach hurt from hunger and although James, the only good peacekeeper she knew, had been giving her food in secret on his night shift, it wasn't enough to satisfy her hunger and he didn't talk to her either. How many days have the hunger games been going on? Was her boy still alive? Oh, her love so young and good, witnessing so many horrible and traumatic things.
They don't allow her visitors, but James told her that her uncles came every day just in case. She only wanted to reunite with Haymitch, in this or the next life, because she wasn't going to be able to live without him in this one.
One day, without warning, a peacekeeper entered with his hands full: an excellent quality television.
"We have a special broadcast for you straight from the Capitol."
"The games? What happened?"
Usually, she hated being nice or cordial with the dogs of the Capitol, but she didn't care now, she only wanted to know if Haymitch was still breathing in that world.
"The games?" the peacekeeper repeated, mocking. "The games ended almost three weeks ago."
In a second the world collapsed on top of her. Had she not been sitting, her legs would not have responded to her and she would collapse onto the cold floor of her cell. Despite her pain, she did not shed a single tear nor did she show her pain to this inhuman man.
They were going to show her how they killed her love, right? It gave her nausea just imagining him covered in his own blood and agonizing. A quick and painless death was all she could wish for him, at least in that high probability that he would never return to her. How to do it? Haymitch got a score of one, that's why she went to protest and sing forbidden songs in the street, they arrested her, obviously. She didn't regret it. If her love couldn't speak, she decided to sing for him and the unfairness of the system.
Haymitch was the first tribute to obtain that score and that ended up closing the coffin, alone and without help in the arena. He will have suffered so much and, although Haymitch told her that it hadn't been her fault, Lenore Dove couldn't help but feel so guilty. If she hadn't tried to help Mrs. Chance so that she could hold the corpse of her son, her boyfriend would never have gotten between her and the peacekeeper, which caused the witch of Drusilla to take him as a replacement for Woodbine.
The peacekeeper left. She didn't even notice that the television was installed and turned on in front of her. The small cell lit up with the flag of Panem on an empty screen of excellent quality. In the corner of the screen, almost tiny, the time: 23:32 pm.
Haymitch had left district 12 more than a month ago, she already lost count and probably his corpse must already be in a wooden coffin.
Without needing to restrain herself, she let out a bitter sob and tears spilled down her cheeks without control.
The television had a glitch and Lenore Dove refused to look up, she couldn't do it, what for? To see the love of her life dying in a frightful way?
Before the image changed, a voice that she had only imagined and heard in dreams filled the cell. She recognized the lyrics first, because her aunt Barb Azure told her once, it was a cry of truth hidden in a song of double meaning.
It's sooner than later that I'm six feet under
It's sooner than later that you'll be alone
So who will you turn to tomorrow, I wonder?
For when the bell rings, lover, you're on your own
Her aunt, the one she could never meet, the one nobody knew what happened to her, but who grew up hearing how Lucy Gray became a free girl, wandering through the meadow.
She sniffed her nose and looked at the screen, on it, Lucy Gray received her with a guitar and doing what the covey knew how to do best: sing.
She was beautiful and had a wonderful voice, so perfect that it left you spellbound. She wore the same dress full of colors that now were nothing more than old scraps that Lenore Dove used to always carry her with her.
She performs on a stage with a dilapidated backdrop, in front of a Capitol audience dressed in old-fashioned clothes, without a trace of the colorful and saturated opulence of the present day.
I am the one who you let see you weeping
I know the soul that you struggled to save
Too bad I'm the bet that you lost in the reaping
Now what will you do when I go to my grave?
Why were they showing her this? She didn't understand it. Nobody in district 12 knew anything about the winner of the tenth hunger games, even her uncles hesitated a bit before starting to talk endlessly about her. Lenore Dove admired Lucy Gray and always yearned to be as free as her.
The audience sniffed their noses. Someone shouted: "Bravo!". The crowd went wild. The girl curtsies and extended her hand to a figure that stood just on the other side of the spotlight.
Then the camera, which before recorded a television from the Capitol, changed abruptly.
On a sofa surrounded by wrinkled blankets there was a boy with his grayish gaze lost, almost empty. The pajama shirt almost hung from his shoulders; he looked emaciated and tired. His hair messy and long. It took her a second to realize who it was and when she began to cry again, she wasn't sure if it was from relief or sadness, because Haymitch was still breathing, but she wasn't sure if he was still alive.
She had never seen him like this, not even when his father died in that explosion in the mines. Haymitch looked like an empty shell and Lenore Dove desperately wished to be there to hug him.
Her boy survived, but forty-eight other children died. Woodbine never left district 12, but he died because of the reaping and she was always going to tell it, because he was one more victim of the system that destroyed the love of her life and thousands of other innocent souls.
Lenore Dove could not understand how or why Haymitch was watching Lucy Gray. She had been a part of her life that she refused to share with him, he never insisted and she could not, no matter how hard she tried, find an answer to that. Did the Capitol have records of the tenth games? Her family, those who had seen the games televised for the first time, barely gave details of what they saw, too personal to share. Why was Haymitch watching that? She almost felt as if he were invading something sacred that didn't belong to be seen, but she knew it wasn't like that, someday she was going to be honest and talk about Lucy Gray with him, besides her aunt would have loved Haymitch, Barb Azure told her so, although Clerk Carmine still didn't like Haymitch. He softened a bit when her boyfriend was reaped and comforted her when she needed it, but she didn't know how Clerk Carmine would be with Haymitch when he returns, empathetic as he must have been with Lucy Gray when she returned from a horrible experience, right? She knew that Haymitch would need support and unconditional love.
From one moment to the next, Haymitch lost control and got up from the sofa. She didn't know what triggered it, but he was a fury.
Haymitch threw a chair against the window and the glass rained everywhere, he himself stepped on them without caring or without noticing the pain and the floor was stained with blood. She wanted to scream at him to stop and stop hurting himself, but the words wouldn't come out, anyway, he couldn't hear her.
He broke things endlessly, venting everything he had been swallowing since he was reaped, probably, or because of the meaning behind the video that, apparently, he did understand unlike her.
Then a burst of bullets rained over his head, none managed to hit him and the video cut off. When she was getting up to shake the television and have it show her more, another image struck her with the same force as the sweeping winter and even that had not been enough to leave her frozen, what that screen showed her, did.
She always had differences and arguments with Maysilee Donner, but in the deepest part of her heart she knew they were similar and that because of that they clashed all the time. The difference was that Maysilee managed to hide it. She wondered if she raised her voice when she was locked up in that arena destined to die. Would she be angry, wherever she is right now? Lenore Dove only knew that she regretted her death, like that of Wyatt Callow and Louella Mccoy, her beautiful and destroyed boy maybe also enters that list.
Lenore Dove believed that everyone should be free and hated that Maysilee had a canary locked in a cage, pet she called it.
The after-victory party, or it looked like a party at least, that didn't matter to her. There was a gigantic golden birdcage hanging from the main light fixture, at eye level. Inside it: Haymitch Abernathy.
Her Haymitch, dressed in an elegant suit, locked in a birdcage. With her stomach churned and her throat tightened by a knot that barely allowed her to breathe, she let herself fall onto the thin mattress.
That hadn't even been the worst despite the fact that it had been an image impossible to erase from her mind, Haymitch played along with them, completely inside a role and a skin foreign to him.
Her beloved and sweet Haymitch, reduced to a caged animal.
Haymitch joked with his sponsors and posed for all the photos they asked for. He smiled in them, he even made funny faces. Lenore Dove dissolved into sobs. Why? Why were they doing that to her love?
Some people approached him to feed him by hand, as if he were a bird pecking crumbs… And he accepted them all with a clear delight on his pretty, but sad face.
Watching each interaction of Haymitch with the people of the Capitol was one torture after another, but when they left him alone, he collapsed a bit against the bars of the cage. He was acting, who knows why and she hated every second. How would he feel?
He was a puppet and a bootlicker of the Capitol.
There was a reason, there must have been because Haymitch would never do it of his own free will. And that terrified her more than him honestly having succumbed to the Capitol.
Two guys from the capitol, college students probably, approached Haymitch somewhat drunk, thanking him for something. How dared they treat him like that, as if he were a pet doing them a favor?
Drusilla and Magno Stift approached Haymitch at some point, completely drunk and took thousands of photos with him. Drusilla called them piglets and beasts, any possible synonym to degrade them, but she was delighted with Haymitch. She finally had a victor after so many years, right? Damn witch.
There was only one person who treated Haymitch with some decency, a blonde girl who hovered close all the time. She didn't know who she was, she didn't care, but she felt a small spark of gratitude because someone treated her boyfriend with some decency. Until she remembered that she was from the Capitol.
A woman with surgically embedded cat ears approached and gave a treat to Haymitch, which he accepted and she stroked his chin with her long nails, as if he were a dog and he closed his eyes, letting himself go for a second in the role.
She didn't want to see more, she couldn't see more, but she didn't avert her blurry gaze from the screen.
It cut again, now they were recapitulations of different parties, interviews and outings. Many people around Haymitch, treating him like a toy and an animal; humiliating and touching him.
Haymitch submitted to so many dehumanizing things during all the cuts she saw, different days apparently and he vomited what little he had in his stomach. They took away all his dignity and autonomy, reduced to nothing…
Until the last clip arrived.
Without the layers of makeup and big clothes, he was again the malnourished and destroyed boy. His ribs stood out and on his abdomen, he had a long horizontal scar, the worst but not the only one; there was a much thinner one on his thighs and multiple cuts along his arms and almost every inch of skin she could catch.
Lenore Dove spent hundreds of nights touching and kissing the same skin that now was furrowed with scars.
On his chest, he had some kind of apparatus that Lenore Dove didn't finish deciphering what it was. He wrapped it around his hand and it looked like he was going to tear it off, but he regretted it at the last second. While he tried to take the pajama shirt to get dressed, his eyes closed and he collapsed on the bed. Were they drugging him too?
She fell asleep, exhausted and sobbing, seeing for the last time the image of the love of her life alone, going through another living hell.
Two days later, Clerk Carmine picked her up and began to scold her. Now he would be stricter than ever with her and she was under house arrest until further notice. She could only think of her boy and the nightmares had been chasing her more than ever.
She didn't dare tell him anything of what she saw in that cell, how to do it? Her love had already been humiliated and tortured to satiety, Haymitch didn't need anyone else to know it.
So hours later, when she saw him in the meadow, she didn't hesitate to run and throw herself into his arms, forgetting for a second everything and remembering that he had returned to her in that world… At least during the precious ten minutes they managed to steal.