accidentalrebellion | Exsilium; IC contact

[ This is very deliberate - the choice of using the voice function, not saying anything to that post on the network (because it's so so familiar, achingly so, but what if), and now, keeping what he says short and in a carefully guarded tone: ]

I'm only going to ask this once: who are you?

[Whatever she's been doing, whatever she's been thinking, her entire world (or whatever she's managed to make of it)... it all grinds to a complete halt when she gets this.

She'd know this voice anywhere. She knows it almost better than she knows her own reflection, or the draw weight on her bow. It's the same one that haunts her every single night, and many times during the day, as she relives the same moments over and over in her mind. Those last few precious moments before the confusion and the resulting aftermath, when she could've done something different. Should have done something different. If she had, he wouldn't have...--

But she can't be hearing this voice. It's physically impossible to be hearing this voice. He's not here. He can't be here. The possibility of it is enough to send her thoughts down a jumbled spiral, and merits the use of the mental checklist to keep from losing herself to it.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I'm seventeen years old. My home is District 12. There is no District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He's a traitor, but I demanded his immunity. I'm keeping him alive. I have to keep him alive....

Yet even facts, even what she knows has to be true for the sake of maintaining what little shred of sanity she has left, are useless against the feelings she can't shake. The part of her that's practically screaming what if. The part of her that has to confirm, no matter how crazy or unreal it is.

So, quietly, with a voice that's small, oh so small, she ventures.]

Peeta?

[ That tone is enough to undo him; it's everything he hates, whatever would make a person feel that way - would make Katniss, the strongest person he knows, feel that way. But of course, the Capitol is sneaky. The Capitol is clever. The Capitol knows how to steal peoples' voices and use them, twist them, as all of the tributes saw in the Quarter Quell. As all of Panem saw, of course.

As a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol.

No, maybe the strongest among them couldn't - there's him, Johanna, and whoever else was picked up to attest to that. But there's also Katniss, the mockingjay who survived not once but twice, living proof that the strongest among the rebels can still give the Capitol a slap in the face. Not without retaliation, no, but there's a certain pleasure in knowing that she's out there somewhere beyond their reach - as she must be, because he's not so naive as to think he'd be kept alive if she weren't, not with his complete inability to tell them anything of the rebellion and face not so loved as hers among the people. He's certainly not so naive as to think he'd be used against Haymitch, who proved so spectacularly that he only plays for his own side. His family is nothing to the Capitol. So - it's clear.

He may be a lot of things, but Peeta Mellark is a Victor of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, and that means he too knows how to survive. There's nothing but relentlessness when he speaks, almost harsh. ]

That's not an answer.

[For everything that's familiar about that voice, there's something that distinctly isn't. Maybe she'd picked up a hint of it initially, but in her shock and her need to confirm, it could've easily become lost under other priorities. But now it's unavoidable. It pierces her like a spear, stings her in a way that almost nothing ever has, in a way that hurts so much it can't be anything but real.

Harshness.

This isn't right. Not directed at her, at any rate. It should be the steady gentleness she knows best, the kind of steadiness she could hold onto when there was nothing else. What managed to keep her nightmares at bay those nights on the train and those nights before the Quell. What she hasn't had in what seems like so long.

(What she needs.)

A breath becomes stuck in her throat, making it even harder to think, to work through this with facts and treat it like the hallucination it probably is, much less to speak. It takes a few long moments before she's able to choke out another equally quiet response.]

It's me.

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[Permaction]

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voice; dated to not long after the rita skeeter post

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1/2

no subject

no subject

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voice; 1/3?

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voice; wait i lied

voice; DONE

voice (backdated to around the time of collette's post)

voice o/!

eternallyvoice (the new fragrance by rp)

text, backdated to the 13th;

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