Tuesday: Secrets

[ibonekoen]

Greetings, fellow wordsmiths, it is I, ibonekeon, your guest host for the week! I bring you today's theme in the form of Secrets — Everybody's got 'em, it's just a matter of who we trust enough to share them.

Come on down, stop on by, hop a carpet and fl— No, wait, wrong movie. Let's see what you can do with today's theme. Does your protagonist (or antagonist) have a secret that's eating away at their soul? Maybe they've discovered someone's secret and they're now wrestling with the moral dilemma of keeping said secret. The sky's the limit! Just remember, have fun!

As always, there's the little matter of rules:
-No more than five prompts in a row. If someone fills one of your prompts, you are then free to prompt again!
-No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
-No spoilers in prompts!
-If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space.

Prompts should be formatted as follows:
-Fandom, Character+/Character, Prompt

Here are just a few examples to get you started:
Glee, Kurt/Blaine, Blaine didn't tell Kurt the whole story about the Sadie Hawkins dance

Avengers movieverse, Tony, His secret is...he's grateful for this ticking time bomb of a family.

tag=secrets

Comments

[drabblewriter.livejournal.com]

any, any, s/he just wants to die

fill: zero-sum (the hunger games, foxface, canonical character death, tw: suicide)

[wakemexsoftly.livejournal.com]

She knows how to calculate odds; unlike the other Districts, the children in District 5 are highly educated. The assumption is that they will grow up to run the various power plants throughout the District and throughout Panem. Scientist’s children never really starve, and it’s the rare child who ends up taking Tesserae. Still, everyone is tense when the Reaping approaches.

There is the unspoken rule among the entire District: no one Volunteers. It isn’t logical. There is the unspoken assumption; if you are smart enough, you’ll come back alive.

But they don’t teach the children the skills that will bring them home. They do that in other Districts, where children wield knives and spears, where children never starve.

She shows off when she can, to tell the Gamemakers that she isn’t a lost cause. She can start a fire with anything. She can climb and she is very good at camouflage. Her fingers fly over the computers, the foraging and animal/insect identification simulations.

At night, she looks down at the Capitol. She's trapped in her room, and trapped inside the Games. She spends a pointless hour throwing herself at the barrier on the windows again and again.

When they are in the hovercraft flying to the arena, she doesn’t look at anyone, not even her own District partner. She realizes that she didn’t even bother to learn his name. When he dies in the bloodbath, she feels nothing.

She can’t sleep in the arena. She knows she should, but she can’t bring herself to relax enough to sleep. Instead, she obsessively calculates odds. She follows the other tributes. When they finally sleep, she steals a bit of their food. The sleep deprivation begins to set in.

Figuring out the safe path to the Career’s stockpile wasn’t luck; it was skill, and intense observation. The decision to try the path for herself was born out of a fit of sleepless mania.

She is almost disappointed when she makes it out of it alive.

With a full stomach, she falls asleep. When she isn’t sleeping, she wanders the forests.

The Gamemakers announce the rule change. Her only thought is, they don’t want me to win.

She sneaks inside the Cornucopia before the Feast. She doesn’t sleep, instead, she clutches her knife hard enough to leave a bruise in her hand. She crouches into a runner’s position at dawn and grabs her backpack, never looking back at the other tributes. Inside, there is a vial of sleep syrup. It’s a small vial, not a lethal dose. They wouldn’t give her food or a weapon. They think she needs to sleep.

She begins to obsess over the idea of dying. A small part of her mind whispers that it would be better to just die by her own hand in the arena. She thinks of District 12, and how they could still win.

A storm rages for the next few days, and she doesn’t bother to find shelter. Once she makes the decision to die, staying alive seems impractical. She screams out her frustration to the rain, to the sky, to the Gamemakers, to Panem. This is what the Games have turned her into; a sleepless mad girl with red hair screaming at the rain.

When the rain ends, she looks for the pair from District 12. She spots Peeta with some red, juicy berries.

She always knew what Nightlock looked like.

Re: fill: zero-sum (the hunger games, foxface, canonical character death, tw: suicide)

[polychromic.livejournal.com]

Oh Foxface, this is lovely and so, so sad.

Re: fill: zero-sum (the hunger games, foxface, canonical character death, tw: suicide)

[xpnkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh :'(

This was heartbreaking, and absolutely brilliant. That last line was so haunting... I'll be thinking about it for days no doubt. Great job!

Re: fill: zero-sum (the hunger games, foxface, canonical character death, tw: suicide)

[lynne-monstr.livejournal.com]

Wow! This was beautiful and tragic and you’ve given such depth to a character I didn’t otherwise think too much on. Wonderful fill!

original; poem

[burn-the-ships.livejournal.com]

Suicide.
Time-bomb ticking inside.
Take a breath, let it out…
Slowly, slowly.
Lungs strain. The pang, the hurt—
oh, but bleeding never felt so good
than when imaginary lines are drawn
inside your head
and numbers tick down
as you count the seconds.
Seconds now. Seconds til you are alone;
honest to God alone. Not abandoned,
because for once, you did the abandoning first.
No, can’t take your life.
Ah, but who’s to stop you
if you want to die?