Day After the Interviews, Twelve’s Suite (@ncllysnge)
All the time they spent worrying yesterday: about the surprise that Fava had up their sleeve, the thin line that Griffin was planning to walk, the responsibility they’d given themself to do the seemingly impossible and move the Capitol to compassion—and they hadn’t worried enough about Nelly. They didn’t think they had to.
Even before they ever truly knew her, Nelly was the Capitol to them. She came to Twelve every year, more colorful than anything else there by far, and she brought the Hunger Games with her. She took two of their neighbors away to die. And once it was Hudson she was taking away, she was their guide to the Capitol, the one who told them everything they knew about how it worked, about what they had to do to fit into it.
They knew that Nelly wasn’t like the rest of the Capitol. That she was lovely, and she was kind. But they somehow hadn’t put it all together, that if Nelly was kind when the rest of the Capitol was cruel, than that must mean that the Capitol was cruel to her, too. Not until last night, when there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.
But they can do something about it now. Nelly’s always given them affection so freely, the belonging they never knew in Twelve but always craved. And maybe they’ve been offering her the same this whole time, too—but now they really know what it means. “I’m so sorry about last night, Nelly,” they say immediately when they see her, not wanting to waste any time. “You didn’t deserve any of that.”