#tmwom

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

When the Rebellion gave orders, it was always in your best interest to follow them. They didn’t tend to allow outside thinking. But the orders to fake your death in order to shock the Capital into action made something inside your shrivel.

The entirety of plan meant that you wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what was going to happen — and that would leave you lying to (and potentially never seeing again) your mother, your sisters, and Finnick.

And while your relationship was fake, set up by President Snow to distract the Capital, you had fallen for the Pretty Boy of District Four. You didn’t like lying about anything and didn’t like lying to your closest people and you especially didn’t like lying to the one man almost single-handedly keeping you afloat in the cesspool you called home.

But you were a part of something bigger now, had been since you agreed to side with the Rebellion, and Finnick’s honest reaction to your death was needed to sell the ruse.

You just hoped you were both alive so you could apologize about it all.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

You knew it was all an act, a ploy to deceive the Capital — that it was a faked love, manufactured to receive more gifts, a way to survive a little bit longer within the Games. You knew that, understood that but… it was hard and getting harder all the time to keep understanding that. You wanted it to be real so much — you hadn’t realized how much you could love someone until it was quite possibly the only positive thing you could feel.

Days into this year’s Games and you were surviving by the grace of a higher power, the Capital and its fondness for tragedy. The more they thought they deserved to witness this love story writing itself in front of them, doomed to end in death, the more support they offered. You knew it was never going to be you alone in the end but you had hope that your partner would make it — they deserved it more than you anyway, had more to actually live for back home.

So your plan had rapidly changed from merely surviving until someone bigger, better, smarter caught you to surviving so you could insure your partner made it. You didn’t think it would be easy — and it wasn’t, not by any stretch of the word — but when you had softly sang them through their nightmares one night, your mentor had been able to send you some desperately needed supplies with the simple message of ‘Keep it up’.

You had grasped their meaning and ran with it, running yourself face first into an actual love for all that it was one sided.

Your partner had grudgingly agreed with your plan to hook the Capital into supporting you and they were quick to remind you, silent and hidden, that they thought the plan was stupid and doomed to failure, most especially due to the fact they didn’t have those feelings for you and didn’t think that they could reliably fake it long enough for it to mean something.

You had simply shrugged your shoulders and told them to try harder, that you both needed to be determined to get one of you back home. The mention of being able to go back to your District was enough to light a fire under your partner.

It might hurt worse if you knew they could love you back but you still wished you had more this a fake love story to tell.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

The snap of your ankle breaking echoed. It was followed by your scream — both of pain and frustration. It wasn’t the first bone the Unsub had broken and you doubt that it will be the last either — unless you got lucky and the team miraculously finds you. You didn’t think the cards were in your favor though.

From what you could remember from the briefing from before you were taken, the team would be looking in a different direction altogether. Although, your capture might be able to help them. You knew that Garcia was fiercely protective and capable of frankly scary things regarding computers and you don’t think the Unsub would have been careful enough to escape the net she’d cast.

You just had to hold out long enough for them to find you.

While you waited for the Unsub to come back into your line of sight, you did your best to memorize everything you could see. It was a technique developed to help keep you in the moment as well as a good way to help the team later in case he got away.

It was about the only thing that you could do in your current state, tied down to a medical board. From the quick glance you had gotten of it before you were detained, it was an EMT bed.

That would certainly explain how the Unsub had been grabbing people — nobody would blink with an EMT moving a body although it might suggest a partner.

Your thoughts scrambled when your left shoulder was yanked hard, dislocating it. A second pair of hands grabbed your right arm and repeated the movement.

Now you knew there were two Unsubs and it looked like your situation just got worse.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

You were feet from the door when you were tackled. The full-on collision sent stars through your head, a persistent ringing sound driving the spike of pain even deeper and deafening you to what your captors were saying. It didn’t matter. You could guess what they were saying anyway.

You just kept your eyes on the freedom in reach that was denied to you, ignoring the tears that were beginning to stream down your face. Like hope, tears in this place tended to invite more trouble than they were worth but you felt like it was appropriate right now.

It was by the skin of your teeth that you had managed to get this far and you were absolutely sure that they’d tighten all the strings holding you down so it wouldn’t be possible again.

By the feel of it, they had already started. The handcuffs were too tight, pinching the skin of your wrists and were beginning to block the blood flow. Rumlow, who had been the one to tackle you, yanked the chains between the cuffs until your shoulders screamed in pain. You struggled to your knees and then to your feet when the pulling didn’t stop.

He continued to use the cuffs to shove you back into the facility, carefully knocking you into every wall, corner, and door you came across. Blood was carving paths down your face, broken nose and scrapes being agitated with every hit. You took it without comment, resigning yourself to it. You knew this was a possibility when you decided to run and unfortunately that was what it came to.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

The scientists had gagged you. It was a first for you — usually they liked it when they could hear your pain. You suspected that they had made some sort of table, charging your pain on a meter. It had certainly seemed like their bruisers worked harder on making you scream on certain days.

But the gagging was new. It might have come about because you were screaming not in pain but in fury — it bothered you more when they had turned their attention to your family than when it was on you.

However, the scientists had three new subjects to experiment on and had little use for you currently.

Instead, they left you tied up and gagged, only able to watch as they repeated the torture and deaths you’d been experiencing the last few months on your brothers. They had enough information on how you reacted to physical torture and wanted to know more on how you’d react the emotional torture brought about by knowing the pain your family was about to endure.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

The prick was so very gentle — you almost didn’t feel a thing, more like a delicate caress than the attempt on your life that it was. You had less then a second of warning in the Force when the shot hit you and barely more than that when the drowsiness set it.

You had the choice to either trace the shot back to where it came from or to attempt a Force led purge to remove whatever it was from your system. You knew you didn’t have time for both.

You choose to follow the trace back. The drug in your system wasn’t meant to kill you and you trusted your back-up — Kenobi and Skywalker were skilled Jedi, who finished their missions successful despite their tendency towards the ridiculous. The team would be able to find you wherever you’d been taken to but they might need a hint in where to start the search.

You trusted in the Force to lead you through the mission safely.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

By now, the sound of the door unlocking automatically sent you to your knees. You knew the routine and you knew what would happen if you didn’t. At first, you had fought like hell every time anyone came to you but now, what felt like months later, your conditioned response was compliance. It wasn’t worth the punishment.

Not when you didn’t know if anyone was coming for you.

You had thought at least Steve wouldn’t have given up on finding you but you were slowly losing hope. You didn’t think that was a bad thing in this place — hope killed here. And you wanted to survive more than anything else. You wanted to survive — this place wasn’t worth your death.

So you lost hope. You saved your energy for better things. Because if it was the last thing you did, you were going to bring this place to the ground.

@themerrywhumpofmay

[mybeautifulbeautifuleternal]

You could hear their laughter still, less with your ears and more with it echoing painfully through your mind. You knew they didn’t mean anything by it, just some friendly humor being thrown around but it still tugged at sore spots, pressure on bruising not allowed to heal.

They were laughing because you still mourned your boyfriend, Billy. He has been a casualty of the summer, dying to save the life of your new little sister, El.

When Billy had first rolled into town, your father Chief Hopper had given you pretty strict instructions to leave the California Bad Boy alone. You listened…for about five minutes.

But Billy had been charming and kind and sweet — only for you, which had its own kind of appeal. To know someone so rough and rude cared enough about you to soften their edges so as to not harm you? You didn’t stand a chance, falling in love quickly and quietly. You had spent what felt like every free moment with him, dreaming of the future and the time when you could see Hawkins in your rear view mirror only.

But Billy had died, sacrificing himself to give El and you time to run from the Mind Flayer.

It was a constant ache for you. You had so quickly structured your life around Billy’s — and his around yours — that his loss, on top of your fathers, sent you spinning. You didn’t, couldn’t find a lifeline, an anchor.

Loving Billy had been easy — but seemingly only for you. The rest of your new friend group had a list of negative things to say about him and were hardly shy in sharing their opinions about him. They couldn’t understand what you had seen in him and they couldn’t understand why you still carried feelings for him.

Today, when they saw you walk into school wearing Billy’s beloved (and very recognizable) leather jacket, the jokes had started flying and hadn’t stopped. They started out pretty innocent, things that might have been said when he was still alive and they were actually teasing you for having a boyfriend, but soon they slid closer and closer to being down right nasty, cruelly twisting the knife stuck in you.

You weren’t sure what was worse — that they didn’t know what affect their words had on you or that they did understand but decided to say them anyway.

Regardless, you fled as soon as you could. You already had Billy’s ghost haunting you — you didn’t want to add their laughter to your burden.

@themerrywhumpofmay