They were both after all, still children whose lives were dictated by powers above them.
They created a strange tableau: rabid boy, trapped girl, bombed-out building. It suggested a tale that could only end in tragedy. Star-crossed lovers meeting their fate. A revenge story turned in on itself. A war saga that took no prisoners.
Not to you maybe,” she said. “But it matters the world having someone show up like I mattered.
Good-bye, District Twelve. Good-bye, hanging tree and Hunger Games and Mayor Lipp. Someday something will kill me, but it won’t be you.
That even if they were separated by space, they were together in time.
Maybe he was not cut out to be a lover. Maybe he was more of a loner at heart. Coriolanus Snow, more loner than lover.
She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again.
The Capitol had tried to take everything from Lucy Gray, and it had utterley failed.
The more he had treated her as something special, the more she’d become human.
He didn’t recognize it, but it brought to mind the hanging of the rebel two days before. Had she been there? Had it prompted this? Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where the dead man called out for his love to flee? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree. Ah, yes. It was Arlo’s hanging, because where else would a dead man call out for his love to flee?
It’s one thing to speak of humans’ essential nature theoretically, another to consider it when a fist is smashing into your mouth.
Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.
That’s our right,” Dr. Gaul countered. “No, it isn’t! I don’t care what you say. You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right.
And you didn’t have to like your family. The bond was a given.
Who needed wealth and success and power when they had love? Didn’t it conquer all?
Win and rain might wash away the blood stains but Capitol hands would not.
Isn’t my costume awful? My stylist’s the biggest idiot in the Capitol. Our tributes have been trees for forty years under her. Wish I’d gotten Cinna. You look fantastic.” Girl talk.
People had short memories. They needed to navigate the rubble, peel off the grubby ration coupons, and witness the Hunger Games to keep the war fresh in their minds. Forgetting could lead to complacency, and then they’d all be back at square one.
Why bother pinching pennies when the dollars had fled long ago?
Say what you will, I’ve done more for Capital reconstruction than the president himself’, Sejanus joked halfheartedly.