Tbosas Fanfiction - Tumblr Posts

Last Line Challenge

Tagged by @moreespressoformydepresso @majorsoapfan @ylvisruinedmylife

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like).

“She thinks there are very few places she won’t follow him, but it is late, and her brothers are dead, and she hasn’t seen Treech much since he started work.”

i fear all of my mutuals have already been tagged but this was fun!!!!

a list of straight masterpieces. you will never read anything like them!!!

TBOSAS Ao3 Masterlist

Inspired by Sawyer!! (Whose masterlist of amazing fics is available here!!)

These summaries are literally terrible forgive me

Ghost Lights On The Water

Because Treech, Coral, Reaper, Mizzen, and Wovey didn’t die in Reaper’s morgue, they become stuck in a brutal cycle of watching each year’s Hunger Games

References to the 74th and 75th Games

Inspired by this Tumblr ask

Oneshot, 8k words

Salt For All The Cuts

Treech is nearly blind. He was born with eyes that didn’t work, and yet he can always see red things

Basically Treech’s struggles with his faulty eyes and the way he gets through life from birth through the Games

Treemina be warned

Oneshot, 3k words

Where Your Eyes Naturally Drift

Treech, Lamina, and the stark differences in their upbringings, ideal, psyches

“Treech came into the world with his eyes pointed towards the sky while Lamina was born with her face in the dirt.”

Parallels galore

Treemina be warned

Oneshot, 4k words

Til Death Do Us Part

A deep dive into the harsh atmosphere of the Capitol’s Academy and all the varying perspectives on the morals of the Hunger Games told from a place of privilege

Character study/my interpretation of each mentor from the Tenth Hunger Games

Current mentor list: Juno Phipps, Iphigenia Moss, Vipsania Sickle, Persephone Price, Pup Harrington, Domitia Whimsiwick (Festus Creed in progress)

Multi-chapter, currently at 73k words

Big Brawls And Yule Balls

Treech and Lamina are childhood friends turned strangers who reunite at the Yule Ball

Harry Potter AU!!

Treech leaves this fic with a crush methinks

Part 2 will eventually be published we’ll see heehee

Oneshot, 5k words

Two Vines Entwined

Treech and Lamina’s journey from the Reaping through the Tenth Hunger Games

Primarily Treech and Lamina friendship with the tiniest bit of romantic undertones if you squint

My first tbosas fic so it’s kinda bad 🫣

Long oneshot, 13k words

a list of straight masterpieces. you will never read anything like them!!!

TBOSAS Ao3 Masterlist

Inspired by Sawyer!! (Whose masterlist of amazing fics is available here!!)

These summaries are literally terrible forgive me

Ghost Lights On The Water

Because Treech, Coral, Reaper, Mizzen, and Wovey didn’t die in Reaper’s morgue, they become stuck in a brutal cycle of watching each year’s Hunger Games

References to the 74th and 75th Games

Inspired by this Tumblr ask

Oneshot, 8k words

Salt For All The Cuts

Treech is nearly blind. He was born with eyes that didn’t work, and yet he can always see red things

Basically Treech’s struggles with his faulty eyes and the way he gets through life from birth through the Games

Treemina be warned

Oneshot, 3k words

Where Your Eyes Naturally Drift

Treech, Lamina, and the stark differences in their upbringings, ideal, psyches

“Treech came into the world with his eyes pointed towards the sky while Lamina was born with her face in the dirt.”

Parallels galore

Treemina be warned

Oneshot, 4k words

Til Death Do Us Part

A deep dive into the harsh atmosphere of the Capitol’s Academy and all the varying perspectives on the morals of the Hunger Games told from a place of privilege

Character study/my interpretation of each mentor from the Tenth Hunger Games

Current mentor list: Juno Phipps, Iphigenia Moss, Vipsania Sickle, Persephone Price, Pup Harrington, Domitia Whimsiwick (Festus Creed in progress)

Multi-chapter, currently at 73k words

Big Brawls And Yule Balls

Treech and Lamina are childhood friends turned strangers who reunite at the Yule Ball

Harry Potter AU!!

Treech leaves this fic with a crush methinks

Part 2 will eventually be published we’ll see heehee

Oneshot, 5k words

Two Vines Entwined

Treech and Lamina’s journey from the Reaping through the Tenth Hunger Games

Primarily Treech and Lamina friendship with the tiniest bit of romantic undertones if you squint

My first tbosas fic so it’s kinda bad 🫣

Long oneshot, 13k words

*sidles in*

Hello again

*bows dramatically and exits stage*

HELLO????? I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS THIS IS BETTER THAN I COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED??? YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE MASTER I AM LIKE GENUINELY IN AWE THIS IS PERFECT

from this ask!

*sidles in*

Hello again

*bows dramatically and exits stage*

HELLO????? I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS THIS IS BETTER THAN I COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED??? YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE MASTER I AM LIKE GENUINELY IN AWE THIS IS PERFECT

from this ask!

nurse she’s out again

I’ve been thinking a lot about who Treech and Lamina are and their relationship to each other and mostly the downfall of it. I wanted to put all those thoughts down into one place and I always enjoy reading character analyses so I thought I’d share!

To preface, this is my own personal take on them and an insight to the way I write them in fics. This is entirely the movie side of them. I enjoy their book versions, but the movie created a very compelling relationship that I have yet to move on from. I would love to hear other thoughts and opinions so please don’t hesitate to share if you feel the need to!

To start, I view them as childhood friends. There are a few options of how I think their relationship could have gone (that is to say developing into a romantic relationship or staying friends) pre-hunger games, but I know that in all of them, they care deeply about the other.

Individually, this is how I write them:

Treech:

To me, Treech is the oldest of two younger sisters and the burden of that is a defining part of his character. His entire family is still intact and that also weighs heavy on him. I think he lives in fear of what could happen to him, his family, and everything he cares about. This leads to an attempt at trying to care about as few people as possible. He tries to keep his head down and mind his own. He keeps everyone at arms-length. He has friends but they are shallow relationships and only viewed as people to spend time with. He will not do anything to put his life and his family’s life at risk. They get by and in that world, have a good life. He is not going to be the one to ruin that. He has not lost anything of value in his life and in turn, that makes him terrified.

Treech has never lost anyone. He doesn’t know how he would react to grief. It terrifies him because he’s never done it. As much as he tries not to he loves deeply, but he is so afraid of loving more than necessary because he has never lost, and when you live in the world they do, losing is inevitable and simply a matter of waiting.

I view him as a slave to self-imposed duty, someone who would sacrifice anything for the few people he loves (*cough cough* his own innocence), as well as someone with an unhealthy dose of self-hatred.

I think Treech is constantly fighting with himself. His dislike for himself, his inability to allow himself to be close to people and his unwavering kindness and sense of duty are in direct opposition of each other at all times. Everything in him is always fighting to gain the power and it really is just a matter of what day it is as to which trait is the strongest.

He is not consistent with his thoughts and feelings and switches up very easily. He’s hard to get a read on because you think you understand him and you do but only for that moment because the next minute he feels the opposite way.

I think Treech views himself as uninfluential and not really someone of any consequence, which to me is why he becomes so infatuated with Lamina.

Lamina:

Lamina lost a mother during the war, and later two older twin brothers who were rebels and died because of that. It is just her and her father (which in my head also meets the headcanon of why she is better dressed than Treech; family of two vs. family of five). Where Treech has never lost anyone he’s loved, Lamina has lost nearly everyone. While a lot of times this would make someone cold, it makes Lamina even more determined to relish in the things she values. She loves, and she refuses to lessen that love just because she may lose it.

I think when you lose someone, it forces you to face not only your own mortality but also everyone else’s. Lamina takes that mortality and instead of being scared of it promises to make the most of it. Not only that but I think it makes you even more confident in your own strength. If you can get through the loss of someone you love, I think there are very few things you can’t get through. Lamina knows this and she knows how she reacts to grief. She trusts that she has the strength to love and lose because she has done it— multiple times— and she has survived.

I think Lamina is wickedly smart and enjoys learning. I view her as someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent and mature, but for all her confidence in her strength, I think she is also insecure. Typically, I find that people with that kind of maturity at such a young age are ostracized because their peers simply aren’t at that level yet and most of the time what kids don’t understand they label as weird. I think Lamina became very used to the feeling of being alone and at times fed into the notion that her differences were bad. I imagine Treech was the first person to ever treat her intelligence as something that is simply “cool” and not something that makes her incapable of being a kid.

I picture Lamina as someone who is cohesive and a flowing picture of all of her different traits. She accepts each one for what it is and allows it to do its job in her life. She tries to always be better but she doesn’t drown in her faults.

Notice how above I say often “this is what they think about themselves”. They think certain ways about themselves when the opposite is true. Perspective!

In actuality, Treech is strong in his devotions and uneasily swayed from them. He views himself as weak-minded when really he is so stuck in his views he cannot change. He believes that keeping everyone at arms length will keep his heart safe when in reality it does more harm than good. He thinks he is of no consequence to anyone, tries so hard to not cause any trouble, yet makes an impact on every person he’s come into contact with. I believe Treech’s number one character trait is that he is kind. It’s in his nature to help and I think he physically cannot stop himself. It’s just something that happens. It’ll be one instance that he thinks means nothing but means everything to someone else (i.e. being kind to Lamina as children is something he doesn’t even think of because “anyone would do this” yet none of their peers had ever done it before). He thinks he’s inconsequential but he impacts people without even knowing it.

Lamina believes she is unnerving to others when in reality she has that kind of spark that makes it hard to look away. Think about those people who are inexplicably infatuating. So yeah, in a way she is unnerving, but only because you can’t help but notice her. She’s an enigma who’s been labeled as weird.

However, I don’t think they are that different from each other. Instead, I think it is the way they go about those similarities that make them different.

For example:

Treech is kind and he wants so badly not to be. Lamina is kind and wishes she were more so. Where she sees her kindness and empathy as a strength, Treech views his as a weakness.

I think they both are intense about their love, but where one runs from the strength of his love, the other does everything she can to make it stronger.

They both are fiercely loyal. Treech tries to limit that loyalty to his family, but Lamina wishes to give it to everyone.

The ironic part about this is that the traits Treech sees as faults in himself he sees as otherworldly in Lamina. (Perspective 😍)

I picture Treech to have almost in a sense placed Lamina atop a pedestal. She is everything he wishes he were; open, free, and believing in good. Lamina in his eyes is something he is unworthy of, but also something he thinks would ruin him should he ever lose it. She is something to be protected but never touched.

This is so unhealthy though, because it’s impossible to be in a relationship with someone you don’t view as an equal.

Lamina, however, grounded sweetheart that she is, views Treech as human. She adores him for all that he is— good and bad. She adores him for his kindness and for his fearfulness. Lamina values Treech because she values every living being. But she loves him because he is Treech.

However, the downside of this is that I imagine she lets him get away with many things because he was the first person outside of her family to be kind for the sake of being kind. I think Treech would reject a lot of her attempts at getting closer and refuse to admit how much he cares about her. I think Lamina, who is so declarative with her love and wants the same back, is only able to look past this because she convinces herself that the only thing that matters about him is his kindness. Kindness she has been a firsthand witness to and kindness that impacted her at a young age. She’s seen the good in him and refuses to let that good be outshined by all his bad, even if that means becoming a bit of a doormat for his bad habits.

Lamina grows to love Treech over a period of time as she forces herself to push past all his flaws. Treech loves her in an instant because he can’t help himself.

This plays into the part above where I talked about how Treech thinks he doesn’t impact anyone when in reality it’s impossible for him not to and how Lamina has that quality about her that forces everyone to at least look at her.

When Treech shows Lamina that first act of kindness as kids, he impacts her life in a way that makes it impossible for her to not want to know him. Lamina inherently has that quality about her, the quality that makes people want to know her, and Treech, guarded, closed-off Treech, is unable to escape her pull.

In my head, there is literally no world where they don’t immediately mean something to each other, because it is literally engraved into who they are. Treech impacts everyone, Lamina forces everyone to impact her.

In a perfect world, Treech goes to therapy for his self-hatred and Lamina gains a little bit of self-worth (i.e. tells Treech to figure his shit out instead of taking it out on her) however they live in Panem and that is not possible.

Thus their downfall.

nurse she’s out again

I’ve been thinking a lot about who Treech and Lamina are and their relationship to each other and mostly the downfall of it. I wanted to put all those thoughts down into one place and I always enjoy reading character analyses so I thought I’d share!

To preface, this is my own personal take on them and an insight to the way I write them in fics. This is entirely the movie side of them. I enjoy their book versions, but the movie created a very compelling relationship that I have yet to move on from. I would love to hear other thoughts and opinions so please don’t hesitate to share if you feel the need to!

To start, I view them as childhood friends. There are a few options of how I think their relationship could have gone (that is to say developing into a romantic relationship or staying friends) pre-hunger games, but I know that in all of them, they care deeply about the other.

Individually, this is how I write them:

Treech:

To me, Treech is the oldest of two younger sisters and the burden of that is a defining part of his character. His entire family is still intact and that also weighs heavy on him. I think he lives in fear of what could happen to him, his family, and everything he cares about. This leads to an attempt at trying to care about as few people as possible. He tries to keep his head down and mind his own. He keeps everyone at arms-length. He has friends but they are shallow relationships and only viewed as people to spend time with. He will not do anything to put his life and his family’s life at risk. They get by and in that world, have a good life. He is not going to be the one to ruin that. He has not lost anything of value in his life and in turn, that makes him terrified.

Treech has never lost anyone. He doesn’t know how he would react to grief. It terrifies him because he’s never done it. As much as he tries not to he loves deeply, but he is so afraid of loving more than necessary because he has never lost, and when you live in the world they do, losing is inevitable and simply a matter of waiting.

I view him as a slave to self-imposed duty, someone who would sacrifice anything for the few people he loves (*cough cough* his own innocence), as well as someone with an unhealthy dose of self-hatred.

I think Treech is constantly fighting with himself. His dislike for himself, his inability to allow himself to be close to people and his unwavering kindness and sense of duty are in direct opposition of each other at all times. Everything in him is always fighting to gain the power and it really is just a matter of what day it is as to which trait is the strongest.

He is not consistent with his thoughts and feelings and switches up very easily. He’s hard to get a read on because you think you understand him and you do but only for that moment because the next minute he feels the opposite way.

I think Treech views himself as uninfluential and not really someone of any consequence, which to me is why he becomes so infatuated with Lamina.

Lamina:

Lamina lost a mother during the war, and later two older twin brothers who were rebels and died because of that. It is just her and her father (which in my head also meets the headcanon of why she is better dressed than Treech; family of two vs. family of five). Where Treech has never lost anyone he’s loved, Lamina has lost nearly everyone. While a lot of times this would make someone cold, it makes Lamina even more determined to relish in the things she values. She loves, and she refuses to lessen that love just because she may lose it.

I think when you lose someone, it forces you to face not only your own mortality but also everyone else’s. Lamina takes that mortality and instead of being scared of it promises to make the most of it. Not only that but I think it makes you even more confident in your own strength. If you can get through the loss of someone you love, I think there are very few things you can’t get through. Lamina knows this and she knows how she reacts to grief. She trusts that she has the strength to love and lose because she has done it— multiple times— and she has survived.

I think Lamina is wickedly smart and enjoys learning. I view her as someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent and mature, but for all her confidence in her strength, I think she is also insecure. Typically, I find that people with that kind of maturity at such a young age are ostracized because their peers simply aren’t at that level yet and most of the time what kids don’t understand they label as weird. I think Lamina became very used to the feeling of being alone and at times fed into the notion that her differences were bad. I imagine Treech was the first person to ever treat her intelligence as something that is simply “cool” and not something that makes her incapable of being a kid.

I picture Lamina as someone who is cohesive and a flowing picture of all of her different traits. She accepts each one for what it is and allows it to do its job in her life. She tries to always be better but she doesn’t drown in her faults.

Notice how above I say often “this is what they think about themselves”. They think certain ways about themselves when the opposite is true. Perspective!

In actuality, Treech is strong in his devotions and uneasily swayed from them. He views himself as weak-minded when really he is so stuck in his views he cannot change. He believes that keeping everyone at arms length will keep his heart safe when in reality it does more harm than good. He thinks he is of no consequence to anyone, tries so hard to not cause any trouble, yet makes an impact on every person he’s come into contact with. I believe Treech’s number one character trait is that he is kind. It’s in his nature to help and I think he physically cannot stop himself. It’s just something that happens. It’ll be one instance that he thinks means nothing but means everything to someone else (i.e. being kind to Lamina as children is something he doesn’t even think of because “anyone would do this” yet none of their peers had ever done it before). He thinks he’s inconsequential but he impacts people without even knowing it.

Lamina believes she is unnerving to others when in reality she has that kind of spark that makes it hard to look away. Think about those people who are inexplicably infatuating. So yeah, in a way she is unnerving, but only because you can’t help but notice her. She’s an enigma who’s been labeled as weird.

However, I don’t think they are that different from each other. Instead, I think it is the way they go about those similarities that make them different.

For example:

Treech is kind and he wants so badly not to be. Lamina is kind and wishes she were more so. Where she sees her kindness and empathy as a strength, Treech views his as a weakness.

I think they both are intense about their love, but where one runs from the strength of his love, the other does everything she can to make it stronger.

They both are fiercely loyal. Treech tries to limit that loyalty to his family, but Lamina wishes to give it to everyone.

The ironic part about this is that the traits Treech sees as faults in himself he sees as otherworldly in Lamina. (Perspective 😍)

I picture Treech to have almost in a sense placed Lamina atop a pedestal. She is everything he wishes he were; open, free, and believing in good. Lamina in his eyes is something he is unworthy of, but also something he thinks would ruin him should he ever lose it. She is something to be protected but never touched.

This is so unhealthy though, because it’s impossible to be in a relationship with someone you don’t view as an equal.

Lamina, however, grounded sweetheart that she is, views Treech as human. She adores him for all that he is— good and bad. She adores him for his kindness and for his fearfulness. Lamina values Treech because she values every living being. But she loves him because he is Treech.

However, the downside of this is that I imagine she lets him get away with many things because he was the first person outside of her family to be kind for the sake of being kind. I think Treech would reject a lot of her attempts at getting closer and refuse to admit how much he cares about her. I think Lamina, who is so declarative with her love and wants the same back, is only able to look past this because she convinces herself that the only thing that matters about him is his kindness. Kindness she has been a firsthand witness to and kindness that impacted her at a young age. She’s seen the good in him and refuses to let that good be outshined by all his bad, even if that means becoming a bit of a doormat for his bad habits.

Lamina grows to love Treech over a period of time as she forces herself to push past all his flaws. Treech loves her in an instant because he can’t help himself.

This plays into the part above where I talked about how Treech thinks he doesn’t impact anyone when in reality it’s impossible for him not to and how Lamina has that quality about her that forces everyone to at least look at her.

When Treech shows Lamina that first act of kindness as kids, he impacts her life in a way that makes it impossible for her to not want to know him. Lamina inherently has that quality about her, the quality that makes people want to know her, and Treech, guarded, closed-off Treech, is unable to escape her pull.

In my head, there is literally no world where they don’t immediately mean something to each other, because it is literally engraved into who they are. Treech impacts everyone, Lamina forces everyone to impact her.

In a perfect world, Treech goes to therapy for his self-hatred and Lamina gains a little bit of self-worth (i.e. tells Treech to figure his shit out instead of taking it out on her) however they live in Panem and that is not possible.

Thus their downfall.

nurse she’s out again

I’ve been thinking a lot about who Treech and Lamina are and their relationship to each other and mostly the downfall of it. I wanted to put all those thoughts down into one place and I always enjoy reading character analyses so I thought I’d share!

To preface, this is my own personal take on them and an insight to the way I write them in fics. This is entirely the movie side of them. I enjoy their book versions, but the movie created a very compelling relationship that I have yet to move on from. I would love to hear other thoughts and opinions so please don’t hesitate to share if you feel the need to!

To start, I view them as childhood friends. There are a few options of how I think their relationship could have gone (that is to say developing into a romantic relationship or staying friends) pre-hunger games, but I know that in all of them, they care deeply about the other.

Individually, this is how I write them:

Treech:

To me, Treech is the oldest of two younger sisters and the burden of that is a defining part of his character. His entire family is still intact and that also weighs heavy on him. I think he lives in fear of what could happen to him, his family, and everything he cares about. This leads to an attempt at trying to care about as few people as possible. He tries to keep his head down and mind his own. He keeps everyone at arms-length. He has friends but they are shallow relationships and only viewed as people to spend time with. He will not do anything to put his life and his family’s life at risk. They get by and in that world, have a good life. He is not going to be the one to ruin that. He has not lost anything of value in his life and in turn, that makes him terrified.

Treech has never lost anyone. He doesn’t know how he would react to grief. It terrifies him because he’s never done it. As much as he tries not to he loves deeply, but he is so afraid of loving more than necessary because he has never lost, and when you live in the world they do, losing is inevitable and simply a matter of waiting.

I view him as a slave to self-imposed duty, someone who would sacrifice anything for the few people he loves (*cough cough* his own innocence), as well as someone with an unhealthy dose of self-hatred.

I think Treech is constantly fighting with himself. His dislike for himself, his inability to allow himself to be close to people and his unwavering kindness and sense of duty are in direct opposition of each other at all times. Everything in him is always fighting to gain the power and it really is just a matter of what day it is as to which trait is the strongest.

He is not consistent with his thoughts and feelings and switches up very easily. He’s hard to get a read on because you think you understand him and you do but only for that moment because the next minute he feels the opposite way.

I think Treech views himself as uninfluential and not really someone of any consequence, which to me is why he becomes so infatuated with Lamina.

Lamina:

Lamina lost a mother during the war, and later two older twin brothers who were rebels and died because of that. It is just her and her father (which in my head also meets the headcanon of why she is better dressed than Treech; family of two vs. family of five). Where Treech has never lost anyone he’s loved, Lamina has lost nearly everyone. While a lot of times this would make someone cold, it makes Lamina even more determined to relish in the things she values. She loves, and she refuses to lessen that love just because she may lose it.

I think when you lose someone, it forces you to face not only your own mortality but also everyone else’s. Lamina takes that mortality and instead of being scared of it promises to make the most of it. Not only that but I think it makes you even more confident in your own strength. If you can get through the loss of someone you love, I think there are very few things you can’t get through. Lamina knows this and she knows how she reacts to grief. She trusts that she has the strength to love and lose because she has done it— multiple times— and she has survived.

I think Lamina is wickedly smart and enjoys learning. I view her as someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent and mature, but for all her confidence in her strength, I think she is also insecure. Typically, I find that people with that kind of maturity at such a young age are ostracized because their peers simply aren’t at that level yet and most of the time what kids don’t understand they label as weird. I think Lamina became very used to the feeling of being alone and at times fed into the notion that her differences were bad. I imagine Treech was the first person to ever treat her intelligence as something that is simply “cool” and not something that makes her incapable of being a kid.

I picture Lamina as someone who is cohesive and a flowing picture of all of her different traits. She accepts each one for what it is and allows it to do its job in her life. She tries to always be better but she doesn’t drown in her faults.

Notice how above I say often “this is what they think about themselves”. They think certain ways about themselves when the opposite is true. Perspective!

In actuality, Treech is strong in his devotions and uneasily swayed from them. He views himself as weak-minded when really he is so stuck in his views he cannot change. He believes that keeping everyone at arms length will keep his heart safe when in reality it does more harm than good. He thinks he is of no consequence to anyone, tries so hard to not cause any trouble, yet makes an impact on every person he’s come into contact with. I believe Treech’s number one character trait is that he is kind. It’s in his nature to help and I think he physically cannot stop himself. It’s just something that happens. It’ll be one instance that he thinks means nothing but means everything to someone else (i.e. being kind to Lamina as children is something he doesn’t even think of because “anyone would do this” yet none of their peers had ever done it before). He thinks he’s inconsequential but he impacts people without even knowing it.

Lamina believes she is unnerving to others when in reality she has that kind of spark that makes it hard to look away. Think about those people who are inexplicably infatuating. So yeah, in a way she is unnerving, but only because you can’t help but notice her. She’s an enigma who’s been labeled as weird.

However, I don’t think they are that different from each other. Instead, I think it is the way they go about those similarities that make them different.

For example:

Treech is kind and he wants so badly not to be. Lamina is kind and wishes she were more so. Where she sees her kindness and empathy as a strength, Treech views his as a weakness.

I think they both are intense about their love, but where one runs from the strength of his love, the other does everything she can to make it stronger.

They both are fiercely loyal. Treech tries to limit that loyalty to his family, but Lamina wishes to give it to everyone.

The ironic part about this is that the traits Treech sees as faults in himself he sees as otherworldly in Lamina. (Perspective 😍)

I picture Treech to have almost in a sense placed Lamina atop a pedestal. She is everything he wishes he were; open, free, and believing in good. Lamina in his eyes is something he is unworthy of, but also something he thinks would ruin him should he ever lose it. She is something to be protected but never touched.

This is so unhealthy though, because it’s impossible to be in a relationship with someone you don’t view as an equal.

Lamina, however, grounded sweetheart that she is, views Treech as human. She adores him for all that he is— good and bad. She adores him for his kindness and for his fearfulness. Lamina values Treech because she values every living being. But she loves him because he is Treech.

However, the downside of this is that I imagine she lets him get away with many things because he was the first person outside of her family to be kind for the sake of being kind. I think Treech would reject a lot of her attempts at getting closer and refuse to admit how much he cares about her. I think Lamina, who is so declarative with her love and wants the same back, is only able to look past this because she convinces herself that the only thing that matters about him is his kindness. Kindness she has been a firsthand witness to and kindness that impacted her at a young age. She’s seen the good in him and refuses to let that good be outshined by all his bad, even if that means becoming a bit of a doormat for his bad habits.

Lamina grows to love Treech over a period of time as she forces herself to push past all his flaws. Treech loves her in an instant because he can’t help himself.

This plays into the part above where I talked about how Treech thinks he doesn’t impact anyone when in reality it’s impossible for him not to and how Lamina has that quality about her that forces everyone to at least look at her.

When Treech shows Lamina that first act of kindness as kids, he impacts her life in a way that makes it impossible for her to not want to know him. Lamina inherently has that quality about her, the quality that makes people want to know her, and Treech, guarded, closed-off Treech, is unable to escape her pull.

In my head, there is literally no world where they don’t immediately mean something to each other, because it is literally engraved into who they are. Treech impacts everyone, Lamina forces everyone to impact her.

In a perfect world, Treech goes to therapy for his self-hatred and Lamina gains a little bit of self-worth (i.e. tells Treech to figure his shit out instead of taking it out on her) however they live in Panem and that is not possible.

Thus their downfall.

nurse she’s out again

I’ve been thinking a lot about who Treech and Lamina are and their relationship to each other and mostly the downfall of it. I wanted to put all those thoughts down into one place and I always enjoy reading character analyses so I thought I’d share!

To preface, this is my own personal take on them and an insight to the way I write them in fics. This is entirely the movie side of them. I enjoy their book versions, but the movie created a very compelling relationship that I have yet to move on from. I would love to hear other thoughts and opinions so please don’t hesitate to share if you feel the need to!

To start, I view them as childhood friends. There are a few options of how I think their relationship could have gone (that is to say developing into a romantic relationship or staying friends) pre-hunger games, but I know that in all of them, they care deeply about the other.

Individually, this is how I write them:

Treech:

To me, Treech is the oldest of two younger sisters and the burden of that is a defining part of his character. His entire family is still intact and that also weighs heavy on him. I think he lives in fear of what could happen to him, his family, and everything he cares about. This leads to an attempt at trying to care about as few people as possible. He tries to keep his head down and mind his own. He keeps everyone at arms-length. He has friends but they are shallow relationships and only viewed as people to spend time with. He will not do anything to put his life and his family’s life at risk. They get by and in that world, have a good life. He is not going to be the one to ruin that. He has not lost anything of value in his life and in turn, that makes him terrified.

Treech has never lost anyone. He doesn’t know how he would react to grief. It terrifies him because he’s never done it. As much as he tries not to he loves deeply, but he is so afraid of loving more than necessary because he has never lost, and when you live in the world they do, losing is inevitable and simply a matter of waiting.

I view him as a slave to self-imposed duty, someone who would sacrifice anything for the few people he loves (*cough cough* his own innocence), as well as someone with an unhealthy dose of self-hatred.

I think Treech is constantly fighting with himself. His dislike for himself, his inability to allow himself to be close to people and his unwavering kindness and sense of duty are in direct opposition of each other at all times. Everything in him is always fighting to gain the power and it really is just a matter of what day it is as to which trait is the strongest.

He is not consistent with his thoughts and feelings and switches up very easily. He’s hard to get a read on because you think you understand him and you do but only for that moment because the next minute he feels the opposite way.

I think Treech views himself as uninfluential and not really someone of any consequence, which to me is why he becomes so infatuated with Lamina.

Lamina:

Lamina lost a mother during the war, and later two older twin brothers who were rebels and died because of that. It is just her and her father (which in my head also meets the headcanon of why she is better dressed than Treech; family of two vs. family of five). Where Treech has never lost anyone he’s loved, Lamina has lost nearly everyone. While a lot of times this would make someone cold, it makes Lamina even more determined to relish in the things she values. She loves, and she refuses to lessen that love just because she may lose it.

I think when you lose someone, it forces you to face not only your own mortality but also everyone else’s. Lamina takes that mortality and instead of being scared of it promises to make the most of it. Not only that but I think it makes you even more confident in your own strength. If you can get through the loss of someone you love, I think there are very few things you can’t get through. Lamina knows this and she knows how she reacts to grief. She trusts that she has the strength to love and lose because she has done it— multiple times— and she has survived.

I think Lamina is wickedly smart and enjoys learning. I view her as someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent and mature, but for all her confidence in her strength, I think she is also insecure. Typically, I find that people with that kind of maturity at such a young age are ostracized because their peers simply aren’t at that level yet and most of the time what kids don’t understand they label as weird. I think Lamina became very used to the feeling of being alone and at times fed into the notion that her differences were bad. I imagine Treech was the first person to ever treat her intelligence as something that is simply “cool” and not something that makes her incapable of being a kid.

I picture Lamina as someone who is cohesive and a flowing picture of all of her different traits. She accepts each one for what it is and allows it to do its job in her life. She tries to always be better but she doesn’t drown in her faults.

Notice how above I say often “this is what they think about themselves”. They think certain ways about themselves when the opposite is true. Perspective!

In actuality, Treech is strong in his devotions and uneasily swayed from them. He views himself as weak-minded when really he is so stuck in his views he cannot change. He believes that keeping everyone at arms length will keep his heart safe when in reality it does more harm than good. He thinks he is of no consequence to anyone, tries so hard to not cause any trouble, yet makes an impact on every person he’s come into contact with. I believe Treech’s number one character trait is that he is kind. It’s in his nature to help and I think he physically cannot stop himself. It’s just something that happens. It’ll be one instance that he thinks means nothing but means everything to someone else (i.e. being kind to Lamina as children is something he doesn’t even think of because “anyone would do this” yet none of their peers had ever done it before). He thinks he’s inconsequential but he impacts people without even knowing it.

Lamina believes she is unnerving to others when in reality she has that kind of spark that makes it hard to look away. Think about those people who are inexplicably infatuating. So yeah, in a way she is unnerving, but only because you can’t help but notice her. She’s an enigma who’s been labeled as weird.

However, I don’t think they are that different from each other. Instead, I think it is the way they go about those similarities that make them different.

For example:

Treech is kind and he wants so badly not to be. Lamina is kind and wishes she were more so. Where she sees her kindness and empathy as a strength, Treech views his as a weakness.

I think they both are intense about their love, but where one runs from the strength of his love, the other does everything she can to make it stronger.

They both are fiercely loyal. Treech tries to limit that loyalty to his family, but Lamina wishes to give it to everyone.

The ironic part about this is that the traits Treech sees as faults in himself he sees as otherworldly in Lamina. (Perspective 😍)

I picture Treech to have almost in a sense placed Lamina atop a pedestal. She is everything he wishes he were; open, free, and believing in good. Lamina in his eyes is something he is unworthy of, but also something he thinks would ruin him should he ever lose it. She is something to be protected but never touched.

This is so unhealthy though, because it’s impossible to be in a relationship with someone you don’t view as an equal.

Lamina, however, grounded sweetheart that she is, views Treech as human. She adores him for all that he is— good and bad. She adores him for his kindness and for his fearfulness. Lamina values Treech because she values every living being. But she loves him because he is Treech.

However, the downside of this is that I imagine she lets him get away with many things because he was the first person outside of her family to be kind for the sake of being kind. I think Treech would reject a lot of her attempts at getting closer and refuse to admit how much he cares about her. I think Lamina, who is so declarative with her love and wants the same back, is only able to look past this because she convinces herself that the only thing that matters about him is his kindness. Kindness she has been a firsthand witness to and kindness that impacted her at a young age. She’s seen the good in him and refuses to let that good be outshined by all his bad, even if that means becoming a bit of a doormat for his bad habits.

Lamina grows to love Treech over a period of time as she forces herself to push past all his flaws. Treech loves her in an instant because he can’t help himself.

This plays into the part above where I talked about how Treech thinks he doesn’t impact anyone when in reality it’s impossible for him not to and how Lamina has that quality about her that forces everyone to at least look at her.

When Treech shows Lamina that first act of kindness as kids, he impacts her life in a way that makes it impossible for her to not want to know him. Lamina inherently has that quality about her, the quality that makes people want to know her, and Treech, guarded, closed-off Treech, is unable to escape her pull.

In my head, there is literally no world where they don’t immediately mean something to each other, because it is literally engraved into who they are. Treech impacts everyone, Lamina forces everyone to impact her.

In a perfect world, Treech goes to therapy for his self-hatred and Lamina gains a little bit of self-worth (i.e. tells Treech to figure his shit out instead of taking it out on her) however they live in Panem and that is not possible.

Thus their downfall.

Part 1:

In my head, there are five key elements that color Treech and Lamina’s relationship and the downfall of it. Those are:

1. their youth

2. they are never in line with each other

3. regret

4. circumstance

5. love

THEIR YOUTH

I think The Hunger Games fans are particularly good at remembering that if a character is young it is fundamental to that character, but everyone needs a reminder every now and then

Lamina is fifteen. Treech is head cannoned as a year to two years older. They are teenagers.

Teenagers in particular have a really hard time when it comes to looking outside yourself. Their worldview is so small because it isn’t even two decades old.

Teenage relationships are so special because there is nothing like it, but they are also so fragile.

There’s nothing quite like trying to figure out who tf you are while also having big intense feelings for someone else.

In my writing, I play around with how the tragedy of their relationship is that it was never given the chance to mend. As I said previously, I think they knew each other long before the games, and I also think they meant something to each other (whatever that means to you). However, I think they were also broken before the games.

This comes mostly from my own conviction that I don’t believe that anyone, even repressed Treech, could abandon someone they love the way he did, but also from the look on Lamina’s face afterward.

I’d like to clarify that the way I view the love Treech has for Lamina as deep and (for him) frustratingly unwavering. I don’t believe that if he was actively in a positive relationship with her, he would have been able to leave her on her own. They also knew each other in a way no one else did for years. If he had abandoned her while being on good terms, in my eyes, he is irredeemable.

But also, I think the look on Lamina’s face wasn’t shocked. It was full of hurt and fear, but there wasn’t the kind of shock on her face that would convey “we’re besties for the resties right now and I trust him more than anything but he just betrayed me”. To me, there was the look of someone who had just been faced with something they knew had the possibility of happening and was now having to face the aftermath.

Also, this is probably important. I think Treech would have happily laid down and died for her (it’s the self-hatred and the feeling of unworthiness) if he didn’t have that pesky devotion to duty trait. The duty in question being his obligation to survive for his family’s sake.

^another example of the juxtaposition of his character

So I think they broke before. Whether it be through distance, time, an argument or something else, I believe something happened that reduced the trust Lamina had in their relationship and allowed Treech to convince himself he no longer owed her his loyalty.

Because like I said, Treech does not want to love people. He loves his family because it is his duty, but that is where he draws the line. He absolutely, under no circumstances, goes out looking for anyone else to love.

(And then he meets Lamina whose defining quality is an inherent lovability but I digress.)

So they were broken, but I do believe that by that point they were too entwined in each other’s lives to stay broken so eventually, they would have healed…

Had they been given the time.

Their youth is such an important part of who they are to me, because they died at those ages. They were broken and died before they could fix it. Before they could grow and mature and form a relationship that is mature and not one from a child’s perspective.

When you meet someone at a young age as I headcannon they did, that’s the core of who they are to you. Treech still viewed her as above him because he was seventeen and it is so easy to think others are better than you when you are seventeen. Lamina loved Treech without blame because he was the first person to show her kindness and a part of her is still that little lonely girl.

But loving someone as a child, and as a teenager, and loving them as an adult is different, because they are different.

I think they were broken because learning to love someone as they age and as you age is so so difficult. It is inevitable there be hiccups, but I think they would have figured it out.

They just got Reaped before they could.

THEY ARE NEVER IN LINE WITH EACH OTHER.

I also touch on this a lot in my writing, but I think a lot of their relationship is a race.

I’ve mentioned how they are similar, it’s just that the way they view those similarities is entirely different.

I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but it is one of the most frustrating things in the world to have all the same traits as someone and use them entirely differently— especially if it’s someone you care about.

I think much of their relationship is a game of catch-up. Lamina finally understands something about Treech but when she goes to tell him he has ran in the other direction. When she reaches him, he has realized the same thing she has, but she is already at a different place and too far to tell. I don’t mean this to say that Lamina is smarter or always ahead, in fact I mean this to say that they are so infuriatingly the same that they are different.

They go at different speeds, and in Lamina’s case she tries her hardest to walk in line with Treech, while he does everything in his power to make sure they are nowhere near in step, because if they’re in-step, that is just someone else to lose.

I think they are always on different pages and part of that is why they just can’t give the other up. It is too fascinating, even for Treech, the idea of what will it be like when we are finally in tune? How will that feel? What could that bring us?

It’s every child’s game wrapped up. Tag, Hide and Seek, Telephone, Ghosts in the Graveyard. One person knows and the other is a victim of that knowing. It’s just a matter of whoever’s “it” at the time.

And it isn’t just their own flaws that won’t allow them to be on the same page. It’s the tumultuous lives they will never escape. Not that I have much experience, but I imagine living in the world of Panem doesn’t allow one the luxury of discovering who the person they love is in a sweet and natural growing way. It’s either you know or you don’t. It’s why Treech’s inability to get close to others is so frustrating, because there is no time to convince him to when death is a very close friend. I picture a constant sense of urgency in their world, one with rooms full of held-breaths and one where being able to sit still is unheard of. There is always something happening.

Often times we take for granted the luxury to not only discover who we are, but to also discover who our loved ones are.

They don’t have that luxury. It’s all or nothing at once.

We see this throughout the main trilogy a lot. Peeta loves Katniss from the start and then when he’s hijacked hates her. Katniss protects the people she loves with no reservations. Even with Peeta, she switches from intense hatred and mistrust to nursing him back to health and risking her own life to do so.

This is because they literally don’t have the luxury of time to figure out just exactly how you feel about someone. In that world you need to know instantly because the promise of time is nonexistent.

I imagine Treech as the exact opposite. I think he goes back and forth all the time on his emotions with Lamina because of how contradictory his personality is. I think this is incredibly frustrating for Lamina who never knows where she stands with him.

I joke a lot about how Treemina ain’t Treemina if they don’t have miscommunication and this is why. They are both so similar that they are never together.

Yet Lamina refuses to give up and tries all her life to pick away at Treech’s walls and there are moments where he lets her and moments when he fights her, and there are even moments when Lamina stops. There are few moments where he helps her, and never ones where they swing at the same time.

You can’t be with someone you aren’t walking in line with.

REGRET.

This might just be the most obvious part of their relationship. The way I write them canonically, almost every single negative interaction is colored with regret.

Clearly, the betrayal is the biggest form of that. Treech regrets having to do it in the first place and he regrets not feeling guilty enough to change it.

I think he regrets that Lamina has to die for him to live. I think he regrets that he loves her and I also think he regrets that he doesn’t love her enough.

I think Lamina towards the end of her life regrets that she ever knew Treech at all, but I also think she regrets that they were never given time. The look on her face as she dies is one of anger but I think it’s mostly pain— and I think that pain encompasses a lot of things. I think it’s the pain of what he did, who they were, what they could have been, and the fact that they never got the chance to discover that.

Regret to me is threaded through all of their interactions and honestly, regret is a main theme of The Hunger Games. When you’re faced with death it’s so easy to think of all the things you’ve done wrong and everything you could have done better.

I also picture the regret to not only be about the betrayal and the knowledge they both have of their imminent deaths but I also think it’s regret that happened long before the games.

This stems mostly from Treech’s look down as he walks toward Coral to accept her offer. It’s one of shame but it also looks to me again, much like Lamina’s as one of acceptance.

I think they both went into the Games knowing this would happen because it’s happened before. I said how I thought they were broken before and while I don’t have a concrete picture of what that looks like I think it’s no surprise to either of them that they go their separate ways because of a betrayal.

That to me adds another layer of tragedy to their relationship. Loving someone that you also have no trust in is miserable, and knowing that the person you love has no trust in you but also not caring to do anything to change that is also miserable.

By now it should be pretty obvious that I view their entire relationship as constantly being at odds. Regret for doing something, regret for not doing something else. Regret for loving each other, regret for not loving each other enough. Regret for what has happened, regret for what will never happen.

It’s so easy to regret things when it comes to people you love. The definition of regret is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity.

In my opinion, their entire relationship is compiled of missed opportunities, whether that be the missed opportunity to walk away and leave, or the missed opportunity to stay and fight both in and out of the arena.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

Obviously, circumstance is big with every relationship. Maybe this shouldn’t be called a key component but being Tributes in The Hunger Games is a pretty big circumstance.

I believe before I mentioned how I think the tragedy of their relationship is that they were never given the chance to fix what had been broken because they died before they could.

I know it may seem like I think Treech is a self-hating, cowardly little bastard (which lowkey yes) but also no.

One of the most interesting things about The Hunger Games is the theme of how fear brings out the worst in people.

It’s the whole thing about how misery loves company and bad emotions breed bad emotions. We see it in literally every Game how it is a consistent fight to stay positive and to hold onto your head. In Catching Fire Katniss is constantly having to be reminded of who the real enemy is.

It is no secret how different the 10th Hunger Games are compared to the ones we see in the original Trilogy. I just want to reiterate how much of a death sentence it was to be Reaped in the early days. Even Katniss, who views The Hunger Games as the horrific practice they are, still has some level of reverence for the Victors. It’s hard not to have reverence for glory, and that is what it means to be a Victor in the Hunger Games of Katniss’s books.

And maybe reverence isn’t the right word, but at least hope that there is a possibility to win, because the Victors are shoved down their throats until the next Game.

During tbosas, it’s the opposite. We don’t even know if the other Districts know who wins the Hunger Games once they do. These kids aren’t thinking about winning because they’ll get rich or a nice house, they’re thinking about winning for the sole luxury of living.

That is a HUGE difference in my opinion and one that is very prevalent through the books. I haven’t read the original trilogy in a while so I could be wrong, and as dire as the circumstances are there is always that underlying thread of “lifelong glory for the winners”, and this is obtained through the way the Tributes are treated pre-games. Personally, I think part of the reason they do that is to make the Tributes even more bloodthirsty. It’s to show them that hey, if you fight hard to win, not ONLY will you survive, but you’ll ALSO have a life of luxury after. It’s horrific, and manipulative, and works completely if the acts of some Victors (Enobaria ripping an opponents throat out with her teeth) is anything to go by.

With tbosas, it feels literally so dire. The Tributes are MISERABLE before the Games and in all honestly I would be too. You’re having to fight to live just to go back to the same hard life you’ve always had. It’s literally insane.

It’s why I think all the good in the 10th Hunger Games is so shocking, because why tf would anyone have any goodness left in their heart when they’ve been stuck in a zoo, barely fed, bombed, and been to two funerals before you even get to the arena?

That kind of suffering brings out either the best in people, or the worst and we see it with all the Tributes.

That’s why I think it’s important to note the circumstance. If it were the 74th Hunger Games, I’m not sure if I’m convinced that Treech would have left Lamina the way he did, because he wouldn’t have been beat down so badly before, the way he was in the 10th.

But after going through everything they did before the arena in the 10th? What is one more heartache on top of the pile? They’re dead anyway.

LOVE.

A bit on the nose I know, but it’s important.

Everything I’ve mentioned before— the sadness, the betrayal, the regret— would not be possible if they didn’t love each other.

It’s that whole quote that’s like a traitor never comes from an enemy it comes from a friend.

That is literally them. That is the tragedy of their relationship. Because for once love did not fix all. It didn’t save anyone, it didn’t protect anyone, and it didn’t do anything besides exist.

However, that is why I find it so cool. If you’ve been on tumblr for even a short while you’ve definitely seen all those posts about how love doesn’t always have to be world-ending to matter.

For me, what I always try to remember is that at the end of the day they loved each other. Yes, they wished they didn’t and it would be so much easier for everyone if they didn’t, but they did.

As confusing, and tumultuous, and complicated as their relationship gets, the core of it is love.

That’s why it hurts as bad as it does. They loved each other. It didn’t do anything to help, but they still did.

If you’ve read my fics you know that I almost always write them as romantic, however, that does not always have to be the end goal. I think that the love they have for each other is deep and unrelenting and it doesn’t always have to end with them in a relationship.

Again, the love was there, whatever type, and that is what matters.

The tumblr post that’s like “not romantic, not platonic but a secret third thing (so devoted the lines blur)” is the easiest way to put it.

It is a luxury to love and it is also a burden, and though neither of them lived long they experienced both sides of that.

Part 1:

In my head, there are five key elements that color Treech and Lamina’s relationship and the downfall of it. Those are:

1. their youth

2. they are never in line with each other

3. regret

4. circumstance

5. love

THEIR YOUTH

I think The Hunger Games fans are particularly good at remembering that if a character is young it is fundamental to that character, but everyone needs a reminder every now and then

Lamina is fifteen. Treech is head cannoned as a year to two years older. They are teenagers.

Teenagers in particular have a really hard time when it comes to looking outside yourself. Their worldview is so small because it isn’t even two decades old.

Teenage relationships are so special because there is nothing like it, but they are also so fragile.

There’s nothing quite like trying to figure out who tf you are while also having big intense feelings for someone else.

In my writing, I play around with how the tragedy of their relationship is that it was never given the chance to mend. As I said previously, I think they knew each other long before the games, and I also think they meant something to each other (whatever that means to you). However, I think they were also broken before the games.

This comes mostly from my own conviction that I don’t believe that anyone, even repressed Treech, could abandon someone they love the way he did, but also from the look on Lamina’s face afterward.

I’d like to clarify that the way I view the love Treech has for Lamina as deep and (for him) frustratingly unwavering. I don’t believe that if he was actively in a positive relationship with her, he would have been able to leave her on her own. They also knew each other in a way no one else did for years. If he had abandoned her while being on good terms, in my eyes, he is irredeemable.

But also, I think the look on Lamina’s face wasn’t shocked. It was full of hurt and fear, but there wasn’t the kind of shock on her face that would convey “we’re besties for the resties right now and I trust him more than anything but he just betrayed me”. To me, there was the look of someone who had just been faced with something they knew had the possibility of happening and was now having to face the aftermath.

Also, this is probably important. I think Treech would have happily laid down and died for her (it’s the self-hatred and the feeling of unworthiness) if he didn’t have that pesky devotion to duty trait. The duty in question being his obligation to survive for his family’s sake.

^another example of the juxtaposition of his character

So I think they broke before. Whether it be through distance, time, an argument or something else, I believe something happened that reduced the trust Lamina had in their relationship and allowed Treech to convince himself he no longer owed her his loyalty.

Because like I said, Treech does not want to love people. He loves his family because it is his duty, but that is where he draws the line. He absolutely, under no circumstances, goes out looking for anyone else to love.

(And then he meets Lamina whose defining quality is an inherent lovability but I digress.)

So they were broken, but I do believe that by that point they were too entwined in each other’s lives to stay broken so eventually, they would have healed…

Had they been given the time.

Their youth is such an important part of who they are to me, because they died at those ages. They were broken and died before they could fix it. Before they could grow and mature and form a relationship that is mature and not one from a child’s perspective.

When you meet someone at a young age as I headcannon they did, that’s the core of who they are to you. Treech still viewed her as above him because he was seventeen and it is so easy to think others are better than you when you are seventeen. Lamina loved Treech without blame because he was the first person to show her kindness and a part of her is still that little lonely girl.

But loving someone as a child, and as a teenager, and loving them as an adult is different, because they are different.

I think they were broken because learning to love someone as they age and as you age is so so difficult. It is inevitable there be hiccups, but I think they would have figured it out.

They just got Reaped before they could.

THEY ARE NEVER IN LINE WITH EACH OTHER.

I also touch on this a lot in my writing, but I think a lot of their relationship is a race.

I’ve mentioned how they are similar, it’s just that the way they view those similarities is entirely different.

I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but it is one of the most frustrating things in the world to have all the same traits as someone and use them entirely differently— especially if it’s someone you care about.

I think much of their relationship is a game of catch-up. Lamina finally understands something about Treech but when she goes to tell him he has ran in the other direction. When she reaches him, he has realized the same thing she has, but she is already at a different place and too far to tell. I don’t mean this to say that Lamina is smarter or always ahead, in fact I mean this to say that they are so infuriatingly the same that they are different.

They go at different speeds, and in Lamina’s case she tries her hardest to walk in line with Treech, while he does everything in his power to make sure they are nowhere near in step, because if they’re in-step, that is just someone else to lose.

I think they are always on different pages and part of that is why they just can’t give the other up. It is too fascinating, even for Treech, the idea of what will it be like when we are finally in tune? How will that feel? What could that bring us?

It’s every child’s game wrapped up. Tag, Hide and Seek, Telephone, Ghosts in the Graveyard. One person knows and the other is a victim of that knowing. It’s just a matter of whoever’s “it” at the time.

And it isn’t just their own flaws that won’t allow them to be on the same page. It’s the tumultuous lives they will never escape. Not that I have much experience, but I imagine living in the world of Panem doesn’t allow one the luxury of discovering who the person they love is in a sweet and natural growing way. It’s either you know or you don’t. It’s why Treech’s inability to get close to others is so frustrating, because there is no time to convince him to when death is a very close friend. I picture a constant sense of urgency in their world, one with rooms full of held-breaths and one where being able to sit still is unheard of. There is always something happening.

Often times we take for granted the luxury to not only discover who we are, but to also discover who our loved ones are.

They don’t have that luxury. It’s all or nothing at once.

We see this throughout the main trilogy a lot. Peeta loves Katniss from the start and then when he’s hijacked hates her. Katniss protects the people she loves with no reservations. Even with Peeta, she switches from intense hatred and mistrust to nursing him back to health and risking her own life to do so.

This is because they literally don’t have the luxury of time to figure out just exactly how you feel about someone. In that world you need to know instantly because the promise of time is nonexistent.

I imagine Treech as the exact opposite. I think he goes back and forth all the time on his emotions with Lamina because of how contradictory his personality is. I think this is incredibly frustrating for Lamina who never knows where she stands with him.

I joke a lot about how Treemina ain’t Treemina if they don’t have miscommunication and this is why. They are both so similar that they are never together.

Yet Lamina refuses to give up and tries all her life to pick away at Treech’s walls and there are moments where he lets her and moments when he fights her, and there are even moments when Lamina stops. There are few moments where he helps her, and never ones where they swing at the same time.

You can’t be with someone you aren’t walking in line with.

REGRET.

This might just be the most obvious part of their relationship. The way I write them canonically, almost every single negative interaction is colored with regret.

Clearly, the betrayal is the biggest form of that. Treech regrets having to do it in the first place and he regrets not feeling guilty enough to change it.

I think he regrets that Lamina has to die for him to live. I think he regrets that he loves her and I also think he regrets that he doesn’t love her enough.

I think Lamina towards the end of her life regrets that she ever knew Treech at all, but I also think she regrets that they were never given time. The look on her face as she dies is one of anger but I think it’s mostly pain— and I think that pain encompasses a lot of things. I think it’s the pain of what he did, who they were, what they could have been, and the fact that they never got the chance to discover that.

Regret to me is threaded through all of their interactions and honestly, regret is a main theme of The Hunger Games. When you’re faced with death it’s so easy to think of all the things you’ve done wrong and everything you could have done better.

I also picture the regret to not only be about the betrayal and the knowledge they both have of their imminent deaths but I also think it’s regret that happened long before the games.

This stems mostly from Treech’s look down as he walks toward Coral to accept her offer. It’s one of shame but it also looks to me again, much like Lamina’s as one of acceptance.

I think they both went into the Games knowing this would happen because it’s happened before. I said how I thought they were broken before and while I don’t have a concrete picture of what that looks like I think it’s no surprise to either of them that they go their separate ways because of a betrayal.

That to me adds another layer of tragedy to their relationship. Loving someone that you also have no trust in is miserable, and knowing that the person you love has no trust in you but also not caring to do anything to change that is also miserable.

By now it should be pretty obvious that I view their entire relationship as constantly being at odds. Regret for doing something, regret for not doing something else. Regret for loving each other, regret for not loving each other enough. Regret for what has happened, regret for what will never happen.

It’s so easy to regret things when it comes to people you love. The definition of regret is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity.

In my opinion, their entire relationship is compiled of missed opportunities, whether that be the missed opportunity to walk away and leave, or the missed opportunity to stay and fight both in and out of the arena.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

Obviously, circumstance is big with every relationship. Maybe this shouldn’t be called a key component but being Tributes in The Hunger Games is a pretty big circumstance.

I believe before I mentioned how I think the tragedy of their relationship is that they were never given the chance to fix what had been broken because they died before they could.

I know it may seem like I think Treech is a self-hating, cowardly little bastard (which lowkey yes) but also no.

One of the most interesting things about The Hunger Games is the theme of how fear brings out the worst in people.

It’s the whole thing about how misery loves company and bad emotions breed bad emotions. We see it in literally every Game how it is a consistent fight to stay positive and to hold onto your head. In Catching Fire Katniss is constantly having to be reminded of who the real enemy is.

It is no secret how different the 10th Hunger Games are compared to the ones we see in the original Trilogy. I just want to reiterate how much of a death sentence it was to be Reaped in the early days. Even Katniss, who views The Hunger Games as the horrific practice they are, still has some level of reverence for the Victors. It’s hard not to have reverence for glory, and that is what it means to be a Victor in the Hunger Games of Katniss’s books.

And maybe reverence isn’t the right word, but at least hope that there is a possibility to win, because the Victors are shoved down their throats until the next Game.

During tbosas, it’s the opposite. We don’t even know if the other Districts know who wins the Hunger Games once they do. These kids aren’t thinking about winning because they’ll get rich or a nice house, they’re thinking about winning for the sole luxury of living.

That is a HUGE difference in my opinion and one that is very prevalent through the books. I haven’t read the original trilogy in a while so I could be wrong, and as dire as the circumstances are there is always that underlying thread of “lifelong glory for the winners”, and this is obtained through the way the Tributes are treated pre-games. Personally, I think part of the reason they do that is to make the Tributes even more bloodthirsty. It’s to show them that hey, if you fight hard to win, not ONLY will you survive, but you’ll ALSO have a life of luxury after. It’s horrific, and manipulative, and works completely if the acts of some Victors (Enobaria ripping an opponents throat out with her teeth) is anything to go by.

With tbosas, it feels literally so dire. The Tributes are MISERABLE before the Games and in all honestly I would be too. You’re having to fight to live just to go back to the same hard life you’ve always had. It’s literally insane.

It’s why I think all the good in the 10th Hunger Games is so shocking, because why tf would anyone have any goodness left in their heart when they’ve been stuck in a zoo, barely fed, bombed, and been to two funerals before you even get to the arena?

That kind of suffering brings out either the best in people, or the worst and we see it with all the Tributes.

That’s why I think it’s important to note the circumstance. If it were the 74th Hunger Games, I’m not sure if I’m convinced that Treech would have left Lamina the way he did, because he wouldn’t have been beat down so badly before, the way he was in the 10th.

But after going through everything they did before the arena in the 10th? What is one more heartache on top of the pile? They’re dead anyway.

LOVE.

A bit on the nose I know, but it’s important.

Everything I’ve mentioned before— the sadness, the betrayal, the regret— would not be possible if they didn’t love each other.

It’s that whole quote that’s like a traitor never comes from an enemy it comes from a friend.

That is literally them. That is the tragedy of their relationship. Because for once love did not fix all. It didn’t save anyone, it didn’t protect anyone, and it didn’t do anything besides exist.

However, that is why I find it so cool. If you’ve been on tumblr for even a short while you’ve definitely seen all those posts about how love doesn’t always have to be world-ending to matter.

For me, what I always try to remember is that at the end of the day they loved each other. Yes, they wished they didn’t and it would be so much easier for everyone if they didn’t, but they did.

As confusing, and tumultuous, and complicated as their relationship gets, the core of it is love.

That’s why it hurts as bad as it does. They loved each other. It didn’t do anything to help, but they still did.

If you’ve read my fics you know that I almost always write them as romantic, however, that does not always have to be the end goal. I think that the love they have for each other is deep and unrelenting and it doesn’t always have to end with them in a relationship.

Again, the love was there, whatever type, and that is what matters.

The tumblr post that’s like “not romantic, not platonic but a secret third thing (so devoted the lines blur)” is the easiest way to put it.

It is a luxury to love and it is also a burden, and though neither of them lived long they experienced both sides of that.

Part 1:

In my head, there are five key elements that color Treech and Lamina’s relationship and the downfall of it. Those are:

1. their youth

2. they are never in line with each other

3. regret

4. circumstance

5. love

THEIR YOUTH

I think The Hunger Games fans are particularly good at remembering that if a character is young it is fundamental to that character, but everyone needs a reminder every now and then

Lamina is fifteen. Treech is head cannoned as a year to two years older. They are teenagers.

Teenagers in particular have a really hard time when it comes to looking outside yourself. Their worldview is so small because it isn’t even two decades old.

Teenage relationships are so special because there is nothing like it, but they are also so fragile.

There’s nothing quite like trying to figure out who tf you are while also having big intense feelings for someone else.

In my writing, I play around with how the tragedy of their relationship is that it was never given the chance to mend. As I said previously, I think they knew each other long before the games, and I also think they meant something to each other (whatever that means to you). However, I think they were also broken before the games.

This comes mostly from my own conviction that I don’t believe that anyone, even repressed Treech, could abandon someone they love the way he did, but also from the look on Lamina’s face afterward.

I’d like to clarify that the way I view the love Treech has for Lamina as deep and (for him) frustratingly unwavering. I don’t believe that if he was actively in a positive relationship with her, he would have been able to leave her on her own. They also knew each other in a way no one else did for years. If he had abandoned her while being on good terms, in my eyes, he is irredeemable.

But also, I think the look on Lamina’s face wasn’t shocked. It was full of hurt and fear, but there wasn’t the kind of shock on her face that would convey “we’re besties for the resties right now and I trust him more than anything but he just betrayed me”. To me, there was the look of someone who had just been faced with something they knew had the possibility of happening and was now having to face the aftermath.

Also, this is probably important. I think Treech would have happily laid down and died for her (it’s the self-hatred and the feeling of unworthiness) if he didn’t have that pesky devotion to duty trait. The duty in question being his obligation to survive for his family’s sake.

^another example of the juxtaposition of his character

So I think they broke before. Whether it be through distance, time, an argument or something else, I believe something happened that reduced the trust Lamina had in their relationship and allowed Treech to convince himself he no longer owed her his loyalty.

Because like I said, Treech does not want to love people. He loves his family because it is his duty, but that is where he draws the line. He absolutely, under no circumstances, goes out looking for anyone else to love.

(And then he meets Lamina whose defining quality is an inherent lovability but I digress.)

So they were broken, but I do believe that by that point they were too entwined in each other’s lives to stay broken so eventually, they would have healed…

Had they been given the time.

Their youth is such an important part of who they are to me, because they died at those ages. They were broken and died before they could fix it. Before they could grow and mature and form a relationship that is mature and not one from a child’s perspective.

When you meet someone at a young age as I headcannon they did, that’s the core of who they are to you. Treech still viewed her as above him because he was seventeen and it is so easy to think others are better than you when you are seventeen. Lamina loved Treech without blame because he was the first person to show her kindness and a part of her is still that little lonely girl.

But loving someone as a child, and as a teenager, and loving them as an adult is different, because they are different.

I think they were broken because learning to love someone as they age and as you age is so so difficult. It is inevitable there be hiccups, but I think they would have figured it out.

They just got Reaped before they could.

THEY ARE NEVER IN LINE WITH EACH OTHER.

I also touch on this a lot in my writing, but I think a lot of their relationship is a race.

I’ve mentioned how they are similar, it’s just that the way they view those similarities is entirely different.

I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but it is one of the most frustrating things in the world to have all the same traits as someone and use them entirely differently— especially if it’s someone you care about.

I think much of their relationship is a game of catch-up. Lamina finally understands something about Treech but when she goes to tell him he has ran in the other direction. When she reaches him, he has realized the same thing she has, but she is already at a different place and too far to tell. I don’t mean this to say that Lamina is smarter or always ahead, in fact I mean this to say that they are so infuriatingly the same that they are different.

They go at different speeds, and in Lamina’s case she tries her hardest to walk in line with Treech, while he does everything in his power to make sure they are nowhere near in step, because if they’re in-step, that is just someone else to lose.

I think they are always on different pages and part of that is why they just can’t give the other up. It is too fascinating, even for Treech, the idea of what will it be like when we are finally in tune? How will that feel? What could that bring us?

It’s every child’s game wrapped up. Tag, Hide and Seek, Telephone, Ghosts in the Graveyard. One person knows and the other is a victim of that knowing. It’s just a matter of whoever’s “it” at the time.

And it isn’t just their own flaws that won’t allow them to be on the same page. It’s the tumultuous lives they will never escape. Not that I have much experience, but I imagine living in the world of Panem doesn’t allow one the luxury of discovering who the person they love is in a sweet and natural growing way. It’s either you know or you don’t. It’s why Treech’s inability to get close to others is so frustrating, because there is no time to convince him to when death is a very close friend. I picture a constant sense of urgency in their world, one with rooms full of held-breaths and one where being able to sit still is unheard of. There is always something happening.

Often times we take for granted the luxury to not only discover who we are, but to also discover who our loved ones are.

They don’t have that luxury. It’s all or nothing at once.

We see this throughout the main trilogy a lot. Peeta loves Katniss from the start and then when he’s hijacked hates her. Katniss protects the people she loves with no reservations. Even with Peeta, she switches from intense hatred and mistrust to nursing him back to health and risking her own life to do so.

This is because they literally don’t have the luxury of time to figure out just exactly how you feel about someone. In that world you need to know instantly because the promise of time is nonexistent.

I imagine Treech as the exact opposite. I think he goes back and forth all the time on his emotions with Lamina because of how contradictory his personality is. I think this is incredibly frustrating for Lamina who never knows where she stands with him.

I joke a lot about how Treemina ain’t Treemina if they don’t have miscommunication and this is why. They are both so similar that they are never together.

Yet Lamina refuses to give up and tries all her life to pick away at Treech’s walls and there are moments where he lets her and moments when he fights her, and there are even moments when Lamina stops. There are few moments where he helps her, and never ones where they swing at the same time.

You can’t be with someone you aren’t walking in line with.

REGRET.

This might just be the most obvious part of their relationship. The way I write them canonically, almost every single negative interaction is colored with regret.

Clearly, the betrayal is the biggest form of that. Treech regrets having to do it in the first place and he regrets not feeling guilty enough to change it.

I think he regrets that Lamina has to die for him to live. I think he regrets that he loves her and I also think he regrets that he doesn’t love her enough.

I think Lamina towards the end of her life regrets that she ever knew Treech at all, but I also think she regrets that they were never given time. The look on her face as she dies is one of anger but I think it’s mostly pain— and I think that pain encompasses a lot of things. I think it’s the pain of what he did, who they were, what they could have been, and the fact that they never got the chance to discover that.

Regret to me is threaded through all of their interactions and honestly, regret is a main theme of The Hunger Games. When you’re faced with death it’s so easy to think of all the things you’ve done wrong and everything you could have done better.

I also picture the regret to not only be about the betrayal and the knowledge they both have of their imminent deaths but I also think it’s regret that happened long before the games.

This stems mostly from Treech’s look down as he walks toward Coral to accept her offer. It’s one of shame but it also looks to me again, much like Lamina’s as one of acceptance.

I think they both went into the Games knowing this would happen because it’s happened before. I said how I thought they were broken before and while I don’t have a concrete picture of what that looks like I think it’s no surprise to either of them that they go their separate ways because of a betrayal.

That to me adds another layer of tragedy to their relationship. Loving someone that you also have no trust in is miserable, and knowing that the person you love has no trust in you but also not caring to do anything to change that is also miserable.

By now it should be pretty obvious that I view their entire relationship as constantly being at odds. Regret for doing something, regret for not doing something else. Regret for loving each other, regret for not loving each other enough. Regret for what has happened, regret for what will never happen.

It’s so easy to regret things when it comes to people you love. The definition of regret is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity.

In my opinion, their entire relationship is compiled of missed opportunities, whether that be the missed opportunity to walk away and leave, or the missed opportunity to stay and fight both in and out of the arena.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

Obviously, circumstance is big with every relationship. Maybe this shouldn’t be called a key component but being Tributes in The Hunger Games is a pretty big circumstance.

I believe before I mentioned how I think the tragedy of their relationship is that they were never given the chance to fix what had been broken because they died before they could.

I know it may seem like I think Treech is a self-hating, cowardly little bastard (which lowkey yes) but also no.

One of the most interesting things about The Hunger Games is the theme of how fear brings out the worst in people.

It’s the whole thing about how misery loves company and bad emotions breed bad emotions. We see it in literally every Game how it is a consistent fight to stay positive and to hold onto your head. In Catching Fire Katniss is constantly having to be reminded of who the real enemy is.

It is no secret how different the 10th Hunger Games are compared to the ones we see in the original Trilogy. I just want to reiterate how much of a death sentence it was to be Reaped in the early days. Even Katniss, who views The Hunger Games as the horrific practice they are, still has some level of reverence for the Victors. It’s hard not to have reverence for glory, and that is what it means to be a Victor in the Hunger Games of Katniss’s books.

And maybe reverence isn’t the right word, but at least hope that there is a possibility to win, because the Victors are shoved down their throats until the next Game.

During tbosas, it’s the opposite. We don’t even know if the other Districts know who wins the Hunger Games once they do. These kids aren’t thinking about winning because they’ll get rich or a nice house, they’re thinking about winning for the sole luxury of living.

That is a HUGE difference in my opinion and one that is very prevalent through the books. I haven’t read the original trilogy in a while so I could be wrong, and as dire as the circumstances are there is always that underlying thread of “lifelong glory for the winners”, and this is obtained through the way the Tributes are treated pre-games. Personally, I think part of the reason they do that is to make the Tributes even more bloodthirsty. It’s to show them that hey, if you fight hard to win, not ONLY will you survive, but you’ll ALSO have a life of luxury after. It’s horrific, and manipulative, and works completely if the acts of some Victors (Enobaria ripping an opponents throat out with her teeth) is anything to go by.

With tbosas, it feels literally so dire. The Tributes are MISERABLE before the Games and in all honestly I would be too. You’re having to fight to live just to go back to the same hard life you’ve always had. It’s literally insane.

It’s why I think all the good in the 10th Hunger Games is so shocking, because why tf would anyone have any goodness left in their heart when they’ve been stuck in a zoo, barely fed, bombed, and been to two funerals before you even get to the arena?

That kind of suffering brings out either the best in people, or the worst and we see it with all the Tributes.

That’s why I think it’s important to note the circumstance. If it were the 74th Hunger Games, I’m not sure if I’m convinced that Treech would have left Lamina the way he did, because he wouldn’t have been beat down so badly before, the way he was in the 10th.

But after going through everything they did before the arena in the 10th? What is one more heartache on top of the pile? They’re dead anyway.

LOVE.

A bit on the nose I know, but it’s important.

Everything I’ve mentioned before— the sadness, the betrayal, the regret— would not be possible if they didn’t love each other.

It’s that whole quote that’s like a traitor never comes from an enemy it comes from a friend.

That is literally them. That is the tragedy of their relationship. Because for once love did not fix all. It didn’t save anyone, it didn’t protect anyone, and it didn’t do anything besides exist.

However, that is why I find it so cool. If you’ve been on tumblr for even a short while you’ve definitely seen all those posts about how love doesn’t always have to be world-ending to matter.

For me, what I always try to remember is that at the end of the day they loved each other. Yes, they wished they didn’t and it would be so much easier for everyone if they didn’t, but they did.

As confusing, and tumultuous, and complicated as their relationship gets, the core of it is love.

That’s why it hurts as bad as it does. They loved each other. It didn’t do anything to help, but they still did.

If you’ve read my fics you know that I almost always write them as romantic, however, that does not always have to be the end goal. I think that the love they have for each other is deep and unrelenting and it doesn’t always have to end with them in a relationship.

Again, the love was there, whatever type, and that is what matters.

The tumblr post that’s like “not romantic, not platonic but a secret third thing (so devoted the lines blur)” is the easiest way to put it.

It is a luxury to love and it is also a burden, and though neither of them lived long they experienced both sides of that.

Part 1:

In my head, there are five key elements that color Treech and Lamina’s relationship and the downfall of it. Those are:

1. their youth

2. they are never in line with each other

3. regret

4. circumstance

5. love

THEIR YOUTH

I think The Hunger Games fans are particularly good at remembering that if a character is young it is fundamental to that character, but everyone needs a reminder every now and then

Lamina is fifteen. Treech is head cannoned as a year to two years older. They are teenagers.

Teenagers in particular have a really hard time when it comes to looking outside yourself. Their worldview is so small because it isn’t even two decades old.

Teenage relationships are so special because there is nothing like it, but they are also so fragile.

There’s nothing quite like trying to figure out who tf you are while also having big intense feelings for someone else.

In my writing, I play around with how the tragedy of their relationship is that it was never given the chance to mend. As I said previously, I think they knew each other long before the games, and I also think they meant something to each other (whatever that means to you). However, I think they were also broken before the games.

This comes mostly from my own conviction that I don’t believe that anyone, even repressed Treech, could abandon someone they love the way he did, but also from the look on Lamina’s face afterward.

I’d like to clarify that the way I view the love Treech has for Lamina as deep and (for him) frustratingly unwavering. I don’t believe that if he was actively in a positive relationship with her, he would have been able to leave her on her own. They also knew each other in a way no one else did for years. If he had abandoned her while being on good terms, in my eyes, he is irredeemable.

But also, I think the look on Lamina’s face wasn’t shocked. It was full of hurt and fear, but there wasn’t the kind of shock on her face that would convey “we’re besties for the resties right now and I trust him more than anything but he just betrayed me”. To me, there was the look of someone who had just been faced with something they knew had the possibility of happening and was now having to face the aftermath.

Also, this is probably important. I think Treech would have happily laid down and died for her (it’s the self-hatred and the feeling of unworthiness) if he didn’t have that pesky devotion to duty trait. The duty in question being his obligation to survive for his family’s sake.

^another example of the juxtaposition of his character

So I think they broke before. Whether it be through distance, time, an argument or something else, I believe something happened that reduced the trust Lamina had in their relationship and allowed Treech to convince himself he no longer owed her his loyalty.

Because like I said, Treech does not want to love people. He loves his family because it is his duty, but that is where he draws the line. He absolutely, under no circumstances, goes out looking for anyone else to love.

(And then he meets Lamina whose defining quality is an inherent lovability but I digress.)

So they were broken, but I do believe that by that point they were too entwined in each other’s lives to stay broken so eventually, they would have healed…

Had they been given the time.

Their youth is such an important part of who they are to me, because they died at those ages. They were broken and died before they could fix it. Before they could grow and mature and form a relationship that is mature and not one from a child’s perspective.

When you meet someone at a young age as I headcannon they did, that’s the core of who they are to you. Treech still viewed her as above him because he was seventeen and it is so easy to think others are better than you when you are seventeen. Lamina loved Treech without blame because he was the first person to show her kindness and a part of her is still that little lonely girl.

But loving someone as a child, and as a teenager, and loving them as an adult is different, because they are different.

I think they were broken because learning to love someone as they age and as you age is so so difficult. It is inevitable there be hiccups, but I think they would have figured it out.

They just got Reaped before they could.

THEY ARE NEVER IN LINE WITH EACH OTHER.

I also touch on this a lot in my writing, but I think a lot of their relationship is a race.

I’ve mentioned how they are similar, it’s just that the way they view those similarities is entirely different.

I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but it is one of the most frustrating things in the world to have all the same traits as someone and use them entirely differently— especially if it’s someone you care about.

I think much of their relationship is a game of catch-up. Lamina finally understands something about Treech but when she goes to tell him he has ran in the other direction. When she reaches him, he has realized the same thing she has, but she is already at a different place and too far to tell. I don’t mean this to say that Lamina is smarter or always ahead, in fact I mean this to say that they are so infuriatingly the same that they are different.

They go at different speeds, and in Lamina’s case she tries her hardest to walk in line with Treech, while he does everything in his power to make sure they are nowhere near in step, because if they’re in-step, that is just someone else to lose.

I think they are always on different pages and part of that is why they just can’t give the other up. It is too fascinating, even for Treech, the idea of what will it be like when we are finally in tune? How will that feel? What could that bring us?

It’s every child’s game wrapped up. Tag, Hide and Seek, Telephone, Ghosts in the Graveyard. One person knows and the other is a victim of that knowing. It’s just a matter of whoever’s “it” at the time.

And it isn’t just their own flaws that won’t allow them to be on the same page. It’s the tumultuous lives they will never escape. Not that I have much experience, but I imagine living in the world of Panem doesn’t allow one the luxury of discovering who the person they love is in a sweet and natural growing way. It’s either you know or you don’t. It’s why Treech’s inability to get close to others is so frustrating, because there is no time to convince him to when death is a very close friend. I picture a constant sense of urgency in their world, one with rooms full of held-breaths and one where being able to sit still is unheard of. There is always something happening.

Often times we take for granted the luxury to not only discover who we are, but to also discover who our loved ones are.

They don’t have that luxury. It’s all or nothing at once.

We see this throughout the main trilogy a lot. Peeta loves Katniss from the start and then when he’s hijacked hates her. Katniss protects the people she loves with no reservations. Even with Peeta, she switches from intense hatred and mistrust to nursing him back to health and risking her own life to do so.

This is because they literally don’t have the luxury of time to figure out just exactly how you feel about someone. In that world you need to know instantly because the promise of time is nonexistent.

I imagine Treech as the exact opposite. I think he goes back and forth all the time on his emotions with Lamina because of how contradictory his personality is. I think this is incredibly frustrating for Lamina who never knows where she stands with him.

I joke a lot about how Treemina ain’t Treemina if they don’t have miscommunication and this is why. They are both so similar that they are never together.

Yet Lamina refuses to give up and tries all her life to pick away at Treech’s walls and there are moments where he lets her and moments when he fights her, and there are even moments when Lamina stops. There are few moments where he helps her, and never ones where they swing at the same time.

You can’t be with someone you aren’t walking in line with.

REGRET.

This might just be the most obvious part of their relationship. The way I write them canonically, almost every single negative interaction is colored with regret.

Clearly, the betrayal is the biggest form of that. Treech regrets having to do it in the first place and he regrets not feeling guilty enough to change it.

I think he regrets that Lamina has to die for him to live. I think he regrets that he loves her and I also think he regrets that he doesn’t love her enough.

I think Lamina towards the end of her life regrets that she ever knew Treech at all, but I also think she regrets that they were never given time. The look on her face as she dies is one of anger but I think it’s mostly pain— and I think that pain encompasses a lot of things. I think it’s the pain of what he did, who they were, what they could have been, and the fact that they never got the chance to discover that.

Regret to me is threaded through all of their interactions and honestly, regret is a main theme of The Hunger Games. When you’re faced with death it’s so easy to think of all the things you’ve done wrong and everything you could have done better.

I also picture the regret to not only be about the betrayal and the knowledge they both have of their imminent deaths but I also think it’s regret that happened long before the games.

This stems mostly from Treech’s look down as he walks toward Coral to accept her offer. It’s one of shame but it also looks to me again, much like Lamina’s as one of acceptance.

I think they both went into the Games knowing this would happen because it’s happened before. I said how I thought they were broken before and while I don’t have a concrete picture of what that looks like I think it’s no surprise to either of them that they go their separate ways because of a betrayal.

That to me adds another layer of tragedy to their relationship. Loving someone that you also have no trust in is miserable, and knowing that the person you love has no trust in you but also not caring to do anything to change that is also miserable.

By now it should be pretty obvious that I view their entire relationship as constantly being at odds. Regret for doing something, regret for not doing something else. Regret for loving each other, regret for not loving each other enough. Regret for what has happened, regret for what will never happen.

It’s so easy to regret things when it comes to people you love. The definition of regret is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity.

In my opinion, their entire relationship is compiled of missed opportunities, whether that be the missed opportunity to walk away and leave, or the missed opportunity to stay and fight both in and out of the arena.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

Obviously, circumstance is big with every relationship. Maybe this shouldn’t be called a key component but being Tributes in The Hunger Games is a pretty big circumstance.

I believe before I mentioned how I think the tragedy of their relationship is that they were never given the chance to fix what had been broken because they died before they could.

I know it may seem like I think Treech is a self-hating, cowardly little bastard (which lowkey yes) but also no.

One of the most interesting things about The Hunger Games is the theme of how fear brings out the worst in people.

It’s the whole thing about how misery loves company and bad emotions breed bad emotions. We see it in literally every Game how it is a consistent fight to stay positive and to hold onto your head. In Catching Fire Katniss is constantly having to be reminded of who the real enemy is.

It is no secret how different the 10th Hunger Games are compared to the ones we see in the original Trilogy. I just want to reiterate how much of a death sentence it was to be Reaped in the early days. Even Katniss, who views The Hunger Games as the horrific practice they are, still has some level of reverence for the Victors. It’s hard not to have reverence for glory, and that is what it means to be a Victor in the Hunger Games of Katniss’s books.

And maybe reverence isn’t the right word, but at least hope that there is a possibility to win, because the Victors are shoved down their throats until the next Game.

During tbosas, it’s the opposite. We don’t even know if the other Districts know who wins the Hunger Games once they do. These kids aren’t thinking about winning because they’ll get rich or a nice house, they’re thinking about winning for the sole luxury of living.

That is a HUGE difference in my opinion and one that is very prevalent through the books. I haven’t read the original trilogy in a while so I could be wrong, and as dire as the circumstances are there is always that underlying thread of “lifelong glory for the winners”, and this is obtained through the way the Tributes are treated pre-games. Personally, I think part of the reason they do that is to make the Tributes even more bloodthirsty. It’s to show them that hey, if you fight hard to win, not ONLY will you survive, but you’ll ALSO have a life of luxury after. It’s horrific, and manipulative, and works completely if the acts of some Victors (Enobaria ripping an opponents throat out with her teeth) is anything to go by.

With tbosas, it feels literally so dire. The Tributes are MISERABLE before the Games and in all honestly I would be too. You’re having to fight to live just to go back to the same hard life you’ve always had. It’s literally insane.

It’s why I think all the good in the 10th Hunger Games is so shocking, because why tf would anyone have any goodness left in their heart when they’ve been stuck in a zoo, barely fed, bombed, and been to two funerals before you even get to the arena?

That kind of suffering brings out either the best in people, or the worst and we see it with all the Tributes.

That’s why I think it’s important to note the circumstance. If it were the 74th Hunger Games, I’m not sure if I’m convinced that Treech would have left Lamina the way he did, because he wouldn’t have been beat down so badly before, the way he was in the 10th.

But after going through everything they did before the arena in the 10th? What is one more heartache on top of the pile? They’re dead anyway.

LOVE.

A bit on the nose I know, but it’s important.

Everything I’ve mentioned before— the sadness, the betrayal, the regret— would not be possible if they didn’t love each other.

It’s that whole quote that’s like a traitor never comes from an enemy it comes from a friend.

That is literally them. That is the tragedy of their relationship. Because for once love did not fix all. It didn’t save anyone, it didn’t protect anyone, and it didn’t do anything besides exist.

However, that is why I find it so cool. If you’ve been on tumblr for even a short while you’ve definitely seen all those posts about how love doesn’t always have to be world-ending to matter.

For me, what I always try to remember is that at the end of the day they loved each other. Yes, they wished they didn’t and it would be so much easier for everyone if they didn’t, but they did.

As confusing, and tumultuous, and complicated as their relationship gets, the core of it is love.

That’s why it hurts as bad as it does. They loved each other. It didn’t do anything to help, but they still did.

If you’ve read my fics you know that I almost always write them as romantic, however, that does not always have to be the end goal. I think that the love they have for each other is deep and unrelenting and it doesn’t always have to end with them in a relationship.

Again, the love was there, whatever type, and that is what matters.

The tumblr post that’s like “not romantic, not platonic but a secret third thing (so devoted the lines blur)” is the easiest way to put it.

It is a luxury to love and it is also a burden, and though neither of them lived long they experienced both sides of that.

being friends with fellow writers is desperately trying to pawn off au’s on each other like a tennis match

being friends with fellow writers is desperately trying to pawn off au’s on each other like a tennis match

being friends with fellow writers is desperately trying to pawn off au’s on each other like a tennis match

being friends with fellow writers is desperately trying to pawn off au’s on each other like a tennis match

Can you write something with Katniss meeting Coriolanus wife. And she's like 'he wasn't always like this' ???

thats so depressinggggg but absolutely its my job. sorry its so short tho, i tried but this felt like an end ykwim?

He was my man, but now he's just a stranger...

(no ship ig, kinda Hunger Games trilogy! Coryo x wife!reader)

Queen of Hearts vibes

Summary: Katniss meets the First Lady of Panem.

Meeting [Name] Snow was a slow anticipated reach into the tresses of the Capital 'nobility'.

Katniss was slightly terrified, having heard that she was a scary woman who would order Peacekeepers to cut your head if you even passed her.

All Snow's are Lions, she'd learned, aiming for nothing but the kill.

But looking at her now, with her long, shimmering, dark blue dress cascading over her frame and her sad [e/c] eyes gazing into the bright rose garden, she had nothing but sympathy in her veins for Snow's wife. By her tensed body, Katniss knew she noticed her walk into the room.

"You know, that rose garden and I, we aren't much different. He prizes us but he says we do nothing but wither." She gazed at the brunette, analyzing Katniss' emotions through her bright green eyes.

" He wasn't always like this...I miss those times."

Katniss burst into laughter, shaking her head as disbelief struck her core.

" No, a man like Snow was born evil, and they deserve to rot in hell."

A slow, sad sigh fell from the First Lady's lips, reminiscing about the life she had with Snow before his yearning for power.

" That's what I thought too, till I fell for nothing but his sweet smile..."

You Can't, You Can't Catch me Now I'm coming like storm into your town

Lucy Gray x Sejanus' Pov

Part I/Part 2/Part 3/

Masterlist

[dark!Sejanus Plinth x Tribute!Lucy Gray Baird]

Warning: violence, serious injury, death, physical assult, gun and knife violence, possibly non-con...maybe.

Summary: You are a rebel, the last chance of the rebellion against President Snow. You're told to go on one last mission to kill the man who massacred Panem. It took you years to understand your mission when you became [name] Lily Baird, starting from the age of five till before the reaping day of the 10th Hunger Games.

The day you began your plan to destroy President Snow before he became the villain he was meant to become.

'Both sisters, Lucy Gray and [Name] Lily Baird are a part of the Covey, and though they have been chosen as tribute for both District 12 and 9 because of our own mistakes, we hope they will stay safe.'

You knew about [Name] Lily Baird, named after her because your mother was inspired by her fiery personality and strength, but now you realize that you were transported to a time before the Baird sisters died, one of sickness and one because of Coriolanus Snow himself.

'I will kill you, President Coriolanus Snow.'

‘ [Name],’ Lucy Gray started. ‘ Has your mentor acted…Suspicious?’

You hummed, eyes focused on your sister.

‘He always acts like we’re attached to the hip and never lets another Capital boy talk to me. I’m grateful for that but he’s too controlling, he thinks that he can own me.’

It's been a couple of days since the beginning of the 10th Hunger Games and Sejanus and Coriolanus have been acting like you and Lucy Gray are nothing but their precious pets.

Lucy Gray shivered before telling you her side.

‘ Sejanus gives me his ma’s cooking and likes to act like all he wants to do is stay close to me. The President’s son, Felix Ravinstill, came up to me once and Sejanus got mad and tripped him as he passed.’

The both of you faded into a silent duo once Reaper came into the room with Dill.

‘Wovey was tired but Dill wanted to hear more about District 9.’ Reaper smiled down at his fellow tribute.

You smiled up at the young girl and tapped on the cold floor as a motion to sit beside you and Lucy Gray.

‘Come over, Dill! What more do you want to know?’

It was nothing but a distraction for both parties involved.

After an hour or so, Peacekeepers brought most tributes out to practice with their mentors-including Lucy Gray- about how to try and kill each other.

Sejanus started to walk up to her before the District 4 girl-Coral- and her mentor, Festus Creed, interrupted the conversation.

‘You’re the District 12 tribute who was the thing that Sejanus Plinth traded his District 9 tribute for, right?’

Festus then smiled while looking at her. 

As if he was some kind of angel…

‘Lucy Gray, you don’t have to converse with him.’ Sejanus announced, glancing at the Creed boy. Festus’ smile faltered before whispering to his tribute to move past her.

Sejanus glared at his back before turning toward Lucy Gray and smiled.

‘So, what should we practice today?’

‘Sejanus! How was today?’ Ma questioned as her dress swished as she went to hug her son.

Sejanus smiled before beginning to talk about how he had developed a slight crush on his tribute. Luckily, his Pa and Ma understand the Districts and don’t mind if he marries a District girl.

‘Lucy Gray is just so…Gorgeous, she’s gorgeous, kind, and cheerful. I don’t know how to define my infatuation with her…’ Sejanus sighed before turning to his parents for a sign of advice.

Strabo Plinth laughed before gifting his son an idea of how to get Lucy Gray in his spell.

‘Help Coriolanus cheat the Games. You know that he will do anything to win and by promising your tribute you will take her away from this torture, she will devote her trust to you. Then you just have nothing but an easy ride up to convince her that you are the perfect husband for her.’ Strabo shrugged as he turned his attention back to the newspaper on his lap.

Sejanus grinned at his father before kissing Ma on the cheek and turning to the door to meet with Coriolanus Snow. Ma yelled for him to eat first but he told her that he would bring the Snow family to eat here.

‘Lucy Gray Baird…Don’t you love me too?’

posted like 3 chaps bc i havent posted in a while

Eyes Never Lie: Part III

gif made by kvtnisseverdeen

summary: Being friends with Coriolanus for a long time lets you what drives him to succeed and survive. You've also gained the insight to guess how he's feeling or what he's about to say just by the expression on his face. But only things that you could never decipher were the thoughts behind his eyes.

A.N: Part 3 is here! Sorry it’s late

word count: 4.3K

divider made by firefly-graphics

You didn’t know how you got in front of the arena, but here you were, being led to the place where all of these innocent kids would die. You then froze, and Coriolanus’ turned and looked at you. “don’t want you to be alone right now.” He added, holding your hand tighter. “Please.” He whispered, letting you know he didn’t want to be alone too. You nodded and squeezed his hand as he walked you toward the arena once more.

Before you realized it you were standing behind Lucy Gray and were ushered to walk forward. The darkness of the tunnel made it a bit hard to see, but the red lights made it easier. Walking forward, the turnstile turned and a voice said “Enjoy the show!” Definitely not creepy. Now beside Lucy, you felt her hand slip into yours, and you welcomed it.

As you walked further in, the hold on your hand got tighter, and you looked at her. She was holding onto your hand for dear life, Lucy was terrified. Suddenly, a noise made you look up and see the arena opening up the top window panels, letting the light in. It was eerie, somewhat amusing, and haunting at the same time. But the decor couldn’t dispel you from an ugly truth: 23 kids are coming into this arena, but only 1 is coming out tomorrow.

“Welcome to the arena for the 10th annual Hunger Games!” A voice cut through the arena. “Tributes, mentors, you have 15 minutes to survey the space and discuss strategy.” You let go of Lucy’s hand and rubbed your hands together. You saw her face contort into one of worry as her eyes darted to you. “Please,” Lucy whispered. “Coriolanus, please don’t let me die in here tomorrow.”

Before any of you could answer, an explosion cut your train of thought off as you were thrown to the ground. You covered your nose as you watched the arena get blown to hell and back. You, Lucy, and Coriolanus stood for a moment as the debris started to fall to the ground, a scream finally leaving your mouth as you ran away, Lucy in front of you and Coriolanus behind you. While you were running, though looked back for Coriolanus and felt a piece of the arena slide across your face, making you fall.

You felt Lucy’s hand turn you towards her, “Where’s Coriolanus?” She asked, making your blood freeze. That was when a familiar voice yelled out, “Help me!” You immediately knew it was Coriolanus. Following the sound of his voice, you soon found him under a piece of debris. You immediately tried to lift it but had trouble. You saw the fire on his back, and it almost sent you into a panic. “Lucy! Help me, please!” You begged, looking into the smoke where you think you saw her last.

She soon ran towards you and joined in the attempt of trying to get it off of him. You were so focused on lifting the beam you almost missed a tribute trying to convince Lucy to run out of the arena with her. “He wouldn’t save you.” You heard Marcus, Senjanus’ tribute say, before running to the blown open doors. But your eyes didn’t leave the beam, and to your suprise, Lucy never stopped to run.

You both lifted it just enough so he could slip away from it. You turned to Lucy, saying a quick thank you before she www dragged away. In that moment, you finally noticed your hands were singing, and saw the beam had burned your hands. But that wasn’t it, your head was also singing a symphony. In fact, the world was spinning.

The next thing you knew, you were falling to the ground, and the next, you were in a hospital bed. Your mother sprung up and hugged you, “Honey! Oh, thank god.” She sighed, holding onto you. “What happened?” You immediately asked. “The rebels bombed the arena. One of those animals from the districts escaped.” Your father said, holding onto you tight. “Coriolanus? Sejanus?” You asked, sitting up, tears starting to well up. “They’re fine, Coriolanus came in right before you did, Sejanus is fine.” Your mother said, and a breath of relief left your lips.

“You, on the other hand, will have a scar on your forehead as well as sore hands.” Your dad said, handing you a mirror. There was a long red scar starting at your left forehead, going across your eyebrow and nose, and ending in the middle of your right cheek. It was ugly, but nothing makeup couldn’t smooth out.

You then reached for your, neck and felt nothing. “My…..my necklace.” You said in a soft tone. “I’m sorry honey. We can get you another one.” Your father soothed, but you shook your head, the sentimental value now gone up in smoke. “Should I be good to go?” You asked, standing up, and finally getting a good look at yourself. You still had your uniform on, riddled now with dust and smoke, as well as your face. Other than the scar now on your face, you looked okay, as well as an exhausted Capitol child who’s survived a rebel bombing and the loss of two friends in one week can be.

You then walked past the rest of the beds, and one sight made you get chills. You saw the president’s son, Felix, your classmate, on a ventilator, scars all over his face. You let out a surprised shout before a nurse turned towards you and shut the curtain, closing off any view from him. Then started to walk out of the hospital and passed a TV.

Turns out they were still going on with the games. Lucky Flickerman was enticing the crowds once more as they were bringing out the tributes to give them one final spotting before they had to die. That was when you got an idea. You walked with a purpose past the beds, but slowed down when you saw a familiar blonde boy asleep in a bed. Coriolanus was okay, he was alive. You forced yourself to run with sore muscles to your house, and go to the back of your closet. You recalled when Lucy said she could “play the strings,” today would be her chance to prove it.

You finally found your guitar, still in its white case, and brought it out. After giving it an experimental strum, you walked towards the last showing of the tributes, and tried to sneak past a peacekeeper.

Unfortunately, you weren’t the best at it. “Hey! What are you doing back here?” One shouted. “I’m here to do one last observation for Dr. Gaul.” You said in your best calm voice, almost scaring yourself from how much you sounded like someone else. You stared back at them when one looked at the other, “Stay right there.” He said and walked out of the room. The minutes going by made you shift from foot to foot until he came back, “Go right in, we’ll be outside.” He said, letting you pass.

Slowly, you walked to the back of the stage and saw Lucy picking at her dress. “Lucy.” You whispered, getting her attention. She immediately ran towards you and before the both of you knew it, you were hugging. She looked at you, her head going to the scar on your face, “Your head.” “I’ll be fine, but I need a favor.” You said, holding the guitar out to her. “I know you said you won’t sing unless you have something to say, I get it. But this is your last chance before the games.” You said, a more serious tone in your voice.

“One last song to put your memory in the minds of everyone who has and will know your name.” You said, watching as she took the guitar and gave it a strum. “You had this? She asked, to which you nodded. You saw her nod towards you, a look of thankfulness before she walked out. You let out a sigh as you watched from a screen as she sang her song, letting her story be told for everyone to hear, making you smile. For someone who just got to the Capitol, she sure learned how to make a lasting impression, one that wouldn’t be forgotten for decades you would say.

As Lucy finished her song, she walked back towards you and tried to speak, but you silenced her. “You did amazing,” you said, taking your guitar back. You then took her hand and held it tightly. “I know you’re not my tribute, Lucy Gray, but I hope you win.” You said, before giving her one last hug before walking home. You laid in bed that night hoping for her survival. That morning you dressed and could barely eat, thinking about the games. As you left, you passed a mirror and got a glimpse of your face. Even though you put concealer over the scar, it was still red.

As you walked to the academy, you ran into Dean Highbottom. “Ah, ms capitol flower, what are you doing up here?” He asked. You then turned to him, “Just wishing my friends good luck.” You answered. For a moment, he didn’t answer, obviously looking at the scar on your face. “I’d only wish one of your friends luck, little miss.” Dean Highbottom said and turned away from you. As you looked for Coriolanus and Sejanus, Sejanus found you first.

“Hey. I didn’t see you at the hospital.” He said, looking at your face and not your eyes. “I left, they had already treated me.” You said. He then held your hand and squeezed it. “Are you okay?” He asked. “I’ll be fine.” You said, knowing what he was implying. Sejanus’ focus then shifted to someone behind you. “Corio.” Senjanus said, walking up to him. “How are you doing? You all right?” He asked, to which Coriolanus shrugged off.

He then turned to you, his eyes widening at the sight of the scar. Before he could speak, a man got the attention of the 3 of you, and signaled he wanted a picture. Sejanus put his arm across you to put his hand on Coriolanus’ shoulder as you felt his hand go to your hip, the same mannerism he used in the zoo. You put your arm around Sejanus’ back & Coriolanus’, and gave a small smile.

The man snapped the camera, immortalizing the moment in the photo. Sejanus walked off and Coriolanus suddenly held you still, looking at the scar closely. “Are you okay?” he asked, looking at you, his eyes, for once you could see how he was feeling: concerned. “I’m fine. It just stings.” you said, rubbing small circles on his hand. “Before I forget, here.” He said, holding up your necklace, the one you thought you would never see again. “How did you get it?” You asked, staring at the pendant dangling in front of you.

“I owed you and Lucy Gray a favor, this is yours.” He said, walking behind you and putting it back around your neck. You turned towards him, only to see him staring at you from over your shoulder. You two were so close to each other, you could feel the faint blow of his breath on your nose. Nervous, you broke the silence. “I hope you win, Corio.” you whispered, but he only looked at you in silence. “When I woke up in the hospital, no one had seen you, not even Sejanus. I thought you were dead.” he said, his voice breaking at the end.

“You haven't lost me, Cori, and you never will.” you said, putting your forehead to his, and kissing it. He then took your hand and kissed it, before smiling. “Happy Hunger Games.” he whispered. “And good luck to you.” you replied before walking out of the room and towards Gaul’s lab. As soon as she laid her eyes on you, that same sinister grin “Let me see you, my flower of death.” Squaring your shoulders, you approached Dr. Gaul, and her hand held your chin still. She chuckled, her eyes going over the length of your scar, before her other hand held one side of your face.

“Hmmm. This rosebud is tougher than I thought.” she then turned and went to her lab. “Come child, I have much to teach you today. For the whole day, you shadowed Dr. Gaul in her lab, learning her methods of creating her “babies” for the games, how to tame them, and how to make them vicious. During one moment, she looked at you as she handed you a snake, letting it get used to your scent. “One reason I chose the colors is to make an illusion. The colors are to make them enticing, the beauty masking their true nature, their deadly nature.” Dr. Gaul said, looking you dead in the eyes.

“Before you know it, you're too busy looking at the beauty of the colors to see you're about to be bitten with their poison, doomed to drown in the beautiful sea of death.” The snake was now circling your neck, before resting still, allowing you to let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. “Let me guess, I'm the fool drowning in the sea?” you asked. She only smirked in response, “Not yet, I'm still deciding if you're the snake not yet radicalized or the flower not yet fertilized with the malicious poison.”

“And how would the flower be poisoned, who does it?” You asked, wondering what her riddle meant. “That is a question that doesn't have an answer.” she said, chuckling as she took the snake from your neck. After a long day, you began to walk home just as a car pulled up in front of you. You began to reach up for your necklace to wrap around your knuckles just as a woman stepped out, looking frantic. You realized it was Senjanus’ mother. “Mrs, Plinth, what's wrong?” you asked. “Honey, have you seen Sejanus?” she asked, walking towards you.

“No. I haven't seen him since the games started. Did something happen?” you asked. “They captured Marcus and put him up in the arena before a tribute mercy killed him.” she said in a sorrowful tone. “One of the tributes mercy killed him, but he was home for one minute and the next he was gone.” she said, slowing her speech down to calm herself some. That was when something dawned on you, and the idea made your stomach do flips. “I'll help look for him.” you said and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you, dearie,” she said and walked back to the car. As you watched her go back, you noticed Mr. Plinth give you a nod before he joined his wife in the car. You, on the other hand, walked toward the arena and convinced yourself to not turn around with every step. You made a quick stop at Dr. Gaul’s lab, noticing she was already walking out. You both froze, looking into each other's eyes. “I take it you found out where your friend is.” She said, you nodding in response. “Go ahead, I'll send someone to go with you in a minute.” she said, and walked away from you.

“When you finally got to the gate, the peacekeepers eyed you, “Let me in, his mother is worried sick.” you said, looking between the two. It didn't take long for them to open the gates and let you in, as well as locking you in. You slowed your breath as you began to walk into the arena, missing the turnstile to avoid the sound going off. You looked around, making sure to keep your steps as quiet as possible so you could get to Sejanus. As you passed a pile of debris, you saw a bow and some arrows and decided to take one of them in case needed it. When you got close enough, his head whipped towards you and relaxed.

He didn't say anything, but he looked back toward Marcus’ body and you kneeled beside him. Against your better judgment, you helped him grieve for a moment, one of his hands finding yours, and you let your head rest on his shoulder. “Thank you.” he said, you only hummed in response. That was when you felt someone walking towards the two of you, raising the arrow in front of you, only to see it pointing at an equally nervous Coriolanus.

“I thought they'd send my ma.” Sejanus said. “I wish they had.” you said, looking back at him. “You need to go, Corio. Both of you.” Sejanus said, standing up. “I'd like to. I really would. But I promised I'd get you out.” Coriolanus whispered. So he was the backup Gaul sent? “Why?” Sej asked. “Because you're our friend.” You added, looking him in the eyes. “I have to do this. I had to go where the cameras are.” He argued. “You think anyone's watching this,” Coriolanus asked, “Gaul cut the feed. Tributes kill you in here, she's just gonna say you died of the flu.”

You then looked at the beam above you 3 and saw a tribute wake up and grab her weapon. You tightened your fist around the arrow as Corio started to pull you closer to his side. “You need to decide right now. Do you wanna fight these tributes, or fight for them?” Coriolanus asked Sejanus, “Because if you wanna make real change, you need to stay alive to do it.” “How can I make any change from out there?” Sejanus asked.

“You're rich, you have your father’s money. You're smart, you care,” you said, looking between Sejanus and the female tribute looking at you three, “You're the only one who stood up to Gaul in that class, not us.” That moment you heard a clatter from somewhere in the arena, putting all of you on edge. You could see Sejanus was starting to get antsy. “We're dead if we don't leave right now.” You whispered to Sejanus. “Come with us. Spend your father's money, and do some real good. Or just be another dead body in Gaul's war.” Coriolanus whispered, getting close to his ear.

“Please, Sejanus, trust us.” You begged, wanting him to leave with the two of you. That was when you heard a scream from the end of the arena, and saw a male tribute charging towards you. “Let's go!” you yelled and ran for the gate. Even though you were running as fast as you could, they both were faster than you. You saw Coriolanus’ hand reach for yours, and he helped you keep up with him. You were able to jump over the turnstile, Sejanus couldn't and you heard a bone in him snap. You ran over to help him up just as the tribute lashed at the three of you.

You were able to miss his first swing, but when he swung his blade low, he cut your leg, making you scream. By instinct, you swung at his leg with the arrow and surprisingly managed to get a cut on his leg before Corio bashed the boy with a piece of debris. Before you could get out the way you felt the boy's blade cut a long line up your back, dragging another scream out of your mouth.

For a moment your vision blurred, hitting the wall as Coriolanus pleaded with the tribute. It didn't work. You heard Coriolanus scream and then proceed to hit the boy with the beam before hitting him in the head, making him fall through the turnstile. You had just gone over to help Sejanus up with you saw Coriolanus hit the boy one more time, and he no longer moved. You and Sejnaus stared at the sight, the horrible display of the dead tribute making you sick. Your best friend just killed someone, and he didn’t need to.

You then heard a group of tributes start to run towards you. “Get up, Sejanus!” You yelled, hoisting him up with one arm and running towards the gate. “Open the gate!” Coriolanus yelled. You ran through the gate and let out a small sigh of relief when it slammed shut, stopping the tributes from coming through. That was when one female tribute, Coral, looked at you briefly before looking directly at Coriolanus. “Watch those screens, gorgeous. ‘Cause I may have missed you tonight, but your songbird’s next on my list.” She smirked before walking away from the gate. You let out a breath and. As you stood up, you then leaned on the gate, and a wave of pain went down your back to the cut on your leg.

Holding yourself up, you let out a whimper as you saw the blood going down your leg. You could also see the gash on Coriolanus back when Sejanus spoke up, apologizing, “I’m… I’m sorry, both of you, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, for all of it.” He looked up at both of you. Behind him, you saw Sejanus’ parents drive up. “My father. Let the buying begin.” He said, and slowly stood up and walked towards his mother. You had just managed to stand up straight again when you and Coriolanus caught the eyes of his father, giving you a silent but grateful nod.

You and Coriolanus were led away and back to Dr. Gaul’s lab. “Snow and his rose stormed down, down on their heads. It stormed down on their heads, and now the boy is...” She stopped and made a noise, imitating the sound of a knife slashing. “Dead.” You whispered to yourself while she chuckled. You two have had enough of the Games tonight, I see,” she said, “Come, sit, I'll stitch you up.”

Coriolanus tried to usher you forward, but you sat down in another seat, “You saved us, you first.” He didn’t argue further. As he sat down, you grabbed a stool and sat beside him. “Who could imagine Crassus Snow's baby boy fighting for his life in the arena one day? What happened in there, that's humanity undressed,” Dr. Gaul let out a sigh before continuing, “Fueled with the terror of becoming prey, see how quickly we become predator. See how quickly civilization disappears?”

“Those tributes didn’t have a choice.” Coriolanus said, finally finding his voice. “I was talking about the two of you.” She said, your eyes finding his stare. “All your fine manners, education, background, stripped away in the blink of an eye, leaving a boy with a club who beats another boy to death to stay alive.” Dr Gaul said, before looking up at you, “And a girl who takes up an arrow and draws blood out of desperation to keep her life.” “You wanna protect people, Mr. Snow? To govern them like your father?

Then it’s essential you accept what human beings are and what it takes to control them.” She then patted his back, signaling him to move.

He squeezed your hand before he slowly walked out of the lab, leaving you alone with your mentor. For a while she stitched up your back, she didn’t say a single word, and neither did you. When she turned you around to sew up your leg, that changed. “So, Snow’s rose is growing her thorns,” She chuckled, “The daughter of the Capitol goes into the arena, who would’ve thought?” “I didn’t intend to humor you tonight, I went in to get my friend.” You replied. Dr. Gaul raised an eyebrow in response, “Be cautious of your loyalty and friendship, young girl.” “They would do the same for me.” You said, looking at her. “Oh I’m sure they would, that’s why you all could’ve died tonight.” Dr Gaul chuckled.

“It’s like I said earlier. Friendship like the one you have with Snow and Plinth can help you thrive as easy as it can be to die following your friend and lover into danger.” Your mouth fell open, but she raised her hand in response. “For a child so wise, you’re very blind to see the eyes of affection that boy has for you?” Dr. Gaul teased. “How are you sure?” You asked, curiously getting the best of you. Dr. Gaul chuckled, “Do you want me to point out the fact he calls you Calanthe, which translates to beautiful flower?”

As she finished the stitch on your leg, she smirked. “Love is a funny thing, pupil. It can be your greatest strength, weapon, or weakness.” “I don’t have a crush on-.” “Don’t lie!” Dr. Gaul shouted at you, making you shut up immediately. “If you don’t love that boy why did you protect him with that arrow in your hand?” She asked, holding your arm up, showing you the arrow still in your clenched hand.

You forgot you still had it.

Dr. Gaul looked at the arrow and then at you, helping you stand up, the stitch now complete. “You’re a strange one, little flower,” Dr. Gaul said, “You don’t see your strengths.” You then looked up at her, “And what do you see?” You asked, grabbing your blazer, and getting ready to leave. As you turned to leave, her chuckle made you freeze and turn around, “I still see what I saw the first time we talked my dear: potential.”