It's hard to focus on what Peeta and Aziraphale are saying. Probably important things, but she's tired, and all this talk is just making her feel foolish.
Her focus had been on taking the rebels down, making such a mess that any attempts to rebuild would take months, at the very least - months they wouldn't be able to spend caging or manipulating folk. That, she thinks bitterly, is where her strengths lie. But now that the damage has been done, she has nothing to offer. No answers to Peeta's smart, reasonable questions, no help for the innocent folk she's displaced, plenty of whom are her friends or acquaintances. No help for herself, even. If it wasn't for Aziraphale, she'd probably have ended up sleeping under a tree.
What has she done?
It's like Carthak all over again, except there's no distance to soften the truth into rumors and no ocean between her and the folk whose lives she upended. Everyone will know exactly what she did. Every walk through the park colored by the seething satisfaction of the rats' nest beneath her feet.
She can't escape it. Not any of it.
She starts a little when Aziraphale touches her shoulder, and the breath she pulls in to respond gets caught behind the lump in her throat. Pressing her lips together, she nods. It's all she can manage.
no subject
Her focus had been on taking the rebels down, making such a mess that any attempts to rebuild would take months, at the very least - months they wouldn't be able to spend caging or manipulating folk. That, she thinks bitterly, is where her strengths lie. But now that the damage has been done, she has nothing to offer. No answers to Peeta's smart, reasonable questions, no help for the innocent folk she's displaced, plenty of whom are her friends or acquaintances. No help for herself, even. If it wasn't for Aziraphale, she'd probably have ended up sleeping under a tree.
What has she done?
It's like Carthak all over again, except there's no distance to soften the truth into rumors and no ocean between her and the folk whose lives she upended. Everyone will know exactly what she did. Every walk through the park colored by the seething satisfaction of the rats' nest beneath her feet.
She can't escape it. Not any of it.
She starts a little when Aziraphale touches her shoulder, and the breath she pulls in to respond gets caught behind the lump in her throat. Pressing her lips together, she nods. It's all she can manage.