Who| Felicity Yoshida and sympathetic looky-loos you
What| Felicity has herself a great big cry over her dead celebrity crush.
Where| Gary's memorial in the park
When| Week 6
Warnings/Notes| None yet


When the things that are upsetting you are things that are not the slightest bit socially acceptable to be upset about, you hold them in. That's how Felicity is sure that it works. That's the Capitolite way, isn't it? It has to be. Everyone here can't be that callous, that casual, that cold, to just keep shrugging off all the death and dreadfulness. Everyone's got to just be taking the dress-up game to the next level. They've got to, because that means that she can do it, too. She can keep in her fear for her uncle the mentor, and her terror at seeing kids from District 2 be reaped and killed, and her horrible sadness over what had happened to Gary. No one needs to see any of that stuff. It's terrible stuff. Stuff you're not supposed to be feeling. So all her energy goes to smiling and putting on the right sort of face, which doesn't leave a lot of energy for everything else. She hasn't written since the latest arena started. The quality of her schoolwork has started to slip. She hasn't been around to the Tribute Center at all. But everything is fine. Honest.

It is this everything-is-fine effort that has kept her away from the little memorial set up in the park for the late Gary Epps. If she were to show up to it, that would look like she cared. Like it mattered, like she'd put enough of herself into the awful idea of flinging herself at him in some misguided attempt to be kissy-faced besties that she couldn't let it go. But... but she couldn't. And she felt guiltier and guiltier each time she talked herself out of it. The world felt particularly cold and grey and sad today, taken as a whole, and that was the nudge she needed to give in, buy flowers, and make the pilgrimage off her regular beaten path to go and pay her respects.

It's not much, but it's well-maintained. Gary's few fans-past-the-end were devoted, and how much work does it really take to position the stuffed tribbles and tape down the goodbye letters and remove the dead flowers, anyway? The fact that it's not much, though, immediately doesn't sit well with Felicity. He deserved way more than this piddly pile of things. He'd complain if he saw it, definitely. Did anyone really care for him, here? Is that going to be it? Gary Epps, rest in peace, now go be forgotten while everyone moves on to the next big thing. He lived, he died, Panem moves on, and in the end, it didn't matter. It didn't matter that Amelia had volunteered and tried her best for District 2, she was dead, too, and ready to be consigned to history. Things were not bright and nice. Things were not safe and fine. Things were absolutely terrible. This memorial was terrible. It shouldn't even have to be, but it is. Just like a lot of things that shouldn't even have to be.

The tears come on fast, and when she raises a hand to wipe at them, the first sob escapes her. And then the floodgates are open and there is no holding any of the sadness back any longer. One hand clasped over her mouth and the other desperately clutching her bouquet of white daisies and yellow roses, she bawls her little heart out. Most of it's for Gary. Some of it's for other things. All of it is ugly and messy and a long time coming.