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They Always Say We're Alike

Summary:

It's so surprising, that 24 years after she's gone, a 16-something girl from District 5 shares so much with a girl she never met.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

If he sees Louella McCoy in Burdock's little girl, he can only see his Lenore Dove in the redhead with two buns and a sharp face. Foxface—Finch, maybe? Looks like a Finch, speaks like one too. It's the sort of nickname his girl would have given Foxface if she'd met her.

Katniss, Nissa, Kat, Kitty, whatever nicknames Burdock would give her in the moment, has little Louella's dark braid and olive skin, the lip that should get her in trouble but never does, because admit it or not, she is smart.

But the redhead, the one whose interview he had to step away from the screen during, is all Lenore Dove. Normally, District 5 works its way around the arena with construction, by powering and shutting off the rudimentary systems other tributes rig up, but this one—

This one knows her plants. This one would thrive in the Meadow, past the fence. The glint of her eyes and the smile in her voice (he doesn't hear what she says, just the amalgamation of sounds) sound the same.

At their cores, they're different. They climb trees the same, squirreling up the boughs as quickly as possible, looking out, but this one grabs fruit, where Lenore Dove would have sung clear and high. They defy the rules the same, but this Foxface leaps from spot to spot, avoiding the landmines where Lenore Dove would have found a way to set them off after she got her haul.

Guess Lenore Dove had quite the impact on the Everdeens after all.

He sees her training on the television, the way her fingers fly across the screen full of plant life, matching pairs and poisons endlessly, blindingly fast. The concentration is the same, the knowledge is the same, and the way she calculates risk is the same.

Her fight is the same, her plans are the same, and when she runs into Burdock's daughter, the fight in their eyes is the same as Haymitch saw when his girl and Burdock play-fought in the woods.

She dies the same. Poison. Sweet berries, nightlock if he had to bet. Blood at the lips, dark stains on the skin, found by a 12 boy first.

 

Notes:

Kudos & comments vv appreciated!