T I M B E R [ClairexHenry]

[Gone5eva]

And there’s more to life than taking this pain and
There’s more to gain when you’re out there being insane.
Being sane, that’s another thing.
That’s another thing baby.

My skull rests against the acrylic glass of the train as a fresh layer of snow cascades from the heavens. I am finally alone here, and I can contemplate everything I had seen and heard in the past few hours. Liquid falls from my cheeks onto my heavy pants, and my gloved hands rise to push away the water in a swift, fluid motion.

While some part of me is curious to see what lies beyond District Seven, my heart aches for my Mother and Father. No, I think. Mother will live. It is Father I worry for. He cried for me. Not one measly little ball of water either. His face had been soaked by worry. The pair of them already accepted the fact I would not be coming home.

I want to slip below the train and allow it to plow over me. The capitol can bring a bloodied mess of gore to the games instead of me- it would probably perform better anyway. Since there seems to be no way off the shooting bullet, I take to slipping deeper in my lonely seat, drawing my scarf around my mouth and nose to hush the heavy breathing the sobs bring on.

Could you really do it? I question myself. The words contort and twist my heart, until my trapped form squirms in the seat. Would I yell those awful things to Zachary if I knew I would never return? My countenance cringes. Pain does strange things to human beings.

In the back of my mind, I wonder how the other twenty three are handling things. Do they think it fair to be reaped? How many have already given up? What about the female who resided with me on this box of steel? I had never met her before, but she looked young. Too young to be in the games on any note.

Everyone was too young to be a pawn of the capitol.

My stomach hisses and growls, reminding me I have yet to eat today. A sigh passes through my lips, and I shakily push myself from the nest I made. Train staff left a small feast for Claire and I on a table somewhere in the next car over, so I begin in that direction. I pass from this lonely train car into a far more spacious area, my eyes wide with shock.

How could a train hold this much space? My fingers trail along the windows on the right as my feet clop-clop-clop towards the table where I sit, and simply stare at the plethora laid before me.

I guess this is the blessing in disguise- I never have to be hungry for the few weeks I'm in the capitol. They wouldn't want us dying of starvation before the filming started, would they?

My fingers lock around a perfect roll of bread, and slowly begin to pick it apart. Though I am hungry and I feel the gnawing in my gut, I am unable to bring myself to eat. The family of children I abandonedleft behind in the district might starve without someone to watch them all.

The guilt kills me inside.

[loren]

[ c l a i r e p a r t r i d g e ]

. vit de district VII .
. une fille seul .
. XIV ans .

"We can't escape, there's no way.
They'll call our names through the speakers.
When they find you they'll retrieve you,
take you where sphered domes will freeze you"

I didn't talk to him. Or look at him. I just stayed on my side of the train compartment curled into the nook of a sofa, chewing off the skin growing around my nails. I had both hands in my mouth, afraid letting them lay idle they might conspire to tear off my scalp or claw out the eyes of my district partner. 

I fucking hated him. I hadn't yet looked at his face for fear that my baby's breath-thin gossamer string of sanity might snap all together and I'd attack him with tooth and claw and all I had a mere... what? Week? Two weeks left tops to own? Before the Games take my life and confiscate my right to control whether I can breathe or burn?

I hadn't heard his name, either. The Peacekeepers had a struggle getting me unto the stage. Not because a five foot-two, one hundred-pound fourteen year old girl was a particularly difficult fight, but because my body was physically denying it. The Games, my death, the years of growing older and learning and knowing and finding that I was abruptly told will never happen.  I collapsed all together in their hands, a pitiful sack of flesh filled with bones and not much else they had to force up the stairs. And when they announced his name, I drowned out every last syllable with my own wails, hoping that maybe, if I could cry loud enough, for long enough, I could drown the whole world. I knew the moment my name was said, I was the only one who would ever sob over my own grave. And it just wasn't fair. I wanted so desperately to drown the world, have us all die in a breathless cathedral where there was no future to be had. If I couldn't have a future, I wanted to murder everyone else's.

And it crossed my mind for half a second. That perhaps I didn't hate him; the boy just as helpless as me in this cattle cart on a one-way trip to the slaughterhouse.  That maybe I was angry at this whole situation, the inevitability of me dying no matter what I said or did or where I ran or who I could stab. I was going to die before I could see my fifteenth summer. Maybe I was angry at the Capitol and its industrialized child extermination. Maybe I was angry at myself for thinking I was so untouchable, for never addressing for a moment in my life that one of those children on the television with a spear through the eye and a cannon shot to summarize their life's worth could so easily be me one day. Maybe I was angry at the universe for making me dream knowing fully well that none of the sickest of nightmares could compare to my reality. Maybe I was angry at th

The fact that my district partner was making a fucking arts and crafts project with the food when we were moments away from having no moments left.

I winced at every krrrrr-krrrr-krrrrrrrrpt! of the bread he was ripping apart. I turned around on the couch to face him for the first time,

"Ay! How about you stick that bread in your mouth, before I find a place on you to stick it in."

" These beautiful moments we shared together
All end now
They'll make me drink this potion
I'll sleep forever, until I wake under the
t h e  g l a c i a l  g r o u n d  "
x

[ t e m p l a t e b y z o ë ]

[Gone5eva]

And there’s more to life than taking this pain and
There’s more to gain when you’re out there being insane.
Being sane, that’s another thing.
That’s another thing baby.

A yelp slips through my jaws as bread chunks flicker and flutter around me as the words tumble from my lips. "I didn't even see you there... Shit!" A hand clutches at my fluttering heart, attempting to usher it back to silence. My fingers collapse upon the mahogany wood as I push further into my chair, gaze ogling the ceiling.

I don't recall seeing her before- nearly the entire reaping from the point the names were called until I came around in the Justice building was blank, like I'd never lived it. Almost as though... Someone else pushed me out of the way, and stood in my shoes for hours. I still do not even know if I was reaped myself, or if I volunteered for one of my little ones. It seemed like something I would do- attempt to be a hero one last time, just to keep my companions, my family safe from the prying arms of the capitol.

This girl, she could not be more than... Fourteen? Fifteen at the most. Her cheeks stuck out- gaunt against an otherwise pretty face. Guilt, regret hit me hard, worse than a truck. More like a concrete wall crashing upon my head. I never got her name. I never even asked. Albany's bracelet jingles on my wrist as I slowly stand, pulling my coat tighter around my form.

My feet carry me across the moving train until I place myself in a lonely chair across from my female partner. She looks far different than I imagined another from my district- she looks more like a doll than anything. Someone of her stature, with perfect skin and golden-blonde locks deserved to be worshiped as a sex icon in the capitol.

Henry had seen the capitol vids.

Tributes like her were always appreciated among the capitolites. My fingers lifted to my scarf, carefully prying it away from my neck. The cold seeped in, forcing goosebumps to rise along his flesh. "I... I'm Henry." I tell her, searching for something, anything we can talk about without forcing me to like her.

I'm not looking forward to the cannon shots that pair with each of the twenty three other tributes. One of us has a chance of escaping the arena and the capitol with our lives, and I don't want to think of the consequences of my actions if they affect her odds.