Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games. Please don't sue! I also do not own the seiries On The Run, from which I borrowed part of the second (Eating meant survival...)paragraph.
There was plenty of reason to watch him, of course.
I had to know when he had gone to take a leak or had gone hunting with the Careers so I could eat. Eating meant survival. Survival meant a chance to leave this arena alive.
After I saw the boy put in the mines, I grew to have a grudging respect for him. I knew this was a hallmark of District Three; that the girl tribute from his district could probably do as much, maybe even more, but I respected him all the same. I always could recognize intelligence in another human being, and he had quite a lot, though I suspect he didn't really know it. It was of a much different type than I had. I was good with logic, he was good with machines, but it was still intelligence, and I found I always admired that in a person, even one I know had to be disposed of eventually.
I also found I sympathized with him one day, as I peered through the bush onto the plain. No doubt the people back in District Three were cursing his very name for allying himself with the Careers, but I knew that I would have done the same thing, if I had been in his position. None of the others back home quite understood anything about the arena. They thought nobility and honor were variables here.
They knew nothing.
You had to do some things that may very well be against your very principles in order to survive. That was the logic of it. Of course, the Gamemakers want a show, so they want you to be principled. They want you to show emotion. They want fighters that were feisty enough to entertain, but not so feisty to challenge them. I knew this. Anyone with half a brain knew what the Gamemakers were up to. I was smart enough to play their game. I put up a show for the audience, so that they thought I would be a smart, mysterious predator.
I supposed that the boy and I were in it together, the lone crusaders for logic in the face of the "star-crossed lovers" from Twelve, the little wisp from Eleven, the orphan from Four, the cripple from Ten, and so many others I can no longer name. I felt a sort of kinship with him after I made that discovery. It was he and I against the whole of Panem, and that gave me peace of mind, because it proved that not all of us were going to be the Capitol's playthings. Not all of us were going to have our true emotions manipulated on national T.V. to tug on some sponsor's heartstrings. There were other ways to get attention. I loved this idea like nothing else.
I really can't tell you when the kinship started to mutate into…something more.
I eventually found out that the boy's name was Kale. I clung to it with a ferocity that my cold mind and heart had never known. I figured out what I was going through. I tried to run, for I knew that love clouded, and certainly still clouds, the mind like the worst poison.
Despite my efforts, it was much too late to escape…him.
I began to realize how, when he turned a certain way on guard, he almost seemed to glow, and that his eyes were a dark, rich brown.
The observations I made filled me with horror, and I wanted someone to do away with the supplies, so that I could go steal from someone else. I needed to have a state of mind that love would never allow me.
When the girl from Twelve and the wisp from Eleven blew up the supplies, I was euphoric.
I was free!
But…he was gone.
I then crept into the woods. Logic told me it could have never happened. He was from District Three; I was from District Five. He worked with the Careers, and I worked alone. I knew that I could not afford a moment of weakness on screen or I would lose sponsors.
I wept anyway.