Name: Deasia Marquis
Age: 17
District: 11
Gender: female
Kills: 2
…
Five Things The Hunger Games Taught Deasia Marquis
…
#1: Don't Make Assumptions
Deasia didn't know what she expected from the Hunger Games.
Firstly, she didn't think the Capitol was for real. Surely they would send them into the arena, wait for a few minutes, then come get them and send them back home. She would be back to the fields in no time. Back to her family. Back to Mina. All of this would blow over, and the Hunger Games would be forgotten.
Oh, how wrong she was.
When the pedestals clicked into place, one little girl, maybe twelve -years-old, jumped off immediately, terrified. But the moment she reached the ground, her body was blown to bits. Her gory remains were splattered everywhere, on the ground, the tributes near her, everything. Another girl, the girl from 8, Deasia thought, started wailing, sinking to her knees on the plate and sobbing. The boy from 7 started visibly shaking, and most of the tributes didn't move a muscle when the gong rang.
Deasia was not one of them. She quickly ran toward the enormous golden horn—the Cornucopia, the Capitol had called it—making sure to keep an eye on the other tributes. This was actually happening. They were actually going to make them kill each other.
The second death of the Games, the first caused by another tribute, was the thirteen-year-old boy from 3, Ridley. The girl from 5 panicked when she saw him running toward him and lobbed a knife, which swiftly became embedded in the barely-teenaged boy's head. Said girl from 5 was crumpled to the ground, sobbing as the boy from 1 loomed over her with a sword, seemingly torn over whether or not to kill her.
Apparently he decided to do it, for the girl from 5 lay dead not twenty seconds later.
There was only one word going through Deasia's head as she snatched up a backpack and started booking it across the meadow: Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—
She only stopped running when cannons began to sound. She collapsed against a large pine tree, wheezing, fighting back tears. She was vaguely aware of seventeen cannons sounding. That left seven tributes left in the arena. Seven children still alive.
Deasia tried to forget those tributes she had seen cut down. But their faces kept flitting through her mind, the sound of their voices, the way they walked and talked and laughed and lived—
Twenty-one tributes died on the first day of the very first Hunger Games.
#2: Trust No One
On the morning of day two in the arena, Deasia stumbled across the boy from 6, Nissan. Nissan begged for mercy, screaming of sick siblings and starving grandmothers. Deasia didn't have the heart to kill him, not now, not yet. Not ever, she hoped. They became the first alliance in Hunger Games history.
Nissan's face was splattered with blood, decorated with cuts and bruises that told Deasia that he had barely made it out of the Cornucopia alive. Nonetheless, she shared her meager supplies with him, knowing that one of them had to win, and if it wasn't her she hoped it could be him. Well, or the other person still out there. Was it the boy from 3? No, she had seen his face in the sky last night. The girl from 8? No, she was dead as well.
"Who else is left?" she wondered aloud, shaking Nissan from a reverie.
"I don't know," the boy from 6 said. "I hope they're not hard to kill." He sighed. "I hope they die of natural causes. I don't want that on my conscience."
"Neither do I," Deasia agreed. She glanced up at the sky. "Why is it getting dark? Wasn't it dawn an hour ago?"
Nissan looked up too. He shook his head. "This whole place is artificial. Surely they can change the time of day at will."
Deasia shrugged and shivered. A biting wind had reared up just a few minutes after she and Nissan agreed to be allies. Were they really that hungry for more bloodshed? Was yesterday not enough? Deasia doubted she would ever know.
"They must be in a hurry to end it," Deasia decided. "Well, in that case, I think I'll take a nap. I should be rested up for the finale, anyway, and, well, I guess I want to delay the inevitable." She looked at Nissan. "Keep watch?"
He nodded firmly. Deasia pulled out the sleeping bag from her backpack and snuggled down in it.
She woke a few minutes later to Nissan holding a knife a few inches above her head, terror and determination conflicting his face.
#3: Kill or Be Killed
Deasia reared back as Nissan brought the knife down. It would have landed in her head if she had not moved. Instead, the blade became stuck in the earth, pulling the sleeping bag down. Nissan desperately yanked, trying to remove the knife from the dirt, but it was stuck fast.
His former ally gave him a swift kick to the back, sending him flying headfirst into a tree. Nissan's head slammed into the bark, leaving him dazed and open for the kill.
Deasia's breathing turned shallow, terrified at the prospect of what she was about to do. She stood over Nissan, looking to the sky with remorse in her eyes. "I don't know if you're watching, but if Nissan has sick siblings or a starving grandmother, I'd like to say I'm sorry. Sorry for what I'm about to do." And with that, she wrenched the knife out of the ground, looking at her former ally's face one last time. She averted her eyes and stabbed the knife into Nissan's chest.
The cannon boomed, and she walked away without looking back. She didn't know what she would see, but she definitely didn't want to know.
#4: Fight Like Your Life Depends on It (Because it Does)
The Games crawled on for another fourteen hours. Deasia finally got her nap, which she took in a tree, too afraid to stay on the ground, and when she awoke it still had not got any lighter. It seemed the newly-appointed Gamemakers were content to make their two final tributes stumble around the dark like drunk idiots.
She had decided to go back to the Cornucopia. If they were going to end this, it might as well be where it started.
The blood of the seventeen tributes who died there still remained, splattered upon the dirt, grass, supplies, and the once-spotless golden Cornucopia. Red was everywhere. Deasia decided that she never, ever wanted to see that color again.
It was unfortunate, of course, that the only other remaining tribute was the boy from 5, Volt, clad in his tomato red jacket, the look of madness on his face.
Deasia had seen him enter the meadow and immediately clambered on top of the Cornucopia, ignoring the stains of red against the background of gold. Her only weapon was the knife she had used to kill Nissan, which she knew would not bode well against the impressive spear Volt wielded.
Fortunately, Volt was very inexperienced with his weapon of choice. He hefted it awkwardly, shouting for Deasia to come down, so he could kill her, so he could go home. Deasia knew that feeling. She wanted to go home desperately, but she doubted she deserved it anymore. After all, she had killed Nissan. It was self-defense, she told herself. I would have never killed him if he hadn't tried to strike first.
Needless to say, those words did nothing to ease her guilt.
She was only shaken from her reverie when Volt threw the spear up at her. It slid across the Cornucopia, skidding to a stop halfway down the metal, leaving Volt weaponless and without the high ground.
Still, he had pick of the supplies that remained in the horn of plenty. He threw another two spears at Deasia before one finally hit her: it was certainly not fatal, at least not yet, but damn did it hurt for her to pull that spear from her shoulder. Luckily it was not her throwing arm. Her left arm may have been out of commission, but her right was feeling fine.
Volt was careless, driven mad by the horrors he had witnessed at this very location, just twenty-seven hours before. He lobbed spears like a madman, and Deasia knew he would run out soon. Then, she would make her move. With her one knife in hand, she would end Volt's life.
Deasia gagged at the thought. She nearly vomited up what little she had had to eat that day. She swallowed thickly, leaning over the edge of the Cornucopia, waiting.
Finally, Volt ran out of spears. He put his head in his hands, pulling at his hair, muttering nonsensically. He was shaking and twitching, clearly insane, and for a moment Deasia felt as if she was just putting him out of his misery. Volt would never be the same if he left this arena. But then again, Deasia wouldn't either.
She threw the knife, and her aim rang true. Volt slumped over a box of blankets, blood pooling around his head. One last cannon rang through the arena.
Deasia collapsed against the Cornucopia, sobbing, unable to stop herself from vomiting. She was going home. Mina would be so happy. She could practically hear her sisters jumping for joy and yelling in excitement. She hoped they weren't being too loud.
Trumpets blared, making Deasia finally sit up.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Victor of the first annual Hunger Games, Deasia Marquis of District 11!" It was the voice of Maximus Morrison, the newly-appointed Master of Ceremonies.
She was going home. Home. At last.
#5: It Does No Good To Dwell on The Past, But That Does Not Give You The Right to Forget It
For the rest of her life, Deasia was the shoulder to lean on. She was the first Victor, meaning everyone always looked to her for guidance and comfort. When she wasn't in the Capitol, endorsing murder with a cute name, she was shut up in her home, trying to forget everything she saw. Only around the time of the eleventh Games, when she and Mina had married and adopted two children, did she finally realize something: she could never forget her past. But for some reason, she didn't want to. She knew that if she forgot those other tributes in those first Games, eventually there would be no one left to remember them. And so, on the eve of every Reaping as long as she lived, she lit twenty-three candles on her porch, one for each tribute who died in her Games. When District 11 earned another Victor, they did this too. Then other Victors from other districts started doing it.
Deasia put herself to the task of committing everything about the tributes in her Games to her memory. She never wanted to forget them.
She had notebooks full of little things about the tributes. She had a whole book dedicated to Nissan, a boy she had known for barely a day, and even more to Volt. She wrote down everything she thought of, no matter where she was, who she was with, or what she was doing. It became a bit of an obsession, an obsession which could never be fulfilled since there was always more to know about a tribute. What was the girl from 8's favorite color? Did the boy from 12 like cats or dogs better? Why was a spear Volt's weapon of choice?
She would never know.
Home no longer felt like home. The fields of District 11 reminded her too much of the meadow the Cornucopia had rested in, the smell of flowers too similar to those in the arena, the red brick bakery too much the color of blood, the gold dress with the blood-red sash she wore in District 5 on the Victory Tour too close to the Cornucopia where Volt made his final stand.
She saw blood wherever she went. Every bit of red she saw, no matter how light or dark, morphed to look like those stains upon the golden horn.
Deasia never wanted to see the color red again, but it haunted her wherever she went.
…
Current Standings
District 1: N/A
District 2: N/A
District 3: N/A
District 4: N/A
District 5: N/A
District 6: N/A
District 7: N/A
District 8: N/A
District 9: N/A
District 10: N/A
District 11: Deasia Marquis (1st Games)
District 12: N/A
A/N: There's the first chapter of Those Who Remain. I have first seven Games pre-written, so the next one should be out relatively soon.
Is Deasia interesting, or is she stupid or cliché? She's probably stupid and cliché. Anywho, hopefully the chapters will get longer as I get further into the Games. I'm definitely looking forward to writing a couple of up-and-coming games, one of which is unfortunately thirty-five games away.
Well, I imagine this first chapter probably isn't all that enticing, but I hope you'll stick around for the other Victors. Some of them are going to be pretty fun.
One other thing: I'm not sure how far I'm going with this story. My current goal is two-hundred Games, but I might end before that if I start running out of ideas. I do have an idea to remedy that, but I don't know if that will happen either…
Anyway, tell me what you think. Or don't. It's up to you.
-Amanda