Author's Note: This is the story about a rebel soldier and his point of view of the war.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.
War. An ugly, deifying term of destruction and death. War, it isn't just an armed conflict, it's pain. Undeniable, indefinable pain. It's the pain of watching your brethren die, it's the pain of the bullet as it pierces your flesh. It's the pain of the lose, fear, the everything about the word. War in Panem used to be just an old wise tale, just a legend no one believed in.
But war isn't that, it isn't just a legend, it's real. So real it's almost like the old legends about the Underworld, or Hell. When my mother used to tell me the tales of the times before Panem, she would tell us of countries that were great and powerful, countries that the world never thought would fall, but they did. In fact, the whole world began to fall. She always told us that all things have a beginning and all things have an end, and when the end comes a new beginning starts, just like Panem.
Maybe that's why I chose to fight in a Rebellion that ended with the highest cost being paid. The lives of our own, brother against brother. I don't think any of us soldiers understood what we were really fighting for, we just did it because we felt we were giving our lives for all the right reasons. I watched my brethren die, and now, on the anniversary of the day we won our independence, I look back with guilt. Guilt that I lived and they died. Guilt that I'm still standing here, my boots crunching in the snow as I walked down an abandoned road. I remember being there many years ago, a major battle being fought here, watching so many die around me. I was one of five survivors that day, the rest of the people I'd grown to be friends with lay dead at my feet.
Every day I would sit and ponder over everything. The time before Panem, the time of Panem, and the time now. I wondered every day what life would be like now if the downfall of Panem had never come, all those poor souls who died would still be here today. All those broken families would be whole again, all those shattered hearts wouldn't have to be picking up the pieces right now, and then I ask myself. But is that really a better option? Can you really ever win?
The answer is beyond me though, so are a lot of things. I'm just a rebel soldier, broken by the things I've seen. I crouch down and pick up a handful of snow, throwing it as far as I can. I think of all those brave soldiers I fought with, and I'm proud to be able to say I stood beside them on this ground, this very day years ago, and fought beside them. I turn and begin to walk in the same direction I'd come, boots crunching in the snow as I walked along the path. One small tear escapes from my watery eyes for all the men who fell that day. Then I shut that day out of my thoughts, because the time to move on has come. Because just as one thing comes to an end, a new beginning starts.