Just an idea I've been thinking about for a while. I don't think i like it, but I'll post it anyway.
I don't own anything, at all.
Jaden could only watch as Rose climbed the steps to the stage.
He was surprised how silent she was. This was the girl who couldn't watch the Hunger Games without crying. Rose usually hid in the house's small bathroom when she thought someone was about to… you know… die.
People died every year in these games.
And Rosie was competing in them.
Suddenly, everything washed over Jaden in a rush of pain, desperation and out right fear. He felt all his air empty from his lungs in one big huff. A hand caught his arm as he felt himself stagger forward, almost dropping to his knees. Rose had reached the stage and was standing next to the escort for this district, an insane man named Xavier Millionson. Her bright red hair looked drab next to the strange rainbow highlights that covered Xavier's head.
Rosie's hands were shaking when she pulled them away from shaking the man's hand, and Jaden felt himself completely break down.
Someone might volunteer for her, Jaden thought desperately. Someone might volunteer, they would save her.
No one volunteered. No one ever does in District 11.
Oh no, oh god, Rosie.
Jaden struggled to stay upright. That was his sister up on that stage. Her forehead was creased, blue eyes staring at her feet, fists clenched at her sides. She was only thirteen, still a child. Who would do this to such a small girl?
She was thirteen years old and she was practically dead.
Before he had a chance to think, why couldn't it have been me, Xavier reached into the boys' bowl of names. He fished around inside for longer than necessary, before he pulled out a name.
"Jaden Greenwood."
A broken sob echoed from the crowd behind Jaden. It took a moment for him to realize that it must have been his mother, then another minute for him to realize the name called was his.
It wasn't until Jaden was on the stage that he realized what his name being called meant.
Oh no oh no oh no
The walk to the stage was slow and long and felt horrifyingly like a death march.
"Looks like we have some family competition," Xavier Millionson said. He giggled out a giddy little sound. "Well, go ahead and shake hands."
Jaden glanced down at his sister. Rose had a hand covering her mouth in an attempt to hold back her hysterics. Tears swam in her wide eyes, and Jaden felt something hot and wet start to spill at the corner of his.
The boy reached down and pulled Rosie tightly to his chest, realizing how small she was for the first time. She had to be a head shorter than Jaden. Rose threw her arms around her brother's waist and held on tight, refusing to let go. It took three peacekeepers to break them apart.
Rose was only thirteen, and Jaden barely fifteen.
And both were as good as dead.
Jaden wondered what he had done to deserve this.
He sat contemplating all the bad things he'd done. The worst he could think of was stealing an apple when he was twelve. But he had been punished by the head peacekeeper.
He had also convinced Rosie they wouldn't be caught. She had been tied to the whipping pole beside him.
Jaden sighed as he looked around the visiting room the peacekeepers had left him. It was well furnished, with a large window overlooking the orchard. No one was out working today, even though the harvest was about to begin. Usually, not working after the reaping was a gift that came along with not being chosen for the Games.
Now, Jaden would have given anything to be out in the fields. He would be on the ground, digging crops up from the roots, and Rosie would be high up in a tree, picking fruit and dodging tracker jacker nests.
It would have been hot, and sweaty, and back-breaking work. But it would have been perfect.
"What do you think Mom is doing, now?" Rosie asked. She was sitting in the seat across from her brother, her face a little green from the constant motion of the train.
"She's probably in the fields," Jaden answered with a shrug.
"Dad, too?"
Jaden shrugs again. "That's where they always are. Why are you asking?"
"I don't know." Rosie said, clutching her stomach and biting her lip. "You don't think they got a day off, do you?"
He sighed and took a bite out of his bagel. "We don't get days off. You know that."
"We should." Rosie leaned forward and placed her head in her hands.
"You're just being stupid, Rosie," Jaden took a sip out of what Xavier had called coffee. "Mom and Dad are fine."
"You're stupid."
"What?" Jaden asked. "Why are you insulting me?"
"You insulted me, first."
"Well, you're being a butt."
"Your face is a butt," Rosie said with a pinched face that was probably supposed to look threatening, but after a moment, she burst out into laughter that was almost hysterical. Jaden just rolled his eyes.
He understood that sometimes, laughing was the easiest way to keep yourself from crying.
"It's a sort of flick of your wrist," The knife instructor said, demonstrating the motion by throwing a knife into a dummy.
Jaden tried to mirror his actions, but the knife curved awkwardly and slammed into the wall, about ten feet away from his target. The boy turned to his sister, who threw a similar knife that dug itself into the hand of a target dummy.
Jaden sighed, aggravated. "Can we go back to the plant section? We actually know how to do that."
Rose shook her head, aiming with a knife once more. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. After throwing, and missing, she turned to her brother. "Jaden, we have to learn these things if you're going to have a chance."
"If I'm going to have a chance?" Jaden said, shaking his head. "You're the only one who's going to have a chance."
"That's not my plan."
"Oh, you have a plan now," Jaden said, lowering the projectile he had been aiming and turning his full attention to the girl beside him, who nodded. Rose pulled her arm back for another throw as Jaden started talking again. "And what might that plan be?"
"My plan is that you win," Rosie said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Jaden stared at her in bewilderment. His little sister was planning on protecting him? Jaden couldn't let that happen. He was the big brother; he was going to protect her.
"You're plan doesn't exactly correspond with mine." Jaden said picking up another weapon, and tested the feel of it in his hands. "And I bet mine's much more thought out."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
Rosie gave a small smile as she threw another knife and hit the dummies shoulder. "I guess we'll just have to see."
Jaden threw, and hit the dummies manly parts. "I guess we will."
And just like that, they had pledged themselves to protect the other.
Jaden looked in the mirror, and didn't see himself.
He recognized the hair, longer than normal and curly and blonde. His eyes were covered with some gunk that went across his eyelid. Apparently it made his green eyes pop, or whatever that meant. There was some green design drawn on his face in light green paint that completely covered his freckles. He was wearing a tuxedo with some shimmering green leave patterns on it and a brown tie.
The prep team told him he looked like a plant. Jaden didn't know if he should be offended or not.
Either way, he looked ridiculous, and he had never been good at public speaking. Jaden was positive that his interview was going to be a disaster.
More importantly, Rosie was going to be a total wreck. She was the shyest person Jaden had ever met, and could barely talk to anybody if she didn't know them.
And tomorrow was the first day of the Games, which Jaden could honestly say, he wasn't excited for.
This interview was just another hurdle he had to overcome before he was planning on dying, and before Rosie was planning on dying, and before Jaden had to make sure she was still alive.
Life had been so simple a week ago.
Jaden glanced at the mirror in front of him again, trying to find something that faintly resembled himself. He found nothing. He wasn't even in the arena, and the capitol had already changed him.
Rose sprinted across the field, past the cornucopia and snatched a backpack before disappearing into the tall prairie grass on the other side. Jaden was at her heels, eyes darting around in search of possible threats. No one was paying any attention to the siblings from District 11.
That night, they found a piece of ground that wasn't too wet, and not covered in rocks. The grass was taller than Jaden, who was an impressive 5' 11", and offered some cover when bent down and tied together.
Jaden collapsed, dropping the backpack Rosie had grabbed and curling on his side in exhaustion. Rose opened the bag and started digging through it. It didn't have much, a pack of dried meat, a half full water bottle and a few spare spear heads. The girl took one of the sharp heads and attached it to her belt before tossing another over to Jaden.
Jaden vaguely realized that they weren't well protected here, in the open and with nothing but spear heads for protection. He wondered if he should stay awake and keep watch.
But Rose curled in a ball beside him, and she was so warm against his side, that before another thought could cross his mind, Jaden was asleep.
Jaden knelt in front of the pile of twigs and dry grass, angrily trying to start a fire with two rocks. He smashed the rocks against each other and swore when nothing more than sparks appeared.
The teenager threw his two rocks in front of him. "People make fires like this every year in the Hunger Games, and they make it look so easy!" Jaden's stomach was aching from hunger as he threw himself onto his back, groaning loudly. "How else are we supposed to-"
"JADEN!" Rose's scream interrupted Jaden's rant. He was immediately on his feet and frantically turned around to see a figure sprinting towards their campsite. The spear head was in his hand and he was springing towards the tribute in less than a second.
His weight pushed the girl to the ground, and with a swift motion, he made a deep cut in her neck. The girl gurgled and spluttered for another moment before a canon fired. The girl was still beneath Jaden.
The sharp head in his hand dropped on the girl's chest, his hands shaking wildly and covered in blood. A hand grabbed his arm and gently guided him away from the body. Rose grabbed the backpack and scattered the attempt of a fire with her foot before grabbing her brother's hand and pulling him in a new direction, a determined look in her eye.
Jaden was still shaking that night when Rose forced him to fall asleep.
Jaden had killed someone.
He had killed a human being, a family out there was crying because of him. He felt disgusting, like his guilt was something tangible. He couldn't believe that he had used his callused hands to destroy something.
More importantly, he completely freaked out. Rose had basically been left to her own devices after he lost his mind for the eight hours he was asleep. Jaden woke up to find a tired, red-eyed Rosie looking down at him.
"You okay?" She asked as soon as his eyes focused.
Jaden just nodded and sat up, dropping his head into his hands and bursting into tears.
"Her name was Perlia," Rose said to him the next day.
"What?"
"The girl, from… before. Her name was Perlia."
He didn't remember how it happened. He didn't remember how they could have possibly snuck past him.
The only thing he could remember about that day was something heavy slamming into him, and two large boys pulling his arms behind his head, forcing him to stare at the boy from District Eight as he threw his sister against a tree.
Rose fought, she fought hard in a whirl of flying legs and arms striking out at random, but his hands found her neck easily, and they squeezed. They squeezed until his knuckles were white, and the brown freckles across Rosie's face disappeared into the red skin stretched across her cheek.
"ROSE!" he called out, desperate to break free from his captors.
"J-Jay," she choked out, giving one last desperate pull on the hands that trapped her. "Jaden."
Rose's body stilled, her bluish face slowly turning pale.
A canon fired, and Jaden shook his head, his brain refusing to believe what his eyes were telling him.
But his eyes weren't liars, and his brain was just being stupid.
District Eight dropped Rose, where she collapsed on the ground in a heap of skinny limbs and a limp head with pale, staring, blue eyes, before he turned around to where Jaden was now frozen in the two boy's arms.
Eight laughed. A hard, cruel bark of a sound that echoed around the grass and bounced off the illusion of a sky above them. "Let's deal with the last of the little farmer twins," he said. Jaden was thrown backwards and landed on the dry dirt behind him. Eight laughed again and pulled out a sword. He stalked towards Jaden with slow, measured steps.
Jaden let loose an animal growl. He glanced at Rosie's empty face before he grabbed the spearhead from his belt and threw it.
He didn't miss.
Jaden scrambled to his feet and ran.
He didn't stop moving until he couldn't hear the threatening shouts of Eight's friends. He didn't stop until his feet started aching. He didn't stop until the temperature had risen at least twelve degrees and the sun had sunk behind the fake horizon. He didn't stop until he felt the tears that had escaped the corners of his eyes were dried on his cheeks and his throat was sore from the sobs ripping themselves from his chest.
He didn't stop until his knees folded in on themselves and he fell onto the ground. He didn't stop until his head fell into his lap and a scream tore itself from his mouth.
Jaden didn't stop.
Jaden killed again the next day.
It was a small eleven year old girl who had tried to steal the last of his dried meat, and Jaden fell on top of her. The same spear head that had killed the boy from District Eight was at her neck in a second and she was dead in the next.
He thought she was the tribute from Four, but he couldn't be sure.
Rosie would have probably known her name.
It was getting really hard to remember why he's doing these unspeakable things. When the canon fired, signaling that there were two people left in the arena, Jaden couldn't even remember why he wanted to live.
All he remembered was his little sister, who wasn't there anymore, and never would be. Because she was dead, and it was someone's fault and that someone had to pay.
But Jaden didn't know if he could make it that long without the red headed girl to drag him along with her.
It was raining when the other surviving tribute, the girl from District Two, found him. She walked towards him with a confident stride, a shiny, blood encrusted hook sword at her side.
Jaden's grip loosened and the spare spear head fell with a clatter at his feet.
Two smiled and raised her sword, taking the final steps towards her prey. She laughed, just like District Eight did. Just like Jaden would never do again.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered, mostly to himself.
And that was how Jaden died, and how his sister never made it home without him.
Meh, the ending sucks, I know. But I hope you enjoyed anyway. Please review.