He watched her through her Games, half-hoping she would win. She was so calm, so collected, and so deadly. He watched her persuade the Career pack, which was greatly diminished due to the lack of District 4 tributes, to let her join. He watched her befriend Maxim, the enormous District 2 tribute, and get him fully on to her side. He watched her fall a little bit in love with the hulking boy, and watched her take her anger out on the District 6 boy after Maxim was killed.
She started her Games alone, a single District 5 tribute, watching as her district partner was blown up by his landmine on the first day, in the first minute of the 67th Hunger Games. She ran, after that. No one could have blamed her. She worked out how to survive in the awful, desert arena. Worked out how to ration her water carefully, and worked out how to use her sword, the sword her district partner had failed to get, so precisely that it moved almost silently through the air.
She joined the Career pack, what was left of it, after just four days in the arena, but in this arena that equated to the usual fortnight. It was just Maxim, his district partner, and the District 1 boy who remained. They headed back to the Cornucopia after she joined; they listened to her when she explained it was suicide to stay out under the desert sun.
It must have happened on the way back to the Cornucopia, he guessed. Sometime around then, at least. All he knew for sure was that too many tributes had died too quickly. The Capitol were growing bored, watching District 4 tributes fall down dead from lack of water and District 11 tributes go mad with a lack of anything green. The Gamemakers rarely go back on an arena design, but they did that year. In a crevice that had occurred after the District 5 boy had jumped off his plate a second too early, they built a lake. It was shallow, and the water was seemingly always hot, but it was still water in the desert.
She moved carefully, the little District 5 girl, he'd give her that. After the District 2 girl was picked off by a throwing star to the brain just before they reached the water at the Cornucopia, she perfected a stance that allowed her to see everything around her, almost all at once. That wasn't exactly hard, though. There are few trees in a desert, after all. When the District 1 boy had his head smashed in by a rock when he went to investigate a strange noise he heard while on guard, she became almost attached at the hip to Maxim. Maxim, on his part, didn't seem to mind. She was the brains of the operation, he the brawn.
What could only have been a day or so later, the District 12 girl appeared in the girl's eyeline. She sat up from where she was lying by the water, immediately on full alert. Maxim lumbered towards the girl, yelling about how lucky District 12 was, still having both tributes alive at this stage of the competition. The girl, the District 5 girl who should never be underestimated at any cost, slipped from 12's sight without her noticing. He knew immediately that the girl from 12 was dead meat. While the scrawny, starving, dehydrated girl from the Seam of District 12 tried pointlessly to distract Maxim from her own pack's approach, the girl from 5 slipped up behind her and broke her neck. She and Maxim only had a split second in which to smile at each other before a throwing star entered his neck, leaving him gasping on the ground. District 5 watched, crying, her hand over his heart and her hair falling silently into his face, as Maxim died. Then, she decided to really go to town the 12 girl's pack.
The boy from 6 had the throwing stars. He died with one being shoved mercilessly down his throat, after she broke his wrist. The girl from 10 had a spiked whip, which she twirled pointlessly around her head. The girl from 5 waited until it accidently snagged a rock, before getting in close and breaking her neck, too. Still, she took too long. He watched, part fascinated, part horrified, as the boy from 12 - a boy who resembled a dinosaur in a strange, primal way - attacked her, slashing her from her shoulder to the top of her leg with a scythe he had found god-knows-where. She gasped in pain, dropping to the ground, and smashing his legs out from underneath him, pulling herself away from him as his head collided with a rock. With her last remaining effort, she stumbled up the Cornucopia, which this year was moulded to look like a pile of rocks. She had been studying it since she had arrived. She knew what its secret purpose was, and she was going to exploit it.
As she reached the highest point of the Cornucopia, Dinosaur Boy began climbing it himself. As the girl looked down into the water next to the Cornucopia, she allowed herself a small smile. She kicked forwards, watching as the rocks fell and crushed the life out of her one remaining competitor. It was obvious, in hindsight. The Cornucopia was built to remove anyone unlucky enough to be taking advantage of the arrival of the water if someone disturbed the carefully piled rocks. The rocks would fall, smashing both the climber and the drinkers to pieces. At the end of the day, the water was just another arena trap. Someone very wise once said 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'. In the arena, this was completely and utterly true.
Throwing herself into the water as the entire structure began to collapse; the girl from 5 appeared on the surface of the shallow pool just as the boy's cannon rang out. She revealed a beautiful smile, beaming radiantly at the crew of the vehicle which came to collect her.
He slightly envied them from being at the receiving end of that look.