She smiles at him across the gym, and that smile blocks out everything. The noises of the the Careers slaughtering dummies, the wheezing and whimpering of tributes who have never picked up a sword in their lives.
(She's something else. Sweet and quiet, she's not complained once since her name was called at the reaping.)
"As I lay me down to sleep…"
All through training, she's learning. She tries the edible plants, and the knife throwing, which she's terrible at, at the fire starting.
(He find himself following her.)
At dinner, she eats hungrily, the only break in her composure. She's skinny, never had enough to eat.
She doesn't complain. She took out tesserae because she had to. She came quietly because she had to. She learns to kill because she has to.
(She accepts it. She just gets on with everything, taking into her stride.)
She scores an eight, and he has no idea what she showed them. Their mentors are both wasted out of their brains and nothing is planned, but she knows what she's doing. It occurs to him that she's a ruthless butcher who's hiding her killer instinct from him.
(It's been done.)
"…I pray the Lord my soul to keep…"
She's a butterfly, flitting about, and she never seems to touch the floor.
She can't be a killer. It's not possible.
(Besides, she's smaller than any of them.)
The night before, they find themselves on the roof, just talking. Her voice is music.
(Somewhere he registers that he loves her.)
"…If I should die before I wake…"
A forest. Green and beautiful, pine trees and soft moss. He takes shelter under a fallen log and sorts through what he grabbed at the Cornucopia. A pack. Some crackers. A slender knife and piece of folded plastic. A tiny flask of water.
There's the sound of a leaf crunching underfoot, and the knife finds his hand.
Of course it's her.
(Who else would it be?)
She's unarmed and miraculously unscathed. "Allies?"
He hesitates. "Alright."
"…I pray the Lord my soul to take…"
Blood. It's all he can see. The gash across her stomach is horrendous, blood seeping between her fingers as she holds herself together.
(He's seen intestines before, in previous Games, but he's never been this close to a person who's dying.)
She's just lying there, the pinks and the reds of her body against the greys and the browns of the greens of the forest.
Death comes not with a bang but with a whimper.
He lies her down on a bed of green, but it's still ugly.
(Nothing pretty about that pretty girl now.)
He curses her. She's supposed to be peaceful now, dammit.
He hates her.
(He loves her.)
He shoves her. "Just stop it. STOP IT!"
(This isn't what death is supposed to be. She's supposed to smile at him and close her eyes. But she died choking, crying, blood and guts spilling.
The say the dead are at peace, but there's nothing peaceful about her. Blood and guts and death. There's no beauty here.
"Now I lay me down to sleep…"
All for naught.
