Author's note: Sorry this chapter is so short it will get longer/better I promise!
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games
I was now on a train for the second time in my life.
I had never expected it to happen again since the first time I'd experienced the feeling, I'd been on my way to my certain death. Except… I hadn't. I, Katniss Everdeen, had won the 74th Annual Hunger Games. How was that even possible? But somehow it was true – I had defeated Clove, Glimmer, even Marvel. They were all gone and I remained. But not in the way that I should have been - not as a true, lone victor. Instead as part of a 'team' with Peeta Mellark.
Team. I thought that in a team, everyone contributed, everyone was equal. Yet Peeta hadn't saved me, more like the other way around. I didn't need him.
But when it came down to it in the end… I couldn't kill him. He didn't deserve that. Neither did I though, so what could we do? So here we both were sitting on the train for the second time. The luxurious refreshments, the feeling that I'd won the Hunger Games, the fact that I was going home. All tings that I never thought I'd experience and all unimaginably wonderful.
Yet I couldn't appreciate the plush, cushioned seat beneath me, the sense of cleanliness and comfort after all those days spent in the arena. I couldn't register the fact that I'd be seeing my family again or even that I'd won, I'd become a victor. Because of all the guilt, all the horrendous, horrible, maddening guilt weighing down on me. I'd cheated my way to success, made up a story to make the Capitol love me. Haymitch says that if I hadn't, I'd have died from lack of sponsors but I don't see how. I'd not only lied to everyone I knew in District 12, but everyone in the whole of Panem. I'd lied and no one knew. No one knew the truth. Okay, Haymitch maybe, but no one that actually mattered understood, I hadn't had a chance to explain. They all believed the lie – Peeta, Gale, Prim, my mother – and probably hated me for it.
Before I could truly feel relieved for anything that was happening to me I had to get home and explain to them the truth, before it got even more out of hand than it already was. But how would I find the words?