Screaming capped off the moment of silence immediately after the suicide bomber's explosion. Cheyenne got up from the ground after throwing Sam down alongside her, quickly snapping her head up to survey the situation. No trace of the antagonist remained; the corpses of three nearby innocents and the still bodies of four Peacekeepers lay motionless on the ground. Nearby Peacekeepers flooded the scene, guns up and at the ready and looking for trouble.
"Get up, run back home," Cheyenne breathed heavily into Sam's ear. "Run as fast as you can. I'll lag behind a bit, make sure nobody's trailing…go. Now."
Sam looked up with wide eyes: "What about you?"
"I'll follow. Just get going Sam – do it."
Sam picked herself up on her feet, casting a hasty look back towards the square. Two of the Peacekeepers had rounded on a man scrambling backwards, leveling rifles straight at his face. His expression said everything: innocent on all presumed charges, guilty merely by association and location. Crack! A rifle bullet exploded from one Peacekeeper's gun, ripping through the man's head and exiting messily out the rear of his cranium.
Without another word, Sam took off running. She sprinted as fast as her legs would take her, throwing worried looks behind her every fifty feet. She slipped on a patch of icy ground, slipping and landing with a painful thud on the hard turf. Her hands scrabbled on the slippery road before her as she struggled to right herself. Thoughts swam through her mind, dragging her from a chaotic survival situation into a troubled morass of the mind.
The bomber had provoked the confrontation in her eye. He seemingly had wanted to give himself up – to take down a Peacekeeper or two as some sort of statement; to goad others into violence or even to just die on his terms. That spoke of only one faction to her – the Vox. If they were becoming this brazen, however, she had to find the answer to an unfortunate question she had been putting off asking until absolutely necessary: She had to find out if Clay was involved or not.
Ignoring Cheyenne's command, Sam jogged away from the path and towards the more open frozen prairie. District 10's Peacekeeper force would be preoccupied – centered on the square in a reactionary response to the bombing. She would be able to ignore attention for the most part; reaching Clay's house just outside of the Ranching Ward without too much trouble. Sam could no longer ignore Nihlus's warning; despite Clay's strange detachment recently, she could not let him end up in the violent boondoggle that the insurgent faction quickly had escalated. If District 4's boat bombing and this murder-suicide were indicative of the future, things would soon get worse in a hurry.
Down! Sam dropped to the ground suddenly as she spotted a Peacekeeper squad hurrying as fast as they could go to the square. She breathed quietly, holding in each breath just a hair longer than normal to squeeze the air out of her lungs without a sound. Time slowed down with each long stride of the Peacekeepers, their heavy-set steel-tipped boots hitting the ground with crunches of ice and anger.
They departed as quickly as they arrived. Sam hurried back to her feet, taking a last look around for danger before sprinting off towards the Lamar household. She prayed Clay would be home on a Sunday, his day off – somehow available for her finally to know the truth.
Icicles hung off the small, ramshackle Lamar household as Sam ran up, melting in the cold sun overhead. Sam trotted up to the door breathlessly, taking a moment on the rickety wooden porch to catch her breath. Nerves fired off anxiously as she put her hands on her thighs; she wondered silently about what she was about to find out. Would Clay even know about the incident today? If he was home and nobody else had arrived before her, chances were likely he wouldn't know about the blast – unless the Vox connection went far deeper than Sam knew. Would he have been complicit in the act – planning it alongside some underground conspiracy dedicated to the chaos and anarchy Nihlus craved so much?
No. No, he couldn't – he had been by Sam through her whole childhood in good and bad times. He wouldn't dive headfirst into something so stupid, so vapid as a resistance cell. Sam couldn't lose yet another piece of her home; couldn't face the loneliness that had been creeping up on her in District 10 since Clara's death. She had to have Clay's love and trust; had to have him by her side just as he always had been.
Sam took a nervous breath, opened the front door of the Lamar house, and faced her entire world falling apart.
Clay stood before the house's simple staircase, his arms wrapped about the waist of a buxom red-headed girl. His back was turned to Sam as he traded kisses with her, his lips connected with hers as one. Although the intimacy went no further than kissing, Sam felt herself go slack-jawed in surprise and agony. The red-headed girl opened a gray eye, staring straight ahead at Sam with a seductive, smug smile as she pulled her lips away from Clay's.
"Mmm," she purred, lowering her head to appraise Sam with a sharper glare. "Your girlfriend here to join us?"
Clay looked around with a snap, his pupils widening with shock upon seeing Sam's dejected arrival.
"Abilene, gimme a second," he said, letting go of her waist and turning fully around to Sam. "What…what are you doing here?"
Sam shook her head, her mouth still ajar from the surprise of the bombshell. She took a step back from the door, her feet connecting with the porch in a pounding thud that rang hollow in her ears. Clay's betrayal of her trust and faith hit her with finality; she felt her heart ripped out of her chest, her guts falling to her feet.
"You…you…" she gaped, her jaw moving up and down like a fish's, failing to make words. "How could you?"
Clay followed her out slowly, closing the door behind her. "Sam, I know this looks strange, but gimme a second to explain…"
"You couldn't explain in a lifetime!" Sam exploded, her pent-up emotion from the sight roaring out of her in a tsunami of jealousy and rage. "All we've been through…all that's happened, and you're…you're just screwing this other girl? Who even is she?"
Clay bit his tongue, ready for the fallout. "Look, Sammy, you've been gone a lot from the district and things change here…"
"Change? Do you remember what you told me when I got Reaped?" she demanded, her hands waving at her side animatedly. "You said you'd be waiting for me! You wanted me to come back – for what? So you could throw me aside to pick up whichever girl you think looks better than me? Is that what it is? Am I just the latest and last thing that's tired and boring?"
"Don't get holy on me," he snapped, irritated by her emotional rant. "I know what we had together, but then you got cozy with the Capitol and got Clara killed off. You think that made me feel warm and cushy inside? How am I supposed to justify myself to everyone who's not rich and shameless like you that I'm supposed to be with one of our victors that we keep on a pedestal?"
"I tried everything I could to save Clara!" Sam lied. "Don't you turn this around! You don't know what it's like…what it's like to have to watch your best friend die like that, especially when being responsible for everything! You don't know what I went through; all the tears I shed – because you were here trying to have your stupid fun with some dippy girl you dug up who-knows-where!"
"You're right," Clay nodded sharply, his face moving from defensiveness to anger. "You're right. I don't know – maybe that's what it is. Sure seems like a good thing I don't, huh? You look perfectly alright accepting whatever gifts the Capitol wants to give you. I guess when you've grown up in your little ivory tower your whole life, you don't understand what those of us without money every day for basic needs have to go through. Maybe that's why I don't get you anymore, Sam."
"You-"
"No, you! I don't want you Sammy; I don't want you, I don't want your gifts from the Capitol, I don't want any of your kind."
Sam shook her head. The impact of Clay's last few sentences slammed into her with the force of a jackhammer: Nihlus was right. Clay had left behind whatever life he'd had before, casting his lot in with whatever the Capitol wasn't. If Sam was part of that, then she was gone as well. There was no bringing him back; no trying to hold onto him and build a future together. He'd never let go of her for Clara's failure and her future as a victor. The Hunger Games had torn them apart and had irrevocably ripped away any dreams of a happy ending.
"I don't believe this," Sam whispered quietly, her eyes tightening up at the corners. "I don't believe what you're saying. You're throwing away everything you had – we had! You don't even care about me…please, stop, come back! You don't have to do whatever it is you're trying to-"
"I think you stopped caring about me or anyone else some time ago," Clay interrupted her coldly. "We don't have a future together, Sam. There's nothing more you and I can make."
"No! I loved you!" Sam gasped, her throat tightening with the threat of tears. "I still love you! Don't do this, Clay! You're breaking my heart!"
"Not much left to break," Clay finished, opening his door and stepping back into the alcove. Abilene smirked from behind him, her eyes laughing at Sam's broken failure – she'd relished in hearing the whole thing. "Bye, Sam. Try not to kill anybody I know when you mentor them this year."
The door slamming told Sam all she needed to know. She turned away from the house with tears streaming down her face, sobs choking her breath. Sam untied the blue ribbon in her ponytail, letting the fabric ripple out from her hand in a gust of wind and flutter towards the house, where it hit the front porch and lay crumpled in a defeated heap.
Sam walked away with her anguish, her head down and her heart left in tatters.
A/N: Well, Sam's certainly having a dramatically bad day. Sorry for the short-ness; I thought including much else would devalue the impact, so I tidied up inside of 2,000 words. Lemme know your thoughts!
