Author's Note (Dec. 27, 2013) - This story is the 72nd Hunger Games. Yes, it used to be the 71st, until I realized Johanna won the 71st, which I'm surprised no one ever pointed out. So, wherever you see it mention the 71st, it's actually the 72nd. Thanks a lot! PS, if you're reading this, I'm still here. Reviews are always appreciated, just keep in mind, this was my first story ever, so be gentle!

See the fish swimming upstream
Back to the hills
Want no part in the whale watch
If you couldn't tell
My lover ain't Christlike
But my lover is childlike

Hero De Lacroix

I know I must be near the end. I was never a real contender anyways. Lucy most definitely wasn't, but if we'd had a choice, we would have rather taken our own lives together rather than die in such horrific ways.

I think I saw Bravo's face in the sky last night. I hope I did, and it wasn't just a part of these fever induced nightmares plaguing my sleep.

I don't know how long it has been since Lucy died. All I know is that no one has found me. No one has helped me. My ribs are still aching. My head is pulsating, and it feels as if someone is repeatedly bashing in my skull with a rock. My entire body aches. My throat and mouth are parched. My stomach is empty and my body feels so heavy that I cannot move.

I find myself wishing Bravo had just killed me too. In the moment, I was relieved when they left me alive. I thought someone would find me. I thought Chaff would send me some food or water, or maybe even medicine. I thought I had been given a gift when the Careers walked away from me. No. I had been given a death sentence.

I attempt to open my eyes, but even the small amount of sunlight gleaming down from the holes in the ceiling blind me and I close them immediately. The images in my mind have become fuzzy. It's only a matter of time now.

Somehow, the thought relaxes me and the pain no longer seems so severe. My mind becomes fuzzy, but in a pleasant way. The pain in my chest significantly lessens until I can feel nothing at all. I feel like I am floating. I am weightless.

My mind drifts to my family back home in Eleven. I think of all my little brothers and sisters and know they are watching me right now. I hope they are not sad. I want to reach out to them. I want to tell them not to cry, that I don't feel any pain.

I think of Lucy, and how her family must be mourning. I wonder if anyone is mourning me too. I wonder how our District feels. I think it must anger them, to see two young children, forced into a place where they had no hope of escaping. Two children who only ever wanted to go home, and knew deep down that they never would.

I think of the fields and orchards, where we would all work during Harvest. The older kids complained about it, but the younger ones always loved it. Harvest meant we didn't have to go to school. It meant we could be outside in the warm sunlight all day, climbing in trees, laughing and singing to the mockingjays.

They let us children climb the tallest trees. My sister, Claire, her friend named Rue and Rue's little brother, Cole. We loved it, climbing through the tree tops to see who could reach the highest fruit. We would whistle and sing and hum throughout the day, giggling as the mockingjays mimicked our songs, and tried to see who could come up with the most complex tunes. Rue always had the loveliest voice though, and the mockingjays favored her. They would repeat our songs for a moment or two, as if testing them out, but always return to Rue's. It was her four note whistle that always signaled the end of the work day.

I am overcome with emotion as I remember my District and how I will never see it again. I will never climb the trees, feeling like I am on top of the world. I will never feel the sunlight on my skin. I will never again eat the sweet fruit, we were allowed only one piece each per day, but it hadn't mattered. To us, it seemed like enough. I will never sing and laugh with my friends.

Even teeming with cruel Peacekeepers and starving children, District Eleven is my home. My home that I will never return to.

With that thought, a light appears behind my eyes, but it is not painful or blinding. It is warm, welcoming, like the sunlight shining through the trees at home. The light gets brighter and Lucy is there, strong and alive. She reaches out one of her small, pale hands and I take it. Warmth engulfs my body at once.

"Where are we going?" I hear my own voice ask.

She smiles, "Home."

In the distance, a cannon sounds.

Crisis Cavitch

"So you're supposed to shake it, take the cap off and inhale." Audrina says, reading the instructions that Brutus and Enobaria sent with the medication.

The last thing I remember is seeing the room piled with goods, I don't even recall stepping into it. Apparently Audrina dragged me out of the flames and shut the door behind us. She said she thought I was dead and she had missed the cannon, but she wouldn't give up.

I don't understand why she didn't just let me die, it's what she's wanted all along. The only thing I can figure is that she so desperately wants me dead by her own hand, that she would risk her own life to revive me just so she could kill me a second time. God, she really is crazy.

After she slathered me with the burn medication, she dragged me far from the burning room. From where I'm laying I can see another door, presumably leading into another booby trapped supply room. No way in hell are either of us going near that.

"I know you want to sleep, but you still have ash in your lungs." Audrina hands me a clear plastic tube.

"I don't know if I trust this." I try to smirk at her, but I'm in so much pain that it quickly turns into a wince.

She takes the tube back from me and shakes it vigorously, then after popping off the cap, she presses it gently between my lips.

"Good, now breathe in a few times, okay?"

I do as she tells me, vaguely wondering who this girl is and what she did with the lethal killer I've known since we were ten. The thought escapes me quickly though, as the medication begins to work. It feels as if my lungs are expanding with each inhalation. Finally she removes the tube from my mouth.

"Better?" She asks me, smiling slightly.

"So much better. Now you, you inhaled just as much smoke and ash as I did."

She glares at me, disliking the fact that I called her out on a weakness. She already refused the burn cream, even though her forearms are severely red and blistered. I didn't fight it though, already planning to put it on her while she sleeps.

"Please? They obviously sent it for both of us, and I'm in no position to help you if you get sick."

"Just kill me, then. It would make things easier on you anyways."

I am not surprised at what she says, but I am surprised at my reaction.

"No. You didn't kill me. I'm not going to kill you."

Her bitter laugh fills the hallway.

"Well, quite a turnaround from where we started off, isn't it?"

I laugh too, thinking of that first day in the Capitol before the parade.

"I guess so." I say, offering her a small smile and pushing the second tube of medication toward her. Pleading with my eyes. This time she doesn't protest.

"Tell me a story." I say to Audrina some time later. My head is in her lap again, and she is applying more medicine to the mangled flesh on my face and neck.

"A story?" She asks, raising an eyebrow. "Crisis, I don't have stories. Not good ones at least."

"Audrina Prescott, I refuse to believe that there has never been a pleasant moment in your life."

She considers this while rubbing medicine on my chest. I feel my heartbeat quicken, and hope she doesn't notice it.

"I don't have many. And I know you don't either. We come from the same place."

"I have happy memories!" I say, defending myself.

She scoffs, "Oh yeah? Like what?"

Like when I woke up and realized that you saved me.

"Ah- well." I falter for a moment, struggling to think of a happy memory that doesn't directly involve her. "Training!"

"Training?" She asks, but I can see the smile on her lips too. Most of the time, training was our favorite part of our lives. It was the only time we were good at something.

"Yeah. The first time I ever hit all the targets during spear throwing. I was twelve. I don't think I have ever felt more happiness in my entire life."

She laughs, no doubt remembering that way, or at least what happened after it.

"Yeah and then Cato went after you and missed two of his targets. And you had the nerve to laugh at him. Which, if I remember correctly, is what earned you..."

She concentrates for a moment, as if trying to remember. Finally she does and lefts the bottom left corner of my shirt, revealing an ugly scar just below my ribcage.

"...this scar." She finishes, and runs her calloused fingers over the rough flesh. I try to calm my breathing and deny how much this small action makes me want her.

"I remember how you and Cato became best friends after that day. Brutus let him torture you long enough to teach you your lesson, and the rest of us got to watch. Pure entertainment."

"Hey! I got a few good hits in there too!" I am smiling more and more as we continue to reminisce.

"I know you did! My sister was trying to hide how worried she was about him and everyone was teasing her about it."

Clove and Cato always did have a thing for each other. I think it started on her first official day of training, Clove was so lethal and had enough previous training that she was put in with our age group even though she was three years younger than us. Cato had tried to take her knife and she threw it at his head, intentionally missing by only a few centimeters. He lunged at her and tackled her to the ground, but somehow she flipped them both and had him pinned until Ares, one of our trainers, peeled them off of each other and they were carted away to solitary confinement. They had been inseparable ever since.

Thinking of Clove and Cato makes me remember all of our friends: Tero, Ivy, Isobel and Gaven. We were like a family, the strongest of our age group and the ones to be feared. Almost every single one of my scars had come from one of them, and Audrina too. We fought each other because if we wanted to be the best, we had to fight the best.

"Your turn, Drina. What's your favorite memory?"

She exhales, clearly not wanting to venture deeper into these memories that carry so much emotion. But she will anyways.

"The day I was reaped." She whispers almost inaudibly.

"What? Why?" I ask, genuinely shocked.

"Because it meant Clove wouldn't have to go in yet. It was her first year, and she wasn't ready yet. I didn't care who it was, I just didn't want her name to come out of that bowl. You and I both know that they fill that thing with more Trainee names than anyone else."

It's true. Our District is rather wealthy, considering. No one ever takes any tesserae because they don't need it. So to make the bowl appear fuller, they dump in extra slips of paper with our names on them.

"You're more protective of her than you let show."

"She doesn't need it though. She can protect herself, we've all seen it. She's strong and dangerous and she would have done well even if her name had been called. I just knew I couldn't bear to watch my baby sister die."

Her fingers are toying with my hair, and I understand how hard it must be for her to admit this.

"What have these Games done to us, Audrina?" I ask. I know that she knows what I am talking about.

"It's real now." She answers. "All our lives, we've been told that the only thing we can do is kill. Fight, kill, murder. So we can bring pride and riches to our District. We get in here, and we're given a new perspective. It wasn't the only thing. We had friends, we had family. We would laugh and smile. We..." She stops for a moment and clears her throat. It occurs to me that she is fighting back tears and I find that I am too. This is a relevation for both of us.

"We loved each other. We cared about each other." She continues, "They told us we couldn't. They told us we didn't know how. We did all along though, in our own way, we did."

We are both quiet then. Absorbing this new information and allowing the silent tears to stream down our faces. Just this once, though, we do not tease or judge. Just this once, we ignore it.

Riah Hutchinson

"I'm starving." Noah complains from his sleeping bag, groaning in pain.

I know the feeling, which is precisely why I'm not very bothered by our lack of food. I'm used to being starving. It comes with being from Twelve. I live in the Seam, but I look like I come from the town, meaning I'm rejected by both. I don't look like the Seam kids, and they don't accept me. I'm too dirty and skinny to be from town, so they don't let me near them either.

"I know, Noah. I'm sorry. I would hunt, but there's not many resources and no game in here."

Things have been tense ever since Noah pushed Crisis and Audrina down one of the holes. They didn't die. We heard cannons later that day, but their faces never showed up in the sky. I could tell that Noah is worried. He doesn't know where they went, and he knows they'll come back at us with a vengeance.

We managed to find water after we put enough distance between ourselves and the holes, but we hadn't eaten since the morning before the Games. I make my way toward Noah and press my lips to his forehead, brushing his hair aside. He turns away from me sharply.

"Noah?" I whisper, wondering what I did wrong.

He sits up with his back to me, muscles tense.

"What are you doing?" He asks, his voice cold and sharp.

"I-I don't... I don't know, I-"

"Well, don't."

His words slice through me like a knife.

"What, Noah? What did I do wrong? Showed you some compassion? I said I'm sorry. I'm just as hungry as you are, but you don't see me complaining. We're doing the best we can." My words come out sharper than I had intended, but I can't help it. Rejection stings.

"No! No you're not! Ever since we got here, you've been telling me how your hunting skills helped save your family. Well, use some of your hunting skills and help save us."

"Noah, it doesn't work like tha-"

"It doesn't work like that?" He stands up now, throwing his sleeping bag to the side and towering over me.

"Was that your plan all along then? Since you're apparently so immune to hunger? You were just going to let me starve and die, so you could take the supplies and survive?"

"Noah, you're not making any sense. Why would I want to kill you? And if I did, why would I waste time trying to starve you? Why wouldn't I just slit your throat in your sleep?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because we're in a televised death match? Maybe because one of us is going to have to kill the other one eventually, why not get it over with now? Apparently you've got it all planned out, don't you?"

Sighing, I reach to stroke his arm. He doesn't know what he's doing. It's hunger-driven anger and insanity, I see it all the time in the Seam.

"Don't fucking touch me!" He screams, reaching for his dagger and holding it out in front of him.

I raise my arms up in front of me and take a few cautious steps back, but he follows me, a crazed glint in his eye.

"Noah, listen to me. You don't know what you're doing. You're hungry, and I'm sorry. We'll go find food right now, I promise. But you have to put the knife down."

My back is pushed up against the cave wall now and he is coming closer. Tears prick the back of my eyes and my throat becomes choked up.

"No."

With one final stride, he shoves his dagger into my ribcage, just barely missing my heart. A sharp, searing pain overcomes me. His eyes lose their glassy look immediately, bringing him back to reality.

"Riah? Riah! No!"

He yanks the knife out and pulls me against him, lowering us both to the floor.

I look up at him, tears are pouring down his cheeks. I give him a weak smile.

"You missed by just a bit." I whisper. It only makes him cry more.

"Riah, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it. I don't want you to die, I need you. I need you, dammit!"

"Shhh, Noah. It's okay. It'll be okay. You'll be okay."

"No. No I won't. I'm losing myself in here, Riah. I don't know what's happening to me."

Tears are streaming down my own face now and it is becoming harder to breathe. I reach up to touch his cheek.

"No you're not. You're going to be fine." I try to inhale, but it hurts. It is exasperating to speak.

"Listen to me. You have to get off this level. Go up to wear they dropped us in from or go down were Audrina and Crisis went, they obviously survived. Do not give up. Do not. You're going to win, or die trying."

He nods through his sobs.

"I'm so sorry." He says, repeating it over and over.

I close my eyes and it's not so bad anymore. I let my mind go completely blank, and it's just like falling asleep. Everything goes dark.

Roman Caulder

There's someone at my camp.

There are two someones at my camp.

I crouch in the tall grass, watching. They are looking through my supplies, picking at the meat I have saved.

I think it should make me angry. It would make a sane person angry, wouldn't it? I imagine so.

I'm not upset. I'm glad they have come. I'm happy to have some new friends. It's been rather lonely up here, with no one to talk to but the stars and no one to play with but the bunnies.

Slowly I stand up, but I'm small and the grass still conceals me. I reach for a knife from my belt and aim for the blonde girl. I laugh to myself before throwing it toward her.

Oh, but she is quick. She is smart. She heard me. And she moved. But not before pushing the boy down.

The knife sticks in his calf and he falls into the embers of the previous night's fire, burning his palms.

How amusing. I move a tiny bit closer and watch the scene play out in front of me.

"What the hell was that?" The boy yells, rolling away from the fire and looking at his hands. Charred black, they are.

They girl pays him no attention. Her eyes are narrowed into slits as she scans the fields. Her eyes roam straight over me at first, but she stops and turns back in my direction and locks eyes with mine. Her eyes look like mine, clear grey and impossibly wide.

We stare at each other for several seconds. Then she smiles. I smile back.

She turns around to face the boy and pulls the knife from his leg.

"That's pretty deep." He says, examining his wound.

The girl nods, and the boy keeps talking.

"Did you see anything out there?"

"No. Not much." She says, her eyes care carefully trained on his.

He looks at his leg again.

"How bad is it? Do you think I can make it?"

She continues to stare, and I step closer. I am only a few yards away now, standing behind the boy. I watch the girl.

After a few seconds of silence, she answers.

"No."

"Wha-"

She plunges the knife into his heart in one swift motion.

She stares into his blank, nearly dead eyes and smiles, "It never would have worked between us, darling."

A cannon sounds and she stands up, locking eyes with me again.

"I know you. I know how you are. You and I aren't so different, Roman." She says, and she wipes the bloody knife on the sleeve of her jacket.

"No, we're not." I answer.

It seems I have found a friend.

Deaths:

Hero De Lacroix

Riah Hutchinson

Lex Slawson

Message me point transfers please!

You are only allowed to send votes in the reviews, not PMs please!

IMPORTANT: I have not decided who will be victor yet. So I decided to let the votes influence my decision. I believe that the remaining twelve all have an equal chance of winning. So get everyone you know to come vote for your tribute, because the amount of points each tribute has will influence my decisions regarding their deaths.

This time you may only vote for two tributes, and they will both receive 50 points. Only one may be your own.

Make sure that you write in your review/message which chapter your votes are for since you get one vote per chapter.

Bonus Points:

*I've decided to give 5 bonus points to each of your tributes if you leave a review! A constructive review, not a review with your votes and that's it. :)

**For more bonus points, go check out these two lovely stories:

The 124th Hunger Games: A Lost Cause by The Silver Panda (My tributes are Scarlet and Arrow, also vote in his poll!)

The 1st Annual Hunger Games! by 73Years (My tribute is Ruby)

Go read and leave them reviews and I'll give your tribute(s) 5 points for each one! Neither of them asked me to promote them, nor will my tributes be receiving points for your reviews, I just think that they deserve some more reads!

Also, make sure to go to www . seventyoneyears . blogspot . com (with no spaces of course!) to see pictures and bios of all the tributes! I updated and changed some since writing this!

-Becca