I Don't Love You by My Chemical Romance

When you go would you have the guts to say

"I don't love you like I loved you yesterday"?

Grace Willow, 17, District Five

I hate it when the darkness lifts. It's too bright in this place during the day, and where I am now holds no crevices for my friends to hide in to be with me. I feel deserted in a place full of cold and fluffy white snow. Deserted and freezing, so cold.

I shiver again and run my bare hands up and down my arms. My gloves were lost in the disaster that took all the rest of my supplies. Everything taken from me, well everything except for one thin dagger, now far too cold to so much as grasp. Not that I should even want to hold it, but for some reason I do now. That's weird because before this week I never would have known what to do with it, but instinct proves stronger than knowledge sometimes. I yearn to hold it in front of me like a shield to keep me safe from everything the Capitol and the other tributes could think to throw at me. If only it didn't hurt so much to touch it with my already frozen fingers.

When I can't stand it any longer I sit down and hold my blue hands in my lap, pressed between my chest and knees to try and move some sort of warmth into them. It doesn't work well, but soon enough I have the tiniest bit of feeling in them and this time I have plans for it. I can't last much longer if my hands were to become permanently numb. I need new gloves, or at least something like them. My plan isn't perfect, but it's worth a try. No one will blame me for trying things in here, and for that I can almost be thankful.

I unzip the insulated jumpsuit I've been in since the Launch room and the chill instantly cuts through me. I very nearly abandon my idea and zip back up and pull up my hood so that I can continue my search for a safe corner in this place. Away from the ice and snow, even though I am fully aware this is just a childish wish. Everyone up to the Launch told me that the Games would be the hardest thing I would ever experience, even those scary people that wore too much makeup and smiled too often told me it would be an honor to come out in one piece. Even after I thought I prepared myself for the worst, this was a shock. Still is a shock to my entire body. It makes me feel different and not in a good way. All I want to do is close my eyes and picture myself back at home in my room with my friends to talk with all night on my bedroom walls. With everything I am made of I just want to be able to wake up from this nightmare that with every night feels more and more like I won't ever wake up from it.

I shake my head of the thoughts, trying to concentrate all of my energy on what I need to do. I'm fully aware of the chilly air surrounding my arms and stomach as the jumpsuit slides down to my hips, leaving me in just a tight fitting shirt that does nothing to halt the cold, but I do my very best to ignore it. All of my brain power right now focuses on me being somewhere else. The warmest place I can think of, the heart of one of the power stations where radiation pulses within each cell of the building. Yes, it's warm there. I'm in a powerhouse; the arena doesn't exist right now. Not until I'm finished what I have to do.

I have barely gotten my knife out from its holster in my belt before a low rumbling sound interrupts my work and I risk the notion of looking up, the very thing that probably saved my life. My entire world shakes as long rods of pointed ice descend down upon me, one catching me on my arm and causing me to screech in pain.

I'm up and running as fast as I can up a set of icy stairs before I can even understand what's going on. The ice is slippery, though, which I had already figured out a long while ago. I slip on the fifth or sixth step and land badly on my back with another pained sound. My breath catches in my throat as I open my eyes to see the wrong end of an ice point coming straight down at me. I roll out of the way in the very last second and I'm amazed that it didn't even touch me.

Just as I am about to get to my feet something pulls me back down to the floor and I think of the worst. Some sort of beast made of white here to devour me? Another tribute that has seen that I am in trouble and has decided to risk killing me themselves? A million possibilities must flash through my mind before I find the courage to look behind me. In two waves relief and horror rush over me. The relief coming from the fact that none of the things I imagined are pulling at me. The horror coming from the realization that the very ice point that nearly killed me is currently pinning my half-shed jumpsuit into the icy floor.

Without a second to think about it I have whipped out my knife and slashed the top half of my jumpsuit from the rest, freeing myself and leaving me scrambling to find my footing. I run for a good thirty feet or so before I realize that the thundering sounds of ice on ice have halted and once again the arena is silent. Remembering my abandoned clothing I inch back towards the site where I had almost met my fate. All over the ground are at least two or more dozen ice points all deeply embedded in the ground. I find the one that hold back my clothing and try heaving the ice off of it before just deciding to cut around it to free the material.

Then, holding the scraps of fabric close to me, I scurry back up the way I came. Freezing with a new passion I come across another little cave and crawl inside. Hugging the ragged thing to me I fall in something of a slumber, with nothing close to sweet dreams to greet me as I shiver.

Rict Green, 18, District Seven

I creep along the walls of the arena, making good time like I have all this time. I feel pretty stupid not even knowing where I'm going or if I will ever get there, but the feeling of self-made wind on my face calms me down. Makes the red in my vision a little less bright.

I don't know what's happening to me. I want to believe that something is controlling me, something sinister that has made me do the things I have done that I cannot even bring myself to so much as mention in my thoughts. But I know it's me and there's no escaping it. I could lie to Santanna when I said I would try and keep her safe back in the Capitol. I could lie to the entire nation during the interviews when I told them how I didn't really have any experience in dealing with things like I would have to in here. I could lie to all those people with ease and a smile on my face but can't do it to myself. No matter what I always know the truth about me, and I hate that. I hate that there is someone in the world that knows what I actually am, or who I actually am. I can't even hide from myself and yet I can hide from a whole country.

What am I even saying?

I shake my head as I continue on. I think I'm way ahead anyone else but I could be wrong because I truly have no idea who I am. Most of these tunnels look like they lead us up, but sometimes I swear I'm walking back down to the ground until I couldn't even tell you which way is up anymore. I think I'm ahead but it's just as likely that I am very far behind, though that even would be preferable to being in the middle where speeding up or slowing down would mean seeing another tribute. That's when it becomes impossible to resist. When they're so close that I can almost feel them breathing and their heart beating as if it were my own.

I promised myself that I wouldn't release myself from this thin shell that keeps me and the rest of the world so safe, but it's gone. My sanity and morals with it. The only thing I can hope is that I win, then maybe I have the chance to die as someone better than myself. I don't want to die a monster, but I don't think I have much of an option.

The next corner I take without even looking first. Nothing has happened so far that I cannot handle, I doubt anything will. It hasn't been quiet for me, that's for sure. I don't think I have to worry about them thinking I'm not pulling my weight in entertainment.

But then again, I could be wrong.

As soon as my foot hits the ice I know that something is wrong. Something deep inside me can feel the pulse of it even before my mind can begin to do anything about it. There's someone else here. That I can say without the slightest doubt in me. And they're coming quick.

I don't have time to hide, not that I truly believe that I would have should I have had the chance. I stand tall with my axe fixed firmly to my side like a third arm; an extension of me that goes further than skin deep. I raise it in preparation as a mighty roar fills my ears and makes my throat go dry.

From around the corner a huge, pure-white beast rears towards me with giant padded paws stomping through the ice hard enough to leave indents as big as my head. Its eyes are nothing but black marbles deeply into the thick white fur and they stare at me with mindless fury that shocks me into a stupor. It's exactly the look I recognize from my own eyes in the polished walls just before I ran from dying form of the District Nine girl.

It takes all of my strength to snap out of the trance and I lift my axe towards the thing's face just seconds before its snapping jaws and shredding claws touched my flesh. It lets out a pained roar as rusty colored blood runs down the side of its head, but other than that second of pause it doesn't let up in the least bit. It charges at me with newfound fury, this time knocking me to the ground with powerful arms. My head bangs against the ice and I see stars, but I'm still conscious enough to remember my weapon, which I slice firmly upwards to the sound of two different kinds of animalistic screams. One from the dying animal and the other from my own lips.

The beast throws its head back and forth in its last dying moments and I know that if anything were to get in its way it would have still taken it down easily. I flatten myself against the ice as paws pound beside my head, one hitting me in the chest and taking the breath from my lungs. I close my eyes and hope, wish so hard that the animal is dying and not just newly finding its rage. With every whip of its head I feel it becoming less likely, that is until it stops moving altogether. Finally it slumps down to one side with one enormous paw and half of its head resting on my chest.

I lie there out of breath and blinking my eyes wildly, half of me expecting to hear a cannon sound at the beast's death but of course there is none. Finally I get up and though my head spins and aches something terrible I am unharmed beyond major bruising. It takes half of my energy to throw the body off of me and the rest to lift myself back up to my feet. In the moment before I continue onward I remember my axe still buried in the thing's throat and I retrieve it with a sickening crush of bones and squirt of blood.

I look down at my axe and a laugh bubbles in my throat, no matter the gravity of the situation. Another wild animal lying at my feet, another layer of blood to add to my weapon, another life to add to the ones I have taken to save my own.

Cecilia Howlite, 16, District One

"He's coming, he's coming!" I say, my words coming in nothing more than hollow squeaks and quick breaths. Brennen holds on to my shoulders loosely, as if he is scared I might try and run off but still wants to be gentle. I don't even have enough sense about me to feel the comfort in his touch, I just need to get away. I just need him to help me because I don't think I can be alone anymore but I don't want to be near him.

"Who? Who? Cecilia, who's coming?" Brennen asks me over and over, but by the way he looks firmly over me I can tell he already knows who I am talking about. The other boy who Brennen must have been allied with stands by with his eyes searching everywhere at once, not knowing whether to get involved but wanting to because I don't think he knows what else to do at this point.

"Obsidian," I whimper, pushing my head into his chest and feeling his arms wrap around me automatically. There's nothing romantic on the gesture, just an attempt to comfort someone that has seen her fate and has run from it.

"No he's not, I'll kill him first," he hisses and I know he means it but somehow that doesn't make me feel any less frantic. He won't kill him because Obsidian is going to kill him first. He's gone mad. He's coming for me and he won't stop coming until he gets his way with me. I never thought I could be so terrified of someone I thought I knew, but the fear in me is all too real.

It peaked last night as Obsidian put his arms around me in a way that felt nothing like it does right now with Brennen. He whispered in my ear like he always does, I knew that he wanted to be more than just allies but I thought I wouldn't have to deal with that ever seeing as his feelings for me could never become reality. Both of us knew that we weren't going to end up together. After all there is only one winner and it was unlikely to be us. Everyone knows that death is no place for romance, because well no one quite knows what death is.

I can still feel the sickening breath on my cheek as he whispered his plans to me in the dead of night. He couldn't see my fear behind the mask of darkness, but I think he knew because he left it after he said it. He left it all alone until he thought I fell asleep, and then he kissed me when he thought I couldn't know. He fell asleep in a ball beside me, his breathing becoming even and calmed, but all I could hear was the fate he planned for us.

"I love you, and I want to be with you forever, Cecilia. I know how we can do that. Don't worry about anything, I won't make it hurt, sweetheart. Nothing will ever hurt again because we'll be together forever with no one to tear us apart."

That's when I knew I had to run, or he was going to kill me.

As soon as I knew he was completely asleep I scrambled to my feet, leaving my backpack behind because it was still clutched in his creeping hands. He must have known I would run, or at least thought about it enough to think to hold onto me as I slept, or maybe it was his way of showing affection, I don't know. But he had made the mistake of only holding onto something easily able to be shed and I had to take the chance, or I wouldn't get another.

I ran and ran, no idea where I was going and unable to see by much more than the shining reflections of the ice that led me this way and that. I knew vaguely that I was going up by the slope of the ground, but beyond that I didn't have enough right mind to care. I just had to get away and I didn't care. It was simply by good fortune that I ran into Brennen and his ally. But I knew he was coming, there's nowhere to hide from him. Not in here where it seems like the Capitol is looking for a tragic love story to report on.

A cracking of ice fills my ears and I whimper loudly into Brennen's jumpsuit. By the way he holds me tighter I understand that it wasn't just his ally or himself shifting around on the floor. It was someone or something else. He knows there's something there, but only I know that it must be him. He would have known by now that I had left. It wouldn't be hard to catch me by following the path I took. This place is all tunnels and I remember no forks in the road I took. No, he'd be coming for me, and I had made it far too easy for him.

It's silent again and still I can't so much as bring myself to lift my head from the protection of Brennen's warm body. The only sound I can hear is the beating of his heart in his chest and the stillness in the air around me that feels as loud as a thousand eating drums. I hear far off breathing which I assume to be Brennen's ally, but there's something else there too. I can't quite pinpoint it but the sound makes me even more restless. Something needs to happen or else the wait alone might cause me to lose my mind.

Then it happens, just like that I am pushed away from Brennen by his own arms and sent sprawling into a pile of snow and ice. I spit it out of my mouth and look up to see the face of fear starring at me with eyes as cold as the ice I lay helplessly in. A knife perched calmly in his hand to match the one in Brennen's belt which I know is useless to him right now.

Brennen Dwyloe, 17, District Two

He hits me but I'm ready for him before he does, already having thrown Cecilia from me to keep her out of reach from him. She didn't even have to say the name and I knew it was him. The boy she was always with in training, her own district partner that I thought seemed so creepy and oddly possessive of her. I don't even know what's going on with her and him, but I am willing to bet it's much bigger than the old he-said-she-said argument. The fear in her eyes and the crazy in his are enough to tell me that much.

Before I can think of my next move the glint of his knife catches me by surprise as it descends towards me and I, being the right thinker that I have always been, throw my hands out in front of me to catch it before it can slice my face in two.

The pain is like nothing I could ever so much as imagine as a deep cut in the palm of my hand sends my head reeling. It takes me several seconds to react but in that short time there are already pieces of skin peeling from my hands in chunks as District One flails out at whatever he can reach. I scream from the bottom of my throat and knock him away from me, sending another plight of pain onto my hands. I do my best to push the pain away from me and concentrate on what I'm doing. Saving Cecilia from this poor excuse of a human being.

Using my hands to punch him is unthinkable, the blood pouring from them making my head still spin like crazy, and so I knee him in the stomach and again in the groin, lashing out at him as best I can. He brings his arms up to protect himself but I still manage a few good hits in, that is until he gets over the initial surprise and delivers a hard punch directly into my jaw.

I see stars and darkness eats at the edge of my consciousness as my body tries to pull me into a safe state. But it's only instincts, and they're wrong right now. I cannot stop fighting or this monster will win and he'll have not only me but Cecilia as well. A new fire burns in my gut but I just can't move. I'm finished, he wins.

I notice that he hasn't stabbed me yet. I strain my eyes to see him and only then become aware of the sounds of battle going on around me. Just three or four feet from where I lay, Kor has become involved himself. He parries One's knife with another that looks oddly familiar, and when I pat my belt I realize why. It's my own knife, which must have fallen out of its place in my belt. He's using my knife. The boy who couldn't stand the thought of murder even in defense is fighting for me.

I guess I never really thought of him as an ally, only as competition for Natalya's affections. But then here he is trying to save me and the girl I think I care for. One wasn't coming after him, he didn't have to fight. It would have been easy for him to slip away and he stayed. He stayed to help me.

With a stab to the gut, One falls in a heap near the side of the wall where Cecilia still cowers in a state I can only describe as complete and utter fear. I stand, all my injuries momentarily forgotten as I watch Kor breathing heavily with my knife still and bloodstained in his grasp. He looks shocked and my first thought is to hug him. He saved me. He saved me when he said he probably never would fight at all and yet he fought for me and Cecilia. His eyes come up to meet mine but this time they're blank, not the caring brown eyes I remember hating so completely. Kor's entire body shakes as if it has only just remembered the cold around it. Then his lips move and he speaks.

"I-I," he stutters. "I didn't want you to fight him alone."

"Thank you," I whisper, though I know the words can't even begin to describe how much I truly have to be grateful to him for.

He nods and all is silent for just a moment before heavy breathing and a bone-chilling scream fill the chilly air. Kor's eyes widen as he spots something behind me and I whirl around just in time to see that One has stood up with the help of the wall and is standing with Cecilia's neck in one hand, and his knife in the other. Blood drips from the wound at his stomach but he only seems vaguely aware of it. I will my feet to move, to do something but they will not. I can only watch and listen as he speaks the terrifying words into her frightened ear.

"I p-p-promised you, t-that they'll never tear u-us apart."

And with those words his knife slices deeply into her throat just above where his hand holds her. Her eyes, wide and childish, roll immediately to the back of her head that now hangs only by a thin flap of skin that is all that remains of her neck. One smiles down at her corpse, kissing her gingerly on the forehead as her cannon fills the deadly silence.

Then, as if in slow motion, he falls to the ground. His body convulses for what could be hours, minutes, or even mere seconds before he too goes still, Cecilia's corpse still hugged to his chest like a ragdoll. His cannon joins hers and Kor places a shaking hand on my shoulder that tells me it's time to leave. There's nothing more we can do to help her.

Obsidian Nixon, District One

Cecilia Howlite, District One

The artist theme for this story will be My Chemical Romance.

Song: I Don't Love You

The blog for this story can be found on my profile. Deaths will be notified there.

I am terribly sorry to the creators that have lost their tributes, I do hope that you will stick around to see the progression of the story. If not then that is okay too and I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Characters were killed based on personality, storyline and of course whether or not their creator reviewed. Hopefully no hard feelings if your character is gone.

From now on, a question or two will be asked at the end of each chapter which I would love for you to answer, and I also ask for a general review on my writing as well, if you would be so kind.

They're coming down in numbers, who do you WANT and THINK will make the final five out of Brennen, Zander, Vienna, Grace, Rict, Juniper, Kor, Veralidaine, and Remy?

I am happy to say that I have returned from my vacation (which those of you reading SIK already know), but also sad to say that I will likely miss an update next week as I am going away again. I will do my very best but you know, life happens. I'm not by any means abandoning this or SIK and updates should get better when school is in since I always look for an excuse to put off my schoolwork.