Day Twelve, Afternoon:
Get the tissues ready, I hope this makes you teary!
"The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly."
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Micah Miraude, District 8, 17:
Breathing. Choking. Moving.
Everything became a blur of root and shrubbery as the forest began to pin me down. It was weak, and breaking free seemed almost easy, but the forest was thick in its abundance. Everytime my hand clawed the air, my legs kicked out of grasp, my head broke free to gulp more oxygen, it was pulled back into the sea of forestry again.
Violet had ran away. I told her too, and I tried to catch a glimpse of the horizon in the hope that she had listened and not gotten herself into a commotion trying to rescue me. It struck me that at one point I would have let her die, even if I had liked her. But there was something new the Games had instilled into me – selflessness? Humility, perhaps? The thought of death wasn't preferably, but as I felt myself get dragged up by the neck by a strong root, feeling it clench and suppress my airways, I thought about my death almost calmly.
And yet still a part of me subconsciously fought back, in any way I could. I rebelled by moving against the constricting forest's will. I'd rather Violet survive, but the thought of her alone in the arena with other tributes worried me. So my hand grasped around for anything. It clung onto a death root, but the plants forced me back even more, dragging me further away from any strongholds. I grasped desperately for something, anything, my hand resting on a dead and thick branch that wasn't animated like the rest of the forest, though soon it would be used for action.
I'd have cried out if I wasn't so low on air. I swung the branch violently at the root around my neck, crying out when it splintered into my own skin. Still, the grip laxed and I could almost feel the dead plant ease its way off my neck. The forest grew rabid, trying to reclaim lost ground, but I swung violently at any weak branch that made its way towards me. And eagerly still I smashed any wood pinning my legs or any part of my body, crying out almost angrily until I was completely free. The forest was still alive, tendrils of botany continued writhing after me, but I rushed off into the forest, hoping that it was the direction Violet was in.
I was surprised the Gamemakers had sent a mutt so weak. A week ago that mutt would have been devastatingly strong, but it was almost as if the Gamemakers had sent it knowing that I would come out alive, even if I had almost gotten myself into a pretty messy predicament. My lungs still felt strained as they desperately absorbed the oxygen they had missed, areas around my throat and limbs were bruised and sore. I glanced around the forest wildly, desperately hoping that I'd find Violet, though there was nothing there.
Above one of the trees, sinking into the forest beneath, a glint of silver caught my eyes. What was it? I paused when I realised I had just seen a sponsor gift. It had seemed pretty far away, and I wondered if it was for me, but I started treading in that direction anyway. I was kind of surprised sponsor gifts were being sent at this point in the Games, when prices rapidly inflated and the remaining mentors paraded around the Capitol like leeches, trying to gather thousands just to make sure their tributes had some bread or water for the next day.
I paused when I saw where the silver parcel had landed. Beside a girl who lay there slumped, eyes closed, chest rising and descending in an unsteady tempo. My jaw almost dropped when I stepped closer, quietly recognising her as my District partner. I had talked to her a few times, I thought she was kind of cool. And I had never expected her to be alive at this point of the Games. I almost forgot to process that she wasn't dead, though the way she slept against the tree seemed kind of wrong.
If I needed to win, get one step closer to the taste of victory, I needed to kill her. That's how Violet and I planned it. I resented not having a knife, though the after-taste of immense guilt followed. How inhumane had the Games made me? I shouldn't be thinking about killing someone from home, from District Eight. That was something so taboo, so unthinkable. And yet I was thinking about it. Sure that she was still asleep despite the cracking of roots and branches beneath me, I stooped down and retrieved the sparkling parcel next to her.
"That might be mine," Tarren said to me, eyes still closed.
I paused. "You don't seem like you can get it."
"I can't," she replied nonchalantly. "I'm paralysed."
Oh. That was kind of shitty, and it did fill me with an immense sadness inside. That meant that Tarren wouldn't be able to win. She was still alive, and still technically a contender, but realistically she didn't stand a chance. That calmness, that acknowledgement on her face told me she knew that. She had almost seemed to accept it.
"D-Do you have help?" I asked. I wanted to help, but it would've been stupid to take on a new ally. And even more stupid to take on a paralysed ally so late into the Games. I realised how horribly detrimental that would be.
"Yeah," Tarren's expression sunk. "An ally."
"Where is he?"
"Hunting to get me food."
I smiled at Tarren, snagging the parcel and beginning to open it. I felt two solid, separate things in it, though they had the same shape. "Nice to know that there's someone out there to protect you."
"What's in there?" Tarren asked, changing conversation. "Is it for me?"
When the packet was torn away I found two syringes, in them a transparent and green liquid stayed, doing nothing but occasionally releasing air bubble. I fumbled around, confused, until I noticed the note that slipped out. Fully written notes like the one before me were seldom included in sponsor gifts, but I still held it in front of me, two fingers around each top corner of the page, scanning it.
Dear Micah,
"It is for me," I said quickly, before continuing.
These are not sponsor gifts. These were sent to you courtesy of the Gamemakers. In these syringes are choices. Both contain the same thing – poison. The poison is infamous for its quickness; it travels straight to the heart and delays the heart's electrical signals, immediately killing the person before they can process it. It is a humane and painless way to kill somebody. There are two syringes full, two choices you have to make.
Tobias Harte, Head Gamemaker.
"What's in that vial?" Tarren asked me, pausing, watching me observe it.
"A choice," was all I replied. I looked her in the eyes, and I think she understood.
Tarren Keenan, District 8, 15:
"Who makes the choice?" I asked, watching Micah withdraw the syringe. Its deadly metal needle glinted in the few waves of sun that washed through the naked tree branches.
"Me," he said, moving the syringe close to me.
I couldn't protect, I couldn't grab something and smack him away, or run to Luster. I could shout Luster, but the needle was pressed against my skin. I nearly slumped my head back and expected the eager arms of death. They were embracing me now, an alluring warmth spread over me as Micah's needle was so close. It was strange to think that after everything this was it – all my fifteen years of life amounted to lying on a forest floor, being injected with something deadly.
"I can't," Micah said. I heard the needle fall, rustling the leaves of the forest ground, disturbing the silence. "I can't do it. Not after knowing you. Not after smiling at you, and joking around with you. I can't do this to you Tarren." He smiled weakly, and gave out a throaty chuckle. "How can I be expected to win when I can't even kill you?"
Killing a District partner was taboo, I knew that. I also knew Micah was doing exactly what he had to do – to get home, to live. I don't know who I wanted to win. I'd usually tragically clutch Luster's cheek (which was impossible, considering the circumstances) and tell him I wanted him to win for me? But did I? I wanted him to live. I also wanted Micah to live. I wanted most of the teenagers who were sent into this arena to have lived.
"Do it," I said, smiling reassuringly. "I'm going to die anyway. I – I wanted to die, you see." I rolled my head weakly, looking at the needle as it lay on a mattress-like leaf. "I lied to Luster to get him to go away, hoping someone would stumble across and find me. I hoped that they would kill me."
I appreciated the silence. Micah grabbed the poisonous mixture and moved it out of my line of sight. I felt back in the dark struggles of life again, death had released me and tumbled me back into a bed of leaves and bad memories. I didn't want the memories. I just wanted sleep, a permanent sleep that seemed – when looking at it in retrospect – long overdue.
"You didn't seem like that giving up type." With inspiration to do what he had to do, Micah safely grabbed my loose arm and held it out, inspecting it.
"I'm not giving up," I said neutrally. "Giving up would be to continue living, after seeing all this. I'm dead already, Micah. I don't like saying it," it did leave a bad taste on the tip of my tongue. "But everything I've seen and done and experienced has killed me inside, you know? You're still alive, might as well get one useless competitor out the way. Because I don't want to give up on death when it claimed me a long time ago. It's all our time to go at one point, that's how nature dictated the ways of the world..." I felt the tears crash onto the ground as I turned to face Micah, who refused to look me in the eyes. "It's not your time to go yet, I hope."
"So do I."
"All I want is for it to be... peaceful..."
"I want that too Tarren, for you."
"I remember when I first met you on the train," I smiled. "I didn't even look at you. I felt you were beneath me, eating all the food on the train while I curled up onto a sofa and did nothing but cry my little heart out. If I knew what the Games would be like, I'd cry harder than I did," Micah and I both laughed at that, our weak chuckles replacing the air which birdsong once occupied. "I didn't really like you, but you did charm me. We never met in the arena, did we? I did think of you every night. I was so happy you made it into the Final Eight... I was so happy your face wasn't in the sky..."
"I saw Leo's," Micah said to me sympathetically.
"And I Reed's."
Micah smiled sadly. As if the thought of his ally's face in the sky empowered him, I would have felt the needle in his hands sink beneath my skin, but I was permanently numbed, I didn't feel a thing. I didn't feel the toxins swim through my veins, stopping my heart when they'd reach it. But I intuitively knew he did it, and there was no fear when I saw him withdraw an empty syringe. There was only peace, only acceptance. It was a peace and acceptance I'd been grasping at for a long time.
"I don't believe in an afterlife, or a heaven," I whispered as I closed my eyes, shutting Micah's face from view. "But if there is one, I'll say hello. I'll tell her you're trying really hard to win for her, Micah."
"I don't believe in one either, but thank you, I'd like to think she'd be proud," I heard Micah stand up. Longing for his face one more time as a feeling of potent sleepiness hit me, I opened my eyes. He did a blurry salute, the two fingered one that those in Panem used for the brave, for the mighty. I didn't know if I deserved that, but a smile slipped onto my tear-stained face as Micah blurred into nothingness.
Micah was supposed to choose whether I lived or died. And so many people had tried making that choice before him – the Careers, Cardinal, Avalynn and the Gamemakers. But they did not choose if I lived or died. I did, and that was incredibly empowering, knowing that out of all those who entered the arena, even though I didn't live or die, I chose my own destiny. The warm arms of death covered me again, like a warm blanket, singing a soothing and serene song into my ears. A lullaby that slowly moved the life out of me, slowly on the forest floor.
"Thank you," was all I said to Micah, before smiling and fading into the peace I had longed for.
Luster Harbetto, District 1, 18:
A panic had immediately swept over me when I heard the cannon boom. I hoped it was someone out there – anyone but Tarren. Though I froze at first, I immediately notched an arrow to my bow and rushed to where I had safely left Tarren. I hadn't gone far, only just far enough to get something for her to eat, to keep her sustained. Not Tarren. Please not Tarren.
"Tarren!" I screamed. She would've protested, cried, struggled had someone attacked her. I'd have heard it. She'd be okay. As I ran, hearing roots crack beneath me, leaping over logs and ducking over branches, watching orange, dying plants rush around me, I kept telling that lie to myself over and over. Tarren was okay.
Tarren had never been okay.
I froze when I reached the part of the forest where she was lying. Slumped on a tree, eyes closed. And her District partner was walking a few metres from her. I gave a cry of rage, my quaking hands releasing an arrow that went way off target and alerted the guy who had chased her. He immediately sprang forward, but I knew that I could be faster. I rushed as fast as I could, refusing fatigue to claim victory. My only hindrance was when I reached Tarren's body, which had formed into a minor smile. I leant down, my heart refusing to beat when I felt that she had no pulse, when I couldn't hear her breaths.
No... No... No...
"Tarren," I shook her. No reaction.
I was bemused. She had no wounds (or no new, gaping, deadly wounds). There was no sadness on her face, only a tranquil smile. There was no wide eyes glazed open in terror like there had been in the other tributes. I backed off from her, my pale hands shaking in a mixture of rage, my heart refusing to beat and confusion choking every inch of me. What had happened? How did she die? I turned and saw her District partner running in the distance, snarling with rage.
I didn't know what happened to her, but I knew that he happened to her.
"Get back here!" I screamed at him. My whole life I had been quiet, introspective. Every emotion kept to myself; I had always had a rich emotional world, but to the external world I was stoic and indifferent. But the rage had boiled over, the pressure of the Games had made me snap again. I felt nothing but anger; even the burning in my calf, the agony Avalynn had inflicted, had been completely mitigated. My process was to run and to kill. "Get here now! You killed her, do you hear me? You killed her!"
He ducked as another arrow pelted in his direction. I remembered his face, if only very vaguely. On that first day in the Games I had tried to kill him, I remember the arrow digging into his elbow. The same elbow which was tattered and bloodstained, I could see it from a distance as he tried to disappear into the forest, tried to escape me. Every arrow I fired in the Games had always left me feeling shot with guit – but I wish that I had hit the bastard in the heart. Tears slipped from my eyes as I desperately ran, my trembling hands struggling to move arrow to bow.
"Get back here!" I screamed, firing off shaky arrow after shaky arrow. The Gamemakers wanted more death, I could sense it. Once in the forest we had strong, fecund roots littering the ground, forestalling us from freely running. But towards the end of the Games those roots had died and been stripped off their nutrients, now the Gamemakers controlled who ran and who struggled. And they wanted Micah to struggle. One of the trees above Micah snapped so suddenly even I hopped back, my enemy diving out of the way as an almighty crash was heard. Seeing the tree fall reminded me so brutally of Avalynn's machine, of the trees it tore down and how it slammed Tarren backwards.
Without thinking I lifted my bow up, arrow held close to it. I was staring at Micah into a void, even my anger had gone in that moment of sentimentality. All seemed so final. I was going to kill again, and that was that –
"No!"
A flash of red hair and the District Seven girl leapt out of nowhere. My life suddenly felt like a theatre performance, with characters weaving on and off the stage at the most ironic and heartbreaking moments. I pulled the arrow back and the hysterical looking Seven girl raised her arms, snarling.
"Don't you touch him!"
With that she threw something sparkling and silver, and I had to admit it was a pretty good throw. I screamed out in pain as a silver knife had lodged itself into my torso. There was more incoherant streaming and I fell to the floor with my own dripping blood, unable to think in that moment of blinding agony. The Seven girl helped the Eight boy up and I watched helplessly as she picked up the murderer, as she carried him away into the distance. I cried and tried doing everything to stop them, but I was powerless.
As the sun shone down on me, above all the frail trees, I realised I was sobbing and shaking on the ground, calling out Tarren's name hopelessly, feeling loneliness seep into me like a poison that crippled my heart.
Late updates, crappy laptops, this is getting repetitive!
Anyway, I hope this chapter was wonderful. For those still submitting forms I've given a deadline: the 16th January. The story has a deadline too - the 16th February. Keep those dates marked :D
I hope you're all enjoying the holiday season, being good people and are eating way too much for your own good! :)
~Toxic
Capitol Commentator Question: Which tribute do you think is the most mentally stable at this point in the Games?
Interviewer Question: How has your Christmas been? :)
