"Why am I the one?"

A/N: Epilogue 1 of 3.

~Go on, go on, go on, if you were thinking that the worst is yet to come

Why am I the one always packing up my stuff?~

Hailey

I wake up in a hospital bed. I'm covered in a giant, weighted blanket, and I quickly toss it off. I'm dressed in actual clothes again, fluffy pajamas clinging to my skin. White gauze is wrapped around my midsection, and when I bring down my hand to my stomach it hardly hurts anymore. I wiggle my toes, and breathe out a sigh of relief when they move to my command. My right ankle still aches in pain, a gelled pad covering it, but I can feel my legs again. All of the cuts and bruises are gone, my skin more perfectly clear than it was before I entered the arena.

From the outside, it must look like I was never in the arena. My fists clench at the thought, and I swing myself up to a sitting position, legs dangling over the side of the bed as I rip out the I.V. that's stuck in my wrist.

"You know, you shouldn't rip that out, probably some important meds in there or something."

I don't have to turn around to know whose voice speaks up from behind me. A part of me wants to yell at him to leave me alone, and just leave me in here. Still though, I can't help the smile that I get hearing the familiar voice.

"Fuck off, Gal, what's the worst that'll happen?" I scoff.

"Fair enough," he says. I feel the bed sink as he sits down on the other side behind me. "I took mine out when I woke up, punched my escort, and ran. And look at me, I turned out perfectly fine."

"Maybe I should put it back in," I murmur, cracking a smile that I work to repress.

"Smart kid," he says.

I swing around, pushing myself to his side but being sure to keep a comfortable gap between us. My skin still feels cool to even my own touch, prickles getting left wherever my hand runs across.

"I did it," I say.

Galavant glances over to me, and nods his head. "Yeah, you did it, kid."

The room falls into silence, and suddenly I'm left without distractions. Nothing to force myself to focus on, to ignore what happened. No way to forget what I did.

The boy from Eleven, Blaze, Levi, Sigma, Prestige, even that fucker Horatio, all of them. Their eyes are etched into my memory. Whether I killed them or let them die, whether they deserved it or not. His head on the floor. My knife in her chest. His boot crushing her head. All of them the same. Their eyes all staring into mine.

I can't stop them. The tears begin to fall, and I can't stop them. I clutch onto my head, desperately holding myself up as my body shudders with sobs. Galavant doesn't try to reach out, or lie to me and say everything is okay, he just sits in silence beside me, softly shaking his head.

"The wrong person won," I say, sniffling as I rub my eyes with my sleeves.

"Maybe," he says plainly. I look up at him, and he looks back with a distant look in his eyes. "But here you are. So what are you gonna do about it?"

"What can I do?" I choke out. "I didn't even get to say goodbye. She was already dead. He stabbed her in the stomach, and the canon was going to come in just a few seconds. He didn't have to do it, but he did. He brought that boot down, and just like that she was gone. Now there's nothing left of her. I'll never get to see her again. I'll never get to say goodbye."

"I'm sorry, kid," Gal says.

"I never get to say goodbye, every time that they leave me. I just don't get it," I say softly. I bite down on my lip, waiting for Galavant to say something. To have some smart, witty saying to shoot back at me. Some life-changing advice. For him to find a way to tell me that everything is alright. That I deserved to win. That things are gonna get better. But nothing comes but silence.

I don't know why, but for some reason I find myself just wanting to say everything. The silence is haunting, and I need to fill it with something, even if the words that come out are things that I hardly allow myself to think about. I don't feel that iron wall anymore, blocking out anything I feel, not allowing myself to be anything but strong, tough, untouchable. There's no more barrier. No more facade. I just feel hurt.

"You know how, well, people say," I start, clunkily stammering the words out, not even sure where I'm going. "They say that love is like, this feeling in your stomach, like there's butterflies in there whenever you're around them." I look up to Galavant, desperate for some kind of confirmation.

He nods his head, remaining completely expressionless. "Yeah."

"I felt that." I feel tears pooling up in my eyes, and I madly dash them away with the palms of my hands, still unable to stop the way my voice wavers and wobbles as the words rush out of me. "Every single time. Whenever she would talk to me, or look at me, or even just be next to me, I would feel it. I still feel it, just thinking about her, and it hurts. It fucking hurts."

He's quiet at that for a while. "You'll find your way."

"What's that supposed to even mean?" I ask.

He nods his head, still having that distant, absent look in his eyes, like he's only halfway here with me. "That's for you to figure out. What kind of person you're going to become. What you'll spend your days doing, who you're going to help, how you're going to help them, the way that you'll cope with the pain. You gotta find out who you are."

"Oh, yeah, to find my purpose, to make the world a better place." I scoff, hugging onto my shoulders as I find myself rocking back and forth. ""I killed 5 people. Usually when a person murders somebody you lock them up, put them in chains so they can't hurt anyone ever again, but instead they're going to be parading me around like I'm some hero. Like I'm some great, generous person, making the world a better place.

"I stabbed an eight-year-old girl in the heart. I decapitated a guy. I ran through the chest of someone's big brother. I hacked away at. . . his face until there was nothing left, not because I needed to, no, because I didn't want anybody to be able to see his face again. I didn't want him to have a funeral where his family could look down at his perfect, touched up face and kiss him on the forehead and say goodbye. So I kept on swinging, and swinging, until there was nothing left. Until I was sure that nobody would ever see him again, that there wasn't a single, tiny shred left of Horatio Rex. That's who I am."

For the first time, Galavant smiles, fiddling with his hands as he avoids looking me in the eyes. "We're all monsters, Hailey. We've all done bad things, awful things that there's no coming back from. It isn't about making the world a good place. We can't hope to do that. Nothing you or me do will ever make things right. Nothing'll ever undo what's been done. The best we can hope for is to just balance the scales a bit."

"She could've done so much more if she won," I mutter. Galavant can try to convince me as much as he wants, but he can't change the fact that I shouldn't be here. "Prestige, Levi, Sigma, hell practically everyone else in that arena has more reasons they should've lived. Levi, he- he had a girlfriend back home that loved him. That one girl, what was her name, Clara? I remember her interviews, she volunteered at a shelter for orphans. And Prestige." My voice cuts off. I can't even bring myself to say it. Thinking about all the things that she still had ahead of her, if it weren't for me. I brought her into the arena, and then when it mattered most I couldn't save her. I could save myself though, of course I could. Or, well. . . .

Galavant begins speaking, something about them all being good people, but blah blah blah. I'm not hearing it though. I'm forcing myself to remember those final moments. On the ground, crawling forward inch by inch, so completely sure that it was the end.

"O-on the ground," I blurt out, cutting Galavant off as he looks at me like I'm a crazy person. "At the end, it was on the ground, but it wasn't there before. It wasn't. . ." I trail off, pieces clicking together in my brain.

"I'm sorry, this probably isn't the best response, but what?"

"That-that fucking dagger," I spit out, the words physically hurting to say. "It wasn't mine."

He doesn't say anything, just looks at me with a concern.

"It had a different handle," I explain. "That dagger wasn't mine, it wasn't Prestige's, it wasn't anybody's." The realization hits me, and suddenly that simmering guilt is brought to a full on flame. "They gave it to me," I say, my voice dropping to a whisper.

Galavant just nods his head, like he knew all along. "They threw you a lifeline."

"Why?" I ask in a hollow voice. I'm not even sure if I can think of an answer, or if there is one, I don't want it. They let me win. They could've just sat and watched as Horatio did whatever he was about to do, but instead they chose to give that dagger to me. If they wanted him dead, they could've done something earlier. They could've let Prestige kill him instead, so why didn't they? The girl that the whole Capitol loved, that had a future, people who cared about her. Someone who wasn't a murdering, awful person who didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing. But they chose me.

Gal shakes his head, letting out a soft sigh. "I don't know. Just don't waste it."

I don't have anything to say to that, and apparently Galavant doesn't have anything more to say either. So the room falls into a heavy silence, those words ringing through my ears, a challenge that I feel like I can't ever hope to beat. How do I do enough? How do I make it right? Where do I even start.

Nothing makes sense anymore. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. It feels like I'm in that room again after being reaped, knowing my whole world has just changed, and not knowing where I'm supposed to even start. I barely managed to beat the Games. I shouldn't have beat them. And now here I am, starting all over again.

I look over to my side, and I see Galavant sitting beside me, and despite everything I feel myself lifted up the tiniest bit. I've got a long way ahead of me, and I still don't even feel like I belong here. But this time, I'm not in it alone.

A/N: I know, I know, subplot is still not mentioned. Not exactly something that's gonna be dropped on Hailey right when she wakes up though. Next chapter things will begin to shape up, but until then. . .

1 epilogue is done, and now only 2 chapters remain before we wrap this story up. Looking back at this story, there's a lot of things I'm really proud of, but also a lot of things I look forward to improving for next time. With that being said, the form for the 102nd Hunger Games is officially open, with guidelines up on my profile page. Whether you've been a long-time submitter and part of this verse, a silent reader following along, or someone just now discovering this for the first time who hasn't read any of my stories, I hope you'll take the time to submit a character. I have a lot of exciting plans, and hope to spend more time focusing on all the tributes and mentors, and their interactions. PM me with any questions you have about that, and otherwise, I'll see you all next chapter!