Ripple Hart from District 4
Victor of the Sixteenth Annual Hunger Games

The community home in District 4 was a colorless place. In fact, it was the most decrepit building imaginable, ignored and left to waste away by the Capitol. As far as the government was concerned, those unfortunate people who were homeless, sick, or disabled were meaningless members of society. Barely even deserving of a roof over their heads.

Ripple Hart, one of the community home's permanent residents, was particularly ignored by the staff. They thought he was Panem's most useless excuse for a human being. As far as they knew, he'd never clearly spoken a sentence in his life.

Sadly, Ripple was never referred to by his actual name. Everyone called him a nasty slur that started with R. He didn't know what it meant, but he knew it was meant to be hurtful. He was good at reading people's voices even when he didn't understand their words.

Only one person had ever showed him kindness. Marina. Marina, the girl with eyes like the ocean. She was one of the few workers at the community home who cared about him, and her kindness was a priceless treasure in the eyes of the mentally disabled boy named Ripple Hart.

"Good morning, Ripple," Marina exclaimed one day, beaming.

Ripple's face broke into a huge grin. "Marina!"

Her name was the one thing he could always say properly.

"I brought you a present," Marina said. Ripple let out a curious whimper as Marina reached into her pocket. She pulled out a small metal object – a toy car – and set it in his hands.

He burst into laughter, running the little car back and forth across the floor. The other people in the home eyed him with scorn, but he didn't care. Now that he had a new toy, his world was filled with sunshine.

"Love," he warbled. "I love cars. I love Marina."

Marina's eyes started to water. "I love you too, Ripple."

At lunch that day, Ripple kept playing with his toy car, running it back and forth over his empty food tray.

"Vroom vroom!" said Marina, making him laugh.

"Vroom vroom!" he repeated. "Vroom vroom!"

Some people took kindly to Ripple's affliction. A sick old woman stopped by and offered him a spool of thread to play with. Marina watched as he carefully wound and unwound the thread, sometimes wrapping it around his fingers to make different patterns. His creativity was rather impressive.

"Oh, look," said a grouchy voice behind her. "It's Marina."

"Who's Marina?" said the speaker's friend.

"That caregiver who always pampers the retard."

Ripple slammed his toy car on the table, his mouth open wide with hurt. It was that word again. The abusive name that everyone gave him. He started to cry, and Marina shot a dirty look at the group of girls before wrapping him in her arms.

He jumped a little, upset by the physical contact. "It's just me," she reassured him. "Let's go back to the toy room. Lunch is almost over anyway."

Why? That was the only question in Marina's mind as she guided Ripple out of the cafeteria. Why were people so cruel? Why couldn't they take a single second out of their day to show kindness to a boy who needed it more than anybody?

Ripple had always hated the reaping. He didn't understand why it was so terrifying, but the way everyone looked so hopeless and scared filled him with fright.

"Alright," Marina said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You wait with the other 16-year-olds. I'll go with the 18-year-olds. Just stay quiet and watch the stage. It'll be over before you know it. I'll meet you right here after it's over. Okay?"

He nodded, smiling off into the distance. She wondered how it must feel to be inside his head. Blissfully unaware of all the awful things going on in the world. It was both a fascinating and terrifying prospect.

District 4's escort this year was a younger guy named Festus. He was just as annoying as the last one. He spent the first five minutes talking about how he was determined to make history as the first male Hunger Games escort.

After that, Festus introduced the mayor and the previous victor from 4, Mags Flanagan. She had eyes like the ocean, just like Marina. That thought kept Ripple occupied while the mayor gave his standard opening speech.

"Let's mix things up," Festus said, "and pick a boy first instead of a girl!"

He started over the boys' reaping ball and grabbed a name. The square drew in a collective breath, and Ripple's chest filled with dread. He could sense the tension in the air, though he had no idea what it was for.

"Ripple Hart!"

For a moment, there was dead silence.

"Me!" Ripple's childlike voice cried out. "I'm Ripple."

"Great," Festus said, apparently shocked by his enthusiasm. "Come up to the stage, please."

He leaped onto the platform and scanned the audience, searching for the face of his only friend. But he couldn't find her. There were just too many people crammed into the small space.

Fortunately, Festus didn't bother to question him. He just shuffled over to the girls' reaping ball and picked a slip of paper.

"Sa…"

"I volunteer as tribute!"

Marina sprinted onto the stage. Her eyes were red from crying, and tears flew off of her chin. Ripple just watched her curiously. Why was she so sad?

"Ripple!" she cried out, pulling him into a hug. "I'm going to keep you safe. I promise."

"What's going on here?" Festus inquired.

Marina explained to the square that Ripple's mind worked differently than everyone else's. The people of District 4 hummed with sympathy even more so than usual; the thought of someone so innocent being sent to the death was incomparably revolting.

Of course, Ripple didn't know that. The only two things he cared about were feeling his toy car and chasing a butterfly across the stage.

Festus cleared his throat, shocked by the situation; it was rare to see a volunteer outside of the first two districts.

"Alright!" he finally shouted. "I give you the tributes of District 4, Ripple Hart and Marina Krill!"

Marina's head spun off her shoulders as she walked into the Justice Building. What had she done? Laid down her life just to protect some guy with a mental disability who almost certainly wouldn't survive?

But Ripple wasn't just some guy. He was her only friend. And sometimes, Marina thought, that kind of devotion was worth dying for.

Fortunately for the two of them, they hit a streak of luck as soon as they arrived in the Capitol. District 4 was assigned a kind stylist named Vesta who was completely understanding of Ripple's disability. She even let him hold the makeup and the beauty tools before she used them on him, just to give him an understanding of what they were.

"Thank you. For helping him," Marina whispered to her one day as she applied a layer of light blue makeup to her face.

Vesta smiled kindly. "Of course. We're all touched by your own act of kindness."

Her volunteering, she realized. It struck her that it was quite silly to talk about acts of kindness in the domain of the Hunger Games.

How much does he understand? Marina wondered furiously. Does he know about the training center? Interview night? Does he know we're on our way to die?

Those events passed without much fanfare. Marina scored a six for her private session (years of lugging chairs and food around the community home gave her a decent amount of strength). Ripple earned a measly one. Of course he did. He had no idea what was going on. He couldn't use any kind of weapon, and even if he could his heart would have refused. For him, the training center had been more like daycare than anything. He ran back and forth between the stations, asking for hugs and little trinkets from the tributes who were kind enough to give him some attention.

It broke Marina's heart into a million pieces every time she saw him add a new trinket to his collection.

Weirdly enough, there were only two career tributes this year: the pair from 1, Dazzle and Goldine. Marina asked around and learned that District 2's academy had shut down in the wake of their most recent victor's death. It would certainly be up and running again in the next few months, but for now – to the other tributes' advantage, no doubt – the academy in District 2 hadn't approved anybody to volunteer into the career pack.

Interview night was a stressful affair. Marina spent her entire three minutes explaining Ripple's disability. The audience was so touched by her volunteering that she already had them in the palm of her hand.

"Well," Caius Flickerman said to finish off the interview, "your words are very moving, Miss Marina. I'm sure I speak for all of us when I wish you and Ripple best of luck in the coming weeks."

Ripple's interview wasn't nearly as smooth. The audience members treated him like a pet, whistling at him and flashing little lights in his direction. He reached out his hands, trying to catch them, but he quickly grew so frustrated he started to cry. Caius tried to comfort him, but it was no use.

"Don't worry about them," Marina said as he stumbled off the stage. "They're just mean. You don't need to worry about them."

"Mean," Ripple repeated. "They're mean."

"But you were brave. You stayed in your chair until your time was up."

"Marina will keep me safe," he said, suddenly remembering her words at the reaping.

"Yes," she affirmed, pulling him into a hug as the girl from District 5 made an entrance. "I'm going to keep you safe. I promise."

But could she really make that promise? The answer was no. She couldn't. In fact, there was an overwhelming chance that they would both be dead in two weeks' time.

But she couldn't tell him that. As long as he had Marina and his toy car, his world was filled with sunshine. And Marina would never, ever ruin that for him.

Marina's heart pounded like a jackhammer as she entered the arena. Ripple! Where was he? A few moments latter, she spotted him at the far end of the pedestal ring, and her heart sank.

She'd forgotten to tell him to stay on his pedestal until the timeline was finished! Marina watched with horror as Ripple took a step forward, nearly stepping off of the plate…

"Ripple!" she screamed. It was a massive risk to immediately draw attention to herself, but what else was she to do? Leave him to blow up before the games even started?

His head jerked in her direction, and he smiled. I need to keep him distracted, Marina thought. But what could she do? Do a little dance? Keep yelling to him? There weren't many options.

Fortunately, mere eye contact was enough to keep him from stepping forward until the time was up. Now, the real challenge had begun. She could run toward Ripple right away, forgoing the cornucopia entirely. Or she could grab a few objects before meeting him. If she chose the latter, there was a good chance Ripple could get himself killed in the first few seconds.

She made the decision in a split second: she couldn't trust him to be alone. She raced straight toward him, moving in a curved path through the interior of the pedestal ring. With only two careers, the bloodbath was moving much slower than usual; the screams weren't nearly as loud this year as in years past.

Marina grabbed Ripple by the shoulders. He hadn't moved an inch since the start of the games. Instead, he was standing dead still on his pedestal, staring with horror at the carnage transpiring around him.

"It's just me," she reassured him. "Now we have to run."

"Run," he deadpanned.

"Yes, run. Remember how we ran on the path outside the community home?"

He nodded, a spark of recognition in his eye.

"Well, run just like that. Hold my hand."

They slipped away from the bloodbath without a single weapon between them. The arena this year was a forest, a grassy area sparsely filled with trees. The trees grew in clusters, Marina realized, not in a continuous forested swath.

Around noon, a fluffy rabbit pranced in front of them. Ripple smiled and extended his hands, reaching for the creature's soft fur. Suddenly, the rabbit opened its mouth wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. It nibbled slightly at Ripple's finger before he jumped backward, gasping with terror as more deadly rabbits crept out of the tall grass.

"Run!" she screamed. "Run, Ripple!"

But running was impossible. The rabbit mutts were just too fast.

Ten minutes later, they came to a stop near a large pile of rocks, panting like mad. Adrenaline could only carry them so far, and now they were too exhausted to continue. They had no choice but to fight.

Marina scooped up a rock and threw it into the midst of the rabbits. One of them screeched, trapped under the rock, black blood squirting left and right as it slowly died.

"Help me, Ripple!"

He caught on quickly. At first, he was apprehensive about hurting the fluffy rabbits, but the way they hissed and snapped their fangs quickly made him realize that these creatures were not friends.

Neither of them escaped the encounter unharmed. Their legs were scraped up and covered with dried blood. And then there was Ripple's finger to think about. He couldn't withstand pain like other people could, and his cries of distress would undoubtedly attract the other tributes before long.

But help was on the way. Marina had stirred up so much sympathy with the audience that she was the third most popular tribute after the careers. A silver parachute floated down into her lap, containing enough medicine and food to keep them full and healthy for days.

"Who are these from?" Ripple asked, managing a rare complete sentence.

"The mean people," she answered. Of course, that brought up a contradiction. The mean people were helping them. Why would they do that?

Ripple raised his eyebrows, inquisitive.

"They're helping us because they like us," she explained.

A smile spread across Ripple's face. In his world, it was a rare thing to be liked.

The next few days were chaotic but bearable. The rabbits proved to be a constant threat, attacking in swarms every few hours. At least they never attacked at night, Marina thought with relief. At least not yet.

Speaking of night, bedtime was a difficult affair. Ripple alternated between periods of wanting to move quickly and not wanting to move at all, so getting him to rest for long periods of time proved to be a challenge.

At one point, their mentor Mags sent them a basket full of toy cars. Marina managed by offering Ripple a new toy every time he slept quietly through the night. Sometimes he woke up crying. Sometimes he stirred and jumped and laughed, and Marina had to hush him as kindly as possible, lest he attract some kind of threat.

Once, he even wandered away. Marina woke up in the dead of night and he was nowhere to be found. Her heart pounded with terror as she searched the nearby regions of the forest. It was almost an hour before she found him again.

But the things that terrified Ripple the most were the cannon shots. One day, several of them fired in the span of a single hour, sending him into a full-out tantrum of terror. Marina suddenly remembered a rabid cat she'd once seen, frothing and growling as a peacekeeper cornered it with his gun. It wasn't a pleasant image.

On Day 4, a silver parachute floated into her lap. She tore away the papery wrapping, eagerly expecting some kind of present, but it was only a note from Mags.

Marina,

You're doing fantastic. I'm truly impressed by your devotion to this boy. But please remember not to get carried away. You must keep your head on your shoulders. Just think about it: you could survive without him but he could not survive without you. I am not a pessimistic person; this is simply the unpleasant truth.

I'm trying my best to manage your sponsor funds as well as I can. There are quite a few people willing to open their purses for the two of you, but Dazzle and Goldine are still alive and they're hogging most of the money.

Keep on keeping on. And watch out for the rabbits.

Sincerely, Mags

"You're reading," Ripple noted.

"Yes, I'm reading. Remember that nice lady named Mags we met last week?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, deep in thought. He had trouble matching faces to names sometimes.

After a few moments, he gave up trying to place the connection. They continued their journey through the sparse forest, stopping in the thicker areas to rest every once in a while. By this point, Ripple had learned why it was important to keep quiet.

Cannon shots continued coming in. Marina figured it was a mixture of career kills and kills made by the rabbit mutts. Those mutts were nasty but bearable if you knew how to fight them. They tried their best to stay near the sporadically-placed rock piles so that they wouldn't be defenseless when the mutts attacked.

After a long and stressful day of quieting and calming Ripple, Marina sat cross-legged in the grass and buried her face in her hands. How much longer could she continue this?

Nearly two weeks had passed since the start of the games, and both Marina and Ripple were ready for combat. Marina was armed with two knives she'd taken from a nest of bloody grass where someone had died. Ripple had one knife as well, gripped tightly in one hand while the other hand played with a toy car.

Marina had spent the entire day prior teaching him how to use it. He'd used it to take down a couple of rabbits during the daily rabbit attack, which made Marina so relieved she almost cried. So he wasn't completely opposed to inflicting harm.

It was a horrifying thought process. She needed to make him violent so that he'd be of help if they were ever attacked. But how could she encourage violence in someone who had no understanding of what violence was? And was it really the right thing to be encouraging violence in anybody?

She couldn't let too many questions cloud her mind. It would make her head blow up. It was all she could do to hold Ripple's hand as they moved carefully through the grass.

There were only a few tributes left. Marina had learned from Mags' notes that both of the careers were dead. One of them died from a rabbit attack, while the other was burned to a crisp during a brush fire lit by the boy from 5. Now, there were only three other tributes: the girl from 3, the boy from 10, and the girl from 12. Not a very intimidating group of opponents, but Marina and Ripple were not exactly fierce warriors themselves.

Another cannon fired, and Ripple squeezed her hand tightly. He didn't cry (he'd heard enough cannons to stop being terrified of them) but his eyes still went wild with anxiety.

"Let's think about home," Marina suggested as they curled up in a bed of dusty flowers that afternoon. "Remember the ocean?"

He didn't really remember the ocean. Neither did she. They spent too much time cooped up in the community home to be taking philosophical walks along the beach.

But Ripple must have remembered something, because he repeated the word over and over again.

"Ocean, ocean."

"What color is the ocean, Ripple?"

"Blue."

"And how does it feel?"

"Soft."

And in that moment, the two greatest friends in the world were the girl who'd signed up for a summer job at the community home and a boy with a mental disability who couldn't tell a cornucopia from a toy trumpet.

The girl from 12 attacked moments later, careening out of the greenery with a knife in her right hand. Marina's heart pounded in her throat as she started to fight back, lashing out as powerfully as she could.

Ripple wasn't much help. He leaped in every once and a while to swipe his knife, but he dealt virtually no damage compared to Marina and her duel blades. Five minutes later, the girl from 12 lay dead in the grass. Marina stood over the still-bleeding corpse, her mind racing wildly. And Ripple sat cross-legged on the ground, rocking back and forth nervously with his hands clapped over his ears.

So that was it. That was what it felt like to kill someone. Marina automatically got the impression she'd lost a version of herself she could never get back. The version of herself that had not taken human life.

And she'd have to do it again soon. There was one other tribute left – either the girl form 3 or the boy from 10 – and if they'd made it this far they were sure to be a fierce opponent.

She refused to think about what she would do if she and Ripple were the only two tributes left in the arena.

Conveniently enough, the other tribute got themself killed before the day was over. Ripple and Marina were resting quietly when they heard a swarm of rabbits screeching in the distance. There was a loud, long, clearly human scream. Then there was a cannon shot. Then there was silence.

Ripple looked up curiously. The look on Marina's face was hard to read. That frustrated him, because he was normally so good at reading people's faces.

She started to move her knife toward her own throat.

"What are you doing?" he asked groggily.

"I love you, Ripple."

"Marina?"

A cannon shot fired. Marina curled up on the ground, shivering a little. Was she cold? Did she need a blanket?

"Marina? Wake up!"

The symphony of trumpets began to play, and Caius Flickerman declared him the victor. But Ripple refused to get to his feet. He just ran his hands over Marina's back, begging her to move. He was yelling before long. Screaming for his only friend in the world to give him a sign she was still alive.

Even when he was inside the hovercraft, he continued chanting those same words over and over:

"Wake up, wake up, wake up."

What a cruel world this was.

List of Victors

District 1 (2 Victors): Luxor Dodge (1st), Citrine Whitacre (9th)

District 2 (3 Victors): Tyrell Crowley (3rd), Lancaster Percy (6th), Ajax Mathers (15th)

District 3 (1 Victor): Lumen Orlaith (12th)

District 4 (2 Victors): Mags Flanagan (11th), Ripple Hart (16th)

District 5 (1 Victor): Electra Wilty (4th)

District 6 (1 Victor): Jaguar Stratton (7th)

District 7 (3 Victors): Rowan Dobson (2nd), Willow Merrick (13th), Ebony Merrick (14th)

District 8 (1 Victor): Georgio Bronte (8th)

District 9 (0 Victors):

District 10 (0 Victors):

District 11 (1 Victor): Bluebell Singer (5th)

District 12 (1 Victor): Canary Roselock (10th)