Alex Trent, District Twelve (17)
I wasn't good to her. Natasha looked to me for love from the day we were born and I was never the brother she deserved. I guess I always told myself it was because of the strain she put on my mother. Our mother. I should have thought of her as our mother and thank goodness I did before it was entirely too late. For most of our childhood she had happy memories of us playing together. I'd gotten my head out of my ass fast enough to not ruin the best friendship I could have but it still hung over my head. For years I'd worked to make it up to her. It would have taken years more- years I wouldn't have now.
Natasha looked at me just like she did when we were little. She looked at me with that same scared, trusting expression as Hunter's arrow poked out of her lung. I'd only been gone a few seconds- just long enough to refill our water bottle. She'd said we should always stick together. I was the one who got antsy, who needed some space after days of being right up next to someone every second of every day. I had all the space I could ever want now.
The jungle was so unlike Twelve. It was prehistoric or something. I felt like I was on another planet. More time went by and eventually I felt like an animal. I couldn't talk to anyone, not with Natasha gone. More than that, everything connected with humanity was gone. No houses, no cooked food, no running water, no washing my clothes until they started to molder and fray off in strips. And the paranoia. I couldn't walk without looking over my shoulder. I couldn't kneel to fill a bottle of water without expecting a knife in my back. I didn't have the words to articulate the damage it did to go to sleep every night not knowing if my consciousness would wink out without me even knowing it. To just stop existing.
It clung to me, the jungle. It felt like a fever dream when I killed Emmalie. I didn't know who it was until I saw the replay. At the time I just saw a human form in front of me and then my hands were on her throat and she looked less and less human until I knew she was a corpse. It seemed like the smell clung to me, along with the sweat and dirt and the heat in the air. It sloughed off my skin when I rubbed my arms. Always wet. Always dirty. I wondered sometimes about the Tributes who died. If the hovercraft didn't get to them immediately I didn't know how they'd find them. The plants would overtake them and they'd become part of the arena.
There were things other than the Tributes in the arena. At night I heard noises like nothing any animal could make. Sometimes I would hear screams near them, but never for long. I didn't think it was anything anyone could fight. It was death out there and when death came for you there was no running. There were other things out there, too. They could kill you too but they weren't death.
So much of the Games only filtered down to me when I was watching the replay. It was like seeing myself do it for the first time. I recognized myself but there was so much that was new to me. I didn't remember killing Farlon until I watched it. I remembered then how it felt when I did. I'd felt like one animal fighting another in an environment that couldn't support us both. I thought it was only the two of them I killed before the finale. I was glad to see the rest of the replay confirm that- I hadn't been entirely sure.
I didn't end up killing Reiner in the end. I only wounded him, and not even badly. We were wrestling on the ground and I kicked him hard in the knee. It bent but didn't break and I didn't see the rest- I saw a chance to leave and I ran. Reiner limped to his feet after me but I was gone by the time he started running. Eventually we'd cross paths again but I was putting that off as long as I could. Animals don't go looking for fights. They only fight to survive.
It wasn't me that killed Reiner. I never saw him again. I only heard him- just some screams in the night, gone after a moment.