Anthony Morgan, District Four male (18)

I gritted my teeth at the radiating pain in my left hand and wrist. There were two ragged gashes in my palm leading to strips of skin torn from my fourth and fifth fingers. The wounds pulsed with my heartbeat, sending tingling pricks of pain into the wound beds. I gingerly held the edge of my shirt with my injured hand while I tore off a strip with the other. It didn't seem like I'd severed the veins, since I wasn't shooting blood wildly, but it was more than I wanted to see. I wound the fabric around my forearm and twisted it until the blood slowed to a trickle. I couldn't leave it on long or my hand would die, but it would stabilize the bleeding so I could do more in-depth first aid. First, though, I had to give Nailah a hand, ha ha.

BOOM!

What? The jaguar hadn't moved for half a minute and I'd thought Nailah was just pinned under its weight. I bent upwards from where I'd been almost lying on the ground, tending to my hand, and saw Nailah wasn't moving either. The jaguar was slumped on her and I saw its jaws were clenched around her neck. No problem, right? It was dead, judging from the knife still stuck at the top of its leg. Nailah should have been able to just push it off.

There was no mistaking that Nailah was dead when I reached her. Her face was mottled and blue and her hands were frozen into unnatural bent claws. It had happened so quickly that for a moment I didn't understand how her eyes were peacefully closed. It wasn't until I tried to nudge the jaguar off her that it started to come together. The cat's body was stiff as a board. It couldn't possibly have had time to reach rigor mortis- it was even still warm. I looked again at the knife in its side and wondered what exact poison Nailah had picked. Thinking back to the adventure novels I'd read about the rainforest in the frontier days, I seemed to remember one that paralyzed you. Maybe even so strongly it clenched your mouth shut.

It didn't matter the exact poison in the end. Nailah was dead and that left only Dionysus, Gigi and Soleil between me and home. Only two of them, really, since two people got to live. I thought about it as I applied more in-depth first aid to my hand. The safe bet was to kill Soleil and trust Dionysus would see the inevitable. The gutsy thing was to fight both of them and let Soleil win with me by default. With my injured hand and common sense, I knew the right choice.


Soleil Kingston, District Eleven female (17)

My heart skipped at the cannon. Four of us left, then. Just two more people and I would live. It didn't seem possible. I still kept thinking I'd wake up soon from a stupid impossible dream. But then, the Games seemed like an impossible bad dream until you got Reaped.

I'd changed so much since the Games began. It used to be I was afraid of everything. I stayed quiet and listened to everyone else and never wanted to make a stir. Then I was on television and paraded through the Capitol and hiding and fighting for survival in the arena and even killing someone. His face flashed in my head and I lost my train of thought. Someone lost their life because of me. I hadn't intended it but that wouldn't bring him back. Just like regret or apologies wouldn't bring me back if one of the Careers found me.

I could win. I could actually win the Games. I had never cared about that and I didn't care about it now. The Capitolites always seemed to think this was such a big chance for us. They thought we were overjoyed at the thought that we might get to live like they did. We just wanted to live. It would be nice to have the secure food and housing that winning the Games would give us but we just wanted the Games to never happen and we would just live in peace. We were so beaten-down now by the fear and mourning that if they canceled the Games I didn't think there would ever be a rebellion anyway, even with the conditions we lived in. If I could just go to bed at night and not be afraid that one of my children would be taken away, I'd be happy to work in the fields.

But what if I did win? I tried to think of some crazy amazing thing I could do with obscene wealth. After trying for a few moments, only one thing came to mind. My father was buried in a pauper's cemetery with only a river stone for a marker. If I won I'd like to get him a real headstone. Nothing gaudy, but maybe a little slab of marble. Something a person like him deserved.

How would I even win the Games? Either Dionysus or Anthony were still left. I couldn't fight either of them. If Gigi was still alive, she or I would be the next to go. If she was gone then the Games were already over. There was no reason for Anthony and Dionysus to fight when they could just team up and take me out for a double Career victory. They had their own loyalty and I was sure that was what they'd do.

If I did die, I wished they'd leave me here. I couldn't think of a more peaceful place to rest, even after what had happened. I could lie here surrounded by flowers and as time went by they would be nourished by what was left of me. I'd be part of the Arena forever. I heard the Capitolites came to past arenas when the Games were done. I'd always wondered if they ever felt anything there- any restless presences or baleful watchers. If I ever haunted this place I'd like to think I'd tend to the flowers.

One thing was for sure. I couldn't stop my own inevitable death. But I could make sure they had to bleed for it. I wasn't going to move from this spot. Let them spend days on end scouring the arena before they finally found me and had to wade through a wall of thorns to drag me out kicking and biting. Let the Capitolites sit bored in front of their screens waiting for their bloody entertainment.

Like they'd read my mind, the rosebush started to wilt around me.


Just a lil short chapter to get some introspection in before more final four action comes!

Timeline: Day 17