Author's Note
I do not own The Hunger Games.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she entered the Hunger Games.
She had grown up in the middle class of District Six, not rich by any means but not lacking a roof over her head or food on her plate.
She had four slips in the bowl.
She only needed one to be chosen.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she arrived in the Capitol.
She was shown off to its rich citizens like a bauble, and caught the eye of a girl who looked at her like a particularly interesting toy, all teeth and pale eyes.
She was unremarkable during the parade, and training, and the Private Sessions, and the Interviews.
She had always been unremarkable.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she entered the arena.
She knew she was going to die.
How could she live, how could she win, against tributes that had trained their entire lives?
She ran from the bloodbath with a backpack, her District partner, and the image of bloodstained water burned into her eyes.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she was dragged into an alliance with Hyperion Ripley.
He was just as scary as he looked, though less so without his sister around.
His sister was the only reason he hadn't killed her.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she saw the thing that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.
It was a boy, the boy from Twelve, except it wasn't and she had already seen his face in the sky.
It was all wrong, misshapen, lumpy, tendrils of something leaking from its shoulders and arms and legs.
She wasn't ashamed of running.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she won the Hunger Games.
She had been trying to get as far from the other tributes as she could, because she was certain that as soon as Hyperion Ripley finished with the boy from Two he would come for her, and if he didn't the girl from Nine would.
So she ran, shoving her way through the trees, stumbling and tripping over tree roots, staggering blind in the darkness, choking, crying.
And then the world exploded.
Even through the trees she saw it, and the trees weren't enough to protect her from the backlash.
She landed sprawled on her front, winded, her leg screaming pain, her backpack protecting her from the ash and rock debris raining down around her. She managed to crawl into a gap between two tree trunks, bracing herself there, clutching the sword she didn't know if she could use.
That was where the hovercraft found her an hour later, when all had died down.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when they crowned her Victor of the Ninety Fourth Hunger Games.
She sat on the stage and smiled numbly as the main events of the Games played out on the screen in front of her.
As it neared the end, there were only a few clips of Hyperion Ripley and the girl from Four fighting and killing the boy from Two, and then an explosion of white.
They said the forcefield had malfunctioned, exploded, and as the only tribute far enough away, she had been the only one to survive.
Arielle Wayne was fifteen and a half when she became the first Victor of the Hunger Games by default.
Sneaky Author's Note:
We're not done yet.
