This one turned out dark wow.

Caleb Lindsay- 14

It was just luck I didn't die in the Bloodbath. I saw Emma's eyes slide over me before they landed on Felix. So the arrow didn't thud into my back as I ran away, and the cannon sounded for someone else.

Two nights later, death found me in a kitchenware store. But he didn't kill me.

Something stirred me awake that night. Maybe it was the sixth sense people say we have when we're being watched, but if it was, mine wasn't very good. When I opened my eyes, Gordon was sitting next to me and looked like he had been for some time. I didn't bother trying to get away. I just closed my eyes and hoped it would be quick.

"I saw you back in the Capitol." The expected knife didn't come. Just words. I peeked out of mostly closed eyes at Gordon.

"You're like me," Gordon went on. I must have looked at him funny, and it matched my thoughts. Like Gordon? Not in the slightest. I didn't kill people.

"Not the killing people thing," Gordon said. "The other thing." Those in our unconventional- you might call it queer- club knew exactly what that meant. And I knew what Gordon added to it when he said it. He wasn't going to kill me. Instead of something terrible, what he wanted was a perversion of something beautiful.

It didn't spare me from anything.

The first time Gordon told me we were going killing, I begged him not to make me. I learned that love from Gordon wasn't protective or cherishing. It was ownership. He put the knife to my throat and told me he could love my memory as much as my life. And so I was with him when he crept to Skyler's hiding place and found her where she lay in the bottom of a pirate ship playground. Never would I forget the way she looked at me as I held her down. I expected that when people looked at Gordon. Never at me. And never did I imagine the sounds Demetria would make.

The nights were full of killing. The days were full of lying. I listened to Gordon talk about his kills and the way they made him feel. I smiled and asked questions and pretended that I was enthralled and swept away by affection for my boyfriend. I learned to push the remorse and horror to a hidden place until he wasn't looking and I could become the agonized accomplice I was. I lay awake after the hunts, staring at the ceiling and wondering what would remain of me after this.

One night, as we were actually sleeping, a soft weight fluttered onto my chest. I sprang up, tears already springing to my eyes at the thought that what I'd dreaded had come true, that it was Gordon's hands soft on me, but it was only a parachute. I opened it as Gordon lay sleeping.

a knife lay inside the parachute. A knife about the size of my hand, like the one Gordon kept under his shirt. And there was a note.

Love

So many layers in one word. It told me who sent it, and how he knew what I was doing and saw past it, and why he was willing to do whatever it took for a poor District kid to be able to afford such a gift. It wasn't hatred for Gordon that gave me the strength to plunge the knife into his helpless form. It was love for Shaw.

I didn't have to kill anyone else after that. The Careers broke up late. The only survivor, Mase, died of his wounds two days later. I came out of the Arena with one death on my hands and four on my soul. I never spoke of it to Shaw. He never spoke of how he got the money. There were a lot of things we didn't talk about, a lot of things that clung to us. So we clung to each other, and with love we got through them.