Cordin Magnetism, District Three (14)
"Cordin!" Abigail screamed. I turned back and saw her leg dangling out over the open Arena through a grate she'd fallen through. Tendrils of smoke curled up into the tunnel we were crawling through to escape the electrical fire we'd started. The air vibrated with the heat and fluctuating air pressure. It cast heat-lines on her face.
I started to crawl back but something stopped me. It wasn't the smoke or the heat. It was a truth I couldn't deny. If Abigail went home I wouldn't. I wouldn't go home and make things better for everyone in the orphanage. I could save them if I was a Victor. I couldn't throw that away. The smoke thickened along with my fear and regret.
"I'm sorry," I said as I left her.
It wasn't a choice that could be forgiven. It colored every second of the rest of my Games. I spent most of my days in the tunnels alone with my thoughts. I ran through a thousand different versions of how Abigail might have died. Maybe the burning started at her legs and ate up to her head. Maybe the tunnel got so hot she cooked before the flame even reached her. In my mind's eye I saw her flesh fall off her bones like when my mother deep-fried chicken.
It didn't start out like that. Abigail, Ava and I went into the Games as what I would call friends. We all wanted to help each other and stay safe as long as we could. I never thought I would be the last member of our alliance. Abigail and I both thought of course it would be Ava. If it wasn't Ava I assumed it would be Abigail. No one thought I would win. It always confused me how Ava died fighting to protect me when we all knew I had no chance to win.
The choice I made changed was never more evident than when I had the chance to make the same decision again. Demetria and I were the last two in the Games. I saw her before she saw me. She was standing inside a kitchen supply store scavenging for the oil bottles and food-adjacent items the Gamemakers left scattered throughout the stores. I could have kept going like I hadn't seen her. I had seen her, though. I'd been hunting her for three days.
I told myself it was for the orphanage that I attacked Demetria. Maybe my friends believed that but it wasn't true. I did it out of fear. Every moment of those three days I was afraid the Gamemakers would get impatient and sent a mutt to kill me. You could say it was self-defense. I couldn't.
I killed Demetria with a bottle of wine. Everyone always imagines a pool of red wine around shattered glass. But really bottles are harder than skulls. It was Demetria that shattered.
After the Games were over I put them from my mind. I went back to the orphanage and gave the workers everything they needed to provide a good life for the kids. I went around talking about my life and advocating for children like me. If anyone thought I was a hypocrite after what I'd done to a child they never mentioned it. It was a thought I had only privately.
What happened in the Arena would always be part of me. But that was what it was: a part. There was more to my life. Time went on and became a smaller and smaller portion of my past. People have been living with memories like that since time began. Soldiers who came back to a world they didn't remember. People who escaped someone they thought loved them. Children who never had a childhood. It was the soldiers people thought of but a lot of times you'd never even know it about a person. It was just an unfairness in their past that weighed them down but didn't stop them from living. And eventually that's what it became for me.