Trigger Warning: There's a panic attack and some self-harm in this chapter.


Nathaniel "Nate" Bloom, District 7

"And this is why,

Why we fight,

Why we lie awake." -

The Decemberists, This is Why We Fight


I'm not killing anyone.

That's what I've been telling myself since my name was read at the reaping. It doesn't matter that I've been swinging an axe since I was old enough to walk. I'm willing to chop up a piece of wood but not a person. Never a living, breathing person, with feelings of their own and a family waiting for them.

It doesn't even matter that I know for sure that some of my opponents have no family left (my district partner, for example). Nobody is going to make me a murderer.

Especially not the Capitol.

There hadn't been much chat on the train. A lot of crying, though. Not from me, since I'd given up on even crying. My district partner had cried, though.

After what he's been through, who could blame him.

His name's Nathaniel Bloom, but everyone calls him Nate. We live in the same orphanage but we've never talked that much. He's always been so quiet. I know enough about him, though. I've heard all the rumours.

The rumours about how Nate had once walked home from school only to find his parents both hacked to pieces.

It'd been the early days of the rebellion, when chaos had just begun to bubble up. They'd never found the murderer and, during the war, the Blooms had been forgotten, their son becoming just another orphan with haunted eyes.

I know it's unlikely that the tributes in my arena will leave their own kids behind, kids like Nate, but it's not impossible. The more I think about friends and siblings, the more my will to live drains away.

When we launch into the arena, I run straight for the weapons. Not because I'm eager to pick one up and start killing. Just because I want to get this over and done with. Maybe I'll be the first to die and I won't even have to witness a single killing. Maybe I'll get stabbed in the back.

As I'm drawing near the axes, something brings me to a sudden halt. Nate hasn't even moved. He's curled up on the ground, shaking, as the boy from Two stalks towards him with a sword.

My arm moves without me thinking. All I know is that I need to protect my district partner because he can't protect himself. One moment, the boy from Two is standing tall and dangerous, the next he's on the ground like a fallen tree, blood leaking from the skull my axe had split open.

I'm a murderer.

But I'd done it to save Nate.

I run for the boy's corpse and tug my axe free. I feel a movement behind me and make a swing on instinct. My axe buries itself in the stomach of the girl from Ten. She falls to the ground, lifeless, a knife still clutched in her hand. I feel nothing. She might as well be a plank of wood. If there's a line you cross when you kill someone, I've already crossed it.

But Nate hasn't. I don't think he ever will. My mind fills with questions as I rush towards him. If he can't kill anyone, how is he going to win? If he isn't going to win, what is the point in protecting him?

"Nate," I whisper to him, "Are you okay?"

"I..." He takes a loud, shuddering breath. "I can't breathe."

I crouch down beside my district partner, conscious of the fight still happening over the weapons. Whoever wins is probably going to come for us and I want to make sure that Nate isn't hyperventilating when they do. His breath comes in sudden panicked gasps.

"It's okay," I say, "This is just... a nightmare! You're having a nightmare. None of this is real. Nobody's going to hurt you."

"How do you know that?" Nate asks.

"Just trust me, okay? Close your eyes. I'll make it all go away."

"O-okay," Nate squeezes his eyes shut. He looks so young, even though I know he's seventeen, just a year younger than me. I don't think he ever had a chance to grow up after what happened to him.

I glance over at the pile of weapons, where the girl from Four is beginning to stalk towards us, knife in hand.

She's just a block of wood, Jenny...

"You still got your eyes closed?" I ask Nate.

"Mmm-hhmmm," he nods, eyes still shut. I smile.

"Keep them closed," I say, "Don't open them."

I swing my axe towards the girl from Four. It slices through her neck with one blow. Her head hits the ground with a dull, wet thud.

"What was that?" Nate asks.

"Nothing," I say, calmly.

"Is it safe to open my eyes yet?"

I look around, taking in all the corpses scattered around. There are twenty-one of them. I guess most of the kids decided to run in rather than get slowly hunted down like last year. You'd killed three of them, Jenny...

"Not yet. We're almost there."

There are three of us left. Myself, Nate and the other kid. I know that, eventually, one of us has to die and I decide that I'd rather it were the other kid than me or Nate. And, out of the tributes who are left, I'm the only one likely to kill them.

I see the girl from Eleven almost immediately, cowering near one of the arena's outer walls. As I move closer, she starts screaming for help and pounding at the wall with bloodied fists. I try to silence her with my axe before realising that she can't have been much older than twelve.

And the crying hasn't stopped.

I dash back over to Nate, who still hasn't moved from where he's been sitting since the start of the games. He's sobbing into his hands. He looks up as I draw near.

"I-I heard a scream," he cries, fixing me with pale, haunted eyes, "Jenny, is that blood on your face?"

I shake my head hurriedly. I'd killed four people to get this boy to the final two. He's the one reason I have to fight in these games. I can't bear the thought of him calling me a murderer.

"It's blood," Nate says, his voice thin and trembling "I know... I know what it looks like. What's happening, Jenny? I'm scared."

It's in that moment that I realise what I have to do. I can imagine the Capitol watching the two of us on their screens - the powerful girl with the axe and the trembling coward with no kills. The victor and the victim. I know that they expect me to kill Nate and, if I don't, they'll find another way to kill him.

But I see things differently. I see a girl with an ocean of blood on her hands and the one innocent that she can save.

"Close your eyes again," I say, reaching for my axe. It's a second too early. Nate catches me.

"Are you going to kill me, Jenny?" He asks, "Please don't kill me. Please, I don't want to die."

"It's okay," I blurt out, "I'm not going to kill you. Please, just close your eyes. You'll be okay. Trust me. You're still in a nightmare. You'll wake up soon."

Nate lets his eyelids flutter closed. He looks so peaceful. I know how easy it would be to slice his head from his shoulders, like I'd done with the girl from Four. But I know that I can't return home having killed Nate. I can't live like that.

I pick up my axe and draw the blade along my wrist. I have to bite down hard on my lip so I don't cry out from the pain and alert Nate to something being wrong. Then I slice my other wrist open. I'm satisfied that I'll bleed out pretty quickly.

Let the Capitol have their victor. Let them have the boy who hadn't moved an inch or spilled a drop of blood the entire games. Let Nate go home. Let him be more than just another sad-eyed orphan. Let him be one of a kind, someone whose struggle was just broadcasted across the entire country. Let him go back to a district that cares about him more than it did before. Give him a chance to get better.

Let Nathaniel Bloom be legendary. Let him be remembered.

Let him be a victor.


That chapter deviated quite a bit from my first draft. I'd always planned for Jenny to kill herself to rig a victor with no kills out of defiance towards the Capitol but I hadn't fully developed Nate's backstory yet. I also put in more interactions between Jenny and Nate because he was a lot less traumatised and a lot less in need of Jenny's support in my first draft.