Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
f4m
He tosses her one of the backpacks once they're a good way away from the cornucopia. She has not, as she put it, stabbed a bitch, but she has found a rapier and several knives, which she now wears around her waist.
The rocks, he sees, aren't rocks, but gravestones. They even have names engraved. She slows to look at one, and he grabs her arm, pulling her on.
"I was looking at that!" she protests.
"We don't have time!"
Every other tribute in this arena is an enemy, even the ones District Four often calls allies.
He just hopes she can, indeed, stab a bitch if she needs to.
f3m
He ran from the cornucopia empty handed, and now he races between the gravestones and tells himself not to fall over his own damn feet.
He doesn't know if there's anyone watching over him, but he does know he doesn't want to die.
So he runs, fleeing into the fog, biting back tears and bile.
f12f
The first cannon makes her jump, but she knows what the second is.
Carefully, shakily, she counts them out.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Seven.
Seven dead.
Seven tributes gone already.
None of them were her, but all of them could have been.
"Huh," she hears him say. "I expected it to be a bit smaller than that this year."
She shrugs. She doesn't want to speak, because she might start crying again.
He takes her hand. "Come on. We need to put distance between us and the other tributes."
d10f
She's regretting agreeing to ally with him, but hopefully he might be of some kind of use.
She really, really hopes so.
He's really annoying.
"This place is so creepy."
"We're in the Hunger Games, it's not meant to be fun."
He rolls his eyes.
She wonders if she's allowed to kill him.
(he's right of course the arena is creepy and the gravestones are the worst but she would never tell him that)
d7m
It was one of the other, but he still sees the fear in the other boy's face, the way the light in his eyes had faded.
He'd had to do it, but he still hated it.
He'd didn't know what his intentions had been, for all he knew the boy had intended to kill him if he hadn't-
If he hadn't-
But he still has blood on his hands.
He still tastes the blood in his mouth.
Perhaps that's why he does it.
He had wanted an ally after all, so when he sees the girl, splattered in blood that can't be her own, when she sees him and stops, he doesn't strike first.
Instead, he opens his mouth. "Do you want an alliance?"
d2f
They sort the supplies as the hovercraft comes for the bodies.
There's more than enough, food and water, weapons and blankets, even a few hats, one of which she sticks on his head and laughs when he throws it off.
They're half the size they normally are, but they're still the Career pack.
"Did you see the pair from Four?"
"Not even sure what they look like," replies the girl from One.
"Saw the boy," he grunts. "Ran off. Not worth it."
She nods. Never mind. Four's been touch and go the last few years anyway, at war with itself.
They don't need them.
d3f
She's not sure where she's running to, but she runs, and when she can't run any further she collapses behind one of the gravestones and hopes no one sees her huddled there.
d4f
She lets him take the lead.
It won't help her in the long run.
It won't save her.
She has always known this is to be her fate.
If she can though, she'd like to see him win.
He's been nice to her.
d8f
It must be a miracle she escaped the bloodbath, but there has never been a thirteen year old Victor.
She tries not to cry.
d8m
He doesn't know what to say to help.
He doesn't know if he wants to.
d10m
They sit together as evening draws in and share a breadroll and an orange. She's only a year older, but she feels so much stronger and more mature than him.
He doesn't know the faces that appear in the sky, but he sees the highest placement is eighteen.
"Seventeen of us left," she says.
And it's only day one.