"Good bye."
"We are already gone." Thyme flinched away from her acknowledgement of his quite sentiment, turning to watch a blur of trees pass from his perch at the window. Already the forests of District 7 were starting to thin into patchy marshland. They had pulled out of the platform at the justice building minutes ago, hadn't they? Thyme pressed his palm against the cold glass that separated him from the hickories of his home. When he was a child, he had fallen into the rapids that powered the saw mills. He had plunged deep underwater, deafened by the roar of the water as it pounded his back, pulling him further downstream. He recognized the exposed roots of the near bank only seconds after he had surfaced – a life line. His only life line. He had struggled towards them with the desperation of a child who has never before been so acutely aware of the life he has to lose. His hand found the root of an old hickory and slowly, he pulled himself from the main current, wrapping his small arms around the slimy root so tightly that his arms strung red against its uneven surface.
He wanted so badly now to reach out to those branches and hold on for dear life against the current of the train. But he is not in the mill rapids; he is in a speeding bullet hurdling hundreds of miles an hour towards his death.
"I'm not going to fight." Thyme was jolted out of his reverie. He turned to Willow. She looked dark compared to the bright afternoon light. Thyme blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I am not going to kill anyone. I don't have to kill anyone. They can't make me kill anyone."
"You don't know that. That games-"
"I do know that. The capital can choose the way I die, but they can't choose the way I live."
Thyme rolled his eyes. She says that now, but just wait until she is in the arena, career with a knife to her throat. She will kill like the rest of them…wouldn't she? Wouldn't I? His voice creaked as he repeated, "You don't know that." But maybe, just maybe, she did.