Title: 13 Miles

Written For Caesar's Palace Summer Olympics Challenge (Shooting)

1,219 words of actual story

Hunger Games

Pairing(s): None

Short Story

What could go wrong in thirteen miles?

Bonnie Organza and Twill Eyelet would soon find out.

Twill squeezed Bonnie's hand as she hobbled forward, leaning heavily on her branch crutch. Bonnie, wheezing, swept her strawberry blonde hair out of her eyes. She was only 14 year of age, the poor thing. She had a twisted ankle, and had been starved until Katniss Everdeen, the heaven sent Mockingjay, appeared in the shack they were staying in. Bonnie ate the cheese bun that Katniss gave her. They feasted, and then they parted. That was three days ago.

They were now in much worse shape.

If Twill's antiquated map was right, they were thirteen miles away from District 13. Bonnie moans constantly, her stomach begging for food, her throat gasping for water. Twill manages her pain better, although she's in even worse shape nutritionally; she hasn't eaten anything in two days. They were both thinner than thin, and their plastic-ey white and black Peacekeeper uniforms hung limply on their malnourished frames. They were both tired, and they had sleep deprivation. They'd kept pressing forward, knowing that they needed to make it to District 13 before wolves, starvation, or dehydration got them.

Sweat sloshed in Twill's heavy boots; she'd contemplated taking them off before. But she knew that wasn't smart. At least she'd allowed herself to take off the woolen stockings, but even then, her feet perspired terribly. Sweat soaked her entire being, and acne, stuff she hadn't had since she quit school at age 16 to work in the factories, was peppering her face. She wanted to take a bath, but she can't. Any water they find, they drink. It was as simple as that.

They slogged on through the rising temperatures. Bonnie was near the tipping point, her face scrunched up in pain, her breaths ragged and strung out. Eleven miles to go, Twill solemnly announced. Bonnie just moaned and collapsed there and then on the forest floor.

"I can't do it, Twill," Bonnie muttered, eyelids scrunched together from the pain coursing through her wrecked body. "Go...go on, Twill. Come on. Go...go to 13. For the both of us. Please. I just...you can't die, too. You just can't."

"You will make it, Bonnie. We can rest for a bit, and then pick it up again." They sat on a chunk of concrete that laid randomly in the woods, like it had been blasted off of a building a million miles away and decided to fly across the length of Panem to land in the middle of the woods. They sipped their last canteen dry and ate some cracker crumbs that Twill managed to scoop out of the bottom of her rucksack. They found a stronger stick for Bonnie to use as a crutch. With appeased stomachs and throats and better attitudes than before, the duo stood and began the march forward. Things were going well.

On the tenth mile, the wolves arrived.

Of course, Twill knew there would be dangers on this journey. Two fugitives, nearly possession-less and certainly homeless, would have to wander the woods alone. But the wolf pack (if you can call four wolves that) circled them, snarling, weak, skinny, hungry. Twill shot her gun.

One went down, the second not far behind. Bonnie managed to whack one on the snout with her crutch, and it fled, but she fell to the ground in the process. The fourth one ripped off Bonnie's thumb and pointer finger before dashing off. Bonnie wailed, screaming bloody murder. Twill quieted her, taking off the girl's sweat soaked woolen socks, wrapping them around the jagged nubs of those two fingers. Bonnie just sobbed and sat on the forest floor.

"I. Can't. Do it!" she shrieked.

"Shh, honey, Bonnie, someone's gonna hear."

"Well I better hope someone hears! Then they can come save us! I am Bonnie Organza. FRICKING SAVE ME!"

"Bonnie," Twill muttered. "Please, please, please, honey. Be quiet."

"To hell with being quiet, goddamit, Twill! We're not going to make it! What are we kidding ourselves. We're going to die!" Bonnie chuckled. "We're going to die, die, die, and die some more, and nothing and no one will be able to help us!"

Twill just grabbed Bonnie's uninjured hand and dragged the probably delirious girl forward.

Nine miles came and went without much consequence, although Bonnie was spitting blood and curses the entire time. Eight miles, and Bonnie's legs buckled. She fell to the ground, screaming curses against the Capitol that would get her hung in the gallows back in 8. She tried to snap her crutch but only ended up hurting her arms. She sobbed uncontrollably, and when she looked up at Twill, the only thing Twill could see in those brown orbs was defeat. Bonnie Organza had given up.

"Go," she whispered. "Go." Twill kissed the girl on the sweaty forehead, squeezing her good hand as tears crept out of her eyes.

"I love you, Bonnie Organza."

"Don't make this hard, Twill. Frickin' go. Please."

Twill gave one last smile before heading away. A minute later, she heard desperate wails and screams from behind her. Twill's eyes bulged and she sprinted back, but it was much too late. The remaining two wolves were already splitting Bonnie's shredded remains by the time Twill found them. Twill screamed and sobbed and shot both wolves to death, and then she kept firing into the dirt until she had no more bullets left. Then she put in her last round of bullets and trudged off.

Mile seven. Mile six. Mile five. The miles passed much faster without having to drag a limping, delirious fourteen year old along. Mile four. Mile three. Mile two. Mile one.

Mile zero.

Twill collapsed in front of the ruins of 13's Justice Building. She begged and pleaded and hoped, she goddamn hoped so hard that her head hurt. She hoped that someone was really below her, that thousands of District 13's citizens actually existed beneath the ground. Because if no one was here, then Twill Eyelet would give up as well, and let her body be mangled by the wolves.

She stripped off her Peacekeeper disguise as she waited. She tossed the helmet into the rubble. She emptied the bullets from her gun and left the empty pistol on the fractured steps of the collapsed Justice Building. She waited for eleven hours.

They let her in when she was only five or six hours away from dying of dehydration.

They poured water down her throat, fixed her wounds, calmed her body with a bit of morphling. But Twill was already numb, lost. The morphling was not needed. She was a lost, broken woman in a lost, broken world.

"What's your name, sweetie?" the nurse asked after she'd recovered enough to speak.

"My named is Ember Organza," Twill muttered. She was now Ember Organza. She was now someone different.

She was now an Ember; she'd always been an Ember. She was now an Organza; she would always miss that fourteen year old girl.

Twill Eyelet was gone. Ember Organza remained in her place.