The seventh day
-Cory, D5F-
Leo's been talking in my head.
In the darkness, I hear his voice, in my head, that voice that he was using before he died. He wishes he hadn't died for me, wasted his only chance on me. He should still be alive. I should be dead, not him. If he were alive, this hell would be over by now and he'd be back home with his family. It's my fault we're still here. It's all my fault. He died for me, because of me. I might as well have just stabbed him. I'm his murderer. I've taken a life and stolen it away.
The first time he said these things, I was able to believe that it was all fake. In my head or made by the Gamemakers, but fake. He wouldn't think those things. He wouldn't say those things. Now, he's been gone for so long that I remember that we were practically strangers. I know nothing about his home life. He wasn't made to die for me. And he did anyways. But he really wanted that chance to win. It meant so much to him. Not that it doesn't mean anything to me, of course it does, but with him… It was different. He never pictured himself dying. Not with whatever friends and family he had waiting for him back home.
Maybe he would say those things. Maybe he did mean them. Maybe he does regret losing his chance for the sake of me, a stranger that has done nothing but hide ever since. I haven't even thought about avenging him. There are still too many Careers for that to be a possibility. Even if it were one-on-one, I'm not confident I could win. I've pictured myself dying in so many different ways by now. It's a miracle I'm still around. Maybe if he could do it again he would let me die. He had a better shot at winning than I did. It just made sense.
I'm sobbing silently by the time the Arena lightens.
I've been untouched since that fateful day. The Careers went the other direction and I've remained hidden. Every morning when it gets lighter I slip out of the tree I've been residing in, gather food from some of the abandoned carts, and get water from the spicket. I have knives in a belt around my waist now, for self-defense, bandages, and a sleeping bag, which makes sleeping in the tree slightly more comfortable, but also slightly more dangerous. I still have the note tucked away in the pocket of my jacket, right next to the feather Victor gave me after the reaping. The feather, dark as the night, is soft under my fingers. The note is slightly crumpled. I had a hard time trying to read it without light, but in the brightest part of the day my eyes were able to find the words.
"A family in District 12 wants you to win, and they'll do whatever they can do make it happen. I know this because they wouldn't stop begging me to send you this stuff. They're devastated because of the loss of one of their son, but the last thing he did was give you a chance to live. I suggest you take that chance. Good luck, and we hope that the odds will be in your favor."
I can't help but feel like I don't deserve the gifts. If what Leo's been saying is true, and I'm starting to fully believe it is, he would change it in an instant. Keep on fighting for his chance, and surrender mine for his. I would probably change it if I could. But, I have to keep using what I have. So far, the numbers have been counting down and nobody's been back around my area. I hope it stays that way.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath as the sky starts to brighten, signaling the coming of the daytime. It's a relief when all the chaos of the noises comes to silence. Currently, the loudest noises are Leo in my ear, and the screams of an older boy, I would assume Collin from District 4. However, if you smack your hands on your ears hard enough, you can hear the faint sounds of gunshots, or the sounds of a bird.
I reach over to start untying myself out of the tree when suddenly, as if someone dropped a sheet of black silk over the Arena, we're sent sprawling into darkness once again. My heartbeat starts to pick up.
"I should have never given up my chance for a wuss like you," said that voice I had just been beginning to place with Leo's face. I quickly search for the rope, sensing that something about this is not right. What could be happening? What day is it? Why is this happening? There were no announcements about a feast… If I'm keeping track correctly there are still ten of us left. What's going on?
I hurriedly untie the rope and start unwinding it, my hands shaking and my forehead wet with sweat.
Suddenly, I hear a slight crack, and feel a breeze beginning. It has a smell that seems familiar, but I just can't place it.
Suddenly, with an unnaturally strong gust of wind, the tree branch I'm sitting on breaks, and I go falling down, hitting the ground hard on my leg and crying out a bit in pain. Shaking, I don't want to move. This has to be a nightmare. I reach over, hand shaking, and pinch my arm. It hurts, but nothing happens. This is real. I quiver.
"Cyra!" I hear the sobs of my District partner. I recognize them so well, even though he's been dead for days. I feel the need to go out, search for him, try to get him back so he can get back home where he belongs.
The rain starts just as I stand up. Since I got here, it hasn't rained much, but now it was just ice cold. I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself and crying out as I put weight on my leg. I try to find my backpack from where the branch fell, but the darkness is so disorienting and I'm so immobile that the search ends unsuccessfully.
Breathe, I think to myself. I take a shaking breath, knowing that if I freak myself out too much I'll panic.
"I never should have died for you! You can't even climb trees!"
"Please…" I can feel my heart start to beat faster and faster. I can feel a panic attack beginning.
Focus. Focus on what's around you. What's real. The darkness is full and complete. I'm still alive. I hear the screams of the deceased, but at an equal volume. They're not real. They're not real. They're just here to scare us. They're not real. My hair is wet from the rain. The rain isn't cold anymore. I realize it suddenly.
A stench starts to fill my nose just then, a stench that is so familiar and yet not familiar at all. In the darkness, it's near impossible to put sounds and smells and even tastes to objects.
Suddenly, a flash of lightning illuminates the Arena, and all I can see is red, sticky blood on my hands.
I scream, and suddenly the noises just become a blur.
"You killed me!" the voice shouts. "You will never wash the blood away! This is your fault!"
I sob, desperate for anything to happen. I tuck my knees to my chest and scream. My screams mesh with Hamilton's so distinctly that I wonder if I'm already dead and in hell. Another flash of lightning brings hot light to the Arena, and I shake.
Please, let it be over. Please. I dig through my pocket, desperate to find the note or the feather, but my hands shake so badly I can't grab ahold of anything. Silently, I beg for any touch of reality. Another flash of lightning burns into my eyes, this time accompanied by a loud crack that makes the tears come more steadily out of my eyes.
This continues for a while, until I feel a rumbling beneath me. Panicking, I go into survival mode, forcing myself to stand as the earth beneath my feet begins to crack and break away. I begin to run, away from there, unable to see where I'm going. Every time I step on my leg, pain sears and slows me down. I don't know what's happening, my entire body is sticky and crusty with the same blood that continues to pour out of the sky, and all I know is that I have to keep moving, as much as it hurts.
I keep going until my body starts to give up, quivering and sending sickness to my stomach as my leg throbs. I stop to heave and recover, when I see the earth in front of me opening to reveal a pit of fire. Before I can make my leg move, the earth beneath me opens up, and suddenly I'm falling into the fires, falling into hell, losing my chance to avenge Leo and make it back home.
I feel the fire burning my hair and skin before I even have a chance to apologize or say goodbye.
~.~.
-Riella, D7F-
"Why did you let me die!? I trusted you!" Callum's sobbing voice wouldn't disappear. Maggie and I had set up camp after getting a far enough distance from Iridesce, and now that we were settled, the noise was louder than ever.
I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears desperately. We couldn't have known what Iridesce was going to do. We were going to help him recover, this wasn't our fault. Something about the way he said it made me feel like it is, though. Like there's something we could've done to stop this. Something more we should've done.
"It was Kendal!" he shouted, sobbing. "Kendal did that to me! It was his handiwork! And you let him go! You could've killed him and you let him go! Who cares if he's from your District, I was your ally! Why should he run free!?" Tears pushed at the corners of my eyes. "You can't kill Kendal! You can't! You're going to die all because you can't kill some pathetic kid that comes from the same place you do! You're going to fail!" My lips quivered but I swallowed down the tears before they came.
I'll do it if I have to, I thought. But if I don't have to, why should I? Why should I turn the whole District against me? They already are, in a way.
The screams continued, though, pulsing in my head and making me feel like I was going crazy. I grabbed Maggie's ankle for support and out of a desperation for reality.
I can't be afraid, I thought. I have to be strong. It's getting down to the wire here. Soon it really will be kill or be killed. Every death is one step closer to where I belong.
"You were my allies, I considered you friends!" he sobbed at me, at us. I grit my teeth.
I can't be afraid. I have to be fearless. Andy is fearless. She's never afraid of things like this, I thought. She loves scary movies.
Sure, her fearlessness makes her reckless sometimes, but I needed just a piece of that right then. "Why did you betray me!?" he sobbed, sounding so desperate my heart broke a bit. After all, I'm still human.
What would Andy do? I thought desperately. What is Andy doing right now as she's watching? I thought about it through the eyes of my girlfriend watching at home. What would she be doing right now?
I knew what she'd do.
"Shut up Callum, I'm tired," I said, after just a second's hesitation.
Yes. Andy would've definitely made snarky-ass comments, just like she probably would've to real tributes, which would've gotten her in trouble. But these ones couldn't hurt me.
Maggie gave a slight laugh at my Andy comment. At least I could lift the mood a little bit. It didn't last long, though. Callum's screams of agony were replayed over and over again, on top of the screams of that boy from 11. I decided to try again. What would Andy say? I tried to picture sitting next to her in the small TV room, feeling the warmth of being nestled into her side as we watched the screen, covered in blackness with ghosts screaming like this. She'd turn to me, her lips going up in a smirk, and she'd say…
"Not our problem. Wasn't my axe. Take it up with Iridesce you guys, I'm trying to sleep here."
Maggie laughed again, and a small smile appeared across my lips. Hey, when I said that Andy saved my life, I meant it. She did it again and she wasn't even there that time.
Thinking of this as a joke, or imagining the ghosts as "edgy" angst-lords, made it almost comedic.
"No need to be so dramatic. Yes, you're so edgy, you like vintage music and wear black a lot. Alright. Leave us alone."
Maggie laughed again, a noise that had become almost foreign to me. Even if we couldn't get very close in a fight to the death like this, it was nice to hear.
Sleeping that night had been easy.
The memory is still fresh that morning when I wake up. It's amazing how perspective counts in these things. The sky starts to brighten and Maggie and I split some of the food we'd taken for breakfast.
Just as I finish eating, though, the entire Arena goes black.
"Maggie?"
"What just happened?"
"Where are the goggles?"
"I'm getting them." She shifted away from me and I could hear her searching for them. Suddenly, the noises started up again: all of them in their horrible glory. The gunshots that represent Nautica make me jump. The screams from Karima are piercing. There's so much chaos, so much noise, that it's hard to pull and Andy and make a snarky comment.
"R-Riella!" Maggie says, sounding scared as a gust of icy cold wind causes both of us to shiver.
"What? What is it?"
"They're not working!" she sounds panicked and close to tears. I know that I need to do something, anything to calm her down. Rain starts to fall out of the sky, rain that feels like pricks of ice it's so cold. I can hear Maggie shivering just as the sounds of a wailing baby overtake my ears and ring in my head.
"You liars! Betrayers!" Callum sobs into my ear. I cover my ears, trying to make it stop. I just need a second to think, if I can think for a second I can figure this out.
Maggie turns on a lantern just as the rain stops being cold. A familiar smell fills my nose, and when I look in the light, I can see that this isn't ordinary rain.
"Make it stop!"
"Maggie, hold on."
"Please!" she shouts and sobs. "Please make it stop! Stop it please!"
"This is my blood on your hands!" Callum shouts.
"I'm so sorry Callum!" sobs Maggie. "Please make it stop Callum, please, Riella, make it stop please!"
The sky is illuminated by a flash of white as a shard of lightning strikes the ferris wheel. At the crack of thunder, Maggie jumps up, screaming and sobbing, and starts running.
"Maggie! Hold on!" I follow the light, close enough that it can't disappear into darkness. Maggie keeps going, almost too fast for me to keep up with, and doesn't stop for a while. The little light stops moving in the distance, and I keep jogging to catch up with it, supplies in tow. Before I can get any closer, though, another enormous burst of light sends me backwards with a loud boom that makes my ears ring, striking the roller coaster and sending it crumpling. I hear another piercing scream come from Maggie, and quickly run as fast as I can the rest of the way, trying to find her.
"Maggie!" I shout, looking around quickly. "Maggie!"
The screams have long-since ended abruptly.
Another flash of lightning illuminates the damage. Where the huge roller coaster once was lies a pile of rubble, under which my ally lies. If a cannon was shot off, I haven't heard it, but I slowly give up hope. The light of the lantern was put out. Maggie is dead.
Another bolt of lightning gives light to more horrors on the horizon, and I can tell that this nightmare has only just begun.
~.~.
A/N: Ahhh I'm sorry it's been so long since I last updated! I hope you can forgive me! Good news is that I recently got on a SYOT hype all over again, so hopefully from here on in I'll be giving this full effort until it's over. Oh, hey, we're down to eight now if I'm correct. Huh. Interesting. I guess next chapter will be another interlude with final 8 interludes.
First, a few announcements: first thing is that the 84 afterlife!AU has been started and is up on the blog. Yay! Hopefully I'll continue it soon. I really wanted to do this chapter first though.
Second thing: Sunday nights, starting at 7, I'm going to stream drawing and maybe some AU writing if I'm not in a drawing mood. Check the Silhouettes blog for details and the link. I'll also be taking some requests for an hour or so, so if you're interested, please pop on!
Third thing: The rest of this story is going to go by quicker than we think, so I've posted a poll on my profile for what you would like to see next/what you would submit to. Please, check it out and vote. I want to write things that people will submit to, and your opinion matters to me.
Alright, I think that's all for now. Thank you so much to all the submitters that have stuck with me and reviewed, I appreciate every review so much and it really gives me motivation to update.
That being said, here's our chapter question, provided by W.R. Winters: If you could go out on a date with any of the tributes(living or dead) who would you choose, and where would you go? And just for kicks and giggles, what tribute would you want to be the awkward third wheel on that date?
Since I'm not asking this question, I'll answer it: I would probably want to go on a date with… Raoul. And we'd go see a symphony concert together. Hm… My awkward third wheel… Well, I mean, Kendal would just be texting Gravity fucking Stowers the whole time anyways. Lol.
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