Thirty squats, forty jumping jacks, fifty burpees. Rinse and repeat. She isn't even breathing hard by the end of it, and she's furious. You don't win by being complacent when things seem like they're going well, but the trainers don't understand. They don't want her to 'risk her health' or 'push herself too far.' The student brushes off their concerns. She knows her limits.
She knows there are no limits, and even if there were, she would bite and claw her way through them. Who is to say that she shouldn't, that she can't? She will.
She does. Now it's sixty squats, eighty jumping jacks, one hundred burpees. Still not enough, but closer.
It is enough. Her Games move more quickly than any in recent memory as she and her allies plow, or, more accurately, cut, stab, and crush through the weaker tributes. It's only eight days before she and the One man watch each other from the opposite sides of a stream, each knowing their entire lives have been lived just for the next few minutes.
Actually, it's only seconds. She doesn't think she so much as blinked, but suddenly, he's right there, forcing her to the ground, his sword poised to strike. She will not be beaten so easily, and she twists out from underneath him before the silver blade slices clean through her throat. Like she's been taught, she does what she has to do.
Her muscles don't win her the Games, she marvels later. Or perhaps they did ensure her victory. The woman does wonder, sometimes, if the jaw counts as a muscle.
.oOo.
A/N: The last chapter's character was Seneca Crane. Thanks for reading and to everybody who has reviewed, favorited, or followed!