A/N: Thanks to Kate of Carlay's help with this one. Originally, meant to be submitted for a challenge, but the prompt just didn't work. I am just posting it anyway. Based on the District 10 boy from the 74th Hunger Games (ie Katniss' first Games) - the boy with the limp. Please review, if you can...
Disclaimer: own nothing.
A boy. A girl. A promise.
"Come on, slow-coach, you ever gonna catch up?" he called, voice muffled by the distance stretched between them.
With a struggled sigh, she pushed herself even harder to meet up with him. Legs straining, lungs gasping for breath, she finally reached where he stood, waiting for her with a smile twisting up the corners of his mouth. He looked completely unruffled, much to her annoyance. His dark hair was still perfectly in place and his green eyes were lit up with amusement at her bedraggled look. Her face was flushed bright pink, her frizzy blonde hair was in wild disarray and there was sweat dripping down the sides of her face. She could never understand how he could manage such a run without showing any signs of actually doing any running. It amazed her. Here she was, collapsing on the ground as her legs gave out beneath her, hands clutching her sides where a stitch had formed, and he was perfectly fine. He was perfect.
"Give me…a minute…please," she panted.
With a laugh he lowered himself down beside her, so close that their shoulders brushed against each other.
"Sure thing," he said. "Take a breather."
Time passed as they sat in the wide field together, underneath a brilliant blue sky, inhaling the smells that farming always brought.
It wasn't the best smell, but it was familiar. It meant home.
After a few more minutes of comfortable silence, listening to each other's breath and heartbeat, they rose as one. They raced each other across the field, raced back towards the town. A smile passed between them, the world faded out of the picture until all they saw was each other's face.
And then one face was gone, tumbling to the ground, and a cry of pain escaped the face's lips.
"Colt!" she screamed, stopping in her tracks and racing to where he lay on the ground.
His bare foot was cut, blood was dripping from the wound at a constant rate, and he was moaning in agony. She felt faint at the sight, but she had to help him.
Get past it, she thought, help Colt.
He had tripped. Somehow. It didn't really make sense to her, for he was perfect and graceful, but that thought didn't change the fact that he was lying in the grass with a nasty cut on his foot.
"I'm okay, Cheyenne," he said through gritted teeth.
She couldn't help the tears that sprung to her eyes, as if his pain was her pain.
"Don't worry, Chey, I'm fine," he breathed.
"But we have to get back! Like, now! The reaping is starting soon…" she trailed off at the look on his face.
"We'll make it, okay? We can make it. You know we are perfect together. At least, that's what our parents say," he said, wincing as he tried to stand.
"But-"
"No buts. We'll make it. You and me. Always. I promise."
And together, he leaning on her, they made their way across the field and down to where the reaping was about to take place.
A boy. A girl. A piece of paper.
There they stood, separated only in distance, as they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
From where she was standing, amongst the other girls of her district, she could just see the top of his head, and his feet. She knew it was his feet because they were bare, and also because of the nasty shade of red which had been left behind on his left foot after the bleeding stopped.
The sound fell away from her, and her heartbeat came into focus along with the fears of being called.
Being chosen.
Being sentenced to death.
With shaking hands she grasped at the folds of her dress, twisting and turning in a ceaseless motion. The woman stepped up to the podium. She called out the names.
And it wasn't her.
Thank god it wasn't her.
She let out a great big sigh, so loud she almost didn't hear the other name that had been called. But when she heard it, processed it, figured out what it meant, her heart fell to the floor.
It was him. The boy. Colt.
Now, not only where they separated by distance, but they were separated by that thin piece of paper. A piece of paper clutched in the hands of a woman who probably couldn't care less.
They were now separated by life and death.
A boy. A girl. A last goodbye.
Saying goodbye is never easy. It haunts, taunts, saddens, plays at the heartstrings, until there is nothing good to remember, ever.
She walked in, streak marks from tears on her face, and she ran to him, gripping him in a hug. She tried to memorise every inch of him, the way he felt between her arms, the way he talked, the way he loved. Words were useless, they served no purpose but to harm, so they both remained silent. A silent goodbye.
A man came, a man with a deep booming voice, commanding her to leave. With difficulty, they tore apart, and she walked out with more than a few backwards glances. He stood up as well, reaching towards her, with a limp to his gait from back in the field. He didn't make it far before she was out of his sight, and the man had closed the door.
Only when she was walking home, tears long since dried leaving behind a hollow shell of a girl, did she realise that she had left her heart back in the room.
Back in the room of the Last Goodbye's.
A boy. A girl. A television.
Flickering images. Distorted sound. Nothing seemed real to her anymore. With a stony expression, she watched as they were paraded in their costumes, she watched as they were interviewed, she watched as they lived what was left of their lives on a TV screen. She couldn't think, or sleep, and she barely spoke. Her eyes were forever glued to that screen, as if it held secret to life itself.
When the truth was, it held her secret.
In that tiny, metal box, her heart, her soul, her life was contained. In that tiny metal box, she watched as half of her trained for death. In that tiny metal box, love was captured, tortured, put on for show.
A fear developed within her. A fear of boxes - for to her it meant the death of love itself.
A boy. A girl. The start of the end.
A moment suspended in time. 24 children, standing, waiting, adrenaline rushing through their systems. An audience poised on the edge of their seats, bloodlust in their eyes impatiently anxious for the first fights and the first deaths. A president, an evil grin fixed on his face as he waits for the rush of power he feels when the children die.
A girl, emotions battling within herself, waiting to see if he makes it out alive.
And then it starts.
And then they're off.
Racing for the Cornucopia.
And she could barely watch as his gait, one that used to be so graceful and cast so much awe, one that was now tainted with a limp that caused him trouble as he ran.
A flash.
A memory.
Racing through the fields of district 10, together, with nothing in their minds but each other, and how it felt to be alongside each other underneath such a vast blue sky.
"You know we are perfect together…"
Words said what felt like so long ago, words that sounded funny in her memory, words that meant more now than they ever did back then. Words that replayed over and over, as she imagined what could have been, what might have been, and what probably would have been.
A life. Together.
But now a life. Apart.
She closed her eyes as the bloodbath started, not daring open them until the sounds of the cannon fires had stopped blaring through the television.
And she didn't really trust what she saw.
She saw him limping away, away from the Cornucopia, totally unaware of the cameras on him. She saw him mouth something, something that looked extraordinarily like…
"I made it Chey, I made it, I made it..."
A boy. A girl. A life lost.
Days went by in fits and starts for her. Every time she woke up, she was plagued with dread that perhaps, while she slept, he had died, and that she had not felt him go. Dragged down by the fogginess of sleep, she stumbled towards the television to check. And after a few minutes of staring unblinkingly at the TV, she would see him and let go of a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.
He was there, limping through the arena, somehow surviving against all odds. Every step he took made her heart take flight, but also weighed her down with guilt – that limp was her fault, that cut was her fault, if he died because he couldn't run away fast enough, it would be her fault too…
A thousand miles away stood the boy, watching, waiting, stomach panging with hunger, as he made a plan in his head. What to do. Where to go. How to get there. How to stay hidden. How to stay alive. The sun was barely up, a pink greyness casting itself across the early-morning sky. Something was different. Before he knew what he was doing, or why, he looked at one of the cameras he knew was floating around (he could feel them, their presence, and what their presence meant) and mouthed something. Something he hoped she would see, even if her watching at that exact moment was near impossible.
"I love you. We would have been perfect. I love you, Chey."
A gasp of surprise. She had seen. She knew. Those words he chose specifically, reminding her of that last day, of the field, of their togetherness. She knew what that meant. He didn't blame her. He still loved her. Even trapped in an arena of madness, he loved her. A weak smile broke out across her face, something that had not happened since the piece of paper drew a wedge between them, and she whispered in reply:
"I love you too."
Mere seconds after that, another boy came flying into the screen, the screen which framed the boy that had her heart, and that boy committed an act of sin that was accepted in the Games.
He killed.
He slaughtered.
She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to keep the image of him saying her name, saying he loved her in her head, but she couldn't keep the sounds of the Games being heard.
She fell to the floor, blackness clouding her vision and her mind.
The last thing she heard was a cannon fire.
A girl. Alone.
Memories were all she had left. As she ventured forward, to the memorial that now stood over the arena were she lost her first love, she remembered the boy from all those years ago.
The boy she loved.
The boy who was gone.
The boy who lived on only in a memory.
She left a single flower at the base of all the names, but it was only meant for one.
She could still hear his voice in her head.
"We would have been perfect."
And her heart, what was left of it, beat faster at the truth of these words.