It's the bloody fight to the death that counts the most… and Haymitch realises surviving that Hunger Games isn't as glorious and as easy as he thought. The price to pay is much more than taking a few lives in order to save your own.

Updates soon, so enjoy this chapter while you can! It's a little shorter than usual, but that's because I had a specific place I wanted to end at. Reviews with advice will be greatly appreciated. And I couldn't decide on either of these two quotes for this chapter, so I wrote both.

"Doesn't the fight for survival also justify swindle and theft? In self defence, anything goes."

- Imelda Marcos

"If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved."

- Khalil Gibran

She screams again and I am running to her, calling her name. I round the corner, just quick enough to see the bright pink flamingo skewer her neck with its beak.

Maysilee is silent now, but not dead, as I run to her. Her hands are trying to staunch the flow of blood coming from her neck but she must know it's futile, she can't be saved. I hold her hand, tell her it's okay to let go, to slip out of this world. She smiles a little, but I know she is in a lot of pain. Tears roll down her face as she breathes her last breath. Then the cannon booms and I know she is gone.

I close her eyelids, and step back a few steps, just watching her. Then I press my three middle fingers of my left hand to my mouth and hold them out to her. To let Maysilee know she is in a better place now, that she will be missed. Then I walk away, letting the hovercraft retrieve her body. I don't go to the abyss, though; I go back to the forest, into a big, deserted clearing to sleep. I hear another cannon, and realise; there are only 3 tributes left.
I wake up early, a bit before dawn, and hear the cannon that is very close, probably only a few hundred metres away. Then I know it is time to face the remaining tribute.

We walk, to a big, open grassed area, perfect for the 'big fight'. I get my knives ready, ready to take her on. It is the girl from District One, and she carries an axe like she knows how to use it lethally and well. Then she lunges at me and it is on.

She swings the axe at my head and I duck, running her through with my knife and opening a wound on her side. She swings the axe into my stomach, and it goes deep, I can feel it. As the girl, Constantia, lunges again, I hit her square in the face, bloodying her nose. She gets agrivated with this and throws me backwards, but I recover quickly to charge at her again. Hitting her in the knee, she goes down, and I'm towering over her when her foot flies out and hits me squarely in the crotch. I double over in pain, giving her time to recover. I'm trying to stab her in the heart, but she's too quick for me, and we struggle for a while, chopping and nipping at each other. I throw an axe at her eye as she throws her axe and we both receive what could well be fatal wounds.

I'm running now, through the forest, weaving in between trees, trying to reach the abyss. We are stumbling up a grassy hill now, me holding in my intestines, Constantia trying to stop the blood pouring from her empty eye socket. I lost my knife in our battle, which is why I am running.
I collapse on the ground in front of the abyss, and Constantia, who is twenty or so metres behind me, reaches back, and with all her strength, throws her axe as hard as she can at my head. I don't have any strength to move, but I don't need to. She misses, and her axe goes flying into the abyss. She's still coming towards me, though; maybe she thinks she will outlast me. But what I know, and she doesn't, is that the axe is not lost forever. True to my thoughts, it comes flying back, aimed at Constantia's head, and she realises this a second before the axe blade berries itself in her skull.

I look at her crumpled body, while I am convulsing as my stomach contracts, and I feel the pain that goes deeper than my intestines. My ears hurt as the trumpets play, and the hovercraft appears and the claw is dropping down to collect me, and for a moment I am afraid that Constantia was a dream, and I haven't fought her at all, or that I am dead, or that now the Capitol is going to torture me, but no, I recognise Claudius Templesmith's voice booming across the arena as I listen to the screams of the Capitol crowds. I'm frozen in place as the claw is pulling me up, up into the air and into the hovercraft.
Then the doctors wheel me in, drug me with morphing, and begin surgery. At least I think its surgery, maybe they are just killing me in an inhumane way and that Constantia won, and is not dead. But the drugs are pulling me under and for now, I just don't care.

Over the next few days, I slip into consciousness and then go out again, but I am vaguely aware of my wounds disappearing, and I am feeling cleaner and less ragged. Good, I guess they aren't trying to kill me. I try to sit up, but I feel nauseas and then they drug me again. And when I finally wake up, I realise I can sit up without feeling sick, and there is a little bit of food for me to eat. I'm starving, but my stomach has other ideas as I heave and my small breakfast makes a reappearance.

I finish spewing up, wipe my mouth and realise, for the first time since I won, I am going home. Home! I will see my mother, and younger brother, and Lucia…. I find myself getting dizzy because of the excitement. Excitement. That's a new feeling, but I'm too overcome with emotions to let it register. My permanent scowl lifts at the thought of that run-down place called District 12 that is my home.

I get dressed into a simple outfit, and find myself being escorted by Shauna down the corridors and out of the hospital in the training centre that I was in, coming to the elevator that takes us to my floor. She's talking, but I don't take any notice. Mainly it's just about how proud she is, and how she is so happy for me, and how she knew I would win. Frankly, I don't want her praise, because she wasn't even my mentor so she didn't help me. She wasn't in the arena with me, as I killed those innocent people in exchange for my life. I realise that's the real reason I feel sick. Those tributes, that I killed…..
I did that. Killed them, to live, and now they will haunt me forever. And then at the Victory Tour, where I will have to look into the faces of their families, and see, reflected there, grief, sorrow, anger, and revenge, even.

I wonder if the flash-backs and nightmares will ever go away.