Forest of the dead

by Rkuda

All the people here have a story. Someone they loved. A past. A world in which they wished to escape. 24 enter. One survives. These are the Games. May the odds be forever in your favour.

4. Chapter 4

4.

"You have to kill them all. All twenty-three of them."

My father paced about the courtroom, muttering to himself. I had a couple of minutes with him and, apart from his initial embrace, my father had not made eye contact with me. IU sat in a wooden chair, my arms across my chest and my gaze turned towards the sea. Over the shingle roofs of the District Four houses, I could see the glistened blue of the ocean's surface. Boats drigten beneath the bast sky, fishermen and whalers going about their daily routine as if I had not just been sentenced to death.

"You can join the Careers," said my father, running his fingers through his hair.

I loathed them, the people who could go on as if nothing happened. My life was ending. O was being thrown into an arena with twenty-three other murderous children and the fishermen could go on fishing.

"Don't befriend them. Don't ever befriend them. You're just going to kill them in the end."

"Are you done yet?" I asked, my voice flat.

My father stopped pacing and turned to stare at me. "What?"

"Cry," I said. "Can you do that?"

"Finnick," said my father, "Finnick, you have to listen to me."

"I just want you to cry for me," I said. "Is it that difficult?"

"Now is not the time for anything like that," said my father. He took me by the shoulders and shook me. "You need to train. You need to strategize."

I pushed his hands away and got to my feet. "I only want one thing from you."

My father opened and closed his mouth. He had nothing to say.

A hard smile crossed my face and I tilted my head to the side. "Your missing a day of fishing. All the money going to waste. But I guess you have one less mouth to feed."

"Finnick."

He might have said something. He might have said something important, but at that moment the courtroom door opened and two Peacekeepers came in to escort my father out. My father shook his head and refused to leave. He turned his eyes to me, pleasing, and I felt something inside me twist, but then he told me to win the games. I told me to kill them all.

I watched without a word as the Peacekeeps led my struggling father out of the court room. The doors closed after them and I collapsed back into the wooden chair.

Perhaps my father did love me to some degree.