The cave floor is hard even for someone like me, I can only imagine how uncomfortable he must feel, someone who grew up with relatively more at least compared to the seam but I sigh, I guess that doesn't matter his wealth kept him out of the games just as well as Prims age did. I can't help but to look at him, asleep on the floor, back arched painfully, leg twisted awkwardly, in an attempt to keep the pain at bay and even uncomfortable as he looks I feel tired. I don't remember the last time I slept or at least slept well and I can feel it like a weight on my shoulders dragging me down but I won't fall, not when I'm so close.
I bring my hands to my knees, trying to keep the warmth that is fleeting and look down at the figure at my feet, although this time I don't see the boy who I'm supposed to be madly in love with but rather the boy that saved me all those years ago, the boy that keeps continuing to though I don't understand why, the boy who when I was configuring how to stay alive was completing on how to die and still be him. He mumbles in his sleep, words I cannot hear and I can't help but remembering that night on the rooftop, it seems like a different life time ago, one where only the thought of killing plagued us and since I'm already in such a pensive mood I don't stop my mind from wondering.
I can't help thinking of how close we are, how close Peeta and I are to winning, that is if Peeta makes it but that is one thought I won't allow myself ponder, we will make it, both of us, together. Winning I think of that word instead, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; it's a word I'm not sure I know the definition of anymore. I was sure of it though at one time or another I know that, I believed you either won the games or lost them, lived or died but that was before Rue. I know I should stop this train of thought, the cameras are watching, waiting for me to slip up so I take a deep breath and start again, thinking instead of the boy I killed. It's an easier thought than Rue and one that I scarcely thought of since, only in tallying the deaths but now it hits me full on, like a kick to the stomach, knocking the air out of me and just like that my careful façade falls. I killed a person, a living breathing human being with thoughts and feelings not some unsentimental deer in the forest but someone with friends and family, someone who was just afraid of dying as I was, as I am and until now I didn't care, he was nothing but a number, that's how they saw us, numbers and pawns in their game but what was even worse is that I am no better. I didn't care, I killed him and I didn't care. Everything is falling down like the rain around this cave but just before I'm about to fall a single thought crawls into my head, I can't let them have this, can't let them see me broken and cowardly in pain over their game. Breathe I did what I had to, to survive, breathe there was nothing I could do, breathe I promised Rue, I promised Prim. And this is a promise I would not break, I will go home, I will see her again and I will never leave her. This now I am sure, would be the only win I would get because as Peeta stirs at my feet, I know we can never win these games, we can only survive them.