60 seconds…
Rue felt entirely alone.
Isolation hollowed out her body. Death was everywhere. It was in the faces of the tributes around her, it was in unnatural air that blew across her face, it was in the crude point the tip of the Cornucopia made. Why was she here? Why were any of them here?
Her throat felt suddenly full, her eyes threatened to tear and very quickly the empty feeling sporadically filled with desperation, terror, abandonment, and sorrow like she had never felt before.
Think of something else, think of something else.
Beneath closed lids she tried to find the beautiful white blooms of the pear blossoms back home. But she couldn't. All she could see was blood.
Her eyes- as gold as the sun, her momma used to say, flickered open and were attracted to the shine of a spear whose head was sharp enough to pierce through her very soul from where she stood.
No, don't, said a voice. Don't cry. Don't be afraid. Be strong. You have to be strong for them. They are watching.
The voice was right. She was sure she could see them- her brothers and sisters standing in a crowd before the only projection screen in their sector of District 11, all their small hands entwined for support, all their eyes on her. She wouldn't let them down. She couldn't.
53 seconds…
Marina wasn't in the area.
She was in a million places but the arena.
She was swimming through the mystical turquoise world of her district, between the pink and red corals, sunlight casting tantalizing recurring shapes of light upon the sea floor carpeted with life. She was on her father's sailboat scooping up prawns with whiskers like cats. She was plucking clear jellyfish out of the water and throwing them at her sisters.
When none of these real memories worked, she created new ones.
She was winning the games. She was on the cover of every fashion magazine in the Capitol. She was kissing the lips of her extraordinarily gorgeous mentor, running her hands again and again through his bronze hair…
49 seconds…
Icaunus, on the other hand, was definitely in the arena.
Unlike his district partner who stood still with her unfocused sky blue eyes somewhere in her own little world, he was hopping up and down, shifting from side to side on his feet. His earthen eyes were everywhere, on everything, on everyone.
This was it. It was time.
How anyone could hold still in this moment was entirely beyond him. His hyperactivity almost caused him to fall off the podium but he managed to stop himself before being blown to bits of flesh and bone. As soon as he righted himself he was bouncing again.
Death didn't occur to him.
46 seconds…
Thresh was completely empty.
His thoughts were empty. His emotions were empty. With golden eyes he fixated on what he needed surrounding the cornucopia – and that was backpacks of food and water. He didn't need weapons; he wasn't going to touch anything he didn't have to from the Capitol.
The image of the little girl perched on her podium across from him with her arms extended slightly, would for as long as he was here, remind him why.
He would use nothing that was theirs.
When he killed, he would use the only thing that still belonged to him and him alone. His bare hands.
41 seconds…
Peeta was completely full.
Full of adrenaline, full of fear, and full of thoughts all vying for his attention. He made a deal with the Careers. So he had no choice but to go into the heart of the cornucopia. He would have to fight; he would probably have to kill. Would one of the Careers just end up slaying him anyway? There was a strong chance they may, despite the bargain. He knew his life was going to end in this arena, but would it be so soon?
However, the most important thought that was able to silence all the others was embodied in a human being standing five tributes down from him. Her grey eyes were fixed upon the Cornucopia. She was staring at the bow.
God, Katniss don't.
Joining the Careers, battling into the Cornucopia; all of it was for her. They wanted her dead and because they were the Careers, without his intervention they would probably make that happen. He was going to get her out of this alive. He didn't care what the cost to his life might be.
To settle his nerves, he tried to remember the exact color of her soft olive cheeks as the fire coming off both of their bodies illuminated them. He tried to remember the perfect shade of her gray eyes when they looked up into his, surrounded by fluffy black lashes that would have never been there if they had been back in District 12.
It was difficult to find those lovely pictures beneath the raging winds of his anxiety but he managed to bring them into focus. And with them, he remembered his purpose.
He wasn't afraid anymore.
34 seconds…
Glimmer rubbed the vacant spot on her finger.
Why did they have to take it away from her? It was her ring, her token. And if they were going to do it why did it have to wait till right before she was encased in the glass tube to be raised into the arena?
Damn them! It was just enough to kill one tribute. It wasn't even fair the advantages some of these heathens had over her. How could she possibly win if it came down to say, just her and the massive ogre that was Cato? It seemed completely fair to allow a slender young woman such as herself to bring in a small little something to make up for the fact that she wasn't a towering giant that could snap a neck with her strength alone.
And speaking of a small little something, what about that pint-sized hobgoblin, Clove? She was the real monster. Glimmer had seen her ability with those knives but she had seen something more in her too. That eerie smile that would form beneath those freckled cheeks of hers as one of her weapons dug into the heart of a dummy. Or her black eyes which would widen as she sliced the neck.
That ring wouldn't have gone to waste.
Her eyes lay on the bow and arrows lying atop the pile in the Cornucopia. That would be hers.
Maybe she didn't have poison. But a bow would work just the same wouldn't it? She could step far out of their range and take out the real competition without a struggle.
And if a struggle should come, well, they wouldn't be the only ones with daggers.
A smile curled her lips.
28 seconds…
Marvel was still as stone.
His body was leaned over the podium with one leg in front of the other as motionless as a statue- a bullet ready to be fired. His target was the silver glistening heads of a case of spears near the interior of the Cornucopia. They were just waiting for his fingers to clench around them, to finally put his years of training to use on the poorly fed, skeletal bodies of his competitors.
The sad little cockroaches he was forced to call his countrymen.
But of course here they weren't.
It was almost pitiful, looking at the scraggly, disoriented, permanently filthy faces of the lesser districts tributes as they seemed to ether shift uncomfortably or hold their bodies in an awkward starting position on their podiums. They always went down so quickly, year after year. Marvel hardly even wanted to kill them to be honest. It just seemed so… wasteful.
There was some competition though that he really wanted to kill.
The two little beasts from District 2.
He didn't need to look at them to know what they were doing, most likely sneering or snarling like the unrefined animals they were. They would be challenges for sure. But there was no doubt in his mind he could slaughter them both.
And Glimmer? The thought of a final fight against his erogenous, superficial, inept district partner was enough to make him chuckle out loud. Her abilities weren't much for nearly eleven years of training. And he would know considering they had attended the same academy together.
These games would be too easy.
Suddenly a pair of sweet eyes and a lovely giggle rang through his mind, interrupting his grueling thoughts. He didn't mind though.
She was always allowed to interrupt him.
Where was she right now? It was a weekday, but even the manufactories were shut down during the games. Was someone counting down the seconds for her? Describing his face as the cameras focused in on it? He hoped she wasn't frightened. Was she wearing her hair in a bow today? He loved when she arranged those strawberry curls of hers at the nape of her neck, exposing her fragile shoulders…
But this wasn't the time to be thinking of her. So with a delicateness he kept reserved only for her, he shooed her away from his thoughts, just for now.
21 seconds…
Cato heard everything.
He heard his heart thump hard against the bones of his chest. He heard his own pants. He heard his blood as it pounded through his veins. He heard his teeth crushing as his jaw grinded them together. He heard everything.
He heard the boy from Seven swallow hard. He heard the little girl from Eleven's heartbeat as she readied herself to run. He heard the faint noise the boy from Ten made as he shifted onto his bad leg. He heard Lover Boy's muscles as they tightened. He heard a bead of sweat trickle down Thresh's back. He heard the bones in Marvel's fingers as they cracked. He heard Glimmer's eyelashes batting as she blinked hard from the sun. He heard the Girl on Fire exhale as she took position to sprint.
But he saw different things.
He saw the boy from Seven grasping at his throat as blood sputtered from it. He saw the little girl from Eleven being crushed beneath his fingers. He saw the leg of the boy from Ten being snapped backwards, bone sticking out in all the wrong places. He saw Lover Boy really pouring his guts out for all of Panem to see, on the ground, surrounded by a pool of blood and purple organs. He saw Thresh's ripped flesh exposing the bone of his spine before kicking it broken. He saw Marvel with various punctures across his body, red gaping mouths spread across bruised purple skin. He saw Glimmer's golden hair tangled in a mess and matted with blood as she lay face down on the ground, her skull completely crushed.
And he saw the Girl on Fire… broken in a million places, her arms, limbs, hands, all bent in the wrong ways. Only she wasn't dead. She was alive. And she was screaming.
Then he saw Clove.
She was in that dress from last night, held up against the walls of the Cornucopia being physically crushed. She was withering in pain. She begged him to stop. Her frail bones were breaking. She was defenseless, weak, terrified. Just how he liked her.
She was pinning the girl from Eight to the ground with a knife held to her throat. Killing, brutal, aggressive. With the same hungry look in those deep green eyes as the night when she so bravely stuck a knife to his neck.
She was bleeding like the rest of them in a heap on the earth.
No longer was he human. Barely was there a time when he truly was, but he was always caged. However, the leash of civilization didn't restrain him here. He was about to be let loose. Wild, feral, manic. The only thing that held him back now was the clock.
Colors seemed to fade as he looked again at his competition. They were all going to die.
Fire coursed through ever limb of his body. He wanted to hear their screams. He wanted to feel their blood as it stuck to his fingers.
He wanted it everywhere like an ocean, drowning out everything.
10 seconds…
Clove waited patiently.
She wasn't calm but her energy wasn't free to bounce throughout her in whichever way it liked. It was concentrated and focused just like the rest of her. She would only get this moment once.
Her life had been nothing more than a fall leading to this point.
A fall through the black pupils of her mother, through purple fires and placid faces, landing into the palms of monsters and acquaintances, dumped into the darkness that only allowed the sparks of stars and dreams of blood. But now she was reaching the bottom and it was the hard packed earth that surrounded her podium and the Cornucopia. The fall was almost over.
This was everything. Everything she had trained for, anticipated, spent her waking hours fantasizing about. It was almost sad it was finally here, it was finally about to happen. There would be nothing more to look forward to.
Her first human kill.
All that separated her from one of the twenty-three that shuffled on their podiums was mere seconds. She couldn't deny the intimacy of the moment. It was stronger and more powerful than the feeling of her knife digging across the belly of a horse, than watching a chicken burn alive from her flame, than running her lips across Cato's skin. She could feel their fear, their terror. She could see it in their faces.
Her vision darkened around the edges again. A smile crept to her lips.
She thought of Lyme's promise. She could win, she could return to the Capitol and be crowned victor, bring pride to her district when she returned home. But even if she did, she wouldn't truly be there.
Once her foot stepped off that podium, she would never leave this place.
4 seconds… 3 seconds… 2 seconds
1 second.