A/N: Thanks to richards25 and charliesunshine for reviewing the last chapter :)
"I hold my breath and close my eyes and think about her
'Cause she's two thousand light years away."
- Billie-Joe Armstrong, 1992.
The 19th Annual Hunger Games
Lucas Raven (18), District 2 Male
Green Day - 2,000 Light Years Away (1992)
I sit atop the rocky outcrop, looking down over the arena. Ice and snow, as far as the eye can see. The only change in colour comes with the dark rocky outcrops that dominate the peaks.
The arena is a mountain range. Tall, difficult peaks of ice and rock that tower into the sky. Around the low ground that situated the cornucopia, there were seven mountains. Natural skyscrapers that literally touch the sky. On that first morning, the cloud layer was so low that the true extent of the mountains was not to be revealed for another two days, and the mist disappeared to give us a good view of the desolate landscape we have been thrown into.
Warmth is not an issue, as the lower slopes of the mountains are sparsely populted with pines. It may be a sparse covering, but there is still plenty of wood to last twenty-four tributes a month or two. And anyway, twelve of us died on the first day, so what wood there is left would last us even longer. And even if the wood does run out, we werre all given fur-lined leather coats as part of our clothing before the Games, so despite being in freezing conditions constantly, the cold is not a concern.
Neither is food a concern. There are lots of small animals that keep to the woods near the bottom of the mountains, most of which are seemingly too stupid to see humans as harmful. They are easy pickings.
Water will never be an issue when ninety percent of the arena is covered by snow. Even without a fire, body warmth would be enough to melt enough ice to keep a tribute hydrated.
I'm not sure how many days have passed, they all seem to blend into one in such a repetitive environment. I'm not sure where the mountain that I am currently at the summit of is in relation to the corncucopia, but it definintely wasn't one of the seven that surrounded the clearing. The cornucopia is nowhere in sight. I know that it takes around three days to ascend and descend a mountain, and this is my third summit that I have reached, so it must have been at least eight days since I first started climbing. I know that I spent a week with the other three Careers roaming the valleys in between the mountains until the Gamemakers sent an avalanche upon us. I was the only Career to survive it.
Since then, I have walked alone through the arena. Back then, there were seven of us alive. I haven't run into anyone (though I did once spot a tribute on a mountain opposite the one I was ascending at the time) but the numbers have decreased to just four of us left alive.
And I have no idea where to begin searching for the others.
After nearly three weeks, they could be anywhere.
So I just wait for something to happen. Every day, I travel aimlessly, waiting until I either randomly stumble across someone else, or the Gamemakers force us together. All I know is that the other three remaining tributes aren't from the Career districts. I can't remember exactly, but I believe one of them is from District 10. I can't even remember it it would be the boy or the girl from Ten, or maybe no-one from District 10 is alive. I genuinely don't know.
Oh, I hate the arena.
I never realised until I got in here that my family were right to warn me when I signed up to the Training Centre. Their harsh regimes and endless training do give District 2 strong tributes for the Games, but it should never have been me. Not when so many others would have willingly taken my place.
And I killed them all in the trials.
That was nothing to the real thing. The District 2 trials and the real Games are barely comparable. I was completely unprepared, even after everything Augustus, Amadeus, Rose, Cicero and Cassius have done for me in the last five years. Five victors can't even defeat this arena.
Well, maybe I can win. There are only four of us left, and I'm sure that I'm the only trained tribute left alive after the avalanche.
But the arena is breaking me, the longer I stay in here. I can survive on what there is in the arena, but over long periods of time, my physical form will waver.
But the major challenges that the arena has given me are the mental ones. I've not seen another person in over a week, and I'm stuck in an entirely alien environment, hundreds of miles from home. There is nothing like this in District 2; there probably isn't anyhting remotely similar to this in any of the districts of Panem.
And I miss home.
Not District 2 as a place; I've barely seen any of it in the years since I devoted myself to becoming a Career. But I miss the people.
By friends, my trainers, my family.
The friends that I had grown close to in the Training Centre, only to be turned against them in the trials. My best friend, Hayden, has been dead for over seven weeks now.
And he died by my hand.
My trainers were the ones who gave me the determination to succeed through all the troubles of life in District 2 and devote myself to becoming a Career. Over five years, they became a second family to me. I spent as much time with them as I did with my actual family. But now I can only associate doubts with them after what they forced me to do during the reaping trials.
I miss the sense of security that they used to give me.
And I miss my family. The family that I turned my back on during my teenage years after signing up to the Training Centre. My mother, my father, my two younger sisters. When they were there, I ignored them. Now that they are a thousand miles away, I feel as though I never wanted to leave them. If I close my eyes, I can picture them all clearly, smiling at me. But I feel as though the solitary confinement of the arena will soon render me insane, and all memory of them will be lost.
And that must not happen at all costs.
Whatever it takes, I must return home to my family. And sitting here atop a mountain isn't getting me any closer to District 2.
With a new sense of urgency, I return to my feet, grab my backpack, and set off down the mountain.
I've got some tributes to hunt.
The 19th Games lasted for twenty-two days, as all the tributes had their own issues to attend to. Their lives weren't threatened, but in order to stay alive there was a lot to do - melting, purifying water, finding firewood, keeping a constant food supply - so nobody had any time to hunt down each other. Eventually, sponsor support and food dried up for two tributes - the boys form Districts 5 and 7 - leaving just Lucas and the girl from District 9 alive. Eventually they sighted each other across the valley, and met in the trees at its base for the confrontation that would decide the Games. After a days-long build-up, the battle lasted less than a minute. Lucas was older, taller, stronger and better-trained, as well as better-supplied and better-rested. And that was that. The battle was quickly over, and Lucas Raven of District 2 became the victor of the 19th Annual Hunger Games.
A/N: Please review! As ever, constructive criticism is welcome :)
