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Most of my exams are now thankfully out the way, so I'm going to have more time for this story from now on :)

This victor is one that anyone who has read 'Catching Fire' should know. I hope that you enjoy their chapter :)


"Louder, louder

And we'll run for our lives

I can hardly speak I understand

Why you can't raise your voice to say."

- Gary Lightbody, 2003.


The 45th Annual Hunger Games

Chaff Harris (17), District 11 Male

Snow Patrol - Run (2003)


I wake slowly, realising disappointedly that nothing has changed in the arena since yesterday.

The air hangs heavy with humidity, the moist earth beneath my feet is giving but not muddy. I feel horrible; my clothes stick to my skin, cold and clammy due to my sweat.

I had expected hardship during the Games, and now I have it.

Still, I know that if the weather is the worst that I have to face, I will have been lucky. We're at the intermediate stage in the Games when the action has cooled down, but the Capitol audience are yet to become bored with proceedings. We've had somewhere between eight and ten days within the arena, and there are only eight of us left alive.

The arena itself is something completely new. All twenty-four tributes started at the top of a large hole in the ground, with little options but to abseil down towards the cornucopia, which lay at the bottom of the hole. From the cornucopia, the arena opened out into an absolutely vast underground system of large, open caves and caverns. The caves are so large that whole forests have grown inside them. Food and water won't be an issue in this arena, but this year's Games offer different challenges.

First, there is the issue of light. During the night, there is next to no light; you'd be lucky to see twelve feet in front of you. Nobody can move around the arena during the night. In the daytime, the caves and caverns are dimly lit but various small cracks and holes in the top of the caves. The light might not be much, but it's enough to see what you're doing.

Then there's the humidity; almost unbearable at times, the humidity prevents long periods of exercise. There's no way of running from a fight, and any fight are almost guaranteed to be short-lived, with a victorious tribute quickly emerging as a winner.

Of the tributes who are left, I'm only worried about a couple. The two remaining Careers from Districts 1 and 2 are the only surviving tributes that matched my training scores. Of the others, I don't see too many threats.

Many of the stronger tributes died early in the Games. Three tributes that I considered to be major threats (the boys from One and Four, plus the girl from District 7) died in the cornucopia bloodbath along with six others, including my district partner.

We had agreed to ally with each other ever since the reaping, and I still feel the gut when I remember her death; the moment that the boy from Five cut her down. I had hoped to avenge her loss (both for my own peace of mind and to punish her murderer) by killing the boy from Five myself, but the Careers beat me to him.

That particular battle took place close to me. I could hear the frantic cries for help, the sound of blade against blade, the screams for help. The boy died, of course, but not before taking a Career down with him. That night, there was a second face in the sky; the face of the girl from District 2. A fourth Career died two days ago, to take our numbers down to eight. Two Careers. Two from District 3. The girls from Six and Eight. The boy from Twelve and myself.

I stand up beneath the tree that I slept by last night, brushing myself down before beginning the now-routine trek to the nearest water source. I know that with every day and every death, I get closer to winning the Games. I never thought that it would be possible, but now, for the first time, I believe that I actually stand a chance. I might become a victor.

And I will do it. For her.


The Games ended on the eleventh day, when the remaining seven tributes were flushed out of the lower caves and up towards the cornucopia when the Gamemakers flooded the lower caverns. Only three tributes survived the floods; two Careers and Chaff. The first two to arrive at the cornucopia, the girl from One and the boy from District 2, had already settled their differences by the time that Chaff arrived on the scene, with the boy from District 2 being the victor.

Attempting to escape him, Chaff tried to climb one of the ropes that led to the surface that had been used to abseil in on the first day. His adversary, in an attempt to stop Chaff escaping him, climbed up the rope next to him, and tried to pull Chaff off of the ropes. However, he also lost his balance when doing so, and both tributes plummeted forty feet onto the uneven, rocky ground around the cornucopia. Both tributes suffered critical injuries, but Chaff was the only tribute to survive them, making him the victor of the 45th Annual Hunger Games.


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