150th – Macy Barker, District Seven
…
God, he should've just volunteered. Would've saved himself a massive headache. If he had just volunteered, he could have lived. Even if now…he doesn't really think he wants to. It should be Macy. She deserves it, and the Capitol won't let it be him. The whole jig is up, and everybody knows about it. He broke all of the rules.
"Shallow," Macy whispers, dragging herself toward him. She looks horrible, but not as horrible as him. He'll die before she does. "Shallow."
He wants her to stop calling her that. That's not his name. It's never been his name. He just made a mistake, and now he's here, dying under a name that never belonged to him.
"Echo," he moans, because the world needs to know. "Call my Echo. That's my…that's my name."
In the end, it doesn't matter. Shallow is alive and Echo won't be in a few minutes. He's alright with that. He's alright with that. Just a few days ago, this would've been a nightmare. But now? Now that he's lying on top of Cornucopia, blood pouring out of his body? Echo's going to die. And that's okay.
Macy will live, and Shallow will live, and that's all that matters.
"You have to tell him, okay?" Echo says. "You have to tell him…you have to tell him it's not his fault."
"Tell him yourself," Macy says. "Tell him. Tell him yourself—"
"I can't!" Echo says. "You know that—that they won't let me—"
"I don't care!" Macy shouts. "I don't care! It has to be you, Echo! You're going to go home, and you're going to tell him all about it and—and—"
Echo smiles at her, just a bit. They would have been best friends back home. She would have gotten along with Shallow, too. His parents would have loved her. Everything would've been great if they had never been Reaped.
"Hey," Echo says. "Hey. It's going to be okay."
"Echo," Macy says.
"You know I'm…I'm not going to win, right?" Echo says. Everything hurts. Everything is blurry. There's so much blood on the Cornucopia. The heat from the lava is so intense, and Lammy's body is just feet away from him. "I'm gonna die."
He's okay with that. He is. He is okay with that. As long as he doesn't look at Lammy's body, or think about Coin, or think about anything. He's going to die at twelve years old and that's okay. That's okay. As long as Macy and Shallow live, he'll be okay with it.
"No, no, you're not," Macy says.
"You're gonna have to tell him…" Echo says. "When you get home. You've…you've gotta tell him."
He misses the trees. There are trees in this arena, but they are black and leafless, dead like the rest of the world, dead like he'll be soon. He wants to see the trees of District Seven again. He wants to see Shallow, see his friends, see his parents. He wants to show Macy the places he loves.
"Tell him yourself!" Macy shouts. She snatches up one of the discarded punji sticks, and Echo reacts with speed he didn't know he still had. The punji stick is aiming for Macy's throat, just about to hit, when Echo wrestles it out of her hands and jams it into his throat.
He's gone before he hits the ground. He's okay with that. He's okay with that. He's okay with that.
a/n: macy and echo are from my first syot, the youngest among us. wrote this scene for the first time over five years ago and gave it another shot.