After the revolution of Katniss Everdeen, the Mockingjay, all of the conspirators took 24 capitol children and put them in the 76th Hunger Games, which was supposed to be the final hunger games.
They were wrong.
After the victor of the 76th Hunger Games, Calix Markatos, won the 76th game, he began yet another revolution. Ironically, this young man gave the people of the capitol hope, it gave them so much hope that they rebelled against the rebels and took over again and Calix became the new president of Panem, now that Snow was dead. Things went back to before the revolution, all the revolutionists were killed, including the Mockingjay and her lover, as well as anyone involved in the conspiracy. Soon the districts knew their place yet again and the Hunger Games started yet again. It began again, with the 77th annual Hunger Games.
To apply to the 77th Annual Hunger Games, please fill out the following and submit it to the blog:
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It has come to my attention that Games before THGYear5, and Gamemakers before me, have failed miserably at their job to see a game come to completion. I am here to change that. It's time for applications for THGYear5, for a new game, and for citizens to realize the power of the Capitol again. Simply APPLY HERE and follow the directions on the page. If you have questions, send them HERE. Application deadline is March 20th, 2013 @ 11:59pm CST, the Reaping will shortly follow. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.||
Head Gamemaker
And welcome to the first annual, Panem Challenge. The Panem Challenge is a game to test you physically and mentally. You will be put through numerous challenges and situations to fight for survival in this years arena. Do not be fooled, these games are hardly the same as any other ordinary game. Please read our FAQ, and if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask. All applications will be due by November 22nd by 11:59pm CST. The reaping will be taking place on November 23rd at 11:00pm CST.
Meg, Clara, and Veronica have managed to survive all the other Tributes, the traps, and mutts of the Arena. Now, it's just the three of them. The following are the results, in order, of how the formula showed who won and who died. I had to actually go back and score all the other pieces once more, average them, just to find the proper Victor, I am pleased to announce that the Victor of THGYear4 is...
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Final Situation
Clara, District 1
The slowly rising sun painted the horizon with pastel pinks, oranges and blues, but the tranquility of the fourth sunrise of the Games was violently interrupted. With a blinding flash and a concussive blast like a thousand bursting weather balloons, the Cornucopia exploded. Shards of golden metal ricocheted off of the charred feast table, some flying over twenty feet, showering there arena's last alliance in gleaming metal shrapnel.
Clara heard the rumbling of explosives before the blast, raising her bandaged arm to cover her face. A ling sliver of metal lodged in the cotton, penetrating her skin but not her bone, thanks to the covering. Veronica seemed unaffected by the shower of projectiles, as her ally had been standing between her and the explosion, absorbing the extent of the damage with gritted teeth.
Both girls' ears hummed loudly in the aftermath, but despite that, very little in the way of serious injuries had been inflicted. Clara's bare legs were shredded by flying chunks of the once-magnificent Cornucopia, but for the most part, her dress had absorbed the damage. As she knelt to pluck a shimmering splinter from her shin, her hearing seemed to abruptly return as the implant inside of her ear sparked to life.
"Just like the Cornucopia gave you life, was the source of first blood, and gave you another chance to survive, so I am giving you the opportunity to make it out alive. You now must fight the other two tributes. With only two people in the way, surely 'victor' isn't such a far off title. You will meet at the wreckage of the Training Center. If you refuse to go, your death is on your own hands."
With the culmination of the message, all noise returned to the persistent, humming static that filled her head. The girl from District One groaned, rubbing her face with her hands, blood from many tiny cuts smearing on her flesh.
Clara turned to Veronica, who wore the same pained and disoriented expression that she did. Her ally's lips seemed to be moving, but Clara could barely pick out what she was trying to say, despite her friend's best attempts to add expressive motions to her vocabulary.
"We… should…" she paused to make a motion to suggest drinking. "Drink… all… of… the… water."
The girl from District One nodded, taking a long drink from the jug that the two had found on plate two and passing it to her ally. This persisted until there was only a little water, thickened with honey, swishing at the bottom. The two had already eaten their rolls.
Clara motioned to the pile of recently obtained weapons, and Veronica nodded agreement; decisions had to be made as to who would get what. The two walked over to the small knife, empty blowgun, and billhook. Clara picked up Ryan's knife, using it to dig the large shard of golden metal from her arm and then sheathing the blade in the skirt of her grey dress.
With a shrug, Veronica took the billhook and collapsed it, stuffing it into her pocket for later use.
Neither girl really wanted the blow gun. It was a cumbersome weapon, unbladed, heavy, and almost entirely useless, as demonstrated by the near-harmless puncture wounds that both Clara and Veronica had sustained in confrontations with Nesanne, the last owner of a blowgun. After a series of increasingly annoyed gestures, Clara snapped it in half. She gathered her other supplies, the jacket wrapped around the vivid green darts. She hadn't yet mentioned them to Veronica, hoping she wouldn't need to.
Once all was attended to, they walked away from the scattered gold of the Cornucopia, neither girl looking back; it would be the last time they saw the remnants of the golden horn. Neither would miss it much. The atmosphere of the place was heavy with ash and blood.
Clara's ears still buzzed, but the high-pitched whine had almost entirely abated.
"Whisp?" she said experimentally, a little too loud.
"I can sort of hear you," Veronica replied.
"I'm okay with you killing me," Clara said, her tone light and conversational.
"…what do you mean by that?"
"Look, I just want to make this easier for you. You don't know much about anatomy, right?"
Veronica tilted her head, confused. "Pretty much nothing."
"Put your hand on my shoulder. Find the first rib, a bit down- yes, that. Now count three ribs down."
The girl from District Seven did as her ally asked, her hand resting on the fabric of Clara's dress. "Now what?"
"That's my heart. Stab me there, and it's over quickly."
The collapsible billhook in Veronica's pocket felt suddenly very heavy. She shrank back, unwilling to confront her thoughts on the matter. "And you're telling me this because..?"
Clara shot her a serious look. "I want it to hurt you as little as possible. If it happens. If you win… I don't want to hurt you the way Nesanne did."
"Killing you would hurt me no matter how easily it went, Clara."
"I'll take that under consideration."
They walked in silence, the blanket of static that filled their heads creating an eerie sort of atmosphere after the night's carnage. The streets were quiet and unfamiliar, but they had a kind of order to them that Clara understood. This particular boulevard was home to several vaguely official-looking, hardy old buildings. It made sense to her that the Training Center should be somewhere nearby.
"Ah, Whisp-y, do you hear something?"
Behind the rushing noise that filled her head was an unfamiliar rumble. It felt as though the ground itself was shaking beneath her.
"Yes, I thi- fuck!"
Seemingly from nowhere, two vaguely equine shapes appeared from the direction of the Cornucopia. The feeling of fracturing pressure from beneath the pavement, the groaning of the asphalt- it was the street being torn down the center in a long, vertical path. The mutts had been released from under ground.
The smaller of the two veered towards Veronica, who had been knocked to the ground by the force from beneath the arena. Clara made as if to help her up, but the larger mutt increased it's speed, marking a direct course that would intercept her before she could reach her ally.
"Go! I can take this one!" Veronica shouted.
Clara whirled to face the larger of the mutts. The majority of the body was unquestionably equine; hooves that shone a deep brown, glossy chestnut forelocks, delicate but muscular appendages. However, where the head ought to stem from a graceful neck, the mutt's torso extended into something recognizably human, blurring the line between hominid and equid. The odd juxtaposition of human and horse was only made more eerie but the mutt's face; this was Ryan, her district partner. While his features were strikingly familiar and, obviously, intentionally so, his eyes had an odd glassy quality.
"Oh, hell…" Her ally's horror-stricken voice echoed from across the wide street. "Nesanne…"
For her part, Clara stared down the cold-eyed facsimile of her former district partner, rolling her head once, leaving her sais sheathed in favor of the knife she had taken from Ryan's corpse the previous night. The irony of the moment made her laugh aloud.
"You again," she said, her voice sing-song and utterly unconcerned. "You always were a persistent one."
The centaur mutt reared back, sharp, shining hooves flashing in the light from the rising sun. Clara dodged back, avoiding a chasm in the pavement that had spread from the site where the mutts had been introduced. She could see a pale green tube, roughly six feet in diameter based on the curvature she could observe in between evading the mutt's clashing hooves. Several bolts had come loose, and water was spraying from a tiny crack next to a line of bolts holding the entire thing together.
She dropped into a crouch, edging further from the mutt. It stopped abruptly, pawing the ground with one hoof.
Abruptly, Clara broke from her defensive stance into a roll, burying the knife in the creature's unshod hoof, effortlessly cleaving deep into the appendage, skewering two major bones.
The mutt reared back again, but she dodged the pounding hooves, throwing herself into the split in the street. Focusing on the crack that shot water several yards into the air, she drove the knife into the weak point. It did very little damage, and her sais weren't terribly useful, either.
Meanwhile, the mutt seemed to have caught on to her location, limping awkwardly to where she crouched on it's three good legs, fourth dripping blood.
"Whisp!" She yelled urgently. "Axe?"
Her ally was not faring quite as well against the centaur mutt, pushing it back with her axe but unsure of what to do beyond staving it off.
"You have a plan?"
"In here, this cleft bit. I need you to break the water main. A few good hits to the weakened part ought to do it. I'll hold them off."
"I trust you," Veronica said. The complete lack of hesitation made Clara freeze momentarily, looking up curiously to gauge her ally's expression.
"You wha-?"
"I trust you, okay? Now what was that about holding them off?"
With a curt nod, Clara resheathed the small knife in her dress, whipping her sais into her hands and throwing herself back onto level ground, fending off the smaller centaur as Veronica switched places with her, raising the axe expertly and bringing it down on the already weakened water main with a resounding crack.
Lukewarm water geysered from the newly enlarged gash, rushing off at an angle, some measure of it bruising Clara's neck with the force. There was a great deal of water in a comparatively small vessel beneath the arena. While the sudden influx startled the smaller centaur back several paces, the larger of the two was growing progressively bolder despite it's wounded leg. Before the odd mutation could seriously injure her ally with it's flailing hooves, Clara bounded over the chasm in the road, dodging rib-cracking kicks to bury one sai deep in the mutt's chest, the other to the side of the humanoid torso.
She stumbled on a slick, loose paving stone as the mutt reared again. Seconds from having her chest crushed, a resounding noise like a bursting dam directly preceded a blast of water from behind her.
Clara took her sais into her hands, clenching Ryan's knife between her teeth and bracing herself for the inevitable impact. Too late, she realized that Veronica had no good way to secure her axe, let alone simultaneously hold the weapon and endure the crushing pressure of twelve feet of water.
Before she could shout a word of warning, the wave overtook them, plunging Clara's field of vision into a cloudy brown turmoil.
Her feet were washed abruptly out from under her, and Clara was all but smashed against the pavement. Her preparation was her saving grace; instead of the base of her skull, her elbow was nearly crushed by the brutal combination of her weight and the water's. The fast-moving current sent her rapidly in the direction they had been walking, a few feet beneath the surface, just close enough to see light. It was clear, but, she observed, had the same high iron content as the water she and Veronica had taken from the pipes on the first day.
Sais in hand, she clumsily propelled herself towards the surface. Clara was no master at swimming, and could only vaguely remember a few strokes; it was, nonetheless, enough to get her head out of the water.
From around the knife in her teeth, she gulped air like a man dying of dehydration would swallow a cool beverage. In her haste to balance out her oxygen and keep her face above the waterline, it took her a moment to realize that her ally was still under. Another rapid breath, and she was below the surface once again. It was slightly reddish-brown, but clear for the most part. She let herself go slack, following the current as it would propel a limp form. Five feet beneath the surface, she hit a body, this one not a mutt. In fact, the centaur mutations seemed to have entirely disappeared, their purpose fulfilled.
Motionless, strands of hair suspended around her face like a sentient form, Veronica still clutched the axe, bobbing with the current under eight feet of water. A trickle of fine bubbles escaped her slightly opened mouth, and the water close to her left parietal was a more concentrated reddish color than the rest of the deluge.
Clara grabbed her ally by the back of her shirt, slowly pulling her upwards as the axe slipped out of the girl's hands. Biting back an exasperated huff, she brought the axehead up to rest on her shoulder, then thrashed her way back to the watery light that shone through the roiling flood around them, bringing Veronica with her.
As she neared the surface once again, the water began to subside. Clara lifted Veronica and her axe free of the tumultuous flood, then checked for a pulse. Her ally's heart was still beating, but weakly. Clara watched passively for a second as Veronica's eyes fluttered open. She coughed up a mouthful of water, then coughed again, hair clinging to her face in damp tendrils.
"You could have told me you couldn't swim, Whisp."
Both girls sat, soaking wet and shivering in the morning breeze. To Clara, the signal couldn't have been clearer. It was time to get moving, or the next catastrophe would result in at least one fatality.
"Are you ready to go?" she asked her ally, putting her arm around Veronica in a brief hug.
"I'm a bit waterlogged, but I'll be fine."
Veronica coughed several times as she labored to find her feet, but she stood, though in a wobbly fashion, on her own. "I can carry my axe," she suggested, after walking a few yards. "Really, I'm just a bit dizzy from hitting my head. Nothing major."
"You're likely concussed. If not from the explosion, from this," Clara observed.
"I'll survive."
The girl from District One smiled half heartedly, not voicing her immediate reaction; only one of them would be surviving the next few hours.
-break-
From where the sudden flooding had brought them, the Training Center was not far by any measure. The building had been constructed solidly, and despite definite charring and several chunks torn from the walls, it was still standing, however shakily.
"Let me go in first. Be prepared for an attack, just wait here," Clara announced authoritatively.
She left Veronica near the door, hidden by a pile of rubble and standing in six inches of water. The heavy doors to the Center swung open slowly. Inside, it was pitch black. The Center's only source of light was the soft dawn sunrise streaming in through the cracks in the heavily warped walls. Clara's vision adjusted slowly to the near-pitch darkness.
As she began to see properly, she caught a glimpse of something moving, breaking one of the spots of light, and instinctively hit the ground. An iron weight swung two feet above her head, smashing into the crumbling concrete wall behind her. She was dusted liberally with fragments and rock dust, but her sais were drawn and her attacker had lost the element of surprise. Where the wall had shattered, light was pouring through.
It was Meg.
Clara cursed quietly, assuming a defensive posture. In one hand, Meg swung the heavy iron ball suspended on a chain; in the other, she held a wickedly sharp rice sickle. Her grip was not expert, and her stance was weak, but her weapon was definitely impressive, and she had at the very least some idea of how to use it, as evidenced by the destroyed wall.
"Meg!" Clara chirped, her tone at odds with her stony composure.
"Are you the only one here?" Meg demanded, swinging the weight in a slow circle.
"Yes, I am." The lie slid out easily, like oil on her tongue.
"Then we'd best get started."
She swung the iron ball at Clara's head, simultaneously aiming the rice sickle at her chest. Pushed up against the wall, she barely managed to dodge both attacks, ducking under the weight and catching the sickle with one sai. While her opponent was off-balance, she aimed a solid kick at Meg's chest, pushing her backwards and gaining some ground for herself.
Before Meg had time to adjust, she attacked with both sais, aiming at the Nine girl's abdomen. Meg brushed both strikes away with the rice sickle, nearly disarming Clara but for her iron grip on the two daggers.
"That's a lovely weapon," Clara observed, stepping carefully out of range.
"I think the blade would look better in red, don't you agree?"
"Ahaha, wonderful. I've missed this! You know, I was half-worried that all this time with Whisp was turning me soft…"
"What the hell is a whisp?"
Meg resumed swinging the weight, building momentum for another strike. Clara watched her carefully, reading the Nine girl's posture and anticipating her next movement, steeling herself to absorb a potential erratic abdominal blow.
"Never you mind. Take your best shot, Meg; you'll find I'm very difficult to kill."
The weight swung forward again, missing Clara's nose by a hair's breadth as she ducked back to avoid the simultaneous blow from Meg's rice sickle
They squared off again, Clara rolling beneath the weight's circular orbit and skewering Meg's foot with a solid jab. Meg cried out and swung the weight hard; it's slow revolutions turned hurried and it connected hard with Clara's jaw, splintering her jaw and stunning her momentarily. She grimaced, taking a few shaky steps back and colliding with a gel dummy- her own. It was enough to distract even Meg; side-by side, the resemblance, though certainly intentional, was disturbing. They were nearly identical, save for dummy-Clara's odd translucence and dead eyes.
Her momentary lapse was what Clara had been waiting for; she threw herself forward, sais at the ready.
"Clara? Are you… what's going on?"
The massive doors swung open, flooding the room with sunlight. Clara froze for a second, looking from her ally to Meg and back again.
Meg didn't hesitate, spinning the weight once and tossing it, from three feet away, at Clara's neck. The chain looped once around her; before the girl from District One had a chance to free herself, Meg dragged her forward, off-balance, and slammed the four-inch blade of the rice sickle into her chest.
As the weight loosened, Clara went slack, dropping first to her knees, then to the ground, rice sickle protruding from her breast, lodged firmly in one of her ribs.
"Clara! No, Clara!"
Veronica sprinted from the opposite end of the room to where her ally lay, bleeding out on the floor; first sluggishly, then, with each passing breath, more and more red painted her damp grey dress. The kusari-gama was still wedged in her chest. Veronica looked up at Meg, whose eyes were wide with some unspoken emotion.
"She doesn't have long," Veronica said quietly, placing herself between Meg and her ally. "If you've killed her, she might as well die knowing she's been properly avenged."
"What's to avenge? She's a killer. She would murder either of us in a second. People like her aren't worth avenging."
"Maybe she's never saved your life personally, but without her I'd never have gotten so far. Considering just how fucked up she is, I don't think she could have turned out better. Clara's my ally, and she's my friend. I'm not going to leave her."
"You trust her?"
"…yes."
"How many people has she killed, Veronica?"
"Fewer than me. Fewer than you. How many of your kills have been justified, Meg?"
The girl from District Nine paused a second, meeting Veronica's furious stare with a gratingly calm expression. She shrugged, though her casual reaction seemed forced. More had happened than she was letting on.
"Your funeral, dear."
Meg whipped a dagger from her belt; Veronica brought the billhook from her pocket, letting her axe fall to the floor with an immense, echoing din.
"Whenever you're ready, Meg," Veronica growled.
Neither was experienced with the weapon they held, but all the same, both girls had a very specific idea of what they wanted to happen. Meg moved in, slashing at Veronica's jacket hard enough to tear the top layer of fabric. The girl from District Seven swung parallel to Meg's ribs; the force of the attack was insufficient to penetrate deeper than the dermal layer. Meg stumbled back on the foot Clara had stabbed, an opening Veronica recognized and took; she followed with a strike at Meg's knife arm, breathing heavily with exertion.
Meg jerked back and continued on the offensive, slashing wildly at Veronica, who was forced closer and closer to where Clara had fallen. The girl from District Seven stepped back again, fully expecting to trip on a corpse; her foot lost purchase on the ground in a slick bloodstain, but, as she noted from where she fell, Clara was gone.
"Final two, you and me?" Meg asked kindly, playing with her dagger as she stooped over the fallen girl. "I wouldn't have called it, but then again-"
She was cut off abruptly by Veronica's axe, which seemed to sprout from her temple. Dark blood spilled from her nose, and Meg's dagger dropped harmlessly from her hand.
"Not… final two. Told you… ahaha, should have listened, Meg. Told you... I'm quite difficult to kill…"
A cannon sounded as Meg hit the ground, limp.
-break-
Veronica stared in confusion. Clara was soaked red with her own blood; she had removed the wadded-up fabric from her arm and used it to staunch the blood pouring from the wound inflicted by Meg's kusari-gama, though the effect as only superficial.
"Can you stand, Whisp-y?"
Unsteadily, Veronica found her feet, though the odd combination of fear and relief clouded her thoughts. Again. She'd been saved again. It seemed that every time there was a distinct threat posed, Clara was there to take the hit. How the hell was she supposed to kill the girl without whom she would be dead five times over?
"I did it, Whisp. I kept us… you… I kept you safe. I held up my part. I promised… I'd be with you until the end. This is the end."
Clara staggered briefly, just as haphazard in her movements as Veronica. Both girls were showing signs of succumbing to the serious wounds they had received; Clara was quite literally bleeding to death, Veronica confused, battered, and concussed.
"No… Clara, it's been four days. It's can't just be over! They can't just make it end like this!" her voice took on a frantic timbre, faced with a choice between her own life and that of her ally.
"We could fight now… you're at an advantage, I'm bleeding fairly heavily. Or… well, this'll kill me within the hour. You could run."
"No. It ends here. Whatever happens, I'm sorry. And thankful. So thankful, Clara. You're the last person I want to fight, and not just because you're terrifying. I really… I owe you." Veronica bit her lip. "I understand that this has to happen. I just don't want it to. But the alternative is worse, for you. I know you. I know how much it would hurt you to die without a fight."
"It's getting a bit difficult to stand. I don't mean to cut in on your time… but you were right, I don't have terribly long to live. So we fight, or I die. That's the final decision. And I'm giving it to you."
"Let's do this, Clara. I need to try… just to know if things would have gone differently, that first day, if I'd tried to fight you." Veronica averted her eyes, not wanting to see Clara's reaction.
To her surprise, her ally handed her the axe, blade still wet with Meg's blood, and offered her arm. She pulled Veronica into a standing position, supporting her slowly towards the door to the Training Center, still hanging open where the District Seven girl had thrown it aside. They emerged into the warm, rosy glow of the rising sun, leaving Meg where she had fallen.
"I understand. And I'll do anything to make this easier for you. I'm dying anyway, Whisp. Are you ready?"
Veronica nodded silently, wiping her axe on her shirt.
"Don't hold back, Clara. I want a real fight. To the death. If you deserve to win, I want it to be you. Okay?"
By way of reply, the girl from District One lunged forward, sais at the ready. Veronica blocked both thrusts with the axe, trying to imagine that the girl she was fighting was anyone other than Clara. It was more difficult than she had anticipated; not only was she fighting a fatally wounded girl, but it was someone she knew…
Clara parried Veronica's next strike easily, letting the axe glance of the prongs of her sais. She was not feeling the same compunctions as her ally, despite what they'd done together. Fighting friends was something she had long since gotten used to. The searing pain in her right breast, where the rice sickle had been embedded, threw her every action slightly out of balance- torn muscles, a badly damaged if not broken rib. And all the blood. She was slick with blood, her makeshift dressing soaked a deep crimson.
Her eyes stung with lack of sleep, and every part of her felt as though lead weights were hanging from her clothing. Every quick motion took a serious, concentrated effort that she had not had to attempt since childhood, learning the fundamentals of proper knife fighting.
She aimed another flurry of nonlethal blows at her ally's abdomen, the majority of which were deflected by Veronica's axe; she connected twice with the girl's lower ribs. Veronica took a step back, the wind knocked from her lungs. She watched Clara's face, a sort of grimly solemn expression, so different from the way she usually looked at Veronica.
The girl from District Seven felt panic welling up in her chest. Clara had meant what she said, about this being a fight to the death. So far, the girl from District One had shown every indication of intending for the loser to be her.
"Clara… Clara, please.." Veronica gasped. "I don't want to make you do this. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
Clara sheathed both of her sais, walking towards her ally with arms outstretched. She flinched as Veronica embraced her, head on her injured chest.
"What's wrong? What can I do?"
"I… I'm sorry. This is what you want, right? A real fight?"
Strands of golden hair stuck to Clara's flushed face, still damp from her impromptu swim earlier. She nodded slowly, watching her ally's expression carefully.
"I'm sorry. It's just so difficult to think of you as an enemy. We can start again… please, don't hold back..."
Clara nodded again, drawing her sais. Veronica raised her axe in what would have been a killing blow. Clara closed her eyes, raising the twin daggers as the axe bore down on her. She caught it effortlessly, twisting the sais and wrenching the axe from Veronica's hands. It hit the floor with a clatter. She opened her eyes to see the same look of wide-eyed amazement that Veronica had worn on their first meeting. The eerie deja vu was not lost on the girl from District One.
"I can't let you kill me," she declared.
"Not that it doesn't make sense… what's wrong, Clara?"
"I've adjusted the equation with all of the values I've determined. I can't let you kill me because it will hurt you. I've decided that I'm the one who should deal with the pain," Clara explained, as though it were the most straight forward thing she'd ever encountered.
"Hold on, Clara, please… what makes you think you can survive more pain than I can?"
"I said nothing about surviving. I should be the one to do this, because for me, it will be over."
"You're not…"
"I've made my choice. It wasn't easy. But I've made it."
Veronica thew her axe back to the ground. When she looked up, her face was wet with tears. "No, you can't… you said you wouldn't…"
"I said I would protect you. This is me, protecting you."
"Is this some sick District One thing? A code of ethics? Do you even have one of those?" Veronica demanded, tears burning in her eyes.
With a sad smile, Clara gestured at the still-bleeding wound that decorated her chest. "If we had longer, Whisp… If we had a little longer, I would have loved you. But now it's got to end. I can take the pain. For you."
Their eyes met for several seconds; Veronica's hazel-green irises meeting Clara's, golden shot with dark brown.
"I can take care of myself, Whisp. Just… I think we should say good bye, before I do anything I may regret. Good bye to everyone. All the dead and all the living. This is the hardest thing I've ever done. You're the only one I'll miss."
For a minute, they stood in silence, each of them lost in separate memories.
"I would have loved you…" Clara echoed, voice barely audible.
"I would have loved you, too."
They paused.
"You keep whispering."
"It's what I do," Veronica laughed.
With that, they were hugging again, the last warm bodies in the arena. Clara gently gripped the back of Veronica's neck, sais still in her hands. Gently. It was a word she'd never have imagined being used to describe her actions.
"Whisp… I've been misleading you. About my intentions."
"It's okay. I'm just… I'm so glad I don't have to kill you."
"Think of something you love."
Clara dropped the sais, pressing her ally to herself. Her blood, hot and wet, held them together- a tangible, adhesive bond. It would be over soon. Even Clara, the quintessential stoic, felt something stir in her chest- it could have been simply brought on by the wound to her breast, but to someone experienced in their own emotions, it would have felt more like grief.
"You don't have to hurt… I'll hurt for you," she whispered. Veronica nodded.
Slowly, Clara's hand inched down her ally's spine.
She drove Ryan's knife deep into Veronica's back, between the third and fourth rib, holding her even closer in a crushing embrace.
"Dying is the easiest part of living," she whispered.
"…I'll miss you."
"I… Whisp, I wasn't lying when I said that I think I could have loved you."
"Neither was I." Blood was beginning to well up in the District Seven girl's mouth, but she replied nonetheless.
"I'm sorry this is taking so long," Clara said quietly.
"No… I'm not sorry. I just wish… I wish you'd have told me."
"Why?"
"So that I could do this."
The dying girl lifted her head and pressed her lips to her ally's in a kiss that tasted of blood and melancholy.
"It was worth it," she murmured, letting her head fall to Clara's chest, too exhausted to hold it up. "Do you… do you remember my name?"
"Veronica."
"Yeah… that's it… but I'm not really her anymore. It would be an honor to die as Whisp."
Veronica went slack in Clara's arms, but her pulse continued to sap the blood from her body, even as Clara sank to the ground, touching her forehead to her dying ally's hair. When she lifted her face up to the sky, it was streaked with tears.
Unapologetically, Clara held the smaller girl to her chest and cried into her hair. She knew what grief was; she had seen grief, had seen people cry, but she had never felt it for herself. The awful tightness in her chest, the stinging tears that forced their way from beneath her eyelids- they were real. So real, and so present. Even as the final cannon of the Games sounded, Clara cried, for the first time in her life, over the body of the girl she had known for less than a month, but who somehow meant so much more than she could explain.
The sound of wild applause echoed through the arena, and somehow, behind the blood rushing through her head, Clara managed to register that this meant she had won.
It felt empty. Veronica's body was still warm in her arms.
"Congratulations, Clara of District One. You are this year's victor of the Hunger Games."
-break-
She slowly lowered Veronica's body to the pavement. were it not for the blood smeared across the girl's skin and clothes, she could have been sleeping.
The tears stopped coming. Clara brushed Veronica's hair from her face, a small smile playing on her lips. She could have been sleeping…
"I guess… ahaha, this was how it had to end… Whisp. Everyone leaves in the end."
Clara herself was lightheaded and numb from blood loss, sleep deprivation and malnourishment, but she was still standing. A hovercraft materialized overhead, and a ladder lowered to her level, surrounded by a field of light.
She looked back at Veronica for a last time. She was small in death, and so still. Unearthly still. Veronica was gone.
With the backs of her hands, she wiped her face dry, then took hold of the suspended ladder, feeling herself frozen in place by the projected field. It wasn't emptiness she was feeling, but normalcy. A return to life as it was outside the arena. Of course, she wouldn't be the same. Her life would be irrevocably different.
She hung there, from the slowly rising ladder, as her consciousness began to fade. Voices swam around her, through air that must have been thicker than molasses. Through it all, her lips moved wordlessly, a soft palilalia on her every exhalation.
"I was right… she doesn't hurt any longer, would've gone anyway… I was right…"
Her consciousness ebbed from a void to searing pain to nothing again. As she was brought into the hovercraft, many hands and voices hang through her head. Her eyes hung numbly open through it all, stinging with uncertainty. She could barely feel the tubes thrust into her arms, the infusions of blood and antibiotics. No one seemed to care that she was still awake.
A young woman paused by her face, cleaning the blood from one of the many old wounds from her encounter with the geji geji.
"I was right," she said aloud. The woman jolted back.
"This is better. She won't have to hurt… and I get to keep her. She'll never get old and she'll never get boring. She'll never leave me, this way. Everyone leaves me eventually. Everyone but her."
"She's awake! Can I get a sedative before she starts moving?"
"You're not in any danger. I've won, now. Isn't that what I wanted?"
"Hurry with the sedative!"
"It's good to know how well I'm trusted," she sighed, stretching to feel the bonds securing her to the gurney. The young woman put a syringe to one of the ports in her IV line.
"You're going to feel very tired. Just close your eyes and count backwards from fifty."
Her eyelids felt abruptly heavy, sinking shut on their own accord. The voices, even her own, felt like they came from miles away.
"It's… better this way…"
In time, she would believe the lie herself.
"She… she would've left on her own… they always do… everyone leaves…"
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What has been the most difficult part of these Games for you?
The most difficult? Coming up with new was to attack and kill Tributes. After awhile, it has all been written. Keeping things exciting gets challenging after a few submissions.
What would you say is the most rewarding part of the Games for you?
Most rewarding is proving to myself I can make it to the Finals, again. I used my writing skills and my creativity to get there, and no one can take that away from me. I am very thankful for my unofficial mentor, Christian, for all the time he spent helping me along. Be it I win or be it I lose, I'm content with my final results.
Did you ever think you'd make the finale, why or why not?
Yes, because I've done it before with less writing skills and help. There were times when I didn't think I'd make it out of a situation, but overall I had faith in myself.
From the moment you submitted your training to the moment you sent in your final submission, what was the one thing that kept you going?
Proving to myself that I can complete something. My friends who wanted me to win also helped a lot, I'm very thankful for them.
Were you in an Actual Arena and be crowned Victor, how do you think you'd cope?
I would remind myself I didn't have a choice. Being reaped is something that happens whether you want it to or not. As I wrote in my narratives, I would focus on coming home to my family and friends. Knowing they needed me, that would keep me going and help me balance out what I've done to other Tributes.
Finally, should you win, what would you want to say to the Tributes and their families?
First, I would apologize to the families of the Tributes I killed. I know my words would do little help to ease the pain of losing a child, but it's all I have. I would tell them to remember them as the people they were before the arena. Remember them in their good times at home. They are in every breeze that sweep through their District, every ray of sunshine. They are still there, just not in their physical form. I'd ask them to never forget their bravery.
What has been the most difficult part of these Games for you?
Hands-down, the most difficult part of the Games was getting to know everyone, to some degree, in some cases hours before they died. I honestly do love people, and developing personal attachments made the whole thing even more gut-wrenching.
What would you say is the most rewarding part of the Games for you?
The most rewarding part was… I'd have to say, it was being able to tell people 'ah, yes, I've been in a Games before- in fact, I'm in the final three!' It gave me some sort of odd validation, to be on the inside looking out instead of the opposite
Did you ever think you'd make the finale, why or why not?
It takes a great deal of arrogance to even enter a Games like this, and even more arrogance to stay alive. I sort of had to believe that I was going to survive in the finale; otherwise I'd not have had sufficient motivation, knowing how it would end.
From the moment you submitted your training to the moment you sent in your final submission, what was the one thing that kept you going?
A lot of things were important to my sticking with the Games, not the least of which were my friends- Nick, who died horribly, Nesanne, who died horribly, Donny, who died horribly, and… well, there are others I could name. Once I was allied with Whisp, there was really no turning back. I can't leave in the middle of something when someone else is, in some small measure, depending on me. Also, it was really fun.
Were you in an Actual Arena and be crowned Victor, how do you think you'd cope?
…in the hypothetical scenario you're proposing, does Victor's Village have internet access? I have sort of a difficult time imagining myself as a victor, if only because my many neurosis would make the endeavor rather futile. But I'd likely end up even more of a shut-in than I already am.
Finally, should you win, what would you want to say to the Tributes and their families?
Ah, to everyones' families… sorry about killing your kids? Sorry about participating in the killing of your kids? My therapist says it's perfectly healthy, so… yeah, I'm still sorry. Killing people is difficult. Specifically to Whisp's family: you raised a pretty awesome ally, do you take requests? I'd like to order a few more. Specifically to Whisp's boyfriend: back off, she's mine, I will not hesitate to cut off bits of you if you do not comply.And, yeah, to everyone: thanks for being cool about this whole murder thing. You're all awesome, even if you're not.
