Daughter of the Games (Sequel to Pregnant in the Games)

Chapter 25: Gone

Ivan's POV: 

The way I see it, pain is inevitable. 

Maybe pain can be avoided, for a short while. But pain is a monster lurking under your bed. Pain is a predator. Pain will chase you. Pain will hunt you down. You can hide in the shadows. You can run as fast as you can. You can try and fight. But in the end, the monster will find you. The monster will win. 

The monster always wins. 

Someone's words will get the better of you. Someone won't look at you the way you look at them. Someone will slice you deeper than a smile can heal. And perhaps worst of all, someone will leave. This is how the monster gets to you. 

Perhaps the only way to avoid the monster is to isolate yourself. Leave behind the friends. Forget about your family. Live a life led only by you. But isolation is lonely, and loneliness in itself is pain. So we take our chances with the people we meet, praying that most of them won't hurt us. 

All of is theoritical, of course. I didn't meet Grey. We were born as a part of one another, just as the sun is part of the earth. And I could never run away from her. There was no way to avoid the pain of her death. We knew that the death was coming. It was just a matter of when. So I suppose there was no particular way for me to run. Plus, Grey didn't intentionally hurt me. She intentionally let the sickness take her. But can I blame her for that? Can I really say that she left me? 

I guess I can. It's not like I can say it to her face anyways. 

The thought sent another stab of pain through my chest. I've always heard about extreme emotional pain, the way it's just as much physical as it is emotional. By having my thick skin, I've never found this to be true. Now I realize that it is. It's as if the Grim Reaper himself stabbed his scythe through my sister, then stabbed it through me, ensuring that my wound wasn't fatal.

Now I have to walk my life with the scars. 

It's been 36 hours since Grey's death. Ni, Chris, and I left the clearing. We went near the blood river, figuring that most tributes would be avoiding it's metallic smell and grim atmosphere. Using the rope we found in the underwater Cornucopia, we tied ourselves to the trees as we slept. We slept sitting up straight, and one person would have to force themselves to stay awake for the sake of guarding, but it worked just fine. 

We've heard two cannons since Grey. Based off of the span between the two cannons, my guess is that two tributes managed to kill one another. There are seven tributes left, three of them being us. There are four people standing between us and the end. Then things get complicated. 

I hope I die before I have to see that. 

I've come to accept that my death is inevitable. The only situation in which I live past these games is if Ni and Chris manage to die before me. If it's the end and it's the three of us, then I will not let myself win.  Chris has an entire family hiding out in District 1. Ni has his mother. What do I have? Two distant parents and a Peacekeeper uniform. I'd be plenty happy to die within this dome. 

I sat up in the tree, tied firmly to the trunk, staring out in the distance. Through the trees, far off in the distance, I could see the beach clearing. I watched as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, until it was over the tree tops. Ni and Chris has untied themselves from their trees already and were on the ground. I pretended to not listen as they interacted. 

"We need to go back to the willow tree soon," Ni stated. "We're about out of water, and we need to eat again soon." 

"Already? We polished off our resources that fast?" Chris asked.