You Won't Drown: A Hunger Games story

Chapter One

(Annie POV, about a year later)

I've always hated the Hunger Games, all the bloodshed, all the pain, all the torment, all those children brutally murdered while none of us could do anything other than sit and watch. It's a kind of helplessness that you never want to imagine, being forced to watch your loved ones fight, and then ultimately lose, the battle against the Capitol. Everyone loses to the Capitol in the end, it's simply too powerful, and President Snow is simply too vindictive. We live our lives with the knowledge that we're nothing more than pawns, nothing more than easily replaceable cogs in the machine of Panem. All of us are expendable, all of us are small and powerless, and President Snow likes to remind all of us about that every damn chance he gets.

We all rely on the Capitol for food, jobs, our lives, and protection from who knows what. Without them, we would fall apart, dissolve into anarchy, and our already stressful lives would get so much worse. We're so dependent on this system, on the way things are now, that there's no way out. There's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide or escape to, because Panem is all there ever is, and all there ever will be.

It's a cage, an occasionally beautiful one, but a cage nonetheless. Nothing we do can protect us, and there's nowhere where we can be safe, even if we play by all the rules. We all live our lives in constant fear that our whole world could come crumbling down around us, and we would be powerless to do anything but watch, just like we're powerless to do anything but watch when it comes to the Hunger Games.

Despite the celebrations and the cheers that welcome the victors home, nobody actually makes it out of that arena alive. The things we're forced to witness, the things we're forced to do in order to have even some small hope of surviving, they're so horrendous that those memories will haunt us every single moment for the rest of our lives. None of us survive, none of us make it out, because the person we were before has to die in order for us to stay alive. That's the only thing that matters in that arena, morals and life goals and personalities are all blocked out so that we can fully focus on the only thing that matters, survival.

I survived the Hunger Games, I made it out alive, and people kept telling me that I won. There were parties and congratulations, I got to travel everywhere in Panem, and yet all of it felt hollow. Out of everyone there, I didn't deserve to come back, I didn't deserve to get lucky and make it out alive when there were 23 other people who would never see another sunrise. Out of everyone there, it shouldn't have been me. Sometimes I think it would have been better if I was just a cannon shot and a picture in the sky, at least then it would be over.

Shivering despite the summer weather, I wrap a warm fleece blanket around my shoulders, desperately trying to stop my teeth from chattering and my whole body from shaking. I've gotten so much weaker lately, so much more fragile emotionally, physically, and mentally. I'm like one of those pieces of paper thin blown glass, something that could be beautiful, but the slightest bit of pressure and it shatters. It's been several years that I've been fragile like this for, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it's getting worse, much worse.

I really shouldn't have made it out of that arena, I really shouldn't be here, but I have no choice in the matter, I have no choice in any of it. My nightmares and memories haunt me when I'm awake and when I'm asleep, there's no escaping all of those horrors, there's no such thing as being safe from the world, safe from myself. There's only the next games, and the next child dying, and all of that time spent alone. It feels like I'm almost always alone.

Sighing, exhausted to my very core, I take a seat on my fancy green couch and turn to face the tv. None of this should be mine, none of these things make this too big house feel like a home; none of this can offer any comfort, certainly not to the poor, mad girl from district four. I curl up into as small of a shape as I can manage, both because I need to conserve body heat and because if I make myself small enough, I hope I can make myself disappear. Everything would be better if I just disappeared.