"Hey, snowflake, snap out of it," a hand on my shoulder makes my obsessive thought process stop in its tracks.
"Not now," I say, without looking up.
"We're the only ones left," he says. I still don't look up; my heart is racing. I know what this means. "Only one of us can win, Avita."
"Shut up."
"One of us is gonna have to-"
"I said shut up," I repeat myself, and this time he does. I hear his footsteps receding and try and piece together where he could go. We're trapped, and we know neither of us has the physical or mental ability to harm the other. I hate to admit it, but... I couldn't imagine life without him now. Not in the arena, anyway. And I haven't even thought about the outside world, back in the Capitol. Is there any possibility that he could still be here, in my life, if we make it back?
"At least let's talk about it," he says. I can hear the despair in his voice.
"What do you want me to do, Jack?" I look up at him, tears brimming in my eyes. "What do you expect me to do about it? Just agree to kill you? Haven't we both killed enough?"
"Oh, and you think it's so easy for me? You have no idea what I've lost," his voice is breaking as he speaks.
"I never said that!" I exclaim, standing up on shaky legs. "I never said that."
"How can you tell me what I do and don't know?" I say, angry now. I look him in the eyes now, both of us on the verge of a full breakdown. "I lost my cousin!"
"And I lost my sister!" he shouts, the sentence shattering into echoes all around us, each echo redistributing the pain it causes. It is silent once it finishes, fades into nothing. The lack of noise feels illegal, crushing.
"Just do it," I say into the silence. "I can't kill you, not after everything we've been through."
He shakes his head, a single tear falling down his face.
"Please?" I say again.
"I can't," he says.
"Yes, you can," I say, my voice beginning to raise again. "You can't expect me to kill you, knowing I'm leaving you on your own!"
"And you can't expect me to kill the only girl I've ever loved!" he shouts. My breath catches in my throat. He rubs his head with a blood stained hand and I look at him. Everything is explained now: the alliance, the conversation between him and Violet that night, just - everything.
Pulling at his hair in his fists, he shuts his eyes. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." He opens his eyes again and I look into them. I don't know what to think; I don't know what to do. I take a step closer to him and take hold of his wrist, stopping him from pulling at his hair any longer. He doesn't object, taking another step towards me. Looking down at the ground, I can feel his breath on my forehead. You could slice the tension with a knife. I look up, into his eyes, and my heartbeat speeds up. There's a million emotions in his eyes, and a million thoughts running through my head.
What is going on? Surely, at a time like this, with everything that's happened, my brain can't be thinking the wild things that it is. It isn't right. We can't let this happen. Or at least, I can't. It would ruin everything we stand for as Snows, to let someone else occupy your thoughts and dictate how you act around them, purely through how they look at you. That's supposed to be our thing.
Snow lands on top.
No matter how much my heart is willing me not to, I take a step backwards. Jack looks at me like an abandoned puppy, and my heart swells with guilt.
"We can't do this, Jack, not like this, not now," I reluctantly say. I can feel tears behind my eyes, but the fact that I need to survive this arena is stronger than any feelings for him right now. "All of the Districts are watching, and I'm not going to give them another Katniss and Peeta. The arena is no place for things like this, we both know that."
"Avita, please; you can't leave me again," he pleads, refusing to let go of my hand. I shake my head.
"Maybe in another life," I say with a cracking voice from the tears that are about to spill over my eyes. "But it can't be this one."
Before he sees me let my emotions take over, I pick up a bag and walk out of the cornucopia. It takes all I have in me not to turn around and run back to him, because I know he wants me to. I want to too.
But as I power forwards, I formulate my plan.
A/n: IT BROKE MY HEART WRITING THIS 😭🫶
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The Last Hunger Games
Fanfiction'They say the Games change everyone. But that's not my plan.' When 12 year old Celestia Snow 'overhears' the conversation about holding the final Hunger Games, she is shocked. Especially when she finds out that the Games will still go ahead. With a...
