The Sound of Falling Snow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 6

Coin's words have shaken me more than anything possibly could at this point. Not Victoria. So sweet, so caring, a fighter, but never wanting to hurt anyone. My breath is shallow, and I am hyperventilating as my best friend walks up to the front. I can hardly conceal the horror from showing on my face, so I resolve to stare at my feet, passive and emotionless instead.

When I finally gather the courage to glance up at her, I see my own terror reflected on her. We both knew deep down that I was going to be chosen, but I had never stopped to think about the fact that she had chances too. Her parents were wealthy Capitol officials before the rebellion, and they had contributed a lot to Panem's success over the more recent years.

What a selfish friend I am. I had spent the last days wallowing in my own helplessness and self-pity, neglecting her and not being there for her after all the times she had been there for me.

In her eyes, I can see the flash of fear that the mask of a brave demeanor can't hide. She must have already figured it out, and the whole time just never told me. She must have not wanted to worry me any more. Well, that didn't work out. I can't help feeling scornful at her, in spite of our predicament. But I know it's misdirected. None of this was her fault.

Victoria moves to stand stiffly by my side, and I can tell she's trying not to let her true feelings show and keep up the façade she has created.

As Coin concludes the drawing, my distress leaves me, making me hollow inside. I remember one of the lines from the video that had been shown two years ago at the reaping for the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, about how we all turned on each other to destroy the world. Alliances torn, bonds broken, nothing left but ashes.

I wonder if that is what will happen to Victoria and I when we're in the arena. No, that won't happen. It can't. We've been friends for so long, it will never happen, no matter what they try and do to us. There's no way that it's possible.

I risk a look at Victoria, who is nervously twisting the yellow string bracelet I gave her for her birthday a few years ago that has been tied around her wrist. Maybe she is avoiding my gaze on purpose.

The newly recruited Peacekeepers guide us to the train station, where we will be riding to an outlying location that had been the site of a previous Quell. They tell us that it is because they want us to understand exactly what we went through, but even though they try to cover it with a blanket of lies and excuses, it's easy enough to find the real answer. They did not have the time nor the money to build an arena specially for this Games. Not that I care, anyway. It won't help me to survive.

—

One hour. Sixty minutes. That's all we have to say our final goodbyes to our loved ones. Only that long to tell them that we're sorry, that we love them, that we'll never forget them. And then we're off. Gone, on our way to the arena, where twenty-three of us will die. Leaving only one of us, broken, trying to find a way out, wishing that it was all just a nightmare from which we'll soon wake. The victor.

During the train ride, which lasts only a few hours, Plutarch Heavensbee, a Gamemaker who had secretly been an ally of the rebels, explains to us about this last Games, which will be very different from the ones hosted by the Capitol for the last seventy-five years.

No mentors, since most of the victors are dead; and no stylists, which means no parade and no interviews. You get sponsors purely by surviving, by fighting.

We sit silently, none of us daring to even say a word, to question what he has just said, not able to be positive of who are really our friends anymore.

The Games are designed to build distrust between the tributes, to punish us for actions that were not even our own. To get revenge for the choices that were made in the past. But I'm not going to play along with them.

We pull into the station a while later, and I periodically sneak looks at Victoria. She must be avoiding me on purpose. Probably scared that I'm upset at her for keeping me in the dark about the possibility. I'm more upset at myself for being so egocentric, feeling miserable for myself while she struggled alone. That's stopping now. I will be the friend to her that she was to me, the one that I wasn't to her.

"Victoria," I whisper urgently, as we file out from the train, squinting at the sudden brightness.

She turns away from me, and I take her by the shoulder. "Victoria, please. I'm sorry. You were there for me, and I wasn't. I'm sorry."

She keeps her gaze trained on the ground, but I can see the tears threatening to spill over from her lashes.

It will take time, I try and reassure myself. Give her a while to forgive you.

—

The tour of the Training Center is somewhat anticlimactic. The room is smaller than mine was when we lived in the mansion, but I'm not complaining. Besides, it's not like it's going to be my home for long.

Only three days until the Games begin. It's like I'm being hunted, every minute, every moment, watching each step I take, terrified that any move I make will result in harsher repercussions than I could ever imagine. Never sure what lies in the shadow, never sure of whether giving my trust will result in my survival or my death. Never sure what lurks in what I thought was light.

With the darkness, it's hard to see the truth of anything.