The Sound of Falling Snow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 19

Morning

Day four in the arena. My throat is once again burning with thirst, my stomach aching for food. I wish I could have spent more time training at the edible plant recognition section of the Training Center, but I overlooked that detail. I guess I assumed that staying alive for the first few days and learning to fight would be more important than the long-term. Not like I could have ever guessed that I would have lasted this long.

Before the Games, I was convinced that if I had been in the arena, I would have died the first day in the Bloodbath. I must be stronger than I thought.

Be brave. Be brave. Be brave. I have never had to be very brave before the war. I thought I did, but I didn't. I really know what it means to be brave now. Fight hard. Don't give up. Stand your ground. Keep going, even when it's hard. This is what it means to be brave.

My thoughts wander to the clock at home. What time is it? Even the absence of this simple fact makes me appreciate what I had before infinitely more, and I long to go back, to see my mother, the place I grew up in. I long to be anywhere but here. But if that's what I want, I either have to fight my way through my enemies or die trying.

Beside me, Victoria stirs slightly, and I think about shaking her awake to have someone to stop the flood of memories and dark thoughts, but then decide against it. We both need to be as alert and energized as possible. Better to leave her be.

I hum quietly, rocking back and forth, back and forth. It isn't long before Victoria stirs, pushing her messy tangle of hair back as she sits up.

"Morning," she says groggily.

"Morning," I reply, smiling at her, because although we're in the arena, it's funny how she is so slow to wake up, just like back in the city, all the times we stayed up late laughing together. I guess some traits never really change, even in a life-or-death situation like the Hunger Games.

"What are you smiling at?" she asks accusingly.

"You," I answer, nudging her lightly with my elbow. But the flinch afterward tells me it's too much, and that we'll die of starvation soon if we can't find something to eat. Some of the tributes from the districts, though underfed, could use it to their advantage. Having learned how to be hungry, that is. Meanwhile Victoria and I are used to the soft, easy lives of the Capitol, and have never had to conquer our hunger. It was so easy to just call someone to attend to it, since our families were "important enough" to have the ability to be served by the Avoxes – silent servants who were punished for the crimes they had previously committed. Even in the war, while everyone was famished from the lack of food, we never had to worry. Someone would always give up their food for us, whether by choice, or by force and threat.

I wrap my arms around my growling stomach, biting the interior of my cheek to stop myself from feeling so all-consumed by the need to eat something.

"Sorry," I mutter to Victoria.

"It's fine." She heaves herself up, wiping the sleep from her eyes, and I notice the way her arms tremble with even that slight movement, how frail we both look, with our bones more pronounced than ever.

I let my head drop into my palms, feeling frustrated and irritable.

"Any chance some sympathetic sponsor might be able to scrape up enough money to buy us something to eat?" Victoria's voice cuts into the silence, the unspoken messages passing between us.

I ponder this possibility for a moment, my mind not as quick and sharp from the dehydration and from being empty for too long. There might be. There might be someone who has seen our resourcefulness and noticed how hard we are fighting to survive, even though we come from a place where things are easy. At least, in the perspective of the people in the districts. Maybe they won't see two people who stood by and watched as generations upon generations of their offspring were tortured for their ancestor's defiance of the unfairness. Maybe they'll see us for who we really are. But I'm starting to forget myself. Maybe in their eyes, we'll just be two children who have been put in the same situation as them, only without warning.

No, I realize. They wouldn't. If they had any sympathy, if they pitied us at all, they would have helped us sooner. If they cared at all, they would have shown their displeasure at repeating history. If they wanted to, they could have made a stand, spoken out against it to stop the Games. But they didn't. Injustice is the price for silence. And we are the ones paying the price. Us, not them.

I look up, and Victoria's eyes are still trained on me. Oh, right. I got so lost in my thoughts that I forgot to answer. But the deadened look in her eyes, the hollowness that echoes mine, is enough to grasp that she understood. We have to stay alive ourselves.

Was it always like this? The Games? They are enough to turn us in circles, against one another, go against our fundamental wisdom. Maybe this is why it's such an effective solution. Throw us all in an arena, make us fight each other; it doesn't do anything, does it? No. It doesn't. It's the fear. The fear is what makes it work. Fear makes us do crazy things sometimes. It can justify irrationality. But it's not always bad. Fear gives us energy. It makes us live. Sometimes.

They claim we are not Panem anymore. They claim we are free, that they freed us. They say we are free from tyranny, with the people who lived under an abusive government for so long leading us. It's all another lie. Lies, lies, and more lies. It's what we've been taught. It's what we believe. Lies. They keep us from the truth. They hide from us the dark secrets. Panem et Circenses. Bread and circuses. It never stops.