The Sound of Falling Snow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 21

The Next Day

At this point, we're both already on our exit. Victoria and I. The one question left to ask is when? Why won't they help us? Would they really be so cruel to let us starve, even though they went through the same thing year after year, decade after decade, even though they understand the fear that we are going through.

There's little more we can do than to wait. Keep waiting. Wait for the doors of death to open so we can step through them into the world beyond.

If there is one thing that I long for past the entrance to death, it is my family. At least if I don't survive, my father and sister will be there, ready and waiting to welcome me. Maybe that would be the best option. Maybe it would be best to just embrace death now, rather than holding on by the one thread that keeps me dangling above the crashing rivers that will wash me away into oblivion. Rather than waiting for the icy cold waves and splashes to slowly release my lingering grip.

I have to hold on. Each day, I must get up. I must continue. I will not let them beat me. Even though my body is crying out in pain, and I'm so fatigued I can hardly move, my eyes still shine with determination and defiance. I can still do it.

Minute after minute. Hour after hour. Even if it isn't much, every second counts. Even if I am growing weaker with every breath, Victoria and I shivering in the manipulated frigidness, each moment longer that I last is a victory. A victory over death. A victory over my opponents. A victory over Coin.

A cannon fires in the distance. One more has died. How many are left? Victoria and I, and...and...I don't have any clue. My mind has gone fuzzy and I can hardly remember my own thoughts, can hardly catch them before they float away. Leander has probably still made it. He was always one of the survivors, anyway. He was one of those bullies who made themselves seem stronger by picking on the people that are smaller than he was.

A second cannon. Who does this one belong to? A sickening thought makes my stomach drop within me. Is that really all I care about? One more kill, one more death. One less obstacle in the path of my victory. Children are dying and all I can do is wonder who has suffered this fate and be glad that it wasn't me. What has become of me? What has become of all of us?

I want them to be over. I want the Games to be over. I want this all to be over and wake up and see that I am still at home, that maybe it was all a nightmare. Every instant that passes makes it deteriorate further, and with inhale my hope of it being something awful that my mind has created dwindles further and further, until it is nothing but a small speck of a desperate hope, one that cannot even overcome the darkness that surrounds it.

The Games are a black hole. In ancient astronomy books, it will tell you about how the fragments of a large star will become a black hole after dying in a supernova explosion. Our pasts made this star. A black hole is so dense and has so much gravity. that nothing, nothing at all, could possibly escape it. Not even light. This is what has happened to our hope. I would not know what these were, for our species gave up on astronomy hundreds of years ago, deeming it not important enough, if it were not for my fascination with strange things that others do not care about. This, too, would have been a secret shrouded in darkness that was not meant to be found if it weren't for all those hours that I spent sneaking into my grandfather's library to see what was so forbidden and so important to keep hidden. Really, I still don't see anything wrong with it.

Another fact about black holes: Black holes are invisible. There is no light that can escape, so we can only see pure darkness. And it is impossible to see pure darkness. Hypothetically, you wouldn't even be aware that you were in one until you had been warped and stretched by its tidal forces. This is what the Games are. They destroy. They twist our thoughts, our words, our actions. They twist us. And worst of all, it was something that none of us could ever have seen coming. It was unpredictable.

We thought we were free. We weren't. We aren't. We will never be free, will we? Freedom. Peace. They are both so impossibly elusive. Every time we have it within our reach, whenever we thrust our hands forward to beyond in an attempt to catch it, it slips away once again. We, as humans, are bound to destroy it every time we get close to keeping it. It is in our nature to be destructive in this way, in our nature to turn away from it over and over. We choose thrills and revenge disguised as justice over true peace and true freedom again and again and again. Our predecessors faced it. Our ancestors faced it. We, too, must face it. Every time when we are given the choice, we choose the wrong one. The black hole warps us again.