The Sound of Falling Snow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 23

We're at something of a stalemate. If she kills one of us, then the other will seize the opportunity to kill her. Yes, it's two against one, but she is a lot bigger and older than we are. Probably more like one of the sixteen- or seventeen-year olds. And we are also malnourished and lacking in fluids.

I don't want to admit it, but I'm scared. Scared for Victoria. Scared for myself. Scared of what I might do if my morals were really put to the test. I bury it deep down, trying not to let myself have any regrets. Whose fault will it be if she swings first? Hers. I would only be defending myself and my friend. It makes me sick anyway.

I can't tell who is the first to strike, but within a matter of a few seconds, our blades are out and the fight has begun.

I lash out at the girl, forgetting myself for an instant, reaching for her neck with my weapon, which has a halo of light that reflects off it from the milky illumination of the moon. It is much too late for the moon to still be out. None of this is natural.

In return for my own attempted blow, I receive an injury of my own. I feel the sharp edge cut into the skin of my left upper arm, making me intake a sharp breath. Warm blood dribbles down my arm, a sticky, slick liquid. I grit my teeth in an effort to control the pain, not let it control me.

Keep fighting. Stay strong.

I swipe at her again and again, ignoring the throbbing from my wound and pouring all my anger at the districts, at the war, at these Games into my attacks. Every hit I try to make fails to make contact.

Don't look back. It's her or you.

The steel slices my flesh, this time in the back of my right calf, nearly making me crumple to the ground. I flail around a bit, stumbling, before grabbing hold of a tree to steady myself. It's bad.

I grit my teeth, pushing myself up to a standing position. Even in the freezing weather, a sweat has broken out on my body, mixing with the blood that streams down from my open cuts, and my clammy hands are slipping on the knife.

Come on, Clio. Pull yourself together.

I am in a daze as I slice through the air again and again, as my target moves swiftly out of reach every time I try to hit her, until finally I do. I hit her with a force that I didn't know I had, not as gentle as I had meant. Unless I did mean it to be that hard. Did I?

The girl collapses to the soiled ground, hunching over and coughing up blood, and the thick red solution stains the leaves, sprays onto my clothes and body, before she finally collapses backward. I subconsciously rub my arms, which have been dirtied from both the wound that this girl inflicted and the one that I gave her.

A cannon goes off – the third one today – startling me with the noise. It takes me a moment longer to figure out who it's for. It dawns on me with a pain as fresh and real as the one from the gash, and I quake with the sudden realization of what I've done.

What did I just do? How could I do this? It's too late to go back. Now it really is too late to change. If you have a single grain of sand, there is no pile. Add another, and the answer is still no. Keep adding one by one, but which grain will tip it so that it is a mound? There must be one that pushes it over the edge, decides and makes it a pile rather than a few granules. This is what is the difference between good and bad, forgivable and unforgivable. What I just did, that is unforgivable. There are times when you are stuck in the middle, able to be pulled into one direction as easily as the other. This single action changed me. For the worse, not for the better, as I had been hoping.

The girl is bleeding out into the earth, her body stiffened and unmoving. What kind of a person am I? This girl has just died, and all I can do is stand here and watch as her remaining blood drains from her, feeling disgusted by the sight. Just minutes ago, I was convinced that I would never do this, that I wouldn't, that I couldn't. Look where that put me. The killer. It was unforgivable. I am unforgivable.

Her eyes are glassy and gazing skyward, and I follow them without thinking why. What is beyond this sky, this arena? What is beyond what we've been taught is the end? Does it go on forever? Where do we go when we die?

"Her name was Marianna," Victoria says without warning, unexpectedly and into the dead silence. I'm not sure how she knows that, but I don't question it. Marianna. The girl whom we have just killed has a name. Marianna.

For the first time, I stop and wonder, even through the barbarity of what I just did. What if it were me? I allow myself to let my guard down for a moment and put myself in her shoes. Sitting in the cold, trying to keep warm but not attract attention at the same time with a fire, I would be by the glowing coals, shivering. If it were me, I would have heard the noise, picked up the sword and gone to defend myself and my supplies. If it were me, I would have fought hard and lost, been lying on the ground as the blood was leached out of me, until I finally was finished. I wonder what her dying thoughts were.

I hear a droning above, and I become aware of the hovercraft flying above. They want us to leave.

Victoria and I search Marianna's pockets and camp quickly for anything that she may have that could help us, hardly stopping to see what any of it is. I push the hurting of the wound from my mind, biting the inside of my cheek to stop myself from complaining, because really, in comparison to the other tributes who are dead, this is nothing, nothing at all.

I cast a furtive glance over my shoulder, and the last thing I see before I disappear into the darkness is her body being lifted up high into the air.