The Sound of Falling Snow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 24

Not again. Flashbacks threaten to overtake me. Blood. Blood everywhere. Blood to pay for the past, blood to keep our future "safe". A blood oath to keep a promise, to seal the fate of our country, our world. This is not enough for them. It will never be enough for them. They do not wish for a blood oath, a vow, a pledge to the new Panem. They do not wish for a better place. A better world would be one where we could all live in harmony together, a world where we could wake up every morning without having to dread the day and without worrying about being judged. But that kind of world exists only in dreams. There are things that come close. Excitement. Calm. Happiness. They don't quite match up, even if they come close. They aren't the same. Such a place is a utopia, a perfect world, a paradise, a heaven on earth. That is, to say, no place. Even the word means it.

Their faces haunt me. Wisps of smoke shadowing their gaunt faces, their eyes pleading and helpless. I am a killer. Nothing can hide that truth.

Leander's ally. I don't even know his name. I killed him, and I don't even care enough to know who he is. And now he will be forgotten by many. So will the others. Marianna. Alana. Who will remember them if there is no one to keep their memories alive? No one. I have ended their lives. They may live on for some time, but in the grand scheme of things, it is for a very limited time indeed. They will soon fade into the background.

Although I might not have killed my sister directly, I could have stopped her death. I could have gone out instead of her, helped my mother and been there when the parachutes exploded, the first round injuring many and the second killing the rest. I could have been there instead. I could have been inside the gates instead. My parents always like Alana better anyway. It would have made them happier. I could have spared them the heartbreak.

Alana was the model of a faultless daughter. The one everyone would love and fawn over. She was obedient and beautiful, quiet and kind. She was all the things that I could never be. I was rebellious and loud, and, as my father used to say, had no filter. So I had to learn. I had to learn to hide my thoughts, learn to hide who I really was. It was hard at first, but eventually I began to settle into it. Even with all I did, even with all my efforts, I was still the second choice. My mother counted on Alana to do the task. Me, however, she didn't. I was always overshadowed by my sister, the trustworthy one.

I resented her for it sometimes, but in hindsight, I should have realized how much she tried to include me, tried to make me feel better by trusting me. Sometimes I pushed her away. Sometimes I took her caring nature for granted. But it's only after the fact that I can fully realize and appreciate how much it meant to me. It's only after she's dead that I can see how much I miss it, how much I miss her. There aren't many people left that I care about anymore, let alone people who care about me. My mother and Victoria. That's it. They're my family, the full extent of it. At least I can have half of it beside me in the Games. At least I'm not entirely by myself. At least I don't have to face this without anyone.

There's just one problem with that. There's only one victor. Only one of us is going to come out of this arena. Victoria or I. It's like the fight with Marianna all over again. In the end, we can't keep this alliance forever. There's, what, eight of us left? Seven? And that would be including the both of us. It won't be long until we're on our own once again. And then? What happens next? We try to survive, and all we can do would be to hope that neither of us is tasked with the awful job of finishing off the other. Beyond that, there's not much we can do. Sit and wait. Hope to last to the end. Hope that we don't have to hurt each other, betray one another's trust.

But for now, it's not a problem I have to deal with, so I push it as far away from my mind as I possibly can.

—

It's nighttime, though the clouds are covering the icy moon– or I think it is, at least, since the day's been going on for much too long for it to still be the morning or afternoon. If it's possible, the temperature has dropped even further, and even with a fire to keep us warm and the extra body heat of the two of us huddled together, covered by our jackets, it's not even close to keeping out the cold. At least we have some food to keep us going.

Marianna's pack had some small scraps left in it, which Victoria and I quickly finished. It wasn't much, but at least it's something. Even just a little bit is better than nothing, isn't it? With some food in my stomach, the hunger has become only even more noticeable. My body has gotten so used to the aches of going without it for a while that putting something in only makes it easier to notice. Like when you don't realize how cold it is until you sit by the fire. It's the same, really. Because how would you know what hunger is if you haven't ever been full?

Tick, tock. Five days we've been in the arena. Eight days since I lost my freedom. The weeks used to pass by so quickly, when I had everything. When I had everything, I never could notice how much I actually had. It takes until you've lost it all to step back and see how much you had before.

If you were to live your entire life with nothing, would you appreciate more than the rest of us the privileges that to us were a given? Or would they, too, eventually learn that it was normal and forget about the rest that are chronically underfed and uncared for? I suppose it's easier to go from nothing to everything, or at least better for others, because someone who started with riches and could get what they wanted with a single word would never truly understand the suffering, even if that's how they ended up. Because everything is nothing if you have never seen beyond it.