kill for your love - the hunger games

(019) a realisation, an agreement

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KILL FOR YOUR LOVE.

act two. 

(chapter nineteen, a realisation, an agreement)

victor's village, 75 ADD.

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JUNIPER HALE WOULD LIKE to think she was smart. She wasn't a genius, that's for sure, but she would like to think she was above average. She had the ability to work out word problems within a few minutes. She could figure out difficult equations. She could read, write, speak. But that was academically. 

Socially, in the arts of common sense and other people, she wasn't so great. Juniper Hale had a blurry view of what was right and wrong and most of the time, with her actions, she did the latter. When it came to figuring out people, to reading the room, she lacked those skills. She was not a people person. She also did not know the deeper meanings of things, such things like the mockingjay pin. But it was also the most simple phrases that one could speak that she wouldn't be able to understand.

("On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pools of Victors'.")

So that was probably why, even after the mandatory broadcast finished and the television automatically turned off, that Juniper Hale still sat on her couch, still trying to figure out what President Snow meant because existing pool of Victors'? What did that mean? Even Orion Hale couldn't figure it out. Or maybe he did. Maybe he did and was sitting in denial on the couch. But as Juniper turned her head to look at the man, it suddenly hit her. 

The existing pool of Victors'. 

There were only three Victors' in District Ten. There was two females, one male. The existing pool. The Victors'. Juniper Hale. Lucy Stevens. Brent Higgins. They were back in the Reaping bowl. 

Juniper felt her heart crash. She heard the screams in her head. She could feel the itching sensation of a blade in her hand. She was in the Reaping bowl. She had to relive the Reaping. If she was chosen by Nadine Groves, she would be a tribute again. She'd go back into the arena. Victors' were tributes. Victors'. Everyone Juniper had grown to know over the years, they were going to be in the arena. Finnick. 

Finnick. 

"June, where are you going?" Orion Hale managed to croak up. Tears were already in his eyes. He had figured it out too. 

But Juniper ignored her father. She ignored his pleas and calls as she hurriedly got up from the couch, nearly slipping on the polished, wooden floorboards as she headed towards the entrance hall where the phone was on the wall. And immediately, without calming herself, she managed to pick up the receiver and push in the numbers she had memorised with shaking fingertips. Her entire body was shaking. It was like Snow had destroyed her entire nervous system with just one sentence. 

Buzz. Tap. Buzz. Tap. Buzz. Tap.

Finnick wasn't picking up. He wasn't picking up and with every buzz of the phone, Juniper could feel the realisation come truly crashing down. It was a fifty-fifty chance. In a few months time, she could be back in the arena. Or Lucy could. Brent was definite. But for the females, fifty-fifty. But Juniper knew. She just knew that President Coriolanus Snow would rig the Reaping so she would go back in. She was going back into the arena.