Snow On Top || Coriolanus Snow

Part 3: The Ride

Y/N

Jessup and I are hurried onto a cargo car with no more than the clothes on our backs. The other 22 tributes from districts one through eleven are already loaded here. Jessup and I get our car, which might seem like a luxury to others, but it doesn't sound like a luxury when you are in a vehicle that previously held animals.

The interior is dark, yet light peeks through the doors' cracks. There is an abundance of hay on the bottom, emanating an unpleasant smell. I think it will do that. The peacekeepers close the door behind us, leaving me and Jessup in almost total darkness. I slide my back down the side of the car, now analyzing that I am spending the last week of my life living like an animal.

Both of us try to get some sleep, but before either of us can settle, Jessup yells.

"AH"

"What's wrong," I ask.

"Y/n, I got bit by something, I don't even know!"

God, why does this have to happen right here, right now? I try to ask a basis of questions to make sure he's okay, but he's fading in and out of consciousness. I started to panic because I had never been in this situation before when I realized he had begun to wake up again. "Where did it bite you?" I asked partially to find the wound and partly to keep him talking so he wouldn't black out.

One of us is going to have to die.

The idea comes unbidden to my mind. How will I handle a bloodbath if I'm panicking over a bite? I think for a second that maybe it is the right thing to do by killing him now so he won't have to suffer. I'm immediately disgusted with myself for the thought of murdering my friend, but maybe there is no such thing as friends in the arena.

"Just leave it be," he says when I try inspecting the wound. His hopeless tone stings, but maybe he's right. There's nothing we can do. Not about his bite and not about the nightmare we're being driven into.

I wake up, aching from a night spent on the cold floor of the train car. Or maybe it was a day. Being shut away in the dark has made me lose all concept of time. Jessup is slumped over beside me, and a stream of light illuminates the welt under his ear left over from the bite. I worry it could grow infected, but we have nothing to clean it with. I can only hope the Capitol will see to it when we arrive–after all, if they lose a tribute before the games, they have less of a show.

Shouting echoes outside as the train comes to a stop. Jessup stirs, instantly tensing and crawling to the crack in the door.

"Peacekeepers," he whispers. "They–" but before he can finish, the door is yanked open, light flooding into the cart. The brightness blinds me momentarily, and before I can see them coming, two Peacekeepers drag me from the cart. I stumble to the ground as they laugh, standing over me.

At last, we've arrived at the Capitol.