Until The Mockingjay Sings

The Training

     Peeta and I were shown to the training room where all the other tributes were already waiting. My hair was back in a ponytail, there was no need to make a show of it today. The training room was huge and  filled with different kinds of weapons and training supplies. The thought of some of these blood hungry kids surrounded by weapons made my stomach feel like breakfast this morning was a bad idea.
I spaced out for most of what the lady in charge of us had to say but she ended her speech with the typical made the odds be ever in your favor.
    I hated that phrase, it always felt so much like a mockery to me.
     How are the odds supposed to be in our favor when they stopped being our odds the second our names were called at the reaping?

     When she was finally done Peeta went to ask for help with his punching. I suppose he took what Haymitch said seriously.
    All at once it hit me how alone I felt. I was in this room surrounded by people and yet nobody was here with me. It felt like the walls were closing in on me. I tried to get myself to breathe like my mom had taught me to do when this happened...

In for four
Now hold
Out for four

"You look really dumb when you make that face." I opened my eyes and had to look slightly down to see who the words were coming from.
"Excuse me?" A boy with black hair was looking back up at me with a very judgy look on his face. He couldn't be older than 13.
"Don't scrunch your eyebrows like that, they're gonna get stuck!" I couldn't help but laugh at this. The air was back in my lungs.
"I'm Mila." I smiled and stretched out my hand. He looked hesitant but he shook it.
"Remy. District 3" He replied back, soldier like. "You're the girl from 12 right? The volunteer who started singing at the reaping." This took me by surprise.
"Singing?" I asked. I did not remember saying anything let alone singing anything.
"Yeah it was some weird song about you being poor or something. That was pretty weird too." Blood rushed to my cheeks. I couldn't believe I had blacked out enough to not remember singing on stage.
"Anyway are you gonna just stand here? What exactly are you training for?" He said. I wasn't sure what to say so I just looked at him.
     "God you have no clue what you're doing huh? Follow me." And like that he turned and began walking. What was I supposed to do but follow him?
    "So a good place to start, is here, with the knives. You need to know how to use a knife if you plan on making it past the first 30 seconds." He took us to a station with targets and all sorts of different knives.
    He grabbed three knives that had holes on the handles and as if it was nothing he threw them all at the targets, perfectly in the middle.
    It was almost scary seeing him morph from a kid to someone who could murder me in a flip of his wrist.
"Woah. You're good." He wasn't even faced by the compliment.
"It's like the first thing we learned at school. Pretty basic." He was now flipping around a knife without looking at it. To say that I was intimidated was an understatement.
     "At school?" All I ever learned in school was how to tell the difference between good and bad coal.
     "There is a lot of preparation for the games there. A lot of weirdos get all excited about them but this is the way I see it. The games are gonna happen every year no matter what I do. Accepting that and learning what they teach is merely a survival tactic."
     I felt like crying again. This little boy had just told me that learning to kill people was something normal for him. Something necessary. He might've looked like a kid but he wasn't. I wasn't sure if he ever had gotten the chance to be.
"Here take this one. No but hold it this way." He handed me a knife and slowly started showing me how to hold it and throw it. I was really, really bad at first but I slowly started to get the hang of it. I wasn't amazing at it but my knives had at least started sticking to the target.
    Afterwards I thanked him and we split to each do our own thing. I worked on some memory drills with plants. It was pretty easy since I knew most of them but sometimes some mutations would show up that I had never heard of before in my life. I learned them pretty fast and I was feeling so good until I read on the screen...

Katniss: Also known as "Swamp Potatoes" grows around bodies of water around District 12.

     The familiar feeling of tears stung behind my eyes. I missed Katniss so much. I also missed my home. I missed being safe and I missed sleeping. I was so exhausted.
      Hot tears were rolling down my face now, I wanted to run. Run out of this building and out of the Capitol and not stop until I reached my meadow.
     "Woah Mila is everything okay?"
     Peeta.
     "I know Haymitch said to not be a threat but I don't think he meant for us to show the opposite." I laughed. Before I was able to wipe my tears, he beat me to it. His hands were rough from all the work he did back in 12.
     Peeta held his hand on my face for a second. It was only a second but it felt like a lifetime. We were looking at each other and once again I could see that boy.
     The boy who I had seen sitting two seats to the right from me in school for years. The boy I had seen laughing at the hub when he accidentally tripped and dropped the bread he was supposed to be selling. The boy who the next day came to school with a bruise on his face and who didn't laugh again for a while.
     The boy that had never seen me, because through all of it he was busy seeing Katniss instead.

     The next two days went pretty much the same way. Remy helped me work more on my knife skills to the point where I didn't feel useless anymore. I even hit the target in the middle a couple of times!
     I kept working on my memory and I was getting really fast. I would even challenge myself to be faster than the last time. It was almost fun.
     On the last day as much as I had been avoiding it, the time had come. I headed over to the bows. I had always been in awe of Katniss' innate ability with the bow and arrow. I loved watching her hunt. The way she hunched slightly and stuck out her tongue a little bit to focus.
     When Katniss tried teaching me how to shoot a bow and arrow for the first time she got really frustrated with me. It took me all day to even hold it correctly and she couldn't understand why I couldn't get it when it came so naturally to her. That was until trying to place the arrow I nicked my finger and it started bleeding. Her frustration immediately changed to worry. We were nine.

     I was not nine anymore, and I didn't have Katniss next to remind me to keep my elbow up and to not freak out too early on. I took a deep breath and planted my feet. I placed the bow in front of me and slowly placed the arrow on it. I pulled my elbow back making sure to keep it up and swiftly released.
    
     The arrow missed the target.

     It felt as if time itself had stopped. I had not only completely missed but it was like the arrow was trying to run away from the target.
     "You know you're supposed to aim for the big circle in the middle right?" A girl asked from behind me. I turned around and a short, thin girl was standing there. I recognized her from the district 2 reaping. Clove.
     "Of course I know that. I'm not dumb." I replied, attempting to seem confident but behind my back my hands were shaking and my ears were hot.
     "It's good to see who won't be hard to take care of." She laughed and walked away.
     Take care of.
     I felt like puking all over again.