The Black Widow- A Hunger Games Fanfic

Let the games begin

I hardly slept that night. I lay in bed with thoughts running through my head and promising to spill out as tears.
I could be dead tomorrow.
I checked the clock. Past midnight.
I could be dead today.
I needed the rest but clearly, trying to sleep was pointless. I slipped on a dressing gown and crept out of my room pursued by the sound of the sliding door whooshing shut automatically behind me. I padded into the main living area, where there was already someone there.
Cashmere was sat on the floor, head bent over her chest, tears dripping down her face. Her blonde hair was wet, she must've just taken a shower, and she was dressed in nothing but a robe showing scalded red skin. The robe had slipped over her shoulder slightly revealing scratch marks and mottled purple bruises that looked a lot like... handprints.
"What happened?" I asked sitting down on the couch beside her. Her head whipped to me showing dark makeup smudged around her eyes,
"Why aren't you in bed."
"I could ask you the same question."
"Look," she said wiping the tears and makeup from her face with the back of her hand, "I can't do this with you right now."
"Then tell me what happened and I'll go to bed." She sighed,
"Fine. You'll probably dead in a few days anyway. Who would you tell?" True, but I didn't appreciate the reminder, or the lack of confidence. She cleared her throat, as if trying to figure out how to phrase it, "Umm... if a victor is considered... desirable, Snow can... Snow will... sell them. Or their bodies at least. If you don't, well... he kills someone you love. If you say no, he... he does it again. And again. Until there's no-one left. So you... so you do it, until you wish you were dead yourself. Until you wish you just died in those fucking games. Because now you're stuck alive and if you stop, well... that's a rebellion in itself. And now I have to help all these kids win when I know... I know, that if they win, the exact same will happen to them."
She breathed out when her confession was done. I was speechless. I had no idea. Now I knew why she had run the minute she saw me in that costume: why she had said it was happening again. She saw me as another her. And I wondered if it would be better now just to let myself be killed in those games.
But of course, I wouldn't. I would survive. Because I needed to go home to the people who loved me. And I knew her fate was mine because I would do anything to protect them. 

I went back to my room after that and sleep quickly took hold- exhaustion winning out over fear. It felt like mere seconds before I was woken again and brought out to the aircraft.
Before I left, Cashmere pressed my district token- the necklace my father had given me- into my palm,
"May the odds be ever in your favour," she told me.

Aboard the aircraft, a woman walked towards me and injected something into my arm. Internally, I cried out in pain but surrounded by the other tributes, I couldn't allow myself to show any weakness so I just smiled. It was only when one of the outlier tributes asked what it was that I learned it was my tracker. Like I was an animal.
And that was the first time I really saw what we were to the Capitol. And the illusion of honour and glory my district and my lifetime of training had built for me around the hunger games were destroyed. And I realised that I had come here to die. And they would not care.

When the craft landed, I was led to a small room where Victoria was waiting for me. She was seated in a chair, smoking a cigarette. She could get lung cancer from that. But she'd probably still have a longer life than I would.
"Eat," she told me, "You're going to need your strength. I want you in one piece for your victory tour." I would be the first to admit that I wasn't the biggest fan of Victoria, but in that moment, I was grateful for the confidence she had in me. It gave me confidence in a time when I had none. I dug into the buffet table, feasting on the capital delicacies for what could be the last time, "And stop," Victoria said, "nobody wants to see you throw your guts up."
"That may not be the only way they see my guts," I said, thinking about how someone could potentially disembowel me in the next hour.

I was spared from Victoria's retort by the arrival of the package that contained my outfit for the games. Victoria unfolded it revealing a black sports bra, a thermal top, a regular green t-shirt, a lightweight grey jacket, which seemed fairly water and windproof, black thermal leggings, dark grey trousers, a wool hat that covered my ears, goggles, black climbing boots and gloves.
"I reckon there will be some rock climbing involved," Victoria told me flatly, "and likely a high altitude."
"Great," I muttered under my breath. High altitudes meant wind and wind meant inaccurate throws. This wasn't looking good for me.
"If you can," Victoria told me, "strip down to the sports bra and leggings, it will show off your figure better."
"Why are you focusing on me showing off my figure when I am about to go fight to the death?" I retorted angrily,
"Your strategy is flirtatious," she told me sensibly, "What did you think was going to happen? Did you really think you could get away with not showing some skin? I have done nothing but help you." I don't know what I had expected- it seemed I had done this to myself. I would've wondered how she found out my strategy but then I realised that it was the same for every district 1 girl. I was just another faceless beauty, who would serve the capitol until her dying breath. Serve the masters who saw me as less than human.
I put on the clothes and had barely fastened my necklace around my neck before the countdown to get in the tube began. I stepped onto the platform without enthusiasm. As it was raised, I tugged off my gloves and put them in my pockets. I was going to be entering the arena with one extra weapon that the gamemakers hadn't planned on.

The platform was raised for a very long time. I wondered if all ascents to the arena were this long. I didn't think that was likely since I was going up for a full five minutes before I was welcomed into the arena by the blinding sun.
The biting cold immediately made me wish I hadn't taken off my gloves, but I knew I wouldn't regret it when the fighting started. I began to look around, the wind whipping against my cheeks with such strength that I imagined that I wouldn't have been able to see much without the goggles.
We appeared to be on the top of a mountain with rock stretching towards the cornucopia but not much behind us. In fact, there appeared to be nothing behind us. Like at all. Where were we supposed to go?
Then I saw the holes. There appeared to be caverns dotted around the area around the cornucopia. It was clever, really, and it forced everyone to go into the bloodbath. Brutal. But clever. And I supposed it wasn't so bad for me.
The clock in the centre had already reached 10. I scoured the cornucopia for the throwing knives and found the pack right in the mouth. I readied myself to run, counting down in my head the seconds until the gong.

CLANG.

And the games began.
I sprinted towards the cornucopia, faster than the tributes to my right and left. I reached the knives at the same time as the girl from 11 but I slashed by ungloved hand across her throat and my nails slit it. She stumbled back as she began to choke on her own blood. She would be dead soon.
Because of me.
But the time for regret would be later.
Another boy ran towards me. He couldn't have been older than fifteen or sixteen. I threw a knife at him and exclaimed in frustration as the wind blew it off course. He scrambled to pick it up and in that time I had crossed the distance between us and landed a roundhouse kick to his head. He stumbled backwards, trying to raise the knife to defend himself. I slashed one of my knives across his throat and reclaimed my knife.
I tried to avoid seeing the fear in his eyes as he died.
I spun back to the cornucopia, Morgan was running towards me. He was shouting something but I couldn't hear him over the wind. I whirled around just in time to see the boy from district 11s fist speeding towards my face. On impact, I went down, seeing stars. I was vaguely aware of him bringing his foot down.
Then stopping. Blood dripped onto me as the three points of a trident- Morgan's trident- impaled his chest. His mouth opened in surprise and he went limp. Morgan pulled the trident from his chest and let the body drop. I barely spared a glance at the boy who had tried to kill me. Barely spent a second on the thought that he had probably killed me because of what I did to his district partner.

As I got up and looked around, I saw that the bloodbath seemed to have finally ended. Most of the tributes were either dead or escaped into the caverns. And finally, I saw why these first minutes were called the bloodbath: the stone surface was covered in so much blood that it could've been water if it hadn't been red. Morgan and I crossed the distance to the cornucopia in silence, both of us trying not to slip on the slick blood as we walked.
Hildegarde, Mason and Jupiter reached the gold horn at the same time as us, but Oceane never did,
"Where is she?" Jupiter asked finally,
"Did anyone see her?" Morgan asked tightly, but the rest of us shook our heads. Mason sighed,
"Let's start checking the bodies."

In the end, it was Hildegarde who found Oceane face down with a stab wound to her gut. A few arrows lay around her, some broken. It looked like they had been blown off course. She was never going to be much help in this environment anyway. I should be happy that there was one less person to worry about. But still, I felt some sadness for the girl who would've been my ally.
as we stood there looking at her dead body, the cannons started to boom.
BOOM. One.
BOOM. Two.
BOOM. Three.
BOOM. Four.
BOOM. Five.
BOOM. Six.
BOOM. Seven.
BOOM. The boy from eleven.
BOOM. The girl from eleven.
BOOM. The other boy.
Ten dead in total. Fourteen survivors. Five of them were here. Just over a third. Something told me the alliance wouldn't last long. I had no intention of dying even if I knew what awaited me afterwards. But what if I could prevent that. Make myself so unattractive to the Capitol citizens that there would be no-one that wanted to lie with me. And a plan began to form in my mind.