The Black Widow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

The Finale

We changed back into our clothes, using Mason's spare t-shirt as a towel. He wouldn't need it anyway. We ate some food and drank our water. I strapped my knives to my person. Not much else happened. Until the parachutes arrived.
"Scuba gear" he commented as he unpacked his parachute. Mine was identical,
"What's scuba?" That was a genuine question. I had never heard of this before in my life.
"There's air in the tanks," he said, "It allows you to breathe underwater and swim faster. He helped me attatch the shoes he called flippers over my boots and the heavy air tanks to my back, bringing the breathing mask to my face. He motioned to the water, indicating that there was only one way to go. I shook my head, if we went down there and he saw Mason's body he would know I had lied.
We walked awkwardly over to the edge of the lake, preparing to go in (the flippers were very hard to walk in) but just then, I noticed that the noise from the waterfall was getting louder. I alerted Mason to it and he spun. Just as the water crashed towards us. It knocked us off our feet, submerging us as we fell with it off the cliff. But the space below us was already full of water. I felt Morgan grab my hand and we swam through the caverns, trying to avoid being separated by the current.

Finally, the current stilled and so did the water. We reached a far more open space, which was still filled with water, and the most horrific sight awaited us. All the bodies of the other tributes were suspended in the water. Their wounds on full display.
The ones I had killed: throats slit open. The boy from 8. The girl from 11. The girl from 5. Mason.
The ones I had known: Oceane. Hildegarde. Jupiter, his head no longer attached to his body. There was no doubt in my mind that it had been severed by an axe.
The boy Mason had killed: his organs floating around him, his body clouded by his blood.
It was all too much. I let out a strangled cry and Morgan spun towards me, face full of worry. He hadn't seen Mason yet.
Morgan helped me to the exit from the room but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the bodies. i counted 21. But there had only been 20 cannons.
The boy from 7 lunged at us. A tiny scuba tank strapped to his back, an axe in his hand. He had less air than us, we just had to outlast him. Morgan blocked his first blow with his trident and I used the distraction to kick around behind him. Morgan spared a glance towards me but that allowed the boy's axe to slice across his wrist. Morgan cried out in pain and the boy raised his axe. But I stabbed him in the neck from behind before he could bring it down. He dropped the axe in shock. Unable to move from the knife lodged in his spinal column. By now Morgan had recovered. He raised his trident and stabbed the boy through the stomach. The canon boomed.
Three remain.

We kept swimming through the caverns, holding hands so he could pull me along at a faster pace than I could normally swim. I understood the urgency- our air tanks would only last so long.
After another twenty minutes of swimming, I began to see light through the water. Morgan pulled me towards it and finally we emerged from the caverns into the wind at the top of the mountain. We tugged off our scuba equipment, discarding it on the ground.
"What happens now?" I asked, shivering as the wind hit my skin,
"We wait," Morgan answered. We went to hide in the cornucopia, where we were sheltered from the wind.

The sun had started to set by the time anything happened, lighting up the sky in brilliant shades of pink and purple. I stood up, wanting to see the sky and left the cornucopia. It was so beautiful. If I died, I wanted this to be the last thing I saw. Suddenly, I saw the girl from 10 emerge from the hole, which had filled with water. She was gasping for air, unable to breathe despite her apparatus. She had the smallest tank of any of the four finalists. I edged over to her, followed closely by Morgan. She ripped the mask from her face, rolling to her back. She passed out. But no cannon fired.
"She's still breathing," I said flatly, looking down at the young girl.
"What do we do?" Morgan asked.
"There's only one thing we can do," I said, knowing that this was the finale and there was no room for sparing peoples' lives. Morgan nodded solemnly and picked up the girl. He was struggling with his injured arm. I took the girl's legs and he took her arms. It seemed as if we agreed that her death should be quick. Neither of our weapons could guarantee an easy death and I couldn't watch her die. Death on impact seemed like the only option.
We carried her to the edge of the mountain, past the pedestals where this had all begun. We swung her for three counts to build up momentum. Then we hurled her off the side of the mountain. We watched her fall, still unconscious and walked away as she hit the ground 500 metres below. The canon boomed.

"We're the last ones," I said, as we stood together at the mouth of the cornucopia,,
"I can't kill you Rose," Morgan mourned, as he took my hands in his.
"Neither can I," I told him, trying to sound authentic, trying to bring tears to my eyes, "I love you Morgan."
"I love you too."
"Then kiss me."
"Are you unarmed?" he asked,
"Why don't you check?" I replied, holding out my arms. Morgan spent time running his hands over my body, removing the knives from their sheaths and throwing them away. Finally, he threw his trident across the top of the mountain, where it fell into a cavern and sank below the water. When he was satisfied that I was unarmed, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips to mine.
I lifted my own hands to his head, running them through his hair and caressing his throat with my thumbs. His lips were locked against mine as my thumbnails dug in. His eyes only opened, injected with pain as I dragged my claws across his throat. He dropped to the floor, choking on his own blood. It only occurred to me as he lay there that he died in the exact same place as my first kill. In the exact same way.
And then the cannon boomed.

And the lone victor remained.