Safe and Sound || Hunger Games

Chapter Twenty Four - Unlucky Thirteen

Chapter Twenty Four - Unlucky Thirteen

Thirteen was never a lucky number. Never really has been. Superstitions made the Games worse and the Games made the superstitions worse. It bounced back at each other in my opinion. After the bloodbath, thirteen tributes were left to fight to the death. Look what happened. Most of them died a horrible death. Take Ryker for example. As if being shot in the leg by a girl from District 12 wasn't bad enough, he was them mauled to death by mutts. Lion mutts. These mutts were made buy the Capitol. The Capitol killed Ryker, not the mutt. The mutt was the bullet, the Capitol the trigger. It took someone to pull the trigger for the bullet to fly. Without a gun, a bullet was virtuously useless and likewise, without a bullet, a gun was useless. All the Districts needed to do was find a way to take this gun from the Capitol and prevent anymore bullets from flying. But it was easier said than done.

Now it was day thirteen of the Games and I was just sitting in my tree next to a sleeping Grayson, waiting for some sort of almighty horror to come and find us. While I was waiting, I was also eating some tinned fruit, which wasn't very nice. However, it was food. And I didn't really acre, I just needed to eat it without complaint if I wanted to stay alive for a bit longer.

As I ate and waited, I thought about the night before. Grayson and I had danced in the face of death, defying it for those precious minutes. It was a way of saying that you could stick us in an arena with blood luting kids, but we would keep going, we would keep smiling and most importantly, we would keep living. And by living, I meant that we would be savouring every moment that we were breathing. Whether it be running away from fire, being chased by Careers or moving in unison, we were going to do it with our heads held high and we were going to do it with dignity and pride for our District. Just because we were the poorest, because we were the smallest certainly did not mean we were the weakest. You could say that 12 was the strongest District, because even though we had virtually nothing, we still fought through. We were better fighters than Districts One, Two and Four. In fact, we were much better survivors than the lot of them. But to the Capitol, to Panem, we were weak. But to ourselves, we were the mockingjays. We just had to spread our wings a bit more, sing our song louder and eventually, someone would realise that we truly had heart.

Grayson with perhaps more than most.

"Did you sleep at all?" I suddenly heard Grayson mutter from beside me, his voice still half asleep and scratchy. I had never heard his morning voice before because of how he always got up before me and was always wide awake when I finally did rise from the depths of my dreams. It sounded husky and it was quite amusing, but it was definitely a good type of amusing. I turned around and looked at him with his bed head and his morning voice. It almost made me smile, but I had to shove it down considerably and quite hard to stop it from cracking right the way across my face madly.

"A little bit." I answered, Grayson reached out and took a bit of dried fruit, nibbling on it, "But I feel fine, honestly." I snickered a little bit, remembering the time when I had scolded Grayson for getting up early. Grayson seemed to think what I was thinking.

"You won't be feeling fine when the exhaustion catches up with you in a couple of hour's time." He said, in a perfect imitation of my voice. I was a little bit shocked, but it was in a good way. Everything so far seemed to be in a good way, which was good. But the thought of the number thirteen hung around in the back of my head. I discarded it through, not wanting to think about it. I shrugged it off and smiled at Grayson.

"You remember what I said?" I queried. Grayson shrugged slightly.

"Naturally." He tapped his head, "Good memory, see. I also find the most important or special things to me easier to remember, but that's just me and my head." My heart may or may not have skipped a beat at his words. Did he really find that simple sentence of mine important and special? This time, I was pushing down a blush. Grayson smirked slightly. "What are you going all pink for? It's just me, just me being me. I didn't say something wrong, did I?" I couldn't help but lean forwards and wrap my arms around his neck and bury my head into his shoulder.