𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

twelve

☆ CHAPTER TWELVE! ☆
012. Goodbye my friend

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❝hit the gas, kill
them all, and we
crawl and we crawl
and we crawl, you be
the detonator.❞

➳➳

THE AIR HAD been stale as it swirled around the tribute's nervous faces; the whole compartment was enclosed with the horrid stench that had somehow remained trapped between the seats and in the fabric from each tribute that had sat in the seats before. Every year only one of those seats would not be contaminated with the DNA of a dead soul, and every year the 23 others seats would be home to ghosts for the survivor. That was how the games were, but I noticed the smell so much quicker the second time now that I had already been familiarized with it.

It seemed as if my breath had been louder than the Peacekeeper that walked around with trackers and my heart was faster than the plane itself. The rhythm of it was unescapable- much like the situation I found myself in- and it seemed as if my leg bounced on the ground to that same beat that was impossible to make up if it wasn't ringing in my ears. It was easier to focus on the way my heart beated or the subtle feeling of blood pumping through my veins when I wasn't prepared to hear it much longer. If anything, it was a sick reminder what a luxury it had become to feel alive.

Still, it was a reminder I had prepared myself for, and one that seemed to have entrenced the entire cast on their way to death.

When my eyes darted to Finnick it was only for a second before I had to look away again; I feared each time that the subject of my vision gravititated that way that I would of found him looking at me with some kind of hate within him. Or something worse, I feared that I would of found him looking at me with pain.

I had to look elsewhere, like towards Johanna two seats down who's face was rich with anger as she set her jaw in place over and over again. Or towards Alec beside her who didn't quite look right, even if there was still something about the two of them together that seemed normal. He hadn't got his piercings on now, something I had never seen, and he looked as if he wasn't even there while he sat with a straight back and a blank stare that for once wasn't filled with ghosts.

At some points I even strayed so far away from the boy from Four that my eyes landed on Peeta Mellark- the only one that actually looked nervous as he fluffed up and flattened down the more golden notes at the top of his head. His face didn't stay still as he glanced from person to person; he only stopped when he spotted Katniss occasionally, much like how I seemed to catch my stare lingering on The Girl on Fire. She managed to seem relatively calm considering her placement between the two siblings from District one- like the rest of us her stony expression never wavered.

Not even when they stuck the trakers into our veins so that it looked like electricity was sprouting from each cell- not even when they unloaded us separately so that we could enter our final preparation room alone. I imagined that her expressions didn't even changed when she let her fingers run over the given uniform like mine did, even if she didn't exactly remember what it meant.