Author Games: Trial By Fire

Becoming a Winner - Bobbie Carnine#67th

"This is my favourite moment, that moment a tribute... becomes a Victor," ~ Ceaser Flickerman.

Name: Bobbie Carnine

Age: 25; she was 18 when she won the Games

Personality: upbeat and optimistic, she refuses to let anything get her down. The Games have dampened her spirit a little, but on the whole she’s bright and lively. She’s happy to have won (since she was reaped she says she had no choice and therefore wasn’t really responsible for what she did), and doesn’t dwell on it too much. She has a habit of talking to herself when she’s scared.

District: 8

Physical Description: short black hair (especially after her games), dark eyes, quite tanned skin. 

Celeb: Morena Baccarin

Games they won: 67th

Weapon and skills: well, she used a mace. Good with machinery.

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Bobie of District Eight - IwaspromisedCake

There are good days, and there are bad days.

Any Victor will tell you that.

The day I hear that I might end up back in the arena is a bad day. We’re all watching, the envelope comes out and I barely hear the words.

The flashback starts instantly.

It’s cold, absolutely bloody freezing. I’d though it was cold when there wasn’t enough for the fire, but this is something else. My hair sticks to my cheeks with the wind but I can’t even feel it. My shoes click on the ice. My stomach snarls and bites. Snow scurries into my face, so thick that I am blind. How are we meant to find each other?

My insides are heavy. So close. Just one more kill. The Careers are gone. Whoever did me the favour of killing them is dead too. The odds might even be in my favour now.

Is that a shadow? Squinting doesn’t help. Huge fluffy snowflakes catch and tangle in my eyelashes like discarded pieces of cotton. My arms crackle when I move them, hoisting the bloody mace so that I at least look prepared.

Every fibre of my being trembles, blood hurtling through each vessel, driving out the cold. The wind rips past my ears; it’s all I can hear. No sight either. Just thoughts of the blissfully cramped streets, the comforting chunter of machinery. Anything but this space, this silence, this abyss.

Someone is here with me.

I can feel it; something blocking the wind, or just intuition. My back prickles. This is it, Bobbie...

“Oh shit,” gasps a tinny voice, “It’s you.”

The world stops.

So this is why they let me go unchallenged. For this.

“Casper?” Oh no. No. No no fucking no. Not him. I’ll take on all the Careers ten times over, that chunk of meat claiming to be a seventeen year old boy. Just please, not little Casper.

“B-bobbie?” 

He cried at night. Shouted out for his twin sister, for his mum. 

I can see his shadow shaking in the pale icy light. “District 8 will be proud,” I blurt out. It’s all I can think of. But they won’t, because...

Something whizzes past my shoulder in the wind, not even close enough for me to flinch. Sobs burst from the small creature in front of me. 

You can do it, Bobbie. Harden your heart. None of this is your fault.

Amy is the spitting image of Casper; you’ll have to go home and see her every day and know that you killed her brother.

All I have is a mace.

“Casper...if you stand still...this won’t hurt,” I promise lamely. Bless the boy’s heart and damn mine; he does. Even when his chest bursts in an explosion of blood, he doesn’t move, but I can’t hear the voice announcing me as the winner over the wind and his dying screams, echoing in the whorls of my ear and tattooed into my eardrums.

Like I said, it’s a bad day.