Stay with me? [Finnick Odair]

30

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Chapter thirty: A lone victor
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The sun came up as soon as the cannon fired, as soon as the tribute was dead, the mutts disappeared and everything was silent. We took our time coming down to the ground, unsure if the game masters had another trick up their sleeves, but what we were sure of was that we were the last two alive. That was a problem.

I never planned on killing any of my allies. I just wanted some protection, I assumed either I would die or they would die before it came down to that, but now it was either me or Rosalie. I didn't want to kill her, she was my friend no matter how nuts she had become.

She turned to me as soon as we were on the ground, eyes wide, she rejoiced and threw her arms around me in a tight embrace as she screamed out with joy— practically suffocating and deafening me in the process. I couldn't help but laugh at her reaction.

"We did it! We're the last two!"

However, as soon as she said that she realised what must happen, one of us had to die.

She stepped back, taking in a deep breath, she shook her arms and her body as if she was getting ready for a jog. "Okay, I'm ready, go ahead," she said as if I had already agreed to it. As if I had already agreed to killing her.

I shook my head. "No way. I'm not going to do that." I instantly refused her request, I wasn't about to willingly kill a friend, I didn't want to, but her face turned sour the second I said the word 'no'. She seemed to snap.

"You have to. One of us has to go home. I can't go back to my district, I have no one. You have to!" She shouted at me so loudly that I jumped, backing away from her, her eyes turned dark and her mouth curled downwards in an unpleasant scowl. "You have to kill me!!"

With that, she tackled me, giving me no warning, no chance to prepare, she simply tackled me to the ground and I tried to fight against her strength but it was too much. She pinned me to the ground, wrapping her fingers around my neck and tightening her grip until it felt like my head was exploding. I was in shock for the most part at how much she changed in such little time, but I managed to pull myself from that state and struggle for the nearest thing to get her off of me. I couldn't think, my mind had went completely blank that when I managed to grab onto something I didn't stop until she stopped moving.

It was a rock, a large piece of rock beside me, my fingers grasped onto it and I managed to pull it up with whatever strength I had left. I swung it at her head, knocking her off of me, she fell to the ground with a thud and I climbed on top of her; straddling her and raising the rock above my head. She was already knocked out, I could've stopped there but I didn't, I was too overwhelmed with shock, terror and the scared feeling that she would wake up again and kill me.

It was the fight or flight instinct and I chose to fight until there was nothing left to fight.

I slammed the rock against her head until her skull cracked like a coconut, spilling blood all over the once perfectly green blades of grass, splattering blood and brains everywhere— including all over me, and reducing her head to nothing but rubble. I stopped when I heard the cannon, my limbs shaking so much that I could barely keep myself upright, I threw the rock as far away as I could and stumbled away from the mangled body of what used to be my friend. Rosalie.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the victor of this year's 66th annual Hunger Games!"

The head game master's voice sounded so enthusiastic, I collapse to my knees and let out all the stomach acid I had been containing throughout all of this, every person I had killed flashing in my mind, my stomach was spilled out all over the grass and left a sour taste in my mouth; I wiped the bile from my lips, swallowing whatever was left in my mouth as the voice continued.

"Clementine Carter! Tribute from District four!"

The roar of the crowd from the Capitol played as I took one last glance around the arena, so much death for such a beautiful place, I couldn't bring myself to look proud at all, I just stared upwards at the sky as a hovercraft materialised in front of the clouds— disrupting the peaceful serenity of the blue sky as it dropped down to gather the remaining tribute from this year's hunger games. Me.

A ladder drops and I find my legs carrying me towards it before I can realise what was going on, I gripped onto the ladder and the electric current glued me to it, pulling me upwards into the hovercraft, the minute the doors closed I fell backwards and fell onto the floor. The dreariness had taken over as well as the hunger from throwing up my last meal, I fell back so hard that I had hit my head on the floor of the hovercraft.

Doctors in sterile white, masked and gloved, tend to my swollen neck and make sure I'm not in danger of death from my injuries. As soon as I was deemed stable, or at least what they defined as stable, they led me into another room where a Capitol attendant handed me a beverage to cool my throat and help stop the swelling.

I slumped onto the floor against the glass door of the room, gulping down the entire ice cold beverage within seconds, I groaned at the relief of the pain in my throat and allowed myself to hand the glass back to the attendant before I choked on it. I caught my reflection in the glass of the door as I looked back out at the other Capitol workers, I looked so famished, wild, like a child raised in the wilderness, knowing nothing more than the terrain she was raised in.

Even a day in that arena could change any person, make them insane, but more than a week could actually make a person wish they were dead.

I found myself sitting in silence until we landed on the roof of the training centre, we weren't back home yet, but I was one step closer to getting back to Mae...