Trapped in the Consequence of Time

Love and War - Willow's POV

It turns out that there weren’t that many rebels to get rid of. When we walked into the square the peacekeepers had a defensive line in front of the president’s mansion and were slowly picking off a group of about a dozen rebels. The ground between them had quite a few bodies and was covered in blood and broken glass along with a few other things that I really didn’t need to know; apparently the rebels were on a retreat.

“Rebels!” Came a voice from the balcony and the firing momentarily stopped. I grabbed James’ arm, ignoring the electric shocks running down my own, and pulled him back into the shadow of the street out of the square, Aquila glanced at us and followed almost tripping over Alexis in the process, who was standing glaring at the balcony. The Peacekeepers and rebels had probably already seen us but there were no civilians around for a reason, I didn’t think the president, at least I assumed it was the president, would be too pleased to see us.“District Thirteen has been destroyed and all other Districts are surrendering. Surrender now and your lives will be spared; we will go forth into the future together learning from our mistakes.”

There was a moment of silence as the rebels looked at each other before giving their answer. They opened fire on the person on the balcony and the peacekeepers spilt up, half of them returned fire while the other half rushed to the balcony where the president was. He had obviously been shot. Then through the gap I finally saw who had been talking and froze in shock.

Falling to the ground his white suit slowly tuning red was a young President Snow. Despite being dead for twenty years very person in Panem still knew his name; his looks; his crimes. The rebels had taken advantage of the momentary confusion and were getting the upper hand were they advancing slowly towards the peacekeepers.

“He’s going to die.” I realised.

“And good riddance.” Alexis snorted.

“He can’t die.” I insisted. “As much as I would love for him to he needs to create the Hunger Games for time to get back on track and he can’t do that if he’s dead. He can’t get my parents together.”

“Well then let’s go stop the rebels.” James rolled his eyes like he’d just stated the obvious that we hadn’t got. He had but it wasn’t quite that simple.

“Somebody needs to get a medic for him.” Rose said.

“I’ll go.” Aquila offered, “Rose, Al go help Snow you three stop the rebels.” Then she turned and ran off, Al grabbed Rose’s hand and dragged her past the Peacekeepers. I glanced at James only to realise that he’d already gone and Alexis was rushing after him having already caught the scent of blood. I rolled my eyes and followed, tripping over random dropped guns and avoiding glass shards the size of my foot and pools of blood alike. By the time I reached them half the rebels already had their guns pointed at their heads.

“Move out the way.” The middle rebel said, he had a little badge on his shirt so I guessed he was the commander but what surprised me most was that he had a Twelve accent. I suppose that made sense, if you’re going to send somebody on a suicide mission it should probably be a somebody from Twelve and they weren’t surrendering so obviously Snow decided to take his anger out on the entire district, and here I was thinking that the only trouble Twelve caused was spawning my parents.

“Stop.” I yelled and Commander Man’s eyes momentarily flicked towards me before going back to James whom his gun was occupied with. Naturally James was still grinning like he had guns pointed at his head on a daily basis, I wouldn’t be surprised. “You heard Snow, surrender and you’ll live. It won’t be easy but you and your families will live, if you don’t he’ll kill you, your family, your friends and punish the whole district.”