❝I'd rather die kind and forgotten than be remembered for being brutal.❞
( *undergoing slight formatting tweaks & adjustments -- the story itself will otherwise remain readable and unchanged! )
⠀⠀⠀⠀ Had Bellamy not volunteered, he wouldn't be sent o...
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( ミ☆ ) THREE tributes from nine
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⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀They only have twenty minutes.
⠀⠀⠀⠀That's twenty minutes for Bellamy and Cortessa to get there, twenty minutes to sign in, twenty minutes to fall into their separate age groups' allocated positions, and twenty minutes until the district's official start to the reaping. Across Panem, timezones work a little differently. Being somewhere in the centre of it, that puts District Nine's reaping directly in the middle-point. By now, district's Eleven and Twelve to the far east will have already chosen their tributes, while Nine and Ten, being so close to one another, will have their tributes in—
⠀⠀⠀⠀Nineteen minutes. The enormous clock on the face of the Justice Building is visible even from this distance, now just nineteen minutes away from striking two. Nineteen minutes for District Nine.
⠀⠀⠀⠀But Pepper has grown too cold — both from the weather and from fright — and their little group of five have fallen just a little too far behind for comfort. Bellamy has taken to carrying his little sister on his back, her arms linked together around his neck and her cheek buried into the back of his hair. He can feel and hear that she's stopped coughing, but she isn't talking to him anymore. If he didn't know any better, he'd say she's asleep. But not five minutes ago, she had poked his right ear and had asked why there was a cut on it. He told her what he told their mother he would: That he had cut his own hair this year and had failed miserably. She bought it, of course, having no reason not to trust him. Bellamy himself half wishes he could believe that was the truth, too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The small crowd they're apart of has begun to move faster, each step collectively synchronised like a beat against the gravel. Cortessa has shouldered herself right up against Bellamy's arm with twins Mateo and Sven on the opposite side of her. She nudges the older boy a little, garnering his attention, though they don't look at each other, just keep their eyes forward.
