The Hunger Games: The Violent Hour

(12) Learning

Chapter Twelve (Please Vote! :D It's short, I know... but I will upload again this week! And it will be in Katniss' POV.)

Wow.

That’s all I can think about as I watch the door that Rye just slammed. I mean, really? Rye? My brother. The boy who would never raise his voice above a whisper. The boy who I always had to protect in school. The boy who wouldn’t swat at a fly, even if it was threatening his life.

Same person who just blew up on my parents. Same person who just slammed the door with an angry face. None of it makes sense.

He’s so delicate…

That’s when I realize it. Rye. I have to protect him. That means…

I can’t come out of that arena alive. Unless I do the same thing my mother did her first Hunger Games… and it’s completely impossible this time. If I try anything of the sort, I’m sure the Gamemakers will just obliterate me from the face of this earth instead of let me live. Because the Capitol – Panem – can’t handle another rebellion. None of us can. Especially those who lived through the last one.

 But I can’t let my parents lose me, either. But they have to be prepared for it. They’re either going to lose one, or both of us. It’s better that Rye stay alive. He’s a much better person and has so much more potential. All I can do is hit something with a bow and arrow. But not nearly as well as my mother.

There was one time, both of us were out in the woods. I never see her alive except for when we’re surrounded by the greenery. The birds, the pine-smelling air, the fresh water… everything about the forest screamed life. I also feel more at home in the forest. Anyway, it was the early months of her teaching me how to shoot. It wasn’t going very well.

“Just watch me,” she had said with an edge in her voice. Her grey eyes glimmered in the sun, and they held a warning. I backed away defensively and perched on a nearby rock that was covered with earthly moss. Then, ever so slowly, she took and arrow and strung it. There was a disturbance in the trees, and before I even had time to realize what it was, my mother had shot it down. Another disturbance, another arrow. And so on it went for hours. It seemed like she would never tire. I watched her technique so closely, I’d gotten it down to a science. When there was a few moments of silence, she dropped her arms and turned to me. “Now it’s your turn,” she told me with a smile.

Like I said, she never does that unless she’s in the woods.

“All right,” I had said, and taken the bow and arrows from behind me. I took the same stance I’d seen her take, and waited for a disturbance. Nothing came. I looked to my mother uneasily and she just smiled at me. It was unbelievably breathtaking. But ever so fleeting. She raised her hand, and brought it down on a nearby tree with a smack, and suddenly there were disturbances everywhere. One. Two. Three. I took down every bird that crossed my sight. Sure, I missed those in my peripherals, but I was just a beginner.

Twenty birds and fourty minutes later, I was sweaty and tired, my arms completely useless after my long session.

There’s a hand on my shoulder. “Iris, you okay?”

I looked up into my father’s blue eyes. They look so different from the ones I’d seen in the video. These eyes were not the eyes of Peeta Mellark. These eyes were clouded with worry and defeat, something he would never have.

Unless, of course, he had just overcome a Tracker Jacker venom attack.

I shrug off his hand. “Yes, I’m fine.” Suddenly, it’s impossible to sit down. My legs are under me, and my feet are moving. I am going the same way that Rye had just left. Like brother like sister, right?

Right?

Is that the right expression? Or am I going completely insane? Thing begin to get cloudy. My strong strides begin to buckle and waver. I don’t even know where I’m headed until my face hits the ground and I completely black out.