Sugarcubes // Finnick Odair - Hunger Games Fanfic

XVI.

After my interview, and after I watched Austin's interview with utmost care, Blight escorts me back to my room. I'm tired, and my feet are cramping up in the tight shoes that I wore. Ripping those wretched things off my feet is the first thing I do when I get back to my room. Then I strip off the clothes I wore and step into the bathroom for what may be one of my last baths.

The fact that I'm entering the games for real tommorow has only just started to creep up on me. It's hitting me now that after tommorow, only one of us will come back, and there is no way to know for sure who that person will be.

Everything seems like a taunt to me. The Capitol facilities that we receive, just before 23 of us will die seems sadistic. It's like fattening up cattle before they go for slaughter. Wicked. Everything seems to be designed to give me a bittersweet feeling about home. The 7 themed furniture and train car, the 7 themed dresses and rooms. I itch to go back home more than I ever have before.

I used to love it. I used to love being away from home, in the forests, alone, because it gave me space to be myself and not the perfect mother-father-sister figure I was supposed to be for my siblings. Now, I would pay millions, give up my very own soul, even, to have just a few more peaceful moments with them. Not ones filled with tears and heartache.

I finger the pictures in my locket gingerly. It's one of Lia and one of Danny. Terry and Anna aren't included since it was my dad's locket before I gave it to Lia, and mine isn't included because she didn't know how to change the photos, and we're too poor to be able to afford to have my picture taken and then printed.

The warm covers, the fluffy bed, the silky pajamas, nothing seems to be able to lull me to sleep. The jitters of the day ahead of me, the anticipation, the nervousness, keeps me wide awake. The fact that my body sinks into the deep mattress makes me even more aware that I don't belong here. I belong back at home, sleeping on the floor with Danny and Lia an arms reach away on the bed. What's the point of having a big bed if nobody's going to occupy more than three-fourths of it?

Giving up on falling asleep, though I should probably be well rested before I go into the arena – who knows when I'll next get to sleep? I slip out of bed. I put on a less comfortable outfit, and lay on the floor beside my bed, hoping to create a more familiar atmosphere in order to trick myself into falling asleep.

It doesn't work.

Still wide awake I roll over to face the fake view of the forest in my room. It wavers slightly, as though too much power is being consumed for the building to keep up the charade properly. It makes me angry. The image of the forests, of the place that each of us value most – be it the seashore, the coal mines, the grasslands, or my forests, is the last and final taunt from the capitol. A way of saying:

You're never going to get to see this in person again, and there's nothing you can do about it except to play into our hands.

It sparks all the bottled up anxiety, panic, anger, and fear inside me to fuel a fire of pure, burning rage.

I hate the capitol

I hate snow

I hate the games.

I sit upright in a flash, anger burning inside me. It's all a trick. The entire games. Because even if you win, you won't win. I think back to Finnick Odair's words as the harsh reality hits me.

I got an offer from president Snow.

The odds are never in our favor. Ever. You die the moment you enter the games. It doesn't matter whether you survive or not. The reason you fight isn't to stay alive because the moment you kill someone you die inside too. The reason to fight is so your loved ones don't die with you in that arena. So, they don't have to mourn your death. Your death is just more hidden if you get out of the arena. I exit my room and then the house with a loud bang of the door, my anger chasing any consideration for the others living with me away – although I'd be surprised if anybody was actually sleeping. I head to the lift, fully meaning to press the button to the roof.