SWAN UPON LEDA; hunger games

chapter 4

    A laugh splits through the air. Birdie, pale skinned and with long blonde hair, approaches, bow in hand, spinning an arrow in the other. She chuckles, watching as Issac crumples, as a canon echoes throughout the entirety of the arena.

    Another life lost.

    The blonde shakes her head as she approaches further. "You are a pretty one, aren't you?" She runs her tongue over her lips, eyes dropping and then rising. "Too bad I think you're a little fucked in the head."

    Leda keeps her spear pointed, chin high. Defiant. "Aren't we all?"

    "Spoken like a true Career, if you ask me."

    Leda spins on her heel, blade raised, ready to strike. Her blood has turned to ice. She is surrounded by those just as capable of killing as her. Together, she is heavily outnumbered. From behind the trees, the other Careers follow—Athena, Malachi, and Cassius. Their four to her one.

    "I'm not like you." Leda says. She refuses to be like them. She will not murder with a smile on her face. She will not find joy like them. She will not feel pride, not even if that somehow connects to the great legacy of her grandmother, Minerva.

    Cassius shakes his head. He is the same age as her. Fifteen. But much larger. Much more dangerous. He is tall and well-built. More so than Malachi or Athena or anyone else in the arena. He, frankly, does strike fear in her. His face is sculpted in a way that reminds her of her father—sharp jawed with, somehow, round edges. She figures Cassius is more like her father than he appears; rigid on the outside, but all too soft on the inside.

    Athena shakes her head, a frown pulling at her lips. "You think you're so...perfect, right? Too good to be like us. That because you were raised differently it means that you don't have the ability to just...shut it all off. Go numb. Just because you didn't spend your childhood in an academy doesn't mean you're so different." She leans against a tree, her dark braids reaching for her hips. "You're parents, dad or mom, maybe a grandparent. They taught you how to hold a knife? Or a bow. They taught you how to tie knots, to throw rocks further than the average person. Then how to make a fire. Keep it going. How to kill a deer and gut it. To boil water to avoid poisoning. I know it. And so do you."

    Leda says nothing. In fact, for the first time, she finds herself looking eye to eye with someone who has maybe lived a life parallel to her own. Something in Athena's eyes, something about it, is the same as what she sees in hers every time she looks in the mirror.

    The woods around them are silent. She can hear her heart in her ears, feel the cold air biting at her skin, sinking into her gut. She hears the arrow notch in the bow before it whistles past her face.

    Leda swings her arms out, the spear slicing through the air, lodging itself in Birdie's arm. The blonde lets out a shriek, but pulls the spear from her arm. Without another thought, she lunges for Leda, hands reaching for her throat.

    But before she can, Malachi has tugged her dark hair with his hand, pulling her into the snow. A cry falls from Leda's lips, a cry of shock. She reaches back as his arms circle around her throat, her hands reaching for his hair just as he had for her. She grabs on and tosses her head back into his, hearing the crunch of her skull and his. She can feel her head split from the force, and the next thing she knows, she is being thrown several feet away, and Birdie is back for her life. Except this time, Birdie is missing an eye.

    With a blind spot on her side, Leda pushes herself to her feet, just behind the blonde girl, and pulls fishing line from her pocket. Winding it around her fingers, she wraps it around Birdie's neck and pulls. She pulls so hard that it cuts into the skin of her hands; so hard that she starts to cry. But not from the pain. From the fact that this is what she had to resort to. That fishing line is how she is forced to kill. To slit a throat just enough that it cuts an artery in just the right spot. Just enough.