Promises of a Sacrificial Lamb |Destiel x The Hunger Games|

-16-

All I can manage is a nod.  I'm losing the strength to speak myself.  A tired, almost nonexistent smile pulls at Cas' lips as he turns around and makes his way toward his room.  Just as his hand touches the doorknob, though, he glances over his shoulder one last time and meets my stare.  It lasts but a second, but to me, it feels like years, and I don't want it to end.

I try not to think about how that could've been one of the final times we exchanged looks.

The hot shower is a blessing after the events of today.  I crank up the temperature, scalding my skin but too preoccupied to care.  I breathe in the steam, revitalize my lungs, wash away the stress gnawing at my muscles, but it does nothing to ease the distress clouding my mind like a dense fog.

I watch as the water turns gray from the eyeliner being rinsed off.  I watch as it slips down the drain, never to be seen again.  I watch as the drain drinks up the river of glitter next, the bold makeup that coated my cheekbones and made me shimmer.  Little by little, I'm stripping away everything that made me memorable, washing it down the shower drain like it never even existed in the first place.

My skin is red and numb by the time I dry myself and absentmindedly stumble into a pair of velvety pajamas.  I thought a warm shower would make me feel better, maybe distract me from all the thoughts rampaging through my head, but now that I'm out, everything comes racing back in a storm of frantic worries.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  The makeup is gone.  The hair products are gone.  The suit is gone.  Everything that made me who I was at the interview is gone, and looking at the disparate person staring back at me makes my stomach churn and my heart grow heavy.

I am no longer the Dean Winchester that the Capitol knows and loves.  I am no longer fierce.  I am no longer bold.  I am no longer witty, charming, strong, flirtatious.  That person doesn't exist anymore.  He was washed down the drain and whisked away into oblivion.  No, the person I see in the reflection is not that boy at all.

Instead I see the Dean Winchester from District 9, the ordinary, modest, penniless farm boy who just wanted to protect his little brother from the cruelty of the Hunger Games, no matter the cost.  He didn't even bother to think about the consequences of his actions at the reaping.  He didn't focus on where they would take him, what they would do to him.  All he cared about was making sure nothing happened to the sibling he'd spent his entire life looking after.  Nothing else was important.

But now, as I stand in front of this spotless mirror in my room in the Capitol's vast Training Center, I stare into the green eyes of the unpretentious farm boy from District 9.  The eyes that are not painted with makeup.  The hair that is not soaked with product.  The face that is blemished in certain places, because he is human.  I stare at him, wondering how he managed to get himself into so much trouble, and I realize he is me.

And I am afraid.

I might never see my family again.  The realization crashes down on me like a burning building.  I spent so much time concentrating on making it through the days leading up to the Games that I hardly stopped to think about the harsh reality of where I really am, exactly what I will be tossed into tomorrow morning.  The Hundredth Hunger Games begin in less than twelve hours.  The arena is unpredictable.  What happens after that gong sounds is unpredictable.  There's no saying what could go wrong once we step off those pedestals, and the endless possibilities terrify me to my very core.

I might never feel the warmth of my mother's embraces again.  I might never feel the secure, reassuring grip of my father's hands on my shoulders.  I might never see Sam's smiling face as he asks me how my day was.  I might never hear one of Charlie's awful but lovable jokes.  I might never breathe in the warm, open air of the expansive wheat fields I grew to adore and appreciate.  I might never see the place I was born and raised in ever again.