Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Daggers of the Mind - 6

The brassy sound of trumpets intrudes on Benji’s dream. As soon as his eyes open, the colourful pictures are forgotten, settling back into the fog of past dreams with a yawn. He stretches out his arms – the stiffness doesn’t shift – and opens his eyes wide to take everything in.

Abi is perched at the window, holding a branch aside so that she can see into the sky. Dappled moonlight streams through the gaps and speckles the floor. It looks…pretty. You don’t really get moonlight in Six. The harsh light of the factories is almost constant, even in the dead of night whenever he snuck out, just for laughs. Moonlight is different, almost softer.

The rest of it, though, can go. The buildings creak; this one feels safe but every so often the walls make a kind of groaning sound that makes him look for the nearest way out. The trees whisper and gossip and move and they could be hiding anything.

Every time he goes to the window, the huge hole in the ground leers and him and he’d swear that he can hear squeaking.

The Capitol anthem finishes, the last notes dropping out of the sky and leaving the silence even more empty than it was before. The pictures are up but he’s not curious and it doesn’t matter. Two today. One in the storm, though he could easily be mistaken on that. And one not long ago, a fight, a death somewhere out of view. Other things are happening outside their little box-building.

Yesterday was a bloodthirsty day: the boys from One and Eleven and the girl from Nine, the centre of the scene in the training centre what feels like years ago. Even the pictures yesterday are fuzzy in his mind. Time goes slowly when you’re sitting around doing nothing, but he’d rather be bored and alive than dead. Just.

By this time tomorrow, it could be his picture. Or Abi’s. And he can’t help but think that, if it could be Abi, then next year it could be his sister, and a few tears sting the corner of his eyes. He wipes them away furiously, before Abi can turn and see. She’ll only laugh at him, though she must feel like crying herself. She’s been trying all day to put her ponytail back up and eventually the band snapped and she’d hurled it to the other side of the room and sulked, hair plastered to her face with grease and sweat. He’s glad his is short, though it must look disgusting. Despite the chill of the breeze, his shirt is still sticking to him and his combats chafe. The storm still hangs in the air and his throat clenches with the memory of the brutal thunder. Please don’t let the Gamemakers do that again. He’d barely been able to tell the cannon.

Abi catches his eye and nods to the outside world; the bruise isn’t fading. Now it’s swollen up so her eye is forced half-closed. How did she get it? Well, however she did, it’s not his fault. At least she’s not messing around with that damn flashlight again.

“Who is it?” he asks, levering himself into a sitting position and rubbing his neck. What he wouldn’t give for his bedsheets. Maybe they are so thin that they’re practically transparent, and maybe the pillow is less of a pillow and more of a bunch of rags. Maybe the Capitol, with their beds you could get lost in, would sneer at them. But they’re more comfortable than a tree trunk any day.

That’s one good thing about the Capitol. The beds and the food. The rest is just stupid.

“Girl from Two.”

For a moment he just nods, not really listening. Then the words actually sink in. The girl from Two. One half of the vicious twins.

Even the Careers are dying now.

Suddenly, it’s as though all the strength has gone from his legs. The Careers, those brutes who charged around the training centre as if they owned the place, are dying too. And somehow, he’s still here.