Before I fall.. ~ One Direction in the Hunger Games.

Before I fall. ~ Chapter 4.

"He's not. But he's the only one."

"What do you mean?" I whisper. I can barely choke the words out. My anger is ebbing away now, replaced with a crazy grief, but the fear isn't gone.

"If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else. That's a rule too. And something must die so that others can live," Louis says.

"What do you mean?" I repeat.

"What I mean is that the Capitol let Zayn's sister make an impossible choice. She had to chose between dying and letting Zayn live or let Zayn die and live herself."

"And she did?" I whisper and I instinctively reach my hand to block his words and to defend myself.

"Waliyha killed herself. She died to let Zayn live," Louis says. "Zayn is alive. He's in the Capitol." His voice trails off in a painful breath.

Pity washes over me and I don't know how to speak. I want to run away, and if I can't run anymore I want to crawl, and if I can't crawl anymore I want to drag myself. I want to let the Capitol and its horrors behind and be free like a bird, as free as the Mockingjays. But I can't escape. "Where is the rest of his family?"

"They've been dead for ages."

It's silent for a moment. My thoughts are blurry, my brain is too shocked to function. My muscles have stopped moving. I thought my fate was bad, but if I hear Zayn's, I realize the things that happen to me are nothing. My whole family is still alive. His isn't. I'm pushing aside the memories of Zayn's family, push, push, push, like I taught myself to do in the past few months. But it doesn't work. I remember their voices, their humor, their looks, even the worried look in Trisha's eyes on the day of the Reaping.

"And your family?" I speak so soft I have to repeat the sentence before he hears me.

"They're alive," Louis says. My relief is as big as his.

"They'll be alive," I promise. "Lottie, too."

He takes his eyes off me and walks to the window. It's dark outside and the thousand stars shine brighter than the sun. This is one of the last days I'll be able to see the real sky, and I want to see it as much as possible.

"I don't know why I have the most luck out of all of us," Louis says. "Zayn's whole family is dead. You're a tribute. And I have no idea where Liam and Niall are, but I'm sure their life is more horrible than mine."

"What did we do?" I ask. "What did we do to let the Capitol hate us so much?"

"We had fun. That's the last thing the Capitol want the people in the districts to have." We're silent again, and then he adds: "You know, if I could reach out and hold a star for every time the Capitol hurts me, I'd hold the sky in the palm of my hand."

I feel exactly the same way, but it isn't smart to say this. If we want any of us to survive, we can't afford things like saying that. "Hey, you've got a face for a smile, you know."

Louis turns around and I can see he understands what I mean: not here, not now. I've always had this special connection with him. We could talk without saying a thing.

"I need to know where Liam and Niall are and what happened to them," I say.

"Me too." He's silent for a moment and then he says: "What if they are tributes too?"

"They aren't," I say, "I would've seen them on television."

"You wouldn't," Louis replies. "The televisions broke after the reaping of District 7. You never know if they weren't in the others. Probably they were."