Writing Competition Entries

i. "I Promise"

This is my first contest entry for a writing contest hosted by LiviieMarie. It may include ideas from my original fanfiction on my other account (which I had recently unpublished) called "Last Hope", a Cato X Reader--so yes, I will be having an OC, and the canon characters I would include would be Cato, Clove, and Enobaria.

Theme: The Hunger Games
Genre: Fanfiction
Word Count: 1598

**Unedited.**

~~

Nothing had ever been the same since my sister's brutal death.

Everywhere I went nowadays, I would hear the uniformed whisper of "coward" and "loser" flutter from the mouths of others like a cloud of moths through the air, and I couldn't blame them. I did nothing to stop my older sister, Lucie, from heading into the Games with nothing but her pride and dignity and a promise to return home to me. I did nothing to stop her when she volunteered to take my place at the reaping. 

And now I couldn't do anything to bring her back from the dead.

It was strange to me how everyone in my district had embraced the Hunger Games like it was their entire life, but being the district who had received the best treatment from the Capitol, it made sense for everyone to return the favour. A good majority of the victors of many Games before had come from either my district, District 1, or District 4, better known as the Career Districts for all the seriousness we have been taking in this annual event. I wasn't sure about the aforementioned districts, but District 2 has an academy dedicated to shaping their potential tributes without a slip, and though I would take pride in honing a few skills, I couldn't say I was cut out to be a tribute.

And now, as I stood by the knife throwing station with a few short blades in hand, I could still hear the whispers pass through me like free form smoke threatening to choke me, torture me slowly from the inside and out.

"Don't listen to them, Jillian," I heard my friend Clove speak up quietly, turning to me with a subtly angered glint in her eye. "You're better than they are."

I wish I could believe her, but I couldn't. What was I in comparison to everyone else around here, really? I've seen kids almost as young as five years old holding the most dangerous of throwing knives for the first time, working with swords when they've reached eight years old, spears at ten, and many more forms of combat as the years went by. And they've wielded them all without fear in their eyes. Once long ago, I used to do the same. Now, I could barely hold an axe in my hands without seeing my sister in front of me.

"Jillian! You're up!"

From afar, I could hear Enobaria call for me, and I nodded as I took my place in front of the target, eyes narrowed as I withdrew a knife from my belt. Back in the day, knife throwing was one of my strongest skills. But now, as I raised my blade, I saw her again, and I couldn't do it.

I couldn't kill Lucie. I couldn't watch her die again.

"Jillian?" Enobaria called out to me as she approached me in a sprint, her eyes steely and her sharp teeth gleaming under the dulled glow of the training centre. "Jillian, what's going on? Throw the knives! You used to be good at this--don't hold yourself back!"

But I was. I was holding myself back, and all because of that one image I could never shake from my head ever since I saw it on television for the first and only time.

I could never seem to forget it no matter how hard I tried.

"Of course she would!" I heard another girl my age, Samantha, call out with a shake of her head. "She's just trying to back out of the Games again! What a coward she is."