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

Before I fall. ~ Chapter 5.

When I wake up, Louis is already gone. There is enough light in the room to see the other three beds. Lottie is still asleep, cuddling her pillow like it's the only thing that can keep her from falling. She looks tired and her pillow is wet, but I'm not sure if it's from sweating or crying.

I crawl out of my bed and open one of the three doors. The biggest bathroom I've ever seen is behind it. A golden shower, a silver bath. It makes me sick to see how much money the Capitol spends on their bathrooms while the people in the Districts starve.

I stare out of the window and see the districts from a distance. Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you-sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.

Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

If I had not seen the nature outside the train change, I would not have believed we were moving, and especially not in this speed. I can barely feel the movements.

It is a foggy morning. Cold too, a harsh spring filled with icy leftovers winds from winter. The meadow outside is covered in clouds of wite, dew on the tip of every blade of grass, silhouettes of ranches and herds, sometimes deers springting to the rushes. I'd give everything to hunt now, to be in the forest again. The window can't get open more than twenty centimeters so they are sure we won't jump out of the train. It's not like they care about us, but they do care about the games.

I step into the shower. There are so many buttons with numbers it takes me a few moments to figure out what I have to do. But finally the hot water comes out of it and I wash all the damage the tears did to my face yesterday off. I'm tired, but I refuse to go to bed again. The nightmares have woken me up three times, like I expected they would, and I'm as afraid of them as of the Capitol. How many times have I seen my family die? Got Liam, Lottie and Niall killed by other tributes? Have I seen myself getting torn apart by mutants? I don't know.

I woke up once because Lottie was screaming. She was asleep but I know she had a dream about being in the Hunger Games. Before I formed a band with my friends, I had nightmares about that, too. But now they've changed into more urgent ones.

I'm afraid of what the day will bring me. Although we're not in the arena yet, the Hunger Games have begun and everything I do and say will effect my sponsors and Lotties chance of surviving.

Chance of surviving! What if Liam and Niall are tributes, too? What if Louis was right yesterday when he said he wouldn't be surprised if the Capitol punished us in that way? How can I make a choice between protecting Lottie, Liam, Niall or myself? What do I have to do if all the tributes are people I truly love?

I once read a book where the main character was talking about fear, about pain. My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's not the way the main character described the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once. This is a terror that feels as old as life itself.

The car goes dark and I scream. Outside it is as night has fallen again. We must be in the tunnel that runs up through the mountains into the Capitol. Tons of rock seperate me from the sky and I can barely breathe. The train speeds along and the tunnel goes on and on.

We must be near the Capitol. I have no idea what time it is, but it is late and I need to hurry. I pull some clothes out of a closet and find a blue jeans with a brown sweather. It probably costs more than all the clothes I have together.