Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Riverdance - 17

Ryan crouches by the stream, scrubbing at his hands. The dust and dirt has worked its way into the creases on his palms, and his fingernails look like the ones on the boy from District Ten. The murmur of the Career group drifts to him on the slight breeze. He pauses for a moment to wipe a trickle of sweat off his forehead. He’s not really sure about this year’s alliance. It’s too scattered, too divided. The tributes from One and Two are capable, that’s for sure, but something about them shrieks of distrust. In the case of the girl from One, it’s more like open hostility and a personal vendetta against every other tribute in the arena.

"I had a dream my life could be so different from this hell I’m living in,” he sings, very softly under his breath as he rubs at a particularly stubborn patch of grime. He’s so absorbed in his primitive toilette, that he doesn’t even regard the snap of a dry twig behind him, or the rustling in the bushes.

Ellie is lost. Somehow in the chaos of the bloodbath she’d lost sight of Carmen, and after that it had just been a welter of noise; screams, the clang of steel on steel, and the constant sound of steel against flesh. The city had swallowed her up in no time, the plants covering her path. Her throat feels ragged from the dry sobs that have been hiccuping out, and her eyes feel strained in the rapidly dimming light. She shouldn’t be doing this. She’s the happiest tribute and she has Glimpty to prove it.

Suddenly she stops, her ears catching a voice nearby. For a long moment she remains still, her rapid blinks the only sign of movement.

Silence again.

She takes a cautious step in the direction the voice had come from and freezes as a dry twig snaps under her foot. In the silence, the noise sounds like a gunshot, and Ellie closes her eyes, half expecting to feel a blade slide into her body.

Nothing happens. The voice carries on; it sounds like singing. A male voice, one that is strikingly familiar and sends a burst of white-hot anger up her small frame. Ellie peers through the vines, her eyes fixing immediately on the red hair that seems to almost glow in the dim light. There’s a stream, and her throat immediately feels dry and raw, but she can’t drink until the boy has gone.
He half turns and she sees his face in profile, and the anger surges again. She doesn’t even realise what she’s doing until she feels the lump of rock in her hand. It’s heavy, but not unwieldy, and her fingers curl around it securely. The boy - Ryan - is still rubbing at his hands.

It’s now or never.

The sound of the gurgling water and his low singing masks the sound of her approach, and in a few seconds she’s standing right behind him.

Ryan is watching his reflection in the water. It’s distorted and rippling, but it’s better than nothing. And it reminds him of home, a little, minus the distinctive tang of salt. If he ignores the looming trees and hulking wrecks of the building around him, he can almost imagine he’s not in the arena, not in the Games. His reflection ripples, and for a second he can see the girl standing behind him, rock held aloft.

He twists, his face turning back and upwards into the first blow. There’s an explosion of pain and light and he can’t see out one eye. Vaguely, he feels the water lap around his head and realises he must have collapsed backward into the stream. There’s a weight on his chest, and through the fractured eye socket he can make out a pair of big brown eyes and reddish hair; it’s the girl from Nine who he annoyed at dinner.

No! If he has to die, it won’t be because of her. He swipes out with one hand, and by the feel of it the blow connects, but though he feels the weight on his chest shift, it doesn’t move by enough for him to throw her off. The pain around his eye is blinding and his depth perception is distorted to the point where it’s making him dizzy.