but hes gone now [Donatello's End]

He can barely breathe through the pain, but he still does. He needs to, because he is just that much closer to going home.

The rest of the tributes are panicking, and in a way that he himself should have been too. But after killing someone, he realized that this is just the way it has to be. The glass jar is cold against his skin as he thinks about, no, yearns for Aspen. Aspens soft hands caressing his face as he looks at him from above. His cool demeanor telling him that everything is going to be alright.

An empty promise made over and over again. Its all like a dream, all of this, and its starting to take its toll on him. However, he doesn’t wake up from it, because he is living it.

He knew that’s what nightmares were called.

And he was one himself, but he didn’t want to admit that to himself. He was not a monster. He was not a villain in the story, or at least, he was not a villain in his story. He was a boy who wanted to go home, to feel the lips of his lover pressed against his own, to feel the trees between his skin, to live just one more day.

And maybe he would get that.

---

He wasn’t hopeful though. He couldn’t be hopeful in this situation, because the amount of blood he was losing was becoming more apparent as he continued to manifest wounds from daggers.

He had an assailant dealing them to him, but she wasn’t keeping up with him. There was something about her that just seemed tired.

Desperate.

And maybe that is what he needed to use against her.

She claimed he was competition, and Donnie wanted to laugh at that notion. He was just a boy.

He was from seven, where they loved nothing but nature and the trees. Born amongst the soft breeze and abandoned all in the same day.

He didn’t know his parents, and he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to at this point. It was funny, how being so close to death made him think about everything that he had ever missed. And at the end of the day, maybe he could find exactly what he was working for, that is, if the girl could keep up on her promise of killing him.

He would welcome that sweet release here. The feeling of letting the life go out of him, but that glass jar around his neck grew colder the more he thought about it.

He wanted to get home to Aspen.

So he was going to have to make her eat her words.

---

His blade found a home in her forearm, and he paused for a moment. There was no happiness here. Donnie could tell that much. He was doing exactly what his captors wanted him to do. Murder.

And he tried to survive, he tried to be quick, and he tried to claim another life. He didn’t want too, but he knew he didn’t have a choice.

He wasn’t quick enough though.

She spat venom at him. Dakota.

”You wont remember me like you wont make it out of here alive.” He said as he found his own type of courage.

However, before he could strike, she did herself, and both of his knives fell out of his hand. His thigh ached, and his skin crawled. Shivers going up and down his body as he stood there in shock. The blood was pulsating out of the wound, out of every wound, and he tried to take a deep breath as he collapsed onto the grass. It hurt, but not as much as realizing that he would not make it back to Aspen. That there was no future for him. That he was not going home.

Maybe he could call this his home? No. He couldn’t do that, even if he did have a piece of home with him, this was nothing more than a burial ground.

”You might be real Dakota, but that doesn’t mean you are immortal.” He wheezed out, his heart beating faster as he tried to reach and hand out. He couldn’t though, his strength was diminishing by the second.

”Villains don’t win Dakota. No one does in Panem.”

And his body quaked and finally gave out.