In the dark [Geebs]

The large training gym is years away from District Ten. Everything is white and sterile. Everything glows- even the buffet table in the cafeteria is rigged with lights. Why do they need so many lights? They already have tubes of light bulbs in the ceiling every foot. The light it casts is cold, making the lines of everyone's face severe. The gauntness of the lower districts, the muscles of the upper districts. It emphasizes differences, as if the large numbers embroidered on our chests weren't enough.

I walk slowly through the gym, observing. There is practically an even number of tributes younger than me as my own age and older. I feel like I'm back at school, watching the younger grades trying to impress the young men and women about to graduate. Trying to prove something.

I can't watch them. They all look like Kahinta.

I look for a station to study. There are so many different tables and only so many hours allotted to learn them. My teeth gnaw on the skin around my thumbnail, brown eyes sweeping the gym.

They stop on a boy. He's older, one of the eighteen year old tributes, a career. He's pale, like Enzo, but larger. His hair is light and his face is made of hard lines and harsh features. He's standing at a table covered in plants. The trainer besides it opens their mouth to talk to them but the boy's fingers curl into fists. He slams them into the foliage, knocking over a display of stinging nettle.

I see his face, jaw tense with pain. Like with Mayor Emberstatt, there is string tied around my bottom rib that pulls me forward. I stand looking up at the career, a large silver one is stitched into his uniform shirt.

I catch his hand, his skin cool to the touch. There are better ways of grabbing a career tribute's attention, especially considering the circumstance, but it felt right.

"Something is wrong." I search ice colored eyes. "You can tell me."

He stops, returning my gaze. He's bigger than me, taller and built like, well, a career. Trained all his life to hurt others, except right now he was the only one who looked hurt. He sighed, slipping his hand from my grasp, but turned his body towards me. An open position.

"I think I made a mistake. A big one."

I feel my heart clench in my chest. The pain that carried in his voice broke my heart. He was born and bred to compete- he volunteered to be here yet there were regrets. I could not imagine that kind of change of heart, carrying that mistake on your shoulders as you're about to be thrown into the most stressful situation of your life.

He had pulled away before so I rub my palms against the thighs of my pants, too wound up not to move but careful to give him space. Sometimes the cattle got irritated when sick and you needed to give them a wide berth, but still keep a watchful eye on them. I was used to watching from afar.

I don't push further. The details of his life were his to hold close and his to give away if he chose.

"What are you going to do about it?" I ask. I'm not sure what he can do. If he wants to go back home that was impossible now. He had offered himself up to the Capitol and now he was their toy. There was little he could do now.

I could feel my heart twist for a stranger. There was so much pain here in this single room, it hovered in the air like a heavy cloud. If no one faced it it's smother us all.