forget about our mothers and our friends {d8 train blitz}

It's a curious feeling, riding on the sleekest technology that the Capitol can offer, traveling a distance of many miles in minutes as opposed to hours. Moreso once the factor that you'll never again see the place of your birth sinks in, alongside that on dancing the tightrope between two equally damned sections of hell, you've fully committed to one - opting to trust in your wits and instincts in an area where no one has the home court advantage as opposed to the place that you and everyone else knows like the back of the hand.

And here's the thing. You're not a fighter. Not in the way that your family has made its name, at any rate. Your weapons are wits and words, shadowed eyes and cherry lips, not bloodied fists and pure dumb luck. And when it comes down to it, there was no chance you could have survived the debt collector's wrath forever. Maybe, if you were lucky, you could survive. Call in one of your brother's boy toys to exploit connections. Coerce Guy into acting as your guardian, or using Laine as a liaison point. But in the end, they would find you. They always did. And running from an inevitability with fear clouding your judgement in a vain attempt to harness a few more gasps of air just simply wasn't your style.

Here, you stood a chance. Even if your odds of survival were a mere one percent, back home those odds were zero, and anything is an improvement over that. And besides, less likely candidates had risen from obscurity and claimed the crown against all odds. Take the drunk from last year, for example. Or the little girl from your cousin's games. Or the boy who had lost half his limbs yet had practically butchered his opponent the year before that. If they had a chance, then who said that you didn't?

You're not stupid. You recognize that the two choices were either certain death, or all-but-certain death. The same fate under two different guises. But one was submitting to the inevitable, and one held the power of choice and a chance, however slim, of survival. For you, that was no contest.

You spare a glance at your district partner, the unlucky kid whose name was pulled out of the glass bowl to join you upon the stage. Unlike poor Zoey Fontaine, there was no savior on his side of the aisle to martyr himself for the sake of a stranger. If there was one thing you had done well by your family name, it was keep them out of your trouble. Dillon and Guy and Laine and everyone else might hurt because of your passing, but they would be alive to hurt, blissfully unaware of all the shit you had gotten yourself into, as well as the grim reaper who hovered patiently behind porcelain skin for the separation of soul from body.

As your eyes travel over his features, lingering on dark hair and a strong jaw, you find you recognize the boy, to an extent. Not due to the details of his face, but by the scars visible on his body and the hunched nature of his back. Not because you've ever seen him, let alone met him, but by missing fingers and a pride ground into dirt. Someone who could once claim the title of fighter, but has long since had that name and that spirit beaten out of him by forces outside of his control.

You always made good money whenever you were able to spot one of those in the arena. One of the few constants next to your own manipulation of Ike's results - an old veteran, beaten and broken down yet containing too much damn pride to quit while they're behind, receiving another nail through their coffin in the form of a split lip or a broken nose, humiliation further tearing open half-healed scars that line their bones.

You'd always found yourself as intrigued by them as you were disgusted. Disgusted because letting pride rule yourself at the expense of your own health was a terrible, terrible way to achieve longevity in any thing; intrigued, because you'd never once felt anything that you'd love enough to risk such impossible odds-

Your train of thought screeches to a halt, even if the literal train you are riding continues on in a smooth hum. No, you realize. That was a lie.

Hadn't you done that very same thing just a few minutes ago? Risk everything for a chance, however slim, at reclaiming that which you loved most?

There was no question within you that the amount of time you had left on this earth would number in hours, let alone days, had you let this chance pass you by. The debt collectors in Eight were nothing if not efficient and thorough, especially with clients who had fallen on the wrong side of a bet. But the Hunger Games? There was always a chance when it came to them, even if the odds for a girl such as yourself were slim to none.

Risking it all for a small shot at glory. You look over at the boy in a new light, gaze contemplative instead of judging. Was his story similar? Had his hand been the price he had paid in search of some lost spark of joy?

Or was his story more connected to the other part of you - the part who had found death waiting ever so patiently for them due to pure, bad luck?