Hunger Games fanfic
Was bored so wrote this out. Enjoy! <3
I watched from a distance as they all started choking and spitting up blood, writhing in pain on the floor and clawing at their necks. They were in too much pain to even scream. Eventually, every one of them passed out and died.
All of them except Lilly.
Lilly, the smallest among them.
The scrawny girl from District 5 stood silently amongst the bodies as they dropped one by one.
That’s when I noticed the porridge they had all been feasting on — all of them except Lilly.
She must have poisoned it.
Clearly, being the smallest Career didn’t make you any less dangerous. If anything, she was the smartest among them.
I had kept an eye on her since the first day in the training center. She wasn’t unattractive, and she had used that to flirt her way into the Career pack. Being from District 5, she normally wouldn’t have been considered a Career, and given her stature, she especially wouldn’t have been taken seriously at first glance.
But she earned her keep.
She cooked, cleaned, and made sure she was always the last to fall asleep. She flirted just enough with the boys to avoid raising suspicion from the other Career girls, while also befriending the girls to keep them on her side.
Still, she knew this arrangement wouldn’t last forever.
A few weeks into the Games, the others started turning on her after she was blamed for something stupid. None of the Careers had died yet, but there weren’t many tributes left, and this was exactly the point in the Games where loyalties were always tested.
She knew the tide was turning against her.
Lilly managed to shift the blame onto Clara, the girl from District 2 that nobody really liked. The others took the bait, and it eventually escalated into a massive fight between Clara and the boy from District 1. It ended with him throwing a dagger straight into Clara’s heart.
Lilly had narrowly avoided a serious bullet, but she knew the goodwill wouldn’t last much longer. Eventually, she would have to enact her real plan.
On Cornucopia Day, she had secretly taken rat poison from a backpack she hid from the rest of the group. She figured she’d need it eventually.
She was right.
Later, she got into another argument with the boy from District 1. He brought up the Clara situation again, saying maybe she should’ve met his blade too.
She defended herself calmly, but she could feel the hollowness of her own words.
That night, she overheard the girls from Districts 1 and 4 talking about her while they thought she was asleep.
That was when she knew her days in both the group and the Games were numbered.
Plan B needed to happen.
So the next morning, she made porridge for everyone like she normally did.
Only this time, she added a little something extra.
With the murder of the Career pack, there were only three of us left: me, the boy from District 7, and Lilly. I, along with the rest of the Careers, had underestimated her. She was dangerously close to walking away with this, and I had to keep my eyes open. Hand-to-hand combat wasn’t her style. She fought in silence — the deadliest kind of predator.
It had been a few days since I had seen either of them. No cannon had fired either, so all of us were circling each other, waiting for someone to make a move. Luckily, I knew how to hunt and hoard supplies, and I had found a hiding spot that kept me safe for a few days. But the food was starting to run out, and I hadn’t seen any non-muttation animals nearby, so I needed to travel tonight.
I left the safety of my tree and started through the forest. I had only made it a little way when I heard, what I thought, was a branch breaking behind me. Startled, I spun around, knife in hand, but there was nothing there.
Just as I was about to relax, a blade shot down from above, slicing across my cheek and barely missing my chest before embedding itself in the forest floor.
My head snapped upward, blood rushing down my face and neck, and I saw her.
Lilly.
Perched high in the tree.
We exchanged a shared look of shock before she suddenly took off. I ripped the knife from the ground and followed, enraged at my own stupidity and at how close she had come to killing me.
She was surprisingly good at climbing trees — so good that I lost sight of her for a moment. Fearful that another knife might come flying down at me, I started to double back when I finally spotted her again.
She hadn’t seen me.
She was hiding.
I watched her quietly for a moment. She didn’t look bloodthirsty or monstrous. She just looked like a scared girl in a tree, trying her best to survive, just like me.
I started reaching for my knife when I suddenly froze.
The arena was going to take care of this cannon for me.
Right behind Lilly, a giant poisonous snake muttation slithered silently through the branches toward her.
I had to stop myself from shouting a warning, but before I could even finish the thought, the snake struck, sinking its fangs into the back of her neck.
She screamed louder than a banshee, swatting wildly at the wound before losing her grip and crashing out of the tree. The snake slithered back into the branches above, searching for its next meal.
I watched her writhe in agony for a moment and considered leaving her there, but I couldn’t do it. She only had minutes left.
So I walked over, grabbed her hand, and crouched beside her.
At first, she looked startled to see me, but her suspicion quickly dissolved into tears as she clutched the back of her oozing neck. Her body twitched violently.
I squeezed her hand and whispered, “You played a good game. You should be proud of yourself.”
I thought she might spit at me.
Instead, she managed a tiny smile and weakly squeezed my hand back.
Eventually, the twitching slowed as the poison worked its way through her bloodstream and her body began to surrender to it. Finally, she stopped moving altogether, frozen in place with her blue eyes wide and glassy.
A cannon fired.
I stepped back so they could take her body away.
I watched as she floated up into the sky, paying her one final respect before turning back toward the woods.
I meant what I said.
She should be proud.
In another life, maybe Lilly’s the one walking out of this arena.