Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns the hunger games.

Because stars are so far away it takes minutes, hours, thousands of years for their light to reach us. A star could have died several lifetimes before us and we would never know. We still see evidence of their existence even after they're gone.

I feel that it's the same with people. There's an empty seat at the table and a room absent of life opposite mine. There's a boy shaped void. What I see will only scratch the surface. His family will notice my fellow tributes absence keenly. Perhaps though they have already filled the void that his presence left behind. Life goes on. In Twelve nobody has time to let grief linger, there are always mouths to feed and work to be done. Well, most people.

I watch the night sky from the window of the main carriage, draped across the sofa which is a shade of blue I've never seen before.

I have no thoughts, I just watch the scattering of light above me like table salt flung upon coal dust.

Only when Haymitch stumbles drunkly in to the coffee table, sending a set of pristinely arranged glass tumblers crashing to the floor, do I tear my eyes away.

He collapses down on the sofa, leaving the mess for the avoxes.

I know he wants to ask, I know all the victors do. What did snow say? What sadistic punishment has he concocted for you to suffer?

But they don't.

I speak not a word on it and they reply in kind.

Haymitch holds out a handful of pills like he did only a few short hours ago and it's not until he's helped me in to bed and shut out that stars that I think of the meeting in the presidents lair.

Behind the hulking wooden doors is an office deceptively simple but elegant in design. Cream panelled walls paired with rich dark garnet drapes hanging at the windows behind the antique looking desk. A patterned rug takes up almost the whole floor of the room leaving a border of dark polished wood at the edges.

Not the lavish opulence I was expecting.

As I approach the leader of our country, president Snow goes back to reading and signing his papers.

Left to wait for his attention my mind starts to wander.

I wonder if he'll congratulate me in winning. I imagine him with a shark like grin, handing me a ballon that suddenly turns into my fellow tributes head which he then pops, blood splattering all over me. I imagine him him raising Prim and my mother from the dead and holding them hostage until I slip up and he kills them all over again. I imagine him actually saying the words congratulations and I wonder if he gains the pieces of soul I loose when I remember all I had to do to hear that and I wonder how much more of my soul he will take. I imagine-

"Ahem"

My eyes snap to his. The documents the president was previously occupied with lay neatly stacked in front of him.

"Congratulations Katniss, you've done your district proud."

I don't say anything. My future has already been decided and nothing that spills past my lips can change that. Instead I exercise the only control I have. Silence.

I can see him evaluating me and wonder if I'm found lacking or enough. Then I wonder which is worse. He doesn't give any indication of either though, he stays the same. Unmoving, unrelenting, unending just like the cruel dictator citizens with eyes can see.

"Victors are seen as commodities in the Capitol, the strongest , most beautiful and only ever the best of what the districts have to offer. People would literally sell their mothers just to have a victor for the night.

But even a ravaged one such as you brings in a fair price."

He lets his words settle like slow release poison. Slowly lapping in wisps curling around my arms, whispering along my skin, killing me both inside and out. Its leisurely drifting in to my lungs ready for kill order, ready to choke my heart and squeeze. It owns me and I know it and it knows it and we're both just waiting.

I slur to haymitch as I chemically drift from the waking world.

"He wants me to play."

A.N Sorry for the long wait guys. Just a short chapter, I hope you like it.