Dove (14).

District Ten Female.

Dove blinks hard against the bright light of the sun as the platforms lock into place. Her heart hammers wildly in her chest, almost hyperventilating as she tries to keep her calm. Her mentor told her not to go to the cornucopia but glancing over at Vera three plates to her left, she realises that her ally is going to run into the fray anyway. If they're going to go then it might as well be together; Vera might be able to survive without any supplies, or even without her, but Dove won't survive without Vera.

She's lived a life so different to Vera's, and the training days were barely useful when Dove was learning from scratch. She'd never even made a fire before in her life; something that made Vera's face contort in surprise when she'd confessed it. If alone in the arena, Dove wouldn't last two minutes. She'd walk into a trap, or eat something poisonous. Do something stupid; something utterly preventable. Vera wouldn't.

Dove knows that District Eight isn't the most civilised of places—and, quite frankly, neither is District Ten—but the stories that the red-headed girl would tell her were right out of a book of nightmares. Living on the streets, starving, no family to even care about her if she went to sleep on one of the really cold nights and didn't wake up. It was a far cry from Dove's upbringing.

"Nobody even came to say goodbye." The girl, two years younger but so much wiser, had told her nonchalantly as they were constructing a shelter. "But, hey, at least some of the Capitolites will be sad when I die."

"I'll be sad." Dove had said without thinking. Then, quickly."Well. If I'm alive I will be. But... I doubt that."

Dove is so caught up in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice the countdown has ticked down straight away. It's not until someone slams into her side, knocking her from her pedestal that she realises that the Hunger Games have begun, and she's made possibly the biggest mistake of her short life.

It's not just anyone who's taken advantage of her absentmindedness and tackled her; it's the boy from District Four.

He presses a knee into her stomach as he straightens up, a guttural cry erupting from Dove's throat as pain courses throughout her body. it makes the boy above her grin as his head whips around, eyes darting from item to item on the floor a few meters in front of them.

"No weapons close." He announces. "Shame, really. I wasn't planning on having to use my bare hands."

He shifts off of her and for a moment, all Dove can feel is relief. But she's not out of this yet, not able to catch her breath before a hand is wrapping itself around her throat and pulling her upwards from the dirt. Knowing what's about to happen, Dove screws her eyes shut and tries to think of anything but this. Anything other than the crushing realisation that she's going to die, really soon, too soon, letting down her district, her parents, Vera…

She thinks of home. Of the ranch that her parents owned with the big bunkhouses for their workers, and the stables where she'd head every morning to ride Dusty. Of the hearty dinners and the games of tag she'd play with the ranch workers' kids her age. Her closet of summer dresses and winter coats, the dress up box in the corner of her room filled with plastic tiaras that she's way too attached to to get rid of even though she hasn't touched any of them in years.

The first slam against the pedestal jolts her out of it, pain radiating from the back of her head. She screams, calling out for her dad because it's the first name that comes to mind and she's missed him all week. The second slam rips a strangled scream from her throat and a cry for help.

By the third slam, Dove is starting to fade. She can't remember what home looks like anymore. Can't even remember where she is now. All she knows is that she's scared. It hurts. But it'll be over soon. It has to be over soon.

The fourth slam, for whatever reason, brings back a little bit of clarity. Dove can't picture the ranch anymore, but she knows it existed. So, as the back of her head meets the pedestal again, she tries extra hard to remember what it was like. She's not even counting how many times her head meets the edge of the platform anymore as the phantom taste of one of her mother's bread rolls fills her mouth and non-existent grass tickles her calves.

The boy from Four has thrown her against the pedestal eight times before he finally decides to get up and move on, leaving her there, the back of her head caved in as she lies in a pool of blood starting to soak into the dry dirt.

The boy from four moves on.

Dove's family never do.

24th Place.

AN: this is just a little thing I'm writing to keep me going through my dissertation. A little stress free project that I can just vibe with and stuff. I want to try and update this daily, the goal being that I write a POV every night to unwind after staring at my laptop in Academic Mode for hours, but we'll see if that ends up happening or not.

Also, this is no way is foreshadowing anything that might happen in my SYOT. I'm just writing it 'cause I thought it would be cool, and I want another project to focus on other than OFitG because sometimes you just gotta take a break from writing the same story, you know? It's still going ahead, and I'm still working on it, but I fancied a change so here we are.

Thanks for reading! :)

-In Writing.