This is it guys - the final chapter!

Liz xxx

Chapter 30 - The Finale Of The Games

Immediately everybody panicked. The explosion hadn't hit anybody but we knew where they were targeted. The base. The Gamemakers had kept to Puck's request and were now destroying every trace of the camp – including their weapons. Knowing we had to run I stilled my anger for Puck, gripping onto Blaine's hand and hurtling towards the forest.

The adrenalin pumping through my veins actually made me run faster – Blaine kept my pace and a million thoughts were running through my head. Was this the end now? Was the final battle finally here? I was trying to decide what to do, my hands fumbling for my knife in my pocket, trying to defend myself, when we suddenly came face to face with the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

A giant pink bug.

My mind flicked back to the interviews. Being pushed out onto the stage – forced to fix everything to save the lives of 24 people. They had asked me about Tina's 'seizures' – and what had I said? Well – the Gamemakers certainly had a good memory.

The bug in front of us was a huge praying mantis – that explained the clicking from before. Its huge pincers snapped together and I almost screamed, before I realised no sound would come out. Turning to Blaine I saw his face white with fear – we both looked a each other and knew there was only one way to go.

To the cornucopia.

As our feet pounded across the ground I could hear the sound of the approaching bugs getting nearer. There must have been bees – the buzzing was unmistakeable. A giant pink centipede blocked our path one way so we were forced to detour, me hacking with my knife at a leg that almost touched me as we passed. The cornucopia was in sight between the trees – it seemed miles away but we kept on plugging forward, my lungs burning with each gasping breath. The blood in my head pumped so fast it almost clouded my vision but I kept on going and kept my hand clasped to Blaine's. We would not leave each other.

When we reached the open space of the original clearing I saw bugs descending on the space from everywhere. Even from a distance they seemed massive – giant woodlouse and dung beetles and ants. All of them seemed intent on heading towards us, so we dug our heels in and ran again. Blaine was heading towards the cornucopia itself, obviously hoping that we would have some kind of shelter there. It was our last chance – the forest was dead to us now. I thought about Santana's body – if she had already been squashed or if they were eating her, but pushed it away to concentrate on propelling myself forward. When we were within 100m I saw the figures of Puck, Quinn and Rachel reaching the cornucopia. Puck seemed to have taken a considerable bite to his shoulder but still managed to haul himself up the side of the structure. Were they climbing on the roof? As they scrabbled to pull themselves up Blaine tugged us in the other direction, heading towards the opposite side of the building. There was a giant spider only metres away – huge jaws opening ready to strike and incapacitate us. I screamed but we reached the building – Blaine jumped up, pulling me with him, and I let go of his hand to grip onto the metal tiles.

"SAM!" I could hear the spider behind me, the snapping of its jaws. Surely the cornucopia wouldn't protect us – surely the bugs would just climb up and devour us. I was about to give up, to let myself die, when arms suddenly yanked me forward and I tumbled forward onto the sloping roof. There was a strange sound, like something hitting an object and then rebounding. Turning round I saw the spider that had been about to kill me staggering backwards – there was a force field surrounding the cornucopia. Once you were inside it – nothing could harm you. If you were out of it…

"Blaine!" I suddenly said, panic ripping through me at the thought of him not being there. Then I realised he was above me – that he had been the one to pull me from the clutches of the spider. He had saved me again.

"I'm ok! I'm ok!" Blaine said back, almost unable to talk. For a second we lay there on the roof, exhausted and spent, but then we remembered the three other people on the other side.

"Come on, let's go."

The cornucopia roof tiles were surprisingly strong. From my spot on the starting podiums it had looked shiny and slippy – now it seemed rusty and easy to grip on. Maybe the arena had deteriorated like we had. As we ran up our side I wondered what would be there to greet us – if Puck would be waiting to give us a swift death. To be honest I welcomed it – this was the final battle after all. When we reached the top however there was nobody waiting for us. Puck and Quinn were the first ones I saw – fighting with each other. They didn't have any weapons but were beating each other to death with tiles they had ripped up from the roof – Puck's face was littered with slashes and Quinn's leg was gushing blood. They were screaming at each other – both completely wild. After all of their pretences – Puck's volunteering to protect the girl he 'couldn't live without', their doting interviews and the tears shed over their heartache – they were murdering each other. Quinn slashed Puck across the chest, screaming something I couldn't hear but sounded like final words. Then they both hurtled towards each other, bodies crunching together so violently that they lost their balance, tumbling down off the roof and through the force field. The pink bugs descended and the sound of ripping and tearing mixed with the screams, until two canons sounded.

Blaine and I turned to each other. For a second I suddenly doubted everything. Puck and Quinn had set up a lie – and obvious one, but not to the public. Careers were good at lying, They had shown that when they killed Santana. Had Blaine been lying? It had been a good one – very convincing – I had even started to join in with it myself. But had this just all been a rouse to gain my trust and then kill me? Blaine's whole body had tensed. I moved my hand towards my knife and he shouted out.

"Sam, no!" I was about to draw it out when suddenly another voice cause me to spin around. Rachel was staggering up the side of the roof. The bald patches on her head made her look deranged – she had a crazy look in her eyes and had also ripped up one of the tiles to use as a weapon. Blaine still had his bow and arrows strapped to his back – I was torn between defending myself from her and him. When she reached the top though, she looked at her District 1 partner instead of me.

"So Blaine…" she said, her voice drawled through her exhaustion. "This is the end."

"Sam, you don't have to worry." Blaine replied, for some reason completely ignoring what was happening and instead trying to convince me that I was going to be ok. "I promise I won't hurt you."

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Rachel's shriek made us both bend down and cover our ears. Immediately I returned to my alert position again, her having passed me to stand face to face with her old ally. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH HIM?" A hand jerked out to point accusingly at me. I saw that her skin was shrivelled and rotting – obviously the medicine hadn't worked fast enough. She was deteriorating.

"YOU LEFT US! YOU LEFT US ALL BEHIND AND KILLED SEB AND SUGAR. FOR HIM?"

"I didn't want to be a Career anymore." Blaine replied, surprisingly calm considering what he was facing. Every so often his eyes would flick to mine to see if I was ok, but I gave him nothing in response. "I wasn't meant to be one."

"OF COURSE YOU WERE! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WITH ME! WE'RE ENGAGED BLAINE!" The word hit me like a bullet. Engaged? Blaine and Rachel had been engaged? Blaine looked like he had been found out – the guilt in his gaze towards me made me speechless. Why had he not told me? How could he have left out such an important detail as that?"

"I never wanted to be engaged to you Rachel! I was forced! I never loved you!" Suddenly it all clicked. The strangeness of the reaping, how it had seemed to be fixed, Blaine's smug smiles through training and interviews – the way he had looked at Rachel in the arena and almost been scared, scared that she would survive…

"You set it up." I said, causing Blaine to look at me and Rachel to stare wildly in my direction. "You set up the reaping so that both of you would get picked. So if you survived Rachel would be gone, and if she survived…" He would be dead. Blaine would rather have died than get married to someone he hadn't chosen.

My friend looked at me desperately – his mouth trying to say a thousand things but nothing coming out. Rachel turned back, her expression still wild.

"YOU SET THIS UP?" I wanted it not to be true – I wanted Blaine to say no so I could believe that his time with me had not all been a lie, a reason to escape. But he nodded his head. Rachel screamed, launching herself towards him, teeth bared. A bow and arrow was whipped out, something fired into the air. She tumbled to the ground and slid halfway down the cornucopia roof, an arrow embedded into her skull.

The arena was silent. Even the bugs had stopped making noise – Quinn and Puck completely devoured. Rachel's slumped and rotting body lay before us, the crazed look still in her eyes. An example of what the Games did to people, what they turned into.

I stepped backwards. Blaine looked broken, his whole posture slumping with desperation.

"You lied to me. I said plainly. His face crumbled.

"Yes." He replied, before immediately continued. "But only about that! Everything else was true!"

"All the things you told me? About caring about me? About how you felt towards the other Careers?"

"YES!" My mind was fighting itself. Every animal instinct inside of me told me to attack – Blaine was lying, he had been this whole time. He would kill me the second we got close. The other side of me – the human side – told me to believe him.

"Sam, you have to believe me – I did set up the reaping to get away from Rachel – I was miserable, I wanted to die. But then when I saw you on that screen…" His speech faltered, tears were pooling in his eyes. "It was like my life changed. Like I finally had something to dream about, to live for." The arena was still silent. I wondered what this looked like to the thousands of people watching – if they were all glued to their seats. "I knew I had to keep up the act, I had to stay with the Careers for a while else they'd kill me. I checked the sky every night, praying not to see your face, wishing you had come with us. But then as soon as I knew I was safe, I broke free. I tried to kill them all for us but could only get two – I wanted to find you, to know you were safe. I was so worried you would be gone, that I would have failed to protect you. And then I found you…" Nothing made sense. My brain was muddled, unable to process anything that was being said. The tears on Blaine's face were dripping onto the floor – I realised I was crying too.

"If you think I'm lying – if you think I don't care about you – then you can kill me now. But I'm not going to hurt you." The bow and arrows were thrown over the edge of the cornucopia. The pink bugs stirred, but when they realised it was nothing edible, fell silent again. Blaine held out his arms, completely opening himself up to me. Had Blaine used me? Had I used Blaine? Had I fabricated feelings in my mind – made him believe I felt the same way so he would help me? Had I used him as a tool to help me survive? The two sides of me fought – screaming at each other so I was almost in pain. Then I dropped my knife and ran forward.

Our bodies slammed together, Blaine wrapping his arms around me and digging his face into my shoulder. I did the same, feeling my body shaking as I sobbed. Relief washed over me, relief and comfort. For a few seconds we stayed like that, not saying anything, just gripping onto each other. Then Blaine pulled away and took hold of my face, kissing me deeply. I responded, squeezing out every last piece of energy I had to kiss him back. How could I ever have doubted him. He was right here, with me. He had always been.

When we broke away I realised how exhausted we both were. We could barely stand, so slumped to the floor, still clasped onto each other. I pressed my forehead to Blaine's, not wanting to lose contact with him ever again.

"Blaine..." I whispered.

"Sam…" He replied. "Sam I…"

"I'm sorry." I said suddenly, feeling like I was going to cry again.

"For what?" Blaine asked, hand cupping my face.

"For doubting you." Suddenly the sounds of speakers crackling filled the arena. We both looked up, expecting to see the face of some Capitol official.

"Congratulations Sam and Blaine." Claudius Templesmith said cheerily, his voice echoing around us. "You are the final two remaining tributes in the 74th Hunger Games." This was strange. The announcer only usually addressed the final winning tribute. For a second I wondered if there was about to be a rule change, if somehow someone had spoken down from the heavens and saved us both.

"But remember," he continued, still sounding cheerful, "there can only be one winner!" The realisation hit. They weren't helping us. They were reminding us. One of us still had to die.

The Gamemakers had probably expected one of us to kill the other right now – I assumed they'd thought my rage over being lied to by Blaine would have driven me to drive a knife through his heart, or Blaine would finally have revealed his true colours and I would have joined Rachel strewn on the side of roof. But we were both still here.

I looked over at Blaine to see him staring at me desperately. I didn't want to die. I hadn't from the moment I had been selected. My interview at the stadium had been all about surviving – doing it for my family. My family who were watching me right now. Was Mother baying for Blaine's blood? Was Stacey screaming for me to stab him? I was the only one with a weapon now – it being behind me, but still. It would take two seconds to grab it. But I didn't want to kill Blaine. I didn't want anyone to kill him. I didn't want him to die.

"Sam…" Blaine said. For a second I thought he was begging me not to kill him, but then I saw his hand reach to rip up a roof tile and realised what he was doing.

"NO!" Knocking his hand away the tile went skittering down, almost falling off the roof. Blaine shook his head.

"I have to do this Sam."

"No you don't! All you ever did was protect me! I will not have you do it again!"

"You can't die Sam! I won't let you die!"

"What did I ever do for you? I didn't help you at all! Let me do this one thing for you!" I grabbed hold of my own tile, suddenly resolving to kill myself, to end the misery that my life had become, that the Games had created. Blaine grabbed my hand and stopped me.

"Oh but Sam." He said, his voice gentle and soft. "You did do something for me." Shuffling forward he cupped my chin with his hand, brushing away the dirt that had ingrained itself there, a smile forming on his lips. "You taught me how to live again... You taught me how to trust, how to care about someone, how to feel like someone cared about you..." As he stared at me with emotional, caring eyes I felt my bottom lip trembling and his fingers ghost across it. "You taught me how to love." Our lips met. It was a chaste kiss, nothing like the ones we had had before in the heat of the moment. But it was filled with more love than you could ever imagine.

"Blaine I…" I went to reply, before a choked sound filled my ears and I was paralyzed. During our kiss, without me even noticing, Blaine had gently removed the roof tile from my hand, brought it towards his chest, and stabbed himself in the heart.

My world imploded. Blaine fell backwards, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, and I lurched out to catch him, pulling his body in towards me.

"BLAINE!" His eyes returned, focusing on me. A smile crept onto his lips and he lifted his hand up weakly to touch my face.

"Sam…" He whispered, his voice faint. I was losing him.

"BLAINE!" I screamed. My head jerked up towards the sky, searching for a camera. "DO SOMETHING HAYMITCH! DO SOMETHING!" It was too late for a sponsor package now. Blaine's body shuddered in my arms – I clutched him to me, just like I had done with Marley, powerless to stop anything. My own body shook with sobs, tears falling down like a river and screams spilling from my mouth. I felt Blaine trying to talk, trying to comfort me – even in his dying seconds. Then he went still and the canon sounded.

"Congratulations, Sam Evans!"

The whirr of hovercraft was suddenly above me. I looked up and screamed, seeing ladders descend down with people hanging onto them. The wind blew around us, me and the dead body of Blaine – the one person I had cared about more than anybody else in the world. As the ladders touched the cornucopia roof the people jumped down and headed towards me – they wanted to separate me and Blaine.

"NO!" I screamed, clutching Blaine tighter and shielding us against them. "NO!" Hands gripped hold of my arms, fingers trying to pry mine away from Blaine. I screamed and fought – my last fight in the arena – but I was exhausted so they overpowered me quickly. As Blaine's limp body was taken away from me I screamed louder, my body convulsing with grief. I suddenly went to grab my own roof tile but more hands hauled me upwards and forced me to grip onto the ladder, where I froze in the hovercraft light.

It felt like a nightmare. The limp, lifeless body of Blaine rose up into the air - like he was being taken to heaven. As I watched him go it felt like my soul was being ripped out of my body, that I would never fully be myself again. The people around me acted as if nothing had happened, signalling up to the control hovercraft and then waiting for me to be lifted up as well.

"Poor guy." One of the men said, speaking to his friend as I self-destructed in the frozen coma I had been forced into. "He won these Hunger Games by caring."

He was right. I had won the Games by caring.

I was the victor of the 74th Hunger Games.

The End

What a ride. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone that has read, commented on and supported this story. It has been my first crossover fic, and I am immensely proud of it. All the positive feedback has only made it even more clear that this is the avenue I would like my writing to go down.

But the story is not over. I am already 5 chapters into a sequel - I will being posting it very soon. For this I need your help.

I have already come up with several original characters, but am leaving a few to you guys. Who do you think deserves to be in the story? They can be from any District - preferably a past winner of the Games. If I like any of your suggestions they will be included in the plot.

Many thanks again, I love you all!

Liz xxx