A/N: This is my own head cannon, I always thought Fox face was a interesting character and I know she was smart enough not to eat those berries by mistake.

Disclaimer: I do not own "The Hunger Games" I'm just visiting around with them.

I always knew it would be something small and inconvenient that would get me in the end. It's interesting, how something as simple as a little purple berry can change your life.

I never thought about it much, mostly because I had never thought I would stop running and thinking ahead long enough to think about it. But today I did stop running. I did stop thinking, and I realized that I didn't care like I always thought I would. Like I know I should.

I shut my eyes and knelt before the pile of nightlock berries that I had stolen from the blond boy. I remembered the words of my grandmother, the last living relative and friend that I had. I remember her soft yet sure voice as she whispered in my ear and as she hugged me, in what would be her final goodbye, the night before the reaping. The night before she died.

I could feel her withered hand as it stroked my hair and could still see the serious light in her faded, green eyes as they fastened onto mine like a mirror image.

"Remember, my red robin, not all victories are worth winning, for there are some that, if you win, you will never be the same and you can never go back. And you realize you never won at all." She had paused for a few seconds and gripped my hand, and it felt like she was giving me the key to a door that concealed the greatest treasure in all the world.

"Sometimes losing is the only way to win the last move, for one death can mean more than many survivors."

Tears began to fill her eyes and my image in them washed away in the terrible truth that she had revealed to me in her last words.

"There is never shame in winning the real game, for there are many who never realize what they are really playing for because they never took the time to learn the rules."

I didn't understand those words at first, and did not know what to do with the key she had given me. I had always though that winning was never an option in the Hunger Games or at anything I did in life.

You just always did what you had to win, to survive. To keep your bag of tricks close, to be just one step ahead of the others. Always thinking, always planning. Eyes open. Always wearing your poker face, even to the last stand.

I remembered getting up that morning of the reaping day and finding that my grandmother had died in her sleep. The night had stolen her breath and the tolls of the dark years had stopped her heart. The only light left about her was the glint of the red in her hair that was not quiet covered all the way by the blanket of grey.

I realized that day, on the train ride to the capital; that the Games would not be worth winning if you have nothing to go back to and had no one to win them for. That if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.

The Game could be played anyway I wanted now, and I could decide the way I would end. I just had to hold on until the right time, the time that would matter the most. The time when people would stop in the streets and pay attention.

And play I did, but all games must come to an end. If they didn't, you would get tired of playing.

I'm so tired of running and I know there is no chance for me, not with four of the strongest tributes left, and now that the star-crossed lovers have found each other again and all odds are in their favor, whether they know it are not.

There is one thing I have learned in my life by learning from the fall of others. No matter how smart you are, there will always be someone smarter, and they will always catch you. Death would hide you with second chances for a little while and you grow used to it, but out of nowhere it will drop you when you least expect it.

The last joke always being on you.

I could feel my tears falling, mixing in with the dirt that streaked my face. I wasn't really sure how I felt about it, I wanted to stay, but I know... I guess I have always known even before the Games, that the odds no matter how many times I stacked them, would never be in my favor.

I would never have a happy ending.

I let my tears come, even though I wanted to wish them away, for I had never been one for tears. But I know no one else will cry for me, so I suppose I have a perfect right to cry for myself, just this one time.

I listened to the wind, my ears straining to hear someone call my name, to plead with me that it would all be alright and I don't have to do this. I listened for that voice crying out to me that there was another way. That we could win, that we would win. That we could go back home and it would be as if the Games had never happened and it was all a bad dream.

But no one called my name. Even the trees were silent. I had no one, no one to plead for me, to stand beside me and to be my advocate. It was just me. Tired, tear-stained me.

The only bright light on my horizon that I could see now was the handful of berries lying before me and a boy who had unknowingly had given me a key to a death that seemed like a second chance at life.

To be free of my fear filled past, my blood stained present and a future - if I ever had a chance of one- of a life of a puppet controlled by bloodied strings that would direct my every move for the rest of my grey filled days.

And I know if you catch a robin and put it in a cage, it will forget its song and its fire will go out and the only thing left of it would be a pile of ash in the bottom of the cage.

"I'm sorry...so sorry," I whispered, looking up at the sun that was setting. It seemed to be trying to hide its face from me, as if it also knew my fate.

"I tried... I tried so hard, but I can't do it, not anymore, not by myself."

"I'm not like them, the other tributes. I don't have a reason and I can't find one and I have no one to help me… there isn't anyone left for me, and I can't try to pretend to escape death any longer… I have run out of chances and I'm out of tricks."

"I'm just too tired to care anymore."

My tears choked my voice into a whisper, and I laid my head in my hands.

I thought of my grandmother, her sad pale green eyes looking at me and I knew she would understand. That she would forgive me. Wishing me the all the best, and longing for me to find peace.

I had cheated death so many times during the Games and the many years of my life before the Games. I always wondered how I would die, what it would be like. If I would die fighting, or if I would let myself hesitate for a for seconds and it would be over in the blink of an eye.

Every time a chance to die would come up, I would always think to myself here it is, this is my chance. But something would stop me, would always interfere. And I would walk away feeling disappointed, and would think to myself maybe next time.

I'm not a stranger to death. I'm very well acquainted with it, seeing it has taken away everyone I have ever cared about. I could always tell when it almost caught me, oh so closely it would brush by, and it always left a shadowed promise in my mind. A whispered promise that, whenever I found a way to slip through its fingers- that it would catch up to me and would make the time it did catch me all the worse.

I looked up from my tear-soaked hands and faced the nightlock again, the last rays of the setting sun glinted off of them, giving them a soft glow of invitation. Maybe these berries would be my last trick, getting myself out of a death I deserved.

I knew that these berries would be my only chance at having a peaceful and somewhat kind death, not that I deserved one, not by any means. Not one that I had seen many of the other tributes die.

I knew I didn't deserve this grace but it seemed like death was offering it to me, knowing that this was my last card to lay down, that my time was up, and that I should accept its final hand. Taking out of my pocket the key that my grandmother knew I would need, and laying it down on the table along with my last card to unlock the door that held my ending. Truly understanding what my grandmother had meant in those whispered words.

For I know now, that I'd rather win by dying my way, than to lose by living the Capitol's way.

Because if I did live, and survived the Games somehow, I would always be dead inside and there would never be a way of going back. It would be terrible to go through life knowing you were dead, but that you were made to live.

My grandmother's words echoed in my head and I realized my surviving the Hunger Games was not meant to be. Sometimes, winning is cheating, and sometimes the people with the best stories are the ones who never get a happy ending.

I just hoped now that someone would remember me enough to tell my story.

I laid down my bag of tricks that I had carried with me since I was old enough to run and I picked up the berries. I wondered if anyone would remember my name.

I could imagine what they were seeing now on the screen. A small, red-haired girl with a tear-stained face, the girl who had outwitted the impossibilities of the Hunger Games and who had schemed her way out of so many traps and dire situations and now she was kneeling before a small pile of purple berries like they held the key to the universe. Like they were her greatest challenge out of the entire Games.

My fingers trembled as they gathered the nightlock; their soft coolness caressed my skin. They turned into a grey and violet rainbow in my hands as fresh tears, now shed out of relief that I don't have to keep fighting alone, rained down upon them.

The burden that had weighed on me all my life slipped off my back, and I felt as if I had been given wings. I dearly hoped my death would make a difference like my grandmother had said.

Maybe the girl with the bow and her companion, maybe they would notice and remember me and maybe they would be different and not just see me as a dead tribute but see me as what I was and not what I had been made into.

"There are always different ways to win," I whispered. "You just have to know the rules of the game."

As I swallowed the berries, the last thing I heard was the wind whispering my name and my fading eyes caught the flash of a red robin as it flew in to the horizon.