Living Lies ✜ Hunger Games x Reader

First Day

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games begin!"

As soon as the buzzer goes off, you sprint off the platform and make eye contact with Peeta again, who has taken off into the forest. Satisfied that he followed according to the plan, you dart between the dead bodies and towards the small orange back pack lying on the ground that you spotted just moments earlier. But apparently, you're not the only tribute that has that idea.

A boy, you're not sure what district he's from, reaches for the pack at the same time that you do. He's unarmed, luckily, but the struggle is still hard. You tug hard on the back pack. And he tugs right back. Not only is this a waste of energy—and probably looks incredibly stupid on television—but it leaves both of you completely vulnerable to outside attack. Not that you're worried about him—his death, at this point, would actually be a favor.

As you suspect, somebody has spotted the brawl and wants to take advantage of it by adding to their kill list. A knife flies out of nowhere and strikes the boy fighting with you. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to help you, and whoever threw it is targeting you next.

Looking towards the direction where the knife came from, you spot the girl from District 2, Clove, aiming to throw at you again. Scrambling for the pack, you hold it out in front of you, wincing slightly as the knife strikes the pack and shudder reverberates through your body. Reaching your hand around, you pull the knife out of the pack and sling the bag over your shoulder, taking off away from Clove, glancing back over your shoulder to see that she is temporarily out of knives to throw.

Your (h/c) fishtail whips around your face and settles back on your shoulder again, only to begin bouncing around again—a distracting repetitive motion, you've discovered. As you disappear through the growth, you see a flash of red hair and quickly attempt to dive behind a bush, only to fail. You and Foxface nearly collide, moving in opposite directions, but instead of slamming your heads together, you both stop and stare at each other for a split second. No words, no nods, no body language—for a second you're both determined, frantic underdogs, who have declared an unspoken truce with each other.

A temporary truce, of course.

After the second is up you watch as Foxface dashes back into the forest. When you're sure that she's gone and not just lying in wait, you backtrack towards the Cornucopia, to see how well it's cleared out. You project that it will mainly be cleared out, maybe a few brave tributes—or suicidal ones, you're not quite sure how to separate between the two—left standing or lying in wait for after the Careers are gone. You're one of the brave ones.

When you finally reach the Cornucopia after minutes of backtracking, you station yourself behind some brush and peer out around the edge. Sure enough, as you suspected, the Careers are greedily stuffing their packs, taking as much as they can. And to your extreme delight, a very much alive Peeta is with them.

After a while, it's obvious they think every living tribute left other than them has either cleared away or been killed and have continued to gather supplies. They don't bother to check for stragglers, so relieved, you sit down and carefully and quietly open up the orange back pack.

The insides are, for your circumstances, not exactly disappointing—you were expecting much worse. At first glance, it contains a think, plastic like sleeping bag, a pack of light crackers, a pack of dehydrated looking beef jerky, and a bottle of iodine. Upon further inspection you manage to discover more items in the bag. Next you pull out a little box of wooden matches,—useless since you're not supposed to start a fire and attract attention—a small coil of wire, dark sunglasses, by the looks of it, and finally, a bottle of water. Eagerly you open the bottle, only to find it empty and shut it back up in disappointment.