TWELVE

A FRIEND

Talia shifted awake, she jumped, her eyes adjusting to the world around her, immediately she feels the cold, her tree offered no warm and she's been warned by Finnick in her mentoring not to start a fire as the smoke would practically be an invitation for come and kill her.

She folded her arms, hugging herself as she looked at the ground below, her backpack stuffed behind her and her knife slotted onto her belt. She couldn't see much in the darkness of the night, but she could see that any footprints she'd have left in the snow were now gone, more snow had since fallen.

Just as she begins to settle back down she hears a scream, followed by the boom of the cannon, and she sits bolt upright, the rope around her waist holds her tight to the tree and she looks around as best she can, and then she sees it, not too far away the glowing ambers of a fire, 5 people surround it- they must have killed whoever had settled there and just by the outlining of his figure, she knows Ethan is one of them. Only 11 other tributes now.

She watches as they set up camp, sharing the food from their backpacks, and Talia listens as best she can to the conversation- strategy for the following day mostly, their plan is to double back to the cornucopia and ensure that they gather everything they can before they head for the mountain.

Talia wonders why on earth they would wish to venture up the mountain, but as she thought about it, it did make sense- caves would offer a much safer haven than any forrest could, and if they had high ground, people were less likely to venture to find them. The careers were in this for the long run.

As Talia listened she learned their names, District 1's male and female were named Marcus and Diamond and District 2's male and female were named Mason and Samantha. They spoke of little else other than who they wanted to individually kill, she heard Darius's name on Ethan's lips, and poor little Archer's name on Marcus's, which meant he wasn't involved in the blood bath, and that made Talia relieved.

"What about the girl from your district?" Diamond asks Ethan as he bites into some beef jerky he must have found in his backpack.

"Talia? I want her to myself," Ethan says and the words made Talia's blood run cold.

"Whats your problem with her?" Samantha questions, looking through the flames to Ethan opposite her.

"She thinks she's something special, she thinks Finnick Odair is the world," Ethan spits and Talia's eyes narrow, he had no idea.

"Did they...Have a thing?" Diamond asks, "He's so handsome,"

"Probably," Ethan says, rolling his eyes, "He often went into her room with her- who knows what they got up to,"

Talia felt her blood boiling now, she wanted to clamber down this tree and kill them all, but she knew she's probably only manage to kill one of them before the rest took her out. Eventually they all settled down to sleep, and Talia did too, though she never quite fell into a deep sleep, any noise would wake her, and she'd check over her backpack and ropes and blade again, before checking over the career camp and nodding back off.

It was dawn when Talia awoke properly, unable to force herself to sleep any longer. She looked down and saw the careers were still asleep, a good time to leave if only she could. Talia knew that walking along the snow covered floor would leave footprints, and the pack of tributes could easily hunt her down. As she sat in the tree, she retied her ponytail and undid the rope around her waist and tucked it away into her backpack. If she didn't get food soon, she'd starve. She flexed her freezing cold fingers and her toes- if she didn't starve, she'd die of frostbite.

She had to get somewhere safe enough to make a fire, warm up, and move on quickly. She makes sure everything is in her backpack and begins her descent, deciding to risk them tracking her, if she stayed in the tree any longer she feared she'd never move her limbs again. She lowered herself to the ground and glanced around towards the camp, their fire still burning, smoke billowing into the air. Fools, she thought silently, anyone could see that and have a field day killing them. As she stood there, she thought about how easy it would be to kill them all right now, in this moment, but the crunch of twigs behind her made her force her back against the tree, she was trapped between whoever was behind the giant tree, and the careers ahead of her.

She holds her breath as the footsteps get louder, and her eyes widen when she sees not a who, but a what. A giant white bear lumbers through the snow towards the careers, her mouth red with blood and her claws stained scarlet too, it seemed she'd already enjoyed a meal- but was it a human she'd killed or another animal. Talia believed it to be an animal, she'd heard no other cannons over night or this morning.

The giant beast sniffs the air and she clamps a hand over her mouth, as if it might help, as the bear keeps walking towards the camp. Slowly, Talia moves to her left, still pressed close to the tree and she moves so she's at least got her body behind the tree, and she crouches to watch the events unfold.

The bear roars and Diamond screams at the sight of it, it lifts up onto its hind legs and slams its huge paws down onto Marcus, ripping his throat out before he can even attempt to kill the creature.

Ethan scrambles to his feet, grabbing his weapon, a mace and he helps Diamond to her feet. Samantha grabs her backpack and starts running, abandoning the others. Mason grabs his spear and holds its point towards the bear, but the bear swings his paw and the spear is thrown away, landing near Talia's tree. Mason grabs Samantha's abandoned axe and throws it at the bear, hitting the gorgeous beasts right shoulder, embedding itself. The bear roars in pain, using its jaws to tear the axe from its flesh.

Diamond, Ethan and Mason take off running after Samantha and the bear follows, she's fast for such a huge animal and Talia waits for the coast to be clear before she stands up. Thats when she feels the cool metal against the back of her neck.

"Turn around, slowly," The voice is shaky, almost silent.

She does as shes told and her lips part as she sees him, "Archer,"

"Talia," He breathes, lowering the weapon immediately, "I thought you were one of them,"

"Its just me...I'm so glad you're okay," Talia says and the young boy smiles softly, a pair of wooly gloves on his fingers.

"Did you get those from the cornucopia?" Talia asks and he shakes his head.

"I was gifted them, the parachute came to me while I was asleep and I woke up to it lying next to me," He says and Talia nods, smiling softly.

"I forgot all about sponsors," She breathes, "Anyway, shall we check out this camp?"

"Yeah sure, that...thing was so scary, I heard it rumble past me while I was up in a tree and I just had to follow it...I felt...I felt like it was going to lead me somewhere, and here we are," Archer says, following Talia to inspect the left over camp.

On the floor, Marcus's dead body lay still and cold, a chunk of his neck and shoulder completely missing from the bears vicious bite. As Talia looks at the body the canon booms- 10 remaining, and as she looked at Archer, who was grabbing Diamond's abandoned backpack, she knew it was going to be either her or him. And as she looked at him, she was reminded of her little brother, and she knew it could never be her.

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Thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed!

honestly love Talia smuch like ugh

~lachys-loch
❤️