A silver parachute drifts slowly to the ground. A large box is attached with a note from mentor Glitter Rosseau, mentor Victory Carter, and escort Cress Clearwater-Steel. Inside is a shield and 1 rubber band. The note reads: “It's almost over. Fight. Win.”
He took a deep breath and tried to recall how many canons reached his ears in the five minutes he sincerely doubted he could get through. The count, mechanical and disorganized, seemed to reach no stable end, and he found himself running to the building he had slept in every night since he got into the arena. He wasn’t running from the danger, because from the way he parted ways with Maxine, he doubted that she represented a true threat to him, especially given the state she was in. He was running, genuinely agitated and frightened by the arena for the first time in his life, in hopes that the place he was most familiar with would assure him the slightest feeling of safety until he calmed down. He burst in, without caring about any other tributes predisposed to hiding in the same building, and looked around for something he couldn’t quite place at the moment, until he understood what was missing.
The building itself unsettled him now, and he found nothing in it of the calmness he was looking for when he decided to head in its direction. If anything, the thought that that was the place he fell asleep in, the place they took him out of before placing him in that nightmare worthy cell, poked holes in his stomach. He no longer knew what to do with his hands, strangely nervous and agitated, both so unlike him that it made him shudder.
Still hours away from dawn, he couldn’t quite place the time, but as soon as he heard the Capitol anthem play in his ears, he knew that it wasn’t the regular time for the death announcements. Yet, after an event as the one they had gone through, it was only understandable that they had dead tributes to count on the sky. First, Briar’s too familiar face flooded the ceiling, blue, and, even without caring about her, he forgot how to breathe in shock for a moment. Wyatt went next, and he remembered, even if temporarily, what indifference tasted like, but seeing Amphora among the dead ones caused that lack of feeling he found certainty and salvation in to falter away once again. He didn’t actively care about her, no, but he got used to her and she did remind him of Marietta, his sister, to the point where he could have made an effort and helped her meet a death less brutal than the one she must have gone through. The missing item of the sector three building turned out to be the chocolate haired girl who didn’t know how to speak to him without risking to upset and could do anything with her hands and a pointed object. It was, more than any personal feelings, the end of something he got used to and it felt strange. He looked at the faces of all the fallen tributes, making a mental list of those who still hadn’t been taken out and wondering if, now that Briar was gone, the odds really were in his favor. He didn’t want to think too much about his chances, not to jinx it - like Marietta was always saying - but, for the first time, there were butterflies in his stomach. He had to try.
As if reading his mind, the noise that marked the landing of a parachute distracted him, making him turn around and open the door of the building only to catch the object he was starting to get used to. That time, the note went first, and reading, hope rose in him as well. People from other districts seemed to be supportive of him and even the escort who didn’t have him at heart last time they spoke seemed hopeful. The note had a warmth he had to fight for, Lucius told himself. “I want to,” he muttered, noticing the spear he had lost the other night and grabbing it tightly in his hand. “I’ll try to.”
