Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the skyline's broken, you and me, far from belief...

-x-

Stratnyy Timbercase is the pride and joy of this family. We wouldn't have put our name on it if we didn't think so. It's the way our family is recognised. And even if we'd called the business something different, the red cedar dust that we can never fully dig out from beneath our fingernails would still be a dead giveaway to our family name. And I will never, ever, scrub it out. I don't care. I'll wear my cedar with pride.

At this point, it's just who we are. We make things out of cedar. That's all. Other things happen between us - dramas, arguments, reminders of sprinklings of old crime by the odd Stratnyy By Choice - but I only ever got caught up in it by association, because I'm either outside enjoying the world or I'm in the shed with the ear defenders on. And I don't have to help, but I want to and I enjoy it. It's good experience for a life in lumber.

Cedar is beautiful. It's one of those softwoods that can get away with being sold for a bit more than the others, so long as it's finished right. And whether or not that finish includes staining is the worst decision in the world because new red cedar is pretty, full of colourful streaks, but if it's left for too long uncovered it will fade to grey. I decide that today is not the day for such decisions, and turn off the power to the lathe.

What I should be doing, instead of digging deep into a vase with a chisel, is emptying my wardrobe for my Reaping clothes, which are still several sizes too big for me. My aunt bought the suit for me five years ago for my first Reaping insisting I would grow into it. I started by having to roll my blazer sleeves up to my elbows, and then halfway up my wrists, and then I had to ditch the blazer because nothing I did with it looked right. I have never fully undone the tie since the first time my dad tied it for me.

The Stratnyy shed is a small extension to the house. One layer of brick, single glazing, and corrugated metal for a roof. When my dad built it, he almost brought the whole thing down when busting through the side of the house to made a doorway. We put the door together out of cedar of course, which used to be a sunny pink, and now it looks no different to the rest of the world. It even smells like it's on the verge of collapse.

"How's the vase coming on?" asks my dad, when I emerge from the dusty workshop.

"It could be better," I reply, rolling up my apron and shoving it into the overfilled washing basket. It takes half my body weight to get the thing to shut. "I managed to sand the kicks out but the natural edge fell off."

The point of a natural edge vase is to leave the bark on the rim. Unfortunately, bark is stupid, and no matter how pretty it is when it's done, it simply isn't worth the time and effort to look after. It's just another impossible place to get the dust out of. I took the bark off on purpose. Natural edges don't sell as well, anyway. The Capitol never really were into that kind of thing.

"Oh, never mind. Anyway, you'd better get cleaned up, son." He blows a ring of cigarette smoke out of the open kitchen window. "You've got two hours before you need to be at the Justice Building."

"Aren't you coming with me this year? You have to get ready too, you know."

"We'll set off a bit after you. Your mother's got the gas fire to fix and I don't trust her not to burn the house down. Matilda knows what she's doing now."

I down a glass of water to clean my throat of dust before heading upstairs. This will be Matilda's second Reaping, and her Reaping dress actually fits her. It's a modest thing. Long sleeves, long skirt, loose round the waist, collared like a school shirt, and I know she hates it even if she's never expressed such an opinion. On the way up the stairs I spot her sitting on the floor of the living room with Mum, deciphering the manual for the fireplace that's been broken since last year.

"Why are we doing this today?" Matilda sighs.

"For the same reason everybody else still goes to work on Reaping Monday," she replies, nose deep in one of the pages. "If you keep yourself busy, you can't worry yourself into oblivion."

It's cold for July. The thermometer on my windowsill, embedded in stained walnut, says so, and the clouds outside are thick. I was never one of those people who could smell when it's about to rain, or feel the humidity, or know the exact speed of the wind with a lick of a finger. The weather to me is what the ground and the sky are doing, and the ground is dry and the clouds are white so I don't even attempt the blazer.

After getting changed I lose hope of ever growing. My trousers lightly trace the floor and my shirt sleeves still bunch up around my wrists. I spend some time standing around in my room not knowing what to do with myself while I wait until it's time to leave, struggling to decide between all of the ways I could spend my last day in here before I'm taken away to the Capitol and the rest of my life is stolen from me. I always prepare myself for the worst on Reaping Day. I learnt that the hard way once I found out what the Quarter Quell was gonna be.

"Hey! Get down here! What are you doing?"

Sometimes I spend too long picturing my own demise. I snap back into reality and come running downstairs to a frustrated Matilda, who apparently shouted me three times during my trance. We can't just skip or show up late. The Reaping is a compulsory event. A person would have to be dying to get away with not going. Matilda grips my wrist hard and takes us down the wide dirt road towards the centre of District 7. We're lucky enough to live very near. Some citizens are hours away.

"Do you remember what you need to do?" I ask.

"Do you?"

"Of course I do."

It's hard to forget the rules of this game. One boy and one girl are picked from two bowls full of the names of everyone aged twelve to eighteen in every district. The chance of being picked increases with age, and with the amount of tesserae taken. Matilda and I are lucky enough to not have to take any, so our chances are low. Never zero, but low.

The first rule is attendance. Matilda and I sign in with a prick of a finger. Our blood is sampled on a large piece of paper and scanned to prove our identities.

The second rule is to arrange ourselves by age and gender. I give Matilda a smile and a gentle pat on the shoulder before we separate to opposite ends of the town square. I would hug her and tell her how much I love her, because no matter how low our chances are, today may still be the last day we spend together. She never was one for that kind of affection.

The third rule is to quietly wait.

Zor, the escort for District 7, comes to the stage. He looks no happier to be here than last year, or the years before. He said in an interview that he doesn't know why he does this. Probably for the money? He doesn't know, he has no interest in the outcome. Zor has said that everything is pointless in the cosmic scheme of things. He is rude and mean to everybody, including Capitol citizens. "How dare you find enjoyment in the death of innocent children?" he once said, with a smile creeping up on his face that he tried desperately to hide, as if it physically pained him to smile. He loves it, really. If he can't catch death's cold embrace that he so longs for, then sending children to the Hunger Games and watching them suffer must be the next best option for him. So there's no wonder, that when District 7's third victor Jules steps up beside him, he rolls his eyes and sighs.

"Hi Jules," he says into the microphone.

Jules nods and waves to us.

Zor points to the large screen to our right. "Here's the stupid war movie. Things would have been so much easier if the Capitol had just nuked us all... all dead... all gone..."

I can't say I disagree with him, and watch as the movie plays. It explains our recent history, how the district rebels failed to win their war against the Capitol, and how these games will be a constant reminder of our disobedience as a nation. The end of the film shows the final moments of last year's annual punishment, where fifteen year old Maria, now sixteen, from District 5, won by doing nothing at all, and yet she's still been in and out of hospitals for the last however long for illnesses both physical and mental.

"May the odds be ever in your favour and all that," yawns Zor, dropping his hand into the girls' Reaping bowl.

I have no reason to worry. Her name is only in there twice. But still my heart beats a little faster, everything tenses, and I can't relax. There is nothing about this that's okay. The fact that Zor looks so indifferent to it all. The fact that Jules still manages to have a kind smile on his face, playing up to the cameras broadcasting live to the Capitol televisions. Zor doesn't even mix the papers in the bowl, picking the first piece off the top and unfolding it, bringing it close to his face.

He remains completely void of expression. "The female tribute," he huffs, pausing for wretched suspense, "is Matilda Stratnyy."

Chapter Text

The fourth rule is less of a rule and more of an opportunity. A little sprig of hope for whoever has their name pulled out of the bowl. Another eligible member of the district can volunteer to replace the one who is reaped.

I've never been reaped. I don't know the feeling of being taken to the stage and standing there watching, as nobody in the square thinks your life is worth saving, but I sure as hell can imagine.

In most districts, volunteering happens out of love. A sibling, a best friend, who would rather die then see their loved one slain.

It's different in One, Two and Four. For some reason, they enjoy the games, and unlike Zor, who is allergic to all enjoyment of anything, they won't deny it. Volunteering in the self-proclaimed Career districts is complicated. Nobody really knows how it works. My closest guess is some kind of first-come first-serve system, with some criteria for a good tribute thrown in that a volunteer needs to appear to meet. That's how they win. The good ones get cocky, and the best ones get chosen.

Until now, I hated this rule, because it allowed the District children to fall into the same mindset as the Capitol, that these games are entertainment - an honour to win. I never saw the point, but as the world slows to a stop around me and everything fades to grey, and as the noise is blocked out by my own head, I see the point.

It's hard to forget the rules of this game, unless the game starts affecting you, and then it takes your mind away.

I'm practically carried up to the stage by a Peacekeeper. Nothing happens by my own accord. I stare at the concrete ground and wait for my brain to process what just happened.

Matilda got reaped. She went to the stage. Zor asked for volunteers.

I raised my hand?

In an instant, the world comes back into focus and my ears start working again. I pass somebody on the stairs, a tall boy, I can't tell his age, and I'm brought to the side of Jules and Zor. And I see Matilda, stood on the other side, with her hands in the air.

"Why?" She yells. "Why would you do that?"

The Peacekeeper who brought me up points his gun at her, silencing her.

I work through it in my head. The rule goes that a person may only volunteer to replace somebody of the same gender. Matilda is a girl, and in my panic, I forgot that I am not. And in my confusion, I took so long to decide what to do that the boy had already been reaped, so I replaced him.

I almost laugh at the the stupidity of it, and hold my breath tightly through the rapidly climbing panic in my chest. It freezes me still, and my mind can't stop guffawing in my head. What even is the sensible response to this?

There are around two thousand twelve to eighteen year olds in District 7. All of them, I can tell, are trying to join the dots over what I've just done. They all know me, I know they do. They all stare. They all know I'm that Stratnyy from two years ago. District 7 has never had a volunteer before. Nobody has had a good enough reason to do so until now, and I don't think I have a very good reason either, but do they care? Does a sensible response to this even exist? Because this was definitely not sensible, but in this moment, I can't bring myself to care. This moment feels like forever, buffering, trying to sort out whatever emotion has swallowed my body. In this tiny moment - lost - I definitely should not be here. It's hilarious and yet their eyes are all seeing me.

I take my first full breath in a what feels like eternity.

Okay. I just did that. I just made that move. That was certainly a move. This is something I'll have to think about, so I can make this all look intentional rather than... whatever it really is.

Zor removes the microphone from the stand and comes closer to me. I remain facing the crowd, barely acknowledging him. I see Jules scratch the back of his head from the corner of my eye. He glistens in the daylight.

"I'm sorry, but..." Zor starts, slowly and heavily, "who the fuck are you?"

Jules cuts in. "Zor, please be nice."

He rolls his eyes. "What's your name, son?"

I find the eyes of the boy who was up here before me, and try hard to remember what his name was, to no avail. I just wasn't listening. He's pale, lanky, some kind of rodent, wearing an awful lilac and green shirt. He stands still with the sixteen year olds, mouth hanging open wide in shock. His braces glint slightly under the thinning clouds.

"Your name."

Zor holds the microphone close to my face.

"Mighty Stratnyy," I whisper, still staring at the boy whose life I just saved by accident. There are some quiet, almost undetectable laughs from the crowd. I have no excuse and they know it. Everybody shakes hands.

Matilda and I are handcuffed and dragged backwards into the Justice Building, where we are shoved into two separate rooms and the doors are locked. These rooms are kept locked down through the year and are only opened for the Games. The reaped tributes go here to wait to be taken to the car, and in the meantime, say their goodbyes to whoever cares enough to wish them one.

It's very lush, like all of the budget for the Justice Building went into fashioning these two rooms. On each end is a wooden settee upholstered in a tough red fabric. The floor is dark polished wood, with a fluffy rug lined up on top. The walls are decorated with fake plants which twist their way up to the small chandelier on the ceiling, and line the heavily reinforced stained glass window.

They made it beautiful, but just in case I for some reason still wanted to leave, they put metal over every possible opening. I don't want to admit that this is what I signed up for. If I'd been reaped, at least I'd have a reason to be angry about the fact that no matter what happens, whether I win or die, I am a prisoner to the Capitol for the rest of my life. And I only have myself to blame for it.

It's so funny, how they think that putting pretty fake plants in here will make it any better. I find humour in the small details, while wondering when I will ever start to feel things again. Matilda's name echoes over and over in my mind.

The door clicks open behind me, and I turn around carefully to avoid stepping on the perfectly combed rug.

"Visitor, five minutes," the Peacekeeper says, stepping out of the doorway. The boy's here. He slowly shuffles in and the door is locked behind him.

He closes his mouth. This might be the only time I'll ever see him with his mouth closed, since he can't seem to use his nose to breathe.

"I don't know why I did it either, dude," I admit. "Just don't go telling anybody that."

"Why would I?" he replies. "You were so out of it I bet the Capitol's already written you off." He shudders, and awkwardly folds over the corner of the rug with his foot. "My name's Dave, I don't think you caught it."

"No, I didn't," I say.

"I originally came to say thank you, but I know you didn't do this for me, did you? What's your excuse going to be?"

That I tried to save my sister but forgot how the game works, I almost say.

"I'll help you figure one out if you can't?" he offers, almost enthusiastically. "If you're going to sacrifice yourself then you at least need to do it with style. Paint yourself as a hero or something."

I sit myself down on the settee furthest from him, and stare at the wood grain in the floorboards, tracing it with my eyes. Nobody in their right mind would use ebony for flooring, unless they were filthy rich.

"Tell them you are doing this to protect her," he smiles.

"Tell who?"

"Jules, Zor, Gerald, especially Gerald, milk it in the interview."

I almost laugh at how he thinks I can tell a lie like that. But would it really be a lie? Taking her out of the games completely was the intention, or at least I think it was, and that falls under protection. I look back up at Dave, and see a little badge on his shirt. It's his work uniform. My mum really wasn't kidding about people working right up to the last minute on Reaping day.

The peacekeeper throws the door open, declaring that the five minutes are up, and Dave is ushered out of the room and quickly replaced with my parents.

They don't look happy.

Chapter Text

The sky is clear now, with the sunlight piercing through the atmosphere, through the coloured window, and igniting my mother's eyes in a fierce shade of orange. Knowing what's coming, I rehearse in my head what Dave told me to say to people, and what he will no doubt also be saying when the Capitol interviews him when I die. I watch her battle with herself, hands and lips trembling. I ready myself in case the hands win, but neither do. My dad decides that any kind of fighting is not going to be a good idea at all. He steps between us, his sawdusty boots burying themselves in the soft white ruffles of the rug.

"Why did you do it?" he asks calmly. I'm grateful he's here. I don't fancy being alone in a room with her.

"Why, Mighty?" she snaps from behind him when I don't answer immediately.

"We go down together," I answer simply. "If she goes, I go too."

"Did you plan for this?" she asks.

"How could I have?"

"You planned for this, didn't you!"

"How could I have?" I say again, stepping backwards when she comes around my dad, and she swings at me.

Part of the reason I joined Wrestling Club at school is for moments like these. Being attacked isn't all that uncommon in Panem. It's actively encouraged in fact, if you're in the right circle. I wish it didn't have to be this way. I never liked fighting, but I've also never been able to avoid that circle. I grab her wrist as it flies to my shoulder, spin her round, take the other one, and give her to my dad. She lets out a sob, and clings onto him as if I'm the one who threw the punch. She's caught in some of the green light from the window.

"What was the point?" she cries. "We had a chance of reuniting again! Now it can never happen! Whatever happens, we can never be whole!"

The Peacekeeper peeks around the door.

"I refuse to believe you love her more than we love you!" she carries on. "Why would you strip us of both our children? At least there was a chance with just one!"

The Peacekeeper checks his watch. I know for a fact it hasn't been five minutes but I still find myself wishing he would say it has been anyway. Many of her words still don't register properly in my head.

She lets go of my dad and strides up to me again, flashing all of the colours. "And I sure as hell hope that if one of our children wins, it isn't you! You were our best, Mighty! You were our best! And you ruined everything!"

"Time's up!" the Peacekeeper bellows way too early, pushing his way past my dad and taking my mum by the shoulders before she can touch me. "Both of you need to leave."

She protests, and he tries to remain still, but both of them are taken away.

Good one, Dave.

Nobody else comes to visit me, so I'm left alone with my thoughts until I'm brought to the car with blacked-out windows and two red flags on the back with Panem's yellow seal in the middle of each. I think about the persona that Dave has painted for me, in his dorky spell of gratitude. Maybe telling the world that I'm to be Matilda's saviour is a nice idea for sponsors? And the whole we-go-down-together narrative could tug on a few heartstrings if I worded it all right? That would be okay, wouldn't it? Maybe he's clever for that. Cleverer than me, for sure. But painting myself as some kind of hero?

I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Zor drives. I'm not as worried as I should be, especially given his suicidal nature. The fact that he's done this every year since the beginning of escorts is reassuring, because he hasn't yet crashed the car. Matilda and I are strapped into the back seats in seatbelts that only Zor can undo. We are separated by an armrest, which would only be useful to people who are not handcuffed, and the arm rest has cup holders with nothing in them. Jules is in the passenger seat, sunglasses on, enjoying the sun coming through the glass roof. It's become a lot warmer since the clouds broke - much more like July.

"Have either of you had visitors?" he asks, swirling an iced drink.

"Yes," I reply. I don't elaborate.

Matilda clears her throat before answering. "Parents visited me. Mum was crying," she says, staring me down with her half-lidded green eyes. "Can't imagine why."

"Yeah, why did you do that?" Zor asks, speaking for the first time in forever.

"You didn't seem to care when I went to the stage."

"And I still don't, but other people might."

"Last I heard, you were calling for the extinction of us all."

"Do you want me to drive into a wall? I can do that, if you want?"

"Please don't."

The car is silent for the rest of the ride to District 7's only train station. It's situated near the borders with Four and One, and it takes Zor about two hours to drive us there. It's very rare that these trains are used by district people. They are mainly cargo trains, transporting goods to and from the Capitol, with the occasional luxury train. Those are usually reserved for Capitol reporters and journalists, but once a year the tributes get to see them too. The station is, as expected, tiny, and filled with the paparazzi. Zor and Jules take us by the handcuff chains and we are brought onto the Capitol train in a bubble of Peacekeepers.

"This would be so much more fun if we had leashes," Zor chuckles, somehow smileless. Jules apologises for his behaviour and we all step onto the train.

It's very majestic. The interior is just as expensive as the waiting rooms in the Justice Building, with polished walls and mahogany tables, a bar, the clearest windows, and several rooms for every passenger. The train is lit warmly from decorative lampshades. Jules happily explains that these trains were a collaborative project between One, Three, and Six, with little things thrown in from every other district. 'Collaborative' meaning everybody did their part, and nobody outside of the Capitol got to see the final product.

The room I am given is as large as it can be within the limited width of the train. It has a neatly made bed and a fitted wardrobe, a desk, an ensuite, skylights, and a girl stood perched in the corner.

She is small, and dressed in a simple red and grey gown. A modest thing. Long sleeves. Loose. Collared. She stands with her head down and her mouth pressed shut. I first heard about these people in school. Avoxes. They rebelled against the Capitol and now they are slaves. I ask her to leave, and she goes quickly and quietly without hesitation, leaving me alone in this strange room which sways with the turns of the tracks to the Capitol.

Chapter Text

"Wakey wakey."

I sit on the floor in front of the full length mirror, convincing my eyes to stay open.

"Rise and shine."

I do not rise and shine.

I swear at my reflection.

It's a miracle I got any sleep last night. I don't think it's quite yet sunk in that I'm here, on a train for the first time, halfway into the deserts of District 1, speeding towards the city that has claimed me. Or, that I have surrendered myself to. I try to imagine what the other tributes might be like. And I think if I go about it the right way, I might be able to keep myself floating in my little bubble of delusion.

Two strong volunteers from District 1, no doubt. Districts 2 and 4 will have more of the same. District 3 missed out on Career status. Nobody there seems to care, though.

District 5, the reigning champions, probably won't be fighting too hard to keep their title. District 5 never really fought that hard. I'm convinced that any time they do well, it's by accident. They are clever over there, they know how to stay out of the way for long enough to be brutally slaughtered in the final three by literally any other district.

If I think like this, it might make me feel better. I don't like it. It feels unnecessarily mean but I just know that if I let myself cave to a worst case scenario even for a second, I'll never be able to leave it.

District 6 will no doubt die in the bloodbath. I don't need to know who they are to know that they are not, and never will be, a problem, because they never have been since that Mephiles became their mentor. He was really good at murdering, scarily good at murdering, but now he's an addict and he's known for being the kind of crazy that's either completely removed from reality or strangely in touch with it, never in between.

District 7. I don't want to think about us.

District 8 are forgettable every year. So are District 9, in fact, I can't remember anything. District 10 are always strong and stocky, it's like their genes should spell out the word "intimidating" when spilled onto the ground with the rest of their blood, because despite looking the part, they have never won the games. District 11 will know what they're doing, they are always contenders, they've come close to winning quite a few times. District 12 never stood a chance.

Given the patterns, from what I remember, plus some exaggerations, Matilda and I are likely not doomed, and I guess thinking about the other districts in a negative light does make me feel better, but I can't give myself that kind of hope before I've even seen who's in here with us. Jules, Zor and Matilda are waiting for me to get up so we can watch the replay of the Reaping together before we enter the Capitol. I reluctantly push myself up off the carpet.

I invite myself into the walk-in wardrobe for the first time. I slept in my reaping suit after spending three hours lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, barely blinking, barely thinking, skipping tea. Jules came in to check if I was alright and I told him that nothing felt real. He gave me a slice of cheese on toast, fresh from the Avox kitchen, and told me that I'd feel more present in the morning, and then we could watch the Reaping together when I'm ready. I wasn't expecting him to be quite so understanding. The cheese on toast oozed with the best grease I had ever tasted when I bit into it. I think that in itself jolted me out of the half-dream state. We get butter now instead of margarine, we are that special.

I choose a polo shirt and trousers, the most familiar outfit I can find. I've been gifted with a full arsenal of exquisite clothing, tailored to Capitol bodies and Capitol fashion trends. It seemed that they thought of everything when welcoming the tributes into their city, except they managed to do all of this whilst reminding us that we will never, ever, be like them. Maybe it's intentional, to remind even the ones who are going to die soon that the district people will never have what the Capitol people have, or maybe it's from a place of ignorance. Maybe they're delusional just like me.

When I leave, I find the other three sitting around a small table with coffee cups, deep in conversation. Jules digs into Matilda's skills and strengths. Top of the class, a mean axe-wielder, Zor points out her habit of saying every other sentence in sarcasm, and he likes it for her. The second she notices me, she goes silent, and her half-flattered smile fades.

"Morning," Zor says. "Thought you were dead."

I can't resist replying with, "Same."

Jules shuffles up the green sofa so I can sit beside him, facing the TV mounted on the opposite wall. He pats his knees, officially ending the morning chat, and enthusiastically reaches for the TV remote.

"Right. Are we ready to see who our opponents are?"

Nobody replies, but he turns on the TV anyway.

The Panem seal appears on the loading screen, again on the recordings menu, and again at the start of the programme which aired about nine hours ago. We will no doubt be the last people in Panem to watch it. The anthem plays, Zor can't resist a half-assed salute, and he flicks his blue hair out of his face to reveal both eyes. I suppose this is one bit of the pre-game that he actually cares about watching.

We are greeted with Gerald Robotnik. He is the grandfather of President Ivo Robotnik, kept looking fresh with innovative serums straight from One and Three. Another "collaborative" project. Gerald is the host of the games, the interviewer, the commentator, the most famous TV star in the country, and the colleague of Breezie, who runs Breeze Media and occasionally does a little bit of interviewing herself. We receive a brief run-down of the previous games, and short pre-recorded interviews. First from Valdez, the winner of the Quarter Quell, and then from frail Maria. Both of them say the same things in very different ways. Winning is an honour: Valdez is glad to have made people proud, and Maria is glad to be alive.

A map of Panem is shown, and District 1 blinks in red. We are transported to their Justice building, and as expected, both tributes are volunteers. The girl is 18 and ecstatic, and the boy is 16 and calm, unnervingly so. His side profile is caught rather handsomely in the sun. Neither of the children reaped in District 2 are volunteered for, but both act as if they are up there by choice anyway, like being reaped for them is akin to winning the lottery.

The rolling, twisting hills of District 3 are the backdrop to their Justice Building. Jules leans back into the cushions, sighing.

"I always hate seeing District 3," he says, as the camera pans over the eligible population. "I think my arena was near there. 'Green Hill Zone', it was called. Massive, massive hills. You can see them in the distance, look. The arena was there, I'm sure of it."

"I thought you were over it?" Zor huffs.

"I will never be over it," Jules replies, turning his attention to his coffee and listening to their escort, Zeena, talk about tesserae. Gerald drones on over her, telling us about Three's only surviving victor, Vanilla, who stands beside Zeena. She won the twelfth Hunger Games, in an arena called 'Sweet Mountain'. He concludes that the reason he thinks she won was because she was the sweetest one there, with a little bit of sharp kick thrown in.

The camera's attention is brought to the patch of twelve year old girls, and it zooms in on a rabbit with delicate mascara and a blue bow around her neck.

"Oh, crap," Jules gasps. "Vanilla has a daughter, doesn't she? She's eligible now."

Matilda shakes her head. "Not even the Capitol are sick enough to rig the reaping and have her in the games. She's been in the limelight since she was born. They love her too much. Cream the Rabbit, the nation's sweet pea."

Zeena flashes her nails in the light, grinning at her nail art before carefully dipping her hand into the girls' bowl. She teases the papers around in circles, gnawing on the inside of her bottom lip, before gently pulling one piece out. She brings it to her eyes, holding it out in front of the microphone, and smirks.

"Cream Paloma."

Matilda's eyes widen. "I take back what I said."

"No!" Jules shouts, rising from his seat. "No, they can't do that!"

Zor sighs. "They can and they will, idiot."

"Come on, Zor, this has got to be rigged!" Jules continues.

"How are they going to rig it?" I ask. "District 3 is huge, she swirled all of the names around, you saw that, right?"

"She was checking her hands, her nails, she might have had it already! Look!"

Jules reaches for the remote to rewind, but Zor slaps it out of his hands. It clatters to the floor, and the batteries pop out of the back and roll away down the length of the train.

"You're hysterical," he says calmly, deeply disappointed in Jules' reaction. "You're right, you never did get over it, did you? What is anybody gonna do? Absolutely nothing. Chill. Watch."

Jules gasps, almost saying something else, but he shakily sits back down instead, sinking into the soft sofa. We missed the second half of District 3 and all of District 4, and we will never know who is coming from there until either somebody finds new batteries or we wait for the recap. For the District 7 reaping, Matilda and I excuse ourselves. Neither of us fancy seeing that again.

Chapter Text

I hardly pay attention to the recap. Zor puts it on the second we are all in the main cabin together, whether we want to watch it or not. He insists that there is time, despite the train pulling to a gradual stop as it nears the Capitol station. District 4, the boy, he volunteered, and nobody seems to be very happy about it. District 5 are wet from the rain.

District 6's escort Zomom reaped a girl who looks way too rich to be District. She delicately rises to the stage dressed in a long, purple gown with ruffles at the wrists, clicky white heels, and a gemstone pressed to her forehead. And the boy, despite being criminally underdressed, still manages to be so radiant that he almost glows amidst the fog. During the few seconds that he is pictured on stage, he is almost smiling. He breathes gently, and directs his whimsical amber-eyed gaze to the clouds.

The train stops once it gets to the end of the track and sends a light jolt throughout the thing. The old batteries from the TV remote come rolling back down the corridor.

"Now listen, you two," Jules begins, in a low voice, void of his usual energy. "The Breez press are outside. The Capitol are outside. They will be watching your every move, so now is not the time to be camera shy. Zor will lead the way to the Tribute Centre, all you have to do is follow him. You will be handed gifts, you will be called, whatever you are offered, politely refuse it and continue to walk. Smile. Pretend that you're happy to be here because I know neither of you are. Especially you, Mighty. Got it?"

He ends his talk with a smile. The kind of smile you'd get from the nice, supportive teacher, who still gets bullied by everybody. The kind who would not hesitate to quit without any notice as soon as they had a good enough reason to do so, but the reason never comes. Zor was right, Jules is still broken. When the train doors open, his cheery smile is already wearing thin.

We are thrusted into a messily parted crowd, held apart by Peacekeepers and loose ropes. The late morning sunlight beams down upon the Capitol, who are just as enthusiastic as Jules said they would be. They hold up banners with the District 7 seal. They know our names. Gifts are offered, Matilda and I just smile. I do as I was told and pretend to enjoy the attention. I begin to wonder, when Matilda blows a kiss to an elderly lady in a large green fedora clutching a paper rose, whether she is pretending at all.

"I can't imagine they'd keep doing this," Zor mutters, closing the door behind the four of us once we've gone into the Tribute Centre through the back. "It's a huge security risk, even more so than that stupid zoo they kept the tributes in. When did they stop doing that... the eleventh? It must be the eleventh? Ten's mentor got stabbed before the tenth games, right? Yeah, the eleventh. This building took a while to renovate though..."

"It was something like that," Jules sighs. "I certainly wasn't kept in a zoo."

"Which games did you win, again?" Zor says the word 'win' with a weird sarcastic emphasis - he was never too pleased with it. Jules's Games were about as unsatisfying as they come.

"The fourteenth."

Zor takes us through a series of protected doors, unlocking them with a small card he keeps in his pocket. He counts on his fingers.

"So..." he trails off briefly. "You... won... when you were twelve? Hah."

Matilda speaks for the first time in a while. "You never knew this before?"

"No, I didn't know," he lies. "Why should I care? Sure he lost like... half of his limbs but... Anyway, the system the Gamemakers have right now is awful. It's broken. I mean, rebels blew up the flipping arena in the tenth games and killed both of District 9. The tributes need protecting, with security, not showing off like this. Well... they need protecting for as long as they're not in the arena. Right Jules?"

"Please remain in your comfort zone, Zor."

"You think I'm incapable of showing compassion?"

Matilda scoffs. "You think this is compassion?"

We are escorted to a large common room. I ignore the bickering of Jules and Zor. I realised very quickly that listening to Zor talk about anything brings about this irrational anger in me. I don't even know what I'm angry for anymore. This is my own fault. I don't know what I expected from him. It's not just the way the tributes are moved around that sucks. I'm not sure why any of us expected him to be able to grasp that now is not the time to make a speech about how tributes need "protecting".

The common room is a large circle with a giant, constantly moving glass paternoster lift in the middle. I heard about these lifts. They were very common in an old continent, and they were brought into the Capitol by engineers who were fascinated by its history. I catch glimpses of other tributes entering the elevator and being lifted to their District's own personal floor. The four of us step into a cabin a few below the tributes I recognise to be from District 10. Echidnas. Heavily bandaged, and they have been since the Reaping.

"We're going to floor seven," Zor says, leaning on the back of the cabin. "Don't leave this building without me. You'll be shot. Or at least, you should be. That's what they say will happen."

The lift is strange, it never stops, Jules makes sure we're ready to step off once we reach the seventh floor. We peer through the glass walls to see if anybody else is around, and all we see is more Avoxes. Matilda and I make a leap for it when the seventh floor comes, swaying slightly as the floor runs away from us. Jules and Zor are much more graceful in their exit. They would be. They do this every year. Soon after we're all off, we hear the moaning of the boy from District 5 after his district partner was too scared to get off the lift.

"You just go for it," he complains. "It's not that hard."

"But Shadow, I'm wearing heels!" she whines, and their conversation fades away above us.

Jules chuckles to himself. "There's always one."

We're taken down the bleak, nondescript corridor to a large door at the end. Zor rests his hand on the doorhandle, flicks his head to get some hair out of his eye, and whistles.

"Welcome to your temporary home. Don't get too emotionally attached. You're probably gonna die. Use the comfy cushions to get it all out of your system now rather than later when the world is watching."

He tries to hide his smirk, as he bows and opens the door.

Chapter Text

Our trip from the train station was televised across Panem. When we got into the large lounge, Jules put on the television and we watched the recap of that. District 6 are still beautifully radiant, and there's a lot of talk about the girl having Capitol ancestry. The boy has smartened up, he's found a white suit with a long coat embroidered with something yellow and fancy. They are at a great contrast to their mentor Mephiles, looking more sober - and tired - than he has ever been in the last few weeks, and I think the camera purposefully avoids their escort. Gerald calls the both of them a "stain on the Capitol streets" in a hushed mutter, as the drone pans from them to us.

We are perfectly framed by a valley between the mountains in the background, as if the Capitol are riverbanks and we are the river. There are bits of cut-down commentary about the "Stratnyy siblings from Seven", and how even where blood is spilled, blood always sticks together... like clots... Gerald quickly moves on from that, and the Capitol eats it up.

So I guess I got away with it. Dave would be proud.

District 8 are both quite young. District 9 have all the charisma in the world. District 10 I saw already at the elevator. The girl from Eleven looks as skittish as ever, and the boy is full of laughter that doesn't even seem fake. And District 12 have been given the mentor who mentored the reigning champion Maria, for some reason. Something about student shortages. I believe his name is Eclipse.

Zor is long gone. He left the three of us so he could go and speak to Zeena.

"They're good friends, what can I say?" Jules says, turning off the television. "This is only the first half of the opening ceremony, we've got the Tribute Parade coming up tonight. So... ignore Zor... settle down, the stylists will be here soon. They'll take you to your dressing rooms to get you all sparkled up for tonight." He pauses on the way to his room and speaks more quietly, almost like he is trying to convince himself of something. "Like, seriously, ignore him."

"Are you having a hard time ignoring him?" I ask, picking up on his mood.

He sighs. "I hate to not be all professional but he gets on my nerves, you know? I don't understand why he has to be so horrible all the time. You two are the best chance we've had in over a decade. I've lost about half my life to these games. It's either, be a mentor, or... I don't know... something else stupid. And I hate it but this is the best choice I have."

"You've known us for less than two days," Matilda says. "Just because Mighty's our first volunteer-"

"No, no, it's not that!" he interrupts. He picks up some fruit and comes to the sofa with us, and gives us an apple each. "I don't know what it is, to be honest, I just have a good feeling about you two."

Matilda crunches into her apple, not breaking eye contact with Jules for a single second. She swallows hard. "Do you say this every year?"

"No."

She nods. "I believe you," she says, and I know she means it, because this girl never lies, and when she does, I know about it.

I immediately forget the name of my stylist the second she tells it to me. It's one of those Capitol names that sounds like a disease. She is in full control of my body for the hour or so that I am underneath her, and she constantly drones on about how she is not paid enough to clean me as if I am not capable of cleaning myself. She complains about having to design my outfit, adjust it to fit, and dress me in it. I'm violated on many levels and put in a weird brown leotard, before bits of felt and pipe cleaner are hand-stitched into it.

Once again, District 7 are turned into trees. My head is painted to look like a mushroom. If I were six years old I think it would be quite cute.

Matilda is dressed the same way, but instead of a mushroom, her head has been converted into moss. Our stylists take us down the stairs rather than the paternoster, they say the outfits might get caught in the openings, and we end up a floor or two underground, in a room with black walls and weird lights on the floor. It is oddly silent.

"Your mentor is waiting for you just down that corridor." Matilda's stylist points to a large door with a star on it and the number seven in the middle. She explains what will happen. "Out there is backstage. You'll be put on a chariot and pulled down the red carpet and up the slope to the top. We've put earplugs in with your headpieces should you need them to stay sane because it is going to be loud out there, okay? Think yourselves lucky because we actually take your comfort into account. Smile and wave, all the usual. Good luck!"

My stylist winks at me and puts her arm round the shoulders of Matilda's, and they walk off together towards the paternoster.

"Mighty?" Matilda asks.

"Yes?"

She smirks. "You look pretty good as a poisonous mushroom. You should do it more often."

The second we step into backstage, Jules sprints to us, happy to see us after being forced to have tea and cupcakes with Zor and Zeena. I catch a glimpse at District 3, who are already set up in their chariot. Cream is in an elegant black dress, accented with LEDs and glowsticks, whereas the boy whose name I can't remember is standing tall and firm in a skin-tight black suit, and his own LED lights are arranged in ways that would certainly make the Capitol stare. We lock eyes for a second or two and I can tell that he is greatly uncomfortable. I may have acquired some muscle from Wrestling Club but clearly my stylist didn't think I had enough of it, for it to be worth exposing and accenting like they did with his.

Jules secures us in our chariot and he gives us another pep talk. I hardly listen. Instead, I am fascinated by the outfits of the other tributes. District 6, to my left, are dressed similarly to how they were during their walk to the Tribute Centre, except they now portray professions in transport. The girl is a pilot dressed in lilac, and the boy is an admiral dressed in white and yellow once again. To their left, District 5 are submerged up to their knees in what looks like radioactive sludge, and their top halves are covered in infinity mirrors. And to my right, District 8 are in very classy black suits with delicate hats. Once everybody is in and ready to go, the ceremony begins.

Chapter Text

The cheers and calls of the Capitol ring throughout the arena the instant District 1 is brought onto the red carpet. I crane my head to the left to get a glimpse of one of the large screens through a gap in the curtain, and there they stand, hand in hand, covered in magenta shards that are fashioned into chestplates and helmets. Once they make it about halfway down the red carpet, and just as District 2 start to leave backstage, the girl thrusts up both of their hands to keep the attention on them for just a little longer. And it works. And the boy, startled by the action, already looks fed up of her and all the attention but he cracks a smile anyway.

District 2, District 3, 4, 5, they all have their own reactions. Nobody can seem to make up their mind on Districts 3 and 4 but the reaction for everybody is still positive. The crowd goes nuts for Six, probably because half of them know the girl already.

The chains tied to the black horses at the front of our chariot clink together as they are ordered to walk. I'm suddenly terrified. For the last few days I have been focused on nothing but the other tributes, who they are and how they might behave, and not once since arriving here did I stop to think about me. Who I am, and what I will do. There's not much point in having a story if I'm not going to tell it. I take a deep breath to calm the nerves, remind myself that there is no going back from this, and for the duration of the ride down the length of the colossal basement, I think of nothing but home.

District 7's forests are segmented into parts. There are the hyper-industrial forests, which grow cheap trees and cut them down without much intervention from workers. This wood goes into light furniture, warehouse packaging, scaffolding, plywood, and other things that don't need to be pretty. Then there are the nicer trees, which are cut down by people with chainsaws to ensure the best cuts, and are looked after by tree surgeons for the best quality timber. These trees are planted in grids that span hundreds of square miles, and there are small camps within these areas where the tree fellers and tree surgeons live. There are the sapling banks deep underground, with collections of offcuts and seeds from endangered exotic trees and plants from all around the world. Some of these are grown in greenhouses.

And then there are the rest of the forests, largely untouched, for great swathes of North West Panem. They are like jungles but colder, incredibly dense and tangled in vines and ferns, with the occasional lake to break up the mess. I like to swim in those lakes, stare at the sky, and watch the mockingjays swoop around the treetops. I listen to the chorus of the wildlife, the cheers of the birds, and watch the flickering lights of the sun poking through the leaves.

The vision is ruined when I see my overgrown face displayed on one of the giant screens. To imagine myself at home like this is one thing, but to see my innermost happiness displayed all over Panem feels violating. I manage to find the camera that films me and weakly smile before my face is swept away by the BreezTV logo. There is some murmuring from Gerald, impossible to hear over all the music and the noise, before the chariot of District 8 is revealed.

We're taken around a corner and up a small ascent, and brought out onto the stage. Its centre is a large circle, and every year the decorations are changed. This year, it is surrounded by cylindrical pillars, angled, with lights in the ends, like a noble collar of fibre-optics. We are brought by an Avox dressed in plain black towards the back of the gradually-building half-moon of tribute chariots. From here, there is a wonderful view of the rest of the tributes, as they join the crescent one by one.

The parade music calms down once everybody is here. Large flags with our district seals are dropped behind us in time with a short burst of the pyrotechnics, which leads the arena into a delicate light show. Highlights of the previous games are re-enacted by tiny drones.

The bloodbath was one of the deadliest there had ever been. It took place in the centre of a space colony, affectionately nicknamed the ARK by the old Gamemakers, because these games marked a new beginning after the first Quarter Quell. Space Colony ARK was a hemispherical caricature-type model of President Ivo Robotnik's face. The games lasted just under a month, thanks to the immense arena and its great maze of corridors. Most of the remaining tributes were picked off one-by-one by natural causes like dehydration or injury. One or two got packed into little pods and sent out into space, to come crashing down and burn up in the atmosphere, or some simulation of it.

The final two were Maria, of course, and a boy from District 3 called Miles, but everybody called him Tails because he had two of them, and he called himself Nine but nobody respected it, and he was at the bottom of the odds for what felt like forever, until he built a giant laser beam in the centre of the ARK and pointed it to the moon, and then he wasn't at the bottom of the odds anymore. The old Gamemakers had to kill him before he used the arena to kill them. After that, he wasn't on the odds at all, and Maria won, completely oblivious.

All the new Gamemakers have said in regards to this is that the next arena will be much smaller. Way smaller.

And the face of the man himself, Robotnik, arrives on the stage, escorted in a bowl-like hovercraft by two small robots, one red and one yellow, and a little blue bird, ready for his annual speech.

Chapter Text

"Mighty..."

Jules slowly invites himself into my room after I don't respond to his knocks. It's grand, everything is so much bigger than on the train, and one of the walls is a giant screen, so I put a screensaver full of trees on it, closed all the curtains, and changed all of the lightbulbs to a weird shade of greeny-brown.

"Mister Stratnyy, did you listen to a single word I said?"

He asks it gently with a soft smile, and chuckles when I reply with nothing but, "Nope."

He pulls his Capitol-issued portable Eggnet phone out of his pocket. "Whimsical, peculiar, hazed, sentimental, in a permanent trance, visibly proud of his district, quietly confident... it's not what I had in mind for you but it appears to be working, none the less."

"How so?"

He sits on the end of the bed that I have cocooned myself in. "Well, the odds have been updated, and for legal reasons I cannot tell you much about them, but with this context I think you can imagine what has happened."

I almost ask him what he wanted from me during the parade but I think it's obvious. I think he wanted some kind of heroic stance, a warrior of some kind, a fighting spirit, something very typical of a volunteer. Instead, he got somebody who didn't do it because they wanted to, but because they had to. Ordinarily, that isn't a good look for the games-obsessed Capitol. But if this changed my odds, in what appears to be a good way, then for some reason, I am clearly not ordinary.

"So my odds have increased?"

"For legal reasons," he slides the phone back into his pocket, "I cannot tell you."

Training begins the next day. We have two and a half days to learn everything there is to know about survival in the wilderness, combat, and the limits of our own bodies. We are told to be here from 9 until 3 for the first two days, with a break in the middle. We are given a small tour of the Training Centre, which is deep in the many basements of the Tribute Centre. The newly-appointed head Gamemaker, Master Zik, gives us a brief tour of the facilities available to us, and we are left under supervision for the first session.

We have all been issued trousers and a polo shirt with our district number on it. Matilda, in her oversized top, makes a wordless beeline for plant identification. I think back to what Jules told me during breakfast this morning: Gain a basic understanding of everything, and downplay your strengths to avoid the attention of the Careers. In his mind, any attention from them is bad attention. I head to the ropes, and watch small clips on how to tie some basic knots. The boy from Eight is here, deep in a knot already, tying several of the one-rope knots all into the same piece of rope. I watch him as he works. It's like this is revision to him, rather than learning.

I sit on the floor opposite him, rehearsing the clips in my head as well as I can, and try a few knots. The Hangman's Noose takes a few attempts but after a while I figure it out. The lasso is much easier, I can't understand why. There is a small knot with fishing line, and a way of securing two pieces of elastic together, that are both fiddly but fun to do. A couple of them are advertised as being purely decorative but I learn them anyway in case for whatever reason, I get bored. And then I look up and find that the roles have reversed, and he's now watching me. He's tying knots while barely looking.

"Is this a talent of District 8?" I ask, watching him crochet a square on his fingers out of some pink wool.

He nods his head. I notice that his wrists are covered in colourful woven bracelets when he takes one off and hands it to me. I run the bracelet between my fingers, noting the smoothness of the blue plasticky fibres, and admire the pattern woven into it, which spells "Ray".

"Ray?"

He nods his head again, and I begin to wonder if this kid can talk.

"Nice to meet you, Ray." I go to hand him his bracelet back but he takes my hand instead and shakes it, before swapping his name bracelet with another one, and he tosses it to me. This one is rougher, brown and red, plaited, and some coloured wooden beads are woven into one end. When I try to give it back to him, he refuses to take it.

I remember another rule. This one was introduced in writing only two years ago. A tribute may bring a token with them to remind them of home. The mentors are supposed to quietly suss it out to make sure there isn't a competitive advantage to bringing said item into the arena, but generally, if you want to keep something, you can keep it. It's one of the Capitol's sad little attempts at empathy, by making this a feature after tributes kept bringing things in. I always wondered who would ruin it by smuggling a retractable weapon or something. I find it ironic that this was officially introduced in the year when the oh-so-dear home is full of people that volunteered you into the games, rather than a reaping choosing you by chance. I got the second highest number of votes that year, the Quarter Quell. District 7 hates the Stratnyys, I've known that since the day I was born and I've refused to let it bother me, but there was someone that people hated more. And now here I am, having undone all of my luck in one bad decision. I remember that I never kept anything. I do not have a token. And now that I think about it, I probably don't deserve one. Why would a volunteer deserve to have a token? It's my own damn fault I'm here.

I don't know if Ray knows I don't have anything. I can't be sure that the bracelets are his tokens or if he's made them over the last few days, but it doesn't matter because he's just given me one, and I don't know if there is a way I can ask him why.

The red and brown streaks in the weaves look like cedar. The wooden beads only reinforce that idea. Stratnyy Timbercase, the pride and joy of my family, has found its way back to me via the rolling waves of coloured string, handcrafted by a master.

"How do you know these things?" I ask, fascinated, and he comes to me and fastens the bracelet around my left wrist. It's secure but not at all tight. I don't plan on ever taking it off. I thank him. Even if this piece of rope didn't come from home, it reminds me of it, and Ray knows it.

"My name is Mighty."

He nods again, but this time it's a different kind of nod. It's the kind of nod that says, "You didn't need to tell me that, because I already know."

Chapter Text

We sit around the circular dining table in the middle of our living space. Matilda and I mostly stick to the foods that we know. Zor is visibly disappointed in us but we ignore him, like Jules told us to.

"So," Zor stars, wiping his fingers on a napkin. "How was training?"

"I learnt that the Capitol likes to invent poisonous food," Matilda replies, scowling at the little red seeds in Zor's bowl.

He sighs. "Are you two going to try anything new? You do realise that we're not allowed to kill you yet, right? No fighting, no killing, none of that, that's the rule until you get to the arena."

"Is that what stopped you from crashing the car?" she asks.

"Car insurance is more expensive than a cheap cremation, so no."

Jules interrupts. "Other than that, how was it? Did you meet anybody?"

"I met the girl from District 5," Matilda rather happily begins. "Her name is Rouge, 18, she can squat a hundred and twenty."

"Kilograms?"

"Yeah, she's strong. I quite like her. And her partner Shadow is pretty fast on roller skates."

Zor laughs. "What good is figure skating in the Hunger Games?"

"He once got in trouble with the Head Peacekeeper of District 5 for attaching rockets to his skates and breaking a bunch of speed limits, but he used the excuse that he was not in, nor on, a vehicle, therefore pedestrian laws applied, and at the time there was no speed limit on pedestrians. He did manage to rip a 50 sign out of the ground though, but apparently nobody found out about that."

The three of us exchange similar glances, confirming that none of us believe a word of what Matilda just said.

"However, he may be a liar," she quickly concludes, before taking a huge bite out of a piece of iced bread. Conversation over.

Jules asks me about my day, and I tell him about Ray and his talents, and show him the bracelet he gave to me. We agree that this might be a symbol of the start of an alliance, and I am advised to keep an eye on him to decide whether he is the kind of person I would like to spend my time in the arena with. Later in today's session, we also had a crack at plant identification, and both of us struggled with it. The colours are all too similar, Ray especially struggled with that, and it's near impossible to gauge size and texture when all of the plants are on a screen. Zor thinks there must have been something we missed.

Matilda just shrugs. "You can figure it out."

"So there's not anything else to it?" I ask, and she just shrugs again.

The showers in the Capitol are mad. District 7 is relatively lucky, in that we have enough capacity for recycling greywater that we are generally self-sufficient on water supply even if it does all have to be boiled before use. Other districts, especially Nine, Ten and Eleven, have especially high water prices because they have to buy it from the Capitol, where it has been routed from the reservoirs on the fringes of District 2, through the Capitol's ridiculous purification process, and the excess is then sold. That means District 7 can afford to have showers, but they are nothing compared to what the Capitol has to offer.

I experiment with some combinations of soaps and pressures and temperatures, trying to sample everything I can before I am dumped in an arena where I won't be able to wash with any level of privacy. I don't think I will ever be ready for this. I'm sick of blaming myself for the fact that I'm here, even if I do only have myself to blame. From now on, I will take things one day at a time, but today went by too quickly, and nothing of the plants went into my head. Which is annoying, because clearly it went into Matilda's.

We might have ruined her mood a little bit during dinner. There are a lot of things that she hates, we've fallen out many times over things I said or did, and what I have learnt about her is that she hates it when people make her think she is a fool. It has nothing to do with whether or not they think that, but if she thinks it, she doesn't like it. She takes pride in her image, she knows that she is clever and that she is worthy and she doesn't stop until she thinks she's doing perfect, and she will work her damned hardest to be the very best. So when she is made to question that, she heads for a defence.

Half of this comes from her inability to see a joke, even if it's dangling by the roller skate laces in front of her face.

I run into the Avox again once I'm out of the shower and smile at her. Her response is to continue staring into another abyss. My mother always struggled to sympathise with the Avoxes, because it's their own fault they ended up here with their tongues cut and their few rights stripped away. She is a strong believer in the phrase 'you reap what you sow' - a person can't break the law and expect to get away with it. What she always left out is that the punishment for Avoxes, this awful mess that they are forced into, in most cases, is not a reflection of the crime they did at all. It's just sadism. Slavery for the sake of greed and power. I can guarantee that if Shadow really did fit rockets to his skates, he'd have been shot or something. This girl probably just spoke out of turn, so they took her speech away.

In my room, there is a small keypad, where you can order pretty much anything you want to. I never wanted to use it, because that means pandering to a society that endorses slavery, but now that I think about it, these people are probably bored out of their minds, so I order some hot chocolate and some biscuits with no intention of eating them, and when the Avox delivers them to my room I offer to let her stay, but when she does, she just continues to stare.

Chapter Text

For day two of training I decide to leave plants and knots behind and see what I can do in relation to combat and defence. Matilda, once again, ignores the fact that I exist, and Ray quite happily focuses on basic survival skills while I set up the wrestling simulation. It's buried in the corner of the Training Centre, where someone would have to go out of their way to watch, and most of the Careers are sat around on the other end conversing about goodness knows what.

The simulation uses robots, programmed with artificial intelligence. They are all robots for close combat like this. Other skill simulations, such as shooting and trap-rigging, appear to use holograms. The central console whirrs smoothly and quietly as the first robots come in. I set the thing to easy mode, knowing I can do better, but Jules told us not to do anything ridiculous and all I want is some practice.

The robots get floored pretty quickly. I increase the difficulty to medium. Nothing really changes. I consider upping it to hard mode but quickly decide against it - It's one thing to look strong to the Careers but to lose a fight to a random robot and look convincingly weak is arguably worse. I wrap my leg around the ankle of the first in another wave of medium robots and fold it into the ground by its neck. I am towered over by a second one so I punch it hard in what should be its liver which knocks that one out too. I am grabbed around the waist by a third and lifted off the ground, and somehow I manage to tip us both over and land on top of it, holding down the button on its neck that says "strangle" for three seconds, and that one shuts down too. Some come at me a few at a time but it's okay because I've trained for this already back at home.

"Impressive."

I unwrap myself from the final robot in the wave and turn to face the handsome boy from District 1, leant against the glass doorframe at the entrance to this small room. When I look at him, he gazes off into some distant point and smiles gently, fidgeting with a little metal star. He looks more menacing under the harsh blue lighting. Sunlight suits him better.

"So you're the one that everybody keeps talking about?" He asks. "You made quite the first impression on Reaping day."

I don't know how to answer, so I just force a chuckle and let the robots crawl back into the walls.

"I had a go at hard mode yesterday," he continues, twirling the blade in his left hand. "Don't be shy, I think you could do well."

"What's the difference between hard and medium?"

"Hard is faster still. The robots can't be too rough in case they hurt you. It's not the best AI in the world, it doesn't really adapt to you like a person can."

I realise the calmness in his voice. The way he speaks is soft and concise, and for some reason I don't feel quite as threatened as I should by the person who might turn out to be the most powerful in these games. He displays a weird mix of friendliness and discipline in a way that I can only think of as some kind of trap, and I'm certain that if it came from anybody else I wouldn't be falling for it.

"I guess that's a shame," are the only words I can find to reply with. Maybe he's genuine, who knows.

"The other Careers are doing my head in," he sighs. "Wanna have a bit of fun?"

Before I know it, he's pocketed his blades and slammed me to the ground, leaving me no time to think about what to do. During a scuffle I discover that he is lighter than me by a long way so as soon as I see a good enough opportunity, I pick him up and pin him. Three seconds pass.

He smiles. "Nah, we can't have that."

In a matter of seconds I am underneath him, held in place by his thighs and an outstretched arm holding me by the neck to the ground, just hard enough for me to not be able to move but not hard enough to hurt. The bright fluorescent lighting paints his silhouette above me, outlining him in a string of neon blue, fierce and still as a ninja of the night. He silently counts to three on his other hand, and sets me free.

"You had me there," he admits. I take his offered hand and he pulls me up off the floor.

"You're a person though, aren't you?" I add. "You came back."

He starts twirling the star again. "People generally don't come back to life after they die, Mighty. It would be cool if they could though." He pauses for a second. "Actually no, that would be awful, because then there would be zombies and they might be evil."

A female voice calls from a distance. "Hey, Espio! Where are you? Get a load of this!"

His smile disappears in an instant and he shakes his head. "I bet District 2's done something positively outrageous again. Take care. I might come back for you one day so you can kill me again."

He winks and then he leaves.

From the windows in this little off-room, there is a great view of the rest of the Training Centre. The lighting is a little warmer out there, but not by much. Each station is positioned against one of the three walls with a social space in the middle. There is aggression, technicality, friendship and academia, all blending together in a buzz of activity. Alliances are coming together. Plans are being made. Techniques are being built upon.

I watch as Matilda storms through one last round of plant identification, calmly reaching a hundred percent, before handing her spot over to the girl from District 9 and making her way towards the combat stations. She sees me through the thick glass window of the close combat chamber. Her expression does not change, but her direction does. Right back around again.

It's lonely. I'm lonely without Matilda.

Chapter Text

"I think I will just be myself, and answer in a way that comes naturally to me."

On the morning of day three of training - the final day, cut short because of the private training sessions that will happen this afternoon - Ray and I investigated some other forms of combat and tested some of our survival skills, plus some more weaving and tying and the dreaded plant identification. Maybe we'll be okay.

"So if Gerald were to ask you... what was your first impression of the Capitol?"

For as long as we stay away from the fruits and the flowers, we'll be okay. Because I can't tell the real ones from the fakes. The ones they showed - the ones that could be in the arena, there's no certainty - are not like anything I've seen before. And Ray has no idea either, I asked what his home is like. Apparently District 8 is small and dense and there is no nature in sight.

"It's grand, for sure. The support is overwhelming and I am forever grateful for the hospitality, but I couldn't help but notice that everything is so... manufactured? And so put-together. The innovation..."

"Yes, the innovation is spectacular, you got that right. How does it compare to Seven?"

"Oh, it doesn't compare. It does not compare at all."

At the camouflage station, he showed me with his handcraft that District 8 is like the Capitol but smaller and poorer and just generally a dirge to be in. I showed him how to replicate the floor of a thick forest out of mud and clay, and in return he taught me how to make slingshots out of animal hide and tight bowls of wicker.

"And how do you feel about your brother, being here with you?"

Matilda is silent. She looks from the corner of her eye, sitting perched on the edge of her tall dining chair, at me, sunken in the soft settee nursing a hot coffee.

She returns to Jules and smiles gently. "I'm happy he is here."

"I thought you were going to answer naturally?" I blurt. "You've been avoiding me for the last three days."

She rolls her eyes. "I admire his boldness."

"I see," Jules trails off, polishing the metal of his right arm with the glove on his left. "Why do you think he volunteered?"

"Why do I think he volunteered?"

"Yes."

She glances at me again.

"It's no good looking to me for answers," I say. "I'll be backstage when you're in that chair."

"I think..." she clears her throat. "For solidarity."

"And yet you've been avoiding me this entire time-"

"That's enough of your input, Mighty," Jules says. "You'll be backstage when she's in that chair."

Zor stumbles in through the entrance to our floor with a half-full cocktail glass in his hand. He lazily salutes us. "How's the interviewing?"

"Finished," Jules replies, slapping his notebook shut.

"Finished? That was short."

"They are very short, Zor, you get maybe a minute tops, I thought you worked here? Anyway Matilda that means if you're going to answer naturally, you're going to have to be quick about it."

Jules and Zor head to the kitchen for their own conversation. I stay nestled in the settee, sipping the coffee and wondering where the world went wrong for us all to end up here, in this room, thrusted into a spotlight only to be completely screwed no matter what happens. We will most likely die. And if not, we might be injured like Jules was, and have half of our bodies replaced with metal. And if neither of those, we'll be property of the Capitol anyway.

"Mighty."

"Yes?"

Matilda moves the tall chair to the side of the settee and sits in front of me and leans over, resting her elbows on her knees. "You want to know why I've been avoiding you?"

Her tone is menacing. Her posture is intimidating. Her voice is a calm form of angry. I have no reason to feel that way about her, really, but I find myself sitting up to match her height anyway.

"Yes," I nod. "I would like to know."

"Because you're an idiot."

"I know that."

"This was never supposed to be you."

"You don't think I've told myself that enough already?"

She swings herself off the chair and starts pacing. "That's not the point, is it?"

"Well then what is the point?"

"The point is, you've given us a plotline, and now I have an obligation to stick to it. My place in these games is not about me anymore. You stole that from me by putting your stupid hand up. My place in these games now is about you, because you did the thing. You shocked the world. You turned heads and now my interview, that should be about me, is going to be all about you."

"...And what do you want me to do about that?"

"Let me write my own story, and leave me alone!"

She storms into her room and slams the door shut.

"Yikes." Zor stands behind me, sipping the cocktail in his hand. "Someone's in trouble."

Jules appears from behind him, and lets out a large sigh. "Sorry about that, man."

"It's fine," I reply, voice cracking slightly. "I had it coming."

Jules returns the chair to where it was before, placing it gently so it doesn't screech against the hardwood floor. He takes the notebook, flicks through the pages to find an empty one, and sits on the other end of the settee by my feet.

"Where's your head at?"

"Is this therapy?"

"Only if you want it to be. Personally, I was thinking it could be some improv interviewing."

"I don't think Gerald's opening line would be 'where's your head at'," I try to laugh, but it doesn't feel right.

"Okay, how about... Why?"

"Just why?"

"Why."

"That is totally something he would ask me the second I sit down, isn't it?"

"And he would expect you to know what he's talking about. Answer."

"I did it because..." I begin, remembering what Dave told me to say. I can't reveal how stupid I truly am, by admitting that for a split second I thought I could replace her, no, I can't say that, "...because I can't imagine a life without her."

And that isn't a lie. If I could imagine a life without her, I wouldn't have done it.

"Did you not have the confidence that she could come home?"

"Oh, I have every confidence in her." That one isn't a lie either. "It's just not a risk I wanted to take. My thought process in that moment was, if she..."

"If she...?"

"If she goes down, I go down too," I say. "We go out together."

Jules scribbles something down in his notebook. "If she goes down... I go down too... Are you aware that that makes it sound like you are willing to sacrifice yourself for her?"

"Absolutely."

He closes the book and pushes it into his jacket pocket. "And would you do that, if the situation called for it? This isn't part of the interview. Think." He doesn't wait for an answer. Instead, he returns to the kitchen, and pats my shoulder on his way.

Chapter Text

Matilda and I return to the Training Centre, guided by Zor as always, after a long chat with Jules. This time, he told us to show off as much as we can, and not to be discouraged if we mess something up. According to him, the Gamemakers will be more impressed by a can-do attitude than a fear of even trying. I don't know how he can be so sure seeing as it's their first year, but it makes me feel just a little better regardless.

"Every shot you don't take is a shot you are guaranteed to miss," he told us, as he closed the door to the seventh floor behind us. "But don't make fools of yourselves, either."

Every tribute of the 27th Games is sitting lined up on benches in district order in a plain grey corridor to a back entrance of the Training Centre. We are informed via a tannoy system that we will enter one at a time, and be given a maximum of ten minutes to display what we have learnt to the Gamemakers, who will be watching us from a room with a large window on the floor above this corridor. We will be called in, and before the session starts, we must address the Gamemakers and introduce ourselves with our name and district for formality. We may use anything in the Centre. Cleaning of the Centre may take between forty seconds and two minutes, depending on what we do.

In a worst case scenario, this will last four hours and forty six minutes. Refreshments and breaks are provided on request. After some mental maths, I estimate that I will have to wait just under three hours before my training session.

The tannoy beeps. "Espio Vaso - District 1."

The corridor is eerily silent, almost as if there is some unwritten rule that we must not communicate with each other before the sessions. I'm sure there are alliances in here somewhere. Of course there is Ray and I but if I don't feel like talking then neither of us ever will. I'm sure the Careers have something going, it's almost a guarantee. For the last few games, those three districts have been a formidable team, but they are quiet. Matilda hasn't said a word directly to me since this morning. Not even the boy from Eleven who laughed with the Capitol on the way down from the train station can spare a word.

"Liza Keenley - District 1."

I do not know what Espio's talents or tactics or intentions are, other than being very good at paralyzing me, less with his body and more with just the fact that he exists in the way that he does, but I find myself hoping that he has done well anyway. I shouldn't. I should fear him, but I don't.

"Sonic Felgate - District 2."

Liza wastes no time, she's out after five minutes.

As time goes on, everybody becomes a little more restless. I think we all underestimated how painstaking the wait would be. I try to amuse myself by counting every overlap in the weaves on my bracelet but it is so intricate and the strings are so small that I lose count several times. The District 6 boy starts humming quietly and I wish the girl sat between us both would just kick him, but I doubt she would because conflict within a district is the last thing any district needs.

"Shadow Kintobor - District 5."

He stretches and cracks his neck as he stands up, clearly feeling stiff, and is the first to say anything since we all got here. "I feel sorry for the rest of y'all. Take the damn breaks."

Rouge chuckles, also stretches, and crosses her legs the other way. "Anyone want to check out the refreshments?"

Nobody answers her.

"Your loss."

She helps herself to an orange juice from the table at the back end of the corridor before being called into the Centre herself.

"Silver Venice - District 6."

Finally, Admiral Discordant is gone.

"Blaze Liesma - District 6."

It's only when she gets up that I realise just how radiant she is, even in clothes that aren't fancy. Blaze definitely is not the most confident but she looks strong. I can't imagine someone like her being anything less than a fierce warrior in these games despite being only fourteen - she reminds me of every fictional soldier-princess there has ever been.

"Mighty Stratnyy - District 7."

When my name is called I am flushed with a wave of dread. The next ten minutes of my life will probably be the most important I ever face, and the score the Gamemakers award me from what they see is everything. It is my chance of success. It is my degree of likeability. It is correlated with the sponsors I get, which could mean life or death. But that flush goes away quickly and my mind empties itself of any worrying thought as its own neat little defence mechanism to stop me from crumbling in there and throwing away any hope of success. I do tend to stop thinking when things like this happen.

The door opens for me and closes behind me as soon as it can. I stretch myself out on the way to the little yellow star drawn on the floor in the middle of the Training Centre. Everything in here is the same, except the benches and mats in the middle have been moved to the sides to give more space. Cameras have been installed in every corner of the Centre so the Gamemakers always have a good view. Their window is situated high up on the wall opposite the combat stations.

When I stand on the star, some lights flash, alerting the Gamemakers of my presence. They too look drowsy, and they are barely halfway through their work today. They all sit in a line along a wide table, halfway through some kind of extravagant feast. Some have notebooks, others have phones, and they all converge in their line to Master Zik, head Gamemaker, sitting all regal in the middle of the giant balcony window. He taps the table to get the attention of the other Gamemakers, giving them some words that I cannot hear nor make out visually from this distance, and he nods his head at me. They are ready.

I take a deep breath.

"Mighty Stratnyy - District 7."

Chapter Text

There is a small beep, and a red ten minute timer is projected onto the blank part of the wall above the Gamemaker balcony. I watch as it ticks down to nine minutes fifty six and then decide I need to actually do something.

I head to the knot-tying station and give myself three minutes to weave a net. Ray showed me all sorts of tricks to weaving large sheets of anything I can find. I kick off my shoes and use my feet to kick parts of the net away from me so I can keep my hands and my eyes on the next knots. I'm quick to tie off the ends, and I am left with a net that is just large enough to wrap around me. Then I take it to the combat stations.

I put the setting to medium, just to test the waters. I allow myself one minute to work out the best way to kill a robot with a net. If I am careful, I can sort out several of them at once. Robots get tangled pretty easily.

At the six minute mark, I decide to take a risk and ditch the net for a second to turn the difficulty to hard. It is as Espio said it would be. Faster. Much faster than he let on, in fact. I catch a quick glimpse at the clock - four minutes and twenty - before I am tumbled onto the floor on top of the net. I'm pinned by the bot, which raises its metal arm above my head.

Time feels like it slows down. I struggle with the force of the robot's weight and wrench my arm free, just a split second too late to stop it from coming within an inch of my nose. The simulation shuts down. It got me.

I have four minutes to make a comeback.

A little dazed, I pick up my net and return to the tying station and slip my shoes back on, and improvise a modification to the net to turn it into a snare. The Gamemakers watch as I work, time ticking down on the clock, and they're probably just as clueless as to what I will do next as I am. Acting on autopilot, I return to the combat station, use the small ledges on windows to climb up the wall, rig the snare to the ceiling, and turn on the station.

The robots just kill themselves. It's kind of morbid.

The timer beeps again when it hits zero, and the door on the other side of the centre opens. I am shooed out by an Avox.

"Mighty!" Jules cheerfully greets when he sees me. "How did it go?"

"For Chaos's sake Jules, ditch the positivity already, he'll probably be dead in a week-"

"Zor-"

"-Wish that were me. Wanna swap, kiddo?"

There is a long, stunned silence. By now, I'm used to Zor's sudden declarations of suicidality, but sometimes it still takes me off guard. It's especially heavy, immediately after leaving the most important exam of my life.

"I-It was fine?" I answer to Jules. "Yeah, it was probably fine."

He nods, and pats me on the back to guide me away from a brooding Zor to a bench in this equally long and plain corridor. "What did you do?"

I explain while the three of us wait for Matilda. When it comes to telling him about how I lost to the robots, he reassures me that it will be okay. It was on hard mode, which is supposed to be hard. It is unlikely that I would end up in a brawl of that kind of difficulty where I am so highly outnumbered unless I encountered the Career pack, and he's already made it very clear that I am not to do that under any circumstances. So I tell him about how I snared a bunch more robots in retaliation and he just laughs.

"What's so funny?"

"You actually sought out revenge? You're so petty."

"Well I had to do something. Is that a bad thing...?"

"It's certainly a thing."

"It means," Zor pipes up from the corner. "That the Gamemakers aren't gonna mess with you because they know you'll do something really stupid afterwards. We've seen that happen before. And seeking revenge is only gonna get you killed even harder."

"Zor he did not do anything stupid, It's quite a clever comeback to be honest. I just found it funny."

"Last time somebody tried to be petty, they got themself killed and District 5 won the games by doing absolutely bugger all."

"I'm not sure why you're trying to care!" I finally snap. I've been patient with this man for far too long. "Five minutes ago you were so convinced I'd die anyway that you were asking to swap with me so you would die instead! We're just that doomed, according to you! I killed some robots with a snare, Zor, what is wrong with that-"

I'm cut short by the sight of Matilda stood in the entrance to the hallway, eyebrows raised. The door slides shut behind her.

"Drama?" she asks, with a slight smile.

Zor leads us back to our floor. It's a route we all know well by now but he still has a duty to take us around anyway, just in case we try to make a run for it. Matilda explains how she once again hundred-percented the plants machine, and spent the rest of her slot lifting weights.

"Seriously, there's a lot I can learn from Rouge, and Shadow's not so bad either," she says.

"I can speak to Maria, if you'd like?" Jules asks. "We can arrange an official alliance between Five and Seven?"

"That depends on what Mighty wants."

I can't explain to myself how her saying that makes me feel. After this morning I wasn't expecting her to care much about me either - as of now, it feels like the only person in the world who has my back is Jules - so the fact that she is asking feels more like a dig than anything else but I don't address it because it would sound ridiculous.

"I've been with the boy from District 8 for training again," I reply. "I think we make a good team. And I did run into the lad from One, but I don't know if I trust him."

"He's been acting really weird," Matilda adds. "I've been watching, he's been avoiding most of his allies but nobody seems to be thinking too much of it other than Rouge and I. He's got his eyes on Shadow for some reason. Can't see why, when the Careers are right there."

Jules sighs. "I don't think it's worth trying to figure anybody out until the interviews. We can learn a lot about people and the kind of player they will be depending on what angle they take in that chair."

Zor once again pushes the doors open for us, significantly wearier than usual.

"I'll talk to Five and Eight tonight," Jules continues. "I'll see what I can do for you both. Get some rest, and we can think about interviews again in a bit. You've both done well."

Chapter Text

"Our beloved Citizens, this Gerald Robotnik of BreezTV bringing to you tonight's special edition of Capitol Calling! Soon to come tonight..."

The four of us are once again sprawled on the sofa I was laid on this morning watching the TV. I have spent the last few hours on my back on the floor of my room with my eyes closed listening to the ambient forest noises that came with the big screen on the wall, again imagining that I am back at home in District 7, floating gently on my back in one of the forest lakes. Gerald lists off the show's content for tonight.

"But first, I must address the elephant in the room. That's right folks, today was the final day of training for the tributes of the annual Hunger Games, and this afternoon each individual tribute was assessed during a ten-minute private training session by our very own Gamemakers. I have Master Zik here with me in the studio tonight."

The camera pans to Master Zik, a short person whose feet barely touch the studio floor from the blue velvet armchair he is sat on. He's an elderly person who is proud to be one of the only Capitol citizens who hasn't undergone any anti-ageing procedures - these features are much more easy to see when he is not twenty feet above you, staring you down with expectations higher up than he is. He talks big for someone who was only hired this year, outsourced from some martial arts club in the Capitol University. "Good evening Gerald."

"Good evening, Master Zik," he smiles. "On my desk here, I have a series of cards with the scores for each tribute's private training session, one to twelve with twelve being the best, faced down and arranged in district order. Can you please confirm that the scores on these cards are valid and correct?"

Zik clears his throat. "It is with great honour that I can confirm on behalf of all of the Gamemakers that we do have valid results, which are printed on the cards in front of you." He smiles. "You're good to go."

"Thank you, Master Zik!"

"So, you two, what are you expecting?" Zor asks, while Gerald picks up his first card. He is shushed by Jules.

"Espio Vaso - District 1..."

Gerald begins with the male tribute from District 1, and as always, he puts a slight delay before he reveals the score.

"...Eleven."

"Eleven?" Jules yells, shocked. "Nobody gets eleven!"

"District 1 have had to up their game this year though, haven't they," Zor sighs. "after the bloodbath last year."

"Liza Keenley - District 1... Nine."

"Okay, that's more normal."

The scores of District 2 are revealed, and so is the score of the boy from District 3, an outstanding ten. I'm not surprised. After what I saw at the tribute parade, I knew there must be some serious strength beneath that leotard.

"Cream Paloma - District 3..."

"Oh god, I do feel for her..." Jules laments.

"...Two."

Zor starts counting on his fingers. "Okay, so on average that's a six which really isn't that bad-"

"Will you cut it out?"

"I don't know why you care about her so much Jules, just because she's twelve and she's the daughter of a victor doesn't make her immune to the Games."

"Well it should!" he argues.

"You're too soft."

"Maybe I actually have empathy, unlike you, because I've been there and done it!"

"Shut up or we'll miss our scores!" Matilda yells. "Yeah, it's sad, but whatever. It is what it is."

Matilda's interference stuns all of us a little. It's not the first time I've heard her do something like that, it happened quite often at home and it rarely worked, but when it did, it lasted a good hour or so. It takes until halfway through District 5 for us to fully settle down. Once again, we all miss everything to do with District 4.

"Rouge Julian - District 5... Seven."

A respectable score. Anything seven or above is respectable in the eyes of the bookies. Maybe Matilda wasn't kidding when she said Rouge was one to look out for.

"Silver Venice - District 6... Five. Blaze Liesma - District 6... Six."

And as I thought, District 6 are, and never will be, a problem. I can try and convince myself of that. But I don't have time to think about them because I'm next. I move to the edge of my seat and rest my forehead on my fists, avoiding any kind of eye contact with the man on the TV.

"Mighty Stratnyy - District 7... Eight."

Jules laughs. "See! I told you, Zor, kid's a genius!"

"And a bloody lucky one at that," he sneers.

"Are we not proud of him?"

"Eight is like, less than three quarters, in old money that's barely B tier."

A score of eight... it might be the most perfect score there is for someone like me. Good enough to boost me, low enough to keep me out of the spotlight... eight is the score of an underdog. Jules and Zor keep bickering while I zone out, staring at the carpet. It worked. Jules was right, I had nothing to worry about.

"What praise do I get?" Matilda asks after some time, once again effortlessly silencing Jules and Zor. "I got an eight too, or were you not listening? What praise do I get, hm?"

Jules lunges for the TV remote, almost missing it. He scrambles for the remote and rewinds back about thirty seconds.

"Matilda Stratnyy - District 7... Eight."

"You weren't listening." She nods. "Thanks."

And for the second time today she shuts herself in her room.

"Ray Zabletsk - District 8... Fo-"

Jules frustratedly switches off the TV and collapses back onto the sofa, dropping his head into his hands.

"She's feeling a lot of things right now, Jules, don't worry about it," I say, in an attempt to cheer him up before realising that maybe this time he doesn't deserve it. Yes, he may have my back, but he also needs to have Matilda's, and right now I can understand why to her it might not feel like he does. Or anybody does.

I volunteered, immediately taking all attention that she would get and putting it onto me. I upset our family, and what could be her last memory of them was ruined as a result of me volunteering. When Jules said that he thinks we are the best chance District 7 has had in over a decade, she believed him when he said he doesn't say that every year, because we are not like any other year, and that can only be explained by the fact that I took the spotlight off everyone else, including her. And now, even when our scores were revealed, I came first, and she was ignored.

Not to mention the fact that there is a chance she still loves me, and the only chance we can stay together now is if we both die. Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking, and she doesn't love me anymore at all.

I head to her room and knock gently on the door. "Tilly?"

It's a childhood nickname. She would only ever let me call it her, when she was about five. I take my chances with it.

"Don't call me that, you don't get to call me that anymore," I hear her say from inside her room. "What do you want?"

I open the door and slide inside, closing it slowly behind me.

She sighs. "If you're not going to say anything else then you can get out and leave me alone."

"I don't understa-"

"I don't understand either, Mighty. And at this rate I don't think we're ever going to figure it out. Please leave."

"I just wanted to say..." I begin, feeling the tell-tale tug behind my chin and knowing that nothing I can do or say will repair us now, "...you did amazing and I'm so proud of you. And I love you. I really do."

"You were listening?"

"Yes," I lie.

"...Thank you. Y-you did good too."

There's a long silence. I debate going to hug her, and decide that it's probably not the best idea. She's not a hugger, especially not when she's mad.

"I mean it," she says, sharply. I don't know whether she means she genuinely thinks I did good, or if she means she really does want me to leave, but just in case I assume the latter and leave her to her solitude.

The second her door clicks shut, Jules is onto me. "Mighty, I am so sorry-"

"It's not me you need to be apologising to, Jules," I retort, desperately holding back tears. "But I don't recommend speaking to her right now either."

I barge past him and head to my own room. I don't bother turning on the ambiance, and instead I dive straight under the covers and stay there, unable to stop thinking about the sheer weight of what I have done, and it is too much for me to handle inside my head. I can't put on a brave face anymore, and for the hour or so that I can remain awake, no amount of sobbing can lessen the impact of being District 7's first volunteer, and losing the love of my sister.

This. This is where I start feeling things again.

Chapter Text

"If you're going to sacrifice yourself then you at least need to do it with style. Paint yourself as a hero or something..."

-o-

I woke up to a pleasant Saturday, and tonight, we are the stars of Capitol Calling. Each of us tributes are sat once again in a crescent shape at the back of the great stage after a strange ritual backstage involving a blind walk through pitch darkness, this time in our interview outfits. They are, by large, much less crazy than the parade costumes. I've been given a tailored brown suit with a waistcoat.

Today has been tough for all of us. Matilda hasn't said a word to anyone unless she really had to, including Jules. Zor has been relatively absent. Jules has tried and failed to talk us into happiness. The last thing he said to us just before we were led onstage was, "Please just keep it civil out there, and play the game how the Capitol wants you to play it, because at this point, if you're honest, it might just backfire."

The Capitol wants a sob story. And with very little collaboration from Matilda and I on how we are going to do this, my only clues will be coming from what she says in the interview slot before mine. I know what they want from me, it's how I present it that I need to think about. I think back to Jules asking me whether I would be willing to die for Matilda.

I think if Gerald asks me that question I might just implode, because the whole reason I'm even here is because that answer would be 'yes'. If the answer is not 'yes' then what could that be, other than an early betrayal?

The answer is 'yes'. Because that was the intention to start with. That is why I am here.

But now we're both here. And if I'm honest, I don't want to die. And if I'm honest, and I say that I would die for her to survive, would anybody care to keep me alive and sponsor me? Would it matter, if I am going to die for her to survive? No matter what I say, I will be lying but I guess that is just what Dave signed me up for. And I think if I did come out of here alive, my family would never forgive me. I wouldn't deserve to have the Stratnyy name. Not that anybody else deserved it either, but that's not the point.

"Our beloved Citizens, this is Panem!"

Music blares and there is a light show, strobing the seal into the air above us all with beams of colour that cross in their trajectories, before all the lights point to the front of the stage, illuminating Gerald in all of his glory.

"Welcome to Capitol Calling! Live from the Training Centre arena, my name is Gerald Robotnik, and behind me, please welcome... the class of twenty seven... our tributes!"

A drum is hit somewhere, and we are all given our own personal spotlight. A cameraman moves a large camera on wheels across the floor, filming us all in a line, while Gerald talks the audience through how tonight's show is going to work. Some of the other tributes greet the camera very fondly. When it reaches me, I smile and awkwardly wave, too overwhelmed by the lights and the noise to care to listen.

"Now we've got all that covered," Gerald says, sitting down on one of the large green armchairs at the front of the stage, "I think it's time for some interviews, don't you?"

The audience cheers.

"Well then, let's begin! We start with District 1... Liza Keenley!"

The spotlights are thrown onto her, dressed in a long yellow gown, as she gets up and struts to the empty armchair in clicky heels. She plays it classy confident, and with obviously faked humbleness.

"I don't want to overestimate my ability," she says with a chuckle in response to the question of her training score of nine, "but I think I can say with confidence that I will be a contender in these games. Vote One, everybody, we won't let you down."

The buzzer sounds at the end of her slot, and she is quickly replaced by Espio. He gives Gerald some background about life in District 1. He is asked about how likely it is that he will regain the title for the district, which he doesn't really answer with any kind of decisiveness, a great contrast from everything I've heard from him before. He skirts around the topic of being the biggest contender by default, instead bigging up his fellow Careers.

"But Espio... your training score. Eleven. Comments?"

He shrugs. "I don't want it to define me."

"What do you mean?"

"These scores... they tell us nothing about the quality of what we will bring to the arena." He speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "All this tells us is how well we work under pressure. Under a time limit. And that's not what the games are all about."

"It's more of a long haul?"

"Exactly. What I can and can't do in ten minutes is no reflection of what I can and can't do in ten days. I may have scored an eleven but that doesn't mean I'll do any better, or that I am any more worth your money, than someone who scored a five."

The Capitol audience are once again intrigued by his approach to Gerald's questioning. Espio is most definitely not playing the angle of your everyday District 1 boy. I begin to wonder if this is going to turn into some kind of self-sabotage, but I think better of him than that. Surely he has a plan.

"That being said..." he continues, "beating the crap out of a bunch of robots is pretty fun."

There it is. The Capitol, who were once silently hung onto his every word, have been thrown into cheers of support. I know now, from the way he that plays, charms, and manipulates an audience, that he is not one to be trusted after all.

"Es! You're not allowed to discuss what you did!"

"When did I do that? I just stated an opinion."

Gerald laughs as the buzzer sounds. "He's clever, witty, and strong, give it up for District 1's Espio!"

His applause is louder than Liza's by a long way. He gives the Capitol a gentle bow before making his way back to his chair in the back. I see Shadow slide him a thumbs up, and Espio communicates back to him with an almost untraceable nod. Nobody can top that interview. He'll be right at the top of the odds now, and he knows it.

Chapter Text

Cream aces her interview, probably because she's so used to the press already, being a victor's daughter. She is asked to twirl to show off her dress and she obliges, curtsying at the end and twirling back to her armchair. She mentions her pets back at home, called Cheese and Chocola, and how she hopes they're doing okay.

Then it's the lad's turn. He is called by his name, Vector, onto the stage, and he gets a big cheer from the crowd. He scored ten. I don't care about what Espio said about the scores being a bunch of crap, he's one to watch. Vector is asked about his career aspirations. He says he's always wanted to become a private investigator in the Capitol, after working up the Peacekeeper rankings if he really must. He is then asked how he feels about being so high up in the odds - even Gerald can't tell him much more than that - and he jokes that it is a shame he couldn't bet on himself even though he's now old enough to gamble, because he's participating.

"Well if you win, you'll get all the money and you'll be able to do your dream career," Gerald says, leaning back on his armchair.

"If I win, I wouldn't need to be a private investigator, would I?"

"Why?"

"Because I'd have all the money anyway."

The buzzer goes. The Capitol appears to like him, but Matilda shakes her head and tuts when the camera pans to the audience for a second or two. "Tasteless," she mutters. "Utterly tasteless."

The girl from Four, Marine, drove boats while her family fished for krill. She reckons she has a knack for navigation. She expresses great love for District 4 and winning will likely be her proudest achievement, and her life would be complete. The boy goes on next, and his name is Big. Big is big. Big's brain is not big. Big has a frog called Froggy. Big misses Froggy. Big volunteered by accident because Froggy fell off his shoulder but on the way to the stage he decided that this is just what the universe led him to do, so now he is happy to be here, and Froggy is still lost but he doesn't care anymore. Froggy is love, Froggy is life. The Captiol can't stop laughing and I pray that his entire character is satire because if it isn't, well, I didn't think anyone could be more stupid than me. I find myself wishing I knew about this guy earlier, rather than listening to everyone argue over Cream, because at least I'd have a bit of joy in my life.

Rouge is playfully flirty, and there is a sort of role reversal, where she manages to get Gerald to talk about himself more than she talks about herself. At around the thirty second mark, she's asked about her aspirations, and she says she wants to be a Peacekeeper, but not the kind with armour and guns. "I'll let you decide the kind of peace I'll be keeping," she laughs, before dismissing herself. Shadow is quiet, barely answering any questions, and ends up complimenting the stage design to avoid talking too much about his recent emotions. When asked about how Maria is doing as a mentor, he simply smiles and says, "She is optimistic. We like her for that."

Admiral Discordant is whimsical and dreamy, speaking softly, almost in a sing-song manner if it wouldn't be so ironic. He shows off his sparking white suit, something which has become a trademark of his by now. He then briefly explains that District 6 don't actually get to use most of the transport that they produce, and how much awe he was in of the train on the way here.

"Panem indeed works best as a team," Gerald responds. "About your district now, who is at home watching you today? Loved ones?"

Silver hesitates. "Well... Nobody in particular."

"Not even family?"

"They are not in the picture."

And then his buzzer sounds.

Matilda is spotlighted, directly to my left side. I see from a screen at the back of the arena that she smiles at Silver as she closely crosses paths with him, and his hand shifts.

"How unfortunate for Silver." Gerald shakes his head. "However we must move on! And speaking of family, we are now onto District 7. Please welcome, Matilda!"

She sits neatly on the armchair. "Hello."

"Good evening, Matilda! My, I have a lot to ask you tonight." Gerald takes a deep breath. "Tell me. What has District 7 got hiding up their sleeves this time?"

"We are strong, Gerald," she smiles. "Back at home we Stratnyys make a lot of things out of cedar, we always have. Some of our products might even have made it past the Capitol to other districts. And our ancestors have always been particularly good at throwing wood around. We have them to thank for these biceps."

"Physical strength, I like it! What's the trademark?"

"Stratnyy Timbercase."

Gerald points to the camera. "Go through your stuff, Citizens, if you've got any Stratnyy Timbercase in your house, that is the best Hunger Games merchandise you will ever get! And Matilda, I bet you're clever too, with a score like eight?"

"I should hope so. The ability to solve problems is probably the most important thing a person can have in these games." She locks her eyes onto the camera, undoing her polite smile and returning to her usual neutral expression. "There is no room for stupid decisions."

Stupid decisions. Like volunteering because you lost your pet frog. Like volunteering because you forgot how volunteering works.

"Now then," Gerald continues, shushing the crowd. "I'm sure you know what's coming. Your brother is here with you."

Her voice lowers. "Indeed he is."

Gerald just leans back on his chair and waits for her to say more. I find myself on half of a split-screen view and try not to look mad about the fact that this girl has just had a dig at me on public television. I won't lie to myself and pretend it was unintentional but not for one second do I let this harsh slap of betrayal hit my face.

"I'm thankful that he is here with me." I know when she lies because she blinks more than usual, and our parents know so too, so I blink at the camera in return. "A familiar face within all this chaos. And one thing I would like to say, to my family, to my parents: Don't worry about us. Especially you, Mum, we're doing just fine out here."

I blink again, slightly harder this time. We're not doing just fine. Your daughter is a liar. She doesn't understand.

"And you will do just fine?"

She smiles again and folds her arms. "And we will do just fine."

Chapter Text

"Good evening, Mighty."

"Good evening, Gerald."

The armchair welcomes me, its soft cushioning enveloping my lower back as I sink into it. It feels like the hug that I never knew I needed quite so badly until now. Matilda's remark probably wasn't even directed at me but I can't see any other reason as to why she would say that in such a manner. All the emphasis of her interview landed on that one line.

We briefly discuss my skills and interests. I tell him I like to make things with my hands, and I joined a Wrestling Club in school when I was ten. When he asks about my training score, I tell the truth and say that I could not be happier.

"I think we ought to get the last thing out of the way now, hm?" he smirks.

"You want to know why, don't you" I chuckle as a guess, knowing already that that is exactly what he wants.

Gerald turns to the audience and asks them gently, "Do we want to know why?"

The audience chirps quietly in affirmation.

"Okay then Mighty. Why?"

Jules is a genius. I think back to our silly little rehearsals back on the seventh floor and say my line. "I did it because I can't imagine a life without her." And the audience eats it up.

"What was going through your head once you were on the stage in front of the Justice Building? Because you looked kind of..."

"Out of it?" I finish. "Yeah, to be honest, in that moment I was just so conflicted. I have full confidence in Matilda and I think she has what it takes to come home, but at that point I don't think we could ever be the same as a family, you know? The second Zor pulled her name out of that bowl, it was game over for every Stratnyy because we all love each other more than anything."

"You love your sister as your sister, and not just some pawn in these games?"

"Exactly," I reply, not really knowing what any of this means to anybody anymore, Matilda or the rest, but if the Capitol understands - which they clearly do - then it will be fine. "The thought that I had, that kept kind of... ticking over in my head, I guess... reappearing in my mind all this time, was that if she goes down, I go down too. And that is what I am going to play by. But for our family and our friends, we are going to do whatever it takes to get one of us home."

This time, it's my turn to face the camera. "Matilda was right. We're strong. She's clever. And maybe this was a stupid decision on my part but I'm here now and I can feel it: District 7 is going to have a victor this year."

I resist the urge to add onto the end, 'and I sure hope it isn't me'.

Jules welcomes us back into our living room after interviews finish with a pat on the back each. "See, I told you that you two could be civil."

"Did you not pick up on all the micro-aggressions?" Zor sighs.

"Well yeah but that's only because we've all been a part of the drama. The rest of Panem has no idea so to that I say, well done!"

"Even though Mighty just wrote himself off completely?" Matilda asks.

"Actually, I don't think he did, you know."

"What do you mean?" she laughs. "He said that if I go down, he goes down too, and he's going to do anything it takes to make sure one of us goes home, which means if he wins then that means I go down, and then what's he going to do? Kill himself? He basically just said that he doesn't want to win, but in a bit of a fancier way."

"Ah," Jules grins. "He's going to do anything it takes. Meaning, he's going to do damn well in there. And you've both got the story. You've got the scores. You've got reasons for the Capitol to love you, sponsor you, pay for your gifts, bet on you, everything. If he said he wanted to win, then that would have undermined the whole narrative. He's done you a massive favour, Matilda."

She raises an eyebrow. Yes, it would have undermined the whole narrative, but isn't that what she wanted?

We settle down for our final big meal before the Games. Up until now, it was hard to think about the upcoming massacre, because there was always something else between us and it. The tribute parade, training, interviews, there was always something to do first, but now all there is to do is sleep.

I ordered beef stew for my final evening meal, massively overestimating my appetite. I tentatively dip my bread crusts in the rich broth spiced with pepper and Worcestershire sauce, which I have developed quite a liking for, and manually organise the eating process. I have to remind myself that once I've bitten, I need to chew, and then swallow. My fork feels heavy, like I barely have the strength in my hand to stop it from clattering down.

I could die tomorrow. But I need to eat, just in case I don't.

I had been looking forward to hearing Ray's interview. I wondered how it was going to work, since he has never said a word to me or anybody else. He sounds younger than thirteen. Much younger than Matilda, at least. He's crafty. He crochets winterwear in the factories of District 8 when he isn't in school. He is fast and he can climb. His favourite food is peanut butter sandwiches. But between his words he stuttered heavily, making hard work of talking, although his energy and enthusiasm never faltered.

Thinking about Ray makes the stew go down easier. Without him, it would have been too easy for my mind to cave in and for me to give up under the pressure. I wasn't expecting to make friends here. I had once frowned upon those in previous games who became attached to their fellow tributes because in the end, at least one of them is going to die and all it will cause is more pain, but that doesn't matter to me anymore. I have a friend. I have somebody I can rely on. I have somebody I can laugh with in times of anguish.

Once I'm through the stew, I come out of the happy daydream, and reality hits once again. Today might have been the last time I ever see Ray. We may not see each other on the hovercraft to the arena. We may not see each other inside of the arena. He might be dead before I can even think about looking for him. I might be dead before he can even think about looking for me.

We could die tomorrow.

Chapter Text

I threw up the toast. Jules made me try breakfast again and I couldn't keep the muesli down either. Zor joked that I was just trying to find an easy way out. Matilda ate her toast completely unfazed. I wasn't hungry anyway.

Once again we are handcuffed, and brought out to the helipad on the roof of the Tribute Centre. Jules salutes us a goodbye. I take him in fully, burning his figure into my mind. The way his prosthetics glint in the sun. The way his red bionic eye is framed by his eyelids, softly folded by his slightly broken smile. It doesn't matter if Matilda thinks he's only rooting for us because of me, because he's rooting for us, and it shows. I find comfort in the knowledge that he will be watching over us.

Zor, however, will not be missed.

We are brought up to a wall in the hovercraft and sat opposite each other. Two Avoxes brings a large syringe to each of us and inject a tracker into our forearms. This will tell the Gamemakers precisely where we are, and it will also tell them whether or not we are still alive. These trackers took a few years to develop, and were first used in the form of wristbands in Jules' games, the fourteenth. After the original Hunger Games arena got partially destroyed before the tenth Games, the Gamemakers realised the importance of being able to track a tribute's exact location and status. The Gamemakers thought they would do well as camera substitutes, however the trackers hardly worked, so they might as well not have been used at all, and ultimately a bunch of stuff happened that was completely unseen by anyone. Conspiracy theorists like Zor do not like the fact that Jules won. The Gamemakers quickly fixed all of that tracker nonsense in the coming years. The tenth Games also led to the creation of a new, themed arena, every year starting in the eleventh. Once the trackers are in, a wall comes down beside us, blocking us off from other tributes that may arrive.

Matilda and I sit in silence for the duration of the ride. I twist Ray's bracelet around, annoyed by how it feels against the handcuff, and pretend that these small sensory grievances are the biggest of my problems. I try to imagine a time where this would be my biggest problem but I was never that good at imagining things when something big is about to happen. I just stop thinking, and instead I dissolve in my own head. Matilda stares at some distant point, considerably deadpan. Perhaps she is pretending to be an Avox. Lately, they have been easier to interact with than she has.

When we arrive, and the hovercraft sinks into the floor beneath our new arena, I don't think about what landscapes may lay above me. Even when we are split apart, and my stylist arrives in the small room I am locked in, my thoughts are only on one topic.

I am not going to find Matilda.

If she doesn't want me around then I won't go to her. I can make it look like I'm trying to find her. I can fake nightmares during sleepless nights. I can talk to Ray about her. I can gaze up to the sky at sunset, holding my breath, waiting for the nightly display of the day's fallen tributes and release a sigh of joy when District 7 is passed without her face on it. I can live a lie, because that's what I've been doing this whole time. As I'm dressed by my stylist in cargo trousers, treaded boots, a green shirt, fingerless gloves and a waterproof hooded fleece, I don't think about what landscapes may lay above me, and the clues that these clothes may give. I think about the stories I have written, and how I can live them out while making sure Matilda can still write her own and win.

"Thirty seconds."

The glass door to the launchpad opens up after the tannoy message and I head inside.

"Would you like any... words of affirmation, before you go?" My stylist asks. I shake my head. She shrugs, and closes the door.

"Fifteen seconds."

I begin to wonder what I will do.

"Ten seconds."

Jules and I never did discuss a bloodbath tactic.

"Five seconds."

Perhaps we should have.

The pad beneath me shifts a little, and a light comes on to my left. "Launch."

The roof opens up above me, and I am immediately drenched in cold, heavy rain. I throw up the hood on my fleece and stabilise myself by briefly leaning on the now wet glass wall as I am pushed upwards into the brand new arena. The world is darkened by thick cloud. I emerge facing the Cornucopia, a square, rickety thing with curved edges, which may or may not be intentional, that filter off the rain into four small streams that run between podiums. One-minute timers projected onto its walls tick down. It is stacked with a bounty of weapons and food and survival kits, and the outside is dotted with bags and baskets. I eye an orange rucksack, and decide to make that be my first move.

Beyond the Cornucopia are large plains of tall grasses, and mountains in the far distance, most likely well beyond the boundaries of this arena. And behind me is a willow forest. Its ground is covered in shrubs and bushes, and rainwater cascades down from the trees' tell-tale drooping branches. That is where I want to be.

Run in, grab the bag, pray that it isn't empty, turn around, leg it into the forest. That's the plan that I rehearse in my head as I watch the clock go down. I spot Ray out of the corner of my eye. He is positioned about ten podiums away to my left, only just visible behind the side of the Cornucopia. He said he is fast and I believe him, so I don't need to worry about him.

To my immediate right is Espio, and as usual he is impossible to decipher. He gives no clues as to where he will go. He doesn't even bother to put up his hood.

And left of me is the girl from District 2. I remember her name to be Amy Rose. I don't recall much about her from the interviews, other than that she is fierce, and one hell of a Career. That's all I really needed to know, to know that I need to stay away from her. And here I am, a likely undeserved eight-scorer, sandwiched between an eleven and a nine.

I keep my eye on the bag, and ready myself for when the first of many cannons sounds, marking the beginning of the 27th Annual Hunger Games. Run in, grab the bag, turn around, leg it into the forest.

Find Ray.

Chapter Text

When the canon sounds, Amy does not hesitate to make a leap over a small rain stream and sprint forwards into the cornucopia, kicking up wet mud from her heels. I tentatively step off the platform.

Run in.

The mud makes for a treacherous run towards the orange bag. The grooves on my boots do barely anything to stop me slipping about with every step.

Grab the bag.

I swing the thing onto my shoulder, not daring to stop running for a second as chaos begins to unfold around me.

Turn around.

I find myself face to face with Espio. Both of us freeze in our tracks, and we instantly come to the mutual agreement that we are not worth it to each other. He turns to run in a different direction, but we are frozen once again by a scream to my left. It comes from the boy from Twelve, dug out of him by a knife in the hands of Liza, Espio's district partner.

The two of us are herded into the Cornucopia together despite wanting nothing to do with each other by shots of arrows, thrusts of knives, and throws of punches, and Espio wastes no time grabbing a set of blades off the wall before leaving me alone in the building. About half of the items remain. Weapons and tools that I don't know how to use make up the bulk of the walls, and in the middle there are more supplies. I help myself to a bag of gummy vitamins and a banana and throw them into my bag, pulling the strings taut. The sound of rain echoes loudly off the Cornucopia's roof, providing a peaceful blanket of white noise for the few moments that I can have it.

I feel my hood get yanked down by an unknown hand, and I am thrusted face first into a wall full of hardware tools. Their voice begins to say something but I don't give them a chance to tell me anything. My fingers find the handle of a hammer. We are spun onto the damp floor. I am pinned. The hammer is wrenched from my grip. An arm is raised, and I do not make the same mistakes as before. I dig my teeth deep into my attacker's wrist, find myself on top of them, and the hammer ends up inside of their skull.

Amy's skull.

Unable to take my eyes off the blood pooling around her head, I stand shakily, letting the noise of the rain consume my thoughts before anything else can. She lays still on her back, and no sign of life can emerge from her. I tear myself from the gruesome sight and look past her to the other side of the Cornucopia. Shadow is here now, and he slowly unhooks a sword from the wall, staring me down, before sprinting out again. I reckon it's about time I did the same, and distance myself from this disaster.

Leg it to the forest.

I picked a heavy hammer. On my run into the forest I don't look at it for fear of what I might see. It's been barely ten minutes and I've already seen enough. The willows welcome me. I push through the brambles which tug at my ankles and I take in the fresh minty smell of the leaves that brush the top of my head as I move. The rain water dribbles down them, coming off like falling diamonds. The soft ground squelches quietly beneath my feet. The occasional boulder is a nice break.

A cannon sounds in the distance, signifying the end of the bloodbath and the beginning of the death toll. It is followed by four more. One of them is the boy from twelve. Another is Amy. The other three, I have no idea, but as long as Matilda and Ray are alive I don't care.

For the next hours, I trudge through the nature and try so desperately hard not to care.

This time last week, it was Sunday, the day before the Reaping. This time last week I was still in bed until the early afternoon, staring at the ceiling and daydreaming about who knows what but I know it wasn't this. If somebody told me this time last week that I would have volunteered for the Hunger Games to fight alongside my sister and have survived the bloodbath with a kill of a Career to my name, I would have just gone back to sleep.

How my life has taken a turn for the worse. I'd only just gotten out of the habit of blaming myself, instead telling myself that I really had no choice but to volunteer because my life would never be the same anyway, but now what else can I do? I've killed a girl. And maybe I didn't have a choice in that either but I don't want to keep making excuses anymore.

As soon as the rain dies down, I dare to take myself back into my more immediate reality and examine my supplies. The head of the hammer is solid metal with two spikes on the back end. I use the bottom of my wet coat to scrape off some of the traces of Amy's blood and brain, because I don't want to see that. To keep myself sane, I tell myself that it's just mud. Because of course, on my way here, I slipped and the hammer broke my fall. I can believe that, of course.

Inside my bag there is the banana and vitamins that I threw in there, plus a packet of dried fruit, an empty bottle, and a small bottle of iodine with instructions on how to use it to disinfect water. A pretty fantastic start as far as supplies go. On my continued walk into the forest I come across a remarkably clear stream, use it to fill up the bottle, add two drops of iodine, and wait on a rock for half an hour for it to sort itself out. The Hunger Games is looking very much like home, like the fringes of the wilderness away from the industrial district. The hollow sound of the wind, the sway of the willow branches, the constant churning of water in the stream. If I were into poetry I would write some, because this seems like something a poet would write about.

Something about how the weeping willows weep with raindrops left over from the storm of the bloodbath, falling down the branches like the tears of the fallen, crystal clear rivers like the crystals from the home of the boy who spared my life or something stupid like that, while his companion was slicing grooves with a diamond edge into a body like the bark of a twisted tree, goodness knows.

It's only day one and I'm already resorting to melodrama, what is happening to me?

Chapter Text

As much as I enjoyed spending time outside in the forest, I always had a curfew. I didn't mind it. If I slept out there, the wolves could have gotten me, but I always dreamt of an opportunity to sit out under the stars and listen to the night-time wildlife under the watchful eyes of the owls. The sun here set some time ago, but there is still a twilight. I've found myself an inlet between rocks, hardly a cave, just a convenient little hole which is reasonably dry as it is raised slightly from the muddy ground. I knock back a vitamin, my first consumption of anything other than the river water. It felt so clear and pure that I'm not sure the iodine was even needed but it still had nature's seasoning in it somewhere.

I don't know the geography of this place. It may never be suitable for stargazing.

Panem's anthem begins to ring throughout the forest, the seal is projected across the roof of the arena, an illusion of a real sky, easy to forget, behind gaps in the treetops. A slideshow of today's fallen tributes begins.

I'm surprised to see that Liza has died. She seemed so fierce and capable during the bloodbath.

The slideshow skips Espio and lands on Amy. I had managed to cast her from my mind for the majority of the evening, instead thinking about wolves and bears and moose, and to see her very much alive and healthy face stretched along the heavens makes me feel dreadfully queasy.

The next is Rouge, Matilda's friend from Five. The only person who she was genuinely enthusiastic about. Maybe she to Matilda was what Ray is to me, and if that is the case, I hope she's doing okay.

The faces of both of District 12 are then projected onto the sky - no surprises there - and the slideshow ends.

For what feels like the next few hours, the arena gets no darker. The now cloudless sky sports no trace of stars, so I trust the rocks not to come down and work out how to sleep.

I am woken by a cannon, thrusting me into the broad daylight of day two. The sun lies some way up the sky but without knowledge of which way is North I can't tell the time. A second cannon sounds while I ration to myself some dried fruit and another swig of water. As long as it's not Matilda or Ray, I remind myself, then I don't care. Seven down, seventeen to go, District 7 for the win.

"See how easy it is not to care?" I hum to myself, so nobody can see what I'm saying but at least I know and at least it feels like I've said it. But then I remember that I kind of do need to care. With two more people dead and what might be a full day ahead of me, I can't just sit here and hope for the best. I've got a sister to pretend to be looking for.

I pat goodbye to my little inlet. Maybe I will return at some point. In the daylight I can finally see how obscure it is behind roots and vegetation. Maybe I could be like Maria and make it out of here alive by just hiding there.

But that would undermine the whole narrative, wouldn't it. My narrative, anyway.

I follow the river upstream in the direction that I find to be South. Even with the sun beaming down it gets no warmer. Several more caves present themselves. I don't want caves that present themselves, I want caves that take actual effort to find but I'm exhausted before I can find one. After a quick water refill I just pick one and stay there.

I mindlessly run the back end of my hammer along the rocky floor. Its vibrations buzz through my arm as I move it, a very real feeling. I spend a while with it, aimlessly scribbling, letting my mind switch off for a little while until I see fruit hanging down from a different kind of tree a little way from here. From a distance they look remarkably like apples, but I can't trust that. After the disaster that was plant identification, I can't trust anything that exists naturally in this arena. In fact, I'm surprised I didn't think twice about the water in here. That could have been poison just like any plant or fruit.

For the last three games - I paid attention as I watched them on our TV back at home - water was not an abundant resource. In the 26th, most of the taps in the ARK were not working. In the 25th it was a scaled-up factory and the only liquid was oil, the thick black kind that could lubricate the plate tectonics of the entire planet and solve earthquakes for eternity. The 24th games was an apocalyptic volcanic wasteland by the name of Crisis City, and the only liquids there were gasoline, lava, and the blood of the dead. That year, the games lasted only a few days, and it strongly favoured the tributes who were liked enough to be gifted water, clever enough to stay away from anywhere that could be jostled by an earthquake or ignited into a whirlwind of fire, and good enough at staying awake to avoid being coated in a layer of molten rock. Mephiles, an insomniac at the time, won that with ease for Six. Surely it would be unfair of the Gamemakers to tamper with the water supply for the fourth Hunger Games in a row, but the thought still keeps me from drinking anything else for a good while despite the water being completely safe.

The sun sets once again after a weirdly uneventful afternoon, and the faces of both of District 9 are projected onto the sky.

Chapter Text

Day three brings more rain. It is less of a downpour this time and more of a light shower. My cave is far from a perfect shelter, for water drips through the rocks above and the gentle wind blows rain into the entrance, but it is still better than nothing at all. The Stratnyy shed was leaky sometimes, but it leaked in the corner where there was no machinery. It leaked down the wall where the tools were hung. Wrenches, screwdrivers, coping saws, files of all roughness, punches, hammers, knives, plastic rulers and steel rules, chisels for carving, gouges for the lathe, the works. We had it all, and it was all rusty because of the leaks but they still did what they were supposed to do. The other side was built more carefully; a malfunctioning power tool, stuttering from water in the system, is not a good idea for any person who wants to keep their fingers.

Just out of curiosity, I take some dried fruit from the packet and place it on a rock outside to see if it can rehydrate. I'd never had dried fruit before the start of the games except for raisins and I don't know how it works. I leave it outside for a little while and eat my slightly browning banana before checking on it, and I find that it's not worked at all. The fruit slices became the consistency of soggy cornflakes, and they leave residue behind on the rock when I pick them up, so I leave them and head back inside and think of the rain and the mud and the coldness creeping up on the arena as an excuse not to go on another Matilda search today.

"Did you seriously think that would work?"

My grip around my hammer tightens, and I slowly turn back around to the cave entrance.

"To rehydrate fruit, you have to heat it up in a pan, with just enough water to cover it."

The District 2 boy, Sonic, leans on the cave entrance, smirking at the apple in his hand.

"It's pretty common to do that in District 2," he nods. His blue quills scratch against the wall. "We eat a lot of dried fruit. It keeps longer, it doesn't go off in the heat and poison us. It's so easy for regular fruit to be bad. Personally, I like onions. It's not really fruit but you can dry it and it's good in a salad with rehydrated tomatoes and cucumber. And I like chillies. They're great on hotdogs. People take dried fruit with them to work if they're going further away. Did you know tomatoes are actually fruits?"

I stay silent at the back of the cave. I don't know what he wants with me, but I keep the grip on my hammer strong just in case his random facts and cooking advice aren't a sign of friendship.

"You're so quiet, what are you so tense for?" he asks politely, before cutting off his next words with a gasp. "I- Oh, it's because I'm from District 2 isn't it," he tuts. "Yeah we're pretty scary. Especially when our teammates die on the first day, we do not like that. Any idea how that happened?"

I watch as he raises the apple to his mouth and take a large bite from it, staring at me the whole time. He chews on it slowly, and swallows hard.

"You can stay quiet and I'll keep you paralysed in your cave all day and all night, or you can tell me whether you know anything."

"I don't know anything," I reply. A bit of apple juice falls from his bitten apple onto the ground, and I notice that the inside of the apple is not pale yellow like most, but a radioactive shade of light green, and Sonic clearly has no idea.

He frowns and points to my hammer. "Don't lie to me, Stratnyy. I saw what you did to her."

"If you're here to kill me, can we just get on with it?"

"No, not until you admit that you're crazy. A walking enigma kills District 2? That's as crazy as it gets."

I have another glance at his apple, and come up with an idea. "If I were truly crazy, I'd be too far gone to ever be able to admit to such a thing."

"...What?"

Another drip lands on the floor. The longer I can keep his attention on me rather than the apple, the longer I can keep him from seeing that he may have just eaten poison.

"In order to admit to being crazy I have to actually be crazy," I continue, "but if I were crazy I wouldn't know I was crazy, that's part of what being crazy is, so I couldn't possibly admit to being crazy. So if you're done talking crap and you still want to kill me for acting in self defence, go ahead."

"Don't be clever with me-"

He suddenly doubles over, gripping his chest and choking in pain. The apple falls onto the floor and rolls in front of him. Sonic presses his eyes shut, holds onto his audibly churning stomach, and coughs up a liquid that is disturbingly green with shreds of red among it. He heaves and splutters for a little while, takes in a shaky breath, and looks up at me.

"Why... didn't you... tell me?" he croaks out, eyes locked onto mine and they scream of betrayal despite us never being friends.

"Remind me," I start, reminding myself to keep my hammer well within the grip of my hand. "Why is it that you eat lots of dried fruit?"

His broken expression turns from confusion to an evil, cocky grin, and he sprints at me faster than I can react and body-slams me into the back wall. I bring my left fist to his face, spraying blood from his nose onto both of our chests, and he kicks me hard in the shins. Before I know it, my hammer is on his head too. I bring it down again and again until he stops fighting back, his head crashing repeatedly into the pool of his own regurgitate. I stand back and steady myself against the cave entrance as his cannon sounds.

I begin to feel dizzy again. Sonic lays limply on the ground in a mess of green, red, and blue, and the "apple" that started it all stands proudly between us, almost mocking him in the way that it leaks its forbidden juice into the puddle of rainwater below it. A gust of wind ruffles his fur, disturbs the fabric of his trousers, coats his fingertips in a dusting of water, and flutters the eyelashes of his still-open eyes. In the dimly lit cave I can see that his irises are just as sickly green as the fruit that weakened him.

It takes a long time for me to realise that I did that. And that a person can still look remarkably animate even when they are dead. It looks wrong for his eyes to be open. I would close them, but to interfere with the body of the person I killed is confusing at best and grossly distasteful and even unforgivable at worst, as if anything I have ever done since last Sunday can be forgiven.

"I don't like fighting," I whisper to myself. And then I lock my jaw in place so I can't cry.

Chapter Text

Two more cannons erupted throughout the arena as I fled the scene along a flatter stretch of the forest, still following the river that has sustained me so graciously. At night, Sonic's face appeared in the sky along with both of District 4: the girl who fished for krill, and Big, my fellow idiot. I wanted nothing more than to escape into another universe so I avoided caves like the plague and chose to sleep in the bushes at the base of a willow instead.

I begin to realise, while my endless trudge through the shallow yet treacherous mud continues, that dried fruit, gummy vitamins, and strange iodine water is not going to cut it for the long run. I'm already halfway down my bag of fruit. Every step I take is a little more sluggish than the last but the fatigue for now is manageable. As long as I am careful with the way I ration my food I should be fine, because this year is going quick. Ten of the tributes are already dead and as long as I eat and drink at least something every day, I should be fine.

Today is cloudy, and slightly cooler again. I walk with no real aim in mind until I hear something click on a rock to my right. And then I watch as a small pebble falls from above and clicks against the rock again. Above me in the weeping branches sits the one person I have been longing to see this entire time, armed with a pocket of rocks, some grapes, and his trademark slingshot.

"Ray!" I grin for what feels like the first time ever.

I pull myself up the tree, using the hammer like an extension to my arms. I don't often climb trees, I prefer to be underneath them, but I can work my way up one if I have to. We share our supplies with each other. Ray has been relying on sponsorships for water, most likely thanks to his lovely interview, and he managed to snatch up the slingshot during the bloodbath.

"I saw you run into Espio," he giggles. "I thought something was gonna go down. But then," he shivers and wraps his fleece around him a little tighter, "then I saw how scared you both were of Liza."

"Did you see what happened to her?"

"No, I had to run. Sticks was going nuts."

"Sticks?"

"Eleven's girl. She's lurking round here, I saw her yesterday. She's real scary."

I nibble on a grape or two and watch the clouds drift across the sky. They are not dark, and they do not threaten rain, but they still leave no room for the sun to break through. "You're talking a bit more?"

Ray smiles, and nicks a grape off the vine he gave to me. "I don't stutter when I'm cold. I don't know why. I think of it like, there always has to be something shivering in me, so when I'm cold my body shivers, but when I'm warm my brain shivers instead."

"An engine?"

"Something like that."

Ray warns me of Sticks' ferality. He watched as she snagged a bow and two quivers from the cornucopia and started launching arrows faster than anyone could run out of the way. Fortunately for them, she wasn't a completely perfect shot, but she is still terrifying with a battle cry and is impossibly agile. After grabbing his slingshot, he fled from the bloodbath and spent his days jumping from tree to tree.

"What happened with you?" he asks.

I guess a lot has happened with me but I'm not sure what to tell him. I don't think I'm ready to think about these things ever again. I don't think I'll ever be ready. But at the same time, what's the point in putting it off? No matter what happens, I'll have to face this at some point. Ray moves his glance to my clothes, where my shirt is still stained with Sonic's blood which has now dried and crusted over my chest. I run my fingers over it, and cringe when the blood snaps when I try to bend part of the ruined fabric.

"I've been in a fight or two."

"And you won, right?"

His enthusiasm catches me off guard. "Well never."

He leans back onto another branch of the tree, inviting me to continue, so I tell him everything. About how Espio and Shadow let me off, about the boy from Twelve, Amy, Shadow, Sonic, and the fruit that pretends to be apple. If there is one thing I have learnt about plants, it's that before you eat them, you cut them open and have a good look inside. And maybe don't trust them even then.

"That's weird, because I've eaten apples from those trees and for me they're fine."

"Were they green in the middle?"

"No. I don't think so, anyway. Well, they clearly can't have been."

"That's really strange."

Of course the Gamemakers would transform eating food into a game of roulette. No wonder half of the victors come out of these games with severe trust issues. Was there any point in spending so much time on plant identification if they were just going to pull a stunt like this? I sigh and rest my head on the trunk behind me. We could have done so much more.

"What are we going to do when we run out of food?" Ray asks.

I told myself to eat at least something every day so maybe I would last long enough. Long enough for what exactly, I'm still not sure. But now, with another person by my side, that might not be possible. I want to put all my energy into him, because he deserves this so much more than I do. Now that Big's dead, it really should be me who goes out next but that's really hard to think about. Like it's hard-wired into me to not think about everything that could go wrong, or go right, depending on who you are and where your priorities lie.

"Let's do one day at a time," I suggest, for both of our sakes, but more for mine than for his. "We have the vitamins, at least. And we need to have your grapes before everything else. It's too easy for regular fruit to go bad."

Chapter Text

Our prayers are answered, and a parachute floats down from the bright skies at the beginning of the fifth day. It contains hot tea, a couple of bread rolls each with a small amount of peanut butter, and a little note from our mentors. I read it aloud for the both of us.

"Keep at it, lads - J 'n' B." I fold the paper slip back up and return it to the box. "Who's B?"

"Bark. He's from the Capitol. He was oddly understanding. Kinda shy, kinda quiet, but a nice guy."

The tea is delightful. It gives us both our first experience of true warmth in days. I sit curled up beneath a tree with the flask as close to my body as I can get it, letting the heat spread through my flesh and my bones, taking the occasional sip of the scorching liquid inside. I was never the biggest tea drinker but this might have swayed me. It's a beautiful experience in a hellscape like this.

Ray smirks at me. "Y-You look- uh-" He buffers and shakes his head. "Man." He slurps some tea and shrugs. "It was good while it lasted."

We laugh about everything for what feels like forever, and start telling each other little stories. Ray plays chess during school lunches. His favourite subjects are maths and geography. He lives in a brutalist apartment complex with his mother and has no siblings. In District 8, anybody above Reaping age will spend most of their evening in factories, so much so that there is rarely any homework set because the teachers know it won't get done. In a world where nobody can make their own choices, and everybody is living with a predetermined future, why be book smart when you can crochet?

It works similarly in Seven. We have school, and outside of school, everybody learns something to do with lumber. There are some mean axe-wielders back at home, and Matilda was one of them. She could split logs for days. There were some dedicated programs run by the schools for the children who couldn't learn from their families like we could. Those usually lived in merchant families downtown, or maybe their parents were employed in business. I know a girl whose parents are musicians, and they run entirely on donations. Matilda and I, being the heirs of Stratnyy Timbercase, were set for life, really. We declared it on paper that we were making contributions to the district industry and that was it.

I used to help out in the shed every couple of Saturdays, my dad taught me all he knows in regards to turning on a lathe, and then when I grew in skill and confidence he would start me off and then leave me to it. Now I'm in there every other day because just like Eight, Seven isn't strict on academics. There's just a baseline we have to meet every year. Wrestling club occurred after school on Wednesdays, and the rest of my free time was spent wandering.

I never really knew what Matilda got up to during her evenings. Before I started spending a lot of time outside, she enjoyed several hobbies like drawing and taking care of wooden horses and playing peg solitaire. She found so many ways to solve it. She used to be so happy, with a smile so radiant she could stop the spin of the world. But then as the years went by, she got more and more distant from everybody.

I would come back in the evenings and things would be tense between my parents. Walking in, I would occasionally hear echoes of arguments about money and business affairs. Something happened before my dad married into the Stratnyys and took my mother's name, bringing with him his own skills and troubles and grudges, but nobody talks about it. It was before the rebellion, before the Dark Days, and people stopped caring about things that happened before then until it came to the first Quarter Quell and they saw an opportunity to punish us and ultimately failed. We're just Stratnyys, after all. All we do is cedar. I guess if Matilda was always at home listening to it all then maybe it would make her less happy. Maybe she learnt that in the world of business and inheritance, there is no room for emotions or dreams because your future is already set out for you. She probably does have dreams and ambitions deep down, despite her constant denial of it. I always thought there was something fake about how she obliges to keeping Stratnyy Timbercase on for another generation. Now the Games have taken those dreams from her too.

Maybe just living in Panem is enough to make a person miserable. And maybe, when I pretend that things are still the same between us, when I call her by the nickname I would call her when she was happier, she's not only mad at me, she's mad at the world too.

We finish our tea and make our way up another tree with a newfound energy, fuelled by a small feast of peanut butter sandwiches garnished with some dried bananas, not caring about the future because everything we care about revolves around today. We scope out the best footholds and pull ourselves up and up, giving each other a hand when we need it, and we make it to some branches that support us and are steady.

The view is fantastic. We chose a tree that is taller than the rest especially for this. The forest is dense throughout and covers this half of the arena in vast swathes. The Cornucopia and the launchpads lie in their open circle not terribly far away. To the right of that before the mountains are the grasses, tall and golden in the light of the high sun, and in the distance there is the glimmer of a lake. I have the last grape from my vine, and take in the beauty of the landscape around us.

"Hey Ray," I ask, after seeing my left wrist while entangling the grape vine in some willow leaves, "how did you know I'd like this bracelet?"

I hear him shuffle over to another branch behind me, slightly higher up. "Oh, that thing? It looks like cedar."

Chapter Text

Both of us are a lot happier after these last two peaceful days, where no faces were shown in the sky, where we chose to live in the moment rather than worry about the rest of the world. When coming dangerously close to running out of dried fruit, Ray walked me through the forest and showed me that some of the apples are absolutely fine. He even bit into one that he halved with my hammer to prove it to me. I couldn't watch, but when nothing bad happened to him even after hours, I finally accepted that the apples that are yellow in the middle rather than the awful green are safe to eat, and we don't need to worry.

We use sheets of tightly woven willow branches to lay over the top of another leaky cave and disguise the front of it to look like the rest of the bushes. Ray is in charge of making the sheets, and it's up to me to blend them into the surroundings. Despite our routines in life being remarkably similar, the settings we were in were drastically different and Ray has no concept of the colours and nuances of wild nature. I give him some of the red berries from nearby bushes in this particular patch of forest which we both knew better than to attempt to eat, because it didn't cross his mind to include those in the camouflage.

"You're an artist," he says, as I adjust one of the branches.

"If I'm an artist then you're an absolute machine, you can crochet anything."

"Machines can't crochet. They haven't been invented yet."

I take a step back and admire our work. It looks like absolutely nothing. Perfect.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I ask, giving Ray a fist bump.

"For us? A good thing, because people have jobs. For the Capitol, pretty bad, because they have to pay us, but they hardly do that. It would probably cost them more to buy blueprints off District 3 if they ever get made than to keep on paying us."

From what I can remember from the limited content in history class at school, District 8 is very poor and was one of the more problematic districts during the rebellion.

"That makes sense, if you think about it from the Capitol's perspective," I say, covertly trying to hint that everything in this system is working solely for the Capitol's benefit and nobody else's. "It keeps everyone busy. Do you know what I mean?"

I think to myself, if you keep the population busy and only just staying afloat, would they have room to rebel? Probably not.

He sighs. "Oh, believe me, we know exactly what you mean and it's exactly why things are the way they are. The Capitol have never been that fond of us. And we were never that fond of them," he frowns. "They rob us, we hate them all."

Ray heads inside our modified cave and I push down any rising worries about what he just said. The Gamemakers will be watching our every move and I had managed to put that out of my mind for the games so far. Sure, he knew what I was on about, but now the rest of the country does too, and we all know what happens to those who are disloyal.

I head in behind him, and we spend some time in silence just enjoying the company of another person for a little while. I watch Ray as he slingshots at a patch of mud over and over from various angles, and listen as the light thud of rocks hitting the surface gets more and more muffled as he carves a hole into the ground with his precision shots. I drift between sleeping and waking, trying to catch up on some rest from the nights where it was interrupted by visions of Amy and Sonic and for some reason, Espio.

It turns out after all that, I didn't even have to fake the nightmares. Or the weird dreams alongside them; if somehow I do win and anybody asks, they probably looked like nightmares from the outside.

"Hey, I'm gonna get some more apples. We might be able to juice them with your hammer or something," Ray says, now bored of shooting holes in the floor.

I give him my hammer. "Make sure to knock them open first. Mind the blood."

I never realised until now just how tired I've been. I always knew I needed more sleep than the usual person. On a weekend, after seven and a half hour school nights, I would go to sleep at ten and still be out past eleven the next morning so clearly my internal clock isn't the greatest. In a silent afternoon in a dark and cold cave, cocooning myself in my fleece for some extra warmth, all I can think about is the melatonin slowly taking over my brain and body, pulling me out of this world into some other one, and I won't know what it's like until I'm there and I never did care about that.

"Mighty!"

Dreamless sleep in the mid afternoon? I must have been tired. I push myself off the ground and crawl out between our camouflaged walls after being woken from the short snap that teleported me through time. It can't have been that long, I realise, because it doesn't take that long to get a few apples.

"Mighty! I- I don't get it, I-"

I find him sat behind a tree, clutching my hammer in his hands. There are several apple halves laid out in front of him in a half-assed attempt at a colour gradient.

"-I thought those ones were safe. And now..." he coughs, "...now everything hurts."

He kicks one of the greener-middled apples with a bite out of it. I pick it up in disbelief and analyse the apple half. Most of it is the same yellow that the good apples were, but this one contains streaks of the green that come out of the core like a magnetic field. And the streaks spread outwards before my eyes.

"I swear it was yellow," he croaks out. "I thought it was yellow!"

"That's just it, Ray, it was yellow," I say, beginning to panic. "The apples are going bad."

He folds and vomits violently over the remaining apples on the ground, green with the same shreds of red as Sonic's. I throw the apple down and run to him, pulling him into a hug and not caring if anything gets on me. I was right to be worried. The apples were always either yellow or green, but now, for the yellow ones to turn green under our touch, can only mean one thing.

The Gamemakers are watching our every move. They rob us. They rob Ray of a life. They rob me of a friend. We all know what happens to those who are disloyal.

Ray coughs over my shoulder again and again until he's out of breath. I feel him lose some strength in his body so I lay him down at the base of the tree. He looks up at me with his clear blue eyes. They still shine like a bright sky even under the thick and heavy cloud of today. His fur is still as golden as the sun that beamed down on us yesterday, when we were at our best. I bite my lip to battle the tugging in my chest, a fight that I know I will lose. I shuffle next to him and he rests his head on my side. If this is where living in the moment and not caring about the future takes us, then at this point I don't know what to do.

I run my fingers through the fur on his head and behind his ears, feeling the soft warmth that I know from experience will be gone soon, and he lets me do it. We sit surrounded by the poison apples and the product of their consumption, completely at the mercy of the Capitol's technology, and there is not a thing either of us can do about it now.

"Find your sister," he whispers, completely voiceless, as the apple that was the most yellow to begin with finally converts itself to full green.

Ray closes his eyes. "Seven for the win."

Chapter Text

The second cannon of the day blasts across the arena. The first was Ray's. I don't know whose this is.

The sound of the cannon reminds me that I am still a person, and that I'm still alive. My vision focuses again for the first time in a good while. I look around. It's still dark from heavy cloud, and a light breeze nips at my fingertips which are still deep in Ray's fur, and that went stone cold ages ago. I shuffle out from underneath him and lay him down at the base of the tree, adjust his jacket to hide stains, and step out from the ring of poison.

The weeping willows weep with rain left from the storm,
Falling down the branches like the tears of the fallen,
Crystal clear rivers flow like the boy who spared me,
While diamonds were thrusted into the bark of a twisted tree.

"The Bark of a twisted tree..." I hum to myself. "A Ray of sunshine on the darkest day..."

I grab one of the apple halves and launch it into the side of a nearby rock, and watch as its sorry little corpse slides down the side of it with the sickly juice it oozes. Over and over again I chuck the apples, listening as their soft and shrivelled remains splat against the stone. I pick up the hammer and throw that at the rock too. I retrieve it, and throw it again. I continue until the apples are nothing but a green paste spread over the ground. When the sky begins to darken even more from the setting of the sun I finally pack it in and head back inside the decorated cave, dragging the hammer along the grass to clean it, and sit in a ball with my hands over my ears so I can't hear the anthem, because if I can't hear the anthem then I won't be tempted to see Ray's face alive in the sky.

For the next day or so can't bring myself to leave the cave for any longer than a few minutes at a time. I use the last bit of my remaining water on the afternoon of the seventh day to swallow down another vitamin, and tap the metal lid against the roof of the cave to celebrate almost one week in the arena. That night, I do check outside when the anthem plays to make sure I didn't sleep through any cannons, and find that there were no more deaths. I wriggle back inside the safety of the walls and once again use excessive amounts of sleep from a tired body to forget about the fact that I have absolutely no idea who is alive and who isn't anymore because of the one anthem that I decided to skip. If Matilda's dead then, whatever. Never mind. There was nothing I could have done about it.

I'm exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and however many other ways there are to be exhausted. So, when another cannon goes off in the middle of the seventh night and wakes me, I'm bitterly annoyed.

Day eight, a new Sunday, has weather no nicer than any other day. When I emerge from the cave to stretch myself out and trek back to the river for more water and basic bodily functions, my attention is brought upwards to a familiar quiet twinkling sound. Another parachute floats down from above me attached to a small canister and it lands gently in my hands. I do everything I set out to do and return to the cave with it.

A small sticker is stuck on the lid of the canister and the handwriting is tiny. "Look after yourself, kiddo. Spoon in the lid - J 'n' B."

I carefully screw open the lid of the canister, and the rich smell of stew hits me like a punch to the face. I remove the spoon from the lid but once again I do not go straight into it. Instead, I sit with the warmth against my chest and remind myself that it's not all terrible. I think of Jules in the Mentors' room, watching the screens, keeping track of every move I make, knowing so much more than I ever will, and I remember what he said to Matilda and I. That he just has a good feeling about us two. That he believes in us. That we are the best chance in over a decade. That he is proud to be from District 7.

I open up the canister again and unfold the metal spoon. I stir the stew around a little, watching the tiny, shiny blobs of the oil in the broth swirl around with the dark streaks of Worcestershire sauce and speckles of pepper, between all kinds of vegetables and actual meat. Little chunks of beef. Tender, not chewy in the slightest. I don't deserve it, but that doesn't matter because clearly Jules and Bark and whoever gave them the money think I do deserve it and as long as I do them proud, I could never ask for any more.

When the night finally comes again, only the face of Cream is projected onto the sky. That sweet, charismatic little girl from Three who loves her pets more than anything, gone. Forget Jules, I can't imagine how Vanilla has been feeling since last night when her daughter's cannon blew. She surely will have watched every second of it. She will have watched the robbery of her little girl. I wonder if she was prepared, or if she had convinced herself that maybe there is a way to get her out alive.

All of a sudden, I feel guilty. All I ever thought about is getting Matilda out of here. I failed to consider that the other people in these games also have lives and families and people who love them, except for maybe Silver. I think about Amy and Sonic who died by my hand, and what could have been happening in District 2 after I robbed them of their children. Siblings. Friends. Neighbours.

I hope it was quick for Cream. Maybe she went in her sleep. And I hope that if somebody did kill her in her sleep, they did it in a way that wasn't brutal or gory or messy at all. That would be the best way out. With dignity, with respect, and not like how I did it to District 2.

Chapter Text

In mid-morning I finally decide that it's time for me to leave because the longer I stay here, the more depressed I will be. I take one last look at the hole that Ray bore into the floor before stepping out into the bright sun. I consider taking part of the camouflage with me for the memories but I decide against it. The bracelet is good enough for me. Ray's body still lays at the tree, completely lifeless. I take a second to absorb the contours of the little home we made for ourselves, before pulling my bag higher onto my shoulder, turning around, and leaving this place behind.

My supplies now consist of the hammer, half a box of vitamins, half a canister of stew that may or may not still be warm, a full bottle of water and half a bottle of iodine. Not eating every day isn't going to kill me. The stew is rich with basically everything I would ever need so it will last me. It will have to last me. Heck, I lived off dried fruit for half a week. I will be fine.

It feels good to be out walking again. It feels good to see the sun and have its heat push through between the cold wind. It feels even better when I come across a pond in a small clearing, just like the ponds from back at home. I remove my jacket and my shirt and use a rock and some of the water to scrape out the stains in them, and while I'm at it I take the rest off as well - as much as I dare with the cameras around - because a full-body wash is way overdue too.

I slip into the pond and lean back against a rock, and stare upwards at the blue sky littered with light and fluffy clouds, encased in a ring of treetops. I listen carefully to the rustle of the branches and the distant calls of crows and mockingjays. I feel the water sway me and work its way between my fingers and toes, lifting me into bliss weightlessness. A small squirrel leaps across a gap between branches, and scurries itself down a tree trunk into the bushes below.

This is true freedom.

There is a hard jolt throughout the arena. The ground shakes violently and pondwater comes in waves over my head, plunging me into the depths. The arena shakes so hard that while I am underwater, I don't know which way is up. I frantically push myself around and get back above the water, and swim back to the edge of pond and wait until the rumble from deep beneath the ground dies down. I dry myself as well as I can with the outside of my jacket, pull all of my damp clothes back on, and drag myself up the nearest tree once things have settled down, clinging on harder than I usually would just out of caution.

In the clearing at the centre of the arena where the Cornucopia should be, lies a pile of rubble. The earthquake destroyed it, and likely took any remaining supplies with it. The mountains in the distance, where the earthquake probably would have started, are still. I watch carefully for any sign of an avalanche and I see no movement at all.

I can't imagine why the Gamemakers would do that. Not unless somebody was after those supplies and they really didn't want them to get there, and after they were so glad to kill Ray after the slightest disappointment, I wouldn't put it past them to manipulate the Games in this way. That really would be unfortunate. As the last sounds of the earthquake die down, startled birds and animals and the like, I hop back down the tree in case there are going to be any aftershocks, but while I wait for those to happen, I hear cannons instead.

Four of them. One after another. Just like how a second bloodbath would sound.

And that means there are only seven of us left.

I could deal with only being in the dark of the death one person, but five? The chances of Matilda still being alive are slim. I still have all confidence in her but the thought of her being murdered so ruthlessly by forces that nobody had any control over eats away at me throughout the day, and on the evening of this ninth day when only the faces of the girl from Eight, both of District 10, and the boy from Eleven appear on the skyline, I feel sicker and sicker and I start to hate myself.

I missed a lot of Matilda. Everything about her. I struggle to name things to myself that I know for certain about her, apart from the things that were most obvious. Introverted bordering on antisocial is one of them, but there has to be more to it than that. Blinking more when she lies is another, and now that I think about it, she never did respond to me when I told her I loved her. She knows I can see straight through her lies. You can't lie if you don't respond at all.

We were never in the same place at the same time at school. I missed out on a lot of the stuff that went on at home because I was always somewhere else. School, Wrestling, the woods, asleep, the Stratnyy shed, lost in my own head, I was always somewhere else. And I did care about her and I still do, but does that matter? I never did show it. I just trusted that she knew.

From the way I've acted over the years, I might as well be a stranger to her, and I need to accept that maybe she just isn't the same person anymore. And if, for whatever reason, these games could have redeemed me, I might have thrown it all away by not only missing most of her life and not being there for her when she needed me most, but missing her death too.

But there is still a fighting chance that she is still out there somewhere. She's strong, she's clever, she didn't tell a single lie in her interview in regards to her skills and strengths. This isn't about the Capitol anymore. This isn't for some stupid narrative anymore. This isn't for Dave anymore. Damn it, this is personal.

Just to calm the worry that constantly ticks in my mind, I will find Matilda. Just to prove to myself that she is still alive, and I'm not a complete failure. Even if she doesn't want to see me, I will find her.

Even if it kills me, I will find her.

Chapter Text

In the spotlight of a bright clearing between apple trees, I stare deep into the inner workings of a camera lens, dug into a hole in a tree trunk. I pay attention to its rings, how they move back and forth through the depth of the lens, and the sounds that they make. Its quick, light buzzes would go unnoticed if I weren't paying attention. A little red light blinks dimly behind the small dome of the lens in the middle.

Hello, Panem.

I take another look at the apple half in my left hand which I opened with the back of the hammer in my right, and it still remains the pale yellow that all good apples should be. I raise it to my mouth, watching carefully for any unauthorised green streaks, and stare the camera down while I take a bite.

They know I know. And they wouldn't dare kill me like this. It's crunchy, not soft. It's a little bit sweet, maybe a little bit sour too, just like an apple should be. Before I swallow, I take one more look at the rest of the apple. No green in sight.

I think back to what Zor said to me after my private training session. 'The Gamemakers aren't gonna mess with you because they know you'll do something really stupid afterwards.' Maybe this is the stupid thing that I do. Or maybe Master Zik just doesn't want to poison me.

Throughout the tenth day I eat the good apples, each time pushing my luck by silently daring the Gamemakers to spike me mid-bite, and I receive no such attempts. It feels empowering to have disarmed one of their weapons but I don't let it make me cocky. After the third apple, and an endless walk through the apple trees and willows, I watch as Sticks' face appears in the night sky and wonder what that so-called feral girl got herself up to.

On the eleventh morning I finish the stew. It's lost its warmth but the seasoning will never go cold. I drink up the last of it and take one last look at the note on the top, before burying the canister and the spoon in the wet ground.

'Look after yourself.'

I find myself in a slightly emptier area of forest, but it is still heavily dense with branches, willow vines, shrubs and rocks. I relocate the lovely river and refill my bottle with the clear water. I can't imagine I would be that far from the edge of the arena. Since the earthquake I have only walked away from the Cornucopia because clearly the Gamemakers don't like anyone to be there, and I know that this arena is much smaller than the last. That was the only clue we received about what this place would be like.

A fallen tree lies across the river further upstream, most likely uprooted by the earthquake. I scramble across it to the other side over the rushing water below. I watch as ants enter and leave the centre of the log in single file, taking small leaves in and out of their new home. It's the little things.

Beyond the river, what else is there to be other than more trees? I could never get sick of it but the anticipation of seeing a person between them is too great for me to want to stop walking and appreciate every single one of them.

A sparkle of metal shines in the distance. I push down any excitement rising in my chest. This could be anyone. Or anything. Matilda could be dead.

I head closer to the sparkle and it goes again - the buckle of a satchel bag, glistening in the sun. I knock a twig with my foot and it snaps beneath me, alerting the person whose face is hidden by their hood, and they turn around.

Green eyes meet mine, wide and alert, and as soon as we register in each others heads, they change. They roll. Matilda pulls her hood down, adjusts her bag and gets up to leave.

"Matilda?"

She shrugs. "Sorry, mate. You missed your chance. You missed your chance about five years ago."

She steps between rocks and puts more distance between us. I only just hear her say from far away, "What part of 'leave me alone' do you not understand?"

I watch her trek behind the trees until I can't see her anymore. I clearly didn't think this through. I wonder if it would have been enough if I just walked more carefully, and didn't get her attention? Just to prove to myself that she is still alive? I wasn't expecting her to welcome me with open arms. A 'hello' would have been nice. Anything other than that would have been nice. The fact that she's alive is the only nice thing about this, but I don't know if I can think of that as a nice thing anymore. Because now it's confirmed. I am the worst, most delusional brother in the world.

But hey, at least I found her. That's all that needed doing. The end.

I turn to walk the other way, no longer caring about any noise I make because what does it matter? There are six people left, and from some careful calculation I work out that we've got District 6, and then there's Vector who's an absolute powerhouse, and Shadow and Espio who from what I've heard and seen are neither here nor there. Sure, Espio got the highest score and I didn't see Shadow's, but they could have killed me straight away if they wanted to, and yet they chose not to. Espio could have overpowered me in training and behaved like a normal person from One, and yet, he didn't. One of those five is dead, and I still don't know who, but if it's Vector then that's it, isn't it? Matilda's basically won by default, unless Espio is absolutely crazy and confusion was part of his plan.

I know it's not that easy, and I can't just write off the rest of the tributes like that, like I've been trying to from the very beginning, but what else am I supposed to do? I don't know who's left. I look up at the mockingjays and listen to their calls. They're almost as oblivious as I am. What I would give to be a mockingjay.

My feet are snagged by something and I'm pulled over onto the ground. I knock another vine on the way down and a tight net falls over me, pinning me. I panic, and try to drag myself out from beneath the net but I can't move. All of my efforts only tangle me in further, so I give up and lay still.

I am alerted by a crunch of the foliage to my left. In a break between the willows stands the figure of a hedgehog, clutching a rope with a rock tied to the end. He advances towards me, and I see that he is decorated in bramble and vines, which are woven into his quills and fur. As he gets closer, I see the rock more clearly - it is splattered with a shade of brown unlike any of the mud I have seen around here. It is richer, darker, and a damn sight bloodier. It looks like how the back of my hammer looked after I carved out those heads. It looks like how my shirt looked before I washed it. It doesn't take long for me to notice that almost every tree in this patch of forest is rigged. Taut branches, braided vines, loops and camouflaged nets are littered among the ground. He steps carefully towards me, between the conveniently positioned rocks that Matilda so carefully stepped around.

I can't believe she didn't tell me about this. The rigging. The patterns in the rocks. Matilda didn't tell me. She must have known, otherwise she would be like me.

As the hedgehog approaches, I realise that there are really no options I have left.

I should never have underestimated Admiral Discordant.

-x-

...In this moment, forever lost.

Chapter Text

I stole the seed from the earth and the colours from the sky,
I choked the breath from all being, eclipsed the stars in your eyes...

-x-

Before the Victors' Villages existed, the victors of the Hunger Games were pretty much ignored entirely. The Games were thought of as a necessary evil by everybody who dared to share their opinion on them, because that was as far as an opinion could go before it brought trouble. Nobody really knows what happened to the first ten victors or so. There are still some echoes of a disastrous tenth Games, and a legacy from an eleventh Games that rocked Panem with its new themed arena. After the eleventh Games, the Capitol decided that the victors need to be kept track of for the sake of keeping the Games alive and so they introduced a Victory Tour, and when lovely Vanilla triumphed on Sweet Mountain in the twelfth Games, they offered her a nice house in a back alley behind the Justice Building, and asked her to mentor the next generations of District 3 for a generous income.

For the tenth, eleventh and twelfth Games, each individual tribute had a mentor who was a student from the Capitol. The new system meant that having two mentors per district had to be scrapped, and then each district only had one.

There were complaints from the Capitol students for the next couple of editions about how unfair it was that Three were being mentored by a victor and nobody else was. District 2 won the thirteenth, and the mentors still complained, but when a twelve year old got dragged out of the fourteenth games - it definitely didn't look like a victory - and had to mentor people older than him the next year, the complaints miraculously stopped.

With this new mentorship system that gradually filled itself out as the years went by, the Capitol needed an incentive for tributes to want to win. Because instead of being able to drift off into the wilderness, they would have to stick around and hold full responsibility for future tributes. Winning the Games entered them into that contract until their district won again. Anything that happened to the tributes in the arena would be on them. Their actions, their words, their gifts, could mean life or death. The Gamemakers were only there to make a show and occasionally prevent a disaster. Dying in the arena was obviously the easy way out, so the Capitol introduced a prize alongside the mentoring income. A year's supply of grain for the citizens of the winning district.

Want your district to have an experienced mentor? Win the Games, then. Want your district to not starve for another year? Winning the Games would be a good start. Want to live in decent housing? I know: Win the Games. All of your problems can be solved by just winning the Hunger Games and selling your soul to the Capitol.

Two fell head over heels for this, and One and Four came round shortly after when they realised they could train for the games just as Two were doing. It's technically against the rules, but the Capitol don't mind when it comes from them. They grew in wealth and confidence, and after a stream of games in the late teens where the three of them all won back-to-back, they allied together and became known as the Careers, because that is what the Games became to them. Careers. And they were damn good at it.

With a team as strong as the Careers, it always looked like game over for the other districts but sometimes there were great comebacks that nobody could ever have seen. The screen above the Justice Building plays the final moments of the 26th Hunger Games, where the Careers didn't stand a chance in the ridiculous arena. We see the moment Miles 'Tails' Prower pointed his giant handmade laser beam towards the moon, which he tested by blipping quickly into space, and he pulled the trigger just too late to avoid the Gamemakers' interference, exploding himself and half of the arena in a great snap of electricity.

District 3 was inches away from either having another victor or being bombed into oblivion, all because of a child that went crazy under Vanilla's supervision and tried to halve the moon. The Gamemakers had no choice but to put a stop to it.

They do tend to get the final say like that.

The screen before us all switches to the dull seal of District 3, displayed high over the rolling hills behind it and the Justice Building. On the stage stand two large bowls full of names, and between them are Vanilla herself and Three's very own escort, Zeena.

"May the odds be ever in your favour!" She smiles after her lengthy speech about tesserae and other related things, before making her way to the girls' bowl.

Zeena is remarkably protective over herself. Fashion-savvy, criminally vain, and unafraid of spending way too much money on all of the ways she can make herself even more 'perfect'. She is a walking Capitol stereotype, and every year she is delighted when Reaping day rolls around. She checks her long, pointed nails in the light, before carefully dipping them into the sunny bowl, flicking a few papers around, and slowly dragging out a piece of paper locked between two of her stripy pink fingertips.

She holds it out in front of her and smirks behind her microphone.

"Cream Paloma."

There are gasps of disbelief from all around. The screen lights up again and shows the face of Vanilla's only daughter, Cream, in her elegant Reaping dress that stands out greatly among the rest of the twelve year olds. She looks into the camera, takes a deep breath, and smiles sadly before heading onto the stage. She's always been like that, masking every emotion with a polite smile. It's what she's been raised to do as a daughter of the first District 3 celebrity. Zeena pats her lightly on the back, and brushes her hand against Vanilla's on the way to the other bowl. Vanilla remains unnaturally still. Only the light wind can shift her glossy hair. Even her flowing dress refuses to move. She would be so beautiful if she weren't so frozen. I'm sure every lad in Three has looked upon her with awe her at some point, and that may or may not have included myself. She keeps her lips pursed shut.

Zeena is quicker about the other bowl. I remind myself of my chances: I am eighteen but I never took tesserae, so my chances are about the same as everybody else's.

"Vector Chasquido."

Okay, that's new.

That's certainly never happened to me before.

I remain stood in my place with the lads, trying hard to feel something but nothing really happens inside of me. It's my face's turn to appear on the screen, and heads turn around me to look at me. I'm taller than most, I'm not hard to find, so all eyes end up on me.

Zeena coughs. "Are you coming up or what?"

I hate Zeena. I always have. She's just too easy to hate, and it's her rushing me that clicks my brain back into gear again. I give her a scowl.

The crowd parts for me to leave and I practically have to drag myself out, and all I can think about on my way up to the stage is how annoying this is. This was supposed my last Reaping. I've done every single one since I was twelve. I took no tesserae. I would have appreciated the extra wealth but I wasn't going to make it any easier for the Capitol to take me. I laboured in the fringes of Three outside of school and dragged crates of metal and wires from the trains to the warehouses and told myself that the exhaustion was worth it because then I could handle the arena, I could be strong and I could be powerful and I wouldn't run out of steam, and after I'm out of Reaping age I could find a better part time job. I was that close, but no.

If I was born two days earlier, I wouldn't have been eligible and it would have been over already. Two days, and I would have turned nineteen today, and my name would not have been in that bowl.

Once I'm on the stage I have to give a handshake to the little girl beside me. She can't be happy with this either, or at least any more happy with this than anyone else would be. Both of us are on the absolute fringes of the age range and it just doesn't feel right for us to both be here at the same time. It's just not fair. I catch the glance of Vanilla, completely void of expression. I don't know what she's thinking about.

"Happy Hunger Games!" Zeena happily shouts, before pushing open the doors to the Justice Building ready for us to be taken inside. The Peacekeepers arrive with their handcuffs, lock us both in and pull us, and as I'm pulled past Zeena, I make sure that she can see just how much I hate her, for this and for everything about her. Her sick little smile and her weird little hands looking all smug about how she is the one who pulled our names out of the bowls when we could have least expected it.

Two days.

Chapter Text

I'm chucked into a small room that is bordered up at every possible opening. It's got red velvet settees, a weird little fluffy rug, and beams across the ceiling that are decorated with fake plants. This is where the families and friends of the tributes visit them before they're bundled in a car and are sent to the train station. I head to the windowsill and look at all the colours in the thick stained glass, and how they distort and refract my view of the outside world. I consider throwing the ceramic vase that sits before me. What is anybody going to do about it? I'm sure tributes have done worse. I'm sure someone somewhere will have smashed up the entire room.

It's coarse and heavy, with ridges down the side that are painted in stripes with blue glaze, and it's filled with even more fake flowers. They smell musty and cold. I could launch it at the walls, bash it against the beams, or just gently slide it onto the floor and watch as it crumbles by my feet like a cat would do, and smile to myself as I regain even the slightest feeling of control. I hold it in my hands and think hard about whether smashing up this vase would make me feel any better in the short term. Probably. But would it fix this? Definitely not. If I won the games, the Capitol would definitely make me pay for it. And I'm sure it would happen before my first paycheque.

The door clicks open behind me and a Peacekeeper stands in the opening. "Visitor," they announce. "Five minutes."

I'm jumped by a bee, Charmy, and my mood immediately brightens. I fumble with the vase and slam it back down on the windowsill before giving him a massive hug.

"Your parents didn't want to come so they sent me instead," Charmy snivels. "But they did tell me to tell you that... uh... what was it... oh yeah! They believe in you, and they're just really sad and they trust you to know that they do definitely love you a lot, I think?" he rambles on. "I don't know, something like that. They said to win, and they trust you."

"They could have at least showed up even if they didn't want to," I complain.

"You're dad's not very well though, is he?" he reminds me. "And he reckons he's said everything he wanted to say already. Your mum too, she just wanted to go home."

It's probably true. They never were the best with emotional things like this. Materialistically, I couldn't have asked for anything more from them. They gave me the freedom to live my life in Three how I wanted to live it, at least as far as I could. They made sure I had everything I needed. But they were never particularly good with words or affection, especially not when they weren't feeling at their best. For the last few weeks, a flu has been going round our end of the District. It's nothing the apothecaries can't deal with but if my parents were never that warm to start with then shivering from a fever isn't going to help with that at all.

I never really minded that much. I never viewed love as a requirement in any kind of relationship as long as there's respect, which there always has been within my family. So I believe them. They worked with me from a distance. And us three did have a long chat before the Reaping anyway and my dad was completely out of it so I can forgive their absence. I probably could have predicted it and justified it on my own if Charmy didn't show up either.

"You are gonna win, right?" Charmy questions. At least I have him.

I crack a grin and flex my biceps. "What do you think I've been slaving away at for all these years? I'm built like a machine, I am, of course I can win!"

I pick him up and put him on my shoulders, laughing along with his startled squeal of joy, spin around, and collapse us both onto one of the settees. He sits on my lap and I hug him again.

"Yeah, I can win," I repeat, gazing at the vase on the windowsill that I was so close to smashing. I can't not win now that I've gone and said all that, but even if I do, it's not just going to be for Charmy and my family. It'll be for all those Reapings I left unscathed. It will be for every time I looked forward to flopping onto my bed at the end of today.

The second I think about how close I was to freedom, my mood darkens again. I let out a sigh and twirl the chain around my neck with my fingers. It's a tatty thing that Charmy dragged out of a dustbin and gave to me last year on my eighteenth birthday. I don't know who let a five year old go about near the dustbins, it's probably where that stupid flu came from, but after we cleaned the chain up a bit it turned out to be quite shiny. It was the best gift I got. And probably the stupidest. But if it came from Charmy and if it was anything remotely sane, I don't think I would have cared what it was because it's the thought that counts.

Sure, love isn't always necessary to get stuff done and I couldn't care less about it if I tried, but this child always makes me feel loved, and I love him for that. It's a great feeling.

The door opens again, and the peacekeeper sticks his head around the doorframe. "Time's up, kiddo, come on."

Charmy sighs, and sadly jumps off my lap onto the rug. He drags his feet on the way to the door. He turns to me just before leaving with sadness in his glassy eyes, outlined by the same pair of goggles he found in that same dustbin.

"You keep smiling, Charm," I say. "Uncle Vec loves you."

And then he is guided out. The Peacekeepers are much more gentle with him than they were with me, which is nice to see. He won't be eligible for another six years. He might even be young enough to get away with not watching the games. I can't remember paying any heavy attention to them until I was about eleven. Maybe it would be different if someone you know is in them. Maybe he would pay attention.

Even more reason for me to win, I guess. Or at the very least, not be too vicious like a lot of victors are. When the door closes, I lean back on the settee and close my eyes. It's annoying for sure. If I had a choice I wouldn't be here but I'm sure I'll be fine. I don't like to break promises, and even though I technically never promised Charmy anything, it would feel wrong of me to not stick to my word. If my family doubted me, they would have showed up to talk to me. I'm certain that the only reason they haven't is because they know they don't need to. They can talk to me in a month's time when I get back home.

Yeah, that's a good thought. I'm coming home.

Chapter Text

"Rule number one," Zeena begins, after strapping me in rather roughly to the back seat of her car. "Don't you fucking dare death stare me anymore, boy. We do manners in here and clearly you have none, so you better learn fast."

She slams my door shut to top off her point before going around the back of her neon pink and lime green 'Zeemobile' to strap Cream in too.

"I wouldn't expect to have to go over the rules with you, Cream," she smiles. "You have been nothing but sweet since I first met you."

Cream's door is closed much more gently.

The journey to the train station is a familiar one for me. Downhill through the city centre of Three, a left turn by the cake shop, straight on through the crossings, and along a long, bare road towards the edge of Three which is where the train station and warehouses are located, separated by tall fences of chicken wire and metal sheets. Past them on the way to the private car park, I see the grey gravel gardens of the warehouses and their trailers, the crates, the forklifts, and the flimsy truck filled with offcuts, useless rubbish, and its own flaking rust that the crew lovingly refers to as the Wastelander. "Remember the old flatbed truck?" Boss would say. "This is nothing like that. The Wastelander could carry the old flatbed truck across the surface of the sun."

This is the side of District 3 that nobody really sees or thinks about. We make the cool tech. We are the producers of all things that can produce things. We learn all the fancy things at school. We can code, we can build intricate machines, and we are inventors. We practically live in the Computer Room and one or two of us have been pulled into the Capitol for our knowledge. But we can only do all of that if we have the materials, and to have those, we need an 'in' and an 'out'.

Zeena swings the Zeemobile into an empty parking slot in the underground parking of the train station and takes Cream and I to our train, with Vanilla in tow. She's been quiet since the Reaping and I don't blame her for it. We're caught up to by Peacekeepers who shield us from cameras and prying eyes, before we are funnelled onto the train.

I always had a bit of an idea what to expect from these trains. I've seen clips of them on television, I've seen scenes of the Capitol's infrastructure and assumed that a train would be just as extra. I've heard about some of the technology that goes into the trains. Why would a train need chandeliers with a hundred bulbs if it weren't going to be impossibly luxurious? Between rugs on the hardwood floors there are seating areas and small cabins and offices and a bar and a kitchen and a bunch of other rooms that are probably never used. The train doors slide to a close behind us and the train begins to move.

"We'll be in the Capitol by midday tomorrow," Zeena says. "Rule number two, don't break anything."

She pulls a phone-looking thing out of her pocket and shuts herself in another room.

Vanilla, Cream and I settle down on a sofa with a small coffee table in the middle in an awkward silence, seasoned with the echoes of Zeena's conversation behind a wall. I wonder if I should maybe leave them to it to talk things out, but they haven't been talking at all so far and I have just as much right to be here as they have, so instead I stare out of the window on the opposite end of the train and watch as the hillside turns into forest.

"Mama, are you alright?" Cream finally asks.

"I have to be, don't I, dear?"

"How did you know that this might happen to me?"

Vanilla looks down at her heels, past her flowing pink fitted dress that lands around her ankles in ruffles, and sighs.

"Is it because it happened to you too?" she continues. "I always thought that was what it was. That you were just being a little extra worried because you've been there."

"Odds and probability and all of those things," Vanilla begins, "they can be so, so mean. I didn't know for sure this would happen darling but you are right, I was worried it would happen to you too." She clasps her hands together. "I do wonder if maybe I manifested this, somehow."

"Please don't blame yourself, Mama," Cream replies. "You couldn't have done anything to stop this. Sometimes this is just how things are."

I glance at Cream, and see her lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling. She's kicked her shoes onto the floor. I wonder what could be going through her head. She always looked and sounded so child-like when she was featured on TV, but she's always had this innocent maturity about her. A weird contradiction, and it freaks me out a little to witness it in person. How she seems so calm about being transported to a literal deathmatch that she is going to be a part of, and yet she is the one comforting her own mother knowing full well what might happen to her.

"How are you, Mister Vector?" she asks me. I'm startled by the use of the title but I try not to think about it.

"I guess I'm fine," I reply. "A little annoyed, but I'm fine."

"Annoyed with Miss Zeena?"

"Of course," I reply. "If the Reaping were in two days' time, I wouldn't have been in that bowl, and yet she had the nerve to choose me, didn't she."

"Well she couldn't do anything about it," Cream says. "It's just probability, after all."

Vanilla joins in. "If you're nice to Zeena then I'm sure she'll be nice to you. She's a simple lady, really, easy to please. And I do mean that well."

Cream nods her head. "I met her a few years ago when she first got the job as escort. She invited herself over for tea so Mama made her some scones and she gave us some of her old things that she didn't want anymore. She came over every year the day before the Reaping."

"You know her well, huh?" I ask, and she smiles. Of course she wouldn't be angry with Zeena for reaping her, if she thinks the world of her. But the more I think about it, the less it makes sense for me to be annoyed either. She couldn't possibly have known. It won't make it any less infuriating but she couldn't possibly have known.

Chapter Text

At seven, we all tuck into hot seeded breads dipped in weird soups I've never had before while the Reaping recap airs. There are a couple of interviews with Valdez and Maria, the victors of the last two games, before we're thrusted into District 1. Two volunteers, nothing to see there. District 2 are delighted, nothing to see there. Cream is just how I remember her, steeling herself for the cameras and the shocked gaze of the crowd on her delicate way up the stairs to the stage. When Zeena reads out my name, the look on my face says it all. Even as I'm forced onto the stage by the cold stares of the universe, my brows remain straight and my eyes remain locked a few feet ahead of me. I stand tall when all that I am feeling is hatred, and when I'm pulled backwards into the Justice Building and the doors close into darkness before transitioning back to the map, the last thing seen of me is my stare right into the camera.

"That's badass," I whisper. "I didn't even know that camera was there."

"Yeah, because you were too busy blaming me for all of your problems in life," Zeena growls, gently patting her lips with a napkin.

District 4 are both volunteers, and there are small cries of protest from the district when the boy who is reaped is replaced by some confused-looking clod with crocs and a frog hat.

"Is he like, mentally okay?" Zeena asks, and nobody answers her.

The reaping continues. Five reaps a couple of punks. The lad from Six looks happy just to be outside for what must be the first time in his life by how he stares off into the sky, and then there's District 7. A girl is reaped, but then her brother volunteers to go to the games with her. She is angered by his decision, but it's nothing the threat of a Peacekeeper's gunshot can't put to rest. I know that District 7 have never had a volunteer before, and I didn't think they ever would, especially not like that.

Eight and Nine are pretty standard from what I can tell, but District 10 catches my eye. The girl is covered in bandages and to an extent the boy is too, but neither of them look particularly injured. They look tough. They look fierce. Ten always does but this time, especially so.

The girl from District 11 is called Sticks. She makes her way onstage clutching a flower crown to her head. She was stood with the sixteen year olds but in no way does she act like it. She moves like she thinks she's being watched, she bites her lip like a nervous wreck, and she cannot stand still at all.

"What do you think, Mama?" Cream asks. "Do you think either of us stand a chance?"

"We will never know until training, dear," she replies.

"I don't want to have to deal with that Sticks girl," I admit. "I don't like the look of her, she looks weird, I feel like she'd just look at me, go, 'yep, I can kill you,' rip my throat out and wear it as a necktie."

Zeena coughs. "If you don't start being nicer to people, I'm gonna turn you into a green snow cone and feed you to that glutton Zomom, because I'm on a diet and can't eat snow cones."

"You've known me for less than a day. Anyway look at yourself, you don't need a diet."

"I've known your for long enough to- Oh!" She gasps, before grinning. "Oh, see, you can be sweet!"

I roll my eyes when she's not looking and dismiss myself from the dining table. Vanilla wasn't kidding when she said Zeena was easy to please.

"Vector is right, Zeena," Vanilla smiles. "You don't need to worry yourself about things like this. Capitol beauty standards are so out of reach for everybody, all that matters is that you're healthy and you feel confident and happy with yourself." She leans towards Zeena, talks more quietly, and makes a hand gesture. "And frankly, you can tell anybody who tells you otherwise that they can do one. You go and get yourself a snow cone."

I shut myself in my new room for tonight. It's small but not cramped, the walls are painted in blue and the floor is covered in fluffy grey carpet. There is an ensuite in the corner next to a walk-in closet, and a large window on the far wall. I watch as the forest transforms into large, yellow and brown fields of grain with a cluster of windmills in the distance. This can only be District 9. After a long time staring out into the great plains, the train track takes a corner around a huge city of concrete buildings that flake with paint.

For a time, the train follows a wide river that parts the endless swathes of yellow and I follow what I can see of the track behind us, raised above the crops on a stone bridge, and in the distance I see another train like this one which I can only assume to be the train of either District 12 or 6. After a little run through the closet I get out a tank top and some jeans for tomorrow. The rest of the clothes are fancier than what I'm used to. I take off my Reaping shirt, which pinched uncomfortably at my neck against Charmy's golden necklace for the greater part of today, and try on the tank top which somehow fits perfectly. It can't be a one-size-fits-all thing. Maybe the Avoxes in here made some guesses about how big I am. I don't know whether to be flattered or concerned that they got it exactly right.

Maybe I'll just leave it on overnight.

I watch the sun set behind District 9 and its various small towns, and continue to stare deep into the night. When there are no real details, Nine doesn't look all that different to the fringes of Three where I worked. There was practically nothing there other than the occasional hole in the ground or pile of metal offcuts. There was even a river just like this one. I can imagine District 9 having huge harvesters just like how we had the Wastelander, but instead of working behind the scenes, the harvesters are all that is known.

Chapter Text

The train pulls to a stop in the Capitol Interchange. Vanilla runs us through what we are supposed to do now. Zeena will lead Cream and I out along the path through the crowds marked out by Peacekeepers. Vanilla will tail behind us. There will be cameras all over the place because today marks the Opening Ceremony, and everybody is going to be watching.

For the short time I was asleep, I slept terribly. I'm not even sure why. Anger never stopped me from sleeping before - if anything it made it easier, knowing that once I'm asleep then nothing can bother me anymore. At maybe four in the morning, we passed the ruins of a metropolis, and it didn't look like District 9 anymore. After that, it was just grassland until we entered the mountains. That was how I knew we were close to the Capitol, and that adding to my three hours of sleep would probably only do more harm than good. Something about inertia crossed my mind. It should be easier to just stay awake.

I don't know when watching the Hunger Games became mandatory, or even if it is strictly mandatory at all. I think we all just collectively assumed that it would be after the outlying districts were given televisions, because they're not given anything. The addition of an Opening Ceremony and a Tribute Parade alongside the interviews that have been around since the tenth, have turned the Games into more of an entertainment event than anything. It doesn't make them any less horrendous. My dad had a theory: If you tell somebody to do something, they're not going to want to do it, so instead of telling them to do it, make the activity more interesting so they do it anyway. And then turn it into a habit, broadcast your propaganda, and make future generations believe that watching the Hunger Games - or at least having the TV on at all times - is just a typical Citizen of Panem thing that is just as necessary as paying taxes or something, and then gradually work in threats behind it. As far as I'm aware, that last part hasn't happened yet, and I hope for Charmy's sake that this year isn't the year that it does.

My theory is that the Opening Ceremony and the Tribute Parade only exist because the Capitol is sick in the head.

The mid-morning sun forces its way through the mountains bordering the Capitol, and the four of us make our way into the centre of the megacity towards the Tribute Centre, which is the hub of a giant underground network leading to everything to do with the Hunger Games, including the arena that we will be in tonight. We follow in the footsteps of District 2 who are not so far ahead of us. The cameras turn to meet us and drones follow us down the Avenue until we reach the back entrance of the Tribute Centre, and Zeena scans herself in.

"This is my cue to let you know that you cannot leave this building without me, as if I'd take you anywhere. I'm not allowed to," She tells us. "This card is the key and this card is mine, thank you, so don't even think about running off."

We're taken through various corridors and we land in a large circular hub with a clear elevator up the middle, constantly moving up and down. It reaches high up the centre of the building, but we will only be going to the third floor. We wait for the next elevator carriage and step on.

"I love this thing," Zeena chuckles. "It's so funny to watch the tributes frantically trying to work out how to get on and off it."

"Is that a side-effect of working for District 3, Miss Zeena? Fascinated by tech and all those who can't use it?" Cream asks.

"Well duh, you guys know it already because you've literally learnt about stuff like this in school. Usually the best district to make fun of is Ten. I would say Twelve but I think they've learnt enough about elevators because of how many people die in them. These things? Baby steps."

We make it onto the third floor and Zeena lets us into our living space. I immediately pick a room and stay there. My arms and legs burn from how tired I am, and I'm certain that the bright light outside was the only thing keeping my eyes open. I've got five nights in here. This room is huge. One of the walls is a screen. The remote is weird. It has its own small screen itself, and it's held like a pistol. I flick through some of the screen savers. Various landscapes come up, like plain hills, forests, mountains, deserts, seabeds, but nothing really grabs me. Night skies and sunsets don't really do anything for me either. Then there are the solid colours and patterns, and I come across a weird kinetic wallpaper that floats in black shards and sparkles.

There is a knock on my door. I tell the person to come in, and it's Vanilla.

"Are you alright, Vector?" she asks, poking her head around the door.

I smile and shake my head. "I'm tired. I got no sleep last night."

"I'm sorry this is happening to you, dear."

"It's okay," I reply. "You have bigger things to worry about than me."

She sighs. "Get yourself some sleep before tonight. I'll wake you up in a bit."

"Cheers. How long have I got?"

"You've got until your stylist comes up here to call for you. Her name is Bunnie D'Coolette. She mainly specialises in hair but... I think she'll be able to do something nice for you. Depending on what she's got planned, she could turn up as soon as midday and as late as six."

"Bunnie D'Coolette..." I ponder. I know that name. I think she was the one who did the outfits for Tails last year, alongside her husband Antoine who did the ones for the girl, and I can't for the life of me remember who she was. Bunnie found ways to braid Tails's fur in patterns that should be impossible. And here I am with only scales to work with.

"And Antoine will do Cream," Vanilla continues. "You should go down at the same time but depending on the plans... I don't know. Anyway, I'll leave you to your slumber. The Avoxes will be at your service."

She smiles and gently closes the door, leaving me alone in this strange room. I decide to let the kinetic wallpapers send me to sleep.

Chapter Text

"Vector, Bunnie is here!"

Vanilla's voice wrenches me out of whatever lifeless state that was. I open my eyes to the dark, shattered universe on my wall and watch as it pulsates. I know people who could animate things like that. They could spawn a cube and cut it up, and then program in some gravity and friction and let it drop. And then they could texture it, render lighting, something like that. I was never good at it.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off in another district than Three. Maybe somewhere like Seven or Eight where the engineering is a bit less technical and a bit more practical. Maybe somewhere where I'd actually be working on the end result rather than working on the things that are used to make the end result. Here we use physics and maths to design something useful like a hammer with slightly better weight distribution than the previous iteration, and then use the machines, that we designed with precision, to make the thing. That's boring. I've always been more into the practical side, the living and breathing side, using the things that have already been made, rather than being stuck in the Computer Room.

"Get a real part time job, use your brain," my dad would tell me. To which I would reply, "Get some sun, you anaemic bastard. This job is doing me just fine."

Vanilla introduces me to Bunnie D'Coolette in person. She seems nice enough. Enthusiastic about what's to come. She tells me that Cream had to go down to the salon about an hour ago because her outfit for the Tribute Parade is a bit more complicated than mine.

"When does the Parade start?" I ask in disbelief when I see that the clock says half past six. Later than Vanilla promised.

"Don't you worry, Vector, we can do this in ten minutes but Antoine warned me not to leave it too late. We'll be more than ready by seven."

She takes us both down a multitude of corridors and a flight of stairs before entering a plain room with a raised part in the middle, and she tells me to stand there. The room has white walls, tiled floors, beige blinds over the windows and one light wooden desk with absolutely nothing on it. A fitted closet stands before me.

"What are you gonna do?" I ask. "Shove some eyeliner on me and call it a day?"

Bunnie swings open the closet doors and chuckles. "The theme we are going for this year is minimalism. Less is more."

Inside the closet, hung up on a bar, is a black leotard with short sleeves and legs that would reach halfway to the knees. It is put alongside some silver rings, about the diameter of a wrist but they don't strike me as bracelets, and some weird cable.

"You weren't kidding."

I reluctantly let Bunnie squeeze me into the leotard. She explains that this year, District 3's outfits are to portray an aesthetic, rather than display direct references to the tech industry. She tells me about a story she read, about a questionnaire on some Capitol students attending the University, asking them to draw a picture of what they think a living room would look like in every district. For some it was pretty straight forward. Districts 1 and 2 were fairly normal. The drawings of Eight had a bunch of rugs and tapestries even though District 8's living spaces could not be further from cosy. District 7 was almost entirely log cabins even though a large portion of their houses are built out of mud brick. Something that should be obvious if you actually watched the news and learnt that districts don't use what they make.

"District 10 had hay in their living rooms, and District 12 lived in caves," Bunnie laughs, weaving some of the cable through the rings, positioning them on my torso, and wrapping the cable around my upper body. "Sometimes I wonder why the Capitol are in charge of this country but what can I say? They are the centre of the world, and they treat us well."

"So what you're saying is, District 3 were given floating refrigerators, blinding lights, abstract art, gloss-painted windowsills, and everybody lives in a soulless concrete jungle?"

"Exactly."

"Swap Three and Eight and then it wouldn't sound so stupid."

"It would sound stupid to them," she chuckles. "All the Capitol really see of the Districts on the TV are the Justice Buildings and maybe a factory or two. Maybe the occasional drone shot. Only the ones who work with the District citizens have any clue what their lives are really like. As a stylist, I had special permission to see this study and it really opened my eyes. If anything, there's more censorship in the Capitol than there is in the Districts."

"How would Robotnik feel if he heard you telling me about this?"

"Oh, I don't know, he'd probably be fine with it. One of his closest colleagues came up with the procedure for this research."

The fact that Bunnie is so happy to tell me about Capitol business and talk to me about how stupid the Capitol students are still rubs me the wrong way. We've all seen what happens to people who talk shit about the Capitol and the people in it. The only way I could justify this to myself is if she is confident that I won't tell anybody about what she really thinks. She can't possibly trust me to keep a secret like that unless she's written me off already.

Suddenly I don't like Bunnie D'Coolette anymore, or her stupid ideas. Especially not when she opens the closet doors even wider to reveal a mirror. Less is more, alright. I got jacked so I would stand a chance if I were to be thrown into an arena. I did not get jacked to be squeezed into a leotard and tied in some weird cable harness that pinches every crease on my body. She turns off the lights, presses a button on my back, and the cables light up.

"The Capitol will love this," she sighs happily. I know they will love it, and hearing it from her is not reassuring in any way.

"Is it because I'm the oldest-"

"We have to get going to the backstage area downstairs."

"What did you do to Cream?"

"To Cream?" she clarifies, before smiling innocently. "Antoine's given her a beautiful black gown, and that one lights up too."

"D-Does it?"

"Come on. Off we go."

Chapter Text

I'm relived to see that Cream's outfit is nowhere near as revealing as mine. Even Antoine asks Bunnie if mine is a little excessive, but she convinces him that this is best for all of us. She uses words like 'powerful', 'strong', 'mighty', 'macho', and some others that make me wonder if I was crazy to think that anything would ever go how I wanted it to. Trust my luck to be reaped right at the very end and be transformed into a walking stereotype. I guess it could be karma from the way that I thought of Zeena but that would make this worth it, and it isn't. By the time Bunnie is done pitching her work and explaining how this year I am to be the Capitol's annual sex object to her own damned husband, I wonder if a marriage counsellor is in order. But then I change my mind and decide on a restraining order instead. Winning the Games and mentoring would easily cover all of that.

We are brought by Vanilla to our chariot, which will take us down the length of the arena to the stage when it is our turn. Zeena is gone, she's sat at a table far away from us with Jules and Zor from District 7, drinking tea and eating vegan cupcakes. With artificial sweeteners. And clotted cream instead of frosting. When she explained that to me, I told her that's not a cupcake, that's nuts, and then she told me that there are almonds in it anyway so I'm technically right, 'as all boys like to think they are'. I didn't have the heart to tell her that almonds technically aren't nuts. Looking back, I probably should have.

"It will be over soon, Vector," Vanilla reassures me, while stroking the mane of the horse in front of me.

"Did you approve this?"

"I had no idea what Bunnie would do," she replies, and I believe her. "I found it weird that she left it so late but I thought it couldn't be a bad thing because then you'd get some more sleep. This happens to somebody every year."

"District 1 were naked last year," Cream pipes up. "Apparently it was to showcase the skincare products they manufacture over there, but I'm sure it was for more than just that. I don't want to like, dismiss this, but it's really not that deep."

I roll my eyes. She's got a point though. At least I'm mostly covered up. I take a quick look around at everyone else, make eye contact with the volunteer from Seven, and cringe. I fold my arms and look directly ahead at the curtain draped before everybody.

"Bunnie reckons this is for minimalism," I almost choke. "She started going on about how the people in the Capitol think we have floating furniture and everything is all futuristic and plain. Lying twat."

"Vector!" Vanilla scolds. "I hate to say it, but you'll be thanking her when you get all the sponsors. I agree that it's dreadful, but the logic checks out. We need to appeal to the citizens."

I have no option but to listen to her. She's been mentoring since the beginning of victor mentorship. She has first-hand experience of how the Games go. District 3 have done remarkably well under her watchful eye even if they have been a little rebellious in the past. I recall something like six top five finishes since the twelfth Games, and two of them I witnessed on the TV myself. Even more remarkable, is the fact that no tribute from District 3 has ever finished last. That record was also held by District 1 until last year, when they both got mauled by the claws of District 12 within the first ten seconds. Gerald is a sucker for statistics to keep the commentary going and so am I, but all this is telling me is that the more of you is exposed, the more likely you are to have your game cut short.

The anthem starts to sound from the arena, and it's not long before District 1's chariot is sent through the curtain to some new music. They're dressed this time. Quite well, actually.

"First of all, unfold your arms, both of you," Vanilla starts. "Cream, you do your princess stance, hands out of your pockets, you are a princess, not a gangster. Vector, back straight, eyes forward, chest puffed, you are a totem, not Zor. Got it?"

Cream nods her head, so I nod mine too. I watch District 2's knights in shining armour ride their chariot away.

"It will be alright," Vanilla smiles. "You've got this."

We wait for the cue, and take our stances. The curtain opens before us, the lights in the arena dim to near blackness, the music quietens, and our fairy lights come on. Cream and I are illuminated, shining bright within the pitch darkness of the arena, and I thank my lucky stars when a short glimpse of a screen in the corner tells me that our faces are almost invisible. I do what Vanilla told me to do while staring at this other thing that definitely isn't me. For the duration of our screen time I can forget about the audience. It's not ideal, but if I can't see them then they can't see me. That's how that works.

The arena lights come back on and the music hits another chorus when District 4 are about to be unveiled, and there's a short string of commentary from Gerald that I struggle to make out before the burst of pyrotechnics ends our session. We're directed onto the stage. I look across at Cream, who doesn't let her guard down for a single second even now that the cameras are off us. I feel terrible for her. At no point in her life has she ever been able to let her guard down. The fact that she's so used to this makes me sick. It's no childhood.

I begin to wonder if it's possible to have a childhood in the Districts of Panem, because as soon as any child becomes spontaneously conscious and starts having their first memories, they are old enough to be able to dread the year they turn twelve. They are old enough to have nightmares about being snatched away by the Capitol and forced to survive alone in a place full of predators. They are old enough to start planning for things that they should never have to plan for. Either the kids will grow up way too fast, or they won't grow up at all.

Chapter Text

Once again, the recap was badass as ever. I don't know why I worry.

Zeena gives me a half-assed "happy birthday" when I drag myself out of my room after a thirteen hour sleep. I woke up with my entire body crying out for the release of some tension and a bit of care after being deeply stuck in the same awkward position for that long. It took several muscle cramps and joint cracks to get myself out of bed just to be slammed in the lower abdomen by death itself. Not a great start to a day, and Zeena makes it no better.

Training starts today. The Gamemakers give us a little tour of the facilities. President Robotnik reckons the Zeti and Co have got it all covered this year, after the sketchiest management of an unforeseen disaster event these games have ever seen. The former Head Gamemaker, who was born in District 3 as it happens, called the previous team the 'Chaos Council'. He got that right.

"Where do you suppose we start?" Cream asks.

We take a look around and Cream immediately decides that she wants nothing to do with the more conventional weaponry. I don't blame her, half of the blades are bigger than she is. I observe the boy from Ten for a while, and watch him pound into a punching bag so hard that it sends vibrations through the floor. His district partner is on first aid, and I chuckle from the irony. If only she knew how to do a bandage right before rocking up to the reaping. Then she probably wouldn't have had to have so many. I see that the lads from Districts 7 and 8 are on rope tying. Maybe she could take her bandages to them and learn something pretty, and actually get away with calling it a fashion statement. It'd be better than what Bunnie can do.

"Why do you look so angry?"

I look over to Cream, who's found herself some darts and a dartboard. I remove myself from my thoughts and give her a smile. "You don't make fun of people in your head to make yourself feel better?"

"...No?"

"Huh, that's weird," I reply, picking up a dart myself. They're bigger and heavier than the darts I know. "I do it all the time. Never out loud, though. I did it in school a lot in exams. In my head I'd insult the people in the questions to lighten the mood a little. I only ever did it when I already knew I was going to fail, though. Stupid Chip and his kitchen full of chocolate. Who does he think he is?"

"That is pretty mean of you."

"If it doesn't leave your head then it's not mean. Nobody can ever know."

"Don't you feel guilty for thinking horrible things about people, Mister Vector?"

"They're not horrible, it's just banter. You know when your parents poke fun at you? It's like that. You know how they call you chubby or whatever? Say you're lazy for needing stabilizers on your bike? Say you need to use your brain more or you'll end up with the dregs of society and nobody will love you?"

Cream looks concerned. "No."

I twirl the dart in my fingers before throwing it at the board. It lands about halfway to the bullseye. "That figures."

"Mama said the best thing a tribute can do is learn survival skills," Cream says, taking me to the fishing simulator as soon as it's free. Together we try out several methods of fishing. With a line, with a handmade net, with a trident, we try them all and discover that Cream is dreadful at all of them but I do okay. That takes until the lunch break. The food is crap compared to the train stuff and the things we had upstairs but what right do I have to complain?

"Hey Vector," comes a voice to the right of me. It's the girl from Five. She smirks at me. "Your outfit last night, it uh, definitely turned a lot of heads. You're quite the hunk- Ouch!"

I have to stifle a laugh when her district partner flicks her round the ear.

"You stay in your lane," he scolds her.

"Am I not allowed to-"

"No, you're not allowed to flirt with the other tributes, Rouge."

She chuckles and turns back to me. "Shadow's just jealous."

He rolls his eyes and then ignores her for the rest of lunch. I like this guy. He seems sensible. He gets it.

In the afternoon, after complaining a little bit about how shitty this birthday is, I suggest to Cream that she learns some basic combat so she's not completely useless in the arena. My plan was to go and do some more survival things but Cream asks me to stay with her because she doesn't like being alone. I tell her that nobody can hurt her yet but she shrugs and says that never stopped anybody, and there's nothing against bullying in the rules. When I ask her why she thinks she'd be bullied, she aims a bow and arrow at a target on a mannequin and misses.

"That's why," she sighs, putting the bow down.

"You'd think-"

"Yeah, you would think she'd have taught me some things like this, you're right, but the truth is, she's only like Maria," she complains. "Mama only won the Games because the Capitol liked her enough to keep her alive while everybody else fell down around her. All she knew was how to be a crowd pleaser, so that's all she passed onto me."

"Well there's no point in giving up, is there?" I pick up the bow and arrows and give them back to her. "Try again, and if anybody's got anything to say then I'll flick them round the ear."

She hesitates, before tentatively reloading the bow and letting the arrow fly into the thigh of the mannequin.

"See?" I pat her on the back. "That's a femoral artery gone. He'll be dead in a minute and a half."

Cream forces a weak smile and takes another shot. This one takes the shoulder.

"Blam, brachial artery, straight out."

"I don't like this, Mister Vector."

"You're not supposed to like it, kiddo, this is the Hunger Games-"

I'm cut off by an arrow whistling dangerously close to my face, straight past me and towards bullseye on the heart of the mannequin doll. It whips into the tense fabric with a crack that echoes from the walls. Thoroughly startled, I search the other end of the Centre for whoever it was that decided to shoot that arrow. I have to squint to see him, the boy from Twelve, who stands in the dark leant against a metal bar. He smiles with his teeth, showing fangs, then nods and walks away.

"They're getting cocky after last year, aren't they?" I growl, still shaken after being inches away from certain death.

"Yeah," Cream replies breathlessly. "Definitely."

Chapter Text

I've come to the realisation that while I'm in here, I'm either going to be sleeping way too much or not sleeping at all. It's all just so foreign. And it's weird now too, because now I'm nineteen and nineteen year olds don't do the Hunger Games. Surely this can't have happened before. If it has then I can't remember. If it has, the Capitol probably would have tweaked the rules a little to make sure it doesn't happen again. I could easily be the oldest tribute ever, let alone this year, and I don't like that. I don't want to be grown in a deathmatch full of little kids. Because that's what they are, really. Anyone less than about fifteen or sixteen is just a kid. If I want to win the Games I need to outlive them. I might even have to kill a few. But they're just kids. I can't be killing children.

"Vector?"

A slip of light from the hallway halves the wall in front of me when my door is pushed a little way open by Vanilla. I nod for her to come in. She closes the door behind her and comes to sit on the bed with me in the darkness.

I've got the blinds and the curtains wide open. Past the Avenue, there are parties outside. Every year there's a bit of a carnival, a celebration of another year of the Capitol's power. There are lights of all colours and an echo of music that I can only just hear if I stop breathing. The inner city is bustling with nightlife, and in the distance near the train station stands a great white board. That's where they display the odds, and from this angle, they are unreadable.

Vanilla sighs. "I'm sorry you've had an awful birthday."

"Not your fault," I reply. "I can't sleep."

"I know, and neither can I."

"Are you doing okay?"

She is silent for a bit. Eerily still. I wouldn't know she's there if it weren't for the weird dip in the mattress beside me.

"You want the truth?" She chuckles, after spending what felt like forever in deep thought. "No, I'm not. But it's not your job to care. This day is about you. That's why I'm here."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I have an idea. You don't have to go along with it but... mind if I turn on the light?"

My eyes ache from the bright light for some time after she turns it on. Laying on the table at the foot of my bed are two piles of clothes and some little boxes. She quietly runs over to my window and closes everything down.

"We need to do this quickly and quietly, okay? Get changed, the pile on the left is yours. I may or may not have gone on a little bit of a shopping spree earlier today... minus the shopping."

I stare at her, wondering what she could possibly mean by that, but she just nods towards the pile before picking up her own and disappearing into the walk-in wardrobe.

So she's nicked clothes. That's the last thing I'd ever expect her to do but I decide to trust her anyways, grab my pile, and get changed in the ensuite. She's given me a grey tank top that's cropped and frayed at the bottom, plus some ripped jeans, a thick belt, boots, and a whole lot of golden accessories to go with my chain. As I slip on the many rings and bracelets and fake piercings she has provided, I take a good look at myself in the mirror. It's definitely not my thing. I wouldn't be caught dead in a crop top back at home but after Bunnie and her stupid ideas, I'm just glad to be wearing actual clothes.

I almost choke when I see Vanilla leant on the bedroom door with her hands deep in the pockets of a grey tracksuit, with her hair slicked back underneath a baseball cap. The lady who used to dress so delicately and formally like a maiden from centuries ago, has decided to go full-on gangster mode for the night and I find it hilarious. Maybe even attractive, if I were to let myself stoop that low. I have to make the conscious decision not to.

"Are you sure you got this the right way round?" I laugh.

"You hate it, don't you."

"Well, I don't hate it, but..."

"You would never wear it?"

"No, never."

"Perfect!" she grins. "I wouldn't ever wear this either but we don't need comfort where we're going. Come."

She sits back on the bed and pats the space in front of her. I hesitantly go over and sit there. The tough jeans and the hard leather belt with its giant golden buckle don't make it easy for me, not like this.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going," she smirks, while cracking open one of the boxes, "outside."

"Outside?"

Vanilla picks a brush from the box and scoops up some blue powder with it, before painting it onto my eyes. The action takes me by surprise at first but I remind myself that she's my mentor, and I have to trust her.

"Well, yeah? What else would we need a disguise for?"

I follow her instructions as to where to put my face and what to do with my eyes. She dips a thin brush in some shiny metallic liquid and lines my eyes with it, before extending my eyelashes with golden mascara. I flinch every time she comes near my eyeball with the tools.

"But Vanilla, I thought tributes weren't allowed to leave the Centre?"

"They're not allowed to leave the Centre without an escort," she corrects, sticking a little rhinestone to the side of my face. "Even then, they're not meant to leave but-"

"Oh for fuck's sake, we're not bringing Zeena, are we?"

"Don't worry." She blows onto my face. She smells like coffee, something someone would only drink at this time if they were actively trying to stay awake. She could have slept if she wanted to. "I've got that covered."

Vanilla unzips her hoodie to reveal a small, flat bag attached to her waist, and from the front pocket she pulls a card. Zeena's card. She tucks it back into the bag and puts her finger to her mouth to tell me to keep this a secret. She's worse than I thought.

"Vanilla, no, we can't do that."

"Sure we can, who's going to stop us? I can't sleep. You can't sleep. This sounds to me like the perfect opportunity to celebrate your last birthday, and get the heck out of here for a little while."

"My... my last birthday?"

The sneaky, lying grin immediately falls off Vanilla's face. "I- No! No, that's not what I meant at all, you know what I mean, don't you?"

"No, Vanilla, I really don't."

I watch her panic. My last birthday. The last one. I would love to hear her try to explain her way out of this after stealing from everybody in the building. Maybe I shouldn't trust her after all.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like-"

"If you want me to die so Cream can live then you can just tell me that, you know?" I say. "You can be honest with me?"

"Ugh." She rubs my eyelid and closes her little box. "I'm sorry, please forget I said anything. Your eyes are done now, I tried to make them as un-you as possible. We're going into town, nobody's going to recognise either of us, Zeena's fast on, it'll be alright. We're celebrating your birthday, okay? I'll aim for us to be back by three or four so we can actually get some sleep."

She told me I didn't have to go along with this but I feel like she's left me no choice. She's assertive, I'll give her that, and she's not wrong about the sleep thing. I would like to get out of here for a bit. I think it would tire me out enough for me to be able to rest. I shrug my shoulders.

"If you say so. But you'd better know what you're doing."

Chapter Text

"Is there no... you know, surveillance?"

"Of course there is, but it's never manned."

"Well you'd think it would be, considering we're in the bloody Capitol."

"If it was manned, they'd have been onto me the second I stepped into Antoine's studio."

"You robbed Antoine?"

"Well Bunnie obviously didn't have anything to blooming rob, did she?"

"Touché."

The paternoster gently lowers us down to the ground floor and we step out into the empty hub room. The lights are dimmed and the air is silent and still. Vanilla takes my hand and brings me through a series of dark, plain corridors to what looks like a fire exit, but is actually a disguised back door designed specifically to catch out escaping tributes. She takes out Zeena's card to deactivate the alarm hidden inside the green light with the running man, and pushes the door open.

We end up in a sparsely populated car park surrounded by high fences and evenly planted trees.

"If I've got this right," Vanilla ponders, "then just over that fence should lead to the back end of an alley that would take us to the food outlet. Think you can climb in those jeans?"

I gawk at her. "I could barely sit in them."

She sighs. "Alright, plan B, uh... stay there."

Vanilla readjusts her cap and her bag and stretches her arms before swinging her leg up over the top of the brick tree planter. She hoists herself up on top, carefully pulls herself over the metal fence, and shimmies down the other side. A little way to the left she locates a gate, which leads into a truck park outside a warehouse, with a bar on her side.

"Please don't be loud..." she whispers. She pulls the bar up out of its slot and the gate stutters open.

We find another gate that can only be opened from inside the warehouse premises, and we sneak through a small patch of polluted woodland until we arrive in the inner city.

District 3's city centre is dense with tall buildings, factories and offices. Shops exist within the ground floors of residential blocks. Roads are thin, winding, and full of holes and cracks. The streets smell of metal mesh and sulphur. Cars run on diesel and the exhaust pipes crack and choke out smoke at every shift of the engines. Buses run on petrol and the paint flakes from the rusty metal exteriors and the windows leak water. Alleyways are dark and damp, and rats and foxes thrive in the bins. Streetlights turn on bright red and slowly transition to yellow as they heat up while the night goes on. The Capitol is not the same.

We walk down well-lit straight grids of brick road, accessible only to pedestrians and fancy new trams. The shops here take up dedicated space, rather than being shoved in a converted kitchen. We pass record shops with shirts and books and discs of all kinds, second-hand game stores run by Capitol teenagers, burger bars, gymnasiums, a stationary shop with adorable little cartoon pandas as the brand motif - all very clean and precise, planned down to every tile.

"It wasn't always like this," Vanilla tells me. "Ten or fifteen years ago, this place was still a complete mess from the Dark Days. The trams only came in a few months ago, they were commissioned by Mephiles soon after he won for District 6."

I remember watching that one. The twenty fourth. It lasted less than a week, half the arena was irradiated and the other half was lava. The Chaos Council really got their game on with the arena designs. Mephiles didn't go into that arena particularly healthy in the head so it was no surprise when he came out of there insisting that he should be provided with a lifetime supply of morphling or else he would refuse to mentor. He also said a lot of things about how he wanted to climb up the Capitol towers and "enter the back passage of the sun" using the powers of his crystals so he could become one with divinity and conceive a demigod. According to Vanilla, the new trams were the only good idea he's ever had.

We reach the square where the parties are, and I'm revolted by the sight. The Chaos Council may have been terrible at disaster prevention but they set the scene for the biggest, most sickening reality show the world has ever seen. The kids have toy swords. There are stands selling Hunger Games merchandise. There are coasters with the faces of this year's tributes and I see a few with mine, from the shot during the reaping when I was being pulled into the Justice Building. I don't know how to feel about my face being monetised. A bright stand catches my eye, and when I head over I see that it is stacked full of dolls. Yellow ones, with two tails and metal accents, with holes through their chests.

"We should move on from here," Vanilla says, looking rather pale after seeing the Tails Doll stand. "I want you to try some new things."

We loop back around to another high street. Vanilla uses Zeena's money to buy us both a strange kind of cold tea full of chewy brown balls that slide perfectly up a wide straw. We each sample a free bite of chilli chocolate fudge. We listen to live music played by buskers by the bus station while we lament about the light pollution and how it blocks out the stars from the clear night sky, but it doesn't really matter to either of us. Aside from the partying and the brainwashing of the children, the Capitol is delightful. The slight chill of the clean night time breeze and the way it slips so easily into my lungs when I breathe is the part I like the most. I feel invisible. I feel free.

We find an empty bench near a small park with the beautiful view of the moonlit mountains behind the cityscape, and Vanilla and I sit there together in silence to finish our bubble tea. I take another look at the big board. I can read it now. And right at the top of the odds, three to one, is me. And then it's Espio Vaso from One, and then Sonic Felgate from Two, then Marine Judas from Four, and then, weirdly, both of District 7 are above the rest of the Careers. But I don't think I care. I'm at the top. The very top. And I'm not supposed to know about it, but it doesn't matter. The Capitol's got faith in me, and if they've got faith in me then that means I have sponsors and that means I can go home, just like I said I would.

I've had nineteen birthdays.

I feel like there's going to be at least twenty.

Chapter Text

"Vector, I really would like to apologise for what I said last night."

The two of us are the last ones in the living room after dinner. Cream's gone to her room for a shower, and Zeena has gone to find Zor to spend some time with him. It beats me why anybody would ever want to do that but according to her, he's a sweetie at heart. I take another sip of the luxurious hot chocolate drink that I ordered from the Avox kitchen. It's rich and thick, and the marshmallows melt into each other making a fluffy disc over the top of the drink. I could just fall asleep right here, but I need to drink this first.

"So I'm not disposable? Or a buffer for your daughter?" I reply, after swallowing down some of the steaming hot liquid.

"No, Vector, you're not." She sighs. "I like you a lot. And obviously I love Cream but every year my heart is broken because it's just not fair that only one of you can win."

"Them's the breaks, pal."

"Yeah. Them's the breaks. But I just wish things were different."

I've been tired all day. I made some stupid misses with the weaponry. I suffered through the survival tasks under the influence of brain fog. I don't think I learnt anything. First aid went over my head. I met nobody else. I hardly listened to a word anyone said today, and I can't help but feel like I'm destined to be a time-waster. Ever since I screwed up my circadian rhythm on the train, everything has fallen apart.

I've only got half a day of training left, and then tomorrow afternoon it's the ten minute private exam. What can I show them other than my ability to throw things into and out of a trailer? If I shoot a bow it'll go the wrong way. If I try to throw a spear I'll probably hit myself. I need sleep, and then tomorrow morning I can study plants and first aid like it's my high school finals all over again. I'll wrap up a mannequin, feed it a pear, and then launch it across the Centre with my teeth.

"Cream has told me that she feels safe around you," Vanilla smiles.

I scoff. "Really?"

"Yes. She says you give her confidence to try new things, and she thinks you could protect her from other tributes."

"Well, I guess that's nice of her."

Cream still freaks me out. She's impossible. A kid like her is not supposed to have such an old soul. She talks like she's seen the world three times over and made it to eighty every time, and then all of a sudden she's crying because she's scared and doesn't know what to do, so I talk to her, and then she smiles and blinks the tears away and gets right on with it as if nothing ever happened. She's wise for other people but her wisdom doesn't apply to her. She'll whack on a face and play pretend. She's a champion, but at the same time she's absolutely nobody. And I can't hate her, because she's sweet. But I can't like her either because I have this feeling that she'll grow up with a face like stone and then learn how to throw it.

"She would like you to stay with her and be her main ally."

I inhale deeply through my nose. It's not what I wanted to hear and I'm pretty sure Vanilla knows that. The odds are messing with me. Me, first in the odds, allied with a twelve year old? It doesn't happen. It shouldn't happen. I've got a home to go back to so I don't need a little girl following me around and her mother watching over me reminding me that if I want to go home then she has to die.

"I would like to win the Hunger Games, Vanilla. And I know that hurts to hear but I have a family too."

"Who are your allies?"

Her quick response surprises me. Almost as if she just doesn't want to hear it. I struggle to think of anybody. I've not spoken to anyone outside of Three, I've only had District 5 speak to me. And I like Shadow, but he's not an ally, not yet at least. And I've seen mister Fang the Sniper from Twelve, and I already know that associating with him is a disaster waiting to happen. I won't dare try it on with the Careers because I know they will betray me at some point, that's their thing. I'm certain District 7 have some kind of weird little strategy that I would be wholly unwelcome in, and I'm not sure anybody else would want anything to do with me either. If they did, they'd have come over.

"I've got nobody," I admit.

"You need allies, Vector."

"Do I?"

"You're not as indestructible as you think you are. You can't win alone."

"You did."

"That was years ago. Things have changed."

"Mephiles had nobody."

"Please just consider it, Vector. You know you can count on Cream."

"Do I know that? Or are you just convincing me that I know that?"

She remains expressionless. "She is the voice of reason that we all need in times like these. District 3 cannot win while divided. No district can. There is strength in numbers."

I don't reply.

She nods her head. "I'll let you think about it."

Vanilla delicately stands from her stool and goes to her own room, red heels clicking quietly on the hardwood floor. I watch the layers of her light pink dress sway by her ankles until she disappears. Her dresses are almost as elegant as she is, but I still prefer her in her skater girl configuration. That Vanilla has balls. She's not scared. She's not a wimp. She actually believes in me. Why else would she take me on a forbidden night out and practically wave the odds in my face? Why take me on a tour of the city if she doesn't think I'll ever be there again? That Vanilla is a victor. This Vanilla is nothing to me. She's pretty and she's nice enough to me and that's about it. If she weren't either of those things I'm sure I would have lost it with her by now.

I have just as much of a right to win as Cream does. But for now, I think I'll play her game. I'll keep her happy. I can't not keep her happy when my life is in her hands. She could well end up being the reason I remain alive. She could also just leave me to die.

It hits me. It may not be what she wanted but the realisation hits me anyway. Cream is a stepping stone to my victory. If tomorrow I can study, give it my all in the exam, score high and smash the interview, then that's money sorted. That's all on me. But there's no point having money if it can't be spent. If I ally with Cream and protect her then Vanilla will reward me because deep down she knows that the only way Cream can make it out alive is if she piggybacks on me.

Cream can't win if I'm dead. You can't win alone, after all.

Chapter Text

For the final few hours of training I spend my entire time cramming as much information as I possibly can. I'm quick to notice patterns in the plant identification tasks and learn what characteristics a naturally occurring poisonous plant may have. The biggest red flags are small red berries and a weird juice or sap. I learn a few ways of filtering things out of water to prepare it for purification with iodine. I can start a fire now. Things seem to be going well, so I try - try - to relax while I eat.

"Mister Vector, what-"

"Will you cut it out?" I snap, out of pure stress. "With the whole 'Mister' stuff. It's really starting to weird me out."

Cream goes quiet. "Just Vector, then?"

"Please."

"Okay. Uh, what are your plans, Vector?"

I feel bad for snapping at her. She doesn't deserve that, so I take a deep breath and put down my utensils before I answer her so make sure it doesn't happen again. "I'm going to do some of the quizzes, maybe start a fire, and then throw some things around."

"Is there anything you can't do?"

She sadly twirls some spaghetti round her fork. I don't think she has any intention of eating it.

"I can't run. I can't hide. I can't paint myself into the side of a tree like you can. My fingers are too big and chunky to do all of those intricate little knots that you can do."

"Do you think I stand a chance?"

I smile. "I think you do."

"I know you do."

"We both do."

"You stand more of a chance than me."

"That depends on what we have to do. Where's your optimism gone?"

Cream goes completely still for a second or two, before that same smile appears again. She eats a meatball and chews it carefully before placing down her fork. She reaches out to me.

"You and I," she starts. "We can make a good team, can't we? Our opposing skillsets can come together to make one complete picture. You an I, we can ally. You can be the powerhouse and I can be the forager. Neither of us can win alone."

I'm suddenly anxious, maybe concerned. That is not a Cream thing to say and I think she knows it, because her smile looks even more fake than it usually does, but I take her hand anyway and shake it, sealing the deal that neither of us want. I don't want this. Cream doesn't want this. But there's not a lot we can do about it because what Vanilla says goes. I wonder if Vanilla was telling the truth last night and if Cream really does feel safe around me, or if she's only here because she has to be. Maybe she doesn't know what she feels anymore. Maybe she never did.

In the afternoon, all twenty four of us sit along the sides of the corridor that leads back into the Training Centre. It's been cleared for the exams. We will go in order of District, boys first, and we have up to ten minutes to show the Gamemakers what we can do. It's awfully quiet.

"Espio Vaso - District 1."

The District 1 boys always score high. I'd be shocked if he got anything less than a nine.

"Liza Keenley - District 1."

She's very quick. Worryingly quick. She clearly had a plan. She gets on with it. I don't like that for her. I hope I never have to meet her.

District 2 take their full time slots, and then my name is called.

"Vector Chasquido - District 3."

I give Cream a smile and a nod before heading through the sliding door.

The Centre's tables have been moved to the side for the private sessions, and all of the Gamemakers sit at a long table above with Zik right in the middle. I stand on the star in the middle of the room and wait for my cue. There is a lingering whiff of smoke, poorly plastered over by a whirring air conditioner and fruity air freshener. A previous tribute must have lit a fire.

"Vector Chasquido - District 3," I repeat. And the ten minute timer on the wall starts to tick.

I head for the quizzes, and my pattern recognition doesn't fail me. I can't say whether I'd have as high as 90% accuracy in the arena but that's a problem for future me. What's a one in ten chance? That's practically impossible, I tell myself, after the end of the fourth minute. And then I remember that I'm here, and my chances were a lot less than that. One wrong move, and I'm dead. The Gamemakers won't let a 90% slide, so I try my luck with the plants test again but I stumble over the buttons, misclick, and come out of it with a 60.

A little shaken, I decide to leave that behind for the last few minutes, and grab some bags of sand. I eye a horizontal bar on the climbing frame. I haven't tried this before but at this point, anything is worth a go. I think back to all of my days throwing things onto the back of the Wastelander from all kinds of weird angles and distances. I feel the weight of a bag, turn it over a few times to learn how it will move, and launch it across the room with seconds to go. I watch as it smacks into the bar and folds itself over it, hanging there, and then the time is up.

I don't even acknowledge the Gamemakers when I leave because I know I've failed. There isn't a way to fail this, everybody gets a number, but I've failed myself regardless. On my way out I look back just before the doors close and see three young Avoxes climbing on top of each other to reach my bag. That was the only decent thing I did.

"Vector!" Vanilla grins. "How did it go?"

"Dreadfully. I messed up the plants tests," I laugh. "I did manage to throw a sand bag at the end though."

"I bet you've done better than you think you have, dear."

"I can't lie, that's not hard. If you think the worst then you can't possibly be disappointed."

While we wait for Cream, we sit opposite each other on the benches and Zeena stands quietly in the corner on that same phone. I watch Vanilla read from a small book. It's called 'The Freedom Fighters of Knothole,' by somebody called Maximillian Acorn. It's old and worn like it's been around for decades but I've never heard of it. Vanilla looks up at me through her eyelashes, forces eye contact with me for way too long, and then puts the book away in her pocket, zipping it tightly. She doesn't stop looking at me the whole time. It's the kind of look you get that forces you to shut up. The kind of look that tells you something is wrong here, and it's nothing to do with you.

Chapter Text

The four of us sit on the largest sofa in the living room, facing the giant television mounted onto the wall. We share nachos and dip them into hot sauces. Tonight's edition of Capitol Calling will be on soon, at seven as usual, and straight away the training scores will be revealed.

Cream is also convinced that she did badly. She tells us that during her session she didn't really know what to do, so she grabbed some pre-made natural pigments and painted flowers on her arms to try to camouflage. I asked her if she ran or climbed at all and she said that she wanted to, but she lost track of time and couldn't. She still has the flowers she painted on her arms. None of us had the heart to tell her that they're not even that good, and that using pre-made stuff isn't exactly mind-blowing, but I could tell that we were all thinking it. Zeena especially, but Cream was oblivious.

"I bet you've done better than the boy," Zeena chuckles. "I sure hope you've done better than the boy."

"The boy?" I ask.

She folds her arms. "Yeah. The boy. You. You're in the Hunger Games. Age doesn't matter now, kiddo."

"I'm too old to be here and you know it."

"Your name was in the bowl, was it not?" She sneers. "You're clearly young enough for the Capitol. You watch your mouth round here, mister, because if you don't watch yours then I won't be watching mine because I have a lot to say."

I roll my eyes and dip another nacho into the salsa. "And what is that supposed to mean, huh? What did I ever do to hurt you?"

Zeena doesn't get a chance to answer me because the ad break ends and the anthem begins. The seal of Panem appears on the screen before the cameras show the inside of Gerald Robotnik's studio. Gerald informs us of what will be on the show tonight, and introduces us to Master Zik who is sat on the chair beside his desk.

"I have a series of cards with the scores for each tribute's private training session, one to twelve with twelve being the best, faced down and arranged in district order. Can you please confirm that the scores on these cards are valid and correct?" He asks to Zik.

"It is with great honour that I can confirm on behalf of all of the Gamemakers that we do have valid results, which are printed on the cards in front of you." He smiles. "You're good to go."

Every new head Gamemaker has had a new catchphrase. Dr. Deep's was 'take it away', back when he was head of the Chaos Council. Zik's just doesn't feel the same.

We watch in silence as Gerald flips over the first card. "Espio Vaso - District 1... Eleven."

"I thought as much," I nod. "He's-" I almost mention the fact that he is second in the odds, five to one, but I have to cut myself off because I'm not supposed to know that. "He's good at what he does."

Cream leans slightly past Vanilla to look at me, confused. She knows I've had nothing to do with anybody, especially not the Careers, so how could I possibly know that? She's smart enough to have heard the wobble in my speech and know that what I said was a cover-up, I'm sure of it. I'm also sure that she doesn't know I went out to the Capitol with Vanilla and saw the board up close. I can't believe Vanilla would have told her. I won't be the one to tell her.

"Liza Keenley - District 1... Nine."

She really did have a plan. An average score of ten for District 1. We need to stay away.

"Sonic Felgate - District 2... Nine. Amy Rose - District 2... Nine."

"My goodness..." Vanilla gasps. "They weren't even volunteers."

It's me next. I relax into the soft cushions as Gerald picks up the next card, expecting absolutely nothing of myself, only to be given a ten.

"What?" Zeena spits, angrily. "There's no way! You came out of there convinced you'd fucked it to the moon and back-"

"Zeena!" Vanilla scolds, just in time for Cream's score to be revealed.

Two.

My heart sinks, and my short burst of joyful disbelief ceases immediately. We'd all put so much effort into convincing Cream that it's going to be okay, and getting her to actually believe it rather than pretending, just for her to score the lowest she could have possibly scored, considering ones are said to be reserved for those who do nothing at all.

"Big Lielaakis - District 4... Six. Marine Judas - District 4... Six."

"Am I doomed?" Cream asks, with a slight laugh in her voice.

Vanilla sighs. "No Cream, you're not doomed. You're allied with Vector, remember?"

I shove some more nachos in my mouth to mask my annoyance. Yeah, Cream. You're allied with Vector. He's going to keep you alive and out of trouble, save you whenever you get into a mess, and sacrifice himself at the end so you can go home to your silly little lonely family. If anything, he's the one that's doomed.

"Shadow Kintobor - District 5... Ten."

I snort laugh, and attempt to lighten the mood. "I wonder if he screwed up the plants test too. That's all it takes to get a ten, 60% on one thing."

From the look on Cream's face, I don't think my attempt does any good at all. I can almost hear her thinking, "If that is all it takes to score a ten, then how badly did I have to have done to have scored a two?" Me and my big mouth.

We keep on eating our nachos and Vanilla tries to promote positivity. Rouge gets a seven. Six get a five and a six, Seven get two eights, Eight get a four and a nine which is rare for District 8. They're usually the worst of the lot. Nine get two sevens, Ten get a nine and a six, and Eleven get a six and a one.

"One?" Cream asks. "Sticks... that's the girl with the flower crown, right?"

"The one who I said was probably crazy? Yeah."

"I wonder what she did."

"You'd be better off wondering what she didn't," I huff. "There would actually be things to wonder about, then."

Gerald reaches the last District's cards, and I listen closely. I had been looking forward to seeing the score of the boy, to see if his attitude is in any way justified.

"Nack Bronwyn - District 12... Eight."

It's annoying because it is. Nack goes on my list of people to stay away from, along with all of the Careers.

"And finally, Shade Dorchadas - District 12... Eight."

Gerald stacks the cards back together and slides them all out in two neat lines, faced up on the desk so they can fit in the camera shot. The scores are remarkably high this year. It's rare that more than about four people get higher than an eight. I can't imagine we're any more skilled than previous rosters. All I can think of is a particular leniency from the new Gamemakers. All I can think of is inflation.

"Whelp." I slap my thighs and stand up. "That's me done for tonight."

Cream still looks sombre as ever.

"Hey. Kid."

She looks up at me, nibbling a plain nacho.

"You did good," I nod. "Don't let that number get to you, okay? It means nothing. It means absolutely nothing in the long run. Once we're in that arena, anything could happen." I give her the proudest, most genuine smile I can muster. "You're doing great."

Chapter Text

I stir after what feels like an exceedingly normal night's sleep to a bright light pouring through my bedroom door. It takes a few attempts to get my eyes to open fully - each time I try I have to slam them shut again to ease the pain from the awful intrusive light. I give up at laying on my right side to wake up, so I turn over onto my left and try again.

I am startled into alertness when my door clicks shut and the light disappears.

"Wakey wakey, you bastard."

Zeena is in my room.

"Wake up."

"Ugh..."

I push myself up above my covers and find Zeena's silhouette standing ominously over the foot of my bed. There is only a slight hint of green to her in the near darkness. Not enough for me to fully see her, but enough for her to still look radioactive.

"Why the heck are you in here?" I groan. My voice cracks.

She inhales sharply, and sighs loudly. "You, you horrid little man, are a crook. You're a criminal."

I respond groggily. "It's too early in the morning for this."

"It wasn't too early in the morning for you to steal my card and my money though, was it?"

I find myself laughing in my weariness. I take myself by surprise. "That wasn't me, sweet pea, that was Vanilla."

I take some time to stretch myself out. I don't know why Zeena thinks she has the right to just barge into my personal space like this. The audacity of her, to accuse me of stealing her things when it could be any one of us. She's had it in for me from the beginning so I guess it makes sense that she would come at me first, but I don't need this. I don't need to be rudely awaken by a crazy doll-woman and be told off the instant I dare to move. I don't need to have that in my room.

"Like I said," I continue. "I have never done anything to hurt you. I'm offended that you would even think something like that of me. Please leave."

She doesn't move. I ask her again, and she just shakes her head, so I decide to start taking off my night clothes. Not for her, but for me, so I can start my morning routine by getting changed as I usually would. If she won't leave then that's not my fault. She can learn boundaries the hard way. That's what you get when you intrude on somebody's personal space.

"So you decided to shove the blame onto Vanilla? You really thought I'd believe that?"

I flick on the bedside light and reach to my bedside table for the clothes I saved from last night, extremely indecent, only really saved by the bedsheets, expecting Zeena to at least look away or something, but she doesn't. She keeps on staring and suddenly it feels like I'm the intruder here. I realise that my attempt to make her uncomfortable enough to leave me alone has completely backfired, but I can't back down. I've started something now.

"I do expect you to believe that," I reply softly, gently clasping my hand around the chain because that is always what I put on first. "Because it was her."

She grabs the remote control for the screen on the wall, and throws it as hard as she can. It shatters all over the floor. "LIAR!"

"Chill out," I whisper, clipping my chain around my neck. "She only bought some tea."

"This 'she' you speak of bought designer clothes!"

"...What?"

Zeena finally moves, but she keeps her eyes on me. She travels round to the left side of my bed, crunching broken glass beneath her heels, and leans over me.

"You left," she says slowly. "Didn't you?"

I nod. "Vanilla wanted to celebrate my birthday with me. I'm sorry to hear that she spent a bunch of your money. She told me that she took the clothes from Antoine's studio."

"And you willingly went out with her?"

"She didn't exactly give me a choice. Trust me, after she told me that we were going to celebrate my 'last' birthday, I didn't want to go, but by then she'd already covered me in eyeliner and cut off my intestines with the stupidest belt I've ever had the displeasure of wearing."

Zeena laughs evilly. "Your last? Sounds about right."

"You just adore sending Cream and I to the slaughter, don't you?"

Her laugh immediately stops, and is replaced with an unnervingly gentle minty breath that lands right on my face. "For the last time. It's probability."

I feel a bout of anger surge within me, forget about the clothes, and force her out of the way so I can get out of the bed.

"Probability, huh?" I snap. "Thousands of kids in District 3 and you manage to reap the oldest and the youngest simultaneously, one of which just happens to be the daughter of our first and only victor?"

"Have you done the maths?"

"Of course I haven't done the stupid maths! Who the hell's got time for that when they're constantly at their wit's end because their entire life has fallen to pieces?"

"You're saying all of this like it's my fault your names were in between my fingers."

"BECAUSE IT IS!"

Zeena shoves me backwards. I try to hit her off me but she beats my reflexes and backhands me into the door of the closet. Her fist flies towards my face and I close my eyes and brace myself for the impact but... nothing happens. Nothing other than a sharp poke at my neck.

I slowly open my eyes again. Zeena's face is inches away from mine. I carefully move her away from me and see that she has me pinned to the closet door by her grotesque fingernails. The middle one lightly pushes into the middle of my voice box, while the other four have somehow extended into thin robotic appendages and dug themselves into the wood behind me. I slowly raise my right hand and carefully pull each fingernail out of the wood to avoid provoking her further, before taking a good look at Zeena's hand. For some reason, she lets me do it.

I assume that the middle fingernail just didn't extend, like the rest of her spring-loaded ones did. If it had done, it would have killed me, and she's smarter than that. But when I see the small slit in the side of that middle nail, I think otherwise.

"I like to carry self defence mechanisms. I engineered them myself, it's why I begged for Three when I applied to be an escort. I'm glad you're impressed," Zeena tells me, completely missing the fact that she's the one who attacked me. Also completely missing the fact that it's not her springed nails that I'm interested in. She has no idea that she's not as smart as she thinks she is.

"Why is there a gap in that one there?" I ask, giving her the opportunity to lie to me one last time so I can feel better about knocking her flying.

She smirks. It's the most I've seen her face do since waking up, other than produce manic laughter. "Well... somehow we had to teach Vanilla to look after her tributes properly. As it turns out, she's still bad at it."

She turns on her heel and heads back round my bed to the door.

"You can thank Zor for that idea. For you, though? Probability." She pushes down the handle. "Watch this space."

Chapter Text

The Hunger Games slogan is as follows:

'May the odds be ever in your favour.'

And that goes for everybody, always, and it applies to everything.

One bad year in District 9 will throw out Panem's largest food source. A little too much rain, a heatwave, an uncontrolled wildfire, anything like that can kill a million people. It's unfortunate, but nothing can stop the forces of nature.

One loose screw in District 6's sprawling veins could derail a train. Depending on what it is carrying, that could cause anything from a small loss of yeild to a colossal biohazard that could wipe out all nearby life. It's unfortunate, but sometimes things just wear out, or spontaneously break.

One unwelcome lightning strike somewhere in District 5's power plants can, and probably will, explode the entire district and beyond. And then the nation would be left with no power, because of something almost entirely unpredictable.

We learn to always have faith in the odds. A good citizen will always have the odds in their favour.

For anything that could ever occur in life, one can only hope that the odds will be kind. When a teenager goes to the Reaping, they'll be hoping like never before. They're alive, which means in one way or another, that the odds have favoured them so far. One last time can't hurt. So the universe rolls its sick little d20.

Except Cream's d20 was full of a bunch of ones, and I was just incredibly unlucky.

The door clicks shut behind Zeena, leaving me in dim light against the closet door, completely naked apart from my chain. I don't know what part of me thought that this was a good idea. From the sound of it, she'd been waiting to confront me about this for days, and nothing was going to stop her anymore. I hate myself. I try to remind myself that this is nobody's fault but hers and Vanilla's but I still hate myself more than either of them.

I look down to my right at the clothes on the bedside table and gingerly pick up the underwear which I took from the closet last night. That closet still contains the clothes that were supposedly belonging to Antoine. I feel a little better now knowing that the clothes weren't stolen, but that is quickly replaced by disgust in remembering that the money used to buy them was.

Lovely Vanilla. Beautiful Vanilla. Elegant Vanilla. Beloved Vanilla. Respected Vanilla. So calm and composed, never raising her voice. Polite, kind, gracious, faithful and so very trusting. A role model for Three, and maybe even the rest. A spectacle of all things that make a wonderful woman. And now she's a robber and a liar. I feel sick.

If she were in the Games instead of Cream, I would not hesitate. She would be gone. She would be dead.

I could tell her and ruin her life. I could rip her out of her fantasies of mathematics and probability and give her the truth that this is all her own fault and force her to live with it, but I think deep down she already knows. No matter what happened, somebody would have found a way to reap Cream. Somebody would have found a reason to hate Vanilla enough to ruin her life more than I ever could. I think back to our time on the train.

'How did you know that this might happen to me? Is it because it happened to you too?' Cream asked her mother, in her innocent little voice. They already know. Vanilla knew it twelve years ago.

This is Saturday, the last full day. Tonight, the interviews will happen, and then tomorrow morning we will be taken to the arena on a hovercraft for the beginning of the Hunger Games, which will begin at 10am sharp. The plan for today is to prepare for the interviews, relax, and maybe eat like a pig too. Just in case.

I manage to get myself dressed without vomiting. I ask an Avox to help me clean up the glass. He looks confused, but obliges. He can't not oblige. I consider committing arson on the closet, but then the Avoxes would have to fix that and that's not really fair on them, and in the long term, if I do happen to make it out alive, I'll pay the price. I don't need any more reasons to have to die in the arena. Once everything is done and I've been given a replacement remote for the wall, I gingerly open the door into the main space looking for Zeena, but she's not there. I find a note left on the coffee table which reads, 'Gone out with Zor, I'll be back in time for interviews - Zeemachine'.

So I make myself a coffee and wait for Vanilla and Cream to get up.

When I sit on the sofa, my chain clinks against the ceramic mug and I remember Charmy. My favourite person in the world. In all of this chaos, I forgot about him, and now that I remember, I long to see his smiling face again. To hear him call my name, and then fly at me yelling for me to catch him. To be able to be silly and childish and make memories that the two of us will never forget. I can't remember how I met him. One day I didn't know him, and the next day I did. Maybe it's a little weird that my best friend is a six year old but I don't care. He's the little nephew I'll never have.

He'd be so proud of me if he were watching. Uncle Vec, all strong in the parade, top of the odds, scoring a ten in training. From an outside perspective, it looks amazing. This kid's got faith in me, I know it. He knows I'm coming back. He's cheering me on every step of the way.

I hold the chain in my hand while I sip my coffee and rub the heavy metal between my fingers. I listen carefully to how the links chink together and think about home.

I don't know why I worry. I've got the world in the palm of my hands. That so-so promise I made to him - it's not so impossible. I have a plan. I know I've got the sponsors. All I have to do now is perfect the interview, and to that I say bring it on.

Chapter Text

"Our beloved Citizens, this is Panem!"

Today has been hard for me. Zeena never specified exactly when she would be back, just that she would be back before tonight, so all day I've been fixated on the door to Three's space, waiting for it to open. I kept reminding myself that after tomorrow morning, I might never have to see her stupid, evil face again. Or Zor's, for that matter, although I never did see much of him, thank goodness. Having to watch Vanilla coach Cream on her television voice and her camera poses one last time was even worse, now that I know exactly why she's here. I couldn't say a word even if I wanted to.

When Zeena eventually did return, it was just in time to bring us back to our stylists, and we were almost late. She had no time to give me any of her usual disappointed scowling. When I got there, I told Bunnie that if she's got anything else "macho" for me then I'll walk right out and go to the interviews in my tracksuit, but as a rather pleasant surprise, she had stitched up a suit for me. And Antoine, Vanilla's very oblivious source of an alibi for her blatantly criminal behaviour no matter what way you look at it, had given Cream a beautiful blue gown.

And now we sit in our interview outfits, watching the beginning of the end from the back of the stage.

"Welcome to Capitol Calling! Live from the Training Centre arena, my name is Gerald Robotnik, and behind me, please welcome... the class of twenty seven... our tributes!"

We are all lit up, and there are cheers. A camera on wheels travels around our half-moon arrangement, and I wink at it when it reaches me, in the same way that I would wink to Charmy to let him know from a distance that I'm here for him, or I'm proud of him or something. For what it's worth, I never knew how much he gets told that back at home, wherever he lives, whoever he lives with, so I always made sure he heard it from me.

Gerald explains the structure of the show. "Each tribute gets one minute to partake in their interview. It is up to them on how they answer, what they answer, and what angle they take. Take notes, Capitol Citizens, because this is your chance to really get to know who is sat before you today. This will be your final opportunity to decide who you will sponsor, and who you want to win. Now we've got all that covered," Gerald says, sitting down on one of the large green armchairs at the front of the stage, "I think it's time for some interviews, don't you?"

The audience cheers.

"Well then, let's begin! We start with District 1... Liza Keenley!"

When Vanilla was coaching me this afternoon, she suggested that I go down the 'humble yet self-aware overachiever' route. So that the Capitol can see that I know how good I am, whilst still showing a degree of likeability. I took her notes back to my room and immediately put them in the bin. I'm sick of lying and pretending, I've done enough of that today. I'll do the interview how I want. I'll answer the questions how I want to answer them. If that involves going down the 'humble yet self-aware overachiever' route then it'll have to come naturally.

When Espio comes on I expect typical Career drivel like Liza's, but when he's asked about his score of eleven and starts talking about how the training scores mean absolutely nothing at all, I smile.

"What I can and can't do in ten minutes is no reflection of what I can and can't do in ten days. I may have scored an eleven but that doesn't mean I'll do any better, or that I am any more worth your money, than someone who scored a five."

I give Cream a little nudge when I'm sure there are no cameras on us. "See?" I whisper. "Even he thinks you're alright."

Cream folds her arms a little tighter and smiles at her feet.

District 2 are confident. Amy tells us about how great she is with a hammer, a skill gifted to her by working part time in one of District 2's side industries, the Forge. Their most famous industry is masonry and stoneware, and like Six, a few citizens have permits to travel beyond the borders of their district. They take their stone from quarries and mountains, and take their clay from dried lakes and rivers and basins that fill up in the rain, and they build. According to Amy, the metal they find in the quarries goes to the Forge, and they'll take anybody physically able enough to melt it down and force it into cable.

Sonic can run fast and hit hard. That's all he really has to say.

"And now," Gerald announces, "for our youngest tribute this year, please welcome, Cream Paloma!"

The Captiol is delighted to see her. Cream politely waves to the audience on the way to the green armchair beside Gerald's.

"Oh darling Cream, how unfortunate that you are here," Gerald begins. "How are you feeling?"

She chuckles. "Honestly? Not wonderful by any means, but I've come to accept that I might just be unlucky. I'm just another kid, after all. It's not like a twelve year old hasn't been reaped before. In fact, one of them won. If he can do it, then why can't I?"

I can imagine that on the TV screens, there is a shot in the Green Room - the VIP area of the audience - of Jules, the mentor for District 7. He was the twelve year old who won against all odds in the rather broken 14th Games, and his win was controversial, to say the least. It wasn't pretty, half of his body had to be replaced and nobody's sure where the other tributes actually went, but I never considered that he may be a kind of role model to Cream, maybe even more so than her own mother.

"Plus, you have a Victor's blood," Gerald adds. "Tell me. What are your skills?"

"Well, like Sonic, I can run fast. And in training I became pretty competent with a bow."

We both know that's a lie, and so does the boy from Twelve, but why should it matter? There physically isn't enough time in an interview to question anything she says without looking like a petty brat.

"Training, huh?" Gerald sighs. "Would you... now forgive me but, would you like to comment on your score?"

My heart sinks, but I reassure myself that Gerald is only here to help us. He wouldn't ask any questions that he knows a tribute can't answer. That's one of his policies that he has commented on in the past. On any year without a feral-looking flower crown girl from Eleven, Cream's score would have been by far the lowest, but she just laughs.

"I don't tend to work well under pressure when I have a stinking headache and numb eyelids," Cream 'admits'. "These Captiol showers and the lovely soaps and perfumes, they're delightful but they do take some getting used to. Speaking of fancy things, I'd love to give props to Antoine, my stylist, for making this wonderful dress for me."

She's too smart for this and Gerald must know it. The Capitol buy into every word. Gerald offers his hand and she takes it and spins to show off the sequins on her gown, and the audience love her, as always. When she sits back down, she's given the chance to make any final comments, and all she says is, "Whoever is looking after Cheese and Chocola back home, I left some bananas for them in my closet. I hope they're doing okay."

Chapter Text

"And now, please welcome, Vector Chasquido!"

It's my turn, and I take it hard. I soak up the attention from the crowd, because I feel like I can do that now. I give them a wave, and shake Gerald's hand before sitting on the pretty green armchair.

"Hello, Vector."

"Good evening, Gerald," I grin.

He askes me about what I want to do with my life, and I tell him the truth, that aside from the physical work that I know I'll have to quit, I've always been interested in the detective industry. Not a Peacekeeper per se, I'll work up the rankings if I have to, but a private investigator of sorts. I think of the roleplaying I used to do with Charmy back in the fields. He was into cops and robbers and for some reason he knew a little bit too much about how crime actually works, so we'd play hide and seek and I'd find him and "arrest" him, which involved picking him up, running back into town, and putting him in a permanently empty composter round the back of the abandoned supermarket and pretending to lock it. He liked it. I never did lock it, I just let him think I did so we could continue to play the game, but if we got caught in places where we shouldn't be, I wouldn't have to mess around with a lock before hiding us.

Gerald then pauses with a smirk, and looks at me from below his thick-lensed glasses. "So... ten?"

I chuckle. "Ten indeed."

"Do tell."

"You know I can't tell you what I did."

"You can tell us what it was like, though."

I look to the audience, sitting staggered in the stands, blending together into one abyss, a sheet of heads and hair, a kind of quantity that loses more and more of its value the longer you look at it. "It was terrifying," I say to nobody in particular. "I don't like exams."

"You do well in them though, don't you."

"Well clearly I do."

"I know you do," Gerald repeats. "And there's something I'm not supposed to tell you, but I can tell you what it's like. A big white board near the train station, and your name, it's in the... general vicinity of the top."

"Uh huh-" I quickly realise that I'm not supposed to know that. "Wait... what? You mean in the odds?"

"You know I can't tell you anything like that, Vector."

"Well it's a shame I can't bet on myself even though I'm old enough now. I'm not sure what I'd do if I won."

It's in that moment I realise, that if I won, I'd be dead. Betting on myself is most likely against the rules and I'm pretty sure that if you break the rules of this game, you die.

"Well if you win, you'll get all the money and you'll be able to do your dream career," Gerald says with a crafty grin, leaning back on his armchair, clearly not concerned about the fact that this would probably get me into big trouble, and then I won't be able to do anything other than sit in my own little composter, which I believe has a more technical name when used for this particular kind of decomposition: a coffin.

"If I win, I wouldn't need to be a private investigator, would I?"

"Why?" he asks, looking genuinely quite confused.

"Because I'd have all the money anyway." I would also be dead as a doornail, but the buzzer saves me from making that comment. It's probably a good thing, I'm not sure talking about my death would go down well in a Hunger Games interview. The audience don't care, they laugh at my ending line, and I'm sent back to the back of the stage.

I'm not sure how Vanilla's going to feel about that. The reactions were good. I think Gerald made me look clever. Charmy will be happy to hear about the private investigator stuff. He's probably on the way to the composter right this minute, and if he isn't, he'll be there at some point this week. In my head I update my to do list for when I win the Games: The first thing I'll do is buy a composter. Then I'll hire a marriage councillor. After that, I can hire a private investigator to stalk Vanilla and see what else she's stealing, and how many other people she's smuggling about. Then I'll buy some more of that chilli chocolate fudge because that made everything worth it.

District 7's interview is exactly what I expected. It's this year's heartstring tugger, I didn't expect anything less. District 9 don't seem all that scared of the Games. The boy, Jet, talks about how himself and the girl, Wave, hit it off immediately and that they are now strong allies. Waves holds up a peace sign from the back of the stage in agreement, and I would believe it if in the interview before she had once stopped talking about how she couldn't have been reaped with a more annoying person, and that she can't wait to 'murder his stupid face'. But Jet laughed through it, and continued to laugh on his way to Gerald afterwards, so maybe that's just how they are.

The girl from Eleven sits in silence for the duration of her interview. I feel sorry for her mentor. District 11 have come close to winning so many times, I believe they have the most runner up finishes of all the districts including the Careers, but they've never won and that means they're still getting fed a new Capitol student every year. I could just about put up with an idiot or an attitude, but I couldn't put up with that. At least the boy seems competent and able. Maybe he's even charming, cunning, weirdly childish, a bit clever, possibly a little deranged considering his specialty is wielding dynamite. Another one to avoid.

And then there's Twelve, the ones I was looking forward to seeing. The girl is quiet, I don't gather anything from her, and then Nack comes on the stage for the final interview.

He's well spoken for a Twelve boy. He wears a wide-brimmed hat, leather gloves, and baggy trousers. He sits straight, with one leg over the other, and makes sure to highlight all of his best qualities, not forgetting to mention his skill with a bow, and always smiling with his teeth. Since he shot at Cream and I, I've been invested. I begin to wonder if maybe we have an underdog on our hands.

Chapter Text

"Pass the salt."

That's the first time Zeena has spoken since this morning. Cream was concerned, and asked Vanilla and I about her weird behaviour and Vanilla reassured her that Zeena is just worried. The three of them are supposed to be friends, after all. They exchange baked goods and old clothes on the yearly occasion that they visit each other. That's what friends do.

We're eating well tonight. Even Zeena has strayed from her strict diet to indulge in another slice of garlic bread. I've chosen a spicy, meaty pasta with a chunky sauce. I quite liked the chilli in the fudge, and I wondered what else it would do good for, and pasta is one of those foods that I could eat for Panem - have loads of it, and still have more.

"I think we ought to discuss plans for tomorrow morning," Vanilla says. "A cornucopia strategy."

"Run and never look back?" I suggest.

"And last all of three days? No, you need at least some supplies."

Vanilla takes another spoonful of her mushroom soup.

"Have you two sorted something out between you?"

Cream and I look at each other. I think we both understand now that we're each better off with the other person close by, even if neither of us particularly wanted that to be the case.

"Of course," I smile. "We're allies. If that's okay with you, Cream?"

"Absolutely." She smiles also, and then so does Vanilla.

"What if you were to grab a bag each or something, and then make a run for it?"

"Together?" Cream asks.

"No, that would make you a target."

"How so?"

"Well you are... well you're you, and Vector is one of the favourites."

"That doesn't make sense," I reply. "If I'm the favourite then won't people want to stay away from me? And if Cream's all alone then, not to be mean but, anyone could-"

"The Careers will want you out, Vector. If Cream is nearby then they'll have her too."

Okay then. I twirl some of the pasta round my fork and fill my mouth with it before I can tell Vanilla that I think she's making the wrong choice. Cream is fast but I'm sure Sonic will be faster. Cream is "competent with a bow" and so is Nack. Cream almost gave up, and that's not good enough. She's not going to make it without me. But once again, what Vanilla says goes. She'll be feeding me life so I have to listen.

The Games start at ten tomorrow morning. I always found it weird that they start on a Sunday. Surely it would make more sense for them to start on the Monday following Reaping Monday, so we get three full days of training rather than two and a half. Regardless, I need to be up by eight so I can be taken to the helipad and shot across Panem in the hovercraft to this year's arena. Only the Gamemakers know what it's going to be like. It gives me until midnight to go to sleep. My sleep has been better for the last couple of days.

As I strip to get into my nightwear I realise that once I'm in the arena, I won't have the luxury of being able to change my clothes anymore.

I run my fingers over the dents in the closet door. I didn't tell the Avox about those as they're not an immediate danger to anybody like the broken glass was. I think about Zeena's intricate nails and remember how they looked up close. Bright. Painted so delicately. Crafted with so much care and time. It's a shame she had to make me her target, or use them as a weapon at all. I hate to admit it but now that I think about it, they were pretty, and they were deceiving.

How wonderful could life be, if I had all that spare time to make something like this? To design it as my hobby, and make a model out of myself? How wonderful would it be if my only dilemma in life was whether or not I should eat a snow cone? If I were so rich that people would want to steal from me?

It's the Capitol. In this corner of the world, you can live like kings and queens.

I open up the closet, and right there are the clothes that Vanilla and I wore on that night. I wonder if it would be worth giving them to Zeena, but she's not into tracksuits or ripped jeans. She likes leggings and stripy sweaters. I take Vanilla's hoodie from the wardrobe and put it on. I'm surprised that it fits. The soft fleece on the inside is soothing against my skin and it smells like her perfume. It smells like kindness, friendship, innocence. There's nothing bad about it.

For the first time in a long time, I think about my parents. The face of my mother appears in my mind for no real reason. I wonder how she's feeling and struggle to pin anything down. Maybe I would have a better idea of how she feels if she actually turned up to the Justice Building despite being tired and caring for my dad, and didn't just assume that I'd be content with the little 'you'll be fine, and if you're reaped, we will be watching' pep talk. I was content, but that's not the point. The point is, my parents never gave me any clues as to how they felt about me. And in return, I never gave anything back, but we functioned. I'm sure we were better at teamwork than anything else.

And then, once again, I think about Charmy, and how badly I need him not to watch just in case I do anything horrible, how badly I want to tell him somehow that I'm still here. I may be a tribute, but I'm still Vector. And then it dawns on me.

Vanilla's going to end up alone. Her family will be gone. Her family that she loves. Cream isn't just a roommate to her, she's not a team member, she's the embodiment of love. Vanilla says she's fine but life gets cruel. It gets brutal. I can't blame her for wanting to get away. The clothes won't have made a dent on Zeena's bank account and nobody's come to shoot me yet.

Vanilla is not evil. I can't hate her.

I can't put up that kind of barrier between myself and victory.

Chapter Text

I used the belt to wedge my door shut. It's good at that. I did it so Zeena couldn't barge into my room again and see me sleeping in Vanilla's hoodie with tears in my eyes. The smell of her perfume, the softness of the inside, the warmth of the fleece, the vision of her dresses, the sound of her shoes, the silence of the air, the glow of the board, the thought of death, it tipped me over last night. I tried to find comfort in the idea that she would be watching me. I tried to get myself to really let myself believe that she cares about me. But nobody's ever cared much about me before up until about a year ago, so I just don't know how to understand, or how to put it into words, that I don't know how love works. I'm surely capable of loving and feeling loved, but it's still an unfamiliar realm and I think I would prefer it if it simply didn't exist at all.

I woke up at half past seven, and fifteen minutes later I still haven't moved. I don't plan to until eight. I left the curtains and the window wide open so the crisp smell of the night outside could come in and take me back to happier moments, and so the pink summer sunrise could stream in and gently nudge me into awareness. Until the turn of the hour, I listen to songbirds and watch as the Capitol trickles back into everyday life.

I dress in easy clothes, take one last sniff of the hoodie, lick the closet door just to see what Zeena's nails may have tasted like if she's the kind to bite them, and have muesli for breakfast. I don't talk much. If I don't talk, then I can't admit to anybody that I'm terrified.

Zeena escorts us to the roof of the Tribute Centre, via the paternoster as always, and the four of us join the queue.

The hovercraft is mighty. I have never been this close to one. It looks like a giant metal moth, almost like a plane but much more square. Cream is fascinated by it. We both look across to District 6, who are oblivious to us, to see what they think, this is their construction of the blueprints of Three's Hivemind after all, but they don't look like they care.

"You remember the plan, don't you?" Vanilla asks, standing eerily still again.

"Split up, grab supplies, leg it, avoid trouble, keep an eye on where we are, meet up once we're out of the middle," I recite.

Vanilla forces a smile and a nod. She spares us the 'you'll be fine' talk that the rest of the mentors are doing. We all know it's pointless because at least one of us won't be. When it's our turn to get on the hovercraft, she hugs Cream and kisses her on the head, and then she shakes my hand, trembling. She does well to hide it.

"Good luck to both of you," she wishes, just before Cream and I are taken onto the hovercraft.

It's split into sections that fill up from the front, and the instant we sit down we are strapped in and injected with a tracker. The wide needle throbs inside my left forearm. When the staff members leave, a shutter comes down on the open side between us and what will be District 4.

"So, how are you feeling?" I ask Cream.

"Like a meteor should come down and kill us all any minute now."

"So you don't have to go in?"

"No, that's not it. This is just how I've been thinking about all of this lately. I've found that if I take it out of my control, I feel better about it all."

The distant sounds of closing shutters ends, and the engine begins to whir.

"But it never was in your control in the first place?"

"Of course not. But now the pressure is off, you see. In all of my interviews I thought of Cheese and Chocola because they're easy to talk to. In tests at school I just treated it like a game. I couldn't do that this time because the thought of a game just reminded me of the Hunger Games. So after interviews I had to come up with a new thing."

The hovercraft wobbles itself into the air, and we're thrusted sideways as it begins to move.

"...Which was mass extinction?"

"Something has survived every mass extinction there has ever been. Otherwise, Panem wouldn't exist."

"But that's just luck."

"The Hunger Games mostly is. Would Maria have won if it were down to survival of the fittest? Would Mephiles have won if he didn't have crippling insomnia?"

"Skipping over Valdez, are we?"

"He's a Career, he doesn't count. Please, just leave me to my metaphors. They make me feel better."

The ride doesn't take that long - half an hour at most, and we spend the duration of it keeping to ourselves. I think her metaphors are foolish and are putting too much reliance on everybody else to just leave her alone but I wouldn't dream of telling her such a thing. She's been through enough.

At arrival, we are let out district by district into an underground network of tunnels, and taken apart to our own preparation room. When I enter mine, Bunnie is there waiting for me. She sits on a swivel chair by a long table, opposite the infamous launch pad.

"Hello Vector."

"Hello Bunnie."

"How are you feeling?"

I laugh. "Like inducing a mass extinction event and surviving. Because that's what this is, isn't it?"

She raises an eyebrow, and drags a duffel bag from beneath the table. "Your clothes are here. I'm sure you'll be glad to know that Vanilla didn't have any input this time."

I take a look inside, and from what I can see it's mostly just cargo trousers, a shirt, and a waterproof fleece.

"...What?"

"Seriously, don't worry-"

"Vanilla had input?"

Bunnie looks confused. "Well yeah? She's your mentor? They weren't her ideas but she gave them green light-"

"Of course it was her idea," I growl. When is anything not her idea? The entire time since the Parade my resentment has been directed at the wrong person. I almost laugh again at the absurdity of it. The absurdity of her, to tell me that she had no idea what Bunnie would do. That lying bitch. But whatever. She did me a favour and at this point I don't think I have a right to be mad anymore.

"I said they weren't- oh whatever. Look, I'm only here to help you."

"I know, I know," I sigh. "And I do appreciate it. It's all just been a lot to take in."

"I understand," Bunnie says. "These clothes here were recommended by the Gamemakers, they are designed to be most suited to the arena above us."

"Have you seen it?"

"No. But from the contents of that bag, expect cold and wet."

I get changed and discover thick-soled boots and fingerless gloves at the bottom of the bag. I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass of the launch tube, and my only thought is 'tree'.

"Thirty seconds."

"You should get in." Bunnie smiles weakly. I stretch myself out before heading inside, right on the fifteen seconds announcement.

"It's been a pleasure working with you, Vector," she says.

"You too," I reply.

The tube closes around me, and I mouth her a 'thank you'.

Chapter Text

The ceiling above me opens as the launchpad rises, and I'm pelted with an onslaught of rain.

I'm brought into a clearing, facing this year's cornucopia. A square shack-looking thing, with metal over the top of it and an opening on all four sides. Beyond it are great plains of yellow grasses, which slowly curl into swamps and finish at a forest behind me with huge, drooping trees and dense ground cover. And far away, there are mountains. It's pleasing to see a relatively normal-looking arena after the hellscapes that the last three have been. So much for the "new beginning" that the Chaos Council promised last year, after building their ARK.

I always found that funny. Surely the new beginning would come after the ARK, and the ARK would symbolise the end. I thought the purpose of the ARK, in the shady old tales told to me by the quiet elders, was to house a male and a female of everything and actually keep the damn things alive.

A basket catches my eye. It looks easy enough to carry, and even if there's nothing in it, it would still be useful to carry other things I find. I take a look around me for Cream and I can't see her. While the timer ticks down, I just wait, and decide to stay away from the forest because that's where everybody will be.

The timer hits zero, and the initiating cannon blasts.

I waste no time sprinting to the basket. I snatch the thing up, quickly check the insides and find it empty apart from some bread and fruit, and keep going past the Cornucopia. To my left there's a stumble between Seven and One, and behind me I hear a gut-wrenching scream. Arrows fly over my head as I jog through all the chaos looking for something else to fill my basket with. Food is fine and good, but something to drink from would be even better.

I manage to stay out of the thick of it, and hide behind rocks before dashing again. I'm risking my life by doing this and I know Vanilla will be facepalming over every step I take but I still fancy my chances.

And then I see her. Pinned to the ground by the boy from District 10. His hand is already covered in blood. I don't give him long enough to raise it above his head before I slam myself into his side, snatch his satchel bag, throw Cream over my shoulder, and run.

I don't stop running until I'm so deep into the grasses that I can't see the Cornucopia anymore. Sheer adrenaline keeps me from slipping in the watery mud.

"Vector, he was going to kill me!" Cream cries. She sits on a rock, hyperventilating, covered in the muck, but she doesn't look injured. She throws her hood over her head to keep the rain away.

"So much for staying apart," I get out between deep breaths. "You couldn't make it up."

"Don't, she couldn't have predicted that."

I almost say that she bloody well could have because I did, and she knows infinitely more about the Games than me. If I'd listened to Vanilla and ran off like she said I should, her daughter would have been dead meat.

"He'd already killed the girl from Twelve," Cream continues, struggling to catch any breath of her own. "I tried to get to a bottle but he came running at me and I couldn't get away-"

"Hey," I interrupt, and sit beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. "It's alright. You're alive."

"I don't like this," she sobs quietly. "I want to go home."

I pull her into a hug. I don't say anything else because what am I supposed to say? This is home now. She needs to get used to it, and I don't want to be the one to tell her that. I let her cry, and this time she doesn't try to stop herself.

She startles when the bloodbath count begins. One by one the cannons go off, and I count that there are five. One of them is the girl from Twelve. As for the rest, I don't have a clue and frankly I don't care. We'll find out tonight anyway.

"I shouldn't be crying like this-"

"Cream."

I give her a look, and she sighs. "I'm a burden on you."

"No you're not."

"Is that the truth?"

"Of course."

I reach out my hand to her again for another handshake and she takes it with a thin smile.

I show her the little basket and the food I managed to snatch, and we go through the bag together. It has a half-full plastic bottle inside, a notebook, some pens, and a scuffed laptop with a shattered screen.

"Did they just throw someone's school bag in here?" I laugh.

"At least we have some water," Cream chuckles.

"And something to keep us entertained, I guess?"

"Do you like drawing?"

"Me?" I roll my eyes. "I'm more of a dark, sexy, rose petal poetry kind of guy. Can you not tell?"

This time, it's Cream's turn to shoot a look at me. "I'm keeping the book."

I groan. "But sharing is caring!"

We bicker playfully over who gets what for some time knowing fully that we will be sharing whatever it is that we get. We decide not to eat at all today seeing as we ate so much last night, and leave the basket closed so the bread doesn't get wet.

The boy from Ten was the fierce boxer from training. The one who sent shockwaves through the floor with every punch. He could have had Cream in one blow if I'd let him. I can only hope that this has at least given Vanilla some much needed trust in my judgement. As Cream and I hide among the grasses and quietly tell each other stories and scribble in the book to lighten the mood, I wonder where that boy is, whether or not he'll try again, whether it's morally fair for me - a nineteen year old - to even be involved in things like this, or if I should have just had a crack at killing him. He would have deserved it. I know we all want to win but killing the twelve year old is not the smart way to do that.

'Not a single thing about this is morally fair,' I remind myself in my head. It's not as if the Capitol have any morals, but if I can help it, I'd still like to cause minimal damage.

I got Cream out of there without breaking any craniums. I think I'm doing quite well.

Chapter Text

The rain dies down by the evening until only the occasional drop falls out of the sky. We find ourselves some new, well-hidden rocks and pray that it doesn't rain overnight. The lack of shelter is not something I considered when bringing us both over here but Cream doesn't let me even begin to apologise. We wait patiently for the death showcase.

The girls from One and Two are dead. Interesting.

Rouge is dead. Thank goodness for that.

And what makes me laugh, is the demise of both of District 12.

"That's four strong ones out of the way, isn't it?" Cream asks. As usual, I can't tell the slightest thing about how she's truly feeling, especially in the dark.

"Two Careers and a couple of eight scorers? I'd say so."

We find a way to wrap ourselves in our coats so that we're going to stay warm throughout the night and I offer to stay awake for a while to keep lookout.

"You'll mess up your rhythm, Vector."

"My rhythm has been messed up since I got here," I laugh. "It's not like I have any commitments anymore, is it?"

"When did it mess up?"

I almost say, 'Since I started spending the nights with your mother,' but I quickly shut down that thought and claim that I just couldn't sleep.

The second day, thank goodness, is dry and the sky is clear. Not particularly warm, but good enough to evaporate the water off our coats. We each have a tangerine and a slice of bread from the basket for breakfast, and finish the water between us. I'm sure there will be plenty more rain to come that we can re-fill the bottle with. Two more cannons sound sometime in the middle of the day.

"Are we really going to be sitting in this grass for eternity?" Cream asks. "I mean, I'm not complaining, but-"

She's interrupted by a small dinging noise from above us.

The noise is connected to a parachute with a box, falling gently through the blue sky, and it lands just in front of Cream, between us. She picks up the box, unhooks the parachute, and opens up the box. There's a note.

"One each, now. Mama."

Cream shows me the content of the box. There is another water bottle, identical to the one from the school bag, and a small vial of iodine with a pipette inside.

"Who do you think died today?" Cream asks, dismantling the box and stretching out the folds in the corrugated cardboard.

"How should I know?" I respond. "I'm not psychic."

"I was just trying to make conversation."

"Wouldn't it be fun to be psychic?"

She ponders over the question for a while. "No."

I'm shocked by the confidence in her answer. "How come?" I ask. "You'd know everything. The future, the past, what people are thinking-"

"You wouldn't be able to escape it," she interrupts. "Always analysing, always worrying about things, it just wouldn't be good for you."

"Wouldn't you be able to protect yourself from the bad things, though?"

"You could try," she laughs. "But it would be pointless because you'd already know whether or not it would work."

She rips a thin piece of cardboard into a rough square, and starts folding with it. I watch her crease it between her fingernails, still decorated from the interviews.

"Well..." I continue. "Let's say you tried anyway. If you knew everything, then you'd already know the secrets to the universe, and if you know the secrets to the universe then you'd be able to time travel and make it so that the things you want to do will always work, so if your brain is telling you it can't do it, then it's just wrong. Because there's always a way."

"Don't try to turn this into a motivational speech, Vector," Cream sighs, bending a head into the little bird she's making. "I'm a rabbit, not a psychic."

"I never said you were, I'm just saying, what if?"

Cream takes some time to admire the bird in her hands. I imagine it alive, and it wouldn't be so out of place. She's gentle enough to be able to handle a bird. She makes a few more folds in the wings, bites creases into the feet, and places it on the ground before her. It stands proud with its wings spread until it's tipped over by the breeze, so Cream stands it up again and holds it in place by the feet with a pebble or two.

"What if what?" she sighs, sadly admiring her artwork. "What if there were aliens and potions and ghosts and demons and unicorns and all the other things we know there can never be?"

I chuckle, and shake my head. "You can tell you're from District 3."

Cream continues to separate cardboard and fold little animals through the afternoon and evening. She tells me nothing about what she's doing and I don't ask. It doesn't matter to me whether the designs are hers or not. I never quite grasped just how boring the games could be for a tribute. At some point, the adrenaline of being in a space full of potential murderers wears off and we just become indifferent to it all. That is, until a real bird swoops down and snatches a worm from right by our feet, and then we're back to square one. We fill the bottles from a nearby stream that runs beautifully clear, and share some bread between us.

When the anthem plays at nightfall, both of the faces of District 9 are projected onto the sky. They died in quick succession. Something happened to them. Maybe it was the four remaining Careers. Maybe it was Wave, murdering Jet's stupid face. But then that doesn't explain her. I don't know, I'm not psychic. And maybe, now that I think about the circumstances, I don't think I want to be. Because if I knew everything, I'd know all the secrets, I'd know all the lies, I'd know all the emotions, I'd know what's happening and every possible outcome of my actions, and I'd know exactly how I'm going to die.

Chapter Text

When the third morning's grey clouds start to give us cold rain, we decide enough is enough and head towards the forest. The rain splashes lightly against our plasticky hoods and echoes in our heads as we walk in silence. It's treacherous. The rocks threaten to trip us, the mud threatens to make us slip, and the grasses threaten to tangle in our ankles, but we make it towards the edge of the fields without much trouble.

"We have to be careful round there, Cream," I say lowly, looking at the edge of the trees. "I bet everybody's in there."

"We can't win, can we?" she laughs. "The easiest place is wet and horrible, but the nice place is dangerous."

"That's just life," I shrug. "It's a shitty world we live in."

We continue our slow trek towards shelter. I'm used to terrain like this. Back in Three when it would rain while I was working, the world didn't just stop for me. I still had to navigate Waste Disposal whatever the weather.

There's a short squeal behind me to my left. I spin around, almost slipping in the mud, and I'm relieved to see that it's just Cream having slipped and fallen. It takes me a second to regain my own composure and calm my racing heart when the memory of the bloodbath pops back up in my mind.

"What the heck?"

Behind me again, there is another voice that I don't recognise.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

I see her - Matilda from Seven - hiding among the grasses, giving me a look of hatred.

"I-"

"Some ally you are." She cuts me off and heads towards Cream. "You okay, my dear?"

Cream just laughs. "Oh, I'm okay, thank you. Just a scratch or two, I think."

"Here, let me have a look."

I watch in disbelief as Matilda takes out a small first aid pouch from her satchel bag and cleans the scratches on Cream's knees with an alcohol wipe, and patches her up with sticky plasters. She even asks her about any latex allergies before putting them on. She then turns to me and completely changes her tone.

"I take it you're alright?" she asks, with a passive-aggressive tint to her words.

"I'm fine."

"Good for you. I mean, if your first reaction is to completely freeze and just stare rather than ask if she's okay, I would have assumed you weren't."

I just leer at her, to let her know that she is wholly unwelcome here. I never imagined after hearing the Stratnyy story that this girl could have such an attitude.

"Look at me like that all you want, it doesn't make me any more confident that the people you're allied with are going to be safe."

She faces away from me entirely and turns her attention back to Cream. "Don't lower your standards for anyone, okay? I don't doubt that Vector is great with you but... you know, just in case something happens, well, I was meaning to ask you to be a part of my team during training so I'll leave the offer open should you need it."

She gives us both a nod, and disappears back into the fields the way we came.

"Huh." Cream gets up off the rock she fell onto and brushes herself down. "That was weird, don't you think?"

I don't take my eyes off the grasses where Matilda disappeared. I try to piece together everything that just happened with no success.

"Stay where you are," I say to her. "I need a minute."

I take a few steps in that direction, past Cream, and onto a taller rock. I just about manage to see above the grasses into the seemingly endless sheet of beige that continues until the mountains. I watch carefully for any unusual shifts in this yellow ocean that could indicate where Matilda may be, but I see nothing. It annoys me. I could have gone after her. I could have hurt her for daring to make me look bad in front of all of Panem when I have sponsors at stake.

I could have had her. I could have killed her. She gave me more than enough chances - even turning away from me entirely - and I took none of them. I just stood there. I just froze.

How dare she.

But then again, why would I? Cream was right there. I can't murder someone right in front of her just because they insulted me. And if Matilda was right, and something did happen to me, then Cream would have nobody. She would surely die.

I catch myself caring. The one thing I didn't want to do.

I take another good look at the field, and it's as still as it can possibly be.

"Vector?"

I ignore Cream. I just missed my chance to work us both up the leaderboard. I can't let myself think of Cream as anything more than a bridge to success because then things like this start happening. I start imagining her death and thinking about what she would do without me, but there is no life without me. There will be no life without me and I will tell myself that until the minute I win.

"Are you alright?"

"Are you?"

"I'm asking if you're alright."

I give up searching for any signs of life from the grasses and step back down off the rock. I swore I wouldn't kill people for Charmy's sake so maybe it's for the best. "Doesn't matter."

"Yes it does-"

"No, Cream. Come on, we're going to the forest out of this rain."

We continue on our way. When we reach the edge, there are three cannon shots, the second two being within minutes of the first and seconds of each other. I can only hope that whatever happened with those tributes distracted from the mess that Matilda made of me. I know how these games work. The really heavy stuff gets to the headlines and stays on the headlines for hours at a time. Everything that happens simply has to be a bloodbath reference. If it isn't a bloodbath reference then it's an interview reference. Every turning point is analysed until exhaustion. Three deaths in a row? Matilda will be forgotten. Unless she was one of the ones who died. I find myself hoping that she was, because then at least people can laugh at her instead of me.

Chapter Text

This forest is thick with ground cover and boulders that form damp pockets of darkness and moss. The trees are huge and dense with drooping leaves, and form a beautiful canopy over us. The rain is guided down the leaves around the outsides of the trees, so the areas closer to the trunks remain relatively dry. Cream picked one by the river, the same clear river that has meandered all the way through the fields, and we stayed there.

It feels so good to be in a place with rigid bones and a shield from the sky. A place where we can sit with back support without having to cover ourselves in wet mud. We're more visible now we're out of the mess of grasses, but at least we can sleep well.

On the evening of the third day we devoured the rest of the fruit and some more of the bread, tired and ravenous from rationing over the previous days. On the display on the third night, we saw the faces of Sonic and both of District 4. Three Careers, gone. That left only Espio from One.

The next morning, a soup canister landed by Cream, addressed to Cream, but she shared it with me anyways, and we had it with the last of our bread. She wondered if we were making a mistake in eating it all then but I reassured her that for as long as we have water, we can survive for weeks. The soup was creamy with tomatoes and strange green leaves and it came with crunchy garlic croutons mixed into it hot and fresh. We melted as we drank it. Hot food had never felt so good.

Later on the fourth day, Cream was gifted her own plasters and wipes, with a note from Vanilla asking her to change them over. She copied what Matilda did, and I got to see her scratches properly for the first time. The rock left small rips in her trousers and dragged deep into her knees, but the cuts looked clean and as healthy as they could be.

No deaths on day four. No deaths on day five either. They were both remarkably uneventful days, apart from the gifts to Cream. I only just manage to keep my mouth shut when a set of screwdrivers falls from the sky.

"Use these for defence. From Mama," she reads, with a grateful grin on her face.

Matilda has done me dirty. Every time a new gift comes via parachute I remember how much the sponsors will be paying for us to survive and survive well. Every time I wonder whether anyone will sponsor the favourite rather than the little girl. It's always the little girl. Because the favourite is such a bad ally.

I have the notebook and a pen. I've been drawing, pretending that I'm writing poetry made of red smoke and roses so Cream won't look. I've been drawing the links on my chain over and over again, improving on the last sketch. I'm not an artist by any means. I needed something to do so I don't drive myself crazy in here, thinking about every betrayal that has smacked me in the face so far.

As I shade in some of the shadows that are landing on my chest, I remember that there is no real use in blaming Matilda for the fact that Vanilla appears to have forgotten about me. District 3 is still getting sponsor money regardless of what's happened, and that's got nothing to do with who gets what.

Since the mentorship overhaul and Vanilla's first year as mentor, each district's two tributes are given one mentor between them to make it "fair", until there are enough living victors to be able to raise it back up to one mentor per tribute again. If at that point there are still some districts with only one living victor, well, they need to just hurry up and win again. In the tenth and eleventh games, sponsorship money went directly to the mentors and their one tribute. Since then, the mentors have had a choice on who to spend the money on, be it their own tributes, or someone else's.

In fact, the mentors have been given a great deal of freedom. The Chaos Council had greatly relaxed the rules over the years for as long as the mentors followed them, and Master Zik's team followed in their footsteps. Gifts must be provided fresh, bought on the day of giving using sponsorship money only, to make sure that there is no misuse of funds or cheating or scamming. The mentors may use their own intuition to decide what their tributes most need, and have free reign to give it to them as long as it doesn't fall within any forbidden categories. Things like firearms, explosives, live animals, and devices that can access beyond the arena. A handwritten note can be sent with the gift, on a specific size of paper that is only writeable on one side, with a rough character limit, and writing must be in printed capitals for easy reading on arena cameras. It claims to be a trust-based system but I bet it isn't without threats.

This has nothing to do with Matilda. She couldn't possibly sway Vanilla that quickly. Not after she made me into an object, stole for me, took me out of bounds, and made me her daughter's knight in shining armour. This is all on her.

I remember telling her that I want to win. 'And I know that hurts to hear but I have a family too.'

I think she may have forgotten that. Or maybe she's in denial. Her quick change of subject afterwards felt like that very much. She may be sweet. Loyal. Beautiful. Loving. Caring. But damn, she's selfish as hell. She sees nothing outside of her own world and her own little circle.

My blood continues to boil but I ignore it and refuse to let it show. I draw a little more aggressively, perfecting the chain that Charmy gave to me as best as I can. I ignore Cream's intrigued looks at the way my hands move as I make this "poetry" and think only of the family that Vanilla has forgotten, or refused to accept, that I have.

Charmy.

Chapter Text

"It's getting weird now."

Right as she says it, referring to the mysterious gap in deaths, a cannon blows.

"Never mind."

In the afternoon, we are sent more food, and it lands right by Cream as always. I was stupid enough to wonder if it was all a coincidence but at this point it can't possibly be. Nothing ever is in these parts. It's just blatant favouritism at this point. We eat the grilled sandwiches and I refuse to speak.

The forest has been remarkably still. Eerily so, to the point where this morning I was certain I started hearing things and seeing shadows across the ground that weren't really there. It's been agonising, just waiting for something to happen. I've struggled to separate reality from my brain's creations, so I've been relying heavily on reactions from Cream to tell me whether I need to worry.

"You need sleep, Vector."

"Do I?"

"You've hardly been sleeping at all."

She's right. My role as lookout never really ended. Last night I couldn't bear to even close my eyes. Anger never stopped me sleeping before, but it sure did this time. So I make sure Cream knows to wake me up should anything go wrong, and let myself sleep.

"VECTOR!"

In what feels like an instant, I'm kicked awake by Cream just in time to be able to swerve away from the furry brown blob that leaps at my face. It tumbles face-first into the tree behind me, and is stunned by the impact. Cream and I take a step back from the tree, fists and screwdrivers at the ready, and take a good look at the thing that just attacked us.

I could cry.

Sticks from Eleven slowly unravels herself and turns to face us, completely unbothered by the blood that's now dripping from her forehead into her right eye. Her expression remains still as ever, until it registers in her mind that we are here, staring at her clumsiness. We see the moment she becomes self-aware again. Sticks raises her hand to her forehead, licks her finger, and screams.

The next minutes are chaos. She pounces at us, rapidly loading arrows into her bow from the quiver on her back. Cream just about dodges and weaves between her erratic and badly-aimed shots. We manage to keep her teeth well away from us. We're all kicked, at some point we all end up in a pile, and I finally manage to grab her bow and snap it.

Cream takes the rest of the arrows from her quiver. We step back one again, and look at Sticks lying flat on her front after we managed to pin her down. We make sure that neither of us are hurt, and we're not apart from some hits that might become bruises. Sticks has the spirit but her coordination is awful. We have the upper hand now and she knows it. She breathes heavily, still bleeding from her face, pushes herself up and makes a run for it.

We're stood in silence for a while, recovering from that mess.

"If only we had something sturdy to fix the bow with," Cream chuckles, holding back tears. "Then we'd have a decent weapon."

"You've got your screwdrivers."

"Well you need something too," she smiles. "I'm surprised you haven't had anything yet. I hope Mama gives you something of your own."

"Yeah," I sigh. "It would be nice."

In the scuffle, we missed the anthem and the display for tonight. Cream informs me that while I was asleep, a second cannon blew, and now we will never know who either of them belonged to. Cream's upset by it, and hopes that neither were for Matilda. She's upset by a lot of things, and on the sixth night, she can't sleep, so I don't sleep either. I can't draw in the darkness so I instead opt for tearing the pages until they can barely hold together anymore. Cream asks about the poetry and I tell her it's a metaphor, seeing as she likes those.

In another day of no deaths I am left completely to myself again. I decide that the laptop is so far beyond fixability that I dismantle it, not knowing what I would even use a laptop for in here. Cream invents a game with the broken bow by sticking both ends of it into the ground and making a makeshift net out of the bow string to throw a rock over, bounce it off a tree, and catch it. On the seventh night, just after the empty anthem, Cream is so tired that she flakes out completely, leaving me on lookout again.

She's woken up by another box landing right on her lap. She opens it, reads the note, and tries to share the contents with me, but I refuse. When she falls back to sleep minutes later and I see that the note was addressed to her again, I finally lose it, and crack under the weight of Vanilla's bullshit.

At least give me something, woman. I saved your daughter's skin, twice, and you can't even find it in your "kind" heart to show me some gratitude?

I should have known it wouldn't play out how I wanted it to. The Hunger Games never do.

I pluck the broken bow halves out of the ground. Vanilla must have all the trust in the world in me. I twang the string pulled taut between the halves. She's taken me for a mug. She's made a fool of me. I look over to Cream, sleeping so peacefully under her chosen tree. None of this is her fault. She's the most innocent out of all of us, but she's caused so many problems. She messed up Vanilla's judgement. She stuck herself to me. She's dragging me down. She's made everyone forget about me.

I hate it. I hate that this is what it's come to, but what has to be done, has to be done.

I silently tiptoe over to her with the bow in my hands and drape the string around her neck so gently as not to wake her. It's not like this can harm me. I show Vanilla who's boss, I'm one step closer to home, and I don't have any obligation to die for someone anymore.

It'a a win-win situation, isn't it? I tighten the string as hard as I can, wrap my elbow around her head, and snap her neck, because at this point I have nothing to lose. When Cream's cannon blows, all I can feel is relief. A weight lifted off my shoulders.

These are my Hunger Games now, and Vanilla will not stop me from winning them. Cream can't win if I'm dead. I can't win if she's alive.

-x-

...When you ask me why I'll tell you true: It was all because I could, and the easy path was safer than the burden to be good.

Chapter Text

I stand here, the reason why death is in season.
The calling is coming, and no, it can't be undone.

-x-

I don't think I ever quite grasped the full importance of this whole ordeal. I turn up so I don't get tracked down and shot by the Peacekeepers. They are the last people I want to be severely injured by. Not killed - they can never aim right, not in these parts, they just make sure you're too broken up to resist being dragged to the Justice Building by the ankles. They're not worth dirt but if I'm honest, they do a better job at killing than I ever could. This is the Hunger Games. It's kill or be killed. I never watched them because I knew I'd just get ideas, with the state I was in a few years ago. I never paid attention when the TV was on in the Hold except for last year because that one was important to me. What's the point? Once you're there you don't come back, not unless your name is Mephiles, and look at what happened to him. No thanks.

I only knew he'd won because my sperm donor came out of the woodwork to let me know that he was rich, because a bag of grain had arrived at the door of the house, and that I didn't need to live at the Hold anymore because we're rich now. I tried explaining to him that everyone got the same bag so relatively speaking he's still just as not rich as he always was, and he will never be more rich than when he wasn't, or isn't, but he didn't like that. And then he asked me how Elise is doing and I rolled my eyes and said she was doing fine. He asked me that again earlier today in the city centre on the way to the Reaping, but once you're there you don't come back, not unless your name is Mephiles, so he clearly never kept track of the Hunger Games either. Even less so than me.

The Hold is a weird little place. There's nothing else quite like it in the district that I know of. It's run by tesserae mostly, and it was founded as a temporary housing solution for any reaping-age kid who needed it. It's kept strictly secret, and it disguises itself as a regular bakery, selling breads from the grains we scam out of the Capitol every year. We all pretend to be each other's siblings and take out max tesserae. The system has been flawed ever since the trade began. It's a risk worth taking for a safe place to sleep until the day you turn nineteen. I can't remember how I came to find out about it.

I shouldn't have been allowed in. I moved in when I was eleven, just before the twenty fourth games began. I faked my age to a local firm so I could work in painting fine details on the armoured vehicles, and I paid the Hold for a place. It wasn't typical at all for a kid to have money to pay, so they gave me a futon and used my money to fix one of the ovens. The progenitor wasn't happy about that but I was done listening to him the second he tried to get me high.

The armoured vehicles I helped to paint were distributed to District 2 and the Capitol. I hand-painted the Panem flag and the District 6 seal so many times that I was sure I could do it in my sleep. I wasn't allowed to use the spray paint and the stencils. I had to use brushes made of goat hair until I turned "seventeen" which would have happened "next year", but the calloused fingers and the swollen wrists and the fear of being found out were worth it for the money and the futon.

I don't know how many times my name was in the bowl. That was calculated by the baker. He knows that I'm really fourteen this year even if my boss doesn't, so that means my name must be in that bowl at least a hundred times because of the number of "siblings" I have. Six is the largest district in Panem by far, or at least we say it is, quadrupling the population of the second largest district, so a bunch kids and their friends who are in on it exploiting the system shouldn't have made much of a noticeable dent on the rankings even if we are pushing up the averages by quite a way. Zomom could have bathed in the bowl if he wanted to. He almost did, trying to get the names out of there. I think most of them were ours, but in the automated system, nobody knew. Nobody's got the time to go through that mess with a fine-toothed comb.

First was Blaze. A shock, really. She only had her name in there three times. A girl in a family like hers would never have to take out tesserae. Her father works closely with the Capitol and has done since before the Dark Days, and her mother is from there, so everybody knows her. Nowadays, if a Capitol citizen were to have relations with any old District man it would be an act of social suicide, but when that District man happens to be the manager of transport coordination and the elected chair of the Capitol's cartography society, it's suddenly not so bad. He was invited to live in the Capitol with his wife but he declined, and she moved here instead.

Then he picked me. Again, not sure how it happened, especially when most of the Hold kids have their names in there about five hundred times each, with one or two hitting the thousands, but I didn't really care. It's just another Monday in my mind. If I don't watch the games or keep up with the news then what is there to worry about? Certain death is a factor, there's no way I'm winning, and I don't think there would ever be a universe where I would want to, but if I don't think about it then it can't hurt me. The entire reaping ceremony was a bit of a blur because I wasn't really thinking about anything.

I had no visitors in the waiting room, not even the progenitor. The plants were cute, though. If I hadn't been reaped, I would have worked my way up the ranks at the finishing department and trained with plants and camouflage. The plants in the room were fabric and the colours weren't quite what I'd expect from the sort of species they were imitating, but District 8 did extremely well with the limited knowledge of plants that they have over there, and seeing as the Capitol has even less, they couldn't be more perfect.

After being in the waiting room, I was shoved with Blaze into the back of this four-wheel-drive monster truck that stinks of whatever Zomom ate before he got here. It's cloudy out. The sunroof has been left open so we can all have the cool summer breeze over our faces. None of us speak much on the journey to the train. Mephiles is sober and delirious, Zomom is driving with headphones on, Blaze is preoccupied with constantly adjusting her seatbelt so it never touches her neck, and I just don't want to talk. It's only twenty minutes more to the station. I can do twenty minutes of silence any time.

I do know enough about the games to understand what will happen next. We'll head to the station, get on a train and sleep on it until halfway through tomorrow, make it to the Capitol and do the tribute parade tomorrow night. Then we will have training on Wednesday and Thursday in full, and half of Friday morning. On Friday afternoon it will be the private training exams, and on Saturday night it's the tribute interviews ready for the games to begin on Sunday morning. But if I don't think about it, it can't hurt me. So for now, I won't.

"Sorry," Mephiles says, finally breaking the silence. "You're gonna have to uh... remind me. What are your names, again?"

Chapter Text

"Silver," I reply.

"Okay Slither, nice to meet you," Mephiles yawns, cracking his neck. "What about you, ma'am? I'll try to remember this time."

"Blaze," she says.

"Blaze who?"

"Liesma."

"Oh, you're... h-have we met? I know that surname."

She answers quickly. "No. Are you alright, Mephiles?"

"No, I'm not alright," he laughs. "My head is killing me and I just wanna sleep, I'm so sorry about all of this-"

"HEY, I LOVE THIS SONG! IN THE NIGHTLIGHT, DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU DREAM?"

"Zomom." Mephiles nudges him sharply after he bursts into song.

"ALL YOUR TROUBLES, ARE THEY ALL WHAT THEY SEEM-"

"Zomom. Remove your headphones, please. Who taught you to drive with headphones on?"

"I don't follow no District Highway Code," he complains, but removes his headphones anyway and hands them to Mephiles who switches them off to use as earmuffs for the rest of the journey. "Y'all take the fun out of everything."

"The Capitol created the Highway Code," Mephiles sighs.

"Nuh-uh!"

"What do you mean 'nuh-uh'?"

Zomom continues to sing as he drives, between arguing with Mephiles over every little thing. I definitely preferred the silence. It's a relief when we make it to the station.

I've never been here before. I always imagined it would be big and fancy seeing as we have so many people and we make the transport work, so I'm surprised when it only has one rail in and one rail out.

"It's a station, not the fucking Capitol Interchange," Mephiles sighs, picking up on my confusion. "How sheltered are you?"

I give him a look.

"He was the same," Zomom laughs. "We got here and he asked me, 'Why is it so dull?' like the little sixteen-going-on-twelve year old boy he was and I said, 'Just 'cause you freaks invented the things don't mean you get to keep 'em-"

He is silenced by a loud smack to the left bicep from Mephiles. It doesn't make a dent on him but he shuts up regardless and escorts the three of us through paparazzi and peacekeepers to the train, docked and ready for us. It's no surprise to Mephiles when Blaze and I are fascinated by the thing, and the three of us can't help but dissolve into laughter when Zomom asks us why we find the thing so interesting.

Mephiles suddenly snaps. "I don't know, Zomom, maybe because us freaks don't get to keep a damn thing we make?" His yelling instantly shuts Zomom up for the second time today.

Everybody knows Mephiles. Even if you're like me and you don't keep up much with the games, Mephiles the Dark is still a name to remember. Especially since it's not even his real name. After he won, he found a way to "sell" his given name to some diehard Capitol fan, and then he made his own, trademarked it, and insisted that people respect it. He found a way to capitalise off pretty much every aspect of himself and from what anybody can tell, he hasn't really drawn much of a line.

And Zomom was kind of right. When he went into the games he was child-like, although clearly still a mess in the head. Maybe the childish nature was a part of that. When he got out, after having experienced the most merciless games there had been yet, he was almost a completely different person. A shell of himself. He had no intention of making it out alive and yet somehow, as he watched people drown in their own lungs and drop dead all around him, he did. It changed him.

He hasn't gotten over it. He survived by wearing a mask which he received as a gift, and since winning, he has never been seen in public without one on. He experimented with colours and eventually settled on a cold light grey.

Mephiles was forced to become a mentor. The standard reward would be a house in the Victor's Village and a yearly bulk payment for services to the Hunger Games. He took the house but never seemed to be there, and rejected the money, asking for a morphling supply instead. They gave it to him in the form of injectables. He said he'd figure out the money some other way. Nobody guessed what that was going to be, especially not from him, but with a brand new identity and all the time in the world to waste, he made it work. Now mentoring is just a yearly nuisance for him, but he has to do it or he'll lose his drugs.

Zomom shuts himself in a room that he has already designated as his, leaving the three of us in the main compartment of the living space.

"Welcome to the train," Mephiles shrugs. "Collaborative project, every District chipped in somehow, final assembly at the Capitol, yada yada, you know it."

He slumps down on the lime green sofa against the far wall and grabs a notebook off the coffee table before him, and points to the armchairs on the other side, inviting us to also sit.

"So. Tell me about yourselves. Give me something to work with."

Blaze and I exchange awkward glances. She doesn't say anything, so I take it as I'm going first.

"Uh, my name is Silver," I repeat, more clearly this time. "I am fourteen. I'm decent with plants, I can paint, I guess I can work well by myself when it comes to uh, hostile environments? As hostile as Six can get, anyway."

Mephiles scribbles something down and then closes the book. "Much of a team player?"

"I don't know."

"Good in school?"

"I dropped out at twelve."

"Respect."

In District 6, as long as you do the basics of education, you're free to guide your own learning. Industry experience is valued much more than a diploma. We learn what the Capitol requires us to learn, and then train further on the job. I dropped out at eleven and faded into the background, missing out on my last year to go to work. I told the school I was going to be home-schooled. I told the progenitor I was still going to public school. I forged my certificates and ID. I told everyone something different and hoped they wouldn't communicate, and thankfully, they never did. This entire district and its relationship with its citizens is run on failures to communicate, and I have taken advantage of every opportunity that this has given me. As long as things get done, nobody cares how.

He asks me a few more questions, like how long I've been in work, and I say the truth: just over three years, because he's writing none of this down and therefore can't prove a thing. I realise there isn't much point in living a lie anymore because what are the Capitol going to do? Kill me?

If there's one thing I know about the Hunger Games, it's that the Capitol citizens love their game and they want it played. They're a bit like Six, in that regard. As long as it gets done in a reasonable fashion, they're satisfied.

Chapter Text

When I pick a room, the Avoxes sort it out for me in a matter of minutes. It's massive, or as massive as it can be on a train. It's got a large bed and an ensuite and a huge closet full of fashion of every genre. I came to the Reaping in the best hoodie I had, still relatively new, but worn out all the same. Most kids of age still have formal clothes left over from school but I left all of that behind, not knowing Reaping etiquette, and I never really saw the point of conforming anyways. Even if I came in pyjamas, I'm sure the worst that would happen to me is a few stares.

I find a white shirt and trousers and a weird little waistcoat with yellow trim, try them on, and put them aside for tomorrow, deciding that every day where I have a choice, I'll try a new aesthetic.

There's a light knock at my door, and Blaze's voice comes shortly after it. "Silver?"

I scramble to get my hoodie back on and open the door for her to come in. "Hey Blaze, what's up?"

"I was just wondering, uh, when's your birthday?"

It's a strange question in a time like this, but I answer it anyway. "April 5th, why?"

She leans on the doorframe and stares at the ceiling, deep in thought. "Come to think of it, it wouldn't matter, would it?" She shakes her head and smiles, amused. "Why did you lie to Mephiles about how long you've been in work for?"

I sit down on the bed for the first time and almost fall over, it's much bouncier than I thought it would be. "Oh, I don't know, maybe I told the truth about that and I actually dropped out of school when I was eleven and lied to everybody?" I smirk.

"...Did you?"

"Well I'm not about to get done for identity fraud, am I? Why would I tell you that?"

She laughs quietly. "You're lucky he's not very well right now."

"Nah, he wouldn't care."

"How did you do it?" she asks, rather innocently.

"Drop out early?"

"Yeah. I couldn't get away with that if I tried."

I remember that not everybody is as dim as the people I'd been surrounded with. Maybe it's unfair of me to assume an entire district of three quarters of a million will all have the same things going on.

"Well, having a parent who will believe absolutely anything you say as long as you say it right is a good start."

"Well then I'm out."

I invite her to sit on the bed with me so she doesn't have to awkwardly lean against the doorframe. She makes a much more graceful descent than me.

"What's your life like?" I ask her. I left for this room shortly after Mephiles was done with me, I didn't get to hear any of her answers to his questions.

"I'm still in school, and I was planning to be until I turned eighteen," she explains. "It's not the worst. I think I would rather leave and train for industry but my parents say that I should prioritise education just in case they change their mind and move us over to the Capitol."

"How likely is that?" I stupidly ask.

She shrugs. "Well now I'm here, not very."

We have a moment or so of quiet. I wait for her to tell me more and I quickly realise that she's not the kind of person who would do that without being asked. She traces the pattern on the wallpaper with her eyes for a little while and moves her thumbs over one another repetitively, but she doesn't seem nervous. Just spaced-out.

"Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be living in the Capitol?"

"Yeah, sometimes," she answers, still tracking the wall. "My mum tells me stories about her teenage years there during the war, what happened before and after, things like that. I think I would have liked it there but I wouldn't have been me."

"How so?"

She moves her gaze to her hands and smiles. "I think I would misunderstand reality. I'm sure my dad wouldn't have let that happen, but I think I might have hated us and maybe even hated him. I think if I grew up with all the prejudice, I'd have believed it whether I wanted to or not. I'm glad I wasn't raised there, even now. I'd rather be reaped than be complicit in this whole thing."

"That makes sense," I nod, although I'm not sure how much she could possibly mean it. I was certain I was in the minority when it came to how little I cared about whether I was reaped. But in a dual-citizenship family, Blaze would see both sides, whereas most people would only see one.

My understanding is that the Capitol have been taught to view District citizens as nothing more than factory and field workers who bring them nice things, with only a select few being the exception. It's to keep them from thinking too hard about the repercussions of inventing this broken economic system. It's bled into politics and created two divisions, the nobility and the peasants, and since the clock was reset to zero and we started counting the years from the start of the Hunger Games, the peasants have turned on each other too, to reap the few benefits that there are to winning. Competition between districts and the idea that they are nothing more than a dull, soulless workforce has become the only point of reference for this nation's vision of time itself. You can't fight something like that. It's impossible to break away from unless you know the truth, which the majority of the Capitol do not, and likely never will.

"What is life like for you?" Blaze asks me.

"It's lonely," I answer. It's an undeniable truth and I am pained by it very frequently. "My only real friend was reaped last year. I try not to think about her too much."

"Elise?"

"Yeah. We both come from a weird bottle-neck in population in the north of Six. A lot of people who are reaped are from round there. We rely on tesserae, and we know the risk but it's worth taking for the sake of us all."

I caught the news after the Games last year: District 6 took 0.087 tesserae per person, making it the fourth richest District per capita. I remember the numbers because they're important to the existence of the Hold. I bet the Hold, and some other underground youth hostels that may or may not exist, brought that average right up with tens of thousands of tesserae at a time, because generally the rest of the district doesn't have these problems. The stats are district-wide. We hide behind the rich. It would be much more concerning if we suddenly just stopped scamming the Capitol altogether. We'd overtake District 1 for sure, but Five would be ridiculous, and Two is unreachable even for Five.

"Elise did pretty well," Blaze smiles, after a minute or two of quiet.

"Yeah," I laugh. "She did."

Chapter Text

"How many times are you gonna run? I've captured you seventeen different times!" the boy from Two exaggerates dramatically. He corners her.

Elise doesn't seem concerned - she leans into it for the bit. "I feel like it's going to be at least eighteen."

Her gaze flicks to the ceiling, and she smiles.

-o-

"...The buffoon's memory is broken and he clearly has no idea what a hostile environment actually is."

"What did you get for the girl?"

"Shy, direct but not rude yet, generally unfamiliar with the concept of having friends, doesn't appear to know that eyes reside within the eye sockets and not in the floor or in the wall or in her hands, an utter nerd, too posh for her own good, although not anywhere near as pretentious as I imagined she'd be. Plenty of time for that to change, though."

"They seem as bad as usual."

"Oh my god just shut up."

Last night was strange. Instead of watching the recap in the main carriage, we watched it in my room. Mephiles came to ask me to come to dinner and saw Blaze and I talking, then Zomom invited himself in and brought the food with him, and suddenly we were watching the girl from Seven almost get herself shot after yelling at her brother for volunteering.

Blaze knows of Cream, the girl from District 3. Apparently she's famous across all of Panem for being the daughter of the twelfth victor, the first child of a victor to reach Reaping age, and now most certainly the first child of a victor to be reaped. Mephiles rolled his eyes and said it's an obvious rigging. Zomom, although friendly with the rest of the escorts and probably in on all plans, swore that he knew nothing about it.

I had to ask an Avox to help me clean all of Zomom's crumbs out of the bed before I could sleep in it.

"Why should I shut up?"

Mephiles and Zomom are arguing again. I've learnt that their fights are never particularly serious, though.

"It's not polite to speak with your mouth full," Mephiles snarls. "Hello?" His tone flips. "Yeah, uh, I can do tomorrow at twelve if you'd like that?" A door slams somewhere.

I get myself up and showered and dressed in the clothes I set out and check myself out in the mirror. The clothes fit me perfectly, and the yellow trim matches my eyes. It's rare that I get to feel good about myself, so I take this moment to enjoy what I've been given and assure myself that I'm doing okay.

We should arrive at the Capitol Interchange in an hour's time, ready for the walk down the Avenue to the Tribute Centre. That will be home until Sunday morning. As a last minute decision, I strip my top half, put my hoodie back on, and re-dress so I can sneak my hoodie in with me. I don't know if I'll be able to have it in the arena. I'll have to ask Mephiles.

For breakfast, Blaze and I down some toast with an orange jam, and have the second Reaping recap on the TV in the background. She's wearing the same clothes as yesterday. A purple dress with white leggings, that each have soft white material round the cuffs.

"I tried the clothes on," she shrugs, noticing that I'm looking at her outfit. "They didn't feel right. You look good, though."

I smile, and pick up the remote to rewind.

I paid attention last year, but never to any year before that for long enough to be able to suss out anything more than that the Careers are special, and Eight, Nine and Twelve are not. I do remember asking Elise, who was eighteen and educated, how the Careers got their name. She remembers when a boy called Sam "Speed" Thorndyke won for District 2 in year 19 making a five-year Career district streak, and how he had joined the alliance after his victor relative Chuck Thorndyke, the mentor at the time, thought it would be a good idea. Chuck, who was a part of that same streak, had already created the name, and it was already being used between the Careers, but Sam was the first to publicise it. The Thorndykes called it the Career alliance to showcase the close relationship between Two and the Capitol, and how Two will remain by their side and make it their life goal to be loyal, and convert other Districts to the same mindset. So far, it's still just One and Four who have joined. The name stuck after Sam used it during his interview and made tributes to his fellow Careers on his victory tour. Another Thorndyke, Christopher, won the 23rd Games under the Career alliance, and then Mephiles came along the year after and watched the last Thorndyke burn.

I always remembered Elise's stories, no matter what they were about or how she told them. She joined the Hold in the same year I did after her father died in a freak accident at the oil distillery. We bonded because we were both new. I remember watching her walk down the Avenue on the television with her district partner I'd never met or seen before. It was so sunny. It made her red hair glow among the Capitol's rainbows, just as radiant, if not more. The morning before, on Reaping morning, I'd helped her straighten it. She sat with her hair splayed out on the ironing board, and I draped some baking paper over it and ironed her hair flat. I couldn't quite get to the roots but she clipped it down so it didn't matter.

She had some weird orange tights on that made her look sunburnt, and if you focused on literally anything about her hair apart from the colour of it then she looked a bit like a squid, but she had on a white dress with yellow trim just like I will have on today. That memory instantly gives me all the confidence I would ever need for this walk down the Avenue. Following my best friend, dressed just like her.

Mephiles staggers wearily into the living space, with rheum in his eyes and dark bags under them. "The second I'm getting in I'm breaking out the beast box, is that alright with you two?" He asks.

Neither of us answer.

"Eh. You'll understand one day. Zomom! We're going."

Chapter Text

It's so much warmer in the Capitol than it was in Six or on the train. It was only when I stepped out and headed for the Avenue that I realised just how cool the air conditioning had been. I immediately regret layering, but I don't let it bother me, and I smile for the cameras like I am expected to, and I continue to do so for as long as I can bear this heat. Of course, the Capitol likes Blaze, they hate Zomom, and nobody can seem to make their mind up on whether to boo Mephiles or cat-call him.

We're tailed by District 7, who soak up a lot of attention of their own. Aside from the Careers, it's Three, Six and Seven that are going to be stealing the show this year, I know it. No other district particularly caught my eye.

The whole way there, Zomom complains about his feet and his back.

"Here, Zomom, come to my house," Mephiles says, as cheerfully as he can manage. "C'mon, let's just go." He takes Zomom's card and opens the door of the Tribute Centre. "To my house." 

Mephiles leads the way through a common room while Zomom explains to us that we can go anywhere in this building as long as everyone's okay with it and we don't leave, and up a weird little elevator to the sixth floor. When we get in, the first thing I notice is just how much of a mess the living space is.

"Welcome to my house," Mephiles proudly announces. "As you can see, I have knocked over many chairs because I get so tilted in the head."

"Tilted?" I ask in confusion.

"Well you see-"

"Is this what a house looks like?" Blaze cuts in.

He grows frustrated. "That doesn't matter. Check out this cool gem I got online for seven-"

"This isn't even your house," I laugh. I pick up the purple rock he's referring to, which was strewn lazily on top of a cabinet along with many other rocks.

"Hey, give me back my thing," he says calmly, taking it out of my hands. "I did not say you could touch it. I'm not distracted that easily, young kid, I swear, don't ever touch my cube once more, I will put you in the dungeon."

"Why are the chairs all over the place?" Blaze asks.

"I threw them around before I left the Capitol last Thursday," Mephiles yawns. "It's good catharsis. Now if you'll excuse me."

He heads to the room that has yellow paint all over the door, and shuts himself inside.

Blaze lets herself smile. "He's found a way to ban the Avoxes from cleaning in here and in his room while he's gone," she explains. "He made some kind of deal with the President after designing the Capitol tram network, saying that he should be able to live in the city where his inventions would be, so as not have any interference in the whole process."

"How the hell did he manage to swindle an entire floor out of the President's old house?"

"The same way he did everything else. A lot of bartering, a lot of technicalities, and a lot of promises. Which, to be fair, he has kept."

"So..." I think for a while. "He's managed to change his name, replace his victory salary entirely with morphling, own a house that he hardly ever spends time in, live as a hermit in the President's childhood home, and claim immunity to Avox checks, all because he revolutionised Capitol transport?"

"When a country is at complete war only twenty five years beforehand, something like that is a pretty huge favour. I don't blame him one bit for milking it."

"Milking? There's a cow?" Zomom pipes up from the kitchen. We ignore him. We've been landed with crazy people.

I pick a room, and the second I close the door my clothes come off and the localised air conditioning comes on. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the hoodie won't be allowed, so I head back out in my trousers and a shirt, hunt through some drawers, and find a sewing kit wedged underneath a pair of binoculars. I knew I'd find one. Everyone has one. And inside it are some mask prototypes, likely stitched together by Mephiles himself.

I had a lot of free time after dropping out of school. In the Hold, most of the money I earnt when I was eleven was spent on maintenance of the bakery, so I had to learn how to sew until I could buy new clothes. Again, Elise taught me everything I know. I bring the kit back to my room and use the scissors to cut the yellow cuffs off the sleeves of the hoodie. I spend some time carefully hemming the edges so they don't fray, stretch them out using my feet so I can embroider a geometric pattern into them with blue cotton, and tie off everything that's loose. I spend a few hours on that embroidery part. I always found it relaxing.

The cuffs are still baggy on my wrists when I try them on so I very carefully pinch them in on themselves, sew them together, and cut off the excess until they feel just right. Now all I have is a pair of fabric bracelets. I won't be any warmer than the other tributes now, so they should be allowed. Now I can have some of my hoodie in the arena with me.

I almost start to regret cutting it up like that, so before that feeling can take hold, I grab some pins and stick the hoodie to the back wall as a decoration. It's not like the Avoxes can do anything about it if I ask them not to while I'm living here. When I'm gone I can't stop them, but when I'm gone I won't be coming back so I won't care. But maybe, because of Mephiles and his banning of all cleaning by them, it could stay here throughout the Games. Maybe it could stay here until I die. Maybe it could stay even beyond.

When I return the kit, I have to climb over rogue chairs and avoid waking Zomom, who lies fast asleep on one of the big sofas. I carefully step around him and wiggle the stiff drawer open in the wooden cabinet behind the sofa, and slowly shuffle the sewing kit back inside, right under the binoculars where I found it.

"Oh, Mephiles!" sings a voice from outside the main door. "I'm here to collect the tributes for fitting!"

I slam the drawer back in and dive onto the other sofa before Zomom can stir completely, and I make plans to gaslight him into thinking he's just hearing things. I kick off my shoes and pretend that I was also asleep just in time for Mephiles to come out of his room.

"Alright, Julie-Su," he shouts back, sounding much more like himself. "Blaze! Sneaker!"

I roll my eyes. "It's Silver."

He looks down at me on the sofa. "Oh. Hi Slimmer. Julie-Su is here to take you and Blaze down to the studios."

"Amazing," I reply, "but I thought that was the escort's job?"

Mephiles shoots Zomom a disappointed look. "Sleeping on the job is probably the best thing he can do for us as long as he's not driving. I don't know what I did to deserve him."

Zomom looks sourly offended, or as offended as he can look when he's just woken up. Mephiles seems to get a kick out of taking digs at him. Blaze comes out of her room, Mephiles opens the door for the stylist Julie-Su, and we're taken on our way to her studio before Zomom can start anything. Their bickering only wastes time.

Chapter Text

Julie-Su's studio is vibrant with violent pinks and purples, and it thrives with life and creativity. Blaze was picked up by another stylist whose name I forgot, but I got a glimpse of their studio and that one looked just as used. Not as pink, for sure, but used.

Julie-Su scratches her head, looking for where to begin. "As you can see, your costume has gone through many iterations since the Reaping yesterday."

She shows me her first idea, which involved a wooden wheel as a headpiece. Her second idea took that same theme and lightened it to save my neck, as a carving from a block of foam accompanied by some sort of cape made to look like a train track. She shows me sketches of a few things in reference to Six's oil industry and its sub-streams in paint and ink production.

"But then I saw your walk down the Avenue this morning," she continues, "and I simply had to reconsider."

She opens up a wardrobe and pulls out a mannequin that she must have adjusted based on the Reaping footage of me, and pinned onto it is the work-in-progress of an admiral outfit in white and yellow, embellished with sparkling jewels.

Julie-Su grins. "All I have to do is whip up some trousers, fit the coat to you, and work out how to get this hat on your head."

"How long do you have?"

She chuckles wearily. "Just over an hour."

She takes measurements from my actual body and orders me to take a long and thorough shower by her precise instructions while she sews together some sheets of white triacetate. Usually, she tells me, she would shower her tribute herself, but this time she has to multitask enough as it is after backtracking on so many ideas. When I'm out and dry she immediately wraps the coat around me and roughly hand-stitches the panels together, before sweeping them through the sewing machine in a matter of minutes. She kicks some gel and a scrunchie to me and tells me to throw my quills into a ponytail - the faster the better, because no working admiral at sea will ever look perfect - and she places the hat on my head, wraps me in the coat, and we sprint down seven flights of stairs to the back of the Tribute Centre's main stage.

Blaze is already there waiting for us with Mephiles and Zomom, in a crisp pilot uniform. Julie-Su gives us all a salute, and runs off back up the stairs.

"The heck?" Mephiles asks.

"She was so indecisive," I laugh, slightly out of breath. "She'd started like, fifteen different things."

"You look good though," Blaze smiles.

I smile back. "So do you. We're kinda matching. Both of us are uh, in charge of a vehicle, I guess? Kind of a stretch seeing as we only make them, but..." I give up trying to explain Julie-Su's logic.

"What were her other ideas? My stylist mentioned some change of plan but she found a lot of my outfit pre-made already."

I laugh. "She described to me in great detail how she was planning to break my neck, pour paint over me, and tie me to train tracks, but then she realised that might not be a good idea, and threw me down the stairs instead. Typical Tuesday things. I don't suppose you were forced to eat soap, were you?"

Blaze stares at me blankly. "I... N-No. Are you okay?"

I chuckle at her shock. Exaggerations clearly aren't her strong point.

"Alright you two," Mephiles interrupts. "I've got to uh... what?" He loses his train of thought for a second, and stares at the chariot before us. "That is a horse, okay. Uh, I've got to tell you, you are going to get on that chariot now and present yourselves nicely for the cameras, you're going on after District 5. In like. Three minutes. It starts. Fuck, I am not-"

Mephiles cuts himself off, takes a deep breath, and lets Zomom take him by the arm and pull him to the water fountain, leaving Blaze and I to ourselves. This is much more like the Mephiles we all know and love.

The chariot is dark and shiny, and inside there is a padded bar to lean on and another bar on each side for us to hold onto. We are in a line with the eleven other chariots and the several other horses, all identically groomed and dark black all over. In the low light, I can't help but pay attention to District 5 in their glow-in-the-dark sludge and infinity-mirror vests, quietly bickering over where to wipe their hands. Further on from them are District 4, covered in sparkling scales and fins, and the District 3 male who would probably look less indecent if he took his costume off.

"Look at Nine," Blaze laughs. "They're birds dressed as scarecrows."

Past the mossy mushrooms of Seven and the pristine suits of Eight, there is a chariot filled with straw, red string, and chequered fabrics, with a mess of feathers and shreds propped up on choppy wooden frames.

"They look like they've been hung, drawn, and quartered," I whisper back. "Who the heck is going to sponsor that?"

"Do scarecrows even work?" She asks. "Birds aren't that scared of people. I used to pick them up and take them home back when I didn't know any better-"

The arena in front of us erupts into life, startling us both, and soon enough the curtains are pulled open in front of the chariot of District 1. One by one the horses roll out, exiting backstage onto the parade with each new verse of the music. One and Two's music is loud and proud, Three's is more like a ballad, Four and Five have a quickened pace, and then it's us.

"STAND STRAIGHT!" Mephiles shouts from somewhere behind us.

Zomom joins in. "YEAH! PROFESSIONALISM!"

So we do as we're told and stand at attention for the duration of the ride down. It's loud and the Capitol cheers for Blaze. I know they cheer for her even though they never say her name, because they know who she is the daughter of. The Capitol enjoys a niche interest. I guess it makes sense that fans of maps and political geography would also be fans of the Games.

Once we reach the end of the parade and the attention falls onto District 7, we finally relax against the bar and soak up our surroundings.

Last year, I watched the tribute parade and the interview just for Elise, and I noticed that the arena for each was pretty much the same. The seating stands had been pulled into a different position and bits of the stage itself had folded out, and I thought it was a really clever use of space to make one arena look like two.

When Twelve finally makes it to the front, the District flags are dropped behind us in a burst of light and fire, and a drone light show plays out the highlights of the last Hunger Games. The grossly deadly bloodbath, the quick fall of One and Four, the pursuit of the boy from District 2 and Elise's great escapes, the bundling of tributes into escape pods which were shot out into space, the descents into insanity as the weeks went by, and the rise and demise of the two-tailed fox who called himself Nine.

And then the man himself, President Robotnik, turns up for his annual speech, and I switch off for it just as I did last year.

Chapter Text

"Hey, are you alright?"

The two of them shut themselves in a chemical closet, hiding from the tributes they were running from.

"Yes," she smiles weakly. "Thank you. This is a common occurrence now. They drag it out for so long that they forget they're supposed to kill me. Where'd you get all those prosthetics from, anyways?"

"Oh, these piles of crap?" He pulls a string hidden in his sleeve and one of the seven metal limbs moves. "Somewhere."

-o-

"Don't you even think about allying with Three again."

That was the last thing Mephiles said to us before Zomon took us down to the first day of training. The Hunger Games are still suffering from the end of the last edition. Something happened to the Gamemakers, and even Maria's mentor got caught up in it somehow and now he's involved in all kinds of strange things that mentors aren't usually involved in. It all kicked off but I stopped caring after Elise couldn't win anymore.

After a short tour of the facilities in the Training Centre - weaponry, combat simulators, fitness stations, nature collections, and areas for socialising - we are left under supervision of the Gamemakers from their embedded balcony.

"Any ideas on where to start?" Blaze asks me.

I shake my head "Not one."

We eventually head to a hunting simulator because it's all that was free around the back end of the Centre. We try out a few ways to tie nets and snares, and read about how to position them from trees so they have the best chance at catching something worthwhile. A little way along the wall there is a camouflage station and Blaze and I agree to check that out tomorrow once we've given ourselves a foundation.

We turn on one of the nature simulators for hunting, rig up a snare using special retractable rope according to the delicate instructions for the simulator logic, and wait quietly for a hologram to come. We had to select the type of snare we tied and clip sensors to the rope so the machine knows where the animals are in relation to the snare. It will only work if we tied it correctly. Blaze called it a nonsensical time-wasting farce after we spent more time setting the thing up than actually tying the ropes. "All because the Capitol can't hire actual hunters 'cause they haven't needed to have any since the summer of minus two. That's when they started eating each other."

"That's fantastic!" shouts a voice shouts from behind us, startling the shadow of a rabbit. "What a great addition to the team."

The Careers have taken two semi-circular sofas outside the hunting simulator. Two volunteers from One, two reaped from Two, and two volunteers from Four.

"Thank you," says the girl from Two, pushing some of her pink hair out of her eyes. "I hope I can be of use."

"And Sonic, what do you do?" the girl from Four asks.

"Well, I run fast and I kick hard." He folds his arms and leans back into the plush leather with a grin on his face, proud of the number two written on his chest.

We eavesdrop on their conversation as discreetly as we can, but we still manage to catch the attention of the quiet boy from District 1. Although instead of making a scene of us listening in like the Careers probably would, he just smiles at us and returns to the conversation, still not saying much other than the occasional 'interesting' or 'that sounds great'. He keeps an eye on us just as secretively as we keep an eye on the Careers.

"Is it just me who's thinking that he really doesn't want to be there?" Blaze whispers.

"Then why volunteer?" I whisper back. "Isn't he sixteen, too? He could have waited."

She hums in acknowledgement of my point, and we return to watching the snares to see if they work.

The holograms of a couple of squirrels bounce through the plastic branches of the trees we rigged the snares to, and they shimmy down the trunks to the floor. They each 'dig' into the ground to bury some nuts, and then fly across the floor to another plastic tree.

The Careers burst into laughter.

"That's genius!" The girl from One puts her head in her hands. "I knew there was something more to you, Big."

The boy from Four pats her shoulder. "I'm smarter than I look, aren't I?"

"That's so good," Sonic laughs. "But I swear, if this doesn't help us immediately, I'm having your head, because this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

Big suddenly changes his entire character. He speaks slowly and stupidly. "My head? But my head belongs to me. I thought stealing was bad?"

"Hold on, lemme just figure this out, you're acting stupid, and then you're gonna help us slam all the tributes so nobody saw it coming. That..."

"Acting? I'm not doing no acting. What do you mean?"

"...is actually genius- STOP!" And Sonic starts laughing again. "I can't take you seriously now I know that you're smart!"

Blaze nudges me. "Were we supposed to hear all that?"

I take another look at the boy from One, who evidently noticed Blaze ask me that question. He smiles, shakes his head, and leaves the group without a word.

"He's weirding me out," I say. "Is he on their team or not?"

"Just be glad he doesn't have you by the throat right now-"

A tree branch flicks behind us. We spin around just in time to see one of our snares flying through the air and a hologram of a squirrel glitching its way after it in the general vicinity of the loop, lagging by a few seconds and a foot or so.

"-Hey, it worked!"

We undo the thing, put it all back, and high-five each other after successfully learning how to catch a bit of food that will last us all of ten minutes, but any win is still a win.

"I think it's time, isn't it? To seal the deal?" Sonic asks the Careers, and they all hum in agreement. The five of them that are left all pick up their water and sit further forwards on the sofas. "To the Thorndykes?"

None of them seem too concerned about the fact that the boy from One has disappeared. They all tap their bottles together. "To the Thorndykes!"

Chapter Text

"Gut, skin, start the fire, make the spit, cook till the middle's not pink anymore. Right, gutting: break its neck, grip it tightly, squeeze the guts out its arse. Skinning: hold it by the back, pull towards the head and the tail, rip the skin and pull it all off. Start the fire with rock or friction. Make the spit out of thin and sturdy sticks. Stick the rabbit on it, and cook."

I end up standing in front of the full-length mirror in my room after pacing the whole space, trying to recall everything I learnt today. I can't afford to be squeamish over a rabbit's intestines dropping onto the floor when that could well be me next week. And even though I'm not going into here with any intention of winning, I'd also rather not be a complete embarrassment. I decide to give it a rest, and head out to the living space where the others are.

Mephiles half-heartedly blows a kiss in the rough direction of his portable phone speakers before ending a call and pocketing the device.

"You went on a date?" Blaze asks.

He yawns. "Yeah. He's fit but really not my type, you know? I'll give it some time to develop before I call it off, though."

I remember the arrangement he made on the train after yelling at Zomom. "Are you looking for something long-term or just a hookup?"

"When have I ever been a man for long term anything?"

Zomom joins in from the kitchen. "You can talk to me about your sex life!"

"I'd rather stick it in a plug socket."

I choke on laughter.

"It was just a dinner date, Sticker!" Mephiles groans. "It's not that funny."

"Dinner?" Zomom shouts.

"Is that all you heard? No!" Mephiles yells back. "We just had it! What are you, a cat?"

I just about manage to stop laughing when I see Blaze staring plainly at Mephiles, not exactly offended, just more aware than he is. When he notices what he said, he rolls his eyes and takes his phone back out again.

"Say, uh, Mee-files," I begin. "I've got these cuffs round my wrists, would it be okay if I take them into the arena with me?"

I don't even have time to show him the cuffs before he says no.

"Wh-Why?"

"I saw them earlier, they'd give you an advantage."

"By keeping my wrists warm?"

"A lot of heat can be lost from your wrists. Sorry mate. In fact, I was meaning to ask for them, give them here."

I don't, so he puts his phone away and turns to me with his hand out and makes prolonged eye contact with me, so I pull off the cuffs and give them to him. He turns them in on themselves a few times and pulls a face at the stitching, as if he could do any better. He glances over to the cabinet that I took the sewing kit from, stares at it for a bit, shrugs, and throws the cuffs into the bin in the corner of the living room. Point taken.

"If you can find something that won't give you an unfair advantage then you can have it."

"Did you take anything with you into your arena?"

Mephiles doesn't give me an answer. He sits much more still than usual, stares at the wall, and exhales silently.

I don't feel like having an early night tonight after tearing apart several rabbit carcases even though it feels like it would be a sensible decision to do so. I decide to explore instead. When Mephiles asks where I'm going when I open up the exit to Six's living space, I remind him that Zomom told us we could go anywhere in the building as long as we didn't leave or annoy anybody by intruding on their space, and I don't explain any further. I head up.

I always liked the sky. If I could get away with it, I'd put some music on and sneak out at night to sing and dance under the stars. I was never great at it but I didn't care because it made me happy for a few minutes, a few more minutes of happiness than I would have had before. I didn't like it with the progenitor. He was predictable in such a stressful way. I became the expert of his emotions. His sighing rate was something I picked up on. When it got to about five sighs per minute, I knew to flee the scene before he could say anything to me, bad or neutral. I got that same vibe from Mephiles just then. I pushed a button in his head.

Living there made me jittery in the brain. Anxious. Cold, occasionally. Always suspicious of somebody somewhere. I was self-aware enough to be able to understand that I couldn't keep at it for much longer or else I'd lose myself completely, even though I couldn't explain that to anyone if I tried, which is why I took those little breaks at night for a sense of freedom. The impulse to run away and never look back was something that not a lot of people I knew had to put up with, and that told me all I needed to know.

When I want to feel calm, like nothing can hurt me, I turn to the sky and I think about flying.

I reach the roof. The night is clear tonight aside from the light pollution obscuring most of the stars, and there are celebrations all over the city. I lean on the railing around the edge of the roof and take it all in: skyscrapers, roads and cars with pretty lights, the occasional jingle of a tram bell, the frequent honk of a horn, songs from the citizens, the faint outlines of mountains creasing the sky, the near-empty car park directly below me and the warehouses and trucks opposite it separated by a line of shiny fences and tree planters - it's a wonderful place really, and for a moment I wonder why Blaze's mother moved away to District 6 and why she didn't take the family back with her. But then I remember what the celebrations are for, and the politics that this city was built upon.

"What's popping, flowerpot?"

To my left appears another tribute. In the low light I just about make out the silhouette of a large hat, and identify the tribute as the boy from Twelve.

"Excuse me?" I reply.

"Your hair." He nods at me. "It kinda looks like a pot leaf. You sticking around for long? I'll be up here for a while."

I take another look over the city and up at the sky. It's not right for stargazing. There's too much light coming from below. There's too much noise to distract me.

"Nah, I'm gonna head back down," I reply. I discover from his presence that this would only have a chance at working if I were alone.

Chapter Text

On the morning of the second day of training, Blaze and I discuss allies. We already know that the Careers are a no-go zone, but we leave the boy from One out of the equation, because he clearly has his own thing going on. He's met with Shadow from Five, and moseyed by Rouge from Five and Matilda from Seven, and as Blaze ponders on the possibility of ignoring Mephiles and attempting an alliance with District 3, I watch him snake around the entrance of the close combat simulator to watch Mighty from Seven on the wrestling.

I shake my head "Bad idea. If we cross our own mentor then who's to say he's going to help us? Vector doesn't look particularly friendly anyway."

He sits alone on the floor of knot-tying, and stares at his tangle with nothing but frustration and confusion.

"But we could talk to Cream," I suggest. "Even if we don't want to ally, I'd still like to meet her. We were planning to go to camo anyway."

We head over to her and watch as she carefully paints tree bark onto the back of her left hand, heavily invested, so we wait for her to notice us first.

Blaze tells me that she lives in the inner city of Six, a wealthier sub-district, with less craftsmanship and more engineering. It's the bit with all the high-rise offices where the more educated go to work in 3D modelling or concept art or simulations and maps of how things are supposed to work. It's a high population with high density living, and nature spots are few and far between. We work with the nature collection rather than the paint, because if you can work with that then you can work with both, and paint would be a weird thing to come across in an arena. I show her the differences between all the plants I can name and important features to look out for just in case someone is smart with plants and knows what's correct for the environment and what isn't, and she teaches me how to weave pretty much anything into my hair and my quills.

Cream leaves without talking to us after Vector calls her over to him. I find the funny side in it. If you want to be allies with someone then you have to make the first move and I wasn't going to risk that after what Mephiles said, even if I don't see any relevance of what happened last year. But Blaze isn't as relieved to see the back of Cream.

"You don't have to listen to everything he says, you know?" Blaze reminds me.

"I wasn't planning on it."

She sighs, and flicks a piece of mud from her arm. "Okay, I'll trust you. We are friends, right?"

I have to think about that for a second. We're allies, of course, we're obliged to be and I have no problem with it, but friendship is dangerous territory. Elise had a friend, and when she died, he tried to blow up the moon.

"Yeah, we're friends," I smile. Only because friendship is a nice thought even if it is a little bit silly, and it's returned with a happiness in Blaze's eyes that I haven't seen yet, so I find myself settling into the idea pretty quickly.

I sort us out a few bowls of water and we clean the mud off ourselves ready for lunch. We did well. If it came to it, I could pretend to be a bush and Blaze could pretend to be the floor. I pick up one of the bowls, now full of opaque slime-like mush, and head back to the sink with it only to be cut off by the girl from Two, who conveniently slams straight into the bowl, covering us both in the dirty water.

"What the fuck?" She yells. "Idiot!"

I gag on the taste of the mud. "This is- that's just- my whole good mood is ruined!" I snap at her. "I hope you're happy with yourself!"

She runs her hands down her sodden shirt, pushing flecks of leaf onto the floor. "I am happy with myself," she snarls. "I have a positive mental attitude!"

I roll my eyes. "Man, I wish that were me. Go away."

She follows me to the sink. "This is all your fault, Silver boy! I'm gonna pluck you up, melt you down, and make a fucking necklace!"

I pretend to care. "Yeah, I probably deserve it."

She suddenly stops following me. "Wait. Shit. You don't make this fun 'cause you're sad."

"I'm always sad." I turn back around to face her fully so I can push this even further. "That's just my thing. I'm sorry, I'm sad, that's just how I be. Leave me alone. You are so rude."

The Careers laugh from a distance. "Hey, Espio! Where are you? Get a load of this!" yells the girl from One, in no particular direction.

Two's girl frowns. "Well now I just feel bad. Dammit." She heads back to the pack, pulls off her shirt, and replaces it with another from a shelf. The second she leaves earshot, she laughs along.

Here's me, thinking I won that. My go-to tactic doesn't usually fail me, but the progenitor is so easy to confuse that it doesn't surprise me.

Espio turns up back to the pack from the close combat simulator and listens to the Careers' account of what just happened. He smiles but does not laugh. He just waits for the topic to change, says hi to Blaze who sits in awe, and makes his way over to me once I've changed my shirt and combed the mud out of my fur.

"You alright?" He asks.

I scowl in an effort to make him go away. "I'm fine."

He hums. "What actually happened?"

I glance back over to the Careers, who have since headed over to Swords to try their luck. This is weird. Espio leans on the side of the shelf with the spare clothes, arms softly folded. I can't identify any hostility in him. I can't work out why he is always so unamused by the rest of the Careers, when usually it's the male tribute from One who glues the alliance together. He is actively sabotaging the Careers in a way that they can't oppose, because he's just never there. He didn't even show up for their toast.

"She cut me off," I answer, and he chuckles in response.

"Don't worry about them," he smiles. "Their mouths are bigger than their brains."

"You got the right," I smile back, still a little sceptical. "We heard every word of Big's plan yesterday."

"So did the whole of Panem. We can leave them to it." He nods to me. "You take care."

Chapter Text

"You know him, right?" Mephiles frustratedly interrogates down the phone line. "You guys are exes or something. If this relationship is going to work, you can't bring your exes. You know how uncomfortable that makes me, sweetie. Please. Let him- just go- make him go away."

I stand in the community kitchen with Blaze and a hot chocolate. I had to make it myself, since Avoxes have been banned from this space. Mephiles has been pacing in and out for the last ten minutes or so, arguing with the man he's been seeing.

"Oh damn," he gasps. "Okay no, that's one hell of a red flag, but that's kinda not my problem, dude- look, I'm sorry but I'm gonna have to call this off. You don't. Bring exes. To dates."

He flips his phone over, throws it onto the kitchen counter, and slides down the doorframe onto the floor, looking very defeated.

"I've got one word of advice for you two," he coughs. "If they're not your type, don't freaking go."

Blaze frowns. "I thought you were supposed to be mentoring us on the Hunger Games, not romance."

For the last couple of days, Blaze has tried and failed to dig some actually useful advice out of Mephiles other than 'get good allies but stay away from Three' and 'make sure you have water, no matter what it takes'. Both of which are useful bits of advice for sponsors and for survival but we both agree that it's not enough.

He rolls his eyes at her. "I'm allowed a life, you know."

"We're not."

"Well, if you'd rather have an inexperienced, unruly, prejudiced Capitol miscreant to match your spoilt princess energy then just say so!" He snaps. "No? Well then shut up complaining! I'm done with you, Blaze. Leave me alone. If I'm not enough for you then join the Careers, they'll give you more than I ever could."

Mephiles puts his head in his hands and groans.

"It's hard," he continues. He gets more frantic as he goes on. "You're difficult. You make this really hard for me. You have no idea what this is like, okay? I survived the Games three years ago. My brain split in half. I don't know who I am anymore- Will you stop staring at me with your judgy little eyes!"

Blaze sighs and swirls her mug around. "I don't think I'm the difficult one here. I just want to learn how to survive from someone who's been there and done it."

"Get out." He snarls slowly. "There's a reason you've got no bloody friends. Get out."

She hesitates, so Mephiles yells the command again, and then she leaves straight away.

Mephiles leans back against the doorframe, breathing heavily through his mask, staring at the kitchen ceiling. Blaze is half right, he is a mentor and he needs to act like one, but she's been going about getting that out of him in the complete wrong way. Trauma does strange things to a person, and he's been through hell and back to get here today. He went from barely staying afloat and regressing to more naïve times to cope, to selling his soul, his mind, his name and his body to anyone who would pay for it after three days of televised torture dubbed as entertainment, just so he could feel like he's at least gaining something while losing everything in the process. He deserved none of it. Nobody ever deserved to win the Hunger Games, but I can't think of anybody who got a worse deal than Mephiles.

"I'm so sorry," is all I can say.

"I kept my eyes shut during the replays after I won," he tells me. "In fact, I never watched it back. I never needed to."

"It stayed in your head, huh?"

"Yeah. It never leaves." He shudders. "I could smell smoke wherever I went even if there wasn't anything there. It felt like the air was falling in on me, every second of every day, and it felt like I couldn't breathe even though I knew I could. That's why I wear this mask all the time. It... it makes the air feel safer. My lungs are messed up and my skin's all dry but I don't care. It makes the air feel safer. And I started doing morphling to make myself feel better. That's the only time I can really forget about it, Silver- I mean... Silicone."

I smirk. Even while venting, he still manages to 'forget' my name. "Alright. Microphone."

"Stopwatch."

"Measles."

His eyes tell me that he's smiling. "At least you're not an ass. This is so... unprofessional of me, I'm sorry. This hasn't happened like this before."

"Don't worry about it," I smile back. "You're trying. That's good enough for me."

I head back up to the roof again for another shot at some alone time under the stars. It's less loud outside tonight with no big parties or fairs, so the light pollution is a little less and the stars are a little more plentiful.

I came up with some of my best ideas under the stars. That impulse to run away and never look back - it was the middle of the night when I set out my plan. Step-by-step, it was to borrow the school printer to forge everything I'd ever need, tell school I was to be home-schooled for my final core year and provide those forged documents, tell the progenitor I'm still going and drop a fake letter through the letterbox every now and then, lie about my age to get into work early, stash all the money away, raid the progenitor's mattress to steal my real documents that he would never let me see, flee, pay the Hold to lie for me, help them in their scam, and gaslight everybody along the way. If I could avoid being reaped even with a thousand papers in the bowl, I'd have saved enough money to take my leave and run for the hills. Flee with extra flee.

Either way, I didn't really mind. The possibility of landing here was a very real one, and one that I did think about a lot more than I wanted to. I didn't want to think about it at all, so anything was a lot. In a way, I longed for it. An easy way out.

I call him the progenitor because he is no father to me, just an ancestor with no real emotional significance. Any other word tied a feeling to that relationship, and there were none. He's the kind of man who would laugh in the faces of the people he hurt, offer them a joint in a shallow attempt at reconciliation, and not take no for an answer. He's the kind of man who smiles in public, which is the only time he ever smiles. He's the kind of man who believes the world is flat, there's no such thing as a climate, let alone climate change, prophecies actually mean something, the future is completely doomed and revolution will always fail, he's always right, and mental illness doesn't exist even though he's cycled through every personality under the sun, sometimes all in one day.

If I were brave enough, or not a coward, whichever is more relevant in a time like this, I'd throw myself over the fence on the roof of the Tribute Centre and freefall to the floor. Because there's a really good chance I'll die in the arena, and I don't see the point in waiting. Because if I wait and I do win, I'll only end up like Mephiles. Lost, alone, tired, and traumatised, with a lifetime of publicity ahead of me, and no way to frolic under the stars without a voice in the back of my head telling me that someone is still watching me.

Chapter Text

The final morning of training goes so much more smoothly than the others. Blaze and I go off in our own directions to revise and cram as much as we can. I discover that I am terrible with all weapons I lay my hands on so I don't even bother trying to learn, and move onto things I might actually stand a chance with. Plant identification, hunting, camouflage, and knot tying.

I see a lot of Mighty from Seven and his quiet friend from Eight. I keep my eye on them, and judge that neither of them are particularly good at what they do apart from knot tying and starting fires. I can understand Eight not being great with plants, but I expected more from Mighty. As I wait for another turn on the plants test, Ray gives Mighty a nudge to tell him it's enough.

"It's just not what I lived nearby," Mighty sighs. "Do you think this could be a clue for the arena?"

His friend shakes his head.

"Yeah, you're probably right."

I was intrigued by Mighty during the reaping recap, and how he so nonchalantly gave his life away after the reaping of his sister. I wondered if he was like me, and all he really wanted was a ticket to death, but the presence of his sister told me otherwise.

Under the stars, I thought a lot about the other tributes and how they might be feeling. Blaze clearly wants to win, or at least do well. The Careers must want to as well. I'm ignoring Espio. District 5, on paper, look like contenders, especially since they've only just won, but Maria could be even more useless than Mephiles is. I've seen bits of Ten and Twelve and they are all fighters. Anything could happen with Three, and Nine should have given up as soon as they got in their chariot. Eleven are impossible to decipher.

Mighty can't possibly want to win. Surely he only put himself here because he wants Matilda to go home and he'd rather die than let her do that alone, but she's not giving him anything back. She's been avoiding him, preferring Five over her own district. She'll go somewhere, see him there, and turn right back around. They're both tense, acting like strangers even though they're siblings.

There's something very odd going on with District 7.

I run through the plants test for the last time and score an 83, and Blaze meets back up with me so we can train together for the final hour or so. This is where we discover that she is remarkable at starting fires with basically anything - it has to be destiny - and I'm half decent with an axe as long as I'm not in combat with it.

For our final lunch in the Training centre, we sit opposite one another and pay close attention to those around us. The Careers sit together, but Espio sits with the boy from Five. Matilda and the Rouge from Five sit as far from Mighty as they can. Vector and Cream engage in a quiet exchange of what looks to be a collection of proposals for an action plan, and shake hands on some deal. It's all very close and quiet, with small distinct groups and no real branching out. I don't know how to feel about that. I don't know what that would mean for us.

"What are you gonna do in the private session this afternoon?" Blaze asks me.

"I haven't thought about it," I admit. "Like genuinely, I have no idea."

"You should do camo."

"I need to do something more impressive than that."

"Hunt? Rig up a snare and then set it off."

"Okay, what about the other nine minutes? I'm kidding, I'll think of something."

I'll have to think of something. In the short time I spend with Mephiles before I have to head back down, I find a way to ease him into telling me that he was very good with a spear, and found a way to light the tip on fire, earning him a solid score of eight. He follows on from that by telling me that he was at least partially responsible for eight deaths in the 24th Games - a feat he is not proud of anymore, although he played right into the insanity because it helped him get his way - and in a complete forfeit of all morals, his only innate response to any tribute dying in his vicinity was manic laughter. Maybe it was sleep or oxygen deprivation. It was certainly deprivation of something. His last piece of advice for us before Blaze and I head into the waiting corridor is that if either of us are going to attempt something like that, we need to make sure to unscrew our heads from our bodies first.

The wait is terrible. We have the timings explained to us and I spot Mighty counting on his fingers before letting out an inaudible sigh.

I spend the two and a bit hours of waiting just staring off into space and daydreaming. Zomom has had his music on through a portable speaker occasionally, during his second or third evening dinners or whatever, since Mephiles took his headphones away. I could never make out the words that were coming from his mouth because there was always a sandwich in there at the same time, but the tunes stuck themselves in my head and never really left.

The music scene of this country is another thing I asked Elise about. District 6 has various underground techno bands, not unlike what the Capitol produces. A few heavier bands from Five managed to wriggle their way into Capitol citizenship after their music got leaked on the news and the President enjoyed it so much that he wanted more. Twelve has a lot of songs. Any time they're on the news, someone is singing something. Elise had heard of a girl who got famous from the tenth Hunger Games by singing at every opportunity, with a fluffy dress and a knack with snakes, but she couldn't remember if her songs actually existed or if they were just part of her late father's lullabies.

She sang one to me a few times, and there was a line that really stuck with me, that I sang to myself after she died.

'Too bad I'm the bet that you lost in the reaping. Now what will you do when I go to my grave?'

Chapter Text

"There was one my father sang to me before the accident," she smiles. "He remembered it from about sixteen years ago. Would you like to hear that one?"

"I'd love to," Tails grins, shuffling closer to her, trying to keep the clinking metal on his back quiet.

Elise obliges. She clears her throat and starts to sing. "You're headed for heaven, the sweet old hereafter, and I've got one foot in the door. But before I can fly up, I've loose ends to tie up, right here in the old therebefore."

-o-

I shake away the memories of old dreams, because they are dreams. They have to be. If I convince myself that it never happened then it will all be okay. I stand on the star in the middle of the rearranged tribute centre, introduce myself, and get to work.

I start by gutting and skinning a rabbit in a matter of seconds just like how I practiced. Any other animal should work similarly, it's just that rabbits are so much looser and easier to tear apart, so that was where I decided to start. I grab some sticks and a fire starter, split some logs, and leave the carcass to roast while I work on something else. I tie up a snare but do it wrong, and lose my momentum almost as soon as I gained it. The next two attempts are a bit more careful, and eventually I get it to trigger at the flick of a feather. I check on the rabbit and find it burnt on one side and raw on the other so I just dump it in a bin - it's not like I'd ever leave food unattended in the arena - and try my luck with the plants test, scoring another 83. A few more logs split with the axe later, the timer beeps and the Avoxes shoo me out.

In the exit corridor, I hear echoes of yet another bickerment between Mephiles and Zomom.

Mephiles groans. "No, I don't want to try your stupid chipotle."

"It's not chipotle, it's chile ahumado en salsa gourmet!"

"Saying it in witch-speak isn't going to make it sound any more appetising."

They both emerge from the men's off to the side.

"District tongues could never handle strong flavours anyway," Zomom laughs.

Mephiles rolls his eyes. "Did your mother ever tell you you're a failure?"

The comment hits Zomom right where it hurts, stopping him in his tracks. Upset, he slumps down on the bench nearest the exit. It creaks dangerously under his weight. "Every day."

Mephiles tuts at him, and turns his attention to me. "Hey Stratosphere, how'd it go?"

I lean against the dull grey wall and look back at the door I came out of, thinking of Blaze and what she could possibly be up to. "I think I took on too much," I reflect.

"What did you do?"

"A plants test, a really bad snare that took forever to get right, some axe work, and I tried to cook a rabbit."

"Did it taste good?" Zomom asks sadly.

I shrug. "Didn't try it. I burnt it. I- ...Zomom."

"Yeah?"

"Is food all you ever think about?"

He looks up at me with pitiful eyes, processes my words, and lets out an immense whine. "Mom was right. I am a failure!" he cries, and he gets up and slams the exit door behind him.

"Can you believe they'd have paid him more than me, if I took the money?" Mephiles shakes his head, and we wait in silence for Blaze.

She did pretty much the same things as I did, only slightly better. When we make it back to the sixth floor, Blaze questions Zomom on why he wasn't there to take us back, and he just sits in silence eating a sandwich with tears in his eyes.

"Do you think we took it too far?" I whisper to Mephiles in the kitchen soon after he took some more morphling.

He smiles evilly. "He deserves it."

"You think?"

"Have you heard what he's been saying about district folk? I hate working with him. He's been like this since the day he met me and beyond."

He quietly squeezes a fruity-smelling teabag against the inside wall of his cup with a small silver spoon, and doesn't stop smiling.

"He deserves every insult that comes his way. I despise every bean of yellow lard on his body. Look at him."

For a few moments, the two of us watch as Blaze tries to nudge him back into happiness using her limited ability to swap between displaying her logic and her compassion. She tries her best to cheer him up but Zomom clearly isn't as good of a thinker as she would need him to be in order for her comforting style to work.

"Look at him solving problems with food, during the Hunger Games of all times."

"I mean, if it works..." I try to choose my words carefully. "...If he has access to something that helps-"

"It's not helping though, is it. All that money he's spending on chile ahumado en salsa gourmet," he says in a mocking tone, "could have been traded for actual therapy, if he's that traumatised."

I almost say that that's rich coming from him, but I know better than to do that and keep my mouth shut.

"Anyway," Mephiles continues, relaxing into a dream-like trance fuelled by the drug in his veins, "if you had to estimate a score, what do you reckon it'd be?"

I think about that for some time. Mephiles scored an eight for his fire spears and Elise scored a six but I never found out what she did. Surely survival skills would be more important than combat, but in the final two, combat will almost always be essential. The ability to eat well with the resources at hand is necessary, and that would include avoiding raw meat and charcoal. And to get that meat, you have to be able to trust that you can catch it, and have the resources to do so. All of that would point to something dreadful, but maybe an 83 on the plants test, a successful fire, and some good axe swings would bring my total back up again.

"Something middle of the road, I hope," is the conclusion I eventually come to.

"You're not going to be optimistic at all?"

"That was the optimism, Misfortune."

He chuckles lightly. "You're just like me really, aren't you?"

I raise an eyebrow at him. "A sadist with a crush on the sun?"

"Yeah. I stand by what I said in that interview, you know," he grins, floating in some kind of mystical cloud space. "The sun's pretty hot." 

Chapter Text

I spend some time with Blaze in her room for a little while before the announcement of our training scores on Capitol Calling tonight. She explains to me how she dislikes a lot of the clothes she has been provided with because they prioritise looks over material comfort. I ask her if that's why she's been cycling through several different colours of pretty much the same thing - leggings and a soft dress - and she says that they're the only garments that feel okay on her.

Just out of curiosity, I take a look through her wardrobe and find it to be exactly the same as mine.

"Clearly you don't have a problem with any of it," she laughs, referring to the skinny jeans I put on after settling back down.

"I wanted to experiment," I reply. "They've given us so much, I thought, why not try it?"

She smiles devilishly. "I'll give you twenty seconds to run to your room, rummage through your wardrobe, and make an outfit. At least one thing from each section."

I grin back, liking the challenge. "Only if you do it too. And you only get ten seconds because you're already here. And you're banned from leggings and fluff."

"Deal." She leans over from the bed to her bedside table and grabs the TV remote. "When this turns on, it's go. Be back here after twenty seconds or you have to forfeit one item of clothing," she laughs. She presses the on button and we wait for the screen to turn from dark blue to a channel, and then we go.

I take no notice of what I grab apart from the fact that it follows a black and red colour scheme. Some kind of thin shirt, something stiff, some leg-covering that could be absolutely anything, general accessories, and a pair of boots, and I bring them back to Blaze's room with about three seconds to spare.

She leans on her closet door clutching clothes of all colours, laughing hysterically. "This is so silly, I don't know what I'm doing!"

"Who's putting them on first?"

"You are."

I borrow her bathroom and examine what I've got to work with. A thin black long-sleeved dress shirt, black trousers so baggy they could be mistaken for a skirt, various thick black bracelets with silver trim, and an elegant red leather corset that sits just perfectly over my torso when I cinch it over the shirt. It's not something I ever would have thought of. I decide that it doesn't suit me one bit when I check my full reflection in the mirror, it's more of a Mephiles thing to wear, but in terms of Capitol fashion it's one of the better things I've seen.

Blaze gasps when she sees me. "Wow. That is classy."

"I'm not a fan," I laugh, but I give her a spin anyway. The trouser legs splay out around me and tickle my legs when they settle back down.

Blaze's outfit turns out to be a mint green crop top with baggy blue shorts, socks that she greatly underestimated the length of when she picked them out, and a beret. She comes out of the bathroom still battling with her top-knot until she gives up, takes it down, plunges her hands into her pockets and makes an exaggerated pout.

"What can I say?" she shrugs. "I've looked worse."

"So have the Capitol," I laugh, which dissolves into us flicking through various channels to critique the fashion and rate it out of ten, and occasionally wheezing at the strange hair and makeup.

Blaze suddenly turns serious. "Do you think they do this on purpose?"

I adjust the tightness of my corset. "Do what?"

"Make the districts look as dull as possible."

I take some time to think about what she means. On the screen is an overhead view of District 8's residential - the same building copied and pasted over and over again until the smog from the industrial breaks the vision. And then another overhead view of Twelve, with sprawling cabins on a plane of endless dirt road dusted with coal. Every man and every woman in the videos follows a solid trend of dark working clothes, following strict social corridors. It was the same for Six. It's the same for everywhere, when you look at it through a television screen.

"They're a lot more colourful than the Capitol is letting on," I reply.

"I mean individually," Blaze says. "It feels good to be able to explore these things, and yet nobody in the Districts ever does it."

I look down at my corset and skirt-looking trousers, and then to Blaze's shorts and shin-socks. "No, there definitely were people who did."

"Yeah, and what happens to them?"

I sigh. "They end up in a hostel."

The reality is that the Districts are indeed a lot more colourful and diverse than the Capitol likes to portray. In the Capitol, self-expression and individuality are celebrated to the point where identity can not only span aesthetics and genders, but whole species. Beauty standards still exist and are crippling for some, but at least there's some room to move and the option to defy expectations.

"And how do they get there?" Blaze asks.

At least half of the Hold had tried to break away from what was considered normal and desirable, with 'unconventional' views on what makes a man a man, a woman a woman, a factory worker a factory worker, a relationship a relationship, and so on. In a country where hard lines are drawn between people physically, hard lines are drawn socially too.

Give everyone a job. Make that job their entire life, nothing more, nothing less. Convince those in power that the people out there are simple robots whose sole purpose is to provide goods. Succeed at that by only showing them the roughest parts of their servants' homelands, with the blandest of people. Feed in rewards in those zones for conformity and deal punishment for misbehaviour, so soon enough, anything that even smells of something different will be slammed down because the entire district's survival weighs on the Capitol's payments for their undying loyalty. We bow down with our grey eyes to their colours because we are less than them. That's what they've convinced themselves of, and we are on their leashes.

The Capitol will believe that the Districts are backwards and too simple to be able to comprehend the full complexity of identity. Our identity is industry, nothing else. We can't show that we know about all of the overlaps and inbetweens and tangles of words and fabrics. We know of them in the Districts because we're not blind and we're not stupid and we're complicated people. What's holding us back is fear of losing everything over a small act of 'rebellion' like a young man wearing a corset.

I nod my head. "I think I know what you're getting at."

Blaze laughs quietly. "I'm so glad I wasn't raised here."

Chapter Text

"Alright," Mephiles sighs, rapidly coming down from his high. "Zomom, if you're gonna be mardy, I don't want you here."

He rolls his eyes. "You're not my dad."

"I'd cry myself to sleep every night if my DNA resulted in you."

"You cry yourself to sleep every night anyway."

"You don't make this easy for me Zomom." Mephiles weakly reaches across the table, grabs some of the bread, rips it open and dumps some ham and coleslaw inside. "Here, glue yourself shut with that."

The TV bursts into sound and colour at 7pm sharp with the intro sequence for Capitol Calling. The four of us watch in silence, soaking up every word from Gerald and Master Zik. After a small introduction and a verbal declaration that everything has been checked and verified, the scores are revealed, and I get a five and Blaze gets a six.

"Can't get much more middle of the road than that," Mephiles says. He massages the inside of his left elbow, clearly not enjoying his life right now. "Good job."

From a quick glance at Blaze, I see that neither of us can tell whether he meant to say that, and if he did, whether he actually thinks we did good, but it doesn't take long for us to remember that Mephiles does not do things just for the sake of being polite, especially when he's starting to crash.

"There were a lot of high scores this year," Blaze observes after the reveal is done.

"What are they usually like?" I ask.

"Like half of the tributes scored an eight or higher. That doesn't happen. Either they've altered the distribution, or this roster are doing way too well."

"New Gamemakers," Zomom huffs. "They always screw something up."

I decide to get an early night for a change. I swap out the corset and shirt for a pyjama top and leave the trousers on because they're comfortable, and wonder what kind of sleep I'll be getting in the arena. Hopefully more than Mephiles got. Hopefully so much that I don't have to wake up and face the outside of the arena after I've been in it.

The next day is empty of timetabled events all until the evening, with the Saturday night Capitol Calling special where the tributes are interviewed back in that same underground arena as where the parade was. The day is spent preparing. Mephiles asks Blaze and I to think of everything that's important to us, the people that we love, and the aspects of our personality that we want to show.

Specifically, his final advice is that Blaze should squeeze as much screen time out of her ancestry as possible and not be an absolute jackass, and I should try not to look like I'm so dizzily under the influence of psychedelics that I'm terrified the sky could open up and abduct me to the wastelands of the fallen Thirteen at any given moment.

"Do I really look like that?"

"The whole of Panem thought you'd never seen the sky before," Mephiles groans, leaning further into his cushions. "You looked fascinated by the fact that clouds exist."

I choose tomfoolery. "I am fascinated by the fact that clouds exist! You haven't lived in District 6 for any longer than a week at a time for about three years. Reaping week is the only week of the year where Six even has clouds."

"You're forgetting I grew up there, idiot."

"Yeah. In the South. You get Three's clouds. We don't make clouds in the North."

He sits up from his lazy position on the sofa. "What do you mean we don't make clouds?"

"How many chimneys have you ever seen in the north of Six?" I ask. "We do oil distilleries up there, we don't burn the stuff."

Mephiles buffers.

"They only put the clouds up there in Reaping week to make us look normal."

Blaze has to stifle a laugh.

"I'd never really seen a white sky before," I continue. "I'm used to it being either blue, orange, black-"

Mephiles cuts me off. "Hold on. You think clouds come from chimneys?" he asks slowly and carefully.

"Well why else does the tap water taste like gasoline?"

Mephiles swears at me and Blaze loses it. A heated back-and-forth ensues where even after I try to explain that I'm not actually that stupid, I just like the sky, Mephiles is still thoroughly bewildered.

"Silver, focus, yeah? Your interview is in like two hours."

"I've been focusing all day," I whine playfully.

He swears at me again and heads to his room, but just before he goes in through the door I notice the corners of his eyes crinkle up in what must be a smile.

This time, it's Blaze's stylist who picks us up and takes us down to the studios, where Julie-Su waits patiently for me with yet another white suit in her hands.

"You were stunning in the parade," she praises, passing me the clothes to put on. "The Capitol are loving this glow-up from the Reaping."

"Well that is all thanks to you," I reply, a little muffled from the shirt pulled over my head. "Plus all of the clothes here are amazing."

"Have you been trying some on?"

I sort out my top half. It's a pristine white shirt with a pale yellow tie, no blazer. I run my hand over the stiff, starchy fabric of the trousers. "I had a corset on yesterday. I can't say whether I liked it or not though. It was very dark and that's not really my thing, you know?"

"A corset?" she repeats, and thinks for a little while. "A corset... I knew there was something missing from this outfit! Hang tight."

I watch her dive back into her messy closet and rummage through all of the whites for a plain corset pretty much exactly like the one I found. She spends a good half an hour fitting it to me and punching pastel gems and sequins into it to make me sparkle.

We step back from her work station with about ten minutes to go before I need to be in the arena, and admire what Julie-Su has done for me.

"You're like a cloud, aren't you?" She laughs, combing through my quills with some kind of gel. "A ball of sparkly... fluffy... white..."

"Yeah," I grin. If I squint, the sequins look like sheets of bright, falling snow. "I am."

Chapter Text

The arena's second iteration is much more like a theatre. The alley down the middle is gone and has been replaced with some kind of VIP seating arrangement with the Gamemakers, mentors, stylists, and other officials, including the dean of the Capitol's Academy and the successor of the creator of the Hunger Games, Professor Pickle.

I pay no real attention to the introduction, only looking where the camera points to in order to pretend that I am interested in the slightest about what Gerald has to say about odds and betting and all of the things that make a competition out of our lives.

My plan was to only really focus on myself for this. I don't need to suss out anybody else, only victors do that, but when Espio continues being strange and Big goes all in with the simple dual-braincell, leisurely caramel ocean exploring, care-free Live Laugh Love daffodil system, I actually start paying some more attention, to the point where after Blaze's flawless interview I am actually alert for once.

"How sad is it for our own Capitol blood to be a part of this... tradition," Gerald laments, in a way that sounds like he is speaking with a gun to his head, and if he called the Games by anything negative, the armed would not hesitate. "Anyway. Next up, our beacon of light in all things dark, it's Silver!"

I force myself to smile at the nearest camera and head over to the armchair in the middle of the front of the stage. I wobble a little on the way there, feeling high on all of the eyes that have suddenly landed on me. My heart stutters a little and my limbs and stomach start to fizz.

"Good evening, Silver," Gerald says.

All I can get out in response is a quiet, "Hi."

Gerald taps his cards on his little table and clears his throat. "You have a wonderful theme going on, don't you? Now I have just received word from your stylist, Julie-Su, who has set you up for a neat little uh... showcase. We have to do this quickly though."

"A showcase?" I ask.

"Yes. Go on, give us a twirl. Sparkle for us!"

A new spotlight bursts onto me from somewhere in the distant front, lighting up all of my gems and sequins and blinding my view of the audience. I do as Gerald says, he gives me no real choice when he appears by my side and grabs my hand, stands me up, and guides me through a full turn. I attempt the least confused expression I can manage. Nobody told me I would be doing this but it's over quicker than it started.

"Now how's that for a glow-up!"

Somehow the audience starts clapping and on a distant screen is the smiling face of Julie-Su. I collapse back into the armchair, grateful for something steady, and completely lose any readiness I once had.

"Well now we've got that out of the way," Gerald chuckles, "tell me. What are you bringing to the arena for us?"

I wasn't told to think about this either. I stutter over the start of my answer, struggling to pin something down that I could be good at, even if it might be a lie. "...Stealth."

"Ah, you're a sneaker!"

"I have been called that," I reply, more quietly than I intended. In the corner of my eye, from the VIP area, I see someone facepalm who I can only imagine to be Mephiles.

"I see, I see. Watch out, everybody. A wild Silver may appear at any moment! Next question. What has impressed you the most about the Capitol?"

This is more like it, and this time I have an answer straight away. "Oh, the trains, by a landslide."

"But Silver, you're from Six!"

"I live up in the North where we make the fuel and the paint, and I've painted some vehicle shells but I've never actually seen the whole things," I tell. "It's fantastic, really, how everything all fits together, and knowing that everything has come from somewhere different and all ended up in the same place."

Gerald grins. "Why yes, how correct! I'm sure this could be a metaphor for the current situation here. All eyes in Panem, all on you Silver, all on you. Panem indeed works best as a team. About your district now, who is at home watching you today? Loved ones?"

My breath catches in my throat. "Well... Nobody in particular."

"Not even family?"

I reply quickly. "They are not in the picture."

The buzzer sounds, signifying a very welcome end to my interview. The crowd makes some awful pitying noise and Gerald whistles sadly and very, very fakely.

"How unfortunate for Silver," Gerald says, as I get up and head back to the half-moon of chairs in the back. "However we must move on! And speaking of family, we are now onto District 7. Please welcome, Matilda!"

On her way past me I feel her brush her hand against mine, and I know it's not an accident because when I look down to see it, it's stuck out a little to the side. I only really process her small gesture when I sit back down next to Blaze who makes the same movement, but instead of grazing my hand, she holds it and gives it a gentle squeeze to hopefully confirm that I'm not going crazy, and that that interview was weird as shit.

What else is weird as shit is the fact that other tributes who would otherwise be threats appear to care about me, at least a little bit. Or maybe that's just how a lot of tributes are. Nice people like us.

I am estranged from my family in every sense of the word, only speaking to them when we cross paths at times like the Reaping when we have no choice but to be in the same place at the same time. Normally I wouldn't care, because I found a new family in the Hold. I don't know them that well, but I know them well enough to know that they're good people, even if they are basically a hidden gang with messed up histories who make fraudulent bread and sell it on some tax-free conveyor belt of things that aren't really supposed to exist.

There is a privilege that comes with having a blood family who are good and supportive people, and nobody acknowledges it because that is the most normal and understood thing, so much so that it's implied even in the word 'family' that those strong and warm connections exist. Blaze acknowledges it because I've told her. What I didn't expect was for Matilda, whose brother literally gave his life away to come with her to the Games, to also acknowledge it.

The Stratnyy interviews finally tell me everything I need to know about who they really are.

Chapter Text

"Hello."

"Good evening, Matilda! My, I have a lot to ask you tonight."

Matilda doesn't get a silly little twirl, or by the sound of it, any unexpected questions. She answers firmly and confidently in the way a Career would. In the way Espio probably should have. She makes a point of showcasing her best features, and tells about how strong arms and a creative flair are part of the Stratnyy blood. She says something about how there is no room for stupid decisions and keeps the audience hooked on every lingering word. The disappointment that flows from her to Mighty is so intense that it almost brings a laugh out of me.

Gerald shushes the crowd's cooing. "Now then. I'm sure you know what's coming. Your brother is here with you."

The bit we've all been waiting to see.

"Indeed he is," she replies, with a kind of flatness to her voice.

I make a quick glance to my right at Mighty, who is in my full view because of the empty chair between us. He stares straight forwards, right into the back of Matilda's head, as still as a statue. Tense as anything. He must feel it too. The resulting silence pushes Matilda to say more.

"I'm thankful that he is here with me. A familiar face within all this chaos. And one thing I would like to say, to my family, to my parents: Don't worry about us. Especially you, Mum, we're doing just fine out here."

'Liar,' I think to myself. There is so much more to this. There is so much more to her.

Mighty's interview is even stranger. His first few sentences are just as messy as mine were but the audience don't care and they cheer for him anyway.

"I have full confidence in Matilda and I think she has what it takes to come home, but at that point I don't think we could ever be the same as a family, you know?"

There's a new silence.

"The second Zor pulled her name out of that bowl, it was game over for every Stratnyy because we all love each other more than anything."

This time when I glance to my right I meet the eyes of Matilda. She flicks her gaze to Mighty and back, and then returns to twiddling her thumbs. I can tell that she's not even remotely into this. Her expression, from what I can see of it, very subtly cycles between scepticism, intrigue, and morbid amusement. And right at the end, a choke is forced out of her when Mighty says, "And maybe this was a stupid decision on my part but I'm here now and I can feel it: District 7 is going to have a victor this year."

I'm sure the cold, wild and ironic laughter that comes out during the final cheers for the Stratnyys could be mistaken for joy and sibling love by any Capitol Games fan, even when she manages to completely switch back to her usual deadpan self the second Mighty looks in her general direction. They're not as close as they are pretending to be and I want to know more.

The rest of the interviews are interesting in their own way. District 9 make jokes about fighting each other and make light of their comedic parade outfits. They bounce off each other in their respective interviews, communicating all the way through, and giving the Capitol a show that will force them to remember at least something about the most forgettable district on the continent. The echidnas from District 10 are straight to the point, strong, and unafraid.

The girl from Eleven, Sticks, just doesn't speak. It's a miracle she managed to get to the armchair with how little she cooperates. She is rigid and confused, darting her attention between anything and everything, none of it Gerald, and when her buzzer goes, she leaves in a flash. The boy, by contrast, is much more down to earth and makes absolutely no comment on his partner's behaviour. To round off the interviews are another clean and concise pair from Twelve.

I don't know what it is. It feels weird. All of it feels weird. The Careers are being weird. Cream being reaped is weird. Vector being literally nineteen - Blaze heard him mention that it was his birthday on Wednesday and only thought to tell me now on the way back to the sixth floor - is weird. Big pretending to be stupid is weird. Julie-Su hijacking my interview is weird. District 7's relationship is weird. District 9's attitude is weird. Sticks is weird. All of it feels weird.

Maybe it's because I've never really paid attention before.

"Sandal, what the fuck was that?" Mephiles asks me the second we get in.

I collapse onto the big sofa, unclipping my corset to give myself some more air. "I don't bloody know. Julie-Su just can't ever plan things in advance, can she?"

"You did well," Blaze says, but her attitude completely shifts when she sees Mephiles in the kitchen breaking out the so-called 'beast box' yet again. "Mephiles!"

"Yes, Blaze?" he shouts back, rolling up his left sleeve.

"Can you like, not?"

He takes a syringe from the box, pulls some rubber off the top, turns it upside down, pushes the bottom slightly and flicks it before pressing it deep into the crook of his elbow. "Can I not what?"

Blaze sighs. "Too late."

He slowly drags the needle back out of his elbow and mops up the blood with the back of his right glove. "Oh. You're doing this again."

"Yes, I am doing this again. How are you supposed to mentor us when you're always either intoxicated or cranky as anything because you're not intoxicated?"

"You forget that I planned out that entire tram network while high as a flipping kite."

"All I'm saying is-"

"Oh, piss off!" He yells. "You're just as bad as all the others."

Blaze continues. "Everyone is the problem except you, huh? I didn't sign up for this any more than you did. I just want to survive!"

"Well then go and do that! I'm not a genie!"

"Can you at least stay sober for a little while?" she pleads.

"What, and just un-inject the morphling?" He spits. "Stupid girl."

"I meant afterwards! And don't call me stupid!"

I get up off the sofa and make a beeline for the exit, not wanting to have to listen to this for any longer than I need to.

"Bitch, I will call you anything-"

I make a point of slamming the door.

Chapter Text

"...When I'm pure like a dove, when I've learned how to love, right here, in the old therebefore, when nothing is left anymore."

Tails, Nine, Miles, whatever his name is, sits leant forward with his chin in his hands, thoroughly impressed by Elise's singing.

"It's nothing much," she giggles, after seeing the look of awe on his face.

"No, no, it was beautiful!"

Something cracks in the ceiling of their little hiding space. Before either of them have a chance to register that it's all coming down on top of Elise's head, she's dead.

A cannon blows. I turn off the TV.

-o-

This time, I'm not the first onto the roof. Nack from Twelve is back, sitting on a bench next to a small rose garden, and Shadow from Five leans on the fence near where I have been before. I go to my usual spot, not too far away from him, and stare out into the remains of the sunset for a long, quiet time.

"So, Venice. How are you feeling?"

Shadow takes me by surprise. He kept his interview quiet, and dodged almost every question by saying something only vaguely relevant, like when Gerald asked him how he had been feeling recently and he talked about the emotives in the stage design instead. His use of my surname immediately makes my mood even worse. Mephiles's nicknames maybe aren't quite so bad.

"Well... Kintobor," I recall, "I feel like jumping off this building."

"You can't do that."

"You can't stop me."

"No, but the forcefield can."

I look back out over the world and see nothing. "There's a forcefield?"

"Listen."

We both go quiet for a little while. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains as we watched it before, and faint shadows had been cast across the West end of the city, only to be replaced by streetlights. It wasn't a rich sunset, no powerful oranges or pinks or clouds that score the sky, but we still stood, paying more attention to that than to each other before Shadow spoke. Just a clear, dark, glassy blue fading into a pastel yellow that crinkles into foggy peaks. It's beautiful and serene past all of the city, and if it weren't for the sound of motor cars and distant music, I might be able to hear something interesting.

"Do you hear it?" Shadow asks after some time. "That electric buzz."

"No."

He hums. "I guess I'm just used to hearing electricity. But don't jump. You'll just be burnt and thrown right back on."

Shadow reminds me of Mephiles, in the nicest possible way. The use of a name other than my own. The odd interview. The grain of his voice and the pace of his words. Even his dark, leathery style. If I knew no better, I'd mistake them for each other. The difference is that Shadow is very sober and he doesn't seem like a complete jerk.

"How loud is it in District 6?" He asks me, after another stretch of quiet.

I don't understand the question.

"Like, what's the background noise y'all have over there?" He clarifies.

"It depends where you live, I guess," I explain. "I live in a very busy place so I get people noises like this. Some people have it very loud near big factories and stuff."

"That makes sense," he nods. "In Five, it's only really loud near the turbines and the power stations. I live near the transformers. Kind of in the middle of nowhere."

"You're more talkative than you let on."

He shakes his head. "It's called trying not to make enemies."

"So it's not called trying to make friends?"

"Seeking friendship is a fool's endeavour in the Hunger Games," he sighs. "I found some nice people and then they stuck with me. I allowed it, although at first I thought they weren't serious. I swore to myself I wouldn't let it happen again."

"Because... the more attached to people you get..." I trail off, trying to find the words to let him know that I understand exactly where he's coming from, especially after Tails and Elise, and even more so since deciding to give Blaze that little bit of joy and call her a friend, over an ally, over a district partner.

"...The worse it'll be for you in the end," he finishes. "Anyway, if you're going off the interview to judge how talkative I am, then you really are just as naïve as you let on."

"So that is the character you're playing for the cameras?"

"Sure. Well, apart from the fact that I just generally don't like Gerald," he admits. "I don't like to speak to twats like him."

"He tries his best though, doesn't he?"

There's another long pause. The sky is much darker than it was ten minutes ago.

"Do you understand the state of the world?" He asks.

"Yeah," I reply. "The Capitol hates us. They want nothing more than for us to suffer because they think they're better than us."

"They don't though, do they? If they wanted that, they'd kill us all."

I turn to face him. "Are you one of the ones who believes that all people are inherently good?"

"No, that's stupid." He sighs. "What I'm trying to say is, twats like Gerald and his production team and whoever writes his scripts do see us as people of our own with favourable qualities and all of that. The reason I call them twats is because they take those qualities and serve them on a platter to the Capitol so they can see us as real people and then pity us, but not in the good way. In the annoying, patronising way, because their ingrained superiority complexes can't handle it. I won't play along with that. I won't show them anything of me. I won't let them find a way to turn me into some... into some..."

"Some kind of joke?"

"Yeah," he breathes. "Some kind of joke."

I wish I could understand him. I wish I could understand where he's coming from with this. If the Capitol already think we're soulless, then Shadow is only proving them right.

"I wasn't expecting to have such deep discussions tonight," I say.

"Neither was I."

I change the subject. "What brought you up here tonight?"

Shadow smiles. It's a nice smile. "Maria. She told me it would be nice. She said she comes up here during the daytime when she's stressed because the fresh air clears her head and it sometimes helps with her illness when it's starting to get bad. And she was stressed, but she promised me that she would be fine and what she really needed was an early night."

It really is a nice smile. It suits him, and I wish he'd done it more. Maria seems to be the only person who can get that out of him.

We stay on the roof until the sky moves past its dark twilight. It's a quiet night in the city, except for one ambulance that makes a pit-stop in the Tribute Centre's indoor car park and flies out to a hospital. It's peaceful with just the two of us and Nack silently enjoying the roses somewhere behind us. I decide to leave when there is no sign of any sunlight anywhere in the sky anymore, and it's a solid, unbroken abyss.

"Good luck, Shadow," I nod to him.

He nods back. "You too, Silver."

Chapter Text

I'm nervous, but it's a good nervous. It's the kind of nervous that makes the air feel fresher and the sun feel warmer. The kind that keeps you alert after sending you to sleep so very easily because the fuzz felt comforting rather than sickening. It's the kind of gleeful shiver you get when you realise that it's all going to be over soon.

I haven't felt that for years. Before the Hold, this special kind of nervousness would come about in the week running up to the Reaping. It was that easy way out I'd always longed for. But when I wasn't reaped and I knew had to stay in Six, the good nervous turned into the bad nervous and then I couldn't volunteer because the bad nervous is paralysing. I'd go back home and pretend to be grateful that I had to spend another year of my life in this stupid country with these horrible people where I'll never get to be my own person.

Horrible people like Zomom, who can't help but poke fun at Blaze and I when neither of us seem too impressed upon arriving at the hovercraft. Neither of us are in the mood for that kind of thing. Not with me letting the last of the real, unsimulated sunlight penetrate every fibre of my being knowing that the sky will never be real again, and not with Blaze feeling sick to the stomach like every other tribute with a will to live left in tact.

Not to mention that even if we did pretend to care, he'd have a go at us for that too.

The hovercraft ride isn't so unbearable. Blaze and I are sat strapped into our own slice of the inside of it with trackers pressed into our arms and not a single word to say to each other. We land in a series of underground tunnels, and we are escorted one at a time to a launch room. Blaze goes first, and then I'm taken through a dimly-lit labyrinth to the room where Julie-Su waits for me with a suitcase full of this year's clothes.

"They're designed specifically for the arena," she tells me.

I take a look through them before putting them on. They're waterproof and warm, in all of the greens and browns. I can deduce that at least we're not in a spacecraft, or in a literal volcano, so I start to swap my clothes around, feeling a little better about that part in particular.

"You smashed your interview," she tells me, after I'm done getting changed. "I'm sorry I took over a little, but I just saw so much potential in those crystals of yours."

I laugh, more out of the nerves than anything. "You took me by surprise with that twirly thing."

"That twirly thing made you even more memorable. It really paid off for you." She inhales sharply, remembering something. "Here, look, I wanted to show you this."

She takes a sheet of newspaper out of her pocket and shows it to me.

"Silver Venice, the radiant boy from District 6, stealing the hearts of the nation in a dreamy and relaxed interview," Julie-Su happily recites. "They love you."

Under the bold headline is a shot of me mid-spin, with beams of coloured light exploding through the pastel gemstones on the corset like how sunbeams would pierce clouds. A little further down is a recount of what I said about Six's smaller sub-industries, and a large analysis of the fact that there would be absolutely nobody rooting for me. No family, no friends, nobody.

'Though all is not lost for Shining Silver' it reads, before providing the phone number in big letters that would be used to sponsor me. 'Will District 6 have their second victor as the boy who made us dream?'

I turn over the scrap of newspaper and see Matilda's face on it, beneath another headline, but before I can read it, the paper is taken from me. I like how she wants me to believe that the Capitol love me specifically. I don't enjoy the thought of that, though. That they're only loving me because I said that nobody else does.

I wonder if they're aware that the only person who did really love me is the person they killed after she sang so nicely. To this day, I'm still not sure what that was for. I don't know what she could possibly have done. It seemed like a bit of an overreaction, even if the song might have smelt of something a little sour.

"Thirty seconds."

Julie-Su panics, and rushes me into the launch tube. "How are you feeling, dear?"

"Fine," I shrug. "I've been better, I've been worse."

"Don't be scared," she smiles.

"I'm not," I smile back, and it's a genuine smile. "I'll be alright."

We wait for the countdown to end. The tube closes around me, and when the floor begins to shift and rain cascades down through the opening roof, Julie-Su gives me a wave. I put up my hood, close my eyes, and hope that her smiling face is the last thing I will ever see.

I planned out this moment excessively during my weird little just-in-case fantasies, because no matter how little I want to think, I still do. Once I'm up on the podium, I'd close my eyes, never open them, never look at what arena I'm in, and just wait for someone to take me. It's no show. It's no entertainment. I never wanted it to be. It's rebellious, but I'm used to it. Nobody can hurt me if I'm dead, and they can kill my family for all I care.

I relax into the idea of it and listen only to the rain pelting down onto the top of my hood and splashing around the wet ground. I know there is a timer going down somewhere but I don't look for it or try to guess how long is left. It's part of the experience. I can't leave this world peacefully if I'm still anticipating something. I focus on the sounds of the nature and ignore the whispers of voices, shivers of cold or of fear, cracks of knuckles and whatnot.

Screw all of them. This thing's for the birds.

The voice doesn't shut up. I was under the impression that it would be quieter during the countdown. The second I think about that, I'm forced to register that the voice is coming from directly to my right.

"For goodness's sake, Silver!" she whisper-shouts. "Wake up!"

Chapter Text

"What are you doing?" Blaze asks through gritted teeth. I'm forced to open my eyes.

The arena looks remarkably normal, with the stretch in front of me fading off into what looks like a huge, distant lake, grain fields to the right, and a spread of thick forest with wide trees that have droopy leaves curling from the left to behind me. The Cornucopia is just a square shack with an opening on each side.

"You ruined it," I hiss back to Blaze.

"Silver, you're not doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Just waiting to die!" She looks behind herself at Shade from Twelve, who is not at all interested in us, and neither is Bean from Eleven next to me. "We're getting through this together, remember?"

I think befriending Blaze might be the biggest mistake I've ever made.

The cannon blasts to signal the start of the Hunger Games, and neither of us know where to go.

Blaze takes my hand and pulls me behind a rock. I pick up a long, rolled-up rope that was laid out beside it and sling it over my shoulder. We watch Nack receive a knife to the stomach courtesy of Liza. He screams, and when blood bursts out of his abdomen onto Liza's hand, everyone in the surrounding area flees. We stay hidden behind the rock and wait for people to get out of the way so we can go somewhere more safe. Sticks clambers off the wall of the Cornucopia with a bow and a bunch of arrows and shoots Liza in the neck. She falls to the ground, and lands on top of Nack in a heap. Blaze tells me to look inside the Cornucopia, where Mighty obliterates Amy's skull with a hammer that he wrenched out of her grip. More arrows fire from Sticks's bow and one of them lands inside of Rouge. As to whether it's intentional, neither of us can tell.

"I'm gonna run through," Blaze decides. "I'll try to get us something good. You go into the trees."

"Blaze-"

"Keep an eye on me. Run after me when I get to the forest."

She waits for a second or two, and sprints into the Cornucopia between erratic arrows. I have no choice but to make a run for it into the forest.

I use the rope to scramble up a tree and disguise myself in the leaves. I keep lookout, and wait for Blaze.

For some reason, nobody is really clearing out from the Cornucopia. District 4 and Sonic are still there, sharing supplies between them. I spot Vector running around the rocks on the far side closer to the distant lake. It looks like the bloodbath is over until a flash of red flies out from behind another rock and Shade is smashed into the ground by a pair of solid fists. Her bag is stolen, and then the tribute, who now I recognise as Knuckles from Ten, sprints across the circle behind the gaze of the Careers and makes a beeline for Cream.

Blaze chooses her moment and darts back out and into the trees, so I unhook my rope and follow her.

"Blaze!" I shout, when she's in close enough earshot that I don't have to be too loud.

We sit together on another rock and look out to make sure nobody has followed us, and then I try to discuss supplies.

"This rope's really good," I pant, still rushing from the whole thing. "I've already used it to help climb up a tree."

"Are you okay, Silver?" she breathes out.

I grimace. "Sure."

She takes my hand again. "What was that all about earlier?"

I keep my hand limp and still so that maybe she'll let go of it, but she doesn't.

"You really don't want to win, do you?" she whispers.

I shake my head. "Never have, never will."

I watch her put the dots together, searching her memories for all of the things I've said and done that could possibly make me be like this. She looks around again and together we spot a camera embedded in a different rock, honing in on us with a little red light.

She grips my hand a little tighter. She sighs. "Could you at least stay with me for a little while? Even if you don't want to go back there, you could still try?"

She ruined it. It's not what I wanted. The one thing I could have had for myself, she's taken. But I don't blame her. She has a loving home and a family that she wants to return to. She has optimistic plans. She wants to learn and be successful and do everybody proud, and the only other thing she ever wanted was to have a good friend. Blaze is great, I couldn't deny her that, and with the cameras focused on our faces, I can't deny her this either.

"Alright," I nod, and pull my hand from hers. "Here's the plan."

Her face lights up in the same way as it did in training, and I can't help but smile.

"We use this rope and the weird little branches to snare up some food for us. There's got to be something living here, it's the most normal forest I've ever seen."

"You think we can do that with these branches?"

I laugh. "If we can do it with the stupid simulator then we can do it with anything. The pressure's off now, too."

"Okay, what else?"

"What did you get from the Cornucopia?"

Blaze empties her pockets onto the rock. "A flip-knife, some matches, and a pot of multivitamins."

All of which are very useful and essential items.

"Everything else would have been useless to us, and most of the food was gone," she elaborates.

In order for Blaze to remain healthy and be capable of winning the Games, we would have to rely on there being animals for us to catch, shelter to keep us safe, and water for us to drink. The first two? Easy, and we might even be able to do without them for some time.

"We might need to be a bit more creative with the water," I say. "There's that lake?"

Blaze shakes her head. "It's too far. The Gamemakers said the arena would be tiny this year to make up for how massive the Space Colony was."

We sit in silence for a little while and assess our options quietly. We could empty the vitamin tub and keep them all in a pocket and use that to collect rainwater, but it's so small it wouldn't be worth the effort. Blaze could weave something, she's good at that and she taught me things.

"We could find out how big the arena really is?" Blaze suggests. "Maybe we'll find more things along the way."

"It's a start," I reply. "Shall we keep heading this way?"

"Why not," she smiles. "Call it an adventure."

Chapter Text

The forest starts out as purely weeping willow trees, and they thicken up around the bottom end of the arena away from the distant mountain range and the fields. We decide to stay out of that part, because that's where we think most people will be, although it could be possible that everybody else has had the same thought and we're all equally as dead as each other. I mention that to Blaze, and she tells me that's less of a problem for us and more of a problem for whichever poor souls decide to defy their instincts and then bitterly regret it while they watch themselves waste away from the uphill lands. We go in a bit of a zig-zag, staying in the general direction of 'away', and come across some apple trees littered in among the willows, but they're very small. Blaze cuts an apple open to check it, and neither of us can see anything wrong with it but we're wary just in case.

We take breaks beneath bigger willow trees as shelter from the pouring rain, and cup our gloveless hands under the drooping leaves to drink. It tastes odd. Not like the gasoline water I told Mephiles about, or the pure and pristine water in the Capitol. It tastes natural and good.

A clearing opens up after a long stretch of forest, not unlike the arrangement of rocks around the Cornucopia. The edge of the clearing follows a river, where trees end abruptly on the other side.

"Could this be it?"

I adjust my hood and step out into the clearing, armed with the rope. If the Tribute Centre has a forcefield, then the arena must have one too. I undo the rope and throw it over the river. It whips against something invisible, and ricochets right back to me.

"Yep, this is it. But the river's in bounds, so that's good."

Blaze comes out after me and we both check out the state of the water in the river. The riverbanks are made of either hard mud or stone, and the water runs exceptionally clear despite the pouring rain.

"Wouldn't it bring mud into the water?" Blaze asks.

"Yeah, it should."

"I don't like this arena. It's unnaturally nice."

"I don't know about nice," I shake my head, "but it's definitely not as normal as I thought it was."

I take a gamble and remove my gloves again.

"Silver no, that could poison you!"

"Better me than you," I shrug, and dip my hands into the river, bring them to my mouth, and swallow some of the water.

I ignore Blaze's panicked declarations that I am an idiot.

The water tastes remarkably normal. No mud or grit. Just a smooth, more earthy version of Capitol tap water. I stand up and give myself a few minutes to just evaluate how my entire body is feeling, inside and out, and find nothing wrong.

"Well it's not an immediate poison," I conclude.

"I won't trust it until tomorrow," Blaze says. "If you don't get ill, I'll consider it a miracle."

We wait for the rain to die down before we try to do anything with our little semi circle. In the meantime, Blaze naps while I practise knots on my rope. I do a few knots that hold things in place, some that retract and strangle, and lasso a few small rocks and pull them to me.

It was Blaze's idea for her to sleep in the afternoon so when I go to sleep at night, she can stay awake and be lookout. I told her I doubt anybody would find us here but she reminded me again that this arena is small, and people always make a beeline for trees.

One of the knots I learnt was how to tie any solid object to the end of a rope in a way that is more secure than a lasso and isn't too taxing on rope length. The only criteria is that the object needs either some straight edges, deep ridges, or a bunch of potential for friction. These rocks have all of those things.

I bring one a little way along the length of the rope and arrange it so that it sits comfortably within the grooves and ridges, twist it around the rock a few times, and pull it tight. It throws well, and sinks itself into the wet grass.

Weapon acquired? Potentially. It makes a difference to sharp things that I can and will damage myself with while trying to damage someone else. If I swung it round like I'm doing the hammer throw I could let it fly and smack someone into the floor without them even knowing I'm there, supposing they're deaf enough to not hear it whistle through the air.

I don't know. It could do something.

I find myself quickly getting bored as the sun starts to set. I see a few shadows of small animals among the grasses.

The branches are certainly workable. I reach up and pull on one, and it's more than sturdy enough to take my weight yet bendy enough to manipulate, and it springs and stretches like a bungee. I pull off some of the thin leaves and bend the branch into some kind of improvised snare, delicately pull it over one of the tree roots, and tickle it with the leaves I yanked off it. The disturbance moves it to a point where it's not secure anymore, and the branch tightens and flies back up into the tree.

Blaze stirs. "Silver?"

"Yeah?" I grin to her.

"What... are you doing?"

She looks at my rock on a leash, and then at the tree that finally starts to settle back down to stillness after expelling a bunch of its water from the shakes I made of it.

"I'm just making," I reply. "They're good. The branches are good."

She gasps excitedly. "You found a way to tie them?"

"It's not even that hard," I explain. "You just have to find something on the ground that'll just about hold it so when something disturbs it, it'll ping right off."

In the limited daylight we have left, I show Blaze how to rig a willow tree into a danger web. She's delighted with it. We make quick work of clearing off the leaves using the knife and swallow a vitamin each before the first display of the fallen tributes: Liza, Amy, Rouge, Nack, and Shade. It's my turn to sleep.

Chapter Text

I wake up to a quiet blinking noise coming from above. It's a clear day and the sunlight comes from almost directly above me, blinding my view of the thing that makes the noise. It floats gently down in a slow blur.

"Good afternoon, Silver," Blaze says cheerfully, and she plucks the dark blob out of the air. "Wake up, we have a gift."

I rub my eyes and sit up against the cold, wet tree. Everything comes into focus, and I see that Blaze is sat in front of me clutching a dark grey flask with a parachute attached to it.

"Do you want to open it or shall I?" she asks.

I stretch and yawn. My voice cracks. "You do it."

She unscrews the lid from the flask, and inside are some plain round crackers that fit perfectly inside it, along with a note that reads, 'It's safe. M.'

"It's safe?" Blaze thinks. "He means the water, right?"

I take a cracker off the top and nibble into it. "He sent us a flask, he must mean that."

Blaze also takes a cracker. "Well we'd have to eat these first. How do you feel?"

I take a moment to assess what my body is doing once again. "I'm well," I answer. "And I have pockets, we don't have to eat these now. We probably shouldn't until we have more trees rigged."

"That's smart," she nods with a smile, and we empty the flask into my pockets and I promise not to crush the crackers. They're tough, they shouldn't be hurt.

"You slept through two cannons, by the way," Blaze tells me. "How you slept through those and woke up at this flask thing, I have no idea."

"It's always been like that," I laugh. "I'll sleep through a bombing and wake up at the squeak of a mouse. How long ago were the cannons?"

"Oh, it can't have been much longer than about half an hour."

"I wonder who they were."

"Not us," she shrugs, "and that's all I care about."

I stretch myself out again and crack my neck and my back after having awkwardly bent them while sleeping through the morning. We spend the afternoon working through the trees, combing the leaves out of the good branches with Blaze's knife, and stretching them over the tree roots in all the places we think the small animals will run. While we wait in the evening for something to happen, we share the crackers and make ourselves feel fuller with the river water.

"I'm surprised he was allowed to tell us that so overtly, you know," Blaze says, folding the note over and over again between her fingers.

"Why wouldn't he be?"

Blaze thinks over it for a little while, and hums quietly.

"Let's not question it," I suggest. "We're both okay, and I doubt he'd break rules like that."

Blaze gives me a look that screams of 'are you sure about that', but we both know she can't say anything. I agree with her. Mephiles would be the first to break a rule, heck, he'd be the reason the rules get updated, but it's not smart of us to question him.

Something snags in the distance and one of the trees is disturbed.

"You're kidding me," Blaze grins. "You're not telling me that worked?"

"It might have just slipped," I reply, but I go over to check the snare anyway, being careful to step around the tree roots that we trapped.

I discover that Blaze is right. A little rabbit hangs by its ankles from the tangle of drooping branches, still very much alive, but in no way capable of escaping.

My heart sinks. I've desensitised myself to the idea of preparing meat in the brutal ways but I've never actually killed it. I imagine it would be the same. Snap it, squeeze it, rip it. But it's a bit different when its eyes still move and shine in ways that make it look less like food and more like someone's pet.

I can't be thinking like that. This is the Hunger Games. I know myself - if it weren't cute I wouldn't hesitate. It can't be cute if I can't see it, so I close my eyes, grab it by the ankles, unhook it, and do the thing blind. On the way back to Blaze I go by an apple tree and snap off a few good sticks and bring back an apple too, so maybe Mephiles can tell us if that's safe as well.

In the evening we assess the wind direction, and we're thankful that it's heading out of the arena through the forcefield, so we start a fire, cook the rabbit, make a risky apple sauce in the bottom of the flask, and hope that the smoke can pass through the forcefield too.

"Are you sure about the apple?"

"It looks normal," I say, inspecting it closely. "So normal. It's the most normal apple I've ever seen."

"It could be a trap, though."

"Well the river wasn't." I take another gamble and lick the knife. "It tastes normal too."

"You're going to be the death of me."

"Nah," I laugh. "Just think yourself lucky we're not burning, melting, drowning, suffocating... what else has there been?"

"The Quarter Quell was in a factory. They called it Scrap Brain Zone."

"...Ew?"

"No, not like, there weren't brain bits in it. Well, there was after Valdez was done with everyone, but..."

"Did you watch it?"

"That was my second one," she sighs. "I watched Mephiles's game and thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, and then it did, because it didn't end in three days flat."

"What was Mephiles's called?"

"Crisis City."

I nod. "Figures."

The sun sets, the sky fills with fake stars, and the anthem begins. The only faces in the sky tonight are the scarecrows from District 9.

"All those jokes they made in the interview about killing each other." Blaze shakes her head. "I wonder what really happened."

"I don't know, but whatever plan they had for that interview clearly didn't work."

"The costumes can't have helped."

"Sometimes nothing can be helped."

When their faces fade from the sky and the anthem falls to silence, Blaze heads to her favourite tree, one that we didn't rig.

"I'm ending my shift," she says. "You keep lookout, friend."

I smile back to her, and she closes her eyes, trusting me with her life, her stuff, her everything. I feel a huge responsibility that for some reason I didn't feel before. We've been sleeping in shifts throughout the night and the morning and not once did I feel like it was a bad idea, or a good idea, or any kind of idea at all. But now people are dying from things unrelated to the bloodbath. Things are happening. Things are moving, and for all we know, District 9 might not have been joking.

She trusts me too much. I wouldn't dream of doing anything to her. I am here to help her win and I am more than okay with that, I would take a bullet for her if it meant I could die and perhaps she could live, but man. She trusts me way too much.

Chapter Text

This time, I am woken up by a cannon, and for some reason Blaze is too. She's startled by it, and she accidentally kicks a snare into action. I panic and yell. We both freeze, paralysed by the new thumping in our fearful hearts.

"Oh my," she breathes, after a few seconds of silence. "I-"

"You're okay."

She inhales carefully. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"Don't worry about it," I try to reassure her. "You're alive."

We look up at the loop dangling above Blaze's head that could very easily have snagged her up. Neither of us know what that would do to a person. For about half of these we used both of our strength combined to rig them so maybe they'd be able to sort something bigger, but the intention isn't to catch tributes.

"Well?" Blaze starts, when I don't stop looking for some time. "Are you thinking of testing that, too?"

I roll my eyes. "Fat chance."

Blaze relocates to her safe tree and we spend some time just watching the light rain and listening to the wind weave through the branches. It's a peaceful place in the semi-circular clearing, carved out beautifully by the river and the trees. It's the sort of place in the middle of nowhere that I would love to find myself in to daydream and dance and sing for nobody but myself. Maybe climb a tree or two, or engage in conversation with the rocks and the flowers. It's better than a scrawny little garden in the middle of the night.

There's a great jolt some way behind me, followed by a snap and a thud. We freeze again. When the rustles of branches fall back into silence, someone screams.

"MARINE!"

I turn around and see a flash of purple running through the trees, which is then snagged by a branch, pulled up into the air, and smacked harshly against the trunk of another tree. The branch snaps, and the purple lands in an awkward fold between two rocks. Blood seeps onto the floor.

"Big," I gasp silently.

Two cannons blast in the distance.

Neither of us know what to do.

We sit in stunned silence for some time.

Blaze is brave enough to head forth and inspect the damage, and sure enough, both tributes from District 4 have been caught in our snares and killed on impact with either the rocks or the trees themselves. She finds the body of Marine, camouflaged well among the ground cover. Blaze sees me looking and gestures for me to stay away, or at least look away, but I don't. I can't.

I map out this stretch of the forest in my head. Both of those snares were ones we rigged together. She picked the trees, but we both did this. We both gripped the branch and leant back and heaved until the blood vessels in our faces felt like they were going to burst, until we reached a root that would hold it. Although when I consider that this was all my idea, my method, and my lead, it's looks less like Blaze's fault and more like mine.

"Silver, stop it," she tells me sternly, when I find myself creeping closer. "I've got this."

"No," is all I can find to say, but I turn back anyway and listen to her doing something with the bodies.

Elise said something about this. She wondered why they can't find a way to dispose of them or return them to the Districts. Because they don't, if they don't want to or can't find them. At least, they haven't since the Chaos Council took charge. They never wanted to. They see it as a mark of history. Odd, considering the Head Gamemaker of the Chaos Council was District himself. It's a neat bit of trivia that Elise told me about, that he got into the Capitol from District 3. She said it's been suggested once or twice by some of the morbidly obsessed that the arenas should be open for guided tours after the Games, and the bodies should still be there. She remembered someone saying that there should be a prize for whoever can find the bodies of the missing tributes from the fourteenth games, because of how everyone's shiny new trackers failed.

We don't know where the arenas are, if they even have physical form. It's a secret between the Head Gamemaker and the President, to stop rebels trying to find them and blow them up again. All we do know is that the ARK is either in space with fake gravity, or there's been a very good simulation of something space-like without anti-gravity. We may be advanced in technology, but surely we're not that good, and the chances of that arena being in actual space are low, but still, I can't refute it.

Blaze returns with some blood on her hands, and washes them in the river. We both expect the blood to discolour the water, but it doesn't. It just sinks straight to the bottom, leaving the water as pristine as ever.

"That is so weird," she whispers.

I change the subject back to what's important. "What did you do?"

"I just moved them so they're together and out of the way," she replies. "Don't start."

"Don't start what?"

"Going all guilty on me. I know it's in there."

"How can I not?"

"Stop it."

She's not angry, just firm. She's so careful not to flinch, shake, let her voice wobble, anything. She keeps herself still as a stone and lets her hands drip-dry back into the river, as if shaking them would set off a whole chain of other tremors that she wouldn't be able to stop.

"This isn't you, Silver," she continues. "This isn't us."

"Then who is it?"

She doesn't reply.

"Then who is it?" I repeat.

"You heard their plan."

"Don't turn this into something good."

She shakes out her next words. "I'm just trying to make this okay. They're together and covered. I'm sorry."

She has nothing to apologise for, but I don't push it. Both of us have so far been able to avoid fretting about the bloodbath. About Liza's stabbing, Sticks's shooting fury, Knuckles's rampage and Mighty's beating. It didn't feel real to me. Nothing felt real to me at that point because I was still in the depths of brain-death. It hadn't yet registered that this was a thing that was happening and I was so determined not to witness it that my mind never really did.

It's different now. We weren't passive observers. We are the reason that Big and Marine are dead now and Blaze is trying to shift the blame onto things that aren't in our control. Like how the bloodbath wasn't in our control.

I saw with my eyes, not with my brain. I remembered the sight and the noise but it never connected. Not until last night, when Blaze reminded me that I'm a person. A living person. A friend. Something that all those people in the bloodbath were to somebody somewhere. It wasn't something either of us could get sad about, because what does it have to do with us?

This? This has everything to do with us. We kill.

Chapter Text

These snares are good. For as long as there are animals in this end of the arena, we are not going to go hungry. I'm sure that in the real world, a forest wouldn't be this good to us. The rabbits and squirrels are practically invisible until they're being caught. And the wind direction always favours us by pushing the small volumes of campfire smoke up against the arena border until they gently phase through. We finish the last of the crackers with a squirrel on the morning of the sixth day.

It has been so quiet since Big and Marine died. The other cannon before them, we saw was Sonic. No deaths happened after that afternoon. Blaze is suspicious that something is going to blow any minute now, because the Capitol likes their action, but the quiet has been enjoyable for me.

I enjoyed the irony, more than anything. How Big and Marine had it all planned out down to a script, were no doubt on their way to murder someone, and ended up getting annihilated in the process. It took two days of silence for me to properly think about this in the same way Blaze has been trying to get me to. What's the point in guilt when they would have overpowered us and killed us within minutes? It's not like we were trying to hurt them, but it is damn funny that they're the ones we did get after hearing every word of their weird little plan.

I also find it hilarious that Espio, the one who wanted nothing to do with the strongest alliance in the Hunger Games, was the last Career standing after just three days. He must be laughing right now, after trusting his judgement and getting it so, so right.

If it's not me - and it won't be me - and it's not Blaze, then I want it to be Espio. Even if it's all an elaborate act like the one Big had going, it sure didn't feel like one. I can trust him to win and not be stupid about it. After we finish with the food, I decide to take my next sleep shift.

In the early afternoon, after a rare dreamless sleep, Blaze wakes me up.

"I'm so tired, Silver," she sighs. "We need to sort out a better sleep schedule."

She's right. We have only been sleeping for about four hours at a time. It would add up to a normal amount but we can't keep breaking it in the middle like this because that ruins it. We might as well be getting no sleep at all.

"Well if you wait until tonight to sleep then you could get a full night's in. I have no problem staying up for you."

"Are you not tired too?"

"Well yeah," I laugh, "but I'm used to it."

Somebody somewhere has always been awake. Whether it was the progenitor on his seventy-two-hour 'sleep fasts' as a cheap way to trip, or someone in the Hold being your general nocturnal teenager who needs something to do between ten at night and four in the morning, somebody somewhere was waking me up on purpose. None of them were as nice about it as Blaze. I doubt she ever got less than eight hours of sleep in one night.

Now that I think about it, she never did really tell me much when I asked her what her life was like. She talked about school, said something about the Capitol, and that was about it. We've been suffering together for almost two weeks now, I think it's Friday, and I still don't know a thing about her other than the stuff that everybody already knows.

"What's your life really like?" I ask her, hoping she remembers the last time I came to her with this question.

She doesn't reply straight away. "What do you want me to tell you about?"

"Anything," I answer. "Anything that made you feel something."

Blaze cools the smoking branches with water from the flask and refills it from the river, still clear as anything. She swirls the water around in the flask and watches the waves distort her reflection.

"It was lonely," she says. "I didn't have any real friends."

I realise that she's taking this in the exact same direction as me. A cannon blows.

Blaze is somewhat relieved that the weird silence has been broken, but she doesn't dwell on the thought. "My dad was in love," she continues, "Not really with my mum, but with the idea of me, the only child, becoming some great prodigy. And she was the gateway to that."

It makes sense now. Her saying that she was planning to stay in education until she was eighteen, but still dreamt of industry training.

"Friendships were a lesser priority," she shrugs. "There were the people I knew in class and we liked each other but they never tried to engage too closely with me, they never invited me to anything, because they knew I wouldn't be able to go. And we never had the deep conversations because they would take up a lot of time that we all knew I just didn't have."

"But you have the time now?" I smile.

She grins. "I have all the time in the world right now."

I remember waking up on the train. When Mephiles said that my memory is broken and Blaze is 'generally unfamiliar with the concept of having friends'. I knew it was true, but I didn't realise just how much it would mean to her, for me to let this happen.

I think of Elise, and how she just randomly appeared in my life and cemented herself there. I am to Blaze what Elise was to me. And I feel terrible, because I never wanted this. I never wanted friends in these games because all they do is make sure you stay alive and give you a reason to live.

"Don't look so shocked," Blaze laughs. "I've had enough of that from everyone else I've ever told about this. It's so funny. I'll tell them one thing about my dad and it's like I've just told them he murdered their pet flicky bird."

She sweeps up the sodden firewood and takes it to the discard pile behind a tree.

I chuckle awkwardly. "I mean, I don't know many parents who would make their kid forfeit their whole social life to study for entrance into a city that they don't even want to move to."

She laughs even more. "It's so funny, isn't it?"

"I mean, not really-"

She doesn't hear me, because by the time the words come out of my mouth, we both realise that she's forgotten which tree roots of the discard-pile tree are rigged and which aren't, and by the time she realises, she's already stepping into a trap. Another one that both of us pulled.

A small yelp escapes her as she stumbles into the taut branch, and all I can do is watch as she's snagged, launched, slammed, and snapped clean in half.

Chapter Text

The most horrid thing about it is that she's not like Big and Marine. Her lights are still on. She doesn't die.

I watch her in paralysing shock, just dangling there, illuminated by a sunbeam from a break in the dark, heavy cloud. It doesn't need to land on her so perfectly, lighting up her shining eyes that slowly become more and more bloodshot as the blood in her broken body rushes to her head, but it does. She is caught at a distorted angle, one knee and one wrist tied up in the branch, back bent, free leg snapped, and her other hand grazing lightly along the sparkling grass. Her cheeks turn rosy and her fingertips turn pink as her heart slowly gives out and gravity takes over. It's a gruesome contradiction, between all the things that would make a person beautiful, and the sorry state that she's bent in and how she got there. It looks like she tries to say something, but I don't know if it's real. Her eyes move in my general direction, and then a slow breath whistles out from her lungs.

Finally, after so long, her cannon blows, and it's a kind of relief. There's no denying that the cannon is hers. If I were in normal circumstances, I might refuse to accept it. I might beg for her to finish what she was starting to say. I might say something myself, maybe even scream it. Maybe throw something. But this isn't normal. None of this is normal. I just hold onto my rope and let the rock dangle like how she dangles from the tree.

It was a recurring nightmare. It got a lot more frequent over these last few weeks, in the run-up to the Reaping and especially in the aftermath of it, between then and the start of the Games. It started to attack me while awake. I'd remember the nightmare and it would turn into a daydream. I'd always managed to shove it down before. It's mostly left me alone for the last week or so, like pretty much every emotion has. Another weird radio silence. Even now, there's not a lot happening to me, and I don't know whether to be confused about that or disgusted. If I could feel either of those things, I think I'd rather feel disgust, so then I'd at least feel like a person.

I watch Blaze's body sway in the wind. The little knife slides out of her trouser pocket and rattles to the floor by her hand.

She was happy. That's what made it so jarring when I watched it. Elise. Miles 'Tails' Prower, later known as 'Nine' by anyone who cared, and not many did. Singing together, no cares in the world. And then disaster struck and ripped it all apart. Tails was shocked to the point of catatonia. He didn't move, didn't speak, didn't cry, for days on end. He dug hours and hours into making things to aid his survival, and then the survival of Elise, and lost the only person he trusted in a matter of seconds. The robbery of a friendship drove him mad. Everybody knows that. It's the new approach now. I knew it, and so did everybody else, when they stuck to their little groups and never branched out.

So what does that mean for me?

The parallels are too strong. Elise, District 6's girl, died in joy. Blaze, District 6's girl, died in laughter. Both of them thought that they had all the time in the world. Blaze said so herself.

I don't want to stand here and pretend to feel something. It crosses my mind that that's something I should do. I watch a small vein burst in Blaze's eye, and blood starts running down her forehead to the tip of her ear. I pull a face.

I had to put off feeling things until later on - it was a defence mechanism I came up with when I was old enough to realise that to the progenitor, my emotions weren't really important or wanted so I'd delay them until I was alone. And by the time I was old enough to realise that that's a stupid idea and will only cause me more harm in the long term than it prevents in the short term, it was already a habit that couldn't be broken. It got to the point that when bad things happened to people I was supposed to care about, I had to pretend to care so nobody would get mad at me for not caring, but not care so much that people would get mad at me for caring too much, even though deep down I always cared more than I could ever handle. I just never allowed it to show.

Breathe through it, concentrate on something, and think about other things until you can't anymore. That's the strategy. Fool proof, mostly. It worked for Tails for about a week and a half, and since the bloodbath, it's worked for me.

And then a spike of nausea hits when I accidentally think of Amy's blood flying up out of her face and landing on Mighty's, and the sound of the arrows thudding into the backs of Liza and Rouge, and Shade's bones cracking under Knuckles's force, and the ghostly whip of Marine through the air, and Big's internals seeping out of him.

A drop of blood falls onto Blaze's knife, so I shuffle it out from under her hand, wash it in the river, and keep it in my pocket full of crumbs. I think about leaving and finding another place. I could go to another clearing like this one, rig it, and maybe even step into a trap myself, but without another person to add some extra flingability to the branches, it wouldn't kill me at all. And leaving would put me at risk. This place is safe.

I almost smile at my contradicting thoughts, and have to slam that down back into expressionlessness when I realise what that might look like.

If I go out, I go out on my own terms when I'm ready. There's no use in letting somebody kill me if I'm in the middle of a thought. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later, that I can fully clear my head and be removed before it's filled again.

I look through the trees that Blaze and I walked through to get here. Even though the arena is stupidly small and hence extremely stressful to hide in, I can't see to any kind of distance. All of our traps are here. Our lovely, stupid, magical river is here. It's just so perfect, and rather beautiful when I don't acknowledge the three dead bodies surrounding the clearing. One of which belongs to my friend.

Friend...

I think I'll stay. It's the safest way to be unsafe.

Chapter Text

On the seventh day, after basically no sleep, I grit my teeth, climb the stupid tree, and slash the branch that ended Blaze. The top of the branch whips up and slaps me in the neck but it's not enough to stop me retching at the sound of her body sinking to the floor.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper, as I dismount the tree and try to pull Blaze behind it with the willow branch, but I have to touch her body too. I try to be gentle with her, as if she's still capable of feeling pain. For all I know about death, she very well could be. She could be screaming inside of her head, or out of her head, watching herself be pulled over lumps of burnt-out firewood and mud. Something crunches horribly from inside of her when I move her shoulder and I shudder so hard that I drop her, and fall backwards into the pile of wood. I let the repulsion shake its way through me and decide that I've had enough. I push the pile of wood over her, along with leaves ripped off the tree, covering her as best as I can, heaving through the whole process.

Red light blinks faintly from a crack down the trunk of the willow, and when my vision stops spontaneously blurring, I see the glass of a camera lens, and the shutters focusing in on my face.

I sigh. "It ain't worth it, y'all," I say to the camera. I don't dare give any specifics, or say anything that could indicate that I'm addressing the rest of the kids at the Hold. For their sake, I would never expose the secrets of the money-laundering bakery. "You don't need it. It's not worth it."

I start hyperventilating again, and force myself to turn away from the pile.

"You think the tesserae is worth it? Trust me, brothers, it ain't."

I close my eyes and make a deep inhale, and then stare directly into the camera, and say my next words all in one breath.

"For more information, visit the Justice Building of your home district and read the rain-damaged laminated poster stapled to the door of the main entrance, to find out how screwed you and your siblings are in the roulette-looking scheme we call tesserae. Make sure you and your siblings are staying in school for long enough to be able to do the maths in order to work out precisely how many papers will be in the reaping bowl at every reapable age before you sign onto the tesserae contract. You may also consult your television for information on whether your district has a growing overpopulation problem."

I allow myself a breath.

"Thank you for having me on your show. Mathematics."

I stab the camera, and the red light goes out.

The rest of the day is spent dismantling squirrels, re-rigging the traps they came from, and cooking them over more scraps of wood. Even with the semi-decent supply of meat and apples that the arena so kindly serves for me, no amount of distilled water can solve the chronic emptiness. I never imagined that spending fourteen years in a sort of rich district and taking the lack of food poverty for granted and instead focusing on dumb things like substance abuse and narcissism would ever come back to bite me. If I'd never really considered the downsides of coming to the arena, then how could I have imagined it?

I smile at the happy dinging of a bell above me. A square box floats down from the sky, hanging by a black parachute, and it lands right by my feet where I sit. Stuck to the top of it is a label written in Mephiles's scruffy handwriting.

It reads, 'Don't overdo it. M.'

"Overdo what?" I chuckle, and click the box's latch open. Surely he's aware that I'm not in the mood for doing anything in small doses right now. I lift the lid, and the second I see what's inside, I slam it back down again and hold it shut.

'If you'd rather have an inexperienced, unruly, prejudiced Capitol miscreant to match your spoilt princess energy then just say so.' That's what he said to Blaze when she dared to question him, and I have a feeling that's what he'll be saying to me if I decide to do what my gut is telling me to: puncture the parachute and launch this box by the strings into the stratosphere.

"Overdo what," I tut to myself sarcastically. "You naïve bastard."

For some reason I open the lid again, and have a closer look at what I've been sent, and my suspicions are confirmed. Morphling. A small vial of it, along with five little syringes in sterile packets, needles attached, with some plastic over the tips. There's a bit of paper stuck to the underside of the lid with instructions, but with the amount of times I've seen Mephiles mumble the whole process to himself, I'm not sure I'd need them. I don't think he thinks I need them either, since he's well aware that in the last two weeks, me, Blaze, and Zomom have all been right next to him at least twice while he's been shooting drugs up into his elbows. Maybe they're only there for completeness. There's no way he wouldn't be careful about something he treasures as much as this.

What is he playing at?

The more I think about it, the more confused I become over the gift. It's one heck of a gift. It's expensive and personal. There's no way I've gathered even a fraction of the sponsorship money required to buy such drugs in this form. The injectable morphling he receives is roughly equivalent to the amount of money he'd be paid as a mentor, and that's a lot, and he reckons he gets through one Beast Box a month. That's what everyone says. This is about a fifth of his regular Beast Box. A mini Beast Box, but it's still a lot of money to just throw off into nowhere.

I decide that the best thing to do with it is bury it by the river bank, and pray that it's interpreted as me protecting it rather than discarding it. I swore blind I would never touch anything that could ever alter me psychologically, whether it was something light and silly like the stuff that the progenitor dug out from the alleyways, or something more hardcore like this. I saw too much of what drugs did to other people to ever want to try them for myself.

I pat the dirt on top of the sealed box. I don't know what Mephiles is playing at, but there's no way I'm playing along.

Chapter Text

"You're headed for heaven, the sweet old hereafter, and I've got one foot in the door. But before I can fly up, I've loose ends to tie up, right here in the old therebefore."

She sings with her eyes closed, and with a continuous smile etched onto every inch of her face for the duration of the song.

"When I'm pure like a dove, when I've learned how to love, right here, in the old therebefore, when nothing is left anymore."

Tails sits leant forward with his chin in his hands, thoroughly impressed by Elise's singing.

"Don't look so shocked," she laughs. "I've had enough of that from everyone else I've ever sang this to."

"I mean, I don't know many..." Tails's words - or are they my words? They become jumbled and his laugh is robotic.

"It's not funny though, is it?" Elise also laughs, but in a more real way.

"Who am I?" I try to ask, but instead the words that come are, "I mean, it really is," and they come from Tails even though it feels like they come from me.

"It's nothing much," Elise giggles, after seeing the look of awe on whoever's face is being controlled by the person who isn't her.

There's a crack, and the world flips upside down. Elise contorts and slams into the crumbling wall.

"I call but no one answers me," her voice screams inside my head, louder than any sound I have ever heard. "Friend!" she cries. "Friend, did you hurt me?"

-o-

I wake up violently choking on my own breath in a different place to where I fell asleep, coughing into collar of the thick fleece that I cocooned myself in. I see that it's close to mid afternoon, if not already there, and wonder how on earth I managed to sleep for such a long time while being racked with strange visions and sounds. Or how I managed to remain alive through it, after clearly having done some serious movement in my sleep.

With no allies to cover for me or wake me up so I can cover for them, I can sleep for much longer if my brain allows for it. On the sixth night it didn't. It kept me awake and busy in the mind, but clearly last night it had some kind of mercy. Not the best mercy, I've never had that, but enough of some form of it to keep me unconscious for what can't be much less than eighteen hours. How exhausted was I?

We're halfway there. If I haven't slept through any cannons - which is unlikely, knowing myself, I'd have slept through another five or six - then there are twelve of us left. I work through the districts in order and name the tributes who I think are still alive.

One - Espio, evidently the smartest one here. Three - Vector and Cream, no surprises. Five - Shadow, danger. Six - Myself, for some reason. Seven - Mighty and Matilda, because of course they're still alive, why wouldn't they be? Eight - Honey, who I know basically nothing about. Ten - Knuckles and Tikal, more danger. Eleven - Bean and Sticks, also danger.

I can't believe I thought this was going to be over quickly. It's beginning to look like we're all in it for the long haul in an arena that can't help but keep us alive.

I find myself staring at the patch of dirt by the riverbank that I disrupted yesterday. I can almost feel the cameras on my back when I look at the location for more than five seconds. 'He's thinking about it,' I can imagine them whispering to each other, as if cameras had conversations. 'He's going to do it.'

And I think, perhaps, after discovering that not even my sleep can leave me alone for longer than a week and just let me have what I want, I will. It's not like I have a future to be worrying about.

I push my stiff self off the ground and sort myself out before heading over to the riverbank and kicking the dirt off the top of the box. It slides out of the ground and into the river, where the mud is washed off and sunken to the bottom. I wipe the water off the box with the inside of my fleece and I'm contented when I open it and see that it hasn't leaked at all.

I open one of the needle packets and undo the top of the vial. I recall everything that Mephiles did: pull the top off the needle, draw up the liquid to the right line, flip it over, flick the air out, whatever. The note said not to overdo it, and I obey. I may be an idiot, but I'm not stupid.

"Hey Dad," I chuckle to nowhere. "Are you proud of me?"

I press the needle into my arm and ease the liquid in, in the exact way that Mephiles did.

"Nah, didn't think so," I smile.

I rub the injection site with my knuckles for a little while, before putting the box back in the ground and sitting back against the good tree. Sure, I know what drugs can do to people, but they're not here. They have responsibilities and I don't anymore. They have things to do and people to see and bills to pay and trams to look after and businesses to manage and errands to run and jobs to go to. What do I have other than three dead bodies, eleven people out to get me, some trees, and a few basic supplies? Nothing. So I relax and wait for the morphling to hit.

And boy, does it hit. It hits harder and faster than I ever could have dreamed. Pains that I didn't even know I had begin to dissolve away and are replaced with something so euphoric that I lose all sense of what's up and what's down, and end up lying on the floor.

I feel like I'm floating, drifting away into the sky like I always wished I could, becoming one with the clouds and ruling the wind and the rain. And it's impossibly warm, as if a blanket of hot cotton has wrapped itself around my body and pressed deep into my skin and beyond, heating me to the core. It's the best hug I could ever ask for, and I needed it so badly, I always have. I don't think I ever understood needing anything until discovering just how much I needed this. All I can do is stare into the beautiful clouds through the gaps in the willow branches and think about just how good it feels to fly away into nothing but bliss and comfort. Like the world is holding my hand and pushing all of its beauty up through my arm and into my head to tell me that nothing can ever go wrong, and everything is going to be okay.

I watch the clouds drift on by, sailing on invisible seas. Sweet.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, I did sleep through a cannon on the seventh night. Cream's. So there's eleven of us, not twelve, and there are only ten people wanting me dead, because I don't count. I saw her face up in the sky and thought it was the real her, and tried to talk to her like I almost did during training. I asked her how she's doing, where she's been, who she's friends and enemies with, and all the other things I would ask a person if I came across them in the arena and I was certain they weren't a threat. And she just smiled at me and didn't really say much, and disappeared behind the clouds. I glared at the clouds, and wondered if they steal people and hide them, and thought that perhaps that's what they'd done to me, and then during the next hour or so, the morphling started to wear off.

I'd seen what it did to Mephiles. Being generally grumpy, irritable, pained, and snapping at people, especially Blaze and Zomom. I didn't want that for myself so I took it upon myself to fall asleep as quickly as possible and skip the come-down.

It's a bit bad. I woke up with a headache and those pains I didn't know I had became painfully obvious. I drank several gulps more of the water and hoped that it would wash it all out of me, but it did basically nothing. I find it funny. Before the Hunger Games, I'd never been so well hydrated.

I have another run round all of the snares again, collect some kind of bird caught by the neck, and bring it back down to the good tree. The tree that never hurt anyone or anything. The safe tree. Blaze's tree. The bird is a weird, scrawny little thing. It doesn't look easy to dismantle in the slightest. Having a knife helps, but this is no rabbit. I decide not to bother with it yet and leave it by the place that Blaze designated as the firepit. I was never as good at starting fires as her. It's scary how good she is with a box of matches. Her parents were onto something when they named her. My name was just the result of a very lazy 'say what you see'. I wasn't even shiny.

The ground thrusts downwards in a sharp snap, and there are deafening crunches of rock and snapping wood all around me. It knocks me to the ground and the world quakes beneath me. I manage to turn myself over, and scramble out of the way just before the good tree comes crashing down. Tied branches whip through the air and trees are uprooted until the arena slowly dies back down to stillness after a few minutes of nothing but hard tremors.

Ah, the fabled arena event. The thing that's supposed to get things going again. Last year, the arena event was Elise's death. I don't know if it was supposed to be, but it definitely got things going. The year before that in the Quarter Quell - Blaze told me about it soon after she mentioned the name Scrap Brain Zone - the massive factory that was usually dormant and unmoving switched itself on. All of the tributes who were hiding between cogs and beneath pistons that they thought were safe were squished, scrambled, and distributed throughout the arena bounds. The twenty fourth wasn't long enough or boring enough for a major arena event to occur.

Elise said there was never any more than one major arena event per year. They were always intended to be defining moments, and if done well, there would be no need for another. Four cannons fire one by one. Eleven becomes seven. I'd say that this was done well enough.

"So much for being one of the first out," I laugh to myself, and I sigh at the river that even after changing its whole course, still runs clear.

I rig up the snares again, and I'm gentle with them so I don't kill the rest of the tributes and win the Games by accident. And this time, I mark them with rocks so I don't kill myself. A root with a rock is a root to be avoided. I spend the whole afternoon on it, sort out the little bird, and braid branches and weave nets while it cooks. I find that I've forgotten a lot of the knots I learnt, so I end up inventing my own. Many of them wouldn't work with willow branches anyway. They're simply not loose enough. I disguise nets with leaves and sticks on the ground, and hide them between hanging branches, and test them with my rock on the rope to make sure they work before tying them up again in the same way.

It's enjoyable. Not in a morphling way, but in a more real way. A tactile, grounding way. I work until my hands are sore.

The second I start thinking, I have to stop. What is it that compels me to do all of this, when I don't even want to win? I can tell myself that all day long, and yet I won't do anything about it. When I realise for even a moment that just by being alive, any person will have an instinct to remain that way and I'm no exception, I head back over to the box. Because last time, it was so good at shutting things up. And it stopped things from hurting and it stopped any scary thoughts like these from sliding in.

All day long, I could tell myself to go and die in a hole. But it's just not going to happen, is it? I'll never be ready. And when the morphling once again flows through my veins, I don't ever want to be.

The rawness in my hands dissolves away, and I get back to work. I bring things out of the forest and over to the river and weave vines and leaves and branches and flowers into my fur and my quills. I think of Blaze and all that she taught me to do at the camouflage station, and I make a piece of art out of myself. I'm incapable of feeling anything negative and I will be for hours, maybe even into the night, so when I think of Blaze I think of happiness and when I see myself in the water I see myself at home. In a forest, alone, enjoying life, and appreciating everything it has for me. This whole world is for me.

Chapter Text

"Have you wandered like me?"

My breath hitches. The crumbling walls fall into nothingness. Tails and Elise disappear, and trees sprout from nowhere. There's the soothing murmur of a river, that rapidly replaces the quakes from the collapse of the room.

She speaks again. Her voice changes. It morphs from crisp and high to lower and more open.

"In the depths of death?"

The voice comes from one particular tree, downstream, to the right of the river as I look at it from the entrance to the little semi circle of trees. Beside the roots, a pile of wood shuffles a little.

"Are you like me?"

-o-

Day ten brings spotted rain, on and off in short bursts or light drizzles, with breaks ranging from minutes to hours. I never imagined I could get bored in here. I always thought I would find a way to keep myself entertained no matter the situation. Singing, humming, swaying, thinking, decorating, getting high, whatever it may be, but I find myself slipping into that awful feeling of agitation and restlessness, with absolutely no motivation to do anything about it. It's been four days since Blaze died. My only real companion since this time last year.

Maybe I did take her for granted. We were friends, and I'll admit it wholly now. I didn't know how much I needed her and her laugh and her smile and her company until it was all gone.

I miss her. I miss her in the same way as I miss Elise. Blaze is Elise. I was, to her, what Elise was to me, but I never imagined that Blaze could ever be an Elise 2.0. I don't know whether to regret our friendship or cherish it now. I'm sad, I'm lost, I'm bored, I'm doing things I swore I'd never do, and I keep having visions, awake or asleep, that terrify me. But if I never had Blaze, I'd have been more sad and more bored and less lost and I'd be keeping my promises and I wouldn't be so scared.

I'd also be dead, which undermines that entire argument, and she'd probably be alive, which is what we all wanted.

On my daily round of snare-checking, I find nothing but slipped vines from the rain, but it's okay because I'm not going hungry. I re-do the slipped ones and make them fit for wet roots, and meander back over towards the clearing.

There's a sharp movement of brown somewhere in front of me, followed by a quick rustle to my right.

I tighten my grip on my rock rope. Since Blaze's death, I haven't let it leave my grasp. It's my one and only chance at a weapon other than the little knife, and that's less of a weapon and more of a thing to cut paper with. I back up to a large tree with no rocks by the roots and keep myself alert for any more movements.

There are a few more rustles, and a click. A snap of a branch, a sniff, and another splash of brown. Furry brown. Badger-shaped brown.

Sticks from Eleven emerges from a bush and locks eyes with me, saying nothing. She has dried blood on her head and a heavily bloodshot eye, just like Blaze's. She looks like some sick resurrection come to haunt me. She has rips in her clothes and spikes on her knuckles, and a complete lack of archery equipment. The sight of her makes me feel nauseous.

"Hello?" I say.

She replies with a growl.

"Do you... talk?"

She snarls like a wild animal. "Of course I talk," she snaps. "What do you think I am?"

I adjust my footing. I don't think she's a sane person, that's for sure. I clear my throat. "I'm sorry, I'd just never heard you talk before."

"Are you gonna kill me?"

"No. Why would I?"

She shakes all over, and rapidly looks around her, looking so terrified and paranoid, as if she could burst away from here at any second. Her voice cracks. "The rain is going to kill us all."

"...What?"

"Are you controlling the rain? Are you switching it on and off?"

"How...?" I trail off. It begins to rain again. Not unusual, for today, but I let myself smile at how well-timed it is.

Sticks is not amused. "You're controlling the rain!" She screams. "You're controlling the rain!"

Sticks leaps at me with her spikes coming at my neck and I only just leap out of the way in time so she can lodge her knuckles into the bark of the tree.

"Switch the rain off!" She yells, yanking herself out of the tree and becoming more and more erratic with every second that passes. "You demon!"

I flee back to the clearing with her hot on my tail. She continues to cry out over every raindrop that touches her. I have to do something. I have a rock and a forcefield to work with. I'm not ready to die yet. Not to a crazy girl like her. Not like this, I'm not ready.

I take my chances and swing the rock behind me as hard as I can, and it smacks into the back of Sticks's head, sending her tumbling over the unlit fire pit to the riverbank.

She lays there, heaving over every bit of water she sees and feels. She tries to scramble away from everything and ends up nowhere but the floor, hyperventilating and foaming at the mouth.

I'd be doing an injustice to the both of us if I left her here. She's not right in the head, and never has been. She's wild and she's hurting, and I have the power to end it. And if I don't end it soon, she'll surely find a way to get back up and end me.

It's such a horrid conflict. Why do I want so badly to stay alive, while at the same time wanting so badly to die? I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. But this isn't for me, it's for her.

I raise the rock over my head and stretch out the rope above me. I've seen enough death and killed enough animals to be able to think about what I'm about to do in some other way that isn't blatant murder. This girl is a menace. She's a problem. She's killed at least two people and for goodness's sake, she's suffering.

I bring the rock down on her head, over and over again until her cannon blows, and I don't feel a single thing. Not guilt. Not relief. Nothing apart from the adrenaline of our chase, slowly fading away as I drag the body behind the scrap tree and leave it out of the way near Blaze's.

"That didn't happen," I say to myself, despite there being blood on my rock and a fourth body in my vicinity. And, as always, I force myself to believe it. "That did not happen."

Chapter Text

Her face appears in the sky. The face of the District 11 Female, in the display dedicated to the fallen.

"It didn't happen," I remind myself. "It says the fallen because she fell over. That's what that means."

I try to keep myself neutral for the next few hours and watch the clouds move across the sky, but I know deep down that no amount of self-gaslighting can send me to sleep and keep me asleep tonight. Though I know what can. Maybe it'll last me until morning. And for goodness' sake, the Games had better end soon, because this is to be dose number three, and then I'll only have two left. With the rate things are going, with my constant evasion of death, and weird spikes and troughs in fatalities, I'm cutting it real fine. As I inject the morphling, I wonder if this is a waste. I wonder if I'm angering Mephiles by using it in this way, or if he's ever sent himself to sleep just like this.

I wake up with a banging headache, and the sunlight is blinding and high over my head. I shiver in the cold, once again being reminded of the harsh reality. There's the faint sound of conversation in the distance, but I can't focus on it. Everything hurts, and I want nothing more than another dose of that miracle liquid to send me right back to sleep so I can't hurt. Maybe forever.

I rest my head in my hands and wonder what has happened to me, but my thoughts are interrupted by the conversation that comes much closer.

"What part of 'leave me alone' do you not understand?" groans the voice of none other than Matilda Stratnyy. I squint up through the sunlight and see the glimmer of the buckle of a satchel bag, before she disappears through the trees.

I hear a sigh from further away, almost directly towards the cornucopia, and then absolutely nothing happens. They've gone away.

I take another look at myself in the river water for the first time in a while, and look over the forest that I've made of myself. I almost forgot I did that. Matilda was so close, and she didn't even see me. Most of the harsh whites in my fur have been covered by leaves, branches, and mud, in a way that looks just like a tree. I could congratulate myself for it. I could laugh and say something like, 'No wonder Mephiles revolutionised Capitol transport while high as a kite,' but Blaze is the real genius here. She always has been.

There's a snap of branches and a rough scream.

"Oh my stars," I scoff. "Like moths to a flame."

I brace myself for whatever it is I'm about to see. Spilled guts, broken backs, whatever. It's just another day in the Hunger Games, it can't be much worse than what's happened already. I follow the sound of shuffling and struggling and make myself known by snapping a branch under my foot. A pair of eyes lock onto mine.

I pretend to be surprised. "Oh fuck, a person? Eugh."

He clears his throat. "...Sorry?"

I realise who he is, and I can't believe I didn't work this out earlier. Matilda wanting someone to leave her alone? Where oh where have I seen that before. I get a little closer, and sure enough, the red shell of Mighty Stratnyy peeks through the leafy links of my woven net.

"Wait, it's you?" I laugh. "I've been dying to meet you!"

"What?" He doesn't find my pun funny but I don't care. "Why?"

"Oh, you know why," I grin, glad to be part of a real conversation again. "You're the Stratnyy boy, the one who tugged all the heart strings. Of course I want to meet you!"

He squints at me from beneath the net. "I'm nothing special."

"Oh no, I don't want you to think you are. I just want to clear a few things up, that's all." I kneel beside him and put down my rock. It's not that I don't want to look threatening. I just don't think it would be wise.

"Like what?"

"Like why you're here."

He gives me a confused smile. "You know why I'm here."

"I also know you're a liar. I want to know why you're really here, and if you tell me the truth, I might just set you free," I smile back, as sweetly as I can manage. "I'm not the kind of guy who likes to stay out of the gossip."

"G-Gossip?"

"Go on, give me the deets," I prompt, and sit back. "Why are you really here? Because we all know it's not why you say it is."

"I..."

"Couldn't live without her? Yeah no, I'm not falling for that. Did you see your interviews? That girl hates your guts. She looked like she never wanted to know you. She was laughing at you."

"That doesn't matter though does it?" He sneers. "Not if I love her."

"You can't possibly love that!" I laugh. "You have no idea what a sad little idiot you look."

"I just wasn't thinking straight, man!"

"Well duh, we know that. If you were thinking straight you wouldn't have bloody done it."

Mighty rolls his eyes at me. A bold move, for someone who can't.

I decide that now is my time to be aggressive. I pick the rock back up. "Don't give me any more lies, Mister Timbercase-"

"I forgot!"

His shout silences the both of us.

I lower my rock a little. "You... what?"

"I forgot how the thing works," he sighs. "I was all over the place and I thought I could replace her... I just forgot that that's not how that works."

I put the rock down. It's not what I was expecting in the slightest. I'm pretty sure that the rule is that you can only replace someone of the same gender. Strange.

"Happy?" he says.

I raise an eyebrow. "...That's a funny way of coming out. You do you, I guess, no judgement from me."

"Sorry?"

I burst out laughing. "Is that seriously how it happened? That's so funny, dude. Damn." I get up and start pacing. "I thought it was going to be juicy, you know?"

"You're a nutter."

"I thought it was gonna be a revenge story!" I cackle. I don't know what it is that makes me this way. Perhaps the traces of morphling that may still remain in my blood. "Like, maybe you really hate your sister, maybe she did something really bad, maybe just existing made you upset with her because you're not the youngest anymore and you're not getting all the attention, I've seen that happen, so you volunteered to take her spotlight and kill her and not get done for murder and then everybody loves you because you won the Hunger Games! That would have been such a good story. Or, oh what if, what if it's your parents you want to screw over? You know that if she's reaped and you volunteer then only one of you goes home, so then you ruin their lives and make them re-evaluate whether they really love you or if you love them because now nothing will ever be the same again! I might have let you go if you said that and I think I would have believed you."

I turn back to Mighty. He could have said anything at all and I'd have believed it, because anything is more believable than his silly lie.

"But no, you didn't do that," I keep laughing "You forgot how the game works."

"Where is Blaze?"

He catches me off guard. "What?"

Mighty slowly breathes in, and speaks clearly and carefully. "Silver, where is Blaze? How is she doing? It's been a while."

Chapter Text

I kneel back down beside Mighty, and grip my rope tight. "What?"

"Where is Blaze? Is she still in? I boycotted the fallen on night six."

I see the eyes of the progenitor in him. If he lied once, he can lie again. He can ask me how she's doing when he must know damn well that she's not here anymore. Dead. Gone. Forever. And I'll never know how she's doing and he'll never learn when to shut up, just like with Elise. But this time I don't roll my eyes in response. I just stare.

"Did she die?" Mighty gasps excitedly, completely losing his mind and not caring to find it. "Did she get killed? Did someone kill her? Maybe she killed herself- no, no... Maybe she starved to death, or died of thirst. Maybe she ate a poison apple? Did you know this arena is riddled with poison apples?"

I didn't know that. The apples are fine. Another lie. I keep staring in horror.

"And if the Capitol don't like you then they'll take good apples and turn them bad right under your nose before you can figure out what they're doing, but the Capitol love her don't they so they wouldn't do that, uh... oh I know, maybe she drowned? That'd be funny, that'd be so ironic, wouldn't it? Fire! Water! Sizzle, oh look it's sizzling!"

He laughs, and then his expression turns very quickly to serious once again. He lazily blows a leaf out of his face.

"Oh I'm sorry, did I hit a sore point?" he asks. "Sorry, I didn't think you loved her or something."

My blood boils. "...How dare you."

He's accepted his fate, so I speed it up for him. Another day, another murder. He deserves every ounce of pain for the pain that he's caused his family. For the pain that he's caused me.

"How dare you!" I yell, and I let the rock descend onto his skull this time. Return to sender? He knows how skulls can collapse. This is for Blaze. Amy, even if she was a bitch. Elise. Matilda, and the rest of the Stratnyys. Screw it, it's for everyone. It would be better for everyone if this weird little man was wiped straight off the map. I keep going even after his cannon blows. I don't stop until the rock falls out of the knots in the rope and wobbles beside his head.

"This is the worst!" I cry. I throw the rope onto the floor and scream. "This is the actual worst!"

I slump down against a different tree and accidentally set off another snare. I start sobbing. I can't remember the last time I cried, but it forces itself out of me in a way I've never felt. And it doesn't help in the slightest. Nothing can, at this point.

"Mephiles?" I choke out, and look towards the sky. "Are you there?"

Of course, I get no answer.

"Mephiles? Are you watching me?"

Nothing.

The eleventh night is agony. I sit at the edge of the clearing after watching Mighty's face fade from the sky and I stay awake for so long that I lose track of time, and finally succumb to the force of sleep in the early hours of the morning. My sleep faces even more disruption. 'Do you know this loneliness? Friend? Friend, do you understand me?' and everything else that Blaze's spirits want to ask me that I have no way of answering to. When I wake up in the afternoon, I decide I've had enough of this place, gather my stuff, refill my water, and go.

I almost didn't believe it when Mephiles said he was at least partially responsible for the demise of a third of his Games. Yet here I am, having killed five people, and collected their bodies in a ring of shallow graves.

I follow the river downstream for ages, into the thicker bit of forest that I knew not to go into, and the sun sets over the arena. I'm not tired in the slightest. I climb a tree that has more footholds than the rest and sit up there with my rope and take a sip of the water. It's such a relief to finally be away from that clearing. Nothing good happened there. And I left the morphling behind, because nothing good comes from that either.

There's another cannon, and only minutes later, the twelfth night's fallen display begins, and on it is the face of Vector, freshly dead.

There are footsteps. Of course I had to walk into the area where the rest of the tributes were. I hold onto the branch above me and lean forward a little so I can see.

The footsteps belong to Espio and Shadow. Espio has his coat wrapped tightly around himself, and Shadow has a bag and a sword. They talk about something while they walk. I struggle to make out what they say to each other.

"I've only just realised how close we are to the end," Espio shivers.

Shadow asks him something to do with ending the alliance, or whatever else they could call it.

Espio sighs, and says something back.

"Would you kill me? For District 1?" Shadow asks. "You wouldn't, would you?"

"Do you want me to?"

They're silent when they pass beneath my tree, and they keep on walking, facing away from me. So whatever it is that Espio starts rambling on about to Shadow, I don't get to hear.

For someone who has been so chronically suicidal - wishing for death to stumble upon him for so long because he doesn't have the guts to do it himself - the reaping feels like a gift. An answered prayer for a coward. A coward like me. Because that's all I am, really. If I had a pair of balls, I'd have done what I set out to do and ended it all days ago. Espio's comment on being close to the end takes me right back to the beginning of the Games.

Rising up that podium. Knowing my life is over before the Games had even started. And now, with four people left, the end doesn't just feel like it's near. It is near. And if I don't hurry up and do something, the end won't really be the end, but another beginning, and I'll be damned if I have to do anything ever again.

I untangle my rope, throw it over the branch above me, and tie myself the last knots that I will ever have to do, because I've had enough.

I'm ready now. I'm done.

-x-

I harnessed the hurt. No switch to reverse.
Now, I have reached the point of no return.

Chapter Text

I stole the gold from the sun, and the silver from the moon.
I drank the blood from your hands and I walked us through eternal doom...

-x-

Sleep is for the weak. If I tell myself that enough, I might just be able to stay awake. Weakness is unacceptable. Always has been, always will be. I don't necessarily believe in that, but what can a person do when everyone else does? I let a yawn slip through and turn to a new page, smiling to myself. There's nothing more unacceptable than this - weakness is far less of a sin - so I could go home and let myself rest, or I could be stubborn and stay here, and battle against the gravity tugging at my eyelids and finish this last chapter. This is my last chance, after all.

It's an interesting one, about all the languages that used to exist. There are no dates on these books, but this one, The Freedom Fighters of Knothole by Maximillian Acorn, I've managed to date to about fifty years ago. And using that information, the rest of the books I've read are more than likely from before the disasters. I did come across a copy of King Arthur though, three different releases of The Arabian Nights, and various innocent poetry anthologies. I'm not sure how they got in here. They're some of the few books from before the war that are still legal.

I keep on reading about the old dead languages and all the different ways in which they died, despite the tiredness trying so hard to pull me away. Some faded naturally, some evolved into other languages entirely, some mixed with English so much that they lost all of their uniqueness, and some other languages, like the one that was once a majority language in the south of Panem, were manually slaughtered from mouths and from texts by the Capitol. Although not until after they'd "borrowed" all the words and phrases that they thought were actually pretty cool.

"You will finish this chapter," I sternly tell myself, but my body doesn't listen.

I wake up with sunlight pouring into the library through the reinforced frosted windows, with pains in my neck and shallow papercuts on my face. I squint and let my eyes adjust to the light and frown at the newly creased pages of the book. I flatten it out and slide it under one of my discard piles. Piles that have been slowly growing since I started sifting through this entire collection. It's a little bittersweet to look at it now.

"Hello?"

I freeze. I've been detected. It must be later in the morning than I initially thought. The shadow of an echidna moves across the far wall and back.

"Rats..." he mutters, before sitting down in a creaky chair. I allow myself a quiet breath of relief.

The mayor of District 1, Pachacamac, spends a lot of his time in the Justice Building. He is in charge of all things for this district, and that includes keeping an eye on all of the confiscated books that were supposed to be destroyed. Nobody is meant to know about them, though.

I wait until everything is still and he starts humming quietly to himself in the other room. I carefully stand, wobbling slightly from the pins and needles in my feet, wait for my body to wake up, and make a break for the back door.

The way I came to find out about the forbidden library was convoluted and stupid. It took years of eavesdropping to finally put the dots together that it even exists. It was partially a product of circumstances, and partially my friend and I being nosy little brats who can't resist a logic puzzle from time to time.

My mother works for Pachacamac. She's one of his many deputies, so she has weekly meetings with him at the Justice Building and even more meetings at the houses of colleagues. When I was little and too in my own head to care about adult conversations like those, she'd take me with her. One day, on the way into Head Peacekeeper Gamma's house, I saw a girl about my age playing on the lawn next door. She saw me too, and threw a toy snake at me in an attempt to scare me for some cheap fun, but I caught it and threw it right back at her. Since then, that girl Nicole and I have been best friends, and instead of going into Gamma's with my mother, I'd stay outside with her. It was for the best, really, because we both got curious very quickly. When we started asking questions, my mother decided I was old enough to be left home alone.

Nicole reported back to me everything she heard of the council meetings. She showed me pages hidden within her notebooks of homework drafts, full of mind maps and diagrams and transcriptions of every word in some complicated script that she developed herself just for this, and we'd comb through every meeting together just for the fun of it, until things started making sense about six months ago. We flipped a coin and it was decided that I would be the one to investigate the mysterious library in the Justice Building, and to see if any of the potential pins would work on the rusty old keypad on the overgrown back door.

I close it very carefully, and move the blackberry branches out of the way so the door can click shut just sweetly. From the angle of the sun, I can tell that it's barely even afternoon yet, so I will be absolutely fine. I nick a blackberry and get going, dragging my feet through the pebbles and letting branches tickle the top of my head.

Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if I threw a heads rather than a tails, and Nicole was the one to do the breaking and entering. For one, I wouldn't have this pretty little walk every weekend. Down a cramped back alley filled with dehydrated bushes and scrawny trees. It's not a wilderness by any means but it does transport me to one. A secret universe. Our own little mystery.

I still haven't managed to convince Nicole to come with me. If I won the coin-toss she would have sent me anyway, I'm sure of it, but it doesn't matter because I'm returning years of favours by bringing bits of ripped pages back to her so she can stash them in her notebooks and analyse them for eternity. I keep my hands stuffed in my pockets as I walk through the town centre towards our suburb, soaking up the sunlight and murmurs of conversation. I collected poetry for her this time, and I plan to tell her that if everything goes wrong and for some reason she still wants to know about all the dead languages, then she's going to have to go and see them for herself.

After posting the poetry and some of my own handwritten notes through her bedroom window, which she always leaves slightly ajar just for me, I run home. It's a big day today, and I don't know how to feel.

Chapter Text

This afternoon there is another meeting, but this time I'm attending. It will be held in an abandoned car park, since my mother did always suspect that Nicole's ears ranged further than anyone was prepared for, even if she had no evidence and never cared enough to try to gather any.

Part of her job is to organise tribute training for the Hunger Games. District 1, being part of the Career alliance, has had an unwritten obligation to produce competent and entertaining tributes each year since Sam "Speed" Thorndyke won the nineteenth. It's our way of staying in the Capitol's good books. My mother worked hard to get to the position she's in, so when she asked me if I'd like to start training, I couldn't refuse. I even liked the idea. I, like the rest of One, liked that the Capitol were treating us better for behaving so well, even if we were technically breaking a rule, but all it did was show them that we were serious about what they had going for the nation, and it was that positive reinforcement and the thought of making my mother proud that made training for the Games just a little bit more appealing.

"Look at that kid Espio," the other kids used to tease. "He's such a sissy, he wants nothing more than to do his darling Momma proud." And it was funny because it was true. But then they grew up and either volunteered and died in the Games or they didn't get chosen, and then they were too old. Valdez made it out alive though, and today I will finally get to meet him formally rather than in passing.

I try and fail to sneak back into the house.

"Es!" my mother shouts from the kitchen. "Where have you been, child?"

"Nicole's," I shout back.

She sighs. "All night?"

I kick my shoes off and find myself laughing. "We may have gotten a little carried away."

"Carried away, huh?" She emerges from the kitchen with soapy hands, and gives me that glare that tells me that she knows I'm lying, but I know she can't prove anything because Nicole's parents are on night shifts and she will lie for me until her teeth are sore. "Not funny, kiddo. You need to stop doing this. If you're going to be having sleepovers, you need to tell me."

"I know," I sigh. She does have a point. Especially since today is going to be one of the most important of my life, and she knows I don't want to be there for it. "When are we setting off?"

"Ten minutes ago."

Valdez may have made it out alive, but it's the state of last year's tributes that this meeting is for. There were more trainees turning eighteen last year than ever before, all of them volunteered, and somehow Valdez and our escort Zavok managed to choose the worst of the lot. They were both dead before the starting cannon had finished echoing through the ARK, killed by Twelve, of all districts. It wasn't a good look for Valdez's first year as our mentor. So, as part of the little meetings, Valdez, Zavok, Pachacamac, Gamma, and my mother had to come up with an action plan to get District 1 back on track. As usual, Nicole had it all written down.

I'm not supposed to know about the fact that I'm going to be volunteering tomorrow. The whole point of today was for everybody to drop that bombshell on me less than twenty four hours before the Reaping so I don't have long enough to think about changing my mind. Only one trainee, Liza, turned eighteen this year, so it's fair game for any cocky young lad who wants to tag along with her, and usually it wouldn't be a big thing like this. Valdez and Zavok have been instructed to choose me this time, no matter who volunteers, because apparently, I'm the best we've got, and we need the best this year.

Nicole has been trying to convince me not to do it, but the truth is that nobody knows what will happen to me then. Nobody in the training program has ever not volunteered in their last eligible year. The reward for taking one for the team is too great. It's comradery. It's admirable to represent District 1 in the Hunger Games. In the first Quarter Quell, we'd already had it planned that everyone was to vote for Valdez, because he was going to volunteer anyway, and like me, he was the best we had and he was proud of it. Outside of the Careers, people voted for their enemies, whereas we voted for the best.

If I don't volunteer, I'll be going against everything I've been raised to believe about worshipping the Capitol that so graciously feeds us, but it's Nicole's little game of telephone and all of the time I've had to think inside of the forbidden library that's unravelled all of that. But I couldn't do or say anything about it, because then that would prove that we've heard it all. Some forensics later and that's certain death for me right there, no matter whose son I am. The Hunger Games is not certain death. As humble as I'd like to be, I fancy my chances, even if Nicole doesn't. I can be full of myself if I want to be.

The speed-walk through the cobbled streets is a shameful one. Mother's upset with me for being so late, and strides with her head down and her hand clasping mine. She's had her suspicions, alright. I could act and pretend to be excited to be meeting the big men of One, or I could silently let her know that I've figured out that this meeting has at least something to do with the Reaping by doing small protests like sneaking out for sleepovers the night before. Something she can't get too mad at me for, because this has never happened before with these specific people and she knows I'm not quite that stupid.

We make it to the multi-storey car park, derelict and unkempt since the business that owned it went bust, and head down a series of concrete stairs to the underground bit that floods in the winter. This is where the others should be waiting for us, as well as Liza. The only plan I have is to somehow talk all of these people out of signing the paperwork - something else that doesn't usually happen, but the circumstances called for it this time, whatever that means - but considering how poor I was at convincing Nicole to come to the library with me, and the chances of them then finding out that I knew about this all along, it's not looking good for me.

I wish Nicole was here. That girl can talk herself out of anything.

Chapter Text

"Oho, precisely on time, Vigil," Pachacamac laughs, flicking his pocket watch shut.

My mother finally lets go of my hand, and glares at me. "We have this one to thank for that," she chuckles back.

The seven of us have found ourselves a corner of the concrete box that has minimal echo and a dry enough floor to sit on. The lights are yellowy and dim, and the place smells like wet mould. Gamma assures us that he has littered the surrounding area with small cameras, and he has junior Peacekeepers on standby should anybody come within audible range of the meeting point. As if anyone would ever want to come here.

"Why here, though?" Liza asks, tracing the hole in the knee of her tights with her thumb. "Seems a bit random?"

"We couldn't do this in the vicinity of citizens, given the nature of what will be discussed today," Gamma responds, in his metallic, monotonic way. "Pachacamac?"

Pachacamac smiles and stretches his back, groans when it cracks, and pulls a flimsy lever-arch file from his backpack.

"Espio, Liza, the reason we bring you here today is imperative. As you will be aware, the Reaping is tomorrow," he explains. "We greatly appreciate your attendance."

He turns to Valdez and Zavok, who have hardly shifted since we arrived. Neither of them look all that pleased to be here, either. Valdez looks nervous, shifting his red beret just to do something with his hands, whereas Zavok just looks generally inconvenienced. He never doesn't.

"And you two, as I am sure you are aware, will have a slightly different job this year."

They both silently nod, so Pachacamac pulls a laminated sheet from his folder. He places it in the middle of the circle, and on it are pictures of the two tributes who represented District 1 last year.

"I do not blame anybody for the failure that was the 26th annual Hunger Games," he says sadly. "That disaster was wholly unprecedented on all fronts. However, we can work towards a rectification this year." He pulls out another bit of paper for his presentation. "I am proposing, for this year only, that the Reaping should be... rigged, if you will."

"What's that going to achieve when we're doing volunteers?" Liza butts in.

Pachacamac chuckles, and swivels the paper round so that both Liza and I can see it well. "I'm getting to that. This here is a list of all of the twelve year olds in One. Familiarise yourself with that list if you want, but it will be unnecessary."

The paper contains the names of what must be a few thousand people, alphabetically by surname in tiny print.

"With the permission of Head Peacekeeper Gamma, we have filled the Reaping bowls with nothing but the names of twelve year olds, so that it statistically impossible for either of you to be reaped."

I do not remember any of this from the initial meeting. That one, that Nicole transcribed, was just speculation and brainstorming. It must be that the plans were finalised like this: in the middle of nowhere, underground, in a state of lockdown. Maybe my mother knew more than we thought.

"We have not informed the other trainees of this," Pachacamac continues. He takes a third paper from the folder and lays it on top of the list of names. This one, we've all seen before. The Reaping rules, plus District 1's training conventions underneath. "Liza, since you are our only eighteen year old, the other girls will respect your position and you shall be the only female volunteer. Where things get more complicated is with Espio."

My mother holds onto my right hand again. I look to my left at Liza, and she seems just as intrigued as I should pretend to be.

I clear my throat. "How so, Pachacamac?"

He leans over from the other side of the circle and taps the paper. "Lines fourteen and fifteen: In the event there are multiple eighteen year olds, eighteen year old trainees may all raise their hands, and the mentor and escort shall pick a tribute. In the event there are no eighteen year olds, all trainees may all raise their hands, and the mentor and escort shall pick a tribute."

"I must admit, I don't like where this is going, Pachacamac-"

"In a long preselection process, myself, Valdez, Zavok, and your mother have decided that you will be our best shot at a win and you are to volunteer tomorrow to replace whichever twelve year old is reaped. Zavok and Valdez will then choose you."

"What about the seventeen year olds?" I try to protest. "They are more experienced, they are more ready?"

"Yes, but you are better than them," Pachacamac simply says. "We need to get this District back into the public eye after the joke that was last year. You can, and should, give that to us, if you know what's important."

His last words linger in quiet echoes around the parking lot. We clearly have different ideas of what is important. Nobody talked about the twelve year olds. I don't understand why Gamma would even allow it to happen. I don't like how they are all so confident that I will volunteer for them. Or maybe they're not confident, and the threat of allowing a twelve year old to go to the arena for District 1 is their way of getting me to comply.

"May I have some time to think?"

Pachacamac leans back onto a ceilng support. "No. We do not have that kind of time. I strongly advise you to do this, Espio. You know what is important, don't you?"

A year ago, I probably would have been able to say yes without hesitation. What's important to them, is our privilege as a district, which we gain by being Careers. What's important is the reward for being loyal and serving those in power. That is the legacy of the Thorndykes: the most decorated family in Panem's districts. But what's important to me has changed since then. But nobody can know about what's important to me, or even make a guess about it, because I know too much. It's too suspicious for me to say no.

"Yes, I know what's important, Pachacamac. It's just..." I search for the right words. "It's just a shock."

"You are brilliant, Espio!" Pachacamac laughs, as if I meant that in a positive way. "Your mother can attest to this."

"Can she?"

My mother squeezes my hand tighter. "Of course you're brilliant, Espio. I am so, so proud of you."

I squeeze her hand back, not out of love or pride but out of disbelief that she would pioneer such a crazy idea - let alone support it - to send her own son to the Hunger Games. I squeeze her hand to let out some emotion in a way that will stop it from showing on my face. Because really, I only have myself to blame for this. If it weren't for all of the all-nighters in the library, I wouldn't be having such difficulty choosing between impending doom and impending doom. If it weren't for the library, impending doom would feel more like a shot at glory.

"What is your decision, Espio?" Pachacamac asks me, with a sternness to his voice.

I wrench myself out of my mother's grip, repulsed by the fact that she could love me so dearly and then betray me like this, but I carefully override those feelings with the softest smile I can manage. There's a logical decision to be made here. The sort of decision that would have me asking, 'What would Nicole do?' The thing is, I just don't know.

She would find a way out of this. She's quick like that. She could use her words but I don't have her words. I may like words just like she does but I'm not Nicole. I'm not that fast with them. I can't think fast enough.

"I'll do it," I cave, and my voice wobbles far more than I would have liked it to. "Where do I sign?"

Chapter Text

Panem began in the Capitol, as a small city in the West that survived the nuclear fallout and climate disasters because of the shelter of the mountains that enveloped it. The name of that old city became unimportant and was sworn to be forgotten, because with the rest of the highly intelligent life on this planet thought to be dead, they became the new capital of the world. They attempted some form of self-sufficiency, but there's only so much a small city nestled between rocky mountains can do, so the people ploughed on in this just-about-managing state, and waited until they were sure the radiation and nuclear winters had calmed down for good.

The Capitol was the capital of the world. They couldn't contact any other city of such scale that made it out alive. But they still needed to make sure of it, so they sent some explorers on a voyage beyond the mountains.

First, they found District 1, saw our gold and our gemstones, and unified us with the Capitol. They sent us supplies and got our old town up and running again, and in return, we paid them with luxury goods. Then they found District 2, off in the other direction, saw their vast reservoirs and their stone and unified them with the Capitol. The explorers kept going in that same direction and found District 3 after ignoring a very tiny and primitive soon-to-be-Nine along the way. Three were a bigger settlement than they were expecting, but after some 'negotiations', they were unified too. They found District 4 by the ocean, and worked with them to build better sea defences with the stone from Two and the brains of some clever people from Three, and had them join in return. Resources were being taxed all over the place by these new expansions, so power generation was the task given to the next settlement they found, and they called that one District 5.

The primitive Nine had since set up great fields of grain to feed themselves, and on the way to Three for some business and a rest point, the explorers stopped off for some bread and asked for a unification. Nine refused entry into this new country, disliking the policies of the government and the restrictions that came with becoming a mere industrial district, but still offered their supply of bread and expanded their fields as far as the Capitol would let them. Bread became a primary foodstuff of the explorers, and this new country was named Panem. It had other meanings too, something to do with circuses, but that bread was the fuel that took them further north of Three to what would become District 6, a land with oil reserves and a surviving city that was historically known for putting the world on wheels. Six connected the districts together as their contribution.

District 7, north in the other direction, provided all of the wood products. Eight provided textiles and became the designated artists of the nation, unifying us all under the same uniform as a symbol of keeping peace and togetherness. And by this time, District 9 was surrounded on all habitable sides, so they handed themselves over to the Capitol.

I did wonder, when I read this section, if the current government knew this too, if there's a reason they're keeping these books behind and not destroying them like they swore to, and perhaps that was why there was such a kerfuffle made of the boy from Three who called himself Nine. It's almost like he knew something himself, about the way this country was made, and tailored his arena persona around it to make a statement. How District 9 could have been District 3 if the Capitol had just paid attention and not let them make their own way until they were surrounded and had no choice but to surrender.

I don't know what kind of point he would have been trying to make, perhaps something about the hopelessness of being encased in a robust circle of people who just want to use you, something about the importance of choosing one's own path like the pre-union District 9 did, an impossible third option to break out of landlock, but when I put those things together in my head, it led me to wonder if Nicole and I are anywhere near as alone in this as we thought. Perhaps other districts have libraries and people writing in secret code to remember what they hear and what they find. But of course, coincidences exist too.

There's a chance that Nine wasn't crazy. But there's a much bigger chance that he was.

District 10, the next settlement to be discovered, was where the problems began. The Capitol's expansion south encountered new climates, customs, languages, and hence cities who also considered themselves to be the capitals of the world. So Two, being the nearest to the Capitol, were given a second job of military affairs, and together they ransacked and ransacked until they found radiation, or until they found the sea. They took all the animals away from the people, gave them notices printed with Six's ink on Seven's paper and bound with Eight's string, and only returned the animals when the people agreed to a unification with the Capitol in a way that everyone else could understand. Districts 11, 12, and 13 revealed themselves after hearing of the power of the Capitol, but none were particularly happy about joining.

The Capitol were worried about Eleven, so they surrounded them in a wall of Peacekeepers, which eventually turned into a wall of stone. They didn't want Twelve to become too powerful so they were given the non-industry of coal mining, and Thirteen were blasted into the ground with their own nuclear weapons after they managed to organise a revolution that almost ended us all again. The truth is blurry on that part. I've read many different things and I don't know what to believe. The Treaty of Treason should have kept me from ever discovering other realities, or even our own history in this level of detail - The Freedom Fighters of Knothole is forbidden for a reason. The Treaty of Treason also declared the beginning of the Hunger Games. A reminder to never disobey the Capitol.

I don't sleep. It's different this time. If sleep is for the weak, then I should have been out like a light the instant I put my head to my pillow but it hasn't happened. The Capitol is nothing to be celebrated. Not after coercing Three, guilt-tripping Four, intimidating Nine, genociding Ten, silencing Eleven, bankrupting Twelve, and destroying all of Thirteen. What's important to me is world peace. Something I thought we'd have learnt our lessons about after the nuclear wars that turned the planet into a wasteland. I don't want to contribute to something like that by volunteering to participate in a scheme designed to keep that kind of regime going.

I wrap my duvet around my face and smell my own tears that have soaked it. It doesn't smell like my bed anymore, so I cry some more. I don't often cry like this. Usually I'm better at slamming on the brakes. If I were literally anywhere else, anybody else, anytime else, I wouldn't be so scared to speak my truth. Hell, put me in District 11 and let me say the word 'liberty'. At least then it wouldn't come as such a shock to everyone. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach when the pen touched the bottom line of the contract. The contract that would kill me if I broke it. Treason against District 1 feels so much heavier than treason against the Capitol, because what did District 1 ever do to deserve a rebel like me? That's what they'd call me, because all they want is that extra aid that doing well in the Games would bring. So now it's either die, die, or sell my soul to the Capitol. And Nicole doesn't want me to die, but I don't want her to get caught up in this because she would be a number one suspect for people that turned me away. Some forensics later... it would be better for us both if I just played the game.

If I die, she loses her best friend. If I die, I can't read anymore. If I die, my mother will be disappointed in me, and I'm sure that if I die I'll still love her even if her love for me is so warped. If I die, it's all down to Liza to bring some kind of respect back into the eyes that cast their gaze onto District 1, and I can't lie to myself and pretend that we don't need it. The Hunger Games keeps this entire district alive, it's part of the reason we're considered wealthy, and after last year, if we die early, we all die young. If we die early, it looks like we don't care. If it looks like we don't care, we're as good as traitors.

I whisper to my ceiling, as best as I can while crying and trying not to make a sound, "I don't want to die."

I turn myself over and shove my face back into my pillow. I shut my eyes tight after accidentally getting a glimpse at the clock, which spins deep into the first quarter of the morning.

"Please," I beg into the pillow's fabric that's coarse, damp, and warm on my skin. "Just let me sleep."

Chapter Text

When I woke up, my eyes were puffy and dark from the sleepless night, so I cracked out the makeup. I told my mother it was because this Reaping is going to be special, when all I really needed to do was make it look like I've had more than four hours of sleep. So, plenty of concealer under my eyes and slightly more daring eyeliner to make up for it. It's not the sort of thing I'd get away with in day-to-day life without a couple of weird looks, but this isn't day-to-day life. I untie the ribbons on the new puff-sleeve blouse that we bought on the way back home after the meeting yesterday especially for this, and button it on.

"Are you ready, dear?"

"Almost," I shout back to Mother, and throw my purple vest over my shirt, fastening it with a yellow belt and styling it with a paper rose in my pocket.

The Reaping isn't scary here. We can always rely on the oldest trainees to save us. If your name is pulled, you get picked on in school for about a week and that's pretty much it. The two of us follow the flow of people to the bus stop and spend the five minute free ride, which would be a twenty minute walk, to the Justice Building quietly soaking up the summer sun through the dusty windows. We always arrive a little bit early, and so does Nicole, and if I'm lucky, I'll get to speak to her. She knows how important this is, and Mother knows I won't be doing anything until we get to talk. That's how it's always been. When we get off the bus, she promises me a visit in the Justice Building, and kisses my forehead before heading off to sign in for the spectator crowd.

"Espio!"

Nicole, in her classic pink Reaping dress, sprints to me from another bus bay. When she reaches me, she throws her arms around me and hugs me tight.

"How did it go? Your meeting?" She asks, letting me go. We both see the state of my paper rose after it got crushed between us, and catch each others hands when we both reach to fix it. I let her get on with it.

"Awful," I laugh quietly.

She gently pushes the rose petals back into their positions and sighs. "You couldn't talk them out of it, could you?"

"I couldn't think of a way to do it without showing them I know too much. I'm sorry, Nicole, I can't risk your safety like that."

Nicole slides the rose back into my pocket. "How would they know about me?"

"Well, who else do I spend such a suspicious amount of time with? We're practically conjoined, you and I. You'll be first on their hit list." I take the rose back out of my pocket, and run my fingers over the new creases. They give it more life. They make it look less perfect. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," she replies. "So... is that it now?"

I nod. "The second the ink went on that paper, the deal was sealed. And there was more to it than we heard. I don't get how they've done it."

Conscious of the time, we join the back of the queue to sign in. We stand side by side and speak in whispers to each other.

"Done what?"

"Rigged it," I say. "They've got Gamma in on it somehow, and filled the bowls with twelve year olds so there's no chance of Liza and I being reaped at all. We'd only be replaced if that happened."

"That's crazy?" she gasps. "Why twelves, though?"

We reach the front of the queue. We take it in turns to confirm our names and ages, and our fingers are pricked for a drop of blood, tested, and stamped onto a paper chart.

"Intimidation, I reckon," I reply. "And it worked. I'm not about to be known as the guy who threw a twelve year old boy under the bus, whether he ends up in the Games or not. I don't want that to be my dying legacy."

"Who says you're gonna die?" she asks.

I sigh. "Nobody, if I do what I'm told. Everybody, if I don't."

We spot a Peacekeeper nearby, and he waves for us to get moving.

"I'll visit you," Nicole smiles, and she hugs me again, even tighter this time, and we head our separate ways. I put the rose back in my pocket.

I stand with the sixteen year old boys. I recognise a few of them from school and general travels around the district. More of them seem to recognise me than I recognise of them. The trainees are generally well-known, and I'm no exception, being the son of the one who runs it. Their eyes are on me because of line fifteen: no eighteen year old trainees. We have a lot of seventeens, and three sixteens including myself. I haven't seen the other two. We never particularly cared for each other.

The screens above the Justice Building switch on.

This movie explains the recent history of Panem. The Treaty of Treason re-wrote all of time. History begins at year zero, and year zero was twenty seven years ago. There's minimal blurb about the Dark Days, with citizens sworn to secrecy under a shroud of mis-matched stories. No details. Nothing that could make the Capitol look bad. All of it is to convince us that every district deserved the Hunger Games, and for the longest time, I believed it. We all did here, because Districts 1, 2 and 4 always stayed right by the Capitol's side until the rebellion bled into us. And we never got hit with the worst of it despite being involved, so we believed every word the Capitol said in the aftermath. Gaslighting and Stockholm Syndrome at their finest.

The film moves on to last year's Hunger Games. District 5 won, after an unfortunate series of disaster events. It started with the death of the girl from Six about two weeks in, after she sang a controversial song, and it ended with the 'Nine' boy from Three trying to blow up the 'moon'. Even then, before the things in Nicole's notebooks started to make sense, I wasn't convinced that the ARK was a real Space Colony, and the moon wasn't just some kind of hologram. Now I believe it even less. If the Capitol are so quick to lie about the entire history of life on this planet, then they can fake a Space Colony anytime. It makes their reaction even more warranted. I'm sure they'd sooner let the real moon get singed a little than have their lies exposed so soon after they almost lost a war.

The movie ends, and Zavok and Valdez make their way onto the stage. Zavok taps at the microphone on his stand, and begins to speak.

"Good afternoon, District 1, and welcome to the Reaping of the 27th Annual Hunger Games. One girl and one boy shall be reaped from the bowls behind me, to compete in the Games. Those of you who took out tesserae, as detailed in the Reaping rules, will have a higher chance of being chosen. A sufficient interval shall be given for any eligible person of the same gender to volunteer to replace those who are reaped. In the event of more than one volunteer, it is to the discretion of myself and your humble mentor Valdez to choose District 1's tribute." He ends his speech with a nod. "May the odds be ever in your favour."

Chapter Text

Zavok swirls the paper around the girls' bowl roughly, before plucking one out of the air. He watches the rest of the papers settle back down to the bottom of the bowl before returning to the microphone and reading out the name.

"Mina Mangosta."

"I volunteer!"

Just as planned, Liza's hand shoots into the air from among the eighteen year old girls, and a Peacekeeper escorts her to the stage. She shakes hands with Valdez and Zavok, tells them her name like they don't know it already, and stands proud, grinning from ear to ear.

I take a slow, deep breath to calm myself, and remind myself that I don't want to die, and volunteering is the only thing I can do that will not result in certain death. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, listening only to the rustle of papers, waiting for a name to be spoken, and feeling only the muscles in my left arm.

"Rotor Valross."

I raise my hand, and wait. There are several hands from the seventeens, another from the sixteens, and one from the fifteens. We keep our hands raised while Zavok and Valdez confer away from the microphones. The others raise their hands higher, puff their chests, furrow their brows, and do whatever else they can to be noticed, but I know that it's all an act from the two men on the stage, so I just keep breathing. They nod their heads, and Zavok returns to his microphone.

He stares into my eyes. His amplified voice booms across the town square. "You. The boy with the rose."

I lower my hand, and step into the opening between the two halves of District 1's children. I'm surrounded on all sides by Peacekeepers, and they follow me to the stage. I climb the stairs, still manually controlling everything I can move and feel, using the techniques I learnt during training to look calm and strong in any kind of adversity. These are the brakes that I slam down on when I know that feeling literally anything at all will pull me down an icy slope and I'll never be able to grab hold of anything again. I count the seconds between breaths, synchronise them with my steps, and let the bright light of the yellow sun act as a focal point rather than a nuisance.

Valdez and Zavok each take my hand, and I smile at them.

"And what is your name, sir?" Zavok asks.

I don't break my breath timings. I answer during a scheduled exhale. "Espio Vaso."

I search through the block of seventeen year old girls and meet the eyes of Nicole. She gives me a small wave, and I just continue smiling. She knows me well enough to know that these smiles are just movements of muscle, and nothing more. Liza initiates a handshake between us, and the Peacekeepers take us inside.

I only ever entered the Justice Building through the weird little door at the back when I wasn't going to meetings with my mother all those years ago. I know the winding corridors on that end of the building like the back of my hand. All the best hiding spots. All the best ways to avoid the sensors on the security cameras. All the best ways to prize open the many padlocks. It took a lot of near-misses not unlike the one yesterday - plus the occasional handful of likely disease-ridden rodent droppings, and once even a whole dead rat, as a means of covering my tracks - to understand the inner workings of the Justice Building so well. I don't know this end like that. The corridors are taller and more open, generally fancier, and full of things that I would have no reason to want to mess about with. Liza and I are shut into rooms opposite each other. The tribute waiting rooms. The second the lock on the door clicks, I take off my mask.

"Damn," I gasp. I've only gone and done it. I find myself wanting nothing more than to scream, but I don't. Instead, I take a cushion from the velvet sofa, throw it on the floor, and kick it into the wall. This building has been a curse on my life. I used to believe that the other districts had been cursed with rebel hearts and punishments, and then that this one had been cursed with the washing of brains, but all along, it was me. I want to rip my brain out of my head and kick it into the wall for as long as I can still stand without it.

"Visitor!"

The door opens, and my mother and Pachacamac are allowed inside. The mask immediately comes back on, and I pretend to be simply throwing the cushion around for entertainment. It takes all of my effort to plaster a calm smile back onto my face.

"Good boy," Mother praises. "I knew you would do it."

I find myself laughing, because I have no words to say.

Pachacamac rests his hand on my shoulder. "You remember everything you have been taught, yes?"

"Yes," I reply. I head back to the sofa and sit down to release myself from his touch. "Always. They're the most important of lessons."

"Good boy," he also says. Both of them practically swell up with pride.

My mother sits down beside me. "You will be a victor, Espio, I know it. Don't tell Liza I say this, but it will be you. You will be the one to bring the title back to us."

"You're my mother." I try to present the shakiness of my voice as a kind of chuckle. My fist clamps around a soft part of the sofa where Pachacamac could sit, but doesn't. "You have to say these things to me."

She laughs. "I may be your mother, Es, but I am also your teacher. Teachers aren't allowed to have favourite students."

"Come on, you know that's a lie."

"She's right," Pachacamac grins. "You're the best we've ever had."

"...Better than Valdez?"

"Well..."

"Better than Finitevus?"

Mother prods me. "Stop it, boy. Accept that you can win, and do it."

I receive more hugs from the both of them. It feels a bit strange to be hugged by the mayor but I let it happen. Hugs may be few and far between for the foreseeable future. They give me bits of advice that I barely listen to. Pretending to be happy takes up all of the space in my brain, leaving no room for learning, but neither of them notice.

A peacekeeper puts their head around the door. "Time?"

My mother sighs. "You know I love you, Es?"

"Yes," I reply. "And I love you too."

She smiles. "Take care. Come home."

Pachacamac gently takes her hand, and they walk out of the lush waiting room together, back out into the corridors of the Justice Building. I lean back onto the windowsill behind me, nudging a ceramic vase, and think about it.

I fancied my chances. They fancy my chances. Surely, if I work hard and don't do anything stupid, it's not all bad. It's the Hunger Games, and I'm the boy from One. So what could possibly go wrong?

Chapter Text

Tears sit behind her eyelids, threatening to spill over with every blink she makes. She struggles to breathe in her usual clear, unbroken rhythms, instead stuttering over every inhale. Once again, I find myself struggling to keep a hold of myself. It always hurt to see her upset, but this time it's hitting so much harder, because this is the last of her I might ever see.

"And there I was," she says, "wishing you were joking. Hoping that the sun was playing tricks on me."

I take Nicole into my arms, and we cry together. I pay attention to how her body feels against mine. I make note of every point of pressure, every shape, every hiccup, every part of her, and etch them carefully into my mind so I will always know what it feels like to hold her so close. I smell her perfume and listen to the crinkle of her favourite dress. I don't ever want to let her go. We will never be whole without each other. She's the best friend I've ever had, and ever will have, and I love her more than anything.

"They really gave you no choice, didn't they?"

"Mhm," I reply. "And when they were in here just before, they looked so happy for me. I just wanted to scream and cry and swear at everything but I couldn't disappoint them like that."

"You're too selfless, Espio."

"No," I deny. "I just didn't want to risk hurting you."

"That's what I said."

We finally let go of each other and wipe our tears on our sleeves. I immediately feel lost, like a piece of my soul has been ripped away from me. A sob forces itself out of my throat and I have to battle with myself so I don't reach to her again. My eyeliner smudges onto the cuff of my shirt, but I don't care.

Nicole sniffs. "They're somewhat right, though. You are the best. You can be a victor."

"You've hardly seen a thing."

"Exactly. I ain't seen nothing yet."

I sigh. "Everyone's overestimating me. I do have a chance, I know it, but it is only a chance."

"But it's still a chance!"

We stand still in the middle of the fluffy white rug, in a kind of checkmate with the world. Maybe she's grasping, and I don't know what I'm doing. Neither of us can sort our heads out. We don't have the time for it.

"I will think of you every day," she promises me.

"I will do the same."

"No. You think of yourself. For once in your life. Be selfish. Win."

I laugh nervously. "Is that a demand?"

"It most certainly is, Vaso."

And there it is. Her winning smile.

"Time's up," the Peacekeeper says. "Well... time was up a minute and a half ago but I couldn't possibly interfere."

We all laugh. Genuinely. Happily. And Nicole wishes me love and peace.

"Are you alright, Espio?" Valdez cheerfully asks me on the way to Zavok's car, once again cocooned in a bubble of Peacekeepers. "Your eyeliner's a bit smudged."

"Oh, you know," I sort of sing, slamming the feelings back down. "Emotions."

Liza tuts playfully. "You made a mistake with him, I tell you."

"What do you mean?" we both reply to her. Valdez winks at me. "Jinx."

Zavok unlocks his car with a click of a button and a blink of a light. It's a weird-looking thing. It's shallow and curvy with a spoiler, and it's painted in red and black with cyan accents, just like Zavok himself. The car's most defining feature is the way the rims of the front windows curve around the back doors to the front wheels, and the giant headlights. It looks fast and it looks mean. The escorts, for no reason in particular, are allowed to use their own personal vehicles as long as they aren't at risk of imminent breakdown, and the seatbelts in the back are up to standard. That being, we can't let ourselves go. The doors of his car open upwards like the elytra of a ladybird, and Zavok locks Liza and I in place. It's only a short drive to the train station, in the complete opposite direction to the way that I came, and it's categorised by a lot of informal chats about anything and everything that could possibly be talked about at this stage. Talents, hobbies, achievements, life goals, tastes, likes, dislikes, memories, and a lot of other things that I can't avoid comment on without appearing like the most boring young man in the world.

"I don't like ice cream either," Liza squints in response to Valdez's confession. "It's too cold."

"Yeah..." he sighs. "Too cold."

"Same," I speak, for the first time in about six miles. "The- The ice cream is too cold. Not me."

Liza tuts again. "I'll take your word for it. Zavok, you don't like ice cream, do you?"

He huffs. "I most certainly do like ice cream."

"Really? You don't strike me as the type who would enjoy it."

"Looks can be deceiving, Liza," Zavok replies. His voice is clear, low, and loud, no matter what he says or how he wishes to say it. It comes right from the core of his chest. "I do rather enjoy a bowl of strawberries and ice cream in the afternoon. Maybe even sprinkles, if I'm feeling daring. The rainbow ones."

"Jimmies?"

"Yes, and chocolate syrup, too."

Zavok pulls up in a parking space in another vast and empty car park. I'm sick of seeing car parks. He escorts Liza, Valdez, and I onto a train, perched neatly on one of the two platforms at District 1's Train station. It's a clean passenger train, streamlined and painted in a pristine white not unlike the uniforms of the Peacekeepers that took us here.

"I recognise that watermark." Liza points out a logo printed onto the glass of one of the train windows. "I used to live next to the glassworks that made this. The one that's partnered with Cut-Rate Shipping, they made windows for the armoured vehicles from Donpa Motors in Six, I can't remember what it's called."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Liza," Valdez says.

"Near the hospital, the glassworks. Oh, what is it called-"

"Make yourselves at home," Zavok addresses us all collectively, ignoring Liza's frustrated head-scratching and ramblings to herself over companies she used to live by and her parents used to work for. "We shall watch the Reaping recap tonight and sleep until tomorrow morning, when I will take you from the train to the Tribute Centre in the Capitol."

"Liza you literally lived there, how do you not know what it's called?" Valdez laughs, barely listening to Zavok. Zavok simply rolls his eyes and sits down on one of the plush settees.

Liza points at the watermark again. "They make windows! They sent the windows to Donpa! They put the windows on the Crimson Tower! Triple glazing!"

"Is that the one built for MeteorTech?" I ask. "That's District 2 Peacekeeper stuff?"

"Collaborative project, Espio!" Liza sighs. "Do you know the place I mean?"

"No. Nobody does, Liza."

"Ugh!" she groans. She leans on the windowsill of the train as it begins to roll forward out of the station, and keeps thinking hard.

Valdez takes a deep inhale, and he too leans on a windowsill.

"Whelp," he sighs. "Welcome to the train."

Chapter Text

I spend the afternoon alone in one of the train's many bedrooms, in a kind of fort made of the pillows and the blankets. I had to find a way to stop myself from thinking, so I alternated between meditation - something my mother taught me - and making paper roses from a notebook in a drawer until I just couldn't stand it anymore.

Meditation isn't something she taught to the whole group. It was just for me. I guess she thought I needed it, and that it would benefit me to have something else to do. And of course, being the young brat that I was, I got easily bored and understimulated and I simply couldn't be bothered with it. But with a bit of perseverance and a few utterances of 'Mother knows best' from the mother who did indeed know best at the time, I got into it. I figured out what it was for.

It's not just sitting around wasting time like I thought it was. It was deeper than that. Quite the opposite of wasting time actually, because if you do it well you'll only save time in the long run because your head will be clearer. You notice things. You withdraw from the world while at the same time being as close to it as you can possibly be. You connect with nature and natural forces and the flow of the air breathes through you. You name all of the emotions in your body and work through each thought one at a time, accept that it exists, and if you must, simply turn it off when you're done with it. It's paying attention to the here and now. Not the future, not the past. Now.

So, naturally, I noticed the noises of a train, the smells of strong air freshener, the feeling of the rumble of tracks, and, having never been on a train before, I panicked. I don't like the here and I don't like the now. It means bad things, and no matter how good I am at switching things off in my mind, I can't switch off this.

"Espio! The recap's coming on!"

I look over my pile of soft fabrics and paper roses and try to calm the rising sickness in my chest, dug out yet again by Valdez's morbid cheerfulness. I can almost hear the soft, sad piano music emanating from the cluster of things. Gentle, romantic, in a minor key, signalling imminent doom. Grey, washed-out petals drifting from the sky, the smell of flowers and rain, wilting, whatever. I don't like what I've made.

"Espio!"

"I'm coming," I shout back. I chuck a blanket over the mess and head out to the table where the others sit.

"What were you doing in there?" Liza asks. "You were locked up for hours!"

"Creativity," I answer sharply. I figured out a while back that concise, confident, no-nonsense answers will never spawn follow-up questions.

"Good to see you, lad," Valdez smiles. He passes me a bowl of soup and some bread, and turns on the television.

The show begins with Gerald Robotnik, the grandfather of President Ivo Robotnik and host of all things Hunger Games. The leadership of Panem is all run by close-knit groups within the Capitol, by the only people who everyone is sure to trust. Even the Chaos Council were closely aligned with Ivo Robotnik, influencing and advising each other in realms from robotic quality-of-life aids, to the elite fashion trends. It's been that way since the war. It might stay that way. After a short introduction, some pre-recorded interviews come on.

"Hey, that's me!" Valdez pipes up, when his face comes onto the screen.

Zavok rolls his eyes. "Are you going to do this every year?"

"Well, yeah?" He laughs. "Just in case people forget?"

Maria comes on afterwards, the traumatised and chronically ill winner of the previous games. One's more patriotic Hunger Games fans bitterly described her as a waste of a win. Especially since District 5 hardly needed it. To which I responded, "Well, neither did we?" And they said, "Yeah but Five don't have a reputation."

After that, there was some talk in the trainee circle about bringing Five into the Career alliance, but the majority voted against doing so. It would be cheap to drag Five into this immediately after their first ever win that they didn't even deserve simply because they are rich as a collective. They said they'd only vote again after this years' Games on the condition that Five wins for a second year in a row. They said it was highly unlikely, even laughed at the prospect. I said I'd wait until after the Reaping to make any comment on it.

District 1's seal flashes up on the screen, and we're taken to an arial view of the Justice Building.

"What a view," Valdez gasps, as the camera pans over the crowd of One's residents, lit up in a blanket of the sun's liquid gold. "I'm proud of how well you two took it," he continues. "Especially you, Liza. The real spirit."

I watch again as she thrusts her hand into the air like a true champion.

When the time comes for me, in my perfect, unbroken eyeliner and my slightly crooked paper rose, I don't look anywhere near as nervous as I felt. Mother taught me well.

"I hope that can be mistaken for quiet confidence," Valdez comments, knowing my true circumstances and the personal and moral dilemma that he had a hand in putting me in. We all know it, to some extent, that I wasn't delighted to have to be here. I ignore him.

District 2 comes on, and this is where Liza cracks out the notebook from her own room and starts taking notes. Neither of Two's tributes are volunteers. From what we can tell, despite creating the Career alliance, they don't treat it as tenderly or strategically as we do. They see it as a triumphant success-story, something to be proud of, something to have the luck and honour of being invited into by the divine for their hard work. They're big on their folk traditions in Two, and they live oblivious of all the people who look down on them for such things, but I'm sure if I were there I'd fit right in.

"They look good," Liza says, clicking her pen away. "They're gonna be good to work with."

Zavok laughs. "What, a couple of runty fifteen year olds?"

"You say that like Espio wasn't a runty fifteen year old less than six months ago." She doesn't say it like a humorous 'gotcha'. She says it with bitterness, and it annoys me. Runty fifteen year old? Perhaps she should have mentioned that 'characteristic' of mine during the meeting before letting me sign the damn contract. Or maybe she just wants to steal the victory for herself, thinking I'll snuff it early on.

"Do you have a problem?" I ask Liza. She goes very quiet and returns to her notes as the scene switches from Two to Three.

Chapter Text

Vector and Cream from Three are one heck of a pair. Vector, eighteen and built like a machine, and Cream, twelve, the literal Victor's daughter. Liza resents them both immediately. They will take sponsors from One. Distasteful, after what they did last year. Really rubbing it in. She then rolls her eyes at District 4 when Big, wearing a huge frog hat, accidentally volunteers by going after his pet frog, which leapt from his shoulder into the central alley. She says the girl, Marine, looks capable enough.

District 5 is where things get really interesting. It is no shock to me that Three reaped Cream, it's exactly the sort of thing the Capitol would do in response to the ending of the last Games and the pressure they were put under. Especially since finding out myself that the Reapings can be meddled with so easily. I wanted to see who comes from Five because of Maria. To see if her first year of mentorship is going to be smooth sailing for her, and maybe if she'll ever have to do another. I wanted to judge whether the trainees back home would need to get their second round of ballots ready. She stands by the bowls wrapped tightly in a thick coat and watches silently as the girl and boy are reaped. I can't think of a reason why Five's reaping would have to be rigged, so it comes as a surprise when Shadow, coatless and soaked to the skin in the pouring rain, heads up to the stage even more unconcerned than I looked, almost smiling, as if he also knew of his fate in advance. It's so subtle and muted by the wet, grey armageddon that nobody else picks up on it, but after everything, I know a rigging when I see one. The trainees can't bin the ballots yet.

District 6 is also remarkably strange. Gerald comments that Blaze is related to the Capitol in some way and her family are popular both there and in Six, so she's rich and low odds, which makes a rigging for her make sense after what happened with Elise from last year. Target the one that everyone loves, and maybe people will learn. And the boy, Silver, is just weird. So weird. He loves the sky. He loves it so much that he never looks down from it for more than a few seconds at a time.

District 7 is talked over until the point of the name-pulling. It can be assumed that their escort Zor is going on another one of his existential, suicidal rants that nobody, not even himself by the look of him, particularly wants to hear. We watch him drag a bit of paper from the bowl, unravel it, and read.

"Matilda Stratnyy."

A thirteen year old girl is taken up to the stage. Liza tuts. "I hate it when they reap young ones. It almost makes me feel bad for being here."

"Only almost?" I reply, still annoyed over her comments. She goes quiet again.

Zor drags his feet over to the other bowl and picks out the other paper. "Dave Pripravnik."

Valdez sighs as a scrawny intern shuffles to the stage. "Rest in peace, Seven," he breathes, though just as Seven's reaping is about to pack up, a hand is raised from the block of seventeen year olds. "Oh?"

"No way?" Zavok says lowly under his breath, fascinated. "Seven's first volunteer."

Another armadillo is practically dragged to the stage by Peacekeepers to the dismay of Matilda. Utterly in a trance, he answers his name to be Mighty Stratnyy. Most definitely an older brother.

"Now that is interesting." Zavok leans back on his chair and slurps some of his soup.

The rest is dull. Liza makes some snarky comments about the two echidnas from Ten in their bandages and the girl from Eleven with her flower crown, but otherwise, there is nothing really to say. Apart from the fact that One, Three, Six, and possibly Five but only to me, were as rigged as rigging can be.

"A promising roster," Valdez frowns. "Not good for us."

"It's only promising until Seven." Liza flicks through her notes. "If we work with Two and the girl from Four, and avoid Three and Eleven like the plague, we might get somewhere."

"Wouldn't it be beneficial to get on Three's side, since you say they will pull all of the sponsors? Couldn't we piggyback on that?" I ask, but I quickly shut up when both Liza and Valdez both give me that tell-tale stare of disappointment. So I finish up my soup, stack my bowl and my bread plates towards the middle of the table, and head out back towards my room.

"Espio!"

I sigh, and move my hand away from the door handle. "Yes, Valdez?"

He gently taps his spoon on the table. "We need you on this team."

"Are you prepared to allow me to participate, then?" I request. "And not let the other member of this 'team' make weird comments about it?"

Liza scoffs. "Like what?"

I hate that response. I always have hated it from people like her. They use it as a deflection tactic, when things build up, to make you look crazy. Those who picked on me before did it too when I tried to call them out on their bullshit regardless of whether I found it funny and I learnt very quickly that I can't win an argument like that. But still, I give it a go. "Like, that we've made a mistake by having me here?" I start listing. "Tutting and rolling your eyes at everything I say? Calling me 'runty'?"

She just laughs. "Oh Es, you know I didn't mean it like that. You're a great asset to the team, we all know this, otherwise you wouldn't be here. I was trying to say to Zavok that being runty isn't a bad thing, because you're here."

I lean on my door, and watch through a window at the rocky deserts that the train meanders through under the orange sunset. That's not the excuse that she thinks it is. "Well that's just wonderful, isn't it."

"We signed the paper, Espio. We volunteered to be here. Zavok and Gamma rigged the reaping just so we could be guaranteed a place here. We're in the deep end now. This is what you've dedicated your whole life to, is it not?"

"Of course," I reply honestly.

"And you want to be here for the honour and pride of representing District 1 and setting an example for the rest of Panem?"

"Of course," I reply slightly less honestly.

"And you agree that actively participating the Hunger Games and trying your damn hardest to put on a compelling show and do bloody well is the key to a peaceful future for our district? And you are willing to dedicate your life to Panem, and you are prepared to serve your life to the nation that served you so well?"

"Of course," I reply dishonestly.

"Well then what's the problem?"

I look back over to the dining table. The TV is left on pause on an arial shot of District 12. Valdez and Zavok quietly sip on their soups, leaving Liza to her words. She bites into another chunk of buttered pepper bread and raises her eyebrows at me expectantly.

I keep my breathing steady, and I keep my face straight. "There is no problem."

She puts the bread down and nods at Valdez, satisfied.

Chapter Text

The sun beams down over the Capitol as our train, the first one to reach the Capitol Interchange, slows to a gradual stop. The four of us get ourselves in position: led by Zavok, Liza and I side by side, and Valdez on our tail. We each rummaged through the wardrobes we were provided with to find the nicest clothes. I found a simple yet classy suit, and stuffed some paper roses in the pockets. It was Valdez's idea, after seeing what I was really getting up to yesterday, to offer a flower or two to some old ladies if I see any on the way down. Every good tribute has a motif, apparently. Something they can be identified with. He failed to provide any examples on the spot, which I found quite hilarious, but he insisted it's true. He called it conditioned marketing. However, the second the doors open, my heart rate quickens and my whole body stiffens. I only manage to get two roses out - one to an enthusiastic lady with a green fedora and another to an adorable little boy - before my fingers seize up and I have to resort to the breathing techniques again. It's a start. By the interviews, when I actually have to say more than two words, I'll be used to crowds.

The third big crowd will come tonight, for the Tribute Parade, and whoever my stylist is has had since the Reaping to stitch something for me to wear on the chariot. It seems like such an unpleasant deadline, to trek through all the footage, come up with an idea, make it, and make it good, but the Capitol do only hire the most highly skilled designers for such jobs.

We enter the Tribute Centre through a back entrance and Zavok checks us in. "As your escort, it is my job to inform you that you are not permitted to leave the premises under any circumstances, unless you are supervised by myself. You are, however, permitted to go to the roof garden without an escort," he recites. "Should you try to leave the Tribute Centre via the roof, your exit will be intercepted by a forcefield which may or may not be fatal. Is that clear?"

Liza laughs. "Exit via the roof? You mean commit suicide? Gosh, this is so formal and official, I love it."

Zavok is not amused.

He wastes no time circling us around the place, verbally annotating every important feature, bits of history about the building and how President Ivo Robotnik used to live on one of these floors, before taking us up the constantly-moving elevator to the next one.

"And these quarters are where we shall all be staying for the next week," he concludes after his passionate delivery of history, thrusting the doors open.

It's an extravagant space. The lights are already on, in a warm, sparkling fashion. Lush carpets, polished floorboards, plumped settees in lime green, wallpaper that twinkles with gold leaf, swirls drawn into the plaster of the ceiling, matching furniture all without a single scratch - it's so perfect it makes me want to scream. This can't possibly be for us, can it? They decorate the rooms so wonderfully, give us such a happy welcome, and in a week we'll have the moment our hearts stop beating televised for all to see.

It's obviously better than the stupid zoo they had before, up until the early teens, but at least that made a little bit of sense. At least the Capitol's intentions and desires were a bit more overt.

Liza, of course, gasps happily at the sight, and runs her hand along the fabric of one of the sofas, and I would say that Valdez looks glad to be back, but something about him makes me change my mind. He too is thinking about this place. It takes him a second or two before he finally decides to sit down.

He was a Career, he sort of still is, he certainly likes to say he is in interviews, and that he is a victor, of course. He portrays himself as a steel-faced, tough-minded, hard-working victor, with a mouth and an attitude when it suits him and a remarkable ability to remain silent when it doesn't, which hasn't often happened because he usually has something to say for everything, but he seems to have had that reality check this year and so far kept his mouth shut when nobody is having a go at him for any unforeseen disaster events that he couldn't really have helped. And yet in that moment before he sat down and relaxed into the cushions, I think we could have agreed that maybe - this place and its beauty - it's the Capitol's twisted form of empathy, a way to show the Districts just how much they'll miss once they're gone, and how much they will never have.

Only fools are blind to that sort of thing, I think, even before they trespass into government buildings and read forbidden historical literature about how horrible this intelligent race truly is. The whole reason the Career alliance exists is because we know that we're never going to be them. But for as long as we do what they want and please them, and break the rules enthusiastically in a way that they like by training for the deathmatch they dragged us into, we'll be as close as we can possibly get. It's forgetting where we came from that results in people like Liza, and it's ignoring where we came from that results in people like Valdez, and it's hiding and obsessing about where we came from that results in people like me.

"Chaos, what am I doing here?" I mutter to myself, and head to the decorated corridor so I can get first dibs on a nice room. I might as well make the most if it.

I spend an offensively long time lying on the floor of this room, staring at the ceiling. Once again, it's amazing, it even has an electric feature wall, but if I can ignore that for a little while then I can focus on clearing my head of all things one at a time, and just happily basking in the silence of my mind, the otherwise unnoticeable noises in my ears, and the fresh, crisp smell of the soft carpet. I may need a lot of time like this, in the biggest week of my life, to sit back and allow myself to breathe so I don't lose my mind and ruin my chances of winning the Games. I have a promise to keep, of course. Well, not really a promise, but a demand to meet. It's big enough, all the same.

Chapter Text

I had maybe an hour to myself before Valdez insisted we watch the walk recap, and the stylists came to take us to their studios.

My stylist's name is Lumina Flowlight, and her twin brother, Void Flowlight, is working with Liza. She tells me that she and her brother are graduate textiles students at the Capitol University, and this is their final project. In their small class of merely eight, it wasn't difficult for the lot of them to pry into the Hunger Games to build their final portfolio. The others are working on districts Two, Seven, and Twelve.

"It's such an honour to be able to work with District 1," she tells me, gently closing the door to her neat studio. She positions me on a raised circular platform in the centre of the room and begins to take some measurements of my body. "Truly a dream come true."

"I hope you succeed," I reply. "What's your plan?"

"Well," she sighs hazily, "I managed to get in touch with your mentor Valdez via Zavok while you were all on the train over here, and he tells me that yourself and Liza are quite the samurai?"

"You could call us that."

She scribbles down some numbers onto the back of her hand. "He says that you two are the best that One has had since Finitevus himself."

"The winner of the fifteenth." I recall. "We've had a lot of great tributes since then, and I'm certain Valdez is one of them?"

It's true that Finitevus was a fantastic player. He was dangerous, a master manipulator, a whole narcissist, tricking the other tributes into believing that he is the only one who can truly be left alone and trusted not to hurt them, only for him to bulldoze them all. 'Purged by fire' as he always said. And he was well-spoken and intelligent and took mentoring more seriously than every other part of his life. He became enraged when his tributes gave up their lives for their allies. To him, no one would willingly kill themself for the sake of another, that's stupid. He couldn't understand why anyone would do such a thing, especially not once the Careers came to play. Valdez's life is his proudest achievement, and now he lives happily in his fancy Victor's house in the Victor's Village sipping wine and playing guitar.

"Valdez sees something in you two," Lumina giggles. "At least, that's what he told me. And I think after the walk, I see it too."

She shows me some magenta triangles made of a tough plastic that glimmer in the brightness of the ring light opposite me. They glow and shine like shards of amethyst crystal, and fasten together with discreet elastic hinges to make a rock-hard body armour.

"You had a bunch of roses at the walk, though, and at the reaping now I think about it" she continues. "I'm not sure how we could incorporate those into the design."

I hum, and slide my thumb across the top line of one of the shards. I decide not to tell her about what Valdez said. I have no particular reason for it, other than my inner chaos gremlin scratching at me, telling me to fight back by whatever means I can. And maybe also out of consideration for her, seeing as her design is already done. "Do you think it's necessary?"

"I suppose not," Lumina smiles. "Maybe we can bring a rose to your interview, though."

"That would be nice."

She carefully dresses me in some decorative and padded undergarments so I'm not caused any discomfort from the shards, and we discuss the tribute walk to break the silences.

District 2, the so-called runty fifteen year olds, were probably the strongest of the lot with a confidence I'd never imagined. I don't know what they feed them in Two, but whatever it is, it has the flavour of ego. I hated them instantly. Vector from Three was oddly quiet. He's intimidating in an anxious way. The kind of way that makes a person seem like they wish they were smaller than their actual size, but they know that they can use it if they need to.

I sincerely hope District 4 has some elaborate plan. Perhaps not so elaborate that it would become a 'Finitevus versus the world' part two though, that would be tragic.

"I don't know what it is about Shadow from Five," I tell Lumina. "Something's not right with him, but I just can't place it."

I mentioned it to Valdez when we watched the walk recap. I told him about the Reaping and what I inferred from his reaction to being called up. The way he almost smiled, almost laughed. He must have known. But Valdez said I'm probably still thinking about my own Reaping, he thinks it's a normal reaction to being reaped, and that I need to be quiet about it before someone suspects me. Shadow didn't speak to anyone on the walk down, though. Not even Rouge. In fact, I'm not sure he looked anyone in the face. Maybe he is just a strange guy but with Five being the reigning champions and the trainees joking about a second win, I can't not pay attention.

"Some people are just a little weird," Lumina replies to my thoughts, some of which I let slip in dazed ramblings. "I don't really know all that much about the Games besides the basics and the parts I need to be involved in, but maybe you'll learn more about him in training?"

"Maybe I will," I smile. "What do they say, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer?"

She chuckles, and clicks my headpiece together. "Well then you'll be meeting everyone? Sussing everyone out?"

I think about that idea for a little while. I'm not opposed to meeting new people. I quite like a gathering every now and then, but that's always more of an informal happiness do than a deathmatch dojo. But still, it's a good idea. More allyship opportunities outside of Two and Four. Knowledge on what to expect from the other tributes.

"Yeah," I nod. "It'll be good."

Chapter Text

"Espio, I hate my stylist!" Liza exclaims when we climb onto our designated chariot backstage from the Parade.

"Void Flowlight?"

"Yeah, how do you know his name?"

"I have his sister."

"What? He didn't mention a sister." She shrugs. "To be fair, he didn't mention much. He's not a talker. Like, at all. He didn't even explain what's going on. About right, for a name like Void Flowlight. Really sapping my energy."

"Well that's interesting," I grin, "because my stylist's name is Lumina and she's a sunshine."

"Good for you!" she scoffs. I bite my lip to stop myself from laughing as she roughly adjusts her crystal shoulders, which definitely were not done with as much caution as mine. "He was so boring. No charisma, no talk, no inspiration behind those eyes. Those dark blue tattooed eyes... ugh."

"I can't imagine he'll be scoring high on his assignments then, if extroversion is part of the marking criteria," I pretend to ponder. "Oh wait, it isn't."

"Assignments?"

"Tattooed eyes, you say?"

"Are you obnoxious on purpose?"

"Alright, you two," Valdez interrupts. Liza pouts at him, and I just keep smiling. He pulls a crumpled scrap of paper from his pocket. "Here's the plan. You two are strong ninjas. Steadfast, okay? You're fierce and powerful and you are victors. Hold hands, too."

Liza looks just as mortified as I feel.

Valdez rolls his eyes. "I mean it. Own it. Show that you're a team, convince yourselves of it, seeing as it bothers you so much. This is a bonding exercise."

"Holding hands is a bonding exercise?" Liza stares.

"Would you rather do a trust fall?"

Liza gives me a hard glare, and this time I can't help myself.

"No," she sighs. "We'll hold hands."

She reluctantly folds her fingers around mine and we find a mutual grip that feels secure yet not too close, just in time for the arena ahead of us to spring to life. The curtain before us opens, and the wheels on the glossy wooden chariot begin to squeak themselves into motion as the horses take their first steps. Liza grips my hand a little tighter, and we take our stances.

Chin up, shoulders back, legs straight, knees locked, eyes ahead, mind the roses flying through the air, breathing steady - ninjas. And I find myself taking little effort to stay that way. Maybe it's from exposure, this being my third time as the centre of attention among so many people, or maybe I am just very suited for the ninja style. I quite like it.

The audience is immense. The stands have been split and rotated to make a path between them to the great stage, collared by a coil of rods with lights at their tips. They're steep and they extend far up above our heads. I wonder how they managed to fit all of this in one underground cavern, but my thoughts are interrupted when Liza's grip suddenly tightens, and she thrusts our arms triumphantly up into the air on the beat of a drum. I almost lose my balance, and the roar of the crowd almost forces me to break my steel expression, but attention soon lands on District 2 and our chariot is wheeled behind the stage.

"Valdez is going to be furious," I shout over the noise when I'm sure there are no cameras left on us.

"He can do one," she shouts back. "We're not little children holding hands at the park for a cute photograph. If he wants teamwork, we can show everyone what that really looks like!"

She finally lets go of me, and I rub my hand where her freshly manicured fingernails dug in between my bones. For once, I agree with her. This isn't a bonding exercise for us two, this is a bonding exercise between us and the world. But then I catch myself agreeing with her, and wonder if telling Valdez that his 'bonding exercise' kinda worked would earn me a broken tooth.

The horses work their way up a slope around the back of the stage and we emerge on top, and we're parked in our designated space. We get a fantastic view of the rest of the tributes. Two are golems, Three are decorated in strings of lights, Four are strange water creatures, Five are dressed in reflective panels like ours and dunked in a glowing slime, Six are dressed smartly as heads of transport, Seven are mushrooms and moss, Eight are in extravagant suits, Nine are scarecrows, Ten are warriors wearing animal skins and the boy is given a goat horn to blow upon entry, Eleven have silver branches with red berries weaved into wings, and Twelve are dressed as coal miners, as District 12 always have been since the debut of the Tribute Parade. I can't imagine those stylists are getting any points for originality. And then the light show begins, recalling the highlights of the previous Hunger Games, and president Ivo Robotnik is brought out onto a raised platform carried by a hovercraft and directed by two small robots and a flicky bird. He waits for the audience to settle down before he begins his speech.

"Welcome!" He exclaims, and the crowd erupts yet again. "Tributes, we welcome you. We salute your courage and your sacrifice. And we wish you, Happy Hunger Games."

Liza finds a reason to take the opportunity and wave. I just smile.

"This year," Robotnik continues, "there are to be a few changes to Gamemaking. Since the execution of the Chaos Council following the Nine Miles Inquiry, we have appointed a new Head Gamemaker, Master Zik. Master Zik shall direct the Games, the tributes' training, and their scores in their private training sessions."

Oh, the Nine Miles Inquiry. A disaster of an interview. Dr. Deep couldn't have handled it any worse. Zik's face appears on a distant screen, and then promptly fades away.

"So to all of the tributes, their mentors, their stylists and their sponsors," he smiles, "may the odds be ever in your favour."

Chapter Text

The Nine Miles Inquiry happened on May 11th, 27. It followed half a year of conferences after conferences in the Capitol trying to piece together exactly what went wrong in the 26th Hunger Games. Nine wasn't the only problem. There was a whole media fiasco about Elise from Six being a rebel due to singing 'District propaganda', the fact that the Games took over a month to resolve which ground the viewer counts to near zero, and pretty much the entire budget being spent on building the arena leaving virtually nothing for arena events other than collapsing the ceiling to kill Elise, ruining any remaining tension and drama because of her ongoing District 2 chase. There were simply too many misuses of Capitol money. All of the funds that had been stashed away from the other Games by the Chaos Council, plus the added success of the Quarter Quell, were blown on nothing.

The Inquiry was supposed to be a be all and end all to it. Everyone in the Capitol was sick to death of all the pussyfooting - they wanted the Chaos Council gone. So, on one random evening on Capitol Calling, Gerald Robotnik invited Head Gamemaker Dr. Deep onto the show. And to my delight, the television in the living space has the whole thing on tape. It was hilarious the first time round, and even better the second time when Nicole and I picked it all apart minute by minute, line by line.

It's the middle of the night, but I don't care. Sleep is for the weak, after all.

This is also part of the reason why I'm convinced that the moon was fake. Vanilla, Three's mentor, was blamed for a lot of the things that happened towards the end, and Dr. Deep countered that by saying that there is nothing she could possibly have done because of the three hour delay in gift giving, and Nine constructed his laser beam thing in about two hours and ten minutes. Like the genius he is. Every year there is some kind of delay because of how the mentors' gifts are just shoved onto a drone, flown over Panem, and dunked into the arena, and education is not completely terrible - we all know that speed equals distance divided by time - so anyone with half a brain should have been able to figure out that Space Colony ARK was very much a land colony. And just as it happened, as the Inquiry was aired live, I could see the exact moment that both Gerald and Deep had someone whisper into the earpieces to shut the fuck up before Deep exposed everything. I watch that moment again on the big television, and wonder how in the world the whole thing managed to stay a secret. They make the eye contact of two men who know they've royally messed up. Gerald quickly changes the subject.

"Alright, enough about Vanilla..." He shakes his head, thoroughly miffed about the state of the situation that Deep has landed him in. "Why did you allow this to happen?"

"Well," Deep laughs nervously, not quite recovering as quickly. "Us Gamemakers can only interfere when it's either an Arena Event, for example the Great Flood of the 17th or the Switch-On of the Quarter Quell, or... a tribute is going to cause mass destruction."

"Well Miles was very clearly unwell in the head, you said it yourself, and that's why I'm not entirely sure I can accept your arguments about Vanilla."

He gets defensive. "We just thought he was making pretty machines! We thought we had him under control, how was I supposed to know he was communicating with demons in there?"

"Weren't you worried when he became 'Nine', and gave himself seven more tails that could electrocute other tributes?"

Deep sighs, knowing full well how this looks. "...I admit that we may have made some oversights, but... Hey, at least we killed him."

"Yeah but did you really need to destroy half of the Space Station?" Gerald asks, almost laughing to himself at the absurdity of the questions he's having to bring to the interview.

"Sure."

"And did you really need to make these games the longest ever? Just for that to be how it ends?"

"Sure."

Gerald suddenly turns sinister. "Do you have no respect for President Ivo Robotnik?"

"Mr. Dr. Eggman?" Deep responds, somehow unaware of Gerald's change in tone. "He's wonderful."

"You blew his nose off, sir."

"Sure."

I'm startled by the sudden opening of a door. Liza's door. She comes out of her room with a near-empty glass, muttering to herself about the Avox water tasting like trash, with a dressing gown half on, half off. She sees me, and raises an eyebrow.

"Espio? What are you doing?"

"I'm watching the Nine Miles Inquiry," I reply, and pause the TV.

"What the fuck are you watching that for?"

"Because Robotnik mentioned it in his speech."

She looks dazed, and walks behind me to the community kitchen to get herself some tap water. "You need to go to sleep."

"I don't like sleeping when I have things I want to think about."

"Do you ever sleep?" She hums. "Or should I ask, do you ever stop thinking?"

I think about that question for long enough to realise that the answer is probably no.

She tuts. "You're actively stripping years off your life."

"I kind of don't give a damn," I reply, quicker than is comfortable, but I know I'm not wrong. How could I give a damn right now?

Liza turns off the tap, downs her water, and leaves the glass to come and sit next to me on the sofa. She stares at the TV for some time, frozen on Gerald's mortified face, and sighs. "I know you're scared, Espio."

There's no point in denying it. "And you're not?"

"Not outwardly, no," she replies, as if that means anything at all.

"Well then neither am I, to most people."

She sighs again, and runs her fingers between the ruffles of her fluffy gown.

"Is it helpful?" I ask. "To think about everything as if you're going to live to eighty? Even now, when you very well couldn't?"

She shrugs. "Well it's a nice distraction, but obviously I need some kind of plan to get there. And it will never not be selfish and bloodthirsty and narcissistic, but..." she trails off, and gives up with her answer. "Just go to sleep, you moron."

Chapter Text

On the first morning of training, after a lengthy chat with Liza and Valdez about our plans, I agree to join in on the Career meeting at the beginning. This whole thing is organised by the mentors and is a relatively well-known system. It's probably not fair. It'll probably get banned for real one day. Maybe the Career alliance will be dismantled, or just forgotten. I was never particularly crazy for it even when I was dead set on every other Career thing. The thought of assigned alliances confused me right from the start.

The way it goes is that District 1 is the lead on introductions and team management, District 4 is the lead on strategy and skill, and District 2 is the lead on bonding and the Thorndyke toast. In the beginning, when all of us are situated in a circle and short little Master Zik gives us a brief tour of the facilities available to us, I meet the eyes of all of the other Careers and they meet each other's. Out of all of them, from what I can infer, Marine is probably the most normal. We are all in shirts with our district number on our chests with a water bottle, also labelled, and surrounded by anything we could possibly need for a smooth entrance into the Games if we were given two and a half months for it rather than two and a half days. I take my gaze away from the non-Career tributes. They don't train. Not formally, anyway. I'm at an advantage and I don't like that guilt even if it can only be a good thing for me.

When training begins, I watch Zik leave the Centre and imagine him hopping neatly back up the stairs to the Gamemaker balcony. Last year, the Chaos Council only had three members: Dr. Deep, born in District 3 but so ingrained in Capitol culture now that nobody there seems to care anymore, and his two Capitol-born employees Dr. Done-It and Dr. Don't. Not their real names, of course, but no insane person in any kind of publicity will use their real name for anything. Nine, and Mephiles the Dark mentor of Six, are also part of that club. And sometime between the 26th and 27th Games, Dr. Deep found himself with a baby whom he named Dr. Babble, and he fully intended to have the baby on the team this year.

There are more of the new Gamemakers, but they don't seem to be anywhere near as closely knit as the Chaos Council. Each of them have their own seat around some banquet that many of them hardly touch.

"Espio!" Liza shouts from directly behind me. "Come on, we have a meeting to run."

"Oh, yes." I chuckle. "Of course."

We find an empty seating area close to the hunting simulators, perhaps in earshot of District 6, but nobody apart from me seems to notice. We all introduce ourselves by name and by age just for formality, before working around the circle, starting with me.

Espio Vaso, a few months into sixteen, generally average height, perhaps a little lighter and thinner than I should be, but that's going on Capitol measurements and that's no good. Decently competent with knives and throwing stars, able to use larger blades, brilliant at hiding in the strangest of places, and they don't need to know where I learnt that. Knowledgeable of survival tactics, appreciative of art and music and poetry and literature and other things of that type... when it gets to that part, I quickly lose the interest of the others, and that's fine. If Liza's already outcasted me then I'll lean into it, so long as they think I'm unkillable. No, not think. Know. They need to know I'm unkillable so they don't try me further down the line, but not enough of a threat to think they have to gang up on me. When Amy asks if I'd like to demonstrate my improv poetry, Liza quickly drags the attention onto herself. It must be working.

She explains all of her skills, pretty much the same as mine minus the nerdy passion for slam poetry nights at the bars in town. By the glassworks, now that I think about it. I say nothing, and just let the rest do their thing. Liza is very quick to praise Amy's skill with a hammer. Any hammer you like.

"Well, I run fast and I kick hard." Sonic folds his arms after his very brief introduction. A simple guy. I like it for him. Liza tries to pry further into Sonic's life and he swears up and down that there's nothing else to it, he just wants to help the team however he can on attack and defence, and maybe bring in a survival skill or two on the side.

I take another look at District 6 on their hunting simulator, and they are absolutely listening. They see me looking and start whispering. And then it's Big's turn to introduce himself after Marine's claim in a strange accent that she can harness the force of water and the bounties within it.

"I didn't think they would make me come," he says sadly. "I thought they'd take pity on me because of Froggy-" his voice cracks terribly. He clears his throat, and completely switches his tone. "Speaking of Froggy, that was a little froggy. I need to work on that if I'm gonna keep it up in the arena. Nice to meet you all."

Liza almost chokes. "That's genius!" she cries, dropping her head into her hands. "I knew there was something more to you, Big!"

He pats her shoulder. "I'm smarter than I look, aren't I?"

Sonic can't stop laughing, and he very overtly runs through the plan with Big from start to finish, and District 6 hears every word. They start whispering again, and I just laugh to myself and leave. The introduction is done. Liza is carrying this anyway. As far as I'm concerned, my job is complete. And since Two are leading bonding, I wouldn't mind taking Amy up on her poetry request if she truly wished.

"A murderer is on the loose," I sing quietly to myself, searching for any way I can explain how this feels, wandering aimlessly around the darkest parts of the Training Centre. To be here, stuck here, running out of time, with home so far away. "While doors keep getting locked... tick tick tock goes the clock..." I sigh, and lean onto a metal frame attatched to a wall. "While our heroes are in the caboose."

Chapter Text

For the remainder of the morning, while the others get on with their tribute to the Thorndyke family, I work on my physical fighting. It's been too long. Usually I would do at least something every day to keep myself active, but what with the meetings and the Reaping and the crowds and all of that, I've been slacking.

The robots whir up before me for one last shot at hard mode. There are modes beyond this, like "hard ii" and "hard iii", "super form" and "mode vii" which does not yet have a name because it hasn't had one generated for it yet by use of the machine, but I don't try them. Hard mode is a comfortable yet challenging push for me, so going any higher would be too much right now. I finish them off with some effort and make the decision to return tomorrow and try hard ii.

I use lunch as an opportunity to observe everybody in the centre and decide on my next move. The Careers, of course, are together. Twelve, Ten, and Nine, Six, and Three are all within their own districts. Sticks from Eleven is alone and refusing to eat, and Bean from Eleven is with Honey from Eight. The boy from Eight, Ray, is sat quietly with Mighty. They're not talking, but they look friendly with each other. Shadow and Rouge are with Matilda, sat close to Three but not really interacting until Rouge attempts to flirt with Vector.

Shadow flicks her ear. "You stay in your lane."

"Am I not allowed to-"

"No, you're not allowed to flirt with the other tributes, Rouge."

She chuckles to Vector. "Shadow's just jealous," she smirks, to which Shadow rolls his eyes and plops a whole coffee bean in his mouth. And then another. The man eats coffee beans like raisins.

I accidentally let him see me looking at him. He looks annoyed at me, making me feel like he's judging me rather than me judging him, and he deals with it by chucking some beans into a ramakin and sternly pushing it across the table to me when the others aren't looking, with the intention of a man who refuses to allow others to question him. The 'I'll show you' type.

"Best eaten with a spoon in the morning," he says to me under his breath, with a gritty snarl in his voice.

After lunch, I do some more wandering and observation, and find Shadow with Rouge and Matilda at Swords. I watch from the shadows as they try to decipher the rather terrible instructions at the simulation. Six had a similar problem with their trap rigging - the instructions are too messy to be worth it but they're the only thing available in most cases. Shadow starts referring to them as the 'destructions', which brings a laugh out of Rouge that he just brushes off with a half smile.

The three of them reach a point where they start talking about their personal lives. Rouge is an avid metal detector, a "gold digger" as described by Shadow, so she banishes him from the conversation until it's his turn. Matilda is great with puzzles and pattern recognition and talks about some solitaire game that she speedruns in various ways that seems pretty universal across districts, or at least Seven and Five, that I somehow have never heard of. Something with a board and pins arranged in a cross, and you eliminate the pins by moving them over each other. Shadow explains that he is very much a skater. Skateboards, roller blades, scooters, whatever he can find - if it's smaller than him and it has wheels, he's hijacked it and made it go faster, to the dismay of Five's Head Peacekeeper Omega.

"He couldn't legally arrest me, though," he shrugs, and then he sees me again. Rouge and Matilda exchange glances, and head off.

I smile at him awkwardly, and take a coffee bean from my pocket and chew on it.

"What are you doing?" he asks me, more concerned than anything.

"Oh, nothing in particular," I reply, pulling a face at the odd taste. "I was just listening to what you were saying to Rouge and Matilda. I was under the impression that District 5 is really strict?"

"They're only strict if you don't know the law."

I tilt my head a little. "...Care to elaborate?"

Shadow obliges, and nods as he finally clicks the last part of the simulation into place. "I'm the reason so many laws have been re-written because I keep finding ways to push them. Before I did that, there was no mention of skates anywhere. It was either vehicles with wheels or pedestrians, and last time I checked, pedestrians don't have wheels and shoes are not vehicles, so I got away with it. Anywhere else, they said, and I'd have been shot on sight, but good law and order is valued in Five. They changed the wording to, 'no citizen shall move themself or others at a speed greater than that which is stated on the speed limit signs,' so I thought I could try to push it even further and figure out a way to attach a wild coyote to an old segway I found, but I think they might have been onto me." He rolls his eyes. "Omega had to remove me from the District before I re-wrote the entire Highway Code. The Reaping's rigged, I'm telling you."

I laugh until I realise he's dead serious. That makes his reaping make so much more sense. The Head Peacekeepers must have a lot more power than I thought, with both Gamma and Omega rigging the reapings. I pick up a sword from the rack and check its weight distribution by balancing it on my forearm.

"Why are you holding that thing like you've done this before?" he asks.

I sigh, and let the sword fall off my arm and I catch it. "Because I'm actually half decent at blades and I need to compensate for everything that I'm bad at by looking like I'm at least good at something that will keep me alive."

Shadow looks from me, to the Careers, and back again. "Pressure, huh?"

"Uh huh."

He nods. "What are you bad at?"

I wonder if I should answer him honestly and say I'm not the best at plants, shooting, spears, in fact, pretty much anything that doesn't involve hiding and slicing, but I don't trust him enough yet to reveal those things about myself so I settle with, "I'm bad at maths. I can do it on paper but in my head it just..."

"Doesn't add up?"

"No, it doesn't-" We both realise the pun that he just accidentally made. "No, Shadow. It doesn't add up."

"What else? Maths is just maths, everyone's bad at that."

"Well I can't draw either. I can fold but I can't draw. I can't say I've ever really tried but if you saw my drawings I think you'd understand why I don't want to. Anyway, this stuff isn't really relevant-"

Somehow, Shadow manages to express something along the lines of laughter without it showing on his face at all.

"What are you bad at?" I ask. "Expressing emotions?"

He pauses. "...Are you trying to get me to smile for you, Vaso?"

"What? No. I mean... maybe?"

He smirks. "You flirting?"

"No, that's disgusting."

He grins, and unhooks his own sword from the rack. "Is this your plan for allies?"

"Shadow I'm not flirting, I saw what you did to Rouge," I laugh. "I just want to get to know people."

"Oh yeah?"

"You're smiling."

He buffers again. "Oh. Indeed I am. You have outsmarted me. And for that..." His eyes darken, and as dramatically as he can dare, he unsheathes his sword. "...You shall pay."

I too unsheathe my sword. "Thou hast flourished thy blade in spite of me?"

It takes him a second to realise that I am not in the slightest serious with any of this. Serious flirting, the romantic, sappy kind - not my forte, and I refuse to do it as much as he refuses to let Rouge do it. Joke flirting? Absolutely, sign me up. Half of the slam poetry I wrote involved that to some degree because it evokes emotion in basically everyone, positive or negative or simply being weirded out. He glances back to the Careers again, who are off in the other corner doing their own thing with the plants. I find myself trying to perhaps telepathically assure him that no, I am not a spy, and yes, he is safe.

He allows himself another smile, and lowers his sword, putting some trust in me, so I lower mine too.

"Okay no but before you decapitate me," he starts, "don't tell your friends about this but I have no idea what I'm doing with this thing and I would greatly appreciate your help. The simulator's fine, I just acted like I broke it so I wouldn't have to tell Rouge."

Chapter Text

I did try, to no avail, to convince Liza that the only reason I was with District 5 all afternoon is because there is a lot I can learn from them and I see them as a threat to our alliance, since they are clearly in cahoots with District 7 and Matilda keeps glancing over at Three. She wasn't having any of it, since she literally saw me teach Shadow how to use a sword, but I promised her that I have it handled. If I can just go around and suss everyone out, perhaps pry into their strategies, then we're basically guaranteed a win. I told her that I'm doing the exact opposite of what I want Shadow to think I'm doing: playing spy, and getting people on our side so they don't kill us. So I need to at least start looking suspicious for them, and let Shadow in on it so I don't scare him away.

I've made up my mind. I want him, and despite his odd habit of plastering this never-get-on-my-bad-side attitude all over his face, I can trust him. Because that's all it is, really. A fake attitude that he knows how to flaunt. We get on remarkably well. I think his plans are similar to Big's, in a way. Convince everyone that he's something he's not. And similar to mine in that we just have to play our roles until the curtains drop.

He is a brilliant weaponist though, and a very quick learner, and he had no problem bearing his teeth and showing that to me. If he were from One, I'm sure he would have been made to volunteer instead of me. I just know that there's a softie in there somewhere. It takes one to know one.

On morning number two after greeting everybody I know, I grab a little metal star to fiddle with and head back to the close combat simulator to try my luck with hard ii, but Mighty is already there winning a battle with the easy robots. I watch him set the difficulty to medium, take a moment to regain his breath, and switch the thing back on. He wins again, then starts another. He flips the first over by its ankle, uppercuts the ribs of the tall one with a firmly balled fist, and wrangles himself out of the third one's tight grip and strangles it. The next few are dead easy to him.

"Impressive," I smile, as he unties himself from the last robot. It's quite a big simulation, and he used all of the space he had very tactically. He looked powerful. "So you're the one that everybody keeps talking about?" I continue. "You made quite the first impression on Reaping day."

Not anymore, though. As it turns out, he's quite bashful when he's not fighting.

I turn my little star over in my hands a few times. I'm not playing spy. I'm not trying to sabotage anybody. I just want to know people, and maybe their limits, too. "I had a go at hard mode yesterday," I tell him. I try to be encouraging. "Don't be shy, I think you could do well."

"What's the difference between hard and medium?" he asks, as if I'm trying to set him up for failure.

"Hard is faster still. The robots can't be too rough in case they hurt you. It's not the best AI in the world, it doesn't really adapt to you like a person can."

He's quiet for a minute or so. I know how this looks and I hate it. I got through to Shadow that I'm not going to kill him unless I really have to, but Mighty, one of the other big opponents of the Careers, is going to take some work.

I don't know why I'm doing this. Actively siding with the enemy rather than the people who would stick with me until the very end. But I remember pretty quickly that it doesn't mean a damn thing because that alliance was assigned to us. It's nothing. It's a requirement, rather than a trustful collaboration. There are no morals, no mercy, no empathy, just a bunch of people using each other for their own gain until they don't need each other anymore.

"I guess that's a shame," Mighty replies, looking attentively at my star.

I put it in my pocket. There's no point being in a team if you're going to be outcasted instantly. Screw the Careers, I'm doing my own thing. "Wanna have a bit of fun?"

It takes him a couple of seconds to catch on to what I'm saying - people are much better practice than a robot will ever be - and I allow him that grace before I tip him onto the floor, and like a champion, he switches us over so he's the one holding me down instead.

I grin. "Nah, we can't have that."

I wriggle my right knee up between us and push it into his ribs, lifting him off me and throwing him over to the side in one clean swoop. And then I hold him in place, so he can't do the same thing to me.

I learn that he is extremely bashful while fighting too, and I take that as a clear sign that I've won.

"You had me there," I admit. I get off him and offer my hand, and he tentatively takes it.

"You're a person though, aren't you? You came back."

I laugh and take my star back out. "People generally don't come back to life after they die, Mighty," I reply, knowing that in the arena, I wouldn't get that kind of second chance. "It would be cool if they could though- Actually no," I cut myself off, "that would be awful, because then there would be zombies and they might be evil."

I never did like the idea of zombies. Or life after death in general. All the stories I read made it look so strange. There were so many different ideas as to how it might work. All of them illegal, but some people do still have fragments of a memory of the one that their family used to read. If I died and my body started doing freaky things like eating brains without me, I'm not sure how I'd know about it, but if I did I'd be very unhappy.

"Hey, Espio! Where are you? Get a load of this!" Liza shouts from far beyond the borders of the close combat simulator. My mood immediately dims.

"I bet District 2's done something positively outrageous again," I sigh, thinking about yesterday afternoon when Sonic and Big had their fishing match and Sonic blamed his incompetence on a 'crippling fear of water, immediate or perceived'. I nod to Mighty. "Take care. I might come back for you one day so you can kill me again."

He looks a little bewildered, so I give him a wink to bewilder him further, and get going.

Chapter Text

I was right. District 2, positively outrageous. This time it's Amy, slinging a shirt slathered in mud into the basket by the clothing shelf. The others enthusiastically tell me some this-and-that story about how Silver threw water over Amy and how we all need to kill him and Twelve first and I pretend to care. They want Twelve because of last year, and they swore that, even though over the years people tend to forget things, District 12 will never, ever forget the word 'Career'. And now they want Six to have the same fate, but I'm not convinced.

Once they've calmed down a little, I sit by Blaze at camo and side-eye the Careers with a smirk. "That's not the truth, is it?" I ask her.

"No," she responds flatly. "What is going on with you? What's your game?"

"Me?" I ask. "Nothing's going on with me. There is no game."

"You've been acting weird." She follows up in a whisper, "Are you trying to sabotage them?"

I consider her question. Maybe I am, but this was more for the sake of my own moral compass than anything. "I don't know," I shrug. "I haven't thought that far ahead."

I look over at Silver and watch him change his shirt and work the mud out of his fur. I should talk to him. I wait until he's done before I make my way over.

"You alright?" I ask him.

He scows at me. "I'm fine."

"Mhm." I look back over to the Careers and wonder if I should care about them seeing me, and decide that I should not. "What actually happened?" I ask, and I lean back onto the shirt rack, fold my arms, and try not to press anything. If he heard all of that about the Career hit list, then there's not much I could say to make it better.

"She cut me off," he answers, switching between glaring at Amy and glaring at me.

"Don't worry about them," I smile. "Their mouths are bigger than their brains."

"You got the right," he almost laughs. "We heard every word of Big's plan yesterday."

"So did the whole of Panem," I reply, and reason to myself that if they do wonder what I'm doing, I can just tell them it doesn't matter because the damage is already done. "We can leave them to it. You take care."

Soon enough, lunch is called, and Shadow immediately locks eyes with me. I scout out a place on the long table that the Avoxes pushed to the middle and settle on an unassuming three-quarters-along seat where Shadow can sit opposite me at an acceptable distance from his own allies.

"Is Blaze correct?" He asks.

"Well..." I trail off, trying to find the right words. "Could it be possible that every single Career in this set is absolutely insufferable?"

Shadow frowns. "Is that including you?"

"Yeah, why not."

He answers in an instant. "Well in that case, yes."

"...Are you calling me insufferable?"

"Well I would suffer in you."

I'm too stunned to speak.

"You started it," he says.

That tickles me. I have to cover my face so nobody sees me dissolve so quickly into laughter. Of all the things he could have said to me, that was not on my bingo card.

I try to be brave, and attempt words. "Now hold on a second-"

He pushes another ramakin of whole coffee beans to me. "Eat."

"You were the one who said-"

"And you disregarded it. Not many people can get even this much out of me."

I take a deep breath to calm myself, and stop myself from saying it's the intention that counts, because is it really? I stare at the coffee beans, and then take one. "Don't start an out of pocket joke flirting war with me. You cannot win that."

"Who's joking? And you still started it," he says again, before tipping half the contents of another ramakin into his mouth. He chews on them for a while before nodding at the coffee bean that still sits between my fingers. So I eat the coffee bean, and he's satisfied.

"You're so odd," I say. "How do you do it?"

"The Ultimate Life Form can win any war," he replies, in that jokey kind of way that makes me wonder if he's really joking after all.

"I meant the coffee."

"I also meant the coffee."

We spend the afternoon together again. This time, instead of combat, we focus on survival basics. Plants to avoid, how to disinfect water, how to stay out of the cold, all of those great things. I tell Shadow a little bit about my life back home. How the main focus of the Career training program was combat, but as my mother runs the thing, I begged her to teach me other skills too, and that was when she insisted meditation should be under that umbrella. I tell him about the general outcasting that came with being a trainee and the son of the head and how glad I am to have Nicole in my life. I almost tell him more. I only now realise how much I want to talk about it all with someone else, but when Shadow sees that in me and tells me to continue, I insist that I've said enough and that it's his turn.

"Okay..." he sighs. "My life, aside from school and pissing off Omega whenever I can is... pretty boring."

This time, it's my turn to look at him expectantly. "Really?"

He huffs, and keeps weaving the rope in his hands without breaking his pace. "I guess I knew Rouge already. I saw her quite a few times at the Peacekeeper HQ. Money, wedding rings, you name it, she's probably stolen it. Omega was definitely sick of us."

"I'm starting to think you spent more time breaking speed limits running from Peacekeepers than anything else."

He laughs. "Faker over there got wind of it and challenged me to a race." He points to Sonic with a flick of his head. "My answer was a profound no, and he had the audacity to call me a faker."

"So, let me guess," I smirk, tying some of my own rope together, "you've won a war with him too without really trying?"

We both watch him at knives for a while, and he runs the same game that we played yesterday where I scored a 91 and Shadow scored an 82. Sonic scores a 64. Shadow nods.

"How's Maria?" I ask.

He returns to weaving. "Ehh, she's doing okay. She's not everything I ever wanted as a mentor but I can't blame her. She's... really sweet. I like her a lot, actually, and so does Rouge."

"I guess that's good."

"How's uh... Valdez?"

I shake my head. "Mid. At this point it's feeling like he's given his job to Liza and let her take charge. She's the one convincing me to get my act together all the time. She even told me to go to bed the other night."

"What? What time was it?"

"Oh, I don't know, 3am?"

He pauses his weaving, and slowly looks up at me. "You are absolutely crazy."

"So are you, Ultimate Life Form, so are you."

Chapter Text

"Okay..." Valdez awkwardly begins, opening up his scrappy notebook. "What's the plan?"

I resist the urge to make some kind of snarky comment that it's a bit late to ask us that question, while we are at this minute being escorted to the waiting hallway for our private training exam.

"I'd find it cheap, personally, if I were a Gamemaker and a tribute used the full ten minutes," Liza says. "I'll show them what I can do in a timely fashion and then get out."

I disagree with her. "I thought the whole point of a ten minute exam is to show them what you can do in a timely fashion?"

"There has to be element of class to it," she says. "The Hunger Games is entertainment as much as it is a deathmatch."

Now that, I do agree with her on.

"What about you, Espio?" Valdez asks me.

"I have a bit of a routine laid out in my head," I answer. Shadow and I, in the few hours we had together this morning, assessed each others' strengths and weaknesses since we were sure our mentors weren't going to provide much advice. Spot on, for us.

"Of course you do," Liza tuts. "What's your plan, performative painting? Reciting an old melodrama?"

"I have the perfect poem for it," I reply, and just to annoy her, I start another improv spiel. "I've made it up to space, with my beloved antique vase, but a mistake in my haste dropped the vase from my embrace-"

"Oh come on, first you stay up all night watching the Nine Miles Inquiry, then you start dissing me for my perfectly sound plan-"

"So now my antique I must replace," I grin, rolling the r. "I'm glad I evoked some emotion in you."

She groans loudly, and we arrive at the hallway.

We're the first in, but not for long. The other districts start filling in behind us fairly quickly, and the way it works is explained to us.

We will enter the Centre one at a time, in order of district, and the boy will go before the girl. That means I will be first in and first out. Each tribute will have a maximum of ten minutes which I'm sure they all plan on taking the entirety of besides Liza, and between each examination is a roughly two-minute interval. A bit of maths later, and I've worked out that Shade from Twelve has to wait about four and a half hours. Surely the new Gamemakers could have devised a better system, but I guess the more outreaching districts did always have to wait longer for everything. Although, refreshments and breaks are to be provided as requested. I can't imagine the Chaos Council coming up with that one.

The tannoy beeps. "Espio Vaso - District 1."

I rise from my spot at the end of the long bench, and the automatic doors into the Training Centre open for me. All of the tables and the social commons have been pushed to the sides, leaving an open area in the midst of the primed simulations with blue padded mats and a yellow star. An Avox instructs me to stand there, points to their mouth, and then to the Gamemakers.

"Espio Vaso," I introduce. "District 1."

My ten minute timer begins.

Liza took it straight out of my head, really. There is a performative aspect to my plan. I grab a log and two rocks and start a fire on the second strike, get it going, and then arrange a mannequin or two around it all within the first minute. And then I locate the light switch and turn it out.

Of course, I didn't have a chance to test this, but Shadow insisted that it would work and I believe him. We came to the conclusion that the reason nobody scores highly in these things is because watching someone training is inherently boring. Being boring never got anyone anywhere in Panem. That's Shadow's plan. I understand it now: be boring on the cameras, don't make a show of himself, and ultimately be the underdog. And he encouraged me to do the same up to a certain point. That point being now, while the doors are closed and mouths are shut.

I use the light of the fire to guide me around the Centre, knowing the Gamemakers can't see me, but that's the point. My mother had some strange ideas naming me Espio but damn if I didn't take it to heart and learn how to sneak. I work my way around the perimeter and pick up a long rope, some throwing blades, and a lick of paint from the camo section which I remembered smelled a little bit like oil. I then do another lap, working the rope around the mannequins in a way that the knot tying station taught me but on a much larger scale, keeping an ear on the muffled mutters of the Gamemakers who wonder what I'm playing at, and on the one minute remaining mark, I strike.

I tug the rope and the mannequins are all tripped over into the fire. The fire is disturbed just enough to light me up brightly in furious flames, and in a few flicks of my wrist, the three mannequins have their necks severed and a painted knife catches fire and triples the size of the fireball. They all burn. I am still and silent. I lock eyes with Master Zik, who is satisfyingly un-bored. When the fire burns down and I know I'm no longer visible, I slide around beneath the balcony until the timer goes and the lights come back on. I exit without a trace. The end.

Valdez is waiting for me. "Espio!"

"Hi."

"Fuck." He scrunches up his nose. "What is that smell?"

"Burning plastic." I walk by him and sit on one of the benches in the exit corridor.

He gets a glimpse of the pile of burning materials in the middle of the Training Centre before the doors close. "What... What did you do?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? The Avoxes are gonna have a right job cleaning that up!"

"It doesn't matter, Liza's giving them some extra time if they need it."

"What did you do?"

I turn to face him, and pull my knees up to my chest. Valdez doesn't know whether to be impressed or terrified by my fire. I just smile. "Murder."

Chapter Text

"Why are we helping each other?"

Shadow huffs. "That's not what we're doing, is it? I thought we were assessing each other's strengths and weaknesses so we know exactly how to kill each other. If you're doing it then I might as well join in, seeing as you're so obsessed with me."

I roll my eyes. "Very funny."

"Wait..." He is confused. "You're serious this whole time?"

-o-

"Yes, Shadow, I am serious," I said. And I'll say it again even though he won't hear me. "Yes, Shadow, I am serious, for goodness' sake!"

Once again I have transformed my room into what, from a distance, would look like some sort of trash can caught in a wind storm. The roses got more and more erratic after every fold. My notebook is wearing thin. I think I might just go insane in here - it's so much more painful than I could have imagined it to be. It didn't hit until now. I felt things, sure, but I put the brakes on and did other things. And I kept the brakes on, because I'm good at that, but the second I got back in after the exam and relaxed just a little bit, knowing I had at least a few hours for it, I slipped again.

Put on a smile, dish out a couple winks and a "take care" or two, just act like I would act with friends, be natural because I never was all that naturally aggressive, just a bit of an ass in my pre-teens who wanted to make people proud rather than happily murder, although I did just demonstrate some kind of 'natural killer instinct'... possibly why I can't seem to catch my breath now because it feels so wrong... I might even be disgusted with myself... but otherwise, I'm not pretending. And yet it feels like I am. It feels like I'm pretending to be unthreatening even though I wanted to be that way from the start, but I also wanted to win, and I still do, because I don't want to die. But then so does everyone else and they're not pretending either. There's a difference between pretending I'm fine and pretending to be someone I'm not. I bet Cream and Ray and Matilda and Shade, our youngest non-aggressors, still want to win. And yet they don't have to go to these lengths to prove to people that they can be trusted.

Or can they? Can anybody who wants to win the Hunger Games be trusted? The Careers will turn on each other eventually. Who's to say that nobody else will? What are we even calling trust?

I lean back on my soft bed amidst the paper flowers and try to slow my breathing down so I can think.

Is trust the belief in the lack of betrayal? If so, then what is betrayal? Is it killing someone in their sleep who you swore to support until the end, or is it just looking at someone in the wrong way, or is it simply the crime of being the boy from District 1?

If trust is the belief in the lack of betrayal then belief in betrayal will stunt the growth of any trust, and if the crime of being from District 1 can cause a belief in betrayal, which I knew it would, then by default nobody outside the Careers will trust me, and if looking at someone in the wrong way will cause a belief in betrayal, which has happened already, then the Careers won't trust me either, and I'm certain they don't, and now I have nobody apart from Shadow, who trusts me by far the most but definitely not enough.

If I want to win, then I can't be trusted. That's the end of it. Allies are to help me get to first place, and whether I believe it or not, that's what I'm using Shadow for. He's right. He's so, so right.

I look at the clock in my room, deduce that the training is somewhere through District 6, and realise I've missed my chance to wish him good luck via the heavens. I have to fight back tears and I don't know why because he never would have heard it.

I want to spend more time with him but I don't know how I could. He was the first example of someone nice and genuine that I'd met since my last hug with Nicole. That wonderful hug that I might never have again. I could go to the roof and hope Shadow will be there, just so I can talk to him and for once not have to pretend that I'm fine, maybe tell him everything from start to finish because even though he has a face like thunder, he listens, but I don't think he will be there. He hasn't said anything implying that he would go there. It'd be a waste of time if I went and it turned out he's not there. I don't know why, but it'd be more than just annoying. It'd feel bad. I'd be disappointed and lonely.

What am I saying? I'm already lonely. I miss Nicole. What am I doing other than reaching to Shadow for some kind of replacement friend?

No, that's not it.

I'm driving myself crazy. All because his Reaping was rigged too. All because we both have that one thing in common. We both knew. He did that little smile, that so untraceable smile, when his name was read out. He knew.

No. This alliance is not malicious. I want to win and I need help to win, sure. That's what allies are for but it's not like that.

"It's not like that," I say to the ceiling, hiccupping to hold my emotions back. I don't know where they came from. I think the fake murder made me realise that perhaps I'm not cut out for this at all. "Shadow I promise it's not like that. If it's just us two at the end I'm giving it to you because I'll never forgive myself and I'm not cut out for this shit."

I said that last part without thinking. It silences my mind.

When I got back in here, I put the feature wall on a smooth, pigeon blue. No patterns, no flashes, no shifts, just a solid blue. It's a good colour. I had sweaters of it and it always made me feel better. So I turn over on my bed, crush a few roses, and just stare at the wall. It's a pretty wall.

"I'm not obsessed, I promise," I laugh. It jostles a tear out of my eye that falls down my right cheek but I don't care. "I just need you to redefine the word 'ally' for me, okay? How about, instead of an asshole using others for his own personal gain, it's just a guy, a victim of circumstances, who needs someone to trust him? Someone to trust? Someone to lean on?"

The wall doesn't reply.

"And like yeah sure, Nicole demanded that I win, but only if you die first. And I'm not gonna do that to you. I... kinda don't wanna do that to anyone. I might have to, though. What is it called... cognitive dissonance?"

The wall starts to hurt my eyes.

"Why do I want you to win? One of us, to win? It's your own damn fault you're here."

I blink at the wall, and the wall appears to blink back at me. The wall knows I'm a hypocrite for that.

I roll my eyes. "Why are we helping each other?" I repeat. "I'm not obsessed, I promise," I repeat. "If it's just us two at the end I'm giving it to you."

Oh, the conflicts of interest. I sigh and turn back over, and dangle a rose above me. On a messy bed, surrounded by roses, lonely, longing for someone to believe a single word I say, lit up in blue, what should be a good colour but it really isn't... thinking about all the conversations we had... the plans we made, the things he said and blamed me for because he's just like that, isn't he. Weirdly clever with his words... a little bit silly... likeable in an annoying way...

"No!" I throw the rose across the room. I wait for the echo of my yell to quieten down, and say it again more calmly. "No."

I sit upright on my bed and gently scatter the roses onto the floor where I can't see them, manually moving every muscle. We are not redefining any words today. Or ever. Never. Allies are allies and that's what we are. We trust each other, and part of the deal is that if it's just us two, he wins. Because he deserves it more than I do, let's face it. It wouldn't be fair. We are allies.

Friendly allies.

Friends- No.

Allies. Allies. Shadow and I are allies. If I keep thinking it then it'll lose its meaning and then I can stop thinking. Semantic satiation. I read about it, in the same book that told me about cognitive dissonance and conditioning. Allies.

That's the end of it. And I daren't call it anything else.

Chapter Text

When I finally emerge from my room, the three of them all turn to look at me simultaneously and none of them say anything but I know they're all thinking it: if you can have a whole breakdown after doing fake murder then what was even the point of bringing you here? Nothing new.

Liza looks at Valdez, who looks at Zavok, who looks back to Liza, and I think they all mutually agree that recruiting me was a mistake after all, and they're damn right.

"Good evening," I say. "Care to... share your thoughts with me?"

Liza bites her lip. Valdez replies, "Have you considered... letting me in on what's going on?"

"Well..." I trail off, well aware that he wants nothing but an explanation over Five, but I pretend not to know that that's what he wants. "In the training exam, I turned off all the lights, lit a fire, put some mannequins around it to simulate some alliance, and then I waited in the dark until the last minute, pulled them all into the fire with a rope and threw blades into them all."

"That's not-"

Liza cuts Valdez off. "Why did you teach Shadow how to use a sword?"

"I taught him wrong on purpose."

Again. Quick, concise answers never spark follow-up questions. Liza isn't the best at swords, so even though she saw it, she would have no idea that I actually taught him everything right, including all the unconventional secrets that she wouldn't know.

The Avoxes bring us food. Some kind of roasted bird with vegetables that Zavok is given the honour of dishing out for us. He unmutes the television as the clock strikes seven, and we all sit in silence and listen to the intro to Capitol Calling, with the faint scratching of serrated knife against bone and ceramic in the background.

Zik is there in the studio with Gerald. The same studio that the Nine Miles Inquiry was in. They have their official chat about confirming that the scores are all good and correct, laid out on the undersides of some cards on a table, and then Gerald slowly reaches and flips the first one over. My fork trembles a little in my hand.

"Espio Vaso - District 1... Eleven."

Liza swears.

"Liza Keenley - District 1... Nine."

Liza swears again, with a worse word. "How?"

"Perhaps you should have used the other five minutes," Zavok says, scowling at her for her profanity. "Although, if Espio spent eight out of ten minutes sliding around in pitch darkness, it might have been better for you if you didn't even show up."

"Sonic Felgate - District 2... Nine. Amy Rose - District 2... Nine."

Liza sighs annoyedly at Zavok.

"Vector Chasquido - District 3... Ten. Cream Paloma - District 3... Two. Big Lielaakis - District 4... Six. Marine Judas - District 4... Six."

I don't think any of us were expecting anything different from that bunch. It only confirms my suspicions about Vector. Awkwardly large, but powerful with it.

When Gerald's hand travels towards the ninth card, Shadow's, my whole body starts to tighten. For some reason, I feel more nervous for his score than my own. I told him that he needed to use a sword because he's simply a natural with one. Now I realise that telling Liza I taught him wrong was probably a mistake.

"Shadow Kintobor - District 5... Ten."

Yeah. Big mistake. Liza glares at me. I try hard to swallow the meat that's been sat in my mouth for longer than I'd like and for some reason I can't seem to initiate that process.

"Rouge Julian - District 5... Seven. Silver Venice - District 6... Five."

I manage to swallow it, only for my throat to stutter over the next bite too when Blaze gets a six and the others' eyes light up because they know now that at least some of their hit list is probably doable.

"Mighty Stratnyy - District 7... Eight."

"Espio." Zavok says. I flinch at his booming voice even though it isn't even that loud. He looks at my plate. "This is not the districts anymore. If you are struggling to eat, you do not have to."

"But the Avoxes-"

"The Avoxes," he interrupts, "are slaves. You needn't feel guilt for them."

Valdez protests. "What are you saying? He's got the Hunger Games in less than two days? He needs to eat!"

"Forcing him will do no good. He must eat when he feels like it for the best outcome."

"I don't think we should be letting him make any decisions," Liza inputs, but she's quickly shut down.

"I don't like how you're assuming that you're the boss here," Zavok says monotonously. "Valdez wears the trousers in this... team."

"Well then why are you making the decisions on what my tributes do when I wear the trousers?"

"Because your trousers are too short. And they were last year too. Have you learnt nothing?"

"I don't understand why you think you're involved in this even in the slightest!"

"Of course I'm involved. Was I not invited to your meeting?"

Valdez slams his fork down. "You invited yourself! All your job involves is being an escort!"

"And picking the tributes, and teaching them the ways and customs of the Capitol, one of which is to listen to one's hunger cues and only eat if one so wishes and is capable."

That shuts Valdez up. Zavok sets his cutlery down much more politely, and turns to me.

"You may be dismissed," he says. So I go. To the roof. Because now I think about it, staying down here is the worst thing I can do right now.

It's nice to actually have a proper view of the city. Most of the other districts have been blessed with that from their own windows in this high-rise. I find a spot at the railing rather close to a little rose garden, and look out over the city. I watch the sun go down. It's a calm sunset. No really striking colours, but it's not dead either. It's smooth and sweet-looking.

"Oh, Nico."

I wonder where she's at and what she's doing. I wonder how many times she's read the poetry I found. I wonder how many times she's considered going to the library. I wonder if she's okay.

"Nico, you don't mind, do you?"

Nico and Es. Es and Nico. The inseparable duo. Those who knew us well knew that about us. When one of us was somewhere, the other wasn't too far behind.

"I just don't know what to do or say anymore. I don't think I have a plan anymore. I found Shadow and... you don't mind, do you?"

The gentle breeze moves the rolling clouds across the sky in the general direction of District 1.

"I love you," I say, and let the wind carry it to her.

I watch the cars swim around in the tangle of roads and car parks far below me, their lights smushing together into one writhing snake of traffic.

"It's just not fair that I've trained and they haven't. There's no equal footing. There's no real chance. Cream, Silver, Blaze... they were screwed from the start."

Cities are so loud. And yet all the noises run over each other in such a way that it makes one muted hum.

"But I guess that's just how it is... Nicole, I would never forgive myself if I won. Do you understand that? You told me to be selfish but-"

"Hey."

A voice from the rose garden startles me. And that's when I see, in the darkness, Nack from Twelve removing his wide-brimmed hat. He carries it with him and stands next to me.

"Don't start," I sigh.

"I'm starting. What was all that?"

I decide that there's just no point in pretending anymore. "Just the insane ramblings of a Career who never really wanted to be here."

"Wow," he whistles. "Didn't think they existed."

"Neither did I."

The two of us watch the sunset dissipate into darkness in silence. Nack takes a pink rose from his pocket, plucks a petal from it, and places it on his tongue. He lets it sit for a few seconds before chewing on it. He notices me looking and offers me a petal - commenting on how it seemed I like roses - which I don't take.

"They're after you," I tell him. "The Careers. They're after you and they're after Shade and Silver and Blaze."

He looks at me, and before he can ask me why I'm telling him such information, I shush him.

"Run. Just run."

Chapter Text

"Hey, Espio."

When I got back last night, I made a point of not speaking to anybody. I still say nothing.

"What's the matter?"

I shake my head. "We were doomed from the start, Valdez."

He sits by me on the big green sofa. Liza is in her room working on her interview persona, and Zavok is in the community kitchen on a laptop wearing a permanent scowl, breathing in deep huffs of air, with a lone pink ice cream sprinkle sat on the corner of his mouth.

Valdez swirls the half-full coffee in his hands. "You're probably right. I'm sorry, Espio. Maybe we should have picked one of the seventeens-"

"Don't apologise, Valdez, you've done it now. It's done now."

He takes a big sip of the coffee and tips his head back onto the back of the sofa. He swishes it around his mouth, swallows, and sighs.

"I needed to widen my contacts," I continue. "You know how it is with Careers. If it's just the Careers at the end, well... I wouldn't stand a chance."

"You befriended Five?"

"Yeah. I did. And Liza doesn't like that I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket... so to speak. That's what she's doing, isn't it? She's put all her faith in Two and Four and absolutely nobody else. It seems odd."

Valdez goes silent for a while, before changing the subject. "We picked you for your stealth, your keen mind, your background-"

"Runty fifteen year old, huh?"

"Espio you're sixteen."

I sigh through my nose. "This isn't a decision you made overnight."

Valdez is quiet again.

"I don't know what you expected to happen."

He finishes his coffee in one clean swig and drags the notebook from his pocket again. "We need to work on your persona. This is no good."

"What's your plan?"

"Well my plan was to have you be the warrior. The ninja from the parade, Mark 2. But that's not going to work with you, is it?"

"Ninja is fine, I can do ninja."

"But not District 1's bulldozer?"

"Absolutely not," I say assertively. "Do I look like a bulldozer to you?"

"...How willing are you to stray from honesty?"

"Not very."

"You have told lies."

"Not like this."

"...Espio?"

"I will not turn myself into something I'm not," I say, slowly and carefully. "I can do that for a short time. I can put on a mask, that's fine, but maintaining it is draining. I meditate, I take out my frustrations on inanimate objects during physical exercise, I lose myself in fantasy worlds, I make things with my hands to keep my mind occupied, and after all that I can work to better myself with a clear head and space to think."

He drums on the side of his empty coffee cup.

"If I do that," I continue, "if I go into that interview and show myself as some fierce, powerful killer with nothing on my mind other than glory, I'll have to be able to maintain it. Meditation and daydream doesn't exactly give off that vibe."

He groans. "Fine. Do what you want. Be honest. But you'd better be smart about it, kiddo. Honesty and wisdom, if they can even coexist. Good luck to you."

I'm given all afternoon to work on it. Honesty and wisdom. It's not something I can prepare for, really. Wouldn't preparing destroy the honesty? And surely it wouldn't be wise of me to prepare anything in advance that is more than just completely vague. Gerald, although predictable sometimes with his questions, has a mind separate from my own as does everyone else. As the interviewer, the host of this whole thing, it's his call on which direction the interview goes. He's supposed to help us. I will have to trust that he does. So instead, I spend the afternoon on the self-care that I told Valdez about. No more roses though, I have too many already.

There was a time where Nicole poked fun at me for meditation. That is all it was, just a bit of fun, she knew my boundaries, but she didn't get it. She was almost robotic in the way that she thought about herself and the world, and her method of comfort was to map out each possibility like it was a flow chart and eliminate the ones that wouldn't work, so as to not worry. She tried to give me that kind of skill but it just made it worse for me, as there's an exception to everything. So when I told her that simply sitting on the floor for an hour and existing in space and working up from my toes to the top of my head to ground me in reality was a good starting point, she was amazed by it and mocked me rather quizzically for about a week. Apparently, it's easy for her to just switch off and figure things out logically like that and she assumed the same for everyone, but then she noticed it making me happier even before I did. And then she gave it a go too and found it beyond useless, but knowing it works for me, she became my biggest supporter. Any time I started to crack over something she'd ask me, "Espio, when was the last time you did your metidation?" and I'd laugh at her mispronunciation every time without fail, even when she started doing it on purpose, and then I'd realise she's onto something.

I spend much longer on the meditation than I planned to, this afternoon. There's a fine line between being aware and grounded, and losing yourself in nothingness. Appreciating the fact that you have a body and a mind that needs to rest, and letting hours fall away in silent, restful bliss. Slowing down. Breathing.

When Lumina arrives to take me to her studio to prepare me for my interview, I feel like I've had the best night's sleep without having lost consciousness even once. My whole body feels lighter and my head is clearer. The air feels fresher despite being in the same building on the same day.

"My, you look happy?" Lumina smiles. "You'll be glad to know, I have a rose for you. A real one, plucked straight from the rooftop garden."

"Oh, that's great and all," I smile back, thinking back to Nack on the roof last night, "but I'm not hungry."

Lumina laughs. I laugh. Nobody else laughs but I don't care. I've fixed my mood now. I feel like me again. How clever can my mother be, sometimes, for giving me such a gift as this?

Chapter Text

Oh, Lumina. What a star. She has set me up with a wonderfully crisp purple suit with white and yellow accents, with plenty of room in the breast pocket of my blazer for the stem of a plush, white rose. And I'm not sure why, but she did give me a little secret to keep: The odds are in the general vicinity of my favour. I can't be surprised by it, though. She told me that I could say anything I want and not a lot would change, and that was all she was legally allowed to tell me.

All of us are backstage arranged in district order with the only instruction being that when the stage doors open, we will walk straight forwards in pitch darkness until we reach our chair, and we will do it in little enough time that we can sort of make it look like we just spawned there. I find Shadow in our line and he nods at me. I give him a smile and mouth to him, "Good job," and he rolls his eyes, but not without smiling too. Then the lights go out, the stage doors open, and we all walk.

It's remarkably easy. The chairs are only a few meters ahead.

There's the beat of a drum, and then a booming voice over a microphone in the darkness. "Welcome to Capitol Calling! Live from the Training Centre arena, please welcome... the class of twenty seven... our tributes!"

We are all lit up in a shower of spotlights, harsh after the darkness, and a camera on wheels swings its way around the semicircle of chairs.

"Each tribute gets one minute to partake in their interview. It is up to them on how they answer, what they answer, and what angle they take. Take notes, Capitol Citizens, because this is your chance to really get to know who is sat before you today. This will be your final opportunity to decide who you will sponsor, and who you want to win."

Twenty four minutes of pure interviews, leaving six for transitions, miscellaneous Gerald talk, intros and outros and whatnot: a perfect time slot for the average Capitol attention span, I'd imagine. One minute doesn't seem anywhere near long enough for a tribute to portray themself accurately, although now I think about it, as Liza makes her way to the stage, accuracy isn't the plan for most.

Typical Career drivel, for the most part. An awkward middle ground between grossly confident and trying to look relatable for the Capitol. Precisely the angle I didn't want for myself. Precisely the angle I don't want to be aligned with.

"What about that training score of yours, hm?" Gerald winks.

"I don't want to overestimate my ability," she chuckles, "but I think I can say with confidence that I will be a contender in these games. Vote One, everybody, we won't let you down."

Her buzzer goes off, marking the end of her interview.

Suddenly the crowd seems way louder and bigger and brighter than it did before, but it's no problem. I prepared for this. Deep breaths, structured movements, focus only on the static of my own brain: it will be fine.

"Good evening, Mr. Vaso," Gerald smiles. He reaches to shake my hand and I take it, thankful for at least something to ground me. The armchair I sit on is green once again, which seems to be a running theme, and it's soft like all the others.

"Tell me," he begins. "How does life in One differ from life in the Capitol? I'd love to hear your perspective."

I give myself a second or two to think, and answer with the first thing that comes to mind. "Something I find rather remarkable about the Capitol is that it's such a huge, urban city, and yet you still find room for gardens? Rooftop gardens. They're quite genius."

"You don't have gardens?"

"Oh no, we have gardens, just not on the rooftops. It's all so dense here, so many people, so much going on, it's so clever how it all slides together into one big picture."

"Kind of like Panem as a whole?"

"Yeah," I say, with less certainty than I had intended. "Like Panem."

He nods, and moves on. "Now. Winning the title for One. How do you fancy your chances?"

"My chances?" I say, as a filler. "My chances..." I sure do fancy them, so long as I'm careful and Shadow doesn't die, or does die, and the Careers don't fall under their own feet, or they don't and they kill everyone apart from me, but I can't say that because at this point it seems less like 'fancying' and more like 'crushing horribly on something way out of my league'. I try a deflection. "Well, with a team like this one, I'm sure there is something."

"But Espio... your training score. Eleven. Comments?"

He only reminds me of what I had to do to get that eleven. I shrug, mainly to stop myself from having another moment in my head. "I don't want it to define me."

"What do you mean?"

"These scores..." I search for another deflection, "they tell us nothing about the quality of what we will bring to the arena. All this tells us is how well we work under pressure. Under a time limit. And that's not what the games are all about."

"It's more of a long haul?"

"Exactly," I smile. "What I can and can't do in ten minutes is no reflection of what I can and can't do in ten days. I may have scored an eleven but that doesn't mean I'll do any better, or that I am any more worth your money, than someone who scored a five."

The audience are quiet. Not good. They're either bored or glued and I don't know which so I need to play a different card now. Round it off.

"That being said..." I think fast - what did I do during those three days? Something, anything. "Beating the crap out of a bunch of robots is pretty fun."

That does it. That fixes the balance. That sweetens the air and unties the tension.

"Es!" Gerald laughs. "You're not allowed to discuss what you did!"

"When did I do that?" I grin. "I just stated an opinion."

My buzzer goes, right on time. Gerald taps his cue cards on the table. "He's clever, witty, and strong, give it up for District 1's Espio!"

The applause seems disproportionate but I don't let it get to me. I give the audience a gentle bow to thank them and head back to the semicircle. I immediately search for Shadow, because the approval of my ally matters more to me than theirs, and he slides me a thumbs up.

Chapter Text

"Espio?" Valdez exclaims. "What the fuck was that?"

"Honesty and wisdom," I say, shrugging off my blazer and draping it over the back of my chair at the dining table.

"Wisdom would have been to big yourself up! Not say stupid things like, I don't want it to define me!"

"That wouldn't have been honesty."

"They're not mutually exclusive, man!"

"You're the one who said that they were."

"He's right," Zavok nods. "Honesty and wisdom, if they can even coexist." He pauses to pick up a saucy rib and suck the meat off it. "I think he did it well."

"Oh, you would," Valdez groans.

We spend our final big meal discussing tactics, and as usual, I'm left out of the equation. Liza talks about an extensive plan for the Careers that the girls devised on the second day of training but when Valdez asks who's doing what, she skims by the topic and tells him that she has it covered and he needn't worry. When Valdez looks to me for answers, I decide it's probably for the best that I say nothing. I don't know anything that they are up to besides the hit list. Any resentment I feel towards the Careers is immediately quashed by the fact that I did this to myself. I separated myself from the group. This is on me. Whatever plan they have, it has nothing to do with me. And I can only assume that Valdez is in on at least something, because he doesn't push it.

I too eat ribs. They're covered in a thick barbecue relish that I try my hardest to wrap my teeth around delicately, but it's virtually impossible. The meat is soft and a little bit pink in the middle, and it's laced with strings of pork fat that I would usually be picky over, a privilege I wasn't aware I had until recent months, but tonight I can't afford to be picky.

Valdez orders that we get an early night with plenty of sleep, so, naturally, I do not.

When the lights are out and the sounds of muffled snores rumble through the walls, I find myself a comfortable spot bang in the middle of the floor and turn on the TV, rapidly spamming the button to lower the volume as soon as it kicks into gear. I find tonight's episode of Capitol Calling, and watch the interviews again.

Liza is expected. I am a bit of a weirdo, perhaps a nerd. Amy is confident and skilful. Sonic is cheerful. Cream suffers from headaches. Vector wants to solve crime, which is cool. It might have been something I'd have done if I didn't dedicate my life to this. Marine's accent is distracting, and I immediately forget everything she says for the second time. Big plays dumb, as he planned. Rouge flirts with Gerald and dismisses herself early.

Shadow.

Shadow is quiet. He doesn't really smile and he leaves pauses between his answers so he doesn't have to say as much. He compliments the stage design to avoid talking about himself, he calls it state of the art. Shadow only smiles when Maria is mentioned. "She is optimistic. We like her for that."

I don't know what his game is, really. Maybe there's something he's not telling me. From this interview and from what he always told me, he is playing boring. He's playing forgettable so he can explode in a chaos blast later on and nobody will see it coming. But his score of ten is contradicting that so hard. He's playing for the sceptics, isn't he. He's got it all figured out.

I need to stop this, and put him out of my mind. It's not going to do me any good. I may never see him again, so what's the point? I may not see him on the way into the hovercraft. I may not see him during the countdown. I may not run by him during the bloodbath. We may not run into each other. All I might see of him is a hologram of his face, woven into the sky by the electrical strings of the forcefield. I might be too dead to see at all.

...I'm not obsessed.

I feel ill. I could die tomorrow.

"Shut up," I say to myself. "You didn't have a life anyways."

It's true. I don't think I ever made any thorough plans for an age greater than eighteen. It doesn't help with the nausea, though. It doesn't stop the memories of previous bloodbaths. Especially not the claws of last year's District 12 ripping open the chests of District 1, yanking out their hearts and squeezing them between their yellowed teeth, the blood falling out between diseased gums all within the first minute or so, so their hands were free to try to kill even more. At least they didn't eat the hearts. That might have been too much even for the Capitol.

It doesn't stop the memories of the rest, either. The activation of the machines in the Quarter Quell - I never imagined a body could be mangled so easily, to the point that it's not even recognisable as an organism let alone a person. And the year before that, with Mephiles and his spear, a menace, threading people like needles and watching them burn in fire and sink into bubbling lakes of liquid rock - I never could scratch those images out of the inside of my skull, and yet everyone else seemed to be fine.

Even before discovering the library, I was never cut out for this.

"Actually shut up," I say again. "Just don't think. Don't think about him, don't think about all of that, just go to sleep and take each hour as it comes."

I left the TV going, and now it's some way through District 9. Jet and Wave, poking fun at each other. Wave joking about murdering Jet's stupid face. The comedic relief of the Games this year, I suppose. It has to come from somewhere.

The faint sound of a siren from outside drags me out of my own head and pulls my eyes from the TV. The siren is quite near. A little loud to be safe for me, so I turn off the TV and head back to my room before anybody can wake up and come out for a glass of water that isn't Avox trash. Fresh from the sink.

I think about it, and turn around and head to the kitchen to get some. Maybe the arena water is trash, who knows. I should drink some water that isn't trash. Maybe it'll give me an extra twenty minutes, if there is another Crisis City.

Chapter Text

"Hey." Zavok nudges Valdez just as we're about to set off from the living space to the roof of the Training Centre. "I got news from Five's escort that Maria can't talk to her tributes again. Everybody's pretty upset about it."

"What? Why?" Valdez asks.

"She's ill isn't she," Zavok explains, flicking his comically small Capitol-issued flip-phone shut and plunging it deep into his pocket. "The stress caused another flare-up last night. She's being kept in hospital for a little while."

I remember the sirens I heard while watching the television. It didn't cross my mind that they could be coming here, and from the look on Liza's face, I think she was awake at that time too.

Valdez sighs. "Oh dear, I do hope she'll be okay."

"Me too. I feel for Five, you know, they're going in at a disadvantage now because everybody else is going to get their little pep-talks before they step on that hovercraft, and all they have is their escort."

Zavok opens the door for us, and we all head out into the corridor. I look back into the space just before Zavok closes the door and wonder if I'll miss it in there. I force myself not to think about that.

"Can a Capitol student not step in?"

"Well, it's not like she's dead, Valdez, she's still alive, she can still send stuff in from a hospital bed, she'll just need an Avox to pack it for her. And what's the point anyway? A random Capitol student wouldn't know a thing about those two. Rouge barely stayed in that interview for thirty seconds and Shadow's just a rock that breathes."

"None of this is fair-"

"-Plus, it's her legal duty to remain a mentor until either she dies or somebody else from Five wins. That's why you're doing this now, and Finitevus is having a lovely long retirement back in the Victor's Village."

We all squeeze into the lift. Zavok's size doesn't do us any favours.

Valdez tuts. "Somebody ought to complain."

"Alright, I'll tell you what you can do about this," Zavok's voice echoes. "You can grab yourself Capitol citizenship, you're beloved enough, get yourself the right to vote, and vote against the current system next time there is a referendum."

"That will likely be never."

"Naturally."

"And if I did vote, what is one vote against a million others?"

"It may not be as wide as you think," he says, "although most of the time it is so don't even bother wasting your time on it. Nobody gives a damn about District 5 anyway unless there's a power cut and right now the lights are on so don't even care, like."

We're the first onto the hovercraft. Valdez runs through the plan with Liza and wishes her good luck. He nods at me, and tells me not to mess anything up, and then we're brought into the first compartment and trackers are injected into our forearms. They tell the Gamemakers where we are by triangulating our location from different ends of the arena, and the thing is kept alive by the ripples in magnetic fields produced by the movement of our blood. I remember watching a clip about how that works when researching pervious games in training. The Gamemakers know when we're dead when the tracker stops working, because that means our hearts have stopped beating and our blood isn't moving anymore. Either that, or the tracker's been removed somehow. The fourteenth games are the edition to thank for the injectable chips.

The ride is shorter than I thought it would be. The arena must be quite close to the Capitol this year. I can't imagine it would be anything special either, after all the broken promises and bankruptcies. I imagine distant mountains. Perhaps a gift delay of an hour, tops. The hovercraft starts sinking downwards, and for the first time in a while, Liza smiles at me.

"Good luck, kiddo," she says.

"Good luck to you, too," I reply. I don't know how much I mean it.

We're separated, and I'm taken to a room where Lumina waits patiently for me, clutching my arena clothes. I allow her to assist in dressing me. Waterproof, fleeced clothes in the colours of mud and foliage.

"This has to be a good sign, right?" I ask about the clothes. "Aren't they designed by the Gamemakers to match the arena?"

"Yes," she replies, zipping my warm coat up for me. "I had nothing to do with this."

"No roses?"

"Sadly, no." She smirks. "I ate them all before we got here."

I laugh. "Thank you, Lumina."

The door to the exit tube opens up so I head inside.

"What's the plan?" she asks me.

"I have no idea," I reply honestly. "Find allies, I guess. And if they die then... I guess it's on me to win."

"Winning isn't your plan from the start?"

I smile at my feet. "Sometimes things get in the way."

"Who are your allies, Espio?"

I look back up at her. Her pink space-buns glow under the harsh lighting. Her wings glisten. Her blue eyes shine with interest. I sigh. I can't be thinking about that.

"Well... nobody in particular," I answer.

"I know that look."

"I'm sure you do."

"Thirty seconds."

My smile quickly fades, and any 'look' is wiped right off my face.

"Thanks again," I say. "I hope you excel in your degree."

Lumina shrugs, and closes the glass door around me. Her voice is warped beyond the glass. "It's not about me, but thank you too. It's been a pleasure."

When the timer is done, the ceiling opens up above my head, and rain cascades down onto my face. That's got to be a good sign. I love the rain anyway, but this is even better. Unless, of course, we're stationed in the middle of a landless swamp. The platform begins to rise, and as per my prediction, I spot the tips of mountains beyond the wooden shack of a Cornucopia.

Trees, mountains, rain, a distant lake. This is fine. It's going to be fine.

To my right is Sonic, chirpy as ever. To my left is Mighty, and further that way is Amy. This already feels rigged, three Careers virtually in a row. And then I see Shadow. He does not look like himself.

I've seen Shadow in the rain once before. He looked confident and a perhaps little smug at the Reaping, but this time he is the complete opposite of that. His breathing is fast and heavy, and his eyes are wide and cannot seem to fixate on anything until they meet with mine. I can practically feel his heartbeat through the air. Something's happened. Something bigger than Maria's flare-up. This isn't right.

He looks away from me, and shakes himself off. Right. The Hunger Games. We have a bloodbath to navigate. I take a deep breath and try to map out a somewhat dry route to the Cornucopia. It will be okay.

Chapter Text

Amy is very quick off the mark. She skid-sprints into the cornucopia as fast as she can, kicking up dirt behind her. Sonic makes light work of the mud and the rain and starts collecting various trinkets off the ground. I don't see Big, Marine or Liza anywhere. Shadow's still getting his head together, it seems. Mighty and I both tentatively step off our platforms and Shadow runs for a bag. I need to get a move on.

I find an orange on the floor and pocket it before attempting my own dash to the cornucopia, but I almost run square into Mighty, clutching an orange bag. His eyes widen and I back off a little, not wanting to start anything with him, and go to run around him.

Liza. Fresh out of the cornucopia, long meat knife in hand. And soon, Nack is on the end of it. She twists the knife evilly in his abdomen, grinning at his screams.

An arrow flies over our heads. Mighty and I run into the cornucopia for some kind of shelter, and on the way in I hear the whistle of another arrow some way behind me and a yelp that sounds a lot like instant karma. I don't let it bother me. I grab a set of good-looking knives off the wall and leave Mighty to his browsing. I'm out of here.

On the other side, serenaded by echoes of battle cries, I turn my back on the cornucopia and head towards forest with nothing but a citrus fruit and some blades to my name. It's fine. This is a whole ecosystem. There will be things here, and the Chaos Council are gone and the budgets are cut so if I'm lucky, nothing will bother me.

The forest is full of a kind of tree that I don't recognise. As far as forests go, and judging by what I saw in the books, my end of One is practically tree-less. Southern One has mild deserts and Northern One has forests, but not like this. Their trees are pointy, almost with District 7 level density. Not like this. The big trees aren't all that dense but they do have wide canopies and they have long, drooping branches that funnel the rain down into wet channels between raised rock platforms, hills, and shallow caves. And between them are other kinds of smaller tree that bear apple-looking fruits that I know better than to trust as real apples.

The rain is relentless and it smells fresh. It falls in clear puddles in the unbroken mud and ferns, and runs downhill. The only noise, aside from my own feet hitting rock, are of rustles of dangling leaves and water. The quiet is very quickly broken however, with the series of cannons that end the bloodbath. One for Nack. One for Liza, I think, as funny as that is. As for the other three, I don't know, and I won't know until tonight.

This is... a situation. Food, I can survive without. Water, on the other hand, should have been my priority. I walk some more and come accross a river, which is disturbingly clear in the rain.

"Idiot," I tut to myself.

I can't be too hard on myself. I made it out of the bloodbath alive, after all. Even better, without killing anyone. Even better, I've outlasted Liza. Who's a runt now?

A pang of sadness ripples through my chest at the thought. Five people dead, right off the bat. And this time, it's not just people on the television. I knew those people. I trained with Liza. Argued with her. Talked with her. Held her hand in solidarity and then betrayed her in plain sight, only for her to be one of the first ones to go. And Nack. I didn't know him well at all, or even if he was a nice person or not, but we watched the city together. He heard my ramblings and I told him to run away before this could happen to him but the odds were not in his favour.

I think of Shade from Twelve and wonder if she made it either. I think of Rouge and Shadow and Matilda and if they found each other. I think of Mighty and wonder what happened with him in the Cornucopia. I think of Silver and Blaze and wonder if they are doing okay. I walk for a good while until the rain stops, but it never does.

A light twinkling sound approaches above my head. When I look up between the trees, a parachute with a cylinder attached to it moseys its way down to me. I catch it - an empty flask with a pippette-bottle of iodine inside - and on the lid is a note in Valdez's chicken scratch.

'Idiot indeed.'

I fill up the flask with water from the river, treat it, and work my way up a tree.

The blades I got came in a set of three, all attached to a large metal split-ring, and all slightly different in their characteristics. They all came with a hard leather sheath over their sharp edges. The smallest one, about the length of a pen, is thin and razor-sharp. The medium one resembles more of a chef's knife, still not that big. And the large one has one serrated edge and another edge that is not quite so sharp but still made with the intention of being used to cut. All three seem workable. All three seem throwable, which is what I do best. I can't help but wonder why this was my instinct, though.

Am I truly looking out for myself? Self defence, and a method of catching and preparing food should I come across it? Or is this the move of a true Career?

Beeline to the Cornucopia, prioritise weaponry over water... no, Careers aren't quite that stupid.

I take a swig of water. It tastes like the tap water in the Capitol. It's far too good to be natural. Liza would like it.

I don't know what to do with myself, so I just wait until the sun sets and the anthem rings out over the arena for the first of the nightly displays of fallen tributes. I start absent-mindedly singing to it out of habit, quietly enough that the only noticeable feeling of my singing is the sensation of my voice in my throat.

"Oh, Horn of Plenty, one Horn of Plenty for us all. And when you raise the cry, the brave shall heed the call, and we shall never falter..."

Liza, Amy, Rouge, Nack, Shade.

"...one horn of plenty for us all."

Oh, the irony. At least Gem of Panem was slightly more realistic. Gem of Panem, mighty city, through the ages you shine anew. Its last televised singing was merely a couple of years ago. I still know all the words, and yet I'd be dead meat if I sang it here. There are no ceilings to collapse onto me, but there are trees to fell.

District 12 didn't make it. The hit-list is on, the Career revenge has begun, and I'll be damned if Twelve ever forgets it.

Chapter Text

In a life full of stupid decisions, it would only make sense for me to make another. I come to realise, as I peel into the orange on the second morning of the Hunger Games, that with oranges, or really any fruit that has a skin, it's all or nothing. I wonder if wrapping the peel back around the orange and having it later would be of any benefit to me, or if I should just face the consequences of my impulsivity and let it be a lesson to me.

I hold it in my hands. It's firm and fresh, if not still a little muddy on one side from no doubt being cannonballed into the floor. I could have half of it now and attempt to save the rest if I folded the skin well over the remaining segments.

I take the small knife and slice carefully into the orange, spend ages eating half of the segments, and cut slits and tabs into the loose skin so I can fold it shut. Learning the art of folding has served me well.

This day is clearer. It's nice to have some sun after a chilly night of being rained on beneath a drooping tree. I was expecting more from night one in the Hunger Games but nothing, absolutely nothing, happened. What I do need is somewhere more sheltered, and with the jagged landscape and random hills and short cliffs with little caverns inside, it sounds plausible that I'd be able to find something.

I walk for the first half of the second day, trying hard to imagine myself anywhere but here, while at the same time trying to keep myself grounded in reality. That is, until I hear distant voices. And they don't stay distant.

"I don't care how your day went," a boy says. "We're not talking anymore."

"But Jet-"

"I said I don't want to know."

"Jet, it was a joke!"

I decide it would be better if I stopped walking and hid. Up another big tree I go.

"Yeah, at my expense," he groans. When I get to a good height I see them both, Jet and Wave from District 9, sit down opposite each other on two rocks by an apple tree, and I watch them through the branches.

"I don't actually want to kill you," Wave sighs. "How would I do it?"

She gestures to Jet's mighty spear, and then to her own handheld blowgun. Clearly there's a disparity in weaponry, heavily biased towards Jet.

"Are you sad that you can't murder my stupid face?"

They're quiet for a while. Wave just stares at the floor while Jet picks mud off of his spear.

"You're not leaving, are you?" he asks her. She shakes her head. He sighs, defeated. "Wanna duel it out?"

Her eyes light up. "Like we did before?"

"Sure."

Wave grins. "I knew you'd come around."

"Not so fast, sunshine. Win the duel and I'll think about it."

They each drop their weapons by their feet. I sneak along a sturdy branch so I can get a better view, intrigued by their game. They stand back to back so they cannot see each other, pick a number on their hands with their fingers, and count down from five. On one, they each spin around and show each other their number. Wave swears as she displays an eight and Jet displays a four. She asks for a best of three, and Jet obliges. In the second round, which Jet wins, he chooses a four and Wave chooses a three. The rules seem complex, as it takes them each a second or two to decide the winner, but they're simple enough that the loser accepts it, and somehow they conclude that they're even. In their third and final game, the tie-breaker, Wave chooses a six and Jet chooses his spear. When they spin around and Wave holds up her number, Jet's spear goes right through her stomach, grinds against her spine, and protrudes out of her back.

She collapses onto her knees. "J-Jet?"

He tuts. "You thought I'd just let you win?"

She coughs blood onto Jet's shoes.

"I had to kill you before you killed me."

"I..." She speaks in bloody gurgles. "I trusted you!"

Jet yanks the spear out of Wave, wipes his feet on a fern, and turns his back to her. "I couldn't trust a single word you said after that interview. Bye, Wave. Stupid-face."

I shrink back into the branches as he moves away from her towards my tree. Wave, rapidly losing blood, reaches up to the apple tree with a dart and pushes the tip into an apple, before shakily picking up her blowgun and loading it. With her last breath, and an awful squirt of blood from front and back as she puts all of her effort into forcing the air out of her lungs, she sends the dart flying into the back of Jet's neck.

He lets out a small yelp and stops in his tracks. He slowly raises his arm and plucks the dart out of his neck as if it's nothing to him. He flicks it onto the floor before turning back to Wave, now motionless on the ground, staring at him with betrayal in her eyes.

"You are so pathetic," he insults. And then her cannon goes.

She wouldn't have done that if there wasn't something wrong with the apples. They must be poison.

Almost immediately after I make that conclusion, Jet vomits at the bottom of my tree. It's a strange colour. Red and green streaks. He steadies himself on the tree trunk and looks back to Wave and the apple tree. Jet brings his hand to his neck where the dart hit, pushes his finger beneath his feathers, and on his finger when it emerges are traces of a thick, neon green juice laced with blood. He vomits again, again, and again, before sitting on a tree root and looking up, clutching his stomach in agony.

He sees me. "Espio?"

"Damn," I mutter to myself. I've been detected. Again.

"Espio, help me," he croaks out.

I can't believe what I'm seeing. My whole body feels frozen and helpless. I shake my head. "I got nothing, I'm sorry."

"You do got something," he insists. "It's your job to got something-"

He convulses again. This time, nothing leaves his mouth but blood. I almost lose my orange slices at the sight and sound of it all, but I keep it down. I remind myself that if this were on the TV, I'd be fine. I'd be absolutely fine. Just breathe.

"Espio..."

Only I'm in the programme.

"Espio please..." Jet sobs. He glares angrily at Wave. "Don't let that bitch be the reason I die."

This is horrible. This is so, so horrible. I need to get out of here. I look around for a foothold so I can get down this tree and flee.

"No," Jet moans as I turn my head. "Don't leave me. You kill me, Espio." His next words are voiceless and constricted. "If I'm gonna die... I don't want her to... to get the kill- Gah! These apples... they kill animals. I'm done for."

He folds in on himself again. I can't get myself to move.

I've a good mind to ignore him after what he did to Wave. She used her last breath and her last energy to make sure Jet got what was coming to him after being betrayed so. For me to come in and undo that would be so unfair on her. Although, I cannot speak on betrayal. And Wave is dead, she won't care. Jet is not, and he is suffering, whether he is terrible at interpreting jokes or not. I find myself asking myself, what would a Career do? A Career would steal the kill for glory, but I'm not a Career, I'm me. What would I do?

Jet's glassy blue eyes catch the midday sunlight as he looks up to me, silently begging for some kind of relief with red bleeding from either side of his stained beak. His thick red blood sparkles against the damp tree roots. Wave's body lies limp in my peripheral. I make my decision, nod, and shimmy down the tree. I make sure Jet dies quickly so he can rest like Wave, and I don't leave his side until his cannon blows. District 9 are out.

And I had a hand in it, didn't I.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

The second night is agony. I want to scream, throw my knives away, or bury them or something. I want to show at least a little bit of emotion, just to let it all out, that I am a killer. I killed Jet. I slit his throat and made sure it killed him. I sit back against a rock and wonder if I'd still feel so terrible if I let him die slowly and painfully, and I don't think I would. It's so much more brutal but at least I would have had nothing to do with it.

But he asked me. He begged me. And I can't let a single tear shed because I did this all to myself. When their faces appear in the sky, I don't sing along to the anthem. I keep my mouth firmly shut because I don't know what I'll say if I open it. Before I attempt sleep, I return and slash the branches of a drooping tree and lay them over Jet and Wave so they are not exposed and their bodies, as they decompose in the mud and the wet and the cold, will not be violated by the eyes of the Capitol anymore.

And of course, I get practically no sleep. What I do get is interrupted by red. Bad red, bloody red. And a red that I'm still conflicted on, a red against black. But I'm tired. So tired. And I begin to wonder if sleep really is for the weak, that little joke that I had with myself to justify staying up and laugh to myself when I nodded off, or if I really was weak all along because I cannot will myself to sleep.

On the third morning, I eat most of the other half of the orange. I daren't leave it any longer in case it shrivels up and goes bad. I spend the day carefully stepping around the river, looking for somewhere to just be, but it's not good. I see squirrels and rabbits and think that maybe I should try to hunt them, but all I can think of is plastic mannequins and arrogant green birds.

Some of the trainees who were dead-set on volunteering fasted for a few days at a time to simulate this kind of feeling. I remember, in the run-up to the reaping, Liza and the seventeens made a point of doing it every month, and I did it a few times myself because I knew what was coming. There's the first day which is generally fine, maybe a little uncomfortable. Then there's the second day, where you start making rash decisions like peeling an orange that you really should have saved. But then you start settling into the brain fog, and that dullness in your stomach starts to feel cleaner and fresher, like your entire system has been reset. It's one of those discomforts that, if you can gaslight yourself enough, starts to feel comforting and safe and warm. You feel lighter in every step that you take, a obvious effect of the faintness and the low blood sugar, and it's when that faintness creeps up into your limbs and your fingertips and you start hearing your thoughts as if they are speaking to you with real sound that you know you need to stop before your body gets addicted and rejects food entirely.

A cannon blasts.

The Hunger Games have put this to the test: Nobody truly starves to death if the number of their district is lower than eight. They are all healthy enough that by the time their organs start to shut down, they've already been weakened by something else. Last year was especially evident of this. Maria, being so small and sickly, got enough donations that Eclipse and a few others with dead tributes and leftover money managed to scrape together a pack or two of her meds and jump-start her back into consciousness a few times. The last food she ate before the end of the games was a jackfruit bread, a week before the incident that ended the season.

Two more cannons blow in quick succession.

I'll be fine. I drag myself up another tree in the gentle, mist-like rain. I feel lighter in my head and in my steps but my body feels heavier than before. When a squirrel comes up to me, bouncing along branches and scrambling up vines, I let it sit by me for the afternoon and through the evening. I think about eating the final segment of the orange, even if it does look a little dead, but when I open up the skin again, the squirrel hops onto my leg and stares at me.

"Hey," I smile. "Are you friendly? Have the Gamemakers engineered you?"

The squirrel just sits there, nose twitching, hands squished up to its chest.

I laugh a little. "I bet you have a pack of friends waiting to devour me, huh?"

It runs up onto my chest. Maybe I won't eat all of the orange. I take the last segment out of the peel, bite half of it off for myself, and let the squirrel have the rest.

"No..." I smile, and swallow the orange segment. "That's been done already. That was a 22nd Hunger Games thing."

The squirrel eats the inside of the segment from between my fingers, and when its done it settles on my stomach.

"You're adorable-"

The anthem blares through the arena, startling my squirrel friend. He bounds off me to some other where. I readjust my position and look up to the sky to see who has died today, and to my shock, it's Sonic, Big, and Marine. All three other careers, out. District 2 and District 4, out along with Twelve and Nine, half of Five and half of One.

I am the last Career? On day three?

That's honestly laughable.

"No, what?" I say to myself, and force the smile right off my face. This isn't funny. District 1 is leaning on me now. They have been since the bloodbath. They're counting on me to come home, or at least survive for long enough as to not make the entire district look like a joke. That's why I'm here. That's why they put me here. I'm here to make One not look like a flipping joke.

And yet here I am, feeding squirrels, struggling to sleep, saying words. Espio Vaso, runty sixteen year old, eleven-scorer, whisperer of squirrels. That's laughable. But I think, now that I've outlived the rest of those idiots, I can let go a little, right?

No. No, this was never about them. The existence of those people never stopped me from doing my own thing. This was about me and my Hunger Games and my morals and my thoughts and doing whatever it takes to meet Nicole's demand and win, and whatever strategic cards I'm going to have to play to do that, letting go of myself and showing the Capitol that I really don't have a leg to stand in here is not what I need to do.

"Hey, Nico," I whisper, with a fake smile that only she will know is fake. "Look at me go."

Chapter Text

Day four, after a night plagued with insomnia and disturbing dreams in the three-second micro-sleeps, is dry but cloudy. Cloudy like the contents of my head. Fuzzy like my insides. Grey and lonely. It's not the most pleasant thing in the world.

It's Nicole's favourite weather. She was never one for bright sunshine because it was too harsh on her sensitive eyes. She didn't like the rain because when it came to wetness, she'd much rather be either completely dry or completely soaked than be in some kind of middle-ground. The wind was annoying to her because of the noise it made and the unpredictability of it, and she liked the cold more than the warmth because it's easier to warm up than it is to cool down. So this stillness, this dullness, this quiet, this was her favourite weather. Perfectly neutral.

She also liked the number four. It's the basis of a lot of music. Four beats in a bar, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes. It's even, and even numbers are satisfying. Things work well when divided into quarters, and quarters are easy to calculate and divide. Four seasons in a year, four directions on a compass, four right angles in a square, four elements, four humours, four suits of cards, four fingers and a thumb. In a science book I found, I thought she'd appreciate that there are four bits that make up DNA, and she did. And another book on mathematics I found that mentioned a four colour theorem, and the fact that any four-sided shape can tessellate a plane, impressed her too. To the point where she spent hours trying to understand the proof behind the maths. I could never.

Day four, good weather. This is Nicole's day and I will survive it for her.

I groggily climb back down the tree, aching from where the wood dug into me overnight, and kneel by the river to refill my water. It runs so unbelievably clear that I almost want to try it without treating it with the iodine, but I think better than to do that. I may be losing my mind but I'm not that stupid. I drink the water, battle against a dizzy spell that threatens to pull me into the river, and drink some more. I think about going out and looking for some fruit that's not poison or an animal that isn't adorable but for some reason the idea of food isn't all that attractive to me anymore.

That is, until a familiar dinging noise emanates from somewhere above me.

It takes some finding. The parachute, attached to a silver box, comes down from the sky a few trees away and settles on a rock. The two braincells in my head that are still working almost manage to convince me that it's too far away to be mine. Almost. I head to the rock and pick up the tin.

It's warm. So warm, and the writing on the top is Valdez's, and it says 'EAT SOMETHING, FFS' in his classic spiky capitals. I carefully unhook the parachute, unscrew the top and-

An arrow flies right into the flask of orange soup, splashing it all over my coat. The arrow sticks out from the front of the flask, inches away from piercing the other side and heading into my heart. I slowly look up into the forest in front of me.

Sticks from Eleven crouches behind a rock, bow in hand, quiver on her back. She scowls at me. "That canister is mine."

She looks feral. She never didn't, to be honest, but she doesn't seem to have had a good start to the Hunger Games either despite having her bow and arrows. I realise now that she is probably the one who shot Liza in the bloodbath. A rather satisfying turn of events after Liza's snarky comments about her. I find it quite nice that everybody is starting to get what they deserve, in one way or another, although I'm not sure what Rouge ever did, and I doubt Twelve were so guilty.

"No it isn't," I reply, slowly stepping backwards. "Unless you haven't eaten anything but an orange since the beginning either."

She growls, which is weird. "I ate a squirrel yesterday, I guess."

"The squirrels are rather friendly round here," I say.

She lowers her bow slightly. "They are?"

"Yeah," I try to smile. "I shared an orange segment with one last night. That's not the one you ate, is it?"

She laughs. "How would I know? Who do you think I am, the government? I... didn't know squirrels liked oranges."

"Oh, they'll eat anything."

She tilts her head. "Do you have any pets back home?" she asks.

"Me? No, no," I shake my head, and wonder if through all this time, all this girl needed was someone to chat with. "I've never had any pets."

"That's a shame," Sticks frowns. "I've always wanted a... hey, HEY!" Her expression turns cold again. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Her yelling startles me and I fumble with the canister. Perhaps I'm not the best judge of character.

"WE ARE NOT FRIENDS!" she cries, and she loads up another arrow, raising her bow once more. "THAT CANISTER THERE? THAT'S MINE!"

I dive out of the way of her next shot and chuck the canister at her, arrow still attached, and bolt for my life. I hear the metal hit something, and Sticks screams.

"YOU SPILT IT ALL, YOU DICK!"

"You're the one who shot the thing!" I yell back as a tactical play, and change direction so hopefully she won't be able to track me. I see an arrow fly over in the general direction of where my voice was, and take that as a success. I keep running as quietly and quickly as I can manage, towards what I believe to be the edge of the arena, to put as much distance between myself and that horrid badger as I can.

I see the waterfall one footstep too late.

I slip. Fall. Tumble. Reach to a branch to try and save myself. Catch my left arm between two branches. Hear something snap. Fall a little further. Smack my head on the ground. Flop onto my back.

Stare at the sky.

Watch it slowly shift from grey to black.

Chapter Text

Bang.

I drag my eyes open. It's all blurry and grey. I don't like it. Thick cloud. Cold. Loud waterfall somewhere. Not nice.

I'm so tired.

I close my eyes again, and almost immediately feel that familiar pull into darkness and numbness and silence once more.

Bang. Again.

This time I manage to keep my eyes open.

It takes a few minutes for me to remember where I am and how I got here, but my thoughts are sluggish. I'm on the ground on my back, numb and cold and muddy. Above me is an apple tree. Smaller than a regular apple tree...

Poison apples. Yeah, they're not normal. Jet.

And the apple tree grows out the side of a smallish cliff. A nearby waterfall comes down it, crystal clear, filling a river that runs ever so pretty. I fell down that cliff, didn't I. I was running. Yeah. It's all coming back to me now.

There's that dinging noise again.

"Ugh, Val, I swear..." I croak out. This time, the canister lands right on my stomach. I take it off with my right hand, and try to push myself into a sitting position with my left.

"ARGH!" The yell tears itself out of my throat. I panic and freeze.

That felt horrid. There was a crunch in my left arm. That was the worst thing I've ever felt. It felt like bone grinding against bone. That snap as I was falling down, that wasn't the tree - it was me. I stay frozen, breathing fast and deeply, trying to relax into the stabbing, throbbing ache that spreads through my left forearm so I don't make any more noise, but it hardly works. Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. This is not good. This is bad. This is really, really bad.

I can't stop the crude words from leaving my mouth.

I gasp from the pain in my arm and the new dizziness in my head as I try to prop myself up against the base of the apple tree, and roll up my left sleeve.

My arm is swollen, bruised, and a little bit misshapen in the middle. This is not good. Looking at it makes me feel ill. Or is that just the swaying in my head? I don't know. I don't want to know. I pull my sleeve back down and turn my attention to the gift.

"Take it slow, idiot," I read aloud, still sluggish in my words and my thoughts. I sigh. "Thanks Valdez. I can always count on you."

I open up the canister and it has that same orange soup that Sticks took from me. It comes with a spoon attached to the inside of the lid. I readjust, position my left arm in my lap and balance the canister on top of it so I can eat. Slowly, as Valdez recommended. I couldn't possibly eat it quickly anyway. It takes me a second or two to figure out how to hold the spoon with my non dominant hand, a problem I never had with using a knife when eating before. And I'm cold and my muscles are stiff from sleeping for so long.

I wonder how long it's been? How many cannons I missed while I was blacked out on a riverbank? It feels like an eternity while also feeling like no time has passed at all.

The soup is a blessing. It feels like heaven to be consuming something warm for the first time in days. It's not the richest, and I'm glad for it, because I know my body would reject it instantly if Valdez were to feed me anything with any kind of substance. The sauce is thin but filled with vegetables. Tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, herbs, a few kinds of beans, and small pasta shells. It makes me realise just how cold I am, and the sudden heat in my stomach prompts my body to learn how to shiver again. It's a harsh shiver, almost a feverish shiver, so I put the lid back on the soup to keep it hot and lean back and let my body stutter into life again.

I'm alive, somehow. And at least two others are not. I'm dizzy, probably concussed, but at least I can remember things. At least I can string a thought together, with a little bit of effort. And a broken arm is not ideal but at least it's not my back or my leg or my hip. If I look at the positives, I'm the luckiest bastard ever to have walked this earth. And I am so, so tired.

I eat some more of the soup when I can move my arm in a straight line again and fall back to sleep.

I'm woken up by the anthem. The Horn of Plenty. One horn of plenty for us all. The night sky is cloudy, with a convenient gap where the projection is. Blaze's face appears in the sky, and then Ray's, and it's in this display of the Fallen that I realise it doesn't say what day it is. I feel like it probably should. The anthem quiets down and the projection fades to black.

Blaze is dead. I spoke to her, didn't I. She asked me if I was sabotaging the Careers and to this day I still don't really know.

"You outlived their hit list, Blaze," I smile. "Good job. You rest now."

As for Ray, I didn't know much about him besides his alliance with Mighty and his overwhelming positivity that shone through his difficulty speaking in the interview. He was so young, and yet he seemed like such a sunshine. A Ray of sunshine. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if he could have met Lumina. I'm sure they would have worked so well together, if she hadn't managed to snag District 1.

The cold starts to creep up on me again. I force myself to move, stretch myself out, allow my body some motion, wincing at the agony that shoots up my left arm every time I instinctively go to use it, steadying myself at every rotation of my head because of how my vision over-exaggerates every millimetre of movement, up, down, left, right, sideways, spinning, upside down, backwards. Definitely concussed. Dazed. Disjointed.

After I've got everything done, refilled my water, finished my soup and buried the canister, I settle back down at the base of the apple tree and think about the tributes I've outlasted by sheer, pure, raw, outright, absolute, unmitigated luck.

Nack, Shade, Jet, Wave, Ray, Blaze, Rouge, Big, Marine, Sonic, Amy, Liza... at least twelve down. I'm in the top half.

I wonder how everyone else is doing.

I wonder who else is even alive.

Chapter Text

Day two of borrowed time is a bit of a rehabilitation day for me. It's on this day that I discover, damn, I hit my head hard. The dizziness just doesn't go away no matter how much water I drink or how careful I am with movement and every now and then I end up in places I don't remember going. I realise by the turn of midday that this is something I'm just going to have to get used to. Having acquired brain damage in the arena is not something I'd ever thought of happening to anyone, let alone myself. My odds must be dropping like I did.

I follow the river downstream, and take it upon myself to train my right arm as my left is now out of use. I transfer my knives from my right inner pocket to my left, slip the medium one out of its leather case, and throw it into the bark of a drooping tree. It doesn't go where I wanted it. I couldn't have expected it to. I try again with the big knife and that throw is even worse. When I go to retrieve them, they practically fall out of the tree, a testament to my weak throws, and when I turn back around too quickly I get the worst vertigo I have ever felt. The whole world sways sideways and I tip over, catching myself on an apple tree. The knives are staying firmly with me from now on. I fill my pockets with rocks and practice throwing with those instead.

It feels good to be walking around, in the same way that stretching in a morning feels good. I gently throw the rocks ahead of me, being careful not to throw them too hard so as to jostle my broken arm, and aim them at things. Rocks in the ground, flowers, leaves, and knots and curves in tree roots and branches. It takes the whole day before I can learn to coordinate again, and it's still very very bad, but not quite as bad as before.

No deaths on this day. Peaceful, easy sleep by the river, with a death in the night. Roused in the morning by more dinging. Some cheese filled with fruit, I think apricot, and sweet biscuits. And the note says, 'Jammy.'

"Jammy?"

I remember the phrase in District 1's slang. It means 'lucky'. Annoyingly so. One would be called a Jammy Devil, if one were so undeserving of such fortunes, perhaps having done nothing at all to achieve them. I open up a biscuit, take a bite, and I'm met with a sticky, creamy raspberry flavour inside.

"Ah," I nod. "I see you have taken to my literary devices, Valdez. Jammy indeed."

On this day, I keep moseying by the river, and discover the edge of the arena when I throw a rock and it bounces off thin air and ricochets right back to me.

I wholly underestimated how boring the Hunger Games could be. It gets to a point where you stop thinking of these things as horrors, and rather as facts of life. The things that plagued my dreams towards the start, Nack's horrible death, Liza's cry as Sticks's arrow thumped into her, Wave pouring red from all ends, Jet's sickness and my hand in ending his misery... yeah. It happened. I don't have the mental capacity to care anymore.

In fact, why should I care about anything? I've been saying it this entire time. I dug my own grave. I made my own bed and now I must lie in it. And not even Valdez, my own mentor, can refrain from talking to me in all the ways I bet Liza wished she could have.

That's the thing, he hardly helped me in the pre-game. At least, not in the way that I thought he would. Maybe I misunderstand what mentors do but from what I heard about Finitevus, I thought it would be very tactical. Hands-on, kind of like an extension of the training. Someone I can go to for advice. And I understand that Valdez is new to this - what else was he dragged to the meeting for, all the way back in that stupid car park? And Zavok never looked too impressed with him, either. In fact, I'd trust Zavok more than I'd trust him.

I've a good mind to boycott everything he sends to me. I will not be called an idiot - twice - even if I did start it. Or sworn at, even if it is only an acronym. Or called Jammy, even if that's what I am.

No. It ends now. And if I die, I can at least say that I died on my own terms with a little bit more dignity than I have right now.

I wriggle the biscuit packet back out of my pocket. I need to go about this cleverly, now. I'm not sure whether this needs to look like an accident or an act of defiance, so why not both? Perhaps it should look like different things to different people. I use my one available hand to tease the top of the bag open, and I can't deny that the sweet smell of the shortbread is tempting. I almost allow myself some laughter. About how I really have settled into the Hunger Games so well after all, that I'm actively messing with my own food supply.

Yeah, nobody's going to see this coming. A hunger strike in the Hunger Games? From District 1? Diabolical.

Now, I could use my teeth. I have a set of them, decent enough despite having not been properly cleaned for a while. In an ideal world I would use them, perhaps to grip onto the top of the packet so I can use my hand to get the food out. And maybe I should also sit my damn self down so I can rest the packet on my legs so gravity doesn't get in the way of my impending sugar rush. But I'm not that smart. I'm an idiot, after all. In fact, a self-identified idiot, and the heavens agreed. I'm not going to be that clever, am I? No, of course not. So I, idiotically, hold the packet in one hand, try to flick a biscuit out with my thumb, and oh dear would you look at that, now the entire packet is in the river.

Oh what a sad sight. Not so jammy after all. But hey, at least I have the cheese. The weird, fruity cheese.

And I could like, have that. I could eat that. But I won't. In an attempt to save myself for emergency, I could just let it rot in my pocket.

I never liked apricot anyway.

For the rest of the day I just keep walking. I realise I must be going crazy. How much of this is brain fog and how much is brain damage, however, is yet to be established and likely never will be. Cream's face appears in the sky at the end of the evening. That sweet girl who must have had way too much on her mind. Vanilla, her mentor and mother, must be devastated. Or perhaps not. Maybe, in some weird way, she's glad that Cream won't have to win so young. One look at Maria, young in mind although much older than that in number, fifteen going on ten I'd say, would sell that stance to me right away if I had a twelve year old child in here. I think it would be better if she did die, in a sad and terrifying and brutal and twisted way.

I hope she died quickly. With dignity. Although, perhaps not like this.

Chapter Text

Okay. It's gotten to the point now where sleeping is involuntary. Time keeps skipping. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like sleep. I just go dizzy, switch off, and then things have moved. That's fine.

I fell asleep at the base of another apple tree, feet away from the edge of the arena where the river curves out of bounds for a bit. It's a very clear, sunny day. The prettiest sunbeams, very bright. Not warm, just bright. I take notice of how beautifully green the nature is here. Everything is so alive, teaming with bugs and small animals that hide in the crevices, blanketed by fluffy moss and sustained by shrubs studded with little flowers. There wasn't anything so lush like this back at home. The sight, the beauty of it, actually brings a tear to my eye. But the closer I look in the direction of the Cornucopia, the more clearly I see some extra movement, not characteristic of a small animal at all. Black and red.

"Shadow...?"

He sprints through the ground cover, hopping over rocks and mud channels with nothing but pure adrenaline plastered over his face.

"Shadow!"

Shadow doesn't hear me. He keeps running towards the arena border.

"SHADOW, STOP!"

His head whips around towards me and he stumbles on a rock, landing arms outstretched what must be only centimetres away from who-knows-what. I wince at the sight, thinking about how those rocks I threw whipped back against the forcefield.

He slowly pushes himself off the ground and brushes himself off, panting. He then turns and strides to me, teeth bared. "You could have both of us dead with that yelling-"

"The border is right there," I interrupt, pushing through yet another dizzy spell and refusing to let it have me. "You'd have flown a mile."

Shadow freezes, no doubt wanting to retort something back to me, but instead his ears prick up and he listens for a few seconds. He sighs.

"You're welcome," I say, and show him how close it is by throwing a rock.

Shadow seems unimpressed by the mechanics of the border, and more interested in me. He stares at me for a few seconds, so I return the favour and stare at him. He looks to be doing well. He doesn't seem injured at all, and he has a sword and a rather full-looking bag to his name.

"You look ill," he says flatly.

"I feel it," I reply.

He sits down opposite me on a rock. "What happened to you? Explain."

"Why does it feel like I'm in trouble?" I ask, but I know exactly why this feels so troubling. I think back to Jet and Wave, sitting in this exact same configuration. Rocks. Apple tree. Big drooping tree off to Wave's right. My right. I instinctively look up into its branches, but see nobody there. Shadow looks confused, so I start my explanation. I recount everything I remember.

"I grabbed an orange and ran into Mighty at the bloodbath. We decided not to hurt each other, so I went to run away, but Liza was there stabbing Nack. So Mighty and I both ran into the cornucopia, I took some knives, heard Liza get shot, most likely by Sticks, and I bolted. Day two... I... I found Jet and Wave doing some weird numbers game to settle some argument they were having, and Jet's solution to that was to kill Wave. And while she was dying, she used a blowdart to poison Jet with some apple juice. These apples are poisonous," I point to the tree behind me.

"Oh? Good to know. I haven't been in here yet."

"Really? Where have you been?"

"The fields on the other side of the arena. Anyway, continue."

I'm not sure why, but I'm almost saddened by the thought that for all this time, the two of us couldn't have been further apart. "Jet was really badly. He..." For some reason, I'm not so capable of getting these words out. Not because I care at all, but because I physically can't. I'm exhausted. "He begged me to kill him."

"And did you?"

"I did."

Shadow nods, saying nothing.

"The third day, I finished off my orange..."

"You only ate an orange in that whole time?"

"It's the Hunger Games, Shadow," I shakily smile. "Don't be so surprised."

He returns to his silence.

"Oh day four I got gifted a canister of soup, but Sticks shot through it and it spilt everywhere."

Shadow tuts. "Typical."

"She chased me downhill, I just about got away from her I think, and I slipped off a drop and broke my arm and smashed the back of my head and blacked out."

"Damn?" he gasps. "How are you even alive after all that?"

"I'm just jammy, aren't I," I shrug. "I got woken up by two cannons and ever since then I've felt like death. Valdez sent me some more soup after I woke up, I'm perpetually discombobulated and dizzy and distracted. My arm kills, Shadow, and I'm not sure how much of anything else I'm actually feeling. Everything feels like nothing and I've just become numb to it all."

He raises an eyebrow, and leans back on his rock. "You knocked yourself out on day four, you say?"

"Yes."

"And you got woken up by two cannons?"

"Yes."

He does that thing again, where he laughs without laughing. "Espio, it's day nine. The second Monday. You were out for two whole days. And before you ask, no. Nobody died on days four and five."

"Oh," I sigh. "No wonder I feel like a truck ran over my head."

Shadow swings his bag off his shoulder. "When was the last time you consumed any protein?"

"Uh, Saturday night. Interview Saturday. I had ribs. Really nice. Juicy, full of fat. The good kind." For the first time in what must be almost a week, my appetite perks up again from the deep sleep that my own denial had pressed it into. "Why?"

He unclips the buckles on his satchel bag and rummages around inside. I get a quick glimpse of what's in there. Mainly fruits, plain crackers, packets of preserved things, what looks like a small first aid kit, and another bag shoved inside at the bottom. He takes out a half full zip-lock bag of meat strips and holds them out to me.

"Are you serious?"

Shadow rolls his eyes. "Yes, Espio, I am serious, for goodness' sake. You need energy. Actually wait." He looks to my left arm, which I left lying over my lap unmoving since soon after I woke up. He opens the bag for me and passes it to me.

I try to battle against my stomach. "Shadow, you can't be doing this."

He takes out a half-eaten grape vine. "If it makes you feel better, I'll eat with you. I know what you're like, Espio, your head's a mess. Even more so than usual. 'Hunger Games' my ass, you're eating."

I smirk and take out a strip of meat, ultimately giving up, but not without dragging him down too. "Hunger Games, your ass I'm eating."

"...Really?" Shadow exasperates, sourly regretting his word choice.

"You bet I've been itching for some good wordplay ever since I got in here," I smile. I take a moment to bite into the meat and chew it carefully. It wasn't gifted to me by Valdez, so technically it's fine. "Stress and pauses in a sentence can change the whole meaning. It's really cool, if not a little unfortunate sometimes. It's a technique often used in slam poetry. The best slam poets really utilise the full arsenal of the sounds of language and turn it into a performative spiel of emotions and drama-"

Shadow groans, but not without another minimal smile. "Quit your yapping and eat the damn jerky. If you weren't already beaten up, I'd do it to you myself."

Chapter Text

Shadow stays right by me. He makes sure I'm doing okay. He helps me get my energy back up, slowly and surely. And eventually I do start to feel a little more like myself. A slightly drunk, slightly broken version of myself, and I still can't seem to arrange my thoughts and words in the exact ways I would want to but I'm still me, at least. We enjoy the sounds of the woods and bask in the sunlight. He has since moved to my right, after complaining about the buzzing of the arena border which I can't hear for the life of me. I pay attention to how the sunlight lands on his fur and quills. On the red parts, it's so vibrant. An electric red. A colour I didn't really see in the glaring blueish lighting of the Training Centre. And the dark fur, that I thought was just jet black and colourless, turns out to be a really deep, dark brown, like black coffee, that only reveals itself as such in natural light like this. He looks warm. Not like the harsh, blunt man that he tries to be.

"So," I begin, "what about you? What's happened with you so far?"

He keeps his gaze up in the leaves, the sun revealing flecks of yellow in his crimson eyes. "Me? Well..."

Shadow adjusts his position so it's less lazy and more like it was before. A more serious sit, when he notices me staring at him. A sit that's more self-conscious, something I never imagined he could be. He takes some time to think.

"I ran, didn't really know where to go, ended up in the Cornucopia, watched Mighty bludgeon Amy's head in with a hammer, grabbed this sword, ran into the grass, found Matilda on day five or something and she shared her stuff with me."

"Oh, that's nice of her," I smile, while only really thinking about his careful omission of the countdown and whatever happened before it.

"It is, isn't it. We decided this morning to check out the Cornucopia, seeing as all the Careers are dead except for you and I couldn't imagine you camping there and killing us both. We got there, stocked up on a bunch of stuff, stayed for a little while, and then got chased out by that brute of a badger."

I chuckle. "You've had her hot on your tail too, huh?"

"I don't know which one of us she followed. We just said good luck and scattered-"

Distant laughter startles us both. It's not the laughter of Sticks, for sure. My heart sinks. Maybe shouting for Shadow really is going to get us killed.

"Are you sure he went this way?" a female voice groans.

The laughter morphs into words. "Of course I'm sure! You think I'm deaf or something?"

"I think you're crazy."

Shadow swears under his breath. I try to apologise but he shushes me, pulls me up by my good arm, and we make way for a tree to scramble up.

"See!" the laughing boy shouts. "Over there! Oh, and he's with Espio!"

The two tributes emerge between two apple trees. Honey from District 8, and Bean from District 11.

Shadow groans. "If it's not one, it's the other."

"Damn right," Bean grins. "Lean, green, and mean, it's your boy Bean Machine! Who were you running from, Shady? Looked pretty flustered out there."

Shadow grumbles his answer. "I was running from your district partner."

"Oh her? Hah! She's harmless."

Honey and I, the only ones not saying anything, just let Shadow and Bean lead the conversation, if it can be called a conversation, but that doesn't mean we're on any kind of common ground. She looks at me like I'm prey, while still managing to look playfully annoyed with Bean in the same way that Shadow keeps getting 'annoyed' with me.

"Honey, dear," Bean turns to her, "I can't believe you were worried. If he has to run from Sticks like that then we could take him in seconds."

"Uh, hello?" I interrupt, knowing it's a risk with the state I'm in, but I just have to try it. I put on my best Career mask, right as I would do back at home. "You're not killing him without getting through me first."

There's a moment of standstill. The four of us exchange heated looks, waiting for someone to start something, and it's Honey that makes the first move. She sprints at me so fast that I can only just swerve out of her way. I'm suddenly more grateful for Shadow's food than I ever could have imagined - the energy burst from the meat and the fruit gifts me just enough power to dodge her punches and her kicks, and enough strength to writhe out of her iron grip on my neck. But then the world begins to turn and I'm not sure what's up anymore. Everything swerves around me and I think I'm going to die. I'm sure I'm going to die. The roaring agony in my broken arm is nothing compared to the panic swelling in my chest as the earth crumbles beneath me and the dizziness turns my legs to jelly telling me that I am going to die. She cuts off my air and her face obscures my view of the world. I whip my biggest knife from its leather sheath at a last ditch effort, and find enough space to drag the sharpened blade along the width of her neck.

Blood rains down onto my chest. Honey chokes, and rolls off me.

"ARGH!"

Off to my left, or at least what I think is left as the whole universe keeps jolting inside of my head, Bean has Shadow in a headlock. I shout something, I don't know what, and Shadow's eyes meet mine. Bean makes a move that can only be a neck-snapper - I know what that looks like - and I think I scream, but Shadow makes one big push and breaks himself free.

It gets quiet. Shadow stands with his sword in an iron grip, and Bean breaths heavily, bent over, hands on his knees.

"You're good," Bean pants.

"Come near either of us and this sword is getting shoved where the sun don't shine."

"Oh I'm not planning on going near you guys," he replies, glancing at me through the corner of his eye. "In fact, I have a secret weapon. They don't call me Bean the Dynamite for no reason."

Bean plunges his hand into his trouser pocket and takes out a weird-looking ball with a metallic tag on the end. My heart drops again. Bean rips the metal out with his teeth and throws it between us, but Shadow isn't having any of it. With his sword, using it like a baseball bat, he flings the grenade back to Bean.

The bomb explodes.

Reality kicks in, and the cold mud of the ground wets the side of my face.

And oh, it hurts so much. My head, it pounds, violently spinning. My neck stings where Honey dug her nails in. My arm makes me contemplate whether death would be better. Everything hurts so much.

I can't handle it.

The world is going dark again.

Chapter Text

"Es? Es! Wake up! ES!"

There's a hand on my shoulder. Gentle. Firm. Nice.

"Espio, come on, it's over! He's dead!"

I'm roused by Shadow squeezing my shoulder. The first thing I see is Honey, face down on the ground, and the knife in my outstretched right arm.

"Are you alright, Espio?"

I need a few seconds to put my head back together. Shadow is alive. It's all okay. He helps me into a sitting position.

"My arm hurts," I get out. "Everything's still shaking."

"I know, I know. You're fine. We're fine."

"The world is like... spinning..."

"There was an earthquake, it's not just you."

"E-Earthquake?"

Shadow nods his head. "Yeah, as we were fighting. Honey and Bean are dead. Two others died in that too. Four cannons."

Cannons. I think of loud noises and remember the bomb. "Are you okay? The bomb-"

"Some shrapnel in my back, that's all. My jacket stopped it from getting too deep."

My thoughts start coming together a little more. "Will you need help getting it out?"

He sighs. "Maybe... probably... but you need to rest-"

"Here, let me get it out," I offer. "That can't stay in there."

We leave this place behind and follow the river back upstream to a familiar place that I staggered by before. The speed that we get there tells me that even after blacking out on the floor for a second time, I am recovering. I am doing better. I pull my glove off with my teeth and wash my right hand in the river water, Shadow and I find some good rocks, and he removes his coat and shirt.

"Is your hand clean?" he asks.

"Yeah, I washed it in the river."

He hums. "I'm not convinced."

"Do you want this doing or not? It's the best I could do."

He sighs. "Yeah. I'm just thinking about infection, is all. It's a shame all my first aid thing has is plasters and bandages."

"Infection won't kill you."

"How do you know?"

"The river water is pure as anything. Capitol tap water, I'm pretty sure, although I haven't tried it neat yet. Plus, things are gonna start speeding up now."

Shadow answers sarcastically. "Magician, huh?"

I get to work on his back. The shrapnel that punctured his clothes mainly takes the form of squarish pellets, only surface level in his skin, easily squeezed out between a finger and a thumb. I would normally be squeamish but I'm desensitised. I wash the blood from his back with small handfuls of the water, and try not to be too happy about how soft his fur is. I make sure that if I must run my hand through it to look for more metal, the texture and the scent that is so undeniably him will only be the second thing on my mind even if it forces itself into the first position. I begin to wonder if the joke flirting is even a joke anymore, or if I really do like him.

"No," I answer. "Pattern recognition. We just had the arena event. Things start speeding up after the arena event. It wakes people up. I'll give it a week before I start questioning my theory. You're not gonna die of infection in a week."

"Wow, thanks, magic man." I realise that perhaps that's not the nicest thing someone could hear after killing someone despite being statistically true, but Shadow still says his reply with a smile.

I laugh, and squeeze out another bit of metal from just beneath his shoulder blade. "Who are you, king of sarcasm?"

"Of course. Why do you think Omega put me in here?"

Shadow, king of sarcasm and dry jokes, rewriting the entire law with it to the point where Omega had to remove him before he could get wild animals banned from the roads, yeah. Sounds about right. It keeps me giggling.

"It's not funny."

"It kinda is, though. The image of you... grabbing a coyote by the ankles... taping it to a segway..."

"Will you shut up and finger me faster?"

Shadow tenses up at the realisation of what he just said. I choke on air. "You what?"

He growls. "You will never win the Hunger Games while I am still alive."

I burst into another fit of badly-muffled laughter, to the dismay of my pounding head. "Do you really mean that?"

"I-" Shadow puts his head in his hands, succumbing also. We share this moment together. I think the accidental innuendos are the best from him. He takes a deep breath. "...I mean it with every fibre of my being, you twat."

"Ah, sure thing, Mister Ultimate Life Form."

The afternoon is awkward. Not because of that, but because of the blood on our clothes and the general dirt that has accumulated on us since the beginning. We take advantage of the sun and light winds and wash ourselves and our clothes as well as we can in the river water. And Shadow very kindly sacrifices his bandages for me. While we wait for our shirts to dry, he takes my arm and gently moves it so it goes across my stomach, makes a secure sling and then wraps another strip of bandage around my waist so my arm cannot be moved at all anymore. And I cannot shake the feeling that I'm using him, still. The feeling that I don't deserve any of this, and that my life should have been over on day four. But then I think about it more. If I died on day four, he'd have either died by slamming into the border, or Bean and Honey would have taken him.

We're in debt to each other. I think I still carry more debt than him, though.

When the anthem sounds through the arena, the faces of Honey, Knuckles, Tikal, and Bean are displayed in the sky. District 10 are now gone, in one fell swoop.

"I think I'm gonna call it a night," I say.

"Already?"

"Yeah, why?"

Shadow gazes up at the stars. "Oh, I was under the impression that you were quite the nocturnal animal."

"Only when I'm feeling strong and powerful like nothing can hurt me," I say. "Right now, I'm feeling anything but."

"Okay." He stretches. "I guess I should sleep too, it's been a long day..." He opens up his bag and takes out a small, tightly rolled sleeping bag from underneath everything else, and throws it to me. "Here."

"...Huh?" I pick it up. Definitely a sleeping bag. "No, Shadow, this is yours."

"I know it's mine, that's why I can give it to you. You need it more than I do."

"You can't keep giving me things, Shadow," I protest, and throw the bag back to him. "You've done so much for me already. This is your sleeping bag. Use it."

He persists with his gift. "You're not sleeping one more night in these games without warmth."

"You're not giving up your bed."

"Yes I am."

"Can we compromise?"

"How the heck are we gonna do that?"

I can't think of anything. "I don't know, but I'm not sleeping until we can."

"Alright," Shadow nods, and he gets in the bag. I watch him kick the bottom of it out a bit, wait a little while for the pillow thing to inflate itself, before abruptly sitting back up and opening the bag by his side. He glares at me. "Get in."

"Um," I smile. "What?"

"Get in. You wanted a compromise? Here's your compromise."

I just stare at him, lost for words.

"It's either this or you're staying up all night," he shrugs. "You started it."

I realise I really don't have a choice. Because he's right, isn't he. I did start it. I only have myself to blame. Maybe I should give in and get in the bag with him... Perhaps let it be lesson to me. All we need now is some raw coffee for the morning.

I head over, wipe the mud on my shoes on some nearby grass so I'm clean, and shuffle into the bag with him. We face away from each other - neither of us needed that clarifying - and adjust the bag around us so we both get at least some space on the pillow.

"Now don't toss."

"Oh, I'm not a tosser."

"Go to sleep." Shadow elbows me in the back. I smirk to myself as he wriggles a bit further into the bag, most likely regretting the choices that led him here. I'm sure he would much rather me have stayed up all night than have to do this. I think I would rather that. But then again, if that's what he'd rather, he wouldn't have compromised, would he? My debt to him only grows and at this point I'm not sure it's even repayable.

I'm alive. I've eaten. My wounds have been cared for. An enemy has been dealt with. And now I'm in bed with Shadow the Hedgehog.

Are we allies? Are we?

The line must be drawn somewhere. Maybe we've crossed it. Or maybe this is just what allies do.

Compromise.

Chapter Text

Strangely, I slept really well. I wasn't expecting to, and I don't think Shadow was either, but I woke up before him to find that he moved - most likely in his sleep because why on earth would he do this consciously - to face me. I think he'd implode if he realised, and I debate whether I should go back to sleep and pretend I haven't noticed or try to wriggle out without waking him up.

I choose the latter, and realise that Shadow is quite possibly the deepest sleeper I know.

There's only one death in the day, nothing to do with us. When the cannon blows we just let it ring and do not speculate. We're both too far gone for that now. We have conversations instead. We play word games. We just enjoy each other's company. I somehow bring myself to chuck a knife into a rabbit and we figure out how to cook and eat it with a fire that we make, and the wind takes the smoke beyond the arena's borders. The meat is not good, but it's definitely not raw so what's the hurt.

When it comes to the evening and Sticks is the one to be projected into the sky, flower crown and skittish eyes and all, Shadow raises his water bottle and I raise mine. We outlasted the flower demon. That deserves a cheers, if nothing else does.

Shadow insists I take the sleeping bag again, and I tell him we can either go on a rota or our little compromise will have to continue, and he takes the option of the compromise and acts like I haven't given him a choice despite it being entirely his decision. And yes, I may have played a part in starting it, but he's the one refusing to let it end.

Shadow falls asleep pretty quickly. I do not.

The nights in here are so dark. To me anyways - perhaps I'm just so used to living in urban areas, or at least places with a lot of streetlights. But the only thing providing any light tonight is the distant twinkle of fake Gamemaker stars. And even then, only the ones that aren't covered by the clouds that gave the occasional sprinkle of rain during the day.

And then there's the dinging again. I don't even see the box come to land on my lap until it's a few feet from my face. The small amount of light that the sky does cast onto the arena is just about enough to make out the thin writing on the note.

"Just in case... E." I read. Not from Valdez. Perhaps it's for Shadow, but then why send it now when I'm awake and he isn't? And why not M for Maria? And Matilda's mentor is Jules, so it wouldn't be from him. I can't think of any mentors who have an E as part of their name and have their own tribute to give to. Eclipse from Twelve is a thought, the only thought I can think of in fact, but what does he have to do with us aside from the pervious year's alignment with Five? Twelve are dead and neither of us have a connection. Unless Nack mentioned that I gave him the tip to run. I won't open it yet, in case it's not for me. I hold it in my arm, turn over, and try to get some sleep.

I'm woken by Shadow shuffling. Tossing as he told me not to, and I almost find it funny until he jolts awake, heaving like he's just run a marathon.

"Shadow...?"

He rolls onto his back and stares with wide eyes into the sky, rigid and panicked. Almost how he was at the start of the bloodbath. After some time he starts to calm down, and notices me looking.

"Leave me alone," he says, and goes to turn back over.

"We got a gift while you were sleeping."

He stops mid rotation. "We did?"

"Yeah. From... E."

Shadow sighs. It's not a good sigh. "And you wanna know who that is, and what's up with me, and what happened at the bloodbath, don't you."

"Well I mean only if you want to tell me."

Shadow sits up next to me in the sleeping bag and we look over the gift. It's a small packet of disinfectant wipes, suitable for cleaning cuts and grazes. Remarkably useful, actually, but it does make me wonder if this so-called E is confident that these games are going to go on for a while. Or perhaps, by the slightly less upset look on Shadow's face, they just have enough money to make Shadow feel a bit more confident that he's getting out of here alive.

Shadow takes a swig of the cold night-time air. "It's from Eclipse."

"Twelve's mentor?"

He shakes his head. "Twelve are dead. He's mentoring Five again now."

A few drops of rain start to fall from the sky, increasingly heavily, so we shuffle in the bag together and zip up the top. The sound of water hitting the outside surface of the bag echoes between us.

"I thought Maria was mentoring you from her hospital bed. Valdez and my escort Zavok were talking about it," I say, thinking the worst.

"That was the plan, yeah."

"So... what happened?"

Shadow goes quiet for a little bit. I don't see him do it because it's so dark, but I feel him press his hands against the top of the sleeping bag, feeling the rain through it. "You know how I had a feeling I was going to end up in here? You know how I had it coming? Well, I decided to make it my mission to just not care. I came into here expecting death in the arena. I knew it was gonna be bloody and horrid and I was prepared to face that the second the starting cannon blew. And on that launchpad, I knew people were gonna die when I went up."

He takes a moment. I wait for him to continue.

"But then she ran in."

"...Oh."

Shadow sniffs. "I don't know how, but she made it there. She wanted to wish me good luck because she didn't get a chance to, and she told me to protect Rouge and then win for her because she can't take it anymore." He sniffs again, and I realise he's crying a couple seconds before he does. He shakes his head and keeps talking, much more carefully. "The Peacekeepers came in and they shot her, Espio. They shot her. Dead."

"Oh my goodness," is all I can think to say.

His breath hitches a little, but he doesn't give up trying to control it. "There's nothing I could have done. That was the whole premise of my thinking. There's nothing I can do about it. Death is inevitable. But then it happened right before my eyes, before the Games had even started, Maria was killed... All she wanted was to wish me good luck, Espio. And I've already failed her because Rouge is dead. Eclipse sent me a note on day two."

"Shadow..." I trail off, lost for words about the situation. I like my words but in times like this I lose them because what realistically can I say when I'm not in a good place either? There isn't anything.

But surely it can't be doing him any good holding all of that in.

"Shadow," I restart. "Would you... Would you like a hug?"

He freezes. I worry about what he's thinking. Panic that I've crossed a line for real this time. He sniffs again. "I don't know."

I take a gamble and rest my good hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Shadow, you're allowed to cry."

And I don't know what it is, but something between us changes in that moment. This whole time we've been joking around. Lightening the mood with my fake flirts and his fake threats, brimming with sarcasm and friendly rivalry. Telling ourselves at every instance of something that feels like friendship that it's not worth it for the sake of our own sanity. Laughing at our blunders and blurring the lines between allies and friends as we tunnel deeper into each other's debt is something I've had to just accept as a product of circumstances, and if I were anything how I've been taught to be, I'd be able to fight it. And yet, over and over again, we find ourselves giving in.

Shadow lets it happen. And I let him cry it out. And he lays his head by my shoulder and I rub circles into his back until he calms down and his heartbeat synchronises with mine. And he stays, and I let him.

Chapter Text

Someone in these woods does not know how to tread quietly.

Shadow and I fell asleep on each other somehow, with my right arm still over him and his head still on my shoulder. If I were a watcher I'd think it's rather sweet but I'm just tired and he's just sad so I'm not sure how sweet this could possibly be. Then again: Capitol. They function on sugar. I gently move out from under him and rest him on the pillow, and unzip the top of the bag.

In the dim light of the sky, the head of Vector whips round to stare at me. His silhouette is tall and threatening and I think he knows it. He slowly raises his hands at the sound of me sitting up. "Hey, I've been looking for you. I come in peace."

Something about the way he says it and his shifty movements through the grass tells me that he cannot see who I am at all and hence is doing nothing but attempting a truce right off the bat. "What do you want?" I ask, hoping he recognises me by my voice.

"Allies."

"Okay," I say. "Why were you looking for us?"

He scratches his head. Shadow, being a void of darkness and in a literal coma whenever he sleeps, is invisible to me, let alone him. But I'm not going to pretend I'm the only one here.

"Uh..." he chuckles. "Could you tell me who's with ya? And who's still alive?"

"I'm with Shadow," I tell him. "And still alive are Mighty, Matilda, and Silver. Why us, Vector?" I ask, and then I think of another point. We are in the top six. This is usually where the Careers would start breaking up. This is usually where alliances start ending. "And why now, this late in the game?"

He starts listing off reasons, and I have a feeling they would be very different if he'd found someone else. "I'm on bad terms with Matilda. I don't want Mighty either because of that. And Silver... he didn't do the best in training. He scored a five. Us... two tens and an eleven... we uh, we could do great things. Top three, all three of us, pretty much guaranteed if we work together if you think about the odds. Or like. What they would be, because obviously I don't know..."

He's grasping. I think it's time I woke Shadow up. I give him a light shake and he rouses.

"Vector's here," I tell the groggy hedgehog. "He wants to make us a deal."

Shadow stretches, cracking his back. "What?"

"Vector, please step away for a few moments so we can discuss this in private."

"Course," he nods, and he goes off into the trees.

"He showed up and asked if we could be allies," I explain as soon as Shadow is awake enough to be able to tune in. "Pitched his case. Made it up on the spot, too."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I had to tell him you were here and who's still alive, and then he listed all the reasons why he'd rather have us than them as if he'd actually thought it through already. Silver's five in training was one reason, and he didn't want Mighty because he's got beef with Matilda. On bad terms, apparently."

"Her and Mighty or him and Matilda?" Shadow asks tiredly. "Well I guess it doesn't matter either way. They're all on bad terms with each other, it seems. Hey, Vector?"

"Yeah?"

Shadow winces at Vector's shouted response. "Idiot..." he mutters under his breath. "Come here, I need to ask you something."

Vector pokes his head around a nearby drooping tree. "What is it?"

"You're on bad terms with Matilda?"

"We clashed."

"Clashed, huh? How so?"

"We just did. She's got the hump on with me, no idea why."

"Right, okay, thank you. You can go back again." Shadow shakes his head as Vector leaves, and talks to me. "He thinks he's so clever, lying like that."

"You know what happened?"

"Of course I do. Matilda told me everything, and I'd sooner believe her than him. He was terrible with Cream. She slipped and fell, cut up all her knee or something, and he just stood and watched."

"...Yikes."

He folds his arms. "So my vote is no."

Given the limited information that I know about this man, his messy alliance pitch and his lack of reaction to Cream's injury, he really doesn't seem like a good ally at all. He also doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd take no for an answer.

"You have to consider that there's hardly anyone left, and we're all he has."

"So?"

I try to structure my argument in my head before I say it, unlike a certain somebody. "If we get in his bad books, well... I'm injured, you're inexperienced with a sword although brilliant at playing baseball with one, and he's six feet tall, six feet wide, and could snap both of us in half with his pinkie fingers." Shadow tuts, but I continue. "We don't need him. We shouldn't want him. But it is in our interest to at least have him on our side."

He sighs. "I don't like it, Espio. We don't know how Cream died. If he's as bad as Matilda says he is... What am I saying, he's too smart for that. Or dumb. Either way, he wouldn't have the nerve to hurt his allies."

"Do you see what I'm saying?"

"Yes, but I don't like it."

"Well, as long as one of us is alert at any given time, we'll be fine. We can make him feel safe and then kill him in his sleep if he's a problem." The suggestion just rolls off my tongue in a way that makes me feel physically ill. Like it came from that secret bank of implicit, conditioned District 1 responses that I've tried so hard to go up against. But either way, it seems to make Shadow feel a bit better about the idea.

"Fine," he huffs. "He can stay, but I'll be asking questions. You'd better be smart about this one, chameleon."

I sigh. He said that differently. Like he's annoyed with me for real. It's a different kind of annoyed to before. A new, sincere kind of annoyed.

"Vector?" He calls, only just loud enough. "You're in. Just don't expect the world. I'm interrogating you tomorrow and you better cooperate if you want to stay in this group, understood?"

Vector nods his head, and then shuffles down to the base of the tree, wrapping himself in his coat.

"Are you sure this is okay?" I ask Shadow. "I fear I may have been too rash with that decision."

"Nah, quite the opposite," he shrugs. "You made a point I didn't think of. We don't need to be making enemies with that dickhead."

"So we're cool?"

"You thought we weren't?"

I don't say anything.

"Espio." He rolls his eyes. "Go to sleep, I'll take the first shift."

Chapter Text

I wake up to another clear sky, almost midday, with the faint smell of smoke in my nose. I lazily gaze up to the leaves above me, basking in the warmth of the sleeping bag and swimming in the emptiness of my own head. The sky is a clean, bright blue without a cloud in sight, detailed by light green branches and vines that rock in the light breeze. The breeze is cold on my face, but in a refreshing way. The sling on my arm, tied around my waist, is tight yet comforting. Distant sounds of singing birds keep me company.

It's been a while since I woke up like this, with nothing really on my mind apart from the beauty of the world that I'm in. It's the second time I've ever woken up in a morning completely wrapped up and cocooned in the belongings of Shadow. It's all Shadow. He allowed this. He made this for me.

"Hey, sleepyhead. Vector strangled a rabbit for us. I lost a bet and ended up with its arse, though. I can tell you that now because you're too tired to make jokes about it."

It's almost romantic. Almost. Do I like it? I don't know, and perhaps I never will.

It takes me a while to kick myself back into gear, and Shadow refrains from starting his interrogation until my head is screwed on properly and the good old dizzy spells go away. Him and Vector put a fire together while I was out. It seems Shadow wriggled the serrated knife out of my pocket while I was asleep and used it to grab a bunch of apple wood and cut some vines from the drooping trees and Vector says he used brute force to produce enough friction for the fire. And the wind carried the smoke out of the arena bounds. The rabbit is much better than the one I hunted. Bigger, meatier, fatter, and considerably less burnt. We garnish it with some of the dried fruit Shadow saved from the Cornucopia.

"Are you alright, Espio?" Shadow asks.

"Yeah, why?"

Shadow looks over at Vector, who works on putting the fire out, and then looks back to me. "You've zoned out twice now today. You just keep doing it."

He looks concerned. I'm not sure why. If anything, this day is one of the best so far. "I have?"

"It's like you just completely stop for a few seconds and your eyelids flicker a little bit and then come back and you don't even seem aware of it. It's kinda freaky. It's happened before too but I didn't say anything."

I find myself laughing because I have no idea what he's talking about. "I guess it would be freaky... I don't know, I just get dizzy sometimes."

He looks mortified by my response. "How hard did you hit your head?"

I shrug. "Hard enough."

"You were out for two days. It's getting worrying."

"I was also sleep deprived at the time-"

Vector kicks a piece of wood into the river, and the fire is officially out. He smiles at us. "So uh, when's this interrogating gonna start?"

Shadow looks at me, silently asking for my go-ahead, and I give him a nod. He clears his throat. "Day by day, tell me where you've been and what's happened with you."

The three of us move to sit on the rocks surrounding the smoking remains of the fire. I face the arena border with Shadow to my left and Vector to my right. Beyond the border is an endless swathe of solid trees, fading out into dark browns and greens. If I had a choice I think I'd happily stare into it all day, but I don't, so I'll listen.

"My memory is a little foggy," Vector hums. "Bloodbath..."

Shadow lazily taps his foot on a patch of leaves.

"I grabbed a basket. It had some bread and fruit in it. I ran around a bit... found Cream. Knuckles from Ten was bothering her. No, not bothering, like... he was gonna kill her basically," He stumbles over his words, clearly a little distressed by the re-telling. "So I knocked him flying and took Cream into the fields. I didn't want to kill him. In all honesty, I wanted to make it as far as I could in this without having to kill anyone."

Shadow and I nod along. I can believe it. Vector taking the moral high ground seems legit, especially since most people would have busted Knuckles's skull in for trying to kill the twelve year old. You know. The most taboo thing anyone can ever do in the Hunger Games. Not even Liza would have done it.

"We were in the field in all the rain and the wet and we thought the forest would be better for us. On the way there, we ran into Matilda and she started mouthing off at me calling me a bad ally because she saw the Knuckles thing and saw that I didn't kill him. And I was like, sorry I'm not a violent murderer, I guess."

I keep one eye on Shadow, and he doesn't even flinch. He's damn good at this game.

"It got to day six and we had a scuffle with Sticks. We couldn't get her, but Cream took a bad hit and I chased her off. That's how I got that half of the bow and the screwdrivers-"

"Cream died on night seven, didn't she?" Shadow queries, as Vector points to a bow and a tool set stuck out of the mud a way away that I hadn't yet seen. "How exactly did she die?"

Vector buffers, almost saying something, but changing his mind last minute with a sharp cringe moving across his face. "I... I don't-"

"Talk," Shadow almost growls.

"No, no... I don't think I want to recount all that yet."

"Could you help her?"

"Shadow, please."

He rolls his eyes. "Don't you think, as your new allies, we have a right to know exactly what happened in your previous alliances so we know we can trust you?"

"Of course you do, I'm just-"

"Vector-"

"Men," I step in. "Take a breather. Shadow, we don't have to do this now if Vector's not ready," I say, hoping that Shadow takes the hint that we are not going to get anything more out of Vector because he's lied and he knows we can see it. "We're all traumatised in here. We've all had a pig of a week and a half, and none of us need more conflicts. We can pick back up on this later."

After a few tense seconds, Shadow finally nods his head. Vector reaches out for a handshake with Shadow, and he leaves his arms firmly folded until I give him a glare and he reciprocates it. He gives me a look that I know well from Nicole. It's the exact same look. It's that tell-tale 'we will be discussing this later over coffee and fudge' look. So I give him a carefully small nod.

Chapter Text

The remainder of the eleventh day, and the eleventh night, is horribly tense. Every interaction between Shadow and Vector is like watching two dark clouds rubbing together just a moment away from exploding into the atmosphere. A crack of fury. I could see it building inside of Shadow, irritated by Vector's mere presence. When the anthem sounds, and Mighty's face is displayed in the sky, Shadow lets out a much-needed sigh before disappearing into the sleeping bag for an early night, leaving me in charge of making sure Vector doesn't turn. He doesn't. It's all okay.

"Hey, Vec," Shadow says, staring lazily up into the unbroken clouds of day twelve. "Can you get the firewood today?"

"What? No!" He exclaims, and gestures to me. "It's not my turn."

I scoff. "We never discussed a rota, did we?"

"Well even if we did," Shadow reasons, "I did it yesterday so it shouldn't really be me, and Espio only has one arm in use and it's his non dominant arm, and if he does anything at any kind of speed he'll pass out."

It's true. I make a point of leaning back on a big tree trunk to cement the statement. My balance has been off since day six. If I can't coordinate myself then I can't get firewood, simple as that. Vector didn't see me throw that knife into that scrawny rabbit and frankly he doesn't need to know about it.

"And I don't know about you, Vector," Shadow continues, "but I'm cold as hell."

"But hell's hot...?" I can't resist. We've both said worse.

"Shut up, Espio," he grins. "You're on my side, remember?"

It's in that moment I realise that we don't really need firewood. Shadow just wants to get rid of Vector for a while, and I decide very very quickly that I'm all for it.

Vector groans. "Do we even need more firewood?"

"You kicked all the wood into the river!" Shadow almost laughs. "Of course we do."

"He's got a sword, Vector, I think you should listen to him," I smirk. "What do you have, blunt screwdrivers? A stick?"

"From Sticks herself!"

"Ouh, impressive, a sticky stick!" I tease. "Go on, now. Wouldn't want Shadow to slice your stick off, would we?"

Vector looks mortified. I bite the inside of my cheek. He makes haste.

Shadow kneels down by a rock and buries his face in his arms, convulsing with muffled laughter yet again. I go over to him and tap him on the shoulder. "Why are you laughing? You've said worse."

"What do you mean?" He titters.

"Well you're the one who said you would gladly suffer in me."

"And you're the one who never said no."

"And?"

He springs up from the rock. "You need to sit down, boy-"

Before I know it, he's spun me round and swept my feet out from under me. He puts me down onto the rock he was just laughing into and pokes me in the middle of my chest with the end of his sword, still safely in its leather sheath.

"-And watch your mouth, for I... am like Sir Lancelot. See my sword? I know you like your literature." He bows, and prods me again. "And you, sir, are like Queen Guinevere-"

I relax into the rock. "So I'm cheating on my husband? With you?"

"-And I have saved you from the peril- Will you shut up? I'm having my moment, here, Espio."

"You're having your power trip."

"I-" I watch him work it all out in his head. Eventually, he just shrugs and chucks the sword strap back over his shoulder and helps me up from the floor. "Touché."

"I will make you suffer, don't you worry about that."

His eyes widen and his cheeks flush when I wink at him, and I quickly let him know that I'm only kidding, but Shadow still pulls his side trying not to die.

He makes a good point, though. His little metaphor is probably much more accurate than he ever could have thought, unless he's had this all planned out already. I think back to that oddly legal copy of King Arthur I found in the forbidden library. The Hunger Games were devised to ensure peace in Panem. So that the Districts would know that rebellion has consequences. Likewise, the Knights of the Round Table ensured the peace of Arthur's kingdom, and Lancelot was one of them. The greatest. The finest. Strong and wise and kind. And madly in love with Guinevere after saving her. So they swore to keep their love a secret. Guinevere's love for Lancelot exceeded her love for King Arthur, her husband, and was passionate only for him.

But that would mean I'm married to President Ivo Robotnik. Mr. Dr. Eggman, as Dr. Deep - or perhaps Sir Dagonet - would call him. No thank you, no can do. That's awful. Marrying him? Nobody wants to marry him. I want to claw my nails into my head and scratch my brain away from my skull now. Squeeze it like a sponge and bury it.

Perhaps Shadow's metaphor wasn't as good as I thought.

Unless it's another metaphorical layer. A double metaphor. A metaphor that catches you off guard and only makes sense when you're not looking at it too hard. A metaphor that hides between layers and is simultaneously here and not here. Schrödinger's Metaphor. Or maybe if I look at it harder, it will make sense. And I think it does.

I'm a 'Career', aren't I? I'm the boy from District 1. I was destined to loyalty to the country. The kingdom. The president. The king. The Round Table of other Career knights. So perhaps if Shadow's metaphor is of any worth, my quiet self-dismissal from the pack would be representative of my affair. My divorce from loyalty. My criminal activity back at home.

And some time later, after a split with Lancelot, Guinevere died, didn't she? And Lancelot, with his big old sword, did not die in battle.

No, the Ultimate Life Form did not die in battle.

I smile. At a stretch, it does work. And I find comfort in it. It reminds me that I am not the winner of the Hunger Games for as long as Shadow is alive, because for as long as Shadow is alive, the metaphor will hold and so will my promise.

'Shadow I promise it's not like that,' I recite in my head. 'If it's just us two at the end I'm giving it to you.'

Chapter Text

Vector spends the majority of the rest of the day sitting by the river trying to fix his broken bow. The bow that he supposedly took from Sticks when she supposedly attacked him. And, by the sound of what he's said so far, supposedly injured Cream such that she died a day and a bit later. All of it, loose inferences. Although the Sticks attack part, I can believe. Where else would he have gotten a bow? I don't know if it's the same bow that she used to shoot through the soup that definitely was mine, and all Shadow remembers is being chased.

He takes vines from the drooping trees and ties them firmly around the bow so the bow string is taut, but when he tries to shoot a screwdriver as an arrow, the bow falls apart in his hands and cuts open his finger.

"Hey, Shadow..." He starts. "That first aid kit of yours-"

"Is empty," he finishes with a lie.

"Really?"

"Yeah." Shadow reaches into his bag, unclips the box, and lets the plasters and the wipes we were gifted fall out into the bottom. He shows Vector the empty box.

Vector shrugs, and sucks his finger clean.

I forgot about those wipes. Shadow has made no complaints about his back since I dug the metal out of it for him. He's been wearing his sword confidently over his waterproof with puncture holes, and he's been moving around as normal. But Eclipse's gift didn't go unappreciated, it seems. When Shadow subtly packs the kit back into the box, I see that the wipes have been opened.

He firmly zips the bag shut. "So, Vector. Are you ready to talk yet?"

He removes his finger from his mouth with a pop. "No."

"Well I guess that's tough luck. What did Sticks do to Cream?"

"It's not important," he sighs. "She hurt her on day six and she died on night seven."

Shadow folds his arms and leans his head back onto a tree trunk, knowing he's not going to get anywhere with this. "Okay. Let's move on from that, then. What next? How did you get from there to here"

Vector breathes a sigh of relief, and changes his position so he's facing away from Shadow. He holds his finger out above the river water and squeezes his finger from its base to the tip, pushing blood from the cut that continues to drip. He then drags his grip back down to the base of his finger and holds it there tightly. The blood appears to sink right to the bottom of the river and the water stays clear.

"I was running out of supplies, so I started making my way to the Cornucopia to see if there was anything left," he explains. Shadow raises an eyebrow but Vector doesn't see it. "I took my time and got there on day nine. But the weird thing is, after I got there, there was this massive earthquake and everything I could have taken was destroyed. So I thought, maybe if I find allies, we could share our stuff out and assist each other in the endgame."

Shadow seems satisfied with this information. I, on the other hand, am not. As Shadow explains how the two of us fared in the earthquake, including the deaths of Honey and Bean, I can't help but wonder.

They talk about the earthquake as if it was some coincidence that Vector was right by the Cornucopia as the Gamemakers destroyed it. I'm not convinced.

If I believe everything that Shadow has told me, which I do, and if I believe everything Matilda said to him, then Vector was a terrible ally to Cream. He saw her get hurt, and did nothing. He stood there and stared. So if Cream was hurt on day six, why should we assume that he helped her at all? He probably didn't. Once a traitor, always a traitor, I reckon. At best, he put her out of her misery and ended her suffering, or at least stayed by her, although he doesn't appear to have a heart from what Matilda has accused him of. At worst, he just went off and left her to die. Either way, it's not looking good for him in the context. It's not painting him in a good light.

But are either of those things something that would make the Gamemakers decide he doesn't deserve to have supplies? Coincidences are almost never that good. The Gamemakers intervened on something, didn't they. He's too powerful, isn't he. Vector killed Cream in cold blood, didn't he. They can't let a man like that win the Hunger Games. And I'm sure they wouldn't have minded having District 10 as collateral damage, because Knuckles supposedly tried it too.

I tune back in, and watch Shadow frustratedly walk away from another argument with Vector, who still refuses to detail what happened to Cream. But it's not needed, because I know he killed her, and not in a good way. Shadow comes over to me, about to begin a rant, but I just keep staring at Vector's back. I can't bring myself to look away from him until Shadow's expression softens and he rests his hand on my shoulder.

"What's up?" he asks.

I keep my breathing steady, and whisper. "Don't you see?"

He looks confused. "See what?" he whispers back.

I give Vector another look, and Shadow follows my eyes onto him. I don't want to have to spell it out for him. I think if I acknowledge it out loud I'll explode. It's that kind of anger that settles heavily in the pit of the stomach. The anger that shocks a person to silence. I watch Shadow move his gaze to the ground and furrow his brows, stare for a little while and tap on my shoulder, before staring at Vector again. The confusion morphs into horror as he realises what I mean, and then again into the most barely-contained outrage I have ever seen from a man. His fist clenches around my shoulder as he tries desperately to keep it in.

"Remember what I said?" I whisper.

His head whips round to look dead into my eyes. His red eyes are jittery, terrifying in the darkness of the quickly setting sun, feeling things - hatred - on such a strong level, but they calm down soon enough. Shadow takes a deep breath and nods. He slowly removes his stiff fingers from my shoulder and silently reaches behind his own to drag the sword from its sheath. It glistens in the low light, and he looks to me for approval, which I give. He treads carefully towards an oblivious Vector, evoking no noise from the leaves or the sticks beneath his feet.

Shadow holds the sword just as I taught him to. He positions his feet right where I guided them into back in the training centre. He raises the sword above his head, takes a deep breath, and lets the blade swing.

Chapter Text

"Oh, Horn of Plenty. One Horn of Plenty for us all. And when you raise the cry, the brave shall heed the call and we should never falter. One Horn of Plenty for us all."

Shadow's singing, although slightly gruff and a little off-key, is refreshing to hear. I can't tell whether he feels like he's won or he's lost, but either way, he's feeling better because he's not shaking anymore. That's all I need. There's four of us left now. Us two, Silver, and Matilda. All of us good people at heart, I'm sure.

"We should get out of here."

Shadow doesn't answer me. He just leans on his sword by Vector's dripping corpse as his thick black blood pools at the bottom of the river. So I pack up our stuff, head over to him, and gently take him away.

We walk upstream in the clear night. Our way is illuminated by the moon and the stars. We stay close to each other, walking side-by-side and almost touching, and it's not really my decision but I still welcome it. I don't think either of us know where we're going. I don't think either of us care.

He breaks the silence after a little while. "I never thought that Matilda would make it this far. Or Silver."

I don't say anything.

"What are you thinking about?" Shadow asks.

I'm relieved that he asked me that rather than how I'm feeling, because I'm not sure I'd have been able to answer that one. "I've only just realised how close we are to the end."

Shadow hums in response, and drags his feet through the grass a little. "If it came to it... how would we end this alliance?"

An important question. One I hadn't thought about in any kind of detail other than it just needs to happen and it needs to be me that dies. Because if I think about it too much, I remember Nicole and her demand and start wondering if I really should be selfish for once. It's not a thought I like to have because I know that even if I don't, she'll understand.

"Can we even call ourselves an alliance at this point?"

I stop breathing, and my heart beats a little faster. I almost ask him what he means, but just as quickly as I think that, I realise there's no point. I never did decipher my emotions towards Shadow. I do consider him a friend, with the added running joke that I'm still not sure actually had any meaning behind it. I can flirt without feelings. I can admire without desire. I know that because I did it with Nicole and Mighty, and Nicole would dramatically roll her eyes and Mighty was just hilarious. But can I pretend I don't like him? Shadow? Can I pretend I don't love our talks and our laughs? Can I pretend that I didn't find so much comfort and safety in sleeping with him by my side? Can I pretend that his fur and his eyes don't make me wonder if the forbidden old gods really do exist, and they made him without an error? Can I pretend that he doesn't make my heart flutter, and that I spend the day longing for the night so I can spend it with him? No. I can't pretend.

"I wouldn't dare call you anything more even though I wish I could," I admit. "I'm sorry."

He nods his head, understanding. Although I can tell he really did want more from this, and I regret not giving it to him, even if I have no idea what word I would have given.

"Would you kill me?" he asks. "For District 1?"

It feels as if I am legally obliged to say yes even if there is no chance I ever would.

"You wouldn't, would you?"

"Do you want me to?"

We keep walking. And every now and then, Shadow looks up at me, almost begging me to speak to him. Talk to him. Say anything at all.

"I didn't want to volunteer, Shadow." I finally cave. If I don't want to win then what's the point in keeping a secret? "I just didn't want to."

"...Huh?"

I continue. "I misjudged the weight of the situation. I spent all of my childhood training for something I ended up not wanting to do, for the sake of stupid pride-"

A cannon blows. It takes both of us by surprise.

"It's what District 1 do," I continue in a shaking whisper, still recovering from the shock of the noise. Cannons feel louder than usual at night. My voice settles. "We train up the children, pick the best, and get them to volunteer, all so we can get gifts from the Capitol to make ourselves feel a bit less jealous about the fact that we're not them. I don't claim them in One and I never wanted them to claim me, but in the moment, I felt so lost... Volunteering was the least punishable thing in an event where anything I did would get me punished."

"So... you decided that almost certain death was better than... what, a clip round the ear?"

I think of Nicole, and what might have happened to the two of us if I didn't comply. If I let anything slip. "It's more than that, but as I said. I misjudged the weight of the situation."

"Damn," Shadow says. "You're almost as stupid as the Stratnyy."

We settle back down by the arena border, and despite all, Shadow takes no convincing to let us share the sleeping bag again. I asked for it this time. I may be stupid, and I may have rejected any word to stick onto whatever we have that isn't just 'alliance', but that doesn't stop him from pushing his head into my neck and letting my right arm slide under him. And we hold each other like that, and my skin lights on fire and I have to re-learn how to breathe and my heart pounds all over my body in all kinds of places and there's just something about him that makes me want to have him even closer. Closer than is physically possible. It's powerful and it aches and I don't think it's a joke anymore.

"Attention tributes."

The two of us are dragged awake by the sound of a voice blaring across the arena.

"It is I, Master Zik, your humble Head Gamemaker."

Shadow sits up to attention. I rub my eyes so I can see in the bright sun.

"You have made it to the top three. Congratulations. It is now day thirteen of the 27th annual Hunger Games. I believe it is time we brought things to a close."

"What do you mean?" Shadow growls, but before either of us can have any thoughts in our heads, a hemisphere over the arena begins from the centre and widens around us in a sheet of bright red.

"A veil of blood is cast over the arena," Zik explains. "Touch it, and incinerate. The veil shall shrink and fall towards the remains of the Cornucopia. A cannon shall mark its beginning. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favour."

He ends it on a sick little laugh, right as the edge of the blood veil fastens into the floor just feet away from us. Shadow scrambles out of the bag and drags me out with him.

"Come on, Espio!" he shouts, hooking his sword onto his shoulder. "We need to go!"

With no time to waste, we start sprinting towards the Cornucopia. The starting cannon only gives us a few seconds of a head start. And all I can think about as I'm running is how stupid I am. Why would I admit to something as crazy as wanting to betray my whole district and hence be opposing of the Capitol when we're right next to the arena border? All I'm doing now is dragging him into my mess and I never wanted that.

"This is all my fault, Shadow!" I shout.

"Save your stupid apologies!"

We run as hard as we can in the slippery terrain but it just isn't fast enough, and we tire quickly. I look over my shoulder to see how much space we have between us and the border, slip on a rock, and twist my knee in ways it was never supposed to bend.

"Espio!"

Shadow runs back to me and tries to pull me up, but I don't let him. He tries to say something but I interrupt him.

"I made my own bed, and now I must lie in it!" I yell through the searing pain in my knee.

He grabs my shoulders. "Well then I'm staying here with you!"

"No you are not!"

"Yes I am!"

The arena border speeds towards us at a dangerous rate.

He continues, but he doesn't yell. "I'm not leaving you here, Espio. Don't you have a family back home?"

Of course I have a family. A family who set me up and sent me off to the Hunger Games thinking it would be the best thing that ever happened to me. And I have Nicole. Of course I have Nicole.

"What do I have?" he shouts. "Nobody!"

"Wrong. You have Maria." The words just fall out of my mouth and I don't know what I'm saying until I'm saying it. "You have Maria, Shadow. She may be dead but she made a request of you. And I have someone who made that same request of me but you know what? Only one of us can win these Games, Shadow, and look at me. And look at you. You're more than I could ever be."

His hands move down from my shoulders and onto my chest, and he grips my coat and kneels in front of me. "N-No, that's not true-"

"You deserve this so much more than I do, Shadow, I love you-"

It wasn't planned, and it catches us both off guard. The border comes closer. Shocked, we both watch it come towards us.

My voice shakes. "You're a great man and a great friend, Shadow."

"Espio-"

"Maria!"

Shadow freezes. It's at this point I realise that the border isn't actually making any noise although it felt like the loudest thing. Tearing up the ground in its wake. If I ignore the colour that everything has been turned to, I could mistake this for any other day. I hate it. His eyes are wide and red as ever, but the flickers of yellow are gone.

"Run." I tell him calmly, and pray that he has a kinder fate than Nack did. "For Maria, Shadow. And then win the Hunger Games. For Maria."

I watch him click back into reality, and tears brim at the corners of his eyes. He leans down, hyperventilating, not really knowing what to do with his arms or his face, and hugs me tight. He holds me up as I wrap my good arm around him and let the shape of his body etch into my mind, holding that feeling there for the mere seconds that I can have it, pushing my face into his soft neck and breathing him in and I think about kissing it - kissing him - and the thought pushes itself through my mind, but there's just no time for that, he needs to get out of here and win. And when Shadow lets go, he wastes no time sprinting away from me over the rocks and between the trees. I watch him disappear behind the plant life, say goodbye to him in my head, and fall back down towards the border.

"Nicole," I sniff, feeling weaker than ever. "Nicole... Nicole, I'm so sorry. I'd never forgive myself. You understand, right?"

Fear rises in my chest as the red gets brighter and I can't move for the agony that spreads throughout my body.

"Nicole!"

It comes scarily close. I can't breathe anymore. My heart feels like it's going to shoot out from my chest. Every muscle in my body locks up like I have never felt. I've never had terror like it. I don't know what to do. I can't run. I can't hide. I can't do anything anymore.

I don't want to die, but I think I'm gonna have to.

"NICOLE!"

-x-

...When the rivers dry, we'll be long gone. No need to compromise.
If there is a God, then I'm their child who's lost the fear to die.

Chapter Text

When the skyline's broken, you and me, dance in the streets...

-x-

"Ain't it wonderful?"

It wasn't until yesterday that Mephiles revealed to me that he had never had so much as a birthday cake, let alone a party. They do exist in the districts. They do find reasons to celebrate, but it wasn't something that Mephiles ever got to do. Yesterday, the 28th, was the birthday of President Ivo Robotnik. Anybody with a birthday within a week of that day gets forgotten about, and it didn't help that Mephiles was forgotten about all the time anyway.

I don't really understand how or why we get on so well. We couldn't be more different, really. We looked at each other in the mentor room and both thought we would hate each other. We tried to avoid each other, but then we ended up bonding over Elise and Maria, and now here I am, spending more time on his floor of the Tribute Centre than I'm spending at home.

He wanted something for his birthday. Any birthday. One birthday would be enough. I thought it was a bit silly of him to arrange for the grand opening of the trams to fall on his nineteenth, not knowing if they would even be built in time, but he got it to work. He got his head down some time after he won the Hunger Games, cranked it up to eleven during this last year, and he made it work. It's something I've always kind of admired about the districts. Or envied, depending on the day. They get on with it. I wish I could do that.

"Yeah," I smile lazily, looking over his creation from the window. "You've done great."

I graduated from the Academy soon after dragging Maria into victory. It's not my proudest achievement, not after having to convince the other students whose tributes were long dead to let me use their leftover sponsor money to practically resurrect her. We won the unofficial title of having the biggest fluke victory in the Hunger Games, ever. The University, after I applied, told me to do something better than just be in the right place at the right time, and to apply again next year. So then I had to find employment. Easier said than done, I fell out of a lot of jobs, but the Chaos Council had my back.

Unlike everyone else, they thought my performance in the 26th Hunger Games was admirable and clever. They liked my resourcefulness, quoting how I saved my sponsorship money for emergencies, and they liked how I didn't get involved in the bigger dramas. As if I possibly could have. I could only do what made sense according to Maria's movements, of which she made basically none. These compliments came via a phone call two days ago, after Dr. Deep heard about my rejection from the University last year. Him and the team have had ages to think about it. So I have a job now, paid once monthly at the end of each month I work, and the preparations for the 27th Hunger Games begin tomorrow.

I've been hiding at Mephiles's since accepting the job offer. I thought he would be upset that I'm going to be working with the Chaos Council, so I was surprised to hear that he really didn't care. In fact, he welcomed it, telling me that I've got to do what I've got to do to go places in this world, but warning me that I should never, ever, trust a Gamemaker. He did the same by coming to live here, doing what he had to do, despite hating the majority of Capitol citizens. My dad's not happy with me, though. He thinks the Chaos Council are crackers and they only bring trouble. He doesn't like Mephiles either. A bad influence, apparently, and I wholeheartedly agree, but unlike him, I'm capable of looking past things like that.

"I still can't believe you managed to swindle a whole floor off the President," I say. "Are you absolutely sure I'm allowed to stay here?"

"Yes," he groans. "You asked me that last week, and the week before, and the week before that, and the answer is still the same. In fact," he up-ends the fake plant on the windowsill, "have my spare card. I don't know why I keep it in here anyway. It's useless to me if I lock myself out."

He grabs my hand and presses the card into it. I'm reluctant to accept it. "Have you read the terms and conditions of this place?"

"Terms and conditions?" He laughs. "There are none. At least, I don't think there are. Well there probably are but I haven't read them if they do exist... Look, even if there are terms and conditions, I can keep your secrets, darling, you know I can. Now take it."

Mephiles doesn't seem to be interested in my no-thank-yous, so I give in and slip the card into my pocket by my phone. I know he can keep my secrets. I would trust him with them forever.

It's confusing. I'm not sure why the Chaos Council needed a new hire. The three of them have been working brilliantly together, governing all Gamemaking, for the best part of a decade, with Dr. Deep as the Head and Dr. Don't and Dr. Done-It as assistants. They told me I would be a good balance to the team, especially after the 26th Games tilted them towards a state of anarchy, plus the added dishevelment of that nuisance of a baby that appeared in Dr. Deep's life sometime since my victory. I can't help but wonder if there's more to it and I'm being dragged into something I won't be able to get out of, but they assured me that it will be fine.

The night spins on, and the two of us lean on the windowsill and fill ourselves with the fresh night-time air, watching the trams slide along city streets. The tracks are embedded into pre-existing roads and the trams drive with the traffic until the tracks split off and bypass all of the congestion. They're good-looking things. Freshly built and painted, with seals from all of the districts that contributed. Mephiles added his own artistic flair to the trams, branding them around crystals to make them undeniably his. He made a jade line, an amber line, and a ruby line. He likes his fancy rocks.

Only the jade and ruby lines come by the Tribute Centre. In order to get home, I can take either line and switch to amber a few stops north. But I'm not going home until after tomorrow so I can convince my dad that the Chaos Council aren't all that terrible.

"How did you do it?" I ask. "All of this?"

Mephiles laughs. "Perpetual envy, school, trauma, fame, drugs, sex, drugs, ambition, drugs, and a healthy dose of endless boredom. I had to fill it with something."

"In that order?"

He puts his arm around my shoulders. "Precisely."

A ruby tram bell jingles a little way away, and we watch it roll on by the Tribute Centre towards the Capitol Interchange.

"Happy birthday, Mephiles."

He gives me a squeeze. "Cheers, Clipper."

Chapter Text

I wake up on one of his sofas. I've woken up here a few times now, wrapped tightly in one of his handmade blankets. I never thought Mephiles would be into textiles - it seems to be the only thing about himself that he hasn't sold - but he knows his way around a needle and thread. I asked him about it when he first showed me his mask collection, and he said it's a rather common skill in Six to be able to sew, despite textiles being more Eight's thing. In some places, recycled fabric is more readily available than paper. And then he reserved this blanket just for me. He doesn't do genuine, unpaid affection. He'll give you something, something nice and personal, but only if he really likes you. At first I didn't believe it because usually, he's a complete ass to everyone he meets.

I run my fingers over his messy, tangled hemming, and as always I find it to be nothing short of delightful.

I quite like what he's done with the place. He has plastic house plants because he doesn't trust himself to keep real ones alive, he has his shelf full of crystals, things put in places like some kind of puzzle but he knows where everything is, and if it weren't for the bright yellow paint on his bedroom door, it would all look rather presentable. I don't mind coming back here every now and then. It has life.

When I get up, I pack myself a sandwich with stuff from his kitchen, barely within its use-by date but still edible, and I leave him a bit of paper taped to the windowsill we were stood at last night, thanking him for the hospitality.

I take the shaky paternoster lift down to the Gamemaker studio, which is technically on the ground floor of this tower, but really it's more of a ground-point-five, situated above the mentor room's low-ish ceilings with a balcony overlooking the Training Centre. The studio will become known as the Control room when the Hunger Games begin, but for now, it's just the centre of design. The lift shuffles its way down to the hub room in a manner that has never once felt safe even if the lift has never failed me. I've become used to it now, stepping on and off of the thing, but with the added nerves of this being my first day on the job, I wonder if I should have just taken the stairs.

Through the lush hub room, which has real plants this time, there are secure doors where I have to use my own card, which was reactivated by Dr. Don't since I lost access to this part of the building after last year. Some tinny-sounding metal stairs and a wide corridor later, I find the studio.

It's a bit different to the mentor room, for sure. I thought it would have had the same blueish lighting as the rest of the training and mentoring sector of this building but the Chaos Council have duct-taped red plastic over the lights, making a warmer, more evil-looking colour that bleeds through the wall of frosted glass. I can just about make out the characteristic blob of cyan, or perhaps green under other lighting, moving about in there. Dr. Deep's haircut is atrocious even when it's hardly visible.

Before I even have a chance to land my knuckles on the door, it's opened before me by old little Dr. Done-It.

He roughly adjusts his thick glasses, peers at me quizzically, and waves his three-footed tripod of a walking stick at me. "Deep! The young'un's here!"

Dr. Deep quickly swoops in between us, almost knocking Dr. Done-It flying. He's much taller than I remember, although I never did get this close to him. So tall, in fact, that his jeans don't even make it to his ankles.

"It's Doctor Deep to you, old man. How many times must I explain to you that age is merely a number?" he scolds, and he takes my hand in a firm handshake. "Good morning, Eclipse. Or should I say, Dr. Darkling?"

I smile at his use of the charming new title. I like how well it fits in with the rest of the Council. "Good morning to you."

He guides me past a grumbling Dr. Done-it, an oblivious Dr. Don't sitting with some handheld game device in a swivel chair, and a sleeping Dr. Babble, to the most central part of this large room. An empty circle, marked out by joints in the floor, surrounded by a ring of tables with screens and keypads.

"Welcome to the future Control room," Dr. Deep grins. "I built it myself."

Dr. Deep explains that today is the first day of arena design, and this circle here on the floor is to be an artificial intelligence replica of the landscape we decide to sculpt. It's very complex technology, connected very strongly to the area we choose. All of the Chaos Council's arenas were built this way, by planting some specially calibrated markers into the ground, dragging the raw materials over, rendering the area in this room, and penetrating the barrier between computer graphics and reality until it's all one meshed-together interactive bowl of electrical soup. It's fascinating stuff.

"And beyond the future Control room is our beloved Gamemaker balcony."

It's here that I get my first real glimpse of where the tributes train. The mentors don't typically get to see this. Last year, one of the other students asked why we can't scope it out for ourselves and advise our tributes on what to do, and Dean Pickle of the Academy said it was just a communication exercise.

It's a long, rectangular room, with hunting simulations on the far side and combat simulations on the near side, gameified study spaces and climbing on the left and weaponry and survival skills on the right, plus more stations of things I don't know, and a communal area in the middle. And before the balcony is a long table, and above it are screens with camera footage of every possible corner.

"We watch the tributes train from here, and this is where we will be dishing out the scores on the private training examination day. And, should something go wrong, we installed guns into the balcony's rim."

"It's all very high-tech," I observe, although the guns are a little unsettling to me.

"Indeed, indeed," Dr. Deep grins, looking immensely proud of his work. "Anyway, we have to get cracking!" he laughs. "We've got an arena to design!"

"And we're starting that today, you say?"

"Absolutely!" he replies. He pats me on the back and takes me back towards the table. I rub my eyes when I get there, still not quite adjusted to the glaring red lights. He appears on my other side, still grinning. "We have absolutely no time to waste, Dr. Darkling, so I hope your brain is just as good as ever."

"Yeah," I say, with less confidence than I would have liked. "I hope so too."

Chapter Text

"Are you gonna let us in on the situation with the budget, then? Or are you gonna keep on acting like we have money? Because I know we don't. It doesn't take a genius to know that."

Dr. Don't lazily rolls himself to the central table in his fancy hover chair, eyes glued to his screen, fingers mashing buttons. His floppy blue-tipped hair stays fallen over his right eye, strongly hair-sprayed down, shading his face and making him look even more uninterested in us than he sounds. He's the last of us to the meeting and the first to say anything worthwhile. In the various interviews and statements since Miles 'Tails' Prower's nine-tailed rampage, Dr. Deep has been markedly silent on the state of the Chaos Council's finances.

"Heh, yeah, about that..." he scratches his head awkwardly. "There is no budget. Well, there is, we do have a limit, but-"

"What?!" Dr. Done-It yells, waking up Dr. Babble. "You're telling me we don't even have savings?"

"Of course we have savings! We just need to use them sparingly. We need to take it easy this year."

"The Chaos Council does not take things easy," Dr. Don't sighs. "Clue's in the name."

"Well then what do you suggest?" Dr. Deep groans.

Don't breathes loudly out of his nose, closes his game, and scratches the back of his undercut. "A fundraiser?" he shrugs.

"Not a chance."

Dr. Done-It chips in. "A loan?"

"Only because you'll die before we have to start paying it off."

Dr. Babble babbles loudly.

"No, Babble, we can't kill the rich and steal their money."

"Hey, you heard the baby," Done-It says, twisting a joint on his walking stick and cocking it like a firearm.

"Wait," I step in, before things get too stupid in here. I didn't think he would be so crazy as to interpret baby noises as a go-ahead to start shooting. I allow myself a few seconds before continuing, to think through what I would like to suggest. "I have an idea."

And it's a shaky idea at that, but if I was hired to be the mediator then I'll throw in my two cents.

"Think about it," I begin. "Why are we upset that we cannot provide the usual chaos?"

Dr. Don't goes to say something, but Dr. Deep shushes him.

"If the chaos is usual," I continue, "then is it really chaos? If we keep on inventing crazy arenas like Crisis City and Scrap Brain Zone and Space Colony ARK, the chaos is going to become predictable. The tributes will expect the same level of crazy from us every time and that's not chaos. That's the opposite of chaos. That's consistency."

Some eyebrows are raised from the other men in the room. I'm glad they're not completely disgusted by my idea.

"Sure, the public can think we're broke," I shrug, "but if we make the most boring, non-descript, safe arena there can be, then nobody's gonna expect it. Not from us. It will mess with their heads. The chaos can be psychological this time, and we shouldn't need to spend all that much to make it happen. Once it's unveiled, we can market it as whiplash. Chaos whiplash."

Don't and Done-It look to Dr. Deep for his approval through their blue tinted glasses, a trademark of the Chaos Council. A smile slowly creeps up on Dr. Deep's face.

"Dr. Darkling," he grins. "The absence of chaos is the new chaos... chaos whiplash... yes, I like it. I like it a lot. I knew I hired you for a reason."

I breathe a sigh of relief. This seems to be going well. And if I'm honest with myself, I'm not sure how I'd be able to sit with myself if I helped create another death dome like the ARK or Crisis City. I watched Maria and the other tributes suffer through that last year but it never really hit me square-on until I heard the stories from Mephiles of what his scrambled mess of a brain turned into after being crowned the 24th victor. Those stories troubled me somewhat. I promised him I'd find a way to make sure the next arena is at least a little bit kinder to the tributes, even if all I can do is make a suggestion.

Dr. Don't suggests we look to old arenas for inspiration, pre-Deep and early-Deep-pre-Chaos-Council. He boots up the files of every arena from the eleventh to the twentieth, and we cycle through them in the big circle.

I'm not familiar with many of these. The eleventh, I know, because it was the first of its kind. An island with an endless ocean, this time, outside of the Capitol. Sweet Mountain, the twelfth, was done purely for the irony. It was just a big old hill, tall but small in diameter, and about halfway through, a massive vat of sweets and honey was dropped over the arena, coating every surface in a layer of sugar. Apparently, somebody somewhere had said, when something similar had happened in the old Capitol arena with live snakes, "Wouldn't it be fun if it was candy?"

The fourteenth introduced trackers in the place of about seventy percent of cameras. Dr. Deep is very quick to skim past that one and its innocent hills. We don't need to be making references to such mistakes as Green Hill Zone after making such mistakes as Space Colony ARK, he reckons.

The fifteenth was pretty cool, full of pumpkins and sound effects of ghosts, but it's too recognisable to repurpose. The rest, I don't remember much at all.

"I'm sure people will pick up on us reusing an old arena," Dr. Deep sighs. "And that'll make us seem even poorer."

"We could meet in the middle and plonk it round the back of the mountains?" Dr. Don't suggests. "That'll save us a good bit of cash. Less time on the hovercraft, less distance for the gifts to fly, less travelling around for us, less powerful signals from here to there?"

"Seems valid," Deep nods. "We could touch it up a bit with some foliage though, so it's not just Green Hill Zone all over again." I notice him shudder a little bit at the end of his sentence, but he shakes it off with a flick of his cyan quiff. Strange. "How are we going to make it completely safe, though?"

The others think about it, but I just keep staring at him. I know the fourteenth Hunger Games was a such a failure that we almost had no victor, but he's acting as if that was anything to do with him. His backstory is little spoken about anymore because he's become so integrated into the Capitol and synonymous with the government that people forget where he came from, but at the time of the fourteenth Games, Dr. Deep was studying for an entrance exam into the Capitol University from the most prestigious academy in District 3. It's odd that he cares so much about things that don't concern him.

He notices me staring at him. "Any ideas, Dr. Darkling?"

He takes me by surprise, so I hum quietly as filler while I try to think of something smart to say.

For a person to be safe, they need shelter, food, water, warmth, and that's about it. Shelter can come from foliage. Food can come from foliage too. Warmth can come from the clothes we commission later on. Water might be a problem.

"We need to consider the water supply," I answer. "The mountains will be good for a river but how should we keep it good?"

"Oh that's easy, we've got tech for that." Don't rolls his eyes as if it should be obvious to me. Or at least, I can only assume he rolls his eyes from the way his one exposed eyebrow moves up and down again. "We can run some ultrasound through the arena, put a potential across the forcefield, and do a bit of coding in the simulation here and there and it'll pull anything out of the water. Oil, mud, blood, poison, you name it, we can purify it. Maybe we put a lake out of bounds that we can run all the waste into. We could do it like ARK, like how we hid all the crap in the that ravine where nobody could see it. I still can't believe all those idiots thought it was really in space."

"Well then I guess that's settled." Dr. Deep relaxes into his chair, and zooms out of the current loaded arena to an overhead three-dimensional map of Panem. It shows biomes, elevation, and populated areas, and if Dr. Deep drops a pin on any point, all the areas visible from ground level are highlighted in red. And from that, he chooses a spot just east of the Capitol, nestled behind the mountains in a landscape already populated with willow trees, ponds, and a big lake further out. Perfect.

"Small arena this time, yeah?" he asks, and we nod, so he zooms in a little further than he usually would and lets the circumference of the metal circle define the arena edge. "Right. We've got a location, we've got a theme, all we need now is a name."

Dr. Babble chatters something enthusiastically, seemingly trying to make a suggestion. The kid clearly understands more language than he can produce. Or perhaps he is just playing with sound and imitating his elders.

"Yes!" Deep exclaims. "Lake Crystal! We will call the arena Lake Crystal!"

"Dr. Babble suggested that, did he?" I smile.

"Indeed he did. I'll send off for a truck for tomorrow. Bring wellies."

"A truck?" I ask. "Wellies?"

"Yep, we're heading over there. We need to put some markers in the floor, build the Cornucopia, and make sure we can fit a river in the boundaries," he enthusiastically explains. "We've got a deadline to work to, Dr. Darkling! We've got a field trip to go on!"

Chapter Text

"I see you've finally decided to come home?"

"Yeah. And I have to show you something."

I hang up my bags on the empty hooks where they should have been, and take the form from my coat that Dr. Deep gave to me before I left. He's signed it and stamped it, he's done one for each member of the Chaos Council, and once I've done my bit it should go straight through the authorities.

Dad comes out from the living room into the hallway. "Oh yeah? What is it?"

I show him the paper. "We're going to start making the arena tomorrow. Dr. Deep's gonna get all the stuff we need onto a truck. We're heading out for the day with Peacekeeper supervision."

"Heading out where?" He asks, flicking through the pages.

I smile. "I am legally not allowed to tell you."

He huffs. "I'm your father. I need to know."

"No you don't," I laugh. "I'm in safe hands, I promise. They're a little odd but they're not crackers."

He rolls his eyes, thoroughly unimpressed but powerless to do anything. I'm sure he's learnt by now that I've aged out of his micromanagement. "How's Mephiles?" he asks, with a sneer on the name.

"Oh he's doing fantastic," I grin, taking the paper back off him. "He's finally been able to do something nice for his birthday. He never got that before."

I kick off my shoes and head upstairs to my room.

We live in a terraced house in the middle of a string of properties coming out of the centre of the north west. The house is thin and dark in the middle where there are no windows and only old yellowed light bulbs, but my room is at the back so I get a bit of sunlight in the evenings. My room is just how I left it, besides the bags of pet food being in a different place.

"Hey, Biology, it's nice to see you again."

When I open my blinds, the strong evening sunset lands right onto my lizard in a beam of orange, who sits curled up just wonderfully at the base of his tank. A little while ago I had to upgrade the tank from a small one for my desk to a big one for the underneath of my bedside shelves. He got very big very quickly and I'm not sure if he's done growing. Truly the ultimate creature. I joked about calling him Biology ironically, because no animal should be able to grow so fast, and the name stuck. Biology the bio lizard.

He's ever so sweet. I grab a bag of dandelions and empty some into his tank, but instead of going for the food, Biology makes a beeline for my hand.

"Missed me, huh?" I giggle, when he climbs up my fingers and sits on my forearm. "I'm sorry, brother. I just had to get out for a bit, that's all. Has Dad been taking good care of you?"

I'm no expert on lizard emotions, but when I take him out of the cage and stroke his head, he closes his eyes and curls up near the crook of my elbow where it's warm. That can only be forgiveness. I take a dandelion head out of the bag and he happily eats it from my hand.

"I'm going on a trip tomorrow, you know," I tell him. I sit on my bed and he crawls up onto my chest. "Just a little way east behind the mountains, but I get to see the outside of the Capitol for the first time. I've got a form to fill out so I can go. Ain't that cool?"

I let it really sink in, and smile. This country is so vast, spanning an entire continent in all directions, and I've only ever visited this densely populated little valley. It's not far at all, but it's farther than I've ever been and it's the farthest I will probably ever go if I make it to university and I don't do Gamemaking for another year. But it's so early to think about this potentially being my first and my last, so I choose to only think about it being the first and let the tingles of anticipation swim through me.

I should get up early and be at the Tribute Centre by six. A feat that would have been rather unreasonable before the trams, as walking would have taken over an hour and the buses are few and far between on this end of town. Mephiles very kindly put a tram stop right in the centre of the suburb, the last stop in the amber line, and that's the stop that I will walk to and that's the tram that I will take.

The trip home was easy. The trams really are nothing special but they do feel fancy because they're new, and they look the part on the inside too. It feels like a bus but more open and airy and faster and smoother and the trams have a conductor who gives you tickets, rather than having to talk to the driver. I reckon if I'm lucky and I'm only going from place to place in the Capitol centre, the conductor won't get to me before I'm off again and I won't need to pay. I raised this with Mephiles in a phone call on the way home and he's done the maths already, there's no problem. A one-hundred-percent yeild would be nice but it's just not going to be possible. This was the most maxed-out system he could do.

I should get up early, and that means I should be asleep in an hour. And I still have my form to fill out.

"Come on, Biology, snuggle's over, unless you want to watch me drag myself through all of this bureaucracy. Yeah, didn't think so."

I gently lower him back into his cage and watch him go on a dandelion hunt, before taking the form to my desk and filling up my pen.

The first few pages are just terms and conditions. Stuff I'd better read if I know what's best for me. There's bits to sign and boxes to tick and agreements to agree to. All very legal. In the midst of the yawnfest, I find humour in the paragraph explaining that no responsibility will land on the Captiol if I'm jumped and murdered by nomadic savages or district escapees, but if I'm jumped and I survive I must agree to provide a full account of their looks and their location as soon as I reach the hospital so they can be tracked down and have their tongues cut, all in the fanciest legalese I've ever read.

I then have to write a written statement on why I wish to leave the Capitol, and I copy down verbatim what Dr. Deep told me to write. I sign my name at the bottom, check it over, seal it in the envelope it came with, and call it a night. I need to make sure I get a good night's sleep, for what could be the biggest day of my life.

Chapter Text

The morning sun of half-past-six continually fights itself through small breaks in the white clouds, ebbing its way over the so-called truck's sun roof. As it turns out, Dr. Deep left it too late to rent anything substantial, so we're limited to a five-door, five-seater four-by-four with a trailer hooked to the back. We loaded around fifty small battery-powered "nodes" into the boot that will power up the forcefield, along with a multitool each, pegs that will mark out the starting platforms, and a huge roll of tough blue rope in case we need it. And in the trailer are some shovels to break the new ground, and everything else we should need to assemble the skeleton of a Cornucopia. Again, late bookings meant that we're only going to be building the beginnings of a shack. Not even modifying it remotely this time. We don't really need to, if we can come back one day and finish it by hand. Once Dr. Done-It was done cursing out Dr. Deep for his poor time management, we turned in our forms without a hitch and set off to the east.

Dr. Done-It is driving along the mountainous roads, keeping the truck sandwiched between two Peacekeeper vehicles. The mountains are familiar and hence uninteresting from all angles within the Capitol, but now we are snaking through them I'm starting to realise just how beautiful and vast they really are, with their snowy tops and mossy cliffs stretching far above us. These roads are rarely traversed and hence rarely maintained and Done-It knows it. He takes corners widely and slowly, ignoring the tailgating of the Peacekeepers behind us urging him to speed up. Deep is in the passenger seat making phone call after phone call with a clipboard on his lap, commissioning the tunnels that will go underneath the arena, and Don't is still forever feeding his gaming addiction.

"Does that thing ever run out of battery?" I ask, when he finally finishes the level he keeps restarting.

"I charge it while I'm sleeping and I keep a power pack with me," he shrugs. "Two today, because it's gonna be a long day."

"I hope you're going to help us set the arena up?" Dr. Done-It scolds. "I'm warning you, kiddo, you're on thin ice."

Dr. Done-It takes his eyes off the road for one second too long and hits a particularly nasty pot hole that jolts the whole car, waking Dr. Babble from his slumber between Don't and I. And he wakes up angrily.

"Oh for goodness's sake," Deep mutters, quickly rounding off his phone call. "Can someone shut the kid up? I don't have time for this."

"You know Dr. Done-It can only concentrate on one thing at once," Don't says. "And I can't sing and I didn't bring my music, so..." He nods to me. "Sorry, Eclipse- I mean, Dr. Darkling. It's gonna have to be you."

"What do you-"

My question is cut off by a particularly loud wail from a particularly reactive baby when we go over another pot hole.

"We tried singing him to sleep," Dr. Deep tries to explain. "And he doesn't really like music, at least not when any of us do it, but then we put an old show on and as it turns out, he'll calm down in an instant to Gem of bleedin' Panem. Can you believe it?"

Even at the name of the song, Dr. Babble's eyes widen a little, but when no song ensues, he's upset again.

"Are you kidding me?" I laugh. "That's not a good thing to sing to a child? What if he remembers it and starts singing it?"

"He's less than one, he forgets he has a body and rediscovers his own limbs every Tuesday. Besides, nobody's listening in on the car. You know the words right? Maybe if you sing it, he'll like it."

I remember when President Robotnik had his little breakdown and banned all songs that he remembered from his younger years, painting a new culture for Panem. His own culture, for the Robotnik era. Mephiles's Elise was enough of a demonstration as to what happens when you make reference to a non-Robotnik era. Especially a musical reference.

But the baby is annoying.

"Of course I know the words," I chuckle nervously. "Yeah, I can sing." I clear my throat, and try to assure myself that if I must work with the Chaos Council, there are much worse things I could be doing. "Gem of Panem, mighty city, through the ages you shine anew. We humbly kneel to your ideal and pledge our love to you..."

To everyone's surprise, Dr. Babble stops screaming and starts happily cooing to the sound of my voice. What a strange child.

"Gem of Panem, heart of Justice, wisdom crowns your marble brow. You give us light, you reunite. To you we make our vow."

I stop for a second and Dr. Deep is onto me immediately. "Don't be fooled by his silence, keep singing," he hisses.

I quickly get back to it. "Gem of Panem, seat of power, strength in peacetime, shield in strife. Protect our land with armoured hand, our Capitol, our life."

I keep singing the anthem's three verses in loops, even after Babble's eyes close, as instructed by Dr. Deep. I don't like it at all, it feels so wrong and I never particularly enjoyed singing anyway, but it keeps him happy and it lulls him right back to sleep right as we leave the mountains and enter the endless green hills and their patches of forest. I know from Deep's map that the thickest part of these willow forests are just outside the southern tip of District 9, and they continue like that for miles and then fade into pure hills by the west of District 3. It's quite surreal to think about.

The forests here, though, aren't the densest. They're just full of willows and the wet ground in which they thrive. I imagine if we diverted some of it then we could make a good river and let it run it into that major lake, as long as the lake doesn't flood, but even then does it matter? Dr. Deep chose this place because nobody ever sees it. We might be the first people in years to ever see it. To see how nature takes its wild course.

"Almost there now," he says, gazing out of the window at the vast, looping hills in the far distance. Another mountainous area visible from a gap in the trees that on any other day would probably be shaded by cloud or by fog, but on this day it seems that the clouds only existed over the Capitol, leaving the rest of the world to be clear as water. "You know the plan, right boys?"

"Yes, Doc!" Done-It chirps. "Let's get this show on the road!"

Chapter Text

Dr. Deep hands out some handheld devices that show us the exact position of the arena he outlined back at the studio. They each have an antenna and a screen, they're simple-looking things, but he tells us that they have some serious secrets deep in the wires within. He distributes five shovels and ten nodes for each of us before remembering that Dr. Babble can only just hold up his own head, so he decides to keep Babble with him and start work on the Cornucopia and the starting pegs. Don't and I get seventeen nodes in a bag each, and Done-It gets the remaining sixteen. We each set out to work on a third of the arena.

I choose the third nearest to the Capitol's shield of mountains, which has some vast fields as a break from all of the forest. The mountains look incredible from here, lit up directly by the sun that sits about halfway up the sky. The shadows have nowhere to hide and the mountains are bright and glowing. As the day goes on and I turn holes into the ground, flick a switch on the nodes and bury them inside, the sky does get a little cloudier and the mountains get a little blurrier but if anything that makes them even more magical, with their snow-capped tips shining through the mist.

The shovelling is easy enough in the damp ground. I follow the red sweeping curve set out for me by the handheld, and every time it's crossed by a spoke, I dig a new hole, power up the node, and watch the spoke turn green. Eight nodes and a few hours in I reach the beginnings of the willows and decide to take a rest break.

I brought another sandwich and some water. Sandwiches are a very versatile meal. This one, I filled sliced whole grain bread with a mashed up hard boiled egg, mayonnaise, and a bunch of fresh lettuce just for texture. I could never use the lettuce at Mephiles's because for some reason the second it touched the air in his flat it would lose all of it's crunch. And I would have used cress if we had any at home, but we haven't managed to grow any yet. It might as well be a crime to eat cress that you haven't grown yourself in an empty egg shell with a face drawn onto it. Everybody's made a cress head at least once in their life and most people never did it again but I did and it makes for nice company when Biology is sleeping.

I sit at the base of a willow and bite into my sandwich. It's a very peaceful arena. It doesn't seem hazardous at all, which is just what I wanted. For Mephiles, mostly.

Whatever unease it is that I feel whenever I look up at the willow leaves above me doesn't last all that long when I remind myself that I'm here for employment and I am doing what I can to make this as okay as it can be. He said it was okay. I'm certain we both know that the Hunger Games need to happen for this country to stay on its feet. All I can do is make it as okay as it can be.

I get through my sandwich and take a swig of water. I listen to the light chirping of the birds. I don't know bird sounds that well, they could be anything from flickies to mockingjays. The rustles of the willow leaves and the echoes of wildlife inspire me to keep on working.

The willow forest has layers to it. There's the wet, muddy ground at the bottom, blanketed in a sheet of grasses and ferns. And then there are mossy rocks and tree roots which make for great footholds, perfect for running over. And then there are bushes and piles of rocks with small gaps in them, all sturdy and good and fantastic for shelter. Then there are apple trees, all a little underdeveloped among all of the competition for sunlight, very clearly bested by the willows that make their canopy. But just to make sure that the apples are okay, I take one, clean my shovel on some grass, and crack it open.

It's good. As good as a wild apple can get. And it tastes a little sour but it's wild. It's perfect. This whole arena is perfect. Damn right, chaos whiplash.

I keep going, digging all of the holes and powering all of the nodes. It's never boring. There's always something new to see. A flower, a weirdly-shaped tree, a rock that looks like something, an animal that scurries away at the sound of my footsteps. And eventually, when I have just one node to go, I find a clearing on the edge. An ellipse of shrubs and grass with the arena's willows on one side and thicker, denser willows on the other. And in the ground, just before where I need to bury the final node, there is a crease, and that crease, almost like a crack in the planet's crust that could make earthquakes and mountains, runs deep out of the westerly forest, around the clearing, and back into the east.

We could run the river through here, if we fed it some water from the tops of the mountains. We would change the map of Panem forever but as Dr. Deep said, this place was chosen because nobody ever sees it. I do the final node, and head back along the spoke to the cornucopia.

"Ah, Dr. Darkling!" Deep grins, as he hoists up a bit of wood with some of the tough blue rope. "You've done all the nodes, have you?"

"Yes, Doctor," I smile back, admiring his work. "You've made quite some progress?"

He's built a shack out of some of the wood thrown into the back of the truck, tied together tightly with willow leaves and held in place with rocks.

"I've got a good pair of biceps, I have," he nods. "Years of yoga. Years and years of yoga. Pilates, too. Classic strength training. Although I will have to make some modifications back at the studio. How was your adventure?"

"Very scenic," I reply. "And I have a cool river idea. It shouldn't be too much work."

"Excellent, excellent! Ah, I'm so glad to have you around. Already you have made a massive difference to the team."

He reaches to shake my hand, and I take it. "It really is a pleasure to be working for you, Dr. Deep."

Chapter Text

"Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, icon of ecology, burgeon ideology, bio lizard, biohazard..." I get down on my knees and peek under my bedside shelves. "Mr. Boy is on the roof again."

After many an hour of singing Gem of Panem to that mad baby just to keep it quiet, I've gotten used to singing to things that I'm being left in charge of, and I've found myself singing to Biology once or twice, and I'm pretty sure he responds to music. This lizard smiles, I'm certain of it. I don't know if lizards have the capacity to enjoy music but I know he hears me. I gently reach into his cage and take him off the underside of the roof and sit on my bed with him on my lap.

I've been binge watching the old Hunger Games highlight reels for inspiration. It was something Dr. Don't suggested. Dr. Deep wasn't so keen on the idea because he's a sucker for originality and Dr. Done-It said that the old quantum dot displays from back in the day were much healthier on the eyes than these portable TVs that project their images like a paper fan, riddled with 'blood-brain-bargepole electrical static' and 'new-fangled sickness waveforms'.

"There's a reason they gave all of those ones to District 12, all those frivolous triangles," he said, when I told him I have one for my room because there's not enough wall space for an actual television.

Vanilla Paloma was much more of a menace than she ever let on. She had the loveliest smile and the kindest voice and the sweetest words. In her interviews, she expressed her passion for helping out in local charities in District 3, and although she was a very busy girl, building her volunteering portfolio, she loved living the quiet life. She has a love for books, all books, reading of any kind, and she spent copious amounts of time in Three's many libraries. Nobody expected anything of her, not even when she made it to the final few.

And then she crept up behind the girl from District 8, who was twitching badly from an endless sugar high, and threw her off the side of Sweet Mountain. The end.

District 2 won the thirteenth games. They were pretty average and so were the tributes. I forget the name of the victor immediately every time it's said. It seemed like there were no real alliances, everyone was either going completely solo or the district partners were simply tolerating each other, and the arena had no real turns or twists, no twists in the plot either, which is probably why the fourteenth games were chosen to take place in the twistiest hills this country has to offer, those same hills on the other side of the willows, and obviously, with the twisty hills, cameras weren't going to work so well, so faulty trackers as a supplement it was.

I find that the season is extremely weird to watch. The run-up, the pre-game, is all the same. The tributes had their interviews, they were much better taken care of now that they weren't being kept in the Capitol zoo so they looked much better on-screen, and then that was pretty much all we saw of them. We did have some brilliant camera shots in the arena, and it was a huge deal when a tribute made it in frame, but a lot of the interactions were recorded by audio through the trackers and their positions were 'pinpointed' on a mini map in the corner. A lot of tributes died with no real explanation, and a lot of deaths were missed because the trackers were so awful, but everyone's heartbeat stopped eventually except for Jules's, so he was very cautiously lifted out of the arena with more fractures than bones in his body and declared the victor.

Nothing about this is screaming "danger" to me. I fail to see what Dr. Deep is so afraid of. Our trackers are so much better now, and I can't understand how getting cameras into Lake Crystal could ever be a problem. I will have to ask him about it.

"What do you think?" I ask Biology. "Is he weird about it, or is he just weird?"

Biology, of course, doesn't respond.

"I think he might be both," I say. "I'll tell him I watched the old Hunger Games highlight reels and I'll be gentle about it. You know I can get people to tell me things."

The fifteenth Hunger Games was won by Finitevus Fitzalan of District 1, regarded nowadays as the greatest victor of all time. Not too nice like Vanilla, not too crazy like Mephiles, not too cocky like most of the Thorndykes - perfectly balanced. He was evil but he was clever with it in a way that was gripping. It's exactly what the Capitol wanted to see from the Games and it's exactly what the Games needed to get back on track. The arena, Pumpkin Hill, was fantastic. It was the first themed arena that actually did something. It stayed hauntingly in character throughout and it held all kinds of secrets and built-in ways to drive the plot of the season forwards at a comfortable and thrilling pace.

And then, in the sixteenth, came the first of the Thorndykes, Chuck. Followed by Dread from District 4 who excelled in another water arena named 'No Place' because there were just no places, then Topaz from Two, and finally, topping off the One-Two-Four streak in the nineteenth Games was Sam Thorndyke. The first relative of a victor to become a victor themself. He was a highly egotistical boy who enjoyed the thrill of the Games and had a one-track mind and a one-track heart. He wanted to win. He wanted it more than anything, and he got it, and he thanked the Careers on the victory tour. Chuck gave the Career alliance its name but Sam made it public. Ever since Finitevus Fitzalan's winning model and Chuck Thorndyke's initiative, the Careers have been a force to be reckoned with.

I decide to call it a night. Tomorrow is the day we splash out on some simulator physics and get the river flowing. We've already estimated how many cameras we need to wipe out as many blind spots as possible with as little tech as possible, the Cornucopia has been cemented into the ground which wasn't exactly difficult to do, and Dr. Deep has successfully got in touch with a firm from Two who are thinking about digging out the holding bays for us in the near future. When the near future is, we don't know, and they haven't yet named their price, but it's fine because we're on schedule and things are going well.

Chapter Text

"I've fed you, burped you, changed you, made sure you're not hurt or ill, and you're still crying?"

"Is that Dr. Deep?" Mephiles giggles down the phone line.

"Yeah, he's gonna get me to help out soon, I swear the only reason he hired me is so I could be his babysitter, so I'd better hang up. Tonight?"

"That's the plan, isn't it? See you then."

I flip my phone shut. I had to cut the call short in case Dr. Deep started trying to sing, or worse still, got me to do it. I know Mephiles will keep my secrets, but on a phone line that could be intercepted by Capitol spies at any point, Mephiles's vow means absolutely nothing. These portable phones are a privilege of anybody who works closely with the government, or is involved in the Hunger Games. Some of them have more features than others. Mine only does calls, not even instant messaging, let alone access to the Eggnet like some phones can do. Wired phones also exist in Capitol houses. I'm not sure if the districts have them. They probably don't.

"Dr. Darkling! I need your beautiful serenade!"

"On my way, Doctor."

Until Mephiles called me, I was busy marking out the camera positions in Lake Crystal, using the Gamemaker dome as my guide. It looks even more beautiful through the dome now that I've been there in person. Dr. Deep waits for me with a frustrated Dr. Babble in his arms, and he hands him to me. When I take him, I'm careful to support his fragile head with my right elbow.

"How old is he?" I ask, but Dr. Deep just doesn't answer, so despite having to look after the child every now and then, he is also absolutely none of my business? Sounds about right. Why I expected this job to be entirely professional and to the point, I have no idea.

"Alright, kiddo," I say, sitting down on one of the many swivel chairs. "You want your Gem of Panem?"

He definitely wants his Gem of Panem.

"Okay, here we go," I smile, resting him on my lap so I can check with one hand if my phone is definitely turned off. It is, so I sing. "Gem of Panem, mighty city, through the ages you shine anew. We humbly kneel to your ideal and pledge our love to you."

And I keep singing and singing until he's sleeping soundly with no sign of waking up soon. I trail off the singing, getting quieter and quieter, until I'm not singing anymore.

"You have such a way with music," Dr. Deep sighs. "I'll go and put him to bed."

I get back to work on the cameras, kneeling at the edge of the dome with a controller. Each camera is fairly small and cheap with a big field of view. I've got a limit of two hundred to stay under but I can max it out for good coverage. I position most of them within trees and rocks, and embed a few in the floor where I think people are likely to run out of the bloodbath for some more cinematic shots. Done-It and Don't are elsewhere in the studio touching on the first design stages of this year's theme art.

"You also have such a way with camerawork..." Dr. Deep says, twiddling his moustache. "Did you watch those previous editions?"

"I did," I admit. "Your creative wishes will still shine, though. We can learn from the past and still do great new things."

"Oh, I suppose you're right."

"I watched the fourteenth games last night," I say, taking the opportunity I was after. "The camerawork was so bad, it really made me want to make sure I get this right-"

"We don't speak of the fourteenth games," he cuts me off sternly. "We speak of those no more than we speak of the tenth."

I look up from the dome at him, standing tall over me. "Is there... a problem with them, Doctor? Aside from what we all already know? I was under the impression that we had moved past that. We are the Chaos Council, aren't we? The old Gamemakers are gone."

He doesn't say anything. He just paces in a small circle, arms tightly folded, breathing deeply through his nose.

"What was your drive for Gamemaking?" I ask, hoping it will steer the discussion in a more positive direction, so I can try again later. "What makes you tick, Dr. Deep?"

He goes to snap something at me, but stops himself, breathing deeply through his nose again. He shakes his head. "You don't want to know."

I feel a smile curling up at the edges of my mouth at how ridiculous his green moustache looks when he breaths and it wiggles, but I quickly shut it down. This is no time for humour. This is strange.

I try to dig in. "You... have a lot on your mind, don't you, Doctor."

He sighs hard and shudders, giving in. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes, of course."

He looks over his shoulder to Done-It and Don't, satisfied that they are hard at work with their noses deep in sketching paper, and he comes and kneels next to me. His breathing turns a little shaky. He stares at the east end of the arena simulation, in the direction of those looping hills.

"I was a tribute in the fourteenth annual Hunger Games."

I'm so surprised that I almost choke, but I keep myself composed. "R... Really?"

"I was the boy from District 3," he begins. "I knew I was dead the moment my name was pulled out of that bowl. I did the interviews in my stupid blond hair and acne and checked shirt. I cried every night in this very building. I kept my distance from most people. Vanilla was still traumatised so we didn't interact all that much. When we were given our trackers, they weren't injectables, they just sort of attached themselves to us. I killed the boy from Six and the girl from Nine. My right eye was torn out by the girl from Two. I shoved a bunch of leaves in my face to stop the bleeding. My tracker fell off a few days from the end and the system thought I was dead, fired my cannon, and shone my face up in the sky. I saw my own death message. That was when I realised they couldn't see me. Or anyone, for that matter."

He doesn't stop staring at the map. I just stay quiet, and let him speak.

"I knew I was close to home. My sense of direction never fails me. In the hovercraft I knew we were heading east and I knew we had hills like this by District 3. I waited and waited until Jules was pulled into the sky and I sat at the edge of the arena throwing stones until the forcefield was dismantled. And then I walked. I walked all the way back. And I knew I would never be able to show my face in District 3 ever again, so when I got there I broke into a salon. I dyed my hair and stole new clothes and money and skincare products and I grew a moustache with some serum I found and I made it my life's mission to never show anyone my eyes or my shaven face. Over the course of six months or so, I created a whole new life for myself and watched my loved ones grow without me and passed an exam that fast-tracked me to the Capitol."

I just stare at him in disbelief.

"Then I got this nose job," he chuckles. "Everything else is real, though. Nobody recognised me. Nobody remembered the boy from Three."

I too, did not remember the boy from Three.

"You asked me what makes me tick," he continues. "I don't know why, but I find comfort in Gamemaking. I feel like I've reclaimed something that, once upon a time, claimed me. But I still don't like looking back on the fourteenth games because it reminds me that... well... I'm one of them. The boys from District 3... they are me and I am them and Green Hill Zone only makes me think about that more."

"Miles? Tails?"

"Nine," he corrects. "He told us his name, and his name is Nine. Killing Nine... it killed a part of me. I can't look after a child like this and do the Games at the same time, and I wouldn't trust the others to look after a houseplant. I watched you care for Maria and I trusted you. I trust you."

This is huge. I'm shocked that he managed to keep all of this a secret for so long. That he could be the most evil, crafty Gamemaker the Games have seen yet - already a mean feat considering he is District himself - and yet he is a former tribute. A victor? An unseen, thought-to-be-dead victor.

I rest my hand on his and look into his big sunglasses, where his eyes should be. "You're right, you can trust me," I say. "Your secret is safe with me."

Chapter Text

Notebook, pen, and spare card in hand, I scan myself into Mephiles's apartment, and there he is, leaning on his sofa adjacent to the front door.

"Good evening, Dr. Darkling," He smiles, taking my stationary and shaking my hand vigorously.

"Good evening to you too, uh... Client Dark? What do therapists call their clients?"

"I don't know, I've never had one," he laughs. "Coffee?"

"Ooh, don't mind if I do."

Just as usual, he sets my stationary down on the sofa and heads over to his coffee machine in the kitchen. This is something we do every once in a while when one of us has something we would like to talk about. We roleplay a therapy session, and start it the same way every time. It was my idea that I came up with after he complained that real therapy seems too formal and he'd much rather talk through his worries with a good friend, something he'd never had until he met me. I flick open my notebook and head to the page I marked out for today, titled 'Sunshine and breakups'.

"The sun just never goes out," he says, after about ten minutes of monologuing over coffee, drunk through straws. "Every relationship will end at some point. Either you break up, and that's never pretty, or one of you dies, and that's not pretty either. And the sun doesn't have feelings, or at least I don't think it does, so if I die first then it won't mind."

"Do you not worry that your love with the sun would be unrequited?" I ask. I never did understand that kind of love where they go on dates and hold hands and stuff. It feels fake to me, like it's just some convoluted method to get onto the next bit that for some reason everyone just decided is better than the friendship route, but that's why Mephiles comes to me about it. He says I have an unbiased approach, and I can help him figure out if romance is really worth it.

"It can't be unrequited if it doesn't even have emotions to begin with," he replies. "Do you ever worry that your own hand doesn't love you? That's basically what I want from the sun."

I tap his shin with my foot to shut him up before he says too much, and draw a little love heart between the sketches of Mephiles and the sun. "Uh, Meph, I'm coming out of character for a second... Do you actually have a crush on the sun? Because you said it in an interview that one time and I thought it was satire but it seems to have become a running theme of yours."

He picks up his coffee and slurps loudly through his straw beneath his grey mask, before placing it back down on the wooden coffee table. "No comment."

We never did write notes during these roleplay therapy sessions. That would make it too serious according to him. His trust issues wouldn't allow it, so we settled on drawing. I spend some time fleshing out his mask and doing some cool things with the lighting seeing as he's stood right next to the sun, and when I'm done I show him the picture.

"Woah," he breathes. "You have gone real deep into my fantasies with that one, dude. Wanna switch?"

I hand him the notebook and pen, kick off my shoes, and relax into the cushions. I didn't have anything specific I wanted to talk about until the events of this afternoon. I promised I'd keep Dr. Deep's secrets, but it's been plaguing my mind. That Jules's victory was only an assumption, an incorrect assumption, and we'll probably never know how many people actually made it out of the fourteenth games alive.

"So, Client Darkling, what seems to be the problem?"

I sigh. "It's complicated today."

Mephiles raises an eyebrow, inviting me to continue.

"Have you ever been inside Yoke Hall?" I ask.

"Why would I have?"

Yoke Hall is the hall of the Capitol Academy where I graduated from last year. I picked up my diploma from that room, handed to me by Dean Pickle, who always had a soft spot for me even before the 26th Hunger Games. I had some nice academic achievements, which was why he selected me for the mentor program. He took over from the previous Dean, the inventor of the Hunger Games, just over sixteen years ago after his sudden death.

"I'm just thinking about how everything's gone all weird since I was last in there," I tell Mephiles. "I got rejected from university. Who the heck gets rejected from university after winning the Hunger Games? Even Dr. Deep got into academia and all he had to do was sit an exam in the districts. I couldn't keep down a job until I got called to be a babysitter with extra steps-"

"Clipper, you need to put that rejection behind you. There's no point dwelling over that."

"Says you," I scoff, but when he scowls at me I realise that our troubles really do not compare like that. I got rejected from university. He got dragged from District 6 and thrown into a city sunken into the mantle layer and now nobody wants him for any longer than a paid one night stand because they all think he's insane. "Sorry."

Mephiles stares at the notebook, and then closes it. "You know it hurt me, right? When you accepted that job offer for the Council. But I wanted to support you because you gotta do what you gotta do. And I got over it. I put it behind me and saw that you are still a good person."

"I know," I reply. "I swear, if I had a choice, if I could get my income some other way-"

"I know." He finishes his coffee in one go.

"That's actually..." I start, searching for the right way to satisfy the nagging in my head without saying too much. "That's sort of what I wanted to talk about. It just feels wrong."

"Gamemaking?"

"Yeah. It feels like... well... knowing how you've been there-"

"I thought I'd already made it clear to you that I don't care about your bloody job. That's all it is. A job. You're my friend, Clipper. That is not changing."

"I'm just so conflicted, but if Dr. Deep can do it, then..."

I have to shut myself up. I realise that talking about this with Mephiles isn't going to help me. I'm not sure why I wanted to talk about it anyway. These aren't my stories to tell. These aren't my stories to even imply. But my point still stands. If Dr. Deep can still be Head Gamemaker after all he's been through then being his assistant, with the support of a friend, shouldn't be such a problem. All this is, is a way to build up my portfolio. It's a bridge to the rest of my life, and all I have to do is cross it and keep the trust of everyone along the way.

Chapter Text

Don't and Done-It have drawn a few theme art designs on paper, and now, tonight, the whole Council are working together rendering them on the computers. Dr. Don't's second vision, the one that we all agreed was the best, is themed around small, glowing circles, all spewing from a central point as if you're looking at a fibre-optic lamp from above. The theme art determines stage design, sponsorship postcards, official media during the Games, merchandise, and everything in between. I'm very unfamiliar with the software we are each translating the sketches into. I spend most of my time researching by means of trial and error and pressing random buttons.

"Another phone call? When does it ever end?" Deep groans when his phone starts buzzing frantically. He answers it. "Hello?"

I peer over the top edge of my computer screen. Dr. Deep smiles and springs up out of his chair and presses the phone to his ear the second he hears the voice on the other side.

"Why, Mister Gerald Robotnik! What makes you call me on such an arbitrary weekday? ...What? Now?" he gasps, his smile disappearing almost as quickly as it came. "What do you mean now? I can't just do it now, I have to prepare for these things, you know! What do you mean this wasn't your idea? This is your show!"

Dr. Don't and Dr. Done-It exchange knowing glances.

Deep flips his phone shut and slams it down on his desk. "Asshole!"

"What's going on now?" Dr. Done-It asks.

"A surprise inquiry on Capitol Calling!" Deep exclaims angrily. "And I'm not even allowed to prepare this time! What a joke. And I've got to go to the media room now otherwise the Peacekeepers are gonna turn up and take me there. The people want answers, apparently. Real ones. All they're gonna get is a garbled mess if I can't have a script-"

"Alright, calm your stache," Dr. Don't rolls his eyes. "If it's any consolation, I want answers too."

Deep glares at him. "What sort of consolation is that?"

"Sarcasm, you dickhead. What time's the show on?"

"In like five minutes, so I need to get the fuck out of here." Dr. Deep frantically mashes some buttons on his computer keyboard and shuts the thing down, before grabbing his phone and striding towards the door. "Wish me luck, I'll need all of it."

He slams the door behind him, rattling the glass and the red plastic taped over the lights.

It's awkwardly quiet for a few minutes. No clicking of mice or typing on keyboards. Only the faint sounds of muffled echoes through the rest of the building and the city outside. I'm the one to break the silence. "We should probably tune in."

The other two hum in agreement, and they turn on one of the big screens over the Training Centre balcony. Dr. Done-It fumbles through the television guide with his stiff fingers until Dr. Don't gives up waiting, takes the remote, and switches us onto Capitol Calling just in time to watch Dr. Deep's slightly out of breath entrance into the studio, welcomed by obviously recycled cheers from a fake studio audience.

"This, dear Citizens," Gerald introduces, "Is the much anticipated Nine Miles Inquiry."

Dr. Deep is confused at that statement, muttering the phrase 'much anticipated' to himself before shaking his head and putting a smile back on his face.

"Firstly, before we begin the questioning, we need to run through precisely what happened here," Gerald continues. "Please, remind us all, and tell the story of the boy from District 3 in the 26th Annual Hunger Games."

"Well," Deep says nervously, squinting at the ring lights behind the cameras that paint white circles onto his goggles. "The bloodbath was dominated by Thorn and Mangey from District 12, of course, and then everybody scattered and hid for a few weeks. During those few weeks, the pair from Two, Scourge and Fiona, I believe their names were, gathered their allies and went on a pursuit of the rest of the tributes. They captured Elise from District 6 many a time, and each time, she managed to escape. One of her escapes was aided by the District 3 boy, who had dismantled parts of the ARK to make himself seven extra tails. They hid together."

I notice him sidestepping the District 3 boy's name, while he says everyone else's. I smile, knowing the reason why.

"Why did you allow him to make those extra tails?" Gerald asks.

"Why shouldn't I have?"

Gerald thinks for a second or two, shrugs, and prompts Dr. Deep to continue.

"They stayed hiding in that cupboard for about three or four hours, which was when Elise started singing, and upon order from the President after some discussion, I collapsed the ceiling and killed her."

"Are all of your actions done on the back of an order from the President, or are you capable of taking initiative?" Gerald asks. "Something we all would hope you can do, as the Head Gamemaker? Because from this it seems that you do not have the capacity to make your own decisions. Is that what you are implying? That all of this was instructed by the President?"

Dr. Deep takes a moment to think about his answer. "That is very much a fallacy. I can, and do, make decisions as Head Gamemaker. I also do what the president, my good friend Mr. Dr. Eggman, says. Now, to finish the story, Ni- uh..." He coughs. "The boy from District 3 was upset by the death of his ally, and so he made it his mission to avenge her. He killed Scourge and Fiona with his robotic tails, and about two hours from the end, started work on the device in the centre of the arena by rewiring the Cornucopia."

"These were the works of an insane man, correct?"

"Yes, I will admit that they were, but myself and the rest of the team saw no problems with what he was doing until the end."

Gerald taps his fingers on his desk, searching for his next point. "In our previous inquiry with Vanilla Paloma, she suggested, that although she did worry of Miles's mental health before the Games, that it was not up to her to correct his behaviour once he was in the arena. She said that as his mentor, all she could do was provide gifts with a small note, which had a large delay, whereas you could have put a stop to his insanity in seconds with much more impact. What do you have to say about this?"

He immediately jumps to Vanilla's defence, even if it would make him look worse, which makes sense, given her significance to him. She mentored him, after all. "Vanilla couldn't have done anything to stop him. The delay in gift giving was almost precisely three hours and he built that laser in two hours and ten-"

Dr. Deep is cut off by what must be a voice in his earpiece, and by the look of it, Gerald gets the same message.

"Oh no," Dr. Don't groans from his big swivel chair. "Oh you idiot, man."

Dr. Done-It waves his stick at the TV. "You don't just tell people how big the delay is!" he yells. "Now people can figure out how far away the arenas are! It's supposed to be a space colony, not a sweet roll down the highway! People believed that!"

"They did?"

"Don't, shut up! I mean, Shut up, just be quiet! Some people were dumb enough to believe it, Dr. Don't, and now look!" He gestures angrily to the TV again. "The façade is gone!"

I watch Deep and Gerald make a particular flavour of eye contact that will most certainly not do them any favours in the tabloids. They can call it a conspiracy all they want now, when people try to suggest that Space Colony ARK was just a big metal bowl in a canyon, but if people try to get on their feet and walk there now that they can work out how far away it is, then that will surely be the end of the Chaos Council. They quickly change the subject.

"Alright, enough about Vanilla..." Gerald shakes his head. "Why did you allow this to happen?"

"Well," Deep laughs nervously. "Us Gamemakers can only interfere when it's either an Arena Event, for example the Great Flood of the 17th or the Switch-On of the Quarter Quell, or... a tribute is going to cause mass destruction."

"Well Miles was very clearly unwell in the head, you said it yourself, and that's why I'm not entirely sure I can accept your arguments about Vanilla."

I can't resist a facepalm when Dr. Deep starts getting defensive. "We just thought he was making pretty machines! We thought we had him under control, how was I supposed to know he was communicating with demons in there?"

"Weren't you worried when he became 'Nine', and gave himself seven more tails that could electrocute other tributes?"

Dr. Deep sighs at the mention of Nine's chosen name. "I admit that we may have made some oversights, but..." He pauses for a second, trying to hide his pained expression. "Hey, at least we killed him."

Gerald almost laughs. "Yeah but did you really need to destroy half of the Space Station?"

"Sure."

"And did you really need to make these games the longest ever? Just for that to be how it ends?"

"Sure." Dr. Deep clearly cannot be bothered to answer properly anymore.

Gerald asks the next question more slowly and seriously. "Do you have no respect for President Ivo Robotnik?"

"Mr. Dr. Eggman?" Deep smiles. "He's wonderful."

Gerald is not impressed. "You blew his nose off, sir."

"Sure."

Gerald inhales deeply. "Okay," he nods. "Last question. Is it possible that you may have been biased in your Gamemaking, as you too once were a boy from District 3?" he asks, making sure to enunciate every word. "Could it be that your reluctance to put a stop to Miles's crafty ways until they almost went out of control were coming from a place of bias?"

Dr. Deep just smiles. He knows that Gerald has finally won. And we know that Gerald has finally won. He's finally got through Dr. Deep's wall of scripts and rehearsals and uncovered the true reason for his failures and Dr. Deep has no means or reason to hide it anymore.

Bias. Something a Head Gamemaker should never have.

Deep sighs, still smiling, and replies with an exasperated, "Sure."

Chapter Text

Dr. Deep storms back into the Gamemaker studio just as he left it. Angrily.

Dr. Done-It is immediately onto him. He leaps out of his chair and strides right over to Deep, turning red, fuming. "What in the flaming depths of Crisis City was that?" he spits, grabbing Deep by a fistful of his red waistcoat.

Deep sighs, not even slightly startled by the rough treatment. "Did I not say I'd be a mess?"

"Well I mean, at least we got our answers this time around," Don't says monotonously from back behind his computer. "Bias, all this time. Anyone with half a brain should have been able to figure that one out. That's what you get when you put someone district in the Gamemaker studio."

Dr. Don't says the word 'district' like it's a slur. It's not at all uncommon for people to do that. My dad does it with Mephiles, and I have wondered in the last year if I'd have been the same if I hadn't met him. If I were in charge, I'm certain that bias would have been the first thing on my mind in deciding a Head Gamemaker. I would never let someone district do the job, no matter how 'loyal' they may be. Dr. Deep is angered by the comment. He shoves a forever grumbling Dr. Done-It off of his chest and marches over to the dome. I stand up to follow him, perhaps to try and console him, but I can't take a single step before the door is busted open yet again.

"EVERYBODY, PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"

Before I know it, all of us are surrounded by five Peacekeepers. We all slowly raise our hands, except for Dr. Babble who still sleeps in his baby chair, somehow unfazed by the noise. Each Peacekeeper aims a gun at one of us. Including at Dr. Babble. And then, in through the door, comes the Head Peacekeeper of the Capitol.

Infinite.

He slowly steps into the room, his pointed boots clicking on the floor and echoing off the walls. We all know of Infinite, whether we have seen him at work or not. He is a short, yet powerful jackal with an influence over the whole city that is only bested by that of the President himself. What he says, goes.

He raises his signature spiked metal helmet, and smiles to us. "Upon order from the President after some discussion," he says mockingly, pressing his hand against a piece in his ear, "you are all to be shot. Tonight. Now."

My heart drops to the pit of my stomach and the air falls out of my lungs, and the only thought that I can form in my mind is, 'This is bad. This is very, very bad.'

One by one, in their circle, the Peacekeepers cock their firearms. We all keep our arms raised, stuck on what to do or say. This isn't fair. Only Dr. Deep messed this up, not me.

"Wait!" I shout. All five Peacekeepers turn their guns onto me, but they don't shoot. I keep my hands far above my head. "Hear me out. Please."

Infinite comes up behind me. "What is it?"

I don't turn to face him. I daren't move. "I have been working here for less than two weeks," I say between deep breaths, thankful that I have been given the grace to speak. "In the 26th Hunger Games, I only mentored Maria. I had nothing to do with Miles, I had nothing to do with Nine, and I had nothing to do with any inquiry."

The Peacekeepers do not budge their aim on their guns.

I breathe hard, and close my eyes. "You will be killing an innocent man."

I keep my eyes closed, and listen to the sound of Infinite's boots, making their way from behind me to my right.

"President?" he asks. There's a long, agonising pause before he speaks again. "Thank you. Darkling, you are dismissed."

I open my eyes to see him standing directly in front of me. The Peacekeepers lower their weapons, and reposition them back to the other members of the Chaos Council, and this time, two barrels point to Deep. I carefully lower my hands, whisper a thank you to Infinite and nod to the Doctors, and shakily make a move towards the exit.

"What about the baby?" Dr. Deep pipes up, the second my hand lays on the doorhandle. I spin back around to look at him, and Dr. Deep says the next words staring right into my eyes with a look of betrayal growing on his face. "He's got even less to do with this than Dr. Darkling. He's less than a year old, for goodness's sake."

Infinite rolls his eyes. "Have you any proof of age?"

Deep shous at Infinite. "You look at the damn kid and you tell me!"

Infinite obeys, and turns his attention to the baby chair, stares for a few of Dr. Babble's sleepy breaths, and annoyedly raises his hand to his earpiece once again. "President?" This time, the decision is almost instant. "Yeah, alright. Darkling, take the baby with you."

He roughly grabs the chair by the top rim and pushes it towards me along the tiled floor. The sudden movement wakes Dr. Babble, and he's fussy when I pick him up. The Doctors keep their arms raised, making no attempt to get themselves out of this. They all look just as guilty as they are, and they know it.

"He'll be alright," I say to Dr. Deep, unable to bring myself to look him in the eye, before I step out of the Gamemaker studio.

The second the glass door clicks shut behind me, muscles that I didn't even know were tensed relax. I hold Dr. Babble close to my chest and hug him tight, for some kind of mutual comfort. The baby may be crazy but he's innocent. So much more innocent than me. I made it out of there and I don't think I deserve it. I step away from the door and lean on the thin banisters of the tinny-sounding metal staircase, facing the frosted glass.

I can't take my eyes off their blurry forms. Dr. Don't's short and chubby stature, with his heavily hair-sprayed blue undercut and weird yellow trousers. Dr. Done-It with his tripod stick raised in the air, forever gripped between his old bones that stand encased in his red and yellow jacket and brown slippers. And Dr. Deep, with his green hair and moustache, his nose job, his now flawless skin, his sunglasses, and of course his pale ankles showing beneath his too-short jeans. My phone starts buzzing wildly in my pocket, but I ignore it.

Infinite lowers his helmet and raises his arm. He shouts to get the Peacekeepers to attention. And when he lowers his arm again, they fire.

Chapter Text

The sound of the simultaneous gunshots rings harshly throughout the building, rattling glass and ricocheting off walls and echoing back and forth, ebbing away. I stand frozen in place as their bodies slide limply down onto the floor, and I stay like that while Infinite and the Peacekeepers converse around them. Only Dr. Babble's upset cries can drag me out of the trance.

I run.

I follow my instinct, which is to sprint up the stairs humming Gem of Panem, mighty city, through the ages you shine anew, all the way to the sixth floor. I keep Babble's head pressed against my neck and I let my voice vibrate the melody into his skull. What a miracle drug of a song. He is by no means okay, but I think something about this song tells him that he will be okay even if he isn't right now, even if his carers did just get shot dead. For being idiots. Just like how the people who sing this song are idiots.

I don't allow myself to feel anything. I can't afford to feel anything yet.

"We humbly kneel..." I sing quietly, when I have to readjust Dr. Babble to get my card out of my pocket from by my now quiet phone. "To your ideal..."

No sooner than I reach my arm out to scan the card, the door is swung open for me by Mephiles himself.

We stand awkwardly in the doorway, in silence. His eyes are frantic, and the edge of his mask is asymmetrical as if he just threw it on in half a second without a care in the world about how he looks. His jacket hangs off one arm, and his shoelaces are tucked in rather than bowed. Behind him, his living room is a mess. His evening meal of spaghetti is half eaten, and the radio is still on. Three members of the Chaos Council, following the short Nine Miles Inquiry, executed on the spot.

He shakily steps aside to let me in, saying nothing. I push off my shoes and gently lay Dr. Babble down on the floor.

Mephiles normally has a dislike for young children, especially young children that can't talk, but I can't bring the words to the front of my mind to apologise for bringing him here. Instead, I just crumble.

He takes me to the sofa, and we sit there together. We don't say a word to each other. He just gives me that same blanket that he gave to me before so I have something nice to cry into, turns the radio onto a different station, and downs the rest of his spaghetti.

"I uh..." he says, after his last swallow. "I was gonna head down there and kick the door in."

"You would have been late," I hiccup.

"I know. I'm sorry. It's my fault for letting you put your trust in a Gamemaker."

"Don't be sorry. I convinced them to let me go."

He nods. "The baby?"

We both look over to Dr. Babble, who has managed to calm down now.

"He's less than a year old so he got out too. Baby's crazy," I reply, and the words just sort of spill out of my head. "Or at least, the Chaos Council like to pretend he is. You know the only thing that'll calm him down when he's upset for no reason is Gem of Panem?"

"You're kidding?"

"Not at all."

"Where's he supposed to be?" Mephiles asks.

I remember receiving no instructions on what to do after I left the Gamemaker studio. I remember their faces, every word that everyone said, every word they didn't say, and the sobs tear themselves violently out of me from deep down in my chest. "I have no idea!"

"Alright, well..." he ponders, "how about... y-you look after yourself, and I'll take him to the Peacekeepers? You can stay here if you want but I'm not having that kid in here, screw that."

I smile at his suggestion through the tears. Typical Mephiles, caring less about the fact that the child is orphaned and more about the fact that the child is here. It makes me feel a little bit better. "Okay," I nod. "You can do that."

I help him tidy up his living room, and show him how to hold Dr. Babble. Mephiles is not at all impressed by it but he insists it's okay and that I don't need any more interactions with peacekeepers today, which I thank him for. But I also decide that this building is not very fun to be in right now, and I tell him when he gets up to leave that I think I want to go home because I still can't seem to stop crying and all I want to do is go to bed, but as always, he's chill with it. We head out of his apartment together and go down the Paternoster to the ground floor.

"Call me when you get home, Clipper," he says as we step out of the elevator, and we head our separate ways.

The walk up the Avenue towards the Capitol Interchange is an awkward one. The sun lies low in the sky, peeking between two mountains and piercing my vision with a sharp beam of sunlight. On any other day, I'd be cursing it for being so difficult, but now I'm stuck between cursing it for being so difficult and thanking it for reminding me that I'm alive. Tears brim at my eyes again, but I wipe them away.

I catch a ruby tram from the interchange. It's busy, shoulder to shoulder, easy to hide away from the line of sight of most people, and the tram conductor doesn't make it to me before I have to transfer to amber. That tram, of course, is a lot less busy, but that comes with the staring. The people looking.

Of course, they all know me from mentoring, but it seems like word has finally gotten out about my involvement with the Gamemakers. As I accepted the job offer, I wondered if I would be thrusted into a new spotlight, or if people would simply know my name and my face not a lot else as they did with Don't and Done-It. I knew I wouldn't be the face of the Gamemakers, but now, I think I might be. Nobody says anything to me. They just look.

I make my way to an empty part of the tram. The seats are arranged in fours. Two seats face two seats, back to back with two more seats, facing another two, and it's modular like that all the way down. It's a design choice that Mephiles never really liked but the people who helped him design it said that it would be better this way, rather than having endless rows like in the buses, so the trams are more open and friendly. He said that all that does is invite awkward eye contact with strangers. I said that probably doesn't matter, but now I'm feeling it on a personal level. The way that everyone just looks at you when you've survived something against all odds? That feeling of unease that my fellow mentors spoke of on their victory tours and their homecomings? Yeah, I get it now.

The amber journey is about twenty minutes long, and I spend it staring into the mountains, thinking about the time I spent on the other side of them. It's the wrong direction now but the sun will still be lighting up their snow-capped cliffs, washing the shadows away.

Chapter Text

The tram comes to a slow, smooth stop at the end of the track. It ends in a car park in our suburb. The end of the amber line, a slightly underdeveloped part of the city but still worthy of care and connections. I'm the only person on it, and I take great care in avoiding any kind of interaction with the tram conductor, who has been staring at me this whole way in his emerald-coloured uniform, by walking through the carriages to the door on the other end.

The house is only a couple of streets away from the tram stop. There's barely anybody out tonight. The sun has passed the tops of the mountains now, so I walk in cool shade. When I get to the door I gently unlock it and find that there are no lights on and no sound. Odd.

"Dad?" I ask. "Are you home?"

Normally at this time of night, he'd be sat all cosy on the settee in the living room in his favourite red dressing gown, with his head cosied up in his favourite blue beanie, but he's not there.

"Dad?" I ask again. "I'm home!"

There's a creak from the top of the dark stairs. "Oh, are you?"

My heart immediately drops again. I know that tone from him. That deep, disappointed, sarcastic tone. The words that pretend to care but the intonation that brims with anger and spoils it all.

"Yes, I'm home," I reply.

"What did I tell you?" he asks.

I sigh. "You told me that the Chaos Council are crackers, and that they only bring trouble-"

He runs down the stairs to me and pins me to the wall. His thick fingers twist around my neck and press down on me there. "And why didn't you listen to me?" he hisses. "Why do you never listen to a single word I say to you? I thought you were dead!"

I work hard to breathe, and I avoid eye contact with him because that never helped whenever he did this before. But I can't answer him. I couldn't possibly tell him why I don't listen. Maybe because I don't like it when he pretends like he knows best but if I said that then I think he would choke me for real. So much for ageing out of his micromanagement.

He lets go of me, although there is no sign of his fury subsiding. I resist the urge to heave the air back into my lungs and instead do it slowly and quietly while he strides back upstairs and loudly slams a door. My door, I think, from the sound and the manner of the echoes. I bring my hand, still very cold from being outside, to my neck and I gently rub where he pressed against it, to try sooth the new ache.

There's some more movement upstairs, and he comes back out of my room. My dad returns to the top of the stairs, and looks down at me from the height in the darkness.

"I have called you," he growls, "sixteen times over. And you did not answer one call." He pauses, whistles, and continues. "I only found out you were alive because of the radio. And don't give me some crap that you couldn't answer the call. If you came home on the tram then you damn well should have. So you might want to come to your room, and you might want to stay there before I kill you myself."

He stands off to one side and gestures for me to come upstairs, so I kick off my shoes and carefully walk up. I try not to make too much noise, and I pass by him smoothly, tensing in case he lays his hands on me again, but he doesn't. He leans over and opens the door to my room, I head inside, and he closes the door.

Biology's cage is open. Biology is on the floor.

"Biology?"

And he's motionless. This isn't good.

My phone buzzes again. I take it out of my pocket and see those sixteen missed calls from my dad, but at the top of the list is an incoming call from Mephiles. I dare not say any words, so I don't answer it. It goes to answerphone, and a voice message comes through. Before I play it, I step over Biology and muffle the phone with my bedsheets so I can press play.

"Hey Clipper, I've dropped him off at the Peacekeeper station, so that's one thing sorted. I overheard some stuff in there. You might get some weird phone calls asking for interviews and whatever but you need to decline those. Don't do any interviews, okay? Don't do any interviews. You have the right to remain silent. Use it. Anyway, call me when you get this."

"I wish I could," I whisper to the phone, knowing it's a bad idea to talk to him right now, before folding it over and putting it back in my pocket.

I turn my attention back to Biology. He hasn't moved an inch. This isn't right. I would never leave the cage door open and I'm sure he wouldn't go to sleep right in the middle of the floor like this. I reach down and carefully pick him up, but he doesn't wake up like he usually would. His body is stiff. He's never stiff. And his breathing is very slow. No, not slow, non-existent. I start to panic and place my fingers against his scaly chest and find that he has no heartbeat either.

"What the..."

It can't be. Biology can't be dead?

"Dad?" I shout. "Dad!"

I get nothing back except the creak of a floorboard outside my room. He's still there. He can hear me.

My dad just killed Biology.

"Biology?" I say to the lizard in my arms. "Biology, please wake up?"

I shuffle onto my bed and hold him in my arms how he would usually crawl there, curled up by my left elbow where it's warm and dark.

"No, no, no..."

And I'd normally feel his breath against my skin as he drifts off to a peaceful sleep, but I'm not feeling it.

"Biology, Biology..." I sing with tears brimming in my eyes, because I don't know what else to do. This is what we would do. "Super boy saurology, icon of ecology, burgeon ideology..."

I hear my dad muttering quietly outside of my room. I ignore him.

I slowly begin to realise that perhaps my singing isn't going to make things better anymore. And this time, I have nobody to cheer me up with their messed up priorities. This time, I'm still scared. My singing can't make it better. "Bio lizard, biohazard... Mr. Boy is on the roof again."

Perhaps it never did.

Chapter Text

"Now you know how I feel. It's about time you learnt empathy, Dr. Darkling."

-o-

The evening is soft.

The air is a kind of tepid stillness, but not so still that it feels heavy. The kind of still that feels light and feathery, and any hints of breeze are gentle, falling along the rooftops like leaves on an autumn day. Not cold, not warm, somewhere in-between. Tepid. And the sky is so glassy and clear, but it's not sunny. The sun has gone away behind the mountains, casting a great shadow over the west end of the Capitol, and as the sun lowers itself further down, the sky darkens to a washed-out, mid blue. And the air is clean. No smoke, no gas, like in other parts of the suburb. Only the distant whirring of electric cars and tram bells can disturb the quiet birds. This place - this park - is clean like still water.

Home has always been tense and dark and close. Claustrophobic. Maybe even suffocating. Low ceilings, narrow rooms and corridors, yellowed light bulbs and lingering whiffs of old incense sticks. But since my punishment for not listening to my dad - that punishment that I'm sure was too far but he didn't seem to think so - it's been unbearable in there. But I never went to Mephiles's in these weeks. I called him, explained, and told him that I don't think I ever want to go back to the Tribute Centre. At least, not for the foreseeable future. Not if nothing changes. Not if nothing happens.

And he was right, I did get approached for interviews. I made great use of my middle fingers when the journalists wouldn't leave me alone. After a week or so, they got the message and stopped trying to talk to me, but I've had phone calls from BreezTV. Mail from Gerald. A knock on the door from Breezie herself, promptly slammed shut by my dad.

He still expects me to pay board. My pay checks from the Chaos Council were to be given monthly, and seeing as I was only there for just under two weeks and I hadn't yet been paid, they are technically in debt to me. But they're also dead. I can't hang a debt over the heads of dead people. But it would be nice if I could have at least something for those thirteen days I did work, from the morning of the 30th of April to the awful evening of the 11th of May. Those dates, while they were never that important to me before, will forever be a part of me now. Robotnik day, Mephiles and tram day, Chaos Council initiation day.

A new Head Gamemaker has been appointed recently. From the Nine Miles Inquiry until that point, the schedule had to be reworked. The budget for the theme branding has been cut. We're getting a stage, the same slogan as last year, whatever that was, nobody ever uses it so I don't know why we even bother, and that's about it. That company that Dr. Deep rang about the tunnels below the arena have accepted the deal, but they now won't have time to make it fancy. Just a labyrinth with walls of bare stone, nothing special. Nothing has happened to the arena location, but the new Head Gamemaker might have a different vision for it.

His name is Master Zik. He's affiliated with the University and he's one hundred percent, pure-blooded Capitol. President Robotnik did not want to make the same mistakes again, apparently. But I think I already hate him, because one look at his credentials revealed to me that he was on the admissions team when I was applying, so he very well could have had a hand in rejecting me. Aside from being just a general administration guy, he teaches physical education at the degree level, and he specialises in the martial arts.

My phone starts to buzz again. I did consider throwing it away and requesting a new one with a new number and only letting Mephiles and my dad know about it, but I figured it would be too much trouble to run that through the network office. Phone number changes are a big deal and they can only be done on these handhelds. Standard phones in houses are fixed forever. Usually it's a crime thing, changing a phone number. Nobody associated with the government in any level changes their number unless they're a rebel. I'm sure any lawyer would tell me to just suck it up and ignore all the excess calls to avoid trouble, but I've had to answer them just in case they're actually important. I take my phone out of my pocket and flip it open, and I'm presented with a number I don't recognise.

"No, no, and no. Goodbye," I say to myself as a warm-up before answering the phone. "Hello?"

"Hello," says a voice on the other end of the line. "Is this Eclipse Darkling?"

I roll my eyes. "Speaking."

The person on the phone laughs, for some odd reason. It's a wily laugh, or at least that's what it feels like after all the calls I've had to put up with where people have laughed upon realising they have actually reached me, but the more carefully I listen, the less sinister it sounds. "It is I," he says. "Master Zik of the Hunger Games."

The park bench I am sat on is suddenly very uncomfortable. I get up and start pacing. "Master Zik?" I repeat, not believing my ears. "Why, it's great to speak to you but why are you calling me at this hour?"

"To send an invitation," he answers simply. "A personal invitation, from myself, to you, no strings attached."

I take my phone down from my ear and hold it in front of my face. "An invitation, huh?"

"And I'm sure you've heard that many times before."

"Oh, believe me, Master, I have," I reply, thinking of all the invitations to talk shows and inquiries and conferences I've had to turn down as of late.

"Don't worry, there will be no press," he laughs again. "I humbly ask you, Mr. Darkling, to meet me in the Control Room at 9am sharp tomorrow morning, for I have an offer that I think you may like."

I sigh, and put the phone back up against my ear, trailing my fingers along the back of the bench. "An offer, hm?"

"I understand if you do not wish to return to the Tribute Centre, but I am a man of my word, Mr. Darkling, and there will be no press. All there will be is an offer, which I know you can't refuse. I'm aware that you have been in a rough patch lately, financially and emotionally, and I would like to help."

I sit back down on the bench to ponder over this call. He could have helped by getting that damn admissions team to not reject me from University, leaving me to navigate adulthood with no experience other than that of coaxing pills down the throat of some sickly girl stranded in a canyon. But with a dad who's given up hope of ever having an obedient son, and only one friend who's either high, off on some new date, or playing Big Man CEO, any positives must be worth taking a shot at. I need as many positives as I can get. And if that's the reason I have to return to that cursed Gamemaker Studio turned Control Room, then I guess I'll just have to go.

"Alright," I say. You've got to do what you've got to do to go places in this world. "Colour me interested."

Chapter Text

"Where are you going?"

It's early. Hence my dad's suspicion. I lightly move him out of the way of the bottom of the stairs so I can get to my shoes. "Just out. For a walk."

"Where to?"

"That park I like. Sunshade Park," I lie.

"That park you've only ever gone to in the evenings because you keep sleeping through the mornings?"

I buy myself a little bit of time by groaning as I pick up my shoes, to think about my answer. "I've realised it might be quite pretty in the morning, too."

He scoffs. "Pretty?"

"Am I not allowed to like pretty things?" I laugh, kneeling down to tie my laces. "A lot of things in this world are pretty. Flowers, clouds, birds-"

His tone darkens. "You're a terrible liar, Eclipse."

"Hm?" I spring back up onto my feet and stare at him, eyes wide, needing him to at least explain a little bit, rather than just leave it at that. I want to know what he thinks he knows.

"You've got that cocky little spring in your step that only tells me you're up to no good," he says. "So spit it out, kiddo. Where are you going?"

I can't help but smirk. I'm no kiddo. But when I reach out to get my coat, his hand snatches my wrist and slams it back down my my side.

I sigh. "You want board paying? Well I'm getting you board. Simple as that."

"Who from?"

"Well, I don't know yet," I say, truthfully. "I only received an offer. I'm yet to accept it-"

He squeezes my wrist tighter and says his words slowly and powerfully. "Who. From."

I shrug, deflecting them. How bad can it be, really? And he sees right through my lies anyway so lying more will only make things worse. "Master Zik of the University," I say. "Don't worry, he's one hundred percent Capitol. Not a crumb of crackers in him."

His hand tenses up, as if he can't make up his mind on whether to let go or to squeeze me so hard that my bones break. His arm trembles, and his breaths are shallow. He stares at me with that same look of betrayal he gives me whenever I do literally anything, so I've learnt not to trust it. I got out of it, didn't I? The Chaos Council, crackers as they were, are dead, and I'm not. And I guess I do sometimes feel bad about it, but really, whose fault was all that? It wasn't mine. And my dad really does pick and choose when he wants to show me that he cares about me. I do wonder sometimes if the only reason he panicked that I was dead was because without me, he wouldn't be able to pay the rent. Jobless, he is, and I do wonder if he ever gets jealous of me. Jealous of the fact that I'm branching out and trying to establish myself in this city even after setbacks. Jealous of the fact that I've grown up, and I'm not certain he has. Not after his choking, lizard-killing tantrums. Not since he never leaves this smelly little crevice in the terrace.

He sighs, and finally lets go of me. "Okay. Fine. Do what you want, because you never learn," my dad says, and he unhooks my coat and gives it to me. "It seems like I'm not your father anymore anyways, so go ahead and get yourself killed. I'll be waiting for your body bag in blue tarpaulin."

I find myself laughing. I know this trick. It's called reverse psychology, and I've learnt that this is usually his last resort. So I decide to ignore it and just take his words literally. "Thanks," I smile. "I'll be off, then. I'll let you know how it goes."

And before he can say anything else, I'm out the door.

Amber tram, yet again. There have been a few delays lately. As the summer months start kicking in, people are wanting to spend more time outdoors and downtown and hence the trams get a little bit overwhelmed in the rush-hours, but the last few stops of amber are always quiet. I look out to the sunny city and wonder what Master Zik's offer could possibly be. Financial and emotional was what he mentioned, so at the very least, he might help me pay for therapy because I'm sure he'll make me have it. And then I'll have to go home and tell my dad that I'm still unemployed and broke, and I don't think any kind of therapy could mend that.

When the ruby tram I changed to pulls into the Capitol Interchange, I weave between passengers and step off the tram onto the platform. It's a big place, this interchange. Big and busy. It's the central point of the whole of Panem, pretty much. All roads lead to the Interchange, or something like that. Rails, maybe, would be a better word. Trams, buses, highways, taxis, helicopters, hovercrafts, cargo trains, and private passenger trains all stop here. The place is huge, tiled, shiny, bright, and well looked-after in recent years, but I've never had to navigate it in its entirety. I've never explored the retail or whatever else there is to see. No, I just have to head down some stairs and out the door and down a short stretch to the Avenue. All familiar territory at this point.

I take out my phone and try to call Mephiles as I walk but he doesn't answer, likely still sleeping, so I leave him a message.

"Hey, Mephiles. I know I'm up early but, do you remember how I said I never wanted to come to the Tribute Centre ever again? Well..." I look up at the thirteen-storey building before me and quickly count up to the sixth floor, from the ground floor and up. The windows we watched the sunset through and traced the tram tracks on the day the trams first opened. The best, and only real birthday he had, and we spent it together. "Things have come up," I smile. "I'm in the area. I've got a meeting with Master Zik at nine, new Head Gamemaker, so don't be alarmed if I turn up in a bit. Love you, bestie."

And then I hang up.

The avenue is vast and empty, and the shadow of the Tribute Centre is cast down it by the morning sun, but it's not a daunting shadow. It's a hopeful one. And I don't often find hope in shadows because they're, well, shadows. Bad luck just seems to follow me around, and with a name like Eclipse, I could only really blame the shadows for it. The shadowy house I live in, the darkness that Space Colony Ark was shrouded in, the lack of natural light in the Gamemaker Studio, Biology living in the dark underneaths of my bedside desk... but today, I don't care. I've got a meeting to go to, and Master Zik has a plan.

Chapter Text

Last time I was in here, trotting along these tinny stairs, I was heading home after the worst day of my life, and I can't help but cringe at the sound of my steps and the little echoes and the smell of the paint on the walls, but I try not to let it bother me at all. And when I reach the top, at floor zero–point–five, I'm relieved to see that the stupid red plastic has been removed. Now the Gamemaker Studio soon–to–be Control Room looks bright. Possibly brighter than it has been in years. I'm suddenly nervous, and I adjust the placement of my coat and my collar before slowly walking to the frosted glass door, raising my arm, and knocking.

It's a few seconds before the door clicks open.

I don't know why, but I was expecting somebody tall and assertive like Dr. Deep to come to the door. Not a tiny, frail old fossil with a wisp of long, white hair springing from his head. He opens the door with his long wooden stick, which looks to be hand–carved, and welcomes me in.

"Ah!" he grins. "You must be the budding young lad I called last night!"

"Eclipse!" I smile back. Master Zik points the end of his cane to me expectantly, so I shake it like I'd shake someone's hand, and he smiles as if I've passed a test. "Pleasure to be meeting you, sir. Quite a pleasure. It's nice to finally put a face to the name," I say, and let go of the stick. It's not very nice to hold. Greasy, in fact. I can only hope that's just residue from whatever it's been polished with. I wait for Zik to turn his head before quickly wiping my hand on my coat. I note how his height only goes up to my navel. "You are much shorter in real life?"

"You shrink as you age, laddie, you'll see," he shrugs, tapping me on the hip with the stick.

Not that much, I think to myself, but I just smile and nod.

Master Zik, although small and shrivelled like a prune, is mighty fast on his feet. In a matter of seconds he's gripped the end of his stick, angled it downwards, and used a ridge in the floor to vault himself up onto a desk. On it is a book twice as wide as him, which he opens onto an empty page. I watch him take a fancy pen, twist it so the shiny golden nib sticks out the end, and start writing.

"Punctual, talkative, healthy..." he thinks out loud. "Dressed... smasually? Cartly? Smartly casually, casually smart... Good build, smells like musty old dandelions, not a bad smell, mind, but he could use some nice perfume..."

"I'm sorry," I chuckle nervously. "What is this?"

He stops writing and looks at me for a few seconds in silence, before returning to his notes. "Insecure."

"Fantastic."

"Yes, very much so. You're exactly what I hoped you would be."

I allow myself a very quiet sigh. What is it with Head Gamemakers being really, really weird? This job seems to attract nutters like moths to a flame.

"Your university application didn't portray any of these qualities," Zik continues. "I had no input in the admissions team's decision to reject you but I did look over it. You need to sell yourself more. You need to emphasise your best qualities and apply them to what the course requires. Use all the buzzwords you can, because that's what the professors skim for. They need to make sure you've actually read the entry requirements and that you've applied yourself to them, and are prepared to assimilate with like-minded students."

I'm confused. "U-um..." I stutter, concerned that all this is going to be is some kind of useless careers lecture. "Insecurity? Musty old dandelions?"

He grins, and thrusts the greasy end of the stick into my chest. "Exactly the sort of stuff a teenager from District 12 would be able to relate to. And the rest is stuff that they need."

"Huh?"

He flips the book back to a previous page of notes. "Look here."

I reluctantly get a little closer to the desk he is sat on, and take a look at the yellow page.

He explains the page's contents. "There are five districts in the Games this year that require a Capitol student to mentor their tributes. Five districts that have not yet won the Hunger Games. Those are Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. Therefore, we would require five budding students from the Capitol Academy to have the cognitive prowess to be invited into such a role. Correct?"

"Correct."

"Well we only have four because everybody else is refusing to get involved. Because the Chaos Council broke the Games beyond repair."

"And I totally understand their reluctance," I chuckle, unsurprised.

"We can't have tributes without a mentor, Mr. Darkling, it wouldn't be fair" Master Zik says. "And that is why, after conversation with Dean Pickle, we have assigned District 12 to you. The rest of the students will find out which districts they're mentoring later today."

It takes me a minute or so to realise the full scope of what Master Zik has just told me. He, the Head Gamemaker, has spoken to Dead Pickle, the one who saw all that potential in me last year, and they are inviting me, an Academy alumnus, a reigning mentoring champion, a former Gamemaker who worked on this very arena, to mentor again for a different district? My heartbeat spikes and the air seems thicker than before, gluing the words in my throat so I can't say them. This can't be fair? This can't be true? This is way too good to be true.

"You're deeply loyal to the Hunger Games at this point, Mr. Darkling." Master Zik continues. "And I know you poured your heart into this arena to try and fix the mess that the Chaos Council made. I saw that in Dr. Deep's notes about you. He admired you a lot. I figured, if we need someone trustworthy to fill in for the student boycotts, it would simply have to be you. And seeing as you have inside information that nobody else has, namely having seen the layout of the Training Centre with your own eyes and knowing the arena in advance, we gave you the runts to make it even."

I can't stop the joy from bubbling up out of me. "You're joking?"

"No word of a lie," Master Zik smiles. "Now go, enjoy the rest of the month, prepare, do whatever." He prods me on the chest with the stick again. "See you in July."

Chapter Text

"Mephiles? Mephiles! May I borrow your washing machine?"

Mephiles is sat at his usual spot on the sofa with a magnifying glass halfway between his face and a sketchpad. After my rather dramatic and enthusiastic entrance into his apartment, he makes a point of slowly lowering his sketching materials onto the coffee table and blowing dust off the magnifying glass before carefully setting that down too. He lifts one leg over the other and places his hands around his knee, cocking his head. "What for?"

I laugh, still a little out of breath, still feeling quite high. "My coat is covered in Zeti grease."

He looks a little confused. "Zeti grease? Ugh, absolutely not, Clipper. Put it in the sink. The washer won't touch that."

I go in the kitchen and press my coat down into the unusually clean sink - unusual because there's usually something in it from three days before - before coming back into the living room and helping myself to a space on the sofa. "Did you get my message?"

"Yeah," he says a little awkwardly. "And I uh..." He trails off and looks at his feet. "I love you too? I think? In a friend way."

"Well yeah, that's why I called you bestie. You know I don't do romance."

His gaze softens. A side of him that even I rarely get to see. "...You really think that?"

"Yeah! Anyway, I've got great news for you, dude, and you're gonna be the first person to hear about it." I give him a little nudge. "The second I got out of that meeting I came sprinting up here to tell you."

"Oh yeah? What is it?"

"I-" I have to cut myself off before I get too carried away in the joy of it, laughing it out. "I am gonna be a mentor again!"

"What?" he gasps. "How?"

"The students are boycotting mentorship because of stupid Dr. Deep which means there are only four when we need five. So Master Zik had a word with Dean Pickle and now I'm gonna be mentoring District 12! And Master Zik gave me some advice for my next university application." I take a moment to catch my breath. "Argh, I'm so happy about it, man. I can feel it, my life is finally coming back into my hands!"

"And Master Zik said so, huh?" he asks. "I mean, be careful with him, but that's great, dude."

"Ahh," I lean back and smush into the cushions, fluttering with excitement over it all. "I know. But there's pressure now to get it right, isn't there? I have a reputation, I can't afford to mess this up. I can't just let these tributes die."

"I mean, twenty three are gonna have to," he says. "They do every year. That's just how it is."

Dr. Deep would say otherwise, but I just shrug. I don't want to dwell on that. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Anyway, what's going on with you? What are you drawing?"

Mephiles's eyes light up at the question, and he reaches for his sketchbook to show me.

"There's this situation in District 2," he explains. "They have a huge road network with trucks and everything because they need to transport stone from their quarries, and they have trucks for their Peacekeeper bases and trucks for their reservoirs and they share all those roads with the citizens that have cars and currently, the roads are a mess. They all need resurfacing with decent tarmac because the potholes are for real deadly, and you see this?" He flips the page to a rough hand-drawn map of the centre of Two. "This intersection here has been blocking up all the arterial roads, and we need those if we want literally anything to come out of District 2. It's just not good enough anymore with the rising population and that new mining initiative that opened up last year. It needs a redesign. It doesn't need to be revolutionary, just clever and efficient."

"And they want you to do it?"

"Not exactly. Dodon Pa, the CEO of Donpa Motors, you know that armoured vehicle company, he heard about it and got it into a talk with the President, and he's been allowed to commission a new road layout. He's doing it through a public competition. Anyone can enter but it was advertised around the University's engineering school. And I thought, screw that, I'm a graduate of District 6, I can do this better than anybody. So here, check this out."

He hands me the sketchbook and explains his ideas page by page. The first pages are some rough sketches and he tells me of some notable ones. The first, a map of the existing layout. Just plain old crossroads. He then copied it below with tracing paper and used a series of coloured highlighters to map out a pattern of traffic lights, and wrote a list of pros and cons to the side of it. The pros include, "Two's pea-brains won't have to do any heavy thinking," and the cons include, "If the whole thing is gonna get demolished for resurfacing, then why spend all this money on a competition just to rebuild the same broken system all over again?"

His next idea is a curly-looking thing that I only just understand the logic of after an explanation. It looks like the trace of some kind of wind turbine, very ugly but extremely efficient. And in the cons list he wrote, "It's too complicated and it looks like a hairball." There's another one which he neatened up and extended to a six-way intersection which is rather beautiful, but it is simply way too big for the space that is available and there aren't even six roads to intersect, so why bother?

The most recent idea is simpler, but unfinished. Pros? No traffic lights, the pea-brains can handle it, traffic should never have to stop, and new roads can spring off the 'clover leaves' if they are ever needed. Cons? Big. That's it. Just the word "big" in capitals. So now Mephiles needs to find a way to shrink it down.

"The deadline is tomorrow," he says wearily. "I only found out about the competition a few days since. There's about three weeks of deliberation and then we find out who wins."

"Damn," I say. "Hey, you never know, this could be your next big break."

"Yeah, I guess it could be." He smiles beneath his mask. "Looks like things are looking up for the both of us, huh?"

I give him another nudge. "Absolutely."

Chapter Text

With only a couple of weeks until the Reaping, I have to write myself a plan. I never have been one for planning, but the events of this last month have called for it. Last year with Maria, I just winged it, and the only real planning I did was squirreling away the sponsorship money 'just in case', not even thinking about why I might need it and when. And I've flip-flopped between thinking that saving Maria was the best sequence of decisions of my life, and the worst. Best in that it got me to where I am today, and worst in that I had to get here like this. But, whatever. Who cares? I got the second chance that nobody has ever gotten before and I'd be stupid if I didn't make the best use of it I possibly can.

Last year, I was almost late to the Capitol Interchange and it was nobody's fault but my own. That would not have been a good look for me. If I had turned up late and missed the walk down the Avenue, then nobody would have sponsored me, Maria wouldn't have trusted me, and it would have been game over from the start. The victors would never have that problem unless they missed the train in their district and that is virtually impossible to do since passenger trains have no real schedule and they just show up when they're needed. So on my parchment, at my desk in my room lit up by mountainous sunset, with a father downstairs - or maybe a stranger - who's been giving me the silent treatment for days now, I put down a bullet point.

'The night before Reaping Monday, move your alarm clock to the other end of the room and set your alarm three times. Maybe four.'

Master Zik said something about musty old dandelions being a District 12 thing but frankly I don't trust him for one second to know what Twelve likes. And I don't trust myself either since all I have to go on are two heart-eating rats, so the prospect of bringing them flowers of any kind is immediately scribbled out. It's not really my style anyway. No, I think if I am going to do anything, I need to keep it on brand. Not cluelessly on brand, but neatly on brand. I need to live up to Dr. Deep's rather lovely notes about me.

'Be professional, stay clever, don't bring flowers,' I write.

"Unless," I say to myself, "this is the beginning of a rebrand? A new Eclipse, dandelion boy, 'insecure', but smart-casual and... wears nice perfume?" I quietly drum my pen on the desk while I think about it. Does it matter if it's really my style? I've got people to impress. So I cross out the 'don't bring flowers' and replace it with, 'bring something prettier than a dandelion and find a perfume that matches its scent'.

As for actual mentor-y things, that's where I get stuck. I know what the arena is in advance, I guess, so I could try and use that to my advantage. I know that everything is safe, so I can tell my tributes not to worry, right?

"No... idiot. Idiot? Yeah, idiot." I think out loud. Because I'm not a Gamemaker anymore. The Chaos Council are not Gamemakers anymore. All responsibility has been handed over to Master Zik and his team and their new budget, so I can't rely on my vision of a pure, healthy arena anymore. I can't even guarantee I'll receive any real credit for it, and as a mentor, I'm not sure I'd even want it because that would just cause problems. No, I can't rely on what I already know, because it might all be changed.

'Don't tell the tributes ANYTHING.'

And with that, the preparation stage begins.

I rewatch the 26th Hunger Games and I pay attention to what the mentors do. Some of them waste money on things that nobody really needs. Some of them, including me, do basically nothing until they really have to, and I make a note to myself that that attitude needs to change. Prevention is much better than a cure, after all. And some mentors, namely Vanilla, Mephiles, and Jules, are tactical with their gift timings and the notes they write, and they did their best to try and prevent disaster before it happened. Until, in the unfortunate cases of Vanilla and Mephiles, it happened anyway and they couldn't have done a damn thing about it.

I know how Mephiles operates in the pre-game and in the mentor room. He does not like to connect with his tributes. He told me that they expect far too much of him, because he only just got out of there himself, but when they're not being assholes about his attitude, he does care about them somewhat. He cared about Elise anyway. And so he communicated to her with the cheapest, crappiest gifts to let her know where on the ARK was safe, and where her next great escape from District 2 would be. He really saw something in that girl, and he was devastated when she had to go and mess it all up by singing a stupid little ditty. I just know that she and Nine would have outlived Maria, and Nine would have made Elise win.

I decide that, aside from the questionable pre-game attitudes, one night stands, and morphling highs, I need to be more like Mephiles, because that's the kind of gameplay that makes a victor.

So in the weeks until the Reaping, I scramble together some money and buy myself some rose-scented perfume, a cheap coat that looks smart enough, and some rose buds that haven't yet bloomed, in the hope that they'll be fresh and ready for Reaping Monday. And I mark my calendar for the Thursday before, because that is when things really get going. The Thursday before is the day the junction competition's winner is announced, yes, but it is also the day that Mephiles, a victor mentor, has to make his way with escort Zomom back to District 6, and I want to see him before he goes. I want to wish him good luck and all of that nice stuff, and let him know that whatever happens, he's gonna be fine.

Chapter Text

I scan myself into Mephiles's apartment, already aware that he's not home, but knowing he will be soon. I told him I would be here waiting for him after he came back from the engineering department after Dodon Pa's announcement. I don't have to do anything today. For the Capitol mentors, our jobs start on Tuesday when the trains make it into the Interchange from the districts. But today is Thursday. All victors except for Mephiles should be in their district's Victor's Village, and their jobs start on Monday when they need to be present at their Reaping. Mephiles, obviously, has some travelling to do, and he's going by car with Zomom, as always. Because the escort's personal car is used to transport the tributes from the Justice Building to the district's train station. Because that's just tradition. It's an appetiser. A small taste of the Capitol before the tributes get there. Dr. Deep's idea. Probably why something so unnecessary and downright dangerous actually made the cut.

While he's gone, I decide to do a little exploring of the apartment. It's not like I haven't been here before, but I've never taken the time to properly look.

The thing that always intrigued me the most, aside from the arrangement of crystals on his sideboard, is the yellow paint smothered onto his bedroom door. He told me he did it in the middle of a particularly bad withdrawal on the Saturday of the 25th pre-game, interview day. He was only two months into seventeen. It happened after the eighteen year old District 6 male threw his morphling out of the window and punched him in the face. He said he could have almost coped with the morphling destruction, after all, he was only just getting started in the whole drug thing, but the impact caused a needle to snap inside his vein that he couldn't get out without cutting himself, and that was what sent him over the edge. In his withdrawal, the day was spent in a near-constant state of panic because of the needle which he was certain would migrate to his heart and kill him. And where the morphling would usually cloud his thoughts and block out memories of his Games just shy of a year prior, he could only have flashbacks. So, in an attempt to get them to come out of his head, he painted his door yellow, cut open his arm, dug around and found the needle, and then tried to complete the painting using his blood.

Tried.

The female tribute had to physically pull him away from the mess he had made while he screamed that it was the only way to get his shadows to leave him and torment someone else, and she held him down while the male bandaged his arm. Mephiles left the paint on the wall as a reminder to others to never, ever, mess with his morphling, and a reminder to himself to never skimp on it. Possibly the worst conclusions he could have come to, but I won't judge. The male ended up coming ninth and the female fifth. Both were victims of the switch-on. And the year after, the male died in the bloodbath soon after both of District 1, and Elise also came ninth.

I find myself getting very close to the door, knowing that if I reached down to that doorknob I'd be breaking all kinds of privacy, but it's just so tempting to explore. I want to know more about him. He's an interesting man, Mephiles is. He's got many layers to him. I let my knuckles lightly graze the doorknob, weighing up the morality of it in my head.

The front door bangs open and I spin round and lean on the wall, heart beating out of my chest. "Mephiles?"

My eyes glue onto the front door, which was so forcefully opened, and I look on as Mephiles just stands in the doorway and watches the door swing and slowly creak to a stop. His eyes then move from the door to the table and he carefully walks over to it, removes his jacket, and places it on the back of a chair. But when the gravity doesn't really work how he wanted it to, and one edge of it is caught on the table leg, he snaps. He picks up the chair and launches it somewhere, not even thinking, and that somewhere is towards me.

I duck out of the way and the chair smacks into the wall. "HEY!"

He barely hears me, and kicks over another chair.

"Mephiles!"

Third chair now, he picks it up and raises it to his head but before he can throw it I leap in front of him and just stare into his eyes. He freezes, still gripping the chair, still overflowing with some kind of weird rage, but he stares into my eyes just as I stare into his.

I take a deep breath, and try to speak calmly. "Put the chair down."

He definitely considers ignoring me, I can see it in the way his arms twitch. I don't know why but I give him the same look I'd give to Biology when he was about to make a bad decision, and for some reason it breaks through. Instead of launching the chair how he wanted to, he just tosses it onto the floor next to us.

"Good. Now, would you like to explain what's going on?" I ask.

He sighs loudly. "I lost the competition," he says angrily, as if I couldn't have inferred that myself. "They made a fool of me."

"Did they?"

"Yeah. Because in my stupidity, I thought my design was finished when it wasn't. And Dodon Pa said if it was, it would have won. But it wasn't. So I'm a loser."

"Did he actually call you a loser?"

"He meant it."

"Yes but did he say it?"

"...No."

"Well then don't worry about it," I tell him. "Your design was good, I'm sure he meant that one."

He sighs again, and sits on the table which still has a chair left at it that he chooses not to use. "You want to know what won?"

I pull out the chair and have it instead. "Go on?"

"Something called-" He has to stop himself to laugh. Of all things. It confuses me. "Something called a 'diverging diamond'," he says, amusing himself with it. "It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Basically, there's this bridge, but before you get on the bridge you have to cross over to the other side of the road so you're driving on the wrong side, and then somehow, some magic thing happens, I don't know, I don't understand it, but it works and it's kinda genius and I wish I'd thought of it but how the fuck does a sane person even think of something like that?"

"A sane person?" I laugh.

He glares at me. "Motherfucker."

And we just laugh about it. A stupid little competition, because that's all it is, really. Where Mephiles did something goofy and the winning design is so weirdly clever that we can't help but laugh at it. And then we get tired of laughing, and Mephiles takes off his mask for some deep breaths. And he leaves it off.

"No mask?" I ask.

"No mask," he says. "You make me feel stronger and smarter because you're here. And..."

That thing happens again, where he loses his empty, sharp stare. Where his shoulders relax and his breathing gets quieter. Where his fingers don't grip the sides of the table so hard and instead just rest there. Where his brows become less tense and his eyelids round off and his ears do... something. It's all so subtle, but when it happens together, it has meaning.

"...You make the air feel safer."

Chapter Text

I left the chairs how Mephiles had thrown them. I know he forbade the Avoxes from cleaning the apartment, so why should I? He made the request specifically because of the yellow paint incident. He told them not to clean the door, and while he was at it, told them not to clean the rest. So I spent the weekend at home, in my room, watching the roses grow.

I woke up today, Reaping Monday, and saw their colour for the first time. The roses turned out to be yellow. They will be ready by tomorrow, and I hope that District 12 likes them. I researched what yellow roses mean, because I heard that different colours have different symbolism, and they mean joy, friendship, caring, and affection. Or at least, they do here. It might mean something completely different to them.

In the recaps, the districts are sorted by number, but the reaping itself proceeds from the east coast to the west coast, and that, in the initial live broadcast, puts District 12 up first.

This is my first time finding out who the escort is. I should have known from last year but I never paid much attention to them. I never really communicated with the escort for District 5. He was boring and he just did his job, so I did mine and focused on Maria and the male tribute Abraham, who called himself the Commander, the cocky bastard. Maria saw the good in everyone but I disliked him immediately. He was grossly overconfident, but he died in the bloodbath. Really put a damper on the whole experience for me. It seemed that most of those who were full of themselves died very quickly anyway.

I learn from Gerald's commentary that Twelve's escort is called Zazz, and I can think of no real way to describe him other than spiky. The Zeti often have defining characteristics like that. His eyes are yellow and angry-looking, his irises are small and beady, he's got eyebags and a spiked choker and matching spiked bracelets, topped off with a spiked mohawk. And his tongue just falls out the side of his gaping mouth like an excited dog. I almost throw up in my mouth when a small bead of saliva drips into the girls' bowl, landing on a paper, and that is the one he picks.

"Shade Dorchadas." His voice is high and grainy like bad radio, and he draws out the stress on his words like a drunkard looking for a fight.

Shade Dorchadas, thirteen, makes her way to the stage before the Justice building. She's small, dressed in black, quills tied behind her head with a black and purple bandana, but she looks determined and unfazed by the calling of her name. Unamused by Zazz's antics, that's for sure. When he shakes her hand, she does the exact same thing I did with Master Zik - wipe it on her clothes - but she is so much less covert about it, maintaining eye contact the entire time.

Zazz laughs and dunks his fist into the boys' bowl, pulls out a handful of papers and blows them back in until just one remains. He unfolds it and reads, "Nack Bronwyn."

Seventeen. He wears a brown fedora with a black strap, a belt with a golden buckle, sturdy brown gloves with metal plates, and boots with thick, grey soles. He has coal dust in his purple fur and rather crooked teeth, but he's not afraid to smile with them once he hits the stage. More handshakes ensue, and the two of them are taken into the Justice Building.

I can work with this. I'm not doomed.

Next up is District 8. They are one of the other districts that will have a Capitol student as a mentor, so again, it is just the escort on stage. She reaps a cat in a fancy red dress called Honey, and a tiny thirteen year old squirrel named Ray. But it's not District 8 I'm interested in right now. It's the district that's on next.

District 6 is cloudy. Not a speck of sunlight in sight. And on the stage is a very tired and recently-sober Mephiles. He stands still with his ears low, staring with his hollow stare, no doubt dissociated and trying not to remember the first time he was up there. And Zomom is by him, somehow even rounder and yellower than he was last year. He dips his arm into the girls' bowl and reads the paper he picks out.

"Blaze..." he ponders over the pronunciation of her surname. "Liesma?"

There are a few gasps from the crowd of Six's children. Perhaps she's famous there. Another cat comes out from the fourteen year olds, wearing a fluffy gown and leggings, and she looks a little bit shaken like she wasn't expecting this at all. Like she thought, for some reason, that she was completely safe. On the other hand, her male counterpart Silver Venice does not look fazed at all. If anything, he looks happy to be there. Dreamy, and comfortable in his oversized hoodie. And Mephiles can't even bring himself to look either of them in the eye when they do their half-assed handshakes, the three of them glued into their respective emotions, quite unable to shake them. It's awkward and confusing and I just hope that Mephiles will be okay.

District 11, rather hilariously, reaps a comedian and a weirdo with a scraggly flower crown. I feel sorry for whichever student has to deal with them.

And then it's District 3. The other interesting one. Dr. Deep's homeland. The district Justice Building closest to both Green Hill Zone and Lake Crystal. And if I squint, the faint hills of Green Hill Zone can just about be made out in the far distance behind the Justice Building. Dr. Deep trekked all that way. It's rather admirable.

The escort, Zeena, I of course paid attention to last year. How could anybody not? She's a horrible women with a slimy heart and an even slimier hairdo. And she's evilly happy to have the privilege of choosing District 3's tributes. Vanilla Paloma, on the other hand, is just as graceful and unmoved as always. She has become the face of District 3. She is loved and admired and yet, just recently, her image has come into disrepute all because of Nine. She was lovely to us all last year. She and Jules were respectively referred to as the mother and father of mentors. Caring and supportive like parents are supposed to be, and there since the beginning of it all. They made sure we were all doing okay, they helped make the competition feel friendlier, they baked us cookies, and they even resolved some of the biggest conflicts in the mentor room. Mainly between Mephiles and Christopher Thorndyke from District 2, because even though Christopher never was the type to pick a fight, even in his Games, he couldn't help but do so with Mephiles because of how he just watched his family burn in the 24th, and with Mephiles' complacent little laughs it just made it more and more heated. It's pretty much resolved now, Chris has gotten over it, or at least gotten over the urge to lash out, but it was interesting to witness all the same.

So when Zeena picks out the female tribute for this year, everybody is rightfully aghast. The Reaping never had been the cleanest of proceedings. Nobody ever claimed that it was. It's just probability, after all, and probability can do people dirty. But nobody could ever have guessed that mathematics could produce something as wicked as this.

Vanilla's own daughter. Cream Paloma.

Chapter Text

The Capitol Interchange has been cleared of the public. The trams are not stopping here. Instead, they are stopping at the stops before the Interchange, and then carrying on straight through. I walked with my yellow roses and my ID through press tents, still refusing interviews, with security and the other student mentors in tow to the bench where we all wait. One by one, the trains from the Districts come in, in order of ascending number. District 1 presented two volunteers this year, and I remember thinking to myself as I watched the overconfident girl take the stage that they would just be squashed again, but the boy, calm and seemingly rather steady, seems to have learnt the lessons of the past. I shall have to keep an eye on him. District 2 were not volunteers but they look happy to be here anyway, holding hands as they walk down the avenue, although the boy doesn't seem quite as into that as the girl. Interestingly for District 3, Cream seems to be the confident one, whereas the male tribute looks like a gentle giant overcome with a mild bout of stage fright, but I'm not sure how many people actually notice that because, as always, it's the Palomas that steal the show.

District 4 look rather stupid, mainly because of the boy who lost his frog pet in the reaping and ended up volunteering in an attempt to retrieve it. The students mentoring Ten and Eleven whisper to each other about them. But then District 5 comes out. And there she is. Maria.

Seeing her alive and well in person for the first time since she left the arena, and not just on television, fills me with such relief. And confidence, too. Confidence that I can be a good mentor. Confidence that I can bring tributes out of the arena alive. Confidence that maybe I can do something that's never been done before, and mentor two victors. That would really make me stand out. I mean, I'm halfway there, aren't I? She's here in the flesh. And so is Mephiles, from the sixth train. I try to give him a wave but he doesn't see me.

After District 7, the student mentors wait by the train platform one by one and pick up their tributes on the way out. None of them have roses. I don't think any of them have fragrances either other than their own sweat. When District 11 get on their way down the Avenue, I take a deep breath and head to the platform, ready for the train.

It's a little awkward. Just standing here expectantly in my best smart-casual clothes, clutching pretty flowers with the entire world outside to my left showered in bright sunshine that I have to squint to see through. The sharp border from the Interchange to the Avenue, the darkness of it in here and the bright celebration out there, feels quite unreal. I didn't feel like this last year. This time, it just feels different. Realer. Better.

The train from District 12 rolls in to a stop at the platform, and the doors open. Zazz is the first to leave, visibly frustrated by something, followed by Shade and finally Nack, who once again wears his wide-brimmed hat. Shade smiles at me, Nack nods, and Zazz strides on over.

"You're their mentor?" he shouts. There's really no need for it. "Pft. Good luck keeping those two cardboard cut-outs alive! Zero personality! Zero!"

"Nice to meet you too, Zazz," I say, and I step past him to Nack and Shade to greet them. "Welcome to the Capitol. Please, take these roses."

Shade is sceptical, saying nothing, and she keeps an eye on Nack for his reaction. I take it as a good sign, that there's already trust between the two of them.

"Ohh," Nack grins, plucking a yellow rose from my hand. "Don't mind if I do!"

And then he starts eating it, and hands a petal to Shade. What a strange guy.

"Uh, hello?" Zazz waves his arms between us. Right, the walk.

I already hate him. As we're following Zazz down the avenue, I find myself having to tap him on the shoulder occasionally and remind him of who's in charge here. That his job is to escort us, not rile up the crowd or sneer at hecklers. Just because he's at the front does not make him the main character.

"And what makes you think you can boss me about?" he asks annoyedly as he swipes his card through our door into the Tribute Centre. "Because you've mentored before? Because nobody wanted you except for the Chaos Council? Wee-woo, sucks to be you." He kicks the door open. "Damn child."

"He's been like this all the way from Twelve," Shade tells me. "Don't provoke him. That'll give you maybe... a fifty percent chance of being punched. The best odds there are."

"And if you do provoke him, that chance rises to about a hundred," Nack adds through a mouthful of rose. "But seeing as you haven't been punched yet, I'll consider it lowered to a ninety five."

"Good to know..." I reply.

"So, each of the districts get their own floor and because you're from Twelve, you get the penthouse," Zazz yawns, taking us up the paternoster. We wait in silence for a little while before he speaks again. "That means the top floor, by the way."

"We know what a penthouse is," Nack rolls his eyes.

"No you don't. You lot live in caves, right?"

"Yeah, and you live under a rock."

"No I do not! I live in quite a nice house, I'll have you know."

"Of course you do. Anyway," I interrupt, "we need to get off in two floors, so concentrate. If the four of us stay in this round the top then we'll break the whole elevator."

Zazz groans and pushes behind us, and when we get to the top floor, he shoves all three of us out. "Don't patronise me!"

The three of us tumble onto the hard carpet, and Zazz hops out of the elevator behind us. The way in which Nack and Shade get up and brush themselves down tells me that they saw this coming from a mile away. Shade reaches down to help me up and I gladly let her.

"Tha-"

Zazz pushes between us towards the door and unlocks it with another swipe. "I am the escort around here, Sunblock. You may have worked every job in the building but you're not taking this one," he sneers, and ushers us in before disappearing back out again.

"Sunblock. That's a new one," I shrug. I must tell Mephiles about this. "What is his problem?" I ask the other two.

"Nobody knows," Shade answers, finally deciding to take a now rather crinkled rose from me. "Nobody knows."

Chapter Text

"What's the plan, then?" Shade asks, caressing the petals on her rose. It's quite the juxtaposition, I think, with her in her rather fierce black outfit and spiked quills being so gentle with the crooked flower. "We're expecting big things from you."

"Yeah, like," Nack flops down onto the lime sofa in this penthouse's central room and kicks off his tatty leather shoes. "Strategy and stuff."

In the moment, my words disappear. "Um, well..."

"Zazz frazzled you?" Nack smiles, kicking his feet up on the empty coffee table before him. "Heh. Happens to the best of us."

I scratch the back of my head. "Yeah, he's quite the character," I laugh, and then, in a flash, I remember what we're supposed to be doing. "But it's you two who are gonna need all the character. Tonight is the Tribute Parade, and I really ought to get in touch with your stylists-"

The stylists. Of course, the stylists. The stylists that I should have been in close contact with the whole time in the run-up to this day. The stylists who I'm not even sure I know the names and numbers of. Or if I've ever been told the names and numbers of. The stylists who I should have been working with to design the best possible outfits that match our collective vision of the tributes from Twelve, to give them the best chance of getting sponsorships. The stylists that I forgot about entirely. But before I can even begin to panic, my phone starts wildly buzzing again. I take it out of my pocket, and see Mephiles's number displayed on the screen.

"Well, what do you know? That's them!" I grin wearily, lying through my teeth. "We'll arrange something great for you for tonight. In the meantime, explore, get comfortable, whatever. I'll be in that room over there if you need me." I nod to the door that, if we were on Mephiles's floor, would be covered in yellow paint, and scuttle very quickly inside. The instant the door clicks shut, my professional face comes off and I answer the phone.

"Mephiles, I am so screwed," I say in a hush.

He sighs. "Hello to you too, Clipper. I didn't see you at the train station."

"I know, I waved to you-"

"Why are you screwed? What's the matter?"

I take a look over the room I've claimed, and it's pretty standard. Just like the one last year, with a big bed and an electric feature wall and an ensuite and a place to order food and a walk-in wardrobe. I lean on a cabinet and breathe, "The stylists. I was supposed to be in touch with them to discuss ideas and then talk a little more after the Reaping but I completely forgot."

"Oh, that's fine," he laughs. "It's their job to make cool fits, and they're getting paid too, you know."

"Mephiles, I don't even know who they are or how to contact them."

"Relax, idiot. They'll show up at your door when they're ready, take your tributes, and scrub them till they're glowing just to plaster them in coal dust. They do that every year. If you were doing any other district then you'd be right to be worried but you're doing fucking Twelve, man."

I run my hand over my lush bedsheets. "They're expecting big things from me, Mephiles."

"Oh come on, we both know that employment history does about as much as a solar-powered flashlight. That's the reality of mentoring. The tributes expect you to do way more than you can handle just because you've done something before. You can't look at someone with a straight face and tell them you won the last games on purpose, can you? I can't look someone in the face and tell them I wanted to bloody survive. And yet here we are, coaching people on how to win on purpose and how to survive. Relax."

I don't know why, but Mephiles' reassurance just isn't hitting the right places today. I don't want to relax. I can't afford to relax. "Why did you call me?"

"Just to ask how you're doing because I didn't see you," he says, in almost a singsong way.

"You're sounding happy," I observe.

"The contents of the Beast Box will do that to you. My tributes are a bit prickish, though. The boy's already lied about his whole life story and I can just tell the girl's gonna annoy me. What an insolent little twerp she's turning out to be. She's going to be one of those posh freaks who wants me to make the world turn on my own, I just know it. And Zomom, Chaos almighty, Zomom. Who taught that rotund piss stain to drive with headphones on?" He sighs, and I hear the squeaks of mattress springs. "Alright, I guess the boy's not so bad, but I just hope he doesn't go all 'you need to do better' on me like everyone else, ever."

"Well, it seems that we've both got our hands full."

He sighs loudly. "Yup."

We sit on the phone in silence for some time. This room is nice. It's got everything I could possibly need for the next week or so but I'm sure I'll have to go back home occasionally. I take the remote control that's set on the cabinet before the bed and turn on the feature wall, flicking through the screen savers. Last year on the fifth floor I appreciated the space themes, even before I saw the arena for the first time. I remember saying to my screen in the mentor room, as Maria rose up her platform into the middle of the ARK, that she'd be okay because I'd basically seen it all. I'd lived, breathed, slept in, and dreamt of all of space. The stars, the galaxies, the nebulae, the whole cosmos. I said to the screen that I could show her where to hide, and then whispered, "If only you could hear me." And somehow, she could. She lived, breathed, slept in, and dreamt of all of space. The stars, the galaxies, the nebulae, the whole cosmos.

With that thought, I turn the feature wall onto a forest with a mountain in the distance, turn up the volume, lay down on the bed, and do as Mephiles said. Relax.

"Oh, by the way," I say, breaking the calm, friendly silence between us. "Zazz, the escort. He gave me a new nickname."

"Oh yeah? What is it?" Mephiles giggles, basking in the delights of his morphling.

I smirk. "Sunblock."

Chapter Text

"Now if you've been keeping up with the news, and I'm not sure how you can't have been, you will recognise this young fellow here with Zazz and the tributes from Twelve. That there is Eclipse Darkling, mentor of District 5 last year and the very man who gave us lovely Maria. He was gifted this position as Twelve's mentor by Master Zik on the back of the executions following the Nine Miles Inquiry. Interesting how the first major decision that the new Head Gamemaker made was one of mercy. Goes to show that the Capitol aren't at all as heartless as some may think."

-o-

The second the loud knocks on the front door of the penthouse make it beyond my bedroom walls, I spring off the bed, run out of the room, thank my lucky stars that Nack and Shade are not out here, and open the door. Before I even acknowledge the two ladies standing outside it, I slide around the door and click it shut behind me, releasing a relieved sigh.

I look up to greet them. "Hi," I breathe. "It's been a long, long week."

Standing in front of me are who I can only assume to be the two stylists for District 12. A tall lemur dressed in yellow, and a wolf who appears to have the other half of the robotic body that Jules didn't need.

"Oh, don't worry about it," the lemur grins. "My name is Tangle, this here is Whisper, and we're both textiles grad students at the University. We've been assigned District 12 in the Hunger Games fashion programme."

"Pleasure to meet you both, I'm Eclipse," I nod, and Tangle takes my hand and shakes it vigorously, whereas Whisper just gently smiles and bows her head. "I apologise for not being in contact with you two sooner-"

Tangle tuts loudly. "I said don't worry about it, we've got plans," she reassures. "And we just need you to run over them with us real quick, shouldn't be too much. They say that less is more, don't they, Whisper?"

"Indeed," Whisper simply says, remarkably quietly. The two of them could not be more different in terms of their enthusiasm. Whisper reveals a sketchbook that she had held behind her.

I can't help but smile, and think about all the other occasions where a book was presented to me and the owner of it excitedly talked me through their plans as I nodded along and made the odd sound of acknowledgement. Mephiles was right, there will be coal dust, but it looks to be just a little more classy than other years have been. The coal dust has been arranged in the sketches as some kind of messy, sweaty, workaholic make-up look. Tangle describes it as 'an abstraction of the dishevelled lives of those in the districts, no real direction or ambition, no substance or opportunity, and yet all made of the same thing with the same origin and the same common goal', with a few rhinestones here and there to represent the Capitol's generosity, and hardy waterproof graphic eyeliner because why the fuck not. The outfits themselves are, of course, coal miners' outfits with little bits and pieces of pizazz.

"Traditional. A little fancy. I like it," I comment. "But how are these going to stand out from previous years? From a distance, it'll just look the same."

"Previous years were bits of old tat," Tangle says, taking the book from Whisper and slapping it shut in a puff of black dust which she wafts away with a sheet of tracing paper. "These are made properly, and in the close-ups they will look truly fabulous and glamorous, and from a distance, you'll see that sparkle, I'm sure of it. There's nothing that can showcase the lower class of Panem quite like a bit of dirty glam, right Whisper?"

Whisper just nods when Tangle elbows her, not even close to the level of eagerness that her co-stylist is overflowing with. They seem a bit odd, these two, with Tangle being so confident that her unremarkable design will do so well and Whisper just quietly going along with whatever she says.

She continues. "I hope Gerald will make some comments on the design choices. The right comments. Although, if he doesn't, it probably won't matter that much. At the end of the day, it's not like he's marking our coursework, is it?"

"At the end of the day, these kids' lives are on the line," I say, becoming slightly annoyed with Tangle's attitude. "So I hope you two can pull this off. You're the stylists, right? You can't just rely on Gerald to say the right things. You have to make that happen."

"And I sure hope we can!" Tangle beams, oblivious to my annoyance, and even Whisper spares a smile. "Are your tributes ready?"

"They should be," I answer, still a little displeased, and I head back inside.

I promised great things. They expected great things. Those two had better produce great things.

"Nack? Shade?" I shout towards the corridor with the other bedrooms. "Your stylists have arrived."

The next few hours are spent preparing for the Tribute Parade itself. I leave my tributes in the 'capable' hands of Tangle and Whsiper, come up with a plan on how they should present themselves during the parade, then head down to the vast basements of the Tribute Centre where the rest of the mentors are. We all congregate in a curtained-off area just before the alleyway where the chariots will ride. Each chariot is towed by beautiful, immaculately-groomed horses that stand to attention and make happy little noises when petted.

Mentoring District 1 is Valdez, the victor of the 25th Hunger Games, and what a victor he was. Beautiful displays of strategy, fantastic acts of espionage, gruesome kills using the arena's mechanics, and an array of skills handed down to him by Finitevus Fitzalan himself. And he's an arrogant bastard. Or at least, he was last year in the mentor room.

District 2 have Christopher Thorndyke, Three have Vanilla of course, and District 4 have Abyss.

Abyss won the 22nd Hunger Games. Another water world - District 4 thrives in those, to nobody's surprise - but this one had its fair share of carnivorous animals that aren't usually carnivorous. Namely, beach squirrels. Most tributes had altercations with a pack of angry squirrels, and Abyss was certainly no exception, but being a great swimmer, she could dive underwater and stay there for long enough that the squirrels would drown, sink to the bottom, and feed her instead of feeding on her. Her tributes have been competent since her victory but I reckon she's got her hands full this year.

"Eclipse!"

Behind me entering the room through the same door I came through, runs a very out of breath Maria. My mood instantly perks up, the sight of her golden hair immediately putting a smile back on my face.

"Maria!" I greet, heading to her, and offering a hand so she can steady herself. "It's so good to see you again!"

She laughs, taking my hand. "Great to see you too. I saw you coming down, I really shouldn't have run though..."

"How have you been as of late?"

"Eugh..." she says, continuing the guttural noise and trailing off into laughter. That answers about everything. "My tributes are gonna turn up soon, our escort had a text from their stylists while I was coming down so I should probably go to the chariot. My phone's not set up yet, you see."

I nod my head. "Do you want to meet up sometime, then? I'd love to catch up properly."

"Of course!" she smiles. "On the roof tomorrow? I think I'll be there all day through training."

I smile back, and give her hand a squeeze before she goes. "I'll be there, I'll make sure of it."

Chapter Text

"Wow, you two are looking very..."

"Hard-working? Like the graftiest of grafters? Sparkly like the diamonds they mine?"

"I was gonna go for 'track and field on a rainy day' but that works too."

"For the last time, we don't mine diamonds," Nack says to Tangle. "As much as we'd love to be District 1, that's not our damn job. Hey, 'Clipse."

"Hey, Nack." I turn to Tangle and Whisper with a very important question about the outfits that Nack and Shade have been given. There's something that's not right with them. "Um, listen. I'm interested to know, where did the eyeliner go?"

"It's glow in the dark," Whisper answers simply.

"Okay?" Shade comes in. "But it's kinda dark in here right now and we're not glowing?"

Shade's right. The two stylists just look at each other, and Whisper speaks again in the exact same manner. "It's glow in the dark."

I sigh. "Okay, well, thank you so much for your help and your fashion, uh, expertise." I shake both of their hands and pat Tangle's shoulder in the direction of the door, praying that they take the hint. "I think I'll take it from here now. That's what I do isn't it? Yes, that's what I do. Thanks. Please, um," I stutter, swallowing my words down. "Have a great evening."

They definitely do take the hint, and leave without saying anything else.

Shade leans on the side of the chariot, looking carefully at her scruffy black fingernails. "Something great?"

I grimace, and lean on the other side of District 11's chariot. "They're a bit pushy," I say, trying to keep myself well out of the firing line. "Well, Tangle is, anyway. Cares more about her bloody degree than you two."

"Oh yeah?" Shade blows some carbon dust off her hand. "What'd she say?"

"Well, to be honest, I'd rather not pit people against each other, but-"

Bleeding through the curtains, some lights start flashing, and music begins. Over on the other end, the curtain is pulled back slightly and District 1's chariot begins to roll. I quickly usher Shade and Nack into our chariot and position them so they look confident and a little less scrawny, and I spend a few seconds tidying up the dust on Nack's left cheek to make it look just a little bit more symmetrical. Neither of us are impressed by it, especially not when I have to lick my finger to get the damn stuff to move, but I think we both know that either of us could have done a better job than Tangle on the makeup, even while blindfolded.

"Backs straight, eyes forward, chins up, don't flinch at the music or if anyone throws anything at you. You've got to look big, strong, and hard, okay?"

"Big, strong, and hard?" Nack repeats, raising an eyebrow at me, smirking. "Calm down, we only met this morning. Take me to dinner first."

I have to resist the urge to swear at him. "Very funny, weasel-teeth. Save that charisma for the interviews and make sure I don't hear it."

He laughs. "Will do, Sunblock."

And with that, our chariot, the final one in the parade, starts to roll.

I keep an eye on one of the big screens in the arena through the now open curtains and watch the cameras transition from District 11 to District 12. Eleven are dressed in twinkling silver branches studded with bright red berries weaved into wings that move gently as their horses pull them along to the stage. They look beautiful. They stand out. We don't. And the eyeliner does not glow. And Gerald does not say the right things. Or any things, really.

"Y'all looked stupid, I'm sorry. Not," Zazz laughs, picking us up after the President's speech of the year.

"You would have said that regardless," Shade rolls her eyes.

"I know. Because you always do."

I gently move myself into the conversation. "You say your job is to be an escort, hm? Well why don't you escort us back up to the penthouse and then skedaddle off to some other place like you did earlier?"

"That's literally what I'm doing!" he groans. "Do you want a smack? I've got more things to tell you wretches anyway."

Back in the paternoster we go, and this time, I keep my mouth firmly shut. On our second journey up the spine of the Tribute Centre, past the ribs of its floors, it's a little bit more cramped because of the tributes' clunky outfits and Zazz's adamance that he will not let any of us stand close to him.

"The roof is fair game," he says. "You can go up there outside of your scheduled hours and just do whatever you want. There's this rose garden, and you can see the city-"

"Rose garden, you say?"

"Shut up, Nack, I'm talking."

"No," he says. "I want to hear more about this rose garden."

"Nack, why do you like roses so much?" Shade asks.

He leans on the wall of our carriage to think about the question, before smiling. "Well aside from tasting nice, I kinda like what they symbolise. They're pretty, but they have thorns, right? Pretty face but with an attitude. So relateable."

Zazz laughs loudly. "You're kidding?"

"No. Because unlike you, I'm not insecure. I might look a little rough around the edges but if I smile, it's all good." He folds his arms, smiles again with his dreadful teeth, and continues. "A smile is a valuable tool. It inspires your allies, keeps your enemies guessing, and ensures that, no matter what comes your way, you're the one in control."

"You're not though, are you?" Zazz prods him. "Because you're in the motherfucking Hunger Games. Dickhead. Jump off the roof."

"Forcefield," I simply say.

Zazz suddenly goes very quiet, and the churning gears of the paternoster become painfully obvious, accompanied only by the sounds of all our light breaths. Zazz takes his attention away from the perpetually smiling, crooked-toothed weasel, and places it on me.

I'm not the tallest of young men, but I never did consider myself short. Zazz, however, makes me question everything I've ever evaluated about my own size. He towers over me and puts his face close to mine.

"Don't. Patronise. Me."

Chapter Text

The rose garden is rather beautiful. It's not that big. The roses are pinkish and are arranged around a cute little fountain. There are wooden benches, and instead of a concrete ground, it's a kind of fake brick. But it's definitely not the star of the show. Not for me, anyway. No, I always loved the view.

I did spend quite a lot of time up here with Maria and the idiot Commander last year. Maria's illness, in Capitol terms, isn't even that severe. One pill a day will keep her going if she takes it in ideal conditions. The Capitol medics invented it about six years before she was born. It's remarkably easy to make, and cheap to get hold of in this city, but District 5 is a whole other situation, and it is certainly lacking in ideal conditions, and so was the ARK.

Her biggest problem in District 5 was her crappy little borough. She told me that Five consists of rich boroughs, middle boroughs, and deprived boroughs, and it all depends on the type of energy they generate.

The rich boroughs are mostly coastal, having dams in the estuaries and other kinds of systems that work with tidal forces. She compared 'richness' to District 1 on a really, really good year. It's these fellows on the coast that keep District 5 among the wealthiest of Panem's districts, despite its stark inequality.

The middle boroughs consist of massive swathes of sparsely populated desert covered in a layer of solar and wind farms. This area also houses the majority of the transformers, producing a constant low buzz of electricity. Maria told me of her friends in the middle boroughs who have either become weirdly and uniquely in tune with all the different melodies of power transformation, or have been driven mad from them. It's an important place to be and people are generally quite well off. Not rich, but not poor either. And vast swathes of low density population still adds up to quite a big chunk of people.

And finally, Maria's home, the deprived boroughs. These house coal power stations that burn the coal mined from District 12, and the heat boils water, and the steam turns a turbine. They make basically no energy compared to the renewable energy plants. Nobody really knows why the coal industry still exists, but it does, and District 12 are providing it, so somebody's got to do something with it. This gives District 5 the almost redundant side-industry of coalite production. A smokeless fuel then sent off to other Districts for a very low price, made by heating coal until all the nasty stuff is drained out of it. It's the by-product of coal plants, and the by-products of this by-product are toxic and they make people sick, and they make sick people even sicker. That plus poverty equals Maria.

She described the extent of it to me. Her meds only work if she has a meal with them, and it would be beneficial if she didn't breathe in all of the pollution or step on ground laden with thick chemicals. So she spent most of her time inside a house with the windows taped shut, and if she wanted fresh air she'd have to go out at night when everything was closed and the wind had blown the pollutants away. She's watched hundreds of sunrises. She thinks of the sunrise as true freedom. She said that before her Games, she joked about wanting to be up on a spaceship and be fed pure air with a fortified wall of void between her and anything that could damage her, with a giant window of more sunrises than she ever imagined there could be. But of course, when it actually happened to her, it was not the romantic mosey around the planet that she hoped it would be. And she needed to eat well in order to feel well. At home, she couldn't just choose between having money for food and having money for Capitol pills, she needed both, so her loved ones starved for her so she could eat, and in the ARK, food was not available a lot of the time. So, when she slowly started to drift in and out of consciousness, flirting with death, I sprinted up the stairs to the fifth floor, grabbed my notebook, and frantically flipped the pages searching for her backup plan that would have bankrupted an entire town in a deprived borough, but I could just about afford if I got everyone to work with me. A stronger pill that's still in clinical trials today that she heard about on the news just days before her reaping, and it works without food.

Maria, as planned, meets me on the roof, and we stay here together for hours until day one of training comes to a close, talking about her new life in the Victor's Village, built in a rich borough, and her first ever tributes, two troublemakers, both from the middle borough with the transformers. And she talks fondly of her tributes, Rouge and Shadow, and wishes she could do more to support them because, "They deserve someone so much better."

The night comes and goes. I hear, mostly from Nack, all sorts of stories about everybody else. He's very observant, this kid. Suspicious of Espio from District 1 because of how distant he is from other Careers and how close he is with Five already. Reluctant to believe Mighty from Seven's volunteering story, convinced there's more to it than either Stratnyy will say. Interested in District 10 and their hushed little conversations with the Careers, who are seemingly already looking to replace Espio with not one extra ally, but two, and telling him nothing about it. Intrigued by Vector and Cream from Three and their whole dynamic, which he just can't seem to figure out.

In the morning, he tells me even more.

"I like the roses," he says. "They taste like fertiliser. Bit weird, but it's an acquired taste."

"You look dreadfully tired," I say to him, noticing the bags under his eyes, but I think again. "Or maybe it's leftover coal dust? That stuff was rigid."

"It won't be," he laughs. "These showers are fantastic." He comes and sits by me on the like green sofa. "I admit, did stay up for way too long. It's so easy to lose track of time. So much to look at, you know?"

"It's a pretty city, isn't it."

"Not just that. I remember, I think it would have been about two ish, I saw some people clambering around in the car park round the back of this building. Gripping stuff."

"Huh," I say. "Trespassers?"

"Probably? But they looked like they were leaving," he replies. "Any thoughts?"

Trespassers wouldn't be too strange, but people leaving? By clambering around a car park? No, it doesn't happen. The trespassers will have got in and made a clumsy exit.

"Nah," I reply, leaning my head into the soft back of the sofa. "It's probably nothing."

Chapter Text

It was a shaky start with Tangle and Whisper, but it matters not. Because between dramas with Mephiles and his own tributes, another relationship of his that came and went, and a strange lingering tension in the tribute pool, Nack and Shade are proving to be quite the tributes. Both of them, fantastic, they each scored an Eight, and the sponsors kinda like it, especially after last year. Nack can shoot an arrow so effortlessly, and Shade is as agile and powerful as any Career her age would be. And, being from Twelve, they both know how to survive. But I'm worried. I'm so, so worried.

It's the interviews tonight, just a few minutes away in fact, and in our preparation, we talked a bit more about the other tributes and how we can stand out from them. And Nack, in typical Nack fashion, dropped the biggest bombshell of the week.

The Careers have successfully formed an alliance with District 10 and have quietly banished Espio from the pack, mostly the decision of Liza, District 1's female tribute, because she has such little faith in him that she had planned on cutting ties with him ever since the car ride to their train station. According to her, Espio is physically strong but emotionally and mentally turbulent. When asked to elaborate by Marine from District 4, she couldn't describe anything specific, just that he seems too 'in his own head' to be of any use to the Careers, and he most definitely is a traitor and he doesn't seem to care. They have all been keeping a close eye on him.

Espio has been friendly with Districts 5 and 6. Especially District 5. Especially Shadow, and he's also shown a large interest in District 7. And that's dangerous for the rest of the Careers because if Espio manages to bind Five, Six and Seven together in an alliance with him at their core, they could be a powerful force in these Games.

Nack then told me of a falling out between Amy from Two and Silver from Six, and how Espio openly sided with Silver. And then, he outlined the Career hit-list:

District Six, because they're annoying and argumentative.

District Twelve, because of their ruthless attacks on the Careers last year, so that they will never forget the word "Career".

And, of course, Espio himself. But he doesn't know it. Nack knows he doesn't know it.

He's been up on the roof every night. I told him very sternly that he must get good amounts of sleep and he has been doing, but last night he was up there for long enough to be able to speak with Espio personally. He seems to have a friend back home called Nicole. He loves her dearly, and he was talking to her through the clouds or something. The only explanation Nack could come up with is that him and Nicole are romantically involved, and now, there's Shadow. And he was wondering if she's okay with it. But he doesn't know for sure if there is anything romantic behind it, that was just his guess. Besides, that wasn't the interesting part.

Espio did not want to volunteer. Something neither of us saw coming. Something neither of us can explain. "Just the insane ramblings of a Career who never really wanted to be here," Nack repeated to me, assuring me that I was just as bewildered as he was. And then he repeated another strange thing Espio said. "They're after you. The Careers. They're after you and they're after Shade and Silver and Blaze." And Espio did not seem to know that they were after him too. And Nack, cleverly, more cleverly than Espio anyway, decided not to say anything at all.

Tangle and Whsiper, annoyingly, just replicated Nack and Shade's Reaping outfits. This time, I don't quite manage to keep a straight face, and Shade ends up laughing at my reaction to seeing the sketches.

"At least you're trying," she says to me just before Whisper has to take her off to her studio. "We expected great things from you and honestly, you've delivered."

"Are you serious?" I ask.

"You've given us great advice, you've kept Zazz off our backs, you've fixed Nack's sleep schedule, you've helped us suss out the other tributes and find our own strengths," she lists off. "If it weren't for you, Eclipse, we'd have been lucky to have gotten eight points combined, not each. So seriously, thank you."

Her words have me taken aback, and they calm my worries somewhat. As far as Shade is concerned, I've done my job. And really, whose approval do I need aside from that of my own tributes? It will mean nothing if they're dead, of course, but a confident tribute will surely do better than a frightful one, so long as they don't go too far and circle back round to Career level confidence that will kill them in an instant. Hopefully, neither of them go that far. I was never a believer in bad omens, but I could be if I wanted to be. Whisper and Tangle take Shade and Nack away, and I head down to the arena once again, to the section of the audience known as the Green Room, reserved for mentors and escorts and other important personnel. I decide to make some notes during the interviews, knowing how much my notes helped me last year.

Liza. Career confidence.
Espio. Humbleness, charm, and most importantly, not Career confidence. Weird. He could at least pretend like he wants to be here?
Amy. The kind of "sweet but deadly" confidence that only a Career could have.
Sonic. Extreme Career confidence. Not weird at all. "Gotta go fast."
Cream. Lovely, as always. Well-spoken, polite, and comfortable in front of a camera.
Vector. We don't learn much about this ten-scorer at all in terms of what he can actually do.
Marine. Career confidence. A sailor.
Big. He loves his pet frog. It's a façade, though.
Rouge. Flirtatious. Assertive. She dismissed herself. Uninterested, maybe? Rebellious, perhaps. Troublemaker, like Maria said.
Shadow. Quiet. Just quiet. Another ten-scorer we know nothing about. Fond of Maria, which earns him some points from me.
Blaze. Capitol blood will always go down well.
Silver. Radiant, likeable, but perhaps a little confused. No family, no friends.
Matilda. Strong. Pissed off with Mighty.
Mighty. Strong. Pissed off with Matilda.
Honey. Compliments everyone else very graciously, perhaps excessively, refusing to give anything away about herself.
Ray. Enthusiastic. Bright. Youthful. Too youthful.
Wave. Clown.
Jet. Clown.
Tikal. Very good with natural remedies. An amateur medic, back in Ten.
Knuckles. Clue's in the name.
Sticks. Silent. She only moves to crack all of her knuckles and her neck in one go.
Bean. Mistaken for a pigeon.

Shade. Polite. Noble. Somewhat quiet, but straightforward with her ability. Exactly what we planned.

Nack.

Nack.

Nack is surprisingly well spoken, better spoken than I've ever heard him, almost like he flicked a switch and binned his strong Twelve accent in favour of a more wealthy one. He is very clever, but I knew that already, and he's not afraid to highlight all of his best qualities, and he knows he's important. I can see it by the way that he sits. One leg over the other, back straight, smiling like he always does, soaking up the attention from the audience. We didn't plan this. I didn't tell him to do that. In fact, I gave him and Shade the same brief. Polite. Noble. Straight forward. And yes, he's doing all of that, but I think he might have taken it too far.

He looks like a Career. He sounds like a Career. And I don't know whether it's because he has a target on his back, or if he genuinely thinks he's a match for the real deal, but I see in him what I see in all of them, and I don't like it one bit.

Chapter Text

I couldn't speak to him. I just couldn't.

I keep telling myself that my worry is irrational. That for the bloodbath, it doesn't matter how the interview went. That there's a reason the cannons are fired separately from all the action. Because the bloodbath is not normal. The bloodbath is not rational. The bloodbath is basically random, it's all just luck, and the reason the big-headed ones have suffered the worst in the last couple of years is because it's all nothing more than a coincidence. It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing.

But I couldn't sleep last night, because I just kept on thinking. How did I never see it before?

He's full of himself, this weasel is. I should have seen it the moment I handed him that rose. I should have seen it when he sprawled over the sofa, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. I should have seen it before the parade, when he made that weird joke to me, taking amusement in making me uncomfortable. I should have seen it in the elevator when he made that speech about smiles. A smile is a valuable tool. It inspires your allies, keeps your enemies guessing, and ensures that, no matter what comes your way, you're the one in control.

Git.

But I can't give up on him. Right from the start, Shade relied on him. She trusts him. They're allies in these games and they need each other. I don't know how much Nack cares, or if he's considered that he may need to lean on Shade one day, but I'm certain he will need to. He will need allies. Just like everybody else did who won the Hunger Games, expect maybe Mephiles and Maria, but their years were not normal. A tribute needs allies to become a victor, not a pretty smile.

If he loses, and if District 12 dies early, then I'm beyond screwed, aren't I? I had my chance at redemption in the Chaos Council, and then Dr. Deep and his stupid life story snatched it from me. I have been given such mercy when my life was headed for misery. I have been given so much more than a second chance. I was given a third. Who the heck gets a third chance? If I mess this up, how am I ever going to get a fourth? I was lucky to even get a first.

"Why have you been avoiding me?" he asks again, still standing over me at the sofa like he has been for the last minute or so, waiting for a straight answer from me.

"I'm gonna be honest," I finally reply, "I'm really worried."

"So that makes you want to avoid me, yeah? On the morning of the Hunger Games?"

"Nack, I'm not avoiding you," I lie. "I'm just thinking."

"About what?" He shouts. "Thinking about what?"

I stand up. "Thinking about what in Ivo's name I can tell you that'll make this any better! They have a hit-list, and you and Shade are on it!" I notice just how close together we have been, pretty much shouting in each others faces, so I sit back down and Nack takes a step back. "I'm trying to think of a strategy."

"Okay." He sits on the coffee table. "What have you got so far, then? Because last time I checked, we had five minutes before we needed to leave and that was about two minutes ago."

I take a deep breath, and let it fall back out of me again. "Take Espio's advice. Run. Just run. Get as far as you can to the arena border, throw stones so you don't smack into it, and I'll kit you out when you get there."

"How do you know there's gonna be stones?"

"I don't. But if there are, use them."

"You did Gamemaking. You know the arena. You just told me there's stones in the arena," he says flatly. "You've pushed boundaries just by being here. You just told me one of the biggest secrets of Panam. You just told me there are stones in the arena. Are you mad?"

Zazz, who's been strangely quiet for the last few days, kicks down his bedroom door and strides out into the corridor, knocking loudly and harshly on Shade's door until she comes out.

I turn my attention back to Nack and give him a look. "I told you nothing."

Zazz takes us up one more floor through the paternoster and drops us three off by the hovercraft as the rest of the tributes are boarding. The thing whirrs almost silently and churns lightly in its motors, warming itself up for takeoff. It's a lovely day with a cool breeze and sunshine, but not too bright. The city below is quieter than usual, with citizens staying at home to watch the beginning of the Hunger Games, so now I can hear the rustle of trees and the hum of the wind whipping between buildings, and the air smells smooth and clean. I watch as District 3 are taken into the entrance, and scan the crowd for everyone else. Maria isn't here. She would have liked this day.

"Well? You got anything to say to us?" Shade asks.

"Yeah," I tell her. "I don't know if you heard it earlier, but at the bloodbath, don't even think about getting supplies. Just leg it as far out as possible, look out for the border, and I'll send you some stuff as soon as I can."

"We have money?"

"I haven't been able to check our total," I tell her. "I don't get to see how much money I have until the Games begin."

"We do have sponsors though, right?"

"Of course," I smile at her. "It'll be alright. Both of you are gonna be okay."

Shade takes my hand to shake it, but Nack stands with his arms firmly by his sides. Shade furrows her eyebrows at the sight, I think wondering why he's like this. I think Nack has lost all of his trust in me now, in a matter of hours.

After the Avoxes have taken them both onto the hovercraft, I watch as it lifts itself up and carries itself eastward over the Capitol, and keep watching until it disappears behind the mountains towards the only clouds in the sky. This is it, now. The Hunger Games will begin soon. Those tribures will be in the arena that I created. My idea. My vision. My third of the border. And somehow I'm still a mentor.

All the other mentors, minus Maria, have congregated around the rose garden, so I go to join them. I don't know what atmosphere I expected, but it wasn't this. Everybody who can fit has crowded around Jules, who clutches his fancy victor phone and holds it high for the rest to see.

"She's gone," he says. "The news came in just a minute ago."

"What news?" I ask, walking towards the group. "Where's Maria?"

"Well, she was in hospital," Valdez says, plucking Jules's phone out of his hand to get a closer look. "District 5 mentor reported missing, please report any sightings to Head Peacekeeper Infinite... What the heck? Where would she even go? Why would she run off from hospital?"

"Listen," Vanilla cuts in. taking Jules's phone back and handing it back to him. "I know we're all worried about sweet Maria, but we need to head downstairs now. Like it or not, we've got a job to do. The Games aren't going to stop just because District 5's mentor is missing. The Peacekeepers will find her, and it'll all be okay."

"I hope so," I say. "Knowing Maria, she's probably just gone outside for a bit and forgot to tell anyone where she's going."

"Exactly," Vanilla smiles. "Come on, you lot. Let's get going."

The rest nod in agreement, and together we make our way down the stairs to the ground floor, trying to put our worries aside and think about what's really important. Our tributes, and how we're going to keep them alive.

Chapter Text

The mentor room looks exactly how it did last year, almost as if the whole place was just locked up, left, and never returned to. It feels odd to be back in here again, like I'm intruding on some elite club that I wasn't invited to, surrounded by fascinated first-timers who were invited, and the people who've been here for years and are used to it all. The oohs and ahs and this-place-is-so-weirds. And the room is shaped just like the Gamemaker Studio, now Control Room, but the interior design is completely different. Off to the right hand side there is a kind of workspace with an ordering station, a gift packing area, and a sort of chute to put the gift in so the Gamemakers can fly it out to whoever it's addressed to. In this room, there are twelve desks in three rows of four, each fitted with two computer monitors, one with the mentor menu and the other with access to every camera in the arena. Where the Gamemaker balcony would have been, is a giant screen that will be showing Gerald's channel for the duration of the Games with his commentary in the daytime and newsreader Omochao and his news ticker in the night, and below that screen are a line of twenty four large light bulbs, each representing a tribute, and those light bulbs will go out with a ding the instant a tribute dies. Before the cannon. Before anybody else knows. The very instant their tracker detects that their heart has stopped beating for good, the light bulb will go out. The rest of the lighting is dim and blueish, and the walls are padded with insulation so nobody can hear us, and we can hear nobody. It's not like we have to stay here forever, though. We can leave if we want to, or if we have to for an interview or something, but what happens in the mentor room, for the most part, stays in the mentor room.

I'm in the back right corner this time. Last year, I was sat next to Mephiles in far-left middle row, and he was, and still is, in near-left middle row. A mentor moving seats has been unheard of until now. My old seat, where Maria should be, is empty.

Valdez turns around in his seat from far-left front after setting up his screens how he usually likes them. Menu monitor turned into portrait and pushed all the way up, camera monitor pushed all the way down and slotted underneath the other one. "Any news on Maria, guys?"

Everyone looks at everyone, and nobody looks like they know anything.

"How are the Games gonna proceed without a mentor?" Abyss from District 4 asks.

"Well they can't just cancel, it's too late," Mephiles answers. "Disappointment of the century. They'll have to find someone else."

Abyss shakes her head. "I'm not sure how they can when they've already had to resort to him."

Yeah. Elite club that I wasn't invited to. I feel it.

I try to ignore the conversation from then on, instead focusing on the screens in front of me. I finally get to see how much money this week's campaign has raised. And it is nerve-wracking. Why wouldn't it be? It was a shaky start with Tangle and Whisper.

Six thousand, four hundred, and thirty one. More than last year, but not by much. Last year, it was the Commander who got us the bulk of the funds. Maria was too old for people to take pity on her youthfulness, instead thinking of her as a bit dim. For comparison, Mephiles peeked over Chris's shoulder last year and told me that Scourge and Fiona were tipping the seventy thousands. I'm better than last year, yes, but it's not good.

And then, just minutes before the Games are due to begin, the constant background hum of Gerald's commentary goes quiet. The sudden absence of his voice takes us all out of our preparatory trances.

Gerald raises his hand to his earpiece, and a worried expression spreads across his face. He clears his throat. "Okay, that's new. Um, everybody watching at home, I've just heard some... crazy news. And-" he pauses, listening to more things being pumped through his earpiece, "we are going to get the bloodbath out of the way before I tell you, because the countdown is starting pretty much right now. So stay tuned, big news coming up. Oh and, Happy Hunger Games!"

And with that, the cameras turn to the Cornucopia, not much better than how Dr. Deep left it, and the pouring storms over little Lake Crystal. It looks dreadful out there. It's not the sunny, pretty haven that I saw. No, the entire place is covered in shadows. Daunting shadows. And the countdown is not the silent, tense minute of waiting that it was last year. It's full of murmurs. Whispers between mentors on what the crazy news could possibly be and whether it might involve Maria. And the tributes, when they rise, are just as restless. I flick through the cameras, looking between the big screen and my own monitor, to try and find Nack and Shade. I'm sure I start on Wave, but it's hard to tell where anybody is. They all have their hoods up except for Espio, so I can't even orient myself unless I find him on my screen. I try to find a landmark, mountains or something, but of course, I put all the starting cameras in the floor. The seconds slip away.

"Silver." Mephiles growls into his screen. "What the fuck are you doing?"

I manage to locate Shade, and watch her eye-up the tips of some trees for a moment or two before moving on round the circle to try and find Nack, but my next click lands me on Blaze, and the next one on Silver.

He just stands there, eyes closed, arms by his sides, completely unmoving, paying no attention to how long there is to go. But I don't have time to keep watching his strange behaviour, so I keep on going. I must find Nack. I must find that narcissistic rat, because even if I can't interfere with what he does, I still want to see it.

"Blaze," Mephiles continues as I skim past Bean, Big, and Rouge. "You're making it real difficult for me to hate you right now."

Tikal, Vector, Honey, Sonic, and finally Espio. Finally a reference point. Espio is facing directly towards the mountains which means Nack must be somewhere in the third closest to the lake. Typical of me to start circling the wrong way, but before I move on, I notice Espio's whole demeanor shift.

Up on the big screen, a more distant camera zooms in on this patch, with Shadow three spaces further along than Espio. He looks...

"Distressed," I whisper to myself. He's breathing hard, struggling against the tears that pool behind his eyelids. This isn't like him, from what I know. In the Reaping, during the walk down the Avenue, the Tribute Parade, his score of ten, his interview, none of that gave the impression that he would be the one to cry, because there's always one.

Could he know more about Maria than we do? He must do.

The camera flicks to Silver and Blaze.

Silver grits his teeth. "You ruined it."

"Silver, you're not doing this."

He rolls his eyes. "Doing what?"

"Just waiting to die!"

Silver looks pissed off to even be alive.

Blaze reaches out to him a little bit, her face plastered with deep concern for her district partner. "We're getting through this together, remember?"

And then the cannon blasts to begin.

Chapter Text

Blaze leaps off her platform and grips Silver's hand, pulling him behind a large rock. He picks up the rope situated behind it, and then the cameras start switching.

Amy wastes no time, and sprints over the sodden mud into the Cornucopia. Most of the other tributes are hesitant to get off their podiums, making hard work of the slippery ground, and Shadow doesn't move at all. But then I see Nack and Shade doing the exact opposite of what I told them to do.

Shade leaps behind a rock and stays there, watching Nack run around in his third of the circle picking up bits of muddy fruit, and I don't even get a chance to scold him in my head for it before a knife is plunged deep into his abdomen by the hand of Liza.

Nack falls to his knees, sinking into the sodden ground, and Liza slowly drags the knife back out, smiling at her achievement and the diluted blood that trickles over her wet hand, until a blurry badger in the background of the shot whips an arrow into her neck. She too falls to the floor, and lands on top of Nack in a bloody heap.

Valdez swears loudly as both of their lights ping out.

The next one to go is Amy's, with the bulk of her death overshadowed by Liza's. An action replay shows Mighty in the Cornucopia almost losing his own life to her, but turning it around in the last milliseconds and cracking her head open with the hammer they argued over between them. As Mighty wobbles back onto his feet, and Shadow - who was unfortunate enough to receive blood splatters to the face after finally making his first move - unhooks a sword and flees, the camera zooms in past Mighty's shoulder and out of one of the other exits.

"AMY!" Sonic shouts, and he tries to run in, but he is restrained by Marine and Tikal.

"He's not worth it!" Marine tells him. "We can make him suffer later if you want, just focus on supplies like we said!"

"But what if there is no later?"

Tikal gets in front of Sonic, blocking his view of Amy's smashed-up skull. "There will be as long as we stick together. Where are those three, anyway?"

Another of Stick's arrows threads one of Tikal's dreads and hits Rouge instead, square in the chest.

Then, the camera returns to Blaze, still behind that rock with Silver. She chooses her moment and dodges erratic arrows into the Cornucopia. Rouge's light goes out, and Silver flees into the forest.

"Whelp," Gerald says, in the middle of a patch of quiet. "Four dead, no serious injuries, and a cat in a cardboard box. An oddly comforting bloodbath, don't you think? Well, less of a bloodbath and more of a glass of tomato juice."

I keep an eye on Shade behind her rock. She's not moving. "Why isn't she moving?" I whisper to myself again. "Move. Shade. Move."

And in a flash of red, she's dead. Her light flickers out.

This is it, isn't it. My third chance has been blown. Their hit-list is in full swing, and my third chance has been blown.

When I push my chair out from beneath my desk, the feet drag loudly along the tiled floor. All eyes turn to me as I stand up from the chair. Some of them look amused. Jules' eyes take pity on me, and somehow Vanilla's find a way to do so too despite her daughter still being in the thick of it. Mephiles' look concerned. I don't care. I need to get out of here now, because I was never supposed to come back.

I should have hung up on Master Zik just like I hung up on everybody else.

The first thing I do is go back to my room, to soak up what I'm going to be leaving behind for as long as I can bear it. I leave the wall on the first screen saver it lands on and stare at it, not even caring what it is, until it sends my eyes funny. But this room, it never felt like mine. It never felt like I lived here. It looks completely untouched, pristine and brand new, because that's what happens when you don't ban Avoxes from your room. I understand Mephiles now. The place you lived in doesn't look like it's been lived in at all when you don't ban Avoxes from it. It doesn't feel like your space when you can't have control over it. It feels like you're floating around, not living at all, just starting every day again. Over and over, just starting. Never finishing. Never running with the chances you get. Just being pulled by force back to a blank slate every single time, and everything you did before, all your hard work, all the marks you left behind on the world, just don't matter anymore. That's been my life for the last year and I hate it. I hate it so much.

Next thing I know, I've pulled a cabinet over its tipping point, and I watch it topple past me and crash onto the floor.

"Clean that, assholes," I say, and just for good measure, I rip the mattress cover off the bed.

It's gone cloudy now, up on the roof again, but it won't be the same storm that battered the arena. Storms don't tend to get past the mountains. That's what the weather presenters always said. The mountains shield us from everything outside. It's how we survived after the global disasters that isolated us from the rest of this dead wasteland of a world. It is only Panem. And the Capitol saved the Districts from wasting away. And then look at how they treated us? Rebelling like that? But in the end, it was the mountains that saved us. Protected us. If there were no mountains around the Captiol, there would be nobody left in the world. And I left them, didn't I. I went beyond the mountains for a day with three men who are now dead and a baby that's in a stranger's care somewhere. And yet I expected it to all be okay?

I reach into my pocket and drag out my phone. I would never normally do this. The whole point of this, from the very beginning, when I studied so hard to be liked by the Dean and end up on the program last year, was to find a way to run in the complete other direction and never return. But I think I was always destined to fail, wasn't I? I've been chased by shadows for my whole life. With a name like Eclipse, how can I escape it? I flip the phone open and dial the number that I swore to myself I would have forgotten by now, and press call.

"Dad?" I say, when the phone stops ringing. "I'm coming home."

Chapter Text

"So now you come crawling back, huh?"

Crackle.

"When it all goes wrong, like I always told you it would? You come crawling right back to Daddy, tail between your legs. Pathetic."

Crackle.

"That's life for you. Shoes off when you come in. I just cleaned the floor."

-o-

It's happening again. The weird looks at rush hour on the tram. I spent hours on that roof, staring at the ruby line, listening to its faint bells jingle as its red-lit carriages rolled to a stop at the Interchange and pulled away again, dreading the moment I stepped foot on it, knowing that it will take me closer to that shadowy room with the empty corpse of Biology's cage still under the table. And now I'm here. Riding it. Taking the weird looks at rush hour and thinking, I deserve them.

The trams have been a little erratic today. Usually when I get off ruby, the amber tram will arrive three minutes later, but this time the amber tram comes early, tailgated by ruby after the tracks merge, and by the time I get off, amber is already gone. It's not a big deal. It's only twelve minutes until the next one.

It was quite funny actually, when Mephiles was drawing up the timetable. We'd only just gotten to the point where we could admit that the other was actually a half decent person, at least on the outside, and he asked me whether he should do five trams per hour or six. That was the first time he ever initiated conversation with me, and not the other way around. And in my shock at actually being approached by Mephiles of all people, I said five when I meant six. As it turned out, it's better this way.

The clouds have become so thick that it almost looks like night time with the sun moving behind the mountains. I see the headlights of the next amber tram before the bells jingle, but that sound is muffled by approaching motors somewhere off to the left. I wait under the shelter while the tram rolls to a stop, and when the doors open, I step forwards.

A horn blasts off to my left, and swanky sports car skids onto the pavement and cuts in front of me, screeching tires inches away from my feet.

The driver rolls down the window and leans over the gear stick to wave me in. Master Zik.

"Not a chance," I say, waving at him to put the window back up. "I'm done with these stupid games."

I try to walk around the back of the car to the tram, but Master Zik slams it into reverse to block me again. "Get in the car!" he yells. "You're not done here until I say you are!"

Then the tram doors close, the bell rings, and it rolls away. So I get in the car, because I just know he's not going to take no for an answer. I can always come back later.

"So?" I ask. "What do you want from me this time?"

"You can't leave," he says, adjusting his... stilts. He pushes down on the pedals and the car lurches back into movement. "You're still a mentor, don't you know?"

"No I'm not?" I almost laugh. "They're both dead. Nack and Shade are dead. What is there to do? Who is there to mentor?"

"District 5," He says, throwing us around a sharp bend. "So you haven't seen the news?"

I brace as Master Zik merges us onto a highway in the least elegant manner possible, bombing it down the right hand lane much faster than he should be, undertaking the rest of the cars. I take a deep breath, preparing for the worst. "What news?"

He tuts and shakes his head. "Maria is dead. She went to hospital because of her illness, then ran out of hospital and snuck onto the hovercraft so she could wish Shadow and Rouge good luck, because she didn't get a proper chance to. She found Shadow, busted into his launch room, and got a wall of bullets to the back."

He keeps on driving with the straightest face I've ever seen from a person. Part of me wants to cry, that Maria made it all this way just to be killed for something stupid like that, after everything she went through and everything I did. Part of me wants to wonder how the flying fuck I've done it. Again. Another blank slate. Another bungee back to the beginning, where lies that impossible fourth chance. Part of me wants to jump out of a moving vehicle, which is equally the most appealing thing I can do right now and probably the most sensible.

"Don't even think about it," Zik says, when I glance towards the door handle. "You're going to mentor Shadow from District 5, and for your own sake, you'd better do it well."

"I know." He's not going to take no for an answer.

Rain begins to patter onto the windscreen, blurring the lights on the other cars. Water sprays up from the wheels in front, turning the entire city into a cloud of wetness and fizzy lights. The only sounds to be heard for the remainder of the ride are the wipers sweeping in front of us, the shudders of an overworked engine in the wrong gear, and water slapping glass with increasing force, echoing in my head, clearing it of its contradictory desires.

So Maria is dead. Shot by peacekeepers, maybe even as Shadow was rising up to the arena, with the image of her death, shot behind glass, burned behind his eyes. It's the worst possible outcome. And yet, somehow, it might be the best. My fourth chance might be the one that finally works. I have a good district. I have a good tribute. I have an immaculate history with District 5. And I have a Head Gamemaker who believes in me. I shouldn't do it. I keep telling myself I shouldn't do it.

But at this point, what even is there to lose?

Nothing. There's nothing to lose.

Master Zik parks up the car in the car park by the Tribute Centre, the same car park that Nack swore someone was trespassing in the other night, and we sprint into the back entrance in the rain. We walk through past seating areas and vending machines, and Zik salutes me before running up the tinny stairs, leaving me by the door of the mentor room. But before I can go in, he runs back down again.

"Oh, and most of the training scores have changed," he smiles. "Some of my colleagues gave everyone scores way too extreme, apparently. So we had to rewrite the distribution. Unfortunately, Shadow is now on a nine, but he is still the second best on our list." He starts going back up the stairs again "Toodles."

Okay. So yet again, my chances are dampened. But I guess if the entire distribution is rewritten then everyone else's chances have been dampened about the same.

"Oh how you magnetise me," I sigh, swiping my entry card through the slot by the door. "Mighty city, shining anew again."

Chapter Text

I gently push the door open with my foot, and the light from the social space slices into the mentor room's blue darkness. The creak of the door alerts the other mentors, and once again, it's all eyes on Eclipse, but this time, for whatever reason, it feels good, because really, realistically, what is there to lose? My tribute is, of fucking course, Shadow, which should make me nervous, but he always seemed to be one of the good ones. Perhaps he can redeem shadows for me. Perhaps he can make it all better.

"Are we back?" Mephiles asks.

"We're so back," I smile.

Maria may be dead, but honestly it's a miracle she didn't die before. Up until this point, I've fluked my way through every interaction. From nailing my exams to scrambling together funds for a product only released weeks before, from bagging a slot in Gamemaking to convincing Infinite and the President to have mercy on me, from one mentor shortage to the next, there's something somewhere that wants me to succeed whether I like it or not, and every time it drags me back to the start, it tells me to try again until I find the right direction. I head back to my old friend far-left middle and give Mephiles a fist bump before checking what funds I have for Shadow.

Forty eight thousand. We're so back.

While Gerald is taking a break from his near-continuous commentary of evening one of the Hunger Games, Omochao, normally a radio newsreader, does the television news. And this robot's voice is tinny and dated and annoying, and he for sure does have a face that was made for radio. He explains a normal distribution, and how each year the Chaos Council aimed to hit one in their training scores. This year, with so many extreme values like an eleven and two tens and a one, and about half the scores being an eight and higher, was so abnormal that it skewed the averages with previous years, all from what looked like a ferociously sub-par roster from the ferociously sub-par glass of tomato juice. The only score that remained the same was Ray from District 8, still on four, and everyone above Ray got reduced by one, and everyone below got increased by one. The highest is now Espio with ten, and the lowest is Sticks with two. Now the graph looks less like a slope and a cliff, and more like a slope and a slope.

"The tributes will never know this unless the mentors tell them," Omochao says, ending the broadcast and returning to Gerald.

"And how are we going to do that?" Valdez groans. "The gift paper is only the length of my thumb."

"How about we just don't tell them?" Chris suggests. "Only Cream and Sticks had their scores increased. Everyone else is gonna feel like they've been cheated. Brilliant for morale, that is."

"They're still roughly the same," Vanilla says. "They're nonsense anyway. The tributes don't need to know."

"Eclipse," Valdez turns around to me and tries to change the subject, clearly upset that Espio's score has been reduced from the highest ever to something District 1 would consider average. "Why are you back? Could they not have got someone else?"

"Zik was adamant that I should do it," I shrug. "Seeing as it's the rule that every district must have a mentor, and District 12 are both dead, and District 5 is vacant, and I did them last year, and even still I bet nobody else wanted to come forward. I think he just decided to give the role back to me so Shadow can have a mentor who's familiar with Five."

He just scowls at me.

"Trust me, Val, I don't know how I do it either."

"Has this ever happened before?" Mephiles asks.

"What? Mentor recycling? Where have you been for the last week?"

"No, not that," he groans. "The same mentor, who mentored the reigning champions, mentoring that district again. It shouldn't happen. Like, I could have predicted recycling students but replacing your own victor? That's crazy."

I have to think about it for a minute, but Mephiles might be right. In the first system, mentors were changed completely every year for a new selection of Capitol students. In the revised system, the victor becomes the new mentor, with Capitol students filling in the gaps. This means that the reigning champion district will always have a fresh mentor, and it should be impossible for anything else to happen. So even though I moved districts, that was still fine under the system, but now that I'm mentoring District 5 again, I really am breaking things.

Vanilla turns around to look at Jules directly behind her, and Jules shrugs. "No, I don't think it's happened before."

"So do Five have an unfair advantage now?" Mephiles asks.

"How could they?" I laugh. "I've never met Shadow in my life."

"You literally just won the games for District 5, Clipper, and now you're at it again."

"Did Twelve not just come dead last?" I nudge him. "I'm sorry that you're insecure."

"Excuse me, I am concerned for the validity of these Games!"

"Yeah right."

I spend some time flicking through this other monitor's set of cameras to find where everybody's gone. A lot can happen in a few hours in the Hunger Games.

Sonic, Marine, Big, Tikal, and Knuckles have claimed the Cornucopia. Most of the others have gone into the forests. Silver and Blaze have found themselves that sweet clearing, which is where I see that Master Zik has implemented my river idea. Omochao makes a comment about it almost perfectly on cue right as I think about it, and I'm relieved to hear that the water is pure, and it's a relief to the other mentors too. Ray is close by, sticking to the treetops, but he's oblivious of District 6 and they are oblivious to him. Upstream is Mighty, searching for somewhere to camp. On the complete other end of this half-moon of arena forest are Bean and Honey, an unlikely alliance, but they seem to get on well. Then there's Jet and Wave, and then Espio. And finally, in the fields, Shadow is at the end closest to Bean and Honey, Matilda is near the border, as close to the mountains as she physically could be, and a little closer to the Cornucopia are Vector and Cream. Sticks is nowhere to be found, not even her mentor can find her, but she's still alive somewhere.

Shadow is kitted out very well. His bag has food and a bottle in it, and a warm thing to sleep in, and I don't know if he's any good with a sword but he certainly looks the part. He's in a good position, too. Close to where the river comes in from outside the arena, hidden well in the tall grasses, and far away from anyone who might want a piece of him. The one person he could run into, should nothing go wrong, is Matilda, and I know from Nack that they are on good terms.

In fact, the whole place doesn't look too alarming, so long as Ten and the Careers don't last. Maybe my vision of a boring, relatively peaceful Hunger Games will make it through after all. That is, until Jet slices an apple open with his spear and it oozes with a green liquid that can only be poison. He tests it on a squirrel that Wave grabs by the scruff of the neck, and the thing dies in a matter of seconds. I guess Zik is free to take his own creative liberties. And then the cameras flick back onto District 3.

"She's calmed down now," Gerald says. "Good, good. I can't imagine that whole fiasco going down well with the sponsors of District 10."

"What happened with Ten?" I ask to nobody in particular.

"Knuckles tried to kill Cream. Awful judgement," Vanilla says flatly. "You know, I don't think it's quite struck me yet that she's in there."

Of course. The girl she raised and loves more than anyone else in the world is in the Hunger Games now. I didn't get to see Knuckles' attack on her, and honestly I'm glad I didn't. After seeing what he did to Shade, I'm surprised Vanilla can say or do anything, knowing that that could have been her little girl too.

She rises out of her seat and steps around her desk, walking towards the big screen, heels clicking lightly on the ground. She looks up at Cream's face while Vector tells her a story about a young lad he used to play with back home, and reaches out to touch the screen. Her hand cups Cream's face so lightly, so gently, before she pulls it away again.

"Vector," Vanilla says, as the camera moves off Cream and back onto the Careers. "Please look after her."

Chapter Text

I've got the fifth floor again now. I exchanged my card to the penthouse for this new one, and immediately found Maria's notebook, sitting wide open on the kitchen countertop. I flick through the pages upon pages of her detailed notes about Shadow and Rouge on the sofa, with a hot coffee on my lap and the morning sun on my back.

Maria described Rouge as a super spy. Remarkably intelligent, with skills in hunting and gathering not often seen in District 5. Her particular brand of trouble was pickpocketing. Jewels, rings, wallets, watches, key chains and car keys, you name it, she's stolen it. And she was strong, too. She did weightlifting as a pastime, both benches and squats. She was a middle borough desert girl with her eyes - and hands - on the riches of the city girl.

Shadow is weirdly good at knot-tying, and he learnt plant identification very quickly. And his strengths do lie in the sword. He fancies himself as quite the Lancelot, in the kind of way where he knows he can do better but will never admit it unless he knows that he'll still be thought of as quite the Lancelot anyway. He calls himself The Ultimate Life Form, Maria wrote, with a star next to it leading to a footnote saying that it was a childhood alter ego that he carried with him as a way to make himself feel better about the fact that his form is not exactly everything he ever wanted it to be. He feels like an alien in himself sometimes, not quite real, not quite fitting in with this or that, but rather a strange third thing, hand-crafted from something far removed from all other society, and he admitted that when he was younger, he was a dick about it. Picking fights and whatever, when people would tell him that there's nothing ultimate about him, because that was what kept his mind attached to his body and gave him purpose. It was affirming, in a way, to not have a role other than being himself, because that is the most powerful and ultimate thing to be. But now he's reached a point where, even though he still feels like his form is a foreign vessel, he can use the title for his own empowerment, and in much less the way of Abe the Commander, who was just an almighty prick.

It's funny she wrote that. It's almost as if she knew I would see this notebook one day, and remembered that I never really liked that guy. Like she knew I might hear Shadow Kintobor call himself the Ultimate Life Form, and immediately think of that idiot from last year. Maria does see the good in everyone, even if there isn't any there, but for Shadow it's definitely there.

She also wrote that it took a lot of digging to actually get this information out of him. That never once in his life has he felt like a member of this construct we call 'identity'. That he's never let people get close to him unless they kept persisting and persisting, because his form, his Ultimate form, is his armour from those who could hurt him. And when they break through, he's scared and distrustful, but eventually, he'll soften. Shadow didn't say any of that himself. Maria only wrote it down because she persisted and found it all hidden in the words he used.

"There's no way you didn't know I was gonna be here," I say to the book.

Shadow's troublemaking took the form of reading the Highway Code from cover to cover several times over and highlighting everything wrong with it, then taking it upon himself to do stupid things on the road and claim that it's perfectly legal because there's nothing saying otherwise. He got himself arrested so many times that he was on first name basis with most of the Peacekeepers in his middle borough, but they could never do anything with him because he was right. Everything he was doing was legal and Five values their justice system. He strongly suspects that the Reaping was rigged against him so the Peacekeepers wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

He reminds me of Biology. A weird thing with a good heart. Truly the ultimate creature.

I close the book and lay it on the sofa next to me, and sip the coffee which has now gone cold, and stare at the doorframe of the entrance to this identical fresh start of an apartment and watch the edge of the sunlight inch across it, millimetre by millimetre.

This is my final chance, isn't it. I need to make sure it can't be reset.

The first thing I do is tip the coffee over onto the coffee table so a thin layer of the brown liquid spreads over it. Then I turn the cushions on the sofa so that they're all a little bit wonky. Then I open the drawers in the empty cabinet behind the sofa and leave them slightly ajar. I arrange glasses unevenly on shelves and order plain flour from the Avox kitchen so I can tread some of it into the carpets. I open all the curtains as wide as they will go, in the most ugly way possible, and let all the sunshine spill into every room, killing every shadow, and then turn on the TV to make sure the only Shadow I still care about is still alive. And he is.

Shadow is still in the patch of field that he ran to yesterday, soaked in sun, surrounded by the yellow grasses. The sun is so strong that it brightens his fur, giving what was solid black some flecks of rich, dark brown. And the red is so much brighter, and all I can think of is, thank goodness he has the grass to hide in. He's cut out, with some swings of his sword, a small circle for himself right by the river. The river that I hope with every beat of my heart is pure like Omochao said it was, because even if Dr. Don't was adamant it was possible with some ultrasound and a potential across the forcefield and "a bit of coding in the simulation here and there", I can't help but wonder if the new Gamemakers really did pull it off. And Shadow's suspicious of it, because in his open bag is a water bottle and a bottle of iodine, and every minute or so he looks at the shadows of the grass and then looks back to the water.

He's been watching the edge of the sunlight too. I should tell him I'm here.

Before I leave, I scout out the whole floor for an Avox, and find one in one of the bedrooms.

"Hey, you," I say, and he looks at me, never speaking. "I have one thing to ask of you. It will be my only request. Understood?"

The Avox just stands there. I keep staring back at him until he nods his head.

"Do not, under any circumstances, clean," I order. "Don't vacuum, don't wipe, don't tidy. For as long as I am District 5's mentor, you will not clean. And make sure the rest of you hear the same."

Chapter Text

I'm back on Five. -Eclipse.

-o-

The second day is uneventful. I sent Shadow some nice, warm bread with a little note letting him know that I'm here now. He didn't really react other than smelling the bread for a really long time before wrapping it back up and putting it in his bag, but I didn't expect much. The bread was less of a necessity and more of a formality. All else that happens is a betrayal in District 9, resolved swiftly by Espio splitting Jet's neck in two. Gerald and Valdez wanted more from it. They wanted Espio to draw it out and let Wave's final shot of poison into Jet's neck be the thing that closes the hawk's eyes just for Espio to snatch the kill seconds before the cannon, but got something more resembling of a mercy kill.

Valdez has been frustrated with Espio since the very beginning. He retrieved no water from the Cornucopia, and no food aside from an orange. The death of the golden child and a mercy kill will do that to a Career mentor. But the more of Espio I watch, the more I like him, and the more glad I am that he is an ally of Shadow's. He has a calm and focused demeanour, like he thinks about things excessively, and any time he does do something on impulse, like opening the orange he had, he takes the time to reflect on it. But he's not okay, not after killing Jet, and he refuses to let that surface fully, slamming his emotions down every time they threaten to come up. As he walks, he brushes his fingertips along the dangling willow branches and lets the feeling distract him until he slashes the branches and covers the bodies with them. He doesn't look stupid. He looks like he knows what he's doing. Like every move he makes holds purpose and motivation, and to me it only looks like motivation for good. I can see why the other Careers don't like him.

It's the night that's more interesting. When the sky is darkened and District 9's faces are displayed high, Ten and the Careers settle down by the Cornucopia. They decide on a system where they take turns sleeping, and Tikal is the first to stay awake. For about an hour, she waits by their fire until she's sure everyone is in their first bout of deep sleep for the night, and then, one by one, she takes their bags and their food, starting with Marine's, wriggling the bag off her slumped shoulders and tipping the contents into the campfire flames before throwing the bag in as well. Tikal waits until the fabric has shrivelled up and gone completely black, before peeling open the Velcro on Sonic's sleeping bag, taking his rucksack from under his quills, and lowering his head onto the floor. That bag gets the same treatment. Then, she empties Big's pockets and puts it all into the fire. 

Leaving Knuckles untouched, she heads inside the Cornucopia, takes as much food as she can carry, and hides the rest of it under Amy's limp body, leaving it exactly how she found it. When she gets back outside, she gently wakes Knuckles.

"It's done," she whispers, and the two of them run off into the forest, as silent as the night itself.

"One of my exes did that. Burnt all my stuff," Mephiles nods, as the camera pans to the grasses. "Right in front of me, too. I know I didn't treat them right, but I didn't deserve that."

"What was their name?"

Mephiles' head snaps around at me, and he stares me down with eyes of daggers. "Solaris," he says, enunciating every syllable. "And then I told my next girlfriend about it on the first date and she broke up with me. Any more questions?"

"No," I reply, watching as the camera zooms in on the grasses. Onto Matilda, who saw Tikal's every move.

I leave the television on in my room while I sleep. A television that, upon turning out the lights for the night, I decided to drip soap down the front of. I wrap myself in the fresh-smelling covers of my bed with the reassuring knowledge from last year that should anything happen, either Gerald's early morning commentary or Omochao's emergency news ticker interjections will wake me up in an instant. People don't tend to die within the amount of time it takes to slide down the banisters to the mentor room, pack a gift, and send it. Especially not this year. And if they do, there was nothing I could have done about it anyway.

"Here he comes..."

Five hours. Not bad.

"Watch this, folks," Gerald leans close to his microphone. "Sonic is going to flip when he finds out what that sneaky Tikal has done to his stuff."

I roll over in the soft bed, cracking my back on my way round, and squint at the harsh light of the television. Sonic stirs in the sunrise over the arena, and brings his hand to his neck, rubbing it and wincing.

"Nice one, Tikal," he smiles. "Funny joke. Now where's my pillow?"

He sits up in his sleeping bag and watches the clouds float across the dark morning sky, and slowly, he follows the path of the smoke with his eyes and lands his gaze onto the fire. Still burning.

"Tikal," he groans. "I told you to put that out when it started getting light-"

He squints at the fire for quite a long time, thinking hard about what he's seeing, noticing the weird shape of the fire and the textures in it and the colour, and his nose twitches at the smell of the smoke. Then looks around at his allies. Marine's bag is gone. Big's pockets are open. And Knuckles and Tikal are nowhere to be seen.

"What the heck?" he exclaims, waking up the other two. "The cowgirl burnt our stuff!"

"Cow... girl?" Big yawns. "What cow?"

"Tikal! I told you we shouldn't have trusted her!"

"You told us nothing," Marine rolls her eyes. "You were the one who encouraged Liza to let Knuckles and his pet hospital come onto our team."

"Yeah, Knuckles! Not her, she was Liza's idea through and through!"

"Oh yeah, blame the dead one," she scowls, folding her arms. "Real classy, Felgate. Now what are we gonna do?"

"Find them?" Big suggests.

Marine scoffs. "Fat chance."

"No, I think we should," Sonic says. "I mean, they might have more of our stuff, and like, we need that stuff."

"I was done listening to you the second you tried to tell me how to fish. We also need to murder them, Sonic."

Sonic doesn't look too impressed by the murder suggestion. "Alright then, if we can't agree then we'll split up for it," he suggests. He stands up and looks around at the landscapes that surround the cornucopia, and points towards the side of the forest that holds the little clearing at the edge. "You two go deep that way and I'll stay towards the middle. And then you can walk round by the border and I'll do the inner stuff. How does that sound?"

"You're crazy," Marine says. "They could be anywhere."

"Well it's either look for them and potentially find them, or not look for them and never find them," Sonic smiles. "Your choice."

Chapter Text

I decide to take my time.

It's a situation, isn't it. It's felt unreal, like I'm being perpetually pushed around by the firm hands of invisible time wardens and stirred deeper and deeper into their vortex of a time loop. I think it's about time I asked myself, who am I really? Other than some teenager who's done more things in the last year than most adults would do in a decade? Other than some idiot who fluked his way through every interaction? No meaningful qualifications but more experiences than months there are to do them in? It's not real, none of it is real.

I think I might understand him. And I think he would understand me. And isn't that what mentorship is about? Mutual understanding, working towards betterment, guidance, encouragement, all those good things? I sent him the bread, he sniffed the bread, he read the note. What am I supposed to do now? Wait until he's gonna die before jumping in and resurrecting him? Or do I reassure him? Send him gifts and let him know that there's someone there, not watching him for the entertainment, or because they have to, but because they need him to succeed?

I can't just leave him be like I left Maria, only making myself known when she was knocking on death's door, no. I will watch Shadow's footage with intention. Because this time, I'm not here because of some dumb extracurricular. But I can still take my time, because the Careers aren't going anywhere near him and he's not going anywhere near them.

When I finally do make it down to the mentor room, I greet everybody who's already there and settle down in my seat. Mentors often suffer from sleep deprivation. You can really tell who's most attached to their tributes by how weary they look. We've only had two nights and Vanilla already looks absolutely dreadful, with her bagged eyes locked onto the big screen as Vector and Cream trudge through the grasses towards the forest. And I can see that Mephiles hasn't been sleeping well, when he leans back in his chair and yawns before returning to his sketchbook of highway interchanges, slumped over the desk. And Jules doesn't seem particularly perky either, until Matilda makes a move.

She hears rustling, and tentatively parts the grasses until she can see Vector and Cream, thoroughly fed up of the rain, stepping through rooted mud and slippery rock. Every now and then, Vector and Cream will slide a little, lose some balance, and recover. Until Cream doesn't. She falls to the ground with a small yelp and catches her knee on a sharp piece of rock. And Vector cannot move.

It's incredible to watch the panic spread up through his chest and over his face, ripping throughout his body and rendering him paralysed. He remembers that moment in the bloodbath, it never left his head, but Matilda, of course, has no idea.

"What the heck?" she yells at him. "Are you just going to stand there?"

Vector gets no chance to answer.

"Some ally you are," she rolls her eyes, and heads towards Cream. "You okay, my dear?"

Cream just laughs. "Oh, I'm okay, thank you. Just a scratch or two, I think."

Matilda smiles sweetly at her. "Here, let me have a look."

She unclips the buckles on her satchel bag and takes out a small first aid pouch. It's nothing fancy. Just bandages, plasters, some wipes and a tiny pair of scissors and some tweezers. She gently rolls up Cream's trouser leg and wipes the bloody scratches clean, asks if her skin can handle plasters, and puts one on her, carefully pressing it flat. Gerald can't help but aww at her 'heart-warming gesture of what it is to be a person'. Cream whispers her thanks, and Matilda turns back around to Vector.

"I take it you're alright?" she asks, looking him up and down.

"I'm fine," he breathes.

"Good for you. I mean, if your first reaction is to completely freeze and just stare rather than ask if she's okay, I would have assumed you weren't."

Vector looks horrified by her attitude with him, and in a way, I can understand both of them. I understand Matilda's frustration but I think if I were Vector I would have done the same. Frozen on the spot. Panicked. I think if anything looked even remotely like the death or near-death of an ally or a colleague or someone along those lines, I probably would be like that, just like how Shadow was like that. And all I can think about, while the two of them argue silently between their eyes, is Dr. Babble. That idiot baby I haven't seen since the day I saved his life.

I wonder where he is and who's taking care of him now. I wonder how he's settling in, and if he's still crying all the time. I wonder if his new carers have found another way to calm him down, a way other than singing forbidden songs. When he wasn't crying, or interjecting with his noises, and when the other Doctors weren't interpreting them so sadistically, he was peaceful. He was actually quite sweet sometimes and I think I miss him.

"Look at me like that all you want," Matilda says. "It doesn't make me any more confident that the people you're allied with are going to be safe."

Things just follow me around. People just drop dead all around me. Biology. The Doctors. Maria. Nack. Shade. Is it just me, and not my name? Am I the problem? Who am I, if I'm not a problem? Is 'Eclipse' a problem, or is it just me?

She turns back to Cream. "Don't lower your standards for anyone, okay? I don't doubt that Vector is great with you, but... you know, just in case anything happens, well, I was meaning to ask you to be a part of my team during training so I'll leave the offer open should you need it."

Vector can't make up his mind. He itches to interject but his mind and his mouth and his body and his eyes all seem to be doing different things and it results in thoughtless, motionless silence. Confusion, even. Me too.

"Are we allowed to quit?" I ask, out of nowhere. Everyone just looks at me. "If we ask nicely?" I clarify, remembering how Master Zik practically bundled me into a car and kidnapped me. "Actually, never mind, I know we can't. I didn't really want to be here anyway."

"Don't lie to yourself," Mephiles says.

"I don't know if I am."

He sighs. He doesn't look at me at all. He just keeps his eyes on his screen, watching as Big and Marine get closer and closer to District 6's little clearing, ambling about with no real sense of direction with a chance that they might miss it entirely. Mephiles taps his foot on the floor and then reaches out to take my hand.

"I will support you in everything you choose to do," he says slowly and clearly. "Because you're my friend, Eclipse. I trust you to make the right decisions for yourself and the children you are responsible for."

"You want me to keep looking out for my tribute?"

"I don't want to tell you to do anything," he says. "I just want you to think about it." He lets go of my hand and rests his arm on his lap. "I want you to think about what you wanted to create. What you wanted to makes these games into for the sake of the people in it, but didn't get the chance."

"Since when were you so poetic?" Valdez interrupts.

Mephiles just remains silent, with his green eyes focused on Valdez's, completely deadpan and breathing silently through his everlasting mask. Valdez takes the hint and turns back around to his setup.

"Oh, and to answer your question," Mephiles says, looking at me in the corner of his eye, "unless you go out like Maria, I don't think you can."

Chapter Text

Day three ends in disaster for the Careers. Mighty has successfully taken down both halves of District 2 - or was it the poison apple that I never intended to exist? Either way, Christopher Thorndyke is out, and so is Abyss after Big and Marine do make it to the clearing and are snagged up in snares before they can say, "Froggy, where are you?" And as the others give out gift after gift, and hot meal after hot meal is sent to Cream with Vanilla stressing over the fact that she can't fit Vector's name on the paper because of the space she has to work with so she just addresses it to the tribute she trusts the most to share, I struggle to find a reason to do so too, because Shadow has everything he needs. A water supply, calories that aren't going to go off, a weapon and supplies to keep himself safe, and a great spot to hide in that nobody has even come close to yet. I've got to keep at least some money in case of a disaster, haven't I?

And Espio is still alive, somehow. I did think he was quite clever, but on the fourth day, it takes Valdez swearing at the Career champion to get him to remember that food isn't just something he can skimp on. He sends a canister of microwaved soup with vegetables and some pasta shells in it, swearing again when it floats down closer to Sticks than it does to Espio. The two of them have been blissfully oblivious of each other for the last few hours and yet Gerald has been stressing about it by far the most out of all of us, flinching in his microphone at every move either of them makes.

Espio is sluggish. The lack of food has clearly begun to mess with his head because he's dizzy and disorientated and drinking more water than he usually does. But he still looks peaceful with it. How can somebody look so much like they know what they're doing when they clearly, evidently, don't?

He notices the silver canister as it comes to a stop on the top of a rock, and he trudges himself over and searches for it in the foliage surrounding it, but when he reaches to it, he hesitates and looks over his shoulders, as if he's just realised that he may not be the only person in this forest, but he puts the thought out of his mind and picks up the canister anyway.

The smile that spreads across his face is one of relief and comfort as he brings the silver canister to his chest and unhooks the parachute.

In a matter of milliseconds, the canister is pierced by another one of Sticks's forceful arrows. Not even Gerald foresaw that one.

"Goodness gracious!" he startles, flying backwards in his creaky chair. He rapidly readjusts his glasses and leans back into his screen again. "Oh, the boy's alive. He's alive, everybody."

Espio holds the canister with his arms outstretched, staring at the arrow inside of it in utter disbelief of how close it came to killing him. He slowly looks up in front of him.

Sticks crouches behind another rock and growls. "That canister is mine."

"No it isn't," Espio replies carefully, stepping backwards into the same footholds that he found for himself on the way there. "Unless you haven't eaten anything but an orange since the beginning either."

She growls louder this time, and Espio hears it and finds it rather strange, but she ignores his reaction. "I ate a squirrel yesterday, I guess."

Espio smiles a little bit. "The squirrels are rather friendly round here."

Sticks lowers her bow slightly. "They are?"

"Yeah. I shared an orange segment with one last night. That's not the one you ate, is it?"

Sticks laughs. A sound that I don't think anybody in the world has ever heard before. This girl, who seemed to be barely sentient in her interview, running on nothing but constant fear and agitation and aggression ticking over in her head, laughing. And it was elicited by another tribute. Espio.

"How would I know?" Sticks grins. "Who do you think I am, the government? I..." she looks down at the rock, "didn't know squirrels liked oranges."

"Oh, they'll eat anything," Espio grins back.

"Do you have any pets back home?"

"Me? No, no," Espio shakes his head. "I've never had any pets."

"That's a shame," Sticks frowns. "I've always wanted a... hey, HEY!" Her expression turns cold and dark again, just like it was before, like she's more terrified of letting her guard down than she is of Espio himself. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Espio startles and fumbles with the canister.

"WE ARE NOT FRIENDS!" she cries, and she loads up another arrow, raising her bow once more. "THAT CANISTER THERE? THAT'S MINE!"

And once again, Sticks starts shooting. And in a spectacular display of agility, Espio leaps out of the way of the arrow and chucks the canister at Sticks, sending the contents flying all over the ground.

"YOU SPILT IT ALL, YOU DICK!" she screams.

"You're the one who shot the thing!" Espio shouts back after hiding round a tree, and then he sprints off in the complete opposite direction while Sticks runs after the echoes of his voice, shooting wildly. Espio takes no chances and keeps on running, putting as much distance between himself and Sticks as possible.

"Espio, slow down now," Gerald says. "You're getting awfully close to the edge-"

He doesn't see the waterfall.

"ESPIO!" a bunch of us collectively yell as he tumbles over into one of the apple trees. He reaches out for a branch to try and save himself from the fall but his arm slips through, catches on two of the branches and snaps between them. He keeps on falling, hitting his head on another branch and landing flat on his back, with the back of his head crashing into a rock embedded in the watery mud.

"No!" Valdez exclaims, scrambling at his keyboard to get a better angle. Espio lays still, eyes wide open, staring up into the sky. "No, no, no! Don't die on me, you stupid idiot!"

But he doesn't. Espio just doesn't die. His eyes slowly fall shut, eyelids pulled down by nothing but gravity, but his heart keeps on beating and his lungs keep on breathing, keeping his tracker powered on and his light firmly in brightness. We remain in complete silence for ages, expecting his light bulb to ping out at any moment, but it stays on.

Espio's light stays on.

Chapter Text

It's the first thing to happen to Shadow in a while.

His ears perk up at the distant sound of rustling grass, much further than anyone expected him to be able to hear. He slowly stands up from his favourite rock and grips his sword in both hands. He holds it high, positioned carefully over his right shoulder, steadying himself with it so he can bring it down at a moment's notice. But no. It's only Matilda. He lowers his sword gently, and for the first time in the five days, he smiles. It's just those two for miles. They're safe.

Day six, Espio is still blacked out by the river on the complete opposite end of the arena. Silver and Blaze are still in their clearing. Bean and Honey are at a bit of a turf war with Knuckles and Tikal in the section of forest nearest the lake, not hurting each other, but making it very clear that they are not joining forces any time soon, and that this patch is mine, thank you very much. Mighty and Ray have found each other, still very near to Silver and Blaze, and Cream and Vector are still receiving gift after gift from sweet Vanilla. Sticks is still everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And it's quiet, so when a conversation starts, there's no reason for Gerald not to zoom in on it all the way.

Mighty and Ray, for the last hour or so, have been decorating a cave in camouflage. It's rather beautiful, what they've done. The two of them have a knack for nature, something I especially wouldn't have expected from Ray, coming from the concrete jungle that is District 8. They blend the cave into the surrounding bushes and trees using branches and willow vines and strings of berries.

"You're an artist," Ray says, as Mighty adjusts one of the branches.

"If I'm an artist then you're an absolute machine, you can crochet anything."

Ray squints at the plants. "Machines can't crochet. They haven't been invented yet."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Mighty asks after stepping back to admire their work, giving Ray a fist bump.

"For us? A good thing, because people have jobs," he explains. "For the Capitol, pretty bad, because they have to pay us, but they hardly do that. It would probably cost them more to buy blueprints off District 3 if they ever get made than to keep on paying us."

"That makes sense, if you think about it from the Capitol's perspective," Mighty shrugs. "It keeps everyone busy. Do you know what I mean?"

Ray sighs loudly. "Oh, believe me, we know exactly what you mean and it's exactly why things are the way they are." He gently kicks a rock. "The Capitol have never been that fond of us. And we were never that fond of them," he frowns. "They rob us, we hate them all."

"What?" Gerald smiles, before rewinding the clip and playing it again, louder and zoomed further in.

"They rob us, we hate them all."

"Oh damn," Valdez smiles. "The Gamemakers have got a real dilemma on their hands now."

"They won't hurt him," Vanilla says sharply.

"Don't be so sure," Mephiles shakes his head. "They'll hurt anyone for anything."

We all remember how Elise died. She died for much less than directly insulting the Capitol. Mephiles couldn't be more right.

"I wonder how Master Zik will take that?" Gerald says shakily. "I'm sure we all remember last year where Dr. Don't disposed of the girl from Six upon 'orders from the President'. What will Zik do?"

Ray heads inside the pretty little cave with the handmade curtains, and Mighty takes a moment to gather his thoughts and shake them out of his mind. He knows. Mighty heads in behind him, and they spend some time in silence just enjoying each other's company. He watches Ray as he slingshots at a patch of mud over and over from various angles, and listens to the light thud of rocks hitting the cave floor. He drifts in and out of sleep, and peeks out at the cloudy sky every time he wakes up, shocked at how long he's slept for, and at the same time, how little.

"Hey, I'm gonna get some more apples," Ray says. "We might be able to juice them with your hammer or something."

Mighty lazily, and rather gladly, gives Ray the hammer. "Make sure to knock them open first. Mind the blood."

It's like a weight has been lifted off Mighty's shoulders when he is finally rid of the hammer, the weapon he used to kill both of District 2. In self defence both times, of course, but his entire body relaxes when Ray takes the head of the hammer and the handle slides out of his fingertips. He wraps himself in his fleece jacket, pulls his knees to his chest, and closes his eyes once more.

Ray takes the hammer outside, tossing it between his hands, and knocks some apples out of the nearest apple tree. He takes them to a willow opposite the cave and knocks them open one by one, assessing their colour, and ordering them from yellow to green. He spends a lot of time on the gradient, going through about twenty apples and moving them into a semicircle. Most of them are fine, so he takes a half from the left side of the curve and bites into it.

But then, as he stares up into the leaves, chewing slowly, the colours begin to shift.

"What's going on?" says District 8's mentor, whose name I can't remember. "Jules, what's going on?"

"I don't know," Jules says, scrambling at keys trying to zoom in on the apples. "I think Zik might be turning the apples bad?"

"No..." Eight's mentor gasps. He watches intently from far right middle as Ray chews the apple, begging him not to swallow. Pleading with the screen to make the apples go back to yellow. But Ray swallows, and the apple he bit from turns entirely green.

Ray leans his head onto the willow trunk, playing with the light above him by fluttering his eyes open and shut, but his carefree smile doesn't last long. He furrows his brows, moves his tongue around his mouth, and looks down at the apple in his hand. Before he can even begin to process what he's seeing, he clutches his stomach and groans.

"Mighty!" he yells.

Mighty rouses from inside the cave. He hears Ray's cries and pushes himself off the ground, before crawling out groggily between the camouflaged walls.

"Mighty! I- I don't get it, I-"

Mighty finds Ray sat behind the willow, now clutching the hammer in his hands. They both look over the colour gradient and watch as it shifts further and further into acidic green.

"-I thought those ones were safe. And now..." Ray coughs, "...now everything hurts."

He kicks the apple that he took the bite from. Mighty pick it up in disbelief and analyses the apple half. Most of it is the same yellow that the good apples were, but this one contains streaks of the green that ripple outwards from the core like waves, pulsating with the poison.

"I swear it was yellow," Ray croaks out, scratching at his throat. "I thought it was yellow!"

"That's just it, Ray, it was yellow," Mighty panics. "The apples are going bad."

Ray leans over and vomits violently over the other apples, and his sick is green with the same shreds of red as Jet's and Sonic's were when they too succumbed to the power of the poison apple. Might throws the apple away and drops down beside Ray, pulling him into a hug and not caring if anything gets on him.

"Well now we know what Zik's capable of," Gerald says.

"Shut up!" Jules outbursts. "You're evil, you're all evil!"

Ray coughs over Mighty's shoulder again and again until he's out of breath. He coughs with no air. His chest convulses in Mighty's arms, desperately trying to rid itself of all contents but unable to take in any more air to push them out. He loses strength in his body so Mighty lays him down at the base of the tree. He looks up with the clear, blue eyes that fluttered beneath the sky just moments ago. Mighty bites his lip to battle the tugging in his chest, a fight that he knows he will lose. He shuffles closer next to him and Ray rests his head on his side. Mighty runs his fingers through the fur on the top of his head and behind his ears, and they sit surrounded by the poison apples and poison vomit, completely at the mercy of the Capitol's technology. Mighty doesn't even try to save him. He knows it's not worth it. He knows already that just one bite of a bad apple would be enough.

"Find your sister," Ray whispers, completely voiceless, as the apple that was the most yellow to begin with finally converts itself to full green. He closes his eyes. "Seven for the win."

His cannon blows after his light goes out with a twinkle. The mentor room, yet again, is completely silent. Shocked at the sights. Most of us don't have a single word to say, but Jules has all of them, racing around in his head, paralysing him just like Vector and Shadow were. As the camera in the tree opposite Mighty and Ray zooms out ever so slowly, Jules clasps his fingers round the edge of his desk and lets out a long, defeated sigh. He feels things, Jules does. For tributes that aren't even his own.

And then, soon after with absolutely no explanation, another light pings out.

Chapter Text

"What?" Mephiles says, quickly and sharply. "What do you mean?"

He stares at the big screen, as the camera keeps hanging over Mighty and Ray.

"Hello?" he waves his arms, shoving his chair out from beneath his desk. He strides around it and past Valdez, towards the line of light bulbs under the screen, and flicks Blaze's bulb hard with his index finger. He turns to face us all when nothing happens, completely confused. "Can someone tell me what's going on?"

I lean over to Mephiles's desk and zoom in on the clearing. I'm not entirely sure what it is I'm looking at but whatever it is, it's not good. "Meph."

"Is this damn thing broken?" He strikes the bulb again, harder this time. It vibrates in its socket.

"Mephiles!" I shout, locking eyes with him sternly and definitively. "Come here."

He huffs annoyedly, but does what he's told. But on his way back over, the cannon finally goes off.

"Sorry about that," Gerald butts in. "Her death was so sudden and unexpected that we triggered the cannon a little bit late. Blaze Liesma of District 6 is out! Silver's slippery snares catch a tribute yet again! Who'd have thought that in an arena so peaceful, the most powerful weapon would be the trees?"

I almost say something. Something about how much I'm starting to hate everything again, and I'm not even sure where it's coming from. This is not what I wanted. Creative liberty, sure, but the poison apples are ruining everything. And now the trees are causing a ruckus too? I promised Mephiles the arena would be alright. I told Mephiles these Games would be okay.

I feel responsible for these tributes in a way I can't even explain. Even if I'm not a Gamemaker anymore, even if I was only a Gamemaker for less than a month, I did enough to have a hand in every single one of their deaths. It was my idea that brought us here. It was my suggestions that gave us Lake Crystal.

The main scene finally goes to the clearing, showing a gross angle of Blaze's twisted body tangled up in willow branches. Silver just stands there bewildered, and when a blood vessel bursts in Blaze's eye, he pulls a face. The blood trickles down from the crease of her eyelid to the tip of her ear and falls in a drip onto the mossy tree roots.

And it was my camera angles that gave us this shot. I did that. That's what I've done. This is the mark I've made on the world.

I feel sick. "Mephiles?"

"Huh," Mephiles says, ignoring me. He slumps back down in the chair beside me and folds his arms. He tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, fascinated by the way Blaze's body sways and rocks in the wind. The corners of his eyes curl upwards, and the top of his mask moves a little. And then he begins to laugh.

It starts out small and quiet, with the shakes of his chest barely disturbing the folds in his shirt, but the more he stares, the funnier he finds Blaze's gruesome demise, to the point where he can't stop hollering until he grips my right shoulder hard and transfers some of the vehemence to me via his fingernails.

"Are you okay?" I ask him, wincing at the sharp pain.

"Oh, he's good, this one," Mephiles guffaws. "Did you see that face he made? The way he scrunched up his cloudy eyebrows and turned up his nose? It's a cat stuck in a tree, dude, you couldn't make it up!"

"You're a sadist."

"That's what they pay me for, baby," he smiles, finally letting go and calming down a little. He exhales loudly, emptying his lungs of all their air and breathing some back in again with a soft smile in his eyes. "If I weren't laughing, well, I'm not sure what I'd be doing but it wouldn't be good, that's for sure. I'm gonna go get some morphling, I'm sick of sobriety. Want some?"

"No," I say.

He shrugs. "Your loss."

"It seems to me..." Valdez ponders, then clearing his throat for the sole purpose of shutting Mephiles up, "that Espio is awake."

Attention is ripped away from Blaze and Silver, and all of it is poured back onto Espio. He's been out cold for the last two days now. It's been remarkably easy to forget that he's even alive, when Valdez hasn't been muttering about him under his breath.

Gerald very quickly drags Omochao and Master Zik onto the show in the form of a four-way split screen between the three of them and Espio, who can barely even open his eyes without swaying in waves of strong vertigo. And, like the irritating bottomless pit of unsolicited encyclopedic knowledge that he is, Omochao already has a hypothesis as to what's actually happened to Espio's brain and body. It takes a few hours to confirm it, after Valdez scrambles together another microwave soup and Espio retrieves it safely, and the Career champion has actually managed to decipher the note and drag himself back onto his feet and wobble around the forest for a little bit as if he's re-learning how to walk, occasionally pausing to do nothing but stare into space, tense up for a bit, and resume as if nothing ever froze.

He thinks, with the help of tracker data, that Espio's brain is just about as schismed as his broken arm is. He tells us via random interjections in the middle of Gerald's usual droning commentary that upon impact with the ground, Espio suffered a bash to the back of his head and since the brain floats in fluid, it would have carried its momentum, and the back of his brain would have smacked into his skull. Impact number one, and that part of the brain is what controls vision and coordinated movement, which makes sense, but nobody asked.

Then, because the brain is squishy and bouncy, it probably would have rebounded off the back of Espio's skull and gone flying into the front too, making impact number two occur somewhere in his frontal lobe, the bit that does planning and personality and some of the more complex language functions. The extent of the damage to that area might take a bit longer to calculate and confirm. The extent to which Omochao is an annoying little know-it-all takes about the length of time needed for Valdez to groan loudly and say, "I don't care about Espio's smooth brain!" to calculate and confirm.

And those weird pauses Espio does every now and then, where he spaces out for seemingly no reason, are accompanied by some of the wackiest nervous system activity that Zik and Omochao have ever seen. They curse that they can't do brain imaging on Espio to see exactly where these "seisures" are coming from, whether they start somewhere specific that got damaged and spread outwards, or if the seisures are in a little bit of everywhere.

They don't last very long. Thirty seconds, tops. But it's still not looking good for Espio at all.

Chapter Text

Mephiles, on day seven of the Hunger Games, after we were all kept down in the mentor room for just a little bit longer than usual on the sixth night, has to move his entire body to pull his head up off his desk. "What am I gonna do with this extra morphling if you don't want it?" he yawns. "I've been trying, you know I've been trying, because I wanted to be a half decent mentor for Little Miss Gemstone Needlecheeks, just to show her that I'm not as stupid as she thinks I am, but she's gone and cracked her spine like a glow stick. This stuff's got an expiry date, and I ain't no overdoser."

It's true that he has been doing quite well lately, at least whenever I've seen him. He's only been high a few times, which is a great improvement on being high near-permanently after the incident on the 25th's Interview Saturday, which I am eternally grateful we weren't friends for. I watch him eye-up an unopened 'Beast Box' on the floor next to him, a much smaller one than he usually keeps for the sake of portability, and I gently put my foot on top of it. "You heard what you just said. Wait until you've come down."

The sixth night was such a blur that I'm not sure I was thinking about anything. Sticks ran into Cream and Vector and for some reason, the two idiots decided not to kill her. The one tribute who I'm sure everybody in Panem is perfectly fine with being dead sooner rather than later, and all they did was take her bow, snap it, take her arrows, and let her scamper away.

We both watch Silver again. We've been wating for him to do something for a while, now. The kid has had next to no sleep, and whatever he did get was haunted by something nasty. After hours of shifting around under his safe tree, he gives in. He grits his teeth and heads across the clearing. Silver climbs the willow that Blaze dangles from, and with the knife, he cuts the branch.

Her head thuds against the roots and the rest of her scrunched-up body slumps around it.

"I'm so sorry," Silver whispers, hopping back down from the tree and battling with himself not to throw up. He pushes his hands beneath her arms and, as gently as he can, he pulls her behind the tree as if she's still alive and just injured. Any time her body makes a weird noise or a bone grinds beneath his fingertips, he shudders with guilt, silently muttering words of apology. And round the back of the tree, where something crunches loudly in her back, Silver drops her and falls backwards onto shreds of old firewood, pale with repulsion and shaking, unable to do any more. He throws a bunch of the firewood over Blaze's body just to be rid of her. He holds his stomach and breathes through his mouth as if he's going to vomit at any given moment, staring forwards through all solid objects at something that doesn't exist, but then he turns his head and his eyes focus right onto the camera in the back of the willow tree.

"It ain't worth it, y'all," he says, with the red light of the camera blinking in the reflections in his eyes. "You don't need it. It's not worth it."

He turns back to the pile, refusing to say anything more, but he starts to hyperventilate. He can't bear to be near the heap of wood and flesh.

"You think the tesserae is worth it?" he says to the camera again. "Trust me, brothers, it ain't."

Silver closes his eyes and makes a deep inhale. I thought this kid had no family. I thought this kid had no friends. What 'brothers'? Is this a generalisation to all of Six? It must be, right?

He says the next bit all in one go. "For more information, visit the Justice Building of your home district and read the rain-damaged laminated poster stapled to the door of the main entrance, to find out how screwed you and your siblings are in the roulette-looking scheme we call tesserae. Make sure you and your siblings are staying in school for long enough to be able to do the maths in order to work out precisely how many papers will be in the reaping bowl at every reapable age before you sign onto the tesserae contract. You may also consult your television for information on whether your district has a growing overpopulation problem." He allows himself one breath to finish it off. "Thank you for having me on your show. Mathematics."

And then he stabs the camera, and the footage turns to black.

The mentor room comes to life for the first time in a long time, with discussion and speculation over what that was all about. Silver has no family and no friends, he said in his interview that nobody is looking out for him so who could he possibly care about? Why bother caring about anybody when they don't even care about him? He's in the Hunger Games, he should only care about himself. And even if he does care, he's fourteen. He shouldn't have enough tesserae to get him even close to being reaped from 'mathematics'. Not in a massive district like District 6. Not unless there's something he isn't telling us. Who are these 'brothers' and how is he getting tesserae from them if they aren't even in the picture?

Mephiles gently pushes his chair out while the others are distracted. "I've got an idea," he whispers, and he takes my arm and pulls me to the gift table with the Beast Box in the other hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Fixing him," he whispers, glancing at the screen which has now been given a new camera. He takes some gift paper and scrawls onto it, "Don't overdo it. M."

I grip his wrist when he reaches to the parachutes. "Are you crazy?" I hiss at him. "Giving Silver hard drugs?"

"Everyone's distracted," he says. "I bet Zik and his minions are flicking through conspiracy theories at the speed of light."

"Do you know what he was talking about?"

"No, I don't," Mephiles growls, and he pulls his arm free and ties a parachute to the box. "What's the worst that could happen? The kid's not an idiot."

I keep pressing. "How did he get the tesserae, Mephiles?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"You're his mentor."

He throws the box into the gift chute and presses the button that will tell Master Zik and his 'minions' to send it to Silver. We head back to our seats just in time for the rest of the mentors to finish their little discussion and point their eyes to Mephiles.

"You think I know anything about any of that?" he says to everybody, and they say nothing. "Well I don't know anything about any of that."

The others aren't convinced. They still don't say anything, but the looks they toss between each other speak of nothing but scepticism, and I'm not sure I believe him either. He leans on his desk in a way where only I can see the contents of the monitors, almost perfectly in sync with the moment a bar at the top turns green and text appears in the middle of the screen.

Gift approved.

Chapter Text

I can't sleep. And I think I know exactly what it is that's keeping me up.

"Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, icon of ecology..."

I kneel on the floor before the coffee table I ruined days ago. The water has dried up, leaving a stain on the table, and what I thought was solid wood has shrivelled up like wet paper. A veneer. And for the fun of it, I stick my head under the table and see the seal of District 8 next to the seal of District 7, where a solid wooden table would only have the latter. But it would have been polished by product from One, packaged in a plastic bottle from Six, engineered in Three using computers fuelled by Five and Twelve, labelled with paper from Seven in buildings made with materials from Two, and the people behind it all fed with food from the rest.

"...burgeon ideology, bio lizard, biohazard, nibbling flowers dried and tattered..."

I think my problem is that I don't know whose side I'm even on anymore.

"...sunflower lizard of dandelion might, yellow like sun, dark like night..."

That's not a good position to be in.

"...Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, Mr. Boy will have his roof again."

And neither is this. I shuffle back out from under the table, shifting a rug with my feet by accident, and then flipping it over on purpose.

This isn't doing me any good in my head so I need to pick a side and stick with it. None of this crisscrossing paths between excelling in whatever this endeavour is and trying to play pacifist, siding with the districts. I'm either a faithful or I'm a traitor, that's what I'm dealing with here. and toeing the line to please everyone around me just won't do. Just look at where that's gotten me. And I can understand the other mentors, the victor mentors, feeling for the districts, I really can. Because they're from there. They're biased towards their own kind. Just look at where that's gotten Dr. Deep. And while we're at it, Mephiles. He too is toeing the line, giving gifts to the Capitol in the form of leathery scenes and tramways, and now he's giving his tribute bits of his own precious supply. It doesn't feel like a legal move. It certainly didn't look like a legal move with the way he made it, but I'd be lying if I said I remember the exact nuances of gift giving rules. He didn't buy it with the sponsorship money but it's not like he bought it with his own, either. Those drugs, those Beast Boxes, are a kind of neutral item. A no-man's land. The taxpayer bought that, and I don't think anybody made any rules on that. But if I'm going to pick a side and stick with it, it's him or the game.

I can't sleep like this.

I head back down to the mentor room at about midnight, just to see if anybody's still in, and to my surprise, it's not as empty as I thought it'd be. In the room at their desks are Jules, Vanilla, and Eight's mentor, and Mephiles is sat on the floor leaning against the cupboards of the gift table, fast on.

"What are you doing back here?" Jules smiles tiredly.

"Couldn't sleep," I reply, dragging my feet back to my desk. "Too much on my mind."

"Like what?"

I think about it for a minute or so. "Philosophical stuff."

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No thank you, Jules," I smile. "Thanks for the offer, though."

He's always been like that with everyone, Jules has. He might just be the nicest man I've ever met. He's an empath, and not one of those fake ones, either. He's been through so much but he holds it in a wise way, always knowing what words to say and how to say them, always prioritising justice and the wellbeing of others despite having suffered so much. And by keeping the secret that Dr. Deep was the fourteenth's second victor, whose side am I on then? Jules's, by letting him sidestep all controversy? Or am I not on his side? Would delegitimising his victory allow him a long deserved break from victorship or would it make his life a living hell?

Picking a side is not going to be a clear-cut endeavour, is it?

These computers, in their files and folders, have the highlight reels of past Hunger Games editions to use as a reference point. I pull open the fourteenth and flick through it, searching for the boy from Three, and before long I find him.

Acne-ridden and stache-less, both eyes in tact, decidedly blond, a slightly different nose but everything else is the same, just younger. The large jaw and oddly small forehead, the broad shoulders and lanky limbs that stick out from their clothing. And his voice, when he speaks in the interview, is a lot less confident and gruff, but it's still him. He's no liar. There was never a time where I didn't believe him because why would someone lie about this? But somehow, it's surreal to see it confirmed with my own eyes. In the background of the shot, Jules sits quietly, patiently wating for his turn to be interviewed, gazing at young Dr. Deep with full, glassy eyes, not a scratch on his body, not a glimmer of metal.

"Yeah," Jules sighs, looking to my monitor as the scene flicks onto the girl from Four's interview highlights. "Sometimes I look back on it myself and wonder if I'm even the same person as I was. I feel like I've changed so much since then. Not just physically, but in my head too."

"But you're you still, aren't you?" I say. "You're one of them. The boys from District 7. They are you and you are them?"

"Definitely," he nods. "And seeing Green Hill Zone..."

Jules trails off into silence, and looks up at the moonlit seventh night, cast over the arena on the big screen at the front. It's on a wide angle from above, showing the contours of the land and the pattern of the trees and the glint of the river that meanders around the side, sourced from the mountains, and beyond the lake it empties into, in the far distance, are those same rolling hills where he and Dr. Deep spent the worst days of their lives.

"It makes you think about it more?"

"Yeah," he nods. "Yeah."

Chapter Text

"I can't stand it," Vanilla says, watching her daughter sleeping underneath a willow tree with her hands pinned tightly under her armpits. "Four thousand... I can get her some mittens with that, right? The fingerless gloves they have in there seem completely useless, and she always hated it when her fingers were cold."

"You might be able to do it," Jules yawns in reply. "They shouldn't be too expensive."

Vanilla steps over to the gift table, treading carefully so the echoes of her clicking heels don't wake Mephiles. She requests a pair of mittens and pays one thousand and eighty for them, packages them in a box, and goes to write Cream's name. But before she packs them, she buys a bigger pair, and then writes the note.

"Why did you never write Vector's names on the gifts?" Eight's mentor asks, noticing the familiar movements of Vanilla's fingers. She's written enough notes for gifts that he's memorised each pen stroke from afar. "I know you were complaining about room, but don't you think he'd be a bit miffed that they're all going to Cream?"

"No," she shakes her head, packaging the two pairs of mittens and sticking the note on the box. "He knows they're allies. He knows that everything that's his is also Cream's and everything that's Cream's is also his. We've had this conversation many a time, but I do still trust Cream more to share."

Vanilla's gift is posted in no time, and the box of mittens lands right on Cream's lap, waking her up. She opens it, reads the note, and tries to share the contents with Vector, but he refuses to even look at what they are. In the low light, he almost looks irritated by the gift after seeing Cream's name yet again

"You sure about that?"

"Shut it, Bark," Vanilla sighs. "They weren't for him initially anyway."

"C and V?" I suggest. "Cream and Vec? C, ampersand, V? You can't fit three letters on a paper?"

Vanilla purses her lips and watches Cream fall back to sleep.

Vector doesn't stop staring at her, watching her chest move with every breath, looking at how her drooped ears sway in the light breeze, and in one swift movement he stands up and plucks the snapped bow from the ground. He pulls the string taut and twangs it with a fingertip and stares at her again with hatred in his eyes. He sighs, and treads over to her.

"Vector?" Vanilla says, with a tremble in her voice. "We talked about this."

He drapes the string around Cream's neck, ever so gently.

Vanilla's chair shoots out from under her. "Vector!"

His grip turns from careful to stern, and his face contorts into nothing but rage. He tightens the string as hard as he can, cutting into the skin on Cream's neck and splitting it open. He wraps his elbow around her head and jolts it, snapping her spine, before letting her go and watching her head fall forwards, her chin landing on her chest. Blood seeps down past Cream's shirt collar, staining the cloth in its path. Her light goes out, and the cannon blows.

Vanilla can't breathe. Her mouth hangs open, trembling. Her hands shakily clasp the sides of her computer keyboard. She keeps her eyes locked onto the big screen, staring straight into Vector's amber eyes and she keeps staring at that exact spot even as the screen flicks into Omochao's night shift. He starts talking but she doesn't hear any of it. She lets out a scream.

It's the kind of scream that rattles windows, disregards walls, and pierces you, chills you to the bone, and makes you wish you were dead so you wouldn't have to hear it or feel its blades in your chest. It's raw, unfiltered agony. It's the shrill screech of a soul split in two. The end of a world. Her whole, entire world.

Vanilla collapses to her knees, crashing into the table on her way down, and Jules jumps up to catch her before she can be hurt. She leans backwards into his arms and wails, tears spilling down her face, and Jules holds her in his embrace. They stay like that for ages, and Jules gently rocks his fellow long serving victor, as her pained howls die down into a soundless ache that pulses from her ribs in every breath and shake of her shattered heart.

She hums and leans into Jules's collarbone, speaking into his neck. "I don't want to do this anymore," she cries. "I don't want to be a mentor anymore."

"Please don't try to quit," I say gently, putting an end to this trope before it can begin. "Don't even try."

She lifts her head off Jules's shoulder and turns to me. She looks dreadful, with her eyeliner running down her cheeks. "What do you mean?" Her voice cracks. "Master Zik-"

"He almost ran me over when I tried to leave and I didn't even know about Maria yet," I inform her. I try to say it as calmly as I can for her. "If you have a tribute to mentor, you have to mentor them, or else he'll bundle you in his car and drag you right back here. You're not gonna have a choice."

Vanilla growls. "I refuse to mentor him! I will not do it! I will not mentor a... a monster-"

"Don't waste your time trying to quit, Vanilla," I tell her. "If you can take Vector to victory, you'll never have to do this again."

Vanilla is stunned, unable to believe what she's hearing. I watch her retreat into her own head and stack my words up in her mind. She laughs through her teeth like she doesn't know what else to do. It's not pleasant. Her eyes are wide and her gaze is erratic and the tears don't stop flowing. She unwraps herself from Jules. "That's rich," she chokes, staggering to her feet. "Coming from a clown like you!"

She throws her chair out of the way and stomps past me, tipping one of my monitors over as she goes by it, and leaves through the door, slamming it behind her. The echoes rumble through the room.

I'm left between three other men, pinned in place by their silent judgement. Bark, whose name I've only just become accustomed to, knits his eyebrows and follows her long-gone path from her chair to the door and then looks back up to me, and I don't like it, so I turn to Jules. He sighs quietly through his nose and shakes his head, almost unnoticeably. So I look to Mephiles, and the second my eyes meet his, he looks away.

Could I have done that any worse? Probably not. Should I care? Yes, definitely. Do I care?

Do I care that I just upset Vanilla beyond belief, or did I just tell her exactly what she needed to hear? The truth? I didn't want to delude her into thinking she can just walk away from this. Arguing with Zik would surely only make things worse. I've tried that and yet I keep on coming back. And when I hear a door slam and a yell or two from upstairs even through all the soundproofing, I know that I'm right. She can't quit, and by trying to, she's caused herself so much unnecessary stress. Her distraught cries press through the walls. She still has a tribute to mentor and the Hunger Games will drag her back kicking and screaming, because you can't just walk away from the Hunger Games. Once you're here, you're here forever. Once you get involved, the silhouette of the seal of Panem, pressed into the wax stamp on the Treaty of Treason, is burnt into your flesh with a glowing metal plate and the scar stays there until the day you die. Vanilla lost Cream the second her name was pulled out of the bowl. There was no point in having any hope for her, for she was basically already dead.

Somebody had to tell her.

But the others don't seem to agree with me. Not even Mephiles seems to agree with me and it's always my side that he's on. But I'm not going to feel any guilt for this. Cream's death was Vanilla's own fault, and you know what? So was Miles's. Nine's, even. He should have won instead of Maria, and I'm sure he must have made some indication that he was going to lose his mind. All she had to do was tell him to nip it in the bud with the gadgets and none of us, none of us, would have had these problems. Her kid would be alive, the Chaos Council would be alive, the Treaty of Treason wouldn't be in jeopardy, and I wouldn't be stuck in a time loop.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" Jules asks.

I look back to him and think about what I want to say, and what I really should say, and decide that the latter is a better idea for now even if it's not true. "Yeah. Very."

Chapter Text

"Come to the Control Room when you get this. We need to catch up."

-o-

The familiar, tinny sound of corrugated, perforated metal sings from beneath my feet and I find myself wanting to step to the beat of Gem of Panem, that oh so forbidden lullaby that may or may not have been what sent me to sleep last night. I should have known the Chaos Council were trouble the second they asked me to whip that out in the car. I should have known Deep was District. Deeply District. So District that he swung back round into engineering their slow deaths to make himself feel better about the fact that he's District, and he survived, and they didn't.

I clasp my fingers around the doorhandle on the wall of frosted glass, push it down, and lean forward.

"Ah, Eclipse!" Master Zik grins. "It took a while for you to make it here, did it not?"

"I've been struggling to sleep," I admit. It's the mid afternoon and I'm barely awake. "I've resorted to singing myself lullabies."

He hooks the end of his stick around my arm and pulls me into the room. "Oh, I don't blame you. I don't think a soul in the nation has had a good sleep since Reaping Monday, myself included."

"What have you called me here for?"

He leaps up onto his desk chair after squeaking it up to the highest setting and taps the far end of the surface, inviting me to sit too. "A wellbeing check-up."

I gingerly sit, and I have to lower the chair so it's not awkward. "Is this therapy?"

"Only if you want it to be. But I'm only qualified to listen."

"Are you even qualified for that?"

"Well, no..." he smiles, "but I do care about you because I think you're something special."

"Huh," I nod. "I wonder where I've heard that before. Why do you think I'm special?" I ask. "Why does everyone think I'm something special? I'm just some dude who did well in an exam last year."

"Because you don't quit," he grins, tapping his fingers on every word.

"Only because I can't."

Master Zik leans back in his chair. "I am not going to infringe upon your own free will. Your own legs took you into the passenger seat of my car. I didn't catch you in a net and kidnap you like Vanilla reckons I did. Something in your brain told you you needed to get back here and get the job done. It's your dedication towards an end goal that makes you special, Eclipse."

He misses the fact that not once have I had an end goal in mind beyond 'get out and stay out'.

He continues dreamily. "Just look at what you've created." Master Zik looks over to the various screens positioned above the balcony, and at the group of Gamemakers at their work stations. "Anyway, how is it going with you? What's going well? Because I think you have a tendency to focus on the negatives. How about we bring some sunshine into this?"

"What's going well?" I repeat. "Sunshine..." And I have to think about it.

What's going very well, the first thing that comes to my mind, is the fact that I'm not in the terrace. That's going extremely well. And I never did call my dad back and explain why I never turned up when I said I was coming home. But he never called me either, so that's going well too. And Shadow is alive and he's in the sunshine. He's still with Matilda in the grass circle, and I shouldn't really be caring about anything other than him. And Mephiles got away with whatever it is that he did, but I still don't know if there was anything for him to get away with.

"I have a question."

It's not the response Master Zik was expecting, but he allows it anyway. "Go on?"

"How does money work?"

He looks very confused.

"Let me rephrase. How do... how does gift giving work with money? What are the limits?"

"Eclipse, this is your second year in mentoring."

"No, I know what we can do, but I think there's a grey area with what we can't."

Master Zik places his stick on the ground in front of his chair and leans quizzically on its top bend.

"I know you can't send things in that you bought with your own personal money but what if..." I try to think of a scenario that doesn't dob Mephiles right in it. "What if I picked a flower-"

"What are you talking about?"

"What if I picked a flower," I assert, "something that I didn't buy, but nobody else in particular bought either, no sponsor, and sent that? A no-man's land of an object?"

He's not getting it.

I keep going. "Like if the taxpayer paid for that flower bed-"

"No, I don't think that would be allo-" He cuts himself off with his own thoughts. We sit in silence for a good few seconds as he stares deep into the table and drums his fingers on the top of his stick. "No."

"Okay."

"Did you do it?"

"No."

"Did someone else do it?"

"Uh..."

He picks up on my hesitation. Master Zik looks at me deeply, narrowing his eyes. "Someone else did it."

"Master Zik-"

He swings off his chair using the stick as a vault lever and clunks it towards the dome. He reaches out and touches the smooth semi-spherical side of it and zooms in on Silver, staring at the patch of dirt that he buried the Beast Box underneath yesterday, every now and then making the beginning of a movement towards it but cancelling it at the last second. Zik rotates Silver inside of the dome and eventually, he gives up trying to resist, and uncovers the box. He doesn't even need the instruction papers to know how to drug himself up with opioids like a professional.

"Hey Dad," he chuckles. "Are you proud of me?" He eases the liquid into a vein in his arm and smiles. "Nah, didn't think so."

"Eclipse," Master Zik says lowly. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention."

My heart rate quickens. This is not what I wanted. "What are you planning?"

"Please go back downstairs."

"Master Zik, what are you planning?"

He turns to me and rests his greasy stick on my shoulder. "Don't panic," he says calmly. "I just have some damage control to do."

Don't panic? Don't panic? I just accidentally snitched on my best friend literally the day after somehow managing to piss him off and we haven't even spoken since then!

"And you wonder why people like you?" Zik smiles, ignoring the emotion that I know I'm doing an awful job at hiding. "Scram."

Chapter Text

"Mephiles!" I shout, bursting the door open.

He sighs at his screen, which is zoomed deep into Silver's arm, and opens his little sketchbook onto a clean page and writes, '10/10 positioning, 7/10 insertion, could have been faster'. He turns around in his chair. "Yeah?"

I step by the door and gently push it shut behind me and head over to him, take his arm, and pull him to the gift table so he knows that this is a conversation just for us two. "I might have said something awful."

"Yeah, you upset Vanilla. The one woman I actually like."

"No, not that," I whisper. "Something else."

I keep hold of his hand even though he's not holding onto me at all. Mephiles looks around at the place we're stood at. His eyes flick between the cupboards and the canisters, the parachutes and the gift chute, and the note papers and the pens provided. And suddenly, he does grip onto me. Tightly.

"What did you do?" he growls, but it might as well be a shout.

My hand shakes within his. "So you know that box you sent to Silver?" I start, and I begin to worry about what his reaction to this might be. I haven't thought that far ahead. "I may have inadvertently asked Master Zik if that was an illegal move... and now he knows what you've done."

"You... You asked if it was an illegal move?" Mephiles pulls away from me and I let my arms fall to my sides. He steps back from me, eyebrows crossed and eyes wide. "Bitch, did that look legal to you?"

"I-I don't know! That's why I asked!"

"Why would you do that?" he bellows, but before he can say anything more, something beeps.

It's not a beep anybody in the mentor room has heard before. Everybody looks up and around, searching for the source of it. It's followed up with Master Zik's voice. "Can Mephiles the Dark please come to the Control Room immediately. Thank you."

When the tannoy clicks off, Mephiles groans loudly and comes back onto me again. "How many more rules do you have to break before it gets into your stupid head?" He rips into me. "How many chances do you need? Gamemakers are not your friends, Eclipse. You don't tell them things, you don't work for them!" Mephiles strides up to me and leans close to my face. "YOU DON'T. TRUST. GAMEMAKERS."

"I'm sorry!"

"I should know, because you were one!" He yells. His voice echoes around the room and inside of my head. "I trusted you, and now look what's happened!"

My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach because he's right. The one category of people that Mephiles always told me I should never put my trust in, I put my trust in. And I became one. And he put his trust in me and I broke it. I wronged him. Just like every other Gamemaker wronged him. And that little whining thought in the back of my mind telling me to pick a side comes back again, but I push it away. Now is not the time.

Mephiles shoves past me, knocking me into the gift table and slams his door on the way out just like Vanilla did. But I don't think I want to stay here. I don't think I like these people at all. So I leave too, and I follow his path up the stairs and back towards the Control Room.

"I'm afraid there are going to be severe consequences for your rule breaking," says Master Zik's voice, which is muffled by the frosted glass.

When I get to the top, I see Mephiles's back pressed against the door.

"The conclusions the President and I have come to are that you will not be disqualified from mentoring, for the sole reason that we have nobody willing to cover for you. Instead, once the Games are over, you will be evicted from the Tribute Centre and sent back to the Victor's Village-"

"What?"

"-and your morphling supply will be cut by fifty percent every month."

"No!" Mephiles yells. "You can't do that? I made a deal with the President! We signed it!"

"And in the coming years, you will not mentor. The responsibility for District 6 will be handed back to the students."

Mephiles begins to laugh in disbelief. "You can't just take my drugs? What about my trams? My life? I- I made a life here!"

"To quote the President," Master Zik says, "Pandering to that dopehead and fuelling his superiority complex was one of the biggest mistakes I've made in my presidency so far."

Mephiles pushes himself off the door. "Why you little-"

Master Zik stares at Mephiles, who charges towards him, and finishes the quote. "Who needs trams anyway?"

And I don't know why or how, but everything feels like it slows down. Each step Mephiles makes echoes in the room. His jacket, the same jacket he threw on all those weeks ago when he was on his way to scrape my dead body off the floor, sways with each enraged movement his legs make. Zik stands before him with his stick pointing high, looking up at Mephiles's masked face with a deadpan expression, not even flinching, not even scared. And behind them is the hum of the other Gamemakers, who gather on the Gamemaker balcony.

The Gamemaker balcony. The gun-ridden Gamemaker balcony. Should something go wrong.

In one swoop, the Gamemakers grip onto a gun each and point them all directly at Mephiles's chest, and before he can register what they're doing, right as his head looks up over Zik and to the fleet of barrels pointed directly at him, they shoot.

The impact of bullets hitting his chest all at once pushes him backwards and topples him. Blood sprays from his front as the bullets travel through the skeleton in his torso, rattling him and shattering every bone in the vicinity. And when he crashes into the floor in front of the frosted glass door, a torrent of red shoots up out of his panicked, punctured heart and it leaks beneath the rim of the door and onto the perforated metal, dripping down to the floor below, running down the door to the mentor room, and staining everything it touches in liquid guilt.

And when the beat of his heart stops and the fountain of blood ceases and turns into a seeping puddle, Master Zik, although blurry, stands as clearly as anything and sees me on the landing. He thuds his stick on the floor just once, vibrating the floor, and that's enough for me to take the hint and go.

Chapter Text

Gem of Panem, mighty city, through the ages you shine anew.
We humbly kneel to your ideal and pledge our love to you!

Gem of Panem, heart of Justice, wisdom crowns your marble brow.
You give us light, you reunite, to you we make our vow!

Gem of Panem, seat of power, strength in peacetime, shield in strife
Protect our land with armoured hand. Our Capitol, our life!

-o-

When I get to the bottom of the stairs, my body keeps on descending and I end up on my knees on the cold tiles of the ground floor. My heart pounds out of my chest, throwing me forwards and stretching my stomach until I begin to retch. But there's nothing in there. In fact, I can't remember the last time I ate, but I can't think about it for long before it all starts invading my head once again. Nothing leaves my body. Nothing can leave my body and my head.

The mentor room door opens somewhere behind me and it scares me. I fall onto my hands and turn over, leaning backwards, and look up at the person in the blood-streaked doorway. It's dark behind him because that's what the mentor room is like but as I'm looking up at him, and he's looking down at me, the door creaks. And then he reaches down to me.

I feel my neck tighten. "NO!" I yell, and push myself backwards along the tiles to distance myself from his outstretched hand. "Don't touch me!"

I have to sit up and scratch at my neck to get the awful feeling to go away, breathing hard, but slowly, as silence falls upon the place again, I realise there's nothing there. He wasn't going to do anything to me. He - Jules - was going to help me up. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jules comes out from the doorway and clicks the door shut behind him, noticing the fresh blood on the paintwork. "I thought I'd come and see what's going on," he says, staring at it, mortified.

I slowly push myself up off the floor and brush myself down. I don't want to be here right now. And if Zik or Jules want me back in the mentor room any time soon, they're going to have to pick me up by the ankles and drag me.

I choose my moment and sprint past him up the stairs and I keep on running despite his calls of my stupid name. There's only one place on my mind and there's only one card in my pocket. I keep on running and running even when my tired legs are screaming at me to stop and when I get to the sixth floor, muscles burning, I scan the card onto the door and it opens for me. And I almost say his name and ask him if he's home, just out of habit. And when I walk inside I can't help but look around for him, on the sofa in his favourite spot, or in the kitchen leant against the cupboard that holds his entire source of happiness in black boxes, or on the floor by the cabinet with the sewing kits and sketchbooks and fabrics and pens, his childlike side that never truly left him, sealed away in a corner. But he's not here, because he's downstairs flat on his back and filled with metal that I may as well have put there with my own hands. Because I did that, didn't I. He's shot because of me.

Footsteps and heavy breathing arrive behind me but I ignore Jules and walk deeper inside. I go past the yellow door, past that half-complete painting that now has its second half disconnected somewhere. But before I go inside that room, I decide to check out the others. One of the bedrooms is quite clean and normal and basic and usual, given what floor it's on. And the other bedroom is the same, aside from the hoodie hung up on the back wall.

I know this hoodie. I'm sure I know it. I reach out to it and feel it in my hands. It's not fluffy on the inside like I expected it to be. It's bobbled and course like it's been worn and washed a million times, but it doesn't look old from the outside. And then I remember which tributes lived here for a week. Silver and Blaze. Silver's Reaping hoodie is here.

'Hey Dad,' I remember him chuckling. 'Are you proud of me?' he asked. 'Nah, didn't think so,' he said with a smile.

"I think I've lost my mind," I say.

"I would be inclined to agree." Jules stands at the foot of Silver's bed holding two bits of round fabric. "I found these in the waste paper bin."

I gingerly walk over to Jules and take the fabric off him. They are quite clearly the cuffs of the hoodie, shrunk down in diameter by clever stitching. They're not cut very neatly, and the embroidery is rather charming from the outside and yet a complete tangle of folded fabric and loose ends on the inside. With a tug or two, the whole thing loosens, and returns to its original shape, with the embroidery pattern still in tact.

"In the cabinet behind the sofa, there is a sewing kit in one of the drawers," I tell Jules. And without having to say a word more, he fetches it for me.

I unpin Silver's Reaping hoodie from the wall, and during the next forever, I reattach the cuffs to the hoodie. I don't know why he would have done this to it, other than to try and take a part of it in the arena with him as a token. With the state of it, all worn on the inside of the felty fabric, he must have loved it a lot and wore it to death. And I can only explain the parts of it ending up in the waste bin by Mephiles deciding that out of all the rules that exist, this was the one to follow. No possible advantageous tokens. And I don't know what could possibly be advantageous about scraps of fabric from a hoodie, but Mephiles's thought processes have never been easy to figure out.

I take my time with it and Jules sits on the bed with me and watches every stitch I make.

I think, in the event that Silver wins, which with the rate he's going in terms of kills and hiding spots he probably will, he should come back to something nice. The hoodie he loved, cut up and embroidered, revived. With the work he did still on it, just touched up and neatened a little, with the threads of the man who drugged him to victory. And I think, if he's got nobody, he'll want at least somebody to tell him he's proud of him.

I know I would, if it were me.

"Do you think he'll live?" I ask Jules, and I realise afterwards that I could be talking about literally anyone. Mephiles, Silver, Shadow, anyone. "If he doesn't," I continue, still not knowing who to focus on, "it's my fault, right?"

"Yeah, it is."

I freeze. "You're just gonna tell me how it is?"

He shrugs. "Telling it how it is seems to be your thing so I thought I'd hop on that train."

Chapter Text

Past the swarm of Peacekeepers, Jules takes me back into the mentor room. He didn't have to pick me up and he didn't have to drag me. He just talked to me for ages and ages until I felt like moving my legs. I didn't like the reality check he gave me, but it was the reality check that I needed. We talked in Silver's room and I don't think I was fully listening at any point. I don't think I can remember many of the words either of us said but I can remember how it felt to hear them.

Yeah. It is my fault. The entire thing is my fault. And neither of us can agree on whether I did the right thing but can I do anything about it now? No. Will letting my thoughts consume me help at all? No. Do I feel like screaming and punching that blue bitch in the face for doing to me exactly what I did to Vanilla? Yes. But what is that going to achieve?

'Don't dish out what you can't take.' I remember that part. I also remember him telling me that time loops only exist if I let them, so I just shouldn't. And I remember asking him directly if Mephiles is dead, and when he told me yes, asking him again. Calling him a liar. And he said to me, 'If he were alive, then what would there be to blame you for?'

And when I get in and I see Vanilla sitting on the floor right where Mephiles was when Cream died, I wonder what it'd be like to be dead. It's not something I've ever thought about before.

"IDIOT!"

Valdez is having another moment, it seems. Espio is, once again, annoying him to the point of rage. The screen zooms in on a packet of biscuits floating down the river, and then onto the face of a chameleon who looks less than surprised to have dropped them. He watches the biscuits travel away from him, being pushed by the river current, with a completely neutral expression stuck across his face. There's nothing notable about it at all aside from how still and unbothered he is.

"Why did you bring me back in here?" I ask Jules.

"To prove a point."

"Do you have to prove a point to me right after I kill my best friend?"

He rolls his eyes. "You killed nobody."

"You just told me, several times, that this entire thing is my fault."

Jules just raises his eyebrows and sits down in his seat. "Just because it's true doesn't mean you have to be a prick about it. We've already discussed this. You had no intention of getting him in trouble, let alone shot, so the most you can do right now is chill out and focus on the Game until it's over. He died of his own stupidity."

"But I'm the reason!" I shout at him, and I can feel my brain pulling itself into a whirlwind again. "I'm the reason my only friend is dead! I'm stuck in a time loop, I swear! Everywhere I go-"

"ECLIPSE. Sit down." Jules yells. He breathes in deeply through his nose. "I'm gonna get you a coffee. And you're gonna drink it. And you're gonna do what every other mentor is doing because that is the only thing that matters right now."

I don't sit down.

"No more time loops. No more secrets. No more betrayals."

"No more?"

"No more."

Our eye contact is deep. He stares far into me. Farther than I've ever gone. It's a feeling stare. It's almost like he is pushing a cloud of calm and reassurance into my head via his mind and his metal eye. Remarkable, after everything he's just said to me. After forbidding me from thinking about Mephiles, knowing I would never stop. After giving me the rawest, most brutal truth because, like it or not, I needed to hear it from someone that isn't me. But before I can cry over it like I so desperately want to, his stare silences me and it feels like it's gonna be okay. He just has that effect on people, I guess. I sit down and he gets up and exits the mentor room for a vending machine, leaving me feeling strangely empty.

I can only describe it as like water. Like I've been cleaned out. Like my brain has been scrubbed with a tough-bristled brush and rinsed under a cold tap. And there is a feeling going on in my chest. The slow rumble of an anxious weight that pulls on my heartbeat. But I think I'm more alert than I've ever felt in recent weeks. Everything looks and feels sharper, like I'm truly in the present. Like I'm in control even if I'm not. And when Jules returns with the coffee and I take a few sips and the caffeine starts to do its thing, I feel hopeful.

The evening brings Cream's face to the sky and I take the opportunity to apologise to Vanilla over how I've behaved, but she won't have it. She says I was right, and that this is what she deserved. Not what Cream deserved, but what she herself deserved. And I tell her that nobody deserves this even though I don't believe it at all.

Vanilla takes out a small, ragged old book from a deep pocket in her dress. I catch the title of it - The Freedom Fighters of Knothole - before she lays it flat on her lap and pulls up her knees. I've never heard of it, and I've never heard of Knothole, so I wonder if it's a fiction book. But every now and then, while pretending to look at my monitors, I glance back over.

It doesn't look like fiction. It's filled to the brim with photographic pictures, graphic text boxes, and timelines and bolded text galore. It's a fact book of some kind, which is odd because where could Knothole possibly be if it's not in the realm of fiction?

Maybe it's in District 3.

It's known that Vanilla has a love for books, all books, and reading of any kind. She said it in her interview fifteen years ago and it doesn't seem like a lot has changed. But I never thought of her as the kind of woman to sit on a cold floor reciting pages upon pages of information back to herself about a random little village somewhere random in the world.

Regardless, she's reading. She's doing something to keep her mind off things and that's all anyone can ask for right now. She reads, I play the game. It's all the same to me.

Chapter Text

"An investigation has been launched in District 6 after concerns were raised over a suspected case of tesserae fraud. This comes after Silver Venice's improvised speech on day seven of the Hunger Games, the contents of which were drastically inconsistent with all information previously known about him. This investigation will target Six's most impoverished communities and begin in the Northern Shanty, which is where most tributes reaped from District 6 in recent years have originated from, with one notable exception being the late Mephiles the Dark."

-o-

"We can't stay here forever, Shadow."

"Why?" Shadow leans back onto a rock. "It's safe here. We have good water. We're surrounded by food sources."

Matilda sighs. "So you just want to wait it out?"

"Yeah. Is there a problem with that?"

"I don't have a weapon. I don't have anything to defend myself."

Shadow gazes up into the clouds and pushes his shoulders back, cracking his upper back against the rock he's leant on before relaxing onto it again. "One. You have me to defend you. Two. People often die to their own weapon. Three. Where are we even going to get a weapon?"

Matilda smirks and folds her arms. "One. What if you die before I do? Two. It's worth the risk to not be defenceless. Three. The Cornucopia, and all but one Career is dead and we both know he's no harm to us."

"The Cornucopia?" Shadow sits up.

"There might be something left in there."

"Like a pack of angry tributes guarding their castle? I don't care if the Careers are dead. If anything, that makes it even less safe because now we have no idea who's gonna be there."

"We need to restock on supplies, Shadow. I know you like the taste of wet grass and meat sticks but we need more."

Shadow tips his head back onto the rock and lets out a long, defeated sigh. "Fine. We can go to the edge and if it's clear we can have a look."

Matilda grins and pats Shadow on the shoulder, a gesture which he cringes at slightly. Matilda doesn't notice. "Thanks, you're the best."

When they pack up and get to walking, Gerald zooms us in on the Cornucopia. It's still surrounded by the bodies of the tributes who went out in the Bloodbath, cold and stiff and pale in the faces. Inside, there's not much food that's worth eating. Most of the supplies were buried under Amy by Tikal so unless Shadow and Matilda want to go graverobbing, all they'll have to choose from are some more bags of heavily preserved food and a bunch of sad-looking grapes. Mighty's favourite wall of shed tools still remains virtually full above Amy, and as for real weapons, it's all close combat stuff like nunchucks, chains and whips, weird little blades, and spiked knuckle dusters, which Gerald says would have been really good on Knuckles if he or Tikal had found them.

"I think it's clear," Matilda whispers, when the two of them make it to the edge of the grass.

"You'd better be right," Shadow hisses, unsheathing his sword and stepping out into the central clearing with Matilda close behind.

They inspect the remains of the Career campfire. It's melded into the mud now, since rainstorm after rainstorm battered its charred contents. Neither of them can work out what was in there initially, so they move on into the Cornucopia itself.

Matilda can't bear to look at Amy. Shadow is unfazed, though, telling her that he was here when it happened and he's just glad she's not rotting yet. Matilda scrunches up her nose at that, and unhooks the nunchucks from the wall and puts them in her bag. Shadow collects more food, including the grapes, and the two of them head back outside. They climb up onto the top of the rickety shack and sit on the edge facing the fields and the mountains, with their feet dangling over.

"It's a pretty arena, isn't it?" Matilda smiles.

"I guess," Shadow replies monotonously. He clearly still doesn't want to be there.

"I told you it was gonna be okay," she keeps smiling, but the smile is wiped off her face in an instant when something creaks behind them. Shadow and Matilda slowly, almost comedically, turn around, and they watch those familiar orange and brown pigtails rise above the other side of the Cornucopia roof.

"Damn." Shadow's grip tightens on his sword. "Not here..."

Sticks sprints at them across the roof, and Shadow grabs Matilda by the collar of her coat and pulls her forwards. They fall onto the ground and scramble back onto their feet, running away just in time for Sticks to land on all fours right where they were.

"RUN!" Shadow yells to Matilda, and she does.

"Good luck!" She yells back to Shadow in case they don't meet again, and the two of them take separate directions, not looking back, knowing that if Sticks is hot on their heels, looking back will only lose them precious time. Sticks takes a second to make up her mind and decides that Matilda is more worth her time and energy, but she's already long gone into the trees by the time she gets up to speed. When Sticks enters the forest, she lets out a kind of battle cry, and runs in the wrong direction.

The camera settles on the particular patch of trees that Sticks turned by. When the echoes of nearby startled birds die down, there's a rustle among the leaves, and soon after, a tribute sticks their nose out. Vector.

"There he goes," Gerald commentates as Vector climbs out of the bush and walks towards the central clearing with nothing but a snapped bow and some blunt screwdrivers to his name. "He's been in that bush all day, waiting for any signs of life in the Cornucopia, and he's finally found them, look. He'll be so disappointed when he gets there and finds nothing but more screwdrivers. Hilarious."

While Shadow runs deeper into the forest and Matilda settles by the river, Vector walks confidently towards the shack with a smile emerging on his face, mistakenly convinced that there must be something left for him. But when he gets there, the shot quickly cuts to the edge of the arena.

"Shadow!" Espio shouts, but his voice is not heard. "SHADOW, STOP!"

Chapter Text

Shadow trips on a rock and flies forwards, landing face first on a patch of mushy grass, just one stretched arm away from being cooked inside out by the arena border. I have to steady myself on my desk despite being firmly sat down in my chair and reassure my head that in its panic and dizziness, it will not fall off and Shadow will survive. He slowly pushes himself off the ground and brushes himself off, panting loudly. He licks around in his mouth, no doubt tasting blood after running so hard and so fast. Shadow grits his teeth, and heads to Espio.

"You could have both of us dead with that yelling-"

"The border is right there," Espio says. He goes to say more, but instead he has to pull his right hand up to his head and ride out a wave of vertigo that threatens to pull him over, but he refuses to let it. His words are drawn out. "You'd have flown a mile."

Shadow looks concerned, and in the break of his frustration, he hears that faint, almost undetectable buzz of the electric border.

Espio watches Shadow realise where he is. "You're welcome," he says, and he throws a rock at it just to prove a point.

Shadow is not as interested in the border as he is in Espio's condition. "You look ill."

"I feel it."

Shadow sits on a rock opposite Espio and lets him explain his run of the games so far. But his language ability keeps on failing him. He loses a sentence or two as he's saying them, and in the middle of explaining what he did to Jet, he disconnects from his reality again. When he returns, seemingly unaware of the trance, Shadow says nothing, preferring to let Espio keep on talking as if nothing ever happened. I can't tell if it's out of respect that he doesn't point it out, or out of confusion. But Espio isn't that bad. For the majority of the time, he's coherent and good and well, but something in his brain has definitely been bruised and I don't think he knows it yet. And Shadow helps Espio work out how long he was unconscious for. He convinces him to eat some food, to Valdez's dismay. "Are you kidding me?" he whines. "How come he's taking food from the enemy and not from me?" And during a long-winded rant that ends in him calling Espio an 'eating disorder on legs', the two tributes end up sitting next to each other, soaking up the sunlight, getting each others energy back up, and every now and then, glancing over at each other and letting their guard down, relaxing their shoulders and breathing more slowly and smoothly, because they feel safe and comfortable around each other. Why else would they be looking happier than ever before?

"We decided this morning to check out the Cornucopia, seeing as all the Careers are dead except for you and I couldn't imagine you camping there and killing us both," Shadow adds on to his growing explanation of his own whereabouts, and failing to mention that Matilda practically had to drag him there. "We got there, stocked up on a bunch of stuff, stayed for a little while, and then got chased out by that brute of a badger."

Espio chuckles lightly. "You've had her hot on your tail too, huh?"

"I don't know which one of us she followed. We just said good luck and scattered-"

They hear something.

"Goodness me," Gerald exasperates. "Are they who I think they are? Bean and Honey from Eleven and Eight respectively are in town, folks!"

And he's damn right. And I just know before anything even starts that I'm going to need several recaps to keep up with this one because it's not a friendly approach that they make. They've never been friendly. For some reason, I can't see those two making a shaky, barely held together truce with Espio and Shadow like the one they have with District 10. Especially not when Honey asks Bean if his 'secret weapon' is safe, and he nods enthusiastically. I check my money, which is still about as high as it was to start with. Donations fell off at around day three because Shadow has been so boring but I save money, don't I, and I have a feeling I might need it. Bean and Honey act like the Careers that never were as they waltz over. They don't know about the state that Espio's in and he uses that to gain whatever advantage he can possibly get. There's some banter and some jabs and a rather daring threat from Espio, and after a period of tense silence, Honey makes the first move.

And then nobody really knows what happens, because the floor starts to rumble.

"What the heck?" Valdez exclaims, as items in the cupboards start chinking and monitors wobble.

On-screen, it's chaos, and the shaking is violent. Espio's groan of agony and disorientation rips through the speakers as the ground crumbles beneath them and a knife is threaded into Honey's neck. In a different shot, the Cornucopia collapses with Vector still inside it. The arena floor splits open in a gargantuan snap, in a straight line from the Cornucopia to the lake, uprooting trees and sending shockwaves through the rocky floor. The Tribute Centre continues to tremble, but not at any damaging rate.

As things begin to calm down in the tectonic sense of things, Bean chucks a small handheld bomb at Shadow, and he deflects it with his sword. Shadow leaps away, diving to the ground, and the bomb explodes in unison with Espio's scream of pure horror, obliterating Bean in a firework of metal scraps and sparks, followed by dark smoke and a rainy dome of blood.

Espio and Shadow melt into the floor. The camera pulls upwards and into the air, delivering a view of the destruction and turmoil that the earthquake caused within the arena. Fallen trees, distressed wildlife, a thin rift in the ground, and off in the farthest reaches towards the lake, the demise of District 10.

The Cornucopia has been reduced to a splintered mess. It finds itself a new equilibrium, after layers of wooden planks and twigs and logs have finished sliding off one another. Cannons begin to ring over the arena, one by one, and simultaneously, the lights under the screen go out. Knuckles. Tikal. Honey. Bean. But not Vector. Vector isn't dead.

It's almost as if he was laying in there completely still waiting for confirmation that he's still alive, because if he's hearing cannons, he must be. Some of the wood shifts and slides and after a big push, Vector finds his feet in the rubble and stands up tall, still clutching his bow and screwdrivers in his hard-knuckled fists. He looks around at the destruction, listens to the cries of the birds, and looks up to the sky.

"You can't get me that easily, Vanilla," he grins. "These Hunger Games are mine."

Chapter Text

"A bakery in District 6's Northern Shanty has been seized and all contents have been removed for analysis as the tesserae fraud investigations continue. It has been revealed that the bakery doubled as a social housing initiative for orphaned children of tesserae age, and the grains seized are the same kind used in the tesserae trade. All people in the bakery and the neighbouring buildings have been arrested for questioning."

-o-

Every now and then, my concentration breaks and I return to the thoughts that Jules forbade me from thinking. And I tell myself, "No, you can think about him later. Dwelling on the past will only hinder you from going forwards," but it's so hard. I'm being pulled and I still don't like it. And I begin to wonder if Jules is as kind as I always made him out to be. Would somebody who is kind refuse to let you think about things, in the name of getting the job done? Would they tell me to just slam the brakes on my own emotions, as if it's that easy not to crash?

Jules has been doing this for thirteen years. He and Vanilla solved most things in the mentor room last time. He knows what he's doing. But he's also closer to a victory than he's ever been. District 7 are doing well. What are we at, now? Top seven? And both of Seven are still in it.

Mighty, Matilda, Silver, Vector, Espio, Shadow, and scraggly Sticks. That's all. In fact, it's getting to the time where Gerald starts asking for short-form interviews with the remaining mentors. So why is he helping me? Unless he isn't helping me at all, and this is all part of a sabotage. A sense of false trust or something, built from karma in the hope that I'll break completely before the endgame and if I need to get involved, I just won't be able to, because I'll be doing what I wanted to do yesterday: curling up in Silver's bed wearing his hoodie and ruminating and ruminating and ruminating. It sounds weird when I think about it from any logical perspective. I don't know Silver. I've never met him. I've never particularly cared about him unless it was vicariously through Mephiles. But now I know that they shared a hobby. Or at the very least, a skill. And Mephiles didn't appreciate it, but I do. And I remember Mephiles liked him. I remember him telling me on the phone that 'the boy's not so bad' and in Mephiles language, that's a pretty big compliment.

If it's not Shadow, I want it to be Silver. And if push comes to shove, I'll help him.

I just need to hope that Shadow doesn't die before Gerald's little interview things. I know they're coming. He had the top four mentors on his show last year and of course that included Vanilla and I. Two mentors went on one episode of Capitol Calling, and the other two went on the next. I was in with Chris last year, and Gerald had us both comment on how we're finding mentoring and what the stakes were like and it was over as quick as it began. It can't have been longer than five minutes. But both Scourge and Fiona died in the middle of the interview to Nine's robotic limbs and the first thing Gerald thought to ask was, "Who are you cheering for now?" And - and this was well before everything really kicked off with the insanity - Chris said Nine. Because anyone strong enough to take down both of District 2 in one go surely deserves it.

I can't exactly say Silver if Shadow conks it. Silver is one Hunger Games victory away from being skinned and torn limb from limb, along with whoever it was that allowed him to turn his family tree into a second District 7.

Look at him go, resetting all his traps with determination and laying out rocks so he knows which trees are set and which aren't. He doesn't know that Matilda is hiding a little way away, watching him do it and learning where not to tread, but Silver has a rock on a rope and she has a baton of metal on a chain. They can't hurt each other.

I think I'd choose Espio instead.

Far downstream, Espio is still on his front on the floor. Shadow sheds his jacket and twists his back, wincing when he pulls a bit of skin that's been punctured by metal. He reaches behind his back and digs his fingers just beneath his left shoulder blade, and pulls out the head of a screw. He runs his hands through his quills and shakes out some more metal. He looks back to his jacket and sees that most of the marks on it didn't make it all the way through.

An action replay shows that Bean took most of the impact. Shadow can't have had very much or else he'd be in a much worse state than he is. He regains his composure and shakes his head and then kneels down by Espio, who is stiff all over and twitching on the floor.

"Espio...?"

His jerking comes to a slow end and he relaxes.

Shadow begins to panic. "Es? Es!" he shouts. "Wake up! ES!"

Espio doesn't wake up.

Shadow puts his hand on Espio's shoulder and holds it firmly, debating whether he should try and shake his friend awake. "Espio, come on, it's over! He's dead!"

And to Shadow's ultimate relief, Espio shows some signs of life. His eyes open heavily and his sight immediately lands on Honey, who bleeds out of her neck. Shadow still doesn't really know what to do. He stays on his knees and tries to get some more air in his lungs while the panic subsides, and he keeps his grip firmly on Espio even while he tries to move, feeling it in his fingers that he's still alive. He starts to help him sit up. "Are you alright, Espio?"

"My arm hurts," he moans. "Everything's still shaking."

"I know, I know. You're fine," Shadow reassures, letting Espio lean on him a little bit. "We're fine."

Espio's consciousness takes another dive and Shadow has to catch him so he doesn't fall back onto the ground again. He wraps his arms around Espio's torso and props his head up with his hand. Whatever thoughts are in his mind in that moment, he shakes away with a flick of his head. He waits patiently until Espio gets some strength again, and he sits him back up.

Espio comes back. "The world is like... spinning..."

"There was an earthquake, it's not just you."

"E-Earthquake?"

Shadow nods his head. "Yeah, as we were fighting. Honey and Bean are dead. Two others died in that too. Four cannons."

Espio steadies himself and whispers the words back, manually plugging them into his head for processing and slowly, carefully, putting the pieces together. "Are you okay? The bomb-"

"Some shrapnel in my back, that's all," Shadow shrugs, brushing off the pain he was in before. "My jacket stopped it from getting too deep."

"Will you need help getting it out?"

He sighs. "Maybe... probably... but you need to rest-"

"Here, let me get it out," Espio insists, not caring one bit about what Shadow thinks. "That can't stay in there."

Shadow almost says something, but decides against it in the last second. However much he can dig out by himself by contorting his arms round his back, he's going to need a second pair of hands. So, carefully, they make a move and follow the river. Espio takes his glove off with his teeth and washes his hand in the water that Shadow still isn't convinced is actually clean, and they talk - perhaps mildly and briefly and light-heartedly bicker - about infection and whatever else, before Espio properly begins his work on Shadow's back.

He's so gentle with it, and he takes his time over every little wound, every now and then leaning forward to get a glimpse of Shadow's face to make sure he isn't in pain. And any time there's blood, he washes it away with the river water, and he appreciates Shadow's fur and the texture of it. And the two of them laugh about Shadow's little traffic games back in Five, choking on air when their weird, jokey flirting goes too far, and they dissolve into each other for the rest of the afternoon. They wash their clothes and bathe in the river and Shadow uses most of his first aid kit to wrap Espio's arm up in a secure sling. And to top it all off, they 'argue' and 'compromise' and end up in Shadow's sleeping bag together.

They're sweet, I guess, I'll give them that.

I look back down at my own monitors, and my jaw drops at the figure at the top. I'm well into the sixty thousands now. That's the sort of money that could buy someone a weapon. That's the sort of money that could buy someone a life-saving remedy. That's the sort of money that could win someone the whole Hunger Games.

If romance is the key to success, then there's no wonder I keep failing. I keep missing the key and assuming I could always open doors with cards instead. But this is a reality show, isn't it, and I keep forgetting that people generally quite like moments like these, and that romance is actually real. But whatever happens, whatever plotline tries to kill the District 5 boy who's in love with the last Career and can't seem to admit it, I now have the power to change it.

Finally, for the first time since the beginning of the season, I begin to feel like I can do this. Properly.

We're so back.

Chapter Text

Mephiles's art cupboard contains a pair of binoculars in its many drawers. I never knew about them until just now. I came in here looking for some of his nice pens that he drew in his sketchbook with so I can write a vow to myself, and found these with them and the sewing stuff. I put the pens and some nice paper and a clipboard and the binoculars all into a bag and take them up to the roof.

It's day ten of the Hunger Games. I'm ten days in, I have a chance at victory, and I still don't know who I am or where I'm going or what I'm doing or anything. So, on this nice, round number, I will make myself a little plan.

"Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, icon of ecology, burgeon ideology," I sing, on the way up the Paternoster. Zik shouldn't have a problem with this. As long as I don't attempt to leave the building, it'll be alright. Although, I did walk very close to the door and stare out of it onto the Avenue, and nobody came running to ask me what I was up to. It makes me wonder if anyone actually keeps track of where people are in here, and if I tried to make a quiet exit, I'd get away with it. But I won't do that. I can't do that.

When I get to the roof, I sit on the floor by the rose garden with my legs crossed and rest the clipboard on my lap. I lay the pens out beside me and take one, and I make that the first thing I write. I'm staying here until the very end.

"Bio lizard, bio hazard, on the rooftop, sunny glow. Mr. Boy has his roof and Mr. Boy will always know..."

What was it that I told myself a bit ago? It's him or the game? It's Mephiles or the game. And Mephiles is dead. I ought to honour him, thank him, even. I ought to reminisce about our friendship by rewriting my promises to him with his ink on his paper, but I've already broken them. I broke them by being an asshole to Vanilla and I'm wondering now if things were tense even before then.

Did he see it in me? That I was trusting the Gamemakers too much? Did he lose trust in me right from the start and just refuse to admit it to himself? Was night seven the last straw, making day eight a whole hay bale or something equally heavy?

I click the pen in my hand a few times and stare out into the Capitol. Maybe he'd been lying to me this whole time. Maybe, like me, he was too scared to lose the one friend he had. Why should I care? I did what I had to do. In fact, he said it himself. You've got to do what you've got to do to get anywhere in this world.

"...You got one shot, only one. Don't you fall into the barrel of the gun. Like a phoenix from the flames, don't you hold your bald head in shame."

So Mephiles was a liar, or at the very least, a fake. Jules is impossible to figure out. Valdez is an asshole. Vanilla's still reading that messed up little book that looks like it's been put through a washing machine. Eleven's mentor did nothing wrong but he also did nothing right, he just did nothing and does nothing. Why the heck would I choose them over the game? The game I know I can win?

"You want a truth? I'll tell you one: Fuck 'em all, fuck 'em all to the sun. Mr. Biology, come on in. We go dance in the sunshine."

I write up the song in full on a new sheet of paper, and I do it in my best handwriting. Forget a vow, this is all I need. And I will do it in the sunshine and sing it in my head. I've got one shot, only one. Fuck them all. Fuck them all to the sun. For Biology, I'll win this game, and I won't hang my bald head in shame.

When I'm done, I gently slide the clipboard back in the bag and put the pens away. I'll pin that up somewhere when I go back down. Maybe I put it in my room on the fifth floor, or better yet, by Silver's hoodie on the sixth.

There's some noise from below, so I take the binoculars and have a look down at the growing congregation of people watching the games on the big outdoor screen. I can faintly hear something about someone "controlling the rain" and I finally get the zoom right. It's Sticks - again - and this time she's going at Silver's throat with the spiked knuckle dusters from the Cornucopia. He leaps out of the way just in time, and she lodges her fist into a tree.

"Switch the rain off, you demon!" she yells, yanking herself out of the tree bark and sprinting after Silver with terror in her eyes. But as Silver runs, he looks more concerned than scared. Especially when Sticks calls out at every drop of water that lands on her as if it's poison. He glances down to the rock he carries in his hands, and when he gets back to his clearing, he takes the chance to strike.

Silver swings the rock around behind him as hard as he can and it smashes into the back of Stick's head. She tumbles over a pile of old firewood and lands flat on her face by the river bank. She heaves over every bit of water she sees, and she can't bear to touch it. Her attempts to scratch herself away from the river only dig her further into the bank. And I don't know if it's glare from the outdoor screen, but it looks like something white is creeping from the corner of her mouth.

Silver stands over her and sighs at the sight, before raising the rock and letting it come down on her head repeatedly until her cannon blows. This time, he makes light work of dragging the body behind the death tree. "That didn't happen," he says to himself as a method of reassurance. "That did not happen."

But it did happen. When I take down the binoculars I notice something flicker a few tram stops past the Interchange. The big white board with the odds on it shifts. The binoculars come back up and I find it, and watch the smooth movements of the bars.

Sticks's name disappears to the lower section of the list, where the dead tributes are stacked up in the order they died. And then, Silver's winning chances begin to rapidly rise. He goes from fourth into third past Vector whose odds have been creeping downwards for days as people realised he wasn't all he was cracked up to be, into second past Mighty who as far as I know has stayed relatively stable, and then into first, knocking Shadow off the top of the odds of the 27th Hunger Games. And then, rather unexpectedly, Matilda's odds fall and Espio's rise, bringing him out of last place for what must the first time since he broke his arm and his brain, because I can't imagine any other reason why he'd be down there.

It seems like a rock on a rope can do some harm after all. Maybe Matilda is in more trouble than we all thought, by hanging around near that clearing. Maybe Silver could actually win this thing.

Maybe I should get my act together and make sure that he can't, instead of cheering for tributes that aren't mine.

Chapter Text

"Shadow mentioned the possibility of infection," I mutter to myself on the way back down the paternoster after the sun has fully set and there's no light left in the sky. In fact, he didn't just mention it, he challenged Espio on his prediction on how long the games actually have left. So when I get back into the mentor room, I make a note to myself to hang up the paper later, and I buy the best antibacterial wipes I can get for a few thousand and send them in. I'm listening to you, Shadow. I'm still here.

The package lands on top of Espio and I almost wonder if I did it wrong, but then I remember that those two are sharing a bed now and Shadow is practically invisible in the dark.

"Just in case... E," Espio reads. He stares at it, very confused, but when isn't he confused nowadays? He turns onto his side and tries to get some more sleep, but then Shadow begins to shuffle a little. He fidgets in his sleep, makes some noise in his throat, and then startles awake.

"Shadow...?"

He rolls onto his back and stares upwards with his eyes wide open. He's rigid and frightened, and he looks almost exactly how he did in the bloodbath, minus the rain and the badly disguised tears. The two of them wait until whatever it is that Shadow's seeing goes away.

"Leave me alone," he says, and goes to turn back over.

"We got a gift while you were sleeping," Espio says.

He stops mid rotation. "We did?"

"Yeah. From... E."

Shadow sighs annoyedly. "And you wanna know who that is, and what's up with me, and what happened at the bloodbath, don't you."

"Well I mean only if you want to tell me."

It's now that I realise, I don't think Shadow has talked about this at all to anybody. Not even Matilda. And I never gave much thought to how Shadow might have felt in that moment. One minute he'll have been preparing for launch with his stylist, the next minute Maria is there, and the next, he's locked in a tube being shot off to eternal doom watching as her blood splatters onto the glass that rattles violently from the sounds of the guns.

I don't blame him for one second when he starts sobbing under the bag. I've been there. Done that. Won that t-shirt. Two of those t-shirts, even. And as he cries, I too feel that familiar tightening in my chest, and I debate on whether I should let it out or shove it down like Jules told me to.

"It's alright, Shadow," Espio says, after offering him a hug that he doesn't know whether to take. "You're allowed to cry."

It's happening, isn't it.

"Jules?" I ask, waking the man up from his sleep on the desk. But I can't find the words to finish my question. What would I even ask him? Do I just not ask him anything and punch him like I wanted to before? Do I thank him for helping me change my mind and work out what's really important, or do I just spill my guts onto him entirely?

"Hm?" he blinks.

"Never mind," I reply, struggling to keep my voice from quivering. Espio's words keep circling in my mind, telling me that it's okay to cry.

I take the bag and leg it back to the paternoster and slide down the back wall of the carriage onto the floor. The crying rips itself out of me and I just can't stop it. I force breaths into my lungs between sobs that I can't seem to control and punch the floor of the carriage in frustration, but the noise vibrates through the metal walls and it sounds so much like a gunshot that I just don't know what to do other than punch it again. And again. And again. And then I see the pulley for the first time as the elevator brings me round the top, pulling my weight horizontally with a slight stutter, before moving me back down again. And I stay in there while my body does its thing, letting the elevator take me in its never-ending loop.

My knuckles begin to throb, and as the feeling slowly ebbs up through my arm, I stop crying. It's almost like the pain in my head has found a way to express itself on my body and I feel better for it even if it hurts. So I punch the side again as hard as I can and feel something move in a way that it shouldn't and shout out at the horrible feeling of it. I stagger backwards and lean onto the carriage and take a look at my knuckles. The bruising is already starting to show and I think I want more. I think I deserve more. But the throbbing takes me out of my own head and puts me back into reality. One more time being dragged over the top of the paternoster tells me that I need to get off now before I break the shaky thing.

I hop off on the sixth floor and fumble around in my pocket for the card that lets me in. My fingers are weak and I almost drop it when I press it against the sensor on the door handle. I go in, shove the card back in my pocket, and sling the bag onto the sofa. Carefully, I put everything away exactly where I found it all, and unclip my song lyrics from the clipboard.

Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, icon of ecology, burgeon ideology,
Bio lizard, bio hazard, nibbling flowers dried and tattered,
Sunflower lizard of dandelion might, yellow like sun, dark like night.
Biology, Biology, super boy saurology, Mr. Boy will have his roof again.
Bio lizard, bio hazard, on the rooftop, sunny glow,
Mr. Boy has his roof and Mr. Boy will always know,
You got one shot, only one, don't you fall into the barrel of the gun,
Like a Phoenix from the flames, don't you hold your bald head in shame.
You want a truth, I'll tell you one: Fuck 'em all, fuck 'em all to the sun,
Come, Biology, come on in. We go dance in the sunshine.

And I do exactly what I planned to. I pin the paper onto the wall next to Silver's hoodie. I don't need it on my floor. I can remember it. I've had my breakdown now and I will not let Jules run from me. I will not let Jules take this win from me.

I will sleep with the lights on tonight, I think. So the shadows can go away. Because if there's anything I want to be right now, anything I need to be, it needs to be the sunshine to the only Shadow that matters.

Chapter Text

"What part of 'leave me alone' do you not understand?"

Just because I slept with the lights on doesn't mean I couldn't allow myself some darkness. I drag myself out of the cocoon of bedsheets I used to block out the bright glare of the television and the bulb above my bed and stretch my eyes open onto the soapy screen. I didn't get a lot of sleep, and my body recoils from the painful light, but I need to check what's going on before I let my heavy eyelids drag me back under. Mighty's on the television, and he watches Matilda walk away from him with her back turned and I think he might be heartbroken. I guess he finally reunited with his sister, and this is the welcome he gets. Tears brim at the corners of his eyes but he forces them down as he too turns away.

I remember something about those two. Nack thought Mighty was very fake, and that his volunteering story was surely some kind of cover-up for a family feud, or maybe even some messed up, last ditch attempt at reconciliation that neither Stratnyy has mentioned or particularly cared for. Whatever. I'm tired. If it's not Shadow or Espio or Silver, I don't need to worry.

I fall back to sleep almost instantly, after having been up for most of last night. I stayed awake for long enough in bed with this TV on to watch Vector convince Espio and Shadow to let him on their team. Neither of them were particularly happy about it, but Espio's logic was that he and Shadow really don't need to be making enemies, and if Vector turns out to be trouble, they can just kill him. I keep that thought on my mind as I drift off again. Vector's death would be the most satisfying thing, after all that's happened. It might take some of the guilt off my chest. But it doesn't feel like very long until I'm woken up again.

"I forgot!"

Mighty's terrified yell echoes in the trees. He's tangled in one of Silver's traps, unable to move.

Silver, covered in bramble, holds the rock still above Mighty's head, and then slowly begins to lower it. "You... what?"

"I forgot how the thing works," he sighs, relived that Silver has put the rock down. "I was all over the place and I thought I could replace her... I just forgot that that's not how that works."

"Hah," I laugh to myself. "That sounds like something I would do."

"Happy?" Mighty says. I don't know what happened before, but the idea of Silver having to threaten to kill Mighty for information on his personal life just for him to say that, tickles me.

Silver raises an eyebrow. "...That's a funny way of coming out. You do you, I guess, no judgement from me."

"Sorry?"

"Is that seriously how it happened?" Silver laughs. "That's so funny, dude. Damn." He gets up and starts pacing around, holding his side as his laugh gets bigger. "I thought it was going to be juicy, you know?"

"You're a nutter."

"I thought it was gonna be a revenge story!" He cackles manically, in the same way that Mephiles would when he's taken a bit more than he should. "Like, maybe you really hate your sister, maybe she did something really bad, maybe just existing made you upset with her because you're not the youngest anymore and you're not getting all the attention, I've seen that happen, so you volunteered to take her spotlight and kill her and not get done for murder and then everybody loves you because you won the Hunger Games! That would have been such a good story," Silver rambles. "Or, oh what if, what if it's your parents you want to screw over? You know that if she's reaped and you volunteer then only one of you goes home, so then you ruin their lives and make them re-evaluate whether they really love you or if you love them because now nothing will ever be the same again! I might have let you go if you said that and I think I would have believed you. But no, you didn't do that," he continues, wiping a tear from his eye. "You forgot how the game works."

"Where is Blaze?" Mighty interrupts, and the question immediately wipes Silver's smile off his face.

"What?"

"Silver, where is Blaze? How is she doing?" he asks, almost tauntingly. "It's been a while."

Silver doesn't like it. He kneels back down beside Mighty and asks him again. "What?"

"Where is Blaze? Is she still in? I boycotted the fallen on night six."

I remember the horror on Silver's face when he had to drag Blaze's body behind the tree that killed her. I remember the waves of sickness that pushed up and through his body at every wretched sound. I remember the blank shock he was in when she died, and the expression he manually moulded his face into, as if he was trying to get his body to react, but it just wouldn't.

"Did she die?" Mighty gasps excitedly, loving the fun he's having with Silver now that he knows his time is almost up. "Did she get killed? Did someone kill her? Maybe she killed herself- no, no... Maybe she starved to death, or died of thirst. Maybe she ate a poison apple? Did you know this arena is riddled with poison apples?"

Silver doesn't answer.

"And if the Capitol don't like you then they'll take good apples and turn them bad right under your nose before you can figure out what they're doing, but the Capitol love her don't they so they wouldn't do that, uh... oh I know, maybe she drowned? That'd be funny, that'd be so ironic, wouldn't it?" he laughs. "Fire! Water! Sizzle, oh look it's sizzling!"

Mighty keeps on giggling, stops abruptly, and blows a leaf off his face. Silver can't do anything.

"Oh I'm sorry, did I hit a sore point?" Mighty asks. "Sorry, I didn't think you loved her or something."

Silver's voice turns dark. "...How dare you."

His hands tremble as he grips the rope tighter. His eyes dart between each of Mighty's pupils. They don't look scared anymore. They look powerful. Mighty looks powerful despite being tied up in Silver's own trap. He has cracked his crazed captor and he is taking that win even if it's the only win he will take.

"How dare you!" Silver yells, and he slams the rock onto Mighty's skull. Repeatedly. Until the cannon blows, and then some. "This is the worst!" He sobs. Silver throws the rope onto the floor and screams. "This is the actual worst!"

Silver flees from the scene, setting off another snare, and slumps down another tree, still crying. He claws at his chest with his fingers, as if wishing it would break open and all of his pent-up misery would disappear from him. Every now and then he looks back through the trees towards Mighty's body and his smashed up head, and whenever he does, the camera flicks back to it. And I swear Mighty's triumphant smile never left. It may be mangled and bloody but once he'd accepted his fate, he wasn't going to go out without leaving a scar on his killer. Return to sender, I think, telling Silver, 'you reap what you sow'.

"Mephiles?" he chokes out, still clutching at his throat and his chest, and he looks towards the sky.

My heart skips a beat at the mention of his name, and I push myself into a sitting position in the bed. "He's not here," I say, almost reflexively, and I want him, need him, to hear me, and not go down this path.

"Are you there?"

"He's not here," I say a little louder. My hands start to shake. "He's not here, Silver."

"Mephiles?" he cries.

"No, Silver," I growl, wishing he would shut up. I have to put my hands over my ears. How dare he cry for Mephiles. How dare he do the one thing that I couldn't do. "Stop it."

His eyes meet one of the cameras in the sky. "Are you watching me?"

Chapter Text

Now that we're in the top five, Gerald wants interviews with the remaining mentors. I had a strong feeling this would happen after he sprung this on us last year, too. The four of us were each sent a voicemail and told to either be in our slot or risk disappointing the entire nation for the few minutes their attention can be held, so, nothing out of the ordinary. There have been a lot of interviews in the Capitol lately, all outside by the Interchange, all conducted by Breezie, the queen of BreezTV. She's collected a great variety of opinions on the Games. Cream and Blaze shouldn't be here. District 6 should be burnt into the ground for how one bakery could have easily caused the economy to crash and burn if it were allowed to expand into a bigger chain. We miss Mephiles, he died for no reason. 'Master' Zik sucks at his job he couldn't kill Vector even if he split the moon in two. Dr. Deep was better. And my personal favourite, which was a quote I heard Breezie read out from the news bulletin: "Forget those rich, smart-ass District immigrants taking our jobs, it's all Eclipse's fault. Dr. Sunshine over there's got a resume longer than the spear of Crystal Methiles."

Thankfully, I shouldn't ever have to interact with Breezie. She's a public girl. All I have to do is talk to Gerald on night twelve, tomorrow. And I know Mephiles told me to say away from interviews but this is different. The circumstances have changed beyond recognition.

Tonight, it's Jules and Valdez. The two of them and Gerald sit together on the same basement stage that the tribute interviews took place on, leaving Vanilla and I in the mentor room alone together. It would be awkward and tense if it weren't for her still reading that book. She's on her third recital of it now. I'd love to know what's in there but since she tried to quit mentoring, she hasn't said much about anything.

The interview with Jules and Valdez starts out very polite and formal. Valdez has never been particularly comfortable in front of a camera despite acting like he's the main character in every scenario, always the one to exclaim some remark at the big screen. Jules sits politely, speaks politely, and does all things politely with a charismatic smile. Jules talks very fondly of both Mighty and Matilda, wishes their family well, and says that he hopes they can have Matilda back home alive and kicking. But, slowly but surely, the composed atmosphere falls apart, with Jules rolling his eyes at Valdez's complaints about Espio's behaviour before he merged souls with Shadow.

"Don't you think his attitude towards your gifts says more about you as a mentor than it does about him?"

"What do you mean?" Valdez whines.

"If he thought anything good of you, he might not have thrown your biscuits in the river. What good are jam biscuits when you've eaten virtually nothing for a week?"

"Oh, just because you've been a mentor longer than I have-"

"Boys," Gerald interjects, and he sighs. "I'm afraid that is the end of our interview slot."

The audience in the arena groans sadly, but that has to be the end of the programme, because the little rectangle in the bottom left expands to fill the entire screen as the display of the fallen goes ahead, and in the sky is Mighty's face, perfectly put together.

I get a better night's sleep this time, and in my preparation for my interview, I form a suit from the closet in my bedroom and remember that the rose-scented perfume I bought is still up in the penthouse. It's no matter, though. On TV, it doesn't matter what I smell like. But while the thought of roses lays on my mind, I head up to the roof and pluck one from the rose garden to tuck into my blazer pocket.

Not much happens on this day. There's more flirting between Panem's favourite romantic couple in deeply platonic denial topped off with a neat little Lancelot metaphor, and Silver finally makes a move out of the clearing and leaves his morphling behind which Matilda eyes up quizzically, almost daring it to try and tempt her over. When the time comes for the interview, I keep an eye on one of the many screens in the building in case anything happens, and watch a little row unfold between Shadow and Vector as Shadow tries to pry at least something out of him in regards to how his previous alliance ended, but at no point does Vanilla turn up to the backstage door. It opens without her, the crowd cheers but half of the noise is confusion, and Gerald takes my hand and brings me to the armchairs at the front.

Not a lot has changed since the tribute interviews. There's another chair, which would have been for Vanilla, but it's left empty. The stage is still surrounded by its collar of fluorescent pillars and somehow Gerald has managed to fill the stands with people despite these snap interview sessions only being arranged a day and a half ago.

"Eclipse!" he grins. "How wonderful to see you again after last year."

"Good evening, Gerald," I reply, soaking up the attention from the audience. "Thank you for having me here. It's a shame Vanilla couldn't make it."

"Oh, I know," he drawls sympathetically. "How has she been doing since... that night?"

"Not brilliantly," I shrug. "But she is keeping herself busy."

Gerald smiles. "Well I guess that's good to hear. Anyway, enough about the no-show-er, how are you? How are you finding mentoring the reigning champion district?"

The audience make an oohing sound after Gerald emphasises the normally-impossible role I have. I have to laugh as a bit of filler while I find my words. I don't know how I feel but I've learnt that how I feel is not what's important. It's what I do and who I side with, so I go for the corporate answer and say something using the words 'honour' and 'privilege' and I don't really know what sentence I manage to form out of it but whatever it is, it works, because everyone is still smiling.

And then Gerald does that thing where he asks the vaguest question possible and expects the recipient to improvise an essay off the top of their head. "How's Shadow?"

"Well..."

I try to think. To anybody watching the Games, it's pretty obvious how he's doing, so instead I take the meaning of, how is Shadow for me? It's these mind games that Gerald does in the interviews but he's got the charisma to keep any conversation running.

"As a tribute, as a mentee," I say, "I quite like him. I think if I were in District 5 to begin with, we'd have got along." I think about Maria's endless notes on Shadow. I'm not sure I'd have been able to get that information out of him but now that I know it, I like him for it. "It's a little strange mentoring a tribute who I've never met in person but I think we might have formed at least some connection."

Gerald nods his head. "And about Maria-"

Cannon. Cannon blast. Oh no.

I quickly find a screen in the basement arena that's displaying the Games and find myself begging in my head that the argument didn't end in Shadow's death. In the corner of my eye there's another screen with my face on it so I just do my best to ignore it and only focus on the one playing the Games. It's so dark in the scene, and I have to squint while my eyes adjust to it after looking by the bright lights of the stage.

The shot is locked onto Vector's face, but I can't for the life of me figure out where it is in relation to the rest of the world. But then the image slowly zooms out, and I see it. Oh, do I see it. Vector's body tips over and lands by the river. His left shoulder knocks his head into the water and it floats away with the current. And blood pours into the river from his neck. His very much sliced up neck. And the camera refocuses and shows Shadow standing behind him, clutching his bloodstained sword, and then again onto Espio who looks on from afar. And then the fallen display begins and Vector's face is show in the sky.

Chapter Text

As soon as I get off the stage and back into the backstage corridors, I sprint as fast as I can up the stairs and onto the ground floor. Vector is dead. The enemy of them all.

I can't act too happy about it, not after I told Vanilla that the only way she can get out of mentoring this year is if she takes her child's killer to victory. When I get to the door of the mentor room, which has been cleaned of some of its blood splatters, I don't really know what sort of attitude to enter with. I hover my hand over the door handle while I regain my breath, but after a second or two the door is sprung open for me by Vanilla herself.

She grabs me by the sleeves of my suit and pulls me into the mentor room, laughing hysterically.

"He strangled her so now he doesn't have a neck anymore!" she cackles, and she keeps holding me with her left hand and grabs a bewildered Valdez with her right. She drags the three of us into a group hug and squeezes us tightly. "Your boys, they're so good!" she squeals.

Valdez breaks free from the hug and I wriggle out of Vanilla's arms.

"Get fucked, bitch!" she hollers at the screen, slamming her fist on her desk with every crazed syllable. "I will mentor for as long as I have a working memory that can rotate your disgusting little shit stain of a headless torso-"

The screen cuts from Vector to Omochao's news room. I don't understand why. It's not the top of the hour, and the camera crew in the back don't look at all prepared for it. Through Vanilla's manic heaving, there's nothing on the screen, it's just a live image of Omochao at his desk receiving input from something, somewhere, with people scrambling around with the microphone and camera setup around him. And then his eyes light up, the news ticker is layered on top of the footage, and the news music comes on.

"Breaking news just in," Omochao begins in his chirpy robotic voice. "Two of our Hunger Games escorts, Zeena and Zor, have infiltrated Breezie's interview tent and are currently demanding that they speak on live television. We are currently trying to connect with them."

Jules, who has been very quiet, sighs loudly. "What could Zor possibly want?"

"Is he the depressed one or the fat one?" Valdez asks.

"The depressed one," Jules rolls his eyes. "I dread my time with him, honestly."

Vanilla's jubilant mood fades away very quickly at the mentions of Zeena and Zor. Her smile drops from her face and she takes a step back from her desk and leans on the front of Jules's, watching intently as the picture shifts from Omochao's news room to the interview tent.

"Move aside!" Zeena barks at the citizens in her way. "Unlike that one Wednesday night, I actually have ID and I'll shove it up your snotty nose if you don't let me through! Thank you."

She barges through the crowd, dragging Zor behind her, with her sharp fingernails locked around his wrist. She walks with determination, not caring whose feet she stands on, until she is by Breezie's side and the microphone is reluctantly handed to her.

Zeena clears her throat and takes a deep breath to compose herself. "I'm sorry if I sound a little weird at any point, I've had three shots in the bar and they're just about kicking in," she says. "Anyway. I'd like to say something. I'd like to address the security team in the Tribute Centre directly, actually, but I don't think they exist which is why I'm doing it here. I'm angry."

Breezie tries to take the microphone away from Zeena, but Zor slaps her hand away. "Let her speak," he snaps.

Zeena scowls at Breezie. "I would have talked about this earlier, I promise I'll get to it, but y'all need context and the context is Vanilla. I like Vanilla," she says through gritted teeth with a twitch in her eyelid. "And I like Cream, and that one isn't a lie. So when Vanilla wronged me, and I'm ninety nine percent sure I know exactly why she did, I was willing to let it slide as long as her little scheme worked. Because I like Cream. Cream's a nice girl."

"What is she talking about?" Jules asks Vanilla, but she doesn't answer.

Zeena continues to snap at the microphone. "Vanilla's plan for these Games was to get Vector on her side, and have him serve her and Cream unconditionally. She tried to guilt-trip him into reserving himself entirely to the service of her daughter. I saw it and I heard it. And the main event? The main thing she did?" She turns around to the crowd and finally lets go of Zor to raise her arm. "Y'all wanna know what she did?"

The crowd doesn't really do much, they're all a little bit astounded, muttering quiet affirmations in confusion.

"She smuggled him outside of the Tribute Centre on Wednesday night of training week, evading non-existent surveillance, in disguise, and they stayed out there in the carnivals into the early hours of Thursday."

Vanilla swears under her breath as Zeena starts to laugh.

"And she did it by stealing my identification and my money!"

"Vanilla?" Jules gasps. "You didn't do that, did you?"

"And I was willing to let it go as long as Cream made it out alive, and I swore to myself that the second she died I would come forward, but let me tell you I could not believe my eyes when I saw that Vector was the one to kill her."

Vanilla shuffles onto the back of Jules's desk and sits on it with her legs crossed, nudging his monitors back a little bit, and she slowly puts her head in her hands. Jules reaches up to her and greatly considers laying a concerned hand on her shoulder, but retracts it when he's just inches away. If what Zeena is saying is true, Vanilla might have just become the most wanted person in Panem. Smuggling a tribute out of the Tribute Centre? That is beyond insane, even if she did bring him back.

And then I remember what Nack said, after he stayed up for most of Wednesday night. Trespassers. In the car park. Leaving.

"He saw her for who she really is," Zeena continues. "When she neglected him in the arena just like she neglected that other male tribute she had, you know who, whether she intended to or not, he saw her for who she really is." Her face contorts into an evil grin. "A crook," she spits. "A thief. A criminal."

Vanilla sobs into her hands.

"And I didn't like Vector," Zeena says, finally calming down a little, "but after what he did, I've gained some real respect for that man."

She lets the microphone slide between her fingers and it drops to the floor, and its damaged screech wails through the interchange. Zor lifts his hands and presses them together, pulls them apart again, and slowly creeps up the pace into clapping. Gradually, the rest of the crowd joins in over the roars of the broken microphone. Some are outraged at Vanilla. Some are still furious after last year. Some are calling for justice for Cream. Some can't believe what they've just heard and decide to turn on Zeena for siding with Vector after everything he's done. While Breezie dips behind the setup to try and turn the horrid noise off, Zeena puts both of her middle fingers up to the camera, and her fingernails extend into sharp metal skewers. She presses them against her neck and drags their pointed tips around in a circle. They leave light marks along her skin. As she completes the circle, and a small group from the crowd sprints at her in fury, she sticks her tongue all the way out and grins with her eyes wide open until she's jumped by the enraged Cream fans and the footage is cut.

Chapter Text

The silence in the room is overwhelming. I swear I can hear my own heart pumping the blood around my head. My breathing, and everyone else's too, feels loud. Everything feels louder than normal without the constant low buzz of television.

Valdez has nothing to say. He carefully reaches up to his head and adjusts his red hat, before bringing his arm back down onto his lap. Jules stares at Vanilla's back, every now and then wanting to say a word or two, but the words never come. Vanilla makes zero comment on Zeena's accusations. Minutes pass like this in absolute silence before finally Vanilla hops off the desk.

"Silver's light's gone," she says, with a kind of shade to her voice. She has none of her usual tone. It's as if she's completely accepted defeat. Like Mephiles, she steps up to the lightbulb and flicks it with her finger, confirming that it's off and not just splintering in its connections or something.

In all the commotion, I don't think anybody noticed Silver's death. How the heck could he have died? He was on track to win this thing. Would Espio and Shadow really just kill him like that, assuming he even got near them? He knows the apples are poison because Mighty told him so. The only thing in there that could possibly kill him is that waterfall that almost claimed Espio. Silver could have won. He'd have broken almost every unwritten rule there is in doing so, with his fraudulent tesserae and his morphling, but he was first in the odds with the most kills and some of the best skills despite his dismal adjusted score of four.

The guy with the hoodie who was so fond of the sky, the kid who I'd grown quite a liking for, is dead now, and I missed it. I missed the death of my second best. And I try to tell myself, at least it's not Shadow, but I still feel a little sad about it.

When the television does come back on, and the news ticker reveals that Zeena is absolutely fine despite having taken a few hits, it's revealed that all that happened to Silver was a suicide. A noose in a willow tree. And that's when I remember his behaviour back in the countdown right at the start of the games. I remember the way he just stood there, motionless, with his eyes stuck shut, waiting for someone to come and end him early. And then Blaze just had to come in and give him a reason to live. I should have seen this coming.

"That's pathetic," Valdez comments, "but helpful none the less."

"District 1 are back in the top three," I observe.

Valdez smiles. "Yeah, and I'd love to know how. We're really in the endgame now, aren't we? We should start doing endgame stuff."

"Like what?"

"Like pulling all-nighters and making sure none of us miss a thing. Jules? What do you think? Fancy staying up all night?"

Valdes's suggestion feels foolish to me. It's not like we could do anything, should something start kicking off. People don't tend to die within the amount of time it takes to slide down the banisters to the mentor room, pack a gift, and send it. And if they do, there was nothing that could have been done about it anyway. If we do need to think on our feet, lack of sleep will cloud our heads. But Jules doesn't seem to think about it like that.

"I like it. I'd like to be able to keep an eye on Matilda even if nothing is happening. This is the closest I've been for so long and I don't think I could sleep even if I wanted to," Jules admits. "You two can sleep and I'll wake you up if something happens. At the end of the day, we're not enemies of each other. How would I betray you?"

Valdez and I make eye contact and I'm sure we both think the same thing at the same time. If we're not enemies, then what are we? Betrayal can come from many places, and Jules - or any person, really - is included in that.

"Let's just turn up the volume," I say. "Let Gerald and Omochao be our alarm clocks."

Valdes tuts. "Are they even slightly reliable after what just happened?"

"No, but it's the best I can come up with, so if you've got any better ideas, I'd love to hear them."

Valdez doesn't respond so I go to the front and reach to the knob on the wall that turns up the television volume, but as my fingers graze the plastic, the mentor room door is busted open behind me.

The yellow light of the hall floods into the darkness and I have to squint to see the figure in the doorway. They're joined by many others, all in uniforms, and when my vision finally focuses I see that it is Head Peacekeeper Infinite once again. He adjusts his spiked mask and steps carefully into the room. I'm reminded of other times, and my chest begins to tighten at the memories, so I take a deep breath and hold it there so my ribs can't collapse.

"Vanilla Paloma," he nods. "Put your hands up."

Vanilla wastes no time in obeying Infinite's order.

The second her hands go past the top of her head, several Peacekeepers run in from behind Infinite and pin her against the screen. Handcuffs are locked around her raised wrists and her dress is searched furiously for its contents. Her big hidden pockets are pulled inside out and all of her possessions clatter to the floor, until a Peacekeeper finds a particularly heavy pocket. They reach inside of it, wrap their gloved hand around it, and pull out that book. The Freedom Fighters of Knothole by Maximillian Acorn.

The search stops abruptly in that moment, and Infinite takes the book and inspects it. He runs his fingers along the mangled top, reads the cover several times over, and turns the pages. "Rebel contraband," he says. "Team, take her to the station, I need to call the President."

Once again, Infinite's words are obeyed in an instant.

"President?" he says, pressing his hand to his earpiece. "We have a problem. Those rebel books from before the war?"

I vaguely hear President Ivo Robotnik hum on the other end.

"We missed one. Maybe a few. Send out some Peacekeepers to the Justice building of District 3."

Chapter Text

"Attention tributes."

I'm dragged awake by the sound of a voice blaring across the arena. My neck clicks as I bring my head up off my keyboard, which had been typing the same string of letters into the computer notepad all night. Valdez groans in front of me. Jules doesn't look like he's had a wink of rest.

"It is I, Master Zik, your humble Head Gamemaker."

"Oh for Chaos's sake," Valdez yawns. "Could this not wait until a bit later in the day?"

The screen is split in half once again. On the left is Matilda, who sits with bare feet dangling in the river. She's got the Beast Box, covered in dirt and unopened, on her lap. She's got her hand hovering over the clasp that it opens by, as if Master Zik's voice stopped her in her tracks. On the other side are Shadow and Espio, side by side in their sleeping bag. Both of them are very close to the edge of the arena, quite far away from each other, so this must be Zik's way of getting things moving again.

"You have made it to the top three. Congratulations. It is now day thirteen of the 27th annual Hunger Games. I believe it is time we brought things to a close."

"What do you mean?" Shadow growls.

The cameras on each half of the screen turn to face the top of the arena's domed border. Staring from the middle and spreading outwards, it becomes visible in a sheet of electric red.

"A veil of blood is cast over the arena," Zik says. "Touch it, and incinerate. The veil shall shrink and fall towards the remains of the Cornucopia. A cannon shall mark its beginning. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favour."

The blood veil slams into the ground behind the three remaining tributes.

"Come on, Espio!" Shadow shouts, hooking his sword onto his shoulder. "We need to go!"

The two of them scramble out of the sleeping bag and leave all their stuff behind. Matilda has no time to pick up hers, and wades barefoot to the other side of the river. The starting cannon blasts the second her feet touch the bank.

"This is all my fault, Shadow!" Espio shouts, for no reason I can think of.

"Save your stupid apologies!" he replies, and the two of them race away from the border, putting a fair distance between themselves and it, but still behaving as if there's only inches between them and incineration.

Matilda struggles to run without her shoes. She's constantly snagging on something, and she cuts her right foot on a log, but she keeps on pushing and pushing, never further than her own arm span away from the border. She swings her arms to help propel her forward and her nunchuck hits the veil. The thing bounds back against her forearm, but she's not electrocuted. She keeps on going.

Espio slips on a rock and his knee dislocates. He gasps as he hits the floor.

"Espio!"

Shadow runs back to Espio and tries to pull him up, to no avail.

"I made my own bed, and now I must lie in it!" Espio yells in agony.

Shadow grabs his shoulders. "Well then I'm staying here with you!"

"No you are not!"

"Yes I am! I'm not leaving you here, Espio. Don't you have a family back home? What do I have?" he shouts. "Nobody!"

"Wrong." Espio shouts in Shadow's face. "You have Maria. You have Maria, Shadow. She may be dead but she made a request of you."

The mention of Maria makes Shadow's ears twitch and his grip on Espio softens.

"And I have someone who made that same request of me but you know what? Only one of us can win these Games, Shadow, and look at me. And look at you. You're more than I could ever be."

Shadow's hands move down from Espio's shoulders and onto his chest. He lays them there, feeling Espio's heart through his shirt, and grips his coat and kneels in front of him. "N-No, that's not true-"

"You deserve this so much more than I do, Shadow, I love you-"

They both freeze and lose the ability to breathe when Espio lets those words slip. They stare into each other's eyes and then slowly turn their heads to the border that they were once a fair distance from.

Espio's voice shakes as he watches the border creep closer. "You're a great man and a great friend, Shadow."

"Espio-"

"Maria!" he shouts, as loud as he physically can.

Shadow flinches, and stays very still.

Espio takes a deep breath, and gently breathes it all out again.

"Run." He tells Shadow calmly. "For Maria, Shadow. And then win the Hunger Games. For Maria."

Shadow's hands begin to tremble and tears build up in the corners of his eyes. He looks down at Espio, who lays below him. He watches Espio's face struggle to stay serious with every foot the border moves, every throb his arm and knee make, and every sway his head takes. He leans down, hyperventilating, not really knowing what to do with his own arms or his own face, and he hugs Espio so tight. The embrace is so deep that it keeps Espio from falling back. They tangle each other up in their arms and rest their heads on each other's shoulders, inhaling each other, making sure it's impossible for their bodies to be any closer together. Shadow lets out a sob and squeezes Espio tight, before finally letting him go. He lays Espio down on the ground, readjusts his sword, and runs as fast as he can away from him and the border.

"Nicole," Espio sniffs weakly, finally allowing the tears to spill. "Nicole... Nicole, I'm so sorry. I'd never forgive myself. You understand, right?"

The soft crying turns into complete panic.

"Nicole!"

Espio watches with widening eyes as the blood veil brushes against the grass. He's tense. He can't move. Every time he tries, his body locks up even stiffer than before. When the border comes so close he could reach out and touch it, he begins to sob in terror.

And then it hits him. The border lights Espio's whole body on fire as he screams the name of that girl Nicole again. The blood veil passes through him, not even stuttering to acknowledge that he's there. Nicole's name echoes through the trees as Espio burns and his charred body falls to pieces in the red zone. After a few seconds, his light goes out, and his cannon blows.

Valdez swears furiously, punches his monitor, shattering the screen, and he storms out of the mentor room.

Shadow collapses into the silent central clearing, and the echoing of the cannon and Espio's last scream finally reaches his brain.

"ESPIO!" he wails into the dirt, gripping the grass between his fingers.

When his distraught echoes dissipate, he pushes himself onto his feet and strides to the edge of the clearing. He watches the blood veil come closer to him with an enraged look on his face. He bares his teeth at the border and growls as it comes near. He thrusts his arm out in front of him, and waits.

He doesn't know who's left. I know he doesn't know who's left. Silver died after the fallen, meaning his face would be displayed tonight. My heart quickens at the sight of his outstretched arm and the panic quickly morphs into anger. After everything Espio just said to him, after begging him to leave and go win the Hunger Games to fulfil his promise to Maria, he's just going to sacrifice himself? And he doesn't even know who it's for?

But then the border stops abruptly, just inches away from Shadow's fingertips. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, waiting for it to touch him and incinerate him, but nothing happens. He slowly peels open his eyes, sees that the veil has stopped, and lowers his arm.

An exhausted Matilda comes up behind him and gently taps him on the shoulder. "Top two gang," she grins.

Chapter Text

"Water."

Jules pries his eyes open and looks towards me.

"Water," I repeat. "Both of them need it."

He looks dreadful. He can't have had a minute of sleep, just as he said he wouldn't. He tries so hard to clamp his jaw shut so the yawn doesn't show, but it fights through him anyway.

"I'll do it," I tell him, forming an idea in my mind. "I've got the money for it."

Jules doesn't look too pleased with the suggestion.

"You've helped me so much, after all," I say, trying to convince him. "You deserve to rest. And at the end of the day, we're not enemies of each other," I repeat his exact words back to him. "How would I betray you?"

He almost yawns again, this time swallowing it down. "Sure," he says, and he rests his head on his desk.

That was easier than I thought it would be.

The idea that I'm getting, the thought that's taking shape in my mind, is gonna cost all the money I have. I think back to just before the blood veil dropped, when Matilda was dangling her feet into the lovely river with the Beast Box resting on her lap. She looked like she wanted to try it, just to see what all the fuss was about with Silver always shooting it up into his arms. It's a shame she had to drop it and leave it behind for the sake of her life. But I can get her some more. I can't get her an original Beast Box, obviously, because that's against the rules. But what I can do is buy all the oral morphling I can afford and dump the lot of it in her water.

I take one last look at the screen as my finger hovers over the handle of the cupboard door that contains vials upon vials of the painkiller. She looks thirsty. She looks like she could down a whole bottle of water in one go.

I take two chilled water bottles with different coloured caps and an entire tray of morphling vials and watch as the number on my screen plummets into the low triple digits. I make sure Jules still isn't looking, before unscrewing the bottle with the red cap, taking a large swig of it, and flipping the corks off the top of every vial. One by one, I pour the liquids in, filling the bottle back up to the top. I screw the red cap back on, attach a parachute, and get it sent to Matilda, and once it's gone, I crack the cap of the blue bottle so they feel the same to open, and send that one to Shadow. Jules remains oblivious to the whole operation.

I can't see them killing each other. They're allies, after all. Matilda can't touch Shadow, not with the weapons they have, and Shadow came very close to killing himself. I can't see them wanting to get this done quickly. So, when their water arrives and both of them drink over half of their respective bottles in one go, I sit back and wait for the drug overdose to hit Matilda like a truck.

This is the second time I've spent tens of thousands on drugs. But this time, I'm not keeping the recipient alive. I'm killing them myself just in case nobody else will, and I'm taking no risks this time. I choose the game.

"So," Matilda begins, after taking another gulp of the water. "You found Espio?"

Shadow swishes some water round his mouth before swallowing it. "You bet I did. Vector, too. I beheaded that bastard."

Matilda nods with approval. "I wonder how Maria's doing? I bet she couldn't have imagined her tribute being in the top two."

"Oh, she imagined it," Shadow replied, still not telling her that Maria is dead. "She imagined it for sure. Anyway," he changes the subject, "what's happened with you?"

Matilda sways a little, so she leans against the Cornucopia remains and laughs. "Mighty found me."

"Oh yeah? How'd that go?"

"I walked away from him," she shrugs. "He acts like he knows me. He acts like he loves me. And yet neither of those things were that evident."

Shadow sits next to her. "Is following you into the Hunger Games not evidence enough?"

"Too little, too late."

"How can volunteering possibly be too little-"

"Look," Matilda cuts him off. "He's dead. Silver bashed his head in with a rock. I don't want to think about him anymore."

Shadow shakes his head. "I still don't really understand. Would it not have been smart of you two just to put aside your differences?"

Matilda takes another gulp of her water. "You're kidding?"

"No. He's your brother, isn't he?"

"Hah," Matilda laughs, swaying some more. The morphling seems to be hitting her very quickly. "He doesn't know the meaning of the word."

Shadow folds his arms and frowns. "Okay, but what about the rest of your family? Are you two not stronger together? Surely it would have been easier to work together and guarantee that your parents get one kid back."

Matilda rolls her eyes. "But they are getting a kid back. I'm alive, aren't I? I've basically won."

Shadow looks down at his feet, resting them gently on a splintered plank of wood. He nods his head, but then stiffens. Did Matilda seriously just say that? It hits Shadow seconds after it hits me. He furrows his brows, unfolds his arms, and slowly turns to face her. He waits until Matilda can focus her vision, before waving at her so she focuses it on him. "You haven't won shit."

Matilda too takes a second to realise the implications of what she just said. "Well, seeing as you just-"

"What, did you expect me to sacrifice myself for you?" Shadow scoffs.

"Shadow-"

"Did you expect me to kill myself so you could live?" he almost laughs. "Because you have a story? Because you have a family? Because you're young? because you're just a girl? That thing I did over there, that was not for you," Shadow growls. He re-folds his arms and plants his feet firmly in the debris. And then he moves his arms upwards over his torso, as if hugging himself. His gruff voice shakes. "That was nothing but madness and grief. I have promises to keep."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"How else could you have meant it?" Shadow snaps. "Tell me. Right now. What you meant."

"I-" Matilda stutters. She loses her voice and can't finish what she tries to say.

"You wanted me to kill myself for you," Shadow fills in.

Matilda just accepts defeat, and nods her head.

Shadow sighs deeply and stands up, unsheathing his sword. "Alright, well, let me tell you something, Matilda. I am not your hero."

Her eyes widen at the sight of the blade, still bloody from Vector's decapitation, and it glimmers in the bold red light.

"I've got promises to keep," he repeats. "And you've annoyed me. I am not your hero. I am not your saviour. I am not your Lancelot-"

He freezes when he says it. He had that metaphor with Espio. The Lancelot metaphor. And I can't remember much about it, I don't think I paid any attention, but it made them laugh. It was a joyful moment while Vector had briefly gone away for something. It could well be the best memory they made together. Shadow holds the thought in his head, gripping the handle of his sword between his fists.

"I am not your Lancelot," he corrects himself.

"Shadow-"

"I am not YOUR Lancelot!"

"SHADOW PLEASE!"

He ignores Matilda's begging and her opioid-swamped apologies. He holds the sword high above his head and lunges towards her over the planks, hearing her out on nothing, and he digs the sword deep into her stomach. Shadow drags it out of her, and watches as her blood runs down the length of the blade and drips onto his shoes. Matilda bleeds out of her back, her life draining out of her, and Shadow throws the sword away. It clatters over the rubble.

In the deep red light, Shadow stumbles back away from her. "They didn't die for nothing," he says, and when the final cannon of the Hunger Games blows, he falls to his knees in the muddy grass as the blood veil shatters and falls around him in electrical crimson rain.

Shadow just won the Hunger Games. I just won the Hunger Games.

He takes off his gloves and pushes his hands into the mud, squeezing it between his fingers, and he watches as the arena comes back into colour and sunshine again. The border fizzles away around him in a twinkling buzz, and the sky peels open to reveal a hovercraft. It sinks down into the arena on its engine thrusters, casts a shade over the green weeping willows, offers Shadow a rope ladder, waits for him to take it, and gently pulls him up.

Chapter Text

Shadow's light is the only light that remains lit underneath the big screen of the mentor room. The ninth bulb across burns in yellow among the dark, dead twenty three. Jules gets up out of his chair, goes to the front, and lays his hand on the fourteenth.

"It's still warm," he whispers.

"Was she always so confident that she was gonna win?"

Jules turns around, clockwise, I note, to look at me with his baggy eyes. He does not see the pile of vials that still lie off to my left. Whether he sees them or not makes no odds to me, what's done is done. He keeps his left hand on the bulb, feeling its warmth drift away.

"I think so," he answers sadly. "She never gave me the impression that she was gonna go out without a fight."

"I wonder why she didn't fight?"

"I wonder why she said all that?"

Jules switches hands, and his tense shoulders slump when his right hand feels that the glass isn't warm anymore. His sad stare travels to Shadow's bulb, and he watches its twisted wire core that radiates hot electrical friction.

"Something must have happened to make her true intentions spill," I say.

He reaches out to touch the bulb. "Like what?"

I watch him press one of his remaining fleshy fingers onto the surface of the glass and keep it there for a second or two, before quickly retracting it back and hissing at the painful heat. He holds his finger up to his face and walks back towards his desk, rubbing circles over his burnt fingertip with his cold metal thumb. I keep on staring at him as he walks, and I keep the pile of vials firmly in my field of vision.

"I don't know," I shrug. "Did you notice she was behaving a little strangely?"

He stops in his tracks and puts his hands back down. "I did."

Jules stands there between Chris's desk and Vanillas with his arms by his sides. Looking at the back of his monitor, he narrows his eyes. He knows I'm trying to tell him something. He looks to me, then he looks further on to the gift table and finally sees it. I reckon I emptied fifty doses into that water bottle and he was too sleepy to notice, but he notices it now. He shoves Mephiles's desk out of the way and grabs my monitor with both hands.

"One hundred and twenty five..." he reads. He grips the monitor tightly. "How... how could you?"

"Oh, but we're not enemies in here, are we?"

His eyes meet mine. The one eye that's alive is wide and shaky. The bionic one can't seem to stop refocusing. His face is riddled with small twitches that speak of the horror of betrayal. I just give him a smile.

"You really did that?" he asks quietly.

I keep on smiling. He's too kind. His heart is too big for this world. Perhaps he did want to help me this entire time, and be the gracious and noble player that he always has been. Maybe all he wanted was a fair fight at the end and he'd have been satisfied no matter the outcome. Even if he was the closest he'd ever been to freedom. Even if I was about to win the Hunger Games twice in a row. But I don't work like that. I'm a self-centred bitch, I've finally figured that out about myself. If I really cared about Mephiles, I wouldn't have become a Gamemaker. If I really cared about Nack and Shade, I'd have remembered to contact their stylists and actually sort something out. If I really cared about Vanilla, I'd have kept my damn mouth shut. I was always destined for District 5 and Master Zik saw it in me from day one.

"What can I say?" I keep smiling. "You don't trust Gamemakers."

I leave him before he can say anything to that, and go up the paternoster to the fifth floor. I knock on the door of the Avox kitchen and one of them comes out to me. Not the same Avox, but it doesn't matter.

"Tell the others I'm no longer Five's mentor," I say, remembering what I told them before. I forbade them from cleaning until the day my job was over. I didn't know if it'd be a win or a loss but either way, this stupid little plan worked. I close the door, pat the shrivelled coffee table goodbye, and head back down.

Shadow will be on his way to the hospital. The same hospital that Maria escaped from on the morning of the bloodbath. I need to go there. I want to meet the guy I mentored and tell him about everything.

After every Hunger Games, the victor is brought there for a full check-up no matter how well they appear. They'll be checking Shadow's back for sure. I'm not convinced Espio could have got all of the shrapnel out after Bean's bomb exploded over him. If it had enough force to kill a person, surely some of the metal would have gone further than skin-deep. Even with both hands, there's no way. But Shadow didn't look all that bad. He never ran like he was injured. He kept himself fed even it if was mostly salty protein, mushy grapes, and that bread I sent. He'll be fine.

It's a beautiful day out in the Capitol. The morning sun is rich and powerful and the occasional clouds split its light into bright sunbeams that paint the city in shining gold. Breezie's tent is still surrounded by people but before anyone can put a microphone in my face, a bunch of Peacekeepers swarm around me.

"You need to be more careful in the future, travelling around alone like this," one of them tells me.

"Is this because of how Zeena got attacked?" I laugh as one of them brushes someone away from the little circle they've put me in. "I guess walls of Peacekeepers aren't just for tributes leaving their districts anymore."

She ignores my comments. "Where are you off to?"

"The hospital."

The Peacekeepers all nod and they follow me to the Interchange tram stop.

I'm going the other way this time. It's a direction I rarely travel in. For this journey, I have to get a jade tram, for that's the only colour that passes by the hospital. And on it is that same conductor with the emerald uniform, who was on the tram on the way back home after the deaths of Nack and Shade. He takes notice of the bundle of Peacekeepers that come onto the tram with me, squints between them, and smiles warmly.

"Welcome back to the tram, young mister," he greets. "I see things are finally looking up for you?"

I glance around at all the Peacekeepers and deduce that it's okay for me to answer. "Yeah," I smile back. "They are."

Chapter Text

A very pleasant nurse takes me through several clean-smelling, brightly lit corridors towards a room near the top of the building. There's a high-security unit in the hospital for the ones who need it, and when I ask her about Maria, she tells me that her condition was so dire that she had to be put somewhere else for more intensive care, and once she'd recovered enough, she would have been moved into this unit. It was during that moving process that she got out. A door was left open, another was unlocked, and with a bit of money still in her pocket she got a bus to a military aircraft hanger and snuck onto the hovercraft there, intravenous drip still hanging out of her arm.

"She was much more clever than anyone gave her the credit for," she smiles. I wouldn't call any of what she did clever, especially given the consequences, but escaping a hospital and sneaking onto a hovercraft takes a certain level of brain thought.

Two more corners later, we find a room with a chunky door and a keypad. I stand behind the nurse as she types in the number, and watch her peek her head into the room. "Mister Kintobor? You have a visitor."

She steps out the way of the door and holds it open for me.

Shadow looks well. His room is plain, with just a bed, a few chairs, a table, and some doctor-y stuff that I don't know the names of. He sits on the edge of the bed, gently tapping his feet on the carpet, and he looks up at me.

"Hey," I smile.

"Hmph."

It's an odd response, so I ignore it. "How are you feeling?"

He doesn't say anything. Rather, he just stares me down with a rather disgusted look on his face.

I try again. "Maria-"

"Don't act like you did anything," he growls. "For me or for her."

I can't help but laugh. "Shadow, I dragged her out of unconsciousness, and Matilda would have had you wrapped round her little finger if I hadn't-"

"And don't act like you know me," he continues, just as darkly as he did before. "I've had a total of nine words from you and two of them were your own name. You're no mentor of mine."

His eye contact is a little bit intimidating. Cold, even. It's not the same stare he gave to Espio, that's for sure. I feel like I'm being cornered by his eyes, herded into the far side of the room and back out the door.

"You're literally a stranger. You had a parasocial relationship with me, if that," he says. And then he folds his arms, kicks his feet onto the bed, and turns away from me. "Begone. And don't fuck up your university application this time."

It's sad. I've been so excited to meet him. I've been so curious about the successor of Maria. Since reading her notes about him, I've felt like we could get along, given the opportunity. But he's right, isn't he. Parasocial, in its entirety.

Peacekeepers follow me to a second jade tram. It's unsettling how they do that. I think I'd prefer the weird stares. I'm damn lucky that's the most I ever got although I don't think I ever really offended anyone like Zeena did. Wrong place, wrong time, for most of it. And the one time I get right place, right time, the guy I did it all for doesn't even want to know me.

I chose the game... for this?

Even if I do make it to university, word will surely get out. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if what I did was even necessary. Shadow did always seem like a man with strong morals. He never gave up on Espio, not once. He killed Vector because, without the context of Vanilla's weird behaviour, he did a cruel, unnecessary thing. And he wanted to be gracious and let Espio take it, or at the very least go down with him, but Shadow, evidently, is a man of his word. Shadow Kintobor keeps promises.

So could he have won? Would he have won? He definitely should have won, there's no two ways about it, but should I have done what I did?

I don't know why, but I get off the tram again at the Tribute Centre. My body just carries me to the paternoster and up it. 'Self-centred bitch' doesn't seem to cut it when the purpose of it wasn't really for me but for him, just to make it easy for him. But if he doesn't appreciate it, then who do I have left?

Shadow doesn't want to know me. My dad hates me. Vanilla's in custody. Mephiles is dead. Biology is dead. Maria is dead. And now I've thrown Jules away too. And if word gets out, like I'm sure it will as it always does, will anybody want to know me other than bloody Master Zik?

Literally every single one of those things, apart from Vanilla, is my fault. I neglected Shadow. I'm an ass to my dad. I let slip about Mephiles. I pushed my luck and got my pet killed. I betrayed the last genuinely good person I know. And I don't know what I could have done to keep Maria from doing what she did but surely I could have done something. Said something. Reassured her or something so her stress wouldn't have built up so far as to hospitalise her and take away her last moments with Rouge and Shadow.

I end up on the sixth floor, outside the living space of Mephiles the Dark. I still have a card - possibly the only valid card that's left - and it works.

It's been cleaned. The first thing I do is run over to Silver's room and find that the hoodie and the lyrics are gone. In the middle of the apartment I turn over cushions and yank out drawers. Everything is cleared out and it's all just gone. I begin to panic, because this is not right. This is wrong. This is the most wrong anything has ever felt.

"No, no, no..."

His blankets are gone. That blanket he let me have is gone. They can't just wipe Mephiles off the face of the planet like this? This is his home. This is where he lived. He lived here.

"How could you do this?" I gasp. "WHY?" I scream, and throw a bunch of cushions across the room in rage. One of them knocks into a dining chair, which falls onto the sideboard, and a purple gem rolls from it onto the floor. On the bottom of it is a sticker, with a seven written on it.

Okay. Maybe they haven't done everything yet. There's still something left of him.

And then I see his door. The yellow paint that I got so used to is still on it. An attempt has been made at scrubbing it off. Perhaps it was cheaper to try and do that than go straight into re-painting. But either way, that tells me one thing and one thing only, so I go to it.

His room is still in tact. More paper, more pens, multiple sketches of the sun and all the other fantasies, some dirtier than others, but I don't care. His room, I think, Mephiles the Dark's room, is completely untouched. I go to his messy desk, clear out a space, grab some paper and pick up a nice-looking pen, because no matter how alone I feel, there is still someone who wants to know me.

Shadows and light can't touch each other. There is always something between them. It's either light and light or shadow and shadow. And eclipses can get on with shadows momentarily. There's that brief encounter. There's that false sense of night when the moon crosses over the sun. But as soon as it passes, as soon as the moon passes, the light is blinding and the shadows are gone.

And if the moon is fake... then the eclipse is always light. There are no shadows.

Fuck the Shadows.

Fuck 'em all to the sun.

Chapter Text

Dear Master Zik,

I, Eclipse Darkling, am writing to you to express my deepest concern for what the Hunger Games has become. In your first year of service to the Treaty of Treason, you have been the face of the aftermath of some of the worst mismanagements in this country's recent history, and I applaud you for the calm and focused manner in which you attempted to fix what the late Dr. Deep had broken. I admire your resourcefulness, your discipline, and your ability to anticipate what is to come, and so, I hope the contents of this letter do not come as a surprise to you, but rather as an affirmation of what I am certain you have already thought.

The Hunger Games was established to serve as a reminder to our twelve districts that the Dark Days shall never be repeated. It was decreed that on the same day each year, each district must offer one young man and one young woman as courageous tributes to fight in a pageant of honour, courage, and sacrifice. To serve our great nation, and to remember those who died for it to keep it alive.

I am afraid that the Hunger Games, since the Chaos Council's reign, have lost their character and their subsequently their hold on the people of the nation. There is a fine balance between a gripping display of national pride and whatever mess the twenties have been. If we continue to follow in the Council's footsteps, I fear that Panem will fall apart, starting with Districts 3 and 6, and their misbehaviour will bleed into the rest. So in the remainder of this letter I will present some suggestions, if you'll have them, as to how future years may be navigated.

Viewing of the Hunger Games must be made compulsory, as far as is possible. As many districts should be made to view them as there were districts that fought in the rebellion and survived. The Hunger Games needs to be a uniting force for peace and that will only be achieved if everybody watches.

Mentors must lose some of their current powers, and I acknowledge that I am part of the problem, for I participated in the current system. We are currently running on the basis of mutual trust where mentors are free to examine and approve their tributes' tokens, and buy, pack, and send their own gifts. It is a recipe for disaster. These duties from now on should lie in the hands of the Gamemakers. They should check the tokens with an unbiased eye, and mentors will submit orders to the Gamemakers for gifts which will be packaged from the Control Room so that they cannot be tampered with. The origin of the gifts should also be checked. And there should be a crackdown on security within the Tribute Centre and escorts should have better means of keeping their belongings safe, to ensure that no tribute can escape before the Games.

Mentors must also be brought back to a level playing field. I will be the first and loudest advocate for this: No more Gamemakers turned mentors, and the Victors Villages were built to be lived in. The Tribute Centre is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a permanent residence for victors or mentors. All mentors will be paid in money, and not in any other substance worth the money. This ought to be non-negotiable. And Gamemakers will not be district, because that introduces unfairness and bias, and the scores that they give in training will be compared with previous distributions before they are released, but I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that.

We must, as a collective, reiterate morality and stick to a consistent moral code. The Hunger Games are brutal, yes, but they can be taken too far. You dealt with this well, Master Zik. Your handling of the attacks on Cream, despite not bringing immediate results, had a domino effect on the rest of the Games and ensured that the victor was a respectable one. But I think the viewers still need to be reminded: This is not a massacre, or a horror show, and it is definitely not chaos. This is service. This is remembrance. This is sacrifice.

To ensure fairness on the side of the tributes, the tesserae system should be revamped and scanned carefully so the economy does not continue on this crash course. I don't know what kind of negligence had to occur for District 6 to be able to fake an overpopulation problem, but the national Census also needs to be re-hashed. The two problems go hand in hand. Fake familial links leads to millions of unauthorised tesserae, and it was only a matter of time before Six found a way to bankrupt the entire country. Furthermore, the tributes should no longer be randomised in their starting pods, but manually ordered so that their neighbours are arbitrary and their district partners cannot attempt to change their chosen courses of action.

Finally, I suggest you write to Head Peacekeeper Infinite and the President, as you are in far more a position to do so than I, and demand that all of the Justice Buildings are raided and emptied of their contents, as well as other randomly sampled buildings in the districts. If anything is found, then raid the whole lot. If District 3 have a library of contraband, who knows what else may lay out there? Where there is some, there will always be more. The Justice Buildings should then be refurbished, fit for a victorious and eternal Panem, where history begins at Year Zero.

I do not expect you to implement any of the suggestions I have made, since I am a mere Academy alumnus, but now that I have outlined my personal vision for the future of the Hunger Games, I would like to sincerely thank you, Master Zik, for the grace and compassion that you have shown me. In my darkest days, you gave me real opportunity and much-needed, sound advice, and I cannot thank you enough for that. I truly owe my life to you.

So, I guess I must now confess that I have held a secret, not just from you, but from everyone, so as to not put any more strain on a year already filled with so much controversy, and I think its telling is finally due. I can point you to evidence if necessary in the form of video clips, and I would like to see a forensic investigation for further confirmation, but it came to my attention back in May that there is a problem regarding our beloved "victor" Jules.

-o-x-

The end is open: I'm not forever lost.
I'm not... forever lost...

Chapter Text

(This essay is posted as a separate chapter, because it's way too long for the notes section. This also contains some information from the other fanfic series I wrote before this one, 'Green Hill Academy'.)

• Gratitude

Yay, you made it! Thank you so much for reading this (extremely niche) fanfic. I appreciate you so much <3 This thing has been vibrating in my brain at some level for the best part of three years. I wrote the majority of it on public transport, mainly trams, which was a huge inspiration for the tram network in the Capitol. I've got a really annoying commute that isn't quite long enough to study on and I wanted to fill it with something to pass the time. I can imagine Mephiles would bring a sketchbook and some pencils along on any long tram journeys he makes, and glare at anyone who comes too close. He always struck me as the creative type.

Some of these chapters have very strong associations to locations or means of transport for me, and whenever I go there, I can't help but remember the time I spent on this story. I deeply apologise to all my friends I've bored to death with my endless ramblings, and I thank them so much for all their support. But I'm not too sorry, because you're about to get my ramblings too :D

• The rationale

This story came to be for three main reasons.

1. I couldn't find any Sonic the Hedgehog Hunger Games AU fics that scratched my brain in the way it needed to be scratched.
2. I wanted to try out a new fandom, but I also didn't want to stop writing in Sonic the Hedgehog, so why not combine them?
3. I've always loved a good Brantsteele Hunger Games simulator, but I wanted more. I wanted lore. I wanted emotion. I wanted alliances that lasted longer than half a day, and a plotline thicker than tar. And in order to do that, I needed to try out a new style.

• The pov system

In past fanfictions, I've switched povs every chapter or so, which is great and all, but I wanted to immerse more in some of the bigger characters for longer, and I decided the way to do that was to do one full pov at a time. I wanted it so each pov would open up new questions and plot points, and answer to some previous ones. I needed them to be distinct from each other, but still necessary to be read in a certain order, so I could control what information the reader gets and when, hence numbering them from 1 to 5. Whether this worked isn't really for me to say, but the structure I ended up making, from what I have observed in my own proofreading, goes something like this:
pov1: (introducing characters and settings, a narrow angle to begin with)
pov2: (a different, equally narrow angle, more serious drama, more information)
pov3: (a wider angle, mainly resolving pov1)
pov4: (a more lore-focused approach, mainly resolving pov2)
pov5: (neck-deep in drama, tying it all together)
And I'm very glad it turned out this way. It wasn't always going to be like this.

In my absolute initial plan, I had Silver and Vector switched over since Vector comes in 5th and Silver comes in 4th, and I can't remember why I reversed that decision, but I definitely couldn't have made this plotline work if Silver were on second. Reason being, I needed to explain the rules and customs of gift giving via Vanilla's actions before turning them on their head via Mephiles', and I wanted to keep Vector and Mighty's fates up in the air for as long as I could reasonably* get away with. I also think the current order increases the field of view quite gradually. Switching them over would, in my mind, have made the thing feel a lot more segmented between povs, which is not what I wanted, because they're all part of the same story.

*And when I say "reasonably" I mean not leaving any cliff-hangers open for too long. Up until about halfway through pov3, I was fully planning on being utterly evil and ending the story after pov4. When I realised a pov5 might be in order, I knew I wanted it to be Eclipse and not Shadow, because truth be told, I had absolutely no idea what I was even doing with Eclipse. I gave him Five, then I said something about him getting involved with the Gamemaker drama and ending up with Twelve, and then he ended up on Five again? I figured I could do a "Shadow" pov without writing as Shadow at all.

As well as the pov system, I had to decide which characters I actually wanted to focus on, when I would set the story, and what major events would happen and when. I do have favourite characters, comfort characters (Silver and Espio), but I also wanted to step out of my comfort zone with characters I enjoy but hadn't yet explored. For that reason, I decided to stay away from a first-person Shadow pov. That was where Mighty, Vector, and Eclipse came in. When it came to designing the leaderboard, I made sure to place my four planned pov characters quite high up so I'd be able to capture the full scope of the Games.

• Names, districts, and placements

I dove into this with no real plan in mind. I didn't even have an arena at this point. I just rounded up a bunch of characters, organised them into districts, decided what order they'd die in, and gave them a reason to die. The plot evolved from those initial notes as I pinned my red strings between them. Most characters needed surnames and adjusted ages and abilities, so in this section, I'll go over the tributes and summarise the notes I made on them, why I put them where, and so on. I'll also explain the origins of their names. A lot of the character surnames are taken from my previous fanfic series 'Green Hill Academy' (mainly for my own entertainment, you don't need to read it). In those cases, the origins are the same in both fanfics.

Espio Vaso
Being a ninja in canon, I thought it only appropriate that he would be part of a Career district, and so I gave him District 1. This is a GHA name, originally derived from several rounds of brainstorming. Chameleons can camouflage. Espio can go invisible. Invisibility is see-through, like glass. What is made of glass? Vases. Vaso.
I was ever so happy when 'The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog' was released, because in Espio's design, he has a rose, and you can put roses in vases. That meant the GHA name would fit right in and I could run wild with the rose thing and the "antique vase" poetry.
I gave Nicole to Espio because of how they have been friends in the comics. Before the whole "The Freedom Fighters of Knothole" contraband idea came into my head as an impulse decision partway through pov2, I was planning on Espio being besties with Sally Acorn. In the end, I never gave Sally a role. Perhaps she's an Avox or in District 13 with her father, I don't know. And Bride of Constant Vigil is Espio's mother in this.
For Espio's death, all I knew was that I wanted him to come 3rd. I didn't care how it happened. The whole "blood veil" thing is a reference to the All Of Us Villains duology, which has been compared to the Hunger Games, and I love it. I thought it'd be fun to bring in a deadly blood veil to make a small arena even smaller, to throw even further shade onto the Chaos Council. The parallels to Espio's death in GHA 1 were somehow completely coincidental.

Liza Keenley
Liza was one of the last characters I added to the roster, and because of her affiliation with Espio, I gave her the other half of District 1. I wasn't sure how to approach her character. I don't know that much about her, so I decided she would be killed off early (23rd). Her surname has no specific meaning.
Because of all the District 1 lore I dumped in pov4, I needed more characters, so I brought in Valdez as the mentor because of the chameleon stuff, Gamma has HP to parallel with Omega, and Pachacamac is the Mayor for another GHA throwback.

Sonic Felgate
Sonic, being the warrior he is, simply had to end up in District 2. That, plus his affiliation with Amy. I didn't want this story to be particularly Sonic-focused. I wanted to explore other characters more than I wanted to explore him, so I just plucked a cause of death out of thin air which was to be bad food, decided I'd find a way to implement it later, and dumped him in 17th place. Mighty bludgeoning him was one of those "the story wrote itself" situations.
I can't remember where I saw this, but someone said Felgate is Sonic's surname so I just took it for GHA and kept it for FL.

Amy Rose
I wanted Mighty to kill her specifically because of how I gave Mighty origins in woodworking. How ironic would it be for the guy with the wood tools to kill the girl with the hammer...
I gave her 22nd. Rose is Amy's canon surname, of course. And Amy is canonically twelve, but I decided to age her up (as well as some other characters) because this roster as a whole is very young in canon and it just didn't feel right. She's in District 2 partly because of Sonic also being there, and partly because of her Piko Piko Hammer. I thought it'd make sense for Two to have a side-industry in some of the rougher metalwork and I can totally see Amy bashing the life out of a metal pipe on an anvil.

Vector Chasquido
"Find the Computer Room!" That's it. That's the reason.
I couldn't bring Charmy anywhere near the Games. That would have been far too cruel. And Chasquido is a GHA name. Crocodiles have big jaws, and they snap their jaws. Several iterations of Google Translate gave me "chasquido" from that logic.
I wanted Vector to have a very memorable arc that would land him in 5th. I wanted to break him entirely and have him right at the end of his rope for as long as possible, and it all just fell into place when I decided who else would be in District 3.

Cream Paloma
She's only in here because I wanted Vanilla to be in District 3. I needed Vector to have a strained relationship with his mentor and I figured the best way to do that would be to have Vanilla manipulate him every step of the way. I love writing Vanilla as a character with questionable morals, with nobody suspecting her. The surname Paloma is a very far-fetched Eurovision Song Contest reference. Since the final iteration of Vector's name came from the Spanish language, I thought I'd get Spanish singer Blanca Paloma up in here, who represented Spain at Eurovision 2023. "Blanca" translates from Spanish to "white" which is the colour of cream and most things with vanilla flavouring.

Big Lielaakis
Yes, his surname is a random Latvian word, no I do not have any justification for it aside from he is a cat and Blaze is also a cat, and Blaze's name is also a random Latvian word that was also completely unjustifiable. More info in her section. He's in District 4 because he likes fishing. This was one of the easier district assignments. I didn't think too much about his death. I scheduled him to come 15th and didn't think about it any further.

Marine Judas
Gonna be honest, no idea where her surname came from. The only reason I gave her one is because she's in an early district and I didn't want to have to keep skipping District 4 after Mighty's pov. She's in District 4 because she's a sailor in canon. I didn't think too much about her death. I scheduled her to come 16th and didn't think about it any further.

Shadow Kintobor
Shadow had a different name in GHA, Robotnik, because in that fic he is still related to Eggman and Gerald. In this fic, he isn't related to them in any way, so I did the only sensible thing and reversed his surname to Kintobor. Dr. Ovi Kintobor doesn't really exist in this fanfic. Maria's surname is Ovi, little bit of an extra for you, but I never mentioned it in the story. This turned District 5 into a kind of "anti-Eggman" naming situation, which worked really nicely for completing Team Dark in the district and bringing Omega in for HP.
I put Shadow in District 5 because of the industry of power generation. Shadow runs on Chaos energy. His very blood is a source of power.
It took me forever to decide whether I wanted Shadow or Matilda to win the Hunger Games. It was part of the reason I considered being evil and calling the fic done at pov4. In my mind, they both deserved it, for very different reasons. I'll paste my thoughts in directly:

Even as the author of this fanfiction, I don't know how I want it to end. Whoever wins, personally I'd be disappointed because both Shadow and Matilda are completely deserving of a victory.
Matilda has a family to go home to, and I'm sure the Capitol will be rooting for her and her only because of the District 7 narrative. Sure, she's got no kills, but to just make it this far is incredible for her, and she did it almost entirely on her own. She just had a few swaps of items with Shadow like halfway through. She was even clever enough to refuse an alliance with Vector, who turned out to be a colossal asshole and a traitor, because she was paying such close attention to how he reacts and responds to Cream. A win for Matilda would make basically everyone happy, and she can go home to her family.
Shadow, on the other hand, has been the luckiest motherfucker the Hunger Games ever did see. He had a fantastic start getting a bag of food and a bottle and a little first aid kit, and he got his hands on a weapon too. Then he ran into Matilda a little bit later and they shared some stuff. And then when they got chased apart by Sticks, Espio just happened to be in the right place at the right time to stop him killing himself by running into the border. Not only is he lucky, he is a fighter. He killed Bean and protected Espio throughout their alliance, and he took Vector out of the games. And he also has a motive to get out of here: He wants to fulfil Maria's last wish. But I feel like if Shadow won, everybody would be pissed with him because that means the Capitol don't get their lovely happily-ever-after. The only thing he's really got going for him is the fact that he killed Vector, and even then, Espio basically told him to do it. So yeah, he's lucky, but is he a true warrior or a sheep?
The real problem is that THEY ARE FRIENDS. THEY ARE ALLIES. They never wanted it to come to this. They're not gonna pull some star-crossed-lovers bullshit because neither of them are like that. I can imagine that they would have been stuck at either end of the Cornucopia in some kind of stand-off for a good stretch of time if Eclipse didn't force an overdose on Matilda.
Thinking about this physically, Shadow could overpower Matilda any day. Yes, Matilda is strong and can stand her ground, but Shadow has a sword and he is not afraid to use it. Given the circumstances, if they were to fight properly, Matilda would be completely defenceless. But psychologically, I don't know if Shadow would have it in him. Shadow is very loyal to his friends, and even though we never get into any level of detail on his relationship with Matilda, I can imagine that he would really quite like her. I think they're similar in many ways and they would just get each other. He understands that Matilda probably has a better reason to leave this arena alive than he does, but for her to win the Games means failing to fulfil Maria's wish. If he died, he also wouldn't have to think about Espio anymore, but considering the chameleon literally told Shadow to win for Maria, he can't make his mind up on Espio either. Basically, he is at the complete mercy of his friends and allies and now that they're all contradicting each other, he doesn't know what to do. He's got too much to live for AND too much to die for.
Matilda has no such internal conflict. All she'd be worried about is whether she can avoid Shadow's sword. I doubt she'd have any problem turning on him if she physically could do so.
Realistically, the stand-off can't last forever, and Shadow would most likely come out on top after a fight initiated by a drugged-up Matilda, but he would not be happy about it and neither would anybody else, and there is still the possibility that Shadow sacrifices himself thinking a victory just isn't worth it.

Rouge Julian
She's in District 5 to complete Team Dark. Her surname is another Eggman reference. She's not a major character so I didn't see any point in keeping her alive beyond the bloodbath (21st).

Silver Venice
Silver the Hedgehog was almost Venice the Mink, so I took Venice for a surname. I put him in District 6 because of how he does time travel. District 6's industry is transportation, and I guess time travel is a form of transportation. The name of his debut game, Sonic 06, completely slipped my mind until a friend reminded me. I'm not sure how I managed to forget, since I wanted to keep Mephiles and Blaze close by in the same district. The shitty relationship with the progenitor and the state of his mental health preceded most other plot ideas in this fanfic. Mental health, toxic relationships, coercion, trauma, queerness, oppression, and the like, were topics I wanted to explore, and I put some of the burden on Silver and let him come in 4th place by suicide.
For Mephiles, his characterisation was a sort of mashup of headcanons, Snapcube shenanigans, and canon content.

Blaze Liesma
This surname is pure GHA lore, and there really is no concise way to explain it other than Vanilla panicking and picking the first language that came to mind and translating "Fire" into it. I probably shouldn't have brought the surname across into this fic, considering Vanilla canonically named Blaze in GHA, and in this story they have zero to do with each other, but I don't care. Perhaps there's some symbolism about how both Blaze and Cream were reaped as a punishment after what happened the previous year, but that would only make sense to about three people in the world.
She needed to die somewhere in the middle for Silver's arc to work, so I put her in 13th, and I wanted to keep her death a secret for as long as I reasonably could just to keep an air of mystery over who's still left. The scene where Sticks attacked Cream and Vector was timed down to the minute, so I could keep Blaze's death quiet.
She's in District 6 because of all of her interdimensional travel and her affiliation with Silver and Mephiles in canon. This is also a partial GHA throwback, where she built her own car and taught Silver how to drive it.

Mighty Stratnyy
I took "forest bathing" quite literally and assumed that meant he likes swimming in forest lakes, rather than just sitting in a forest and soaking up the nature. Either way, he needed all the trees he could get, so I plonked him right in the middle of District 7. His surname is another product of Google Translate, only I can't remember what the original word was. Mighty was always going to die, he was doomed from the start, and the absolute latest I could put him, within reason, was 6th, and I wanted Silver to kill him because of how oddly confident he was that District 6 were going to be really shit at the Games.
As for Jules as mentor, I have no idea why I did that. My mind is a mystery even to myself, but it turned into something real big, that's for sure. I'm writing an entire section on Dr. Deep and his relationship with the Hunger Games under The reinstatement of Odair, and why I decided to give him such a massive backstory in the first place. Those of you who are good with your Hunger Games knowledge can probably imagine the panic I felt towards the end of pov4 when I spontaneously decided to google a certain fourteen-year-old victor...

Matilda Stratnyy
She's Mighty's sister and she has plot armour, what can I say?
I left Matilda's feelings and life story vague on purpose. If Mighty is to be the closest we get to her, and he has no idea what he did wrong, then I figured the reader shouldn't know either. I wanted the reader to feel that same confusion and loneliness that Mighty feels whenever Matilda pushes him away.

Ray Zabletsk
This one, along with Honey, Nack, and Shade, was a real wild-card choice. I'm sure if I thought about it more, I could have found a way to do this without using methods resembling RNG, but I'm still very happy with how the fic turned out and I cannot imagine what would have gone on if the characters were switched. It's a real butterfly-effect situation. Even his death from "bad food" was a random choice, but I managed to make a friend cry, and that's more than good enough for me (14th).

Honey (?)
Honey, being a cat, would probably have a surname of Latvian origin just like Blaze and Big have, I don't fucking know. I've got inside jokes with myself at this point. I didn't get to explore the whole dynamic with her and Bean, and the conflicts they might have had with District 10. I never felt the need to do it, really. I kept changing my mind over whether I wanted Espio or Shadow to kill her and put her in 9th. In the end, I just let Day 9 write itself (although I did overhaul it about three times, in a slightly larger font size in my notes app at every rewrite).

Jet (?)
The Babylon Rogues are giving District 9. I don't know why. I really do not know why. I wanted them to kill each other pretty early on because of Wave's interview, but of course, Espio had to ruin it (18th).

Wave (?)
I actually got into a very small and light-hearted, loving little bickerment with my friend over this. Here it is, condensed.

Me: In her interview, she says she couldn't have asked for a cooler person to be reaped with, and jokingly says that she "can't wait to murder his stupid face."
Him: That better be foreshadowing to her being forced to murder him.
Me: Oh god, you have good ideas. No, I can't change the plot now lmao
Him: YES YOU CAN
Me: FINE, LEMME GO CHECK WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE CHARACTERS. Don't expect it to happen though because I was planning for those two to be the joke of the season.
Him: Well-
Me: Right, I've done something. Not quite that but I've altered how they cease.

I can't remember what was originally going to happen. I still don't really know how to feel about Wave's death (19th).

Knuckles (?)
Isn't Cowboy Knuckles a thing? It also made sense to place him as far south in Panem as I could get him. I really didn't feel like going into that much detail on his character arc without a clear way to knit it into the bigger picture, but I think there's enough information from povs 4 and 5 to gain an idea of his motives and intentions: From joining the Careers and killing Shade and going for Cream so he would be spared in the bloodbath, to running away with Tikal and succumbing to the beautifully timed earthquake which aimed to kill both him and Vector because of who they chose to turn on (11th).

Tikal (?)
She just had to go with Knuckles. She's not related to Pachacamac here. She placed 10th immediately after Knuckles. The numbers are only really a formality, the order of their deaths isn't that important.

Bean (?)
The children in Panem are often named after the industry they grew up around, hence Bean in District 11. In all honesty, I'm not sure why I allied him with Honey. Probably another one of those RNG-type decisions, or perhaps a gap that needed filling. They're both in Sonic the Fighters, so it's not too far-fetched of a pairing. His death is a GHA reference, but this time instead of Espio throwing the bomb back to him, Shadow got the pleasure of blasting him into 8th place.

Sticks (?)
Again, the children in Panem are often named after the industry they grew up around, hence Sticks in District 11. She came down with rabies, like Jessup, but it didn't hit her very fast, although Sticks is generally quite aggressive anyway so precisely when she got bitten by an infected animal is up for debate. I wanted Silver to be the one to put her out of her misery (7th), seeing as I don't think they've ever come close to interacting in canon, and she was headed that way anyway. I drew myself a Sticks map during a neuroscience lecture. It was fun. The map. Not the lecture.

Nack Bronwyn
Random choices, chosen well before I decided I needed to write Eclipse. I probably could have chosen a more interesting District 12 if I knew what I was doing, but then again, District 12 is such a strange part of Eclipse's arc that interesting characters would have made pov5 even longer. Dead last was inevitable. It may be far-fetched to think that this is the sole reason District 12 never forgets the word "Career" so maybe District 1 just keep on killing Twelve in the bloodbath for the foreseeable future, I don't know.

Shade Dorchadas
Random choices. There has to be a few. She came 20th because the Careers (and Knuckles) were on a fucking mission.

• History, victors, and the middle-ground

The decision to write the 27th Hunger Games was quite literally RNG. I asked the same friend I discussed the death of Wave with about which year I should write, and he said 99. And I said no, because I couldn't be bothered to bring back the Hunger Games after the second rebellion.

Me: Random two-digit number, please.
Him: Ninety-nine.
Me: So this is the 99th Hunger Games?
Him: Lmao apparently?
Me: I don't like that. Try again.
Him: Random two-digit number, but not that one. Okay. Ninety eight.

So I got out a random number generator, rolled a 27, and he asked me why I even bothered. To this day, I don't know, but it was perfect because it put me in a very turbulent position. The Games were still in their infancy with the rules still flawed and unwritten, President Snow (Ivo Robotnik, in this case) was early in his reign, the Tribute Centre started using their big basement for all the fancy stuff while the Games were still relatively small, but we're just far along enough in the timeline for there to be hype over the Quarter Quell and Dr. Deep running wild with the gimmicks as a twisted way to process his trauma (more on that later), and hence, the Games got way too big for their boots.

The history of Panem itself was a risk I decided was worth taking. Since I combined Tails and Nine into the same character, I didn't really see him as one to act without a good reason. I decided to leave his motives unwritten in my planning for a little while as I progressed in the present. When I watched the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I saw the map of Panem, saw District 9's position and bordering districts, and thought it was strange that that was where District 9 would be. I let Espio relay my baseless theories to the reader and decided to create the metaphor that would link District 9 to Tails-Nine. None of what I will say in the next italic block is the objective truth to the story, please interpret the situation however you wish to, for the story has now ended and we are currently in a case of 'Death of the Author'.

Even before Panem was fully unified, the Capitol were exorcizing their power and drawing strict lines between people, stripping them of any identity they had before and ensuring they could never have it again. And yet, they named the country after the bread from District 9. It was only a matter of time before that backfired. An omen, if you will, that Panem would eventually fall apart and take back their liberty and the freedom to choose their own paths.
So, when young, scrawny Miles came into the Games and called himself Nine and tried to choose his own path and not the one that the Gamemakers had set out for him, it reminded the Government of the mistakes they made in unification, and it reminded them of the Dark Days. So why didn't the Government realise that Miles had actually read The Freedom Fighters of Knothole, and all of this was just a statement? And that when he went into the Games, he had that memory of the unification story and he wanted to use it, turn himself into a personification of District 9, and take his own path? And that he put his mission on hold for Elise, and when the Gamemakers killed her for singing the songs of a girl who took her own path, he decided to get on with it once and for all? Well, at the time, there was no reason to believe that the book still existed. But when Vanilla was found with the book, they put the dots together.
Miles, Tails, Nine, he was never crazy. He just had a plan, and Vanilla might have been in on it the whole time.

As part of my planning, I made a list of all the victors of the Games so far, partly just to keep track of the statistics I worked into the narrative. Here is the list in its fullest state, along with key developments.

1. District 7
2. District 3 - Beauregard (?)
3. [undecided]
4. [undecided]
5. [undecided]
6. [undecided]
7. [undecided]
8. District 2 - Aleena (?)
9. District 7 - Chaco Bankissy
   Mentors established, interviews and gifts introduced
10. District 12 - Lucy Gray Baird - Broken arena
11. District 4 - Mags Flanagan - First themed arena
    Future victors become mentors
12. District 3 - Vanilla Paloma - "Sweet Mountain"
13. District 2
    Training Centre fully refurbished, trackers introduced
14. District 7 - Jules (?) - "Green Hill Zone"
15. District 1 - Finitevus Fitzalan - "Pumpkin Hill"
16. District 2 - Chuck Thorndyke
17. District 4 - Dread (?) - "No Place"
    Rise of the Career Alliance
18. District 2 - Topaz (?)
19. District 2 - Sam "Speed" Thorndyke
20. [undecided]
21. [undecided]
    Tribute parade debut
22. District 4 - Abyss (?) - [squirrels]
23. District 2 - Christopher Thorndyke
24. District 6 - Mephiles "The Dark" - "Crisis City"
    First Quarter Quell, Tokens introduced
25. District 1 - Valdez (?) - "Scrap Brain Zone"
26. District 5 - Maria Ovi - "Space Colony ARK"
27. District 5 - Shadow Kintobor - "Lake Crystal"
    Mentors lose some rights
28. District 6 - Preston Prq7qe - "Mirage Express" (THIS ONE IS A JOKE)

• The reinstatement of Odair

I wanted to keep this fic as accurate to both Hunger Games and Sonic canon as I realistically could, with a skew in favour of the Hunger Games timeline. That meant making a lot of sacrifices from both fandoms. That also meant having to know my shit. Some people might tell me not to mention this particular part of the writing process because of the Streisand effect, but that assumes that the Streisand effect is a bad thing, whereas I just see it as an excuse to continue infodumping into the early hours of the morning.

Finnick Odair is canonically the youngest victor of the Hunger Games, having won at fourteen years old. I wrote that Jules is the youngest victor of the Hunger Games, having won at twelve years old. Calling this another canon sacrifice felt lazy and very much avoidable to me if I'd just engaged one or two more braincells in the planning stage, so, somehow, I had to find a way to undo his victory. Killing him off wouldn't work, because he'd still be a victor.

When I realised this at 2am, minutes before I needed to go to sleep, my progress was nearing the end of pov4. All I had to work with at this point were some dodgy trackers, the fact that Jules could see Green Hill Zone from District 3 in the Reaping recap, a loose, conceptual framework of Eclipse's story, and a dead District 3-born Dr. Deep. I really don't know how I got so lucky, because half of this stuff I put in for the sake of it. That's how writing works for me, a lot of the time. I include random shit and then a hundred chapters down the line it becomes the most important sentence to the whole story. And since the fourteenth Games are already buried deep in the secret archives alongside the tenth, revoking Jules's victor status might simply be a matter of spreading a bunch of lies and propaganda about how the fourteenth Games didn't really count, having Jules quietly disappear, and just never talking about what really happened or who else might have escaped.

And since I've already mentioned the Eurovision Song Contest, I'd like to talk about another stupid little parallel I accidentally made. The first ESC was in 1956. Therefore, the fourteenth ESC took place in 1969. ESC 1969 ended in a four-way tie. Oh, and the stage design and theme art? Pulled straight from Eurovision 2015.

• Music

The band 'Lord of the Lost' represented Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest, 2023. They were my mum's favourite, and she bought their album 'Blood and Glitter' and put it on in the car. At the time, I had just started writing pov1 and I had an idea of where the plot was going, so when 'Forever Lost' came on, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the lyrics were perfect for the story. Other artists I have referenced include 'Will Wood and the Tapeworms' and 'Fat Dog', both of which were mostly in pov5.

Music kept me inspired. It dragged me out of several cases of the writer's block by re-immersing me in my universe. I made a Spotify playlist full of songs that I collected in a similar way to 'Forever Lost' - hearing them, and thinking, "Wait, this sounds familiar." Below is the link. Most of the songs relate to multiple characters, so putting them in any kind of order was a challenge, but for the most part, they are chronological.
open.spotify.com/playlist/1e24V3urBGWuisWSkoM1D5?si=304cb6ce7b29411b

• What remains under the floorboards

I have more things in my head. There are characters I left behind, but I think this fanfiction is over now. There are characters with stories left untold. Tales and songs and notes on scraps of paper, posted through windowsills and hidden beneath the floorboards, collated into prompts and poems and performed in pitch-black wine cellars. There are piles of the stories, waiting for someone to break in and crack them open, but for the sake of my sanity, and for the sake of the pace, and for the sake of the flow, they are better left to mesh back into the soil as compost, rather than simmer on low heat, hydrating for eternity. I'm happy with what I've created. I'm proud of what I've done. When things got difficult in the real world and I felt like giving up, I found a feeling of joy and a sense of purpose in my writing. I celebrated every milestone as a step closer to an end goal, so I wouldn't be stuck in an endless loop of feeling the same things over and over again with nowhere to put them. A pathway, so I wouldn't feel Forever Lost.

My work here is done. Thank you.