Natalia had been twelve for two days when they call her name.
The odds weren't exactly against her, but with the Quarter Quell, they were worse than usual.
"Natalia Romanova!" and then a delighted smile. "Oh, what a beautiful name! It rolls off the tongue so nicely!" Frostine croons. "Come on up here, sweetie." The girl already standing beside the painted and costumed woman has tears streaking down her face and a hitch in her breath.
The girls around her murmur and shuffle to make room, and she slips her way through the gaps until she reaches the front. Her skirt, the nicest she owns, barely ruffles in the hot breeze. She holds her head high and proud as she glides up to the stage, each footfall precise and sure.
Frostine reaches out with one bony hand once she reaches the stop of the steps and clamps onto her shoulder. Natalia lets herself be steered to her escort's side. The other girl is shuffled to the side, out of the way. "Wonderful, wonderful! My, you are a pretty one. Smile for the camera, darling!"
Obediently, Natalia pastes a small, halfhearted smile on her face. Her district stares back stonily. The girls, her fellow contenders for the Reaping, are more relaxed now, with the guilty relief that they had not been chosen. There is low, mutinous muttering – as usual, she knows, when a tribute so young is chosen – but Natalia knows there is nobody in the crowd who actually gives a damn about her in particular, and it dies away quickly.
Except one. But he is just one day shy twelve, not even eligible to volunteer. He stares mutely back at her, eyes wide in horror, at the back of the crowd.
Natalia meets his eyes, and for a split second, lets her smile soften into something genuine. For him, she vows, she will come back alive.
…
The doors open, and Natalia smiles when he bursts in, tripping over his own feet. Without hesitation, he throws himself at her, and she catches him.
"Nat," and his voice is strangled, muffled against her shoulder. "I—you can't, you can't leave me, I—you—"
"Hey," she interrupts him, soft but firm. "It'll be okay, Clint, I can do this. I'll win and come back, and we'll live in the Victor's Village. We'll have as much food as we can eat and we'll never get cold." She smooths one hand over his cowlick, and he pulls back. He's blinking away tears, trying so hard to be strong for her. Tears prick her eyes, but she wills them away.
He slips a pendant into her hand – a hand carved wooden figure on a piece of twine. "For your token," he says, unnecessarily. "Will you – will you wear it?"
She nods, closes her hand over it. "Until the end of time."
She holds his hand, the rest of the time they have left, and he leans his forehead on her shoulder, and she on his in silence. She lets his breathing soothe her, fill her up, give her strength, then lifts her head to memorize the lines of his face – just in case this is the last time –
No, she can't afford to think that.
In the end, the Peacekeepers drag him out. "You have to live!" he yells to her, his calm placidity evaporating into panic. "You need to win, Nat, promise – !" and the doors close behind him.
Natalia stands tall, hands at her side. "I promise," she breathes to an empty room.
Natalia has no family left in the world. She hadn't expected the doors to open again, but they do, and she turns, mask of calm firmly in place, and the Madame strides in.
"Natalia." The Madame crosses her arms. Natalia inclines her head. The older woman purses her lips. She doesn't quite seem to know what to say. "We'll miss you, at the Red Room," is what she says finally. Natalia imagines the words would be stilted and awkward in another's mouth, but the Madame is far too disciplined for that.
"Thank you," Natalia replies. "Give everyone my love."
There is nothing, really, to say. The Madame nods once, sharply, and turns to go, but pauses. "You're a survivor," she says. A last farewell. And then she is gone.
Natalia stands in silence until the Peacekeepers come for her.
…
Nick Fury is a bit of a legend in all of Panem, but especially District 10.
He is the first and only victor from their District. He also killed all four the four Careers left in the top five with him in an ambush and pitched battle, his only kills of the entire Game.
Natasha sits with poise, a serene mask on her face even as she puzzles out the fancy silverware, and eyes him discreetly over the potatoes and buttered bread rolls on her plate.
He stares straight back at her through his one uncovered eye, unaffected.
At the end of the table, Frostine twitters like a bird, excitement over the Reaping warring with thinly veiled disgust at her tablemates' manners on her ostentatiously decorated face. Beside her, Jessica who had been crying on the stage pokes at the food on her plate and does not eat. The two boys, one visibly angry and the other with trembling hands, wolf down the potatoes and steak ravenously – the former with his hands, the latter with only a fork. None of her fellow tributes speak.
One mentor for four of them. Natalia will need to keep Fury's attention on her if she wants to survive.
She slices through the meat delicately, and it is tender enough to melt on her tongue. The table is too tall for her to eat comfortably, and her feet swing just a few centimeters shy of the floor.
"Listen up," says Fury, his voice gruff, and launches into a long lecture about the Games, the Capitol, and their training. Natalia absorbs every word like a sponge. Jessica descends increasingly into despair as he continues, and Trembling Hands looks like he's going to be sick.
"Why do we have to suck up to them?" Angry interrupts when Fury tells them to make friendly with the audience and stylists. "They're all going to watch us die and laugh." He's seventeen, the oldest of the tributes, and judging by the callouses on his hands, probably works in the slaughterhouses. Worked. He tosses a half-eaten bread roll onto his plate mutinously and wipes his hands on his pants. Frostine leans away from him slightly, the blue gemstones embedded around her eyes twinkling in the light as she crinkles her face in distaste.
"Don't interrupt me, boy," Fury glowers. Angry scowls down at his plate. "Sponsors will make or break your Games. You run out of food or get an infection, you're going to wish you made nice with the Capitol folks. So you let them pretty you up, they want to make you a damn peacock you let them. They say jump, you ask how high. Am I clear?" The older man sweeps them all with a glare.
"Yes, sir," says Natalia, and the others echo her, reluctantly. Fury's eye comes to rest on her, and she smiles beatifically.
Fury grunts approvingly, apparently satisfied with their response. "Let's talk schedules."
Once they finish eating, they watch the Reapings. Natalia memorizes all their names, their mannerisms, studies their bodies and postures and movements. She gives them nicknames. It'll make it easier for her to kill them in the arena.
As for the past 24 years, the tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 are exceptionally strong. The first girl from District 2 who volunteers, a tall, lithe blonde with a razor sharp smile, lingers in her mind. Natalia would bet everything she owned that this girl will make it to the top five.
Natalia notes the ones that cry, the undernourished, the faint of heart. She catalogues the ones with fire in their eyes, lean muscle under taut skin.
The others are staring at the screen almost blankly. Jessica is on the verge of tears again, Angry is scowling at the wall, and Trembling Hands looks like he might pass out. They've given up hope. It takes a lot to survive in an outer District like 10, but it takes more to survive life as a killer. They'll fight when the time comes, but they don't have the fortitude to last. Not like Natalia.
After all, Natalia is a survivor.
…
Natalia doesn't have to be the one to request individual rather than group training. Angry does that for her.
Good. She doesn't need her fellow District tributes' suspicions on her.
When they are all sleeping, in their individual rooms on the train, she slips out and stands in front of the door to his compartment. She smooths down her jean skirt, then knocks twice and stands back, hands clasped behind her back.
Fury is still dressed in all black, leather trenchcoat and eyepatch both firmly in place. He looks down at her and raises his eyebrow. "Yes?"
Natalia stares back boldly, shoulders back and chin up. "Teach me how to win," she says.
He smiles. It's not a friendly one.
Natalia doesn't care.
…
"Oh, what an absolute doll you are!"
Natalia stands absolutely naked as a trio of color-coordinated but outrageously modified (actual feathers sprouting from their heads and shoulders) woodpeckers circle her critically, armed with scrubbing sponges and tweezers.
"But your skin!" one bemoans dramatically, snatching Natalia's wrist up and staring at her forearm. "What a tragedy! Oh, how do you stand it?"
Natalia resists the urge to snatch her hand back, or worse, punch him in the face. "It really is quite difficult," she says instead, widening her eyes mournfully.
The prep team buys it unquestioningly, cooing at her sympathetically.
"You poor dear," one trills. Her brilliant orange plumage is contrasted by swirling blue inked in a mask around her eyes. Natalia thinks her name starts with a P.
"Don't you worry," another promises earnestly, clucking woefully at her shoulder-length hair. "We'll fix you right up!"
Natalia beams winningly at them, and watches them fall for her all over again.
Her stylist is relatively new and desperately trying to fit in. Unfortunately, the blue honeycomb inked over every inch of his skin comes off as garish, and the indigo and purple rhinestones in stripes along his cheeks do him no favors. His fingernails are covered by silver rhinestones and flash when he gestures wildly.
He's harried, eyes jumping all over. He is Jessica's stylist too, because there weren't enough to give every District four. Their prep team is also shared.
"And we could do a, a, cow style!" he rambles. "Make you a cow warrior! I'll get you some, some leathers. Black and white leathers. Make you look strong. Cow warrior chief! Nice big headdress, you'll look darling! Absolutely fierce!"
Natalia doesn't want to look like a cow. She doesn't want to look strong, and she certainly doesn't want to look fierce. She widens her eyes pleadingly, tilts her head to the side. "Mr. Nimmo, sir," she interrupts. "Can I be an angel?"
The stylist pauses, mouth gaping. He's leaning towards outrage. He also has final authority on her parade costume, so Natalia has to sell her pitch fast.
Natalia lowers her head. "I'm sorry," she mumbles, reaching up to scrub the tears welling up in her eyes. Nimmo makes noises of distress and pulls her wrist away gently, admonishing her not to smear her makeup. "I just – my mommy told me stories about the angels that help me watch over the sheep. She said they're the prettiest creatures in the world!" She looks up at Nimmo through her lashes. "I always wanted to wear a pretty dress and be an angel. And you're really good at making people pretty. Can you – can you make me a sheep angel?" She bites her lip, twists her hands demurely in front of her.
He hems and haws, but Natalia knows she's won. She can see the gears turning in his head with the ideas she's planted. "I'll see what I can do," the stylist says, pursing his lips. "You've been such a good girl after all – the team loves you! Not like that other girl, keeps fighting back. She threw Balthar's comb clean across the room! What a barbarian! My word." And he leaves the room muttering. Natalia smiles.
Her dress is exactly as she wanted it. Pure white and with textured whorls made of something Nimmo calls "quilting dacron", it falls to her knees, where it's trimmed by a thick, almost raw wool. The sleeves are cut off at the shoulder and fall down her back in two coattails – her wings. Her halo is a circlet of wool, resting atop her hair and liberal extensions make her red curls fall halfway down her back. Nimmo hands her a pair of gloves, black satin trimmed with wool, and a puffy pair of matching boots. The prep team – Natalia calls them P, Q, and R in her head – stencil silvery designs all over her face and bare arms.
They stand back when they're done, the four Capitol woodpeckers, and PQR practically faint from excitement as Nimmo turns her to the mirror.
She doesn't recognize herself, with alabaster skin sparkling silver and hair like fire. The girl in pure white that stares back from the mirror isn't the shepherd girl from the Red Room in the livestock District. Natalia hates herself for it, but she likes it.
She wants to rip it off, throw away this visage that makes her like what the Capitol has done to her to make her its own. But she has to play the game. She knows what she has to do.
She beams, lets a radiant smile split her face, and throws her arms around Nimmo's waist in a hug. "Thank you, Mr. Nimmo," she breathes, willing tears to well up in her eyes, and "it's beautiful," and though he pries her off, gently, so she doesn't ruin her makeup, he is smiling too – wide and pleased and grateful that this little girl from the barbarian district appreciates his work. She hugs PQR each in turn too, and they aww and fuss over her until it's time to go.
While the last-minute costume change might have been good for her, it seems to have been rather unfortunate for her chariot partner. Trembling Hands looks extremely uncomfortable in his high-collared, wool-lined tuxedo made of the same material as her dress. He doesn't have a halo, but he is holding a shepherd's crook awkwardly in one hand. His pants are the same light material, tucked into boots like hers, and he rubs frantically under his collar. Jessica and Angry have been handed down the cow warrior look, and Natalia thinks they pull it off as well as can be expected. The cow-print vests are atrocious but show off Angry's triceps and biceps quite well, though she thinks the steer-horn headdress is a bit much.
The room is almost bursting, with twice as many chariots, horses, and tributes as previous years. Natalia wonders if they'd modified the waiting area to accommodate this many, or if they hadn't bothered and simply squished everyone into the original. She bets on the latter.
Stylists and prep teams scurry back and forth, shrieking in panic or excitement as they rush their final touches. Most of the other tributes look rather shellshocked, huddled with the others from their District and murmuring quietly or struck mute. The Careers have formed a sort of mega-group, laughing raucously and conversing with easy grace. Every so often, one sweeps their gaze over the rest of the tributes, rooted stiffly in place, and turns back to the group with a satisfied smirk. It's raw intimidation, and it's working.
Natalia is not very afraid. She is already planning ways to take them apart. Clint's pendant hangs about her neck, out in the open despite her stylist's displeased objections; one devastated expression on Natalia's face made him relent reluctantly.
She is not nervous during the chariot ride, unlike Trembling Hands who is stiff as a board and forgets how to smile. She beams and waves shyly at the audience, who scream and cheer and throw flowers at her. She is darling, she knows, the youngest of the tributes here, and she plays it up as best she can.
She is not the most stunning – Girl 2A takes that with a daring silver sheathe dress and gladiator heels, or Boy 4A who is stripped to the waist but pulls it off well with a chiseled chest and abs and stunning blue eyes. Girl 7A is naturally gorgeous, but her stylist has flubbed it by turning her into a pine tree that masks her body's curves. The older girl from 12 actually does quite well this year by the audience's roars, baggy miner's pants tucked into boots and nothing on top but a black bandeau and smears of coal dust.
Natalia doesn't bother to listen to the President's speech. This is her first chance to observe her competitors in person, so she watches them instead. They're watching her too, she knows, so she blinks back with wide eyes, always breaks eye contact first, and fidgets with her hands. She sees them dismissing her as a threat – Girl 4B's mouth tips in a scornful sneer – and she smiles inside.
…
That night, when they're all in their rooms with their massive beds and fake windows, she slips out and pads to Fury's room. She takes the knives he gives her and they spar until her muscles give out. When she's lying on the floor, gasping for air, he begins his lecture.
…
Most of the others are at combat-related stations, desperately handling spears and swords and knives for the first time so they can go down fighting. The Careers are there too, casually intimidating the rest with their ease and familiarity with the weapons. Natalia isn't about to show off her weapons skills in front of 47 competitors, so she heads straight for the traps station, where she picks up snare after pitfall with ease.
She plays shy, doesn't talk to anyone first. Nobody talks to her until lunch, when she's sitting alone and methodically clearing the food from her tray.
"Hi." Natalia looks up, and Girl 11A sets down her tray. Natalia gives her a small, unsure smile. "I'm Dana," Girl 11A says.
"Natalia," she responds in a mumble, dropping her eyes back down to her tray. Girl 11A is slight of build, and even with the faint cord of muscle shifting beneath her skin, Natalia knows she is one of the weaker ones. She will be picked off early, especially with such a large field. An early death was usually quicker, cleaner; Girl 11A would be lucky for that, Natalia notes dispassionately.
Girl 11A sticks around after lunch, when Natalia moves on to the edibles station, and is in fact joined by Girls 11B, 6A and B, and Boys 6B and 7A. They're the leftovers, those so hopeless that nobody else will ally with them, drawn instinctively to others of their ilk. Herd mentality. They're the deer, the sardines, forming a group so each has a slightly better chance of survival. They talk amongst each other, stilted conversation that smooths as the afternoon stretches on.
Natalia doesn't say much, but frightened doe-eyes and murmured questions "is this how you do it?" "am I doing this right?" "can you help me?" have their protective older sibling instincts flaring, and they collect her into their group, a little unfortunate girl to help and guard. They want to take care of her, and she capitalizes on it ruthlessly. Remorse has no business in the Games.
She shrinks back when a Career tribute stalks past, wearing confidence and arrogance like cloaks, and Boy 6B puts a comforting hand on her shoulder as Girl 6A steps in front of her defensively. Girl 1B notices, smirks predatorily, and winks as she saunters past. Boy 7A practically growls when she's gone, and the girls from 11 have lips pressed together and eyebrows furrowed. Natalia lets a single tear slip down her face, catches the others' attention when she lifts a hand to wipe it away, and makes a show of acting brave by fighting down her tears. She has them wrapped around her little finger, and the part of her that hates it weakens and weakens.
At night, after dinner, she knocks on Fury's door.
…
Knives at night. Fury feeds her everything she needs to know about the games.
Training by day. Natalia builds her persona and hits every single non-combat station available.
She watches the other tributes, builds her mental profiles. She notes the ones who are holding back, the ones with false bravado. She constructs plans to take them out. Her herd adds Girl 8A, bringing them up to eight strong.
Natalia doesn't want a high training score. That would bring her persona crashing down. When the doors open to let her in, she trots to the center of the floor. The Gamemakers are not paying much attention. That's okay.
She dances. Madame taught all the girls ballet, and in her bland training uniform, she twirls and patters across the floor, leaps and hops through the air. She tiptoes delicately forward, bends her knees, spins to the music in her head.
The Gamemakers are thoroughly unimpressed. Natalia resists the urge to laugh. Instead, she beams angelically upwards at them when she is dismissed and drops into a curtsy before skipping lightly out.
Girl 2A scores an 11, the highest of all. The rest of the Careers range from 8 to 10. Her alliance members mostly get 4s and 5s, but Boy 7A manages a 7. Angry gets an 8, but rather than pleased, his glower darkens. Natalia receives a 3.
Fury's scrutiny is calculating. Her fellow District 10 tributes are caught between scorn, relief, and concern. Natalia makes herself look devastated.
Too easy.
…
Her interview dress, after careful word placement around Nimmo, is a shimmery parody of a shepherd girl's frock, overlaid with a snowy shawl, braided leather circlet, and knee-high gladiator sandals.
She sits demurely. There are almost forty interviews between the first and her. Does the Capitol audience get bored? The first few tributes start off strong, of course. They're always crowd favorites. Girl 2A plays flirtatious and deadly by turns. The audience loves it – danger, after all, is quite seductive. By District 7 the crowd is bored, by 9, restless. When Natalia walks on stage, the applause is polite but not enthusiastic.
"Natalia Romanova," Caesar smiles. "Twelve years old! Aren't you just adorable?"
Natalia twists her hands in her lap and ducks her head. "Thank you, sir," she says shyly.
Several people in the audience aww. Caesar turns up the brightness of his smile. "Oh, just call me Caesar!" he invites. "We're all friends, aren't we?" he asks the audience, who dutifully responds with a cheer. "Tell me, Natalia, how are you liking the Capitol."
Natalia smiles. "It's amazing!" she gushes. "Everything is so bright, and, and clean! Everyone has been so nice – and everyone I met is so pretty!" she adds, then covers her mouth and blushes, as if she can't believe she'd said such a thing out loud.
Caesar laughs heartily, leaning in to touch her shoulder companionably. The audience members preen. "You're looking quite pretty yourself, young lady," he winks, and the crowd murmurs agreement.
"Oh, it's because of my stylist, Mr. Nimmo," Natalia replies demurely. "He's magic!"
A ripple of laughter and smiles passes through the audience. The camera projects Nimmo's face, looking surprised, pleased, and bashful. Caesar smiles indulgently. "He certainly has outdone himself this year." He leans forward. "Tell me, Natalia," he says confidentially. "What's it like being mentored by a legend?"
The camera pans over to Nick Fury, in his black leathers and an intimidating scowl pasted on his face.
Natalia hesitates just a moment, and blurts, "He's scary," and then immediately buries her face in her hands again. The crowd laughs again. She can tell they're swaying to her side, hanging onto her words – an adorable little girl, drawn to her innocence and naivety, as Caesar coaxes her to show her blushing face again. Maybe it won't be enough for sponsors, but surely the tributes are buying her cover as well.
"Do you have anyone waiting back at home for you?" Caesar prompts.
Natalia knew the question was coming, but it catches her off guard nonetheless. She pauses, and the devastation that creeps onto her face is real. The crowd murmurs sympathetically, and the buzzer goes off.
"Best of luck to you, Natalia Romanova of District 10. May the odds be ever in your favor," Caesar finishes quietly, and the applause continues long after she's left the stage.
…
Natalia sleeps well, her night dreamless. Her anticipation is ruthlessly crushed down, her nervousness and sense of impending doom both compartmentalized with cold efficiency. She is serene when she wakes, and she is ready to go when they come for her.
Jessica is near tears yet again but trying to hide it. Trembling Hands is living up to his nickname, and his face is deathly pale. Angry looks like he might be sick. Natalia pulls a shell-shocked expression on her face.
…
Fury claps her shoulder, looks her dead in the eye, and commands, "Win."
…
The uniform is light but waterproof, thin mottled pants, black T-shirt, thin camo jacket. Boots.
…
Natalia wraps Clint's pendant around her bicep, tight enough that it can't be used as a handhold, loose enough for blood circulation.
…
The glass tube slides open. Natalia steps in.
…
Natalia breathes in the humid air as the tube retracts, sharp eyes taking in every detail. Towering trees, thick undergrowth, leaves and vines everywhere: jungle. She can work with this.
There are packs scattered all around, some a tantalizing five meters away, and growing in value to the cornucopia. Boy 4B stands on the plate closest to her on the right, and he stares right at her with a predatory leer. Natalia lets herself flinch and look away. Girl 9A is on her right – strong build but little technique in terms of weaponry.
Natalia breathes. The count reaches zero.
The horn sounds, and Natalia launches herself off her plate. She hightails it into the jungle without grabbing a single thing and doesn't stop her light-footed sprint until she judges she's a good distance from the cornucopia. She stalks through the trees and drops down onto the roots of a large tree, carefully regulating her breathing.
She doubts she was followed, but better safe than sorry. She holds herself very still, straining her eyes and ears as she peers around the trunk. Nothing. Nobody in sight, nothing to break the oppressive silence that Natalia's mind screams is just not right. Too busy at the cornucopia to pursue one little girl who is easy prey anyways.
Nick Fury's rules of survival, number one: don't get caught up in the bloodbath. Check.
For all that she spent her week of training building up camaraderie with her herd, Natalia has no intention of seeking them out. Not immediately, anyways. Natalia will work well enough alone.
For now, Natalia needs to get access to supplies: food, water, weapons, shelter.
She leaves the relative security of her tree and makes her way onwards. She needs to prepare to go on the offensive. Although she hadn't joined in the bloodbath, she also doesn't have any supplies. She couldn't safely drink water even if she found some, because she doesn't have a water purification kit.
She does find water. A river, wending its way among the trees. Natalia walks lightly so that when she checks, she doesn't leave footprints. She retreats back a few meters, scales a tree with sure, easy movements. The tree trunks are wide and slick when not covered by moss, the actual branches far above her head, but vines drop from branches to the ground. She pulls herself up hand over hand up a vine, keeps climbing until she's all but concealed in a tangle of leaves and vines and shadows. The heat is sweltering; she's sweating under the jacket, but she's reluctant to take it off. She knows this is the type of climate the mosquitoes thrive in, and although probably not fatal, she'd rather not have to deal with the irritation of their bites. She can endure. She pulls up her hood to conceal her hair and settles in to wait.
A few minutes later, the cannons begin. Twelve in total; thirty-six left to play. It's a disappointment. Natalia had hoped the bloodbath would take out more – perhaps the presence of a larger Career pack sent would-be scavengers running when they otherwise might have tried for a prize. That would be bad news for Natalia as well. Less stragglers with backpacks means less potential prey for her with the purification tablets she needed most.
She lets herself doze. She was hidden well enough, and secure enough in the boughs of the tree. She knows she could never truly sleep in this arena, and she had never fallen out of a tree while asleep in the past.
It's a gamble to sleep in the daytime, more so on the first day. But she's betting that the other tributes will be too preoccupied staying alive and getting away than deliberately hunting down the others. And if the Careers do as they've traditionally done, they'll be setting up a defense perimeter and base camp around the cornucopia today.
She's startled awake twice by the boom a cannon. Each time, she remains motionless, holding her breathe, until she determines it safe to sleep again.
She comes awake some time later when foliage rustles unnaturally somewhere below her perch. Natalia isn't sure how long she slept. A good number of hours, probably. She's always been good at sleeping at will. She can't see the sun; only in the Cornucopia clearing was it clearly visible. Otherwise, the thick foliage of the jungle blocks most of her view of the sky. She'd have to climb much higher to see the sky. She leans down carefully to check. It's a deer – a welcome sight. At least, until it turns and she sees a second, deformed head protruding from its neck. She freezes, and stares as the creature bounds away leisurely. What the hell? Then: can I still eat it?
While she's contemplating this, she hears a different kind of rustle. Human footfalls.
She stays still and silent, but coils her muscles in preparation for fight or flight.
Natalia recognizes him. Boy 5B. He's gasping, out of breath. He's made no attempt to hide his tracks, and his jacket is tied around his waist. Her sharp eyes track a small bulge in his jacket pocket. The purification tablets? But he falls on the river and drinks directly from the source. Natalia grimaces – whatever he grabbed probably wasn't the tablets. She doesn't make a move as he rises, stumbles across the river – he's in up to his chest – and disappears back into the jungle.
Natalia doesn't plan to move for a long while. She stretches each limb in turn, tensing and relaxing muscles bit by bit to keep herself warmed up. As she watches, a snake with a girth the size of her neck slips through the undergrowth on the opposite side of the stream. A small, spotted, catlike creature crouches to lap at the water's edge. Neither has an extra head.
The light begins to fade. Natalia doesn't move for hours. She is patient. Impatience gets you killed, Fury's voice growls in her mind.
Dusk. Natalia climbs precariously high until she has a good view of the sky as the sun slips away and takes the last moment of the arena's illumination to do some scouting. She sees a circular break in the distance back the way she came from – the cornucopia's clearing. Everything else seems to be unbroken forest, dominated by the same unfamiliar tree as the one she's perched in. A mist hanging low over the trees obscures the horizon; she can't see if or where the trees end. She twists around: the land rises there in mountains, maybe. She can't see the peaks, but she keeps trying until darkness falls completely.
The anthem makes her start, then cling to her tree as its tip sways precariously.
Faces appear in the sky: Girl 1B is first. A boy from District 3, then another Career – one of the boys from District 4. One girl and one boy from Five. Girls 6A and 8A from the Herd. Boy 8B. Jessica and Trembling Hands. The boy from 11 who received an 8. The thirteen-year-old girl from Twelve. Districts 2 and 7 are the only ones entirely unscathed – 2 because of the obvious, but 7 is a surprise. A credit to their mentor, perhaps.
Natalia does not have time for emotion. She forces it away into her mind, and what's left is the lingering thought that their ends had probably been fast. One last mercy.
The night fades back to black, and the unnatural silence returns to the arena. It's only then that Natalia realizes why her mind thinks it's so wrong. Jungle like this, there should be some kind of bird. The woods back in 10 always had some kind of singing birds, like mockingjays – where there are trees, there are birds to take advantage of them. But here she has yet to see a single bird.
It doesn't have to mean anything. For all Natalia knows, the other districts might not even have birds. So Natalia files away the information for later consideration.
Carefully, keeping close to the trunk of the tree to keep the branches from rustling, she lowers herself down to the branches, then wraps her sleeves around her hands and slides down a vine until she reaches the forest floor. She was expecting it to be completely black, but there's an unearthly glow in patches, either on the ground, scattered on rocks, or the trees themselves.
It's moss, she discovers, when she approaches cautiously to take a closer look. One patch by itself is not enough light to see more than a couple feet in any direction if she strains her eyes, but the whole forest is covered by the stuff. It throws the trees into dramatic shadows – plenty of hiding places for someone like Natalia, but probably still dark enough that the other tributes will want to hunker down and hide out the night.
Prime time for Natalia to begin her hunt. She slips through the trees, keeping the river on her right, and goes to find a victim. Easier said than done.
If Natalia were the other tributes, she would be sleeping up high in a tree, where nobody could see her. Possibly with some sort of ranged weapon to pick off people like Natalia.
But very few other tributes had bothered visiting the rope climbing station during training, and even fewer made it higher than ten or fifteen feet. The lowest branches of these massive trees are at least thirty. There are other kinds of tree, sure, but thin and whippy. They wouldn't be able to support Natalia's weight, and she's pretty sure she weighs somewhere around five or ten pounds less than the next smallest tribute. Natalia predicts they'll be bedded down in the undergrowth, huddling like fawns in hopes of escaping detection.
She doesn't rush. That would be careless, and carelessness kills here as surely as starvation.
She steps slow and careful, taking care not to break the branches from the brush. Creeping movements will hide her better if there is someone watching, although she cannot cover as much ground.
She keeps going the same direction for what feels like an hour, hour and a half. She doubles back on her tracks, breaks to the right or left every so often and conceals herself in the shadows and waits ten minutes or so before continuing. Despite her little side trips, she follows the river diligently, and every so often goes out of her way to make sure it is still on her right.
It's something of a haphazard search pattern, with her irregular zigzagging, but very slow going. The river stays wide each time she checks on it, but she doesn't know if it's getting deeper, though she suspects it is. The currents have slowed, a lazy meander here instead of a headlong rush.
She's paranoid. How could she not be? Her heart beats steady, but a little faster than normal. She freezes at the slightest noise and her eyes dart from shadow to shadow until she finds the culprit – a small mammal scurrying across the ground or in the bush, a snake slithering the length of a tree trunk. She still hasn't found another tribute, and she entertains the possibility that she's been wandering right past them, hidden in the boughs of the great trees or among their roots.
Half a mile later, Natalia freezes, holds her breath. She strains her ears, and the sound comes again: the quiet, huffed exhale of someone who is sleeping lightly.
He's well hidden, but it's his face that gives him away. Pale and drawn, his face glows in the eerie lighting of the moss that pillows his head, and it catches Natalia's eyes despite the leafy branches of a bush that he'd drawn over himself.
Natalia is cautious. Starting from five meters away, she conducts a spiraling patrol of the surrounding area, glaring up into the gloom of the trees, just in case this Boy 3A is not alone and his partner is keeping watch nearby. Her search turns up empty. There's nobody else in the vicinity.
Either way, she needs to make her move fast. The longer she waits, the more likely he'll wake up or someone or something else will find one or both of them.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, she knows exactly what she has to do.
She doesn't know what supplies, if any, he has. Simple thievery won't be enough – she'll have to kill him.
A small part of Natalia is screaming, horrified, telling her this is wrong, she can't go around killing people, especially when she has other options, it's sick, it's messed up. Natalia crushes it down, discards it. It's surprisingly easy. There is no room for hesitation or morals in the Games. She's a survivor. If that means she has to be a killer, then she'll kill.
She stalks him like a predator, soundless, her small frame coiled to half her height.
He doesn't wake up until her arm's around his neck and she pulls.
She drags him up against her, shoves at the back of his head with her other arm as he flails. Something hits her in the arm, badly aimed and without strength. She yanks his head to the side, and he drops it. His struggles are sluggish, probably still half asleep, and his hands, twice the size of hers, claw at her arm weakly. He stills in her arms, goes limp. She keeps holding on, almost a minute, she thinks. Then she drops him and scrabbles to grab everything he owns. There's the knife he hit her with, that he hadn't had the time or foresight or presence of mind to properly stab her with. She strips him of his jacket, then his shirt. There's something bulky in the pocket of the jacket, but she doesn't stop to check it. The struggle might have been relatively quiet, but she won't run the risk of discovery by staying in the area.
Once she's done, she wiggles backward, casts a quick glance in every direction. She sees nothing, hears nothing. Natalia picks up the knife. She makes herself move forward seamlessly before she can hesitate or change her mind. She draws a crimson smile in his throat.
The cannon startles her – caught up in her mind during her first murder, she'd completely forgotten about the cannon. She wipes her knife clean on his pants, slips it into the pocket on her right pants leg. Everything else gets bundled into her new extra jacket, which she winds tightly around her midsection. She leaves Boy 3A in the loam and slips onward. Her hands aren't even shaking.
A small, disgusted voice tells her there's something wrong with her. She ignores it.
She moves a little faster, puts some distance between herself and the kill site. Once she determines she's far enough, she does another spiral check, chooses a tree, and hauls herself up by the vines. The muscles in her arm have a fine tremble when she reaches the lowest branch, but she keeps climbing up through the branches to a large fork before she allows herself to stop. Carefully, so she doesn't drop anything, she unwraps Boy 3A's jacket. She sets the t-shirt aside in favor of figuring out exactly what he'd picked up from the Cornucopia.
It's a small backpack, one strap. A fanny pack, really. Inside, there's another knife, smaller, but with the same sleek edge serrated about an inch closest to the hilt. A small bottle of chlorine tablets. A floppy black parody of a water skin. Beef jerky wrapped in plastic.
Something gleams at her from the darkness, distracting her perusal of the supply pack. Natalia freezes, stares intently into the gloom. Unfortunately, the eyes that glow back at her are all too familiar.
Back in 10, she and Clint had been responsible for guarding the Red Room's sheep for a couple weeks at a time. Most of the danger had come from hawks or coyotes preying on their lambs, but every so often, a mountain lion would try to drag a sheep away. At night, she would see it watching her from the treeline as she clutched her staff, its eyes reflecting the light.
With a sinking heart, she realizes that the puma in the next tree must be even bigger than the ones she faced at home. Its eyes are set further apart, and she thinks she can make out the outline of a broad muzzle.
Without breaking eye contact, Natalia reaches into her pocket and draws the knife. Her mind throws panicked suggestions at her – run, throw the knife, climb higher, run, kill it – but none of those will do any good against a predator that can climb and run faster than her, and if she throws her knife and misses, she'll only have the shorter blade left.
The creature blinks, languidly, and the eyes disappear as it turns. Natalia hears the brush of fur against bark, the scratch of claws, and a muted thump far below. In the glow of the moss, her eyes catch the strangely mottled body wind its way into the shadows.
Natalia doesn't move, staring desperately into the darkness below her tree, until she realizes that she can see more than just shadowy outlines. Light is starting to filter in from the treetops.
She releases her white-knuckled grip on her knife and runs a hand through her hair, shaken. Once she's regained most of her composure, she turns to her supplies. She needs to be ready to move quickly – if the Careers don't come hunting, the Gamemakers will probably herd her towards them.
She cuts up Boy 3A's shirt, and the bottom and sleeves of his jacket to make coverings for her head and hands. Once her hands are wrapped, she allows herself a piece of beef, then another before she forces herself to stop. Both knives go in her pockets. Everything else she stuffs back into the pack and straps it around her waist.
Even prepared, she's reluctant to leave the relative security of her tree. Although she knows she'd be more or less trapped if she were to be spotted, being on the ground somehow feels more vulnerable.
She dithers.
It might have saved her, because a large group of footsteps tramps into the edge of her awareness. She freezes, resists the instinct to bolt. She shrinks back against the trunk of the tree, and watches between the gaps of the leaves as the tributes approach.
It's not the Careers, but it's a large group – Natalia reckons it's the biggest coalition outside the Careers, maybe ever given that the pool of candidates is twice as large this year. They all look hardened, carry themselves in a way that knows survival. They're the strongest of the non-Career tributes, and Natalia watched them enough during training to know who's in this alliance. There's the tall, muscled boy from 11, both girls from 7 who move with an easy grace through the trees, the boy from 6 who's not in her herd. Boy 9A and Girl 9B. With the death of both girls from District 5 in the bloodbath, that must mean Boy 7B and Boy 12A are probably guarding their camp.
"Hey, there's water!" one of the boys calls. The boy from 6 runs forward, towards the river.
The others follow, cautiously. 6 is careful enough to give the water a cursory check before he jumps in, cautiously followed by Girl 9B, who splashes in up to her waist. Her district partner gets to work immediately filling water bottles, while Girl 7A turns to keep watch.
"Hey, you should probably be more careful," admonishes Girl 7B, giving the water a more suspicious glare. "You never know what they'll stick in those."
Boy 6A makes a face but wades back towards the bank. Girl 9B is halfway out when he screams and disappears under a mound of wriggling silver.
"Get out!" Girl 7A yells, rushing to grab Girl 9B's arm. Boy 9A grabs her under her arms and helps haul her onto the riverbank. Her teeth are gritted but she doesn't scream despite the two fish attached to her calves by long, needle-like teeth.
"Garvin!" calls Girl 7B, desperately. "Hold on!"
Boy 11B extends his spear out over the water, and a flailing hand emerges from the mass of fish to grab it. 11B hauls him out bodily, but it's too late.
In the seconds before his hand slips off the spear, Natalia catches a glimpse of his torso, eaten away until his ribcage shines white, between the wriggling bodies of the fish. His body slips back into water that boils red, and 11 jerks back the spear. Natalia flinches. Girl 7B muffles a shriek. In the distance, his cannon booms.
The alliance leaves quickly back the way they can, subdued. Natalia counts thirty minutes before she dares to slide down.
The river is serene once again, but Natalia walks a good way upstream before she decides the water should be safe again. She fills her water as quickly as possible, keeping an eye out for the carnivorous fish, but they don't make an appearance. The hair rises on the back of her neck and she spins, one hand on a knife, but when she stares into the trees there's nothing there. She caps the skin quickly, retreats from the banks of the river before she drops a tablet in and shoves it back into her pack.
The sensation of being watched does not vanish. If anything, it grows. Natalia cannot shake it when she doubles back, past where Boy 6A was eaten alive, and pushes further into the unknown.
She follows the river and walks straight into the barrier of the arena. She stumbles backwards, momentarily disoriented. She'd slowed down, luckily for her face, when she heard a faint buzzing noise.
She can hardly tell it's there, but for the faint ripple when she hit it.
Natalia turns back around. Staying near the river is both dangerous and convenient, but for another day at least, she'll risk it.
She's in pretty good condition. She'd discovered a tree with fruits she recognized in training, long and oblong and slightly curved with a rubbery skin that peels back from the creamy insides. She eats two right away, rips the peels apart and buries them beneath a bush. She stuffs as many as she can carry in her jacket's pockets, memorizes the spot, and moves on.
…
In the afternoon, there's another cannon. That puts them at fifteen down: there's thirty-two more tributes between her and Clint.
She can do this.
And of course that's when her stalker pounces.
She walks – no, staggers away from the encounter. She holds her arm tight to her body, ignores the pain screaming from her forearm and her shoulder.
It was the puma from before, but not quite a puma. Mottled black spots, broad muzzle, unnaturally long claws that literally flash silver, and in the split second before when she turned to face it Natalia, had realized it was a mutt.
And now she's down an arm. Her windbreaker is ripped to hell. She's sacrificed the bottom of her shirt for bandages. And she can't even eat the damned mutt.
Natalia killed a mountain lion once. She and Clint. But it had been from a distance, her throwing knives and his arrows. They'd sold its pelt, but nobody would buy the meat. It was common knowledge in District 10 – cat meat of any kind led to madness, and aside from a couple of cases every so often, nobody dared eat it no matter how desperate.
The madness could take anywhere from hours to weeks to set in. Natalia doesn't want to gamble. She leaves its body to rot or be picked apart by scavengers.
She doesn't bother washing off the blood, lets it dry on her face as a macabre sort of camouflage. The rain washes it away anyways, that night, and the red runs off her in rivulets. She's dripping red.
As though a valve had been broken, the rain doesn't stop. Not that night, not the next day, not the night after that. Natalia scales a tree and stays there. The effort she exerts to get up leaves her shaking in exhaustion and pain, and she can't muster the strength to go up and check the sky when the anthem plays. She sleeps.
She eats the fruits and some more of the dried beef.
She thinks about giving up, letting herself slip out of the tree. If she were lucky, the fall would kill her.
But she's never been lucky, has she? If she were, she wouldn't be in the worst Games ever at the youngest age possible.
She wouldn't have been orphaned. She wouldn't have been taken in by the Red Room.
But 'wouldn't-have-been's and bad luck won't get her out of this mess, so she puts them out of her head. She's alone, wounded, and vulnerable. She needs to find a buffer, some sort of camouflage. She needs to find her Herd.
…
She doesn't know where to start, but the next night, she decides to cross the river. It's a gamble – she only knows for sure that Boy 5B crossed the river because she watched him do it, back on the first day. Maybe her Herd turned back, or maybe even rendezvoused on the other side of the arena.
Crossing the river is more easily said than done. The river is swollen with the rainfall, so she swings across on a vine. It's slippery with water, and she loses her grip, crashing to the muddy riverbank on the opposite side. It jars her shoulder and knocks the wind out of her, and she lays there, stunned, blinking back tears of pain.
She drags herself up and onwards.
The rain dulls her senses, muffles her surroundings. It's hard for her to stay alert with the pain and weight of exhaustion. She has a search pattern, one that loops and doubles back so she can check for pursuers, but she can't make herself stick with it. With the rain and the mud, it takes all her concentration to step where she won't make as visible a trail; whenever her boot squelches in her mud, she has to stop and scrub it out, throw loose leaves on top to hide it. It's too tiring.
So when she reaches the part where she's supposed to double back on her trail to check for hunters, she forges ahead instead. She does do the requisite hide-and-wait, though, if only to shut up Fury's voice snarling at her carelessness in her head. She flinches when she hears noises, chattering in the trees or scuffling at ground level, but every time she checks, it's some animal – intelligent eyes in brown fur and long, thin tails up above, small snuffling mammals on the ground. She doesn't have the strength to try and hunt one.
She starts seeing signs of other tributes. Places where the bushes have been disturbed, knocking dead leaves and berries to the ground, where mud has been scrubbed over unnaturally to hide footprints. She sees another of those fruit trees, but all the lowest fruit has been plucked.
Finally, she finds a snare when the light glints off the metal wire.
She backs up, 10 meters, 50 meters, and settles down to wait. She doesn't know whose this trap is, but if she's lucky, it'll be the Herd's.
Draped in her and Boy 3A's jackets, she crouches in the bushes and smears mud over her face.
The snare catches something – medium-small, hooved, generally black in color. It squeals and scrabbles around in short bursts. Natalia watches it for hours, terrified that it'll draw another predator. Her stomach growls, and she eats the last of her beef.
Her luck holds: in the evening, two people come to check the snare, and they're from her Herd. Natalia's breath picks up. Girl 11A and Girl 6B pick their way from the forest on her right, exclaim over the creature in the trap. 6B kills it with her spear and picks it up by the nape of the neck. Girl 11A resets the snare.
They're about to leave. Natalia makes her move.
She pulls the coverings around her head down around her neck, revealing her hair, and stands. "Dana!" she calls, stumbling towards the pair. It's only half-feigned; her legs have fallen asleep while she waited in the bushes.
Both older girls whirl in surprise. Girl 6B brandishes her spear, but 11A steps forward, hope and disbelief lighting up her features. "Natalia?"
Natalia lets tears streak her muddy face as she launches herself into Girl 11A's midsection. "Dana, I was so scared – and the cat – attacked me! Hurts – couldn't find you," she mumbles, as the older girl huggs her fiercely.
"We got you, we got you now," the older girl murmurs, carding a hand through Natalia's hair.
Girl 6B pats her head and smiles at her, but it's strained.
They take her back to their camp. There are only five of them, now, because of the two who died during the bloodbath.
All of them have the signs of the hunted – perpetual frowns, jumpiness, strained conversation.
They'd found a cave – good cover, but easy to be trapped inside. Natalia follows them in anyways. Girl 11B makes distressed noises when she sees Natalia's wounds, which had scabbed over but still ooze blood, and changes her makeshift bandages.
"How did you get these?" Girl 11B asks, poking gingerly at Natalia's shoulder.
"There was a big cat," says Natalia. "Like a mountain lion, but darker. And it had spots. And really big claws."
"Leopard," Girl 6B interjects. "It's called a leopard."
Natalia nods. "I was looking for food and it jumped on me."
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Girl 6B and Boy 6B exchange glances. "How did you get away?" Boy 6B asks.
Natalia doesn't want to tell them it was her. "It hit me with its claws, but it couldn't bite me. It stepped on a snake," she says, the story forming in her head. "and…" she flinched. "The snake attacked the cat and I ran."
The two from District 6 are clearly dubious, and not even the girls from 11 are completely buying her story.
"The snake attacked the leopard?" asks Girl 6B skeptically. "That's how you got away?"
Natalia nods. "It was a really, really big snake," she elaborates, holding out her hands until she's indicating a girth that's as big as her head.
The four older teens exchange puzzled looks as Natalia stares up at them with wide eyes.
"I did see a snake that big the other day," Girl 11B says at last. "But I've never heard of the animals in the arenas killing each other before."
Boy 6B barks out a harsh laugh. "It's the Hunger Games, Maybelle. Maybe the animals are hungry too."
And just like that, the tension is gone. Natalia is one of them now.
They give her meat, cooked over a tiny fire in the back of the cave, and she shows them her knives and the contents of her bag, including two of the now-squashed fruit that Girl 11A calls a 'banana'.
There's one rough patch when they ask her where she got the extra clothes, but it's explained away easily when she tells them "I stole them from a boy who left them on a tree while he went swimming," and they laugh at her story.
Boy 7A comes back in from guard duty, and though Natalia volunteers to be next, the girls from 11 insist that she needs to rest. Girl 11B goes instead.
Natalia sleeps.
She doesn't wake up for the anthem, but when she does, Girl 11A fills her in.
"Anton from 5 died today," the older girl says, fiddling with her knife. "There're 27 of us left."
"27?" Natalia repeats, frowning. "Aren't there 30…something?"
Girl 6B shakes her head. "You must have missed some of the cannons. Seven tributes have died since the bloodbath." And she reels off a list of the remaining tributes.
Natalia sags against the wall. One week. One week since the Games started, and 21 tributes are dead.
"The Careers must be getting busy," Boy 7A says grimly.
…
Natalia gets a full three days of respite with her Herd before her false security comes crashing down.
By then, they're 25, not 27.
…
"Natalia? What's wrong?" asks Boy 7A when she freezes. He stands, rabbit dangling from his hand, and is answered by a spear in the chest.
A cannon. 24.
Natalia leans around the trunk of the tree, aims and throws in a split second. The knife arches smoothly, end over end, and embeds itself in the eye of Girl 2B.
A cannon. 23.
Very good, Natalia, says the Madame in her head.
A cannon. 22.
Natalia grabs the axe from Boy 7A's belt, wrenches the spear from his chest, slides the knife from Girl 2B's eye, and yanks the second and third spears from her cooling hands.
A cannon. 21.
She runs, throws the weapons save her knife aside in the undergrowth and sprints back towards the camp. The rain is now just a mist.
She's greeted by Girl 6B's twisted body slumped in a pool of blood at the edge of the camp. Her eyes stare sightlessly up past Natalia's face. There's a throwing knife lodged in her throat. Natalia pulls it free, wipes the blade on the dirt as more blood comes gushing out.
The camp itself is undisturbed. Natalia slinks up to the cave, but it's empty. Their supplies are all still inside.
On the far side of camp, she finds the undergrowth trampled and follows the trail. She finds Boy 6B slumped facedown at the base of a tree. There's a gaping wound in the middle of his back, above his heart. She checks his pulse anyways, but he's gone. She takes his knives and keeps going.
Girl 11B is sprawled about a hundred meters away. Natalia rushes up. She's still alive, but there's an arrow in her shoulder and she's convulsing in pain. Natalia pockets one of her knives and reaches out to touch her arm.
"Maybelle! Maybelle, what happened?" Natalia asks urgently. "Are they still here?"
Girl 11B smiles tightly. Her teeth are bloody; she'd bitten through her tongue. "Natalia. You're okay," she gasps, and she sounds so relieved that Natalia feels like she's the one who was impaled. "No, they're gone. I –" She grimaces and her eyes roll up in her head as she shudders. "Dana and I, we led them to a nest of vipers." She flops in arm to the side with effort, and Natalia sees an unmoving lump half-hidden in the bushes. "They ran, but we," another ripple of pain, "we were both bitten. We'll be dead in an hour."
"An antidote. Is there an antidote?" Natalia asks desperately. "The sponsors can send an antidote!"
With visible effort and a bitter smile, the older girl raises a hand to ruffle Natalia's hair. "Natalia. I don't want an antidote."
Natalia recoils. "Wh-what?"
"I was," she convulses, and when she recovers, she's panting. "Was never going to win. It's better like this."
"Maybelle," Natalia breathes.
"This way, I went out fighting," Girl 11B gasps, and writhes against the ground. Despite the pain, her eyes are warm. "Natalia, it – it would be really nice if you could win."
Natalia doesn't want to watch Girl 11B die slowly and in pain for an hour. She brings her knife in front of her, deliberately. The older girl's eyes fix on it, then flicker up to Natalia's face.
"Natalia, I can't—I can't ask you to," she pants.
"Please," Natalia says, reaching out to touch Girl 11B's face. "I don't want you to be in pain."
Girl 11B closes her eyes, nods. "Thank you," she whispers, opening her eyes.
Natalia slits her throat, and Girl 11B dies with a faint smile on her lips.
She goes to Girl 11A next. Her chest moves shallowly, and her breath hitches. Natalia rolls her onto her back, and her eyes flicker open, dazed but don't focus. They drift closed again. Natalia cuts her throat too.
It feels wrong, when she stands, brushes off her knees automatically, to leave these two girls who cared for her even in a game of killing just lying in the undergrowth.
She dredges up the old blessing Madame had taught them.
"May your suffering end," she says aloud at last, "and may your soul find rest."
…
There are seven faces in the sky that night. Natalia thinks that 11A's vipers got Boy 4B in the end.
When the anthem ends, she gets her first sponsor gift. From the sky floats a silvery parachute bearing a large coil of thin, matte wire. She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Thank you."
She's got the rest of her Herd's supplies in one backpack, and there's enough to last at least a couple of days. Probably longer.
She builds her web with the wire, retrieves the spears and other weapons to make it deadly. Once she's exhausted her coil of wire, she cuts vines and uses those. She makes stakes out of branches and sharpens them with her knife. Natalia spent the most time at the trap-making station in training, and now is her chance to put it to good use.
The Careers know she's alive, and they'll know where to find her. So she'll be waiting.
They don't come that night, which is fortunate, because Natalia needed that time to build her web. They don't come the next day either, so Natalia when she's done trapping a large circle around her cave, she spends the time in tense solitude. She re-bandages her arm and shoulder, stretches out so she knows her range of motion. She lays out her knives and cleans them with sure, practiced hands. When she's done, she sits with eyes clothed and just listens.
Make a life, take a life, the Madame always told her girls. Here in the Red Room, you must learn to do both.
Well, Natalia has never done the former, but she's definitely done the latter. It's a little messed up.
Crunch. A muffled shout. A cannon.
Natalia open her eyes and smiles.
She goes out to greet her guests. After all, the Madame always taught her to mind her manners.
On the left, Boy 1A is down with a stake between his eyes. Natalia hadn't been expecting that particular trap to work, but it's a pleasant surprise. She ducks just in time for an arrow to go whistling over her head and dives back into the cave as another just barely misses her hand.
A startled scream from the other side of the camp. Natalia peeks out and sees Girl 4A hanging from a tree branch, sawing at the rope around her ankle with a knife. She gets free and twists in the air to land on her feet, only to fall onto the stakes Natalia had hidden beneath a bush. A cannon.
Natalia pulls back when another arrow flies past, slicing a furrow into her shoulder. Blood wells up, but it's not debilitating. Their archer is starting to get dangerous, so she takes a moment to pinpoint his position from the angle of his arrows. She palms a knife, leans out, and hurls it.
A meaty thunk, followed by another cannon.
She slinks out of the cave, knives in hand, and looks around. Girl 1A has been caught by another snare, dangling with the wire digging into her ankle. It looks broken. She's a sitting duck; there are stakes under her trap too. Natalia sends a knife through her neck almost casually.
The rest are tuning around now. She's killed four of them, already. They're off-kilter, not sure what to do now that a twelve-year-old crybaby has effectively slaughtered half their number.
That's fine. They're in the middle of her web, after all.
She chases them, slashes a vine that sends a tripwire up right across Boy 1B's path. He goes down hard; Natalia knifes him in the back and keeps running.
She throws another knife, and stakes pop up in front of Boy 2B and Girl 2B. The pair hurdle them gracefully and keep running. Girl 4B pauses to hurl a spear back that Natalia just barely dodges.
Natalia throws her knives, not at the tributes, but at the vines tied taut against their respective trees and activates the rest of her traps. She ducks behind a tree as a tripwire shoots up and spears, stakes weighed with rocks, and Girl 11A's machete rain down on the Careers' heads. A cannon. She rounds the other side of the tree, and hurls another knife. Boy 2B deflects it with a sword, but Natalia can almost smell the blood from the wooden stakes in his back. Girl 2B has left him for dead, vanishing into the trees, and he and Natalia both know it.
She smiles at him. He snarls at her.
Even wounded, Boy 2B is not easy prey. Natalia loses herself in the rhythm of the fight, reacting to his slightest movements. Her knives clash against the blade of his sword, and she's forced back when he shoves. Then he feints, slashes down. She deflects with her knife, sends the other plunging towards his neck, but he sweeps his sword down and around and comes up to hit it away. An underhanded throw with her left hand before he can recover, and the knife slips up under his sternum. His sword falls from a lifeless hand.
Natalia sways, looks back at the carnage she's created. It starts to rain again.
…
Seven faces in the sky again, but all by Natalia's hand. There are eight faces between her and Clint and home.
Natalia swings her backpack onto her uninjured shoulder and leaves the cave. Most of her traps lie unused in the forest, but she doesn't think she'll be able to lure anyone else in.
Instead, she crosses the river, back towards the Cornucopia. After two weeks in the arena, even with the Quarter Quell, they're starting to wind down to the last few tributes. The Gamemakers usually herd the last survivors back towards the starting point, so she figures she'll save them – and herself – the trouble.
She scales a tree again to wait. In the afternoon, a pair of cannons go off within a minute of each other. At night, after the anthem, there's another.
The next day, she hears footsteps under her tree. She freezes, flattens herself against the branch, and draws her hood up.
It's Angry, and he's being chased by the girls from 9. There's a long knife in his hand, but one of the girls chasing him hurls one that hits him in the shoulder and he goes down. He scrambles up, but they're on him by the time he gets his feet under him.
He lashes out with his knife, catches one across the stomach. The other yells and attacks with viciousness if not skill. Angry doesn't know much about knives either, and barely manages to deflect. But he can't take down two of them, even with one injured, and there's a knife in his shoulder too. Natalia thinks it's a miracle he can even stand, let alone fight.
Against her better judgement, she grabs for the nearest vine and slides down one-handed, knife in her free hand. When her feet hit the floor she runs, but in the seconds it took, Angry is down again. She throws her knife before Girl 9A can slash his throat, and it hits true in the middle of her back. She collapses on top of him, and Girl 9B whirls to face her, knife in one hand and the other hand over the wound in her stomach.
She's no challenge for her, for all that the older teen is taller. She doesn't have the same ruthlessness as Natalia, and no week of training can overcome five years of it. Natalia's knife slides between her ribs, and she pushes the body aside as the cannon fires.
She heaves Girl 9A's body off Angry, but despite the fire in his eyes, he's clearly not going to make it. Blood is throbbing from a wound on his leg, gushing with a terrifying speed.
He glowers up at her, a bitter smile twisting his mouth. "Of course," he spits between gritted teeth, then his mouth goes slack. His cannon fires.
She doesn't know him. She didn't even like him, nor he her. "May your suffering end," she says anyways into the mist. "And may your soul find rest."
…
Madame was an anomaly in District 10. Not because she ran a brothel – 10 had several – but because the Peacekeepers turned a blind eye to her "Make a life, take a life" policy. Nobody messed with the Madame's girls. They were whores, but they were untouchable.
Growing up in the Red Room probably wasn't the healthiest lifestyle, but it gave Natalia a better chance of winning her Games than almost any other girl in the district. The Madame was a harsh taskmaster, but under her instruction, Natalia thrived. It made her a fighter, a survivor.
It gave her a taste of freedom and long nights under the stars with the sheep. Wool was the Red Room's official ware, and it gave her an excuse to leave the district for a few weeks at a time to the pastures outside. When Clint came along, it was the two of them until the end of time.
If Clint were here now, he'd be watching her back. Or 'Hey, Nat, watch this,' he'd say, and balance an arrow on the tip of his nose. He'd steal the last banana from her backpack, break it in half and split it with her.
Or he'd just sit with her, back to back in silence, a warm source of comfort.
Or maybe he'd stare at her in disgust, shy away from her touch, her with blood dripping from her hands.
No.
She can't lose it now.
She can't be his Nat.
Right now, she has to survive.
She has to win.
…
Girl 3B and Girl 7A both show up in the sky two nights later. Just like that, Natalia is in the top three.
She lingers at the edge of the Cornucopia clearing, stalks slow and careful through the trees each day, but she doesn't see any sign of the last two.
She runs low food, so she sets snares.
But somehow, she doesn't think she'll need them.
A cannon fires before she can check them, and Natalia knows the last girl is coming for her.
…
It's the tall blonde girl, the Capitol's favorite. Her knife comes whistling through the trees, and it's only Natalia's heightened paranoia that saves her, whirling and slashing the blade out of the air.
Girl 2B follows the knife, and she's fast and deadly and every bit Natalia's match and more.
Her beautiful face is twisted into a dark scowl. She's got a bruise blooming across her cheekbone and there's a darkened patch on her arm and a bulge around her upper thigh that suggests a bandage, so she's not entire unscathed after cutting a swathe through the other remaining tributes. Natalia draws a second knife in a flash and parries a blow that probably could have sliced her arm to the bone.
But Girl 2B's onslaught is unrelenting and furious, and Natalia takes a cut across her cheek, then another on her forearm when she can't quite get her knife up fast enough. She grits her teeth, backs up a few steps, but the older girl follows.
Reversing her grip on one of the knives, she smashes one of Girl 2B's knives aside and slashes down with her other knife, scoring a slash on her arm, but when it hits her torso, the blade bounces off. Girl 2B takes advantage of the opening and backhands her across the face with the pommel of a blade. Natalia stumbles backwards, and Girl 2B presses her advantage. Her knife finds Natalia's side; blood soaks her shirt and drips down to the waistband of her pants.
Natalia's blocks are weak, but the adrenaline lets her stay in the fight and she manages to get her blades up in time to deflect the other's knives.
She risks a quick look backwards, and Girl 2B lunges. Natalia leaps backwards, out of range, and backpedals furiously. Girl 2B gives chase, then surprise breaks through her furious snarl as she's yanked down into the ground, her ankle caught in the loop of Natalia's trap.
Natalia's on her before she can recover, a knife in the back.
The cannon fires. The trumpets blare. Caesar's booming voice fills the arena.
Natalia is the victor of the Quarter Quell.
She stands frozen, chest heaving, blood dripping from her side. She sways, but she doesn't feel the pain, not yet.
Her eyes are fixated on the body of Girl 2B, who died with Natalia's knife in her heart.
Her name was Yelena.
…
When she wakes up, everything is white. The blankets, the floor, the ceiling, her clothes. Everything except her mentor, who stands out starkly in his trademark black trench coat, leather eyepatch, and dark scowl. He helps her struggle into an upright position, sitting with her back against the headboard.
"I see you're back in the land of the living," he says, when she blinks up at him. Natalia doesn't reply. Fury sighs and runs a hand over his head. "Hate to break it to you, but you've gone and made a good mess out of everything," he tells her. "Capitol liked that cute lil innocent thing you had going. Not so much the cold killer who pulled the wool over their eyes."
On the little table next to her, she sees her pendent. The wooden hourglass is the color of rust now, stained with blood.
"I didn't – " she trails off, stares down at her hands, because she did. Silence yawns between them. "Marlin," she says instead. "Silka. Maybelle. Dana."
Incomprehension in Fury's eyes clears as she goes on, and he covers her hand with one of his, large and warm and comforting.
"Jago. Geia. Wiatt. Erynaia."
"You're not just a killer, Natalia."
The tears Natalia wouldn't let fall begin to spill down her cheeks. "Loretta. Yule. Dianco."
Fury pulls her roughly against his shoulder, tangles his fingers in her hair.
"Revana. Shenchi." Her voice breaks, muffled against Fury's coat. "Yelena."
She shudders as she cries silently. He holds her as she falls apart.
…
Her coronation is a big event.
Despite Fury's warnings, the crowd is enthusiastic and cheers wildly at her appearance. She deigns to acknowledge them with only a nod, which only heightens their excitement.
Natalia watches her Games with an icy calm mask.
She doesn't have an innocent shepherd girl façade this time around. Her dress is black and sleek with red details. The weight she lost during the games cuts angles in her face. She looks dangerous, and even Nimmo hadn't quite known how to treat her.
Her Games is a murder mystery. They paint her as a master assassin – a deadly killer hidden behind the appearance of a scared, clueless girl. She watches herself strangle Marlin into unconsciousness, slit his throat. Onscreen Natalia does nothing but observe as Silka hurls a spear into Breiran's chest before hurling the knife that lodges in Silka's eye.
"Natalia, you're okay," Maybelle says, and Natalia slits her throat. Dana's eyes open when Natalia flips her onto her back, and then she kills her too.
"May your suffering end," says Natalia in a voiceover. By itself, without context, it is haunting. "And may your soul find rest."
The other tributes are barely shown, and even the Career pack is treated as a sideshow attraction, with only glimpses until Natalia snares them all in her web and dispatches them one by one.
She doesn't recognize the face on the screen, cold and emotionless and splattered in blood.
They build up to her final battle with Yelena, switching between cuts of her setting her snares and Yelena hunting down Nassia from 12, who killed three other tributes before Yelena took her down.
The final battle is short but desperate. Natalia stares stonily at the screen as onscreen Natalia finally slams her knife into Yelena's back and stands.
The president himself appears to present her crown. "Congratulations, Natalia," he says.
She wonders if the blood she smells on his breath is real.
…
Fury is there to greet her when she steps off stage. His eyes are tired and regretful.
"Welcome to the Hunger Games," he says.
A/N This is the (almost) 2-year anniversary of me writing this piece (xposted from ao3). The writing is...not great? I hope it's better now, anyways, but I have a sequel (chapter) in progress that should be up in a couple days and then that'll be it for MYSE for now.