Originally published: 2016-10-04

As usual, a world of thanks to monsterr for being such a helpful and super fast beta.

A bitter truth about The Hunger Games: you did not become a victor because of a good heart.

Sugawara Koushi had tried, though.

Even with his hands soaked in blood, he had tried.

A first impression of a warm, friendly smile; a mole by his left eye –a fairy's touch, his mother would've called it. Under the studio's spotlights his hair gleamed with the shine of melted silver. A most unusual color, even by the Capitol's flamboyant standards.

Memorable, and that was what counted.

He navigated the interview without faltering once. If the cameras, the dazzling lights, or the audience made him nervous, none of his gestures let it show. His manner of speech – calm, easy – gave the impression of a tideless sea; but a mischievous glint in his eyes, a certain playfulness in his smile, turned the public into his lifelong friends.

He lacked the arrogance and the certainty in his own strength so characteristic of Careers and neither did he radiate an aura of danger. He was very far from the image of a born victor that the Capitol was so used to.

And yet, he got the audience wrapped around his little finger in three minutes. Quite a feat for someone from District 8, so unused to standing out in the Games. As his mentor, Sawamura Daichi ought to have felt more than satisfied.

And here he was, going through a silent panic attack.

He hid it well, or course. He always had the talent to cover up his more tumultuous feelings under a façade of calmness and confidence. The ability to keep a cool head in a crisis was what saved his life when it had been his turn to take part in the Games, two years ago.

(If he could survive the arena with a cannibal tribute on the loose, he could survive almost anything.)

He smiles as he accepted the other mentors' congratulations, even those undeniably tainted with a dose of irony. The escort assigned to District 8, for once, seemed hopeful of getting sponsors (no one wanted 8, not even her: the only good thing to be said about the 8th was that it wasn't 11 or 12). He gave her a pat on the shoulder and assured her that she could rest easy; this year would not be a problem at all.

But there was a problem. No matter how pleasant he could be or how charming he appeared on camera, Sugawara Koushi had a fatal flaw.

Daichi watched the boy as he offered words of comfort, with a squeeze of the shoulder, to the second tribute of their district (whose name, to his awful shame, he would be unable to remember, blurred with so many others), and one thought gnawed at him.

That boy wasn't a killer.

And at the Hunger Games, there were only two ways to leave the arena: as a killer, or as a corpse.

"What do you make of my strategy, Sawamura-san?"

Daichi flinched as he met Sugawara's questioning gaze. It was odd, even a tad worrisome: when he looked into those eyes, he didn't feel like they belonged to a stranger, but to someone who had always been by his side. Someone who already seemed to know every nook and cranny in his mind and who could read in his every gesture a map of his thoughts.

Until his name was called during the Reaping, though, Daichi had never heard of Sugawara Koushi, he had never set eyes on him. District 8 was overpopulated (unhealthily so) and you didn't get to know even half of the other workers at the same factory.

And yet, Sugawara regarded him as though all of his carefully built facades were made of crystal.

"Eh, I think it's alright. It's risky, sure – everything at the arena is a risk, even doing nothing – but I reckon that, under the circumstances, it might be your best option. And I've told you to stop calling me Sawamura-san: everyone else calls me Daichi and you're about my age, you make me feel old."

"Oh, but you are an old soul in a young body, Daichi."

His eyes gleamed brighter than the jewelry from District 1 and his lips quivered a little.

Daichi gaped.

"I can't believe this. Are you mocking your mentor? You know you depend entirely on me to get you supplies, don't you"

He pretended as though he were about to get up from the sofa and abandon the room. Sugawara flung himself to hold onto his arm.

"No, please, I'd never do such thing! Please, don't leave me stranded in the arena."

His tone poorly concealed his laughter, but something about his words felt like a punch to the chest. Daichi stopped dead on his tracks and held his gaze.

"I would never do that, Sugawara. Ever."

An 'oh!' escaped his lips, every trace of hilarity vanishing from his face.

"I know Daichi."

He gave his arm a squeeze and offered him a smile that was very different than the one he'd regaled to the cameras: a little sadder, a lot more honest.

"You don't think that I can do it, do you?"

Daichi denied it vehemently, of course. The last thing a tribute needed right before stepping into the arena was for his mentor's insecurity to add to the voices of fear and uncertainty inside his head. His smile seemed to grow sadder and Daichi knew that he'd seen right through him once more.

How could he have gotten to know him so well in such little time?

"I don't want you to think that I believe you to be weak, or stupid, because I know very well that you're not." His words were frank: he also felt like he knew him well, although he could not read him just as easily yet. "It's not that, it's just…"

He sighed.

"I don't believe you capable of killing anyone."

It was impossible to see the look on Sugawara's face, with his head tilted down, his silver hair a curtain over his features. His hand did not let go of Daichi's arm, and the latter felt the stupid impulse to cover his hand with his own, an impulse he could barely contain.

When he looked up, there were no traces of a smile of any kind and the flickering lights of the artificial fireplace drew shadows on his fair skin, lending an otherworldly air to his serious visage.

A fairy's touch.

"I don't know if I'm capable of slaughtering children either, Daichi. But to be honest, does anyone know what they are capable of before setting foot in the arena? Did you?"

He felt a shiver down his spine.

No, Daichi had not known what he was capable of, until he was faced with a boy much stronger than himself, his hands tight around Daichi's neck, stealing the air from his lungs little by little.

A boy that dropped dead at his feet when, before he lost consciousness, he managed to plunge his knife into his gut.

There were many things about himself he had ignored before setting foot in the arena.

Most of them he wished he could forget.

At the time, he had thought it a good idea. They didn't have many victors still alive at District 8 – too urban, too full of factories, too much at a disadvantage – but they tried to take turns as mentors all the same. Otherwise they would've gone insane: year after year, getting to know the tributes from your district, learning their names, advising them as best as you could only to send them to a certain death. Because, no matter how well you did and how much the odds were in your favor, the inescapable truth was that one of them would always, always come back home in a wooden box.

In the Hunger Games even when you won, you lost.

Always.

That year was Daichi's first as a mentor, and it was again the turn of Kurokawa, who had been his own mentor. The man patted him on the back.

"We'll do it like this: each one of us will handle one of the tributes. Trust me: it's the easiest way, you'll go crazy enough with one, let's not even think about handling two at the same time."

"But… what if I'm terrible at it?"

His former mentor shrugged.

"I'll help you out if you need it but… Daichi, it doesn't really matter what you do. You just can't win. The sooner you accept that, the better."

Daichi felt his jaw drop. Those weren't the encouraging words he had expected.

They had survived, after all.

They had won.

When the first tribute fainted as his name got called during the Reaping, he started to understand. Kurokawa sighed.

"Don't worry, I'll handle that one."

Sugawara Koushi was the second name called by the escort into the microphone and a young man approached the stage at a brisk pace, his impossible hair dazzling under the midmorning sun. When Daichi faced him, he realized the boy was about his age, though he was shorter and leaner. His composure didn't waver at all, not even when the Peacekeepers started to shake the other tribute to get him to react, and the first thing he did once the ceremony was over was shake his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Sawamura-san." From his poise, it would've been impossible to believe that he'd just gotten a death sentence. Daichi thought there was some unreal quality about this tribute.

His tribute from now on, until…

Until the odds decided whether they were in his favor or not.

That last night Daichi insisted that he needed some sleep.

"All of our hard work will be for nothing if you fall asleep when the cannon fires and you get blown up in pieces."

Sugawara raised his eyebrows.

"Did you sleep before your games?"

"…not a lot."

Every time he thought of saying "goodnight," to retire to his own bedroom, something in Sugawara's gaze held him back. A few more minutes, what difference would it make? He told himself that over and over again, although he didn't need to make much of an effort to convince himself to stay.

They ended up sinking into the impossibly soft bed, talking about anything but the Hunger Games. They chatted about home, so different in each other's memories; about the strange and terrifying Capitol fashion; Daichi shared his bizarre adventures at his first party after winning the Games. Sugawara burst into laughter when Daichi told him how he had mistaken a lady's feathery hat with the turkey served on the table. When he heard his laughter, Daichi felt a sharp pang in his chest.

I want to hear it again. I want to hear it always.

He swallowed.

He was such a moron.

If Sugawara noticed, for once he pretended he didn't. His eyelids eventually fell closed and his breathing evened out as sleep overcame him, but it took Daichi a long time to get rid of the vision of flickering lights drawing figures on his pale skin, of his parted lips, his hair spilled over his forehead, that mole by his left eye.

When he left Sugawara's room to stride towards his own, the greying light prior to sunrise already bathed the hallway where he ran into Kurokawa, blowing over a gigantic mug of coffee. They both gaped at each other, and the man's eyes widened a little.

"Oh," he just said before resuming his way and Daichi felt the urge to stop him, to explain that it wasn't what it looked like, but what would've been the point?

The mentors couldn't escort the tributes to the arena, only their stylists got to see them in the last moments before stepping out. But Sugawara stopped right before the door where he would have to say goodbye to Daichi. He contemplated him for a few moments, as though there was something still left to decipher on his face, as though Sugawara hadn't already read him inside out. His eyes lingered a few seconds on his lips, before looking up to gaze into his eyes. His expression turned resolute.

"Daichi, it's been an honor."

He felt all the words get stuck in his throat, but somehow he managed to blurt out:

"Same here. And, Suga—" It was the first time he shortened his name. "I expect you back, so you'd better make an effort. I promise you I will."

A smile curved his lips then and his eyes crinkled a little, and Daichi swallowed but, before he could keep embarrassing himself, they came to take Sugawara away.

It wouldn't be the last time he saw him.

It wouldn't be.

Twenty-four platforms in a circle, reflected in countless screens throughout Panem. Twenty-four platforms, where just as many tributes waited, with their eyes wide open, for the sixty seconds that remained before the cannon shot that would kick off the Games. The audience held their breath; the gamblers shouted their last bets; the mentors waited for the Cornucopia bloodbath to commence: some, with their fists clenched; others, with the indifference of years upon years of spilled blood.

(Daichi wondered if reaching that level of indifference would be a blessing or a curse.)

Many of the tributes seemed to tremble like leaves shaken by the wind, the fear etched on their every feature; whereas the six kids from the central districts – the so called Careers – narrowed their eyes, weighing the strength of their opponents, ready to jump as soon as the cannon fired.

The Careers didn't enter the arena as though dragged to the gallows: they jumped into the battlefield, hungry for glory.

Daichi's gaze searched in the gigantic screens for his tribute and, with such a unique shine in his hair, it didn't take him long. Unlike the other tribute from his district, Sugawara wasn't trembling. With his head held high and his face undaunted, he resembled a statue.

His eyes, though, were as intense and as calculating as a Career's.

If they hadn't been so mesmerized by the air of impatient blood thirst emanating from the Careers, perhaps either the hosts or the gamblers would have noticed that not all the kids from the peripheral districts seemed already resigned to certain death. Perhaps they would have noticed the glances they exchanged, or the way their eyes wandered to the grey-haired tribute from District 8; maybe they would've seen Sugawara's faint nod, his chin pointing in a certain direction.

Or perhaps not.

The cannon fired and twenty-four children jumped off their platforms and started to run. Daichi was grateful that none of them froze on their platform: the explosives underneath tended to scatter the pieces of the tribute in a rather unpleasant manner.

During the first half hour of the Games, when everyone was still within reach to fall prey to those stronger and faster at finding the weapons, the worst of the carnage took place. The six boys from the career districts moved quickly, almost in unison: there was neither panic nor hesitation in their movements, and anyone who was too weak or slow fell by their hands.

To the spectators' shock – and most especially to the gamblers' – there was another group of boys that didn't run aimlessly when the cannon fired, another group that managed to keep a cool head during the Cornucopia bloodbath. With movements that looked almost rehearsed, they acted as a team to snatch the supplies closest at hand and run away together before the Careers found the weapons and began to hunt them.

The scrawniest tribute from 11, barely thirteen years old, stumbled; panic flaring up in his eyes. Before he hit the floor, a large boy from 7 came running and grabbed him from the back of his shirt to pull him forward; just as a boy from 6 punched one of District 12's tributes in the face to buy a boy from 3 enough time to run away.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" shrieked one of the hosts.

"If what you're seeing is an alliance," his partner deadpanned, "then yes, I guess so. It looks like the alliance of districts 1, 2 and 4 will have some competition this year."

(Perhaps his tone wasn't mocking, perhaps it only sounded like that to Daichi, so used already at the scorn from the Capitol and the central districts.)

Competition for the Careers or not, the existence of a new alliance was undeniable.

An alliance that had begun to weave in secret during the days at the Training Center, among those children that, even though scared, were not resigned to die. Boys who were discarded by the Careers, whose talents and skills weren't as evident.

While the Careers took over the Cornucopia and its supplies, surrounded by the corpses of children, the group of assorted tributes of different districts put as much distance as they could before they stopped to count survivors and supplies.

All the allies had managed to get out of the bloodbath alive. Something that seemed to take everyone by surprise except, perhaps, Sugawara.

"Why wouldn't we make it?" he said calmly. "We had a plan, and the Careers never expect anyone else to have one."

The boy from 6 narrowed his eyes, a grimace twisting his mouth.

"Aren't you a little overly optimistic?"

Sugawara pinned on him that penetrating gaze Daichi already knew so well.

"I'm not making any promises," he said slowly, his gaze sliding over the rest of the group. "No one can make any promises in the Games, and it's not news for any of us that the Careers are at an advantage. But," he added, raising his chin a little, "I do know for sure that, on our own, we're an easy target. Together, we can at least make it difficult for them. And I don't know about you," he went on, as his lips began to curve in a smile, "but I'm all for making it very difficult for them."

The radiance of his smile seemed to vanquish the shadow of doubt in the gazes of the other boys, some of which chorused "hear, hear" and smiled as well, with the frailest sliver of hope.

The boy from 6, though, still looked wary.

"Hey, Eight," he began, grabbing him by the elbow as the rest of the group walked ahead, in search of a water source and a higher ground. Sugawara raised an eyebrow.

"Eight?"

The one from 6 shrugged.

"I don't see the point in learning everyone's names and getting all chummy when only one gets to leave the arena, and we'll be very lucky if it's one of us. So yeah, you're Eight. Any trouble with that?"

Sugawara looked like he was pondering on it for a moment, his head tilted.

"What are you going to do with the boys from 7? There're two of them."

Six rolled his eyes.

"We'll call them A and B, whatever." His gaze wandered towards the tributes from 7, one of which was helping District 11's kid get through branches as thick as clubs. Two parallel lines showed on his forehead. "Eight, you said that the idea was to make a stand against the Careers. You said you'd gather the people with survival skills, who would contribute to the group."

Sugawara frowned.

"So I did."

"Oh, yeah? And what about Eleven? I saw the other boy from his district: he was much taller, and stronger too. And he wasn't twelve."

"Thirteen."

"Whatever, he would've still been way more useful to make a stand against the Careers, you can't deny that."

"And yet, he didn't make it through the bloodbath," replied Sugawara, pulling a branch out of the way to let Six through. "I picked Eleven, as you call him, for a reason."

The boy from District 6 didn't look like much compared to any of the Careers, or even next to the tallest tribute from 7. But he had several centimeters on Sugawara, a difference that became all the more evident when he took a step forward and the boy from 8 had to tilt his head backwards to hold his gaze.

"I hope that reason wasn't pity, Eight," he snapped. "This is an alliance for survival, so it'd be for the best if, from now on, we try to be more pragmatic and don't let ourselves get carried away by sentimentality, alright?"

"I am being pragmatic, Six," Sugawara whispered, holding his gaze without stepping back. No hint of a smile or of the glowing warmth that had won over the audience could be seen on his face now.

Hours later, the group stopped for a moment to eat something. Only one of the bags contained some jerky, so they started to search through the roots, the branches and the bushes. Six and Three smiled with satisfaction at finding a bunch of black berries, but those smiles were wiped off when the scrawny, frail boy from 11 threw them to the ground.

"Those are very poisonous, you'll drop dead just like that. Here, I found some edible roots."

Sugawara said nothing, but the glance he exchanged with Six was quite eloquent.

That year the Gamemakers did quite a stunning job with the arena. At first glance, it looked like the typical jungle arena, so well used in prior years. Through the walls of branches and vines, though, soon a more original touch was glimpsed. The hosts let out "oohhhhhs" and "awwwws" when they saw for the first time the arena's new setting: sand-colored stone pillars, fractured obelisks, decayed structures in the shape of step-pyramids reaching toward the sky, floors made of fantastically colored mosaics, statues and fountains of stunning white marble.

(Perhaps a scholar of ancient civilizations might have grumbled about the eclectic mishmash, but most of Panem's citizens had a far too vague idea of what the world had looked like before the wars and the radiation, so they were unable to spot the incongruences.)

Beauty, as it was always the case in the arena, hid a lethal side.

The first one to find out was the only tribute from District 9 to survive the bloodbath, a boy with dark hair, a scared look, and barely fourteen years old. He slipped away through the trees until he got quite some distance between himself and the Cornucopia, and then he wandered alone and empty-handed, until dehydration started to fog his gaze and turned his pace unsteady. He would soon fall, and then he'd become prey to the Careers.

If they were fast enough to beat dehydration.

A murmur made him start when he was about to pass out: a murmur of water.

More than one person in the audience gasped, because the screens showed, not a stream or a waterfall, but a magnificent fountain of snow-white marble, with a statue of a woman pouring crystalline water from a pitcher. Surrounding it, instead of grass and stones, there was a breathtaking mosaic, a shred of a fantastic dream intruding in the landscape of the arena.

At times, good fortune on the arena could be incredible.

And fickle.

A first step onto the mosaic floor and nothing happened; a second one and the boy's cracked lips pulled into a smile; a third and the floor disappeared beneath his feet. The mosaic vanished and in its place, a pit appeared, covered in gleaming sharp metal spikes. A flash of panic distorted the boy's features, his arms swinging in the air for an instant before he fell with a hideous sound that would burn into Daichi's eardrums.

The boy did not scream: the spike drawing gushes of blood from his throat prevented it. His own body weight made him sink farther into the sharp spikes, blood spilling all over them, a macabre reflection of the fountain of crystalline water above.

The following minutes felt very, very long.

The cannon fired at long last and, as soon as the hovercraft had taken away the body, the colorful mosaic reappeared and concealed any trace of the bloody spikes, the trap ready for its next victim.

The rest of the tributes had their chance to find out about the landscape's lethal nature. While the Careers ware traversing a row of massive pillars, these began to fall like dominoes and only his quick reflexes saved District 2's tribute from certain death.

Five, from Sugawara's group, did not share the same fortune. As he walked between two tall obelisks, he activated an invisible sensor and a storm of darts shot out from the stones to jab into his neck, his arms, his sides. He fell on his knees amidst screams of pain, huge blisters sprouting all over his skin. Some of the boys began to rush towards him, but Sugawara stopped them dead on their tracks.

"Stay where you are! If you go to him, you'll activate another trap."

Six gawked at him, the shrieking of the boy from 5 reverberating among the stone pillars and the trees.

"You want us to leave him like that?"

"But he's right," the boy from 3 intervened. "There must be other traps around… if we run to him, we're sure to trigger them."

"And what do you plan on doing? Just leave him lying there?"

The screams turned into sobs. The boy, desperate, tried to pull out the darts as his skin acquired a purple hue. Sugawara bit his lower lip and then, very slowly, he raised a foot and placed it on the muddy print he had left on the stone floor. Step by step he made his way back, careful to always step on his own footprints. Three mimicked him, constantly glancing at his surroundings, and Eleven followed in Sugawara's footsteps: he was quite short, so he had to take a stride for each step of the boy of 8.

"It's tracker jackers' poison," he blurted out, looking over Sugawara's shoulder, who turned halfway to look at him.

"Do you know of any cure?"

Eleven thought for a moment, then he nodded.

"Tracker jackers' stings aren't that odd back at home, and if I can find some leaves… But I've never treated so many stings at once."

"We have to try it anyway. What do you need?"

The boy glanced up at the trees surrounding them.

"Well, for starters, I should climb one of those without getting myself killed along the way…"

The biggest boy from 7 offered to help and, in the meantime, the others approached as close as they dared to try to pluck the darts off Five's skin. Sugawara made an attempt at calming him down, but first Five's cries of pain and then his fall into unconsciousness turned all of his efforts pretty much useless.

For the rest of the afternoon and well into the night, Eleven treated Five's wounds as best as he could. Every now and then, the boy's eyes flickered open, but consciousness seemed miles away from his disoriented gaze, inarticulate sounds twisted by pain and panic escaping from his throat.

With the excuse of looking for food or lumber, more than one boy disappeared for longer and longer amounts of time. Only Six and Sugawara remained steadfast by Eleven's side, helping him out whenever they could, but, from the greyish hue of their faces, it wouldn't take much more for them to faint as well. Eleven bit his lower lip until he drew blood, trying to cover up every blister with leaves, but as hours dragged on, the strength of the poison proved to be too much for any homemade remedy. The cannon's thunder was met by the other boys' poorly-concealed relief.

Eleven remained very still for a moment, the cannon's echo still resonating among the trees, his fingers tainted by mashed leaves, a glassy-eyed gaze pinned on Five's deformed face.

Sugawara wrapped an arm around his shoulders and helped him to stand up.

"You did everything you could, do you hear me? You did everything you could."

Eleven didn't reply and Sugawara did not insist.

It didn't take them long to realize that the traps were conveniently placed all over the arena in such a manner that made them impossible to avoid. Even though the tributes could get food from trees and bushes, the only sources of water were found at the epicenter of the traps. Flames sprouted from the floor and the walls, the stairs would turn into lethal ramps, invisible threads capable of slicing through ankles would appear: that year, the traps collected more deaths than the Careers.

The second alliance's gang found an unexpected advantage: Three and Sugawara turned out to be very good at finding out the placement of the traps and how to get around them.

"Those drawings and inscriptions on the walls and pillars, the symbols on the floor… they aren't just for decoration," Three pointed out. "They make patterns, and if we can decipher them, we can avoid the traps."

"Are you very, very sure of that theory, Three?"

"Do we have a better option?" Sugawara cut in. "We already know that all water sources are surrounded by traps, so we have to find a way to get through them. And I think Three is right: the traps aren't placed haphazardly, they follow a design. If we can figure out what that design is like… We have to try, at least."

When it looked like Six was going to protest again, Sugawara elbowed him in the ribs in a way that could have been taken as a friendly gesture, if it hadn't been for the look of utter pain on the boy's face.

"Negativity begone! We didn't come here to die."

He smiled, a smile that managed to de dazzling even without the glow of the spotlights, and the boys around him looked a little calmer, a little more confident.

How terribly Daichi longed for even a fraction of that calm.

Every night, those tributes that still drew breath turned their gazes up at the sky, their faces illuminated by the blue lights drawing in the darkness of night the portraits of the children who had fallen that day.

Three days after the beginning of the games, the blue lights drew the face of the other tribute from 8. Everyone but Six avoided looking at Sugawara, with his grey hair tinted blue and an inscrutable look in his brown eyes.

"Did you know him from before?" asked Six in a quiet voice. Sugawara shook his head. Silence stretched on as the rest of the group got ready to sleep, making an obvious effort to avoid glancing at the other two boys or giving any sign of listening to their conversation.

Six hugged his own knees and rested his chin on them, his gaze lost in the first line of trees. The last notes of Panem's anthem died out and the blue lights blended into the night sky, but Sugawara's face was still turned towards the stars. Six glanced at him.

"Look, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he whispered. "But… why didn't you ask him to join us? Did you think he was dead weight or something?"

For a moment, Sugawara gave no sign of having heard him at all, his eyes still glued to the dark sky. Something that was not quite a sigh escaped from his lips.

"I tried. But he… he already thought of himself as dead, you know? You could see it in his eyes."

Six seemed to ponder on his words for a moment and then he nodded. Many of the tributes stepped into the arena assuming they were already dead and, more often than not, the Games proved them right. He gave Sugawara a gentle nudge with his shoulder, an attempt at comfort, perhaps, before lying down to sleep.

Sugawara remained with his eyes fixed on the sky for a long time that night.

After a week, the shadows underneath Daichi's eyes looked like they had been drawn in ink and it was hard to remember when the last time he had eaten was or what he'd had. Such a ridiculous thing, finding himself in the land of overabundance. Kurokawa was now helping him full-time, released by the atrocious death of his tribute.

(His name, Daichi would forget, but the afterimages of his death would haunt his dreams for many years to come.)

Nothing ever seemed enough. Kurokawa regarded him and sighed.

"Daichi, you can't do this to yourself. Remember that you'll have to come back next year, and the year after that, and for the rest of your life, and you won't make it like this. And neither will they."

He knew it, he had known it since the very first time his gaze caught Sugawara Koushi's and, like a total moron, he had returned his handshake and told him it was nice to meet him despite the circumstances; he had known it when he smiled back at him; when he wondered for the first time what it would feel like to thread his fingers through his extraordinary hair, if it would feel as soft and terse as the silver it resembled; when it crossed his mind for the first time to place a kiss on that mole.

A complete moron, that was what he was.

The Careers, distracted perhaps by an arena keen on killing them, did not realize at once the dangers a second alliance could pose. But they had been raised as strategists, as hunters. All their lives they had prepared for this moment. No matter how adept Three and Sugawara were at figuring out the patterns of the traps and finding ways to get through them, they weren't infallible.

Faced with the double threat of the traps and the Career pack, they never stood a chance.

One by one they fell, either at the hands of the Careers or killed by those traps they weren't smart, quick, or lucky enough to avoid. One cannon shot after the other until a spear thrown by a tribute from 2 went through Three's chest. The cannon fired before his body slumped onto the ground.

His head hit with a thud against a stone step and, in one of those dramatic twists the Capitol cherished so much, acid rain fell over the boy from 2, melting his flesh to the bone. The horrified screams of his allies drowned out the cannon, and Six desperately pulled at Eleven's and Sugawara's arms until he got them to react.

The three last survivors of the second alliance ran towards the maze of trees and vines, until they got swallowed by the dense vegetation, where there were no water sources, but they would find no traps or Careers either. They ran until they were out of breath, and then they ran a little more until they could not take another step and they fell on their knees on top of the roots.

Eleven was shaking so much he had to hold onto a tree trunk not to fall, his white lips moving silently, voice stuck in his throat. Still gasping for air, Six just stared at him, but Sugawara summoned the strength to crawl towards him and put an arm over his shoulder. He said nothing, maybe because he was unable to speak himself, but he pulled Eleven closer until he stopped shaking, until his breath no longer sounded like choked sobs.

The first thread of red laser that crossed the aisle at the height of his ankles was easy to avoid with one jump. The second, waist-high, took a little more agility. Two threads accelerating at once at different heights were more difficult but he managed. Three threads were harder. Four zigzagging towards him managed to cut his shoulder and shin.

When the red threads split into a tight spider web, Six only had enough time to shoot a horrified glance at Sugawara, before he fell to the floor in pieces.

An image forever engraved on the audience's retinas: Sugawara Koushi, his silver hair now soaked by sweat stuck to his face, tainted by mud and traces of dried blood; a hand stretched in front of him; the fake calmness in his voice.

"Follow my voice, Eleven, will you? You're almost there. A step to the right, that's it, another two forward, don't open your eyes, there you go, another step: no, don't put your foot there, a little more to the left, you're doing well."

Haltingly, Eleven moved forward following Sugawara's instructions, his arms wide open to keep balance, his eyelids shut tight.

"You're doing well. One step more, right in front of your other feet, just like that."

Eleven, unseeing, walked past the bloody mess of Six's remains, a heap of flesh impossible to recognize as a human shape. Sugawara swallowed and kept encouraging Eleven in a tranquil voice, a horrifying contrast to the deadly paleness of his skin and the uncontrollable trembling of his hand, stretched towards the last ally he had left.

(A part of Daichi didn't want to watch; another was incapable of looking away.)

"That's it, you're almost there, put your right foot in front of your left, give me your hand…"

Sugawara stretched his arm to grab the boy's hand and pull hard. Eleven gasped and stumbled but Sugawara was quick to catch him.

"You're fine, you're fine," Sugawara repeated like a mantra, maybe to himself. Eleven nodded, but when he opened his eyes Sugawara grabbed his chin to prevent him from turning his head. Eleven's eyes widened and Sugawara shook his head.

"Don't look back."

"But…"

"You heard the cannon, you know what it means. Don't look back, okay?"

Eleven nodded and Sugawara practically dragged him away from there, without a single glance back.

"Minoru."

Eleven's voice rose just above the murmur of the blood pouring out his chest, and Sugawara leant forward to push a sweaty strand of hair off his forehead.

"Don't speak, it won't…"

He fell silent, because at this point there was nothing anymore that could do him any good.

"My… my name's Minoru."

Sugawara nodded, a stiff smile stretching his lips.

"Minoru, I'm Koushi. Nice to meet you."

His voice broke in the last syllable, his arms tightening around Eleven's tiny body, which began to convulse. Air could barely pass through the threshold of his lips anymore. With an already mechanical gesture, Sugawara kept cradling him in his arms, soaked with the boy's blood.

The cannon would not fire yet.

"That's nice and all, but he could be done with it and die already, right? I mean, I could finish him off, but it's not really worth it, is it?"

The tribute from District 4 was leaning on his harpoon, an ugly cut on his left leg. His mouth twisted in annoyance, or perhaps just exhaustion.

"If you want, I can kill you so you don't have to watch him die. After all, he's all you got left."

The people of Panem, who had seen Sugawara's warm, friendly smile and heard his quiet, respectful voice, were treated then to a spectacle of a very different nature. Because the calmness of the surface masked the storm brewing underneath and just as warm as his smile was, just as cold was Sugawara's wrath.

He barely glanced at the boy from 4 by the corner of his eye before raising a hand: a twist of his wrist, and the sharp dart stuck into the boy's jugular. Blood poured out in spurts and the cannon fired for District 4 before it did for 11.

And it would not fire again for 8.

Careers had been trained since the cradle to kill their prey, but in the Games some people learnt fast, and not in vain had Sugawara Koushi memorized the design of every single trap.

Centuries came to pass between the moment the victor of those Hunger Games was announced and the moment Daichi got to set his eyes on Sugawara again. When he did, it took him a moment to recognize him: the Capitol's medical and beauty treatments had turned him into an otherworldly creature of luminescent skin, devoid of any flaws or traces of humanity, his hair transmuted into pure molten silver.

But the mole was still there, his own fairy's touch, and when he saw Daichi, the smile that curved his lips was just as he remembered it: more tired, more sorrowful, still recognizable.

He felt the urge to do something monumentally stupid, like hug him or perhaps burst into tears on his shoulder, right in front of the Capitol's stylists, prep team, and doctors. He held himself back, and maybe Sugawara's smile dimmed another bit.

Only on the train back home (if one could ever get back home after the Games), with the lights dimmed, Daichi dared to grasp his hand and hold on tight.

"I'm glad it was you."

Sugawara did not smile, but fixed his eyes on him, as though he were a hard to decipher text.

And then, he leant forward and kissed him.

Minutes, centuries later, when air became once again an imperious need, he confessed:

"I wanted to do this when I had to say goodbye to you, so at least that would be my last memory before the Games. But it wouldn't have been very fair to you."

Only someone like Sugawara Koushi would think about what might be fair to those that would survive as he walked towards certain death.

Daichi did not let go of his hand for almost the entire journey back to District 8. He wasn't sure he would be willing to let go for the rest of his life.