cutscenes
I'm in a creative mood today. Plus I've been wanting to do a 'Five' fic for a while. Or in this case, a 'six' fic. :D
By the way, if you read my normal fics, I'm doing exams so no updates for a while :(
Kara x
Five Ways You Didn't Know They'd Started Something
1. Katniss Everdeen
She wriggles uncomfortably, wedged in behind the desk; her plait is caught under the table leg. Every time she moves, it jerks her forwards, and she silently curses her father for insisting she kept it long.
"Why couldn't I just cut it off? I'm a big kid now. It's stupid," she grumbles under her breath. Long hair does nobody any use, and useless things are a staple in some people's lives but that's never been her, it's not District Twelve's way.
Just then, her desk jolts two inches forwards with a shudder, freeing her plait, and she sighs with relief for a second before realising hey, the ground is moving. Everything freezes except the now gently shaking floor, the only thing she usually counts on always being still. A constant, like long hair and dandelions and Father.
Still, it was a bit of good luck, she supposes, stroking her plait absent-mindedly as the floor stills, silence settling on the children like ash from a volcanic eruption. The event over, the impact not yet realised.
Through the corner of her eye, she glimpses a cloud of smoke in the direction of the mine.
Oh well, probably nothing.
2. Primrose Everdeen
Nights are made for sleeping, and dreams are for escape...
Katniss taught her that. She thinks. It's only been an hour since her unsmiling face faded from the static of the TV, but already her face is blurry, and Katniss needs to come back so I can seal her face in ink and never ever forget it again because if I forget her there's no point to anything.
She wonders if maybe her sister will appear in her dreams, the pretty, childish little dreamworlds; but her eyes won't shut-and she's not sure she wants to visit Amia or Thistland or Silverville anyway, the worlds she's spent so long creating and visits during sleep.
Since the Reaping, they've seemed...outdated. The arena's colours were vivid but they sucked all the brightness out of her. She's loved the colour red since childhood (whatever 'now' is, childhood is the last word she'd use) but now she burrows into her pillows to avoid seeing the crimson dress hanging on the door.
"Mom?" Reaching a hand out only brings crinkly sheets and fingertips gliding over tearstains; and she's a big girl now with her name on death's list, but that doesn't mean she can handle being alone tonight. When her feet come into contact with the freezing stone floor, she doesn't wince. She can't. It would feel like betrayal.
Two minutes later she hurtles back under the covers and blocks her ears because she kind of likes forgetting now, like she needs to forget her mother crouched on the floor and no, of course she wasn't saying please let Katniss go quickly, don't be so stupid
She's always wanted to be a big girl, but she'd give anything to be in Katniss' place right now if it meant not growing up at all.
3. Gale Hawthorne
"Katniss Everdeen is a liability, Mr. Hawthorne."
She locks eye contact and he can't move, trapped in her gaze; muscles tensed to fight, yet there's no enemies to be found. Or at least, no armed ones. It reminds him a little of watching the Games, but if ever his muscles stretched to breaking point then, he could switch off the television and reality would be boxed away.
Here, nobody can hear him scream.
"Miss Everdeen is unstable, has absolutely no respect for authority, and has served her purpose to the rebel cause. There is no more that can be done for her."
The rationality to her words catches him off guard. He was prepared for flattery, blackmail, bribery; for a gun to his temple or an arrow to his shin. But a rational argument is unnerving to fight against, when it's always grounded him. No emotions involved, just assessing a situation and doing what is most practical.
It's the reason he's still alive, but whenever he imagines Rory getting reaped instead of Prim...he can't bring himself to volunteer, even in his dreams (he hates himself, but Rory's crying face is always replaced by consequences and probability and statistics and those fucking little figures that twine around his neck like a noose) he knows Katniss is better than him. She'll die first, but maybe in this world that's lucky.
But he won't take his chances.
"No," he says simply, and snatches his gaze away, leaving before she can utter a single syllable in reply. Leaving before he can allow the figures to take over.
Leaving before he can pick up that blueprint he left on her desk; the one that took him hours, the most foolproof attack possible-
He doesn't even remember it until three months later, when the news headlines flicker on and the figures tighten around his neck until he implodes.
Because it doesn't matter what Gale Hawthorne does; if Coin couldn't get hold of one girl on fire, he should've known she would just set another one ablaze.
Interlock that with revenge, and it's just all the sweeter.
4. Peeta Mellark
"You useless, useless son of a bitch-"
That was the soundtrack to his childhood; usually coupled with a slap that coloured cheeks and made him wonder why it was always the evil stepmother in the fairytales. She never quite realised the irony in calling him a son of a bitch, and he wouldn't point it out.
But no amount of warm cooking smells and crinkled smiles from his submissive, helpless father could redeem the constant loneliness of living with her.
He had been only four when his brother, six at the time, had sprinted in with tear-stained, blueberry bruised left cheek, shivering in fear that one of the teachers would spot him...even at four, Peeta knew the Home was where kids went to die, of misery or otherwise.
So he sat there for an hour with his paintbrush, an old ramekin of paint and nothing but the wind in his ears, turning his brother into the happy, unblemished child he should've been.
Come the arena twelve years later, and nobody ever bothers to ask him how he's gotten so good at camouflaging himself.
And frankly, he's okay with that.
5. Haymitch Abernathy
It's been six hours since the Games began and Haymitch Abernathy is concealed inside an old, rotting hollow log with a furry moss coating. It's the closest he'll ever get to a bed again, he thinks morbidly.
He's always been a realist. Here, it sucks. He could really use a sickly sweet, energising shot of optimism right now, but that'll never be his style; living in the cinder-choked slums of Twelve, you don't set much stock by happiness.
Survival is all that's ever been handed to him, and sometimes he wonders if it's enough.
He leans his head back, ears pricked for the slightest sound of footsteps through the undergrowth; every leaf swept into the air by the fabricated breeze makes him seize up in fear and anticipation. But after a few more hours, he succumbs to sleep. It's a huge arena and a large amount of the tributes are gone (he's always been a realist, but 'death' seems too final) – surely nobody will come across him?
He should've known.
"Fuck," he breathes at the unwelcome sight his eyes flicker open to. Ace Milan, the sponsor-studded District One archangel with a model's face and a psycho's mind, is brandishing a knife whilst smiling dangerously at him through the hollow in the tree trunk.
Surprisingly, calm settles over him. He's dead. It won't be quick. Who the hell cares? At least it ended quickly. And he'll never go back to the ashes of Twelve again.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Ace whispers, stroking his knife like a beloved pet and wielding a far more dangerous spark of madness in his eyes. Haymitch slides out of the tree trunk without hesitating and gets up to face his killer. Ace's backup is languishing lazily a few metres away, chewing on some raisins as he glances at Haymitch disinterestedly.
The sixteen-year-old Twelve boy sizes up his chances. He's bigger and stockier than Ace, but the knife in his hand is far superior to his...well, nothing. He hadn't risked scooping up anything more than the dry biscuits in his pocket. Damn it all to hell, he knew he should've gone for that sickle when he had the chance.
Ace bares his teeth in a predatory grin. "Hmm, what shall I do with you? So many possibilities. It doesn't matter if you make it difficult; in fact, I'm really hoping you make sure it isn't quick-"
Then he's cut off, powerful and measured voice reduced to a gurgle.
Panicked, he reaches a hand to his throat, and pulls it away clean. Haymitch can't see anything wrong with him, but his companion's eyes widen and he scrambles up to run before dropping to the ground with an anguished squeal. Ace's beguiling eyes glaze over and the cannon booms; just as it does, Haymitch notes the dart in the side of his neck, penetrating deep into his windpipe.
He smiles and closes his eyes, waiting for the blow.
Slow footsteps; tentative, stalking...closer...closer...
Goodbye, cruel world.
"Haymitch? Is that you?"
He opens his eyes, and the sight in front of him is so incredible, he must be dead because there is no way in hell he is this lucky. He's always been a realist, and Twelves don't get lucky. As in, ever. But she seems so real...
"...Maysilee?"
...And One Way You Didn't Know He'd Started Everything
1. President Coriolanus Snow
It's the last day of the Games. Assistants and employees are flitting past him constantly, leaving notes, asking questions, painting an atmosphere of tension and excitement that chokes everyone like poison gas, but he doesn't notice.
He hasn't moved in three days, eyes locked so fixatedly on the screen that the world has just become a haze of colours and tinny screams from the primitive speakers on the television. He won't move.
He can't.
It's the 32nd Hunger Games and Coriolanus is a nobody. An eighteen-year-old young man with bright, unnerving eyes who took the job as an intern to the District Nine Ambassador the second he left his final Reaping. Make something of yourself, they'd said to him. You're not in danger anymore, take the bull by the horns, the world's your oyster, and a thousand other motivating clichés.
He makes coffee and alphabetises files. It's safe. He's happy, he's a month or two off bringing home a weekly wage, and that's as far as he wants to go. Sometimes the other interns whisper about one day making it to the Capitol, but that's not him. Glitz, glamour...all the glitter he wants is the threads in his mother's sewing machine. Maybe he'll get to a higher position here, but that's it.
But right now, jobs are the last thing on his mind. Any one of the people who passes him-Capitolian Gamemakers and reporters and assistants, with blinding hairstyles and alien accents-sees a blank, nearly catatonic figure, and nobody bothers to ask why.
The kid is just an intern, right? Probably just being lazy on the job, nothing more...
He's always been incredibly close to his family. His parents are a seamstress and a road-sweeper, the humblest of beginnings; the thought of their cleverest son, the only literate one, being an assistant to the Capitolian Ambassador of District Nine is the joy of their lives. He has two older brothers; hasn't heard from them for a while. Doesn't particularly care.
And Rose.
Everything's always been Rose; her soft hair, petals of cheeks, sparks in her eyes and fun-loving grin, the way she takes his hand and tugs him out of the house into the rain, where they get wet and it doesn't even matter. She's always made him warm inside. She has that effect on people.
Thirteen, she was. Thirteen. And she is thirteen and she'll always be thirteen. Fucking thirteen, they always said it was unlucky, but he never...expected that.
He blinks and the Victor is standing triumphant on a rock platform surrounded by sand and littered with dead bodies. Three. None of them he recognises. The last body he recognised left three...no, four days ago. Scooped up ridiculously tenderly by the groping claw of a hovercraft, peaceful smile and petal cheeks; a gaping hole in her back, rusted with blood, but nothing compared to the charred flesh that was once soft and sweet and his. It was raining. It's not meant to rain in a desert, is it? It's like they were mocking him. And then the rain turned to fire and she was left to burn. But they left just enough...just enough of her that he couldn't pretend it was anything else.
The anthem plays, and the screen flickers to black. He continues staring blankly for a time, then rouses himself, staggers out of the building and into his empty home. Parents and brothers aren't here. They'll all be at the...oh, right. Funeral.
He tenderly strokes the aging medicine cabinet, then rips it off its hinges and pulls out the concealed bottle behind. Expensive, this stuff is. Potent. Deadly. He flips off the cap and tips three pills into his palm. Four would finish the job, but as the fourth pill teeters on the rim of the bottle, he places it back down and begins to pace, looking at the sky with fever in his eyes.
"Rose...you love the Capitol, don't you? The glitz and glamour always was perfect for you. You'd dress up in all the materials Mother discarded, blues and golds and greens, since you were a baby...even when you got reaped, you were excited at seeing the Capitol. You said you'd accepted it..." He seizes on a bottle and tips it down his throat, not bothering to read the label. He's disappointed; it's only cough syrup, diluted at that.
"Well, Rosie, I'm gonna make you a deal. I'm always fighting with you about whether there's anything after you die. I've always said there isn't, death is where it ends...you think there's something more. Prove it. You get me through this...and I'll get to the Capitol, Rosie. I'll hate every second of it, but I'll do it...for you. I will. I will. I will."
He gets more hysterical, seizing on loose floorboards and hurling them bodily at the door for no reason other than it's not fair and it never will be.
"I hate the Districts. I hate them. They cheered on that monster, the one that took the spark out of your eyes...they're giving him a hero's welcome home, the bastard. The Districts are the ones that have ruined us. Not the Capitol. The Districts. It's their fault!"
In the fit of pique he's seized by, he scoops up the three pills and swallows them, feeling nothing. The agony won't begin for at least an hour. That's too long. Too soft for him. He should have protected her and he failed and he deserves all the pain a medicine cabinet can rain upon him. Rain. Ha. It turns up everywhere.
Hand falls on a bottle of bleach, and he glugs it without question, screaming through the liquid as it burns through his cheeks, searing his throat, leaving sores that should heal. But he knows they won't. Good.
He lies down on the floor as pain slowly begins to radiate through his body and a bead of sweat trickles down his nose. Apart from that, nothing. Nothing but floorboards and emptiness.
I'll get them for you, Rose. They'll burn, just like you.