Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead & The Hunger Games or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: I recently watched The Hunger Games and well, what else was I supposed to do? It just screamed for a caryl au. In terms of the Hunger Games universe, I am thinking this could easily fit in as a replacement for the actual canon events in the first book. With Carol in place of Katniss as the inspiration for the revolution. I am also ignoring the age rule in terms of the Reaping and keeping their ages within TWD canon.
Warnings: adult language, adult content, angst, alcoholism, alcoholism as a coping method, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, canon appropriate violence, ust and more.
Even the Phoenix (needs ashes to rise)
Chapter One
"Oh my god this is delicious! Just delicious!" Caesar raved, fanning himself, almost shaking his co-anchor clear off the chair in his excitement. "She's delicious. This entire twist is delicious! What a gem! A diamond in the literal rough!"
"Just in case you aren't sick to death of the coal metaphors by now," Claudius Templesmith remarked, adjusting himself primly as he shook his sleeve free of any imaginary wrinkles left from Caesar's outburst. Slightly miffed as the cameras zoomed in on the gutted corpse of what had once the Career favorite to win. A particularly fierce candidate from District Two that went by the name of 'The Governor.'
"Is this love? It must be! What a dowdy little minx! She had me fooled - everyone fooled!" Caesar gushed. "Lowest record in a decade from skills to ratings. Even our interview, despite my best efforts. The sponsors practically fell asleep in their chairs while she was 'displaying her skills' and now look at her! Two direct kills in less than two days – all of them from the Career Districts - and she has the little ones from districts eight through eleven trailing after her like ducklings!"
"Now, I am not so sure about that, Caesar," Templesmith cut in, white wig quaking. "What is her strategy here? She must know there can only be one winner. One would say she is even being cruel, getting her 'duckling's' hopes of survival up like that. She can only protect them for so long, if that is indeed what she is doing. Wouldn't it be kinder, cleaner, to let the other tributes pick off the fledglings quickly? No fuss, no muss?"
"Well luckily for her and the brood, you seem to be in the minority, my friend. Because they are positively being flooded with gifts," Caesar replied, clearly smug as he practically made love to the microphone in his excitement.
"There's even a rumor that each district's tribute she's protected so far are pooling their coin to send bread. Unheard of to see the districts speaking in one voice like this. I am intrigued to see where it goes. I am sure mentor and previous Hunger Games' champion Daryl Dixon is being run ragged making sure she is receiving her new found sponsors' exceedingly generous donations."
It wasn't until the Capitol feeds switched back to the live broadcast from the arena that he felt his muscles unclench. Not realizing how tense he'd been until the stress started leaking out of him, like fluid from an open wound.
They hadn't caught on yet.
They didn't know.
She was alright.
Still swingin'.
Still alive.
His communicator beeped – a shrill two-tone tell - but he ignored it. Already knowing without having to look that it was Jacqui and Patricia trying to get him to head topside and smooze with the sponsors again. He just grunted, half tempted to chuck the stupid thing into the nearest vase of water and be done with it.
What was the point of all that now anyway?
Other than maybe keeping up appearances?
Their girl had all the fucking bread she could eat.
The sponsors had come in droves - tittering and peeping. Heaping gifts into his team's arms when Carol had saved that District eight girl, Mika something. And had only added to the pack from there on. He wasn't sure what it was, but she seemed to inspire something in the others, a trust that was unheard of - especially given the experiences he'd had during his own Hunger Games.
Wouldn't be long now, anyway.
The board had been set, it was just a matter of getting the last piece into place.
He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching it catch the light. Almost able to forget the starched lines of the dark suit he'd been forced into as the soothing warmth of the potent liquor trickled down his throat. His hand wavered slightly as he topped up the glass. Scowling into the bright lights and ever-moving finery of one of the Capitol's most exclusive dining balconies with little care for who might see him.
He still had a part to play after all. People to convince. Lord only knows who was watching. He couldn't afford to slip up now. He had to keep playin' the part. The surly ex-Hunger Games champion, largely ignored by the Capitol due to his bad attitude and tendency to either drink himself into an uneasy sleep or hold a knife to the throat of whatever glittering peacock decided they deserved a roll in the sheets with District Twelve's most celebrated champion.
Besides, he was going to miss quality shit like this - the good shit - might as well enjoy it while he still could. He had a feeling that where he was going, the extras weren't exactly something that were on the menu, regardless of who he was.
Things were about to change.
Maybe even for the better.
He shoved a piece of glazed duck into his mouth, forgoing his fork in favor of his fingers as he found his thoughts reeling back to the moment on the train. Back to the moment the whisky he'd been sipping turned to ash in his mouth as he watched her step nimbly into the train car. A diminutive little thing with close cropped hair and a faded, flower-print dress.
She had refused to meet his eyes and for reasons he hadn't been comfortable digging into, that had only made him angry. Because he hadn't been seeing her. Not really. He'd been seeing yet another accusing, dead-eyed stare. Another tearful tangle of sobbing relatives. Widows, widowers, mothers, fathers, siblings, small children, or worse - no one at all.
He'd ignored the male tribute when they'd joined him at the table – Morales something, frankly he didn't care. Instead, he'd fixed her with a glare and just fucking waited. Steaming inside his own skin like a living itch. So god damned angry he could spit as he silently dared her to break the silence first.
"Why?" he snarled, the sheer force behind it causing the both of them to flinch as he stared across the table at her. The shriveled, faded little part of him that he still called human, half-wondered what she saw in his expression as her blue eyes went watery. Sheened over with unshed tears.
"Why did you do it?" he hissed, slamming a clenched fist across the top of the table as the china rattled in warning. Barely sparing a second to acknowledge them when Patricia and Jacqui rustled in at the wings, herding the male tribute off to the neighboring car so they could give him the rundown of what would be expected of him at the Capitol.
For a long staggering moment he thought she wasn't going to answer. That she was going let the moment bleed out until he backhanded his glass off the table and did something he'd probably regret if his conscience ever slunk back from whenever the hell it'd fucked off to the moment his knife had found a new home in innocent flesh and twisted deep.
"Because her son deserves to grow up with his mother," she murmured, so soft he had to strain to hear. Adding layers to his rage as everything about her – from the way she was dressed, to her manner, even the way she still wouldn't meet his eyes – rankled deep.
"…and because Lori- well, after Rick, she doesn't deserve it," the woman added, shoulders settling in a firm line like she believed every word. Mindless of the quiet tears making tracks down her cheeks as her thin flower dress gaped – about two sizes too big – at the neck.
"And you do?" he barked, leaning back in his chair. Tossing a hand above his head to gesture back towards the Hall of Justice, the little hairs on the back of his neck pricking as a surge of dry heat washed through him. "Is that what this is all about? Why you volunteered? You're here to be some sort of fucking martyr? Wastin' my time? Is that right, lady?"
"And that bothers you?" she returned, somehow turning a slap-back into a gentle question. Effectively turning everything back on him as he struggled to figure out just when he'd lost control of the conversation.
"No one deserves the games," he snarled, voice a deadly calm. Doing nothing to belay the first flash of the storm as he back handed his glass off the table with a liquidy shatter. Taking a sick sort of pleasure out of it when she jumped - a quick of fear entering her eyes for the first time.
'Good…' something inside him crooned. She should be afraid. She should be shaking with it. Regretting it. Cursing herself for ever standing up for her little brown-haired friend in the first place.
"Not even those that train for it. Compete for it. Those vicious little fucks from the Career districts? The ones that want to win? The ones that usually win?" he hissed, jerking himself upright, both hands flat on the table as he tried to mask a panic attack with edgy posturing.
He didn't know what was wrong with him. Why he was seven seconds away from just fucking losing it in front of this woman like she actually meant something. Like he gave two shits about her doe-eyes and hidden expressions. Like he-
He'd kept it together for so long. He'd compartmentalized. Coped. Survived. Who was she to tear him down? To make him hurt? To make him feel and bleed when he swore nothing could ever move him again. That he wouldn't let himself-
"You know why? Because it's all a lie. And that lie is all they're taught. The glory, the riches, the fame. They don't know. They're fuckin' kids and they start lying to 'em young," he growled. Watching his own reflection loom and twist in the wide of her eyes. Trying and failing to push aside the memories of frightened eyes and a cold-blooded killer trapped in the body of a seventeen year old girl who'd cried for her mother before his second arrow found its mark. Putting her out of her misery before the dead ones stumbling out of the dark could start their ripping and tearing.
Lizzie.
Her name had been Lizzie.
He eyed her down, reaching blindly for a fresh glass. Needing the calming burn as he sloshed amber liquid down the sides of the crystal jug in his haste to unstopper it. The accusing eyes of every tribute he'd been forced to mentor - forced to watch die - slaughtered like sacrificial lambs for a Capitol that made an annual holiday out of it, slicing viciously through his mind's eye as the muscles in the left side of his face twitched nervously.
It all bled together. The people he hadn't been able to save. The people he hadn't tried to save. Even the people he'd just outright killed. The ones he'd gone after in the arena. The ones that'd come after him. They were all a part of him now. Haunting his present, past, and future.
He blinked, clearing the hazing fog that had settled in without his permission.
God, he was tired.
It was like this every year.
As if the Capitol freaks got some sort of sick pleasure out of stretchin' them all paper-thin.
Reminding them of their place the same time as they heaped up their coffers.
It wasn't a game.
It was a punishment.
"You won't make it," he told her cruelly, strangely empty of the malice he'd originally intended as she watched him carefully. Animated and alert in a way she hadn't been before. Like for the first time since she'd walked into the stage-car she was truly alive. "You aren't like them."
"Neither are you," she replied, careful and quiet as the vice in his chest squeezed tight. So unexpected he almost wheezed for breath. "You aren't like them. You made it. But you aren't."
"I can't help you," he rasped, sitting down hard in his chair, tossing back a finger of expensive whiskey like it was water. "You won't win. You'll never make it. The Capitol will eat you alive long before they toss you into the arena."
What was it about her?
What was it about her that made him feel like he wasn't-
"But that's the catch isn't it," she answered, looking him dead in the eye as something he thought he'd lost a long time ago curled possessively in his gut. "No one ever really wins, do they? They just survive it – barely."
He watched her watch him as the silence sunk low. Train picking up speed as they careened around a mountain edge. Daylight flickering through the trees like the sun had not yet made up its mind to rise.
"Maybe it's time that changed…" she whispered, eyes bright like the flickering of a blue-lit flame. Fierce and coy in a way he was certain the world would never see coming.
It didn't seem like much, as far as first meetings go.
But for the first time in over seven years, it was enough to get him to put down his glass.
A/N #1: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter, please stay tuned.