and rise with me forever
across the silent sand
and the stars will be your eyes
and the wind will be my hands
far from any road, the handsome family
.
.
.
The girl from 3 dies first.
When she steps off of the platform it is fast and sickeningly deliberate. She's gone before the countdown is over. Somewhere across the circle a boy, her District partner, screams like the sound has been ripped out of him, "Jemma, no!" Already, there are pieces of her body littering the ground like trash.
No one flinches.
All around them is only ice, and Skye chances a look at Grant before she refocuses on the Cornucopia.
five
.
.
.
four
.
.
.
three
.
.
.
two
When the escort calls her name, she is certain it must be a mistake. Her most recent family lives well enough that they have no need for tesserae, and she was certain that the chances of her name being called, one slip of paper among hundreds, were low enough that she needn't worry. The odds of her being called with one name in the lottery were so slim, they should've been in her favor.
"Skye? Dear?" the woman proclaims again in a horrible trill.
Behind her, Miles shoves her forward, and Skye begins walking unsteadily to the stage. The Peacekeepers move aside in deference as she passes. Even they have a certain measure of respect for a dead girl walking.
She doesn't hear the second name the woman calls, but she doesn't have to. She won't be alive to remember it in a week.
Already, the boy is moving through the crowd, parting them easily. He's tall, broad-shouldered, handsome. Exactly the kind of tribute that earns sponsors. He looks like a statue, immovable and perfectly formed, his face as still as stone. When he shakes her hand his grip is firm, focused.
He'll win, she thinks suddenly, standing there with her pretty dress, her hair in braids around her head.
Skye is seventeen years old, and she is almost certainly going to die. The realization hits her like a punch in the stomach, knocks the air out of her lungs.
"District 6, your tributes for the 71st Annual Hunger Games!"
She's going to die.
Just beyond the crowd of silent spectators, the clocks begin to chime.
The Cornucopia is a slaughterhouse, but Skye had been prepared for that. She snatches a backpack with shaking hands and a winter coat with the other while she shoves on her boots, looking around all the while to be sure that no one is sneaking up behind her.
The girl from District 2 grabs another tribute and slits his throat before taking his supplies and sprinting in the other direction. The whole thing takes less than a minute, the arterial spray slicing a pattern on the snow, some of the blood showering on Skye, warm and sticky. When she looks after the running figure, she can see that the other girl has a flower in her hair. The sight of it makes her want to cry.
There's blood that tastes like metal in her mouth, and she's certain that it isn't hers.
She spits it out on the ice before she runs.
The goodbyes are mostly silent. Her partner says goodbye to his brother, briefly, quietly, before straightening up and closing his mouth. No one shows up for her, but she wasn't expecting them to. She and the boy step onto the train and watch as the town gets smaller in the distance.
"I'm Grant," he says abruptly, once they've both settled into their seats. "Grant Ward."
She nods. "Skye."
Neither of them really feel the need to make any more conversation after that.
The nearest landmark, they agreed during training, is where they would meet up after the Cornucopia. None of them had been prepared for the possibility of no landmarks close by. Skye knows how to handle the cold, has been alone and freezing and starving before, but she can already see some of the other tributes folding in on themselves, without supplies, without allies, without any hope of survival. They'll die slow.
The closest shelter is hundreds of yards away, as far as she can tell. Looking back, she can clearly make out the red mass of the Cornucopia, where some of the tributes are still fighting for backpacks, ignoring the bodies at their feet. She watches a girl no older than thirteen fall to the ground, a knife still protruding from her eye, her District partner lurching away from her corpse after taking back his weapon.
It's snowing, blurring the already nearly invisible horizon even more. Skye can't tell where Grant ran to, and waiting around, she's realizes, will only get her killed.
She chooses a point where the trees seem to part more than usual and heads that way, her breath heaving out in rasping gasps.
"I thought Mike Peterson was a mentor," Grant says at dinner, digging into his steak with the enthusiasm of a starving animal. "Did something happen?"
Their female mentor replies shortly, "He died."
Melinda May had won years before, at fifteen. Her mentors were the now-dead Peterson and Phil Coulson, who watches their interaction with a kind of disinterested amusement.
Skye isn't surprised about Peterson's death. She'd seen him before, walking unsteadily through the streets, track marks on his arms and eyes wild and unseeing. A District 6 victor turned morphling addict is hardly unique. Instead, she feels a selfish sort of satisfaction, knowing that her mentors are the best of the many their District has to offer. The Cavalry, who brought down no fewer than twelve other tributes with nothing but a pocketknife, and Coulson, the man who cheated death in the final minutes of his game.
Their escort claps her hands. "No talk like that here, remember? This is polite conversation."
"And this is a polite bloodbath," Melinda responds, her voice flat and unwavering, tone brooking no argument. "Mike Peterson is dead, and I am taking his place as your second mentor. Any other questions? Grant? Skye?"
Suddenly, all eyes at the table rove to her, clearly expecting for her to say something. Grant looks merely curious, Melinda, emotionless, and Coulson's expression is something she can't place.
"No," she says as normally as she can manage. "Nothing."
She swallows past the lump in her throat and takes another bite of her meal, which she's disappointed to find has lost some of its taste. Everyone turns their attention back to eating with her reply, all except for Coulson.
He fixes his eyes on her with a kind of fascinated intensity and doesn't say anything for the entire dinner.
She finds the boy from 3 first, deeper into the forest. His back is to one of the trees, his knees huddled against his chest, his eyes as blank as if he were already dead. When she approaches, he tenses up, holding a knife close to his face.
"Don't worry," she says, showing him her empty hands. "I'm not gonna hurt you." She kneels next to him as he relaxes, slowly dropping the knife back to his chest. "My name is Skye."
He closes his eyes and swallows, his expression pained, like even an action as simple as that hurts. "Leo. You can call me Fitz."
She holds out her hand for him to shake, which he does, reluctantly. She knows she must look horrible, her hair already knotted, a splatter of blood leading to her mouth. She settles down next to him, watching the forest floor to see if anyone sneaks up on them.
"That girl," she murmurs slowly, "she was your friend?"
He nods, holding his gaze away from her. "She said she wouldn't going to kill anyone, no matter what. I didn't know that was what she meant. She was good like that, you know?" He clears his throat. "She was good."
"You loved her?"
His voice is wrecked when he speaks again, raw and broken. "Yeah, I loved her."
Someone screams somewhere in the forest, and Skye straightens up. "Okay, Fitz. I know you're hurting, and I know you don't want to do this, but we have to move. My partner and I have an alliance, and you and I have to go find him. He's the best chance we have."
She stands, shaking the snow from her jacket and pulling her backpack over her shoulder. Her fingers are going numb, she realizes, and she shoves them in her pockets for gloves. Fitz doesn't move.
Someone else yells, this time from closer by, and she crouches down to his level, forcing him to look her in the eye. "Look, Fitz, we have to go. If you think for one second that you have a shot in hell of surviving this, you do it. Because you and I both know that she wouldn't want it any other way."
Finally, he looks up, meeting her gaze, and for the first time since the countdown he looks close to living.
She holds out her hand. "For Jemma, right?"
He nods, pulling himself up with her help. "For Jemma."
They strip her bare for the makeover, handle her body like a piece of meat and then build her again from scratch. She feels exposed, stretched out on the table and plucked and twisted and remade.
Once the stylists are through she's led to another room to be dressed for the chariot ride. She waits for the designer, shivering in only her white shorts and tank top, makeup caked on her skin. Without a mirror, she has no idea what they've done to her already. She wonders idly if Grant feels the same, being scrubbed raw by the male stylists.
The man who walks in next is not who she was expecting. He's solidly built and wearing nothing but black, down to the patch covering one of his eyes. "Hello Skye," he greets, holding out his hand for her to shake. "I'm Fury, your designer."
She stares in shock. From her little experience with members of the Capitol, she knows that they're bright, vibrant, and nearly always awful. Fury, aside from the distinctive name, seems more intimidating than anything else. He pushes aside a panel on the wall and gestures for her to follow him over.
"This," he announces gruffly, gesturing to the gown inside, "is what you'll be wearing. I'll leave you alone to get changed."
Though she still can't believe that a man like that is in charge of making costumes for the Capitol, she stares in awe at the dress hanging in front of her. Transportation, she and Grant had joked nervously, must be difficult to design for.
"What can they do?" she laughed. "Put us in train costumes?"
"No," he replied, "they'll make us into buses."
Her outfit for the chariot ride is black and glittering, onyx diamonds dripping down the sleeves and floor-length skirt. It's tight, she can tell already, with a long train in the back and a neckline dipping low down her chest. The shoes are black and dangerously high, and she struggles to put them on.
She wraps herself in the garment, careful not to tear the delicate material, and finally turns to inspect herself in the mirror. Her eyes are the most shocking thing, having been encrusted heavily with thick black liner that extends all the way to her hairline. Black jewels adorn her temples, and her hair has been pulled back in a high, tight ponytail, giving her whole face the impression of having been tugged until her already narrow eyes disappeared. Her lips, the only color in the entire ensemble, are blood red.
She doesn't know exactly what impression Fury is going for, until she spots the dark, plastic wings woven into her hair. From a side view, the outfit provides a perfect picture of motion. An airplane.
Skye smiles.
There are fourteen cannons that go off at the end of the first night, much more than usual. Fitz and Skye watch as the fallen tributes' faces pass in quick succession across the darkened ceiling. She pretends to ignore his slight intake of breath when his partner comes onscreen. Jemma Simmons, pretty, probably sixteen, and dead. Her expression in the photograph not proud so much as it is frightened. No picture appears for District 6, and she lets out her breath in relief.
Skye takes the first watch, sitting silently in the shadows of the fire that crackles in front of her. She leans against Fitz, who shivers violently in the cold and wakes up twice from two more cannon blasts before his watch has even started. If Skye had to make a guess, she would say that most of them froze to death, died slowly and uninterestingly. Melinda's games had been in a rainforest, warm and tropical, the animals vicious and carnivorous. No chance of dying quiet. She supposes she should feel lucky that there isn't much the Gamemakers can throw at them in icy wasteland.
The third cannon of the day wakes her up when it goes off in the early morning, after the sounds of shouting somewhere deeper in the forest. She hopes to God none of them were Grant. Already there are seventeen tributes dead, and she feels certain that the ones remaining won't be killed through any efforts on the Gamemakers' part.
They must realize that they're already going too quickly.
The hotel is larger than any building she's ever seen, chandeliers dropped from the ceiling like wax, marble floors that echo every sound. She's still in her costume from the chariots, as is Grant, who, like her, looks in awe around him. He is dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, all black, with large, round goggles that he takes off now to see the room more clearly.
("The pilot," he explained when she saw him, "and you must be the plane." The crowd roared in approval as they passed.)
Their suite and her room are, if anything, even more impressive. The bed is softer than any in her District, and everything that can be is coated in diamonds or glitter. The view from the balcony is expansive enough to see the whole city with, buildings blistering in the bright sun, the train tracks snaking through the grid.
Skye briefly wonders if the fall from the balcony is high enough to kill her. She realizes quickly enough that, of course, the Gamemakers would never allow for that to happen. She'll only die when they let her.
"We need to find food," Fitz says impatiently, once they've gathered all of their supplies. "There are no animals that I've seen in this part of the forest. Once we find a source of food, we can start looking for your District partner."
"Grant," Skye corrects absently, fiddling with the straps of her backpack. "Shouldn't we find water?"
"There's snow," he reminds her. "That'll be more than enough for all of us."
"Fine. Food, then Grant. Where do you suggest we start?"
Dinner is quiet once again, all until their escort excuses herself from the table.
"Finally," Grants mutters under his breath. Melinda smiles, just barely, before her face returns to its non-expression.
"Alright," Coulson says, laying his palms flat against the table, "now that what's-her-name is gone, let's talk strategy. Do either of you have any special skills?" When neither of them makes any motion to speak, he sighs. "May?"
"Ward. Start talking."
Grant clears his throat, obviously nervous. "I can fight," he says at last, after a few moments of internal deliberation.
Melinda nods. "Alright. We can work with that." She turns again, this time to Skye. "You?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing."
"Nothing?" The three of them lean forward, bodies tilted to her every movement like satellites in orbit.
She gives out a weak chuckle. "I'm good with computers."
Melinda nods slowly, and Skye can practically see her writing her out of the plan. She's seen it happen before, tributes left by the wayside and killed as easy as anything. Useless things don't last very long in the arena.
"Well," she announces finally, in the exact same tone of voice, "we'll have to get you up to speed then, won't we?"
The find the frozen lake at noon. As far as she can see the ground is solid ice. Fitz walks along the side of it quickly, eyes distant, before finally turning back to Skye and remarking, "It's not very wide, and this'll give us protection on one side. We can go around it."
"How long will that take?"
He squints. "A few hours, maybe. Less, if we go quickly."
She steels herself, assessing the options. If they walk across, assuming the ice is thick enough, it will be faster, but should the ice break whoever falls will die. Without fail. "Alright. Okay, yeah, let's go."
It's slow going, walking knee-deep in snow. She thanks whatever God there is that she managed to get a pair of boots, though they slip against her ankle from the too-large size. Occasionally, Fitz stops and merely looks around, seeming to think very hard about something, and continues on without a word, leading her without a glance behind him.
She thinks, sometimes, that it must be like the old story that she can't quite recall the details of. The one about the man who leads a girl from hell. Hell, she is certain now, is the frozen ground and someone else's blood in your mouth.
"We need to rest," she finally says, after Fitz has stopped for what seems like the millionth time. "We need to eat."
"Eat what?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Did you even check your pack to see if there was something in there?"
He stops completely, turning to her in shock before finally shrugging guiltily. "No."
"Then check, Fitz. God, how embarrassing would it be to get this far and die of starvation?"
"You have something, you know that, right?" Coulson says to her, swirling his drink around in his glass before he knocks it back in one swallow, hissing at the burn. "Everyone has at least one thing that could help them live."
Grant has already called it a night, insisted that he needed a good night's sleep before the first day of training. Melinda, for her part, left without so much as a word, and Skye was too afraid to question it.
She's decided to stay awake until she falls asleep out of sheer exhaustion, knowing if she tries now she'll just toss and turn until morning.
"No," she replies, stupidly belligerent. "There's nothing, I guarantee it." She feels sick to the head, from weariness, from fear. Her body is raw and aching, her hair ripped from the root, face scrubbed for an hour in her white-gold bathroom. She is certain there are still traces of black liner on her eyelids, still bits of red on her mouth. "There's nothing."
He's shaking his head in denial before she's even finished speaking. "Skye, I know you're smarter than that. If you really believe you have no chance, no shot in hell of making it out of there, then you would've already done something about it." He leans toward her, holding her gaze steadily even as she flinches away. "What can you do?"
She thinks suddenly of the homes she knows in District 6, the families that booted her without so much as a warning. Starving in the streets with her hair in knots. Fighting with her fists balled and her knuckles torn for a place to sleep on the hardwood floors. Miles, who she was so, so certain about, who was the only constant in every new situation, and who shoved her forward without a word when she was reaped.
"I can learn," she says harshly, biting the words out. "I can survive."
"Now that," Coulson smiles, "I can work with."
The blood is vivid red and spread out against the ice, and when Fitz sees it, he pauses.
"Wait," he murmurs, holding out a hand to keep Skye from moving any further. "Something's wrong here."
"What?" she asks, furrowing her brow while his eyes go blank. "Fitz, what is it?"
"There's no body," he begins slowly, picking up speed as he goes. "There's no trail of blood leading somewhere else. And it's fresh."
"So? Someone hurt themselves, wrapped up, and moved on."
"They're close," he insists, his voice dropped down to barely more than a whisper. "They might still be here."
She begins to speak again, but he waves his hand to silence her, his attention shifting to the trees by the side of the lake. He watches them carefully and slowly begins moving closer to the forest. Skye's mouth goes dry.
"Fitz," she hisses, her stomach twisting with a sense of dread, "get back here."
He ignores her, his eyes still fixed on the space in front of him.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he sings under his breath as he walks even closer.
The trees rustle, and for a moment everything seems to slow down. Skye glances at Fitz, whose eyes are already filling with panic.
Suddenly, the boy from District 10 launches out of the thicket, a knife still lodged in his leg, blood pouring from the injury.
He knocks Fitz to the ground, fighting with a sort of vicious desperation, and Skye screams. She fumbles for something in her pack, a knife, an arrow, a rope, as he shouts for help. Her hands are shaking with adrenaline when she finally pulls the knife from one of the pockets. She slices it on her palm accidentally, but she doesn't feel the pain.
The boy is making noises like a wounded animal as he claws at Fitz, who, for all his scrawniness, has somehow managed to reverse their positions so that he has the upper hand.
"Skye!" he yells, panic clear in his voice, as she scrambles to get closer to them. "Help me!"
The boy has pulled himself free, ready to run at them, when she screams again, the final thing she can think of to do. He falters, just barely, at the sound, but it's enough.
She tosses Fitz the knife, and he catches the blade end with his fingers. She looks away, unable to watch what she knows has to happen.
The boy is shuddering on the ground when she finally looks again, his neck opened wide, blood flowing out in a thick, red gush. The color is horrible against the ice, horrible against Fitz's hands as he tries, in vain, to close the wound.
"Oh God, no," he begs, patting the cut in some desperate attempt to close it. "Oh God, I'm sorry, please, I'm so sorry."
The boy convulses on the ground, his eyes roaming mindlessly.
"Please, I'm so sorry."
After a minute, he goes still, all the fight gone from his body. The cannon sounds. Fitz moves his hands over the boy's face, closing his eyes with his fingertips. Skye can only watch in muted horror, her vision blurring as she stares.
"Come on," he says finally, standing up shakily. "We need his supplies." He rolls the other tribute over, pulling his arms free from his pack and emptying it out onto the ground. Skye shoves the contents into her own bag, and Fitz, after a moment of deliberation, pulls the knife from his leg. He wipes the blood off with his hand, and it mixes with his own. With hers, too, she realizes absently.
By the time they walk away, his body is nothing more than a red stain on the ground.
The helicopter roars like an animal overhead.
Training, she realizes quickly, is more of an intimidation method than anything else. There are weapons, survival stations, and arena simulations, but the most terrifying things are the other tributes.
One of the Careers, she doesn't know which, swings an axe over her head and cuts the simulation tribute to ribbons. She smiles when she catches Skye's eye.
"Oh God," she mutters and cringes when the girl slices easily through another body. Grant whistles low in his throat, watching the spectacle. "We're going to die."
"Yeah," he agrees.
She only kind of appreciates that he doesn't offer any hollow comfort.
The rabbits strung up on the tree are gruesome, but Fitz almost smiles at the sight.
"There's game here," he murmurs, "and whoever was here before is gone now."
Skye furrows her brow. "How can you tell? And why would they leave the animals behind?"
"Intimidation, maybe. Show how well they're surviving. And look," he points to the snow-covered ground, "no tracks. The snow only fell in the morning. We can stop here, it's getting dark. We'll be more likely to find your partner on this side of the lake, anyway."
"Grant," she corrects again, but Fitz's stubborn unwillingness to remember his name strikes a chord with her, this time. They must have the same reasons, after all, for thinking of the other tributes in those terms. The boy from 6, wearing his brother's token, the girl from 2 with the flower in her hair that made her look so young, the girl from 3 who killed herself rather than kill someone else, and the boy from 10 with dark hair and even darker eyes, now nothing more than a red mass of flesh twisted on the icy ground. If it doesn't have a name it can't be real.
Already there are only six of them left. One must be Fitz, one must be her, and one, she hopes to a God she can't quite believe in, must be Grant.
Fitz builds the fire, the branches leaning together like a house, a burning effigy of everything they once knew. He lights it with his good hand and settles back to watch the flames throw sparks against the snow.
The rabbits turn over and over on the spit, and Skye shivers in the cold. Hopes she dies quiet.
"How was your first day?" he asks, his voice hoarse.
He only speaks to her after Grant and Melinda have already gone to bed, when she's watching the black television screen like it holds the secrets to her survival and he's drinking alcohol she's certain burns him more than it soothes. She thinks it's because they both need the distraction.
"Fine," she replies, purposefully evasive. Neither she nor Grant made any other alliances; they knew what happened to tributes that teamed up with Careers. The ones from 12 seemed normal, if a little young, and she saw the pair from 3 at one of the defense strategy stations, both of them bickering amicably, but she had panicked before speaking to any of them. "Grant taught me some of his moves."
"I'll have May work with the two of you tomorrow."
Skye frowns, just slightly. "Aren't you going to train us at all? Give us advice?"
He laughs, but the sound is harsh and angry and empty. "Don't die. Or do, you know. Whatever works for you." He reaches again for the bottle, but she grabs his wrist before he can.
"Look," she says lowly, her hold tight on his arm, "I'm going to die, clearly. But Grant still has a chance of making it out of this thing alive, and you owe him your help, even if you won't give it to me."
"You're an idiot if you think Ward will win," he says, almost laughing. It makes her blood boil. "That kid's got a savior complex bigger than all the Districts combined. He'll die for anyone in that arena, no questions asked, if he believes it's the right thing to do. My advice? Die with dignity, when you can. It'll be less painful that way."
"You don't think Grant could win," she states flatly, and Coulson nods seriously.
"You, actually, have a pretty good chance. Better than him, at least. You've earned his approval as a good person. He'll protect you until one of you is dead."
"You don't think I could win on my own? That I need someone else to protect me?"
"I couldn't win on my own, and I don't think you want to kill anyone, anyway. But you're a fighter, Skye. You have a shot." He pries her hand easily from his wrist and sets the bottle on the ground. "You could win," he mutters thoughtfully. "You could, if you wanted to."
"How did you?" She's curious, honestly, about that more than anything.
He exhales, slowly, and if she hadn't been paying attention, Skye wouldn't have noticed the way his breath shakes, just slightly. "You don't win, not really." He tilts his head toward her. "My year was Titus, do you remember him?"
Titus, who cut and clawed and sliced and disemboweled and looked at the cameras directly, the flesh of the other tributes in his mouth. Who died underneath the rubble of an avelanche that was maybe, maybe an accident, because they couldn't very well have a goddamn cannibal win the whole thing, could they?
She remembers Titus.
She knows that that was the year Coulson won, too. He had been one of the bigger mysteries of the arena, the boy with an average appearance and average scores and few sponsors with very little screen time. He faded easily and, everyone realized later, intentionally into the background. By the time there were only a handful of tributes left, most of the audience had forgotten he was still a contender.
Skye nods.
"All I did," he admits, "was let him take everyone else out. I followed him, just far enough away that he didn't know, but close enough that no one tried to kick up a fuss by killing me with him right there. To them, it wasn't worth it. Let them underestimate you," he adds sharply. "Let them think you aren't a threat."
"What about the end?" she presses, something urgent in her voice that she doesn't know the reason for. "You almost died, that's what everyone says."
"He stabbed me," he explain, his voice too light for the conversation. "And then when he thought he was safe, he relaxed. And I cut his throat." His hands are shaking, and Skye pretends not to notice. "I died later, on the plane. For eight seconds, but it felt like more. When I woke up again, I asked them if they could let me die, you know? Just let me die already."
As he speaks, she can almost see it. Coulson was sixteen when he won, begging the Gamemakers to please, just let him die. She can see it. Stab me, shoot me, hang me like the man in the tree. Let me die.
"But they needed a winner."
He nods, drawing himself out of his thoughts. "They needed a winner." He glances at her. "I'll help you and Ward tomorrow, alright? We have to start thinking about interviews, anyway."
He bids her goodnight before leaving the room, the bottle hanging loosely from his hand. Skye falls asleep on the couch shortly after, exhausted from the day of training.
Dreams of bodies strung up in the branches of trees.
She recognizes his voice, which is the only thing that stops Fitz from throwing his knife at the silhouette in front of them, physics be damned.
"Grant?" she calls softly, just in case she's mistaken, but as he walks closer she can see his face more clearly. "Grant!"
Grant stumbles toward them, his face now illuminated by the flames. Skye startles when she sees him, worn down and ruined. He must not have gotten any rest since the Cornucopia, and she wonders if that's how he avoided freezing to death in his sleep. There's an ugly set of bruises forming a pattern along his jaw, red and purple, that mirror the ones blooming along Fitz's arms, and a long, jagged cut trailing down from his brow.
"Oh my God, what happened to you?" She stands up just as he staggers to his knees, catching him before he falls to the ground. There's ice in his hair, and his mouth is pale. The smell of iron clings to him like perfume.
Grant smiles, but his mouth twists until it seems more like baring his teeth. "Everything," he laughs.
"Faster," Melinda barks as Skye struggles to her feet. "I know you can do better than that."
She stands, and a drop of blood tracks down from her lip. She tastes metal.
"Come on," Melinda says again, her eyes betraying a nervousness Skye thought her incapable of. Grant is easy to train, already sharpened into a fine and vicious point, but Skye is soft and weak and totally unprepared. She'll die, no doubt, and all Melinda's efforts will have been in vain. "Come on, try, Skye."
Across the room, Coulson flips Grant on his back once again and the ground shakes with the force of it. Melinda catches her partner's eye and he returns her sudden look of panic. They're older, sure, and more experienced with hand to hand combat, but they only have so much time.
Skye watches the exchange dispassionately and wonders if that means she's already ready to die.
"Hit me again," Melinda says, her voice returned to its regular monotone. She doesn't have a scratch on her. "Try again."
Her mouth tastes like metal, like unforgiving floorboards, like not eating for days and days and days. She lands a solid hit on Melinda's jaw, open-handed, her nails catching on her flesh until it tears, and finally, finally blood wells to the surface, hot and brutal.
Melinda finally smiles, touching her hands to her face. Fingers come away red and shining. "Better."
He hasn't eaten, he hasn't sleep, and they force feed him bits and pieces of the rabbits when they can. Skye rips off a strip of cloth to put against his cut and two more to replace the wrappings on her and Fitz's hands.
He has several parachute canisters in his backpack, and she knows Coulson and Melinda must have sent everything to Grant. When it occurs to her, the idea that they kept him alive makes her angrier than anything else.
(Their scores came in and Skye coasted with an average score, just this side of good, but Grant was a fucking god to them, he could win, he would win. But Coulson looked on and looked at her and she suddenly she saw how it would all occur. Grant would play the part of the tragic hero in their little morality play. The dog thrown to the lions so the lamb could run away.)
The cannons don't even wake him, though there are only four. Six left, she thinks suddenly, and the thought is enough to keep her from sleeping. Even if they are in the final moments, even if Grant does die for her like they mean for him to, she may die as well. And all of it will have been for nothing.
The night sky glitters with stars that don't really exist, and the fire throws sparks accusingly.
Melinda's hand is an animal's claw around her face, and it leaves marks. Coulson looks Grant up and down. They only speak to each other, never to the people in front of them. The nameless tributes from District 6.
"She's pretty, thin, exotic," Melinda assesses finally. "An orphan, right? Damsel in distress, maybe?"
"Yeah," he replies absently, glancing at Grant from every angle. "Little girl lost. Grant will be the big tough hero, and we'll play them off each other." He looks at Skye, as if just noticing her presence. "Is there anything either of you could mention in the interviews? Lost loves, family ties, overcoming obstacles?"
Grant clenches his jaw, just as uncomfortable with the blunt judgement as she is. "I've got a kid brother," he bites out finally. "I told him I'd try my best to make it back."
Coulson nods thoughtfully and shifts his attention to Skye. There's nothing in his eyes to suggest any sort of sympathy. He looks hollow, like his insides were carved out to make way for this rationality.
She answers before either of them has a chance to ask. "My parents are dead." Floorboards coated in dust. Her stomach twisting itself inside-out from hunger. Miles, with his cold, cold hands. "There's nothing really. I don't have anything to fight for."
Melinda purses her lips. "Alright. If he asks you anything about why you want to win, deflect. Stick to the story."
Big tough protector. Little girl lost. Damsel in distress. Tragic hero.
"Alright," she agrees. She keeps the careful neutrality present on her face until everyone finally looks away, Coulson tearing his eyes from her like pulling weeds.
The morning sky is the color of smoke and ash when Grant finally wakes up, gazing blearily around him.
"No one else is dead," Fitz says in reply to a question no one asked. "Still six of us."
None of them make mention of the fact that they total half of the survivors. None of them ask if maybe they should split up, just so they won't have to kill each other, in the end.
Skye tugs at the knot in her hair with her good hand and stands up to pull the other rabbits from the trees.
"Oh," Grant says mildly, "you found the food I left."
Fitz frowns slightly. "You left these here? Why?"
"Had enough. So I knew where I was before. Just in case someone else needed them. Lots of reasons I guess."
Coulson was right, Skye realizes suddenly, watching Grant struggle to his feet. In case someone else needed them, needed him. She may not live, Fitz may not live, but they still have a chance. Grant will die, the goddamn hero. It's only a matter of when.
And the girl from District 5 runs screaming toward them.
Caesar beams at the lights as the audience roars.
"Grant Ward, everyone!"
Skye has already completed her interview. She smiled, she giggled at everything Caesar said, she teared up at the appropriate times. No one congratulates her on the performance when she glides offstage, but she wasn't expecting them to.
(Alone at the goodbyes, and the boy to her right kissed his younger brother on his forehead like it meant something.)
Grant is smiling at the crowd, waving his hand. He looks beautiful and devastating, his suit fashionable, his eyes like a dead man's eyes. He glitters like ice in the silvery lights.
Caesar gestures to his seat, and Grant obliges, sitting down.
"So, Grant," he begins, leaning in. Trying to establish a connection. Skye has seen it before, usually been on the receiving end of parents attempting to reel her in before tossing her back. "How are you feeling?"
He chuckles, charmingly self-deprecating. For a moment she almost believes it. "As good as you'd expect, Caesar. The competition this year is pretty tough."
"Not a problem for you though, right? I've heard," the crowd ooh's and ah's, right on cue, "that you've been marked as one of the Games' top contenders. I mean, where did you learn to fight like that?"
Grant swallows, and if Skye didn't know him she wouldn't realize the way his eyes fill with panic, just for a moment. But she does know him, so she sees it, and Caesar doesn't, so he is safe. "My older brother taught me," he replies, just a little too lightly. "Runs in the family, I suppose."
"So, do you think you have a chance of winning, then? Anyone special you're playing for?" He says playing like it's a choice, and she flinches. To her right, Melinda closes her hand into a fist. "A girl, maybe?"
"No," Grant chuckles, "nothing like that."
"What is it?" Caesar crows, fabricated concern lacing his tone. "What will make you the victor of this year's Hunger Games?"
"I made a promise to my little brother," he says, bowing his head carefully, just so. The crowd lets out a murmur of sympathy. "I told him I'd try my best to get back home."
"Well," Caesar says, his grin like a shark. "Isn't that a wonderful motivation? Let's give it up for Grant Ward, everyone! Let's hear it for Grant!"
He smiles one last time for the crowd as he stands, waving as he walks offstage.
Even in the dark of the backstage area, Skye can see that his hands are shaking.
"Help me!" the girl cries out as she stumbles to them. She can't be any older than fourteen. "He's going to kill me!" She runs straight into Skye, nearly knocking her over.
She can tell with a single glance that Grant is on high alert now, his head tilted to the trees surrounding them, listening for any sound. The girl is sobbing in earnest now, her arms around Skye's waist trembling from the tightness of her grip. When Skye looks down, she can see the girl's token, a gold cross hanging around her neck.
Fitz kicks snow over the dying fire, extinguishing it completely. For a moment, everything is quiet.
The boy from District 5 charges through the trees, a knife in his hands. He snarls at them, as feral as an animal.
Grant, still limping, runs toward him, already prepared to fight, ignoring Fitz's yells to stop.
Skye pulls the girl close and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, there's a body lying dead on the ground.
"What is your endgame?"
Coulson furrows his brow in confusion, but he doesn't lose that glint in his eyes that means he understands everything perfectly. "Endgame?"
Skye narrows her eyes, the fury she felt watching the interviews bubbling up again, hot in her throat. She must look ridiculous, she knows, her dark eyes painted wide, her pale mouth painted scarlet. She's still wearing her dress, with its modest neckline and knee length skirt, and it makes her feel too young, too small, too obviously vulnerable. She crosses her arms and glares at Coulson, but he doesn't say a word.
"You think I don't know that you're the one in charge here? Melinda, she's smart, but she's not making any decisions."
"Your point being?"
"My point being," she hisses, "you are manipulating us. You're building Grant up, you're helping him just so you can use him to keep me alive."
"Who says I want to keep you alive?" he asks, almost seriously, and she scoffs.
"Don't play dumb with me. I know you've already written him off as collateral damage."
"He won't be damage," he replies, spitting out the words. "He'll be a goddamn martyr. I might as well help one of you survive this thing."
"I don't want to survive if it's at the expense of my partner's life. Help him. He's got a better chance of living than me anyway. He's got more to lose."
"He doesn't want to live," he says, and his voice is suddenly flat, emptied out of any emotion. "He'd rather die than hurt another innocent human being. He's going to get himself killed the first chance he can, Skye, and he's going to do it with a smile on his face. I might as well help my one good tribute as much as I can."
"What if I don't want to be helped?" she half-screams, throwing her hands in the air. "What if you're doing all of this training and all of it goes to waste? I don't have any skills, I have no chance of surviving this. Why can't you let me live out my last days in peace?"
"What would you rather be, happy or alive?" he asks suddenly, and the question makes Skye forget whatever she was going to say next. "See, Melinda and I, we made our choice. Every victor back in District 6, every victor in the Games, we all chose life. And we knew what we were doing when we did. Someone like Grant, the question is just as easy. He'd rather die knowing he did the right thing than live with the guilt. So what would you rather be, happy or alive?"
She knows immediately what her answer is (rotted floorboards and days without food and the coldest hands along her spine), but she hesitates anyway.
"I'd rather be alive," she says finally. Walks back to her room before she can see him smile.
The girl looks up from her hands as Grant stumbles back to them, already with new cuts and bruises littering his skin. Skye laughs in disbelief, raking her hands through her hair, and she barely registers Fitz shouting his excitement.
The helicopters are already circling like vultures, but they ignore the sound, the shadow crossing darkly over the ice.
The girl runs to Grant, her hair shining in its twisted braid,
and he opens his arms,
and the metal gleams in her hand.
Skye only realizes what was going to happen at the moment that it does. She doesn't even have time to scream.
The girl pulls the knife from his stomach and drops it, and Grant falls to the ground. She's gone before they can blink, her necklace glinting gold in the watery sun.
Skye runs to him as he shivers on the ground, his mouth already filled with blood, and she cries, screams, shakes him even when his eyes go blank and the cannon fires.
She takes the bloodied knife and runs after the girl.
Melinda and Grant are training together and Skye watches. They're evenly matched, but Grant gets the upper hand when Melinda stumbles. He pins her, his hand around her throat.
He looks so beautiful, Skye thinks, like a statue.
It's the last day, and she and Grant are as ready as they'll ever be. Grant is strong and good and beautiful and she watches him and he looks just like a statue.
She doesn't sleep the night before the Games. She tosses and turns and thinks of the bodies of children, piled high on the ground.
She catches the girl's hood with her fingers and pulls until she falls.
"No," the girl screams wildly, clawing at Skye's face with her hands, but she has her pinned, and she is bigger and stronger and better at this. "Please, I'm sorry!"
The girl looks so young. Her cross is red and hot and ruined with Grant's blood.
"Please, I'm sorry!"
Skye slices the girl's throat, and then she doesn't beg anymore.
The cannon fires.
Skye doesn't have a token. There's nothing anyone gave her before she left, no scrap of evidence that she came from anywhere. Grant wears a bracelet his brother made him around his wrist. The girl from 5 has a golden necklace. The boy from 3 has a ring that matches the one on his partner's finger. The girl from 2 has a flower in her hair.
She watches the other tributes as they say goodbye to each other before stepping into the rooms. Some of them wave and smile, barely nervous at all, while others of them avoid everyone's eyes as they slip into their rooms. The boy from District 10 walks to his room with his head held high, a kind of dignity in his step that suggests a final walk before his execution.
The tributes from District 3 hold hands, not saying a word, and it's the first time Skye has seen either of them with each other and totally silent.
The boy touches his forehead to hers, closing his eyes, his shoulders moving like he's breathing deeply, like he's trying to breathe her in, all of her at once. The girl stretches on her toes and tilts up just enough so their lips meet.
When the girl walks away to her own room, he still hasn't moved, and he still hasn't opened his eyes.
Skye breathes heavily, before grabbing the knife once again and pocketing it. The helicopter crane is already starting to descend, ready to take the body and burn it, or bury it, or string it up on a tree like an ornament. She doesn't quite know what they could do with the corpses of twenty-three dead children.
When she hears another cannon fire, she doesn't think of Fitz.
She thinks instead of the girl in the first moments of the game, her body in pieces on the ground, a ring still banded tight on her finger. She thinks of his voice when he was laughing with her and his voice he screamed at her not to go and his voice when he said he loved her. She thinks of when she knew them not as Jemma Simmons or Leo Fitz, but as the tributes from District 3, their hands wrapped around each other's and the girl leans up for the last happy moments of her life.
The cannon fires, and Fitz dies alone, unprotected, and his last thought is of the girl strewn across the icy ground, and the ring on her finger, and her lips on his mouth.
Skye stands up and walks wearily to the Cornucopia.
Grant nods at her before he opens the door, and Skye has to walk on without him. The rest of the tributes are already in place for the start of the Games, already waiting for the glass doors to slide open, waiting for an eleventh hour savior, waiting for the sword to finally fall on their necks.
She steps into an almost empty room, and Coulson tries to smile at her.
"Is Melinda with Grant?" is all she can think to ask, and he nods.
"Are you ready?" he asks, and she nods in return.
"Yeah," she tries to say, but her voice breaks and she's crying all of a sudden, she's crying for the first time since she was reaped and she's crying these big, heaving gasps like trying to breathe underwater, and it's the most vicious thing they could have done to her. Her vision blurs as he guides her into the glass tube, into her own goddamn noose.
"I'm sorry, Skye," she hears him whisper, his voice broken. "I am so, so sorry."
He brings his hand to her face, and it's fleeting and small and insistent. He steps back, and the glass door slides shut.
"Me too," she says in reply, even though he can't hear, and presses her palm to the glass.
The platform begins to rise.
The Cornucopia is emptied of everything of value, and it seems to collapse on itself. It's been cleaned of bodies, of blood, of anything that would suggest what had happened there. The sun shines on her back, almost warmly. The ice is beginning to melt.
She sits down at the steps and waits for the final tribute.
Skye isn't surprised when the girl with the flower appears in the trees, almost smirking as she walks lithely toward the Cornucopia. She looks totally unruffled, except for the blood on her hands, and it must be Fitz's, wouldn't it be his? She waited until he was alone and vulnerable and killed him, and Skye doesn't even blame her, and that is the worst part, the final blow, the reason for the Hunger Games.
Skye doesn't blame her.
"Wasn't expecting to see you here," the girl pronounces, her voice high and clear. "I suppose it's just you and me now, isn't that right?"
Skye nods, and the girl readies herself as she stands.
"So you know," she says as she walks toward Skye, slow and sleek and untouchable. "I really am sorry about all this. Truly, I am."
The first blow is so fast Skye doesn't even see it. It catches her in the jaw, hard enough to leave bruises, and as she falls, the girl catches her again on the other side of her face, this time tearing her skin with her nails. When the girl grabs her shoulders, though, ready to bring her to the ground and end the fight, Skye manages to shove her face away and regain her balance.
The girl breathes heavily as she stumbles back, and some of the easy confidence fades from her face. She looks murderously angry.
The girl is quick and deadly accurate, she can tell, and it obviously worked for her up to this point, choosing weaker prey and killing from a distance, but Skye is stronger and more substantial. The fight is evenly matched, and the Gamemakers never like for a final confrontation to last too long, lest the audience begin to grow tired.
Skye decides to try for brute strength instead of defensive moves this time.
She runs at the other girl, her hands and legs moving of their own accord as she fights. The girl responds in kind with each blow, striking faster than Skye can dodge her and landing hits that she could never block.
The girl manages to get a sound grip on Skye's throat, her fingers tightening around her neck as she brings her other hand to Skye's face. The knife gleams as she brings it forward.
Skye screams desperately as it comes closer, and finally succeeds in shoving the girl away just before the metal brushes against her skin.
She falls to the ground, hard, and before she can stand again, Skye has her pinned to the ground. The girl screams, more angry than afraid, trapped and wild.
She reaches for her knife, only to find that it isn't there.
The girl kicks her off during the momentary distraction and scrambles away, reaching for a weapon of some kind, searching mindlessly for a blade, a rock, an icicle, finding nothing.
The ground is beginning to thaw, and there is nothing within her reach.
Skye reaches around and grabs the girl by the back of her neck, and the only sounds are the girl screaming and the ice cracking and her blood rushing in her ears. She twists the girl's arms together and drags her to the Cornucopia, huge and burning in the sun, because the sun is burning and the ice is melting and the girl is shouting and the audience, she knows, she knows, is roaring.
"Shut up!" she screams and slams the girl's head against the steps, over and over and over until—
The last cannon booms, shaking the ground as the blood tracks slowly across the ice, and for once, Skye is so very alive. She almost laughs as the helicopter begins its descent, its white lights shining over her body, over the red heap of limbs tangled on the ground.
She looks up, and it glitters the color of gunmetal.
The arena is a frozen tundra, cold and unforgiving and brutal. The Cornucopia, a grotesque pile, sits in the center of the circle. The wind whips through her hair as her platform ascends, and when Skye looks around at all of the other tributes, their faces are blank, their arms and legs as thin as reeds.
ten
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.
nine
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eight
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.
The girl from 3 steps off of her platform, and her District partner screams. Skye looks over at Grant.
.
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seven
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six
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.
.
five
.
.
.
It's so goddamn cold. Skye shuts her eyes because, because, because.
.
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four
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three
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two
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.
She opens her eyes—
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one