"Hope is the dream of a soul awake."
Santana is exhausted, though she knows that she's had more sleep and leisure time in the last two weeks than she has ever had in her entire life.
Something about putting on a smile and appearing happy and grateful for a few hours at a time is more draining than ten hours straight on the deck of a fishing boat with the sun beating down on her. Santana remembers the way it feels to breathe in humid salt air and she almost chokes on the crisp, cold mountain wind that blows in directly from the east. It smells like pine needles and snow, and she misses home.
It's almost over. Almost.
Her escort, Grace Hitchens, offers her a bright-eyed smile from her position opposite her on the tier. Grace is wearing the most ridiculous outfit to date – a bell-shaped golden dress with long, flared sleeves. Her hair is the same color, and is piled so high that Santana is sure most of it can't actually belong to Grace. She wears bright, glittery make-up that accents her cheekbones and makes a striking contrast against her dark skin. Santana sometimes marvels at the wideness of Grace's smile, and how she always seems so delighted all of the time.
She's never killed anyone.
Santana's body contracts in an invisible shudder; she turns away from Grace, who is – albeit obnoxious – at least familiar. The crowd of people staring back at her are all strangers, though she imagines any of them could be one of her cousins. They don't look that different, not from here.
District 2 is cold, maybe colder than any other district so far. Santana feels claustrophobic and suffocated by the dense weight of the mountains in the distance, crowding out the sky. Santana is too used to looking at a horizon restricted only by waves. She shuffles, kicking at the hem of her dress – sapphire blue and shimmering, too, like the ocean she loves so much – ruffling the tiny square of paper that Grace had handed her only an hour ago.
Santana's mind blanks when she tries to remember the people who died from this district, less than half a year ago. It's all a hazy blur to her now – whenever she tries to focus, all she sees is darkness. The only time Santana can ever really remember the days in the arena is right on the edge of sleep; then she claws, screaming, away from the brink of slumber into wild-eyed, heart-racing panic. Those memories dart away again, as elusive as shadows, the second her mind is fully awake. It's both frustrating and somewhat reassuring to realize that, at least for now, her time in the Hunger Games will be nothing but almost-nightmares, robbing her of rest.
Santana doesn't mind, not really. At least she's still alive and can enjoy sleep, however fleeting it may be.
Her nose is numb, and she rubs at it in an attempt to stop it from leaking. The cold is too much for her – she can barely read the squiggles of Grace's writing. The speeches are all the same, anyway; varied only a little bit in order to put on a good show. Santana doesn't remember the kids who died from this district last year, so she doesn't have to feel anything when she looks into the eyes of their parents or siblings. She doesn't have to relive the moment that they died – she doesn't have to hear them crying or screaming. Santana knows that, for some of these people, that's probably the only thing they ever hear; some of them may replay that awful instant again and again. Not Santana. She has that, at least, to be grateful for.
Santana doesn't take note of any of the dignitaries sharing the platform with her – she flinches away from the handshake of the mayor of District 2, a broad-shouldered, burly man with soft hands and wide-set eyes. His hair is peppered gray and gold, and Santana notices the way his eyes dart beneath the cliff of his forehead. It's strange that his hands are so soft. What's the main industry of District 2? Masonry?
"That's Russell Fabray," Finnick whispers into her ear, his hand low on her back. Santana wonders if her expression was that obviously baffled, that it required some kind of explanation from her mentor.
Fabray? Fabray? Why is that name so familiar to Santana?
"Quinn –" Santana murmurs.
Finnick laughs. "Yes. Last year's victor."
Santana's eyes scan the small crowd of people, less disheveled and dirty than the general population, who move in tandem with her back towards the building.
Quinn is nowhere to be found, however.
Santana remembers her for her striking beauty and the deadly way she wielded a collection of knives against the other children in the arena that year. Santana remembers something else about Quinn Fabray – Quinn actually volunteered for the Hunger Games.
Finnick keeps laughing, though Santana couldn't say what about. The thing about Finnick Odair is that he's always smiling, and sometimes his grin aggravates her more than Grace's. Santana shakes loose of him once they enter the domed building, separating herself from the crowd of people who immediately flock to him. Santana can't stand the way Finnick seems to absorb the adulation of perfect strangers, or how he preens and gloats. His smile is often perceived as charming, but all Santana ever reads in it is mockery.
"You're Santana Lopez."
Santana starts, her muscles coiling painfully, heart pounding somewhere in the vicinity of her throat. The voice chuckles at her wide-eyed panic, and Santana frowns, fighting the way her chest struggles to breathe.
"Didn't mean to startle you."
"Right." Santana squints at the mop of wild tawny hair, the flash of eyes, a taut smile. "Can I help you?"
"Just wanted a close up look of you.. the killer saint."
Santana's lip curls immediately, her fingers tightening into fists; she feels her shoulders squaring just as the rage bubbles directly beneath her diaphragm.
The other girl laughs – harsh and thick, almost as if she were spitting it out.
"Easy. Easy." Her smile is brighter now – more genuine. "It's a better title than the one they gave me."
Suddenly it dawns on Santana who this must be – this is the famed Quinn Fabray? The girl they called crazed, insane? The Butcher of District 2?
She's so slight, so petite; Santana thinks that she mustn't weigh more than barrel of clams. She has wispy, pixie-like features and slanted, fairy tale eyes; Santana remembers her being golden and beautiful and enchanting, but not like this. This girl isn't prettied up for the cameras, the way the Capitol likes. This girl doesn't have long, flowing hair the color of spun sunlight. Instead, it's a choppy, uneven bob, in this light a pale brown and in others a wheaten honey.
Quinn smiles, and something about it makes the fist clenched behind Santana's breastbone relax. She breathes, and a weight falls away – she doesn't know why, but Quinn puts her at ease, even with the clouded mystery in her eyes.
"Really, what do you want?" Santana's voice isn't quite rid of the distrust she feels, but the tension in her body wanes by degrees.
Quinn presses her lips together, still amused, and slants her gaze towards the gaggle of people – mostly women – surrounding Finnick. "Your mentor. He's quite popular."
Santana rolls her eyes.
"That's really very ungracious of you, Santana," Quinn murmurs. "His connections were an asset to you during your game."
Santana feels something inside herself slamming down – whatever tiny door Quinn's smile opened, her words sealed back up again. Santana turns away, briskly, searching for Grace and her escape back onto the train.
I just want this to be over. I just want to be home.
"You shouldn't treat your friends like this, Santana," Quinn calls after her, heedless of the others who might hear. "You're going to need them in the Capitol."
Santana doesn't bother turning; in fact, she doesn't spare another thought for Quinn Fabray until she's lying in her bed on the train on the way to District 1.
Quinn Fabray spoke of friends – was she talking only about the way Santana treats Finnick? Or was she talking about herself?
Why on earth would Quinn Fabray want to befriend me?
Santana doesn't dream of death and killing that night. Instead she dreams of a forest bathed in dappled sunlight, and the way a laugh can sound like bells chiming in the wind or like an axe cleaving a skull in half; she dreams of fairy-light eyes and a broad, mirthless smile, and beauty both as deadly as a blade and as fragile as a rose.
Caesar Flickerman is the one who started calling her Saint Santana, and the name stuck.
If it weren't for the fact that she hates being in the spotlight and refuses to speak unless spoken to, Santana would point out that the title is redundant – the name, itself, is literally a means of saying Saint Anna.
Caesar Flickerman is an idiot.
District 4 is home, and Santana is well aware of its reputation as a district that produces refined killers. Finnick Odair is one of many mentors that hail from her district – Santana grew up in the shadow of people like Mags and Finnick and a handful of others. Sometimes, boys or girls will volunteer as tribute in order to have their chance at winning the Hunger Games; hers is a place that produces children that glorify killing others.
Santana is different, then, in how she came to win – she never bloodied her own hands. She never enjoyed the broadcasted Hunger Games, as so many do, and she always turned her nose up in disgust at the boys in her grade who often organized mock-Games and battles and duels in preparation for participating one day. The memory of falling asleep to the sound of ancient hymns hummed in the darkness eclipses any of the ones that made murdering seem like a game. Santana doesn't know what the words mean – no one alive does – but her grandmother sang them anyway, and told Santana that they meant harm no one and do only good and love one another.
Santana has broken a few noses in her time, sure. She once tackled Finn Hudson to the ground and dislocated his shoulder for picking on a boy smaller than he was, but she never killed anyone.
She still breaks out in a cold sweat when she remembers the sound of her name crackling over the loudspeakers, when Grace Hitchens pulled it from the vat full of hundreds of names. There wasn't a groan – quite – at the revelation, but Santana could sense the heavy disappointment pouring from her peers. Santana Lopez? A loser for sure. A walking corpse. Practically dead already.
Nobody rushed in to volunteer for her, though. Santana's ears buzzed and rang in the silence, and her chest constricted in an attempt to suck in air; even now, a year later, she still tastes the tangy panic in the back of her throat when she remembers her name being called.
"I've never killed anyone," Santana told Finnick, her lips numb, on the way to the Capitol.
"Of course you haven't," he said, buttering his roll. His eyebrows rose. "No one who goes into the Games is a murderer, Santana. But every single person who comes out of it is," he glanced at her – his eyes were calculating and, for once, flatly serious; devoid of his usual mirth. "Are you going to come out of it?"
Santana swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "Is it murder if it's self-defense?"
Finnick's grin blossomed abruptly. "Is it water if it's wet?"
Santana remembers squinting, unsettled by Finnick's merriment. "I don't know – is it?"
"Not always," Finnick inclined his head, a smirk still pulling at his lips. "But you can drown in it, either way."
Santana had decided then that she didn't like Finnick.
"I won't kill anyone."
"Then you'll die." Finnick shrugged.
Even now – standing beside him, palms gripped tightly, eyebrows drawn together as they wait patiently for this year's tributes to be reaped – Santana thinks it was somewhat spite that drove her to defy Finnick's prediction.
Santana wanted to live, of course. Santana wanted to win the Hunger Games and come back home to her mother and father. But she didn't want to come back if it meant she would spend the rest of her life on the brink of drowning.
The boy who was reaped with her was named Ryder Lynn, and he hadn't felt the same way. He was a beast; he killed no less than five other children during the initial Bloodbath, and two others later on. He would have killed Santana, too, if she hadn't been too quick for him. In the end, it had been the tribute from District 3 that ended Ryder. Sometimes Santana still thinks of him, and how he used to play fish-n-hooks with Santana's cousin Nico.
"Kitty Wilde!" it booms out over the silent crowd, and the group of fifteen-year-old girls part to let the blonde through.
Santana doesn't know her very well, which should be reassuring – shouldn't it? Then why is there a tight ball of anxiety located directly behind her navel? Why do her ribs ache when she breathes?
Finnick's hand rests low on her back, and for once she doesn't move away from it. His palm is broad and strong and reassuring, and Santana keeps breathing.
"Samuel Evans!"
Santana's heart skips and tumbles – she wobbles, and Finnick holds her steady.
Not Sam.
"Almost," Finnick whispers, and Santana doesn't know what he's saying – almost what?
It's almost over? How? This nightmare has just begun. Santana has to watch Sam – kind, gentle, loving Sam – go into the arena and fight, kill, murder, die.
How can she do this? How can anyone?
"Now. It's over." Finnick breathes, and Santana realizes he just meant it was almost time for the cameras to go off. No one is watching, now. No one important.
Sammy Evans is white as a sheet, his cornflower eyes like dark bruises in his skull. His younger brother and sister tug at their mother's sleeves – his mother wilts into his father, who stares at Sam as if he is a ghost already.
Sam is a boy Santana has known all her life – she played house with him when they were children. Sam taught her how to make a perfect fishhook in less than a minute; she practiced knotting nets with him for countless hours after school.
Samuel Evans is one of the best people Santana has ever met, and now she has to watch him die – or help him kill.
Santana remembers the time Sam kissed her behind a canning shack, on a hot summer day when the sand stuck to her bare toes and halfway up her calves. She turns to stifle a sob against Finnick's chest; Finnick holds her tightly and ushers her quietly onto the train, away from the eyes of her friends and family.
Sam doesn't need to see this – see her breaking down on his behalf. Santana drew strength (stubborn defiance) from Finnick, so she has to be equally steady for Sam. Maybe he will make it out. Maybe he'll survive.
But Santana knows, by now, that even if he survives the Hunger Games, he'll never be the same old Sammy Evans. She knows that if he is lucky enough – or brutal enough – to survive, he'll never laugh with quite the same weightlessness again; he'll never sleep without that gut-wrenching terror hiding in his bowels.
Worry about that later, Santana. Worry about it after he makes it out – at least then he'll be alive.
Santana tells herself that, but she wonders – she often wonders if it wouldn't have been better for her to die as herself in that arena, rather than to keep on walking around as this person who only looks a lot like who she used to be, but who is entirely a stranger.
The Capitol is just as she remembers it – resplendent and self-indulgent and disgusting.
Santana generates buzz as the freshest of the victors, but Finnick steals the spotlight, as usual. Santana is fine with that. She thinks that she will never resent Finnick for his ability to charm a crowd.
Sam has been quiet and withdrawn since they boarded the train, but Santana would have expected nothing else. Kitty is younger than both of them, too young to be very familiar to either – but she has a pretty face and a catty wit, and the cameras love her. Santana has to stop herself from feeling too fond of the girl. Finnick showers her with affection, and the Capitol eats it up; nobody pays much attention to surly Saint Santana. It's lucky for Sam that so many people think he looks like Finnick. It's lucky, too, that he's broad-shouldered and muscled and has the biggest grin of all; that he's adorable and good-looking and just generally good. People will want to help him, Santana hopes. The Capitol benefactors will want him to live just as desperately as Santana does.
The days before they enter the arena slip by so quickly. Santana can't contain the way her insides vibrate and clatter with nerves and fear and adrenaline when she finally says goodbye. She doesn't have words for Sam or Kitty – she knows that they deserve better than her. Santana had no idea what kind of a burden survival would bring.
"Do you pray, Santana?"
Finnick is smiling – of course – but there's a melancholy tilt to the edge of his mouth.
Santana shakes her head. There is fine silver netting woven into the length of her braid – it catches and glimmers in the light. She doesn't know how to pray, or to whom.
"That's too bad." Finnick's smile dies, and he sucks on his teeth with a sigh. The silence between them is heavy and somber, and Santana finds herself inching towards him, until her shoulder rests against the firmness of his arm.
Santana has a dozen questions – how long will it be? How long will this last? What do we do?
"The only thing we can do now is hope, and.." Finnick doesn't finish the thought, but it hangs there between them, as tangible as fear. Pray.
Santana hears her grandmother singing in a timeless corner of her mind – and she doesn't know the meaning of the words, but they dance and tickle at the back of her throat; she begins in a whisper, murmuring, the tune as familiar as a memory of home:
"O salutaris hostia,
Quae caeli pandis ostium,
Bella premunt hostilia –"
Santana can't remember the next part, not really, because suddenly she's crying and Finnick has his arms wrapped around her and she can't stop the way tears fall like a hot sheet down her face, scalding her cheeks and chin and neck.
Santana wants to ask him, will it ever end?
But she already knows the answer to that.
The Capitol celebrates while the children of the districts die, and though Santana knew that already, it's strange to face the reality of it. She sips champagne that makes her stomach roll and tries not to stare too anxiously at the screens that light up the upper sections of the walls. People only pay attention during dramatic parts – nobody cares too much about a tribute peeing into the bushes, or one crying himself to sleep. Santana doesn't want to watch that either, not really.
Finnick is out schmoozing, which – it's where he's meant to be. Santana knows she can't spend the rest of her life tucked against him, his quiet and hostile shadow. Capitol partygoers have already begun whispering about a romance between them – seriously? Ew. Finnick has dimples wide enough to bathe in. There's literally nothing about him that appeals to her, not in that way. She'd rather face the crowd alone than try to battle rumors of love from gossipy, gaudy Capitol elitists.
Finnick is the perfect mentor, if only because the patrons of the Capitol love him. They all vy for his favor – and his bed, Santana has heard – and would send gifts to tributes that he favors. Santana wants to beg him to ask for aid for Sam. She knows that he prefers Kitty.
"Do you know him?"
Santana jerks – the bubbly liquid sloshes violently inside its flute – and she nearly bolts across the room. She would have, if it hadn't been for the soft-but-firm palm on her forearm, holding her in place.
She glares at it with wild-eyed incredulity, her heart hammering in her chest. She tries to compose herself, but she can't stop the painful and rapid expansion of her ribs, or the way her muscles ache and jitter with nervous energy. She hates being snuck up on like that.
"Sorry," Quinn says with a smirk, belying that she is anything but.
"What do you want?" Santana's voice drips acid and resentment – she brushes Quinn's fingers away by pulling her champagne glass to her lips and taking a healthy sip.
"Your tribute. Do you know him?"
Santana stifles the way pain flares along her skin, igniting her nerves and constricting her lungs. She scans the crowd for a moment, searching for a way to answer Quinn's question without giving too much away.
"Yes," Santana says, finally, because she can think of no other alternative than to tell the truth. "We're age-mates. We grew up together."
Quinn doesn't respond immediately, and that makes Santana wary, so she turns to regard the other victor. She's surprised by what she finds: Quinn's face is twisted in an emotion that could be – what? Pain? Something like sorrow flits across the green-shadow speckles in her eyes, and it makes Santana's throat swell.
"I'm so sor—"
"Don't," Santana replies flatly. She doesn't have it in her to combat Quinn's sympathy – all Santana wants to do is shake loose of her and find somewhere dark and quiet to hide. Quinn Fabray is too much for Santana, too much everything, Quinn makes her feel too much – and that's something she just doesn't know how to deal with.
It's a mystery why this stranger evokes such a response, but Santana is too exhausted to try to figure that one out, either. She just wants to get away.
"Really, though," Quinn's voice is soft and pliant, for once, and something about the tremulous and timid cast of it makes Santana's stomach knot. Quinn lifts a hand and rubs her fingertips along the edge of Santana's forearm, almost pleading – for a second, Santana considers folding into Quinn, a reaction that comes as naturally as an instinct. Her eyes widen when she realizes that she was on the brink of collapsing into Quinn, and it makes her take a step back, breaking the contact between them – dissolving the spell Quinn had cast over her with her physical touch.
"Thank you," Santana struggles to speak around the lump in her throat. She swallows dryly, then drowns the last of her champagne in a single gulp. "I have to go."
"I'm always around," Quinn calls after her – quieter than she was in District 2, but no less conspicuous. Santana's spine straightens, aware of how odd and even dangerous it was for Quinn to be addressing her with such familiarity in a room full of Capitol snobs – she turns around, shaking her head, in an attempt to silence Quinn.
It doesn't work. "If you ever need anything," Quinn continues.
Santana feels rooted to the spot by Quinn's eyes – captivating beneath the chandeliers of the ballroom, dancing with a sort of ephemeral spirit; her skin is golden and glowing, and her hair is lightened to an almost ethereal hue. It's styled so that it wings out from around her face, giving her a delicate, slanted appearance. Santana's gaze roams down Quinn's body, taking in the way the emerald-green dress clings to her curves and winks, glittering, with every movement. Santana blinks, catching herself lingering on Quinn's hips, and when she turns to look at Quinn's face again, Quinn's lips are twisted in a knowing smirk – soft, still, but somehow.. cocky.
It makes Santana narrow her eyes, brows arching. She has no idea what that was – she doesn't know how Quinn's expression made her abdomen tighten with an entirely new sensation, something she has never really felt before. She presses the flat of her palm there, as if to quiet the furious fluttering and tugging, but it doesn't work. She barely registers the crowds of people who move around her, so distracted she is by her own body and the way Quinn looks at her.
Quinn tilts her head, acknowledging something – apparently some message passed between them, the content of which Santana hasn't a clue – before she turns to smile graciously at a rotund man with tall, purple hair. He grins at Quinn, and then moves in front of her, blocking her from Santana's view.
Santana doesn't have much time to dwell on it – someone tugs at her elbow, and she's whisked away, conned into dancing with a man twenty years her senior and three inches shorter. She tries to focus on him and the conversation at hand, but she can't; she keeps getting lost in the memory of Quinn's eyes, and how, even now, replaying it can make her heart pound.
Unlike the last time she had an encounter with Quinn Fabray, Santana spends the rest of the night thinking of nothing but her; and how Quinn's beauty is, indeed, both delicate and dangerous, though she can't put a finger on exactly why.
A/N: Hey! I hate to start something when I have such an important story left unfinished, but I'm caught up in the THG fever, so I couldn't help it. Please excuse the liberal interpretations I used for the 'verse in general; it's been years since I've read the books. I hope to write the next few parts to this fairly quickly. I'd love to know what you think, though!