Under a willow tree, they huddle together for warmth. Rain crashes down just beyond his feet and drips onto both of them through the branches. Neither of them says anything, because what is there to say? Both of them know exactly how this will end—in blood and pain.
They could always poison themselves. There's that. But then their families will pay, the pain of their loved ones serving as a countermeasure to their escape from the Capitol's bloodlust.
She breaks the silence of hours. "Are you awake?"
"Yeah."
"All right." If she was wiser, she would end there, but her instincts as an older sister compel her to add, "don't fall asleep, you won't wake up again. Hypothermia."
He nods, and says no more. This girl, this District Three nobody, remains the one person he's seen in the arena since the bloodbath. She cut him down from a snare a week (a month, a year?) ago. At the time, he didn't ask why. At the moment, he doesn't care enough to bother. He's a bit more concerned with the odd numbness in his toes.
The ground, once hard-packed and covered with leaves, has given away to a freezing and uncomfortably muddy surface that resembles slush more than a ground. She shifts uncomfortably, crosses one leg over the other. When she was younger, it rained like this for weeks. Several families in her tenement didn't have enough food to outlast it, and they starved to death. Her father was one of the men elected to throw their emaciated corpses into the flooded streets. Some other families survived, but lost a child. She doesn't want to think about that, but she knows now why they did it. This rain induces madness, a subtle hint of dementia in the pounding, freezing sheets of water.
"So," she says.
"So."
"You know, we've been allies for what—two weeks?"
"… That's as good a time as any," is his response, so she can tell that he doesn't know either.
"We've been allies for two weeks, then," she continues, "and I don't even know your name." Her mind screams at her, calling her a fool for trying to fraternize with somebody who must become an enemy, but she soldiers on, after tucking the blanket that covers them under her left leg. "I'm Sal."
"Haze. It's a pleasure." Is that a hint of irony in his voice? She cuts her eyes at him, but the water running down their faces obscures emotion. He moves his foot under the blanket, and it bumps against hers.
"Fallen asleep?"
"Hmm? No, my toes are … numb."
"Yeah, you should probably keep moving your foot, then." It's all she can think of to say, and she's well aware of how idiotic it sounds.
Hours later, they're still under the tree. He can't bear it—the not knowing, the endless, deafening silence that is louder than all the noise he's heard. Even the Careers would be better than this, he thinks, because at least something would happen then. "You want to head out? Take our chances?"
After deliberating for a few moments, she replies. "No. Mutts. They seem to be avoiding this area." And that's true; the ape-like creatures sent out to kill them haven't tracked them down yet.
"I just … I can't stand it. The waiting." It's the most personal thing he's said to her so far.
She nods, and draws a circle in the mud with one hand. As he watches, she adds rays that branch out from the circle. "I started working in the factories when I was ten," she says, "and I spent every day waiting for the next piece of equipment to come down the line."
So she doesn't know, then. "I grew up trying to get to the next place as quickly as possible. It sort of comes with the territory."
And they lapse into silence after that, neither of them willing to share anymore. Why bother, when they're going to die anyway?
But after a few hours, she's the first to push the blanket off and stand, stretching awkwardly. He doesn't look at her, doesn't watch the sharp angles of her starved body. At least, he tells himself that. "I thought you said to wait," he says, and is disgusted by how petulant he sounds.
"We need food," she says quietly. It's true. The pain in his stomach might have faded away, but his head hurts and everything seems a bit brighter. When he, too, pulls the blanket off and stands, his world explodes into little spots and he almost falls.
"Yeah," he agrees. "But we should stay in this area." Or you could scout around outside, he almost says.
She moves off quietly, and he picks up their blanket and wraps it around his shoulders, envious of her jacket—he lost his ages ago, in the bloodbath. A small part of his mind reminds him of his childhood, when a blanket became a cape and he pretended to fly, jumping off of beds and chairs, but he shoves it away.
This isn't District Seven, he tells himself, and you aren't nine. Jump off anything here and you'll die.
Neither of them has any aptitude for finding food in the wild, it seems. She's grown up surrounded by technology and wouldn't know a wildflower if it danced in front of her dressed in its Sunday best, and all he knows is that willow trees aren't used much in construction.
After a while, she falls to her knees. It's too much. The starvation, the clawing in her stomach—it forces itself on her, and she can do nothing but cave in. She is not stronger than her body, her Capitol, or her competitors. The rain beats down mercilessly, and it occurs to her that she'll most likely get pneumonia, if she hasn't already.
She coughs—a wet, ragged noise that rips out of her chest—and stands up. Keep going, Sal, keep going. Think of the others. Don't you want to go back home?
Her mentor had told her that in order for her to stand a fighting chance, she must never show weakness. Well, she thinks, I guess I'm never going home, then, Siri.
"Hey," Haze says, and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, stay in it, all right? Don't chip off on me."
He is the one rock in her world, and she clings to him. But he's just as unsteady as she is. "Chip off?" she asks.
It takes him a little while to respond. "District Seven slang, I guess. You've never heard of it?"
"No."
They comb over the willow grove, well aware of the mutts that lurk just beyond the boundaries of the willows. When she reaches the edge of a clearing, Sal sees one of them. It's moving with inhuman grace, elongated limbs propelling it swiftly over the ground. Although the mutt is too far away now, she knows that in its mouth are razor-sharp teeth, wolf-like in structure.
She remembers the way those teeth looked when they were bared at her, the way they seemed to be able to bite through steel. Perhaps they are, she muses, but the pain in her stomach stops her from focusing on the Capitol's designer monsters.
Haze's weakening, she can tell. If she wanted to, she could point out a possible food source and hit him over the head with a rock, bash and bash until—no, she tells herself. There is more to her than a weak, cowering animal. She has a sister, a little sister.
Sal thinks of having Jemma watch her kill Haze and shudders internally. But then she thinks of food, of being back home. Even Three's ashy air and constant pollution are better than this, she thinks.
Haze can feel himself going. Despite the constant movement, his toes haven't woken up, and his calves feel sluggish. Dead. He's felt like this before, once when he and the other trainees were sent out to haul back the timber of the day, in the midst of a rainstorm. If the wood rotted, the profit would be lost. Not only would the Peacekeepers be furious, but families would starve as well. So he and eleven others trudged out in the rain, leading horses. They hitched the horses to the long sleighs that carried the wood, but the horses couldn't see the path in the rain, and refused to go.
The others drew straws, and they picked him, the tall, sulky one, to lead the horses through a ten-mile deluge. On the way back, one of his shoes fell off, and the sock was so soaked through that, once dried, it stretched to become twice the size.
He wonders if his mother still has that sock. He hopes she does. It's probably all that will be left of him, once his younger brothers get the clothes and his older brother takes his room. The sock will be too large to use, yet too reminiscent of him to throw away.
At this point, he realizes that he's accepted his death. It's not a crushing realization, and he doesn't stagger under the weight of it. He merely accepts it, the same way he did his Reaping. The world has always given him more than he can handle, and he's always risen to the challenge. But this, now, this rain, and this hunger—it's too much. Haze walks to a tree and sits down, prepared to die. He can't see Sal, and it's just as well. He wants as much privacy as he can garner in this arena.
Sal doesn't discover the stream so much as wade into it. Even with her head hunched down, she can barely see the ground beneath her feet. She wraps her arms around her growling stomach. It strikes her that there must be other tributes out there, somewhere. She's stopped listening for cannons, or trying to distinguish them from the semi-frequent thunder.
The cold of the water hits her like a slap in the face, and she gasps with shock. For a second, she almost screams, but who would come and help her? Not Haze, surely, his silent demeanor suggests that he's a loner, just as likely to kill her as he is to save her. So she stays silent as she flails in the water, grabbing at something—anything—to help her get back onto the land.
Salvation comes a few meters down, in the form of a dagger-like sliver of rock that comes free as she uses it to haul herself out of the water. Once on the land, she curls up into a small ball in the mud and lets the rain pound over her. This doesn't do anything to sate her hunger, though, so she lifts her face up and drinks rainwater until she is full, if not sated.
All she can think of now is the rock in her hand. Although it's not much of a weapon, it's a way out.
Haze breathes, deep and even. He listens to his heart thud against his chest and thinks of the way it resembles axes thudding into wood, even though one brings life and the other brings death. He doesn't think about his family, little Eli and Abe, older Alder. His mother's one piece of advice to him was to not panic.
He doesn't think about that, either.
There are footsteps now, not crashing but still loud. Whoever is trying to find him doesn't care about being heard, or is perhaps relying on the rain to camouflage the noise they're making. For a moment, he thinks about who or what it is. Either way, there's no use running.
It turns out to be Sal. Her hair is plastered to her face, and she's shivering. "Hey," he says calmly.
"You were so hard to find," she says, and laughs. Her voice sounds a little higher.
"I haven't moved much." He's unapologetic—beyond caring, really. And that's when he notices the rock in her hand. So she's found herself a weapon, he muses. Good for her. Maybe she'll score a notch on a mutt before it rips her in half.
Sal laughs again, as if he's the funniest guy in the world. "Yeah," she agrees. "Ditzy me, can't tell a motherboard from a keyboard!" Her voice lilts a little, and he looks at her, confused. This must be some District Three joke, he surmises, although her laughter is completely uncalled for, especially here.
"Sal, you sound hysterical. Calm down." He wants to die in peace, not near some crazy girl who has decided to go Amazon on a group of ape-wolf mutts.
And suddenly, she's angry. "Don't you tell me what to do!" she screeches at him, and suddenly he's sprawled on the ground, and she's hitting at him with the rock. She isn't very strong, but neither is he, and it only takes a few blows before the pain in his head overwhelms everything.
The world fades, and all he can think is that Sal apparently wasn't going to charge the mutts after all.
Sal hears the cannon go off, and some part of her mind registers this. But Haze's blood is red in a world of gray; his flesh is food in a world of hunger. She snarls wordlessly at the sky, and shoves Haze onto his back. Cutting through his shirt with her rock, she sits back on her haunches.
Haze is emaciated in death, his ribs thrusting up beneath pale skin. Sal gets a better grip on her rock and cuts his stomach open; mimicking something she's seen a past tribute do. Granted, he went for the heart, and she's not as picky, but this will do.
All reservations and thoughts of family gone, she shoves her hands into Haze and pulls out a red handful of food. She shoves the whatever-it-is into her mouth, heedless of the red stains on her hands until she mindlessly licks them and finds that they taste not delicious, but as though they might placate her hunger.
After a few handfuls, she grows tired of this, and rips Haze open further with her hands, shoving her face into his abdominal cavity. It's messy, and viscera sticks to her hair, but she is beyond noticing.
She feasts. Once she is finally full, some small part of her mind reminds her of the need for the Capitol to remove the bodies, and she lurches away from her repast. A few steps away from the body, she falls to her knees. No, she thinks. It's food. And she's crawling back to the body, back to scavenge whatever she can.
After an hour or so of this, she is aware of the snarls. She looks up, her face bloodied, and sees the hungry red eyes of the mutts.
A second cannon sounds before being drowned out by the pounding rain.
Wrote this in the summer of 2012, reposting after I deleted my old account.