title: left are your bones (soon sinking like stones)
fandom: the hunger games
characters: marvel (+ glimmer & the careers)
information: 74th hunger games | 2096 words | oneshot
summary: they all say marvel looks like a victor. saying is not believing, just as looking is not being. (or: marvel in the 74th hunger games)
( oh my, look at what you have done )
Selection for a volunteer in District One is as much of an honor as it is an excuse to throw an opulent and grandiose party in celebration of the child they are sending off to the murder house.
"It's odd, isn't it? It has been years since they announced the male volunteer before the female."
"We'll have to endure the suspense until the Reaping comes, I expect."
"I can't say I'm not satisfied with our male volunteer. He has that spark about him."
"I wouldn't be surprised if District One had another victor in their near future." His mother brushes his hair back possessively, carefully combing it over. "Never mind the girl, my son has pure talent."
Marvel mutters something about needing to talk to his trainer and excuses himself from his mother's rich circle of widows.
-/-
A hand curls around his arm, stopping him. Caught off guard, Marvel's quickly swivels around to face a petite blonde. Vaguely, and only vaguely, he recognizes her from training.
The smile on her face, he never learns, is deadlier than any weapon he would ever live to wield.
The look of confusion on his face prompts the girl to clarify. "Glimmer." She releases his arm to procure a flute of champagne from a nearby waiter.
He looks at her, expecting her to continue. She doesn't, only studying at him in between sips of champagne. Her eyes travel up and down his figure, searching for weaknesses, chinks in his armor, hidden under his dark blue suit.
Marvel clears his throat. "It was a pleasure to have a nonexistent conversation with you, but I should —"
"—Who said this conversation was nonexistent?"
"I believe I did," he answers flatly.
"You're not like what they say you are," she says, placing the empty flute on a nearby table. "If your mother and roundtable gossip is anything to go by."
Marvel quirks and eyebrow and shoves his hands into his pockets. "That would be...?"
"A victor," she replies haughtily, before spinning on her heel and disappearing into the crowd of chattering socialites.
The day of the Reaping arrives with a wave of excitement, leaving behind a district enthralled and two no sooner dead.
The girl printed on the parchment is a fifteen, only halfway through her training. Another voice rings in the silence, crystal clear, but breaking ice. This must be the elusive female volunteer.
The jeweled ring on her finger reflects sunlight, cascading and fanning around her as her hand goes up. The cameras are trained on her, the blonde with the pretty hair, pretty eyes. Pretty is all the audience ever registers.
Beckoning to the distant familiarity, her name surfaces in his mind, cold and sharp. Glimmer.
The escort's hand reaches into the glass bowl again, and before he can fully say the name of a young boy, Marvel's hand rises into the mass of cold morning air. He volunteers in a motion long calculated before his foot steps onto the podium.
As the two tributes raise their hands in celebration of the occasion, he feels the faint scratch of a ring on his finger.
Glimmer turns her head to covertly smile at him, almost sweetly. She might as well have stabbed him on stage, right then and there.
-/-
"If I said I was surprised, it would be a lie," he says, breaking the silence. The train is steadily speeding toward the Capitol, on the fast track to death.
Glimmer nods and props her elbows on the table, leaning forward. "Oh?" she says with sudden interest, her red lipstick-covered mouth forming a small circle.
"You said I didn't look like a victor."
Glimmer gives a small laugh. "Don't worry, I'm sure you look the part."
"I could say the same for you," he says. "They'll love having two good-looking tributes all in one district."
Her face remains playful, moving forward inch by inch until her lips are by his ear. "Looking like a victor, anyone can do," she whispers, drawing out each of the words.
He tenses, her hot breath swirling on his skin.
"It's only a shame you're not made of one."
There's a tentative alliance that hangs in the air, one written in the code of being a Career. The spectators would expect nothing more than a few friendly laughs before one of them impales the other.
Cato, with a face mauled by pride and arrogance, confirms as much on the first day pre-game training. His district partner, Clove, lingers to the side with her willowy frame and demeanor as sharp as steel.
The two from District Four are much weaker than those of previous years, Marvel notes. He wonders when he'll need to kill both of them for his crown.
-/-
He plays his part effortlessly during the interviews, flawlessly and to applause. Charming, skilled, and endowed with a good sense of humor, he promises he will return with blood on his hands.
None of it will be his, Marvel has assured himself of that much.
-/-
Marvel returns to the District One complex to find Glimmer sitting on a stool alone, still wearing the sheer dress and her heels discarded on the floor. Her head snaps up the second she hears a sound from the elevator.
"Took you long enough," she says, pulling pins out of her hair. Her blonde locks curl around her shoulders, delicately framing her face.
"I heard they confiscated your token." Without knowing it, Marvel walks over to sit beside her. He senses the almost imperceptible shock on her face before it melts back into her mask of apathy.
Glimmer shrugs. "How disappointing."
"A poisoned spike when you turned the gemstone. Nicely concealed, but did you really think you would win the games with a ring?" Marvel cranes his neck to look at her hands and finds a small band of white on her ring finger, the place where her token would have been.
She lifts her head to look him in the eye, unflinching. "You can say that again when we're both home in District One."
"When I'm back in District One, you mean."
Glimmer cranes her head to look at him, propping her chin to look at him. "That's exactly what I meant." She hops off the stool, picking up her heels from the floor. "You, home in a coffin."
Marvel feels only the slightest temptation to snap off her blonde head and watch it roll away into the distance.
The 74th Hunger Games begin in a frenzy, with a few decent kills in the Cornucopia bloodbath and a firmly established, save for one dead District Four boy, Career alliance. Marvel doesn't bother to acquaint himself with everyone's names; he'll learn them when he watches the victory reel. Nobody is a threat more than they are an obstacle, another body he'll have to spear aside and watch die.
Marvel finds the District Three boy huddled behind trees around the Cornucopia, visibly shaking and stuttering. On the words "mine" and "advantage," Clove rushes over and puts her knife on the boy's neck. After a moment of more-than-cooperative interrogation, the Careers enjoy the spoils of the Cornucopia as the deathly terrified District Three boy begins digging up the once dormant mines.
Cato keeps a wary eye on Lover Boy, although insisting they'll need him to trace down the Bitch on Fire. Clove keeps a careful distance away from Cato, eyeing his every move as she twists the blade in her hands. The girl from District Four busies herself with organizing the supplies they plan on rigging, although expendable as Lover Boy, who has nothing to do but dig alongside District Three boy. Glimmer smiles and smirks and tosses her hair, all for the benefit of the audience.
-/-
People die, faces flick up over the night sky, and his hands are caked with blood and dirt, but Marvel laughs and jokes through the day, safe in the knowledge of his inevitable victory.
-/-
The Bitch on Fire has nested herself up in a tree, per Lover Boy's suggestion. Everyone else is on edge, impatient, and counting down the seconds until they can spill more blood.
"If you were any worse with that bow, you would be shooting yourself," Marvel says to Glimmer as she relieves herself from the sheath of bows. She's at fault for the fact that they've decided to camp out under a tree and a cannon has yet to ring.
Glimmer glares at him, Clove gives a sharp laugh, and Cato looks about ready to tear out someone's jugular.
"Why don't you kill her yourself?" Glimmer retorts and offers him the bow.
Marvel mock-considers the proposal for a few seconds. "I think I'll pass. Wouldn't want to accidentally kill you instead."
Marvel wakes up to a haze, frenetic but lulling his mind into numbness. He can only distantly hear screams, and he's not sure what he's doing. He's putting one foot in front of the other and he thinks he's running; it would be best to run right now, but his limbs are weak and his mind is disjointed. A prickling sensation travels up and down his arms, and he also feels it on his neck and legs, yet it hurts so much that it doesn't hurt at all.
Marvel only distantly hears Gimmer's screams, and sees her thrashing body in the periphery of his vision through the cloud of haze. He hears cannons, one, two, or four, he can no longer count.
The arena darts in and out of view, replaced by a slideshow of spears and corpses—his corpse, Glimmer's corpse, his mother's corpse, the mangled and dismembered corpse everyone thought was his father's—and so much blood. He thinks he can hear yelling, someone yelling at him, but what he really hears is the small voice in the back of his head telling him to get to water.
The world bursts into fireworks of blood, broken limbs, and severed appendages.
-/-
Their numbers are down by half when Marvel feels his crown slipping away from his hands and melting away from his fingers. District Four girl and Glimmer died in the hands of the trackerjackers set upon them by the Bitch from Twelve, and Cato insists he left Peeta rotting in his own grave.
Marvel misses Glimmer, almost. He's left with Cato, who insists they need to hunt every waking moment, and Clove, who isn't much better company. Clove and Cato sit clustered together, plotting and sharpening weapons.
He sits on the outside, teetering on the edge of death and victory.
Cato, Clove, and Marvel rush off back to what they once thought was a completely fortified Cornucopia to find charred supplies and a helpless District Three boy. Marvel only watches Cato begin to crack and snap District Three boy's neck.
They all decide to dissolve the alliance, with a mountain of supplies now rendered useless and more tributes to kill. Marvel heads back in the direction of the decoy fires, not bothering to think the next time he sees the pair from District Two, their bodies will be at his feet.
-/-
The little girl is trapped in a net, twisted into the weave of the rope. Encased in her own prison, she tears and claws at the fibers to no avail. Marvel raises his spear, positioned to throw it and send a chorus of cannons into the chilly air.
She's young, like he was when he started, but then he sees destroyed supplies, snapped necks, and his house in the Victor's village, and his spear is flying out of his hand like the hundreds of times before this moment. He hears the distant rustling of branches, loud and frantic crashing through the thick of the forest. The noise of shock from the little girl lets Marvel know he has made his mark.
Only half a moment later, Marvel is on the ground with an arrow in his neck.
-/-
He is left with the harsh refutation of everything he once thought he was and the ghost of his victory buried with his coffin.
(author's note:)
written over the summer. published now.
I love the careers, and this fic only scratches the surface of my appreciation.
Marvel is seldom-mentioned in the series, in fact, Katniss doesn't learn his name until Catching Fire. Everyone always sort of dismisses Marvel's character as Rue's killer and that's all he ever is. The evil Career that killed Rue.
On the other side of things, this is a boy who is willing to kill a girl, a young little girl, in order to win the games. He's tangled in this mentality of victory that it has all but blinded him, to the point where he acknowledges he must kill this girl, however young she is, because that's what he has to do.