The 74th Hunger Games part 2

The girl is getting stoned to death on the screen. The big black boy has arms that are as thick as her torso and the rock hits her temple and crushes her skull. The cameras used for the games are the best quality available and you can not only see every last drop of blood on the piece of rock, you can even hear the crunching noise of the bones collapsing. Nausea hits him instantly and he closes his eyes, breathes through his nose, tries to think himself away. The capitol viewers, sitting in the larger viewing auditorium downstairs, the non-VIP area so to speak, start clapping and booing and yelling. Most people are so sucked in to the lovers that they have been betting on them, but there are the people who have always bet on 2, some have even made a small fortune by doing this; 2 is the district with the most wins over the years and this year they looked like a shoo in for a win. This girl is, no was, vicious and did not seem to feel any remorse, the boy… he is huge and seems somewhat unstable. The unstable ones always do better than the sensible ones.

He reopens his eyes to see the big boy and the small district 12 girl talk, to see him let her get away with her backpack and he is a little bit relieved. He has learned over the years never to root for any of them, because inevitably they lose. Even if they win, they lose- Look at us, he thinks. We all won and what are we? A big mess, that is what we are. Damaged beyond belief. As if on cue a small victor from before he was born, high as the sky on morphling, gets up and starts whistling a soft tune while she dances in a small circle by herself. Two Capitol workers come in almost instantly and violently drag her off the platform. They largely ignore the drunks, the crazies and the addicts on the platform, but during important events, when the Capitol people will want to know how the old victors react and cameras sprout out of every corner, they need to make sure the lot of them looks regal and in shape. They are the pride of the nation after all, the strongest and best. Capitol favorites.

"Ah, see, she got him the medicine, the world is right again. They will live happily ever after… or until they are killed tomorrow, who knows?" he hears Johanna snidely remark in her fourth row seat and he wishes she would stop it. Usually he enjoys her humor, usually he loves that she is a rebel, unafraid of going against the Capitol, but today, with cameras everywhere, chances are the Capitol workers will have her arrested and tortured for good measure if she doesn't shut up. But she is stubborn. And loud.

Most of the rebels know to be quiet. Just like they will know when to speak up, once the time is right. Of the 40 or so victors who are still alive, at least 15 are part of the rebels, though you would never know which ones by just looking at them. And you would never know that there is something uniting them. The rebel movement was born a long time ago, initially just a few idealists who smoked a lot of mary-plant, a soft hallucinogen, and talked more than they did, a few people from each district, but it had been growing more and more important in the past few years. Some districts have movements that are big, that have weapons hidden away, whole armies, ready to go when the time is right. Other districts are pretty much ignored. Twelve for example is a mess, tiny and very poor, governed by a little man with no fire in him and nobody hating on him. A bad growing medium for rebellion. You need to be fed to have the strength to fight, you need to have a very present enemy to bind together in hatred. Someone thousands of miles away in a city only ever seen on television does not count. The only district 12 victor alive is a drunk who is smarter than most and who is informed of everything, but he cannot be counted as a real rebel, for he will not do anything for them. But at least he doesn't do anything against them either.

Finnick had been contacted the third year after his games. Life for him, as for every other victor, was divided in before games and after games. He had received one of the rebellion letters, folded inside a piece of wood, not too much unlike what Johanna and he had been using to send letters back and forth illegally between districts four and seven. It informed him of the inter-district rebellion and asked him to join them and he didn't know what to do initially. He has a younger brother, Kai, who he was afraid for if he was caught, but then one night he lay with a woman three times his age, who told him about how the Capitol scientist chose orphans from the high number districts, especially 11, because "they breed like rabbits", to try out new drugs and surgeries. How they had sawed open the skull of babies and disconnected pieces of their brains to understand better how they worked. How they just piled the children that did not make it up and burned them. And this lady was not complaining about the cruelty or injustice, no she was complaining that the smoke from the fires sometimes reached her windows and how she could not stand the smell. And he knew that if he wanted to stay alive, not just physically, but emotionally, he had to do something. He wrote back, sent the letter, as directed, baked into a loaf of bread to someone in the city and received the electronic device a few weeks later. It was small, like a small television that fit into the palm of your hand and kind of bendy, so it would fit into small places like undergarments. It receives letters and news. It is a most incredible invention, made by the rebels in District 3, and the most amazing thing about it is that it is untrackable as the waves used to send information changes constantly. Everything that gets written on it can be read by everybody in the rebellion for a few hours, sometimes a few days. Well, by everyone who owns a device, because not all rebels have one, but all the leaders do and the victors who joined each got one too. Because they are valuable. They have more power than most, because they are public figures, because everybody knows their names and because they are beloved by the Capitol people. And most of them have a special mission. His is to discover secrets.

He had not known if he should tell Johanna and when he finally did, he found out to his surprise that she had been contacted before him, she had signed up before even finishing the letter. She had nothing really to lose at that point. Except for him.

He watches the red haired girl eat the dried meat in her backpack on the screen, wash it down with some juice, and is relieved to not hear any more commotion coming from the fourth row. His eyelids are starting to get heavy, but he knows better than to fall asleep in the platform seat. He once asked Mags if the nightmares ever stop and she had shown him how her teeth had been gnawed down. 60 plus years after her games she still grinds her teeth in fear at night. Well, nowadays she grinds her gums. He wonders if the brute victors from district 1 or 2 also cry in their sleep and then remembers that like him, they were trained for it, like him they volunteered to go in, eager to show their prowess in the Arena. And he reckons that they, like him, never thought that winning could be almost as bad as losing in these games.

He sits up, rubs his eyes and wonders if nobody is going to leave soon, giving him an excuse to also disappear, just as they apparently decide to show the victors' reactions to the feast. He smiles his most winning smile into a camera, winks and shakes his hair back and hears a lot of oohs and aahs from the Capitol seats downstairs. The women he slept with, the ones he will sleep with, in the next week, next year, next decade. A pressure starts in the middle of his chest and quickly encompasses his entire body… the panic of inevitability, of being caught in this life. He watches as Johanna, dark shadows under her eyes matching the black lines she draws around them, the black powders she applies to her eyelids, scowls at him, and the entire Capitol, from the giant screen. A smile spreads on his face, a real one. She never fails to pull him out of his self pity. He knows what she would say "What are you complaining about? Enough men not getting any ever and you complain about getting too much! Men!"

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She is sitting sideways, her legs dangling off the side of her seat into her neighbor's. He hasn't come to the platform for days and she is not sure if he is just too drugged out of his mind or if he, like her, is just bored to tears. There are few things less interesting than watching rain, one of them possibly watching rain on a screen. In the Arena it has been raining for days and the death of Thresh, the "gentle giant" who smashes skulls with rocks as if they were peanuts, was thankfully quick, which means that for 2 days they have basically been watching people asleep in the rain. She can't understand how the redhead is still alive, but she kind of roots for her. Not that she actually roots for anybody, but she seems the least deadly of the bunch, except maybe for the blond lover boy… but even he killed someone early on, and having someone win the games who did not cause the death of a single tribute would be such a punch in the face of the game-makers. Which means there is probably an avalanche or a giant lizard already out there, heading for the hollow-cheeked girl.

Only 4 to go, at the most 3 more days. Then a week or two while they put the victor back together like all the king's horses and all the king's men try with humpty dumpty. She doesn't even know what a Humpty Dumpty is… but she remembers her grandmother saying this children's rhyme to her when she was little and when she asked what a King was her grandmother replied "Like a president, only not mean". She misses the old lady. No, she doesn't. She doesn't allow herself to miss anyone, because if she does there would be nothing left of her. Too many to miss.

In 3 weeks at the most she will be back home. In her victor's house. By herself. She shares the entire victor's village with 2 neighbors, one Holt, who seems to basically just eat all day long. He is the fattest man she has ever seen and his mouth is always full of some half chewed mass, even when he talks. He won some 20 years ago, and ironically he won by outrunning everybody else when they were attacked by a trio of mutts that seemed like a cross between a bear and a venomous snake. It is hard to fathom, nowadays he can barely walk from his couch to the bathroom. The other one is Blight. He doesn't talk much. Or do much. He seems to simply exist, silently. Actually, sometimes she forgets he does.

Fed up with the rain on the screen she gets up and announces "I can watch the same thing in my shower" and gets off the platform and back into the victory building. Finnick knows that she is leaving, he will leave in a few minutes. They never leave together, even though it wouldn't be suspicious. Others leave in groups, too. No point in risking anything though, life is risky enough as it is.

The little redhead is dead. The lovers poisoned her, maybe by mistake, and now the final battle is on, lovers against that overgrown toddler from district 2. She looks at the screen and bites into her piece of orange. Finnick can't eat during the games, for someone who claims not to ever have been seasick he gets surprisingly easily sick when on solid ground, but nothing affects her. She is numb. So what if that mutt just chewed off half the leg of the lover boy? She has seen worse. She has done worse. She sees worse every night and every time she lets her mind wander. She chews and offers a piece to Blight who shakes his head. "Better, more for me."

The noise from the Capitol audience is starting to get deafening. They love it. Lover boy bleeding to death on the Corn and the other boy being chewed to bits under it. Even from here, even only seeing an inch of neck, she can tell that Finnick has gone green. Poor pretty boy, she thinks and grins.

They say it never gets easier, but they are wrong. It is easier to watch kids die when you have seen them do it by the dozen. He says, it is all an act, she is not really as cold as she claims to be, but sometimes she worries she actually is. Cold. And dead inside. The girl from 12, she is probably going to win, with or without the boy. Which is fine. Less reconstructive surgery than if the district 2 boy wins… they would have to somehow make him a new head at this point.

The screams and cries from the boy are terrible, blood curdling and they keep going. All night. She leaves to go to the bathroom and in the hallway she realizes she is shaking. Finnick is coming back from the bathroom, he must have thrown up the two bites of dinner he managed to eat, and he sees her leaning against the wall, trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm. She is glad that if anyone has to see her like this, that it is him. He comes closer, then wraps her in his arms. It only lasts a few seconds then he lets go and they walk in opposite directions without looking back.

The cannon fires and the hovercraft collects the boy. It is all over, they won, first time ever, two victors. Johanna does not trust the game-makers though. She had told Finnick last night that she was sure they would not allow this to happen and the boy seems to be about 5 minutes away from bleeding out. Maybe they will just be slow enough to lose him. Then the announcement. Not two victors at all. Just one. Go ahead and kill each other lovers!

She knew not to trust and now she watches, for the first time these games absolutely glued to her seat, how the girl puts an arrow in her bow and aims at the boy's head without delay, without even a second thought. He does the opposite though, just waits for her to do it, hopes she will shoot him and win. Granted, Johanna is no expert in love, but if that was her and Finnick, would she immediately try to kill him? She does not think so, hopes she would not, and she is suddenly very suspicious of this lover girl. Was it all for show? She thought she would know an act if she saw one, what with her being possibly the most successful of all the faking tributes in history, but she did not see through this.

However, lover girl does not shoot him instead they both take a few of the deadly berries, they announce that they will sacrifice themselves for their love and put the berries in their mouth. The screaming in the viewing auditorium is deafening. And the Capitol surrenders to these two teenagers. They won. They tricked the Capitol. She feels the little electric jolt her device gives off when they get a new message and she sees several of the victors suddenly move oddly, spasm or shake. Nobody takes it out though, of course nobody does, it would be crazy. Here in front of everybody, in front of cameras that will be filming them in no time at all to see how they react to having these kids among their group from next year onwards. She lets the orange peel she was playing with fall and crawls past Blight's seat under Holt's. There is no way anyone can see her under 500 pounds of human. She takes the device out of the pocket inside her bra. Only four words are on the small screen, four words that make her tremble again, this time in anticipation though. Change is coming. Nothing will ever be the same.

"Mission Mockingjay starts today"