A/N: I was struggling with how to do the big reveal since we were never TOLD how Mags figured it out, and I'm not totally happy about this, but my life has gotten ten times as hard recently, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. For the sake of not losing total inspiration and ending up in Hiatus Hell, I decided to post this!

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorite, and/or added this story to their alerts!

To Guest 1: I actually wanted to add some new POVs, but for now it's just Madge to not interrupt the flow. We'll see how it all turns out.

To Guest 2: Thanks for reviewing, I'm glad you're enjoying my story!

To Fangirl: Thanks, I'm glad you like my Madge! I never forgive the deaths of characters for shock value, no matter how much I love a series, and I honestly can't think of any reason as to why Collins killed her as an afterthought. She was legit Katniss' only girl friend for two whole books! At least kill her onscreen to give it some meaning!

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, blood, drowning.


Unforgettable

Chapter Four: Make Some Waves

The ground is slick with blood. We are slick with it. I dig my fingers into the sleeves of Rory's suit, because trying to hold onto his wrist is impossible. We try to run, but if we go too fast we'll fall and break something or maybe even drown in blood. I can hear Calisto's voice shouting at us to keep up. He is dragging his sister behind him but still manages a quicker pace than me. Career training or something else? I feel as if I could be better at it if I had spent more time in the forests around 12.

Splendid suddenly stumbles and lands in a heap and doesn't get up. Her brother swings wildly around but can't see her in the inky darkness, her blonde hair already tinged dark red. It's only because she lands right in front of us that I even know where she is, but I don't care. My only thought is to protect Rory. I have to get him out of this bloody deluge.

He has other plans, however, and he slips out of my grasp. No, he pulls himself from my grasp, and runs towards our fallen ally. I want to scream at him. Just let her die! She has to die so you can live! At least this way we won't be traitors. But Calisto has blindly stumbled my way and if I voice my thoughts he will use that sword of his on us both without hesitation.

Both our charges are huddled on the ground, pushed down by the heavy blood and completely covered. In the darkness they look like an amorphous blob. We each grab and haul one up and I know by the feel of breasts on my back that I've grabbed the wrong one. But Calisto has thrown Rory over his shoulder like a sack of flour and continues towards the beach, so I follow.

The rain is unrelenting, my feet continuously slip as a good two inches of the liquid covers the ground. It's only dumb luck that when my feet finally give up their senseless dance and I fall face forward, I land on the beach. A loud splash tells me Calisto went straight to the water. Hopefully he took Rory with him. Splendid rolls off my back and lies beside me. I allow myself a moment to breathe, knowing that Calisto won't try anything with Rory when his sister is within stabbing distance from me.

Still, the second I get my breath back, I rise to my feet and stumble to the water. I try my best to scrub out the blood from my suit, when I realize it is pointless. I strip it off, more worried about cleanliness than shame, the fact that two males of hormonal age are mere feet from me. I've never had to worry about lustful gazes anyway, and I doubt it will change now that I am an enemy to these men. My undershirt is clean enough to stay on either way.

I clean it as best I can, but I know I don't do a good job. I've never had to clean my own clothes, my father always sending the clothes out to be washed by some poor woman that needed to make ends meet. The night is still young, but the moonlight is bright enough that I can see most of the bloodstains are gone. Having a few won't hurt my cold-blooded killer gimmick either, so I decide to throw it on the sand to dry and take care of my skin, untwist my hair from its braid and dip my curls under the water.

At first, when Cinna had told me he would be braiding my hair, I was worried he would try to make me look too much like Katniss, but it turns out my hair is too short and unruly for that. He called it a fishtail braid - appropriate, I laugh to myself - and it was lovely, and complex, and I will never be able to replicate it.

I flip my hair over my head and feel the strands lightly whip my back, thick streams of water flowing down my shirt. I look over and see Calisto is looking again. Okay, so I look like a drowned rat, there's no need to stare! I thought we were past this, too. He knows I am not skilled enough to earn a 12. He allied with me because he saw that number and saw sponsors. He doesn't have to keep looking.

"What?" I snap angrily and he only shakes his head before following my lead and stripping down to wash his suit.

Splendid joins him shortly after and Rory tells me I have to hang the suit to dry. We inventory our weapons once again and try to ignore our thirst. At least the night is cool. But I know that we can't go on for much longer. I consider asking, remembering that Katniss had swallowed her pride and looked to the skies to ask for water, but I know it would do no good. Neither Haymitch nor Katniss would waste valuable resources on sending us water.

I know there has to be drinkable water somewhere, we just have to be clever enough to find it.

At some point in the night, an hour or two since the rain, we hear a scream pierce the night and then the boom of a cannon. Seven down now.

Morning comes too quickly and I know we will have to move. We should have moved earlier, but we were all too weary. But I know that they will have to clean the blood off the leaves and ground somehow if they expect anybody else to fall for that trap and I don't want to be around to find out how they manage it.

The humid night air has done very little to dry our suits, so we move on in our undershirts and skin-tight pants, though I make sure that Rory and I have our belts on. No telling if we'll ever have to jump back into the water. I decide to wrap the suit into a hat around my head to keep the worst of the sun from hitting my face and teach Rory how to do it as well. Then Splendid insists I teach her, and Calisto figures it out quickly enough.

We look like a team, I think as we set off, and I try to ignore the twisting in my stomach as I remember that I will have to kill two of them.


We weave our way through the jungle, unwilling to be out in the open. It is midmorning when it suddenly becomes unnaturally still. I grab Rory's wrist and shout at the Careers' retreating backs, but they don't hear. I panic. Some primal instinct sends the hairs on the back of my neck to attention and I run towards my allies. The force field is flawless. I don't even notice it until I run right into it.

By some miracle, perhaps the impact made some sort of noise, Calisto looks back and his eyes widen when he sees us on the ground. He runs back, pulling out his sword, and I shout at him to stop, raise my hands since I know my voice is useless, but he doesn't understand in time. He is sent flying into his sister as he rebounds off the force field he ran into facefirst.

We all stand, staring at the scant inches that separate us, not understanding what this means. Is it just meant to split is us up? No, that's not necessary. They love watching alliances fall apart. And the rebellion can receive no bigger blow than us turning on each other. The Districts cannot trust each other if they see how easily we can betray one another.

The wind hits us first, and it carries with it the scent of the sea, and that's how I know something horrible is coming; because the wind is coming from the opposite direction of the manmade sea. And it is only because of those books that I spent so much time reading, those useless books I always considered worthless, that I guess what is coming.

Tsunami.

I push Rory to a tree, easy enough to climb, but strong and most importantly tall. "Climb, Rory, climb!"

I have no time to explain and I'm happy that he is still unquestioningly following my orders. I climb up after him as best I'm able, but we are neither of us expert climbers. There was nothing to be used as a substitute for a tree at the Career Camp and the rope climbing station at the Training Center in no way prepares you for tree climbing.

The roaring is next, and it is a miracle that we hear the cannon blast over it. Eight down. We are as high as we can go without snapping the branches we are perched on. I can only be glad that the trunk of the tree is large enough to cover our bodies even this high up. And then I see it. Crystalline blue with foaming white.

And we are nowhere near high enough.

I grab one of the sharper knives from my arsenal and stab it in the trunk as hard as I can. Either desperation lends me strength, or the tree is hollow, but the knife is buried to the hilt with one strike. I have enough time to wrap my arms around the trunk, gripping the knife as hard as I can, and keeping Rory trapped between my body and the tree, when the wave hits.

The tree groans grotesquely and bends enough that the rushing water reaches our hips. "Hang on, Rory!"

I can't let go. We'll be flung into the force field and fried. Or held in place and drowned. If the force of the water doesn't crush us. Right now, the only thing keeping us alive is the fact that the tree is taking most of the impact. I can hear the people in the Capitol laughing. They're literally drowning the embers, the sparks, the protégés of the girl on fire.

I don't know how long the water rushes by, but eventually it calms and an ocean surrounds us. Then it recedes. When a hovercraft arrives to take a distant body, I assume it's safe enough to move back down.

"Are you okay?"

Rory nods, but I can feel his entire body trembling. I decide to stay in place a while longer, to keep his obvious fear from the cameras for as long as I can.

Things have become more complex since the reaping. My first thought was of Gale, how if I played the Games as they were meant to be played, I would be proving to him that I was every mean thing he'd ever thought of me, of my family. Then I thought of the Everdeens; of Katniss, Prim, and their mother. Of how close they are to the Hawthornes, as close as the family the Capitol claims they are. How even if they were happy I survived, if I let Rory die in order to survive, they'd never be able to love me, truly, the way they love him. When Hazelle hugged me, I felt indebted to her too. My own parents had given up on me, but she still held onto hope for her son, and her inner strength moved me. I thought of how young he was - even though Stitcher is younger -, I thought of how District 12 would think of the mayor's privileged daughter winning, of Haymitch's drinking, Katniss' nightmares, Peeta's charming yet hollow smiles.

And then Rory took my hand on the chariot, and he ate lunch with me every day, he told Stitcher how cool I was, and he gushed about how I would be the best big sister at his interview with Caesar Flickerman. Every time we interacted, he was kind to me, even though he must be as scared as I am. I wanted to sacrifice myself for completely selfish reasons; to not deal with the fallout from the Games, and maybe be admired for a few years by folks back home. But as time went on, as brief as it was, I wanted to sacrifice myself for him . . . for him.

I whisper soothing words to him and eventually he gulps and nods and I understand that he is ready to move. I let him down first, as the knife is stuck and I struggle a little to pull it out. When I finally do, the blade is scratched and damaged and a thin stream of water follows it out of the trunk. I doubt I'll be able to use this knife again.

The District 1 siblings are surprisingly still waiting for us in the exact spot we left them. They are obviously reluctant to cross the spot marked by the force field, but I am strangely pleased by their loyalty. I wouldn't have blamed them for assuming us dead and leaving. I would have.

We walk for an hour before we decide to stop for another break. There are sixteen of us left but it will quickly be down to twelve if we do not get water!

I am so angry I don't notice the parachute at first. It is only the incessant beeping that gets my attention. I run up to get it, despite knowing that it could be for any one of us. Well, we're an alliance, so if it's for one of us, it's for all of us. None of us know what it is, though. I've never seen anything like it, and Calisto assures us that it's no weapon he's ever seen which practically guarantees it's not a weapon.

Calisto throws his head back and shouts to the sky, "Mom, if you're there, some damned water would be nice!"

Mom. I forgot. His mother is a Victor, that's why he's here. It didn't occur to me that they'd have to mentor their own loved ones. Katniss and Peeta had no choice, but places like 1, 2, and 4 should have the option of not being the one to send their children to their deaths. Did she choose to do so? Did she think she had a better chance of keeping at least one of them alive if she did?

Absolutely. And since we're allied, our mentors are working together which means that they all had to approve this gift before it was sent. A mother would not let her children die of dehydration. This must be something to get water, somehow.

And suddenly it snaps together. The hollow center, the tapered edge, the fanged rat Rory caught, and the stream of water from the tree. At the time I thought it was floodwater that had seeped in, but the knife was too tightly packed into the tree to allow even the least bit of water. It was from in the tree! I have no idea what it's called, but I know what it's for.

I start hacking away at the nearest tree with a knife, careful to not cause as much damage to this blade as the last one. I ignore all questions, even as I know they must think I've lost it, and in minutes I am ready to place our gift in the hollow. Nothing happens for a few seconds, long enough to think I am completely wrong, but then a single drop falls out. They all hold their breaths as they figure out what it is I am doing.

I lick the top of my mouth with my dry tongue and have to stop myself from shouting in joy when a steady stream comes out. We take turns gorging ourselves with it, wetting our hair and faces. Calisto runs to the shore and grabs some large, hollow shells to fill, and it almost feels like a Sunday spent with friends.

Then a cannon sounds and any levity dissipates.


We spend a long time drinking from the tree. And then we take turns relieving ourselves when our bladders are overly full. It is about two hours after the wave hit when the gongs sound again. Twelve gongs, and then the lightning storm hitting the same tall tree. I'm glad we didn't stay there. Ancient books can't be right about everything.

But then, shortly after the lightning storm strikes we hear the telltale signs of rain. Just like last night.

I look up at the sky and realize it was about midday when the gongs started. It wouldn't be too much of a guess to say that it was midnight when the gongs rang based on how long it took for the sun to rise. I remember the Cornucopia and the twelve spokes spreading out from it. The force field that kept Rory and me trapped was perfectly wedged between two of the spokes. The District 1 siblings even told us how weird it looked, like a slice of pie.

Twelve gongs, twelve spokes, twelve wedges.

Twelve Districts?

No, that's not right. They don't care too much for symbolism. They prefer ham-fisted lessons. Like, look how we can force you to watch your children die and you can't do a thing to stop us. Ha!

Twelve gongs, lightning storm, blood rain. Then, nearly half a day later, a wave. I don't know if anything happened in between, but I'm willing to bet it did.

The lightning storm and blood rain keep happening even if they don't kill anybody, which means it's not for show. It's mechanized. Automated. Like the many alarms my father keeps to remind him when he needs to move onto a new duty in order to get his work done.

And that's it!

Twelve gongs, twelve spokes, twelve wedges. Midnight and midday. Twelve hours. It's automated by the hours!

"I get it!" I say and my companions all look at me strangely.

I know it's stupid to say this out loud, to announce to the Gamemakers that I've figured out their grand plan. I know what happened to Haymitch for figuring out his Games. But I don't care. It's too late for them to do anything to change it and I have to share it with them. Just in case I die too soon and Rory has to fend for himself. All he has to do is stay one hour ahead of the traps and he could outlast everybody else.

The Gamemakers want to make waves, well, I can make some waves as well.

"This place is automated. The traps are triggered by the hour, not our presence. This is a clock!"

I see the confusion, the uncertainty, and then the realization that I am correct flit plainly across their faces.

I can almost hear Haymitch say, "Clever like Maysilee," and I can't help the smirk that overtakes my face.


A/N: A bit shorter than the last, and if it feels like I'm rushing through the Quell, it's because I am. We already know how the arena works so spending a thousand words on how weird it all is, is pointless. I also couldn't have Madge figure it out too quickly either, not trying to make her perfect. Even with her books and her father's alarms, it's a pretty big leap of logic to make without at least a full day.

Now that we got the big reveal out of the way though, we can get to the 100% AU Quarter Quell! Or, well, like 60% AU, the traps are still the same. More or less. I changed the wave from how it was described in the book/shown in the movie to help Madge put the pieces together and for DRAMA, basically.

As always, tell me what you liked, didn't like, and what could use improvement.

~ Destiny's Sweet Melody