Jesse pointedly arrives in the training room early the next day. Dawn is there already, talking to the boy from District Two. Jesse walks over to them, not missing how both of them lower their voices while he approaches, then quickly start talking about shoes – of all things – once he's within earshot.
"Don't try that with me," he reprimands the pair of them. "I know you two are planning something." He'd had his suspicions about Dawn, as well as Ramona and Lis, as soon as he'd 'allied' with them. Now that he's seen these two talking, that's all the proof he needs that Dawn doesn't trust either of the other two girls, and probably doesn't trust him, either.
"I want in," he says without preamble, even though he really doesn't.
"Why?" Dawn asks him, crossing her arms.
"Because Ramona and Lis are probably going to slit your throat one night, and I'm not about to let them get the better of me."
"You?" Dawn laughs. "How is it getting the better of you when I'm the one getting killed?"
"Because including you was my idea," Jesse admits. Then he holds out a hand to the boy from District Two. "What do you say?" He'd wanted this boy in an alliance since the beginning, since he's great at close combat even though he has really been playing up his limp. Jesse can tell; it's been fluctuating every day.
"Yeah," the boy nods, shaking Jesse's hand.
"Geoff," Dawn starts, but the boy – Geoff, apparently – cuts her off. "No, it's a good idea."
"You're clever," Jesse tells Dawn, though he's not paying her a compliment. "That's your strength. So be clever now and realize that I'm not trying to double-cross you. I want to win – I want to live – just as much as you do, and forming a completely fake alliance with two of the most dangerous girls in the arena is going to work to our advantage. Ramona and Lis have something planned already; I can tell. We just have to beat them to the punch, and I'd much rather have you in on the plan than trying to do it on my own."
Lie.
"Okay," she nods. "What about Blaine?"
Fuck. He'd really been hoping she would have forgotten about him.
"He's… he's not interested in an alliance anymore," Jesse says honestly. Dawn raises both eyebrows, but the others have started to trickle in, and Jesse isn't about to be found out before the games have even started. He just offers Geoff a small smile that's probably more of a grimace, and then heads over to one of the stations, not really paying any mind to where he's going.
It's archery, and Jewel is already standing there, shooting arrow after arrow at the target. Jesse, smirking, sneaks up behind her and asks, "Pretending to shoot me?" right as she's about to release her last arrow. She jumps and the arrow flies wildly off its mark. Turning to scowl at him, she looks like she wants to hit him, but Jesse just keeps on smirking and heads to another station. It's all about getting her riled up, so she doesn't have a level head in the games. He can already see what will happen to her. She'll come after him in the bloodbath, not noticing someone else coming her way, and that will be it for her.
It's a shame, really, representing District One so poorly, but Jesse's not really all that fussed. He'll make up for it when he wins.
He's scoping out the room for a potential sparring partner when someone taps him on the shoulder. He turns, and it's Blaine, who looks smaller than Jesse remembered and like he'd rather be anywhere else.
"My mentor says I have to be in your stupid alliance," Blaine tells him.
"Smart mentor," Jesse nods. "Okay."
"That's it?" Blaine raises an eyebrow.
"What do you mean, 'that's it'?" Jesse mirrors the expression. Had Blaine been expecting him to say no?
"You hate me," Blaine reminds him, which makes Jesse laugh. Affronted, Blaine crosses his arms and asks, "What?"
"Hatred is relative to survival," Jesse tells him.
"Everything's relative to survival to you," Blaine says with a roll of his eyes.
"Don't do that," Jesse warns him. "We've already had this conversation, where you try to guilt me into giving a shit, and you ended up crying the last time." Blaine's eyes start to look glassy, shining. "You keep saying how you've resigned yourself to dying, that you don't care about trying to get out alive, and that's great, good for you. It makes it easier on those of us who actually do want to live. So don't fault us for that."
"I'm not faulting you," Blaine's arms tighten across his chest, though his eyes remain shining. "I just feel bad for you."
Jesse frowns at him for a few moments, not saying anything. Then: "Okay, that's nice. So why don't you go tell Dawn that you're back in, and she can hopefully tell you something that'll help you not be useless. Because I'm really sick of your attitude."
He ends up sparring with the boy from District Twelve, filing away how the boy moves and what side he favors. He's a little clumsy, which makes Jesse think he's holding himself back. He's sick and tired of all this training; they've been trying to hide their true abilities for too long. He's ready to just go into the arena and get it over with.
Ramona, Lis, Dawn, and Blaine all come over to him at the end of the training session to talk strategy. Each of them shares their strengths, deciding that since Jesse is physically the strongest, he should be the one fighting towards the cornucopia during the bloodbath. Ramona will have his back, while Lis and Dawn will each try to grab the supplies stationed furthest away from the cornucopia and throw them back towards the thing. It's a dirty tactic, taking away as much as possible from the others, but survival is important.
Blaine, whose self-proclaimed strength is "nothing," has been instructed to run and double back once the fighting is over. He clearly hates this plan, but all four of the others give him a stern look, so he agrees. The three girls leave, and Blaine's about to follow when Jesse takes him by the arm and hauls him off to the side.
"Don't do it." is all he says.
"Do what?" Blaine asks.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Jesse tells him, because he just knows that Blaine is thinking of running straight into the middle of the bloodbath and getting himself killed on purpose. Or maybe he'll trip off his platform. Jesse's seen that happen before.
"Can you just give it a rest?" Blaine snaps. "You're a career, you've been training for this for your whole life, good for you. And now I'm somehow stuck in your group, and I'm supposed to run away like a coward, just so you can drag me along and kill me later. I don't want to die like that."
"Then how do you want to die?" Jesse argues, his patience snapping. "Do you want to fall off your fucking platform and look like a wimp? Or would you rather have your name blended in with everyone else who dies in the bloodbath? At least this way people will remember you."
"I don't care!" Blaine shouts. "I don't fucking care about being remembered for something that pathetic! If people remember me, I want it to be because I did something that actually meant something. I hate this. I hate that they're throwing children into some stupid arena to kill each other. I hate that I'm a part of it. I hate what I'm being asked to do, because I don't kill people for fun, Jesse. I'm not enjoying this. It's completely sick, and maybe if you actually looked at what's going on instead of looking at the end result, you'd realize that you're nothing more than a puppet they've manipulated into doing exactly what they want."
Acting completely out of impulse and unable to stop himself, Jesse takes a swing at Blaine. The other boy is able to duck his head, and not a moment too soon, because when Jesse's fist collides with the wall behind him, his fingers graze Blaine's ear.
"The truth fucking hurts," Blaine says with a smirk, then shoulders past him towards the door.
Jesse glares after him. Blaine has no idea what he's talking about. Jesse isn't some puppet, trained to do exactly as he's told. The Games aren't a show; it's a matter of life and death. Winning is something to be proud of, something that will make him set for life. It's an opportunity for something better. Sure, Jesse might be from the richest district and from a wealthy family at that, but winning the Games, being famous, being known throughout the Capitol, having his own fucking mansion… That's something to be proud of.
They're not puppets. If they were puppets, the Capitol would have so many restrictions. Volunteers wouldn't be allowed. Career tributes wouldn't be allowed. They'd probably reap kids younger and younger instead of having actual rules about this sort of thing.
The Capitol could have easily wiped out all twelve districts if they wanted, but instead they had allowed them to live. If sending off two kids each year was the price to live in peace, then really, what was the problem with that? That was the whole point in having Career tributes. Then you'd know that someone from your district would be coming home.
Jesse punches the wall again, feeling the skin on his knuckles split.
"Fuck," he looks down at his had, now bloodied. He can't afford to get upset like this. They're due to start the Games in two days; he has to be presentable and at his prime, not sporting a bandaged hand right from the start.
He goes back to their suite, where Jewel is screaming about something while both mentors are trying to calm her down. Jesse walks straight past all three of them and into the bathroom, filling the sink with hot, soapy water. Then he plunges his hand into it, barely even noticing the sting. This is nothing. Once he'd had his entire shoulder torn open, and he hadn't made a sound while getting patched up.
Forgoing a bandage and just wrapping his hand in a towel, Jesse heads back out into their main room. Jewel has stopped shouting, but is sitting on the couch with her legs drawn up to her chest, his hair all over the place and her face red.
"I hate you," she tells him.
"Noted," he replies with a smirk, glad that at least one thing had gone to plan.
"You two," Jewel's mentor beings, clearly thinking that Jesse will stick around to listen, "are supposed to be teammates. You're from the same District, and–"
"I'm going out," Jesse says loudly, pushing through the door and ignoring her calls after him. Henri ha disappeared, and unless he turns up and tells Jesse he needs to stay put and be lectured like a toddler sneaking cookies, he's not about to subject himself to that. Even if Henri did tell him to stay, he probably wouldn't have listened.
He doesn't go far, just outside to a small garden right next to the wall of the building. He sits down on a stone bench, looking around at the carefully sculpted and altogether ridiculously artificial plants, lip curling into a snarl. Even he can tell this is all fake, the perfumes from the flowers coming from somewhere else. It might look pretty from a distance, but up close it just looks extravagant and messy.
Nobody in District One has a fake garden like this. They have real gardens with real flowers, and even though Jesse's never bothered to sit in one before, he's suddenly overwhelmed with just how fake this one is. The colors are too bright, the leaves too waxy, every petal on every flower the same shape. To the untrained eye or a casual observer, this may pass for something real, but to someone sitting in it, it's disgustingly fake. He wonders if this is what the arena will look like, fake plants everywhere with cameras hidden inside of them, mutated animals running around trying to hunt them all down. He wonders if that will mean there's no food. It probably wouldn't be that hard for the Capitol to try. After all, they'd stuck Henri's bunch into a frozen wasteland. Why not put this year's batch of tributes in a forest made of plastic?
He's seconds away from plucking a flower and tasting it, just to see if these really are made of plastic or if they are made of something edible, when he hears footsteps. Looking up, he recognizes Geoff, who seems surprised to find him here.
"I didn't take you for a nature kind of guy," Geoff says with an attempt at a smile.
"This isn't real nature," Jesse points out.
"True," Geoff shrugs. "But it's close enough, all things considered." He sits down next to Jesse on the bench. "Reveling in the last minute quiet before it all goes to Hell?"
"Something like that," Jesse admits.
"So what's the plan, then?" Geoff asks. "Not to interrupt the quiet, but we need one, and now's as good a time as any to figure it out."
"What's there to plan?" Jesse shrugs. "Dawn and Blaine and I are going to pretend to be in an alliance with Ramona and Lis, and once those two start to seem fidgety, we'll kill them and come join up with you."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"And how are you planning on finding me?"
"Well, that's up to you," Jesse says honestly. "We'll have enough on our hands trying to keep them from figuring shit out. Maybe we can talk Blaine into being the carrier pigeon or something."
"He's not gonna like that," Geoff laughs.
"Well, it's better than running away, which he hates even more," Jesse finds himself sharing. Geoff frowns.
"Did you tell him that half the tributes run anyway?" he asks. "No offense, but that kid would be slaughtered in the bloodbath, but if he's so stuck on liking what he's doing, it might help knowing that."
"What are you going to do when the Games start?" Jesse asks.
"Fight my way through until I get whatever I have my eye on," Geoff tells him. "And I will cut you down if you get in my way, even with this double-crossing alliance plan."
"Same goes to you," Jesse's smiling when he says it. "Stay out of my way."
It's strange, how he doesn't actually feel threatened talking like this to Geoff. There's something about him that Jesse likes, something calming that makes him seem trustworthy, and even while threatening each other's lives, Jesse feels completely comfortable.
"Well, here's hoping we get stationed on opposite sides," Geoff says after a few moments of silence.
"And if we end up next to each other, run the other way," Jesse decides. "If I'm on your left, run right, and vice versa."
"Deal."
He leaves Geoff in that fake garden and goes back inside. Part of him wants to go run the whole carrier pigeon deal by Blaine, but the other part of him is so tremendously pissed at him that he doesn't even want to think about him, let alone speak to him. He feels personally insulted, because Blaine has no idea what these Games mean to some people. What they mean to him.
For however long the Games take place, everyone in all twelve Districts and the Capitol are unified. They might be cheering for different tributes, but they're all doing the same thing. They're all watching together. That kind of unification takes something powerful, something meaningful, and Jesse's the one who's going to be a part of that now. Not only will he be famous, be the victor, but he'll have been a part of something that's bigger than just him.
You're just a puppet.
He has to stop himself from slamming his fist against the wall again.
He's not a puppet. He's not doing this just for everyone else's enjoyment. He's doing it for himself, for his own satisfaction. He's doing it to stay alive. He's doing it to win the Games.
The name strikes him, right there, for the first time. These Games have been taking place since before Jesse was born. That's just what they're called. It's not really a game, because games don't have live and death consequences. It was just a name, a title, something catchy.
The Hunger Games.
A game where twenty four kids fight to the death, and only one gets out alive. A game where there are no friendships, just allies, where everything has a purpose, where any second could be the last one he spends alive.
It's nothing more than a movie to all of them. They watch it on their giant television screens, are completely detached from it. They've never met the tributes apart from the parade and those stupid interviews. It's just a movie they can turn off whenever it gets too much, whenever they get bored, whenever nothing's happening.
That wasn't how he'd seen it. His entire life, he'd watched those screens with his eyes as wide as saucers. He'd watched the big kids from the training center in the middle of the city go off to fight, looked for their faces, and felt like a tiny bit of himself was there with them. It had changed once he'd gotten older, of course, but when he had been a small boy, he'd idolized those boys and girls. He'd wanted to be just like them, and as soon as he was old enough, he'd told his parents he wanted to train to be a Career tribute.
They'd been overjoyed, sending him down the street immediately to get fitted for a uniform, to take preliminary tests, to find out if he had any physical deficiencies or allergies that would keep him from performing to the best of his ability. His little five-year-old body had been stuck with needle after needle after needle, and he'd just sat there, watching replays of the old Games while they kept doing those tests.
And when he'd been accepted and went off to be educated and trained with the others, Jesse couldn't have been happier.
Had all of that really just been a lie? Was he the only one who felt like that, him and the other Careers? Maybe everyone else in the District hated the Games, used them as a way to ensure that their own children would never end up in the arena. It wasn't about bringing glory to their district at all; it was about sending others off to fight in their places.
Jesse glares at the door to their suite, having unconsciously walked back there. He doesn't want to be here, with Jewel and her mentor and possible Henri. He doesn't want to be anywhere connected with the Games of the Capitol, because how else is he supposed to figure all this out? He feels like the world has been ripped out from underneath him, and he starts stumbling down the hallway, back the way he'd come. He wants somewhere quiet and peaceful, somewhere simple, somewhere that isn't pumped full of fake perfumes and manicured to the point of being unrecognizable.
He ends up in front of Blaine's door, his head pressed against the wall next to it, unable to bring himself to knock. He can hear people speaking on the other side, and then there's actually laughter, and it's more out of curiosity than anything else that finds Blaine knocking.
The girl tribute is the one who opens the door, and she jumps at the sight of him. He hasn't really paid her much mind until right now, but she's a skinny little stick of a thing, even if he can tell she's got some muscle, not just skin and bones.
"Um, Blaine?" she looks over her shoulder. "I think it's for you." She steps aside, and Jesse enters the room, shocked to see Blaine sitting cross-legged on the floor with the two mentors and an empty spot that could only be where the girl had just been sitting with them. There's a board game on the floor between them, though Jesse doesn't know what it is.
"Hey," Blaine greets him, looking surprised. He stands up. "I just took my turn, anyway, so you guys just… play without me for a while. Skip me if you want." He turns a teasing face onto the girl. "But no peeking at my cards." He steps outside into the hallway, waiting for Jesse to follow before closing the door behind them.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jesse asks him.
"What?" Blaine laughs. "We're not supposed to play games here?"
"That is a complete waste of time," he says dismissively.
"Having fun before I die is a waste of time?" Blaine raises an eyebrow, but he doesn't sound angry.
"Yes," Jesse says, even though he knows that doesn't really make sense, because everyone can spend their time however they please. "There are more important things you should be doing."
"Like?"
"Like listening to me."
Blaine sighs.
"Why bother? I'm going to die anyway and you hate me, so I might as well play a fucking board game and trip off my platform so I don't have to suffer through you playing twenty stab wounds, since that's probably your idea of fun."
Jesse glares at him. Blaine stares back, his arms crossing over his chest.
"Fine," Jesse's patience breaks again. "Fine. You have fun with that, okay? Let me know how that goes for you, trying to make a statement by falling off your platform early. That'll really give everyone something to remember. The worthless boy from District Ten who can't even stand upright properly, that'll be an awesome story, an awesome legacy to leave your family with. I'm done trying to help you."
"Good," Blaine says, but it's in such a childish tone that Jesse scoffs.
"Did you even hear what I said?" He reaches out and flicks one of Blaine's ears. "I was going to help you, you ass."
"And I told you I don't want to get dragged around just so you can kill me later."
"Help. You. This is me," he points to himself, "offering to help you," he pokes Blaine in the forehead, hard, "after I know exactly what you want help doing. But fine, since you'd rather get blown to bits, never mind. Pretend I never said anything, and have a nice death."
He starts walking away, but then Blaine (predictably) calls after him.
"Wait, what?"
Jesse turns, smirking.
"Nope, I don't think I want to help you anymore. After all, you really are a rude little shit to me."
"And you're a self-righteous and brainwashed bastard," Blaine counters. Jesse grimaces.
"Really, any time you feel like working yourself back into my good graces, please do."
Blaine's arms tighten across his chest, his brow furrowed. Jesse just stands there, his chin tilted slightly upwards, looking down at Blaine and wondering if this would even work. He'd given Blaine no reason to believe him, other than those two magic words, but they're still allies. Allies are supposed to listen to each other, even if they hate each other.
But it's not really Blaine himself that Jesse hates. It's more the fact that Blaine was able to call him a puppet and make it stick, because if that really is true, shouldn't he have figured that out himself before now?
"How exactly do you want to help me?" Blaine finally asks.
Jesse grins at him, and it's a completely wicked smile that feels positively glorious.
"I want to make you the victor of the Hunger Games."