A/N- THIS CHAPTER IS HUGE- even by my standards! I'm starting to think Monday will be 'Stardust update day'.
Sorry to sound like a patronising twat, but I wanted to explain 'time stuff' in this fic. Don't assume that what you're reading is linear. Whilst the story overall will progress in a chronological order, there'll be a fair amount of timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff as I character-swap. I hope it's relatively easy to follow!
One final note- things get dark from this point on. Don't read while eating.
"You look lost." Greg made a significant effort to appear casual as he turned around. The girl from Eleven leant against a rock a few feet away, watching him and grinning. He'd been walking and jogging for a few hours now, and had made it out of the initial cluster of trees by just going straight. That part had been simple; it was where to go from there that had confused him.
"I'm fine," he said warily. He couldn't see any weapons, but that didn't mean she didn't have any. Seemingly reading his thoughts, she spread her arms.
"I'm clean," she told him. "See." She twirled around, showing that she was definitely unarmed.
"What do you want?" Greg asked.
"I don't want anything. You look lost, that's all."
"I've hardly been here before," he said defensively. She laughed.
"Oh, feeling feisty? I bet you've just been wandering around since the Games started, haven't you?"
"Well, what else was I supposed to do?
"Find water, you idiot. That's what everybody's supposed to do. There's a river nearby- I'm going there now, if you want to follow me."
"Yeah, and get ambushed," he snorted. "Thanks, but no thanks." She laughed, in a not-entirely pleasant way.
"There's no ambush. Don't flatter yourself."
"Then I don't understand. Why would you help me?"
She shrugged. "It's useful to have allies. I'm trying to track down Jonathan, but you're the next best thing. I was searching for food when I saw you- guess my luck finally came in."
"Oh." Something small began to glow inside of Greg. "Okay." He still wasn't entirely sure he could trust her, but it seemed as good a strategy as any.
"So what's your name again?" she asked as they travelled.
"Greg. Yours?"
"Sally. What were you, from Seven?"
"No, Six. Are you and Jason from the same district then?"
"His name's Jonathon, and yeah. I meant to find him at the Cornucopia, but we lost track of each other."
"Oh, okay. So do you know him from school or something?"
"Nah. He's two years older than me."
"Oh, so he's… fifteen?"
"Seventeen," she glared. "I'm fifteen, thank you."
"Okay, sorry. So how do you know him, then?"
"We worked on the same farm, transporting the produce. It's a good idea to have allies that you know and trust."
"Oh. Wait a second," Greg said- he just couldn't help himself. "Is that why you choose me? You trust me?"
"No, idiot. It's because I'm pretty sure that if you snapped one night and attacked me, I'd win. It's also a good idea to have allies that are weaker than you."
"Oh," he said; and then after a pause, "okay".
"Do you actually know other words?" she asked incredulously, and he decided it would be a good idea to just stay quiet for a little while. Sally seemed to agree.
They were four cannon-shots in when Sherlock discovered the first sign, carved into the dirt under a bush. He had noticed the low death toll- of course he had- but he wasn't bothered. What everybody else was doing was of little relevance to him. He had been feeling for mud or any indication that there would be life nearby; he was still very much on the wrong side of the woods, and trying to find his way back. It would have been simple if not for the various turns he had had to take to shake off the boy with the knives. If he just walked in a straight line, he could be just heading further in the forest, resigned to die quietly of dehydration. His progress in finding a water source so far had been… lacking.
When he noticed the 'V', cut into the ground as if with a knife, a bolt of excitement ran through him. Something different. Finally. He ran his finger very gently over it. He even pushed on it lightly, but nothing happened. Just a mark, then. He checked the ground twice and then a third time, but there hadn't been any other letters that had been wiped away- just that one 'V'. His mind scrolled through various possibilities. Violence. Victory. Victors. Somebody's initials, perhaps? He couldn't remember any tributes with a name beginning with 'V', though.
He reached into the bag he had taken and pulled out his token. They had debated at length as to whether or not it could be considered a weapon, but had eventually consented to him having it. The small, rectangular magnifying glass would probably be of little use in the arena, but he felt more comfortable having it with him. It was good to finally get the chance to use it again.
The 'V' looked recent. When he compared the dirt in the dent to the soil around it, he found the crevice was not quite as dry. He was unwilling to leave the spot, but time was moving on and the sun was beginning to sink. Sherlock had decided to measure time by the cannon shots until he could find a better way to do things. There was no way to judge time in the arena other than by the rise and fall of the sun, and it didn't take a genius to realise that the Gamemakers could manipulate that.
Eventually, having garnered all he could from the mark, he turned his attention to gathering a few handfuls of berries from a nearby bush. He had come across them at Edible Plants; whilst not particularly appetising, they were safe. He ate them absent-mindedly as he walked on.
Trees pressed endlessly in on Sherlock as he continued searching. It was difficult; more so than he had anticipated. The Gamemakers intended to give nothing away, and everywhere he turned he saw the exact same trees, the exact same grass, the exact same everything. He was trying to find or create markers, but the more he walked the less oriented he felt. Every noise in the trees around him caused him to freeze in place, ready to run or fight or climb (could he climb a tree? He was sure he could figure it out). Each had been a false alarm, though; if there were tributes still in the forest, they hadn't come after him. Yet.
Evening passed and night began to fall, and still Sherlock walked. If he was hungry or tired, he didn't notice. He briefly wondered if any cameras were following him, but concluded against it. He might be flashed up every hour or so, but nothing more. There was nothing interesting about a man wandering around a forest.
In the growing darkness, it was even harder to tell where he had been and where he had to go. It reached the point where his surroundings merged into one solid, indistinguishable wall, and he was forced to stop. There was no way he could see in the inky blackness he had been plunged into, and the last thing he wanted was to run into a trap or another tribute.
Relying on touch more than sight, he located a sturdy-seeming tree and gently tested his weight on the first branch. It held, and he pulled himself up. It was slow and systematic, but he had soon swung his way onto a wide branch about three-quarters of the way up. It was a little brighter up there, with more of the moonlight able to reach him. He took the opportunity to investigate the pack he had taken. He had briefly checked it earlier, but only for water or food. There had been neither.
Sherlock pulled out the items one by one, feeling them carefully and holding them up to the watery light to make out their shapes. A coil of rope. A small bottle of iodine. An empty flask, a wooden box of matches, a thin black sleeping bag and a miniature flashlight. Every fibre of him itched to continue on through the forest under torchlight. People would be sleeping now, so it would probably even be safer.
But something- some long forgotten sense of self-preservation- kept him clinging to the tree. He hadn't been able to tell where he was going in the daylight; with just a thin beam of light, he'd be worse than useless. And if everybody else was asleep, then he may as well follow suit. As much as Sherlock loathed the idea of wasting five or six hours- time that could be used exploring or thinking or investigating- he reluctantly conceded that he was going to need all the energy he could get.
He grudgingly tugged the sleeping bag up around him. Again relying on touch, he managed to fasten the rope around himself and the trunk, mimicking the knots he had learned in training. There. It would not be impossible for him to fall out of the tree, but it would be much harder. Trying to ignore the on-going stream of his thoughts, buzzing angrily around the crevices of his skull, Sherlock closed his eyes. He would find water in the morning.
Molly was still a little dazed that she had not only made it out of the Cornucopia, but had actually gotten something for her troubles. She had meant to take Glamor's advice, she really had, but something had come over her at the last minute. Something that said she was sick of just doing what people told her, of always assuming that they knew best. It was a little like self-belief.
She ran her fingers lightly over the bow. It was a fairly standard one, and she had a limited cache of arrows- but she had arrows. She had a weapon. She had briefly caught sight of John running parallel to her in the forest, and had seen the flash of something metallic in his hand. Neither of them had listened to Glamor, then. She felt guilty for letting her mentor down on one of the rare times he had tried to help, but at least she had stuck to his second piece of advice.
The river was very long. Molly knew that because she had found it and nobody else was there. If she had managed to find such a valuable resource, others must have done so first. The stream stretched out ahead of her and behind her, and she suspected it ran the whole length of the arena. There were various bushes and rocks scattered around, and in a few places even clusters of trees.
Molly had managed to find a large bush with no berries to attract others or thorns to scratch at her, and torn out branches to create a space inside. She curled herself inside her nest and listened to the anthem play. She could just about make out the few faces that appeared in the sky above. Both of Three flashed up (Molly wondered if they had gone out protecting each other), then the girl from Six, and then a huge jump to the boy from Eleven. Molly tried her hardest to remember her list. Sherry? Had that been one of the girls? She supposed it didn't really matter anymore.
Molly returned to her bow, plucking gently at the string. She was okay at archery. Passable. If somebody came after her, she probably wouldn't react in time, but maybe the bow's presence would unnerve them a little if nothing else. Make them think twice about coming after her.
Molly heard the rustle of leaves behind her and was out of her den in a second. She was still clutching at her bow, but the arrows were on a branch inside, out of reach. Useless. It was dark, too dark to see properly, but there was a shape only a short distance away. A human shape. The figure turned to look at Molly, and cocked its head on the side, intrigued.
"You heard me coming," a feminine voice said, seemingly without anger. Molly thought she remembered hearing it before, but she couldn't find the name.
"Um… yes?" Molly said. She wasn't sure why.
"Most people don't hear me," the voice said, and the figure began to shift closer. Molly hovered in place, torn between sprinting and listening. "Or if they do, they ignore it. So why did you leave so quickly? Most people would have at least waited for a few seconds to check."
"I- I don't know," Molly said. "I was just lucky, I guess."
"I suppose so," the woman said, moving closer still until she was inches away. Her skin glowed an ethereal white in the moonlight; she was a little taller than Molly, and definitely older. "But with reactions that quick? With instincts that sharp? Do you want to know what I think?"
"Um- okay," Molly said, swallowing firmly. She could see the woman smile, even in the darkness.
"I think you didn't act like most people because you aren't most people. I think you're rather more special than you give yourself credit for."
"I don't think so," Molly laughed uneasily. "I'm … average."
"Oh, no. Innocent, yes. Vanilla, yes. But average? I don't think so."
"I- there's nothing wrong with average," Molly stuttered.
"I wouldn't know, dear. I'm far too exciting for that." Her words finally made something click inside Molly's head.
"You're the woman from One, aren't you?" she asked. "Irene?"
"What was it that gave it away?" she drawled.
"You sound half in love with yourself," Molly blurted out without really thinking. "No, I- I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" The woman just laughed.
"Sweetie, I'm fully in love with myself. Why settle for anybody less?"
"I- I, um-"
"I do think I'm going to need an ally, though," Irene said thoughtfully. "The Games this year are frightfully sociable, and I was never one to fall behind on a trend. I meant to just knock you out and steal that bow, but I can hardly ignore you now, can I?"
"I, um- no?"
"No indeed. So allies, then?"
"Yes, okay," Molly nodded, beginning to smile.
"Excellent," Irene returned her smile broadly. "You can take the first shift- I'm going to sleep. I almost certainly shouldn't trust you, but what's life without a little risk?"
"Wait, shift?" Molly asked, alarmed, as the woman began to move towards the hollowed-out bush. "What shift?"
"The guard shift, of course. It isn't safe for us both to sleep at once. There's a game on, you know, and some people play dirty." She climbed inside the greenery, but popped her head back out a second later. "I should know."
The picture faded and the anthem cut off abruptly, and silence pressed down on Greg's lungs. He and Sally had been picking berries from a nearby bush when the music preceding the death count had begun to play. The girl from Six. The boy from Eleven. Why had they both lost their partners on the same day? On the first day? Even in a world of unfairness, it felt cruel. Don't think like that, he reminded himself, but he was growing sick of protecting the Capitol. On a day like today, what was there worth protecting?
He looked over at Sally in the dimming light, and was surprised to see tears pricking at her eyes. She caught him looking, and contorted her face into a look of derision. "What?" she sniffed, but her bravado was cracking around the edges.
"I'm sorry about Jonathan," he said gently.
"Yeah, well. It had to happen at some point," she said bluntly, determinedly looking anywhere but at Greg. "Sorry about…"
"Sherry. Her name was Sherry," Greg said. It was… a strange feeling. Sherry was gone. A week ago, he had not known of her existence, and now he was painfully aware of her death. He wondered if he ought to be crying, but he felt strangely removed from it all. He hadn't known her very well, but he ached inside all the same.
"Yeah, her." Sally's voice wobbled on the last word.
"Sally?"
"Shut up," she said fiercely. She swayed slightly, and he grabbed her arm. The berries she had been holding tumbled to the ground.
"You need to sit down."
"Get off me!" she barked. He complied, and she sat down heavily. He did the same. They sat side by side, and after a few breaths Sally crumpled. Her head crashed into her folded arms, and she sobbed. They were ugly, noisy wails, and Greg found himself knowing what to do without really knowing why. He threw an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him.
"Get- off-"she began to say.
"Give it a rest," he told her firmly. Miraculously, she consented. She turned her head into his shoulder and he felt tears wetting his shirt. A fresh wave of guilt broke over him at his lack of emotion to Sherry's death. It hurt to think of her, but nothing more. He secretly wondered if Jonathon had been more to Sally than she had let on, but wasn't stupid enough to suggest it. He stayed quiet and rubbed gentle circles across Sally's shoulders as she cried and cried.
After a few minutes, she suddenly fell silent and dried up, as though her eyes had only just realised just what they were doing. She pulled away, dragging her sleeve across her eyes roughly.
"That didn't happen, okay?" she said, and he nodded. "I'm going to sleep now."
"Okay, sleep well."
"Yeah, whatever. See you in the morning, idiot."
Greg thought there might have been just a hint of affection in the last word, but he couldn't be sure.
When John awoke, the sun was halfway through rising. He had slept under a cluster of rocks the night before, which he had managed to push together to form a kind of den. There was very little space under the canopy of stone, but there had been just enough room for him to slide in. He stretched, back aching from the uncomfortable ground, and headed to the river.
He splashed his face with the cold water, and washed some of the dirt off of his hands. His stomach was shouting at him, and he returned to his lair. About thirty minutes away from where he had slept, the water was deeper and a trickle of fish swum backwards and forwards. He had caught two after much trial and error (catching fish with his hands was not a skill he'd ever tried to develop), and still had one left. It was even light enough that he could cook it with no huge safety risks.
It wasn't easy to get a spark without matches, but he'd spent a lot of time on the relevant station in training. It only took around twenty minutes for him to have a small fire quietly puttering away. John felt justified in taking a moment of pride over that. He had water, and food, and shelter, and fire. He was in a pretty good position, all things considered.
After he had swallowed the last of the fish, he made the decision to go and fetch more. There was no point in putting it off until he was hungry or weak, and it gave him something to do if nothing else. By following the river, he soon found himself back in the same place, though he flinched when he saw the state of it.
A new angry, dark red stain soaked the ground, though there was no body to be seen. Either somebody had been injured, or worse, and he had missed the cannon-shot overnight. He tried to simply avoid the sticky red liquid, but the smell was impossible to ignore. He debated going somewhere else, but firmly told himself that there was no point. He would just have to get through it. His fingers closed tighter around his gun, a comfort blanket of sorts.
It was only his determined effort to not look at the blood that made him notice the marking. A short distance away from the blood smear, three letters were carved into the mud. John frowned. Had they been there yesterday? If he was honest, he hadn't been looking, and the marks were small and easy to miss. He bent down and traced over them with his nail. LXX. What the hell was LXX? He didn't like the sound of the 'XX'; it seemed ominous, like a warning. But he'd drunk the water and eaten the fish, and he felt fine. Nothing from the river had smelt strange or tasted odd. It was probably safe, he decided.
John was lucky. He straightened up just as the girl behind him swung, so the branch only smacked against his back rather than cracking open his skull. Her strike was weakened, his sudden movement throwing her off. He cried out in pain, but was able to spin around to find her raising the branch above her head, snarling. His bullet caught her through the throat before she had time to bring it down.
He watched as if in slow motion as the wood fell from her hand, forgotten. Her eyes widened and she brought a hand to her throat, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the wound. Rivers of blood poured down her sleeves and dripped off the fabric, mixing with the drying death already at their feet. She moved her mouth as if trying to speak but the words would not come out and she jerked violently in place, lips still attempting to form useless shapes. Her body gave in and she dropped, limbs still shuddering, eyes still looking straight into his. The cannon blast sounded as her body landed, the ground shaking with the impact of what he had just done.
John couldn't move.
A bird in the tree emitted a single shrill note, a warning. He couldn't stop looking at the body, the smell of blood forcing itself into his nose and under his eyes and down his throat until he was filled with it, saturated. Without warning, somebody pulled the lights from his head and he couldn't see, immobilised, the world spinning out of control around him. He heard the hovercraft materialise and he was finally able to free his limbs, to snap out of it.
He tried to run from the noise but stumbled and fell, smashing face-first into the dirt and mud with a sharp cry. The gun flew out of his hand and he made no effort to go after it. He rolled onto his side and his vision cleared in time to see metal jaws descending to close around a victim, and whilst he knew it was for her, the girl with the branch, the claw seemed to leer at him. I know what you've done, it grinned, opening wide to show its teeth. I know, I know, I know.
John scrabbled away, never taking his eyes off it, and the claw swallowed the girl's body whole except one pale arm. It dangled almost comically, crimson torrents far too bright against her white skin. It was only then that he realised just where he had fallen. He looked down slowly and blood stared back, only a breath away. His hands were coated with the bright new blood of the girl and the old, rusty remembrance of a previous death, entwining together on his skin. He touched a shaking hand to his face and felt the same mixture underneath his fingertips; slick against his face, his mouth, his eyes.
John vomited without warning, violently and painfully. All that talk, for what? All of that talk of morals and ethics and right-or-wrong and at the first sign of danger, he pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger and watched a girl die. A girl with a family and friends at home in District Eight, oh God, in District Eight, where somebody he cared about probably cared about her.
John ran.
He ran with no sense of direction or meaning, running aimlessly now he had finally gotten his muscles to work. They pushed him onwards and he ran, and ran, and ran. His thoughts were spiralling out of control and worse than the disgust or the guilt was the truth, the horrible truth, that he had not felt fear or distress. He had raised the gun and pulled the trigger and for one terrible, hideous second, it had felt good. The rush, the adrenaline, the finally fucking fighting back against something that caused him pain- it had felt right.
There were various pods of shelter clustered along the river, and he found himself in one of the tree-based ones without even realising. Heart hammering, he turned to the left and found himself surrounded by forest; the same when he turned to the right. No no no, he was back, he was back in the woods with the trees that reached for him and would not let him go. This was not what he wanted, this was not what was supposed to happen.
He twisted frantically, but everywhere around him was the same, a never-ending army of bark and branches rushing to snare him. He tried to continue running but a thorned vine tore at his ankle and endless twigs scratched like needles across his arms, his hands, his face. The trees pressed in on him, never-ending, pinning him where he was with no sense of escape. He wondered what Harry must think of him now: whether she was remembering Clara's killer and silently grouping the two of them together, linked incurably by blood spilled.
Oh, and it had all been so placid, so sweet, so meaningless. Walk around a forest, cook some food- he had really started to wonder if he could just wait the whole thing out. He laughed out loud hysterically at the thought of it. Welcome to reality, welcome to the Hunger Games, welcome to the end of everything you thought you knew. They had told John about the threat of dying- but what about the threat of killing? What about what that did to you?
When he came across the hollowed-out log, wide and lying in a thicket of bushes, he didn't think twice. He squirmed into it desperately, trying to escape the woods that threatened to swallow him whole, that saw the death upon his hands and knew. It was dim and musty and damp, but it felt like a bunker in a war he did not understand and so he stayed in place.
He swore that the bark was moving, colours bursting out of it that whispered, voices, voices he knew and voices he did not know. He heard his name. He heard the girl's name, for although he could not hear or remember it but he knew it was hers. It briefly crossed his mind that he was probably going insane. It briefly crossed his mind that this was probably no bad thing, considering the circumstances.
When he awoke, he was not sure if he had passed out or if he fallen asleep. It didn't really matter. It wouldn't change a thing.
