Chapter Ten: Victorious
A/N: Thank you for the reviews, lovelies! I really do appreciate it! Because you've all been so great, I've been getting to work on this, and here's the next chapter. It's the end of Elethea's Games, but definitely not the end of her story yet ;) Remember, reviews are love, and motivate me into writing!
"My wounds cry for the grave,
My soul cries for deliverance
Will I be denied, Christ, tourniquet
My suicide?"
- Tourniquet, Evanescence
Elethea's POV
I'm hunting down the boy from District 3 – my final adversary. All I wanted to do was end this once and for all, cut loose the tension that's coiled inside me as tightly as the knots I used to tie with Dom during training. I find him at dawn, fiddling with something around the fountain. The water reflects off his face and hair, shimmering and swaying. I catch my breath and watch him from a crevice between buildings, for once grateful for my small size.
I steel myself and twirl one of my knives in my hand, watching it glitter in the sunlight. I watch District 3 carefully. I don't even know his name. But I have to do this, because I swore a silent oath to Dom's corpse that I would win. District 4 will have its Victor – it just isn't the one that everyone expected. I take a deep breath and step out of the shadows.
"District 3."
The boy spins around. He isn't surprised to see me, but then again, he shouldn't be. I'm the only other tribute left in the arena after all. He inclines his head almost formally.
"4."
"So." I stare down at my knife, watching how the light of the sun bounces off it. "Just you and me. Scared?"
"No." District 3 shakes his head, but I know he's lying. I can see the trepidation building in his eyes as I close in on him. He's done something to rig the fountain, judging by the way he seemed to be fixing something up before.
"Liar," I retaliate, before winging my knife at him. I'm impatient. I don't want to drag this out any longer than necessary. The District 3 boy hurls himself out of the way and I run at him, tackling him to the pavement. It hurts and the world spins like a merry-go-round. He isn't too much bigger than me, but he manages to throw me off and grab a fistful of my hair, dragging me towards the water. I yelp and struggle.
I manage to shove him away, backing away from him. I can't go near that water in the fountain, no way. It glimmers invitingly, like the sea at high tide when the waves crash over the rocks…but District 3 knows I like water. He grabs my arms but I slam my foot into his shin, causing him to hurl me to the ground. My head smacks onto the stone and everything spins in and out of focus. I whirl my legs around, knocking the boy's feet from underneath him. I reach for my knife, but he hauls me up first.
He starts dragging me slowly but surely towards the fountain. I flail, kicking and panicking. He lands a punch to my gut but I spit in his face and he flinches and staggers back. I lunge with my knife but he hits me across the face, his fist catching my mouth. There's a metallic taste in my mouth and I grimace, spitting out blood. He kick me in the ribs hard enough to make me stumble, the wind knocked out of me, but despite being out of breath I kick back, sending him into the water.
He lights up like a Christmas tree, the electricity pulsing through him as he screams and flails. It's a horrible sight, so horrible that I want to be sick, or turn away, but I can't. This is the finale. This is my victory, bitter as it tastes in my mouth. The boy finally, after what seems like forever, stops twitching and stills. His cannon resonates throughout the arena, empty apart from me. I'm so alone. It doesn't feel like victory.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" The voice booms out across Panem and I wince. The pain sparks in my ribs and I crumple to my knees. "The winner of the 69th Hunger Games – Elethea Ambrose!"
I curl myself into a ball and cry.
Finnick's POV
Elethea is escorted into the waiting room, where I sit anxiously in my chair, clutching the arms so tightly that my knuckles have gone white. The dark-haired girl who enters is hardly the argumentative, overconfident child who went into the arena. There's dried blood all over Elethea's face, days old by now. Her hair's messy and there's a glazed look about her eyes. I stand up and walk over as she plays with her hands uncomfortably.
She's the first Victor from 4 since me. She is the same age as I was when I won, but even now she seems so painfully young that it hurts like a knife to see how much one person can change...and for Elethea, it's only the beginning. She looks up at me, and her eyes are like knives cutting into my soul. The misery there is something I can't avoid.
"Dom," she whispers, and I reach out to gently wipe the blood from her face. She's very pale underneath it all, and she's definitely lost some weight since entering the arena. Elethea seems more tiny than ever.
"I know," I reply softly. That's all I can say, the only words that come out of my mouth. I don't know how to make this young girl feel better. Even at eighteen, I still don't know how to comfort a child. I would be the worst father or brother ever. She bites her lip, and I wonder if she's going to cry.
"He would hate me."
"No, he wouldn't," I insist. Elethea didn't kill Dom out of spite, or even the necessity to survive. She had killed him because she had wrongly assumed him to be Romulus come to get her. She had been scared and it had been a mistake, a horrible mistake.
"I murdered him," Elethea informs me, tears welling in her green eyes. In some ways, I wish the boy from District 3 had killed her. Wouldn't it be better, for this young girl to meet a quick end rather than having to endure the torment I know is yet to come?
"It was an accident," I assure him, putting my hands on his shoulders. She is so little. It seems strange that someone so young and small can have won the Games. I was the same age, but I sure wasn't barely over five feet tall.
"And Romulus..." Elethea swallows hard. "I mutilated him..."
I nod slowly. "He deserved it."
She shakes her head fervently. "No one deserved that."
I sigh heavily. It seems like Elethea sees herself as a monster, and there's nothing I can do to convince her otherwise. I know that the journey is going to be long and hard. I'm eighteen and it still hurts. I don't know when it's going to stop. Maybe it never does. Elethea buries her face in her hands and I put my arms around her, hugging her close. Whatever the case, we Victors have to look after each other. We're in this together.
"He should have lived," Elethea murmurs, "Not me. He was stronger."
"So was Romulus," I remind her. While Dom was stabbed in the dark, Elethea had beaten Romulus in a fair fight in broad daylight.
"You think I don't know that?" Elethea rubs her arms and shifts uncomfortably. I can tell that she is still traumatised by what Romulus tried to do to her. "I should have died."
"I'm glad you didn't," I admit. Maybe it's just good to know I have another Victor to feel my pain, selfish as that is. Elethea's only four years younger than me. Perhaps we'll become friends over time. I'd like a friend.
"When does it stop hurting?" Elethea asks.
I'd give anything not to answer the question. She's just a child. A child who has, by chance, won the 69th Hunger Games. How are you supposed to tell a child that they will never wake up from the nightmare, that it's going to take over their whole reality?
"It doesn't."
Elethea bites her lip hard, tears running down her cheeks. I kiss the top of her head and hold her close as she sobs. I understand what it must be like to realise things are never going to go back to how they used to be. I still fear for her. She's a pretty little girl, and she's almost certainly going to grow up to be a beauty. I don't want Snow to have Elethea used as I am used.
"Why did he look after me?" Elethea asks, looking up at me through teary eyes as though I have all the answers.
"Because he cared about you," I remark. It had been obvious to everyone, everywhere. Even the other Careers had surely noticed it. When I heard Elethea's scream of distress at Dom's death, I understood that she really did love him, in some way. I shake the matter away, because it doesn't seem fair for a fourteen-year-old to have her heart broken that way.
"He shouldn't have." Elethea shakes her head vigorously. "I'm not worth it. He should have focused on keeping himself alive."
"I care about you," I state. It's true in a way. Sure, she was an annoying brat before, but I've come to see this girl as almost like my baby sister, someone I need to protect. I understand why Dom wanted to protect her, although the sixteen-year-old's feelings for Elethea had been romantic rather than brotherly.
"Yeah, but you're my mentor," Elethea points out, as if that means I care by default, because I have to.
"There's no difference," I insist. The need to protect her is the similarity between Dom and I, although the feelings causing the protective instincts are different.
"They all thought I was the baby. But in the end I was the worst monster of all." She clings to me tightly, and her mind seems to turn back to her family. "Leon...what's he going to think of me?"
"I'm sure he'll just be happy to have you home," I reply, although doubt tugs inside me at the mention of Elethea's brother.
"I don't know if I can do it," Elethea murmurs. I can tell that going home frightens her, as it frightened me. To return as if nothing has happened is a scary prospect. She shivers against me.
"You can," I say firmly, gripping her shoulders and looking into those tearful dark green eyes. "I know you can."
"But I'm so alone," Elethea whispers, and I feel pity for her. She's not alone, even though I know what it's like to feel that way.
"You have me," I remind her, a slight smile crossing my lips.
She shakes her head. "You're busy."
"I have time," I assure her. It should be...interesting, to have another teenage Victor around the place, following me around like a lost puppy. But he supposed Mags had had to deal with him, so he could deal with Elethea.
"What do you do?" Elethea inquires curiously. "To stop the pain?"
"I try and take my mind off it." I zone out momentarily, my mind flicking back to my own Games, before I smile back down at her. "Make myself busy."
"How?" She persists almost desperately. I can already see her searching for an escape, a way out of the miserable life she's been forced into. Surely even she's thinking that death would have been preferable.
"Depends on where I am and who I'm with." I brush her dark hair out of her face. "Sometimes I swim."
She nods silently and I hug her, holding her close despite the fact that she remains still in my arms. She buries her face in my chest and I rhythmically stroke her hair, hoping that she can find some sort of comfort.
"When do you stop becoming numb?" she inquires, just when I thought there'd come an end to her questions.
"It takes a few weeks," I reply quietly.
She stares at her feet. "I just wish it would all go away."
"We all do," I say grimly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Elethea's POV
"You killed me." Dom circles me with a spear clutched in his hand, his blue eyes burning with hatred. I watch him with only my small throwing knives in my grasp. "I saved you so many times…and that's how you repay me?"
He spins the spear and his face becomes Romulus's, hard and full of malicious glee. I take a few staggering steps back, but he advances on me quickly, shoving me to the ground and holding the spear up over me.
"You don't deserve a quick death."
There is no time to beg, to plead for mercy. Romulus drives the spear through my stomach and twists and I'm screaming and screaming as blood pumps out of me and floods the arena, staining it red…
I wake up tangled in the sheets, crying out in panic. I run my hands frantically over my stomach, searching for any sign that I've been stabbed. After a few moments I sink back against the pillows in relief. It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. I curl onto my side and start sobbing.
I look up as my door open, feeling remorse as I've likely woken Finnick. But it's not Finnick in the doorway. It's a little old woman who's barely bigger than me. She must be Mags, the other mentor who accompanied us to the Capitol. I've seen glances of her. She's in her seventies at least. But she is frail, and it makes sense that Finnick has been the one seeing us, although I wonder if Mags is the one behind his advice.
The old woman walks over and sits beside me on the bed. I wonder what she's going to say, but instead she just starts to softly stroke my dark hair back. Although the gesture surprises me, I close my eyes and after some time, Mags's gentleness lulls me into a dreamless sleep where I am safe.