Incredible beta... I adore my readers... I don't own HG... Rated T for lots 'o stuff...
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"Why... what happened?" Cal squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing her temples methodically.
"We raided his little camp, like you said. And got Pearl back," James jerked his chin in her vague direction. She just tossed her hair and went back to pouting. "And killed Three. The one who's been making all these traps. We did exactly what you told us to." He crossed his thick arms defiantly over his broad chest, trying to look intimidating. His threatening glare was lost on Cal's flaming composure.
"I did not tell you to get Lecha killed!"
He shrugged. "'Snot like she actually did anything around here."
"She... didn't... do anything? Is that what you think?" her pitch cracked up another octave. "That you don't do anything? That Neveah doesn't do anything? Hell, that Copper doesn't do anything?"
His huge mouth opened to appose. She didn't give him the air.
"Of course we do things! We're each essential to make this alliance work. You're brawn. Neveah's somewhat more valuable than you. Pearl's speed. Copper's work. And Lecha was our only guard, keeping the only steady water supply as our's!"
They argue like a married couple, I thought bitterly as I listened to their rallying voices. With a sigh, I settled back against the smooth rock's surface, feeling its warmth soak through my thin tank and onto my skin. At least the sun was back. It sure beat the snow. I ran my wool coat over my hands, sliding it from palm to palm systematically as I considered the hardy fabric. It could be used for something else, I mused. A cot? Or maybe we could make a better pack out of it-the neon yellow ones tended to grab the eye. This dark grey material wouldn't be nearly as conspicuous...
"Neveah can guard. He'd be good at that." James tossed his overgrown black mane out of his eyes arrogantly.
"Really? You want me to leave my most valuable ally here?"
"Your most valuable ally? Ouch, that hurts." He put a hand over his heart and pouted in mock-hurt.
"Yes. He has strength and brain activity. Rare combination, that."
"Well if I had to choose," Pearl piped up from the pond side. "I would leave the little one here. She can guard just as well as Nev or James. Better than James, actually." She scowled at James' broad back.
Nev? Another nickname? I took a silent sigh and ignored Pearl's batting eyes. Nev is okay. Better than Nevie. Or Vay-Vay. That was bad.
"Oh, yeah, there's a plan," James said, tone dripping with sarcasm. "Leave the little unreliable twit here-"
"Well that's not very nice, is it?" I didn't raise my gaze from the coat in my hands as I spoke, and didn't bother checking his reaction. I'm not one to pick fights, but this guy... deserves a challenge now and then.
"Without her, we'd all be hopelessly tangled in wires we didn't even see," I continued dryly.
"Sure. Great. Now that we've baby-sat her as she disengaged all her fancy traps, I say we kill her." He kept his nose high as he regarded Copper's small form, curled up with her arms around her knees on the ground by Cal. The little girl had sort of taken a liking to Cal- she was the only one of us Copper would talk to, and was always met by a low, calm response from our Captain. I guess the woman behind our strategy had a motherly side too. Who would've guessed?
"Go right ahead," Cal replied icily. "Just know you'd be breaking our treaty, and we'd-"
"-have every right to kill me, I know, I know," he said with a roll of his eyes. "Just trying to be reasonable. Our whole goal is to dispose of other tributes. We haven't been doing very much disposing lately."
"A fact that worries me, too," Cal said, quieter now, as if this was a topic she'd been giving a lot of thought to. She continued in the same low, stressed hiss. "There have been hardly any deaths. How are the Gamemakers keeping Panem entertained with this?"
"What, we aren't entertaining?" Pearl tossed her hair over to her other shoulder and ran her fingers through it briefly, before giving up with the snarls and sighing loudly.
"Not everyone has a face pretty enough to keep an audience enthralled," Cal said, dead-voiced.
Pearl scoffed. "And you think you don't? Really, girl, they would be dying at your feet if I could just get ahold of some mascara and a cocktail dress. You are so lucky-your legs are ten miles long! You must have a million admirers back in Four. All those swimmers..." she trailed off as her gaze slipped into her own fantasy of what Four looks like. I bet her picture didn't include the constant smell of fish or the poverty that swept the back streets and alleys by the dockshops.
"Idiotism aside," Cal piped blatantly. "I think it makes the most sense for-"
She cut off suddenly, gaze locked on me and mind obviously whirling.
"What?" James demanded. Copper glanced up at her in concern.
"Swimmers." Her dazed stare didn't waver.
James rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm sure they are very attractive-"
"No, idiot, swimmers! In the ocean."
Pearl and James stared at her blankly as her idea snapped in my head. I was willing to bet we were going hiking very shortly.
Cal was on her feet in an instant, grabbing the nearest pack and slinging it agilely over her shoulder. "We're going to find the water. The salt water. Haven't you been smelling it?"
Spear in hand, I swung on a pack of my own. Of course I'd been smelling it. My upper lip was cracking from the amount of times my tongue had skidded over it, tasting the salt in the air. It was one of the only things that reminded me of home. That, and the strip of leather that encircled my neck in a loose sort of jewelry-my token. It was just a bit of leather off the ship deck, but it was stiff and molded to my collar bone with sea salt and watery air. Nothing could be a better reminder of what I'm not going home to; I won't have to work on a shrimping vessel after I've won. Mother and Father can stop worrying about us on the boats... they can retire in peace...
"Uh, no." Pearl rolled her eyes, but picked up on the signal and starting slipping her knives into a great range of hiding places on her person. How she could dart around with that many blades against her skin was beyond me.
"...And how exactly are we going to find your little home-away-from-home?" James drawled, reluctantly gathering himself together.
"Carefully," she muttered, scraping her palms along the tips of her trident. After her gaze took on that satisfied gleam, she measured the rest of us up. "Ready for the off?"
"...But Cal, there's only four of us. And her." Pearl sneered at Copper's small form. "Who's guarding?"
"No one," Cal answered without missing a beat, "because we have this."
We all drifted subconsciously toward the rod she was pulling from her pack. It was... a straw sort of thing. Open on both ends, with intricate netting lodged inside. Its shiny steel coating promised the instrument a long life, something that I get the feeling was a good thing.
"And are you going to introduce us to your little friend?" James taunted after a moment of us studying the tool.
"It's a water purifier," Cal snapped back, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We find the salt water source, and we have an even more limitless supply than before. And a broader, more protectable camp. Which," she took a breath, "would make a perfect home base for hunting."
Pearl opened her mouth to appose, but seemed to be unable to fight Cal's logic.
"That's a long name," James muttered. "I was hoping for Joe. Or Bob."
Cal rolled her eyes as she tucked the purifier away in her pack. "If it better fits your maturity level... it's Wup." With that, she turned on her heel and marched off along the thin stream that poured into our pond, Copper close at her heels.
"Wup? What kind of a name is that?" James called after her, stumbling along in her path.
"Water and purifier. Take the first letters and most prominent vowel, and we have your new friend. Keep up, Clickit."
He grappled for a response as Pearl fell into step behind him, me silently bringing up the rear.
Pearl sighed theatrically. "I liked the pond."
I just nodded and prayed for silence. But who was I kidding?
"It was nice and cool... great drinking... I mean, the ocean can't be all that."
"It is." Crap. What happened to silence?
"Oh?" Her interest was sparked, and victory flickered in her bright gaze.
"It's... nice. More alive than the puddle we've been living off."
"Oh, but I hear it's so dangerous. Not that I've ever seen it..."
"It treats you fine as long as you respect it."
"Respect it? How do you respect water?"
"It's not..." Why didn't I just shut up? "...water. It's the sea. It has currents that can drag you under in an instant... you get tipped overboard, and you're dead..."
She lapsed into silence as we walked along and listened to James and Cal argue with each other. James' frustrated roars were clipped with Cal's sharp tongue of logic, only occasionally broken in a moment in which neither knew what to say. I wondered for the millionth time if it would really be all that dishonorable if Cal, Pearl and I teamed up to get a knife in him...
"So how's your life back home?" Pearl picked up, as if we were close friend who hadn't met in a while.
"It's... great."
"Glad to hear it. Your girlfriend must be so worried about you, coming out here."
The sickly-sweetness that saturated her voice begged for the denial in my response. Why couldn't she leave me alone? Did she really think she was going to be able to crack me like she was so used to cracking others?
"I'm sure she's missing me dearly. Cries herself to sleep every night." I took advantage of her moment of confusion. "Not nearly as bad as your boyfriends, though," I continued in the same quiet tone, carefully emphasizing the plural. "And that bloke from Six? The one you're established with?"
Silent anger blazed behind her gaze for a split second- she obviously wasn't used to boys minding the fact that she has multiple beaus. She blew it off with an airy laugh. "Oh, he was boring and jealous. Preferred his Six brainiac to me, can you believe it?" She sighed as if to ask what the world was coming to. This girl really needed to get over herself.
"And you won't rest until you have another guy trailing you like a lost puppy," I muttered, bending closer to her to make sure she got my point.
"What? No, I-"
"...Are all alone, without your usual trail of followers, and you need attention," I whispered back.
She laughed louder for the cameras, but I caught the note of hysteria in the sound. She leaned against me in earnest then, matching her steps to mine and smiling as if we were having the time of our lives. Her voice dropped to an intimate whisper. "Maybe I just need something warm to help me fall asleep."
I harshly swallowed the bile in my throat. "Maybe you can't stand being alone."
"Maybe I have my sights set a bit... higher... this time."
"Maybe you need a severe reality check and a realization of who you're talking to."
"Maybe I like a blond with a build."
"Maybe this is the arena, not some house party where you have the pick of the crop." I grabbed hold of her arm and yanked her slim frame to a stop, heavily meeting her gaze. With an incredible effort, I pasted a dirty smile to my face, hoping it didn't show how I was biting back the vomit I wanted to spew all over her. Praying the cameras were picking up on our anticipating, knowing expressions, I dropped my tone even lower, so my lips hardly moved and there was no way any camera could hear what I was saying.
"I see right through you, you know that? You're out to kill just as much as the next tribute. And you have the means, too- I've seen you with those blades. We've armed you, and fed you, and supported you; we've led you to kill after kill. You have everything in this arena."
"Everything except-"
"Don't. Push it."
So of course she had to. Hands trailing up from my arms to my shoulders and twining themselves in the thin hair at the base of my neck, her twisted grin split and she yanked herself up to meet my height-
My own grip moved harshly to her shoulders, and with all the pent-up energy I'd been trying to contain, Pearl was sent back a few feet, into a palm trunk, and crumpled on the ground. Long blond hair tangled over her face as she meagerly lifted her head. All a show of patheticness, I told myself. She had the crowd right where she wanted them-at her feet. Poor One girl. What a monster of a Four boy. How could he?
Breath low and ragged with carefully checked rage, I considered her crumpled form. "Leave me alone," I warned her as she began to stagger to her feet, clutching her nose; which, by the look of the stream of blood and slight crookedness, was broken.
"If tat's how you wan' it," she coughed back, trying to flick her hair out of her face as her hands fumbled over her nose.
Walk away, Neveah. Walk away. Leave her.
But then I'd have one very powerful tribute out of my alliance and in for my blood. I needed to somehow get back in her good books... which was exactly the opposite of what I wanted.
With a heavy sigh and an impressive amount of mental strength, I approached her and brushed the bloodied hair off her face. Surprise flickered over her expression as I began wiping away the blood from under her nose and her mouth.
"It's broken," I said gruffly, careful not to meet her gaze.
"Anb?" she mumbled.
"And it's going to be crooked."
A low grumble in her throat gave her opinion of the idea of her face with an imperfect nose.
"I can fix it," I continued, warding all the negative emotion out of my tone.
She sighed and nodded. I carefully place my bloodied hands on either side of her nose and managed to shoot her a victorious glance before I threw all my strength-from heaving nets over the side of the deck-into shoving the core of her nose back into its proper position. She cried out; a feminine, high-pitched sound that was thoroughly satisfying to my bottled temper. A new stream of blood coursed down her face, and I was careful to be overly gentle in mopping it up with the hem of my tank.
"Better?" I asked, letting the tiniest bit of a sneer into the single word.
She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. "Yeah. Loads better. We should find Cal and James."
I didn't need further invitation to leave the bloodied palm. I could vaguely hear her angry steps behind me and allowed myself the smallest smile. Breaking her nose had been fun. Re-breaking it had been better.
"Neveah! Pearl!" Cal's distant cry echoed around the nearest palms.
"Here!" Pearl was quick to call back. We both hastened our paces to a run in the direction of Cal's distress.
"Neveah!"
"Hang on!" I yelled back. This was bad. Cal's voice didn't twist like that unless it was bad.
"Hey," Pearl said, running up alongside me as we hurtled through the palms. "I'm loosing a lot of blood."
"Deal," I growled back, pressing my pace faster. It was no use racing her long, lean legs, though, and she easily matched my speed.
"I could faint at any moment," she continued, hardly short of breath. "I really need something to staunch the flow."
"Use your shirt," I snapped before realizing how bad that sounded. With a growl, I stripped mine off and tossed it to her grinning face. She mumbled a thank-you and pressed the soiled fabric to her nose.
"Pearl? Neveah!"
"Com-" We burst hazardously into a leafy clearing, where Cal's voice was much, much closer.
"There you are." Cal's gaze was wide with stress, a plan obviously ticking away in her head. James lounged against a nearby palm, his bored demeanour clashing drastically with Cal's pacing.
"What's wrong?" Pearl demanded from behind my shirt. She adjusted it to get any untouched space good and thoroughly bloodstained. I shot her a glare.
"It's apparently that Five twerp," James answered nonchalantly.
"What about her?" I asked slowly.
"Copper's gone!" Cal finally burst.
"And?" Pearl pressed.
"And she knows where we're headed, and she has all her trap-setting material, and she has all of our plans. She could take us down in a second."
I was right. It was bad.
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