Arena, Day Six.

Acacia Wilson — 16 years
District Seven Female

I mentally will my hands to not shake.

I don't know what part my brain is playing in this operation, but my hands have been steady so far, so I'm hoping it's enough. I'm sitting cross-legged on the ground in the mud, on a dryer patch of land Finnea and I had picked out earlier. It's a dead end, but there's enough crates and sand bags stacked behind me that it's an easy scramble up and out of the trench if something corners us. Tried and proven.

Finnea reaches into her backpack and pulls out the little canister of what she thinks is poison. Of what I'm choosing to believe it's poison. Sure, it's says 'DANGEROUS' in big, bolded letters on the bottom of it, but the Capitol's done a hell of a lot worse things than lie about stuff.

"If you drip that shit on me and I die, I'm coming back to haunt you."

Finn looks over her shoulder and gives me a small smile, huffing as she turns back around to remove the lid.

I consider that an accomplishment. She been quiet since Porter, quieter than before. I didn't think that was possible until now.

Maybe it's because we have a chance, now, because she finally feels like she's accomplishing something. It's good for her.

I feel calmer now too. It should be going the opposite way, I think. After Porter, my hands shook for almost two days straight, shoved into my pockets so Finn or the Capitol or District Seven didn't see it. They're steady, now. Steadier than they were before. I'm unused to the feeling of it.

Finnea comes back and crouches in front of me, the silver canister clutched tightly in her hand.

"I was serious about haunting you, by the way," I point out. "We better not fuck this up."

"Nah, we won't," she says quietly.

It's almost easy to believe her. Nothing's happened to us for three days. Really, nothing's come after us this whole time. We've been lucky. But now I'm just waiting for it. And waiting for it's getting too hard.

We need to move. I want to move.

"After this we're moving out," I decide. Finn looks up at me for a split second before returning her gaze to the canister.

"Why?" She asks quietly, but not decidedly against it. I mark that as a success.

"There are still three Careers left. They're not going to die with us sitting here."

She pauses, almost freezing, and carefully puts the canister on the ground out of reach of either of us. Her eyes are troubled.

"You saying what I think you're saying?"

Porter would want me to. Us to. He would want us to win. To fight. To go to war. He was more made for it than either of us. I look up at Finnea.

"They've hunted us for too many years. We're going to tear the three of them down."

Camilla Harthgrove — 18 years
District One Female

"Honestly, do you ever shut up?"

"I think I've proven quite effectively that the answer's no."

"Well, you barely talked for the first few days that we were in here, and now it feels like your mission is to talk me to death."

Hariwin grins. I roll my eyes.

"Maybe I am trying to talk you to death. You never know."

"Great," I mutter under my breath. Even though I'm walking ahead of him, I can practically see the grin on his face. It's infuriating. This whole situation is infuriating. We haven't seen anybody since we left the bunker two days ago. I'm beginning to think that this place is bigger than we initially expected, or maybe it's just easier to get lost.

There are nine other tributes left. Hariwin and I have only killed two people. So who's out there doing it?

"Think it's the Six guy?" I ask idly. Hariwin's a bit closer to my back, now, and I can hear the noise of frustration he makes before he's able to push it back down. I turn around, glancing over my shoulder at him, and he's scowling. So it's evidently still a sore spot.

"Don't worry. You can have him. I'm not touching that shit."

"Gee, thanks," Hariwin quips. "Don't think so, though. That's what, four people since the bloodbath? There's no way. He volunteered, but he didn't have it in him. Like Daniels, only he didn't talk as much."

I sigh, hanging my head whilst trying not to lean back and hit him.

"Anyone I should leave for you?" Hariwin asks casually. I'm surprised he's even asking. He might have lost some of his initial murder-drive, but it's still there. I'm just wondering how long before we do find someone and it comes back out.

"Nah, I'm good. Go for it," I tell him. Really, there's no one I need to kill. Want to kill. I didn't want to kill the Five girl, necessarily, but she's still dead. Everyone who's still standing in my way is the exact same. A casualty of war. Something that needed to happen.

A spasm runs through my stomach the second I think it, and I freeze abruptly, stopping dead in my tracks. Hariwin nearly walks into my back.

"Jesus, woman, warn a guy, would you?" He snaps, stepping around me. It takes a few seconds for him walking to slow to a halt, turning back to look at me, one eyebrow raised.

"You gonna make it, or should I just keep going?"

I squeeze my eyes shut for a brief second. I'm doing this for myself. For what could be my future child. So why does it feel so wrong? To survive and live my life all I have to do is ruin God knows how many others. Take away children and siblings and people who don't deserve it. I knew that was it, when I volunteered. I didn't have a problem with it then. Everything changed when Sheridan took my hand the night of the interviews and told me to fight for it.

Fight for it, I remind myself. Not just for yourself. For your child. For Sheridan. For everyone that's died.

For everyone I'm going to kill.

Abigail Locey — 17 years
District Ten Female

I think I've decided that I don't like this forest.

Of course, I think I decided that the moment I laid eyes on it. But Quill's plan made sense, and we're okay so far, and that's all that matters. Everyone who's died so far has died in the trenches or in the bunkers and as haunting at this place looks, maybe it's safe.

"Abigail, don't move."

Or not.

I freeze from my sitting position on the ground, leaning against one of the few trees we left alone. Quill had been crouched a few feet in front of me, shoving together something that half-resembles a fire, but now he's staring over my shoulder, machete in one hand and the other slowly pulling the gun out of his belt. Every one of my instincts is telling me to go for my own knife, but the look in Quill's eyes is saying I shouldn't bother moving, at least not for the time being.

He raises the gun. I squeeze my eyes shut, even though I know he's not aiming it at me.

Bang.

I want to yelp, but I shove it back down. There's a high-pitched squeal from behind me, and then silence. I peek my eyes open. Quill's more relaxed now. I lean over sideways, peeking back over my shoulder. It's another one of the mutts, the same kind that almost took out his eye, except it looks three times the size of the other one. There's a bullet hole in the middle of it's face, and I grimace. It really didn't need to be any uglier than it already was, fur all caked with mud and limbs misshapen. I turn back to Quill, sighing.

"Well, now we're even, I guess— holy shit."

Quill blinks at me. My heart is in my throat.

"Okay, you don't move now."

Something in his face drops.

There's three of them behind him. I swear they keep getting bigger. They're at the edge of the little clearing we've stationed ourselves in, but we're already outnumbered. Their teeth have to be longer than my fingers.

"If you must know," Quill manages. "There's two more behind you."

Without thinking, I turn as quickly as possible, putting my back to Quill. He gets the message and does the same. I keep going until the backs of my shoulders knock against his. Our backpacks are both across the clearing. There's nothing between us and them but fifteen, maybe twenty feet of space.

"On a scale of 1-10, how screwed are we."

"11."

"How optimistic," I mutter. He might be right, though. My knife is nothing compared to the size of these things, and we know from experience how fast they move. Even if Quill could manage to get a good enough shot off to kill one of them, the other two would be on him in the seconds, and the noise would no doubt send the two staring me down into a frenzy.

"There's another in the trees to our right," Quill notices. It's lurking further back, jaws open and saliva dripping onto the ground where it walks.

Three for each of us, and that's hoping they don't have anymore friends.

"Do we have a plan?" Quill asks.

"Don't die," I fire back quickly, and I can feel the sigh he lets out against my back. It's true, though. I'm not losing him too. Not after Dess. Not after Falco. He's the closest thing I have to a friend left.

My heartbeat's ticking away the seconds. One. I tighten my grip. Two. Quill tenses against my back.

The one on our right springs into action.

Quill swivels his arm and shoots. It skims across the top of the thing's back. The other five spring into action the second he moves.

I'm beginning to think Quill's 11 was an optimistic one.

I dive out of the way from one as it leaps towards me, hitting the ground with a thump. I get an extra second to kick out as one rounds on me, snapping my foot into it's leg. Despite their size, they're surprisingly fragile. There's a sharp crack where my foot connects and it howls in pain. The other one replaces it, and then the one from further in the woods, lingering behind it, menacing and slavering.

I've got one knife. Which means I have to let them get close enough to kill. The thought isn't a reassuring one.

I lunge to my feet and start running.

The two uninjured ones give chase. I don't even have a second to make sure that Quill's still alive. He could be dying and I wouldn't even know it.

My lunge takes me to the injured one, it's back leg dangling. It bares it's teeth at me despite it. Before it can get a chance to maneuver even with it's injury, I rip my knife through it's throat.

There's blood coating my hand and most of my upper arm. It's retched, steaming against the cool air. And in the split second I stop to kill this one, one of the others slams into my back. I just barely manage to turn in mid air, striking out an arm in an attempt to get it anywhere other than on top of me that barely budges it at all. When I land, it feels like every ounce of my breath is driven straight out of my body, and there are teeth snapping an inch from my face.

"Abigail!"

I try to look towards Quill, but the teeth in my face are the more important part. Something strikes it in the side of the head. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to stop in sheer confusion.

It's the gun.

It bounces off and lands on the ground a foot away from me. I stretch out my arm, fingers clasping around the barrel, and swing it into it's head again. Whatever's going in their head isn't very promising, because it rolls off me, limbs flailing, onto the ground. Quill's only got one of his own left. I raise the gun and fire. A bullet buries itself in the other one's head as it leaps towards me mid-air, sending it crashing to the ground. I get onto my knees, burying the knife in the remaining one's back as it lies dazed a few feet away. It lets out a quiet whimper and goes still.

I turn in time to see Quill lop the head clean off of the last one, seeing it roll into the leaves. There's blood everywhere, and I think I can feel some, thick and cloying, on the back of my head from where I fell.

Quill looks at me in exasperation. "Will these things ever leave me alone."

It feels wrong to laugh, but one almost escapes. He steps over the corpse of one and offers me a hand, grimacing at the blood coating my own. He starts hauling me up.

Something leaps out of the darkening shadows of the trees. A scream just barely erupts from my throat, but it's not in time. It crashes into Quill's back, his hand ripped out of mine. His head cracks against the ground. There's a part of me screaming that he's already dead, neck snapped, but he's still moving, trying to get away from it, but his machete went flying and I can't find the knife, can't find the gun, we're done for—

An arrow buries itself in the mutt's neck.

I freeze, on my hands and knees on the ground, searching for the knife. Quill's eyes, squeezed shut against the attack, snap open.

"What the fuck?" He says in disbelief.

I shove the mutt off of him with one hand and wrap my other arm around him, hauling him up into a sitting position. He goes stiff as a board. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think that this is his instinctual reaction to getting hugged. His chin still tips forward the slightest bit, resting on my shoulder, and one of his hands comes up to rest on the back of my shoulder, his other arm bracing the two of us up.

"What the fuck," he mutters again, but this time I can tell he's looking over my shoulder again. I can almost see his eyes, confused and wide, the faintest bit of terror lingering in the back of them.

The arrow. In the middle of everything, I forgot about the arrow.

I turn.

It's Ross.

Mulberry Flax — 12 years
District Eleven Male

I go back to the Cornucopia.

Again.

I know, I know. Remember what happened last time, and all that shit. But now I know for a fact that half of them are dead and the other half's out roaming, and they don't have any plans on coming back anytime soon.

Believe me, I spend a few extra hours outside the bunker making sure no one's in there. I really don't need a repeat of last time.

Eventually I creep in, propping the door open with my shoulder and shoving my head in the gap. All of the doors are shut but one, letting a wide rectangle of light in from the opposite side of the room. The bodies are gone. Don't quite know how the Capitol managed to get them, what with a roof over their heads, but there's nothing left but the bloodstains on the ground and the weapons laying perfectly where their hands would have been, had their corpses still been there.

It's eerie. It's never been this silent in here before. I shove the door I entered through completely open, making sure it doesn't swing shut again. The light's helping.

It still feels like I shouldn't be here, like this place has been claimed and it's now off-limits territory. Maybe their ghosts are still here. I wince a little bit when I see the blood splatters along the crates that are no doubt from the knife in Amara's forehead.

That wasn't my fault. None of it was, not even close. What was I supposed to do, latch myself onto Terron's back like an over-aggressive koala and hope for the best? It's a miracle there weren't more casualties. I didn't plan on being one.

All of the bigger packs are gone, no doubt taken by the remaining three, but I probably wouldn't have been able to carry most of them anyway. I find a smaller one and begin shoving as much food as I can into it, shiny silver packages of it. I leave one in my hand and tear it open with my teeth. These adventures are almost always started because I'm so damn hungry. It's one thing back in Eleven, when you know there's no food and you have to put up with it, but it's another thing when there's a whole Cornucopia full of it and it's right in front of you.

If only the feeling of eyes staring at me from every direction would go away.

Out of habit, I glance around. There's nothing but the shadows in the corner of the room and the sound of the wind whistling through the doors.

Maybe the whole Games thing is just making me more paranoid. Maybe it's because I've never had someone watching my back. Amara almost counted. Probably would have if she hadn't died right in front of me.

The only ounce of satisfaction I get is that Terron is probably rotting in whatever corner of hell he crawled out of, and he didn't manage to drag me down with him.

Despite the stillness of the air and the general on edge feeling that's settled into my bones, it's safer here than it is anywhere else. When the mutts came, four of them went outside and they shut the doors. We were safe in here.

It's ironic, I know. Twelve year old from District Eleven single-handedly takes the Cornucopia from approximately no one.

But there's a safety here, and for the first time that I can remember, I'm not soaked to the bone or freezing or starving to death in a trench.

I grab another packet of food and a bottle of water, tucking my bag under the same arm. With my free hand I begin to scrabble up the back of the Cornucopia, wincing when my wet shoes slide against the metal. Eventually I crest the top, sliding forward until I'm seated on the edge with my legs dangling before the mouth. It feels like something's going to slither out of it and grab my legs, drag me down and not let me come back up, but nothing does.

I'm being irrational. I know I am.

But if I'm being irrational, I know I'm alive, and that has to be good enough.

Rossili Daniels — 17 years
District Four Male

In my head, all the ways I found her were infinitely better than this.

I wasn't watching her fight for her life with an ally I didn't know existed, wasn't watching the panicked look in her eyes when she realized he was going to die, watching her turn and look me in the eye like she didn't even know me.

Maybe the only Ross Abbie can know is the one that killed Falco.

I can't even remember what District the guy is from, with so many people and names blurring together. I've never even spoken to him. He looks confused, though, and angry, but the same type of thing is already leeching into Abbie's eyes, like I'm damned for even trying to come here.

"Should I push a tree on him?" The guy mutters, a little too loud to be considering whispering.

To say I have no idea what's going on is an underestimation.

There's something here telling me not to move, though, not to cross that line. Not yet.

I sling the bow back over my shoulder and drop my arm. Both of them continue staring at me from their position on the ground, unmoving.

In my head, it wasn't this awkward. I didn't expect her to be happy, necessarily, but, well. It's still wrong.

"Ross?" Is what she finally decides on, hesitant and unsure, like she doesn't know if it's really me. I look down at the ground, scuffing my feet through the leaves. Looking her in the eyes is too hard. It's like she's looking for something that used to be there, something that went away a long time ago.

"Yeah," I settle on quietly. I only look up when she stumbles to her feet. Her ally is looking between the two of us like he just stumbled across a very interesting sideshow, looking more curious than nervous. Abbie steps carefully around the bodies of one of the mutts, swiping her knife off the ground. Something like fear spikes into my heart, just for a second. If she wants to hurt me, she'll be able to. He won't be able to fight back against her. Maybe before, if he hadn't known her, if he hadn't bothered to. But not now.

She stops a foot in front of me. I make myself look her in the eye.

And then she slaps me across the face.

It takes me more than a second to register that she just hit me, but my head's very clearly snapped to the side, and out of the corner of my one eye I can very clearly see her allies jaw-dropped expression. He looks proud. That, or impressed.

It would be funny if it wasn't due to the fact that she just slapped me.

When I lift my head up, my cheek is stinging, but it's nothing worse than what's already happened. Her hand is more red than what my face feels like, but what's worse are the angry, burning tears in her eyes. Seeing that hurts more than anything Terron ever did.

"Okay, I deserved that," is all I can think of to say. Abbie looks like she wants to hit me again. Probably multiple times. I think she might have, if her ally hadn't pushed himself to his feet behind her. She looks back at him for a second, and when she turns back towards me, she's staring firmly at the ground.

"I know sorry's never gonna be enough for you," I say quickly. "But there's nothing else for me to say. I'm sorry. More sorry than I think I've ever been. But I can't take it back. I killed him. Believe me, it took long enough for me to even be able to say it outloud. You can hate me, do whatever you want, but you're not getting rid of me. Not now."

Her head snaps up at the last bit. Now she just looks angry.

"What are you going to do?" She snaps. "If this is some shit mission to prove that you're still you with emotions and actual feelings, don't bother. I don't need protecting, watching over, whatever you're going to call it. You proved that when you killed him."

Her ally is looking very interested in a tree off to his left. It might be the wind, but I think he's whistling.

"I know you don't," I say quietly. "But I knew I'd hate myself for as long as I'm still alive if I didn't try."

She's silent for a long time. Her lips are pressed so hard together they're white, and she absentmindedly scrapes at a flake of dried blood wedged tight underneath one of her fingernails. She looks worse than I last saw her, but more resolved. Stronger.

"Abbie," I plead. "Please."

If she turns me away, I'll go, but I won't know what else to do. I won't go back to Hariwin and Camilla. I won't have anyone.

Abbie sighs shakily and runs a hand over her face. She turns back to her ally. He stares back at her impassively. He doesn't look like he's going to hurt the guy who just saved his life, but I also have no idea who he is.

On a last whim I slip the bow off my shoulder and hold it out to her. Her eyes trail down from my face to the hand offering it.

"It's yours," I explain. "I don't want it. I took it for you. Either way, it's yours."

Slowly, carefully, she wraps one of her hands around the arc. I drop it from my hand. She looks at the thing like it's not real, turning it over in her hands. I take the sheath of arrows off my back, offering them to her once she hooks the bow on her shoulder. This time she takes them quicker.

"Thank you," she says eventually, barely a whisper. I nod, even though she's back to not looking me in the eyes.

"Okay," Abbie says. "Okay. But. But I'm not—" she struggles to find the words. "I'm not going through that again. I can't."

I offer her a tight smile. I rest my hand on her arm, and count it as a victory when she doesn't shove me away. She still kind of looks like she wants to. I look over her shoulder at her ally, who is currently leaning face-first into a tree, hands pressed tight over his face. I can't exactly blame him. I feel like I'm living in a soap opera. Abbie follows my gaze, letting out a tight, but fond, smile. She steps carefully away from my arm and strides over to him. I can't hear what they're saying, but I can tell that they care about each other, that they work well together.

I watch the two of them gather up their stuff, trying not to feel like something important just changed. It did, really, but not in the way I should be excited about. Maybe I'm changing things. Making them better.

For Falco. For Astrid, Amara and Sheridan. For my friends. For my Mom.

Abbie crosses back over to me with him right behind her. On a whim, I hold my hand out to him, waiting to see what'll happen.

"I'm Ross," I say casually. "District Four. In case it wasn't already made obvious."

He stares back at my hand, looks quickly to my face, and then stares at Abbie. She tries not to smile.

"Seriously, what the fuck is going on?" He asks, for the third time in ten minutes, even though he knows what's going on and Abbie might have forced him to agree to it.

"This is Quill," Abbie chimes in. "He has a way with words."

He scowls and shrugs away from the hand she puts on his shoulder, stepping around both of us to begin making a path through the woods. I stare after him, and then look down at Abbie. She meets my eyes for a moment before stepping around me herself, eyes downcast, jogging for a second to catch up to him. I'm left standing in the middle of the woods, their forms retreating from me, watching as she shoves him in the shoulder, her smile already easier.

Well, maybe things aren't better yet.

But I'm working on it.

So. I've had the same victor for god only knows how many months and while writing this chapter I started imagining it as someone else. Help. And I know when I updated last Friday I said you guys were waiting until Sunday for this one, but I have no self-control.

Anyway, I've written a lot of weird alliances but Quill/Abbie/Ross might take the cake. They're funny, though. Even more fun to write. Quill really doesn't know what's going on or how he ended up here, pray for him.

In other news, I know exactly how many chapters of this story are left, because I actually took the time to plan it all out. I know exactly when we're getting the victor. I know exactly how many POV's everyone has left until I murder them. I know what chapter I'll be able to mark this story as complete, and that's really exciting. If I don't screw it up. And well, I've said it to a few people, but a sequel is definitely looking more promising. Still won't happen for a few months, but it's never too early to start thinking, if you really want to.

Until next time.