Warning: This is a violent chapter, a truly M-rated chapter for violence, language, and psychological. . . scariness.
Chapter 34: Match Postponed
In mid-October after the 71st, we're to have another organized excursion outside the District. The boys and I feel the same strange mixture of excitement and apprehension as we did two years ago when Cato and I won. They went last year, too, but I was in the hospital. We're excited as always to go wandering around outside the District, but a little nervous about seeming to know more than we should. So we're careful and never venture off the path the trainers lead us down.
They apparently rotate venues because this isn't the same patch of land we played on two years ago, but the spiel is the same. Everybody take a pack, one of those shocking suits, and a gun and spread out. When we hear the pistol go, have at it. Having no desire to mix things up, the boys and I stay together as usual. They got ganged up on last year, but since they lost early then, no one bothers us now. Not until Caleb draws in a sharp breath of surprise and mild discomfort and I see that his arm is splattered with yellow paint. All three of us raise our guns and return fire, but whoever it is answers back, getting Caleb once in the stomach and once in the chest, then me low in the ribs. We get them in the end, but still it wasn't smart of us to be out here so unprotected, but I guess we thought people moved away.
We hear our attacker hiss in pain at Cato's last shot and all raise our fingers from the triggers, guessing he's too badly wounded to continue, or that he would be if these were real bullets. "Good one," he tells Cato, coming out from behind the cops that had been hiding him. "Right in the neck, ah," Tomas grimaces as he runs his fingers over the still-wet paint.
"You did start it," Cato points out.
"I'm not complaining."
"Ssh!" I hiss across at him and he shuts up immediately, having heard the same rustling that I did. It's maybe twenty-five yards away, the sounds of two peoples' footsteps. "Come on," I whisper to Cato and Caleb and move over in that direction. Tomas follows, his hands empty, having dropped his gun in the bushes when he was shot and forgotten about it with the sudden change in tension. Somehow something doesn't feel right. As we get closer we distinguish the two voices, one a boy's, the other a girl's.
"What are you crazy?" she says, laughing slightly, a little nervously.
"Not at all," he answers. We can see them now, see as he tries to put his arm around her waist.
"Get off," she says, and the laughter is gone from her voice. She's not joking as she pushes his hand off her. But the boy persists, sliding his hand down her back and pulling himself closer to her.
"No, hey, what the hell is the matter with you?" she snaps at him angrily, pushing at his arm again, but she hasn't got the leverage to free herself. I've seen people attacked. And I've been attacked myself, but never like this. It's weird. I think it might be one of those attacks that we used to hear about.
"What?" he asks walking forward into her. "It's not a big deal. It's fun," he says, clearly trying to be persuasive.
"No, can you––" she mutters, finally getting her hands around in front of him and putting them on his chest. "Get off." She pushes him a little, but he's bigger than her so it's hard. Force won't do it. She has to hit him, to hurt him. And she knows it because she tries. She brings the heel of her foot down hard on to to of his and he grunts, catches hold of both her wrists in one strong long fingered hand, and pushes her back against the tree. It must hurt, the bark of just the hardness of the surface because she inhales sharply in pain we hear more movement of leaves, then there's her sharp pained inhale.
The boy leans close to her, presumably talking into her ear, the moving his head down, kissing her, I think. She gives a sound of frustration or revulsion or both and I look away from the for the first time since I laid eyes on them. Cato looks a little confused, Caleb a little sick, and Tomas livid. Scary mad. And that's coming from me, the master of pissing off both Brutus and Paul.
No sooner have I just begun to think about what to do, to help the girl or stop the boy, than Tomas is moving, acting already. He pushes Cato roughly out of the way, picks up a large stone off the rocky ground and gives the boy a vicious crack on the side of the head, knocking him first sideways, then crumpling to the ground. The girl instantly moves away from the tree where the boy had had her pinned. I follow Tomas so I end up far too close to the boy and far from her for her liking and she ends up closer to Cato. "You, keep away!" she snarls at him, drawing one of the fake knives and holding it threateningly at him. Cato raises his hands to shoulder height in surrender.
"Get help," I say quietly to Caleb, moving forward. He leaves his gun to keep his hands free and runs back toward the center of our arena. I kneel down beside the boy Tomas hit, but I don't touch him. He groans in pain and I can clearly see why. Tomas put a dent in his skull in the shape of the rock. His eye is undamaged, but that won't keep him alive. And I don't know how to help. I didn't want him to hurt the girl now pacing behind me, but I didn't want him to die either, I guess. Now his skull is caved in and I have no idea how to fix it. I only know that if no one does anything, he's sure to die, but I don't even know what will kill him. The broken bone wouldn't do it on it's own, but it would if it poked his brain, but if that were the case he'd be dead already probably. Or not. I have no idea. But I'm right. Something is killing him. It takes another minute or two but the boy dies, lying on the rocky ground in front of me. I've seen lots of people die on the television, but this is the closest I've ever been to a person as their life is going out of them.
Part of his head is crushed in and the sight is so . . . unusual, that it becomes ridiculous and I feel a laugh twisting in my guts. And why shouldn't I let it out? He's dead. He'll never know. It doesn't matter. But then again, it does. It matters for me because I know if I let it out, I'll never stop laughing and they'll have to lock me up. So instead, I clamp my teeth together and look back at Tomas, whose eyes meet mine over the boy's body. I can't tell what emotion I see there. Remorse? Fear? Defiance? Somewhere in my brain the fact registers that I need to learn to read people better, but it's quiet and insignificant in this moment. Louder are the sounds of my breath, the girl's shrill voice as she insists to Cato over and over again that she's fine. She has leaves in her hair and her voice is squeaking like crazy, but she's in a much better way than her would-be attacker.
Tomas says something, but it's so fast the only words I understand are "thermometer" and "lever" which can't be at all he said. Then the stone slips from his fingers to land on the leafy ground and Tomas takes off running, sprinting away from the center of our pretend arena. Somehow I know instinctively that he shouldn't run, but he's too far away too quickly for me to tell him that, and even if he could hear me shout for him to wait, I can't tell him why I think he should and this must seem like the best option to him. They'll surely punish him if he stays.
"Hey," I say to the girl who is pacing nervously. "Calm down, ok. The trainers will be here in a minute. You have to be calm for them."
"I'm fine!" she snaps back at me.
"Here," says Cato, holding out his water bottle to her. "Drink. It'll give you something to do." She takes it and when she does, I can see her hands are shaking.
Trainers arrive. "Where'd he go? You said there were six of you. Where's the one who hit him?" one of them demands of Caleb. Two trainers with medical kits drop down beside the boy, but there's nothing they can do.
"He took off," I say to anyone who cares to listen.
"Where?" barks the trainer who's apparently going to lead the search for Tomas. I point in the general direction of his flight and four trainers run off that way, not as fast as Tomas, but they're armed and he's not. I look after them, feeling sick. I'm afraid for Tomas, afraid of them for him and I've just sent them after him.
The girl pushes Cato's water bottle back into Caleb's hands, having mixed them up. She thanks the wrong twin but it doesn't matter. The trainer who gives the speech at the beginning, Avery, leads the girl back toward camp, one hand on the girl's arm, guiding her, but I don't think it's really necessary because she seems to have truly calmed down a little.
The two trainers close up their kits and one of them produces a big black bag from somewhere. I watch as the unzip it, lay the boy's body in it and close it up again. Behind me, I register that another trainer is on her radio, giving orders to close the arena, that the game has been postponed. She replaces the radio on her hip and looks at the two medic-trainers. "I'll take these three. You get him back." With almost no pause she shifts her attention to me, "Come on." I walk back between Cato and Caleb. If it were up to us we wouldn't talk, but I guess the trainer needs to hear more. "You two saw this happen as well?"
Cato just looks at her, surprised probably that she wants to talk. I answer. "Yeah. We saw the whole thing."
She raises her eyebrows. "And?" And what? And what happened? And was it justified? And did Tomas overreact? And why couldn't the girl defend herself? And why did Tomas feel the need to slam the kid's head with a rock? And why did none of us step in earlier?
"And it happened like Caleb said." I don't know what Caleb said, but I can't imagine he lied to them. "The one who got hit was going to . . .hurt that girl. You know when trainees and Peacekeepers jumped girls from town? That way. And we didn't know what to do." Hitting someone is one thing. I'm used to that. I can stop that. But this was different. "But Tomas . . . did, I guess."
We hadn't gotten far when we found the boy and girl so we're back to the center of the arena in another minute. "Just wait for everyone else. We're going back inside." There are already some people waiting. Some splattered with paint, others free of it, having apparently been fake-stabbed. I realize my suit is still on and shut it off, past caring about winning this thing.
The boys and I are making for as secluded a space as we can find when Raylan joins us, free of paint but shaking. "Hey," he says, but Caleb puts a hand on his chest to stop him. He ignores the gesture, pushes Caleb's hand off him and speaks to me. "Didn't expect to see you back here so soon. Somebody got me with a sword across the chest. It hurt like hell. But what happened to you?" Can't he tell something's wrong? More people are showing up now, much faster than they do during the actual game.
"Nothing," I answer.
"What do you mean nothing? Why are you back then?"
"Raylan," I snap. "Look around. The game's over."
"What?" Raylan says, looking around. Comprehension becomes clear on his face and I can tell he believes me. "Why? What happened?" I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell him. The trainers might want to cover this up.
"No idea," I lie. "Just go sit back down. Avery will probably explain." While he's turned around again, looking at all the faces that have suddenly come back to camp, the boys and I move away from him, but we've lost our spot thanks to Raylan. We end up standing in the back of the crowd.
"This match is being postponed until further notice," Avery announces. "Remove your suits, replace your gear and we'll return to the District. There is no need for discussion."
There are no questions from the crowd. We do exactly as she said without talking, until they bring the stretcher back, bearing the body of the dead boy. Another boy raises his voice to carry to the trainers. "Whoa, hey! What the hell happened?" he almost shouts. "Somebody got killed and you weren't even gonna tell us? Who is that?" I find Paul in the crowd before I can locate the speaker and I don't get a look at the boy's face before Paul hits him so hard I'll be surprised if he still has all his teeth. The other trainees back up into each other, some stumbling a little. Paul doesn't look at the boy he knocked to the ground but speaks to the crowd.
"You were told not to talk, to put your gear back in order and return to the District," he reminds us. Nobody moves. "So what the fuck are you all standing there staring for?" Instant movement. People move quicker, shoving their gear back where it goes and hurrying away to give fellow trainees room. When everyone's ready the trainers take the crowd back down toward the border. "Clove. Get over here." I recognize Brutus's voice. "And Cato." Cato and I peal out of the crowd and meet Brutus, Jacob, Mavrik, Voski, and two other girls and one boy I recognize from the accelerated program but don't actually know. "They shot Tomas."
"What?" I blurt.
"Are you suddenly hard of hearing or just stupid?" Brutus snaps at me. "They shot him. Took the top of his head off, too, by their account. I want to make sure you guys can handle this so you'll stay with me until they get here."
That's weird, like he's turning Tomas's death into a test, which I guess he is, but no one argues. We wait a few minutes and then the two medic-trainers who put the other boy in the black bag come into sight, carrying a second stretcher between them. They put it up on a gurney and head into the back of the medical vehicle to wash their hands.
"Gather 'round," Brutus says. We do it and as I get closer, I realize there's a very bad smell coming from the gurney. Cato is beside me on my left, Voski on my right. She and Mavrik were smart, positioning themselves at Tomas's shins and not his waist or shoulders. The oldest boy stands behind the girl across from me and the oldest girl stands at Tomas's feet. Brutus pulls on a pair of gloves, not wanting to get any of the dark liquid staining the bag on his hands. "If you're gonna be sick, do it elsewhere," Brutus advises, his hands on the zipper. Cato's right hand clenches on my wrist, just once briefly. I think it's meant to be comforting for one or both of us, but it scares me so badly I jerk away. Brutus shrugs a little, then undoes the top third of the bag.
Voski, even from her position farthest away immediately gives a small squeak and moves away to throw up. Jacob takes a good long look before deciding he's had enough, too. The girl I don't know stands right across from me. Her eyes fill with tears even though she tries angrily to blink them back and she turns away so we won't see. She collides with the oldest boy who, trying to pull off chivalry, puts a hand up high on her back and walks away with her. I take my eyes away from them and look down at Tomas. Brutus wasn't kidding. And the medics weren't kidding. And the trainer who shot him wasn't messing around. If I didn't know it was him, I wouldn't recognize Tomas through the blood and brain and broken bone that is all that remains of everything higher than his nose. There's a curse and then rustling to my right but I don't look to see what it is. My eyes stay fixed on where Tomas's were a little while ago. It's crazy to think he was alive and unhurt no more than twenty minutes ago. I just saw him. He was joking about taking that paintball to the neck. He's not joking now. There's scuffling on my left, an annoyed grunt, a snicker, and then footsteps moving away.
"Don't touch." Brutus tells me quietly a moment later. "You'll get your hands dirty."
"What do you think, I'm nuts?" I snap back, my eyes still glued to the ruin of Tomas's head.
"I don't know. You're still standing here and everybody else walked away." I jump at that knowledge and look around. Sure enough, he's right. Voski's sick, Mavrik looks about to faint, Jacob's sitting with his back against a tree his head cradled in his arms which rest on his knees; the other girl is crying quietly; even Cato moved away, leaving me here with Brutus and Tomas. Brutus pulls off the gloves, which make snapping sounds as they return to their original size. I can tell he's grinning as he says "Nuts, indeed." Then he claps me me hard on the back. He walks away, leaving me along beside Tomas's body. "Close that, will you?" he says casually to me, like I'm closing a cabinet door or something instead of a body bag. Feeling a little sick myself now, I gingerly put my fingers on the zipper and pull it up. The two medic-trainers have returned. One hands me a disinfecting wipe for my fingers and then they move Tomas into the truck beside the other dead boy whose name I don't know.
Brutus takes a car back to the District, leaving us to walk back together. We could catch up with the group, but they're moving at a pretty good clip and none of us really feels like that right now so we lag behind. Voski, who's spitting constantly to rid her mouth of the taste of vomit, is angry at Brutus for making us stay there, but she tries to conceal it under curiosity. "What the hell even happened, huh?" she asks the group of us. "Between those two, I mean?" No one but Cato and I knows, but we don't tell them, mostly for the sake of the girl Tomas saved. She doesn't need people on her case, asking her questions, pressing her for answers, or worse blaming her for today. We all just shrug. Voski spits again and the other girl sniffles and wipes her nose on the back of her hand.
"Why'd he want just us to see it?" asks Jacob, sounding numb.
"Because we're going into the arena," Mavrik answers. "Right? Aren't we all? You two go in this next year." He looks at the oldest boy and girl of our group, then shifts his gaze to Voski and Jacob, "You two together for the 73rd." Then he turns to Cato and his to-be District Partner, the crying girl, "You two for the 74th, and you and me for the 75th."
"He said he wanted to make sure we could handle it," says the oldest girl. "There'll be blood in the arena, and we'll have to be the ones to draw it sometimes. If we can't actually handle it––" Cato's district partner is glaring at the back of the girl's head, probably figuring that just because she teared up doesn't mean she didn't handle it. She didn't pull an Annie Cresta, but I have a feeling a few more sights like that one might do for her.
Coming down the last hill we catch up to the other trainees, which is good because we'll need them to get back in to the District. Caleb doesn't ask what Brutus wanted until it's just the three of us walking alone back to our village. I look at Cato, wondering how much to say. I don't care about keeping stronghold secrets from these two, but Caleb doesn't even like talking about Chicken Killing Day. What would he do with this thing about Tomas? But the alternative is to lie, which I won't do, or to be vague which will only make it worse. Cato and I come silently to the conclusion that we have to at least tell him about Tomas. He'll ask questions anyway when he doesn't show up on Monday and we don't want that. There are going to be enough questions on Monday already.
"They shot him," I say quietly. Surprisingly, Caleb takes that calmly.
"I thought they would. He ran after he'd just killed someone. They probably thought he was still armed and dangerous. Shoot first, ask questions later. He shouldn't have run. But why––"
"Please don't ask why we were told to stay," Cato says, not looking at either of us. Shocked by his tone, which is one neither of us has ever heard from him, Caleb looks at me, not asking for what happened exactly, but for some explanation. I just give a tiny shake of the head and Caleb puts a hand on my shoulder, telling me he understands, even though he doesn't, trying to offer comfort when he doesn't even know what's wrong. I reach up and squeeze his hand, thanking him.
When the time comes for the boys and I to go our separate ways, I return Cato's gesture from earlier, briefly taking a grip on his arm. His eyes drop down to my fingers, then up at my face. He tries to smile, but can't manage it and neither can I.
I do better with my parents though. I don't want them to know about today so I make the effort to make it sound like the simulation went exactly as planned. No, Cato and I didn't win. Honestly they probably rig it so that doesn't happen again. That's fine though. It's fun anyway and good practice. No big deal. Dinner food. Hygiene. Bedtime.
But sleep doesn't come. I can't get the events of today out of my head. I lie awake for a long time, unable to close my eyes for more than a minute at a time. It takes a long while before I realize the buzzing in my ears is actually words. Thermometer lever. Thermometer lever. Thermometer lever. Over and over again. And then finally my memory collides with reason and I know it wasn't thermometer lever.
"Tell my mother I love her," he said.
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
How did I ever get thermometer lever out of that?
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
I don't even know his mother.
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
Now I understand why he held me the way he did when he kept me out of Cato's initiation fight. He never held down my hands, and even after I scratched the hell out of his head, he still tried to apologize, even though he'd actually been keeping me safe. His mother is one of the girls who was attacked and he knows it. Maybe that's where he got his red hair. Knew it. He knew it before they broke open his skull.
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
Something taps on the window and it scares me so badly I sit bolt upright, whipping my head around to look at the window. There's only moonlight out there, moonlight and some figure that isn't usually there. Brutus gave me knives years ago. They're hidden deep in a drawer so if our house is ever raided for whatever reason, hopefully they won't be found, but now I realize I want them closer to me. I wouldn't feel so threatened if I had my hands on a weapon. Still, my hands will make for pretty good weapons in and of themselves. I see movement outside and get up, letting my fear reflect inside me and come out on my face as anger until I realize upon opening the window that it's Cato.
This is the first time this has ever happened. Maybe we've left in the dark on a Sunday to go up into the mountains, but we don't just show up at each others' houses in the middle of the night. I want to ask what the hell he's doing over here, but I can't because I know. "Can't sleep?" I ask quietly.
"Can't even close my eyes," he confirms. "Do you want to come out here? I know it's late, but I have to move around and. . ." he trails off, but I know what he means. He needs someone to talk to. We both do.
"Let me get shoes," I tell him. We haven't put the grass and leaves down yet this year, and sock feet don't make noise on stone floor so I get out of my room, grab shoes, return to my room, slip the shoes on, and slide out the window to join Cato. Should have grabbed a coat. I want to wrap my arms around myself to keep warm, but know that gesture looks self-protective, and even if it doesn't, it'll tell Cato I'm cold and I don't want him offering me his coat or something.
We walk in silence until we're well away from my house and even then, when Cato speaks, he does it quietly. "How did you stay so calm?"
"I don't know," I answer flatly. It scares me. I shouldn't have been calm. This wasn't normal training. Two people died today, one right in front of me and the other head his head opened. I shouldn't be calm. I should be like Cato, angry and scared and confused. "Do you remember Titus from a couple of years ago?"
Cato looks at me, probably wondering why on earth I'm bringing him up. "Cannibal kid from 6?" he asks.
I nod. "Yeah. He scared me and I only ever saw him on the screen. I mean, I was younger then, so I guess it was acceptable to be scared of some kid who was much bigger than me who killed a District 2 Tribute, right?"
He just shrugs, which is fine. He just came over to my house in the middle of the night to talk this out. I'm mentioning this instance years after the fact. There's no comparison. He's got no room to judge. "We couldn't have helped Tomas," I speak for something to do, and I say those words in the hope that they'll help Cato. "Caleb was right. Once he ran it was done. There was nothing we could do."
"We could have. We could have not told them where he went. Or persuaded him not to go." He says we, but I remember having both of those thoughts as it was all happening so I don't here 'we'. I hear 'you'. It isn't officially an accusation; in fact, I doubt he means it in that way at all, but because I'm not ok with everything that happened and how I handled it, I have to remind myself that he doesn't mean that to sound the way it does. "They didn't even try him," Cato points out. "If they were going to kill him, shouldn't there have been a trial or something. A hearing or whatever."
"We knew he did it," I remind him. "We watched it happen. What was their to try?"
"I don't know, but. . . "
"What's it matter, anyway, Cato? He's dead. He's past help or harm now. And Brutus is right. We've got to get used to this if we're going to keep it together the real Games." He glares at me, shocked and disbelieving and it takes a few seconds for me to realize what I've just implied. That there was some good that came of today. That maybe we should go hang out in a morgue or something. Or like the trainers planned this. Like they organized it on purpose as a sort of exercise. I mean, what are the odds it all goes down right next to us? "Not. . . like that. I'm not saying this was in any way a good thing. What's the matter with you? I just mean. . . I don't know."
"We shouldn't be doing this, Tiny," he whispers. "It should shake you when you see somebody get killed. It should matter. And they're training that humanity out of us."
Out of me. Not out of him.
When I return to my room, I pull Brutus' knives from my drawer and slip the balanced one out of the sheath. I sleep with one hand firmly around the handle, that hand under my pillow to keep it concealed. Once I've swept every corner with my eyes to be absolutely sure I'm alone. I close my eyes.
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
Tell my mother I love her.
Disclaimer: Don't own the Hunger Games.
AN: Whoa. I wrote this a while ago and was re-reading it just now and it is really dark so I hope everyone's ok after that.
I want to remind everyone that this isn't a story where people get killed or beaten up for no reason. It's not violent just to be violent or sad just to be sad. It's all teaching the characters something. I guess that's Clove's point in that last discussion with Cato and he takes the more normal stance that is, these are lessons they shouldn't need to learn. Also I feel a little like George R. R. Martin, killing a bunch of people. :(
To my lovely reviewers
Ghanaperu: Awkward. Here they are mid-social-skills-development and then this happens. Again, kind of reminds me of Ender's Game. Every time he almost gets close to someone, the adults change something on him that separates him again.
You're right about the accelerated program distancing Caleb a little. Clove actually says something about it in "Telling Cato Anyway". She says it to Cato, that she doesn't really want to tell Caleb because it runs along the same lines as Chicken Killing Day and he says, not telling him won't keep him ignorant. And it comes up again here. There are things they don't really want to talk to him about, because he's a much different, much gentler much more conscientious person than they are. He and Cato sometimes think along the same lines, right? But the difference is that Cato will think one way, the right way, but act as he's been trained to act, and Caleb won't. He'd try to find some way around it. The way Cato thinks when he's talking to Clove privately and the way he thinks in practice are almost two different people. Caleb and Clove usually think the same way no matter what and that's going to distance them from each other. She won't want to explain some things, and consequently, he won't understand her sometimes which makes her miserable and him frustrated. They adore each other. They'd do anything to keep each other safe and happy, but they don't always see eye to eye.
Clove1113: Ok, good. That was the chapter I was most nervous about. And the violent ones like this one, but I didn't want anyone to think I'm hating on the armed forces. Totally not. Jeez. Ah. Also, you'll see more of other characters soon. There's a whole chapter coming up here that should be full of non-violent actually-personal interactions. Clove also makes a new friend pretty soon here and she's super cute and not involved in training.
One thing I forgot!
Has everyone/anyone seen those Capitol TV promo things? The District Voices videos that were done before Mockingjay came out? Well, they did one for District 2 (! I love District 2 and most people don't so I was really excited when they did that!) and I'm writing a chapter right now that would delve into the production of a video like that. Like the Capitol sends a crew to film one of those commercial things. It'll be a different video to the one that exists in real life because the one they made before Mockingjay was theoretically made after the 75th Games/just before them and right now in the story we're right after the 71st. Show of hands (or whatever since this is the internet and we don't have hands) who's interested in reading a chapter like that? It'll give much more character to the other members of Cato and Clove's squad because they spend like an entire day with them filming this thing.