Author's Note: So, we got to see Phlox's side of things in the last chapter. But how are Vale, Fen, and Lark going to react to her sudden appearance? (For Phlox's sake, let's hope she was right in thinking they wouldn't just shoot her on sight. XD)
"Say they didn't. Say the supplies were gone. How long would they last?" –Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games
"Go ahead. Do it now. I dare you."
At the sound of the unmuffled female voice, Vale's head shot up. Beside her, Fen and Lark did the same. Their breakfast of dried fruit was quickly forgotten.
The voice sounded again, even louder, almost defiant. "I dare you!"
A slender, familiar figure came bursting through the trees, a large backpack swinging from her slight shoulders. Dark, clever eyes, an impassive face, her hair a mass of dark braids: Phlox, the girl from District Eleven.
When she was still several dozen feet away from them, the girl hesitated, turning back and looking over her shoulder, as if she was searching the line of dense, lofty trees for signs of a pursuer. Vale squinted in the same direction, but she couldn't see anything, other than Phlox heaving a long sigh of relief.
As this went on, Fen had been reaching for her silver bow. Now, not removing her eyes from Phlox's motionless form, she nocked an arrow and started to aim.
Vale held up a hand to stop her. "Wait, Fen."
"What?" she said in a growl. Her gaze and her arrow were still trained on the newcomer.
Vale was trembling slightly, still startled, but at the same time, she thought that Phlox didn't seem incredibly dangerous. She didn't even seem to be carrying a weapon.
"L-let's see what she wants first," Vale whispered.
Fen sighed and lowered her weapon slightly. However, she still eyed Phlox warily as the girl approached. "What do you want?" she asked.
Phlox glanced backward again in the direction from which she had come, and she seemed to sigh thankfully again. But her features were still unreadable as she turned them on Vale.
"Hey, I was thinking you might need an ally." She smirked slightly as she said this, as if she was repeating an inside joke that she knew they wouldn't comprehend. "So, what do you say?"
Vale was taken off guard by this blunt request. "What?"
Fen echoed her sentiment, but with a blatant edge of hostility and distrust as she set the bow down atop her lap: "What?"
"I said, do you want to form an alliance?" The District Eleven girl's dark eyes narrowed.
Fen's hand twitched in anticipation in the direction of her bow, but Vale stopped her. "All right," she said with a tentative smile.
Fen rolled her eyes, muttering something under her breath about Vale being as naïve as Lark. "No, not 'all right,'" she said. She eyed Phlox with mistrust. "Where did you get that backpack?"
She responded with that same level, almost blasé tone: "Stole it from a Career."
"Really?" Lark's eyes widened with wonder. "How?"
"I set a trap for him. Hung him upside down from a tree. It wasn't too difficult. Unfortunately, he cut himself loose before I could do anything more than take his supplies." She shrugged. "Oh, well."
Phlox seemed to notice the way in which Vale and Lark were gazing at her in awe. Fen still looked skeptical, however.
"So, who's to say that we can trust you?" she asked. "I'll be the first to say that I hate the Careers, but who says you aren't planning to kill us, just like you were planning on killing him?"
Phlox just shrugged. "I guess you'll just have to trust me." She cracked open the backpack. "There's a lot of useful items in here you might want access to: meat, crackers, knives…"
Fen bit her lip, frozen for a moment in indecision. Finally, she directed her eyes to the clouded gray sky and breathed a silent, reluctant sigh.
"Fine. You can stay with us."
/
Obsidian finally finished sawing through the thick white rope around his ankle, and it fell to the ground without a sound. He shifted into a different sitting position and sighed. It was much more comfortable to sit on top of his nice, downy sleeping bag.
Except that Phlox girl had taken his sleeping bag, his food—practically everything except for his sword. He had walked right into her trap, literally, and nearly been killed.
Worse yet, she had made it clear that she'd been following him. She had witnessed him leaving the Careers, murdering Ford. And she'd probably overheard his pathetic practice at requesting an alliance. "So, kind of cold at night by yourself, huh? Well, since you're alone now, and so am I…" Had he honestly considered saying that? Did he want to get punched in the face?
He should have been more careful. Back at the Training Center, Obsidian had been all too careful. He had made sure not to showcase any of his own skills, all the while keeping a close eye out for the talents, abilities, and weaknesses of all the other tributes. He had been clever. A serious threat.
And now, he'd gotten his only supplies swiped from right underneath his nose by a scrawny, underfed sixteen-year-old from District Eleven who had outmaneuvered him easily, almost without trying.
She'd managed to catch him in her snare, cut right to his core with that jab about his murder of Ford, then ran off with his supplies to the one place where she seemed to know he wouldn't fight her to get them back.
It was almost as if Phlox had known him better than he knew himself in some ways. He recalled the victorious gleam in her eyes as she'd spotted Vale and her companions and called out to him, "Go ahead. Do it now. I dare you." The upward curl of her mouth as she realized that she had already won the moment she laid eyes on the others.
And obviously, she had won, because Obsidian hadn't followed her as she burst into the trio's camp. He could have, and he probably even should have, but he wouldn't. Something caused him to stop, as if twin nooses had come up from the ground and seized him by the ankles, stopping him in his tracks. And perhaps flipping him upside down again, too.
Yes, Phlox definitely knew something about him that gave her an edge. Perhaps it had something to do with Vale and the fact that he kept going out of his way in an effort not to kill her.
Well, he said to himself, fists mechanically clenching at his sides, You don't hurt innocent things. That's just wrong.
Yet, when he finally decided to be honest with himself, he had hurt a lot of innocent things recently. In the bloodbath, he'd killed Mac and Rye, two little boys almost as tiny as Kit had been, and Carilee, a helpless, harmless girl. Even Dornick, who had been robust and dangerous, had only been doing what he had to do to survive, like Obsidian was.
And even Ford… He wasn't so bad, not as bad as Amber and Achilles and Brigid. He was just too scared to disagree with them. And can I really blame him for that? Obsidian wished he hadn't killed him. He could have just knocked him out with the flat of the blade, instead of doing what he'd actually done. Apparently, he was more of a Career than he had thought.
And if he would do something like that to his own ally Ford, when there had clearly been a better way, who was to say that he wouldn't be perfectly capable of doing it again?
Maybe it's a good thing that she's allied with Phlox and the brother and sister from Five. Phlox is smart, and Fen is good with a bow and loyal to the people she cares about, or at least, she seems like that with her brother. They'd all kill me on sight if I got too close to them.
So it was better that he stayed away. Perhaps he could go back to that nice little ditch where Vale and Kit used to camp. It had looked comfortable enough, he supposed—so it wouldn't be too bad a spot, even without a sleeping bag. Anyway, he needed to leave to hunt down something to eat, meat or some berries or something. He would end up starving to death if he didn't.
Slowly, Obsidian got to his feet. One hand on the hilt of the sword at his side, he turned, not glancing back in the direction of Vale and her allies, and started back the opposite way.
"Here comes that sun again. That means another day without you, my friend…. And it's so hard to do and so easy to say, but sometimes, sometimes you just have to walk away. Walk away. With so many people to love in my life, why do I worry about one?…" –Ben Harper, "Walk Away"
Author's Note: ...And Sid pulls another "exit stage left" on us. I think somebody needs a hug. XD
Anyway, hope you enjoyed! And just in case you're wondering, here's a list of all the tributes who are still in the Games:
Amber Sheen- District 1
Obsidian Citrine- District 1
Brigid- District 2
Achilles- District 2
Fen- District 5
Lark- District 5
Lexus- District 6
Chas- District 10
Phlox Ragweed- District 11
Vale Whitaker- District 12
...And then, there were ten.
~Lily
