Day 2-3: Shakeup
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my motto for life -
merit, not sympathy, wins-
my song against death.
'Blind Boone's Apparitions', Tyehimba Jess
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Marcus Ota, District 2
"I can't believe you're not asleep yet," I say, genuinely a little surprised. "You took half my guard shift last night. What are you running on, three hours?"
"It's not important," Cora says, shifting in her bedroll, her eyes glued to the sky. "I just wanna see who the cannon was this morning, that's all."
"Who do you think it's going to be?" I ask, rolling my head to try to crack my neck in anticipation of a long guard shift where we've made camp in the pine forest.
"One of those outer district kids, maybe?" she offers. "Probably the glasses one whose partner Jewel and Manari killed the first day. Hard to come back from that."
She glances away from the darkening sky to give me a sad look.
"I can't imagine if you died on the first day."
"I'm not going anywhere," I tell her with a laugh. "You can sleep, really. I'll tell you who it is when you wake up."
"No, I want to see it myself," she insists. "I remember people more by their faces and their voices and what they are. A name doesn't mean anything."
I sigh dramatically, stooping to add some pine needles to the little fire we made in a cleared section of the sand. The flames crackle cheerily, in stark contrast with the unsettling noises and the ever-present thrum of insects that pervades every corner of the arena. Cora is very good with fires, but it's mostly because she has no reasonable fear of burning herself.
The first strains of the anthem interrupt the relative stillness of the moment - she shifts again, and I know her attention is laser-focused on the seal in the sky through the sparse pine-needle canopy overhead.
"Oh my god," she breathes, and I look up too, just in time to see Angel's face overhead, flickering against the wispy clouds.
The image shifts to the girl from District 9, who I'd completely forgotten from the previous night. Angel's last victim.
"Shit," I reply. "Not my first guess."
"Well, you won't have any more troubles with him, then," Cora says matter-of-factly.
I look back at her, not satisfied with that analysis.
"What does this mean for us, though? Like, what went down? Who could have killed him? You don't think is was Renata, do you? She seemed off earlier."
"We can ask her when we get back," Cora sighs.
"If she's there when we get back."
"Why would she kill him?"
"In fairness, if I had to spend another half hour with him this morning I'd have killed him myself," I say, leaning against one of the larger slash pines.
"So, he wasn't super pleasant. Literally anybody but us coulda killed him over that."
"I dunno," I say. "Who's got the firepower to be taking out a trainee?"
"Samil," Cora says bitterly. "From Ten."
"Hey, he didn't get you," I interject. "And there's other competitors, too. If the pair from Three are still together… or if Jewel or Manari… y'know."
"That's a scary thought," she says musingly. "If they've gone rogue this early, that could be hard for us. You left the bow at the Cornucopia, right?"
"It's made of plastic, and not the high-grade stuff. The kind of thing you train children with."
"They could still get us with it before we could get them."
"So we'll be careful on the walk-up," I say with a shrug. "Not much else we can do if they've tapped out of the alliance."
"Jewel will still be injured if she hasn't gotten any better medicine yet," Cora says, a little smugly. "I think we could take the two of them, even in our shape. Even if they had the bow."
My leg and my dominant hand are still hurting pretty badly, but I can't help but agree - we should be healed enough by tomorrow morning to take on just about anyone. I'm not worried, especially with the potential advance warning of Angel's death.
I didn't hate the guy or anything, but he was difficult. Also, ally or not, that's one real competitor down. Out of the eleven left, apart from me - well, I'm not shaking in my running shoes at the thought of meeting the girls from District 6 and District 7, or the boys from District 8 and District 11, even knowing the Samil guy could be a real threat. Him, the pair from District 3, and then… my own allies. That's all that I've really gotta be thinking about right now.
And I'm more and more convinced that I can rely on Cora. I think she'd eat her machete before she'd disappoint Claudia. And, well, Claudia didn't exactly treat any of us like beloved family members, not Cora and not anyone else. She seems to have forgotten about that already.
The excitement of the big reveal over, Cora finally seems to be succumbing to her injuries and her exhaustion - she's drifted off mid-conversation, eyes fluttered closed.
Finally, all is still, but for the noises of the fire and the wings of insects in the trees overhead. I'm not trying to stare at her, but it's hard not to with her face so disturbingly close to the fire.
Some things about her are just so hard to completely understand. How Claudia can break her bones and watch her bleed on a plinth in combat and send her to the Games to die but still have some kind of godlike status in her mind. How quickly she decided to trust me - does she do this with everybody who pays an ounce of attention to her? How she doesn't care about hurting, or doesn't hurt, or both.
Watching her sleep is like staring at the tire marks on the road from a fatal accident after the wreckage has been cleared. The blood has long since washed away, but something terrible happened there and it can't quite be erased.
It's not my job to fix her. It's my job to keep us both alive until Aaron tells me not to. Then it's my job to win.
Trusting my sense of hearing and the crunchy pine needles blanketing the sand in the pine forest to keep us safe, I lay back in the sand and watch the stars, to avoid looking at her or thinking too hard about how badly my wounds still hurt. Before Cassie and Alexa were born, my parents would take me out at night to look at the stars. My dad had names for the constellations, and my mom had different ones, and they would argue playfully about which was more accurately descriptive - District 6's or District 2's interpretation of the same patterns of distant light.
Cassiopeia's crown - or her throne - depending on who you ask, shines overhead. To the right, either a bear cub or a ladle. The stars are clearer here than in District 2, where the lights of the central city surrounding the mountain that contains the Center make it difficult to see much more than the brightest stars.
We traveled out a few times, on business or for a weekend away, to the smaller outlying villages that surround the still-active quarries, and it was easier to see the sky there.
Cassie was named after the constellation.
I'm not sure where my name came from, but for the upper class in District 2, it's common to emulate the naming practices of the Capitol in contrast with the traditional naming traditions of the working class.
When I get home, I'll have to ask them.
The night wears on quickly with these thoughts, and I decide to let Cora sleep as long as she can. She did the same for me last night, didn't wake me up to relieve her from watch until well after the agreed-upon time. It'll probably bother her a lot more than it bothered me, but, well, tough luck. If we're going to be taking care of each other like that, she should understand it's gotta be a mutual thing or I look like a jerk.
By the time the sky is beginning to lighten, turning the greenish-yellowish deep blue of an old bruise at the skyline over the ocean, she jolts awake.
"You should have woke me up," she insists once she's conscious enough to understand my deception.
"You looked so peaceful," I say, smiling. "I couldn't bring myself to disturb you."
It's very easy to fluster her.
"Well, at least take a nap before we head back," she instructs me, the beginnings of the sunrise meaning she can't hide her flushed face, even behind the swaths of white cotton bandage.
"No problem," I say, knowing she'll actually have to wake me up at the agreed upon time so we'll make it to the Cornucopia before the day starts in earnest.
After the evening and most of the night, my injured leg and hand don't hurt nearly so badly. It's practically criminal, keeping the healing ointment from our allies, but I'm glad we've kept it in reserve for ourselves so far. Cora tends to injure herself horrifically every few hours, and tagging along with her has proved a liability for me as well.
In much less pain, it's easier than it would have been earlier to drift off to sleep until Cora wakes me with a hand on my shoulder, the sun now well over the horizon.
"Good morning," she says. "Ready to head back?"
With my full night's sleep the previous night, a two-hour nap proves enough to keep me squarely in the zone of consciousness, and I have no trouble helping her pack up the camp and kick sand over the fire.
"Do you think they'll be happy to see us?" Cora asks brightly as we begin to trek back to camp.
"If they don't mistake us for ghosts, so covered in bandages," I laugh.
"Well, we're not too far off, I don't think. We got a little turned around trying to get back yesterday, but now that the sun's half-risen over there I think I know where we are."
"Nice," I tell her. "Lead the way, then."
The pine forest is less sinister in the golden light of the morning. I think I see a grey squirrel high in one of the enormous trees as we pass - though I'm not one to stoop to hunting, it reminds me that we haven't had breakfast yet. I might try to make something once we get back to camp, something warm and filling and not-rice-mush-or-energy-bars-and-dried-fruit.
There's really only so much dried fruit a man can eat.
"Almost there!" Cora announces proudly, pointing ahead.
The morning sun glints off the gold shell of the Cornucopia, still far in the distance, but visible through the trees.
"How're your cuts?" I ask, suddenly on my guard with the knowledge that we're almost back in the vicinity of potentially hostile competitors.
"Way better," she says. "I can lift my arms above my head again and I can like, move my face. That's as good as I could hope for. You?"
Experimentally, I flex my right hand, relieved to feel only a little stretch and sting where yesterday evening there was only a hot ball of agony. My leg, too, is pretty well pulled-together. It was cut deeper than my hand, but I can walk on it just fine.
"Gotta love that ointment," I say. "I'm good for whatever gets thrown at us next."
"Should we draw weapons?" Cora asks, noting my furrowed brow with concern.
"I think so," I say, unsheathing my sword as the Cornucopia comes into clearer focus. "Just in case. We don't know what we're walking into."
"No more cannons since last night, right?" she asks.
"Right, I'd have said something."
"Maybe it was a quiet night. We got torn up, Angel got killed, I bet stuff happened with other people. Busy day. Sometimes they gotta just let us sleep, right?"
"A quiet night usually precedes yet another busy day," I say heavily, beginning to wish I didn't have this image to maintain and could've just slept a bit longer.
"Hey, looks like someone's coming out to greet us," Cora begins, then shrieks as something rips past us, tearing half the bandage from her face.
Before I can fully process what's happening, she throws herself over me, knocking us both to the ground. I narrowly avoid both skewering her with my sword and being disemboweled by the machete she still carries.
"Next one's going through your fucking chest if you don't start explaining real fast what the fuck happened yesterday morning!" Jewel calls.
Well, shit. Apparently she has a better throwing arm on her than she let on in training.
A single spear wobbles slightly where it's been lodged in a pine tree behind us, at least three inches deep.
She's not playing around.
I wrack my brain for what she could be upset about. She thinks we killed Angel and broke the alliance? She thinks we… hurt Manari? Hurt her, somehow? Badmouthed District 1? Insulted her eye makeup? Angel said he thought she wore too much at the final night party and she looked like she was about to gut him before Renata intervened.
Honestly, I can't think of anything else we might have done, and I give Cora an urgent look from where she is… of course, trying to shield me with her body.
Tapping her gently on the shoulder, I extricate myself from where I'm spread-eagled in the sand.
"I can manage myself," I remind her. "But we need to think fast, here."
Oh, shit. Did she find out about the ointment?
"Yesterday morning," Cora hisses. "That's when we left, anything after we left wasn't our fault! How would she know? She was asleep!"
That's it.
"I'm going to stand up, so please don't kill me yet," I announce, hoping I don't sound too flippant as I pull myself to my feet and shake the sand out of my hair, leaving my katana on the ground.
"Start explaining if you want to keep breathing," Jewel says, from a distance, and I hear the sincere and righteous fury coloring her voice loud and clear.
"Angel was being obnoxious and we left before he and Renata cleared out," I say, holding my palms up in surrender. "We told them to wake one of you up before they left. I take it that didn't happen?"
She's standing, spear in hand, beside a small arsenal of ready weaponry. If we don't defuse this situation fast, Cora and I are dead.
"Is that so?" Jewel says slowly.
"I was there! It's, uh… it's so!" Cora pipes up helpfully, standing up next to me.
I try not to roll my eyes.
Out of the thousands of situations in which Cora is a helpful and reliable ally, matters of diplomacy are… not those situations.
"Look, we're as freaked out as you are about this whole Angel thing," I say, gambling on her not having been the one to kill him based on the fact that Renata is still alive somewhere in the arena. "I don't know what to say - we left early, got torn up by some mutts but made it out, and now we're back. If Angel left you asleep, that's an alliance-breaking move. If he was still around, I'd take him out myself."
Still seemingly on the fence, Jewel lowers her spear only a fraction of an inch.
"I didn't kill him, but I'd like to know who did so I can send them a fucking gift basket," she says, tone dripping with acid. "Someone left us like fucking sitting ducks here."
"Look," I continue, "Alliance-breaking move. If we pulled that shit, we wouldn't be so keen to show our faces back here. Who came back? Who didn't? That should speak for itself."
Cora, blessedly resigned to silence, nods vigorously in support of my point.
Even from so far away, I can see Jewel's face contort - her eyes narrow as though she's mulling over what I've said. Finally, her forehead relaxes and she drops her spear to her side.
"Fine, I guess. Come on back over."
"Allies?" I demand, knowing Aaron would probably cuff me if I failed to solicit proper verification before walking back into a trap.
At least this way she's a little bit on the hook if she decides to turn around and skewer us once we get a bit closer.
"Yeah, glad to have you guys back," she says with a long sigh as we approach.
From only a few feet away, Jewel looks bad. Her face is strained with pain and worry, sallow from blood loss. I wonder how much she's slept. Less than Cora, less than me.
"Everything okay?" Cora asks, ever the medic.
"Manari limped back in last night half-dead," Jewel says. "I need help. I don't know how to help him. I just wrapped him up with some antibiotics and put him in the tent, made him drink some water, but I don't know how to… I'm not good at this."
"Hey," Cora says reassuringly. "I actually have great news. Marcus and I got hurt so bad from the mutt, our mentors sent us some great ointment that heals things super fast! We're willing to share, especially since… y'know, I wish we didn't just trust Angel to do the right thing, that was stupid. But this will help make amends, right?"
She shoots a barely-perceptible look at me to gauge my reaction as Jewel's face softens.
Well, fuck me, apparently Cora isn't as bad at this diplomacy thing as I thought. Gotta hand it to her.
"Can you look him over?" Jewel asks, and though I know she'd be too proud to admit it, there's a bit of a pleading edge to her voice.
Cora has regained the high ground in this situation now, and she knows it.
"Of course," she says reassuringly. "And then, you have to let me take care of your arm. You've been working so hard."
Okay, don't overdo it, I think.
Jewel seems a little too bleary and out of it to catch on to how terrible Cora's acting is. The sooner I can separate them though, the better.
"Hey, while Cora takes a look at Manari, why don't I start with your arm?" I offer.
She nods, gesturing Cora towards the tent that the pair from District 1 were theoretically supposed to share.
"How are you really doing?" I ask her softly, unrolling the bloody bandage from her arm once we're in relative privacy.
I don't usually do the 'turn on the charm' thing unless it's to banter with service workers or win over my parents' older associates or philanthropic donors at their events, but if it's worked so far on Cora it might be useful here, too.
"Well, I'm losing my fucking mind, for one thing," Jewel says, laughing harshly. "I hate this so much. I feel useless. Can't help my district partner, can't keep those fucks from Four from hanging us out to dry…"
She seems to realize she's saying too much, and she clamps her mouth shut as I finally get the bandage off.
Her wound doesn't look too bad. It was cleaned well enough and the antibiotic must have helped, but there's still some yellowed tissue dotting the red gouge in her forearm.
"I'm going to try to scrape some of this away with some clean bandages so we can wash the wound again, okay?" I say, ignoring her oversight.
"Great," she says. "Fix me up, doc."
I laugh, even though it's not that funny.
"Don't be too nice, now," Jewel cautions me. "Cora strikes me as the jealous type."
Ah, looks like I've hit a fine line here. I don't have enough experience to fully know how to cross this tightrope.
"We're allies," I remind her, adding, "and friends, I hope."
Her smile doesn't reach her eyes.
"Of course. Ow, shit."
I may have debrided her wound a little harder than necessary. Recognizing the comment for what it was - a push - it seemed appropriate to push back rather than acquiesce. I hope I made the right call.
"Let's add some more antibiotic," I say, brushing aside her protest and applying some of the thick gel that I know will be at least a little soothing.
"What a mess," she sighs - looking at me, not her mangled arm.
"Cora, can we get some of that ointment?" I call, not breaking eye contact with Jewel.
I will not blink first.
Before we can go any further on that path, though, Cora rolls out of the tent - smeared with notably more blood than before.
"He's not going to die or anything," she announces, disregarding the tense situation entirely. "I'm just cleaning a ton of stabs. He's bruised bad, but nothing seems completely crushed. There's pills to keep the blood from pooling and get the inflammation down, and he can take those once the tooth-stabs have healed. How's Jewel?"
"Relieved," Jewel replies innocently. "I was worried about him."
"Well, he needs a lot of care still," Cora says, a little confused now that she's actually paying attention. "I'll want to stay by his side for at least a few more hours to make sure he's out of the woods."
"How long till he's up?" Jewel asks. "I can't just hang around here much longer, I'm losing my shit stuck here."
"I'm putting my foot down, even if he says otherwise," Cora declares. "He's out of commission until he's had a full night's sleep. Eight hours to heal, no fewer."
"So you're an expert now?" Jewel counters. "Once he can walk, we're going hunting. I'm not staying here a second longer than I have to."
"I'm as close as you have to one," Cora insists, handing me the ointment and crossing her arms. "And you're hardly in a position to be telling me what to do."
The tube isn't empty, but it's not full either. I squeeze a lima-bean sized amount out and distribute it evenly across the tear in Jewel's arm.
There's that cagey look again in her hazel eyes, like a wounded animal. Jewel's not doing too well. Could definitely use some sleep, but seems unwilling to accept that. At least now her enmity isn't directed towards me at point-blank range, though distributing it to Cora isn't much of an improvement. I hope this interaction hasn't started some fresh rivalry.
"It should start working very quickly," I say soothingly, taking great care not to do anything to hurt Jewel as I begin to wrap her arm and hand the tube back to Cora.
"I sure hope so," she says, reluctant to turn her stare away from my partner. "I need to get back out there."
"And you will," I reassure her.
She pauses, giving me a look like she's just realized something.
"Come to think of it, yeah, I will," she repeats. "I don't need to wait for Manari. You'll come with me. Cora can take care of him, since she's such a professional."
'No!', comes the emphatic response from Manari, apparently conscious in the tent.
"Sounds like he's not on board," I say, trying to stifle a laugh at the thought of leaving a badly injured Manari at Cora's mercy.
"They should get to know each other better," Jewel says, smiling. "Y'know, Marcus, me and you, we get along fine. I think these two need some work."
Cora makes a vague noise of concern, but that gets eclipsed as, from within the tent, Manari groans 'please, no', again, which only makes the whole situation more hilarious.
Maybe we do need a bit of a shakeup. As well as Cora and I can play off each other, we're running out of tricks to keep it interesting, in part because neither of us has half a clue what we're doing. Separation raises the stakes, and gives us an easy next-step. Separation-reuniting is a simple narrative to follow. Provided I can keep Jewel from running me through, which I think I can. By force if necessary.
"I think it's a good idea," I say. "It's day three, Cora, people are getting hungry and that'll make them brave and put our supplies at risk. It's not like you won't see any action here. At the same time, if we all stick together and don't do anything flashy, who knows what hell the Gamemakers will rain down on us for not doing our jobs? We have a job."
"But..." she insists, "you should rest first, have something to eat. Your wounds are barely healed, and everyone's in the swamp forest now, and if you could see how bad Manari was torn up you'd think twice about jumping in."
"I also hate the plan," Manari grumbles, and thought I can't see his face from inside the tent, I can imagine it well enough.
"Oh, learn to deal," Jewel laughs, tapping on the roof of the tent. "C'mon, expand your horizons."
"I like my horizons already," he insists.
"Look, I'll be back before you know it," I reassure Cora.
"I just don't want you to leave," she says plaintively.
Jewel stifles a snort of laughter under a feigned cough. I struggle not to turn and glare at her. Give me a damn minute, please.
"Final two," I remind her. "For that to happen, everyone in the swamp forest has to go down, and we're not gonna manage that if I just hang around here, right? And you're our best bet at keeping Manari alive. I'm not nearly as good at healing stuff as you are. It just makes sense."
She nods, looking cross but resigned.
"Okay, fine," she sighs. "You're right, anyway - about the supplies, and all the tributes in the forest. I trust you."
"I have not agreed to this," Manari exclaims from the tent.
"You're outvoted," Jewel says. "I thought you were Mr. Tolerant, was I wrong?"
He says something darkly that doesn't bear repeating.
"It's settled then," I announce. "Let's have some breakfast, pack up, and head out."
Cora returns sullenly to the tent to finish patching up Manari's wounds, and I'm alone with Jewel once more.
"What exactly are you hoping to accomplish with this?" I demand, keeping my voice too low to be easily heard from any distance.
"Maybe I want to get to know you better," she purrs.
"Oh, cut that out," I say. "You can't play a player."
"A player? Please. Don't try me. You are so far out of your league," she laughs. "There's some things you can't fake."
"So it's gonna be a full day of this," I sigh. "I think I'd rather just take whatever mutt they use to punish us for sticking around and doing nothing."
I know for a fact that Jewel isn't half the sexed-up image she constructed for the pre-Games. Know for a damn fact that she was much more interested in making bad jokes and talking strategy for the half-week I got to know her than doing anything her eyes are suggesting now. She's tired, she's on-edge, she's devolving - or she really is playing me, and I have no idea which.
"Most men wouldn't turn me down," she says with a smile.
I swallow, hard.
"I'd never turn down a hunting trip, which must be what you mean," I say sharply, aware that with the speed my words are tumbling out I must seem flustered.
But I'm not. Not flustered.
"If you say so, player," she says, and I realize as she sashays over to the Cornucopia to begin preparing our packs that her gait has changed entirely from what it was both when she was threatening us and when she was fretting over Manari.
The last time I saw this Jewel was on the interview stage and so help me I am not falling for it. I am not some deluded Capitol man who sees her give a saucy wink and thinks he's getting any more than that - any more than a wink and a knife in his back.
I need to recollect myself.
"Hey," Cora says, emerging from the tent again. "He's not happy about… anything, right now, actually, but he's napping. I told him a sleeping pill was a pain pill and it seems to have worked."
She gives me an appraising look.
"Is something wrong? You seem tense. You really should get some sleep, too. I can guard. You don't have to leave right away, do you?"
My mouth feels dry all over again. This may be my last chance to avoid going into the swamp forest with Jewel. But I feel my sword at my side - my hand almost totally healed - and I think, what's the worst that could happen? What couldn't I handle?
"I'm fine," I say.
"O...kay," she replies doubtfully, checking my forehead with the back of her bloody hand as though she's concerned I have a fever.
"For real," I say, summoning up a smile.
"I trust you," she says again.
All I can think about is how, sincerely, she shouldn't. But that doesn't stop her, of course, because nothing stops Cora once she's made up her mind about something or someone, not logic or broken bones or mutts or common sense or fire.
I hope she'll be okay without me.
The sincere concern for her safety is… new, and surprising, but I shake it away as quickly as I can. I have my own problems to worry about.
"You should have some breakfast too," I say, experimentally stoking the coals of the fire we left behind, relieved to find them still alive. "We can boil eggs, cut up some fresh fruit, make some oatmeal, a nice hearty meal."
"Sounds good," Cora says brightly, hopping over to the Cornucopia to help with prep work, though I notice that she gives Jewel a wide berth.
I hope I'm making the right call. I mean, mixed pairs within the trainee alliance hunt all the time - it almost would have been weird if we hadn't switched up at some point. But for all of Cora's issues, I can count on her loyalty if I can count on anything in this hell-dimension of a world, where lobsters try to eat us and I'm the one, for once, being seen through. With anyone else… I'll need eyes in the back of my head.
But what's the alternative? I stay and deal ineffectively with Manari while Jewel gets Cora to admit everything about the ointment and everything else after twenty seconds of questioning? Admittedly, Jewel could play either of us just as well. But if I can so easily find the cracks in Cora's armor to win her over, there's no way Jewel would have any trouble if they spent much time alone. And then, well… I guess I'd still trust Cora to do what she thought Claudia wanted her to do, but that doesn't necessarily align with my interests, and I need to keep all that balanced. I need her as firmly on my side as possible.
Maybe gallivanting off with Jewel isn't the best way to do that, but it beats… any alternative I can think up. Shit.
I try to push all of the conflicting signals out of my head and focus on one question: what would Aaron tell me to do?
He didn't like Cora all that much beyond cursory tolerance. Maybe because she's always been so wrapped around Claudia's little finger, and Claudia isn't exactly Aaron's favorite person in the world. From the start, he was insistent that if I really wanted to endear myself to District 2, my best bet would be to learn some rocks and drop some names and keep myself a safe distance from my psychotic time bomb of a partner.
But he was wrong about that. This is working out fine.
I should just talk to her.
Yeah. That makes sense.
"Hey, Cora," I say, "could you help me fill this stewpot up with seawater?"
"Huh?" she says, poking her head out of the Cornucopia. "Weird choice, but okay. It's a big pot for four people."
As I nod towards the shore, she seems to cotton on to the fact that this is a pretense to speak with her alone, and obediently picks up the massive stewpot and follows me towards the shore.
"What do you… think about this setup?" I ask abruptly once we're out of earshot, camouflaged by the sound of the waves.
"It seems ridiculous, like, what are you going to do, use seawater as a base for oatmeal? That sounds gross and salty, but like, I'm not complaining. As long as you boil it, I don't think it's dangerous..."
"No," I laugh. "Jesus, that was an excuse to get you over here."
"Oh," she says. "Well, I don't think I'll be able to trick Manari into drugging himself to sleep twice, but I can deal. Who knows, maybe he's actually not as preachy and self-important as he seems half the time. And I mean, he should be grateful, once I have him fixed up."
"And that's, like, the only thing you're worried about?" I say slowly.
"If Jewel tried to kill you I'm pretty sure you'd win that fight," she says with a shrug. "You got an eleven. She's like the size of an eleven year old. Just come back in one piece."
"Okay," I say, a little relieved, but a little perturbed for other reasons. "I guess the whole kissing thing kinda threw me off on what this was."
She laughs.
"Yeah, about that, let me just say again, I'm so sorry - I know I'm basically useless at that stuff, but anything you think will help, I'll give it a go. Just say the word!"
I must be grimacing, because she laughs again.
"Oh no, was I that bad?"
"No, not at all," I say. "Thanks for talking to me, I'm glad I was worried over nothing."
The tire marks on the pavement are more clear now than ever. Or maybe I'm projecting my own bullshit in her direction. I'm not so sure anymore.
"Look, I'm your ally and your friend," she adds. "Not in the Jewel way, in the real way. You've been really kind to me, and you don't… have to, y'know. But I appreciate it. You don't owe me anything. Just… final two, okay?"
I wonder if I've ever actually understood anything about anything.
"You seem really… well," I tell her.
"The full night's rest really helped," she says. "Thank you for that."
"You two planning on making a swim for it, or are you gonna come back and help me with breakfast?" Jewel calls.
Cora shoots me a look.
"Coming back! I finally talked him out of his seawater oatmeal plan, don't worry, we're safe from his cooking for now."
I wish I could get some sleep - my head isn't on straight, it feels like my brain is trying to swim through molasses. It's both a little comforting and a little worrying to remember that Jewel is much more out-of-it-exhausted than I am.
"Sounds like we finally found something Marcus can't do," Jewel laughs as we approach.
"He didn't know there was a difference between peppers like the vegetable and ground pepper," Cora says conspiratorially. "I saw him get confused on the train when our escort offered him the shaker."
"Don't tell her that!" I say, feigning embarrassment at the story that emphatically did not happen. "I'm not a chef, how should I know?"
The little aside seems to have the desired effect - Jewel doesn't appear actively suspicious about our interlude to the beach.
"I was just thinking," Jewel says, slicing up a pear with the edge of a comically large two-handed sword, "Manari says the outer district kids, Six-Seven-Eleven, are together and probably weaponless. We know Renata has a spear, but I don't think she's much of a thrower - her form wasn't great at the station. And between the Eight-Ten guys, one has a slingshot and he's pretty good with it. No news on Three. That's what you're up against, taking care of Manari."
"Sounds doable," Cora replies, busily emptying a bottle of water and half a bag of rolled oats into one of the pots.
"If I come back and he's dead, I'll kill both of you," Jewel adds, looking from me to Cora.
Cora doesn't blink.
"Back atcha. Marcus comes back alive, or you won't," she says placidly.
Again, that weird tension between the two of them. I think back to Jewel's skepticism of Cora in training, and wonder if that's at the root of it or if there's something else.
"Glad we understand each other," Jewel announces. "Who wants some pears?"
Breakfast is good, if quiet. I think not murdering each other is about the best possible outcome, which makes it a higher-stakes breakfast than most, though I've had worse.
"Ready to go?" Jewel finally asks.
"As I'll ever be," I say, slinging my pack over my shoulder and staring off into the swamp forest, wondering what waits for me there.
Just in general… what's next?
x
It's hard to manage the passage of time, you may have noticed, when I'm doing one POV per chapter and half of the POVs are time-overlapped because, like… things happen! But also I reread the whole series like twice while I was in the woods with my best friend over Thanksgiving break and I'm determined not to have the whole Games be over in four days and also to give a fair shake to everybody who's still alive without making this whole thing like a million words.
So, I think the temporal movement like, 'worked' here, and at this point the alliances are pretty static and you basically know where everybody is, so I'm not freaking out so much about extensively covering everyone.
Of twelve remaining: Bridget and Dion are hanging out in the cave. Fidan, Statice, and Yuna are on the run in the swamp forest. Closer to the boundary with the pine forest, Renata is flying solo (and we'll check in with her next), Damask and Samil are also treed in the same general area, Cora is sticking at the Cornucopia with Manari, and Jewel and Marcus are about to set out on a hunting trip and shake! things! up!
