Anthracite Amber Weitz, District Twelve
Everything happened so suddenly. One moment Tesla was showing her how to use the spile, and the next, she collapsed to the ground. Anthracite didn't believe it at first. The cannon was too fast, and she fell so quickly, there was no time to make sense of why or how she could die so suddenly. After all, the two of them were well hydrated, and had managed to avoid the poisonous snakes in the arena. Only a heart attack could end someone's life so fast, as far as Anthracite was aware, or had seen for herself. Tesla was far too young for that.
Cradling her former companion's body in her arms, however, revealed the answer. A metal dart dislodged from the girl's shoulder blade and fell to the ground softly. Too soft for something so deadly.
Instantly, Anthracite remembered the boy from One, throwing darts in the training center. His aim was impeccable, and second only to his knowledge of poisons. She found little comfort in knowing the reason for Tesla's swift end. Instead she felt hollowed out, all of her emotions drained in the same moment as her ally's life.
As she leaned over Tesla's body, Anthracite felt a cold sense of clarity. Her whole life she was gently chided for being overdramatic, but when it came to the Hunger Games, she felt that perhaps she had under-reacted. Patterns came into focus, connections that had always been there but she hadn't seen.
The Games was not the first time she had faced death, not even the first time this year. During that record heat wave, when her leg was broken, she remembered a sick, nauseous feeling before she lost consciousness. Waking up in a District Twelve hospital bed, Mattock was there beside her, in a bed of his own. Mattock had saved her. He was always saving her. When they were reaped together, she made a vow to herself to save him this time.
And she had failed. Staring down at Tesla, she realized that she had failed again. Everyone who trusted or depended on her was gone. She felt the heat coming down through gaps in the trees and foliage overhead.
Of course the arena this year would be hot. She was destined to die in the heat, like she should have that day, when Mattock saved her. If only she had the sense to die then, Mattock wouldn't have had to look after her in the arena. Perhaps he would have had a shot.
She could practically hear Carlotta screaming at her. 'Going back to your self pity already? For fuck's sake. I haven't even been gone for a day. Get over yourself, stand on your own two feet for once, you miserable loser.'
It was a comforting thing to imagine, the girl from Ten coaching her out of her own misery. But Carlotta was gone. Alive, unlike the others, which only supported Anthracite's belief that wasting time and energy on her was a mistake. Perhaps Carlotta ought to have killed her, after all, making good on her constant threats and fulfilling Anthracite's destiny as well. Even now she wondered why she hadn't.
'Because I believed in you,' her inner Carlotta whispered, 'like Mattock believed in you. Like Tesla. The reason people keep saving you is because they see something in you that is worth saving.'
Real Carlotta would never say something so sentimental out loud, but it was even too hopeful a thought for her usual inner monologues. It was so jarring, she physically recoiled from it, hit hard like a ton of bricks slamming against her chest. Her posture shifted involuntarily, from balancing up on her knees, to slumping back to a full sitting position.
A dart whizzed through the air exactly in time to miss thanks to her move, so close that Anthracite felt the tiniest wind against her cheek, a poison kiss meant for her. A poison kiss she had just barely dodged. Of course, the boy from One was still nearby, and she was so lost in thought that he nearly managed to kill her too.
She waited for her self loathing to return, to tell her that perhaps that would have been for the best, but it never came. Instead all she could think of was Mattock and his easy smile.
'You can do this, double A.'
Anthracite looked at Tesla's still body. Her face was peaceful, no sign of pain whatsoever, and the thin layer of gold dust made her shimmer softly like some sort of ethereal being. She might have let the girl down, but perhaps she could still avenge her death.
She looked around, spotting the boy from One, already coating the tip of a dart with some sort of liquid whilst hiding in the underbrush nearby. He was fast, efficient, but his focus was not on her. Recognizing her advantage, she unsheathed a knife Tesla had given her earlier that same day, and charged. There was no strategy, no backup plan if this didn't work. All Anthracite had was a rage that burned as hot as the desert she found herself in.
That was all she needed. A sharp gasp, a dull squelching sound, and the knife entered the boy's abdomen. He looked up at her, surprised and in pain, and for a moment Anthracite thought she could see the parts of him that weren't formed by his training. He may have been a career, but he was the same age as her. In another world, they could have been friends.
But if she stopped now, she knew the Career in him would take control again and she would be dead. So she drew back her arm and stabbed him again. Two, three, four five and six more times. On and on until his eyes turned to glass and she heard the sound of a cannon.
Anthracite was sure she should have felt guilty, should have wanted to cry over the boy and the life that was lost. But it was too hot to waste tears. The Career knew the risks when he volunteered. Perhaps he was still a victim, but he was not one to the same degree as Mattock, certainly not as much as Tesla.
She stood, realizing that now, she was truly alone. The realization didn't scare her any more. Everyone she had cared about, had cared about her back, believed in her when she was unable to believe in herself. If she died, everything everyone had done for her would be in vain. She was determined to not let that happen.
Anthracite Amber Weitz was going to win the Hunger Games. No matter what it took.
Titania Topaz, District One
When the first cannon went off, Titania was helping Serena May to fortify the gates leading to the tunnels inside the pit . She didn't think much of it. Death was an obvious part of the Hunger Games. Part of her felt disturbed at how used to such grim reality she was becoming, but she reminded herself that only a few more deaths stood between her and home.
Even while she mused over how many tributes remained, her hands held steady as she fastened planks of wood repurposed from some of the supply crates contained within the pit together with rope.
She counted the amount of times the cannon had fired in her head. Titania was fairly certain that it was the tenth time. Two more deaths and the Games would be two thirds of the way over. There would be Capitol interviews with tribute families, betting would hit a fever pitch, and sponsor items would be more expensive.
Titania found it to be a strange comfort, imagining how people outside of the arena were acting. She could distance herself from the horror, pretend none of this had anything to do with her.
But what did people think of her? She wondered how she might be viewed back in Panem. As a frontrunner, an extra, a villain? Titania had spent most of her time in the Pit, she realized, and so she couldn't be sure what was happening in the rest of the arena. As a result she had nothing to compare herself against. Except maybe Elixane and her band of outcasts. With only one kill to her name, and the careers having dwindled to none but her, Diamond, and Serena May, she wondered if she might be a disappointment to District One. Was she making her mother's reputation worse by being here?
She waved all these thoughts away with a shake of her head. No good came from thinking so negatively. She was a leader, she was alive, she had the Pit and she had an alliance. Not to mention a wide variety of supplies. She had Serena May by her side, too, smarter and more capable than anyone she had ever met. And she had-
Boom
There was no way she could know.
No way to put a face to the sound until the anthem later that night. Yet she did know, as if her own heart had been the one that stopped as the cannon went off. There were always stories of twins who could know when the other was hurting. Titania was an only child, so had no idea how realistic that might be. But that cannon was for Diamond. She knew it like she knew her own name.
When they first met, she was fifteen, almost sixteen, and he was just a fidgeting young boy in her presentation classes. Forcing the career academy to let her into the boy's presentation track had taken so much longer than she thought. Finally being allowed to wear suits, to go through practice interviews with bold confidence, thrilled her to no end. Her instructors toiled for years trying to drill demure sex appeal into her from the moment she hit puberty. Even if they had been successful, she would have hated it down to her bones. But Titania was too headstrong to let her teachers grind her down into their narrow views of femininity.
Diamond wasn't as sure of himself. Small, even for his age, with a personality that seemed just as unassuming. Squirming in his seat alongside all of the other boys, who had been picked for their good looks and athleticism, he made quite a strange sight.
He didn't fit, and yet no one could deny how skilled he was, and so Diamond could never be rejected from the program by academy instructors. Titania respected that, and filed it away in her head. Back then, there was no particular reason to keep track of him, just a feeling. A sort of instinct which always served her well before.
Despite that instinct, she mostly ignored the boy until years later. Since he was younger than her they didn't have many classes together. While Titania consistently shone in her studies, Diamond kept his head down. He did well enough to stay in training, but that was about it. Perhaps, if things hadn't gone down as they did with her first District partner, he never would have been chosen for the Hunger Games at all.
Pizazz Wayfinder was her age, keeping up with her most of the time, and Titania was hardly surprised when the academy chose him to be her partner in the Games. She didn't hate him, and they worked efficiently enough as a team. But neither of them would have a problem when the time came to slit the other's throat. That seemed ideal, given the circumstances.
But when his leg was broken, Arctic Lennard was called as his replacement. Arctic was almost as talented as Pizazz and Titania, but meaner. Even then she could have forced the partnership to work, but then she caught him laughing with friends outside the academy. Joking about her, about her sexuality, about her talent, and worst of all about her mother. Insisting that the only way Titania could have got this far was because Sapphire still had influence at the Career Academy.
He did not mean "influence" to mean respect amongst the faculty.
In the end, she supposed that maybe he was right, because those influences were what allowed her to remove him from his position as tribute. Titania was the top choice for career, not Arctic. When she complained about the boy, the instructors were so mortified that they allowed her to choose anyone she wanted as a district partner. And she had chosen Diamond. Unassuming, brilliant, Diamond. She believed in him, she trusted him, and she wanted no one else but him to be by her side during the games.
And because she believed in him so strongly, she was the reason Diamond was dead.
Titania fell to the ground and wailed.
Serena May knelt beside her. She didn't ask what was wrong. Titania wondered if she could somehow sense it, too, or if she simply managed to infer what was filling the Career with pain now. The girl from Seven had intuition as sharp as anyone she had ever met. They could communicate without words most of the time, understanding each other as easily as breathing, even more than it had been with Diamond.
Kneeling there in the dirt of the Pit, Titania returned to another memory. She was young, trying to convince her mother to allow her to attempt career training. "This is for you, mother! For your reputation, your legacy, everything the capitol took from you. I'm going to get it back!"
Her mother grasped her hands so tightly that Titania feared the tips of her fingers might turn purple. "Oh daughter. My darling Titania. Nothing in this world, not my legacy or my riches or all the fame of Panem, is as precious as your life. You are all that matters."
She didn't understand then. In fact, she wasn't certain she had ever understood what her mother had meant until she heard the cannon that signaled her best friend was dead. Until Serena May took her by the hand while she mourned.
Titania the Fool. No matter how they viewed her outside the Games, that was how she would always feel about herself. In the Hunger Games there was no way out but through. Only now did she truly see the meaning and the cost of that fact. The seventy-fourth Hunger Games were long gone. There would be no gimmicks or last-minute rule changes. Only one could emerge as Victor.
And so, if she ever wanted to see her mother again, she would have to lose not just her best friend but the young woman she was quickly falling head over heels in love with. For Titania to live through the Hunger Games…
Serena May would have to die.
Carlotta Pierce, District Ten
It hadn't worked.
Fury swept through her, a kinetic force compelling her to act. An instant later, one of her bottles of water was dripping down the walls of the cave, only she could barely remember throwing it. Just like she could tell that the blood curdling screams were her own. But it was all very distant, as if someone else had taken over her body.
Or maybe something else. Grief, a twisted master, had her under its thumb despite everything she had done to avoid it. Leaving Anthracite and Tesla behind was meant to protect her from being destroyed when one of them died. Only now she was by herself in a cave, staring at the projected face of the girl from Five, and hurting so damn bad.
It hadn't worked.
Maybe if she had stayed, Tesla would still be alive. It was a stupid thing to think, arrogant and probably untrue. But she thought it anyway. Guilt ate at her like maggots on a carcass.
Why hadn't it worked?
She was supposed to shake it off, like she had shaken off everyone she'd seen die before. Like she shook off the fact that her mother, alive and well, still chose to drop her at the group home and never look back. Carlotta was the monster who could stand it all. But instead she was in tears now, pummeling herself with might-have-beens.
'Beep-beep, beep-beep.' A golden canister slid out of the cave wall only a few feet away. Carlotta didn't want to touch it. The gold paint reminded her too much of Tesla, and as the tube shimmered faintly in the light of her fire Carlotta came very close to throwing another water bottle.
That thought brought her back to her senses. What was she doing, wasting water in a desert, ignoring a sponsor item purely because of the gaudy gold shit that passed for paint to the Capitol? Was she trying to kill herself?
A week ago, she would have dismissed the possibility outright. But she was being more honest with herself since the Reaping. Without the bravado and layers of lies protecting her, there were two hard truths she couldn't ignore: Carlotta had cared for Tesla, and now she was dead.
The arena was a difficult place to maintain perspective. She knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she had reasons to stay alive. At least...probably. But sitting alone in a cave, mourning the death of an ally, those reasons didn't make themselves readily apparent. Survival felt like an uphill battle with no reward at the top.
She reached forward and picked up the golden tube. Depression was pathetic, and Carlotta would be a lot of things, but she refused to be that. Even if there was no point, she was going to try and push forward. Take every bit of help offered. She did wonder, though, what kind of asshole would support such an unlikeable monster as herself.
Inside of the tube there was a small pot of soup and a couple of tesserae rolls. Nothing major, but hearty and warm, the kind of thing that could make or break a tribute this late. A small note lay on top of the soup. Carlotta unwrapped it and read.
'Just in case you forgot that there's someone in your corner-
Blaire.'
Reading the name, Carlotta felt a surge of emotion other than pain. Although she wasn't entirely sure what it was, the sensation wasn't unpleasant. Blaire was out there, getting her sponsors, trying to keep her alive. Even though Carlotta probably hadn't made that easy for her. Even though Carlotta was seriously debating with herself whether she wanted to be alive at all.
That night before the Hunger Games, when she and Blaire spoke out on the ledge, flashed through her mind. Her mentor had insisted that she cared for Carlotta, not just as her tribute, but as a person. Carlotta hadn't believed her back then. She didn't believe anyone cared about her back then.
Even now, she could picture the possibilities where she let Blaire down so clearly. It would happen eventually. She would do something or say something and it would all be over.
Would it?
Hope. That was the emotion she felt when she read Blaire's name. It was a reminder of home, of the resilience of District Ten, of the fact that there were people who knew her and claimed to love her. She didn't know if things would turn out well, but for once she allowed herself to hope.
And one thing was certain; Blaire Offerseed would never die in the Hunger Games.
Carlotta found the nearest visible camera, and tilted her soup towards it. "Thank you." she said. She imagined the Capitol would eat that up. That her sponsors thought she was talking to them. But she wasn't. She was talking to Blaire.
She was talking to the woman keeping her alive.
AN: oh gosh this one took a while, yeah? But it's done now, and we get even closer to the finale as day four comes to a close. This time is going to be a liiiittle different because I'm going to have two Capitol chapters this time before we go back to the arena. But I promise it's good stuff. Thank you everyone who is still actually reading this story.
Anyway, on to obituaries.
10th, Diamond Stark by AProudBibliophile- I'm very sorry Fiona. It was kind of a jerk move of me to kill both of your characters back to back. Diamond was such a joy to write, and he added a ton of dimension to the careers and the games in general. There were a bunch of subplots that happened which I hadn't expected because Diamond just popped up and was like 'hey, remember me?'. His existence also allowed me to write a murder mystery in the Hunger Games. A murder mystery! Like that is just awesome. Diamond was smart and resourceful and made an impression on everyone he talked to. He will be missed.
So, time for the kill count.
Diamond Stark- Two kills, Tanner and Tesla
Dash Grester- Two kills, Raleigh and Lucien
Elixane Marcus- One kill, Demetri
Demetri Donovan- One kill, Zella
Titania Topaz- One kill, Issa
Carlotta Pierce- One and a half kills, Arachne
Seaward Waters- One kill, Mattock
Cordelia Korver- One kill, Seaward
Violet Beckingridge- One kill, Ruben
Ashlar Granodum- One kill, Nettie Sue
Astra Porter- One Kill, Dash
Rust Waxy- One Kill, Cordelia
Anthracite Amber Weitz- One Kill, Diamond
Thank you so much for everyone still invested in this story. I love you all. Please review if you can, and enjoy the chapter!
