forget the horror here,
leave it all down here,
it's future rust and it's future dust.
—
Pauletta Kapok — 15
District Eight Female — the 31st Hunger Games
Nobody expected much of P.K.
She's reaped on a sweltering afternoon in District Eight of all places. Sweat sticks her dark hair to her forehead and flushed cheeks, and her dress is ill-fitting and made out of curtain fabric.
She stumbles on her way to the stage. Standing next to the escort wide-eyed and knees knocking, she balls up one hand in the fabric of her dress and the other at her side, fingernails digging into the palm of her hand. P.K doesn't cry, but it doesn't curry her much favour with the Capitol anyway—when the first batch of odds based on the reapings alone are announced during the train ride, the Capitolites make their opinion of her known. Twenty-first is where they place her. Just above the two tributes from Twelve and a thirteen year old from Six who fainted when her name was called.
P.K's mentor doesn't have any more faith in her than the Capitol, either. District Eight's only victor doesn't spare a glance her way, making a point of speaking only to P.K's district partner on the train. Houndstooth is scrawny but he's three years older than P.K, and District Eight's best shot. P.K knows that mentoring must be hard—especially after they've had twenty-seven years of nothing but disappointment—but Azlon's rejection keeps her up that night.
He knows what it takes to get through the Hunger Games.
He knows that P.K doesn't have it.
When he finally utters a word to her, it's stretching into the afternoon of their second day together. P.K is curled up on the couch, staring out of the window, and Azlon is somewhere in the back of the train car. At first, it doesn't even register that he's speaking to her. She hears him speak, but she doesn't register it—she knows that she should still listen; even though his advice is meant for Houndstooth, it doesn't mean that P.K can't benefit from it. But she isn't exactly thinking logically with everything that has been going on.
"Pauletta." It's her name that catches her attention. She turns around.
"P.K."
"Hm?"
"Everybody calls me P.K."
"P.K, then." Azlon doesn't look amused, though P.K isn't quite sure why she thinks that he should. There's nothing funny about any of this. "Give them a performance tonight."
P.K doesn't say anything in return, even though there's a question she desperately wants to ask: why?
Her grave has already been dug, so what is giving the Capitol a performance going to do for her?
She tries to take the advice. But it's hard to give the Capitol a performance when she feels like the world's biggest fool, stuffed into a costume that looks as though a toddler put the thing together.
"The different fabrics represent District Eight's versatility," her stylist tells her, before the parade. P.K thinks that the woman just doesn't see the point in making anything meaningful for a girl that will die and be forgotten soon.
She doesn't blame her.
P.K doesn't think that anything could prepare her for training.
She barely says two words the entire time she's there. Keeps her head down, and practices at a handful of stations she overhears Azlon telling Houndstooth to visit. Sometimes other tributes join her, but they never say a word. P.K is okay with that.
She's never had a good judgement of character; numerous people she has trusted throughout her life have thrown her trust back in her face. Instances few and far between, but enough to make her wary. Besides, how would one even go about trusting another tribute enough to turn their back on them. They're all gunning for the same thing, and to get their prize everyone else has to die. They're enemies. Plain and simple.
P.K has already dealt with the emotional hurt caused by so-called friends. She doesn't want to have to grapple with it again, only this time with a dagger protruding from her back. The other times have ended in tears; at its worst betrayal in the arena ends with a body in a box and a face in the sky.
If she can help it, P.K doesn't want it to be hers.
Houndstooth worms his way into an alliance with the two tributes from Seven, and the boy from Ten, he tells them over dinner on the second night. When Azlon's eyes flick to her, his raised eyebrows already betraying his question, P.K shakes her head. Azlon's mouth sets into a line.
"That's stupid." He spears a boiled potato on his fork. "Are you even trying here, P.K?"
She doesn't finish her dinner. Instead she locks herself in her room and finally lets herself cry.
She waits for what feels like forever for her private session.
And it's barely worth it; a 4 is all that her efforts are worth to the Gamemakers.
Before her, Houndstooth scores an eight.
P.K wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole, her cheeks burning with shame as she feels all of the eyes turn to her. Azlon clicks his tongue in disapproval and it takes everything within her not to snap at him. It's not as if he's helped her much.
She cries again that night. P.K had thought she'd made peace with it all, but she's terrified.
Houndstooth might go down in history books; District Eight's first Victor in almost three decades. Second Victor overall.
P.K won't even be a footnote.
"So, Pauletta, what have you enjoyed most about your stay in the Capitol?"
P.K tugs at the neckline of her dress, eyes squinted against the bright stage lights and heart hammering in her chest.
"Um." Her cheeks must be bright red, even under all the blush. This is embarrassing. Even more embarrassing than her score yesterday. "I like the food. There—uh, there's a lot of it."
She's never been great at holding a conversation and this interview is no exception. By the way the man across from her keeps clearing his throat and tapping his foot, she's not the only one who isn't finding this any fun at all. P.K has been dreading this all day; it's one thing to know that her family are back home watching this, but it's another thing to know that they are not the only ones. Everyone back home is, everyone in the other districts are, everyone in the Capitol is. P.K has the attention of everyone in Panem, and she doesn't want it at all. Right now, all P.K can think about is the sick feeling rising in her stomach and her head starting to pound.
"Is there a special someone you're trying to get home to?"
"My mom and dad," P.K says quietly. Even mentioning them makes her chest tighten with homesickness. "My little brother, too. But...well, no one like...like that. Like you're asking about. Just family."
The audience coos, hands clasped under chins and bottom lips stuck out. But they don't really care.
If they did, these Games wouldn't be a thing in the first place.
The bloodbath is a blur.
P.K emerges somehow unscathed. There's blood on her hands, on the dagger she wrenches from underneath a crate. It's not hers.
Nobody expected much from P.K.
Definitely not a kill in the bloodbath.
P.K doesn't know if the drops on her cheeks are tears or raindrops. Though she comes to the conclusion that it's probably a mix of both.
The Three boy is dead, and it's P.K's fault. He killed Houndstooth—jabbed a spear into the boy's back whilst he was reaching for something else—but is that really an excuse? Or did P.K kill him because he was there and she had a dagger and knew how to use it?
She had to do it is what she tells herself. He wouldn't have hesitated to kill her—didn't hesitate to kill Houndstooth—and she's in the Games after all. He was an enemy. An obstacle.
He shouldn't have been. He should have been back home, doing whatever it is they do in District Three.
Yet, there they both were.
When the nightly recap is broadcast, P.K weeps for her District Partner and for the person she's become.
It's weird, knowing that she is District Eight's only chance.
She was the one nobody was betting on; an awkward chariot ride, no allies, an awful score, and a fumbled interview. Houndstooth somehow took everything in his stride, playing the pre-Games the way that they were supposed to be played.
But he was dead.
All that prep hadn't helped him in the slightest.
So...what is helping her? How is she still alive?
More questions that she will never get the answers to, because she isn't sure that there is any.
P.K hikes the straps of her pack further up, wiping sweat from her forehead as she hikes. Two days in and she can barely walk from the blisters on her feet, she feels sick with hunger, and her mouth never seems to stay dry for long. She catches the rainwater in her bottle overnight, but even though P.K rations it, it never seems to last long.
She's starting to doubt whether surviving the bloodbath was even worth it.
Will it really mean anything? Or is she just prolonging this torture?
Things take a turn on the sixth day.
There are nine of them left. P.K watches the nightly recap like her survival is tied directly to it, which she supposes might be true in a way. Last night she was shocked to see the faces of two Careers; the One girl and Four boy. She doesn't think she wants to know what happened.
It could have just been the inevitable fracture of the Career Pack. But it's possible that there's a threat in this arena that the two of them couldn't defeat. If that's the case, it doesn't bode well for her. So P.K tries not to think about it.
At this point, the pain in her feet is normal. She moves slower than she did before, but she isn't completely static like she almost expected she would be. Her headache is always there, too, and so is the hunger and thirst.
She doesn't hear the girl before she sees her. It's the blonde hair that catches P.K's attention, not the crunching sounds of the leaves underneath her boots. They seem to spot each other at the same time; both of them stopping immediately and staring at each other through the trees. For a few seconds, P.K thinks that the girl might just go on her way and pretend that this never happened.
That's before a throwing knife is protruding from her shoulder.
P.K howls in surprise and pain, toppling backwards just as another knife whizzes past her and embeds itself in a tree trunk.
She barely has time to register that before the girl is upon her, a sneer drawn across her lips. She kicks P.K square in the chin, eliciting another howl from the Eight girl.
But something catches her attention elsewhere. A tree rustling? Another tribute? P.K isn't sure, but the girl seems frozen, her head turned to the left where her eyes search the undergrowth for whatever has her spooked.
P.K doesn't freeze this time. She doesn't hesitate. She grips her knife in her hand—it's her left, since doing anything with her right hand is completely off limits now that her shoulder is useless—and brings it up to the girl's neck before stabbing it in.
The girl isn't able to make much noise. Other than a choking sound that P.K is sure will haunt her dreams.
But P.K doesn't stick around. She's shouldered her pack and snagged the other girl's bag, the pack hanging from the crook of her elbow, before the cannon has even fired, fleeing into the woods around her.
That night she finds out the girl was from district Ten.
That night when she closes her eyes all she can hear is the choking.
P.K doesn't go to the feast.
She probably should have.
It's now that she regrets not going to the first aid station during training. The flesh around her wound is red, irritated and hot to the touch. It's infected, and if Azlon is watching then he's not rushing to find her anything that will help.
She lies against the tree trunk, no longer able to pull herself to relative safety amongst the branches. She's survived this far to die of an infection?
Just her luck.
She's dozing off when the feast happens. But four cannons going off is what wakes her up; two almost simultaneously, another one a few minutes later, and then one not too long after that.
P.K swallows thickly, her throat hurting with the effort. She's so close.
But she's also so far.
Three more tributes left to outlast.
That's all she needs to do.
It's easier said than done, but P.K has to try; her mom and dad and brother are waiting for her.
And maybe she lied to the interviewer. There might be someone special back home, too.
She hasn't slept a full night since she entered the arena.
P.K is utterly exhausted. Worn down. Worn out.
The thoughts are back; that she should have just let herself die in the bloodbath, that she shouldn't have fought against the Ten girl.
A cannon disrupts her sleep again. She sits up, aware of where it places her; the finale is coming, and P.K is probably the least prepared in this entire arena. Her shoulder is only getting worse. Her brain is foggy. Her head pounds. She can't even keep down the tiny amounts of food she forces herself to eat.
P.K is going downhill and fast.
She had assumed this was now a game of outlasting, but P.K knows that it can't be. Not if she wants to get home.
Not if she wants to see her brother again. Her parents. The girl who works at the fabric shop in the East Side. Who has that angelic grin and the lovely red hair.
She hasn't long managed to drift off again when another cannon fires.
This time, P.K gets to her feet.
It's now or never.
But how do you prepare for something you never thought you would live to see?
Preparing wouldn't have done her any good.
When P.K finally comes face to face with her final boss, it's not who she was expecting to see. At the start of the Games she'd kept up with the recap, but the moment her shoulder was injured, it took the back seat. Her brain is so foggy that P.K doesn't know she would be able to recall that information right now anyway.
It's hard enough to recall her name and the fact that she is in the Hunger Games in the first place.
So when she stumbles onto—literally—the thirteen-year-old from district Six, P.K thinks that she must be hallucinating.
The girl is sprawled out in the undergrowth underneath a sharp drop, awake but unmoving, in a similar situation to what P.K is. There is a gash along her back, definitely infected, and her wrist and ankle are bent at an odd angle.
"What the hell happened to you?" The question is definitely inappropriate, but it's the only thing that P.K can hoarsely force out.
The girl murmurs something indecipherable, and then something about mutts and the District Two boy, that P.K doesn't need to actually hear to piece together.
The mutts were supposed to take the Six girl out, or at least force a confrontation between her and the Two boy, but instead they got the boy. P.K has to hold back a laugh; she'll bet that somebody is getting fired for that.
The biggest threat in the arena turned into mutt food, and the only other competitor chased off a cliff and rendered useless.
P.K feels as though it's almost too easy.
And it should be too easy.
But P.K doesn't know if she can bring herself to kill this girl. The other two times it was in defense of herself, but this is a little girl. Defenseless. Broken.
P.K doesn't want to become a monster.
But then her eyes meet the girl's.
"Please," the girl whispers. Her eyes slide shut. "Be quick."
P.K is. Her dagger across the girl's throat, and she's dead in not even a minute.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the winner of the 31st Annual Hunger Games: Pauletta Kapok!"
It doesn't feel as good as P.K had imagined it to.
But she's out. She's the Victor against all odds.
As the hovercraft claw clamps around her, P.K drops her dagger, watching it fall into the undergrowth as she's carried away. Leaving the arena behind.
But, as much as she wishes she could forget everything, it turns out that out of sight and out of mind doesn't work with the arena.
Three months on, and she still hasn't had a full night's sleep.
Three months on, and P.K is still a murderer and a monster.
Three months on, and P.K has lost count of the times she wishes that she perished in that arena.
Nobody expected much of P.K. She wishes that she'd met those expectations.
Excelling, in this case, has ruined everything.
But P.K has to live for those who didn't get to.
For those who won't get to see this time next year.
Winning the Hunger Games has made her richer than she ever expected to be. But it has also burdened her with a debt that she doesn't think can ever be paid.
spanish sahara - foals
so...this prologue was not supposed to be this long. it's why i used the choppy format—so i could keep things more concise. apparently it didn't work. i do want to reassure everyone that this format will not be used in the rest of the story; it was just the only way i could cover everything i wanted to in P.K's experience without writing a massive chapter. i could've kept going if i wanted to...
anyway, hi! i'm jack and i hope you enjoyed this prologue. for my first syot i didn't want to go with any subplot, so figuring out a prologue was hard. i think this is okay, though? i hope you guys think so, anyway.
the form is on my profile, so please take a look! i'd love to see the tributes you guys create!