Song: Special Death by Mirah
Day 2 (btw, I'll only say what day it is at the start of the chapter if the day has changed. For example, the chapters before this all took place on day 1. Hope that makes sense? idk I'm kinda running on four hours of sleep and three lolly snakes right now so lol ahahahahahhbghraejgbh)
"Are you fucking joking me, Four?" Enyo snaps, crossing her arms. It's been a day, and the two of them still haven't stopped bickering – they're like little children. "That's a shitty fire."
"Oh, well you do it then," Brook says. Not breaking eye contact, he snatches Enyo's water bottle from her hands, unscrews the lid, and empties the contents onto the perfectly fine fire.
She grits her teeth, and her hand twitches, as if she's longing to reach for her sword and send his head flying. Part of me hopes that she will. "I will. I'll make one that actually works." For crying out loud. The two toughest tributes in the arena are fighting like children – and they're not even mine, so I can't yell at them. Usually One Victors love mentoring – it's engrained in us, after all – but I hate it SO MUCH sometimes. Especially when our allies are arrogant brats.
Citrine rolls her eyes, and grabs Lazarus by the arm. "Let's get out of here."
"You mean hunting, right?"
Citrine smiles devilishly. "For now." Good girl. She's not dumb. She knows that they need to get away from Enyo and Brook – the alliance will implode sooner than usual if the two of them keep arguing.
"Can I come?" Andromache asks, fidgeting nervously. Girl had better get a grip – she's scared out of her mind of Brook and Enyo and she's not doing a great job of hiding it.
Citrine, thankfully for Andromache, is nicer than our usual tribute, though maybe the friendship of the girls from Four and One last year has swayed her judgement. She smiles sympathetically. "Yeah, sweetie, grab your spear."
"We'll stay here," Jason says, looking at Fern, who nods. The boy from Eleven has, surprisingly, merged seamlessly into the Career pack. He's nowhere near up to their level, but he's got the right mindset and isn't intimidated by them at all. He might actually turn out to be a good ally.
I turn to Gloss, who's sitting beside me in our booth, staring intently at Lazarus. "They need to ditch Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber."
"Agreed," he says, tearing himself away from the screen for a second to look at me. "Think we can convince them?"
"Let's let them figure it out themselves first – I think they already know."
He nods, like he already knew what I was about to say. "How can they not?"
I shrug, and turn back to the screen. It's good having Gloss here. Our minds are so similar that we work effortlessly as a team – he's one of the only other One Victors I don't dislike. The others are too self-obsessed. Especially Shine – I fucking hate Shine. Yeah, she was my mentor, what of it? The bitch is so obsessed with herself she probably spent more time in front of the mirror than she did helping me win. Not that I needed her help anyway, but it sure would have been nice. I guess I'm a bit self-obsessed, but at least I'm not a complete bitch about it.
"Enyo really does remind me of Baria," I say.
"Why? Because she's an asshole?"
"Pretty much," I admit, and Gloss laughs.
"Don't let her hear you saying that," he warns.
"Whatever. I'm not scared of her."
"Sure you're not."
"I'm not!" I protest, though my heart's not in it. I'm far more on edge than I usually am – maybe it's because this arena is based on mine. My arena was also a ruined city, with zombie mutts and plenty of Gamemaker traps. Caesar says to the Capitol audience they did it for the ten-year anniversary of my Victory – I say they did it to torture me a little bit more. "She's the one who should be scared of me."
Gloss senses my anxiety, but he doesn't mention it. I'm glad. I'll probably either start crying or drinking myself to death if he tries to make me talk about it. "Sure, Cash, sure."
"Shut the fuck up. Didn't Nero beat you at arm-wrestling the other day?"
He flexes, biceps popping, and wiggles his eyebrows the way Finnick does when he's being sarcastic. "Only because I had already beaten Haymitch."
I start to laugh, rolling my eyes. "Yeah, like that's an achievement! Abernathy was so drunk he probably didn't even know he was arm-wrestling."
"Oh, shut up, you're just butthurt cos I'm better than you."
"Yeah, whatever, Glossy," I say, using the childhood nickname he hates possibly even more than President Snow. It never fails to get a reaction out of him.
He thumbs his nose at me – good to know we never really got past eight years old. "Cashie." I punch him, hard, in the shoulder, and he punches me back, just as hard. Anyone watching us would think we hated each other – but in all reality, if we hated each other, we'd be calling each other 'sweetie' or 'darling' or something like that. I save insincerity for people I want to make insecure. Maybe that's psychopathic, but we all do it, the other female One Victors and I. It's a survival mechanism, for me at least. A decade of being pimped out to Capitol freaks will do that to you.
The kids have only been walking for ten minutes or so, but they've covered good ground. The idiots – there's so many signs that someone's living around here, but they're too arrogant to actually open their eyes. The girl from Three lurks in the shadows, watching them – she's looking at them the way they should be looking at her. She's looking at them the way a predator looks at its prey. Hungry. Ready to attack.
It takes me a moment to find it – and it's barely visible, running along the ground. A thin strand of rope frayed and pulled away from the larger fibre. It's too late to warn them, and I pray that one of them will notice it before –
Citrine steps on the rope. It pulls taut, and a jagged piece of metal comes flying from somewhere above, burying itself deep into her abdomen.
Lazarus and Andromache yelp in surprise, only barely catching Citrine before she slumps to the ground. They lower her down gently, and she moans, already white as a ghost and shaking.
"Oh, shit, oh shit." Lazarus drops down beside her and cups her face in his hands. "Come on, we have to get her back to camp."
Gloss and I look at each other and sigh. Like most of our tributes, Citrine and Lazarus basically grew up together in the academy. We do things a little differently to Two and Four – we pick who will be paired up years before they go to the Games, so they can learn to be a team. They trained together, fought together, ate together, did everything short of showering together. It means our tributes usually work well as a team – but it also means they're loyal to a fault to each other. It's our fatal flaw, I suppose.
Lazarus would be far better off leaving Citrine here to die. She's not going to last much longer – she's losing too much blood too quickly, and the wound in her stomach is one that not even Capitol doctors could fix. Anyone watching can see that she's already dead, and maybe Lazarus does too, but he's gritted his jaw, his eyes flashing with determination – or maybe stubbornness.
Andromache looks down at Citrine, who is quickly bleeding out, and bites her lip. "Lazarus-" she begins, but he cuts her off.
"No," he says, in a voice so firm even I wouldn't dare challenging him over this. "I'm not leaving her. We have to try."
She sighs. "Okay. I'll hold her feet."
Together, they pick Citrine up, Lazarus supporting her torso, Andromache her legs. They walk awkwardly back to camp as quickly as they can, Citrine moaning and groaning in their arms.
Citrine's rapier and waterskin lay in the puddle of blood. When she's certain the careers are gone, the girl from Three creeps out of the shadows and snatches them up, melting back into the city faster than I can blink. It was her trap that got Citrine, and now the little bitch has the audacity to steal her supplies.
"Fuck!" I say, and slam my fist down on the table. It hurts, and will probably bruise, but I don't react to the pain. "Gloss, they have to ditch her. They have to."
"They won't."
"You think I don't know that?" I snap at him, and immediately regret it.
He doesn't react. "It'll be okay, Cash."
They cover ground quickly, and in about ten minutes they're back at camp. It's a miracle Citrine hasn't bled out yet, but she's not far off. Jason shouts when he sees them, and he and Enyo rush over to help with Citrine. They rest her onto Lazarus' lap, her stomach supported by his leg. He strokes her hair and she moans, grabbing Lazarus' hand with all the strength she has left. "Laz," she whispers.
Lazarus' eyes are bright. "Where's the first aid kit? Someone grab it."
"Lazarus," Enyo says, more softly than I thought she was capable of. "We can't help her."
"We have to try," he says. A tear runs down his cheek ad he wipes it away, smearing blood on his face.
"Don't waste our supplies," Brook says. I want to reach through the screen and wring this kid's neck – one glance at Gloss tells me he feels the same way. Sure, Brook's got a point, but the least he could do is be a bit sympathetic to Lazarus, who's about to lose his best friend.
"How fucking dare you-"
"Okay, fine," Brook says, raising his hands above his head. "I'm sorry. Let me look at her."
Brook kneels down beside Citrine, and for a moment he looks like he's genuinely about to help, his face a picture of friendly concern. Then he yanks the metal out of her stomach.
The bleeding increases tenfold almost immediately, and Citrine starts to cry from the pain, even paler than she had been before.
"What the hell, Four!" Lazarus shouts. He tries to shove Brook away, but from his awkward angle supporting Citrine, he's unable to. The others lurk uncomfortably around, none of them attempting to interfere – not even Enyo, who's clenched her jaw and crossed her arms tightly. "Do you even know first aid?"
"Oh, my bad," Brook says, smiling dangerously. He raises his arms and slams the piece of metal back into Citrine's stomach, so hard it actually goes through her, piercing Lazarus' leg. Citrine coughs, splattering blood all over Lazarus' face, before going limp in his arms. There's a brief silence as the shocked Careers try to comprehend what just happened. The cannon goes off, bringing them all back to their senses. Lazarus gently lowers Citrine's corpse to the ground before jumping to his feet, enraged.
He leaps forward, reaching for the spear strapped to his back. Jason and Enyo grab his arms and attempt to hold him back, but his rage is more than they can handle – he tears himself from their grip and lunges at Brook.
Brook doesn't even blink. He swipes once with his dagger, straight through Lazarus' throat, and a second cannon goes off. If Lazarus had been in his right mind – if he hadn't been blinded by grief and rage and Citrine's blood – he certainly would have been able to block the blow. But he didn't, and on the second day of the Games, our district has been entirely wiped out.
I let out some sort of choked noise in the back of my throat, and Gloss begins breathing heavier, whispering "shit" over and over again under his breath.
I reach for his hand, and squeeze it like it's a life raft. "Gloss, what the hell just happened?!"
He reaches across and hugs me tight. "We lost the Game, Cash, that's what happened."
Everyone thinks that we Careers are bloodthirsty sociopaths, just because we train our kids and send the ones with the best shot into the Games. They think we don't feel it when they die, year after year, despite years of hard work and training. They think we don't care about our tributes until they're Victors.
They're wrong. I don't know about everyone else, but I feel each death. With each lost child, a little bit more of my soul chips away.
I'm going to die here someday.