IX: September: District Eleven.
Only a craven would steal a fruit when he could take the whole orchard.
This must be how the Capitol pictures Eleven.
It's so green. Too green. It's so artificial it burns Farasha's eyes, making her squint through the sunlight that rains down in bright rays.
There is nothing so artificial back home—the rolling fields and lines of orchards aplenty are interspersed by guard towers and lines of barbed wire, manned by wandering Peacekeepers with stun batons and threatening words. Even the sun somehow seems fake.
Farasha wouldn't really know, though. She only ever sees it from a distance. Some would call that a blessing, being away from the orchards, but the few square miles of Eleven's urbanization gets boring after a few years, and she's had nine of them to grow tired of it. She longs for the open air, for the freedom that comes for choice. She longs to not be stifled.
It appears she's finally gotten her wish.
Even though the sun threatens to blind her, it doesn't stop Farasha from seeing the chaos—that, or the lack thereof, really. She can't say it's much of a surprise. This is Eleven's crop after a hundred years, twenty-four panicked kids who know well enough to stay away from a bloodbath. Both of their tributes have been slaughtered by Careers in the first ten minutes for the past four years now.
There are no Careers now. It makes everything significantly easier, though that doesn't stop her from tracking the movement of everyone around her, planning just in case of an ambush. Farasha doesn't let that fear stop her from doing her job, though.
She has no idea where the girls are, but they were both alive last she saw, and too close together not to watch each other's backs. After so many years of being on the fringe, Asha finally had someone come to her. It wasn't just that, even, but two someone's, a pair of older girls who had been watching her that entire first day of training.
Their eyes were like lasers zeroing in, but Farasha hadn't let it faze her. The trainer at the camouflage station liked her something fierce, complimenting her whenever she said something clever.
It had only taken a few hours for the girls to approach, asking all sorts of questions, spilling compliments over her. You're really good at that, huh? Over and over again, watching with admiration in their eyes.
For the first time in fourteen years, Farasha had felt seen. She hadn't even had to try—fitting, because she doubts she ever would have. They had taken her under their wings, been what she suspected friends were like.
It didn't matter that they were Poppy-and-Ixora, Ixora-and-Poppy, a pair so close it was hard to get a word in otherwise. They believed she was good for something when Asha didn't even believe it herself. They were asking things of her.
Up until this point, her life had been a useless wasteland. She wouldn't allow it to be now.
It's why collecting the supplies is so important. They had given her strict instructions on what to look for, splitting up the workload so that they could get in and out, well-equipped, as soon as possible. She's found a first-aid kit. Water. A flashlight. There's a body in front of her, but she pays it no mind—Farasha jumps over it's legs and scoops up the last thing she sees close by. Not a request, but something she feels is necessary.
The knife is reassuring, if nothing else.
"Hey!" Ixora's voice is louder and clear on the other side of the horn, nearly out of view, and Farasha abandons her search on the ground and heads to them directly. They must be good, then, and she's not the type to argue during such a situation. They're not leaving her behind; that's good enough.
Poppy has a sword in hand upon her approach, warding off a younger boy that continues to eye the backpack lying at her feet. Farasha scoops it up as soon as she's within reach, shoving her armful of supplies through the zipper. Her oldest ally is toting a second backpack, no doubt filled with water—that was their agreement.
It's only Ixora that can truly catch her attention, however. She remains steadfast at Poppy's side, but her hands are empty save for a knife not unlike Farasha's own. She was supposed to be looking for things too, back-ups of the things they were prioritizing just in case they proved difficult to find. For the amount of time that has passed, no matter how brief it truly has been, for her to be empty-handed is jarring.
As soon as she zips the bag shut, Ixora takes it from her hands and shoulders it. "Good job, kid," she says with a smile, quickly turning a foul look on the boy that's still staring at them. "What are you still doing here? Scram."
Farasha feels relief when he bolts—hopping over a body is one thing, but watching one fall might be another thing entirely. "Shall we go?"
It's almost worrying how calm she is not that she's with her allies, the plan having been seen through. Poppy nods, nudging at her back to get her to move through the trees as she watches what's left of the field mill around the horn, picking up scraps. She jogs into the orchards with only her own knife gripped tightly between her fingers, refusing to allow herself to think about it too intently.
Ixora got caught up with something, is all. She's uninjured, but someone could have been chasing her. She took the bag because she's taller, shoulders strong from long summers working in the fields. Asha is practically frail in comparison.
"That went better than expected," Poppy breathes out behind her—when she glances over her shoulder Poppy looks elated, no doubt that everything went according to plan.
Almost everything.
Perhaps it doesn't matter that they weren't so equal, if everything worked out. These girls trust her. Asha has always been on the outside looking in, unable to breach even the most delicate of social circles. She'd much rather be in her room with her terrariums, allowing the largest of her stag beetles to crawl up and down her arms, content in its new home.
It's easy to be nothing in the face of a bug. They're not judgmental creatures. People are much, much worse, proving themselves to be such time and time again. When you find the good ones, or when they come to you, the only answer is to keep them, discrepancies be damned.
Finally, having a direction feels right.
Only four cannons fire the first day, even into the night.
Clementine doesn't know any of them, something that feels simultaneously like a relief and a massive tragedy. Eleven's just too damn big for anyone to really know one another unless you go to the same school.
There was one—Vernon, his name is, four years her junior and unfamiliar at best, but her attempts at befriending a thirteen year old hadn't exactly gone very far. Besides, Clem had found her friends—of course she had. That's what she was best at.
By far the easiest had been Amias, congenial to a fault even if he wasn't the loudest person in the room, so level-headed that it was almost unnerving. In a throng of terrified kids he had been the calm sea, and when she had asked him do you come here often? he had smiled and huffed out a laugh under her breath, nothing more than that needed.
Clem hadn't known exactly what she was looking for in allies, only that she wanted them. Amias was by her side now, reaching overtop her head to pluck the ripest pears off of their respective branch, but the other two were lurking further away, finding refuge in the shade.
When she had approached Iry for the first time, the younger girl had looked terrified, as if Clementine was some sort of all-consuming threat, about to rip her throat out before the Games had even begun. She had forced Iry to sit with them at lunch, and forced her to come with them to the gauntlet afterward. As the hours trickled by, she had warmed up. By the end, she was laughing along with Amias at whatever Clementine said.
Elijah, on the other hand, was one of the only people still somehow alone by the end of the third day. A part of him seemed content with it, too, though it hadn't taken him much coaxing at all to join them.
He wouldn't have been the type of person Clem spent time with back at home; quiet people never seemed to last.
Four was better than three though, right? And he had no one else—why wouldn't he have stuck around?
"Hey, dunce, move it," Amias urges, and she jabs him in the ribs even as she steps away, allowing him enough room to collect the rest of the fruit. The one good thing about the orchards is that they'll never go hungry. It's sweltering, of course—sweat runs down her spine in a steady trickle as it has since the sun rose, clinging to her temples in the worst way. She's not used to the heat like some people are; Clem's a packer, an inspector who packs things up before they get sent off. No one trusts her and her gangly limbs to be climbing any sort of ladders or trees.
At least they won't freeze, either.
"Be careful who you're calling a dunce," she warns playfully, waggling a finger in Amias face. "Might come back to bite you."
"You bite? I can't say I'm surprised."
She swats him in the arm. "Only sometimes."
He rolls his eyes, punctuated with a slight smile as he drops his new collection of pears into Clem's waiting arms. At least he's happy, somehow, in the midst of all this bullshit. That's all she can hope for.
Of course, there are other concerns. Iry and Elijah are still some ways down the row, still resting, knees touching. Their heads are bent close together, mouths moving but nothing audible reaching Clementine's ears. After a moment, Elijah barks out a quiet laugh. The noise is so foreign that Clem can only blink.
You just don't get reactions out of him like that, in her experience. He doesn't smile often. Certainly doesn't laugh.
Until now.
She's the one that brought them in as separate entities. She's their leader, even if claiming so out-loud seems audacious. Clementine is just glad to have a group of people that she can call her own. She's made them smile, kept their spirits up. It should be her Elijah is laughing at.
There's nothing there she can trust. Amias is safe. Those two have grown worryingly close in such a short period of time, and Clementine hasn't been watching closely enough to tell if such a thing is dangerous.
Brooks would tell her she's being paranoid, but it's not as if her brother pays enough attention to her nowadays to tell. She makes sure he gets up on time, makes him breakfast, helps him with his homework, but Clem can't shake the feeling that he hates her. They used to be so close, too, back during the days when Clementine could drag him on any sort of adventure without protest.
They're both distant now, Brooks and her father. Neither of them really care. Clementine could climb onto a rooftop and scream her name into the sky only for them to look the other way.
"Amias?" she questions, reaching forward to tug at the ends of his hair when he doesn't respond. "Would you call us friends?"
"Me and you?" he fires back. "Nah. More like you're my annoying sibling, or something. Weird cousin. I could go on for days, but…"
She resists the urge to tug at him again, giving him an eye-roll of her own when he turns back to her with a cheeky smile. They are friends. She trusts him in a way that she finds she hasn't trusted someone in a long while. People usually leave before she can, sending her one last sideways glance as they depart. Each relationship feels more and more ephemeral than the last.
That doesn't mean she's going to give up, nor stop trying. Clementine works her tail off, alright? She does well enough in school and she goes right to work and she puts food on the table when her father is too exhausted to even ask them how their days were. It's a routine she hates, something she has only longed to change, but she's doing it.
She always gets through it, somehow. Even if each day seems worse than the last, that doesn't stop her from waking up the next with a smile on her face.
Still, a part of her wants nothing more than to take the spear lashed to Amias' back and hold onto it, just in case.
But that would be irrational. A fool's errand. Nothing is wrong.
Nothing yet, at least.
The other girls aren't handling it well.
Unlike Farasha, who doesn't dare swat at the clouds of fruit flies that float within the trees or the bugs that buzz too close to her nose, they fling their arms about and shriek as if Eleven did the poorest job of desensitizing them to the realities of the outdoors that it could have.
The air has been alive every night, too, lit up with fireflies that sparkled in massive droves. It was still warm even after the sun sank below the horizon, no sleeping bags or shelter truly necessary, but it was obvious the girls didn't like it. They would much prefer their beds back home, uncomfortable as they may be.
Now don't get her wrong, a bed would be nice, but Farasha doesn't mind laying back, heads pillowed beneath her head, to watch their lights flash and twinkle above her head, the ink-blotted sky alight with a thousand stars.
The air was clean out here. Farasha lived two blocks away from Eleven's only processing factory and lived permanently in a half-smog, the stench of contamination and rotted fruit a permanent memory in her mind.
Ahead of her, Poppy swears as something flies directly past her face and backpedals nearly into Ixora, who chuckles. Farasha looks up into the tree whose branches brush against the crown of her head; only a few white blossoms remain. Otherwise, the breeze is strong with the scent of citrus, enough to wake anyone up within a mile's radius.
"We should take these ones," Farasha comments, stopping her allies in her tracks. "They just ripened, by the looks of it, and as long as we don't leave them out they'll last longer than most things."
"Sounds good enough to me," Ixora announces. She stretches up, tugging free the first orange she spots, the branch snapping back up to meet the rest of its compatriots with a wild shake. Asha moves more slowly around the other side, tucking the fruits into the crook of her arm. As long as they don't eat too many, nothing should go awry; Farasha has little desire to experience what would happen if you filled yourself up with citrus, but the training manuals in the Capitol didn't suggest any food.
It was obvious immediately. The manuals on edible fruit and camouflage, everything centered around the outdoors. No one is pretending anymore that the Districts won't just face what they see every single day back at home.
Farasha prefers this, at least, to the well-traveled stress she lives alongside. This is much better.
A butterfly clinging to a nearby branch nearly becomes unseen as she combs through the tree, it's dark orange wings blending into the tree it's chosen, each splotch of white resembling a flower. Farasha holds her hand out, forgoing the fruit, allowing the insect's antennae to flit over her outstretched fingers, coaxing its legs gently across the palm of her hand.
You don't see monarchs very often in Eleven; twice a year, at most, because of their migration patterns. That's what Miss Omarah always told her, anyway. She was never the best at science, but her undying fascination always made her rapt attention look so much more impressive than any other student. Miss Omarah would answer any question she has with a smile on her face.
The monarch nestles gently against her palm, wings flapping every so often. It would be nice to see them more often, she thinks. Especially like this.
"God, you're weird," Ixora mutters, striding around her to clean out a new branch with a distasteful look on her face. "I have no idea how you can stand the feeling of those things crawling on you. Gives me the heebie-jeebies."
"Hey, if she likes bugs, she likes bugs," Poppy cuts in. "At least we'll know which ones won't kill us."
Farasha holds her hand out to the sky with a smile on her face, giving it a gentle shake until the monarch takes flight and lets itself be carried away by the breeze. Her allies just don't get it. The only ones who do, really, are her bugs at home, safe as always.
Or at least they were. Farasha feeds them and cares for them and then tucks them away so that her parents will never know she's keeping such a collection under their roof. The beetles in their terrarium underneath her bed, the pair of earthworms that live in their dirt in the darkness of her sock drawer, and then Enoby, of course. Big enough to span Farasha's hand, wings jet black, the only kind of it she had ever seen. Asking Miss Omarah if silk moths were rare in Eleven would have drawn unwanted questions—Farasha had figured that one out herself after hours of research.
But her parents didn't know. No one did. How long can they last, really, without Farasha caring for them? It's been a week already, and there's still so much more to go…
When she stepped over that body at the bloodbath, she had felt almost nothing at all. Now, though, her heart plummets into her stomach. They were her only true friends, the creatures she had saved from the smoke outside and the trampling feet and the frantic, annoyed hands.
She squeezes her eyes shut, forcing a deep breath down her throat. There's nothing she can do now, even if she wants to scream. Doing so before in her life has only drawn attention—intentional, of course, but not the sort of thing you wanted in here.
They were going to die long before she would be able to call her parents and tell them. Realistically, Farasha was likely to as well. She would have no idea about their fates. She wouldn't have to clean out their little habitats from her room. That would be the job of her parents in a few months time once they finally worked up the courage to open the door and confront the fact that she was gone in-between shifts.
Of course they won't survive that long, but it's a pleasantry, at least, to pretend. It gives her something like a purpose. She can't save anyone here, but she can try to save them.
She's never had a proper direction in life, not once.
Would anyone else count this one as such a thing, though?
"I thought I'd be more afraid of the dark," Iry comments quietly, eyes roving just above the tree-line. "It's not so bad though, with you guys."
Clementine shoves down her budding irritation at the girl in the face of their shared sentiment—nothing is quite so scary when you have people to face it with, even if those people may not be the most trustworthy. She nods, passing Amias' spear from hand to hand as she stares into the night, on alert for any passerby's.
"I don't know what I'd do," Iry admits. "I mean, Eli has practically been keeping me sane…"
She's sure the grinding of her teeth is audible, but if Iry hears it she chooses not to question it. Clem is supposed to be keeping watching, for Panem's sake, not be inundated with plain-as-day pronouncements of how much Iry cares for Elijah.
It's not easy to tune her out; listening to other people is what Clem does. She likes to know what makes them, what they think about, who they are.
Just not so much right now.
Iry is still going, too. No matter how much she tries to filter the words through one ear and out the other, it just doesn't quite work. Clementine's lips twist into a frown as she rounds on her younger ally, noting the widening of her eyes.
"Can you please, for all of five seconds, just shut up about Elijah?"
"W-What?"
"Elijah. Stop talking about him. It's all Eli-this and Eli-that and I get it, okay, you're obsessed with the guy but let me remind you that I'm the reason you're here," Clem snaps. "You know what would have happened to you otherwise, right? You were sniveling like a little baby abandoned by it's mommy. Someone would have killed you in that first minute, and you know it as well as I do."
Dare she say it looks as if Iry's lower lip is beginning to tremble. Here come the waterworks. Let her run to Elijah if she wants, say Clem was being mean to her. It's her own fault.
They really aren't trustworthy people, are they? She knew it from the moment they stepped foot in here.
"Clem" Iry starts. "Clementine, I—"
"I said shut up."
"I don't know where this is coming from…"
"Shut up."
"But—"
"Shut up!" she insists, voice verging on a yell as she drives the spear forward. The blunt end of it knocks into Iry's stomach and sends her stumbling back a few paces, a gasp escaping her lips. If only she was finished with it then. Clem drives the spear forward once again, almost relishing in the moment that Iry finally realizes what's about to happen.
The spear-tip sinks into her stomach and she lets out a choked whimper, stumbling back further as Clem presses forward until her back hits the line of trees behind them. She holds on tight as Iry slips to the ground, hands still fastened around the spear as blood begins to bubble free from the end that has disappeared into her stomach.
Somehow, the boys have not awoken. Peaceful sleepers, those ones. The cannon will wake them, though, or the hovercraft… Clementine doesn't have long before they know.
And they will know. There's no way to clean up the blood, to hide the wound in Iry's stomach. She pulls the spear free as the light begins to die from the younger girl's eyes, striding back the thirty or so yards she had put between them and the camp. It had seemed like an intelligent idea at the time to get some distance, to have a better view.
Of course it was—just not for the reasons she anticipated.
Clementine knows deep in her heart that Amias will forgive her for this; he's her friend. He has to. Once he hears her out, he'll understand everything, the very same way she would for him. It's Elijah that's the problem, laid out flat on his back, eyes closed in tranquil sleep. He's more than capable of fighting and killing if he puts his mind to it, and kill her he will if he finds out what she's done.
If he knows, Clem dies.
He can't know.
She hovers above him, oddly still, taking breaths that further steady the previous shake to her arms, that calm the racing of her heart within her ribcage. It was her decision to bring them in—it only makes sense that she's the one to remove them from the equation, too.
Clem breathes. The cannon fires, the serenity of the darkness shattering over them.
She brings the blade down into his heart before he can even open his eyes.
It seems like nothing is moving at the pace it should be.
There are technically no concrete rules at how fast they have to see things through—if things are going too slow, the Gamemakers will urge them forward. They all know it.
No doubt Eleven is fitting the exact bill everyone suspected they would. They're not often fighters, too beaten down and exhausted to rise tall even when threatened. There are anomalies of course, the real threats, but they're not the easiest folk to find.
Farasha knows little of true threats. She knows bullies, like most kids her age, and anything worse has stayed far, far away. The biggest grievances in her life are the expectations of her parents, the aimless directions in which she spins trying to find a path in life. Nothing is truly wrong, and any declaration hinting at such a thing would only be taken in offense.
Out there, somewhere, are the few people willing to see the job through. Those who became killers in the bloodbath, and those on the hunt. They're not like her lurking in the shadows of her allies just waiting for something to happen—they're the ones trying to make it.
Farasha isn't sure what alerts her to the new presence on the hillside. She hears nothing and feels no eyes on her. The boy that appears to be slinking through the trees a few rows in the distance is none the wiser to the fact that she's watching him, but it's easy to tell why. Poppy and Ixora are further up. They're never quiet; at least not as quiet as Farasha is. No doubt he's creeping up to try and make a move.
She scrambles forward, but moving only makes her lose sight of him. She stills pressed up against the bark of an apple tree, unwilling to be seen. Farasha has already patted every inch of her clothing with clay and mud to avoid being seen, much to the distaste of her allies. They hadn't been keen on doing the same.
They were making themselves targets all to avoid a little bit of dirt. Farasha would only be seen, on the other hand, if she wanted to be.
A rustle from up ahead makes the hair at the nape of her neck rise, and it's followed almost immediately by an alarmed shout. Has he found them so quickly, or did he unknowingly stumble on them? It doesn't seem like the most strategic thing in the world to try and fight two other people, especially if they're armed… what could he really get out of it?
Asha knows that any other person would run to their aid, but she can't make her feet move at a pace quicker than a near-crawl, dreading what she'll find beyond the next row of trees. Deep down she knows how little she'll care if Poppy or Ixora were to die—every time the sun rises, the realization hits her all over again. These girls don't care about her. Farasha was a tool of them, a source of knowledge that they couldn't force on themselves in a meager three days. They didn't bother asking any true questions because they had her to do the work.
Allies are good in any scenario, but what of the end, when they choose each-other over her? What then?
The tell-tale sign of something thudding to the ground makes her feet stutter-stop, pushing aside the crop of branches to view what's on the other side. The boy is twitching on the grass, blood foaming from his mouth as Poppy forces the sword further into his neck, effectively silencing the last of his gurgles.
"Way to come in right at the end there," Ixora comments snidely, eyes rolling as she steadies Poppy, stepping away from the boy's body.
"I saw him coming in from the east," Farasha says quietly. "I didn't think he'd get here so fast."
Poppy's eyes snap up to her so quickly it's almost frightening. "You what?"
"I said I—"
"I heard what you said," Poppy interrupts. "You saw him coming and you didn't do anything? You didn't warn us?"
"Yelling would have just brought him towards me."
"Right." Poppy snorts, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "Self-preservation, I forgot. Some ally you are. Try to be more useless next time in helping us fight—I'd love to see you try."
Her shoulder crashes into Farasha's side as she breezes past her. Ixora quickly stands where she's bent over the boy, rooting through his evidently empty pockets. No wonder he was willing to chance it—he was probably desperate.
"Some good you are," she mutters under her breath, making a beeline after Poppy. Farasha doesn't know if she's referring to the boy, or… or to her.
What was she to do, though? The best option was to keep quiet, do what she's good at, and sneak up just in case they were in serious trouble. Shouting could have done more than just bring this boy down on them—there are things out there none of them are aware of. More tributes. What use is there in that much danger?
Of course she failed in their eyes. That's all she ever does, over and over again.
Farasha is an abject failure no matter the situation.
Perhaps if she had warned them everything would have gone the same way. Perhaps if she had, it may have been the opposite; for all Farasha knows, she might be so unfortunate enough to be staring at the corpse of Poppy or Ixora instead of this boy she doesn't know.
Would it have been so unfortunate, though? What Farasha have even cared?
The yawning pit in her stomach tells her all she needs to know.
Clementine has never been on the receiving end of such blatant hatred.
There's no way around it. No talking herself into a different story. Certainly no re-working of the history she wrote.
Amias hates her. Well and truly hates her.
It wasn't supposed to go like this, is the thing. He was supposed to understand. From the moment he had opened his eyes to see her hanging over Elijah's body, he had looked terrified. Clem had watched him scramble away from her, hands held out like he could ward her off. The way he looked at her it was like she was the monster that had been hiding beneath his bed since she was a child.
He had shook his head through every word that had spilled from her mouth. He had closed his eyes, whispered things under her breath. And he was too scared to leave her, too. They were sociable creatures at heart, people who needed company like most others needed air.
But he hadn't spoken to her, well and truly, since then. What was it, thirty-six hours?
It felt like a fucking lifetime.
Don't get her wrong, though—she's tried. Stony silence is the only thing she receives. Every part of him she thought she knew has turned to dust, and Clem doesn't doubt that he'll turn tail and run to the first other person he sees in his quest to get away from her. Friend or foe, it's not like he'll care. In his eyes, anyone is better than her.
He can't even be so grateful enough to realize that she did it for them. They can get out of here without having to worry about anyone else—not any enemies, not Iry and Elijah and their loyalty to one another.
He can't be grateful, more than likely, because she's refused to give the spear back to him. When he had worked up the nerve to ask that first sunrise after, that had been her time to stay quiet. Amias' hand had trembled when he held it out in her direction, a plea in his eyes. Just give it back to me. It'll be better this way.
If someone hated you, they had every reason to kill you. Clementine wasn't about to hand him back the very thing that would allow him to do it.
Of course, he could do it some other way. Strangle her when they were lying down at night. Shove her over, slam her skull into a tree. Beat her to death with a branch. Out here there was no shortage of options.
She hadn't dreamed of anything out here, but if she had, Clementine suspected they would be nightmares of those very things, all intertwined into one hell. The way he looked at her now, never let her too far out of his sight, the circles under his eyes from being unable to sleep…
Having someone scared of her was not a pleasant realization. More than anything, it was frustrating. And as that frustration grew, so did the understanding that his fear was perhaps a valid one. Perhaps this is why people always left her. If they cut their losses early, there was no way to get hurt.
He was so good, too. The definition of a perfect friend. They could joke together and relax in one another's company—it was her who had shattered that, wasn't it?
He deserved better than her. Maybe everyone did.
"Amias," she says suddenly, stopping dead in her tracks. He's about ten feet behind her, she knows, but he stops just as quick. "You should go."
His silence is resounding. Her ears are singing. She can hear his feet shifting back and forth in the grass, practically see the question lingering in his eyes. "Why?"
"Because I'll kill you too, eventually."
"I don't believe that," he says back. "If I did, I would've left right away."
"Yeah, well, maybe you don't know me as well as you were hoping to," she snaps. When Clem rounds on him, he takes half a step back, and she forces her grip around the spear to loosen. "You're telling me what you think, and I'm telling you what I know. One day soon I'll think the same thing about you as I thought about them and that's it for you, alright? Good as dead."
"If this is some sort of self-sacrificial thing to clear your conscience…"
Clem barks out a laugh. "My conscience. Right. Because I care."
"Just because you did a bad thing doesn't make you an evil person."
"Then why are you treating me like one?" she asks. Amias shakes his head; clearly he doesn't have an answer for that either.
He has every right to be upset. Clementine just doesn't know how to handle that fact, and she never has.
She never will.
"I still don't think you'll do it," he says quietly.
"Fine," she hisses. "I'm leaving, then. Don't follow me."
"Clem—"
She turns tail, spear still in hand. If Amias wants to ask for it back one last time, he doesn't dare try. A part of her considers throwing it at him just to unleash that last little bit of annoyance, but a weapon is worth more in her hands than outside of them.
Somehow, blissfully, her request is heard. When she turns at the crest of the next hill Amias is still standing there, hands laced behind his head, watching her go. There's no friendly wave, no tearful goodbye.
If they're lucky, they'll never see each-other again. Clementine won't be the one to kill him. Maybe he'll find someone else to go to the end with, someone who will be able to look Clem in the eyes one day and kill her like Amias won't be able to.
If they're unlucky, then fate will find a way. She'll be the monster he thinks of her as.
Unfortunately, it's as little of a concern as she expected it to be.
It feels more and more like she's working to avoid them.
Farasha has her explanations, of course—whether or not Poppy or Ixora believe them no longer seems to matter. It doesn't matter what she says, good or bad, because she gets a scoff or an eye-roll in return every single time.
Sometimes, she gets only silence. Somehow it doesn't seem as painful as everything else.
Each day she grows more convinced she's going to have to cut her losses and run; somehow, Asha has mucked them all up so bad that there's no repairing it. If she had just played along, they would have continued to see her more useful qualities and charades as friends until one of them keeled over. This is why, back home, she stopped trying. It always turns out the same.
She waits until both girls are settled to the ground for the night to haul herself up into the apple tree, searching out the ripest fruits. Farasha is supposed to be keeping watch, but no doubt one of them will be checking on her.
She needs food if she wants to get away, and if they come after her she may not have the chance to stop. Most likely they haven't even noticed her feet leave the group. Nobody ever pays much attention to the things that linger underfoot, her or otherwise. Farasha only wishes she could hear them, though. They never talk confidently with her around, at least not to one another.
The truth would hurt like the lash of a Peacekeeper's whip, but at least then she would know. Farasha has been told she's a little too far off the beaten path more than once in her life, and she's no stranger to those sort of things now.
She plucks her first apple of choice free and tucks it into the fold of her shirt, the snapping of the stem almost immediately drowned out by a cacophonous buzzing. Farasha lets herself go still almost without realizing, eyes darting in every direction to spot the source. It's not as hard as one may expect—the nest is large and robust, hanging by what appears to be a mere thread several feet to her right.
They're shimmering bodies are pure gold in the dying light, crawling across the outside of the nest before disappearing into the hive within. All of her muscles have locked up, breath reduced nearly to nothing.
Farasha has never been face-to-face with them before, but any kid in Eleven knows it. If you see them, you don't move. All you can do is pray, really, and hope that someone notices you quick enough to call for help.
Each summer the units called to remove the tracker jackers are thinned until their ranks are almost non-existent come autumn, bodies dumped into some mass grave in the corner of a field. The mayor will always thank their families, whether they save someone or not. Most of the time, it's not. This time, though, there's no one to call for. No help is coming to save her.
If she so much as catches their attention—and she will if she risk dropping from her perch to the ground below—they won't stop coming after her until she's dead.
There aren't many fates worse than it.
She can do this, though. If she waits until they all move into the hive, or if they all happen to move somewhere else, she can shimmy away fast enough. There's no running involved, no wild flapping of her arms or screaming. That's the mistake everyone makes, she thinks. Their brain knows what to do, but they panic in the face of true danger.
Farasha refuses to panic.
"Where the hell are you, head-case?
She just barely avoids jumping as Ixora's voice calls out down below, allowing her eyes to slip shut in order to calm each rapid breath that tries to escape her lips. Each crunch of the older girl's feet through the drying grass sounds like a gunshot, each one louder than the last as she approaches the very bottom of the trunk.
This time, there really is no way to shout a warning. Farasha will be dead within seconds if she even opens her mouth.
The worst part is, she can't even look down to see Ixora, to express something in her eyes. A simple panicked look would suffice. "Is there a reason you're up there?" Ixora calls up to her, and every single curse word imaginable comes to life in Farasha's mind. Her mother never did like when she swore.
There's a delayed buzz as one of the jackers swoops past her face and descends towards the ground. Within seconds, a handful more follow. She hears Ixora let out a muffled complaint, and there's the slapping of her palm against bare skin.
She doesn't even know that she's about to die.
"What the fuck?" she says a moment later, voice increasing in volume. The swarm of them has taken to the air, now, but the cloud isn't enough to eclipse Ixora's answering scream as they engulf her. She can only imagine what's happening below—Farasha's eyes can only find the hive still hanging before her.
Below, Ixora's screams have turned into one long, never-ending wail. They're so focused on her that Farasha feels something like safe. If Poppy has enough brains, she won't even risk trying to get close.
There's are only half a dozen jackers left crawling across the ridged edge of the hive, wings twitching as they contemplate taking flight.
Farasha makes the decision for them—she raises her foot, bringing it down squarely where the hive connects to the branch above, and sends it plummeting to the ground. The sole of her boot comes away clean, no splattered insects to be found. There's a heavy thud as the hive crashes directly into where Ixora has been absorbed by the writhing surge of insects.
She's no longer screaming. If she's lucky, she's dead.
And it's all because of Farasha.
She'll be able to climb down—not anytime soon, but sometime in the night. If Poppy is still alive, and Asha doesn't doubt that she is, she'll be able to tell her all about what happened. Almost all of it, anyway.
Just like always, Farasha could have said something. There's always the option to do more.
To anyone who will find out about this at a later time, it may look like the perfect accident.
It almost was.
She's never been good at being alone.
Clem isn't a stranger to knowing such a thing—sometimes, on the odd days that Brooks is up before her and leaves the house before she's even managed breakfast, she's forced to walk to school all by her lonesome. Most of the time she traverses to her job the same way, and then back home again.
When there are other people to distract her, Clementine's thoughts have no room to run wild. They always traveled at a pace she couldn't hope to catch up to no matter how bad she tried to tame them.
It was just her and her mind, now. What a dangerous combination that could be.
It was paranoia, and wondering what each individual noise was the next row over, no matter how small. It was the lengthening shadows of the trees as the sun set yet again. Even the stars seemed to be getting dimmer, the moon almost non-existent. Still, Clem kept moving. At least thinking and walking was better than stewing in one spot for the entirety of the night.
Of course, sitting would mean watching the sky, too, like she had last night.
Nothing about it seemed real.
The last thing she had been expecting after leaving Amias behind not six hours previous was to see his face lit up in the night, a faint smile on his shimmering portrait before it disappeared. Of course her brain had run rampant then too, trying to think up reasonings—he was strong enough, it would appear, to fend off most attackers, but Clem had stolen his weapon. What was he to do empty-handed? Had something else found him, taking advantage of the fact that he had no one to watch his six?
There were a hundred disgusting combinations, but the one her brain kept going back to, almost out of fear, was the what if? What if the boy she had connected with so instantaneously had given up the second Clementine had left him alone?
There was no easy way for him to do it, but anything was possible for a boy desperate to die.
If he had been of course. It's not as if Clem could ask him. The only way she would ever know what happened to him was if she got out of here. No one out there in the real world would claim that was a good enough reason, but it had to be for her.
What else was there, really? If she won, she wouldn't have to be alone anymore? She had Brooks, of course, even if they didn't get along most days. Her school friends and the crowd at her work. Hell, Clem would even take her father at this point, no matter how slighted he felt by her. She just needed five minutes of him listening—well and truly listening, and he would get it. He wouldn't yell at her for taking on work. He wouldn't ignore her every other second of the day. They could come to some sort of understanding, before…
Well, before what? Before she died in a few months? That couldn't be her fate if she got out of here. There was no death—only persevering through it, and Clementine had already done the unthinkable once. Twice, even, if her brain dared to separate them. It was still plenty easier to think of Iry and Elijah as one entity, a slip up. Anything more and their very existences, or lack thereof, followed her through the orchards like ghostly visions.
She could do it again. It was always the hardest the first time. After that it was less thought and more action, killing because there was simply no other choice.
Amias had clearly succumbed before facing that choice head-on. Clementine refused to be lumped in alongside him, another pathetic child who would be forgotten about in a few years time. By the end of January, there would be two-hundred and eighty-seven new bodies buried across all of Panem.
Perhaps life would have her be one of them, but Clem was not so keen on finding out just yet. Instead, she would keep moving.
She would just keep moving.
Poppy's not a stupid little girl.
Everything would have been easier if she was.
When the swarm finally moves on, Ixora's body is an unrecognizable, bloated mess, skin mottled in every shade of bruise and swollen with lumps that make every part of her appear distorted.
When the hovercraft comes from her and carries her skyward, her skin sinks in like wet paper, pustules popping open over the grass. Poppy flinches. Farasha does not.
There's something wrong with her—she's convinced of it. Because not even for a moment has she felt bad about Ixora. Farasha feels nothing for her mourning family or friends or the boyfriend she claimed to have. She felt more when she raised her boot to kick the hive down, strategically leaving the insects alone so that their blood wouldn't be on her conscience.
It's terrifying, the realization that you're a sick individual. Her mind's not right if she feels this way. Something is inherently wrong in her make-up, her insides warped and brain wired incorrectly. How can she not care about the sight of a dead body at her feet?
The first time, this time… why doesn't Farasha care?
The only thing she cares about now is Poppy's firm, unending stare. Something accusatory lurks behind the neutrality she's aiming for, a more sinister plan clearly forming in her brain.
Farasha isn't the only one whose mind has been flipped and turned upside down.
For how on edge Poppy is, though, for all her attentiveness, something in her seems to want to avoid Farasha too. There's a healthy distance between them, enough that she doesn't fear any sudden movement. Of course she still has her knife, still unused, but she doesn't think she'll have to use it.
That's now though. In a few hours, a few days, there's no telling when the switch will flip for Poppy.
When Farasha will wind up dead.
A friend wouldn't do that to her, but they were never really friends, were they?
She waits patiently until Poppy is as far away as she's dared the past twelve or so hours, hugging her makeshift rucksack close to her chest. It's not so suspicious that she has it when Asha has spent the past few days tying it into something sturdy, even before Ixora died. She slips the fabric strap over her shoulder and tugs on it for good measure, the lumpy weight of the fruit she's collected nudging up against her spine.
Poppy looks away—far, far away, eyes fixated on the horizon-line above the trees, and Farasha takes off.
By the time she turns around, Asha has put enough distance between them that she doesn't hear an audible reaction, nor is she able to tell with her ears alone if Poppy is giving chase or not. Frankly, Farasha doesn't care if she is. Turning around is a waste of time. As long as she keeps moving, and she moves fast, Poppy won't find her.
It's as if she prepared for this very moment without knowing. For days her allies giggled at her for covering herself in mud and allowing twigs and leaves to remain pasted over her clothes, knotting her hair back and beneath the collar of her shirt so that she looked more akin to a garden sprite than a simple human. She zig-zags between the trees and up the hill that breaks from the orchard, the dead grass leaving no remnants as she races closer to the top, fire burning in her throat.
Farasha has never run so far before, never at such a breakneck pace. Her legs are starting to ache, knees quaking.
Finally, she looks back—there's no clear sign of Poppy, but that doesn't mean she hasn't just lagged behind. Asha tucks her knife between her teeth and throws herself at the nearest tree. They're taller out here, no fruit to be found. It's only thick foliage, the darkness of the growth taking in her without hesitation as she scrambles up into the lowest branches and forces herself still.
With each breath her chest feels as if it's about to burst open. She needs one good, deep inhale—but not now. Now she can hear footsteps approaching, not nearly as fast as her own, but enough to be concerning. Less than ten seconds later she hears the crunching of dead undergrowth as someone passes beneath her perch. Farasha doesn't dare peer down to check less she risks being discovered, but there's no avoiding the fact that it's Poppy.
She's still moving, though. There's no reason for her to stop if she thinks Farasha hasn't.
She made the right decision in running. There was no safety back there.
Farasha counts to sixty as slowly as she can make herself, and finally inhales, nearly choking on the rush of air that floods into her throat. She presses her forehead into the bark, arms wrapped around the branch as she holds onto it for dear life.
"Psst."
Despite her grip, Farasha nearly rolls off and to the ground below. She shoves herself up, still heaving as she presses tight up against the trunk of the tree, head whipping about.
"Up here," the voice calls softly. "Don't worry, you're safe."
Finally, she finds them, an older girl at least ten feet above her, sitting on the last of the sturdy branches. As she begins to swing her legs back and forth, the whole thing creaks, though she doesn't seem to pay it any mind.
Farasha's fingers flex around the knife, but the girl's smile doesn't waver. A more pressing matter is the spear she has laid across her lap, fingers dancing along its length. She isn't moving to kill Farasha though, nor did she draw attention when she most certainly saw Poppy run by. Chances are this girl was hiding from the ruckus they made running.
"This might be kind of sudden," the girl says, voice strong and certain. "But I've been thinking for a few days about finding a new friend. What d'ya say?"
It wasn't so much a choice to take Farasha in as it was a certainty.
Clementine had seen this small wisp of a girl throw herself into the tree she had chosen to watch from, and knew it would have been easy to kill her. All she had to do was lean down and jab her with the spear.
Of course, then, her body falling from the tree would have alerted the girl chasing her, and Clem was sort of tired. It wasn't so easy sleeping without someone to watch your back, it turned out. It was even harder when she was still lost in thoughts of what could have possibly been Amias' end after all this time.
A distraction was welcome, but more than anything, a fresh start was what she had been unknowingly craving. That, and Farasha was alone as she was. There was no one to come between them, to break this fragile thing they had started by sheer convenience.
She was a lot like Brooks, really, and nearly the same age. They were both reserved in their own ways. Where her brother was clearly used to her antics, though, Farasha was not. She jumped out of her own skin sometimes as if she had forgotten Clem was there in-between bouts of talking, giving up little information no matter what sort of questions Clem asked.
She leans back against the trunk of a tree, shading her eyes as she looks skyward. "Hey, Farasha?"
"Hm?"
"How many of us do you think are left?"
"Nine."
"That's… oddly specific."
"No—no, I mean, I know there's nine," the younger girl says. "I've been keeping track. Counting every night."
Clementine rolls her neck to the side, finding Farasha sitting in the shade just to her left. "You're pretty smart, aren't you?"
The shrug she receives in response is one thing, but the way Farasha clams up, hunching in on herself, says all that Clem needs to know. "I mean it, you know."
"You barely know me."
"But I know that you're smart," Clementine insists. Smarter than her, at least. Between getting up early to make sure Brooks is all put together and working until after the sun sets, she hardly gets enough sleep some days to even stay awake through her first class. Like most in Eleven, she's destined for a life of all work and no play. No adventure.
She never could have dreamed of anything worse.
"My parents don't think so," Farasha says quietly. "Or at least… they wish I was more. I think everyone does."
"Sometimes parents aren't always the people we need them to be," Clem responds. Of course her own father springs to mind, the fact that she hardly sees him between dusk and dawn—Farasha has parents much more present than her own, so it would seem, but that doesn't mean it's made anything better.
As for the other people, though? Fuck them. She's done meeting the expectations of other people. Clem is going to run free and never let anyone hold her back again.
It looks like Farasha might be looking for something similar.
"I'm glad I found you," Clem says softly.
"I think I found you," Farasha fires back, but there's a small smile playing at her lips when Clementine turns to face her, and she can't help but smile back.
This really is just what she needed.
A cannon blasts overhead, but she hardly jolts. The noise has found a home in her, and Clem no longer writhes with discomfort upon hearing it. "Eight," Farasha murmurs.
Eight left, including herself. Another by her side.
There couldn't possibly be much left.
Clementine likes her. A part of Farasha even likes Clementine back.
She thinks there's a much larger part, though, that's utterly and undeniably terrified.
There's no telling if that's what friendship is, overcoming fear for something more—Farasha has never experienced anything like true friendship, not once in her entire life. Of course, she's never put in anything that could be considered a true effort, and that hasn't changed now. Things just never work; why would she put effort in when it wasn't going to?
But Clementine hadn't left her, or seemed bothered by the fact that she didn't talk much unless it was about a subject she had never even heard of before. She just smiled and nodded and left herself be engrossed in Asha's subjects regardless of how trivial they may have been. She didn't call her strange, or weird. She didn't think anything of it at all.
It was nice to be accepted by someone who was still a halfway-stranger, whose last name she wasn't even privy to. But still, there was that fear… fear she couldn't shake, that lingered when she tried to lay down at night and re-emerged stronger as soon as the sun rose.
It was the way Clementine tromped about with no regard for what was under her feet, raucous and unhesitating. It was the blood caked onto the end of her spear and how she would work at it with her nails sometimes, humming under her breath.
It was how she laughed, and smiled, letting her eyes twinkle in the light as if nothing was truly wrong.
"Clementine," she says carefully, peering around the treetops first before she dares speak. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure thing." The older girl doesn't break pace, nor turn around. The mere idea of anyone asking Farasha any sort of intimate question would be enough to make her stomach turn, but it doesn't appear Clementine cares much.
"That blood on your spear… where did it come from?"
Clementine hums again, that same familiar tune. "My allies."
Everything in Farasha's power is devoted to keeping an even gait, not allowing her feet to trip up on themselves. "Why?"
"The two of them weren't easy to trust. I had to, before they inevitably turned on us first."
"Us?"
"Me and Amias."
The lump in her throat feels wider than ever. "What happened to Amias?"
"'Dunno. We separated, and he died not long after."
Should it be a relief that she didn't kill all of her allies, or a horror that she dared to take two of them out in the first place? Of course, Farasha didn't know them—maybe Clementine's allies were dangerous. She can't remember a single thing about them, from their faces to their ages.
Is it better if they were dangerous? Is it worse, still, that just like Ixora, Farasha doesn't feel inclined to have even a moment of mourning for them?
You could call Clementine a monster, of course, if the shoe fits, but Farasha would sooner find the true definition of the word if she were to look in a mirror. When Clementine peers back at her she manages a feeble smile, unable to find the truth of the matter in her answering, more sunny one.
There are four others still out there, Poppy included. Realistically speaking Clementine is her best choice, but…
But what? What else is she to do except run aimlessly, without thought or direction? She'd be no better than the others, then, crushing the ground beneath her feet and expecting victory in return. Staying is the only true choice—for now, at least. It's become apparently obvious that Clementine is not the most trustworthy person existing in the universe; neither is Farasha, really.
They're not really friends. Friends would mean trying, and love, and protection. Farasha does not feel that any of those things are true.
For now all she can do is wait.
If she has to run once again, she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.
Only a few hours ago there had been five of them left blistering under this sun.
Three seemed like such an inconsequential number in any other scenario—now, it was both thrilling and terrifying. One more person to get out of here. One more person that stood in her way.
Farasha had never said so, but she harbored worry that their opponent would be her former ally. Until now, Clementine had to admit that the thought was troublesome, to say the least. Personal grudges never worked out well.
It wasn't her, though. She only knew it wasn't because of the boy twenty or so yards away, back still turned to them. Clementine wasn't a good enough shot with the spear to chance throwing it, and judging by his tense shoulders he knew someone was behind him. Was he just biding his time? Coming up with a plan? It seemed a little bit late for that.
Granted they hadn't come up with one either. Farasha was half a step behind her and hidden a bit in the shadow of her back, clearly in no hurry to confront him head on. He reminded her the slightest bit of Amias—tall, broad-shouldered. A gentle giant sort of fellow.
She just wasn't expecting this one to be very gentle.
When he turns, her suspicions are confirmed; his face and shirt stained with a copious amount of blood, the blade of the hatchet in his grip broken by what she certainly hopes isn't leftover flesh, but certainly could be. Clementine dares to wave at him with her free hand. Better that he come over here rather than chance running towards him.
Her heart is alive in her chest, an electric drumbeat, but fear is not able to paralyze her no matter how hard it may be. This is entertainment at its finest, right? This is what they want.
He takes a hesitant step forward, then a few more. She readies her spear, raised in his direction. When he charges forward, it's all she can do to plant her feet in the browned grass as firmly as can be and wait.
Except just behind her, Farasha takes off.
The younger girl is gone like a flash of lightning, there one second and gone the next. She's nothing more than a blur as Clementine whips around, watching as she melts into the trees and beyond. "Fara—"
A blade cuts into her shoulder, a great force colliding with her.
Farasha's gone, and he's still here. There's no time to contemplate her disappearance.
She goes flying to the ground, landing so hard that she struggles for air as the boy looms over her. Clementine rolls, but not fast enough to avoid the hit—instead of gouging her open, at least, the hatchet grazes over her shoulder and chest, spilling enough blood to splatter hot over her skin, but not enough to kill. That's what matters.
She rolls, smashing the smear into his legs, but her hardly budges. Clem wraps one arm around his knees, trying to drag him down, and feels the hatchet sink deep into her shoulder in response.
This, finally, is enough to elicit a scream. Half of it feels like nothing more than rate as she yanks at him as hard as she can, trying to force him down even as he attempts to shake her off.
Farasha is gone. If she had stayed, this would already be over. Two against one, their trust, it would have worked—
So much for trust at all.
His knee drives into her injured shoulder where she grips at it, and finally connects with her jaw; Clem's head snaps backwards, blood exploding into her mouth as she bites down hard on her tongue, flailing back into the grass. The axe glints in the sunlight over her head, poised for the killing blow. The spear feels almost numb in her hands as she holds it up, pressing it forward even though she can hardly see.
The boy above her howls. She feels resistance at the end of the spear, fingers trembling as she holds on for dear life.
Clementine is forced to let go as pain explodes in her stomach like a starburst, something like an animalistic howl escaping her lips ; she only gets one good look at the axe embedded in her abdomen before the weight of her spear digging into his stomach forces him back, too.
It rips out when he goes. The spear, though, tears free from her own hands, stuck inside him as he stumbles back and collapses, hitting the ground with a thud that shakes the earth. Blood washes out in tremendous waves over her shaking hands as she presses them over the flayed skin of her stomach. Fluid seeps over her fingers, a slimy coating that only makes holding on more difficult.
Somehow she's not dead, but he isn't either. He's still lying there in the grass, hands locked around the shaft of the spear still poking out of his gut. With that deep of a wound, he'll almost certainly bleed out to death if he removes it.
Unless he gets up to kill her first.. Clementine doesn't think she could get a grip on the hatchet even if someone begged her to.
She rolls onto her side, biting down on a horrific sob as pain tears through her stomach and along her chest. She leaves one hand there, ignoring the sickening pink of coiled flesh beneath her palm, each shift of her body forcing her intestines out through the gaping hole he's left in her stomach. There's no way someone can survive long like this—she's going to die.
Clementine can either crawl away and hope he dies before he has enough thought to come after her, or she can finish the job.
Is she even capable of either.
Her fingers stretch for the hatchet, its weight seeming like something impossible as she drags it to her chest. One good hit, and he's dead. That's all she needs. Just a last little bit of strength, the fortitude to get the job done.
Fading is just so much easier than working. Her vision is warping into something like a faded gray, the shapes of the trees distorting before her very eyes.
Clearer, somehow, is the little form she sees moving through them, growing closer with every second. A person it most obviously is, but her brain refuses to recognize the importance of it until they're right before her, looking down at the broken bodies laid in the grass. She's one of them, of course. She feels like the worst one.
"Farasha," she chokes out. The other girl doesn't even look at her.
She bends down. Plunges her little knife into the boy's neck just as he tries to jerk away from her, something oddly clinical behind her motions.
Clementine collapses into the grass with a sob as his cannon fires, the hatchet still wedged awkwardly beneath her. The amount of blood soaking her skin makes her feel feverish, each new gush of it worse than the last.
Farasha came back, but she… but she left in the first place. Maybe she was scared. Maybe she just didn't want to be in the midst of a fight.
But she still left Clementine to die.
"You left," she accuses, each breath a mixture of a sob and a choked inhale, trying to regain air that doesn't seem to exist. "You fucking left."
All she can do is hold herself together, hands pressed over her still-seeping stomach as she presses her face forward into the dirt. Clementine can't even bear to look at her now, and it has nothing to do with the pain.
She took her in. She cared about her and asked after her life. They were friends.
And this is how she repays her?
THE VICTORS OF DISTRICT ELEVEN... CLEMENTINE ALINSKY (17) & FARASHA ORIANI (14).
thecentennialcelebration . tumblr . com
Thank you to Bee and Thorne for Clem and Asha. ❤
Hypocrite friendless losers, the chapter, am I right. Just kidding I still love them a lot.
Regardless, dare I say I believe we're in the home stretch of these chapters now. Just a few more to find our end - the pre-games head-start is decent as of right now, but we'll see how that continues on as time passes. For now I'm just enjoying what I have, and I hope y'all can do the same as well.
Until next time.