A/N: A number of people have been speculating about how many victors there will be, so I thought I'd jump on here just to clear up that there will indeed only be *one* victor of the 225th Games. I'm not personally fond of fanfics that take the ending of THG canon, especially because it carries a lot of weight, and I don't want to cheapen that in any way. I once read a fic where all four main characters survived, and as nice as that may sound, I felt very cheated by the false suspense it had put me through over which of them would die, so in this story I have aimed to fulfill the promise given on the outset. Twenty four go in, only one comes out. Happy Hunger Games~

xXx

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lucy stepped away from the wall before her rational mind caught up, his name leaving her mouth in a breath half-voiced.

"Caspian?"

The boy's head snapped up and dark eyes locked onto her.

Real.

Alive.

But his expression shifted in an instant from surprise to panic, hand flying out to stop her before she took another step.

She froze, skin tingling as he glanced over his shoulder, strong profile silhouetted against grey stone as his eyes flashed, and voices rang over the desert, calling, taunting.

"You're not getting off that easy, Telmar!"

"Hey, did you see where he went?"

Eustace grabbed Lucy's arm and dragged her back behind cover as Caspian pressed himself against the ledge and shot her an apologetic glance.

"Careers," hissed Eustace. "He led them straight to us."

Jill clutched his arm, eyes round as saucers, but Lucy only glanced back to Caspian, silhouetted chest rising and falling as boots pounded closer and then stopped a ways off, maybe a dozen yards by the sound of it.

"I thought he went into the forest," barked a boy, and Lucy's chest stuttered when she recognized Peter's honey-rich voice.

"Oh, great, you lost him again," gasped a girl, harsh and raspy from running. "You should have just killed him when you had the chance!"

"You think I wasn't trying? He's good, I told you!"

"Well now he's disarmed, you didn't have to let him get away!"

"I didn't let him."

"Suit yourself," spat the girl. "We haven't made a kill in two days, and you, if I recall correctly, haven't made any. You going soft or something, Wolfsbane? Forget all your training?"

"I told you," growled Peter, "I was busy. And twelve-year-olds shouldn't count, anyway, so we're even."

"I did that girl a mercy. Now she doesn't have to sweat out here like the rest of us."

Peter grunted in what might actually have been disgust, and Gael's tiny body flashed into Lucy's mind. So this must be Edith. That made sense, considering how familiar they sounded with each other.

"Maybe I'll settle for the runt."

"Hey!" another voice snapped, and Lucy's eyebrows rose.

Up until that point, she'd assumed it was only the District Two pair after Caspian, but now she moved just enough to peer through a jagged split in the outcropping, up between the dusty crags concealing her from view.

The Twos stood with their backs to her, Peter's hand in his straw-blond mop, Edith twirling her spear, dark ponytail swishing down to the small of her back. But between them and a few yards further away stood another boy, sunlight splashing over scruffy black hair and a sharp, pale face, stumbling back a step with a metallic rasp as his sword flashed into his hand.

Edmund.

"How'd he manage that alliance?" breathed Eustace, barely audible.

Lucy shook her head, eyes glued to the scene.

"He hasn't got a thing from his precious mentor since we've been here," said Edith, a grin sneaking into her voice as she shifted the spear to her other hand and drew a knife from her belt. "I'm starting to think she doesn't care about him after all."

"Don't waste time playing," sighed Peter, "If you're gonna kill him, just do it."

Edmund leveled his sword in Edith's direction, taking another step back, wild dark eyes on the knife.

"Shame you were so mean to your district partner, Eddie, we can't even use you as bait!"

"What is this?" snapped Edmund, thinly masked panic leaking from his tone into Lucy's chest. "You're giving up on Eight now?"

"Oh, we'll get him. But I'm tired. And you're easy."

Edmund opened his mouth as if to retort, but dropped his sword and bolted past Peter, boots pounding the stone before crashing down into the gully between Lucy and Caspian just as the knife came flying after him and clattered against the opposite wall.

Lucy jerked back, slamming into Eustace's chest as Jill squeaked, but the boy didn't even spare them a glance, scrambling to his feet and breaking away at a dead sprint up the length of the ravine as Edith swore and charged after him.

"Move," hissed Eustace, shoving Lucy off just as her own wits rushed back and she scrambled down the gully out of the careers' path where Edmund had just disappeared, glancing back in time to catch Caspian launching himself up the other side of the ditch as Peter lunged.

A small avalanche of pebbles skittered after Edith as she slid into the shallow ravine and locked eyes with Lucy.

"Go!" cried Lucy, no longer concerned with keeping quiet, bursting past Eustace down a sharp right turn and skidding across a narrow seam of rock before turning again into the winding, jagged maze.

The ground sloped, narrowing, boots clapping over rock, veins rushing, until she burst out onto the side of a hill stretching down into the southern distance, and skidded to a stop.

Flat open stone slanted sharply down from the rocky ridge at the edge of the gully.

Lucy glanced both ways before Eustace crashed in behind her and almost knocked her off her feet, grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her up along the edge, up into another collection of crags above the hill, climbing over a flat boulder and ducking into a narrow path as loose rocks shifted beneath their feet and Lucy's heartbeat pounded in her ears.

She didn't dare look back, not until the path opened into a basin and they pulled up short, boulders encircling them on every side, leaning against natural rock walls with jagged gaps above and below.

Lucy doubled over and clutched the stitch in her side. Eustace spun, panting, eyes flying from one natural opening to the next as Jill glanced back the way they came, short hair swishing out around her flushed face.

"Maybe there's another path?" gasped Jill, "If we turn—"

"No, through here," said Eustace, and stepped toward a low space between two leaning stones, barely large enough to crawl through.

"I'm not going in there!"

Eustace turned on her. "You don't have a choice, Pole!"

"Why can't we go the other way?"

"Because that just leads right back where we came from!"

"But—"

"I'm really not in the mood to meet anyone up there, no offense to your boyfriend," he snapped at Lucy, and grabbed Jill's wrist to drag her toward the boulders.

Lucy straightened up to follow.

"But I can't—"

"Oh buck up and have some self respect for once in your life," spat Eustace, but before Jill could argue, a shift in loose rocks clattered behind them and Eustace glanced over his shoulder and shoved Jill behind him just as Lucy glanced up to see Edith in the opening they'd come from.

Something silver flashed in the air, alarm rang for a split second in Lucy's head, and then a chunk and a thump as Eustace slammed to the ground.

Lucy stumbled back, a second delayed, heart skipping a beat, barely registering her own body as it took an automatic inventory, feverish chills rushing through her abdomen, unharmed.

Eustace coughed.

A silver spear protruded from his chest, gleaming in the too-bright sun, the weight of its shaft pinning him on his side as he shuddered with the effort of sucking air into empty lungs, digging his forehead into the stone, fingers reaching up to close around metal, another cough shaking his shoulders before Jill choked "Scrubb!" and Edith Jackle drew the second knife from her belt and stepped leisurely into the basin.

Lucy grabbed Jill on pure instinct just as the girl dropped, locking both arms around her waist and dragging her up to her feet in spite of the shrieking, clawing attempts to fight her off, to cling to Eustace, grabbing for his arm, his hand, and for a moment her head swam with Jill's cries.

"No, no, no, wait, please, you can't— we can't— please, Eustace, wait—"

He reached up to clutch Jill's sleeve, blood pooling black against his weatherproof jacket at the base of the spear, spreading over grey stone, grey eyes, pale blond hair flopping the wrong way over his forehead, and he coughed with a half-caught groan, bright red dribbling from the corner of his mouth as he choked what might have been "go," before Lucy ripped her free and dragged her across the stone to the opposite wall.

Edith followed with long strides, shining knife in hand, and Jill's struggle weakened just enough for Lucy to leap up the side of a boulder and clamber to the top, head spinning as she reached back for Jill and Edith bolted.

Adrenaline surged into her arms, hauling Jill up and crashing down on the other side to scale a jagged incline until it fell off again and they skidded into a path like the ones they'd first run through.

A cannon shot split the air.

Jill shrieked and almost doubled over.

Lucy reached back to grasp her hand slick with blood and interlocked their fingers before another pair of boots landed on the stone behind them and they swerved down an offshoot in the gully.

Her legs buzzed, trembling with every jarring footfall, and then she turned a corner to a sharp wall of stone up ahead.

Dead end.

Lucy cursed and spun, but Edith blocked the way, long black hair slipping from her ponytail into her sharp face, grinning as she slowed to approach them, twirling the knife in her hand.

Jill stumbled backward.

Lucy pulled the arrow out of the pocket in her backpack, bracing herself between Jill and the career tribute, but Edith only laughed.

"Oh, isn't this fun! Your precious ally turned out to be worth the trouble after all, leading us all the way out here." She smiled sweetly.

Lucy wanted to punch her perfect nose.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he didn't mean to rat you out, but… this is just too perfect, isn't it? Caspian the Capitol darling, and his little lady. And… whoever they are." She flicked her blade lazily toward Jill. "Sorry, don't remember your names."

She took a step closer and Jill took a step back, pulling Lucy with her, arrow clutched uselessly in her hand, nerves pricking, eyes darting to the stone as if she could find an escape in its merciless grey face.

The career girl loomed, studying Lucy as if debating which feature to carve out first, and she'd nearly decided to take her chances with the arrow when a shadow appeared above Edith and dropped down behind her, popping up just as she spun, locking strong arms around her head and shoulders and snapping tight in one sharp motion.

Lucy jumped at the sickening crack.

Jill gave a startled yelp, Edith's body crumpled to the ground, and a cannon boomed as Caspian's dark eyes pinned Lucy like lightning.

For a moment they stared at each other, Caspian's hair clinging to his slick forehead, panting, a trickle of red dripping from his hand, and then he glanced down at Edith and stooped to pick up her knife.

"Come on," he gasped, doubling back the way they'd come.

Lucy followed instantly, his voice now the only directive in her head, gripping Jill by the hand and following Caspian down a shallow place into an intersection and then a long slanting corridor, the stitch returning to her side but she ignored it.

A few turns later they burst out into the same sloping hillside, the same open expanse they'd stumbled upon with Eustace just minutes ago, and Lucy's stomach flipped.

Then a shape down in the valley caught her eye, a figure bolting across the flat desert at the bottom of the hill, Edmund's black hair catching the sun as he ran, and Lucy glanced around the barren, cracked stone.

"Where's Peter?"

"Shoved him off the ledge back there," panted Caspian, rich voice strained and rasping but so familiar. "Didn't kill him, though, just slowed him down."

In the distance, Edmund stumbled to a halt.

Lucy furrowed her brow, squinting down at him.

The boy turned to his right, as if he'd seen something interesting and wanted a closer look, striding over bright grey stone reflecting the sun's heat.

He stopped at a clump of low boulders, glanced up the hill toward the three of them for a moment, and then knelt down to the ground and disappeared.

Lucy blinked.

"Where did he—?"

Footsteps clapped down the corridor behind them and Lucy glanced up at Caspian just as he looked back at her.

"No time like the present to find out," he breathed, and they leapt at once down the hill, skidding over the sharp decline and catching traction just enough to run without tripping, Jill still attached to Lucy by the hand as the earth leveled out and they aimed for the boulders.

Lucy glanced back to glimpse Peter at the top of the hill behind them, metal glinting at a distance, and then she looked ahead again, thighs burning, breaths catching on the twinge in her ribs, everything inside her forcibly ignoring the skitter of small stones as Peter followed.

She barely even noticed they'd reached the boulders before Caspian slowed, and she pulled up behind him, easing her stride as her legs burned numb, and looked down at last into a black chasm in the stone.

She gasped for breath, staring as Caspian stepped up to the edge, a rough hole in the ground about the size of a natural well, bottomless to the eye. Even the blinding sunlight didn't reach all the way to the floor. If it had a floor.

Strangest of all, a rope already hung down into the emptiness, lashed around the nearest boulder and tightly knotted. Certainly not Edmund's handiwork, she'd been watching, he'd had no time to tie it. Someone else must have been here first.

"Are you sure…"

She didn't fancy climbing down into that blackness with Edmund or anyone else waiting at the bottom, but Caspian had already lowered himself to the stone and grasped the rope, Peter's footsteps echoing over the wasteland, and she shut her mouth as her district partner slipped inside and the darkness swallowed him up.

A few moments later he called back "It's not too far," his voice hollow and strange in the darkness.

"You go next," said Lucy.

Honey brown eyes snapped up to meet hers. "What?"

"Go on, hurry!"

Jill looked back at the hole, cringing away as if it might leap up to swallow her whole, fingers trembling in Lucy's hand. "I can't— it's too— I— I can't—"

She clenched her jaw, forcibly stopping her own complaints as she stared down into the abyss, and Lucy resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder as Peter's footsteps pounded closer.

"I'm coming right behind you, okay?"

Jill nodded. And at last, reluctantly, shakily, she lowered herself to the ground and dipped her legs into the pit, testing it an inch at a time, letting go of Lucy to grip the rope.

The moment she disappeared, Lucy positioned herself to follow, but the footsteps clapped nearer, pounding in her chest like an off-kilter heartbeat, closing in, and at the last second she looked up.

Peter faltered less than ten yards away, golden hair gleaming and sweat-drenched, blue eyes flashing in his rugged, handsome face, sword clutched in one hand, sunlight catching on the edge.

In a handful of strides he could have brought the blade to her throat, so close she almost slipped, catching herself on the stone just in time; but for a second he hesitated, for a second his steps slowed as he met her eyes, for a second something flickered across his face before Caspian called "Lucy!" and she looked back and dropped into the hole.

Rope dug into her palms with the full strain of her weight, urgency rushing back into her limbs as she lowered herself down, Caspian's strong hands catching her waist just as Peter's shadow blotted out the sunlight and she dropped the rest of the way, stumbling into her partner as they both backed away from the rope.

The looming shadow shifted, slivers of light peeking through around it, hesitating, perhaps weighing the odds. Then it moved away and daylight poured back in, followed by an odd swishing sound Lucy couldn't place until she realized he was pulling the rope back up, out of the hole. The last flick of it disappeared over the edge, followed by a long silence, and then pebbles crunched as Peter walked away.

A short eternity later, Lucy let out her breath.

Her heart pounded heavy as lead in her chest, every fiber of her being trembling as if she might disintegrate on the spot.

"Where did Edmund go?" she breathed, voice echoing as a hollow whisper.

"Disappeared off into the tunnel when I came down."

"Tunnel?"

Lucy squinted, eyes still adjusting to the pitch darkness, unable to make out the details of her surroundings save for the single patch of azure sky burning jagged purple spots into her vision, and the vague figures of Jill and Caspian standing on either side of her, illuminated by the hole, though the echoes of their hollow breaths did sound deeper behind them.

Jill sank to the ground, trembling, silent.

Lucy didn't move.

"Are you okay?" breathed Caspian, so softly it barely even echoed.

And at last everything crashed over Lucy at once.

Eustace was dead.

Edith was dead.

They had no hope of getting back out through that hole.

She didn't even know where they were.

Caspian was here.

Caspian was finally here.

And before she could think another coherent thought, she walked straight into his chest with a breath that might have been a sob if she'd had the energy, fingers digging into the back of his jacket, and Caspian clutched her so tight to his ribs he might have crushed her, deflating into her hair with a sigh as if all the strength had gone out of his body.

His hair tickled her cheek, breath warm on her scalp, one hand at the base of her neck and the other digging into her spine, and she clung as if he were the last safe thing in the world, his heartbeat pounding in her ear, real in a sea of unreality.

Gleaming silver spears, pools of liquid ruby spilling over dust, the sickening snap of vertebrae and the power in the arms she always knew could have snapped her in half.

Tears burned but refused to fall.

Blood should never have been allowed to look that red.

"I'm sorry," breathed Caspian into her hair, "I didn't mean to lead them to you, I didn't know."

She just nodded into his jacket, sucking in a deep, shuddering breath.

It didn't register for several long minutes that he may as well have been a stranger, but at this moment Lucy couldn't have cared less. At this moment she might have known him for years, so shockingly, intensely familiar was the sound of his breathing and the strength of his embrace that a lifetime might have passed in the nine days since Zardeenah first called his name at the Reaping.

At last, she loosened her grip and pulled back, air rushing into her lungs, and the cave fell silent in the absence of his heart's steady rhythm.

Caspian winced at the movement.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," he murmured, "Just my hand."

She reached out reflexively, but he pulled away, and their eyes snapped up to meet again, this time clearer in the darkness, the fragmented sky's glow tracing his features and glinting faintly in black eyes, where something almost like fear flickered before he looked away.

"Sorry," he murmured again.

"I have bandages," she said, brows twitching uncertainly, and waited until he nodded to unsling her bag from her shoulders.

She knelt to the rough stone floor to dig through it, pushing aside twine and wrapped meats, the traps they were meant to be setting up now, until she pulled her tiny first-aid kit from the bottom, and Caspian lowered himself across from her, bending one leg and stretching the other, probably even sorer than she was.

She reached for his hand again, and he hesitated before finally letting her take it.

Gingerly, she turned his palm over and pushed his sleeve up, revealing the fresh, deep gash from the heel of his hand to his thumb where Peter must have disarmed him earlier. But beneath that, stretching all the way down his palm and wrist, ran a web of deep scars she'd only caught glimpses of until now, thick and pale, and much older than the arena.

He stiffened.

She avoided his eyes.

She'd never been squeamish around wounds the way Marjorie always had been, she'd seen plenty in the girls' home, and in the factory, but something about the random, criss-crossing scars made her stomach turn.

Even as she cleaned the cut with a drop of disinfectant (Caspian sucked in a small breath but made no noise), she couldn't help but steal glances at the old wounds, and when she'd nearly finished bandaging it, wrapping thin layers of gauze between his thumb and forefinger, Caspian spoke again.

"Sparring practice."

Lucy glanced up.

"With my uncle. I wasn't very good at first."

She furrowed her brow. Who would use real swords on a kid in training?

He gave a small, forced smile, but Lucy got the idea that part was more for the audience than for her. He hadn't mentioned Miraz in his interview, not specifically. That detail would mean nothing to them. But she knew.

Rage boiled up in her throat, bubbling so that she almost couldn't speak. But he wouldn't have said it for sympathy. His tone was almost one of apology. Of guilt.

"You don't have to tell me," she murmured.

"I know."

She watched him for another moment before dropping her gaze to the bandage, taping it off and tucking her supplies back into the bag as Caspian pulled his sleeve down over the scars, but Lucy thought secretly that they didn't all look like sparring accidents.

Silence settled in again and her flesh crawled with it.

"How did you find us?" she asked, desperate to fill the void with anything she could muster.

"Well, that was mostly an accident, actually. I've been trying to come this way from the beginning, but avoiding the careers took me further north than I liked. I thought the fire this morning might have been you, so that was why I aimed for the forest, but… well, they caught up with me again… and…"

The fire.

How had that only been this morning? Crackling twigs accompanied by Eustace's harmless griping about how long it took to roast something as pitiful and pointless as a squirrel.

"Would you like me to throw it back?" Lucy had drawled, and earned herself a flaming stick leveled in her direction.

"Don't touch my beautiful squirrel."

Lucy coughed to clear her throat and took a shallow breath. "They were already all the way out here?"

Caspian hummed in affirmation. "Hunting."

She shuddered. "And Edmund with them, too."

"How'd he manage that alliance?"

She swallowed hard. "I didn't see them together in training."

"No, he must have bartered something here. Not that it seems to be working in his favor." Caspian glanced over his shoulder into the pitch black tunnel Lucy could now just barely make out, remembering again that they weren't alone down here.

Another short silence passed before Lucy said "Well… we should probably get moving if we want to find a way out of here, hm?"

She didn't want to move. She wanted to lay down and rest her aching muscles and sink into the stone and forget all of this had ever happened, but she zipped up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder, glancing to Jill where the girl sat unmoving in exactly the same spot, arms wrapped around her knees, eyes fixed on a point in the middle of the air.

"I can't leave her," breathed Lucy, unprompted. "She's my ally."

Caspian looked at Jill too, gaze resting on her for a moment before looking back at Lucy with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"Okay."