Chapter 6: Sacrifices
September, 150 ADD
Oberon wasn't sure what woke him until he felt a sudden coldness in the place where Dagmara should be. His eyes flickered open, still muddled with sleep; the clock on the bedside table flaunted an ungodly hour, the only light in the room aside from a soft glow emanating from the half-closed bathroom door.
A flutter of shaky breaths reached his ears, followed by the sound of running water. His body moved before his mind fully processed the state of being awake, feet padding across the floor to the bathroom. Pushing open the door, he saw Dagmara hunched over the sink, her face dripping wet, dark curls piled into a loose knot on top of her head. The expression she wore sent a flash of concern through his chest; clearly, she'd been crying, though when she turned to look at him, her lips stretched into a sheepish grimace. She'd always hated people seeing her upset. "Honey, what's wrong?"
Dagmara shook her head, a loose curl falling from its tie to frame her face. So different from the aura of composure she projected on a daily basis. "Just a nightmare," she said brusquely. The tinkle of running water echoed slightly off the marble walls of the room; she turned off the faucet, wiping her face with a towel.
Embarrassment radiated from her, even after all these years; a grown woman, still getting nightmares? He did too, every once in a while. It was only natural, after what they'd been through, he figured. "Ruiz?" Oberon asked knowingly. The particularly horrid fate of her poor district partner often played a role in her dreams.
Dagmara nodded. "Him, yeah. And fucking—" She paused, exhaling a sharp, angry breath. "Karkarros."
Oberon's lip curled in disgust at the name, the expression mirrored on Dagmara's face. Gently, he pulled her into his arms, her head coming to rest against his shoulder. They'd swept their house for bugs often enough, but better safe than sorry.
"I'd kill that man if I could," she whispered into his ear, her tone quick and vicious.
He hummed in agreement, though it came out more like a growl. "I live for the day."
Dagmara chuckled, though it turned into a sigh of displeasure, her lips turning downwards in a frown. "Oberon, what the hell are we doing?"
"What do you mean, hon?"
"Venatrix."
"What about her?"
Dagmara shot him a chastising glare. "Don't play stupid. What if she doesn't make it?" Even saying it out loud brought a cloud of fear across his wife's dignified features. "I don't know if I could handle that so soon, not after Bell…"
The pang of grief, of guilt, that tore through Oberon's heart at their little girl's name must've passed through his wife's as well; Dagmara buried her head in his chest, and he held her there, willing to give her a safe place to fall apart until she could gather herself back together. "She will," he murmured into her hair. "She has to."
"And then what? Look at us, Oberon." Dagmara pulled away from him, her sharp brown eyes biting into his. "Is this really what we want for our daughter?" She had a point; of course she did. "What the hell kind of parents are we?"
Oberon sighed. "It's what she wants, Dag."
"Is it?"
"She wants to make things right." Things hadn't been right since Bellara volunteered, and certainly not since she died. That wasn't supposed to happen; it never should have happened.
And even then… she'd been the most skilled tribute to enter that damn arena, first and only twelve year-old to ever score an eleven in her private training session. He'd been so proud… she should've won, goddammit! Instead, that smirking rat of a Head Gamemaker had sent his dogs after her and handed the crown to the Eleven girl, of all fucking people. There was nothing right or fair about it.
But Venatrix would make things right. She would show that Gamemaker what a fucking mistake it had been to rip Bellara from their lives like that, and by god, Oberon would end that man's career if it was the last thing he did.
"I don't like it," Dagmara said stubbornly.
It doesn't matter whether we like it or not, he didn't say out loud. Venatrix knew her duty; they'd been preparing her for this since she was old enough to hold a sword. Perhaps it was beyond stupid to try for any more Victors in the family, but frankly, it was out of their hands. Oberon and Dagmara had (albeit unknowingly) set these expectations upon their future children when they married; Dagmara knew this. A lack of enthusiasm for the Games in their children would be tantamount to treason — they could thank District Two's Career status for that.
"She'll have to live with that weight on her chest for the rest of her life. And not to mention the clients..."
"Trixie knows what she's getting into." Dagmara opened her mouth to argue, but Oberon cut her off. "We'll keep the Karkarroses away from her, love, okay? They don't go for everyone."
"Oberon—"
"The Capitol wants to see her win," he continued, his tone almost insistent. "She has the motivation, the background, the skills… They want to see her perform, and we have to let them. You know we don't really have a choice."
"Is one child not enough for them?" Dagmara hissed bitterly. Again, she melded into his chest, her forehead brushing against the scratchy whiskers on his jaw.
"They want a Victor from us, Dag," he murmured. "And if it can't be Trixie…"
He didn't really need to finish the sentence.
"C'mon, let's go back to bed," he said gently. She huffed, but followed him, nestling back into his arms as they crawled under the covers. Oberon planted a quick kiss on her forehead, stoutly ignoring the clock on the bedside table telling him he'd have to be up and on his way to the Academy in a mere couple of hours. Oh well.
Dagmara's closeness comforted him, and as her breathing evened into the steady rhythm of sleep, his mind drifted towards how he'd somehow managed to pull her from the arena all those years ago, only five years after his own Games. His first Victor, and his first real love to boot (anything before had been so superficial he hardly even remembered now), though the latter part hadn't come until later on. It had certainly been unexpected, though perhaps they should've realized sooner, given how much time they'd spent together, from training, to living next door to each other, to the Games themselves. The year after they married, they'd brought Morwenna to Victory. A testament to the strength of their bond, according to the Capitol (between the two of them, all credit went to Morwenna's pinpoint accuracy with a bow; it had gotten her eleven kills in the arena).
Within the span of five years, they'd brought their children into the world, only to lose a third of them in the same hell that they themselves had succeeded in escaping. Oberon exhaled, the pain surging through his chest again as Dagmara shifted in her sleep.
He couldn't tell whether or not his wife blamed him for Bellara's death, though she made the effort to contradict the notion.
To say it haunted him would be an understatement; the thought prickled at the edge of his consciousness every time life gave him a second to breathe. Everything was quieter without her around, without her excitement and bubbling laughter to bounce through the spacious halls of the Pyke manor. A heavy kind of silence, only broken in some moments by Venatrix and Iago teasing each other like everything was normal before they remembered it wasn't, and the quiet settled over them again like a thick fog. Surely, it was enough to drive anyone mad.
And whose fault had it been, really? It didn't sit right with him to blame Bellara for her impulsiveness, even though it had been her prerogative to volunteer against the will of her parents and the Academy.
Things had seemed so much simpler when they were younger; more than once, he'd caught the kids plotting out their Victor's mansions together as if it were part of their birthright. If it were up to him, it would be. Hell, ever since he and Dagmara had individually sat her down and showed her their Games (a standard procedure for the kids once they reached training age at eight years old) she'd shown the most enthusiasm for it, hailing her parents as heroes while Venatrix had cried and Iago had turned uncharacteristically silent. It had hurt to put them through that — especially poor Ruiz, and the scene from his, with the Ten boy (referring to them as 'scenes', he found, made it easier to separate the action from the memory) — but they had the right to know what they were getting themselves into.
And Bell had certainly thrown herself into it… Oberon remembered the first time she'd picked up a battleaxe — Dag's, to be specific, the weapon itself more than half her size — and the light in her eyes as she declared that she wanted to be just like her mother.
The memory of her final moments in the arena assaulted him mercilessly, as vivid as when he'd watched them through the screen in real-time. The snow-white fur of the mutts stained red with her blood as they—
"No—stay back! Get away!"
—the terror written plain across her little-girl face as the mutt ripped the weapon from her hands—
"Dad, help me!"
—her choked sobs turning to agonized screams under the flash of teeth; the utter defeat crumpling him from the inside out as he could do nothing but watch—
"Where are you, Dad?"
They'd toyed with her, leaving her bleeding out into a clump of those hellish orange lilies that lined the walkways of the manicured palace garden. Cold. Small. Alone.
"I can't… Please, it hurts…"
"We'll make a Victor out of you yet, Bell," he used to tell her, accompanied by a quick ruffle of her brunette curls, her response of effortless giggles.
Apparently he'd said it often enough to stick in her brain, to warp her confidence into the words "I volunteer as tribute." Damn me to hell for that.
Oberon squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself back to the present, if only for the preservation of his sanity. Like a chronic headache, his brain circled back to that damn Gamemaker, to the one that did make it out. District Eleven. What a waste of a Victor. What more could they have wanted from their Quell than the legacy Victor Bellara would've been?
Perhaps they just want to see how many of yours they can take. How many he'd willingly feed to the jaws of their machine before ultimately either giving up or running out of children.
A sobering thought. It reminded him of a story he'd heard long ago, of a cruel god who asked a father to offer his son as a sacrifice. The man had gotten so far as holding a blade to the boy's neck before the god interfered, sparing the son as a reward for his father's loyalty.
His own gods, Oberon knew, were not so kind.
A/N: Shorter chapter this time.. I was going to tack another scene onto the end of it, but I like how this one ends here... I think there are gonna be a couple more Oberon POV's sprinkled throughout this (and perhaps a few others). I'd love to know your thoughts on this; he's. Definitely interesting lol. At least, I think so. ..So, y'know, I was thinking about it, and I can't decide if making your own kids sit through your Hunger Games would count as child abuse or not; probably on some level, but I guess Panem as a whole really doesn't give a flying fig newton about that, all things considering fdjh.
Anyways, some updates for the upcoming 168th Victory Tour: We do be gettin places, boys /eyes/.. I plan on sprinting the last couple of chapters/scenes for the April NaNo stuff :D Unfortunately, I've got ~* exams *~ for the first week of April (aka next week yeeT), so I'm thinking I'll start posting after that. Perhaps even next Friday, since that's my birthday :D I will be turning [REDACTED] years old, but no one really cares about that hjfd. I'm thinking that I'll update the Tour weekly after that (at least until I finish the writing itself; then I can probably be more frequent after that !) Yeah!
..Because of the Exams, though, I can't exactly promise another chapter of TrV next week... ;-; I'll try, of course (bc I do have the idea of how I want it to go in my head already), but yeah. Also gotta like Not fail out of my program wheeze.. Either way, I'll see y'all in like two weeks for the start of the Tour and/or TrV ch7/8 !
- Nell