Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death, Chapter #15: Whispers of Doom, focused on Training Night 2 (I have never written a Training Night before, just a 'Night Before Launching' so this'll be interesting). Last chapter, #14, focused on Training Day 2 with povs from Poem, Magnus, Porscha, Nokomis, Ramses, and Orion, as well as a look into something with Cain... a lot happened, and a lot more to go. This chapter has povs from Calen, Camilla, Dill, Kai'sa, Jasper, and Diana, and I have very excited for it as it'll lead to a lot of developments coming up with the latter half of the Pre-Games, because that's right ya'll, we're halfway through the pre-games starting with this chapter which just has me so damn excited... I've been flying through it at a relatively good speed, and I am still aiming for a bloodbath and foray into the arena at Halloween so *crosses fingers* let's get to it. Hope you all enjoy Chapter #15: Whispers of Doom.
"There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies and that is fighting without them," ~ Winston Churchill
Calen Kinegrove: District 10 Male P.O.V (15)
Silence passes on the floor, Calen Kinegrove digging a finger underneath his nails on his left hand, a speck of dirt causing him to wrinkle his nose together in disgust as he gets the particle free, looking away from watching it float down the ground like a speck of dust caught in the wind, he gagging at the rather nasty thought of seeing other… particles do such a similar manner. It is quiet on the District 10 floor, he sitting in the living room with nothing but the Avoxes to act as his company. Time ticks by like grains of sand on the wall, falling through an hourglass that he turns over to see if he can count all the shiny objects in the Capitol skyline from his vantage point.
It is such a beautiful city, a beautiful city that is going to kill him when he looks at it, a croak of surprise bubbling in his throat at the negative thought, sharp pains shooting through his side and up the base of his skull. Calen frowns, rubbing his fingers hard against the side of his head, resting down on his side, laying his cheek into the soft leather of the pillow. It is late, around nine or so now, and Nokomis hasn't come back to the floor to eat dinner or anything, and Calen has no idea where Roxanne is, so he simply dines with the Avoxes, they looking about rather terrified, but he is not about to hurt them or anything.
"No, it's okay," he tells them, with his trademark soft smile. The smile he gives his family, expecting them to be grateful that the 'man of the house' has showed up, but instead he's laughed at, jeered at, hands tied together on a bay hale, or pelted with acorns from a booing crowd and his mother shaking her head back and forth with a frown. "You can eat with me. I want you to; I don't want to be alone..." he whispers.
Calen has to check to see if there are any cameras, which there aren't, nothing blinking or watching him, so he has the Avoxes pull a chair up to the table, quite grand and painted a silver chrome color, like a fresh chain linked fence that bruises his fingers onto many times when he runs into it at ramming speed, trying to not be gored by one of the cattle. It gets him good, the chain link fence however, a rusted over spot, his mother terrified that it means he is about to get the cholera or the syphilis – "Not how that works, Mom," he corrects his mother, she nearly thwacking him on the head with the rolling pin – as she chides him for doing a man's job.
"You're not cut out for this type of life, Calen," she tells him, that dismissive look always there in her cold eyes, grim and unrelenting, vicious, and mean-spirited, and he wants to know why. Why is she so cold to him? Why is she so distant? What did he do to deserve any of this? He didn't wake up and ask for his father to not come home one day, as if that is something any little boy wishes to have happen to his family, a family that depends on the weak hearths to get them through the night… Calen sniffs away the thought.
"If I am not cut out for this life, then how will I live?" he asks his mother, putting a hand under her hand, begging to get an answer as he cannot have any of that just dropped at his feet and she not bring up any sort of response. A man gets by because he has to. He rolls his sleeves up and gets his fingers dirty, sticking his hands in elbow grease and covering himself in the 'shit' because he has to, and because no one else will do it. If no one else does it, that is an unbelievable number of corpses on his hands, and he is not about to let that happen.
He'll never forget his mother's response, where she presses a hand against his face as if she is about to kiss him and be warm and tell him all sorts of wonderful things wrapped up in cotton candy clouds, but instead, with her fingers digging into his flesh, eyes cold, mouth set down firm in a solid line, the harsh winters, the snowflakes that leave his father's gravestone chipped and broken off in webs of pain and discomfort… "You are already dead…"
Calen pushes the thought away from his head as far as he can, curling up on himself, smiling at the memory of dinner. The smell of roast pork and baked beans and tart biscuits with some sort of jam on them that sprays crumbles everywhere as he takes a bite. A laugh that bounces along the spotlights of the room while he laughs away and away, giggling because an Avox is making the funniest facial expressions, they having little pieces of paper next to their plate and some sort of pencil or pen that he finds in a cupboard.
Dinner is sweet, nice, and quick, and Calen feels a bit of warmth envelop in his stomach as he puts the dishes up, sending the Avoxes on their own ways, they pressing their foreheads against each other's in warm glee, he standing there in the kitchen and smiling. The smile wavers slightly at the fact that Roxanne hasn't shown up still, and it's now 9:30 and he hasn't seen Nokomis since lunch. He knows where she is, just a floor beneath his own feet, laughing and giggling and carrying away with her newfound sister, Camilla Rodriguez, and her new brother, Gemini Lennox… he tries to not be bitter, thinking about the fact that she has found all of this happiness and doesn't even extend the invitation to him.
Well, instead, he is focused on something else, as he hears the girl from Twelve, Kai'sa Shadow, scream after someone named Ramses, her district partner Calen believes. The kid from Four, the guy from Four, rather, Orion, diving in after Ramses takes a spill… Calen watches with wide eyes as he gives the boy from Twelve CPR, looking at the incident behind a column. His heart explodes in relief at seeing the kid cough up half the pool onto the tile, and then Ramses is hugging Orion and Orion is hugging back… Calen's heart is pounding in his chest, but he finds that he is also smiling.
The two guys leave the training center together, Orion's partner Diana calling out after her district brethren, but if he hears her, Orion makes no effort to stop and turn around, leaving Diana to stomp around the center with a headache, stabbing a knife into any dummy that'll take its place. Calen cannot stop looking back at the pool, which is being cleaned up by a few Avoxes, the trainer that must've allowed the accident to happen getting boxed in the face, copper splattering along the fresh white paint, Calen's blood going cold as he sees the man is dragged off to… somewhere, and that is the last time Calen sees the man while he grabs a short sword and tries hacking a dummy to pieces.
He goes to Four's floor to see if Orion and Ramses are there, but he is only met by Diana and her cold demeanor, she telling him to leave the way he came so he doesn't end up with a steak knife between his shoulder blades, Calen bidding her goodbye before heading up to District 12's floor. He has no idea where Kai'sa is, Ramses mentioning that she went to the roof after speaking to the girl from Six, that Porscha Watanabe, but that is not what Calen is there for.
"An alliance?" Orion quirks an eyebrow, he having an arm slung around Ramses's shoulder, keeping the other kid flush and tight to him, a few Avoxes prepping an ice pack and a blanket to drape across the kid's shoulders, Calen rocking back and forth on his heels with a sheepish grin on his face.
"Yes… I'd like to partner with you in the Games."
The two boys look at one another, Ramses frowning. "I don't know if Orion and I are allying in the arena either, Calen…" It is odd hearing his name spoken by someone else that isn't Nokomis or Roxanne, but a stranger. Competition, someone he is supposed to dislike and hate for being in the same position he is in. A seed of stupidity and idiocy sinks into Calen's stomach at the disproving glances from the two guys sitting across from him, rather close for comfort he realizes with a raised eyebrow, but he doesn't say anything.
Calen thinks it is stupid to go there and ask to begin with, that he'd be allies with people he doesn't even know, tributes who are older than him by two and three years, with more muscle and strength poured into their bodies than what he'd ever make working at the ranch, constantly being disrespected by the other workers who bind his body with twine and leave him trussed up on a hay bale like a slaughtered pig. He hastens away from the floor, going back to Ten's, and has supper with the Avoxes. It has been a few hours since then, he laying there, scratching his name into the leather.
Something about the selflessness compels him to Orion, at the very least, Calen surmising that Ramses just must be a package deal.
He quirks his head up at hearing the elevator doors ding open, he turning and shifting on the couch to see Roxanne step in, his escort, the woman he didn't even dine with him, he shaking his head and placing his head down on the pillow as her high heeled steps echo around the dining room and living room, the elevator doors closing shut behind her.
"Where's Nokomis?" she asks, not even saying hello, going straight for the liquor cabinet, pulling out a wine glass and filling it up with the first bottle she finds out of the collection.
"Floor Nine," Calen says into the pillow, trying to hide the bitter distaste in his throat. He is not upset, not at all. Not that he is going to self-invite himself to a place he is not wanted, but there's a morsel, a dumb part of him out there, the part his mother has constantly tried to whack back into his head on the account of his stupidity that she has never been able to knock away. "She's being best buddies with Camilla." He rolls over so he is looking at the ceiling, getting a pink spotlight directly in his face, washing his skin over a rosy glow.
Roxanne steps above him, lips turned into a frown, before sitting down in a swinging chair just over in the corner, by the television set. "You sound upset," she says, Calen quirking an eyebrow at the lack of her tint of superiority and the hint of disdain she normally poises herself with. He doesn't care to ask where she had been, nor that she's missed dinner, or about the Avoxes, but he simply looks at her instead with a blank stare. "You have a right to be," the escort takes a sip of her wine glass. "A district partner not being with their district partner is backwards indeed," but Roxanne pauses, looking at Calen with a heavy stare. "But something tells me that you also were rejected in a different way. Someone turn down your offer for allies?"
Calen shifts up into a sitting position out of surprise. "Ho- how would you know about that?" And then, with a higher tint of incredulousness in his voice. "You got that from looking at my face?"
"I didn't get this job because I was pretty," Roxanne takes a sip of the wine glass, setting it down before pursing her lips together. "If that is the case, then Adriane Lantham is the biggest bimbo out of them all," her lips quip up in a soft smile. "No, you look upset, and there's really only a few things here to be upset about, and you're so nice and positive…"
"Orion Maythorpe and Ramses Boskov…" Calen whispers, hanging his head in shame, looking down at the floor, shifting his feet back and forth on the carpet. "Guy from Four and Twelve. Orion saved Ramses from a near drowning accident today and I just thought…" he flaps a hand aimlessly against his leg. "I don't know what I thought, to be honest…"
Roxanne pushes her glass to the side some, getting up out of her chair and walking over to him. "Well, it doesn't matter, Calen, that they said no. It matters that you had the courage and the guts to ask," he raises an eyebrow at the sudden kindness and gentleness from her. She must be drunk. No one is this nice sober, not if they're him, at least. "You'll just have to prove them wrong in the arena, prove why they should be with someone like you and that they need you by their side," Roxanne says, sweetly.
"Prove them wrong?" Calen echoes, frowning.
Her voice is solid, her gaze cold, but it is not like his mother looking at him, it is prideful, strong, and filling him with reverence.
"Outlast them."
Camilla Rodriguez: District 9 Female P.O.V (17)
The sound of chinked glasses fills the atmosphere, bubbly laughter and warm voices rising to the thoroughfare, hitting the ceiling, and cascading in pearlish white waves, leaving stalagmites of happiness to drip halcyon pools down below onto the floor. Camilla smiles to herself, into the rim of the shot glass she's nestling against her chest, the cold metal of the solid gray container chilling the spot on her skin while Gemini bucks over in laughter, howling, face flushed and bright, lips discolored slightly, but Camilla's head is slightly swimming in two and a half vodka shots to even focus on it.
Nokomis is sitting down on the floor, legs crossed underneath each other as she smirks and smiles back in laughter at something Gemini whispers… something about paint thinner and something snapping, though Camilla isn't sure exactly what the joke is, Nokomis gets it instantly, a faint smile rising from her lips, that making Camilla's heart elate. She has yet to really see the girl from Ten smile, and she gets it, she really does, that where they are and what they're going through is no laughing matter but… people can't be droll and upset and brooding all the time, can they? Camilla swirls a finger around her shot glass before taking the last sips, head slightly spinning as she rests her head against the couch.
Millet would be disappointed in her, she knows. She can already hear his voice on the soundwaves, rippling in discontentment, on how she has taken her eye off of the ball. Ever since her father dies and her mother is killed in explosions covered in sulfur lining, it has been survival. No talking to anyone, as they can be an enemy. They can hurt you; assume everyone you meet is out to get out, for not trusting anyone is safer that way and yet… yet here she is laughing with her district partner and this girl she's never met before just three days ago, and something compels her to call Nokomis over for lunch two days in a row, or to talk to them before the chariots start… how can she preach something her entire life and then leave it all in a rush when things do not go the way she plans?
Camilla chews on her lower lip, tying the cherry stem in her mouth under her tongue, something a coworker once tells her would probably be a useful skill in getting into the Capitol, as if this is any place she'd actually want to be at in any capacity. Except, wait, she is, and she's making the best of it, regardless about what her brother would want. Camilla frowns, the happiness of the room sinking into a dark black olive pit in her stomach as she spits the tied cherry stem into the glass, it chinking on the sides as she sets it down.
"I… I don't get the joke," she frowns, running a hand down the couch.
"It's for people with artistic sensibilities," Gemini says, his face bright and flushed, Camilla frowning at the abruptness in his tone. She's heard it in his voice, little quirks here and there that she has had to discover on her own while working in the fields and fending for herself, that people will find a way to stab her in the heart, in manners where you cannot see the knife until it is too late and you're spilling copper everywhere. Not that he has been downright rude to her, per say, but the warmth and familiarity and the enjoyment she feels with Gemini that first night on the train and that night under the cheering Capitol crowds has all but evaporated, and what is left… Camilla doesn't like it, a dried out corn husk sitting in front of her as dinner for the night, and Gemini's pointed stare that he gives her when she mentions that she's invited Nokomis to drinks on their floor and- "You wouldn't get it because you don't do anything artistic."
"Gemini!" Nokomis admonishes him, giving him a slight shove, which has the alcoholic painter slip off of the couch and onto the floor, he laughing at that as well. "That was rude!" the girl rolls her eyes, shaking her ponytail, looking back at Camilla, her heart skipping a beat. Something about Nokomis's manner, her unapologetic demeanor in who she is… someone Camilla can lower her guard around, show her secrets, the hand in poker that she has from a deck that Millet buys with his own money that he earns only for some bully to steal them from him during lunch, a fist in a shirt, a black eye later, and Camilla nearly taking a sickle and slicing the bully's throat open.
She flinches at the idea of seeing Gemini's pale face, illuminative under the bright pink lights, rosy and blushing that mark his skin, with a sickle sticking out of his cheek. Camilla lets out a shaky gasp, coughing on air, she pressing a hand against her throat. The same feeling when the supervisor calls her over, the news of her dead family riding his tongue in a scorching, searing bright red flame on her skin… Camilla stands up abruptly, knocking her glass over to the side, it making a heavy thump on the carpet.
"Can- can you excuse me for a moment?" she lets out shakily, running her hands over her arms.
Gemini frowns from his perch, but he is many more shots in tonight than her, though it isn't that late to be wasted, the concept of self-destruction making her skin itch. Nokomis, however, is much quicker to the draw, leaping to her feet, she only having had a single drink, eyes bright and conscious while Camilla's entire world does a front flip with her still in the driver's seat.
"Are you okay, Cammie?" Nokomis asks, Camilla realizing with a heartbeat in her ears that she just used… she just used the name her brother calls her, when he's terrified and has one too many nightmares of the woman in fiery red coming to him in the middle of the night, moaning to not be left alone in purgatory anymore…
Camilla turns away from her friends, bustling into her bathroom, the girl's rooms always on the left side of the apartment halls, as that is where Nokomis says her room is, where she hears Calen's mutterings about being a 'man' or somesuch other patriarchal term late at night. Camilla shakes her head, blurring away all thoughts of Calen or Nokomis or Millet or Gemini or the Capitol or her dead parents: the man in chalk white, and the woman who breathes fuego… she steps into the bathroom, about to slam the door shut when a hand catches it, forcibly, stopping her from slamming it shut.
"Please… please go away…" Camilla whines low in her throat before sinking down to the floor, on her knees. She cannot get the thought out of her head, at finding an excuse to end Gemini's life in the arena, as that is what they're all here for, no? To survive? To do what she has been doing by herself for the last few years with nothing but her brother's warm hand in her own, and his concerned voice making sure she's sleeping and eating enough while he goes without as sister must be strong.
"You must be strong," Millet tells her, in the Justice Building, feet on carpet and his hands on her shoulders as he's taller than her, his voice deep, and he's a young man, who might be spending this world alone and cold and hungry and without his big sister… Camilla wipes a tear out of her eyes. "I need you to come home, Cammie. Please…"
"Being strong…" she whimpers, hating herself in that moment, for the desperation is evident in her voice, the pain, the uncertainty, the upsetedness… "It means… it means…"
"It'll mean killing," Millet's voice is hardened, the raspy gasp she hears when sitting down with him on the front of their porch, sky torn asunder and spilling copper fumes into the air, the taste of blood heavy on her tongue. "Surviving. Doing what we Rodriguez's do best."
There is a dark joke hidden in there somewhere where Camilla wants to retort that so far the track record has been 2-2 on members of the Rodriguez family surviving, but that'll earn her a box to the ear if she dared utter some sort of hearsay like that.
Camilla lifts her head up, a few tears streaming down her face as Nokomis steps into the bathroom, closing it quickly behind her, crouching down. "Camilla, what's wrong?"
"I- I don't want to talk about it."
"Bullshit," the girl from Ten spits out, unapologetic ever still, Camilla's eyes widening at the language, though she figures that she is no saint and shouldn't expect Nokomis to be one either. "Something is bothering you. I've seen it on your face all night, way before Gemini ever insulted you, which by the way, was incredibly, incredibly rude."
The girl runs a hand down the side of the sink, sniffling. "You'd think of me different."
"Would I?" Nokomis's voice is soft, light, appealing, warm, and above all, non-judgmental. "Camilla, you and I and Gemini and twenty-one other kids our age are in the worst time of our lives, and we're in the worst possible scenario out of what happened with the districts and the war…" her voice is hollow now, as Nokomis picks at her fingernails. "My family did what they could do to ensure I survived. Who is to say what Magnus Winterthorn has done to stay on his own two feet? Or- or that Peverell guy who is hiding his demons?" Nokomis presses a hand under Camilla's jaw. "What had you get so upset?"
Camilla swallows down a sob, expecting Millet's reprimanding voice to fill the void, to choke the air and snuff, about survival and what a Rodriguez does and it's bullshit as she bites down on her fist. Nokomis grabs a tissue off of the counter, plucking it out of the carrier. A knock comes on the other side of the door, Gemini's worried voice hitting Camilla's ears like the crashing of cymbals.
"Is Camilla okay?"
"Just give a minute, Gem," Nokomis says back, tilting her head, voice solid. Camilla sees that her friend pauses, lips wanting to mouth more, but she holds back. Then, Nokomis turns back to Camilla, nodding silently at her to open up, to release one secret, to let the bucket of burden fall to the floor just this one time.
Camilla wets her lips, tears dampening her cheeks. "I- I thought about Gemini dying. About my hand doing it…" she trembles as Nokomis wraps her arms around her. "And- and then his face changed, and it was my brother telling me what we do to survive and-" A pained noise releases from her throat as Camilla sinks forward, hands curled around each other and gripping her chest in self-comfort. "I- couldn't do it!"
Nokomis shushes her with a warm kiss to the cheek, hugging her tight and placing a hand against the small of her back, running soothing circles with the flat of her palm. "Camilla, Camilla, Camilla… it's okay. It's just a thought. And as long as you don't enact on them or start fantasizing happily about Gemini then…" the girl shrugs. "Then it is just a thought, and it doesn't make me think of you any differently."
The girl sits back on her knees, sniffling, wiping at her nose. Nokomis is right. Almost to the point where Camilla doesn't want her to be right; she'd rather her friend be wrong so she can prove them all about her deepest and darkest desires…
She returns the hug, sating her body into the warmth of someone else's touch, someone else's grasp that is not the solidness of her brother. "I want you…" Camilla lets out a ragged breath, another weak sob ripping through her chest. "I want you and I to be allies in the arena, Nokomis," Harshly, static, broken. "Please…"
Nokomis hums a warm sound into the conjuncture of her neck and shoulder, smiling, Camilla seeing the look in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.
"Sold, Rodriguez."
Dill Waylon: District 11 Male P.O.V (16)
Two days of training, and Dill Waylon feels as lost as he did when stepping off of the train and taking the first inhalation of the Capitol air. The air is smoggy despite there being clear skies, unlike the citrus scents he finds in Eleven just round the bend, fingers plucked and scarred as he picks at strawberries and blueberries, feeling a wasp's tickle as it dances along his thumb, the insect flying in front of him, but it does not sting him as the King of the Orchard is never stung. Popular without being popular, the world's biggest myth.
He feels like he is the only lost soul, unable to find their tether while he wanders around the training room. Cassiopeia, in all of her vitriol and fire wound up in her tiny body, the mark of impact on his groin still flaring up in agony from time to time that his him clench his nails into his palms, has even found a purpose. From the way that even twelve-year-old Zachary seems to know where he is going makes a pit of fury and discontentment lull in Dill's stomach. Being home, in the orchards, it had given him a purpose, even when people crowd around him to hear about the old men with their twirling mustaches that he'd corral into bed with him, or the woman with her lacy stockings up to the knee that'd feet him strawberry tarts on her bathroom floor.
None of that is impressive here, not that Dill finds it impressive either, but it still gives him a purpose, where he can find someone's eyes on him and a finger pointed in his direction, that it's him, the king who sleeps around, a pit of shame developing further in his chest. How is he to blame what gives him happiness and a sense of belonging? It's not like he is hurting anyone with his actions except his own reputation.
Dill presses his fingers into the counter, biting on his lower lip. Let them rejoice and cheer at gossiping behind his back, when all he does is go through life one gentle paddle at a time, fighting the vicious waves that propel him back to land, making him grit his teeth so hard that he's clenching down on them and shattering his jaw with the force of a sledgehammer. There are thumps of noise above him, Dill looking up and frowning. District 12's floor is above him, and he knows he saw Orion Maythorpe join Ramses Boskov after pulling him out of the pool onto their home, but what they're doing up there, he has no idea.
"Perhaps they're fucking," he snorts with a laugh, to himself, thinking it and laughing cheerfully. It'd be a dosage of happiness in this otherwise depressing place, shivering at the feel of lace against his shoulder blades, and when his family still doesn't have enough money on the table to feed everyone, so his stomach growls some more and he refuses to reach for the croissant staring at him even when his parents raise their voices. He doesn't like people yelling at him, never able to operate under pressure like that very well, his heartbeat beating in his chest as his parents demand he and his other siblings eat or they're all going to starve and what is the point of living anymore?
He's thought about that question before, wanting to ask it all the time, truthfully, to anyone who'd listen. He has no idea where Marlon, their tanned and blue haired escort is, somewhere down in the pits of the training center smoking cigarettes and joints he believes, and not doing his job of well… helping. Dill runs a hand through his hair, struggling to his feet. He has been sitting in the living room, waiting for inspiration to hit him, but nothing comes, just Dill staring at the ceiling fans swinging back and forth. He knows Cassiopeia has gone to bed, and he should soon, too, actually, for what tomorrow brings. He hollows out his cheeks and sighs.
Whenever he'd be bored back home in Eleven, there'd be someone waiting for him at their doorsteps where he could go and spend the evening, where he could feel someone's kiss into his shoulder blades or a tongue down his throat and that person could help him stop feeling, stop feeling the world buzz around him just for a second, just for a second. King of the Orchard. What a joke. Dill scoffs and shakes his head. He hates the nickname, he has always despised it, always hated the connotations it made, that it meant someone wanted to be near him or friends with him, when he didn't want to be near anyone in the first place.
Dill gets up off the floor, and against his better judgment, goes to the left side of the main hall, which is shared by his bedroom and the bathroom, knocking on the closed door. There's the sound of squeaking, familiar, all too familiar in his ears, as the door opens and Cassiopeia is standing in front of him, a hand on her hips, she looking at him, though she isn't judgmental. She's just… looking.
"What do you want, Dill?" she asks him, raising an eyebrow. Ever the tactician, he rolling his eyes at her brusqueness. An ally, home, and a girl who wouldn't hesitate to slice him into ribbons if her talent in the training center is anything to go by or scoff at.
"Just bored; can I come in?" he asks, nodding towards her bedroom. It is not his mother or father that teaches him about politeness, but the man with the silver smile and the curly mustache, and a balding head, hair thinning on the sides like a freshly reaped crop, yet for all the lessons have taught him, all the good he has learned…
Cassiopeia quirks the other eyebrow briefly before opening the door to her bedroom all the way. "Sure. Knock yourself out," and she returns to sit at the desk in the corner of the room. Dill steps inside but leaves the door open, just so no one gets any wrong ideas or anything, not that he'd be interested in her anyways, far too young, and far too girly for his type of nature… barbed words float by in his head, the femininity in his soul a cage trying to burst free…
"What have you been doing?"
"None of your business," Cassiopeia grits at him, a pencil clenched in her right hand as she writes away, muttering and cussing under her breath, ever the diplomat, Dill rolling his eyes so hard in his skull that he feels the ligaments and muscles practically ripple.
"Cass…" he gets out, voice low. He has no idea exactly why he approaches her that night after she hits him, to smooth things over, but it is the truth. There needs to be twenty-two enemies in the arena, not twenty-three, and he does not have the state of mind to try and think about what it means to slice home from collarbone to sternum…
She turns around in her chair, Dill realizing that it is the same exact chair in his bedroom. In fact, both rooms are identical. If both rooms are identical, why dole them out? What would be the purpose? "Dill, it's personal to me and that's all that matters."
He throws his hands up in feign innocence, surrendering to her, though he is pretty certain that she'd just about disembowel him if given the chance. "Fine, fine…" Dill exhaling a shaky breath and laying his head back on Cassiopeia's comforter, feeling at how just much softer it is than his own. That's not fair. The 'king' of an orchard deserves the best material one has to offer, no? "Well, tomorrow is it…" he says after an awkward pause, his gaze now focused on the spinning ceiling fan, as if this is not what he is already doing back in the living room with just a change of scenery.
Cassiopeia barely has time to turn back around and face her desk before she is frowning and tapping the pencil against the side of her desk. "Tomorrow is… what?" she frowns, raising an eyebrow.
"The last day we're guaranteed to be left alive," he says, sitting up and looking at his district partner. She brings her eyebrows forward some, furrowing them and pursing her lips. It is the truth however, a terrifying truth. Tomorrow brings what the Head Trainer calls 'Private Sessions,' or what little usefulness Marlon can give them between his cups of coffee and vodka which Dill assumes is no good mix at all, where each tribute is to perform for the Head Gamemaker, a man who hasn't even been seen yet by any of them, or better known as Vice President Cain Passionia. Dill cannot lie and say he hasn't thought about getting in the pants of the second most powerful man on the planet, in Panem, but the very idea that he has to walk in and show off a skillset for someone… it terrifies him, down to the core, stirring like a sea unable to be tamed by even the Prophet himself.
Following the sessions, which are said to take two and a half hours total if each tribute is given five minutes to present for Mr. Passionia, will be a waiting period of two hours. In that time, where Dill is certain he'll be chewing through the cuticles on his fingers faster than watching a squirrel devour tree bark. In that period of time, the vice president will decide everyone's fate. A single score, from one to twelve – Cassiopeia is the one who asks about a zero, and Marlon simply laughs, that they better pray to ensure they don't score that bad – and then it'll be broadcasted to the world, where everyone will know how each tribute stacks up against the other, Dill's heart hammering in his chest.
What does everyone think of him? What do those sparkly and beautiful blonde kids from Four think of him, and when they see him score a 6, will they laugh? Will they be surprised? He's not sure. After that, speaking with another handsome face in front of the entire damn world, Mr. Richmond Anvil… or as what Marlon calls them, Interviews.
Cassiopeia frowns at the statement. "Dill… why would you say something like that?"
"Do you have an idea of what you're going to do for the Vice President tomorrow? What you're going to say on stage in front of the nation?" he sits up at the foot of the bed, looking at her pointedly. "Cassiopeia, we enter the arena in two days, and after that… well… you just need to be prepared…" his voice is a bit hollow, surprising him at the push of emotion in his vocal cords, imagining silk and hands slapping down on a table, and raised voices, and so many damn pieces of bread that he flushes down the toilet to prove a point… that he cares. And no one notices, no one notices.
His district partner stirs awkwardly back and forth in her seat, raising an eyebrow. "I have an idea on what I want to do tomorrow, yes, I do," she grins. "I'll score high, I know it. Enough to impress Amalie and then she'll have to say yes when I-" Cassiopeia stumbles over herself, the atmosphere of the room rising a few bubbly notches, Dill quirking an eyebrow.
"Who is Amalie?" he laughs.
She sneers at him, turning back around to face the desk, continuing on whatever project is in her hands. "None of your business, Mr. Orchard King," and then, a belabored pause floats between them as Dill realizes he has no plan. No course of action, nothing in his head, he has no idea what he is going to do, a sitting duck in water, drowning. Flailing. "We're gonna be okay, Dill," Cassiopeia says, softly, almost speaking to herself, though she doesn't turn around to face him.
"I know…" Dill whispers back. "I know…"
He doesn't believe her.
He doesn't even believe himself.
All he believes are the whispers of doom against the back of his neck, making all the hair on his skin stand on end.
Kai'sa Shadow: District 12 Female P.O.V (16)
The call of the void. There is a word for it, Kai'sa unable to think of it, but she runs the word 'void' in her head over and over again, in different tones and different syllables, her mouth forming around the words without any sound coming out of her throat as she stares out into the deep blue sky. Harsh, colors vibrating on the inside of her skull, glimmering silver and glittering gold, bronze droplets encrusted along her ribcage as she toes the line. Her shoes are off, discarded somewhere against the elevator doors, gravel pointed and sharp in her toes as she goes en pointe, gasping lightly at the popping bones.
The roof is delightful, and she has it all to herself, there being the sharp whistle of wind accompanying her heartbeat as it blows her do everywhere, she wiping it out of her eyes as she takes one step closer to the void. Void. Void. Void. Four letters, hopelessness and empty, pitch black where no light shines, and it is where she is going, one day. She might go there, she might now, she may survive the horrors of this arena, but after seeing Ramses dive down into a pool of liquid fire and see it scorch his lungs open… Kai'sa shudders at the thought, tiptoeing even further. One-foot dangles off of the roof, she perfectly balanced on the other, Valentina's teachings coming back to her with a smile on her lips. Light as a feather she must be, light as a feather with a core as strong as bricks before she is to think about plummeting down, a swan dive to the concrete below. She'll grow wings at the movement, she'll sprout feathers, more feathers, but these wings will not be bright and colorful, but dark and black, cold, without spirit. Someone will see her fly above their heads.
The void calls to her stronger, this time adding the voice of her brother. The voice of her mother. Her adopted father, a man she wants to hate, but a man she must love for he is the new caretaker, someone who'll propel the Shadow name into the light, a light she so desperately wants to touch, Kai'sa holding her hand out to touch the light, but it ripples away from her, she crying out into the void for the lashing whips to hold onto her and pull her in. Let the raven be born, a phoenix with grappling talons and hooks for her beak, to break into a wingspan coated in oil and the rich, copper scent of blood.
Kai'sa takes another step forward, balancing very preciously on her heel, feeling the tension give away so she can fall, fall, fall, fall… and she will-
"You can't, you know," a girl's voice tells her, cacophic sounds in her ears, causing Kai'sa to stumble back, and the bright colors of the night sky evaporate back into the clouds, leaving the world dark and faintly lit up by the bright lights of hotel rooms and the Capitol nightlife. Kai'sa whips her head back around to see Porscha Watanabe standing by the entrance, arms resting against the side of the building, her shoes also off, Kai'sa breathing heavily. Shoes. Off. Shoes. Off. Void. Void. Void Shoes Off. Echolalia is the word for it, her new father, Simon Ether, pulling it out of a dictionary with a faint hum as she drives him nuts with repeated phrases, she sticking to one, and it dances in her head for a bit before it is off to find a new host.
She frowns at the girl, an intruder more like, Kai'sa crossing her arms over her chest. "I wasn't gonna do it, y'know. I'm not…" Kai'sa catches herself on her words, about to say something perhaps much harsher than what she intends do. "I don't mean to do that."
"It doesn't matter," Porscha shrugs her shoulders, a rather unemotional look on her face, if there is a way to describe ambivalence emotionally. "There's a forcefield down at the bottom of it. Worst you'd get is a bloodied, broken nose, and whatever the Peacekeepers would want to force upon you, of course, for trying to escape from the world that they've designed for us."
Kai'sa steps away from the ledge, feeling a chill ripple through her body. The void is unappetizing, a pit made of anchovies and spit and the blood of burst soles as she twists on her feet with Valentina's words in her ears. "How do you know there's something down there?"
"It's just above the twelfth floor," the girl from Six says, easily making her way across the top of the roof, sliding on the shale. There is a garden up on the rooftop too, accessible only via an elevator, stuck in a glass cage that Kai'sa can see just across there, but she prefers being by the smokestack columns and seeing the cloudy haze in the air. It reminds her of home, home being so far away, but is home nonetheless, with the coal bits rising into the sky and darkening up her heart. Void. Void. Voids. "The Peacekeepers threatened to throw Pierce into it as punishment if he continued trying to strangle tributes."
It isn't funny, but Kai'sa still laughs at it. Loud and violent in her throat, like a hacking donkey as she hits and pounds her chest. "How's he doing?" Kai'sa likes Pierce enough, though she hasn't interacted with him at all, simply seeing him from across the way. There aren't many people she's been around that have actually been nice to her, or friendly, or have spoken two words to her. There is Vesuvia Vocanova, that girl from Three, however, who does talk to her on the first day of training, something about the stirring darkness in her eyes, and that she's an inspiration, but Kai'sa strikes that off as someone simply prattling about weirdness, perhaps being high, as her district partner, Jasper, jokes about weed once more. She rubs the thought away with a hand on her forehead, grinding down into the skin. Voids.
"Pierce is doing fine. Temper tantrums have stopped," Porscha sighs, resting her head against a column, sitting down on the ground with a slide, her legs out under her. "Today, though, during dinner, he said I have the head of a snake. I- I don't think that was supposed to be an insult, but…" the girl shrugs her shoulders, dark hair and dark eyes almost invisible in the moonlit night sky, Kai'sa blinking and trying to locate her. "But my district partner isn't the one who nearly died today. How's Ramses?"
She jars at hearing his name. No one asks about her, just the guy who fell into a pool and some sort of knight in shining armor to race in after him and save him from making a complete fool of himself. No one asks how the girl is doing with a family incinerated in the tunnels, where the woman who keeps her sane is ripped away from her and she's left to flounder about like a fish without water. How does it feel to have the man who ordered the execution on the home she had known and loved now become her father figure?
Kai'sa grits her teeth together. "He's fine. Doesn't seem upset about the fact that I think he got the Capitol worker punished, and he's on our floor probably sucking Maythorpe off…" she throws a hand in his hair. "I don't care about Ramses."
Porscha's eyes twinkle in the darkness. "Well… that was emotive…" she laughs. "I saw you hug him though and try and see if he was okay."
"Well, of course I would. I don't want him dead but I- I don't care about him." She turns away from Porscha, arms still crossed over the other. She does not expect anyone to come over and talk to her, as when anyone does, she simply gets those wide-eyed stares the way most people have looked at Kai'sa her entire life, she snarling and baring her teeth at anyone who dares approach her. Voids are attractive as there is no one to look at her, no one to stare at her and make her realize that she is all alone in this world.
Kai'sa is used to people looking at her. Her siblings look at her with adoration and love, or… they used to, now rotting in the ground with fallen leaves to act as their companions, ants burrowing into them and leaving mounds to desecrate the gravestone. When Valentina looks at her, she sees a woman who is exalted and happy, a smile on her lips, pupils wide and bright and simply glowing at her, telling her again, again, again, again! The voice fluctuates from seriousness to delight over and over again, lapping at the shores and Kai'sa continues keep spinning. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Void. Void. Void. Void. She repeats them, over, and over and over. Why else is she a dancer? There is nothing else in this world for her to dedicate her mind to.
The way her father, her new father looks at her, Kai'sa only knows how to describe it as lukewarm, where he doesn't want a daughter because he lost his, which he did, and she feels bad at the fact that she has no step-sister to claim in her life, but that he has a trophy. A gilded bird to lock into a cage while she spreads her raven wings and clashes against the cage, squawking and screeching, clamoring for freedom and gnawing at the bars.
Porscha Watanabe looks at her differently, too, she looking back at the girl from Six who has turned her attention to the horizon, at the bands of black that dance along the Capitol skyline. Her look is one of fire, and dare she say it, passion, though she doesn't know her. A complete stranger, one not covered in shadow.
"I used to think I hated my father," Porscha says, a hand on her stomach, as if she is applying pressure onto a wound to staunch blood flow. "He did things that I didn't understand," she brings her brow together, her free hand raised above her and pressed into the column. "He did things that I as a little girl would never understand in a million years, but he wanted security and safety and I held it against him… I always made sure he knew what a dick I thought he was," she looks at Kai'sa dead on, the girl leaping out of her skin at the closeness. "He wanted to be the little dancer you see in a music box, and I threatened to break my legs, so I'd never dance again."
The thought of Kai'sa never dancing again sends a spike of ice into her chest, a cool chill spreading down her front as she grabs onto her heart, tugging at skin. "Never dance again? I- I can't stomach the thought…" and then, added softly, as if that is what Porscha is meaning to really tell her, "I'm glad you don't hate your father. I don't hate my family if they were still here. I don't even hate my new dad, although the world and Ramses tells me I should.
"What do you mean?" Porscha asks, getting to her feet.
"It's not important," Kai'sa squeezes her eyes shut, hands going to her side. Thinking of reaching the void again, going to the roof, letting the forcefield smash her brains open and send blood out her nose. Crush her into the ground, let her return to the dirt, spite Simon Ether one last time, let Valentina weep into her ballet slippers, and have Ramses choke on more pool water as she takes him with her.
Porscha reaches Kai'sa in a few strides, placing a hand on the girl's shoulder. "If it isn't important, then I won't ask…" and there are fingers tugging at the girl's hands to pull them apart and into Porscha's grasp, Kai'sa looking at the other girl with a look lost in her eyes, lips parted. "Show me in a dance, then. Let us dance on this rooftop… we'll never get another chance, don't you think?"
And so Porscha begins to move, simply gliding backwards and frontwards, her hands sliding out of Kai'sa's, silky, smooth, almost buttery, but delightful as Kai'sa watches the girl from Six twirl and leap about on the rooftop, her own body ambling to move.
So she does, and Kai'sa lets herself glide, and the word void dissipates into a pointed foot and arched back and her hands twisting towards the sky.
Jasper Overheart: District 3 Male P.O.V (18)
All he can think about over the last few days is the way the green blood spills out of the eviscerated dummy in the training center, against the linoleum floor. The way the knife is stuck so deep in the plastic that only the handle is sticking out of it, and the way it is his district partner that does it, Vesuvia turning around to face him with a glimmer of delight and violence in her eyes, making Jasper's hair on his arms stand up. Not that he has never had to do anything violent in his life, of course, things he'll never share with his siblings, they crossing his mind ever so often in concern… how are they? Is someone coming over to cook their meals for him? He left the gun on the kitchen table, out in the open… it'd be just like his younger brother and sister to shoot their hands off and-
Someone snaps at him, their fingers clicking against one another, jarring Jasper out of the memory. He blinks his eyes together heavily, looking over at the disturbance, it being Cole Echo, their escort, dressed entirely in white, getting up out of his seat to reach all the way across the living room. "Jasper, I need you present," the man chides, shame burning in Jasper's gut.
"Sorry…" he rubs his brow with his fingers, his left hand rolling a button back and forth, it being from a pair of pants that he finds hanging awkwardly in the closet. Vesuvia appraises him with a raised eyebrow, her bright hair tucked back into a bun with a few strands hanging over her ears; she is a more lax position, laying in a chair with her body turned horizontal, legs strapped over the side, feet angled towards the ceiling. "Sorry," Jasper apologizes again, sitting up straight. "What were we discussing?"
"How we're not going to die, Overheart," his district partner giggles, wiggling her eyebrows at him, he locking eyes with her while she playfully smiles back at him. "Stay with us, darling, or otherwise you'll be choking on my dust."
"You want me to beat you in chess again?" Jasper asks boldly, puffing out his chest, smirking.
"Please. You win cause I let you."
"Bull-" he goes to say, calling her bluff, as he knows that Vesuvia is just saying that to save face for she'd never beat him in a fair fight.
Cole slams a foot on the ground and his fist into the table next to him, hitting the surface hard enough that his glasses fall onto the floor, but their escort leaves them there as both Jasper and Vesuvia look back at him with pursed lips, silencing their chatter immediately. Jasper sits back in his chair, frowning, feeling shame and scolded feelings rise in his chest. He still believes that Vesuvia is just teasing him. He likes it, truthfully, to be honest, but he's not sure why.
Their escort pinches his nose bridge, sighing. "Sorry, didn't mean to get aggressive, but you two are not taking things seriously like you should," Cole reaches down and sets his glasses back down. "Tomorrow you'll be presenting your special skill set for the vice president and his team of workers, and they have the ability to decide your fate in the arena if you screw this up," A seed of worry stirs in Jasper's gut at the words, he flashing Vesuvia a look, she matching it, but she doesn't look as disconcerted, rather mellow about it. "While being lethal and knowing how to survive is all fine and dandy, what matters is when you are loved by the Capitol populace and they send you sponsor gifts," Cole explains, running a hand through his bleached hair. Jasper hums along the words; sponsors, he knows what they are. Could he ask someone to send bread back to Three? "If the Capitol and Panem doesn't see you as someone to invest in, they'll give their gifts elsewhere and spend their money differently. What are you gonna do when the girl from Four, the one you say, Vesuvia, is an excellent shot and she's been gifted the most prestigious bow possible because she scores a 12?"
Jasper sees his district partner frown to herself, sitting up properly in the chair. "I'd like to see her try…" she grumbles. "Diana is good, but she isn't the best thing in the world," There's hostility behind her words, teeth gritted into each other, Jasper's skin prickling at the tension. Someone back home thought they'd be untouchable, that they're hotter than the sun in terms of shine and luster, and then their head is rolling on the presidential mansion steps, Jasper sees the pictures of home destroyed as he sinks to his knees, and Vesuvia witnesses him shooting at the mural of a heart underneath a dilapidated bridge.
"Cockiness is going to get you killed, Vesuvia," Cole says, and while Jasper agrees, he stills his tongue. He is much more modest in his skills, he believes. Holding a sword in his hand and swinging it, yes, it is effective, and watching the plastic dummy head roll to the ground is not going to be the same as seeing that little Cecelia Blackstone, or that sweet Sylvan Adello lose their head with his hand holding onto the sword at the other end. His eyes flit to Vesuvia, she staring daggers at Cole, who continues prattling on about fatal flaws and that one can never be so sure of themselves in the Capitol, as the Gamemakers are going to love to rip the floor out from underneath them.
Jasper does agree with the sentiment, he cannot underestimate anyone, and he cannot overestimate anyone's ability to kill and do what they must do to survive, especially Vesuvia. She looks at him, perhaps blocking out Cole entirely before she shakes her head and pushes herself off of the chair. Her hair is flaming bright under the lights as she points a finger at their escort. "Fuck you, Cole. I am not going to get killed because I was 'cocky,'" her voice rises in mockery. "I can handle myself fine, and I don't need you second guessing what I can do."
That's it. The fire he has always seen in her, the same fire he feels stir in his chest as she kisses him, Jasper absentmindedly rubbing his cheek where he remembers her lips being. It stuns him into silence for a moment, Vesuvia grinning cheekily at him before she's back to slicing the dummy up, spilling more goop onto the floor, doing it in excess to the point where he cannot see the tile anymore, the visual terrifying him, but it also excites him. He, out of everyone in the amassed cast, gets her to be from home, someone he can lean on and have help in the areas where he is weaker.
All Jasper can think about is that kiss. The kiss, the offer back from when they first met when he nearly shoots her feet off… Jasper runs a hand through his hair, whereas Cole picks his glasses off the table and wipes the dust off of them. "Jasper, do you understand me?"
"I do, Mr. Echo," Jasper says, absentmindedly, eyebrows furrowing at Vesuvia's reaction. From what he has seen over the last few days, even when she gets close up and personal in Kileigh Katsaras' space, he noticing that the girl from Five is a lot more mellow in the training center for the day, going about and sticking to her district partner and actually doing, well… training, but all he can focus on is how Vesuvia gets in the other girl's face. Not that what she is talking about is exactly pleasant, his stomach churning like a sailor thrown overboard and into the waters below, but- well, it doesn't matter. She's upset, bothered, and he is not going to simply sit there and let his one tether to home walk around unfocused.
He needs her. He needs Vesuvia to get home, to get back to his family, the task appointed on his shoulders that he is to take care of them, the last thing his father says to him before he goes off into the world and gets his legs blown up by a grenade, or what his mom whispers in his ear with her arms looped around his, holding out the gun, Jasper taking it and sealing his fate. Dead Peacekeeper leather.
"No, no you don't," Cole shakes his head, muttering to himself. "Why do I even bother?"
Jasper blocks out the noise, getting up from his chair, wandering over to Vesuvia's bedroom door. His heartbeat clamors in his chest. He's never met someone like her, where back in Thirteen, everyone else is vapid and self-centered, hearing Nathaniel Coin's rallying cry to war fill their systems and override all their natural thought processes. Jasper lets himself get swept up in it too, he'll admit, bloodlust filling his chest and overflowing his brain to where he cannot think straight except seeing heads roll, watching those in their gilded towers scream and clutch their petticoats to their stomachs when their world falls apart, and then… on his own, with the gun in hand, clenching his siblings by their waists, seeing what the world is really like as the sky is on fire… Jasper wonders where he went wrong. What path did he turn down and around before realizing that this is not him?
Vesuvia may be more violent than he will ever be, but there's a grittiness in her that he respects, that he likes. Boldness. Bravery. In the Capitol, the one place he does want to see burn down, he'll look with wide eyes. It is her promise to him, is it not? She'll help him burn it down… that is what she says, on the train ride into the city.
He stands in front of her door, knocking, to find that it is slightly ajar, Vesuvia about to step out into the hallway, she jumping as he is close to her, towering over her. "Hey…" he starts shortly after, the two of them catching their breath. "Are you okay?" he asks her. "Cole seemed to really get to you and-"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Vesuvia waves away the concern with a hand, unflappable, as if she is back to her normal self. "I just… I'm used to people not believing in me, and I don't like it. I'm used to proving them wrong."
Jasper says it without even thinking it. "I believe in you," and she kind of scoffs at that, but he's shaking his head, nodding, smiling. "I do, Vesuvia. I saw what you did in the training center, and how you hold yourself. Lethal weapon," he grins at that, and the spot on his cheek warms up from the way Vesuvia smiles back at him, she reaching out and hugging him tight, he resting his head on her head. "Let's prove them all wrong and take 12's, and let's get Diana Kratovska to look shocked right in that perfect face of hers, yeah?"
Vesuvia hums against him, courage building in Jasper's stomach. She's dangerous, and he's been warned about the dangerous ones that live outside and live among them, those that he needs to, where Jasper can smell bullshit from a mile away, but here, with Vesuvia, he doesn't smell anything except the scent of her hair. The scent of her hair and her smile and the fact that she takes confidence in a stranger that she doesn't even know.
A kiss, warm and fluttering, against his cheek, and it unlocks the world's treasures.
"Vesuvia?" he ventures forward daringly, she looking up at him, innocently. "Do- do you think your offer is still on the table?" Jasper asks, swallowing heavily.
"Offer?" she echoes, bringing her eyebrows up near her hairline.
The world is overwhelming scarlet and auburn as Jasper reaches out and holds her hands in his. "The- the one you told me before the reaping. If- if you were to offer more than a job opportunity-"
Jasper doesn't get to say another word before Vesuvia is smiling at him and tugging him down to her face so she can kiss him, her lips on his, and Jasper's world explodes in bright sulfur and orange flames that lick up his arms and make him feel alive.
"I thought you'd never ask, Overheart," Vesuvia chuckles to herself, and her hands are in his shirt, tugging him forward. Jasper decides that he is doing this for himself, for no one else.
He is going to live a little and ignore the whispers of doom playing in his ears.
Diana Kratovska: District 4 Female P.O.V (17)
She is a bit surprised, to be honest, that they even showed up, but she knows that her words are too enticing to leave just sitting open, and that her offer is too good sounding to be left alone without people at least meeting halfway. Diana tugs her hair into a ponytail, checking the time on the wall as the clock ticks by, seconds melding into nothingness but background noise as she sets her drink aside, taking one last sip of her water while the eyes of her visitors – a fancy word, she figures, but she likes the amusement at seeing their quirked brows and inquisitive expressions – stare back at her, somewhat blankly, or fully filled to the brim with emotion.
"You needed us for something?" Magnus ventures forwards first, he still dressed in the training uniform, Diana noticing the fact that his arm muscles were practically popping out of the fabric, she trying hard to not stare. Catalus is dressed a lot more fine than that, a cherry crisp button down on his tanned skin and dark hair, though there is a layer of nervousness settling among the three of them, Diana notices it in Catalus the most by the way there are knots in his shirt, a bunch of wrinkles crinkled around his shrugged shoulders.
"Proposition on the table had been your precise words," Catalus leans towards the counter, the two guys from One and Two sitting across from her, Diana having asked each of them separately shortly before the training center closed for the night to visit her on Floor Four without their district partners, just them. Diana expects Orion to be around somewhere, perhaps, but instead, once again, she's surprised, or well, he is surprising her by being up on 12's floor. He has been there all damn day, and she has no idea if he is going to ever come back down and interact with the people who matter.
The winners.
She knew she'd devour him in this competition the moment she lays eyes on him. Heroism doesn't exist in the Capitol; heroism doesn't exist in an arena where an evil president and his team of lackeys force kids to kill each other for sustenance and survival. Diana scratches on the inside of her arm, tackling an itch, the way her father would tell her to grab a bull by the horns and wrestle it into the ground, wrestle it into submission and make it realize that she's the boss, she's the one in charge, just like how she shall be the one in charge of the duo looking back at her.
Diana takes another swig of her water, swallowing, not taking her eyes off of them as Magnus and Catalus look at each other, some sort of silent conversation passing between them. It bothers her, even though it shouldn't. Most of the other tributes here… they seem to have support systems. Magnus and Catalus have one another, Districts 3, 7, 8, 9… they fall into each other's grasps and stand hand in hand, arm in arm, and Diana is a reed blowing in the wind with Orion's volunteering ass. An ass who volunteers and is unable to stay afloat in the waves, jumping in after the pathetic and weak.
If he can't swim, then why did he go into a room that held the only body of water? It is a question Diana asks herself, in private, and then aloud at Orion in passing with the few moments they get before he announces where he's going, and she can only look at him and frown. Wyvern knows what she wishes to do, humming warm praise in his throat while looking for the comics splash on the newspaper he is reading. Her father would have an answer, as would her mother, though she is more passive in her coaching. If he can't swim, then you don't dive in after him to be devoured by the sharks. Let them feast on his bones, let them devour his soul and let them spit it back out into the surf…
Diana locks her jaw, settling her glass down on the counter. "I'm not gonna beat around the bush, guys," she says, firmly, having rehearsed in front of the mirror about twenty times on her game plan speech. "I think us three, out of the others here, are the only ones who have a real, and I mean, real shot at winning this thing."
"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence," Magnus interjecting, smirking, while Catalus elbows him in the ribs, camaraderie already separating her, leaving her isolated, an island with storms raging on all sides as Diana finds herself treading water, trying to keep her head above the water so she doesn't drown. All the arrows she's fired into the sea coming back to hit her in the chest, downing her the way she hears her parents- she bites away the memory.
"I am serious, Winterthorn," Diana grits out, slapping her hand on the counter. "Us three only. The others, they just don't strike me as having the ability to outlast in whatever conditions are thrown at us," she rights herself up straight, setting her shoulders back. Take the lead. Take affirmative action. Become the poster child for success. Don't let anyone else's mistakes define your own path. Do not let anyone else in your way. Let the surf swallow the weak whole, but you'll stand there, against the tide and be a sturdy rock. She has had to be the strong one in her group of friends, Caesar, Miller, and Bree always shirking away from their duties, letting their voices be drowned out by the waves that hit them and knock them asunder, taking them under and Diana is forced to swim out after them, hoping she is not dragged out by the currents. "Us three… I want an alliance. Together, I think we'd prove to be unstoppable."
Her words do not settle in with smiles immediately like she expects, a bit of anger with a vinegar tint hitting her throat in a bitter white wake backsplash, until she sees Magnus bring his eyebrows up, Catalus not necessarily frowning, but not smiling.
"An alliance?" he repeats the word. "With us."
"That's what I said," Diana nods her head, curling her hands into fists atop the counter, as if she were tethered to a bowstring. "A Kratovska doesn't stutter," her father never did, she never will. A Kratovska never stutters, a Kratovska never misses, and Diana doesn't ever miss. Missing is failure, weakness to the water that she assaults. If she were to be weak, she'd collect seashells instead of bulls-eyes.
Catalus crosses his arms over his chest, but Magnus's body language has gone down to relaxation. Diana has to admit the thought crosses her mind the moment she sees them talking to each other at the tribute parade, seeing Magnus from the reaping recap reel, and that Catalus is a Drachma… everyone in Panem knows how the Drachma family from One are. Notoriety, fame… that can be useful to her survival. It is what she is doing, when she stands there against the chariot as Orion foolishly chats to those around him, and what she is doing when she tells Magnus's district partner, that bitchy looking girl Portia off… Diana is focused, narrowed gaze in on her targets, and then she realizes what must be done.
The Hunger Games, if they've shown her anything already over these last two days, let alone what the ceremonies and procedures in the next day also add, is that the Games follow strength. She is going to be the strongest one if she must, to make everyone's eyes fall on her. It is a game, that being what Wyvern tells her and Orion at breakfast this morning, which leads to her district partner scowling into his English muffin as he wipes jam on it. A game, and a game is won by winners, winning meaning surviving… being the best, being the most loved, being well, the stars of Panem. To be the name everyone has in their minds or on their lips, syllables that collided together will form Diana Kratovska.
"Just you, Magnus, and I?" Catalus asks, his body language deferring a little bit into the counter, he now resting his elbows on the surface like Magnus, who looks a little bit unfocused, but still, present.
"I am not thinking of offering this to anyone else," Diana lies through her teeth. While she will not be so stupid to go and ask Vesuvia and Jasper if they would want to be an alliance, or that seemingly strong girl from Seven who looks a little bit attached to the sniveling weakling at her side right away, there are no better options than the two guys in front of her. "My pick of the litter," she tells herself, echoing what her father, Joshua, says, with a hand in her hair and a smile on his face. "The world is yours to choose from, because you'll be strong enough to claim it yourself."
"What about Orion?" Magnus asks, and everything seems to grind to a halt, someone taking the record off and smashing it against their knee, Diana shooting Winterthorn a slight glare, trying to level the anger in her eyes. She can't piss off everyone and push them away. "He privy to this?"
"I'm not including him in this," she says, lifting her chin, crossing her arms. "Besides, he's been up on Floor Twelve probably with his mouth on that kid's dick anyways…" Diana rolls her eyes, bile rising in her throat. He looks strong on the outside, with his blonde hair, bright and gorgeous, muscles underneath, and he screams a rebel life for her, but yet, somewhere there's a heart of gold… she doesn't get it. "I just want it to be us three."
Catalus bridges his eyebrows together, Diana resisting the urge to slap him, cause she would, if he wanted to bring about even one utterance of protest to the idea. "Cecelia isn't going to like it…"
Diana tilts her head back and laughs. "Catalus, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but Cecelia is thirteen. You're a foot and a half taller than her," she sees that Catalus isn't laughing with her, but more so he has a hand pressed up against his black eye that circles around his face, and although he hasn't shared how he got it, Diana can surmise that his little district partner is somehow involved. As if he'd let a thirteen-year-old girl beat him up, however. "She is not going to be helpful in an arena where everything might be able to kill us. She'd be dead weight, and I hate to say it, she's not going to be getting out of the arena alive, and I know that you know that."
The boy from One frowns, but he doesn't disagree with her, simply nodding his head and turning to Magnus. "What about Portia? She seems-"
"Let the bitch rot in hell for all I care," Magnus interrupts him with a cold stone statement, his voice frigid, making Diana raise an eyebrow. The easy-going nature to be abandoned and embraced more casually with his namesake for sure. "If you knew what she did, you'd all be wanting to kill her. Hell, I want to…"
Diana doesn't want to think about plans of killing anyone just yet, and while that is not out of her realm of imagination, there are other things to focus on. No Orion. No Cecelia. No Portia. Just… just Diana Kratovska, Catalus Drachma, and Magnus Winterthorn, a trio. "Fine, take care of her… I-" Diana stops herself short, shaking her ponytail back and forth. "Are you in? You accept my proposal?" she holds her hand out, palm down to the counter. "We're contenders; let's stay that way, let's make the Capitol have no choice but to root for us."
Magnus and Catalus don't hesitate, putting their hands atop hers, warmth filling Diana's chest, her heart bursting with feeling and excitement. She does a countdown, the three of them releasing on three… she's riding the clouds, she's about to win the Games.
Wyvern shouts at them from his bedroom that they're being too loud, and that an old man needs his sleep.
Diana nearly murders the escort just when the clock strikes midnight.
Alrighty, alrighty ladies and gentlemen! That was Chapter #15: Whispers of Doom, focused on Training Night 2, with povs from Calen, Camilla, Dill, Kai'sa, Jasper, and Diana. I wrote Dill through Diana pretty much in one sitting tonight, and I am exhausted, but I was not delaying the update any further. A lot of developments, and some really new developments when you think about it, but that just means there is more on the way! Each tribute has now had two povs each, which is crazy as we've just now reached the halfway point of the pre-games. We've got Private Sessions, Scores, Interview Night, Night Before, and Launching left... I am planning for the bloodbath around Halloween after all, which means crunch time is soon upon me.
Each tribute gets one last pre games pov spread out over these five chapters, and we're getting a few more Capitol character povs in the empty spots, which I am so excited about. Don't forget, as we go through the story before the bloodbath, to vote on the six tributes you think will be going in the bloodbath (bloodbaths in stories solely by me will never be more than six FYI) and if you want, let me know who you voted for, since those polls never say who voted for who... and hey, your thought process may even change! Next chapter is #16: Spot the Competition, which is focused on the Private Sessions. I am not doing what I normally do where I go over every single private session as I have done in the past, just as I want to try something new. Five tribute POVs of Orion, Porscha, Magnus, Camilla, and Dill, with two Capitol povs of Adriane who opens the chapter, and Cain who closes the chapter. Seven total.
I hope you all have been enjoying the story so far, and feedback from you guys is greatly appreciated whenever you can give it. As I say this, I am now 21 years old - birthday was on Friday - and I realized I have been writing fanfiction for eight years now... like holy hell. Anyways, please, as always, review if you want! I love you all so much! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm