Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death Chapter 28: Curtain of Blood and Tears, a hunger games fanfic

Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter for Liberty, Chapter #28: Curtain of Blood and Tears, focused on Arena Night V... cause yes, I guess this is a precedent that I am starting to write night chapters in the arena that involve people *dying* which is crazy. Last chapter, #27, was a 'smaller' chapter in terms of povs and word count... when it was just five povs and only like 11k, but it's fine haha. This chapter is another entirely tribute focused arena one with the usual six tribute povs, as I am starting another round of giving tributes povs, cause I have planned out in this arena how each certain range of tribute placements has an equal # of povs. Last chapter, Vesuvia was told to keep secrets, Girl Power met another alliance, and the Mini-Careers have slain a god... what lies ahead, do you ask? I hope you enjoy Chapter #28: Curtain of Blood and Tears.

"Almost losing one person you love shines a bright spotlight on life, and suddenly strips you of everything but your real feelings," ~ Fannie Flagg

Kai'sa Shadow: District 12 Female P.O.V (16)

The voices have mainly stopped speaking at her in such acidic tones. They're still there, oh Kai'sa has not forgotten about them, and they haven't forgotten about her, but they've at least toned down their vitriolic hatred that rattles around her skull. Porscha's presence has been helping, but Kai'sa still looks at her with a few side-eye glances every once in a while. The sound of the mace connecting with Kileigh's skull and tearing away flesh, with sticking stands of blood connecting to the weapon's smooth surface plays over in her head time and time again as Kai'sa tries closing her eyes to sleep.

Should she be afraid of the girl currently leading her through a very dense section of the dead forest? The echolalia in her head is telling her otherwise, as Porscha grips onto Kai'sa's wrist, tugging her along a little harsh for her liking. Kai'sa stares at her ally's head, at how the hair is slowly starting to grow back over the tattoos scaling her pale skin. This girl saved her, Kai'sa cannot forget that, as her ally dove into the lake after her when Kai'sa felt it necessary to take a mid-afternoon swim… she shudders at the thought. At the idea of her body being down in a pool of water until fish begin to eat away at her eyelids.

"Where are you taking us?" Kai'sa asks, a bit annoyed, as they've been walking for over thirty minutes now, it seems. Whenever she looks up at the arena dome, which feels so inaccessible from its smoothed over surface in the sky, like a god's throne that she can just barely reach if she stood on pointe, the sun beats hotly down upon her skull, as Kai'sa has tied her back into a ponytail. It is still a bit damp and waterlogged from her improvised diving showcase, which has tiny moments of pulsating fear scatter through her wrists. Her hair should've dried out by now, especially with the insufferable heat they're under.

"Don't you like adventure?" Porscha snips back at her, though the tone of her ally lately has been much gentler than the typical barbarism Kai'sa has come to appreciate. She sticks by the girl's side not just because of her dancing background, but because she is so unapologetic about who she is that Kai'sa has no idea what to do except stand there and look at her in fascination. For she is, truly, fascinated.

"Not when the adventurer is currently breaking my wrist," Kai'sa says as sweetly as she can, glancing down at how Porscha's grip will surely leave bruises up and down her forearm. Her father – new step-father, her mind has to correct her, you'd never call him your father even with a gun to your head – occasionally grabs her like that. He never has raised a hand to strike her, no, he has Peacekeepers for that, but it is over an eye-roll at the dinner table, or how she accidentally drops the butter knife, since the maid – Kai'sa names the woman, with dusty gray hair and iron wrought spectacles on her face, Carnage – decides to rush into the dining room like a tempest, scaring her. Her arms are bruised from his touch when he could break her wrist if he snapped hard enough.

What could she do if she snapped hard enough?

"Oh please," Porscha's voice is mocking now, but sweet. A bitter sweetness, like biting into a tangerine, though Kai'sa has only had them once or twice in her life… she doesn't come from the same loads of cash as the Watanabe's. "You love it when I touch you."

"That was uncalled for, and inappropriate…" Kai'sa blushes, trying to wrench her wrist away from Porscha. She saved her life, but she killed someone. Murder. Murderer. Dead girl. You're the dead girl. She is the dead girl. She is the murderer. You are the murderer. You will be murdered. Cheery. Kai'sa makes a face, as Porscha lets go of her hand, turning back to her. "Sorry, I just-"

"No, I get it," Porscha sighs, pinching her brow. "I'm a little too forward, if you know what I mean."

Oh, Kai'sa understands it. She may have lived in a bunker for half of her life, but she's understood Porscha's implications from the top of the bell tower in the fishing village back to District 12's coal mines deep underground. It is somewhat flattering to her, for she's never had someone interested in her, but Kai'sa has no idea how to set her down gently. She… romance has never…

"It's nice," Kai'sa says, against her better wishes. All the time spent with Valentina, and yet she has never learned anything. All the hours of wrapping her feet in pale gauze just for the blisters on her big toe to pop, coating them in a bubbling scarlet foam… all of the times she has spent watching what she eats with Simon Ether looking over her with a cocked head and inquisitive gaze. Manners, manners… and Kai'sa Shadow has spent her entire life abandoning whatever manners she thought she had. "I like having someone appreciate me."

"Well…" Porscha trails off, turning back around to keep walking. "I like more than just how nice you are and-"

"How nice I am…" Kai'sa tells herself. A lie. She nearly skewered Ramses in the liver at the cornucopia when the Games began, because all of his hateful rhetoric came back to punch her in the face. He wants to lead, wants to rule, and she wouldn't be a part of his kingdom because he couldn't stand her. She'd be forgotten about, and since she fraternized with traitors… - "I don't fraternize with traitors!" Kai'sa snaps at him, pushing Ramses up against the wall on their floor, the force strong enough to send the picture on the wall crashing to the floor. "He's my foster parent… I didn't have a choice!" – she can only see red marring his skin. A red she'd create by stabbing him down through the thorax and slicing into his gut.

"That is why," as Porscha is still talking whether or not Kai'sa is listening, "As I went to look for lunch today, I came across this and thought you wanted to see!" Her voice bubbles with excitement, as Porscha races on ahead through the thicket, Kai'sa picking up the pace to not stay behind. The trees start thickening as the two girls race through the forest, until Kai'sa hears the sound of rushing water. It is loud, deafening almost, but certainly there. The ground underneath her feet softens up, shoes squelching into the earth as it transitions from dirt to sand.

Porscha is standing still just ahead of her, as Kai'sa slows her pace, reaching her ally. The girl from Six has her arms stretched out wide, a smile on her face. It is a waterfall, from up high, the water the clearest blue that Kai'sa has ever seen, crashing down into an aquamarine pool below. Porscha takes one look at Kai'sa, the dumb grin widening, before she is taking off her tribute uniform, stripping down to her bra.

Kai'sa realizes, with a start, that she has never seen her ally in any state of undress before, and good lord her thighs are killer. Porscha hollers at the top of her lungs, taking a running sprint off of the rock wall, diving in a huge heap to the water below. She lands with a splash, sinking down deep, until Porscha resurfaces, whooping into the air.

"C'mon Kai'sa! The water feels great!" she yells out happily, her dark hair now sticking to the back of her head, covering up her tattoos. Porscha goes under the water, Kai'sa barely able to make out her swimming form with the sun falling down on her body.

It does look like fun… but… Kai'sa steps forward, dangling one foot off of the edge. She closes her eyes, waiting for the whispers. Waiting for that damned vocal disease to come back, to whisper sounds of demise and pain, as if her brother would resurrect himself out of the pond when Porscha is to resurface. If she ever resurfaces… Kai'sa hates her mind, nearly as much as she hates herself.

Kai'sa bounces on her heels, her breathing coming and going faster and faster. "Screw it," she shakes her head. "Screw it…" The girl from Twelve leaps off of the cliff without removing her clothes, tucking into a cannonball as she connects with the water. She almost lands directly on Porscha, but she is laughing too hard to care. Porscha splashes her with a gigantic tide of water, breaking her laugh up in a choked croak.

Her wings are clipped, sure, a bit waterlogged, but Kai'sa can still stretch them, as she begins to swim laps. There used to be a community pool in the Market District in Twelve, but when the fire bombs started to fall from the sky, Kai'sa watches one of her happy places that is not Valentina's dance studio become engulfed in flames, a tide of burning charcoal than that of liquid blue and chlorine. The towel that is wrapped around her waist for the festivities that day is thrown into a closet, the light of day kept away from the colorful bands that stretch along the cloth. Kai'sa is sure that towel is still back in her father's house.

Is he watching? Does he care that she's been sent to her death in the Hunger Games?

Porscha lays herself out on one of the rock walls stretching around the outer pool, that grin still on her face. This may be the longest time Kai'sa has ever seen her smile, which is certainly sweet. For a second, as Kai'sa dives back under the water, making bubbles under the surface as she giggles and spins, it is as if she is not in the Hunger Games, fighting for her life. All of this fright and pain and fear of seeing someone with a loaded bow aimed at her face if she is to round a bend… that feeling is lost to the thaw of the waves and the wind, to the coolness of fresh water droplets sliding down her back. Some beads of sweat drip down her eyebrows when Kai'sa leaps out of the water.

Porscha swims over to her, though Kai'sa can only hear her own heartbeat and not her ally swimming due to the crashing waterfall. She raises an eyebrow as Porscha simply swims past her, over to the naturalistic ovation crashing down above their heads. They cannot be the only tributes to have found this section of the arena… and why it'd be in the decayed and dying forest of all places, Kai'sa isn't sure. Nothing here is in a state of decay, but full bloom, as Kai'sa picks up a water lily in her hands, sending it elsewhere into the pool with a gentle push.

She used to think she'd die surrounded by falling pillars of cinders and ash, as she rummages through burnt away eaves of a house she never lived in, looking at charred remains of a family she never would get to meet. Kai'sa is certain her world would burn away, as if she angered someone somewhere who'd make sure when she passes away, that the sun is setting, and her shadow is stretched out far across the sidewalk.

Porscha snaps a finger in front of her face, jarring Kai'sa out of the memory, the girl jolting backwards and splashing around like a flailing seal.

"What?" Kai'sa asks, alarmed. She did remove her weapons and her backpack up at the cliffside, and it is clear Porscha did too… are- are they under attack? Kai'sa turns around, but as the two girls are now behind the waterfall, all she sees is the falling water from above. Could- are they in danger?

Porscha tugs Kai'sa closer to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. "Kai'sa, we're okay. Besides, over the waterfall, who could hear us?" she soothes her, running a hand down the girl's scalp. "I asked you if you wanted to stay here for a while. Just, forget the games and everything," Kai'sa nods her head, hands reaching out to grab Porscha's.

She is wonderful… and she truly means for the best.

"We could…" Kai'sa says, swallowing heavily, licking her lips, which are starting to crack. "I'd like that."

She could stay with Porscha Watanabe forever, twirling and dancing underneath a waterfall. It'll be her new happy place, when the dancing mirrors are put away, as Valentina nurses a broken ankle that'll forever end her career…

Kai'sa, against her better judgement, though she knows there has never been any good judgmental decisions made on her part in her life, kisses Porscha on the cheek.

"I'd like that," she smiles, feeling tears come to her eyes. "I'd love to."

Catalus Drachma: District 1 Male P.O.V (18)

Whoever they must've pleased is still proud of them, as Diana hops up excitedly on her turned over log, nursing the wound in arm from Fenrir's slash across her upper body. Catalus turns his head up to the sky when a box lands down in front of their campsite, the sun starting to set behind them. It is a box… that is enough to make Catalus's eyes bulge out of his head. Everything beforehand has been a single item attached to the parachute; man, what did they do? Magnus races to the box first, colliding into Diana, which has her swearing obscenities into the dirt after falling over, but that only makes the boy from Two laugh harder.

Catalus holds onto his gift from the Gods, clutching it close to his chest. He has yet to really look at it, for the gift had been wrapped up, sitting on the seat of the Humvee after the adrenaline in his body flushes down the drain. It looked to be a claw of some sort, with a button sitting in the middle of the handle, like a trigger, but Catalus has only had a few minutes to look at it since the group tries escaping the caverns, checking around them every few steps in case more devils with glowing eyes decided to stop by and give them a visit. While there is a tremble in Magnus's voice that Catalus notices hadn't been there just a few days beforehand, he is still espousing something about bravado in how they were noticed.

"Or it means we're boring to the Capitol audience?" Catalus mutters his other thought in the secrecy of his own head, even if he shouldn't be afraid to speak it aloud. They have zero weapons, since Magnus is out of arrows, the bow broke when he flung it at Fenrir's body, Diana's spear is snapped in two and the other knives are back at the campsite, and Catalus's sword is a dissolved puddle of black blood and titanium in the cavern. They're screwed, truthfully, if they came across anyone.

Catalus believes he is done for when he hears the howl ripple throughout the cavern, though Magnus swears it is just his stomach, but the risk settles in and rears its ugly head in through a hole, a hole filled by fur and a snarling maw full of spittle and dripping with blood. The wolf chases after Diana and Magnus, as it has its eyes on them instead of Catalus, he falling into a hole out of shock when Fenrir busts itself out of the hole, creating a much larger hole than what had been there initially.

He is running around in the dark, trying to get through his section of the cave, all the while hearing Magnus and Diana, close by, but unreachable, screaming. The worse thoughts he's ever had flood through his brain at the very notion of what is happening to them, at what they must be enduring, and it sickens him to his knees. When he collapses, about to drop his sword, for the scream that Diana echoes is just a pitch too high to be anything but that of infinite pain, his head hits something metallic, making him grunt.

It had to have been left behind by a Peacekeeper task force, for Catalus cannot see a reason as to why there is some sort of modern technology stashed away in a cave in an arena that models the 12th century, but it doesn't matter anymore of why it is there. It simply matters that it's his… someone would laugh at him having a golf cart when he plays with Harmony on the weekends back in One, but it is his ability in driving that saves his allies' lives, whether they are ever going to admit it or not.

Magnus is still laughing, the sun pouring down onto his back, as he latches the chest open. Diana is still sitting in a heap on the ground, brushing dust off of her bandages. "What was it you said?" he asks, looking back at Catalus. The boy from One piques an eyebrow. "That we would be screwed in the arena without weapons?" Magnus kicks over the crate, and it is as if a leprechaun and Christmas had decided to get together and shower them with gifts. "We're back in the game!"

"HOLY SHIT!" Diana curses at the top of her lungs, to the same effect of Catalus's mouth dropping open at the open variety of weapons plummeting out of the box. Golden spears with a white trim at the top, the tip of the piercing weapon alit with a trail of golden dust down the spiral. Magnus picks one up, twirling it around him like a baton as he flings it at Diana. She hits the deck, elbows digging into the dirt as the weapon soars over her head. "Really, Magnus?" she asks, exasperated, when she lifts her head up in a glare.

"Sorry!" he yells back sheepishly, while Catalus, keeping eye-contact with Magnus, approaches the rest of the weapons in the box. A golden sword is sitting in the middle of the pile, the hilt a luminous silver, a gemstone that he believes to be a ruby sitting in the center. Catalus picks up the sword, giving it a few swings. He had never held a weapon in his life before the training center, and while a few attempts at martial arts leaves him mostly unsuccessful in getting someone to the mat, it is experience that is invaluable to him.

The weapon feels amazing, Catalus breaking a fast smile, but that is nothing compared to the hooting and hollering that his coattails as Magnus fishes through the pile of sheathed knives and bandoliers to pick up a bow. It is a deep and royal purple, with finned protrusions at the ends of the bow, the string thrumming like a harp as Magnus runs his finger up and down the weapon. It is marvelous, it is beautiful… and there is a quiver full of golden arrows sitting at the bottom of the box that the boy from Two slings over his shoulder. He loads up an arrow, taking aim at a tree sitting just a few feet away from Diana. The shot is not anywhere near her now, but Magnus fires regardless, and she still jumps.

"Seriously?" she complains, getting to her feet.

"I am just doing it for laughs, now," Magnus grins, but this time it is full of teeth and shows his overbite.

Catalus retrieves the sheath sitting on the ground for his sword, swinging it over his back, as he matches Magnus step-for-step. "Man… who the hell did we impress that could afford all this?" he asks, looking down at the weapons. Adriane tells him, though he chooses to listen to his escort's words as loosely as he can whenever he can, that people from the districts can also send any tribute items if they want, but it has been five days and Catalus has yet to see his family send him anything. It is not as if he expects… well, that is a lie. He knows he is lying to himself but confronting the truth that his family would not want to help him is something he has never had to deal with before.

"Someone who must love seeing us kill wolves," Magnus opines, as he tugs back on the bowstring, marking another shot. Diana is sitting on an upturned rock, digging through her pack for some more gauze, Catalus glancing back at her.

He has yet to have an opportunity to tell either one of them of what happened in the cave, with that… he is not sure what word to use, the god, that comes before him in a pillar of shining light and disappearing in a plume of sea salt that Catalus still tastes on his tongue like a bitter afterthought. He taps Magnus on the shoulder, motioning his head to a tree just a few feet away, as Diana is up and about dancing around with the spear as if it is going to dance back with her.

Magnus raises an eyebrow in confusion but doesn't say anything as he leaves the overturned crate behind them. He picks up the other spear, as there had been two of them in the packaging, holding onto it. Catalus scratches the middle of his back against the pine tree, glancing around, Diana still focused on fornicating with her weapon gloriously.

"What's the matter?" the boy from Two asks, crossing his arms together.

Catalus leans his head down, sucking air into his cheeks. Betrayal… as he will never be able to get the word out of his head, no matter how hard he tries replacing it with another memory. Harmony getting slugged by a man they cheat out of a few pennies and nickels and rations in one of the gambling dens, her shattered cry of pain as her cheek hits the poker table… that is not enough, even though in the moment Catalus's blood turns to ice, and all he can see is red drowning out the man's nylon jacket that he breaks one of the ties across the man's neck.

Betrayal… is he betraying the arena's secret by… he has already made the jump, and he has cast his prayer out to where he chooses to land.

"This is going to sound crazy…" Catalus licks his lips, which only rises Magnus's raised eyebrow and furrowed brow. "But yesterday, when we first entered that cave system, I… as the two of you raced off, I…" he hesitates.

"You… what, Catalus?" Magnus prompts on, clenching the base end of the spear a bit more tightly, as Catalus hears the leather of Magnus's shirt clench and crackle.

"Something in the arena spoke to me," the boy from One spits out, a little bit hurried, rushed, panic in his voice. He glances back around the tree to see Diana, but she is still focused in her spear work. "Sitting on a throne of stalagmites or something, and the thing was shimmering and… no, I am not fucking with you," Catalus sighs, for Magnus's perplexed expression is replaced by one of amusement. "It told me that I was going to be betrayed," he whispers.

Magnus's facial expression turns to that of alarm, though Catalus is not sure how much of it is the heat bearing down on his back, or that everything looks to be made of deceit and shadow ever since Adriane Lantham makes it her personal mission to turn his stay in the Capitol into a one-way ticket to hell. "Did this thing say by who?"

"No," Catalus shakes his head in dissent. "But… it did mention to look out for a cave entrance with a large drum at the center of the mouth," he says. The picture sits in his head, a bit worse for wear, for all of the cave entrances the trio of them have seen have been nothing short of a small gap that is only by about seven or eight feet tall, and this sounds to him as if he would find the entrance to a building. The word drum makes him picture Harmony pointing at one sitting in the window of a music shop in District 1's bureaucratic district, but his brother, Khristos reminds them that family money should be spent only on things for the family. His voice is highly pointed in that regard.

Magnus pinches his brow. "Catalus, lemme just say-"

"You don't have to say anything," Catalus pats his ally on the back, smiling. He does not agree to an alliance with he and Diana Kratovska just out of the sight of strength, or the thought that he does not believe he is allowed to run with the big dogs, though that is for sure part of it. The man's jacket, the man who runs out in the rain, as Catalus drops the golf club to the ground still sits there, probably, in the rain, under that dilapidated warehouse. No one should be picking him for the Red Team, but someone has. "I trust you enough that when it comes down to it, we fight like men," he says. He chooses to leave out the part that means he knows where Magnus Winterthorn would outright flatten him in a fight, an arrow sticking out of his liver, and the bow shoved down his throat.

The gift from the arena that is hooked to his right side pocket slaps him in the leg, Catalus looking down at it. He has yet to even see what the weapon does, so exhausted by dragging Diana and Magnus out of the cave system alive with of all of their old weapons corroded and wasted in a heap of scrap metal behind them. Who does he trust with that?

"Then that means you think…" Magnus's voice is quiet, perhaps the quietest Catalus has ever heard him speak from the vivacious laughter from when the sponsor gift drops out of the sky.

"That Diana is who we should be watching out for?" he cuts the soldier off in mid-sentence. "Yes… yes, I do." Catalus nods his head. He can forgive her for killing Cecelia back at the cornucopia in the beginning of the Games, that does not sit with him any longer than it should anymore, even as he pictures wisps of her dark hair floating between his hands like flotsam from a wreckage out in the middle of the ocean. He will not forgive her enough, however, to where he trusts her with his life down to the final three, or two… or wherever it is that he now has to point his sword towards her throat.

"I suggest we don't tell her about what you heard."

"I figured that, Maggie," Catalus smiles.

Magnus's eyes flash a solid steel, before he pats him on the shoulder. The soldier turns away, walking back over to Diana, Magnus having one hand dig into the quiver for an arrow, though he assumes it'll be just for another practice shot at Diana's expense of sanity and rationality. Catalus runs a hand through his hair, breathing shakily.

Well, one thing down. Just the Hunger Games to contend with, right?

Portia Beninblade: District 2 Female P.O.V (18)

Portia is angry. Well, angry is not the right word. There most likely is not a word in the English dictionary that'll be broad enough to describe the exact type of rage coursing through her fingertips. It starts the moment Camilla and Nokomis step forward, stuck in the cornucopia, with their wide eyes and outstretched hands, pleading mercy. Mercy… it is an absurd thought that only continues to add fuel to the fire. Except it is most likely not a fire, but an inferno that threatens to spill out of her ears if she is not careful. A waste, an absolute waste, as she watches the shirts of District 8 vanish into the trees from her high vantage point sitting atop the golden horn. There is hardly a word that passes between her and her allies – a word she is starting to use less and less, it sounding hyperbolic and completely fake at this point, if she can be reasonable – as they head back down from the hill.

The entire trip is for nothing, a complete and entire waste, but there is a level of disconnect here. From the minimalistic chattering going on between Camilla Rodriguez and Nokomis Yanaba that Portia discovers, as she glances back, the two girls just a bit behind her, but that might be due to her quickened pace.

The knife that she has pressed to Poem's throat, at the juncture where she can feel the heartbeat thrum into her wrist so she is reminded that is very much alive and failing at this new position of leader is stuck to her side, in its sheath, hooked just at the belt where it might fall to the ground at any minute. Her sword is still strapped to her back, but for their efforts – the two dingdongs talking behind her as they try making their way back to camp through the fishing village rather than rushing into the decaying forest head on – she has made the other two girls carry all the medical supplies.

Diana is not even there at the cornucopia like Portia hopes for, but truthfully she is no longer sure what she wants, but it is not as if she is ever going to admit that out loud for anyone to hear. The girl isn't there, someone who needs to be taught the definition of respect, she gets bandages and a tourniquet for her day's wasted effort of making the trip, and there are no faces that'll be shining in the sky as there has yet to be a fired cannon all day, and the sun is setting dangerously low for her liking.

Make an impression, she is told. Her impression is overshadowed by Magnus fucking Winterthorn and his 12, and anything else she does in the Capitol is all for naught, as she has to try and best the gilded soldier with medal of valor for supporting the wrong side in the war. The idiot who the Capitol should not be celebrating, and she's passed up like a pork roast with an apple shoved in her mouth.

Portia wraps her hand round the base of a tree, stilling in her movement as Camilla guffaws at a half-hearted joke Nokomis passes off as entertainment. The girl from Two swivels on her outer-district allies.

"You guys want to laugh just a little bit louder so we're all killed?" Portia snaps, clenching her hands and unclenching them again, fingernails digging into her palm, leaving behind red residues. "Better yet, let's just let the Gamemakers blow us all up cause clearly we're not taking this seriously enough…" she glowers at the two of them.

Camilla holds a hand up and out, trying to stifle her laughter, as Portia's glare only deepens, her mouth twisting into a sneer. "If anyone in this arena is going to hear us coming, it'll be from you and the Herculean stomping from your shoes," Camilla points down at Portia's feet. "Or they hear the tea-kettle sounds spilling from the steam just steady streaming out of your ears…"

Nokomis giggles, covering her mouth with a hand, as she tries not making eye-contact with Portia. "Eat chalk, Yanaba," the girl spits back at her, thrusting a finger in both girls' directions. "I'd really appreciate, next time, when we have other tributes bending to our will, that you don't second-guess my decisions. It makes me look weak."

"The only thing making you look weak is yourself, Portia," Nokomis says, sticking her hands in her pockets. Portia almost has half the mind to reach out and just snap the girl's neck then and there. Who'd miss her? Her father is dead, and from all the time Nokomis spends talking about her dead father and despondent mother… who'd miss her if she just ended it all? It is not like Camilla Rodriguez has enough fortitude to do anything about it. "Besides, you heard what they said. They-"

"I know both of you know that the entire thing Poem and Niklaus told was a lie," Portia waves off the statement with a hand, scoffing. She saw the lie written on Niklaus's face as Poem begins speaking the falsehood, for his eyebrows rise, and there is a panic reflecting back at her under the poorly lit horn. His face speaks to that of improvisation, that he has no idea where this party train is heading, but she plays along. There is still that chance, that very slim .001% that her mother talks about one day while cutting up apples for some sort of breakfast pastry, that a wrinkle exists in any situation, no matter the situation. They could be entirely false, telling a complete lie, but something nags at her deep down that-

"Wait a minute," Camilla interrupts her, Portia swallowing her words, lifting her head up. "You knew they were lying and still let them leave? What the hell are you mad at us for, then?"

"Just to see how you would handle it," Portia smirks. A lie, as far as she is aware. Improvisation, but there is no one else to reflect that back off of her with.

"And?" Nokomis piques an eyebrow, though her gaze is not on Portia, but something behind her.

"You failed." Portia is incapable of hiding the smugness in her voice. Although Nokomis receives the first kill in this entire ordeal, which is quite insane as she simply just needs to be looked at to see her weakness, there is zero bloodthirstiness in her, zero pulsating of the veins.

"Now wait just a minute!" Camilla raises her voice, lifting up a finger, but she never gets to finish the sentence.

Nokomis pushes Portia to the ground, eyes widened, mouth open in a harsh gasp. "Hit the deck, Portia!" she yelps, before grabbing Camilla by the arm, hoisting her down as well. All three girls plummet to the ground, Portia about to open her mouth and protest, for no one ever gets to push her, when the sound of something soaring over their heads stops its track in the tree that Portia stops to rest on.

Her gaze bears itself directly into the golden arrow protruding straight out of the trunk, Camilla at a loss for words, while Nokomis is straight up swearing words that Portia has never heard. Portia looks at the arrow for another second, frowning. That… Kileigh Katsaras is dead, and everyone at the cornucopia saw how she held onto a bow… and-

"It's Diana!" Portia screams, rushing to her feet, drawing out her sword. With Diana comes to the other two twins… Catalus and Magnus will be around. She has no idea who'd she want… does she slice down the Queen of the Arena, or her hell spawn district partner with an ego that knows no bounds? "Get up!" she hisses at the two of them.

This is real. This is realer than going after two District 8 weaklings because she can. This is someone going after her, after them because they can.

Camilla is up on her feet, holding onto her blade as tightly as she can, Portia hearing the cracking of her knuckles. Nokomis is slow to the draw, Portia watching right up close as an arrow goes straight into the girl's right hand. None of them speak, as the girl from Ten downs herself to her knees, eyes wide and stuck at the fact that an arrow is sticking in her hand, slightly protruding out the other hand, blood starting to spill out, though it isn't gushing, more so steady. Portia swallows heavily, while Nokomis bursts into an uncontrollable bough of laughter.

"There… there's an arrow in my hands and…" she can hardly control the nervous giggle that comes tumbling out.

Portia grits her teeth together, whipping around the tree with a snarl. Her blade connects with that of Catalus Drachma's, the boy from One sliding around the other side of the tree. He croaks in surprise, barely having enough time to step back as Portia makes a lunge, swinging at him again. Her strike gets dirt, while Camilla steps out from behind her cover, ducking as a golden spear sails over her head into the same tree that Nokomis is barricading herself behind. Diana's voice can be heard, as the girl from Four is swearing obscenely, but Portia cannot see her. She ducks under another one of Catalus's swings, Nokomis rolling out of the way from another fired arrow.

She can make out Magnus out of the corner of her, he loading his bow, the weapon impressively beautiful in his hand. Damn… it is gorgeous… it'll look so much better in her hand, she's sure. Portia kicks Catalus in the chest, knocking him flat to the ground, as the girl from Two makes a beeline for her district partner. She shouts her arrival, though she knows more than likely it is the dumbest decision she can make. All of Panem is going to watch him die, and she cannot wait…

Diana has reached Camilla, snatching her spear out of the tree, while the girl from Nine sweeps her off of her feet. Magnus fumbles his next shot as Portia smacks into him, both of them falling onto the ground. She raises her sword to strike him in the face as he knees her as hard as he can in the stomach. Portia growls in pain, but she keeps her balance, swinging down. It misses him slightly, the blade digging into his shoulder, and not his neck like she hopes. Magnus's quiver is pinned beneath him, bow just slightly out of reach, but there is amble room for him as he grabs the arrow he had been prepped to fire. He jabs it into Portia's right shoulder, the pain much more noticeable this time as copper starts leaking down her shirt and onto his.

"I'm going to kill you!" she snarls at him. This is what will get her back in the Capitol's good graces, she is sure of it. She will jump off of the highest cliff in the world if someone gets to Magnus Winterthorn before her.

"Not if I get you first!" Magnus chokes back, as he goes to stab at her again, wrenching the arrow out of her shoulder.

Nokomis is on her feet, as Portia rolls away from the jab, the girl from Nine ducking underneath Catalus, her own sword discarded in the grass. She punches Catalus in the chest with the back of her hand, the one with the arrow, making her screech in pain, though it only seems to mystify the boy from One. Her next punch is straight for his nose, there being an audible crack, as a bursting sheen of scarlet covers her hands, and Catalus howls. He stumbles back, rolling over, for Nokomis has her sword again, and she's slashing it in his direction.

Portia glances over at Camilla to see her dive under Diana's next thrust with the golden spear, knife in hand, that she buries into the girl's calf. No! No! No! NO! It is all wrong, Diana Kratovska is hers! She's claimed stake in the girl's life!

"Fuck!" Diana shouts out at the top of her lungs, looking at the blade, pulling it out herself, a tide of scarlet splashing out over Camilla's hands. The two girls look at one another in shock, more on Camilla's part than anything else, before she has to duck in time for another one of Diana's attacks. She is whacked in the back of the head with the spear, hard enough to send Camilla down into the grass, dazed. Diana stands above her, holding onto the spear, though her stance is swaying. "I'm going to hurt you now…" she hisses.

Portia rushes over towards the girl from Four, but before she can make it another step, someone trips her, she falling to the ground hard on her elbows. She is trying to feel past the cut into her shoulder as she witnesses Catalus grab Nokomis's hand, the one with the arrow now visibly removed, as he digs his hand into her wound. She screams in pain, but Portia is unable to go anywhere as Magnus's voice can be heard in her ear, he tugging on her legs.

She twists around onto her back, as he tries tugging her over in his direction, a bloodied arrow clenched in his hand, while his wound spills out blood. Portia kicks at his hand as hard as she can, though there are no sounds of it breaking, to her dismay. She swings her sword at him as hard as she can, angling it downwards, the strike connecting with his chest. A garbled sound of distorted pain spills out of his throat, as she removes the sword from his skin. Blood pours out of his chest, Magnus downing himself to one knee. None of the wounds have seemed fatal yet, but Portia does not have the time to check.

She rushes at Diana, but it seems like she and Nokomis have the same idea, for the two girls both collide into the girl from Four at nearly the same time, knocking their heads together. Camilla groans, clutching the back of her head, while Portia winces, pressing a hand against her forehead. Diana is muttering something unintelligible under her breath, but all Portia can hear is another one of Magnus's fired arrows sail over her head.

Camilla is tugging at her to get up, then trying to hoist Nokomis to her feet. The three girls are bleeding from numerous cuts, as Diana is crawling back towards her spear. Magnus is back on his own two feet, though from their angle, Portia is unsure how much blood is spilling out of the chest wound, for his shoulder injury is doing enough as it is.

The three of them, her 'Girl Power' team, sway in a woozy daze back and forth, as Diana grits her teeth together, trying to keep her pressure off of her injured leg. "Kill them all…" she snarls, while Catalus is searching for his sword in the grass somewhere.

"That's our sign to leave…" Portia rasps harshly, her throat vibrating, the spot directly underneath her jaw on fire. Magnus snarls back, likewise, letting another arrow fly, but it misses Camilla's left ear by a hairbreadth of an inch.

The three girls flee away from the fishing village as fast as their legs can carry them, the soil stained in their own scarlet messes. The audience is watching, and all that Portia wants for them is to remember… they all remember this moment where she managed to single-handedly win their approval back.

The next time she sees Poem Cavalli and her lie-espousing drug addict from District 8? She'll give them bloodied smiles from ear to ear.

Niklaus Peverell: District 8 Male P.O.V (18)

The movement is aimless. There is no direction to where his feet are going, and Niklaus Peverell has no idea what thoughts are any more. They are just formless jumbles in his head scattering off lime the four winds to the points in his skull that will no longer take any heed to where they land. His heart is still pounding in his chest, even though it has been nearly two and a half hours, if the arena clock is correct and on time, since the running starts down the cornucopia hill, and he's guiding Poem by the hand, gripping her hard enough that there are fingerprints left jutting out on the lump of bone and flesh. She has to tell him to stop moving, she has to be the one who shouts his name a little more forcefully than he is used to. No one… not even Rudy says his name in the frightened tone that Poem shouts it out with.

Niklaus pauses, collapsing to his knees, overcome with exhaustion. The setting sun casts a gorgeous glow of sunburst orange and gold down his arms, pooling in his hair, as Poem comes to a stop next to him. She runs a hand through his hair, kissing the top of his forehead, though he cannot hear the words she is saying. She has remained remarkably calm, he will note, despite the fact that she had just spent a few minutes of her life with a knife thrust up against her neck. Her carotid artery is a centimeter away from being slashed open, and she's the one holding his hands tightly as a sob wrenches itself out of his throat.

What is he doing? What is he even doing here, in this stupid nightmarish, hellish landscape? Who allowed him to continue on living when the first needle lands in his skin, a white slush avalanching down into his veins? Someone should've let him sit the rest of the rebellion out, let his father build the roof himself without ever needing the help from his despondent eighteen year-old son who does not know his south from his west and his east from his north. He… Niklaus needs to crawl on all fours over to a boy he has loathed, a man really, since he is eleven, as Rudy Patterkinn looks down at him with a smug smile, cigarette in hand, offering a taste of the Gods ichor, a bloody droplet of sunshine landing on Niklaus's open jaw.

He has the stupid token, he has his token piece that his mother gave him, a reminder of a home Niklaus simply wishes would burn down to the ground, for that is all he wants to see in District 8. If the smokestacks crumble, perhaps he can rebuild his shattered heart with the cinders and ash left behind billowing up into the sky in its wake. If doesn't mean anything to him, holding this talisman clenched beneath a spool of string and his pant leg, if the girl who has no need to even join him is lost in the wreckage.

"Niklaus, we need to keep moving…" Poem's voice is clearer, stronger, as she holds onto his hand. "I know that Camilla and Nokomis and Portia… they all know we were lying, and they let us go, but they might-"

He lifts his head up, looking at Poem with disdain furrowed between his brow. "How… how are you not freaking out right now? You just… we just… I just almost…" he is unable to finish the thought, sinking his head into the dirt. He can feel a worm crawling along his scalp, a parasite that has always been there ever since he places a painkiller under his tongue and lies out in the mayor's backyard naked with a pool umbrella over his constellation ridden map. Someone is able to draw the underground sewer system on his back with an ink quill pen from the number of injection spots and knife marks and other sorts of indentions that Rudy makes when there is an ochre glow settling along their rented hotel room. He has "Daddy's money," as that is the moniker Rudy claims while they glide back and forth on the bedsheets. It isn't love, but Niklaus is lying if he says he doesn't love just a bit of it.

Where there isn't any talk of the money he owes or what he is going to do with the next shipment of cocaine that clearly will be wasted in two days. Where there are a few moments when Niklaus's bruised lips are kissed and the hand that is curled in his hair has not yet morphed into the ugly fist that will for sure rear his head back to expose his neck. It is love, in a way, an attention that Niklaus does not get from the orange pills and white slush.

He slings his backpack over and onto the ground, unzipping it. Poem is at his side again, though she has gone silent. He can feel her eyes scanning over him, looking for the off-switch perhaps, but he's been searching for the off-switch for the last eighteen years and he still cannot find it. Niklaus overturns the backpack, medical supplies, and his single golden knife that he retrieves at the cornucopia, fending off Magnus Winterthorn, among other things spilling out onto the ground.

Where… where… where is it?

"No…" Niklaus rasps in his throat, as if he had just swallowed a jar of bees and they stung his throat up to death. "No, no… nononononononono…" he digs his hands in his hair, tugging at his scalp. The motions that are not love, the motions that leave him scattered and broken. The ones where his father digs his fingernail into his chest just a bit sharper than before, or where the screams from the bodies are still echoing in his ears even as Niklaus watches that last smokestack crumble, and the broken glass reverbs along his throat.

"Niklaus, what are you looking for?" Poem's voice is that of alarm to the highest degree, panic hollowly ringing along the lining of her esophagus and around her jaw. "Niklaus, we cannot-"

"It's not here!" Niklaus screams, curling in on himself. He is sure, he swears there had been a shipment of the 'good stuff' in a sponsor gift last night as Damien is wishing him well and that all things considered, the odds are starting to turn in their favor. It is sugar for the candied apple that is indeed sent their way, but it is from Poem's mother, Anya Cavalli, who only writes "I love you, Poetic Device," on the card, which has his district partner laughing, and taking a gigantic bite out of the candied apple that she forgets to share.

But he swears… he swears it is there and it is just hiding from him!

"Niklaus!" Poem shouts again, dragging at his arms, trying to wrestle himself to the ground. "It isn't there! Whatever you are looking for isn't there!" she yells.

He throws her off of him, harshly, she landing on the ground with a crash and a crack that is not good for her tailbone. Poem gasps, but she sits there in the dirt, surrounded by their supplies and all of their gear that is not replacing the love that Niklaus needs out of a hypodermic needle and some plastic baggies. Niklaus shoves his knife aside, unsheathing it and staking it directly on the ground. It is here. He will find it. There is a gold mine of it underneath his feet, the land pulsating to his movement, and he will tap out Morse code to retrieve what he needs. It'll open up for him like a present on Christmas morning, except the last gift Rudy gives him on Christmas morning is a restraining order that is broken six times since then so they could sleep together some more and Niklaus has five more highs on his bathroom floor. The sixth one, the time where Rudy barges into the hostel room on Reaping Day… last high since then, and the sex is over in forty-nine seconds.

Niklaus is holding his breath, and he's counting it in his head to see how long Rudy commentates until his skin turns blue. However, it is Poem's voice in his head. She is no longer yelling at him, instead with her curls and her sweet scents pressed into his shoulder. Niklaus is acutely aware that he is screaming into the bundled up sleeping bag. He is screaming so hard that his voice breaks, yet he continues. He continues screaming until he feels a pounding in the back of his skull.

Perhaps the entire arena can hear him; let them. Let them hear and let them face an addict without his tic.

"I am right here, Niklaus…" Poem whispers, she kissing his right arm, fingers linking around the injection spots, soothing them over in a rubbing motion that Rudy never touches him with. His mother never even gives him the sweet caress on his face. "I am not going anywhere. I am right here."

She never says goodbye.

"I almost lost you," Niklaus rasps, lifting his head up, brushing his arms against Poem's. He looks at her, she sitting back on her heels, lips parted. He could kiss her, but all he can see is Portia's knife pressed into her jugular. He could kiss her, but all he'd taste is streams of blood cascading down her face and onto his. There is no pulse when he glances and presses a finger against her neck, humming where he has no hum under his own skin. "I almost lost you," he repeats, "And I don't know what I was going to do if I watched you drop dead there on the cornucopia floor."

Niklaus locks eyes with her, tears streaming cleanly down his face. Rudy always brushes away his tears, kisses him and makes sure the hickey on his neck shows up for the morning papers, for it is such a horrid gossip that the Head Peacekeeper of District 8's son is slumming it in bed with a man who is not even trying to hold two living parents in his life.

Poem lets the tears fall. She lets them fall, as she holds onto Niklaus as tight as she can. They're somewhere in the fishing village, in the center of the arena, but he knows that is not true. He is here with her, and this is where he will stay, for as long as he can. Their camp, back in the scorched earth section of the arena, where that fire giant roams, and who knows what other sorts of endangerments to their life hiding beneath rocks like scorpions or something he finds in his work shoes.

"I needed my pick-me-up," Niklaus says, with a pause, licking his lips. Poem presses her hands to the side of his face, tilting her head slightly, cooing. "Losing you and not having the one thing in this world that makes sense… you can't even imagine-" his voice cracks, Niklaus looking away from her.

His district partner, because if he thinks of her as Poem Cavalli right now, the one person in his life who is noticing him right now, he might fall apart and be unable to be stitched back together again, presses his face so he is keeping eye-contact with her.

"I get it, Niklaus." There is a slight sense of glow on her cheeks. "I ripped the needle out of your arm on the train." The pain is still there, dulled, but there, and the injection site is taking a lot longer than normal to heal, as Niklaus sets it down, since he's stuck himself so many damn times all over his point at this point like his body is some cartographer's map, that the spot would work over into a scab in three days. Makeup helps, but…

It has been eight days, and Niklaus can feel wind blowing against his bloodstream.

"I'm sorry…" Niklaus shakes his head. "I shouldn't have asked you to go with me. I shouldn't have asked you to step it up in the arena, where it looks like you were five seconds away from dying and I didn't even have the balls to try and save you and-"

"Niklaus," Poem says again, without the forcefulness of before, but with all the intensity in the world, as she presses her palms into his cheeks, keeping his face steady and directly on her. "Let me be your pick-me-up, for as long as I am able to."

He is not given a moment to respond, as she kisses him.

He swears the kiss goes on forever and ever, to the point where the golden bands across the sky of the dwindling sunset transform into the dark bands of night.

How does one get addicted to a person?

Poem Cavalli is singing the sweet siren song of a needle, as her lips connect to his, and he kisses her back.

For as long as he's able to, he will allow her to keep this position.

Diana Kratovska: District 4 Female P.O.V (17)

She is unsure of when along the one someone told her it is okay to lie to herself. Diana Kratovska has been trying out that strategy for the last six months, on seeing where lying to herself is going to get her, as if somehow the world will have its own epiphany and launch her into space, so she go touch Saturn's rings and be kissed by the Roman gods who clearly reside on the crystal residues that are not actually solid. Yes, Diana pays attention in science class, but is mainly so the droll douchebag drooling over her sitting in the second row by the window is not given an extra ounce of attention she does not feel comfortable in giving away.

Diana hisses to herself, fingers clenching down on the wooden chair she is sitting in as Catalus tightly wraps a piece of gauze around the stab wound in her leg. Stupid, stupid District 9 Camilla Rodriguez for getting an upper hand on her. She should've never let her guard down, but Diana sees Portia advancing on her from afar, as Magnus tries holding back his own district partner unsuccessfully, and the curtain has been dropped. Since Catalus is doing all of bumbfuck nothing, it falls on her shoulders to once again be the leader. Being the leader has landed a knife in her leg, and somehow her rich prick allies, cause yes, Catalus Drachma is a rich prick no matter how much civility he espouses out of his mouth. Diana sees through it, and she'd shatter the silver plate over his head and gag him with the spoon if it is in her best interest. He volunteers for this shit, knowing it is about killing others, and he will try to prove that he has the moral high ground. It sickens her.

It sickens her, however, with the lying that she has told herself. Up until this point, as Diana is registering the pain connecting to her brainstem from the wound in her leg that a girl who she thought is not a threat, regardless of her training score, the Games are an easily playable game. Yes, it is dangerous territory with a game that she predicts how, at the start of the arena, none of the tributes are going to run forward. Her theory is proven correct, and Diana rejoices. She can fire at whomever she wants, since nothing is stopping her from reaching the bow and arrow that Wyvern assures is her placed perfectly in front of her landing spot.

"Why is that going to happen?" Diana recalls herself asking, frowning. There must be a catch. There is always a catch. No one is ever this nice to her, especially for Diana as she will rightfully call herself 'that bitch' to a group of journalists with a straight face. How would someone be able to twist that lie in her ankle then, if she's telling the truth and admitting to it?

"Because the Gamemakers have hope in you to provide them a show," Wyvern grins at her, nodding his spectacled head in her direction. At least she is referring to his eyewear as spectacles now, but she is considering, still, sending her salad fork into his arm as payback one day when she escapes this hellhole.

There is nothing from stopping Magnus or Catalus from breaking their promises and rushing straight for her when the Games begin, as she lines up her arrow at Orion's leg and watches the copper spill out of him. It had been fun, it had been an exciting moment where the adrenaline is not lost on her as she snarls out with an unmatched ferocity at those who dare challenge her. Maybe Jasper will succumb to some sort of bacterial meningitis from the cheek wound he retrieves as she fires at him atop the cornucopia.

The only signs they've been met with, the only signs she's been met with, since then, as downing a twelve-year-old is not a feat she will tack onto her resume any time soon, is that they are not the marketable show that the Gamemakers want them to be. She knows it.

Yet Diana is lying to herself that they are.

"How do you even know how to properly bandage up wounds?" she asks. They decide to not light a fire for the night, as their wounds would be too debilitating if the girls decide to make their midnight return into a revenge fantasy, or if Vesuvia Vocanova pairs up with her – Diana's – district partner and his sun bleached skin for a midnight raid. They are holed out under the first house they find, in still the same condition as it is when Magnus points it out on the first afternoon.

She can barely make out Magnus, who is brooding in the back corner of the shack, his eyes lit up by moonlight and the faint flickering of a firefly across his face. But he is there, she can tell, for she can hear his breathing. His wound is not as bad as it first looked, as all Diana sees out of the corner of her eye is Portia swing her sword across his chest, and there's a streak of blood in the grass like a line has been marked in the sand. Catalus's nose is broken, and his breathing sounds wheezy, a characteristic that Diana is trying to keep from making her lose all sense of composure. Her leg wound, his nose, Magnus's slice across the chest, plus the wound he gets in the shoulder.

They beat an arena god, a wolf that nearly takes a bite out of her side because it can, only because Catalus saves the day on a cart he can drive for it is there. That wolf, Fenrir, as Diana is still holding onto the dog tag that is ripped free from the beast's neck in the scuffle, would've ended them all. She is still telling herself, ten hours away from the incident, that she has the strength to fend off the beast by herself and she'd win. If she were holding the bow.

Which she isn't.

She has to face facts. She's looking at them dead in the face. The arena is letting them know, Vice President Cain Passionia is letting them know, that they're running out their stay in this gilded Nordic fever dream. It scares the ever loving shit out of her. If this is the arena's message to her, where she knows that they are playing by the rules, then what is everyone else being told? The group that has not fought off tributes in the beginning, the group who does not have two kills to their name – a fact she has not yet forgotten, her gaze passing over the top of Catalus's bloodstained hair – or those who have fought an arena god and died… what is their note? Doughnuts and chocolate covered strawberries?

Catalus grits his teeth together, gorgeous pearly whites in the flickering darkness. It is nearing ten or so, as Diana looks at the arena clock, its blue translucent glow shining around. There are zero faces in the sky, to her dismay, which means all of these events today have been for nothing.

The boy from One tightens a knot around her leg, the pressure there, and she is sure the bandage is soaked to its breaking point in crimson tides. "What is my last name again, Diana?"

"Drachma," she says, frowning. She does not have the patience to be messed with. Truth be told, she simply does not have the patience to handle this existing plane that the world has kicked her into without giving her a way out. "There is a way out," a voice tells her. It sounds like Orion's and hers pushed together. "You die, princess, and you escape this torment forever." Aloud, however, in the moment, with her allies. "Drachma."

"I am supposed to be the apparent heir to the Drachma Conglomerate, Federation, Foundation… doesn't matter what name you pick." Catalus wipes his hand on a dirty towel, Diana able to make out the blood stains gripping his face and underneath his nose bridge, atop his lip. Charcoal black stains under the cover of darkness, for whomever their Capitol sponsor is has not sent them gifts beyond the weapons of the day. A step forward, step back, she supposes. Catalus, however, is still speaking, but she has checked out, even though it is her question posed in the first place. "My parents want me to be the face of a very important company in Panem, and part of that is training in everything you can think of."

"Like what?" Magnus pipes up, from his corner of the room. His magnificent bow, the bow that should be hers - she lets the damned soldier win since he lost the war, why is one scuffle such a big deal? – sits in his lap, he strumming the string like it belongs on some sort of lyre. He is taking the first watch tonight, for he volunteers. Diana would've picked him anyways but seeing his performance in their brawl in the dwindling sunsets, if all of his shots only earn Nokomis an arrow to the hand, perhaps she should take the first watch.

Catalus sets Diana's hand down gently onto her lap, retrieving another bandage out of his backpack, pressing it against her forehead. Camilla has a good left hook, which knocks her into a tree that scrapes just above the left eyebrow. "You name it. Martial arts, swimming, fishing, business skills, marketing, algebra…" A pause, a loaded one, as Diana swats away Catalus's hand. It is poised there for just a second too long. "Medicine."

"Sounds like you're a jack of all trades, then, Cattie," Magnus grins. Diana can tell he's grinning. They all have stupid nicknames for each other, and Diana wants it to be known that she's started it all by calling him Maggie in their first, and unfortunately now, not last life-threatening situation.

"Eh, I'd say I am less than mediocre at all of them," Catalus laughs. Diana jostles in her seat. He- is she going to die because of his horrible medical expertise? "Sorry," he adds, smiling sheepishly at her.

Diana reaches for her canteen, which is sitting on an overturned chair, her spear there as well, but the weapon is out of reach enough for it to scare her. She is hardly ever scared. She is not scared when Magnus motions to a spot behind the tree line that she cannot see, but he spots three bodies, and there is only one alliance in the Games meant for three people, so he lines up his shot.

"Oh, now I wish you had told me that sooner," Diana scoffs, rolling her eyes. "I would've asked my father to instill a life insurance policy on me before I got selected."

No one laughs with her. No one even cracks a smile, but Diana notes in her head that her own face does not shift either. It is not as if the Hunger Games could be decided as a moment of happiness and sunshine, but she knows now that there should be brief glimpses of brightness. A comedy she's never allowed herself to have.

Catalus goes over to Magnus, just to double check on his injuries, for Magnus swears that he has the medical marvel body of seven and a half men – "And you've eaten enough for eight full men," Diana snickers at breakfast that morning, in the cave system – the two men speaking in hushed voices.

Diana needs to have these moments of sunshine, for every other moment surrounding her is going to be accompanied by slaughter. None of them, not her, Magnus, or Catalus, pursue Portia and her band of outer district girls away into the forest. They leave on their own, which is supplicated by Magnus having arrows pointed at the back of their heads, but no one pursues them. Diana wants to, but the blood spilling out of her leg has her crash into the same tree that produces the headwound.

Catalus goes to leap forward with his golden sword, but there is hesitancy marked all over his entire face that she sees, and that she tastes. She tastes his fear in moving next, and Magnus is too injured to actually release the next shot he loads into the bow. Mercy, she offers her fleeing almost-killers mercy, when she's been asked to put on a fucking show.

There'll be no mercy when the cameras rise up on a new dawn. Her parents may not walk among the living anymore, but her father did not teach her mercy. A bow is not put into her hands so she can give some Capitol Peacekeeper with a smug grin hiding behind his visor mercy as he has the barrel of his gun pointed down at her lungs.

Diana does not care who the tribute is, or what district they're from, or even if she all of a sudden finds herself in passionate lip-lock with Portia Beninblade, cause like it or not, there is an advantageous allure to her anger that she is unable to see under the blinding lights of the Tribute Center on the night of the parade.

Any encounter she has with someone else will be met with their deaths, as her hands are soaked in red. Like the tide, she will drag them out into the ocean to be drowned.

Their last glimpse will be her face.

For Diana intends to win, and there is no lie she could tell herself that'd ever convince her not to.

Orion Maythorpe: District 4 Male P.O.V (18)

The night sky is cooling and chilling on his exposed arms, making the hair from elbow to wrist stand up on end like Orion's body has been transformed into grass out in the savannahs. He half expects an antelope or a deer of some kind to just leap out of his body and out into the arena, but that would be not the first time his mind has thought such an outlandish idea. The first outlandish one is currently hooked by his side, holding onto his left hand while Orion ventures into the arena darkness with his right hand outstretched, an axe that'll do his beck and calling.

Ramses is quieter than usual, ever since Orion announces that they're going to go out hunting in the middle of the night. He didn't have to come with him, but he does, because it is truthfully not as if he is going to leave him behind, even if it feels like the right thing. Orion tosses Ramses his sword, and that is that. He wants to switch up his weapons, for his hands are starting to get tired clenching around the rough and wide base of the sword, while the axe is lighter and looser in his grasp.

"That's not the only thing that is light and loose in your grasp," Ramses teases him, earlier, when the sun is still setting down. His lover grins, all the while nudging his shoulder, as the two men step out of their cabin, their sanctuary.

"Dirty!" Orion gasps, playfully, nudging Ramses back, before connecting their lips with a kiss. He likes it. It is a thought that makes his blood stir in his soul, and rush down deep to fill the pockets that are otherwise inaccessible.

Orion can say he wants to hunt for foxes and birds high up in trees that he cannot climb, but it is more than that. There are two tributes from District 3 who have eluded his wrath, a strange sentiment for him to share, but he can feel it building in his wrists, inflaming the tendons, and pulsating along his ribcage. He holds onto Ramses' hand tighter than before, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss along the knuckle ridge. They've come to a stop at the head of a hill. The hill.

"You okay, Orion?" Ramses asks, a faint blush settling on his cheeks when Orion presses his lips his against the wrist, squeezing his hand tight. "You're hardly this romantic with me."

"And what about your dirty joke of my hands being fast and loose, Ramses?" Orion quips back, raising an eyebrow. He looks back at the hill, making out faintly in the night the first anchor they had stabbed into the shale slide from yesterday when making the first climb initially. They have no idea what is on the top of the hill. He is certain there won't be Vesuvia and Jasper up there, but they are not the only tributes that he has an axe to grind with. "You sure you can do this?" he asks. There is zero judgment in his voice, as he looks at Ramses, but his lover turns his head away. The blush is there, still, but it is faint.

"Yes," Ramses says, but Orion does not believe him. The confidence is not there, the confidence that he feels and gets to see up close when he is introduced to him just after the tribute parade. He and Diana are still tugging at their uncomfortably tight clothing, and Orion wishes he didn't have his bare chest broadcasted to the entire country – ironic now, given he and Ramses have played hide the cannoli twice since landing in the arena – and Diana is wanting to curse everyone out, when Ramses steps up to them with his district partner in tow. Kai'sa is quiet, and merely gives them a wave, but Ramses shakes his hand. Diana wanders off, still cursing about how tight her fishtail braid is choking off circulation to the brain, but Orion lets the handshake linger.

The thrumming of their heartbeats is alive, to which Kai'sa is snickering at the top of her lungs. "You gonna kiss now?" she chuckles, and the two boys split apart. Orion is pleased to meet him, but a shiver slides down his spine from the way Ramses' gaze lingers, going down over sculpted abs and sliding up his torso. Orion may have or may not replicated the same gesture back in Ramses' dormitory in the training center the night before launch, their lips attached to tender places, fingers curved in softer spots of palpable ecstasy, and Orion is drinking in every sound Ramses makes.

His parents must be losing their minds, all to which Orion wishes he could find the closest camera and smile. It must be the most unnerving thing for his family to endure… having zero control of their son once he is out of their grasp. He would much rather be ensnared in Ramses's arms.

"I can do it," Ramses says, again, nodding his head. An affirmative squeeze of his hand in Orion's, as he steps forward, unhooking the rope at his belt loop. He sheathes the sword in the scabbard by his side, threading the rope through to the top, holding onto the pinion. "Besides." He turns around, looking at Orion in the bleakness. "I would've stayed behind at the cabin if I thought I couldn't."

"That's my man," Orion whispers, shoving Ramses up the sheer rockface gently, irresistibly scanning over every dimple and crater of his skin. All his, and Diana tries taking it from him. All his, and Kai'sa, as Ramses claims it to be, tries taking it from him. Jasper and Vesuvia try taking it from him… Orion is going to take their loved ones away from them if they ever think of laying a single hand on Ramses's head ever again. A single hair strand will be moved out of place, and he is going to go over the horizon screaming at the top of his lungs.

Orion waits his turn, patiently, standing guard by the first peg, until Ramses is up at the top of the forty foot incline, head peaking out over the edge. He scales up the shale, holding out onto his lover's outstretched hand, the two men grunting copiously until he is tugged back over the edge. It is all familiar, Orion's body temperature dropping a few degrees once they are standing comfortably on both feet again.

The tree they had hid behind is still there, but Orion does not expect the arena in a single night to undergo a complete overhaul. There are dried spots of dark patches of grass placed here and there, sights that turn his blood to ice. It is a precipitator of bad news, as Alistair used to tell him. Sitting out on the beach, Orion's gaze searching for rabid wild dogs to leap out of the sand and drag him down to Atlantis… and there is a reassuring pat on his shoulder that there is nothing to worry about. Alistair reminds him of that even as he is dragged off to the guillotine, while Orion is kneeling there, watching, waiting for his turn. His parents make him watch the execution, and at the end of the day, when there are crickets chirping and palm fronds blowing gently in a nightly breeze, he is given a soothing bubble bath. As if aromatic lavender and bath water in a golden basin is going to make him forget watching the blood drip off of the Justice Building's steps.

"Orion?" Ramses asks him, reaching out and gripping his hand. Whenever they make contact like this, Orion establishes that the pointer and ring fingers go to the identical matching spots on the other's hand, their middle fingers extended, and they do not land on the skin. A connection, as Orion grips back. Tight, this time. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lies, shaking his head, smiling. He has to tell himself that, even when Alistair's name is written in the paper, and he's a traitor. Even when his parents have to tell him that they're taking away his allowance, Orion simply wants to scream. He cannot try the drowning himself out in the ocean pattern again, as his family instills a watchful eye on him since the execution. Dogs do not exist in his neighborhood anymore, and his family does not keep bananas in the house any longer, out of fear that he'll… well, he doesn't have to finish the statement. "You should've let them execute me, Mom," he rasps at the dinner table. It is spaghetti that night, marinara sauce, and copper spilling down his arms. "This is hell."

The two boys continue on further through the woods, the ground crunching underneath their feet. Every twenty steps or so, one of the two of them turns around to make sure no one is following them. Orion is ready. Wyvern has sent food basket after food basket with encouraging letters telling him how there are people in the Capitol rooting for him, people in the Capitol rooting for their relationship to succeed, a golden lion and a pharaoh sitting on a throne jeweled by encrusted diamonds… a lion must devour prey to survive, and a pharaoh must sit in judgment lest he be the judged.

They've been walking for around ten minutes or so when Ramses pauses first, pointing out into the dark. "I see something. Or… someone," he says, Orion stopping to follow his point.

He is telling the truth, and damn, his lover's eyesight is much better than his at night. Not just a single shape, but two. Orion can barely make out hair outlines, the glow of the arena dome casting down onto the ground in a holographic blue light that barely makes out residues of hair and body structure. There are a few backpacks and sleeping bags strewn about, Orion unable to see any weapons, but it is a pair of tributes. That is for certain.

"I don't remember Kai'sa and Porscha being that well-armed," Orion whispers, starting to bounce on his feet. Not loud enough to alert anyone else, but this is serious. No one is attacking them now, but they've stalked through the tall grass and found the doe that is unsuspecting. "That has to be one of the others… District 3 or District 8."

"But I thought Poem and Niklaus went into the other side of the arena…" Ramses whispers back. Orion is unable to glean what emotion is reflecting back in his lover's eyes, but it is not one of fright. It is resolute, it is strength. It is commitment.

"Then, well," Orion's throat tightens, his voice quieter than a dormouse. "We rush them. I'll take Jasper, and you just… just tackle Vesuvia and keep her pinned. She's ferocious, but…" The words hang unsaid between them, as Ramses kisses him deeply, pressing a hand into his chest. He believes in him, and he trusts him.

There is nothing more sacred than that.

Orion mouths a countdown. One. Two. Three. On three, he leaps forward through the dark, screaming a battle-cry out at the top of his lungs. District Three will pay. District Three will have their blood soak these sands, and there'll be no one left to mourn them at home under their cyberized windmills… Vesuvia and Jasper tell the audiences during the interviews that they have no family left to speak of. Orion is doing the world a favor… be the soldier he never is allowed to be.

His scream causes both tributes, as Ramses is right, there are two of them, to jostle in alarm. They are not quick on the draw, however, as Ramses darts out of the shadows to his left, colliding into Vesuvia. It is not Vesuvia Vocanova's voice that comes out of the girl's mouth, but Orion does not have enough time to decide that while Ramses struggles pinning the girl to the ground.

The boy, who Orion only gets a quick glimpse of in the dark, is much skinnier than Jasper, but he never got a good look at the District Thirteen runaway. "You motherfuckers-" Jasper spits out, but Orion never gives him the chance to finish his thought.

He swings his axe as hard as he can at the boy's head. Jasper struck down his lover, made him bleed, made Orion think he passed away… mercy is not on the menu. The axe slices straight through Jasper's neck, cutting it clean off. An estranged cry spills from the girl's throat, who is sounding remarkably unlike Vesuvia right now. Orion gasps, dropping the axe out of his loose grasp. The now headless body flops to the ground, Orion sinking to his knees.

His horrified gaze is met with the face of Niklaus Peverell, wide eyed, blood dripping out of the open cavity. Which means… he looks over at Ramses, who is trying with all of his might to hold down a squirming and struggling Poem Cavalli. She is screaming who her ally's name, but he's just a head attached to a blade… oh fuck, oh fuck. Ramses holds her down by the shoulders, Poem angling her head to bite down on his hand as hard as she can. Orion's lover cries out in pain, letting go of her as she chomps down harder.

Ramses pushes Poem off of him, cursing, clutching his wounded hand to his chest. Poem is up off of the ground in an immediate flash, snatching something off of the ground, and what looks like one of the backpacks, as she flees into the darkness. An antelope running off into the tall grass without the predators chasing them on their heels.

Orion looks at Niklaus's head, hands reaching out to pluck it off of the axe. It weighs with the heaviness of a bowling ball or one of his weights, copper spilling out all over his hands. He holds the head close to his chest, weeping in exasperated gasps and sobs.

"I'm so sorry, Alistair…" he moans into Niklaus's matted hair, soothing out the strands, all the while Ramses tries angling his hand in the darkness to see the damage done by Poem's bite. "Alistair, forgive me, I never meant to kill…" Niklaus's (Alistair's) head does not respond, even as Orion wails into the night.

The curtains have fallen, the serrated ends dripping with blood, soaked by Orion's tears. The guillotine blade falls, and Orion will gladly stick out his neck, anticipating the blow.

15th: Niklaus Peverell, 18, District 8 Male. Killed by Orion Maythorpe of District 4 via beheading with an axe. Submitted by timesphobic. Oh, my lord, Niklaus, where do I begin. Initially, a long, long time ago, like back in August, when I finished planning out the story, I had you as my original victor. The darkness in you, the tragedy, I absolutely loved it and was touched by what was given to me. Obviously, things have changed to have you at 15th, but the intro I wrote for you might still be single favorite pov I've ever written, and I absolutely loved your dynamic with Poem... one of my favorite district partner pairs of all time I have gotten to write. However, the stakes are high, and this arena is full of people willing to go that extra mile... I'll miss you, and you will be missed by everyone else, I am certain.

Tribute List (Boy - Girl)

District 1: Catalus Drachma [Submitted by Manny Siliezar]

District 2: Magnus Winterthorn [Submitted by Audmirable] / Portia Beninblade [Submitted by WhateverIsOpen]

District 3: Jasper Overheart [Submitted by ParanoidSylph] / Vesuvia Vocanova [Submitted by Platrium]

District 4: Orion Maythorpe [Submitted by jimster920] / Diana Kratovska [Submitted by Firedawn'd]

District 6: Porscha Watanabe [Submitted by thornehub]

District 7: Sylvan Adello [Submitted by In Writing]

District 8: Poem Cavalli [Submitted by LordShiro]

District 9: Camilla Rodriguez [Submitted by Reign of Winter]

District 10: Nokomis Yanaba [Submitted by Ripple237]

District 12: Ramses Boskov [Submitted by Guesttwelve] / Kai'sa Shadow [Submitted by Rune Whisperer]

…

ALLIANCE LIST

The Mini Careers: Catalus Drachma (D1M), Magnus Winterthorn (D2M), Diana Kratovska (D4F)

Girl Power: Portia Beninblade (D2F), Camilla Rodriguez (D9F), Nokomis Yanaba (D10F)

Brutal Technology: Jasper Overheart (D3M), Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F)

Respect For the Principal: Orion Maythorpe (D4M), Ramses Boskov (D12M)

The Dancing Queens: Porscha Watanabe (D6F), Kai'sa Shadow (D12F)

Loners: Sylvan Adello (D7M), Poem Cavalli (D8F)

…

Kill Leaderboard:

Magnus Winterthorn (D2M): I
Portia Beninblade (D2F): I
Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F): I
Orion Maythorpe (D4M): I
Diana Kratovska (D4F): I
Porscha Watanabe (D6F): I
Gemini Lennox (D9M): I
Nokomis Yanaba (D10F): I
Cassiopeia Grey (D11F): I
Arena/Mutts: I

I cannot remember the last time I was so proud of a chapter that I finished writing, but I must say it, I am so damn proud of this chapter. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Chapter #28: Curtain of Blood and Tears, focused on Arena Night V of Liberty. Kai'sa has found a paradise, Catalus came to a crossroad, Portia and Girl Power met with an enemy who can fight back, Niklaus needed a new addiction, Diana has a new strategy, and Orion has ensnared someone in his claws. This is the first tribute death that has genuinely made me cry, as these characters in the Top 15 I adore and love beyond counting and reasoning, but I can't let them all live... just one.

This is probably the longest arena chapter so far of the story, as I just found so much content to write about, but our alliances are starting to take hits, and I swear this won't be the first time or last time. I am curious on who you believe will get their first 'second' kill of the Games, because so far everyone in the list has had just one to their name. I think, soon, I will be getting rid of the poll on my profile about your desire Top 8, but do still vote if you haven't, cause a lot of transformations in character arcs and alliances will happen when we get there. Next chapter. #29: The Blade's Sweet Song, will focus on Day 6 of the arena with just five tribute povs, but it is still going to be an absolutely game-changing addition. Thorne and I are working vigilantly on getting all of our Red Silence tribute introductions written, and we will back to posting for that story soon.

I love you guys so much! Your support means the world to me, and I'd love to know what you thought of this chapter. Have a great day! Bye!

~ Paradigm