Hey everybody, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death! So, let's see... last time was quite a doozy and a lot of surprising things happened such as Poem rebuilt a burnt bridge (literally and metaphorically), Magnus was rewarded for his treachery, Vesuvia cut away her cancers, and on the Capitol side of things, Lydia uncovered a dark secret... and in this chapter I can say welcome to the final six! I have already congratulated you all before, but again another round of applause to the submitters of Catalus Drachma, Magnus Winterthorn, Vesuvia Vocanova, Porscha Watanabe, Poem Cavalli, and Camilla Rodriguez... so again congrats to Manny, AJ, Plat, Thorne, Shiro, and Reign for making it this far cause it really means your kiddos have so far survived 200k of emotional torture that still isn't over. This chapter is still long, as each tribute is getting a pov. I will admit that there are no deaths this chapter, but things getting moved into their final positions, for this is the calm before the storm, and the hurricane is coming. Which means... as there's only two more chapters left in this arena, kids are dying soon, and chances are, it's yours. I hope you all enjoy Chapter #36: Calm Before the Storm, detailing Night 10 in the arena.
"I am only not only the calm before the storm. I am the calm. I am the storm," ~ Ivy Atalanta
Catalus Drachma: District 1 Male P.O.V (18)
He's been in this arena for way too long. He's been away from home, a place Catalus never thought he'd miss, for far too long. To be true, as Catalus looks up at the trees and feels the rays of sunshine fall down on his burn marks, it definitely is not the people from One that he misses. Most of them are like the mayor, Friedrich Calvary, who sit on their porches with mint juleps in jeweled hands, wrinkled skin tacked back by staples and plastic surgery to mimic those in the Capitol, with only gossip and words on wind between them to act as their comfort.
Those people are the ones Catalus sees in the town square, down the streets handing out fliers demanding that people 'Support the Troops.' Catalus is handed one of them once, going to get groceries, since it is his turn in the family. Something about sharing the blame – err, responsibilities, he corrects, expecting his family to come out of the bushes and smack him upside the head – and the only thing Catalus is to be blamed for is his enraged reaction at the woman who hands him the flier. The flier is of Emrick Israel, the golden president who has more blood on his hands than any sort of precious metal, with a thought bubble above his head, begging people to, well, support the troops.
"The Peacekeeper army?" Catalus snarls at the woman, and he drops the bag of groceries he's carrying on the ground. One of the carrots for his mother's vegetable medley spills out onto the sidewalk, he stepping atop it and crunching it underneath his foot. He forces the woman to look at it, squashing orange bits into the sidewalk. "That'll be this district once they come through here. That'll be your head when one of them decides to take your husband in for questioning because of a joke. That'll be your grandchildren, killed for laughter…" The fear is palpable in the woman's eyes, and there are Peacekeepers, the same people Catalus detests, marching over.
He lets go of the woman, crumbling the flier in his fist and pushing it back to the woman. No one in One understands the danger they're in.
Two weeks later, he has the captive in his grasp, the golf club in his hand, the golf club he needs to slam into the man's skull, but he doesn't, he doesn't, and his confidence is the crushed carrot underneath his feet.
The woman's children would be eligible for the Hunger Games, Catalus realizes, later, indeterminately later, but a terrifying, saddening thought all the same that has the heir to the Drachma Conglomerate sink to his knees and cry. The woman had no idea what she's doing, what she had been really doing to the people of One, and Catalus didn't either.
He doesn't miss them, seeing patriotism to the Panemian flag sweep into the streets. He misses the gambling dens with his fake IDs, with Harmony hooked onto his arm like the best friend that she is while they're bent over poker tables with cards and chips piled so high that Catalus can hardly see the dealer's greasy hair. Catalus yearns for another ginger ale spiked with rum at the bottom, being stirred around by plastic straws that could fit under his fingernails. He misses losing it all, the crazed look taking over in his eyes, as his hands reach across the table for more, more, more.
Harmony is usually trashed at that point, and Catalus is getting on the ire of the other players at the table. Hands are grappling at him, tugging him back and trying to force him into his seat, but then he's spitting and cussing, drunk on just two sips of rum. Many bruises, where the bruise that the Peacekeeper had given him back in the Capitol can only pale in comparison, dot his face from each successful toss out of the den.
Yet they let him back in, since he's wasting away the good fortune that his last name comes with, and he's always supporting the bar.
Catalus realizes that he has a gambling problem way too late for his own good, and even after Harmony breaks the news to him on the golf course about his forcing to volunteer for the Games, he sees the bright side of it later that night, hugging a warm cup of joe against his chest. The risk always overrides his fear, where Catalus's mind breaks in one way for decision making, jumping over what part of his brain throws him into the fight or flight.
It is as if there are imaginary numbers over every single item around him, pushing him in the direction of decisions. He sees it over Poem's head, even now, his ally looking at him as she replaces the bandages on his wounded arm, it then being his turn to swap out the bandage on the back of her neck due to Surt's exploding tree fiasco in their fight. Over her head are these imaginary 1's and 0's, his mind flitting through all the options in which he could go down just by opening his mouth or choosing to reach out and caress her cheek.
The shame builds in his gut at that avenue, all sorts of zeroes collapsing on top of Poem's head, he blinking away the binary code. It is an attraction he had expected to be built just by spending all his time with her. It creeps up when looking at Diana, at how her muscular body would be a treat for anyone who somehow got her on their side, but then her sexual orientation shuts that down in Catalus's mind without hesitation. Too bitter for him, anyways, and men have never been something he's decided to dabble in.
Poem, however, it is more than just on the level of looks, as they're close to one another last night in the warmth of each other's embraces. It had been a different sort of day than seeing Poem kill Nokomis only twenty-four hours prior, but that she saved him, a tribute he expected to have died way before the number of tributes crossed into the single digits. The girl he counted out, despite knowing he isn't the only one to have his mind cross into that territory… and then she rejects him, telling him he's handsome and-
"Catalus, all the ointment is going to drip onto the ground if you don't move your arm," Poem chides, her tone playful and teasing, as well as critical at the same time. He blushes, breaking out of his thoughts. "I am not going to roll around in mulch just for a burn," his ally points out, she tugging her hair up and out of the way from the burns.
"Sorry," he apologizes, before placing the bandage down on her skin. Catalus flattens it out, he seeing Poem tense up briefly, ever so briefly in the shoulders, and the tension deflates once he lifts his hands off of her. After her rejection last night, and the sermon – he doesn't know what else to call it, truthfully – he is given this morning, Catalus's thoughts have been directed towards one word. Future, and he has no idea what the future holds. "Just… got distracted," he says, finishing with the treatment.
"That's been happening a lot today," Poem frowns, she getting to her feet, dusting off her knees. Catalus watches her rise, seeing the richness in her movements. "What's up with that, dude?" He had expected notoriety and a low-leveled form of fame from his family's background, Catalus expecting to truly be the only rich tribute in the Games, until he comes across seeing Poem in the training center.
Her nonchalance and total disbelief and disregard for what is going around her had been an entirely different story, but Catalus saw all of it, all of the money in her blood flow and how the girl from Eight handles herself. While there is still a bit of that suave type of handling in Poem now, it has been replaced by a steely interior, where her blood if nicked will bleed crimson like everyone else, instead of the ichor from her upbringing.
Catalus realizes she called him dude, and for a second it is as if she had been replaced by Magnus, a dumb smile crossing his face. He misses Magnus too, but ever since he saw Diana's face shine in the sky, a creeping feeling rises into his throat, sitting on his Adam's apple like an extra rock. The feeling doubles with Jasper Overheart's face in the sky from just moments ago, when the tribute counter decreases down to six.
That is when the thoughts of the future come into play, and the creeping feeling in his gut at the thought of seeing Magnus again explode across his body like someone unleashed a sneeze in his intestines.
Poem goes to get her stuff and to take another sip of water. Catalus asks her to conserve it earlier in the day since they're trying to stay on the move, and he has no idea whether or not they'll come across another water source that had been a godsend like the brooklet they stop at. He watches her swallow for a moment, when she wouldn't be able to get a word out immediately, before speaking.
"I had a thought, Poem," he says, sitting up, groaning. The burn across his chest hurts a lot, and his nose is starting to throb, the very last injury he had been given when Nokomis punches him in the face. He has gotten very lucky so far without really being too scathed in the battles they've all endured, though Catalus knows that luck isn't a real well he can dredge up at any time to source his needs. His benefits are decided upon in an imaginary process, such as wondering how Poem will gel to what he has to say. A rickety bridge to cross, and if Catalus is good at one thing in his life, it is crossing dangerous bridges to the other side, a ravine down below him. "Concerning us and the future."
"That makes it sound oddly romantic," Poem comments, causing Catalus to frown. It isn't meant to be romantic, but entirely serious, and entirely terrifying. "No one has ever made an 'us' with me before," she says.
"I don't mean it like that," Catalus interjects quickly, and another blush rises to his face. It had been immature on his part, for the anger and even jealousy he feels in his soul when she rejects him last night. Jealous of Niklaus Peverell, a boy without a physical head, let alone actually being alive, all because someone had gotten to her affections first. He's never really been told 'no' before, and it surprises Catalus that he hasn't acted out more because of that. "It's serious, what I am thinking about."
Poem finishes closing the cap to her canteen, shucking it back to the side of her backpack. She sets her pack down onto the ground, going into the first zipper to grab the X-Ray glasses. Catalus finds it strange that their reward for killing a fire giant are X-Ray glasses when something like his grappling claw would make more sense, but that is besides the point. They've been using the X-Ray glasses as a means to find alternate routes to… well, anywhere. Sources underground to hide from the rest of the tributes since the dread has been building in Catalus's stomach on the notion of having to fight other living beings again.
Almost as if he has gotten out of touch, and it sickens him to think there are people, Magnus coming to mind, who had made a living out of fighting and killing, even if the boy from Two had fought in the rebel army and killed Peacekeepers. He still killed, Catalus tasting a bitterness on his tongue from failed promises and dreams he's never reached… Sylvan is the first life he's ever taken, and it sits on his heart like a cinderblock.
"There's only six of us left now," he says, rubbing at his beard. It feels weird not having his usual necklaces and earrings on his body, the extra weight missing when he touches his face.
"I know how to count," Poem teases, making a face, as she holds onto the X-Ray glasses in her fingers. Slender fingers that weave and loom and create, dazzling down strings or strumming along a harp… Catalus takes his eyes off of her fingers, imagining them soothing spirals of comfort down his tired back.
Catalus rolls his eyes. Even with ten whole days and nights in this arena, Poem's mood balances between humor and desperation, between the nonchalance that drags her into this mess in the first place, and the grittiness that is how Surt ends up dead, and his life ends up being saved.
She'll never truly get it, unlike Catalus, who got it on the first day, the moment he shot his hand up in the air and shouted the fated words.
"We don't know if any of the other four out there allied together. If we were to have fight Vesuvia and Magnus as a pairing, for instance…" Catalus trails off, his blood going cold at the very concept of having to fight the two… he has confidence in himself, surely, but a prison convict and a soldier… not exactly the most wondrous of chances. "To put it bluntly, I think we're fucked."
"Cheery, Catalus," Poem bites on the inside of her cheek, and the glint of happiness in Poem's eyes flickers out like a snuffed cigarette smashed into a brick wall. "Let's sit here and discuss our possible deaths!"
"It's just a thought," Catalus gets to his feet, wincing and hissing in pain as his body protests the movements. "I have been planning on us being the final two ever since I asked if we could be allies," Poem's eyes don't leave him as he approaches her, stumbling slightly. He feels a bit tipsy, as if he's back in the Dice Club with Harmony in one hand, and another ginger ale with rum in the other. "But we know that only one can win, and if we end up being the only two tributes left alive in the arena, you know what it means," He places his hands on her shoulders, careful not to lean in.
Poem swallows heavily, he hearing it, making a face, but he sees it on his face. He is forcing her to confront the possibility that it'd be just the two of them left, forcing her to think about what it means to turn on someone you'd consider to be a brother, or who he'd consider to be a sister.
He hesitated once, when he watches the captive Peacekeeper race off into the night of District 1's barely illuminated streets, puddles of rain and terror getting splashed in the man's wake. Poem would have to sink a knife into his chest to end him if she wanted to make it home, and he'd have to pierce her body with his sword, the very scabbard feeling heavy on his back at the thought of it, he grimacing again.
"Yeah…" she says, her voice cold, unemotive.
"We'd have to fight, cause there's no way President Israel or Vice President Passionia would allow us to both go home," Catalus swishes his tongue from side to side in his mouth. "I can't make you promises that I know I can't keep," he says, forcing her to look at him with a finger under her chin. "I can't promise you I'll just let you win these Games and go home to your parents who love you…" Poem doesn't cut her gaze away this time. "But I can't say I just would go swinging for the fences at you so I can make it home either."
Part of it is a lie, but Catalus knows he doesn't have the heart to really force the truth at her in this way. He had his future stolen from him with the real promise of a silver gun shooting out his brains if he didn't raise his hand to volunteer. His younger brother will grow up without a sibling to look at for help. His parents will have to attend a funeral of their child before their own… he cannot do it to them.
Catalus knows, also, however, he cannot watch the blood pour out of Poem's body with her eyes wide and terrified at the prospect that she is about to die, especially if he somehow promises her that he'll spare her.
Part of him wonders if they end up having to charge the bull like a matador head on, if it'd be better Poem is downed by a former ally or an arena terror in the shape of a Vocanova, Watanabe, or Rodriguez.
Poem shrugs his hands off of her body, she rubbing at her face, and Catalus sees the telltale prickling of tears in her eyes.
"I- I don't want to think about that right now, Catalus," she says, scrubbing at her face rapidly.
"Poem, I just wanted to bring it to your-" he starts.
"That is all I think about now!" Poem screams at him, she turning on her heels. She doesn't have any weapons in her hand, and Catalus doesn't even flinch when her anger is thrown his way. "All I am thinking about is how I'll have to say goodbye to you, not even how I'd have to say goodbye to all of this if I don't make it home," her voice cracks, and Poem shakes her head.
"I'm sorry, Poem…" Catalus whispers. "I'm sorry."
"I just want to cross that bridge when we get there," she snips at him, she tugging her backpack tight to her body. Poem exhales a breath, hard in her chest, he seeing her body shake. "I- when we get there," she says.
"When we get there," Catalus repeats to himself in his head.
If they get there, of course, as Catalus stares at the back of the storm rushing to overwhelm them.
And in the bands of the storm, millions of 1's and 0's, decisions he may make, pathways he may take.
And Catalus is ready to rush them all.
Vesuvia Vocanova: District 3 Female P.O.V (18)
The smoke plumage had risen high in the sky by the time Vesuvia is far enough away from the cabin to no longer smell the roaring fire. It has dissipated now, into the evening, under the ochre glow of the sunset that is dwindling along the tree line. The air smells sweet, like cherries, causing the girl to frown as she snacks on her latest bit of squirrel that she kills by bashing it with her foot into the side of a tree. From the times she smelled rotting flesh in prison, cooked underneath a spit that the Peacekeepers on her good side – of which there were very few – provided, it had never been a sweet smell.
A twinge of guilt sits in her stomach about what happened, but the guilt is rolled over by the thoughts and promises of tomorrow, of what the future holds. Without Jasper, her chances can technically be cut in half if she were to come across another tribute, where it is up to just her now, and if she makes one false move, one wrong step… it could be someone else's knife in her throat, and not the other way around. She'll miss his tender kisses placed on the center of her back, or the adoring look in his eyes given a glow by the fire crackling underneath when the two of them stare at each other across the dark sand of the scorched earth.
He should have… he should have never given away his fear of fire. A seed of regret does billow down the back of her thighs at having mentioned that to him in his final moments, before she drops the match, at how his last memory before the flames consumed his flesh is the thought that he won't survive, that he won't be alive, and the girl he thought he could trust brought it all down in a wave of dark smoke.
The other prisoners on the block learned quickly that Vesuvia Vocanova is not someone one can trust. Half the time she is unsure if she trusts herself, if what she is doing is genuinely the right thing to do, but not on behalf of some morals – please, she scoffs to herself, morals are for those who like taking it in the ass, she says at some market one Wednesday morning after being released from prison, and the shopkeeper sputters incoherently – like justice or virtue… she debates whether or not it'd be right for her.
There is a moment, in her time in the cells, that Vesuvia will never forget, it sitting there on the forefront of her mind in the way the seminar instructor looks at her with horror, wide-eyed, similar to a doe caught in the headlights of a Peacekeeper truck. Similar to Jasper before his flesh melts off, Vesuvia adds, sickeningly.
It is the metaphor of the railroad car going down the tracks, where the power is in her hands at whether or not one person or three gets run over. It is an impossible moment to forget, where even the incarceration system that pushes her into a damp, dark cave in the first place, believes she has no redemption.
"Yes, miss, in the front row," the man points to her, for Vesuvia has her hand straight up in the air, a gleeful smile on her face. They expect that the prisoners, after doing 'hard time' are going to come to their senses and say that it is wrong to watch human life be wasted in such a way. They expect that Vesuvia will have grown a heart in this time, as if her heart is some sort of fungi that needs decrepit corners of jail cells to actually foster life.
"Easy," she shrugs, seeing the informer lift his head up some, chin pointed in her direction. The man's face reminds her of a roadblock that'd get run over, if she were driving said truck. "You take the person on the single track and tie them to the one with the other four and then have the railroad car run over all four of them."
Her response gets her a punch in the face by a Peacekeeper she calls Dotty. He goes dotty for sure, when she makes sure the man gets his in the employee showers, his throat cut to the bone with a porcelain shard from the wall.
Dotty is buried in a potter's field, and Vesuvia is the one who's escaping the manacles of the justice system.
"Oh how it's failed me," Vesuvia thinks to herself, unable to control the wicked laughter that spills from her throat. "Oh how society must have let me down, how they could have let this happen…"
There haven't been any sponsor gifts from the sky, besides the rope and tape she requests from particular Capitol audience members early in the morning, when the crickets are still out, but the canaries are also going for thir first flight of the day. Vesuvia is annoyed by the prospect, believing for sure that someone would have been entertained by what she's done, how she betrayed a man she is supposed to love.
A handbook doesn't exist for the Hunger Games, a sort of play-by-play, but Vesuvia knows that on an entertainment level, it is those motions in her video games that get people out of their seats, cash in hand, ready to play another one of her creations. People want to see the guts and the gore, they want to watch someone's heart be ripped out of their chest on a metaphorical and physical level, just to watch it get crushed in a loved one's hand, or someone who they believed to be a loved one.
They want to hear tears, they want to feel another's pain… and Vesuvia will give it all to them, facilitating to them under a steel beam, a welding torch at her fingertips, sparks flying from haphazard wires underneath her feet, all of it underneath the torrential downpour of blood above her head.
She hears a child once at school say that her hair color is for her wickedness. "She has a red hair," whispers some kid who always ate his boogers or wiped it on his clothes, Vesuvia looking at them with her copper colored pigtails, wondering how it'd look if that child's braces were on the outside of their lips instead of inside. "That means she'll kill us if we look at her the wrong way."
Vesuvia is certain that little brat and his family melted away in the napalm strike of the technological corridor in Three where the families there designed AC units and robots that'd help in manufacturing parts for ventilation. She hears about locked away in her cell, smiling all the while… everyone who has ever doubted her, everyone who has ever looked at her the wrong way and claimed that a girl in robotics or a girl in the video game making industry, they all get their just desserts, and she has holds the spoon.
After finishing her last bit of charred squirrel – she isn't afraid of building a fire anymore with there only being five others in the arena – Vesuvia wipes her hands off. She looks around, going to open her mouth and ask if Jasper wants any, for it'd be rude of her to finish off her meal by herself, and-
"Oh, wait, that's right," Vesuvia says, making a funny face. "I burned you alive at the stake ten hours ago. Whoopsie. No squirrel for you, I guess."
She shoulders her backpack, continuing on the trek ahead and out of the fishing village. Finding allies feels like a silly thing to do now, with there only being so many tributes left alive now, and with there being just so many left, that means new answers have to be conjured up on where her ally went.
Would anyone believe her if she says it is Camilla Rodriguez who plunges her knife into Jasper's chest, versus the morbid disaster that actually takes place? Vesuvia doesn't have time to keep track of her lies, when she already is having a difficult time placing where she is in space time.
However, even if she doesn't know what lies or cover-ups she'd give in case she does come across someone, Vesuvia is not without a game plan.
Trudging through the dark, Vesuvia knows that the games are coming to an end. If it isn't in a day at the least, cause she doesn't expect it to be in the next few hours, there's only another twenty-four hours on top of that at max. Everyone is pushed together, convergence, the very narrative structures she uses in her video games. A momentous action to throw everything into a tumultuous landscape, whether it be a tsunami pouring over the hills and wiping out the fishing village, or hell spawn ravens divebombing from the sky in a black cloud for the others to fight off… Vesuvia wants to make it back to where it all started.
She can see the massive oak tree just a bit away through the brush, Vesuvia knocking away branches with Jasper's sword. He doesn't need it anymore, and it'd be a waste of good steel if she witnesses it get plucked out of the arena and float away in the sky. She has the sword with her, as well as her few knives tuckered in at the sides of her body. The metal pole that Cole sponsors, their first – "As a couple," she smirks to herself – and the nation's first, is in the bag, Vesuvia deciding it'd be last resort, since no one alive in the arena knows she has it.
The girl crouches down low once the flattened grass of the fishing village morphs into that of the flowery spotted hill of the cornucopia plain. The horn is golden in the setting sun, the very last bands of bright gone behind the rock walls on the left side, the only part of the arena she has yet to step forward to. The obsidian beach also glimmers in the rushing night, dark bands of navy blue clashing in the air with the vivacious yellows and roaring oranges. Vesuvia takes a second to listen to the distilling quiet, at how waves lap at the shores of the empty beach.
It is too quiet, perhaps, for her liking, she holding onto the sword with a tighter grip as she advances out onto the plain. Jasper recommends once or twice the possibility of staying in the cornucopia earlier on in the Games, when there are more people alive, more corpses to add to her list of tallies, but Vesuvia dislikes the idea.
From the time when the Games started, Vesuvia doesn't see any way to hunt for food without exposing themselves out in the open for too long, and while she is confident in her abilities to ward off enemies, her opinion of Jasper's fighting skills dwindle by the minute, especially when that golden score of six flashes under her name.
The coast is clear to her, Vesuvia darting across the open expanse of land and sky as fast as she can, noting in her head how much clatter her body makes. If she has to move from shelter again, she'll have to decide what to leave behind, then. Every step counts, every breath is a risk Vesuvia has to be willing to take.
She slows her run to a quick brisk when she reaches the metal horn, almost slipping onto her ass by how slick the floor is. Vesuvia cusses to herself, hissing and brushing her hair out of her face as she shelters inside. The temperature in the back of the cornucopia is far colder than she anticipates, she shivering and holding her sides tight as she finds a place to hide behind a few upturned boxes.
Someone must have been by, but whether that had been on day two of the Games, or just mere hours ago, Vesuvia isn't sure, but she knows whoever happens upon her, she'd be prepared for.
Vesuvia sits there in the dark, pushing and stacking the remaining four boxes in the cornucopia atop the other to hide her body, huddling in the far left corner, keeping her body pressed firm against the metal.
She has the sword sitting next to her, her knives still strapped to her body, Vesuvia placing the iron pole from Cole in her pocket. Armed to the teeth, yet she's hiding away from the world, away from the cameras… all against her nature, but Vesuvia knows all she has to do is wait. All she has to do is wait for her moment.
As she sits there, Vesuvia humming to herself to pass the time, head leaned back and pressed against the cold metal, the girl feels a wetness trickle down her cheek, splashing onto her pant leg.
She sits up, rubbing a finger down her face, down a very odd cold trail leaking from her eyes.
Crying.
"Seriously?" she says, aloud, flinging away the tears in disgust. "I'm crying?" Vesuvia snorts.
She has nothing to regret, and when the red sun rises, tainted by the spilled blood, Vesuvia knows that all of it will be towards her success. Every action she's ever taken, every person she's ever killed or crossed, it'll all mean something.
It is her gift, her talent, taking something and making it out of nothing.
Jasper Overheart is just one more stepping stone to the crown.
A crown made of thorns and flesh and blood and rotting carrion, a crown Vesuvia will happily take.
She sits back, letting the tears flow from her face, from the pain she knows she really isn't experiencing, but showing off for the cameras that'll surely find her, and waits.
All she has to do is wait.
Camilla Rodriguez: District 9 Female P.O.V (17)
Boredom has sunk into Camilla's soles, she feeling it as she tries lifting her leg up in the air to take the very next step in her path to nowhere. She feels like a nomad, wandering from spot to spot with no place to call home, no one to force her to stop and take a survey of her surroundings besides herself. Seeing Jasper and Vesuvia – an eerie chill washes over her seeing the boy's face shine in the sky, his smile fading into the dark – yesterday is her last moment of action with another human being, Camilla simply flitting form one pothole to the other in the ground without a care in the world.
Well, that's not correct, as she pauses to think about resting for the night. The one cannon that had gone off all evening had been from Jasper, with his face high and bright, and Camilla is exhausted from running. There are a few scares, such as the flock of birds that decide to interrupt her slumber in the morning, a murder of crows blasting away from one of the trees nearby into the air.
Her dreams are quiet, the usual suspects in them – her parents, her brother, Nokomis, even Gemini and Portia at times – off on vacation in someone else's head, as Camilla's sleep is just blackness. A blackness she can feel under her soul, rubbing against her ribcage, tugging her down into desperation. It is an improvement in that she's only cried once or twice in the last forty-eight hours, still in disbelief over seeing who she'd consider her best friend plunge to her death.
Camilla knows she's lying when disappointment creeps into the back of her throat at the lack of any physical interactions for the entire day. It is her first day in the arena, as seeing District Three yesterday counts on some technical level, that she's been entirely alone. Alone, alone, alone to fester, alone to rot. Alone to be forgotten about.
"Wouldn't that be ironic?" Camilla whispers to herself, she sinking into a low lying tree trunk that has been split open by a lightning strike, from what the damage looks like to her. "Everyone forgets about me, and they go and kill each other, and leave me alive…"
She doesn't believe the words, even as she lays there, keeping her head down, hair out of her face. The words sound false as she grips the hilt of the karambit even tighter in the dark. A dark blade to take a fool by surprise in the blackness if Camilla were to respond with lightning fast reflexes. She could do it. She's been prepping herself all day on what it will mean to take another life. To thrust herself into the action willingly, for Kai'sa – she wonders, briefly, where that raven landed in her death throes, what circle of Hell has the girl been shipped off to and is she still dancing where she went? – had been in trying to save an ally, there is nothing like that here.
She wouldn't want to ally with anyone on the pretense, though it is very slim to her, that the Games would continue on for another ten days, and then ends up sobbing as she plunges the blade in and out of Porscha Watanabe's back. In another life, she can picture herself being friends with almost everyone. Even Portia, though the thought hits the back of her throat in a bitter spray of vinegar and disbelief. There had been moments, in the end, after the girls get into their battle with Diana and posse of male volunteers, that they trade amicable secrets in the dark.
Camilla laughs at the memory of Nokomis mentioning how once she ended up accidentally putting sugar instead of salt onto meat her family is cooking, and that the Yanaba family's teeth hurt for a week. Portia ruins it with another statement of how someone from the Beninblade family doesn't eat sweets, which the girls roll their eyes, throw dirt at her, whatever they can to lift the mood.
"Lift the mood?" comes a voice that is not Camilla's in her head. "Lift the mood before you plunged a knife into the girl's calf?"
"Shut up," Camilla hisses, hugging herself tight, turning over in the wooden bed. She looks up through the canopy of trees, listening to the slow trill of the crickets perched above on their palaces of twigs and sticks. The moon is out, a comforting sight amid all the greenery that could hide any number of assailants. The voice has been out in full force today when Camilla trips over an upturned root that juts out of the ground behind a few rocks. It mocks her then, as the girl crash lands onto the dirt, accidentally swearing at the top of her lungs in terror that she just snapped her ankle. "Shut up, you won't be able to make me feel guilty for what I had to do…"
Guilt.
It is an odd word that she weighs on her tongue, as if someone placed a ball bearing in the center of the organ, before slamming a hammer down atop it.
She has nothing to feel guilty about, Camilla mulling over her past actions in the last ten days. There are things she regrets, for sure, such as not reaching out to Nokomis any later than the fourth day in the arena, when the faces that shine in that sky show Nevaeh Davoli, Gemini Lennox, and Cassiopeia Grey. She regrets not stabbing Portia in the side the moment Poem Cavalli and Niklaus Peverell are thrown into the leviathan's jaws when they come across the cornucopia that day, just after the two outer district girls reconcile their differences.
But there is nothing to be guilty over.
"Wrong," comes the voice once more, but this time it is not the stranger that Camilla knows quite well. The voice changes to that of her brother's, Millet's voice strong, sturdy, for her brother is never wrong. A Rodriguez is never wrong. She sounds like Portia with that, she snorting at the irony. "Wrong again, Cammie."
"Yeah?" she challenges it back, crossing her arms over her chest. "Like what?"
"For being born. For existing in District 9."
She falters in hitting her brother across the face. She can't, when she looks at his lopsided grin that is missing one too many teeth for he must've talked back to the Peacekeepers on patrol in his own fields. Working at fifteen to feed he and his older sister, their security blanket ripped away from them…
"No," Camilla says, shaking her head, hands gripping her hair tight to the point where she'd rip it out of her head if she pulled hard enough. "No, you're wrong! You're the one who's wrong!" she is screaming it now, in her head, pointing towards her brother who keeps that stupid grin on his face.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she's wrong for existing.
While Portia throws her fervent support to the loyalists, and Nokomis throws her support to the rebels, both of her allies having their eyes lit up, faces twisted in battles talking of sacrifice and necessity, Camilla sits in between them entirely in disagreement.
The Capitol killed her father, executive orders heralded by President Israel for the Peacekeeper army to fight back. That is indisputable, and she begs her father not to go, tugging at his arms, trying to remove the ammunition from his gun and hide it around the house so her father wouldn't be able to find it.
He leaves anyways, and he's sent home in a box, his body covered in soot and ash, and her tears as Camilla doesn't know what to do other than cry over his corpse.
The rebels killed her mother, however. District Thirteen, and whatever other districts allied with the decision are the reason her mom is buried six feet under with hardly a corpse to her name. Those mortars, they do not come from the Capitol. Nathaniel Coin's name is written on one of them, from what her brother tells her when their mother pushes Millet aside, and the blast takes her. He tells her, Camilla that is, later, that he doesn't even have time to process what happens in front of him, for another mortar lands just a few feet away, splintering through a table, it sitting there, and sitting there, and sitting there.
It never goes off, Camilla feeling tears stream down her shirt from her brother hugging at her midsection, he sobbing into her chest at how he wishes the fire could've eaten him alive then, to let him see his parents who he loved so much.
She is collateral damage on both sides, no lost love for anyone who supports either side. Camilla is unsure, though, if she would've sacrificed her mother for the cause, as that is what District Thirteen does, in their strike, to knock out the squad of heavily fortified Peacekeepers occupying District Nine. The effort proves to be futile, and she's stuck in the Games dealing with those consequences.
Better if she hadn't been born. Initially it is Millet that says it, perched on the front steps of their new lodging.
"Better off… what?" she asks her brother, pressing a hand to his face, forcing him to look her directly in the eyes. "Millet, what did you just say?"
Her brother, who hasn't washed his face in what looks to be like centuries, is staring off past her, at the Peacekeepers who are filling out paperwork with Millet's boss, a portly man who smells like garlic, and ate cigars as if they were carrots. "Dead," he repeats, eyes unfocused, tears mixing in with the ash, with the dust, with their mother's lifeblood. "I'd rather be dead."
"No, no you don't," Camilla interrupts him, gripping him hard in the hand, digging her fingers into his skin so he'd hiss and wince, trying to get out of his sister's grasp. It forces him to look at her, as Camilla leans forward, mouth set in a hard line. "You've still got someone next to you trying to fight. You can't give up because I won't give up."
She is still trying to fight by those words, though by the minute that is starting to get harder and harder, Camilla feeling invisible bullets puncture her throat and liver, talons slicing down across her chest and exposing her inner cavities for blood to pour in.
Camilla tries to fight off the invasive thoughts by curling in on herself, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow will be the day I take back what I've lost," she tells herself. Millet is watching, even though she begs him in the family visitation rooms in the Justice Building that she wants him to look away, to never watch in case things go south. She has to get back to him, for if she isn't there to tell him to keep his chin up and stay alive… would he? Is he only doing it for her sake?
"Is it?" comes the voice again. Millet's voice, filled with poison, puncturing her in the same spots as the bullet holes. "What is the motto? Excelsior? You're going to achieve excelsior?"
"I can do anything I put my mind to," Camilla bites back, trying to picture what the crown will be that she's given when she wins. Emrick and Cain mentioned a crown, she believes, and hers would be out of ivory, out of bones of the dead, out of thorns that she can place atop her skull for existing.
"Oh, you can? That's new," it is as if Camilla can feel her brother sitting on the outside of the log, running a hand down her face. "Well, put your mind to a quick and easy end…" A shiver slides down her spine, for she can feel a presence getting closer and closer, breathing down her neck. "You're going to die here, Camilla. You will forever be alone."
Camilla jolts upright out of the hollowed out tree trunk, gasping for air, her throat burning with each gulp. She places her hands down her form, tapping at her chest, rubbing her hands down her sides.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, still stuck in the arena, and as the voice says, the voice in her head always being right, she is alone.
Camilla is very, very alone.
Magnus Winterthorn: District 2 Male P.O.V (18)
The night has brought much of nothing to Magnus's head except seeing shapes in the dark that are not really there. After a good while, they've all blended into the same amorphous shadow creature, with talons for hands, and beaks for feet, glowing red eyes that'd stare at him like a lion stalking a gazelle through the low-lying grass of a savannah. And true to his words, Magnus doesn't break his gaze. He keeps staring at his potential demise in front of him, holding onto the new sponsor gift that is sent from above. It is a marvelous weapon, truth be told, Magnus holding onto it every few seconds whenever he feels like it. While he hasn't removed the protective covers, nor has he turned the weapon on since he believes his escort's note to be true about a battery life of some sort, it hums alive against his hands whenever he touches it.
He has it hooked to his side, reminded of its presence every few steps when it slaps the side of his leg. Magnus has to remember that the tool he has in his possession is to help him, not to bring himself harm. Call it paranoia perhaps, but he's been in District Two after the rebellion ends, and the new mayor is instilled with powers that no district mayor had before that he can remember.
Tools that are supposed to help grieving families, but they're just tighter yokes on the families that had men go off to fight. The Winterthorn family is the same, dirtily done and knocked off their guard by the restrictions. Magnus can remember being physically punched in the face by the head coach of the local neighborhood's soccer field, where rebel scum aren't allowed to go anymore, Magnus wearing the shiner like a badge of honor when he goes to school.
That is ripped away from his as well, in the sense that although his studies are nothing to write home about – he certainly never burst into his parents' bedroom at night to tell them of the wonderful score he got on the latest English exam – he knows that failing every class, even gym, looks suspicious. Sure enough, as he asks, and his math teacher lowers her frames at him with judging eyes.
"Trash gets what they deserve, Mr. Winterthorn," the woman's voice is sharp. Astute, calculating, Magnus feeling each syllable permeate into his soul. "Such as yourself, for what you've done."
All this barbed criticism thrown his way, all of these motions done to demean him, and Magnus still doesn't let his self-esteem drop. He found himself in the war, crawling through the mud, digging his hands into the dirt to drop another mine into place. He finds himself eating raw cold food out of cans of homes they raid, or piling bodies atop one another for the burn pile, and there is his sense of community.
He's yelled at, sure. Superiors getting in his face, biting down on cigars and chewing cigarettes between their teeth like they're wafers, yelling out insults that he's brainless, that they're surprised he's still kicking and that a Peacekeeper sniper hasn't taken him out… Magnus lets all of it brush off, grinning and grinning and waving back at the men who tell him that the best place for him will be rotting in the ground.
The sense of community is lost in Two, even before the tide shifts and the district is on the losing side of the equation instead of the winning one. There are protests in the town squares, picket signs on either side, but Magnus ignores all of the protesting and screaming to stand in line for the recruitment sign-up-sheet and still get rejected.
The army didn't want to have more than two members from any family joining them to fight, as Magnus waved his brother and father goodbye since they're capable of fighting… doesn't stop him, though. Rejection is a hard-sell. He'd have to have been tied up to be unable to join, and even then, Magnus is willing to volunteer himself to become a lemming for the rebel army.
Magnus wipes at his forehead and neck, tilting his head up to the cool air passing through. It may be around ten or so in the evening, with that one cannon being the only excitement that happens to him all day, but it is hot. He feels the rising heat start to slide down his body like a full suit, sweat clinging to his arms, causing his body to become sticky.
It reminds him of being in Eleven, with that kid whose brains are shot out of his head shortly after Magnus yells an inspirational speech towards him. He recalls those long days in the summer, digging graves, digging trenches, hiding behind abandoned shacks with too many tracker jacker nests to count hanging above their head.
It is there that he is more alive than ever, doing the most killing he's ever done in one sitting, in District 11.
The memory hits him like a sledgehammer to the ribs, Magnus stopping dead in his tracks, an audible gasp leeching from his lips.
"No…" he murmurs, sinking his head into his chest, the soldier caving down to his knees. "No, no, no, no…" Magnus whispers over again, his voice like nails on a chalkboard down his throat. "I told you to leave me alone, I told you to leave me alone!"
There are ten individual Peacekeepers sitting in front of Magnus Winterthorn and his squad. The night sky is full of stars, the last wisps of the smoke of their recent battle vanishing away into nothingness. Magnus looks around at his platoon, the youngest of the bunch that he is embedded with, most being from various places that aren't Two. There's a married couple from Five – Magnus is surprised to see a queer couple even fighting – who are sitting on an overturned crate of oranges, the fruit spoilt.
Or the man from Six who peddles drugs to teenagers, finding the army to be his escape route from jail; Magnus doesn't trust him, he hardly trusts anyone in the platoon with his life, but the guy from Six, even with the good skills he has with a fishhook, Magnus seeing them up close through someone's ribcage, is a no-go.
All of it coordinates to the lieutenant of their merry band of bitches – the man's words, not Magnus' – who is from District One, a man that Magnus had seen with electric blonde hair once upon a time, now with locks of black that swoop and tangle above his eyebrows. He's the one who likes smoking cigarettes that give off the stench of cotton candy.
The Peacekeepers had been caught raiding some sort of orphanage for kids who lost their parents, primarily their fathers, in the latest skew of battles to populate the districts. Magnus always found it weird that he wasn't placed in a battalion specifically of other eighteen year-olds, but instead with a group of men who all had children when he didn't himself.
"Winterthorn, it's your turn," the lieutenant tells him, turning his face towards the boy, his jawline covered in soot, his face expressionless beyond the hatred that radiates in the man's eyes.
Magnus has been requesting to be one of the ones on the frontline when it comes to nightly executions. They're not nightly anymore, after his battalion runs out of rapists they find on the streets, or other crooked people – whether it be Capitol loyalists, Peacekeepers, thieves… the laundry list goes on and on – when someone volunteers to place their gun against the scum's head and shoot their brains out.
Not that he'd call it fun, but…
Magnus gets to his feet, jawline set hard on the leader of the Peacekeeper group they find, where it is the leaders that always go first.
"You know who I am?" he asks the leader, a greying man who seems to be in his fifties, a tiredness in the man's face, lines that drag down to his neck. The leader, who doesn't have much mobility in the way of turning his head, simply blinks. Magnus crouches down in front of the man, tilting his head to the side, keeping his expression level. "I'm the guy who never misses."
That is an accolade he doesn't award himself, but it sticks, it holds, and Magnus likes it. He takes a shot, and it means a dead loyalist on the other end of the barrel. The orphanage held just children, the caretakers all killed earlier in the week by the same group of ten out before him. He hates them all, every single one of them. Targeting children…
"I see the fear in your eyes," Magnus says, eyes appraising over their captives. "I see them in all of yours, and you know what that tells me?" he leans into the leader's space, right to his ear. He could bite it off if he wanted to, show some savagery. "It shows me that you aren't a real man, especially allowing your legion to do what they did."
He volunteers to write the log for the day when his lieutenant can't through all the tears. Children shackled to their beds, burned alive while the bedding goes up in flames. One had been… well, Magnus can't finish the thought, simply using the acronym of SA'd in the log. She had been thirteen, from the records they find still intact on the second floor.
"You disgust me," Magnus says, and then, instead of pulling out a pistol and shooting the man straight in the head, he goes for the knife at his belt. He doesn't let the leader try to defend himself for an action that is impossible to defend. The soldier slices through the man's throat, closing his eyes and relishing the sound of choking, or the splatter of scarlet that dots his gloves while he holds the man's head up, letting the spray get on those of either Peacekeeper by his side. "You all disgust me! Doing that to those who couldn't help themselves! And now you're going to get fates worse than they did!"
He does that for each man, except the last, the one who proudly – like a fucking idiot, honestly – admits to the crime, admits to what there'll be no jury or trial for, and Magnus slices slow, as if he is cutting a pizza, or a good ribeye down to the bone.
Magnus screams, a terrified yell rippling out of his body as he pushes himself away from the sight of the dead man, of the ten lives he killed, fathers perhaps, with children who won't ever see their parent on Christmas day again, widowed women who promise they'll never find another man for their beds.
"No!" Magnus shouts, squeezing his eyes shut, digging his fingers into his nose, pinching, tearing. "No! I didn't- I did what I had to do!"
The war follows him like skunk spray, clinging to his clothes and tearing them, causing everyone he ever knew to run away as if he were a lepper. How is he supposed to face his mom and younger siblings at the dinner table over buttered rolls, or not vomit when he looks down at the steak his mother cooks for them, since she got a raise at work?
How is he supposed to return to any form of normal ever again?
"Leave me alone!" Magnus yells into the darkness, tears pouring down his face. The shadows morph again, into the men he's killed, into every soul he's ever seen perish in front of him, whether it his fault or not. Pierce Alversway waves, eyes plucked out of his skull, fourteen different arrows sticking out of his heart. Sylvan Adello, who he let die on his watch, with a gaping hole in his side, spilling out offal in a steady stream. There is Diana Kratovska, her body covered in a thick layer of black, but she isn't smiling. She is glaring at him, words she'll never say left on her tongue in a billowing cloud of smoke. "I left you all behind!" he continues to screech. "I left you in Two! I killed you all, I buried you!"
The boy from Two grabs his bow, wrenching arrows out of the quiver, holding them in his grasp, letting them fall down onto the ground, he doesn't care where they go. One of them slices down across his thigh, briefly, but he doesn't acknowledge the pain, he doesn't truly feel the small trickle of copper that taints his shoelaces.
He releases arrow after arrow after arrow into the night. "I did what I was told to do!" Magnus pleads, his throat raspy. "I don't deserve this! I don't deserve this!" he shouts again. "All I ever wanted to do was save my country! Save my people!"
Magnus shoots his last arrow, his hand coming up empty when he reaches down into his quiver. He flings the bow away in disgust, hoping to hit the shadow monsters in the face, but they just stand there, silently. Judging him and every decision he's ever made, even as Magnus rushes behind a tree to get away from the stares.
All of his supplies are left behind him, but he doesn't care. "Leave me alone…" he rasps over and over, as he climbs up high, hands developing blisters as he grips the branches harder, hoisting himself until he can no longer see the ground clearly.
"I did what I had to do…" Magnus whispers, as he manages to find a branch sturdy enough for him, to wait and hold out the night. "I don't regret anything…" Magnus hugs his knees close to his chest, pressing his head into his thighs, almost about to start rocking back and forth. "No one can blame me… no one can blame me."
Perhaps no one could blame Magnus for what he's done, he's not quite sure.
He blames himself; he blames Panem, he blames his parents, he blames the army… he blames the lieutenant from One with his cotton candy cigarettes.
Magnus Winterthorn coops himself up and tree, waiting for the memories to pass, for the guilt to wash away, waiting for the right moment to go down and retrieve his bow and the arrows he discarded haphazardly into the night.
They never go away, and up there in the trees, between the branches and leaves, he stays.
Poem Cavalli: District 8 Female P.O.V (16)
Her dreams have become troublesome as of late, Poem rubbing her arms down her side, wiping away the sweat that pools along her body, she biting on her cheek while waiting for the current headache she is experiencing to pass. In the dark, she sees Catalus glance over at her with concern on his face, the feeling exuding off of his eyes. Poem returns the warm gesture with a smile, as she then switches to rubbing her temples tightly. Her parents always called her temporary headaches to be that of a genius's ailments, when one is too intelligent for the world to handle, and it finds a way to punch her back.
"I'd be okay with early menopause," Poem mentions, once at dinner, rather out of the blue as she stirs her iced tea. Potatoes fall of her father's fork, her mother in open conversation about the latest design she's come up with in her study, and both of her parents end up looking at her with their mouths open, disbelief on their faces. "What?" Poem shrugs, uncomfortable with that many eyes on her. "I don't want to be punished by the world is all," and then, as she goes to eat her mixed greens, "Besides, periods blow."
She is sent to bed without the rest of the food for such caustic talk at dinner, Poem rolling her eyes even then, in the arena, thinking of the memory that couldn't have been more than just a few weeks ago, truthfully, before all of this… Poem tastes the word like a drop of acid on her tongue as she examines the this in front of her, it being a hill up in the fishing village.
Catalus prefers walking on latitudes instead of longitudes, mentioning something about the beach of obsidian that he hasn't gotten to look at yet. Poem freezes in their walk at the mention of the place, of the first time she and Niklaus went exploring down that side of the arena, where the ground opens up beneath her, and they're enshrouded in darkness for twelve hours, she already feeling like giving up then.
Then the god, Mimir, sees them, offers them guidance, visions of grandeur and promises of riches ahead… Poem's mouth salivates at the sight of all of the weapons and the provisions, caught up in thinking that supplies equaled safety.
She snorts now, at the thought. "Load of crock," Poem tells herself, as she places the x-ray glasses on for the fifth time in ten minutes, as Catalus reaches the top of the hill before she does. "You at least gonna walk a little slower so I can catch up with you?" she calls out at him, but he simply sticks his tongue out. "Thought so," she laughs.
The ground in front of her is arrayed in a sort of bluish glow, Poem scanning the soil directly ahead to see roots of flowers burrowing into the earth. If there is something that can be seen through, the shade of blue lightens to a more white color, like when she looks directly at a tree. They've gotten unlucky in the meantime, stuck in the decaying forest, no underground spots to hide in.
"Well, I want to find some sort of shelter for the night," Catalus tells her, as Poem makes it to the top of the hill, rather out of breath. They've been walking on and off for hours, stopping every thirty minutes or so to stretch, and on their last rouse, a nap.
"Well, Catalus, hate to break it to you," Poem exhales each word slowly as she catches her breath, hands on her knees, body stooped forward, "We are sorta kinda in the middle of night already."
He sticks his tongue out at her again, tugging his backpack aside to grab his grappling claw. Something about being hungry, to which Poem cracks that perhaps he has cataracts to rhyme with his first name, since every attempt her ally has made at catching food with his claw from the Gamemakers results with empty air and more swearing pocketing the heated space.
"If you think you're such an expert, you give it a whirl," Catalus tells her, eyebrow raised as a challenge.
"I know my limits," she says, waving off the challenge good naturedly. "Not enough to know the limits of your own stupidity, though," Poem adds in her head, biting down on her tongue to stop screaming into her fist while Catalus continues walking. "Volunteering for a death match must top the list of stupid in District Eight."
The plans haven't changed for her, Poem realizing that with there being six tributes left, as Catalus loves outlining whenever they get a break, that she can make it home, she can still see the presidential mansion and talk to First Lady Israel on decking her out in her designs.
She'd have to get pills to help her sleep, though, for the Poem knows no matter how gorgeous her bedroom would become, the walls would not be able to stop the nightmares from clawing at her.
On the night before the Games, after her horrifying and humiliating interview with the Master of Ceremonies, despite having Niklaus right there next to her, with one gentle hand soothing down her scalp, the nightmares began. It starts with someone, anyone really, stabbing her in the chest with a silver blade, face obscured by the shadows that start to lengthen along the room. She awakens in the middle of the night in terror, clutching at where the wounds would be, but somehow, to her surprise and fright, Niklaus is sound asleep next to her, and he doesn't even move.
The nightmares stay the same night after night, Poem waking up multiple times on a few of them, but there are days where she stays cooped up all close without a care in the world, besides the gnawing thought that her death is very plausible, that her demise could come instantaneously. They only began to change when Catalus steps in the picture.
At first they're only of Niklaus, she dreaming of holding him tight, surrounded by fabric of her own in a workshop she'd consider to be nothing less than magical, waves of light streaming through amaranthine windows, covering her lover in a royal glow. Until the windows shatter, and pieces of glass find her lover's throat, Niklaus crumbling to his knees, she simply screaming, for blood is slippery, and the glass will cut her if she tries saving his life.
It is Niklaus dying over and over again as she sleeps, but it is news to Poem that she speaks in her sleep, and no matter how often she begs him to give her an answer, he doesn't tell her anything. He looks at her, flashes a sad smile, and then turns his head away, a telling look in his eyes, but still, the words do not come. She doesn't have it in her to beat it out of him, for what good would it bring her?
Orion is in the dream she has just a few hours ago, he cackling even as Poem stabs him in the throat over and over and over, cussing at him for stealing her future, stealing the man who showed her that there are needles more powerful than one that sews. Catalus is in the same nightmare, cheering her on, egging her on, saying he deserves it… Niklaus is back in the nightmare too, but he's pleading with her.
Telling her to stop.
Poem doesn't stop, even when she awakes, without a sound breaking free this time, Catalus sitting up against a tree, face at an impasse before they start their journey once more.
"Hey, what about that place?" Catalus says, coming to a halt, Poem walking into his outstretched arm, it hitting her in the face. "I think I see a roof out over that tree."
"Ouch," Poem grumbles, rubbing at her face. She tightens the grip on her knife, taking the glasses off, for all the good they've been doing. The girl follows her ally's arm, looking up some, past a treetop, to see wooden beams glowing serenely in the moonlit night. "I mean…" she drawls off the sentence, scratching her neck. "What if someone is already there? We haven't seen anyone all day, Catalus."
It bothers her more than she wants it to, the fact that they haven't seen anyone all day. As if the Gamemakers were intentionally turning everyone away, trying to find new ways to block them off from getting into contact with a foe. Not that Poem has anyone on a hitlist of any kind, the ones she did are dead, and she's not sure if Camilla Rodriguez deserves to die anymore.
"Well," Catalus says, cracking his neck, Poem wincing at the disgusting noise. "Then that means we have to come prepared," and he tightens the grip on his sword.
She latches onto his arm, mindful of the knowing look that spreads on his face, his mouth half tilted up in a smirk. Poem thinks back to the argument the two had in the afternoon, seeing Jasper's face light up the sky, about the end, the end that has consumed her every waking second. It is a wonderful time to be alive, she snorts again, sardonically. Plagued by fear of the near future when she's awake and plagued by the regrets she's lived with when she's asleep.
Catalus cuts away some brush in between their path, the two of them inching closer and closer to the building that is revealed by each step they take. The two crouch down low to the ground when they round up the very top of the hill, Poem hearing the soft sound of trickling water… another brooklet or river, perhaps.
They stay still for a few minutes, the only noise occupying their space being their breathing, Catalus coughing once or twice.
"It… it looks clear," Catalus forms his opinion after another moment of surveillance, where there hasn't been a single soul walking around, or going to get water from the nearby water source, or, well, zero signs of life. "C'mon, let's camp here for tonight."
He leads her by the hand, a protest bubbling on Poem's lips as they approach. She realizes it is a hut by the way the building is shaped when they come up to it, and though the complete lack of light makes it hard to see, Poem can tell that there is no one there, just getting the feeling along the top of her arms.
Catalus stops in the doorway, frowning. "You smell that?" he asks, looking at her.
Poem halts, likewise, sniffing the air at his behest. A sickly sweet smell, one that makes her gag, she turning her head to the side to hack up a lung. "Smoke!" she exclaims, Poem dry heaving once more. Living in District Eight is a constant battle between her perfumes from the Cavalli collection, one of her father's most prized possessions, and the smell of plastic and fumes that radiate from Eight's clouded, stormy, sordid skies above their heads. A nastiness that Poem used to despise, and even though the smell still makes her eyes water, she longs for it; she longs for the vistas overlooking the crappy little home with smokestacks and factories, and District Eight's shoddy homes.
She never believed she'd ever miss it, that the Capitol would house her forever and ever.
Catalus steps into the hut, not getting very far before he pauses again, beckoning Poem forward. "Whoa…" he whispers, in amazement, lifting his head up. "You're gonna want to take a look at this."
Poem frowns, placing her knife back by her side, as she matches her ally's side. It is only a few steps in when she sees it, what causes his reaction. "Wow…" she whispers, mirroring the tone in Catalus's voice. The other half of the hut, the side that neither of them saw while climbing up the hill, is gone. Completely eradicated, as if there had been nothing there in the first place.
In its place, dark scorch marks line the grass, Poem seeing the little, tiny stream just beyond where she figured the hut would've ended. From her entire time spent in the village, when had only been a few days – Catalus claims he and Diana and Magnus stayed in the section for the entire duration they were an alliance – she cannot recall half-finished huts, the Gamemaker team heralded by the vice president having all their designs completed.
The two of them look up, Poem seeing that the rafters only go so high into the air before they're cut off, wooden beams ending abruptly, jagged bits sticking out. The ground beneath them crunches under the soles of their boots, Catalus going to then crouch down at where the floor ends.
He runs his hand along the surface of the cabin, rubbing whatever comes on his hand when he lifts it back up to show Poem, his skin covered in a light, pale covering.
"It's ash…" he whispers, furrowing his brow together.
Poem looks around the hut in confusion. "Catalus…" she drawls out his name, fear creeping up into her throat. "What- what happened here, you think? What… do you think Surt did this? Or-" she doesn't want to finish the statement, but she locks eyes with him anyways, and he shudders visibly. "Did one of the other tributes?"
Catalus opens his mouth to respond, but he doesn't get the chance to before a glorious, and Poem does mean glorious, trumpet sound cuts him off, the noise reverberating around the arena. Poem jumps in place, Catalus rushing immediately to her side, sword drawn.
The two of them look up, seeing the Panemian logo shine bright in the sky, the glimpse of the flag causing Poem to swallow heavily, bitterness flooding down her throat. To think… to think she loved where the logo came from, that she wanted to shake their hands more than anything.
"You still do, Poem," she reminds herself, almost scathingly in a mocking form. "Don't forget your real aspirations, girl."
Catalus and Poem wait on bated breath, her heart beating in her chest like a snare drum that causes her skin to thrum under her hands, she placing her fingers against her skin to quell the beat.
"Congratulations, tributes!" Cain Passionia's voice comes from around them, Poem glancing over at Catalus to see that his face is anything but happy about hearing the man. "To the final six of you that are alive, I say that you have fought well up until now. I come to you for just one announcement that I figure you all are privy to," and there's a pause, as Catalus takes a step forward towards the voice, Poem gripping onto his hand. "At the cornucopia plain where you all began your journey, at noon, no earlier, no later, there'll be a feast," Poem's blood goes cold in her arms, she tightening her grip on Catalus's hand to keep the warmth close by. "Each tribute will have one bag with your district number on it, with supplies. It could be food, shelter, weapons…" a dancing pause, Poem hearing the happiness in the vice president's voice. "It is a chance to see old faces, perhaps thin down the competition. Not attending this occasion is not an option. This will not be the only announcement, just to ensure you don't forget. That'll be all."
A loud trumpet sounds him out, and Poem's head is spinning.
Without hesitation, Catalus turns to her, his mouth set in a firm line. "Still want to avoid the topic of what we're gonna do in the future now?" he asks.
No, Poem figures, in her head. No reason to now, with the future thrust into her hands whether she likes it or not.
Porscha Watanabe: District 6 Female P.O.V (16)
The announcement of what'll happen at noon sends Porscha into a frenzy. It is the only word she can think of, Porscha having to stop her walk to catch her breath, feeling her lungs expand so much that they could pop under pressure like a balloon. She doesn't want to fight; she's tired of fighting, of swinging a weapon at someone's head and hoping it bursts with blood and gore and guts and that a hallmark cannon fires at the end of it. Porscha has a hard time believing she's done what she's done over the last ten days and nights in the arena, from watching blood peel off of her club with Kileigh's scalp attached to one end or swinging enragedly at Portia for being a massive bitch.
A Watanabe is a staple to the community, and all Porscha feels anymore is that she is a colossal joke to those who used to know her. Her father's name doesn't help the situation anymore, but she's used to dancing off the barbed stares and the harsh jokes tossed her way whenever she'd be out in public. She doesn't expect having to defend herself, like the night before the reapings at the market place. Porscha forgets about him, and the boy's ugly face, but she can't forget his skull, caved in, smashed to bits, pieces of brain matter looking like cubed steak if she glances hard enough.
Porscha, in her frenzy, which is her just running, as she's never been known to stop and face her problems head on, where she never confronts her father beyond the first time he slaps her across the face, comes to a collection of trees. She throws her supplies off of her body, dropping her weapons to the ground, body screaming in protest from the wounds suffered yesterday in the fight with the fire god.
She does the only thing she can think of, to bat away the thoughts in her head. Porscha dances, twisting her form under the moon, under the cover of shade brought by the branches that tangle above her head.
The girl from Six extends a leg into second position, bowing her head down, flexibility allowing her to stretch to where her hair brushes up against her knee. She rises back up to a standing position, extending her leg out into an arabesque, rising on the tips of her toes. It is a freeze frame moment, Porscha expecting the sky to flash as if a camera were to take her picture then. She keeps the position for a few seconds, her body aching, but she holds the pose.
"Never fear the unknown," she whispers to herself, as Porscha then unwinds herself into a leap, a glissade over an upturned rock. She has to stop her body from colliding with a tree, coming to a halt. As her hands are pressed into the bark, she arches her back, letting her hands outstretch to the sky. She pictures Kai'sa out there, up in the stars, dancing with her, twirling until she is nauseous, wherever she is.
Porscha lands on her back in the leaves, pointing and arching her feet in the air. Aimless movement, perhaps, but not to her. Each kick, each lift of the leg, as she crooks her right into a back attitude turn, each movement in poetry down her limbs. The anger that she feels for being locked in a dome designed by men with nothing better to do with their time… it all recedes to her fingertips.
She does a pirouette into the dark, chaining a few a la secondes in a sequence, until Porscha then finishes the movement with another kick, thigh nearly hitting herself in the face. The girl makes a running start, doing another leap over a rock, before landing on her knees, skidding into the dirt. She thrusts her hands behind her, head preened back, a smile on her face.
She dances to applause. She can dance to silence; Porscha Watanabe knows only one rule when on the stage, and that is to fill every inch of space with your body, to never let the spotlight land on someone else.
Porscha gets to her feet, going to grab her supplies, sweat starting to drip off of her face. As her hands lace the straps of her backpack, heart pounding in her chest, her happiness is disturbed.
"Looks like someone found a new form of stress release…" comes a male voice behind her, from above. Porscha screams, righting herself immediately, locking her knees together. She looks up above her, wildly, eyes landing squarely on that of Magnus Winterthorn peering at her in the bleak. Her body is tense, as she reaches down for the weapons near her. "No!" the boy shouts, he leaning forward, almost falling out of the tree. "Please… just…" Magnus pauses, licking his lips, sighing heavily. "Please, don't run off. I- I don't want to…"
A flush of color rises to Porscha's cheeks, she wiping sweat out of her eyes. Performing for a live audience is one thing. Performing for strangers is different, except this stranger has been selected to kill her. She could be staring at her killer in the face, where she let her guard down, and Porscha is so intertwined in her own movement, lost in a world of mirrors and ballet slippers, that she doesn't know his presence.
"You- you shouldn't have seen that," she stutters, body still locked up and tense.
Magnus smiles, she able to see the glimmer of his teeth in the dark. "I think you're very good, Porscha," he says, and the blush returns to her face. "I don't know anything about dance, but…" another pause, as Magnus cracks his knuckles. "I like what I saw. You're talented."
"Thank you…" Porscha says, looking away from him. She knows she isn't in any danger, Diana is gone, Catalus is with Poem, and the boy from Two is on his lonesome, nothing about his attitude suggesting ferociousness or threat of any kind.
"Care to join me up here?" Magnus asks, beckoning her up with a wave of his hand. "I've got plenty of room, and I can't sleep."
Every instinct in Porscha is screaming at her to run away, to go find another spot to dance, another spot to express her creativity, for outside eyes are forbidden to see what lays in an artist's soul. She never let her father look in at her practices, not that he'd care, but she forbids it all the same.
She still finds herself reaching up into the tree, hoisting herself up by her upper body strength. Porscha keeps her bag hoisted over her shoulder, placing her cudgel in it as her body strains to make it up to where Magnus is. There is a large branch, more like a log, for her to rest, and when she finally makes it, out of breath for real, the thrill and excitement from her performance down below flushes down to her toes, she feeling the sparks cause her feet to twitch.
"Most of the girls I know aren't able to climb trees," Magnus says, a hint of amazement on his voice. Sexist prick. "But you look strong, so kudos," he claps his hands, Porscha thrown off by the action, as well as his total dick comment.
"In dance, you're always lifting. I had to lift other girls a lot, and on occasion, guys too," Porscha says, unzipping her backpack to retrieve her weapon. In case she needs it, but since she's already climbed into the tree, what good will this do her now? She pauses her speech, looking away so she doesn't have to glance at his face, with whatever expression he'd have done up to mock her. "You- you've been up here long?" she asks.
"A few hours," Magnus shrugs, Porscha seeing he has something tightly pressed against his chest, it almost invisible to get a glimpse at in the dark, but she knows there is something there because of how his hands are elevated up off of his body. "Like I said, can't sleep."
She nods her head soundlessly. Kai'sa had trouble sleeping too, Porscha helpless at the nights while she watched her ally twist and turn, unsure how to comfort her when she'd wake up clawing at her body. Porscha lets her nightmares consume her whenever one would come up, usually of her mother crawling on her hands and knees into her bedroom to kill her.
"Thinking about what we're all so graciously invited to in the morning?" Porscha barks a harsh laughter at the language she uses. Declining to attend is not an option, were the vice president's words. Porscha is unsure of what she'd ever even need from the Capitol now, unless they had the power to resurrect the dead, which she knows is not plausible. All she wants is freedom, to escape, but she figures that won't happen either.
Magnus shakes his head, frowning. "I debated not even going," Porscha appraises him with surprise, lifting her brow. "I- I'm tired of playing this game that they're making us do," he looks at her in the dark, she startled by the, well, the only word Porscha can use is pain. The pain in his eyes, reflected by the tears streaming down his face. "I thought I'd get used to seeing violence being in the war, but-" he cuts himself off, scoffing. "Like usual, I was wrong."
"I'm used to having to play games all my life," Porscha comments, without even having to think of her response. Any chance she gets to dunk on the life she used to come from. Magnus looks over at her, mimicking the same expression of a risen brow. "I used to not like dancing," she admits, rubbing a hand down her pant leg, scratching at the underside of her palm. "He made me do it since he didn't want to watch over a little girl with nothing better to do than ruin her father's business meetings…" she scoffs as well, rolling her eyes. "Business meetings on burning the country down."
Magnus doesn't speak at first, simply letting the words process in his head, Porscha able to tell how, even in the dark of night, she sees his eyes shift from a more wounded look to that of a sullen anger. Not exactly a rage, unlike what Porscha is used to feeling day by day. "Your dad," he says, and the words hold a weight to them unlike what she's heard before, "Killed so many-"
"You can spare me the lecture, Winterthorn," Porscha cuts him off, interrupting Magnus with the raise of a hand. The words bulk up in his throat, he stuttering over whatever insults he wishes to get out, for she's heard them all. "My father and I don't share the same viewpoint on Panem. He thinks himself a hero, and I think he's a murderer…" she lowers her voice, flicking dirt out of her nails, dusting off her knees. "Like me…" Porscha adds, but in a whisper, a whisper that Magnus wouldn't be able to hear even if he had been sitting directly atop her.
"I'm sorry," Magnus says, but she has no idea why he's apologizing. It isn't as if- she shakes her head, stopping the thought. All of this mulling is pointless, the past is something she can't change, it'd futile to try.
"I always wondered what it'd be like if I had different parents," Porscha connects her gaze with his. "My mom… well, to put it lightly, died in childbirth with me, and my father, Datsun," she spits his name with the venom of a thousand rattlesnakes, hoping even now, far away from her, some of the venom would land on his face and choke the life out of his heart. "Well, it's why I flock to dance as much as I do," Porscha rubs a hand over her mouth. "If I make it home, that won't change. Even with what I've done," she says.
Another pause, where there's a whistle of wind, Porscha leaning her head back against the tree trunk.
"What have you done, Porscha?" Magnus asks, barely above a whisper. "You kill anyone here?"
She lifts her head off of the tree. "You kill anyone?" Porscha retorts back. She expects that he'd want to talk of what he's done. All the soldiers she's ever run into back home did, proud to talk of which rebel 'scum' they discarded into shallow ditches.
"I asked you first, Watanabe," Magnus snipes at her, without a second to let her words land.
Porscha crosses her arms, cudgel pressing against her clavicle. One could apply pressure to it and cause a snap if they wanted. If she wanted to, she could injure herself. "Two…" she whispers, bulking her tongue on both sides of her mouth, swapping sides. She doesn't connect her gaze with Magnus because she knows, no matter what he's done, there'll be judgement in his stare. "A few days ago, it was Portia…"
"You did all of us a favor," Magnus interjects, but he stops talking when she flashes him a glare in the dark.
Favor or not, Porscha knows that the moment will be seared into her brain forever. The blade into the girl's heart, lowering her to the ground and letting the girl, who caused so much recent, so much fresh pain to radiate in her soul, take her last breath. "Porscha and her alliance killed Kai'sa the day before I killed her. She must've found me sleeping and thought I was easy prey, but she decided to laugh before…" Porscha stops, swallowing heavily.
"And who else?"
"Day three, I think," she starts, voice hoarse. "Kileigh Katsaras," Porscha enunciates the deceased girl from Five's name, as if she were breathing life into her. Magnus bristles in his spot, but she pays him no mind. "Smattered her head in with… this," she points to the weapon snug against her body. "All because of what she did to Pierce," she squeezes her eyes shut, rasping out the next statement. "For a girl who claimed to be non-violent, she… she…"
"What, Porscha?" Magnus asks, and Porscha can tell that he's leaning forward by the shift of his body, the sound of metal scraping into the tree.
"Kileigh thought that Pierce killed Zachary during the beginning of the Games," Porscha gets the words out, spilling off of her tongue like hot sauce, burning her throat with rise and fall of her mouth. "So she hunted him down, like an animal. Kai'sa and I found him with his eyes carved out of his head, arrows in his heart…" Tears trickle down her face at the memory, it also seared into her brain, Kileigh's demise tattooed in black ink to the underside of her eyes. "So when I found her, even though she swore she didn't do it, I caved her skull in cause all I could think about was her brutality!" Porscha gasps, liquid fire coursing through her lungs as she takes a deep breath.
In the dark, she sees Magnus shift something that must be resting up against his shoulder down to his right leg, the side of his body that she can't see. "I'm sorry, Porscha." Genuine sorrow in his voice, as far as she's aware.
She sniffles, wiping at her nose, opening her eyes. She's cried enough tears, to where Porscha is sick of sadness. "What about you? Surely someone with your fighting experience, you've caused a few cannons."
Magnus laughs modestly. "Despite what my training score and background says, the answer is… well, no, I haven't," he admits, Porscha about to call out bullshit, but she sees the shame on his face. "Diana killed Cecelia during the start of the games, and Ramses a few days ago. She made Catalus end Sylvan just the day before that…" he rubs at his jaw. "And I've witnessed all of it."
"Diana," Porscha speaks the girl's name, it foreign on her tongue. "How'd she die?"
"District Three found us," Magnus says, his tone quiet, eyes unfocused, gaze looking at the beyond. "She had suffered a nasty fall while we were exploring a cave and… I… I wasn't enough," he trails off, looking down at his hands.
Porscha frowns, a twinge of guilt twanging her heart like a stringed instrument. She doesn't expect this out of him. "Well, Magnus, come tomorrow… you know that if you want to get out of here alive, you're going to have to be enough. Not for Diana anymore, but for yourself," she says, leaning forward, and if she could press a hand on his shoulder, Porscha would.
Magnus sniffles as well, flashing her a soft smile. "Thanks, Porscha," and then, as they let the quiet settle over them in the trees, he looks over at her, a glisten in his eyes. "Porscha, can- and I know this is absolutely silly, but tomorrow, when it comes time," she looks at him, eyebrows raised. "Let's ally together, just for the feast. I'd have your back if you've got mine."
Just like she doesn't believe she would've found herself dancing in the dark, Porscha doesn't expect to find herself up in a tree speaking to someone, spilling her guts out to who should be an enemy. Just like how she doesn't expect to be boarding up her house, preparing for the storm, with the answer that comes out of her mouth.
"Sure, Magnus," she says, grinning, reaching out this time, to shake his hand. "Allies."
The calm before the storm has come and passed, and what lies ahead is a tidal wave of pain and blood and sacrifice… and Porscha Watanabe wants to have her head above water when the tide rushes in.
The night goes on, and the final six live another day.
Tribute List (Boy - Girl)
District 1: Catalus Drachma [Submitted by Manny Siliezar]
District 2: Magnus Winterthorn [Submitted by Audmirable]
District 3: Vesuvia Vocanova [Submitted by Platrium]
District 6: Porscha Watanabe [Submitted by thorne98]
District 8: Poem Cavalli [Submitted by LordShiro]
District 9: Camilla Rodriguez [Submitted by Reign of Winter]
…
ALLIANCE LIST
Privileged at Birth: Catalus Drachma (D1M), Poem Cavalli (D8F)
Open Hearts, Open Wounds: Magnus Winterthorn (D2M), Porscha Watanabe (D6F)
Loners: Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F), Camilla Rodriguez (D9F)
…
Kill Leaderboard:
Catalus Drachma (D1M): I
Magnus Winterthorn (D2M): I
Portia Beninblade (D2F): I
Jasper Overheart (D3M): I
Vesuvia Vocanova (D3F): II
Orion Maythorpe (D4M): I
Diana Kratovska (D4F): II
Porscha Watanabe (D6F): II
Poem Cavalli (D8F): I
Gemini Lennox (D9M): I
Camilla Rodriguez (D9F): I
Nokomis Yanaba (D10F): I
Cassiopeia Grey (D11F): I
Arena/Mutts: II
So, I will really try to keep this brief since the chapter length far surpassed what I thought it would. That was Chapter #36: Calm Before the Storm. I had this written from September 1st to the 3rd, and held in stockpile for posting on the 10th. Chapter #37, detailing our final six in Arena Day Eleven, called A Golden Feast of Demise, at the time of posting this chapter, has already been written and will be posted either late Sunday night or early Monday morning on September 12th/13th, to then have Liberty's arena finale that following weekend on September 17th or 18th. I hope ya'lls potentially last look at these kiddos has been fun, cause I sure have enjoyed them as we go onto the finale. New alliance has been formed, and there's a feast coming, and your children are scheduled to attend.
Reviewing is lovely, as I'd appreciate ya'lls thoughts. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, thanks for your patience, and I can't wait to show you #37, as it is a load of fun. I love you all so much! Bye!
~ Paradigm