Song Suggestion: X Ambassadors, Jamie N Commons- "Jungle"

Poison Dipped Arrows

Cato became despondent after his show of power. He sat on the sidelines, refusing to participate. He had no mentor to goad him into trying, and even if he had one, the mentor would be better off keeping his mouth shut with the foul mood he was giving off.

Throughout the training, the tributes fell into a routine; mainly, they kept away from each other. Gale stuck by her side, despite her hesitancy on keeping him there. Other than that, she gravitated to the easier work stations, avoiding the weights and weapons like Brutus told her.

She also avoided Cato, but he did not try and seek her out anymore. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Before she knew it, training ended and the next step in the games commenced:

The scoring from the Gamemakers.

Later in the Week

Prim's palms began to sweat as she walked through the door. She tried not to be nervous, but she never liked to be the center of attention, especially when it counted towards something that mattered.

The Gamemakers lined the upper section of the room. Half of them sat with legs crossed and a small glass of wine gripped by the stem. The looked remarkably similar: dark suits, short hair, calculating eyes. They measured and valued with a glance.

The other half hovered around a table overflowing with colorful food. The scent made her mouth water. She refused to eat today, despite Brutus' overbearing orders. She was afraid it would not stay down, but it also kept her mind sharp and focused, helped her to remember the danger of the people staring down at her.

They held her life in their hands. The score went a long way with sponsors. Lose sponsors, lose popularity, and lose your life. It was a tried and true formula, played out multiple times in front of audiences. The least valuable players were used as fodder for the new capitol-invented weapons: fireballs shooting from nowhere, mutated animals, staged natural disasters. Nothing was out of the possibility. However, a favorite was less likely to die from random acts. They wanted the best and most dramatic scenes to be played out between the most dynamic characters.

Prim walked softly forward. A bow was laid out for her. She picked it up, noticing it was very similar to the one she practiced with in the Club with Lorcan.

She ran her fingers over the curved limbs of the bow. Then she picked an arrow up by its shaftand nocked it into place. She walked in front of the target, pulling the bow into position.

After steadying herself, she glanced up at the crowd above her. Most of the Gamemakers had stopped what they were doing and joined their comrades that were watching.

Breathe, Prim reminded herself of the steps, determined not to fail. Focus on the target, imagine the point of entry, forget your doubts. She head Brutus and Gale and Lorcan in her head, the countless hours they spent trying to mold her into Katniss.

Prim released the arrow. The energy transferred into enough velocity to whiz through the air. Prim almost didn't want to look, but had to. The arrow stuck out of the dummy. It hit close to the center of the target, but it did not strike as true as it could have.

Average and ordinary. Just like she thought she would be, just like she had always been.

Prim glanced up at the crowd. They gave approving nods and murmured amongst themselves, but she could tell they were underwhelmed. Prim had several more arrows she could fire, but she knew the only one that mattered was the one that she just fired.

Oh well, she tried to comfort herself, it could have been worse. She could have missed completely.

The Gamemaker that talked to her at Tea Time stared at her as she picked up another arrow. He tilted his head, as if deep in thought, seeing through her and beyond her at the same time. The stare was disconcerting as she pulled back the second arrow and let it loose. The rest of the Gamemakers lost their attention to her, like she predicted, but the dark-haired man sat still as she went through arrow after arrow, each as ordinary as the last.

The sound of breaking glass drew her attention away from her task. Prim turned her head to see commotion at the Gamemakers' table. Several avoxes and Gamemakers fluttered around the dark-haired Gamemaker from tea time. He held his hand out, and it dripped with fresh blood. The wound seeped around shards of glass embedded into his palm. A shattered wine glass lay at his feet.

He did not move or wince or respond to the people around him; he simply continued to stare at Prim, as if imploring something from her. I challenge you, the look told her.

It was if...

He did it on purpose. The realization came quick, and her feet moved quicker. In a few bounds, she neared the staircase, and within just a few more, she scaled to the top, pushing bodies out of the way until she reached her destination.

"I can help," Prim said.

The others turned to her in confusion. The side of his mouth twitched upward, and he held out his hand.

"If you think you can."

"I can," Prim said firmly, finding her footing. If she was comfortable with anything, it was with a wound that needed healing.

She gripped his hand firmly and brought it up for inspection. Several small gashes littered the skin, and small shards of glass still poked up. They would need to be removed. The problem was getting the microscopic shards out of the—

"Release Gamemaker Quintus, tribute," a voice broke her concentration. She turned to see a Capitol doctor. He wore a starched white overcoat, tall and thin, but filled with authority. He held a small leather satchel by his side. Without even looking at her, he was opening the satchel and pulling out medical materials: pain ointment, needle, thread, antiseptic. A strange paste came last. She had seen it once before: it would melt the skin and thread together once everything was sutured.

He glanced sharply up with pale, pointed eyes, set close on his face, resembling a weasel. They pierced her with disdain.

"I am chief practitioner here, working with none other than President Snow himself. I will not have our head Gamemaker operated on by some backwards country child. Now move or I—"

Head Gamemaker? Had she been that obtuse to not notice him before?

"Let the girl work." Quintus cut him off.

"Pardon me," the doctor answered back, obviously unaccustomed to someone talking back, "But the—"

"I said let the girl show me what she can do," he looked at Prim sharply, "That is what I'm here for, correct?"

"If you say so," the doctor answered back slowly.

"I do."

"Very well."

With that Prim returned her concentration to her patient, getting lost in the process, absorbed enough that she forgot the Gamemaker, the doctor, and her future. The only thing that mattered was the cut and the glass and the blood.

Twenty Minutes Later

"All done," Prim tied off the small string into the knot that her mother taught her. After, she dressed the wound with precision.

Prim let go of his hand. Her fingers felt numb and cold without the skin and tendons to hold.

"Your assessment, doctor?" Gamemaker Quintus held out his hand to the beady-eyed doctor. He scrunched up his weasel nose as he scrutinized her work. After, he sneered but he nodded, as if disappointed in what he found.

"Primitive, but effective," he spit out. The word sounded as if he ate slime. "The wound is closed, and you will most likely not get an infection, but still," he cautioned, "there will be scarring. You should have allowed me to do it."

"But why?" The Gamemaker asked with another slight twitch to the side of his lip. "Scars are in fashion."

The other Gamemakers crowded around him with raised eyebrows. They whispered to each other in low tones, looking at her as if adding points to her tally. But still. It didn't raise their assessment to the level of greatness. She probably rated just above poor. Nothing special, just another body to mourn for a moment and forget the next. This was proved by a man with odd features. There was nothing that stuck him out from the crowd except a tenseness of the face, much like Mrs. Manniola, as if his skin had been tugged backwards on his skull. He had zero wrinkles. No smile lines or frown lines, nothing to present emotion.

"Healing is a good skill to have, but it's a reactive defense. She may outlive her competitors, but it will do nothing to save her in the end." His bearing suggested he was second-in-command.

Prim was sure what she was hearing was unusual. Most competitors never heard the assessments and discussions of their trials. To be fair, most competitors never sewed up the head Gamemaker either.

"True," a woman said, "her offense is lacking."

She felt herself slipping. As the rest of the crowd nodded and swayed to the man with the unnatural face, she saw her future falling along with popular opinion.

No, her heart suddenly lurched. No! She would not sit back and let herself slide. She thought of Jace and his smile, of Cato and his swinging sword. She was tired of being a casualty of other people's action; of being a pawn in someone else's game, being slid around by cruel, indifferent whims.

She refused to be a pawn, or a knight, or a queen.

No, it was time she started being a player.

"I have other skills beyond closing a wound."

The crowd had been engrossed in a small debate, but at her voice, they stopped as a collective and looked at her, regaining their interest.

The head Gamemaker's smile tightened around the corners of his mouth. She had surprised him, and it was obvious that it was a rare event.

Thirty Minutes Later

Prim stood before a variety of plants. The foliage jumbled together, the vines and leaves hugging each other.

"This fern plant helps reduce the sting of nettles." She pointed to the plant with soft bristles, "and this one," she held up an orange flowered plant, "Is the blood flower. It works as a heart stimulant, and its sap can induce vomit, when needed."

She went through several others, brushing her fingers along their stems with care. The green was out of place in the clinical setting. The plants seemed to know this. They lost their luster under the faux light, no longer straining towards open sky. The capitol would kill anything natural given time.

She could name them in her sleep.

Catnip, useful in stopping fever and stemming blood flow. Sage, a component in many of her salves made for cuts and burns. Marijuana, a pain reliever. She went on and on: Navajo Tea, Poppy, Alfalfa.

She would have kept going, but the man with the tight features stopped her.

"Well she can cure the shits and reduce pain, but I still stand by what I said."

The spark of courage flared in her, the defiance. In an instant, she knew the feeling was hatred. The quick jump to that emotion surprised her. Maybe Cato was rubbing off on her, but in the end it didn't matter.

The Prim she had become was one that had survived and will continue to.

The Gamemakers wanted more than knowledge of danger. They wanted knowledge of death. They wanted her to prove a threat.

"Garlic," she continued holding the bulbous plant in her fingers, "is also a natural inflammatory." This time when she set down the garlic she picked up a cluster of yellow flowers. "And this," she walked over to her previous station, plucking the bow from the ground where it had been abandoned. After, she picked up an arrow, placing the razor tip against the bright petals, "This is the golden poppy. It's an opioid plant. When used correctly it can reduce anxiety. However," she dropped the flowers in a heap on the floor, "when prepared with care, it produces powerful toxins, which the ancients before the ancients used to incapacitate prey with poison dipped arrows."

She guided the arrow into place, and in one motion raised it, aimed it, and released it. It twirled fast and powerful, funneled by more instinct than judgement. The feathers fluttered by her cheek as it flew past.

This time it struck true.

It silenced the Gamemakers.

Though it didn't matter this time whether she hit the mark or not. That was a bonus. Even the Gamemakers knew it was a kill shot. Regardless of where it hit the victim, it reduced them to a vulnerable, liquid state.

"You see, in the end, knowledge is more deadly than strength,"

She glanced up to see Quintus smile, just for an instant. Hard and cruel. It was not an easy, happy act, but something made of iron and war. His smile resembled a cat's purr, a satisfied, indulgent thing, as if a rat fell right into its paws.

And then he opened his palm and a she saw a flash of silver, so fast it was almost a blur of molten light.

It was a chain with an emblem that matched the one around her neck.

A circle.