A/N: Our last three POVs of training! I'm excited to write out these three and then get onto the more exciting phases of this story like all of you probably are! To wrap up our training, today we'll be visiting the minds of Baron Arbor from Seven, Libby Miles from Six, and Rufus Braunvieh from Ten! After these three, we'll have a chapter with a POV waiting for the Sessions and then the Private Sessions report. After that, the scores, and then onto the interviews and such. This one came out quicker, and I hope you're all ready to end this portion of the story! :D
Happy 50th chapter! Y'all are a true blessing, and I love you all dearly for all the support!
Trigger warnings: Profanity
{Baron's song is "Devil In Me" by Halsey, Libby's song is "Past Lives" by Borns, and Rufus's song is "Haunting" by, you guessed it, Halsey!}
You said I'm
Too much to handle
You said I
Shine too bright
I burnt the candle
Flew too high
I won't take anyone down if I crawl tonight
But I still let everyone down when I change in size
And I went tumbling down trying to reach your height
But I scream too loud when I speak my mind
Baron Arbor, 16
District Seven Male
Oakes hands me my breakfast plate when I sit down. He's been building meals for Ivy and I since we arrived here. The landscape of my platter has been expertly arranged, the landforms plucked for various reasons, by Oakes himself. Protein to help build muscle, fat for energy storage, fruit and vegetables for vitamins, and so on. My head's still swimming in sleepy land, and I drowsily nod my thanks towards my Mentor after he sets down the plate in front of me. Oakes then goes back to the buffet cart, loading up a plate meticulously for Ivy, who sits across the table from me. Once she has a plate in front of her as well, Oakes makes one for himself and sits down next to me. We all began to dig in, and then there's loud clacking as Paula emerges from her room.
Her pretty white-blonde hair is in intentionally messy knots around her head, and she's dressed in some silvery gown that highlights her better features. She's shooting a promo interview today, I guess. She pulls the chair next to Ivy out with a screech and sits down. Razzle is frightened by all of the noise, and she looks up from her plate, loaded with powdered donuts, to quiver and shake her head indignantly at Paula.
"The health nut's still got you at it, eh?" Paula laughs. "I quit his meal plan the second day and ate whatever the fuck I wanted. You feeding my girl your 'careful, precise' food plan? Ivy, don't eat it if you don't want to. It's all a futile waste of time."
"Ignore her," Oakes guffaws. "She followed my meal plans to a T. She's just fiesty because she hates sitting in a chair for four hours with Fabula, under the bright lights with makeup coating her entire face."
"Stupid old man," Paula murmurs in a somehow affectionate manner, and once again I am perplexed by their relationship. Everyone I knew back home was straightforward. Either they liked me, or they didn't. That's probably because of my background, but still. I'm not the greatest at dissecting all of these emotional strands and strings to understand people's true meanings and the like, and that's probably why I'm still flying solo on the third day of training.
I eat my breakfast rather quietly, keeping my eyes locked on the plate as I gradually clear it. No one pays me much attention; Razzle is busy trying to brush the powdered sugar off of her face without ruining her makeup. Paula and Ivy are sniping retorts back and forth like a duo of hacking hyenas, and Oakes is eating himseifl while pensively sketching out the meal plan for the next couple of days on a napkin. I close my eyes and shovel the last bits of scrambled eggs into my mouth, savoring the taste and wishing, not for the first time, that I could be back in my Grandma Circe's homey little cabin, the smells of spices and wood smoke clogging my nostrils. I'm transported to toes curling in springy moss, wind chimes and glass vials tinkling in the wind, and the soft cadence of my grandmother's lullaby.
Among the tall hillocks, between the green trees, my love lies in wait, to swaddle thee. Among the tall hillocks, above the dove's rook, my love lies in wait, to rush like a brook. Among the tall hillocks, around the sound bend, my loves lies in wait, to have a hand to lend.
"What are you humming?" Razzle asks after she's dabbed away the powdered sugar from her too-bony-for-her-age face.
"An old song from Seven that my grandmother used to sing," I mutter, staring at my plate.
"Sing it again, Baron," Oakes murmurs. "I recognize it."
"I do too," Ivy inserts. "There's more verses, aren't there?"
"It's called The Hillock's Lullaby," I whisper.
"My mother used to sing that to me," Paula grunts.
And then, before I know it, everyone at the table is singing The Hillock's Lullaby, even Razzle. Despite her looks, she is pretty smart, and she really does love Seven's culture for whatever reason. None of our voices are that good, but our soft spoken verses mingle together to form something rather magical. By the end, Razzle's wiping tears from her eyes, and the small smile on Paula's face is the most genuine one I've ever seen.
Then Oakes looks at his watch, and swears. "Holy shit. Training started five minutes ago."
It's a clattering rush as we throw down our utensils, grab our shoes, and make a mad dash for the elevator. Paula is muttering mindlessly about being late for her interview, while Ivy and I want to make the most of our final hours of training. Razzle starts freaking because we're all freaking, and Oakes shouts for us to move quickly as the doors slide shut. The elevator swoops towards the basement. It stops at the ground level to let off a breathless Paula, and then goes down another floor to drop Ivy and I off at the training center. My District partner jogs off to find her allies, leaving me standing there for a moment.
"Kick it into gear, Baron," I growl to myself as I march into the Training Center. "The Coven's depending on you to not make a further fool out of them."
I stomp out into the Training Center and head immediately for hatchets and axes, where no one currently is. I need to focus in now, hone my skills in these last few precious hours. I know what I'll be showing the Gamemakers now due to Oakes's careful planning, and now I just have to refine the skills I've chosen in these last minutes to make sure I'm practicing them in front of the Gamemakers to the very best of my ability. The trainer just nods when I approach; I've been spending a lot of time here as late, and he doesn't even need to acknowledge or help me as I grab a hatchet and take my stance against a mannequin.
As I hack and splice, The Hillock's Lullaby echoes through my head, reverberating off of the crannies in my head that I didn't even know existed. Distant memories of my earlier childhood surface, and strange scents fill my nostrils, broken, unintelligible words flooding my ears. It's almost like a vision, but nothing really happens. I just keep dicing with the hatchet as the weird phenomenon in my brain continues on for a little before abruptly stopping. One last scene fills my head, however.
Hope is eternal, my grandmother whispers as she helps me stir soup in a mottled bronze pot. Never give up, my sapling.
"I don't plan to, gramma," I hiss as I split open the head of the mannequin with my hatchet. I don't plan on giving up one ounce.
Past lives couldn't ever hold me down
Lost love is sweeter when it's finally found
I've got the strangest feeling
This isn't our first time around
Past lives couldn't ever come between us
Some time the dreamers finally wake up
Don't wake me I'm not dreaming
Don't wake me I'm not dreaming
Libby Miles, 16
District Six Female
I keep looking at the little paper slip Calla gave me. I glance back up at the clock hanging above the entrance to the lunch room; there's around three hours and fifteen minutes left. The slip says that I should go to Dr. Endell's office at three hours remaining in the session. I vehemently refused when Calla put the slip next to my plate at breakfast this morning. I don't need some doctor prodding and poking me and telling me that I'm certifiably insane. I've already covered all of those bases on my own. Then Calla got snappy and told me that I need to figure out what's wrong with my head so I can deal with it and have a chance in the arena, along with a few expletives sprinkled in that statement that I decided to omit of course. And I can't disagree with that.
There's always been a small part of me that's been afraid of doctors. It's just an inherent thing inside of me; the too clean rooms with rubbery gloves and sterile medical instruments. The fluorescent lights bearing down and the swish of the white lab coat, the squeak of the cushy tennis shoes. It also doesn't help that one of the few shows transmitted to Six is a horror series about doctors murdering patients. Also, when I was still on dirty morphling, my parents thought I was ill with something and wanted to take me to the doctor. I rebelled for as long as I could, and when they finally took me, the doctor did a blood test and told them I was addicted. I'll never forget my mother's eyes, boring into my soul as she choked back betrayed-feeling tears.
So I have an intolerance for doctor's visits. I'm already picturing Dr. Endell in my head. He'll have a snaggle tooth and a bad limp, and he'll have a fondness for horn rimmed glasses and nose piercings. His hair will probably be some crazy shade of pink, and he'll be wearing contacts that make his eyes yellow or purple, depending on his mood. He enjoys wearing corduroys and windbreakers with nothing underneath, all in various shades of blood red. Oh, and he wears periwinkle colored sandals that break so often that he's just taped them onto his feet with duct tape. The hilarious depiction distracts me from the reality of everything for a few moments. I've totally abandoned trying to actually be productive at my current station, edible plants, just sitting among the heaps of models and looking over them absently while Ambassa glares down at me with discontent towards me. She clicks over and taps me on the shoulder, her dark skin contrasting against my light.
"Six? There's a girl who wants to practice here, and all the slots are full. You don't seem to be doing much. Mind giving up your spot?"
What a brat. Punch her! Anaya squeals. I suppress her. She hasn't be bothering me much this morning since my nerves for the doctor's visit have been setting me on edge enough, but she can't resist making some comments even in burdensome moments like these. I shake off her words and reply.
"Sure," I murmur, glancing up at the clock. Two minutes until there's only three hours left of training. Code for time to go, and to move as fast as possible!
I rise to my feet and jog across the gym towards the exit into one of the hallways adjacent to the training center, the one Calla told me holds the personal offices of some officials, storage, the sickbay, and the exam room, where I'm heading. The two Peacekeepers stationed at the exit glare down at me when I arrive in front of them. I pull out my crumpled slip and hand it to them. The taller one looks it over, nods, and unlocks the door for me. I step through without a single word, not giving them the satisfaction of seeing the fear that's glimmering in my eyes. They'll think I'm scared of them, and not Dr. Endell.
I check the plaques outside of the doors. All of them are storage rooms or offices for a couple of minutes until I see a door with chairs on either side of it. The plaque next to it declares it the exam room, and I jog over and pound my fist against the door.
It cracks open, and I look up into the beaming face of a definitely-not snaggle toothed Dr. Endell. He's actually decently handsome, and looks more like a District citizen than a Capitolite with his sandy orange hair that's shoulder length and healthy for his age, and glittering blue eyes that hum with happiness. He beckons me inside and instructs me to sit on the exam table, and I ease myself onto the thing as he sits down at the desk, turning on his computer.
"So your Mentor, Ms. Espenson, set up this appointment to talk about your mental health," Dr. Endell says in a tone of voice that indicates that it is not a question. I still nod in agreement anyway, and Dr. Endell nods in response, opening up a file. I see the headshot of myself that they took at the Justice Building at the top, and then a blank space where the picture of me in the tribute uniform probably will be, the picture that they'll take before I go into the tube to project into the sky when I (probably) end up dying in the god forsaken arena.
"Talk to me about everything that's going on," Dr. Endell murmurs soothingly, and I launch right into it. If I try to go slowly, I won't be able to get the words out.
"Well, my sister died mysteriously a while back. I started morphling from the grief, and I started getting this voice in my head that sounds like her, telling me all these things and yelling at me and everything...I can sometimes push it away, but not normally. It distracts me and makes me seem like a maniac. I don't know. I know I'm crazy, I don't need a doctor's test to tell me all of this."
"What types of things does this voice tell you?"
"Well, Anaya-"
"You have a name for it?"
"It's my sister's voice," I hiss, disgruntled. "We've already been over this."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Miles. Continue."
"Yeah, she just taunts me, telling me to do bad things like stealing, hurting others and myself, and getting more morphling."
"She tells you to get more morphling?"
"Yeah, pretty often. It's the thing she always bothers me about, because she knows it's my sensitive point."
"I think I might know what's going on here," Dr. Endell muses, and I immediately perk up.
"You...you could solve this and help me?"
"It's not a drug or anything. But let me go through some stuff. So she's just a voice in your head? Not a personality that comes onto its own?"
"Yeah, she's just a voice in my head. I'm always myself. It's like we're having a conversation almost?" I'm starting to realize how truly jacked up I sound, but I have to keep going.
"Well, Ms. Miles...are you still addicted to dirty morphling?"
"Excuse me?! I quit ages ago. I haven't had anything since I was 14, over two years ago."
"Well, this affliction is common. There's a chemical compound in most dirty morphling from Six that triggers this phenomenon, especially if the abuser is going through a stressful or emotional time in that life. It distorts reality and has been known to insert a false reality, along with voices, into one's head. It makes the user take more drugs because doing so erases the voices and distortion for a short period of time. But the phenomenon usually fades in about a two week period after the last dosage."
His words hang in the air for a moment.
"I...but..." I trail off.
"Can I do a blood test?" Dr. Endell inquires softly.
"O-okay..." The process is quick. He draws just a dab of blood from my arm, and then runs it through a small machine and then pulls out a chip from the end of the machine. He plugs it into his computer, and the results pop up onto the screen. He looks them over curiously. It's medical lingo that I can't understand, but when he turns to me, he looks utterly sad.
"Libby...your last dose of morphling was less than two days ago."
Keep on haunting
Keep on haunting me
Keep on haunting
Keep on haunting me
I was as pure as a river
But now I think I'm possessed
You put a fever inside me
And I've been cold since you left
Rufus Braunvieh, 17
District Ten Male
The chimes ring through the air as I'm hunched over at the edible insects station, telling me that it's time to put down whatever I'm working with and head to lunch. Training is officially over. A few of the people nearby seem dissatisfied or exasperated that training is over. One boy has to be half dragged away from daggers as he complains and thrashes, saying that he needs more time to learn. However, I'm sort of relieved.
Oxen and Fixtata pretty much made her come down here today. I'm smart enough to realize that three days of playing with toys in a bleak gray room isn't going to do anything to change my odds in the Games, but Oxen and Fixtata wanted me to get a little bit more time in and also make sure that I'd get a good lunch and be there on time for Private Sessions. Apparently, you don't have to even go to the Private Sessions, and they just give you a 0. But no one's every missed them before, and I don't necessarily want to go down in history as the first thick headed dumbo who was too lazy to go to Private Sessions.
The lunch is rather quiet. I l alone at a table. Two other loners sit there; the pair from Six. The girl looks spacey and mortified simultaneously, barely eating any of her food, while her District partner looks at her sympathetically and tries to make conversation with her out of pity, but she doesn't respond, too caught up in whatever's playing through her mind at the moment. It's almost comical to watch for the first two minutes, and then it just becomes pathetic.
The Five girl arrives in the lunch room minutes from the end. She grabs a roll and sits down with two of her allies. The fourth, the pregnant one from Twelve, isn't present however. I do a count of everyone in the room. 23 tributes. We're all here, except for the pregnant lady.
The whispers start flowing through the room as the lunch rolls towards its end, and the pregnant girl still isn't here. If you aren't here by the end of the lunch, you're exempt from training and will receive a score of 0, which basically means you didn't show up and isn't an actual rating. It's something Tautulus went over this morning when he was talking to a few trainers, and I overheard. It's pretty common knowledge anyway, I'd just never heard of it before then.
I hear the Careers muttering about the pregnant girl being absent, and her three allies are chattering loudly, all looking extremely worried about the young woman's absence. I would be worried too; it would be rather embarrassing if one of your allies didn't even show for Private Sessions. Says enough to the public about the quality and skill set of those that are within it. The minutes tick away. Everyone's mostly finished with their food, including myself. We're now all just staring at the door and then up at the clock in anticipation, waiting for the Twelve girl to arrive. Because she has to, right?
With barely a minute left, the doors slam open. We all perk up, expecting to see the pregnant girl, but instead it's Twelve's young Mentor. She's panting, and she jogs over to Tautulus, who's waiting by the far side of the lunchroom, where he'll give us a speech while the lunchroom is rearranged into a sitting room for us to wait in until the Sessions are ready to start. The woman stops in front of Tautulus, and she catches her breath before speaking.
"Carmen collapsed when she got back to our floor from Endell's office," the Mentor pants. "She's in bed, and she can't move. They won't help her since it's pregnancy related. We've been supplying food and water just to make sure she doesn't die or anything, but we can't do anything else. Can you postpone Sessions or at least wait for her? It's not a matter of choice, it's a matter of that she literally cannot be here, or she could die."
"The rules clearly state that under any circumstances, a tribute who doesn't arrive in the lunchroom by the end of the lunch period will be excluded from Private Sessions." He points up at the clock. "It's almost a minute past the deadline for her. I'm sorry, Eris."
Twelve's Mentor, apparently Eris, growls and stalks off, still breathing heavily. We all turn to Tautulus, who wipes the pitying look from his face and grins widely at all of us.
"Welcome, tributes. Please, come gather around me as the staff will clear the tables and put out the waiting chairs."
We all stand and clump around him, trying not to pay attention to the symphony of screeches and scratches as Avoxes, trainers, and cooks alike help drag the tables out of the room and into storage, replacing them with rows of chairs, twenty four exactly. At the last moment, one of the Avoxes removes the twenty fourth chair before skittering off.
"Please, be seated in District order. Females first, males second. So, Ms. Vegas, you'll be first, and Mr. Parthenia, you'll be last." We all walk over to our seats. They're arranged into three rows of eight, the last one only seven. I'm in the back row, wedged in between a devilishly grinning Miriam and a sunny looking Eleven girl. Thank god you're not allowed to talk, or else I'd probably leave the room and accept my 0 just because I don't want to sit by these two for the next whatever hours.
"Tributes, the rules are simple. You will have fifteen minutes to demonstrate your skills before us. You will be graded on your skills, and will be assigned a score in the range of 1 to 12. The typical tribute earns around a 5. You may do any activity, even if it just sitting on the floor and doing absolutely nothing. You will still receive a 1 for being here. We may dismiss you at any time if we believe that we've seen enough. Once you're done with your Private Session, you will exit through the elevator and return to your District's floor and remain there for the rest of the day until the scores broadcast is released to the nation. Any questions?"
Tautulus is met with silence. He grins wolfishly then.
"Then I bid your farewell. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor. I'll see one of you at the Final Interview in a couple of weeks." And then he leaves just like that, out the door and probably to go home and work out or something ridiculous.
We sit there in silence for a few minutes as the Gamemakers must be preparing the training center and the Loft for the Sessions. And when they're ready, an automated voice rings throughout the renovated lunchroom, spooking many of us, myself included.
"Trinity Vegas." The One girl stands, beaming as she marches off into the Training Center. Now it's time to wait, wait, and wait some more. How fun.
A/N: TRAINING IS OFFICIALLY DONE HALLELUJAH! This was a really fun chapter to write but I'm so excited to move on! From now on, things will be even more fun to write for me, and I'm excited to see how everything goes :D
Next will be Private Sessions reports, in the style of LCS's, just more in depth, along with a POV from one of the tributes about a piece of their session and then going back to their floor. Then I'll have the scores broadcast, also LCS style. And then we'll be onto interviews and such! :D
Did you like these guys? Favorite of these three? Least favorite of these three? Now that you've seen everyone again, who would you say are you favorite six tributes? Oh, and what did you think about Libby's revelation?! And about Carmen?! GAH DRAMA
I haven't put out the trivia answers in FOREVER, and I think I'll just put them all out the chapter before the Bloodbath. That way you can check your answers and calculate your points in one huge sitting. It will probably be easier that way.
Trivia:
Baron (1 pt.) - What is the song that he sings?
Libby (1 pt.) - What color are the sandals that Libby's mental image of Dr. Endell wore?
Rufus (1 pt.) - Who tried to convince Tautulus to let Carmen be able to compete in training?