NGL this chapter is a bit of a downer (in stark contrast to the others in this nihilistic death romp lol).


The Gods are kind that night. She wakes up having had what was almost a decent rest, but the morning has come and the space next to her is cold. Their night is clearly over.

In the cold light of day, his declaration that they have power over the other tributes and the promise of a quick death seem a lot less romantic. Last night feels like a teenaged delusion, an attempt to grasp hold of a girl who has long since slipped away. His plan remains the same as it has always been. He will get whatever he wants from her, and then dispose of her when he's finished. Nothing she has done has changed that.

There will be no more truces, no more missed opportunities or promises of mercy. The sun has risen and there are only five of them left now, and, despite the Heathers' and Brad's superior strength, he is clearly her most deadly opponent. She needs to get rid of him before he has a chance to do the same to her.

It was easier, she thinks, back when she was just another tribute. Just the girl from a poor district, too unimportant to even remember her name, never mind to bother hunting down.

It was not easier, she reminds herself, you were alone, hungry and weaponless, you did all this so you could survive.

And survive she did, Or at least someone who resembles me in appearance, she thinks with a burst of hatred for her overlords, strong enough that it takes even her aback, I have become this mess because of them.

He's sitting on a rock, a little way off eating a packet of nuts for breakfast. He offers her some as she sits beside him, but she refuses, choosing to get something out of her own bag instead, checking as she does that nothing, especially her water, looks tampered with.

He raises his eyebrows, but neither of them mention it further. That would require good communication and their relationship has not yet reached that level of intimacy.

"Are we still aiming for the Heathers?" she asks, more as something to say than a serious discussion of what may happen today.

"I think we have to. They're clearly hunting us, so we're going to run into them anyway, we may as well fight them when we choose to and they're still injured. It might give us a tactical advantage if we take them by surprise."

"Even injured they're a lot better trained than us, and it looks like any advantage we might have had with Heather's fear of blood is long gone."

He nods, "It's worth bearing in mind as a last resort though. Otherwise, they do have injuries that we can take advantage of. Heather Duke has a gash on her left forearm and her forehead, she also seemed to have a scratch on her right hip and both of her knees are grazed. Heather McNamara obviously has a limp, which seems to be caused by a mild sprain in the right ankle, there's a bad graze all down that leg and the right arm too and scratches on her face. I think she had a nasty fall – so I'd say she'd be bruised all that side, I bet hitting her there would be painful enough to make her lose focus."

He lists the injuries off as if he's looking at a photo of the girls, was that what he was studying when I was trying to drown out Courtney's screams? She tries to commit what he says to memory nonetheless, it could be useful.

She wonders what he can casually list off about her.

A beeping noise pulls her from her thoughts and she looks up to locate the parachute.

"You get it, it won't be mine. My mentor, Haymitch, hates me more than the Capitol and he hates the Capitol more than sobriety."

"Sensible man," she says, with half a grin, separating the flask from the parachute, and opening it curiously. She's not sure what Cecelia thinks she needs. Whatever she's been sent doesn't look like a weapon, but she doesn't need anything much supplies wise at the moment, their trip to the Cornucopia has left them pretty well stocked.

"Water?" She says confused, as she inspects a few drops she's poured into her hand "but we still have some left? We don't need…"

But JD's already on his feet and is looking down over the arena, "Fuck. Yes, we do."

She looks at where he is pointing. The river, so vicious and deep when they were running yesterday, is now nothing but a muddy ditch. She squints over to where the Cornucopia glistens in the morning light, "I think the lake near the Cornucopia has gone too."

"They're drawing us together." He says, "If we only have one water source we can't be too far apart."

And it makes running away from you that much harder, if we're both heading in the same direction.

She nods, trying to recall where else she's seen water in the arena, she was sure there was a big pool out west, but when she checks she sees nothing but a dirt valley.

"There are some rivers north," he says, "Martha and I stopped there on our second day."

If there is, it's too far away for her to see. Still, there's no sign of anything in any other direction either, "Let's go there then. If we're wrong I'm sure the Gamemakers will make sure we know."

He agrees. What other plan do they have?

xxx

They drink as little as they can get away with before setting off down the hill, any idea (hypothetical or not) to actively hunt the Heathers gone with this new Gamemakers' twist, but their knives are drawn in case of a sudden ambush.

They continue that way for a long time, she's reminded of her days hunting with the Heathers and the hours of searching for something, with no idea whether they're going in the right direction.

"How far away was this water?"

"I don't know, maybe a little over a day's walk."

She tries not to show her frustration, "Of course, we've always got the fun risk that we are going in the wrong direction and we die when the Gamemakers decide to send us one of their not too subtle signs."

He looks at her with an arrogance that would be unbelievable in anyone but a 17-year-old boy. "They're not going to kill us, there's been far too much money put on which of us will kill the other."

She smiles grimly and doesn't continue the conversation.

The temperature in the arena is hotter than it has ever been, forcing them to use even more of their precious water supply as they hike through the bumpy terrain. She's never been more thankful to Cecelia and her sponsors, she thinks, as they take a break from their hike early in the afternoon to pour a few rationed gulps down her throat.

It's then that she hears a noise.

"Listen," she says, grabbing JD's arm, "do you hear that?"

It takes her a few more moments to place where she's heard the sound before, but then she recalls it. It's the quiet sobbing she heard one night when she was with the Careers.

JD is already heading towards the source, so she follows him more cautiously, aware that Heather Duke is more than capable of springing a trap.

The first thing they see of Heather McNamara is her bright blonde hair, tangled and splayed around her, as she lies curled up on the forest floor. She's hugging her knees, gently rocking on her side, but it does nothing to hide the pool of blood she is lying in. Stabbed in the stomach, poor girl. Whenever she's seen Heather in action she's been fast and muscly, quick with a knife. She's never appreciated how small she really is, right now she seems barely larger than a child.

JD glances at Heather. She doesn't like the expression that forms on his face, it's the same one he wears when he's trapped her into doing something she doesn't want to, when he knows he has all the power.

"Want me to kill her?" he says, not bothering to lower his voice in front of the whimpering girl.

It would be the easiest solution, she could walk away, not hear the girl who had a fiancé waiting for her at home's final screams. She could forget that Heather McNamara was anything other than another enemy that they've defeated and, honestly, her life would be better for it. It's what they expect. It's what he preaches. She really should let it all happen in front of her, as she did with Courtney, with Martha, with Betty…

Or she could use the little power she's been granted for good for once.

She pushes him away, "Oh go sate your bloodlust by killing a bunny rabbit or something."

He doesn't really move, just takes a couple of steps and leans against a tree, and continues watching with amusement. She rolls her eyes, turns her back on him and goes up to Heather.

The girl is feebly struggling, still conscious, but with no more than a couple of hours' life left in her.

She tries to move away as Veronica approaches, but only succeeds in getting more blood to pour out of her wound, a cry of pain escapes her lips.

"Shhh, Heather, you don't need to move. It's only me, it's Veronica." She kneels down beside her and gently grasps her hand, "Was it Brad who did this? Is he near?"

But the girl shakes her head, "Heather," she croaks.

"Heather Duke?"

When she speaks it is barely a whisper, "I couldn't keep up with her, she said I was a waste of space."

She thinks back to Heather Duke back at the Career camp, tries to reconcile her with the girl who tortured Courtney yesterday, the girl who could now so callously stab an ally who she'd spent the past two weeks with, just because her life would be easier without her.

Veronica clearly isn't the only one who has sold her soul for the chance to survive.

"She wants you dead, you know."

Veronica laughs humourlessly, eyes flickering to the boy still coolly watching them from a distance, "Doesn't everyone?"

"Yeah, but she wants to kill you especially, as painfully as she can, you killed Heather, Kurt and Ram and raided our supplies."

"I didn't kill Hea… not the point, do you know where she is now? Is she close?"

Heather screws up her face in concentration, "She left an hour ago, maybe? I can't tell… it hurts, I haven't heard her in a while."

No certainties there, but she figures Heather Duke probably doesn't think she'll have headed straight for a dying girl and, with JD as a lookout, they're probably at least as safe here as they would be anywhere else.

"Don't worry about that now, Heather. Focus on breathing, if you don't struggle it will hurt less." She tries to find more to say, but what is there? "You'll be ok," is as much of a lie as, "I don't want you to die." But the girl is here and she is hurting, so she squeezes her hand tighter, so she can know someone is there as she suffers.

"I wasn't supposed to volunteer." Heather says after a few minutes, her voice straining with the effort, but she seems to need someone to hear her final confession before she goes, "They said I wasn't strong enough, chose another girl at the academy to volunteer this year, but it was my last chance – I didn't want to have spent all this time training for nothing, to have let everyone who believed in me down. Everyone told me not to, my family said they'd still be proud of me, Chris said he didn't want to see me suffer. But I did it, I pushed in first, only one person can volunteer so it was me, I did it. And now… and now… they'll all see me die."

She doesn't have the energy left for any more tears, but Veronica doesn't need them to understand.

"They won't see you suffer though." She says, gently, "Not anymore. I'll kill you quickly and then all the pain will be gone. Is that ok?"

Heather nods, squeezing Veronica's hand gratefully. As she does so Veronica can feel a cold metal band rub against their entwined, bloodstained fingers.

Veronica looks down at Heather's ring, still glistening under the dirt and blood, it's beauty somehow untarnished, "Tell me about your fiance," she says, "you clearly love each other so much." It feels like lulling a child to sleep. It's the most human she's felt in days.

"We do." Says Heather, "Our love is… God, our love is perfect. He's so handsome, with golden curls and blue eyes like the sky. He's really sweet, he used to wait for me every day outside the academy, we used to hold hands and walk round the streets just talking and watching the sunset. He was the only one who got me, who knew I was more than just pretty and fierce, he didn't just care if I was a victor, he understood the me inside of me…"

She's smiling when Veronica plunges the knife into her. The cannon goes off before she has time to take it out, consciously not looking at the blood of the girl who had a loving family and a future husband waiting for her at home. Heather should have known, they should have all known, there's no place for love here – not in the arena, not in Panem. She turns away, blinks hard to get rid of the water building up in her eyes.

"That was disgusting." his voice, cutting through the glade, feels unnaturally loud after her whispered conversation.

Ah yes, back to reality.

She rounds on him, "Which bit? The utter destruction of a human life and the life of everyone who loved her or the idea that showing some compassion might be a good thing?"

He snorts, "In what way was she deserving of your compassion? You've seen her kill. You've seen her taunt those weaker than her. Believe me, if your positions had been reversed she wouldn't have been holding your hand and singing you off to sleep."

"That doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing! I comforted a scared girl moments before her death, it didn't cost me anything, how is that a bad thing?"

"And now she is dead, beyond feeling, and the deed you did is worthless."

"It was worth it to me, it was worth it to her, maybe it was worth it to her family and her fiancé. What did a little bit of compassion cost me?"

"Nothing gets done with compassion faster than it would get done with violence."

Worthless, disposable, not even worthy of a gentle death, he doesn't see why it matters, doesn't value her as a human at all, is this what he'll feel for me once I am gotten rid of?

She seethes, wondering how she ever thought the two of them had anything in common, "Well excuse me for not being needlessly cruel. With catchphrases like that, President Gowan should employ you as one of his advisors."

"I'm not needlessly cruel, I use the right amount of cruelty to reach my end goals."

"What end goals? Mass murder?"

He smirks, "Sometimes."

She rolls her eyes and looks around for Heather's bag.

"It's not there." JD says, "Heather Duke must have taken it with her. I looked when you were taking ages. You could have at least asked her if there was any water nearby."

"Yeah, that was clearly the most pressing matter."

"It's the most pressing matter for us."

"A girl, who, regardless of who she was, was always kind to me, has just died painfully. Have some fucking respect."

"She was one person. Not even a good person, who we always knew had to die. Do you know how many people die every day in this shitty country? Do you know how many people would give their lives to change things? I don't know why you're getting so emotional over her, it's so… so female."

That pisses her off, resisting the urge to stab him right there and then, she instead stops in her tracks and turns to face him, "Well, if you haven't noticed from all the fucking we've been doing, I am female." she says, pulling up her shirt and flashing him. "But if you're so sure that's a bad thing, maybe we should just cry in front of Heather Duke and she'll make sure not to attack us." And she swings her bag on her back, continuing northward at such a pace that he has to run to catch up with her.

She keeps on going, him trailing at her heels until the sun is low in the sky. Still they find no water. Eventually she admits defeat, and flops down in some bracken covered woodland, just as the Anthem starts playing.

Heather beams down at her, golden curls framing her unblemished face, she looks excited about finally getting a chance to do something she'd trained her whole life for and happily planning the wedding she is sure she'll have on her return.

Veronica imagines herself in Heather's shoes, imagines training for years and years for these Games, knowing that this is what your life is leading to. A chance of fame, of riches and adoration. This is your only chance to escape the curse of being born in the districts. The only way to know that you won't be forgotten. Of course you would do anything to win.

Sure, it's a stupid way of viewing something that will likely cause you to needlessly die, but that makes it no less tragic.

And if she's honest with herself, riches, fame, her life meaning something, is it that much different from what she's always wished for?

"She was just a girl who wanted what we all want. To be the victor. To win." She says, as much to herself as to him.

"You don't win by being the victor," he snaps, making no attempt to keep his voice down, "they win," he gestures to the sky, "they always win the game they've rigged in their favour."

xxx

They don't risk a fire tonight. Instead, they get out their sleeping bags and sit inside them for warmth, as they eat more of the food left in their backpacks, and check their water supply. Both of them have a little less than a litre left, it's enough if they find water early tomorrow, but if it takes any longer they're going to struggle.

They don't talk more than necessary. She keeps an eye on him, checking where his knife is, ensuring her own is right beside her. Any warmth they had for each other, real or imagined, has faded. Their goals no longer overlap. The best way for either of them to progress is for the other to die, and he's made it perfectly clear today that he feels no sympathy no matter who he kills.

When he leans over and kisses her, she doesn't feel objectified as much as possessed. If she knew the possession would end the moment she killed him maybe that would be ok, but she knows she can never be free, not from him, not from the Capitol, not from herself. She lets him continue for a few minutes, but the feel of his lips on her neck no longer takes her away from the arena, they just remind her of what she's done to get here.

When he tries to pull her down to the ground she pushes him away. He scowls but doesn't try again.

She's glad when he asks her to take first watch.

As she waits for him to go to sleep she thinks not of Heather McNamara but of Heather Duke. How she had quietly noticed when Veronica was suffering, how, in her own way, she had helped her. What must she have gone through for her to turn into this?

But she already knows, of course she does. Veronica knows more than anyone that to win you need to push any part of you that makes you human to the side, you need to embrace your inner monster and lose any mercy you may have for everyone who is suffering just like you. And, even after all that, you are still just following orders. Even though you have fought with everything you have, whatever remains of you is still just doing what the Capitol has always wanted.

Showing compassion to Heather McNamara today was just a token gesture, a way to fool herself into thinking she had some control, but JD was right, in the grand scheme of things it is meaningless. Until there is a revolution she will always be playing right into their hands.

And with that bitter taste in her mouth, she knows the next foul deed that she must commit.

xxx

She waits until he is softly snoring to make her move. As quietly as possible she grabs her knife and gets to her feet. If she does it now, before she thinks about it, before it seems like a betrayal, she'll only have two tributes and the eternal grasp of the Capitol to worry about.

All she needs to do is slit his throat and he will be gone.

She looks at his sleeping form. He is dead to the world, apparently unconcerned by either waking or sleeping nightmares, like he always is. Her pulse quickens, her breathing fast, as she tries to think of every terrible thing he's done to her and not of the moments they've shared. God, she hopes he doesn't wake up, not even when it's too late to stop her. She doesn't think she can handle another betrayed cry haunting her dreams.

She takes a cautious step forward and her heart sinks as she takes in the rest of the situation. There are dried leaves surrounding his sleeping bag, his knife no longer lies between them but is gripped firmly in his hand, glistening red in the moonlight. No matter how quietly she creeps, the sound of her footsteps on the leaves will wake him up, ready to attack. It's deliberate, she realises, he has said nothing, of course, but he knows that she's starting to value the idea of one fewer competitor more than the protection his presence can offer. He knows she is a threat and he is working at the top of his ability to mitigate it.

She's quite flattered really.

She rethinks. If she can't kill him, she can still run, take all of the supplies from him and make her own way – praying for the unlikely chance that someone else kills him off before she has to face him. She searches around for the bags but she can't find them.

They're in the sleeping bag, she realises, the bastard has worked out her plan here too, he knows she won't live long enough to win without any food or their ever dwindling water and she can't get anything without waking him. She's trapped, just as much as she has been when she needed him to survive.

She slumps back into her sleeping bag, defeated. She will leave on his terms only, in the grip of a hovercraft and with the boom of a cannon. The cut he gave her after he killed Heather, when he held a knife to her stomach and threatened to kill her, has scabbed over. She picks at it until a few ruby droplets ooze out.

Far, far too late to join her, she realises she envies Betty. To die at least a little on your own terms, your hands still clean, believing you'll make a difference, rather than having your throat slit by a psychopath when he no longer finds you useful. Maybe then you even feel somewhat good about your impending fate.

But she didn't choose that path, did she? She was much too selfish, content to let others die if it meant that she survived. She thinks about everyone she had a part in killing, or at least didn't help: David, the girl from District 7, Martha, Heather, Peter, Kurt, Ram, Keith, Courtney. Nine. Nine people are dead who might not be if it wasn't for her. She raises her knife and gently presses the blade against the side of her arm, again and again, until there are nine notches, to remind herself of who she really is whenever she starts to think she's done something good.

Humans were not meant to live like this, she thinks, as she watches a few drops of blood trickle down her wrist, knowing their only companions will happily betray them or die horribly, maybe by their own hand. How can she go forward, how can she return home, knowing she has lived like this? Does she have enough of a soul left?

She looks at her companion, almost peaceful when asleep, of course, some of them have lived like this for years.

When he takes over guard duty she sleeps surrounded by the crunchy leaves, with the bags inside her sleeping bag and a tight grip on her knife.


The Capitol Presents: the Surviving Tributes, Day 9

District 1
Heather McNamara
Ram Sweeny

District 2
Heather Chandler
David Remington

District 3
Betty Finn
Peter Dawson

District 4
Heather Duke

Kurt Kelly

District 5
Shannon Lucas
Rodney Bulb

District 6
Cathy Stone
Al Springer

District 7
Tracy Hophead
Bobby Young

District 8
Veronica Sawyer

Brad Richards

District 9
Courtney Chadwick
Keith Harrington

District 10
Shelly Little
Dennis Grundy

District 11
Phyllis McCarthy
Dwight Archer

District 12
Martha Dunstock
Jason Dean

Deaths today: 1
Survivors: 4