Day 3, Part 2: The Resolute and The Ruined.

Chrys Gerhart. District 1.

Chrys Gerhart leaves the Career pack, and he is free.

He gives fuck-all about Dior. Her and her grandiloquent, obnoxious ass can shove it. Dior Marini can rot in hell for all he cares; she can die in her obsessive quest for the Eights, she can die strangled, for all it matters. She is no longer Chrys Gerhart's problem, and Chrys Gerhart does not need to care about her.

All he needs to care about today is…

Six girl.

And maybe he's petty, and maybe he's just like Dior, but he has a reason. She's rent a stump out of his arm and every breath he takes are daggers in his lungs and it's taking all the morphine that his mentor's doping him up with to keep himself conscious. Sure, it might be spiteful, but it's not like Dior; going after the Eights without rhyme or reason, with so much intensity. But is it not deserved?

And he has a reason, more than most of the clueless rich bitch students in the Academy would've, in their search for glory and fame or one another stereotypical reason:Chrys is doing it for his family.

For his struggling family, barely able to make ends meet. He's a Career for them; he's here to help them.

He is.

And he'll start with her, Six girl, the bitch that deserves his blade the most, and he'll work his way through the tributes. He'll kill them all. He'll kill Dior, too, he'd certainly like to, but Dior is so embroiled in her internecine quest against Eight. They'll mutually self-destruct. And so will the Career pack, for they don't matter to him.

And then with that—and then with that, perhaps he stands a chance.

(No. He does stand a chance. Maybe he's missing an arm, and maybe he's bleeding out, and maybe Dior Marini's right, and that he'll be exsanguinated—but Chrys Gerhart refuses to kneel over and die. He is above that.)

Chrys has a plan, he does, doesn't matter if he's bleeding to his death, doesn't matter if he has barely a day or two to if he keeps his mind on Six girl and if he focuses on the way her neck'll snap it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

They're travelling through the welded honeycomb forests. Eastwards. Far away from where the pack would be hunting. And towards where Six girl had run.

With Kiernan Alcraiz by his side.

(If he's being totally honest… Chrys isn't exactly sure, why, he'd brought Kiernan along. Maybe the kid's an asset, but only so much of an asset as he is a liability. Kieran Alcraiz is mad, and he is volatile, and he feels so inferior, and he wants to justify himself and his presence, and if Chrys Gerhart were being smart or rational, he would simply just leave Kiernan a victim to an imploding pack. To leave him to be cannibalised by the warring factions; a casualty from the likes of Dior or Althea or anyone, really. It would be so easy—and it'd be one more down, one step closer to the crown.)

But he… couldn't. Not really. Kiernan helped him. He'd helped him with his tourniquet; he'd watched out for him. And his scowling face and his sneer would never show, but Chrys knows that Kiernan Alcraiz cares about him. Even a little.

(And there's a part of him, a more personal part, a part of him that would never admit— that when he looks at Kiernan he sees his brother reflected and because of that he can't—he can't not bring him along. Not really.)

Was it a poor decision? Perhaps. Rash? Perhaps.

But it was right. It's what his heart wanted to do. It's what he needed to do.

And he's glad.

But for now.

For now, they hunt Six. They'll end Six. He'll kill Six, by his own hand; he'll wrench her arm out, he'll make her taste retribution. And no matter how much Kiernan Alcraiz reminds him of family—he is not Chrys's family, not really. And he serves a reminder:

Of his goals. Of what he's supposed to do. Of how he needs to win.

For them.

(That is how Chrys justifies himself. It is always only for them.)

Kiernan Alcraiz. District 2.

He treks through the Arena with Chrys Gerhart, and the Arena is far too familiar to him.

Physically, he knows why he's here.

(Of course, there's Maeve, fucking Maeve—but he isn't thinking about that now. He can't think about that now.)

He's here because of Chrys Gerhart, who wants to kill. And Kiernan isn't sure why he's agreed to be dragged upon this revenge-quest, but it was better than being with Dior. Or the rest of the pack, because their eyes raise hairs upon his skin, and leave an extra shudder in his already fucked-up breath. They, who are wolves, ready to pounce—

It's better that he's with Chrys. It's better that he doesn't die.

He knows why he's here, physically.

(Yet mentally… Kiernan Alcraiz can't shrug off the sense of deja-vu that he feels. And sure, he might've fucking seen his sister die on screen, and sure, he might've just been remembering that, really, as he treks through the golden weaves of moss, but fucking hell—)

It's so cold in the Arena.

(And it's cold, despite the warm-gold that the Arena shows, but it is too similar at the same time, too. It is… eerie. It's like the gusts and the winds of the Arena last Games have made their way here.)

Have stayed here.

(... he tries not to think about it. Because once he starts he can't stop, and Kiernan can't think about Maeve, or that stupid girl from One, or the 55th Games, or any of them at all. He can't. Cause then he'll begin to remember, remember the way his sister shorted on her breaths, remember the mutt's grizzled chops after gnawing on her spine, the empty mirages in her eyes as she'd died, he'll remember and—)

— and he can't be that in the Games.

"Kiernan?"

He looks up at Chrys. And there's concern's in his eyes, obviously there'll be concern in his eyes, and Kiernan Alcraiz exhales. Closes his eyes. Fucking hell. Because he's so obvious, isn't he? Just so damn see-through, so damn weak—

"Are you okay, Kiernan?"

"I'm fine," Kiernan responds, and there's a certain scoff that edges his voice. And he's thankful for it, too—better mad, better angry, just so Chrys'll stay away from him, just so he'll stop plodding, stop prying, stop trying to unveil him like he's some enigma to pick open, some chest to break open—

A frown twinges on Chrys Gerhart's lips. "You don't look fine, Kiernan."

"I am," he says, firm, almost snaps, but he doesn't, he controls himself, takes it back.

Because Chrys is looking at him with concern in his eyes, and despite how much Kiernan hates it, there's also a certain… sensation, confined, that tugs at his chest.

(When was the last time someone had looked at him with concern in their eyes?)

"... okay," Chrys murmurs, pushes his lips together.

Thank you.

"But, uh, if you don't mind me saying… I think I know what you're thinking."

Kiernan's eyes widen. Please, no, don't—

"... I know about Maeve."

He stiffens.

"Don't."

Chrys sighs. And his eyes are not even on Kiernan's eyes. He's gazing into the forests that look too much like those forests, and he's eyeing the skies that are the same damn skies, and his fingers are rippling over his skin because the wind that swallows the Arena is just the same, just the same…

"I just wanted to say," and stop speaking is all Kiernan wants to say, because no, not right now, not when the winds are so ferocious and not when he's so cold, not when he closes his eyes and removes the grandeur of gold. Not when he'll be in the 55th Games again, amid death and frigid hell, strewn in the place that had rendered allto oblivion—

And Chrys either doesn't notice or doesn't care, no, not at all, because he pushes his lips together and he's exhaling a breath and here's looking into the skies rather than Kiernan's eyes—

"If it's worth anything…" he says, quietly. "I'm sorry. About how she died."

Chrys finally looksat Kiernan.

And his eyes are so blue too damn blue—has it been so blue before it hasn't been so blue before he doesn't remember them being so fucking blue—and Kiernan's breaths are quickening, no, fuck—

—and shut up is all he wants to scream because no he isn't, no he isn't sorry, he doesn't care, he can't care, and Kiernan tries to ignore the heat in his ears, pressing hollow pain against his head, don't breathe too fast, don't breathe too slow, steady, steady…

And he feels Chrys's eyes too acutely on him and he does not want to speak. Because if he speaks then Chrys'll hear how his throat's stuffy and how his eyes are rimmed with red and how frustration pricks pain by his eyes and Kiernan Alcraiz does not want to cry, he can't cry, he can't show just how weak he is to the Capitol—even if they know it already—and they can't see that he cares, can't see any of that, cause he doesn't, he doesn't give a fucking shit about his life, not when he knows he'll die anyway, and he isn't affected by the Capitol's Games, he isn't affected by Maeve's, he isn't, he's not, he's not anything, he's not anything…

Instead, Kiernan gazes off into the distance, refocuses, because he can't have Chrys see him, not like this, not right now. He looks into the gold and concentrates on the autumnal leaves and wills the images of mist-frosted luscious-green forests to melt away.

But it doesn't.

And what he does see, is this.

A lone figure. Trudging off in the distance.

And Kiernan's throat tightens when he realises, exactly, who it is.

"It's Six."

Chrys Gerhart. District 1.

Six girl does not see him.

And Chrys wants to laugh. So much for hunting, really, when they're tripping up on prey.

Six girl has an axe, too, in her right hand. His axe. That axe she'd robbed off him, that she'd used to destroy his limbs, that axe, his fucking axe—

He snorts. Oh, how much he'd like to knock her over, force her to the ground, seize his axe from her hands, let the blade descend across her arm, watch her limb drop to the ground, watch it roll away, and he'll be towering over her, his revenge fulfilled, and he'll lop off her head with it too, and then she won't matter anymore, nothing will matter anymore—

"Chrys," Kiernan says, and his eyes snap back to the District Two boy. There's wariness in his eyes, and Chrys feels another feeling sink in his chest, particularly when Kiernan speaks.

"... are you killing her?"

"Of course," he says easily, and his hand, the one remaining hand he has left, grips his axe.

He's waited too long for Six.

(And isn't it deserved? Pain, so excoriating, ravages his arm; vertigo, dizziness, attacks his head; his balance is horrendous, halfway between falling, lurching, falling again; he can barely walk, can barely talk without pain; headaches pound in his head, he hasn't gotten any nights of sleep, so delirious in pain, drifting in morphine and pain...)

And Six girl must've felt something in the air because she twists her head, and then her eyes land on Chrys. And she recognises him because her eyes narrow, and her grip on her axe (his axe) tightens, and it's like she wants to fight again.

(She dares?)

"Fight me, then!" he yells, and it's torn out of his throat before he even knows it, far too guttural, and Six girl cocks her head, and half a grin licks by her lips, and she doesn't run, no, she stays her ground, looks at him in the eyes.

"Yeah? You want me to?" she says, and it's too much too taken in amusement, in a challenge so assured in herself, oh, her audacity, her fucking audacity—

Chrys snarls. And he knows that Kiernan's tensing by him, and there are words that spill out of his lips, but they're so muffled, really, and he can't hear anything except for the roar of blood in his ear and Chrys Gerhart doesn't give a shit about him, now.

("Don't kill, don't kill—" and Emilio's eyes look up at him, pleading, "Chrys, why're you training for the Games? Why do you wanna kill everyone in there? People… people that're just like me. Why…?")

He grips his axe and his footsteps crunch against the autumnal leaves. And the scent of the wilderness infiltrates his lungs, and it imbues a thrill in his veins, he's so ready. Rage inhabits his heart in a sing-song dance, and Chrys lets out a breath, lets a grin ravage his face too.

Chrys swings. And it meets Six girl's steel with a screech, and they're both standing, breathing, and Six girl's grinning, all too fucking gleeful at the pause of a blow. He scowls, twists her axe aside with the metalhead, but she jumps back, and anger ravages his skin, oh no, not this, not now.

(He needs to kill her. Needs to for himself, needs to for his family. And once his axe crests across her neck. And once she's dead. She won't matter, won't matter, won't matter...)

They fight. Flames stoke his skin for every moment more she stands and stays parrying, hitting, grinning. And he's mad, he just wants her head decapitated and he wants her to die and he wants it to be over with—

(... won't matter, won't matter, won't matter...)

Six girl doesn't have much experience with an axe, no matter how hard she tries. And all in all, Chrys Gerhart is a Career, and he's the best of the Academy, and so, and so—

He sends his axe smashing down on hers, and her axe breaks away from her hand. There's an opening. Chrys relishes in the surprise in Six girl's eyes, what can you do now, as she stares at her fallen axe, and then him, and she reaches down to grab her weapon—but no, oh no, it's too late.

One swing and he decapitates her.

Her head rolls. A burst of feeling explodes from his chest, and so much glee environs his skin, his lungs, and he's so ecstatic, he's so gleeful, oh, he couldn't be any fucking happier—

Until his eyes meet Six's, and he expects joy to jag down his breath, expects his veins to pulsate with energy, he expects retribution to be wrought, he expects to feel alive again—

But her eyes are so brown.

And Chrys's breath stops.

(And in Six girl's face he sees his sister, and suddenly her black hair melts off into brown fringes and a bright grin, sparkling with a smile and sunrise, Chrys, would you seriously? You'd help me? And Chrys had nodded, let a grin dance by the corner of his lips, of course I would, why wouldn't I? I'll have all the money I'll need when I become Victor, and I'll help you with your projects, you can be a fashion designer! I'll get you into the positions you need with my prestige, and you'll do so well, Melissa, you can produce your designs Capitol-wide, I know it already—)

And Chrys's breath wavers, his axe wavers, and he's still, for a moment, his limbs seized, he, so frozen, and he doesn't know how to speak, doesn't know how to breathe. He looks down at Melissa, dead, and he can't… he doesn't… he…

(And the cannon thrums against the grounds, an earthshattering sound, and his breath is in his throat and he's so cold, he's so, he's so cold...)

And he's trying to save his siblings, he's killed Melissa ("Chrys, d'you wanna try on my new design?"), and he's trying to give them a better life, and Kiernan Alcraiz's face haunts his breaths, (Emilio, so terrified, "Chrys, why're you going into a death game, I don't wanna lose you in there), and Seven boy, bleeding apart, (Julius, all grown up, "I wanna be a woodworker, Father!"), and Ten boy, muscled with work, split in half, (his father, Lancer, a weary breath by his lips, so sooted in his work, "Chrys, help me with dinner, would you? I wouldn't know what I'd do without you—")

And their families don't matter to him, they don't, they're tributes, he knows, he doesn't care about them, they need to die for his to live, but then something else sinks into his chest, something vile and grotesque and hollow, because that's when it hits him—

(... because it won't matter, it won't matter, nothing will matter. No matter what Chrys does, he's dying anyway, he won't save his family. He won't win. And it won't matter.)

It won't matter.

Kiernan Alcraiz. District 2.

Kiernan watches Chrys Gerhart murder with eyes-too-wide, and he is breathless.

His stomach's shaking, quaking with the frenzy of an earthquake. And he's familiar with the sight of death, he knows it. He's all too willing to dispense death, he's supposed to, he's a Career (no, not really, never a Career, just a wannabe), and he wants to kill, he wants to raze, he wants to show them all, just how much he's worth, just how much he's able, just how much he is capable, but—

But the death cements it for him, too clearly, as he watches Six girl gargle on her blood—and no, no, despite how much he wants to, despite how much it thrums in his bones (kill, kill, kill, show them just what you're capable of, show them you're not just a fucking child-about-to-die, doomed to die in the Games—)

Kiernan Alcraiz can't kill. He isn't made to.

(And 'course there's another girl he always sees, blonde instead of brown, head lolling outta her skin, spine jagging through like a pitchpole, her lips brushed with dirt, her fingers constricted together, half-gripping a stem in her pocket, its petals trampled by claws, her face mangled with rose petals…)

No. Nonononono—

But he can't deny it.

Because fucking hell, fucking hell, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how he tries to forget her, no matter how much he curses her and scorns her and no matter how many times he tries to scrub their last name from his name, no matter how much he pounds his head against his fists and chokes back his sobs and forces the tears from brimming over his eyes, he knows—

Kiernan Alcraiz hasn't moved on from Maeve Alcraiz's death.

(He knows he cannot forget. No—he can't. Not the moments they'd spent in the golden forests, laughing and shaking, chasing one another, hide-and-seek through the plains, catch through the too-destitute Alcraiz household, Maeve's too-loud, too-bubbly laughter and shrieks, as she'd tackled him to the grounds and embraced him with tickles, and he'd squirmed and laughed and he'd been so fucking happy, when the two beds in their room were still theirs and alive and when they kept making the sculptures upon their shelves, despite the way Mom was sighing in exasperation, cause they couldn't stop, not when he could've spent a moment more, a second more, a heartbeat more together, and they were together, grinning, laughing, too fucking happy for the world, and—)

And Kiernan's eyes are so wet and he feels a torrent of sobs in his lungs but they come out only as half-winded chokes and he knows, he's having the beginnings of an attack, and he needs his inhaler, needs to breathe, but he's rooted and he's shaking and shivering like there's an earthquake that creeps up on his skin and he's so, he's so cold, so cold-broken-cold and even though he knows what he needs, even though the inhaler's right there in his pocket and he knows what he has to do, knows he has to reach, he doesn't, he doesn't—

He doesn't breathe.

And there's something muffled by his ear, someone's speaking that he can't hear, that dances across his skin, and then there are arms upon his shoulders and there's a figure kneeling in front of him, speaking, shaking him, but he can't move, he's hollow, he's only a shell of himself and he's half-away, he isn't even there, and as much as the figure blurred in slices of mist shakes him he doesn't respond, he's in shock—

(Catatonia, wasn't that what Maeve had felt, destroyed by the mutt but not obliterated yet, in the process of dying, not quite dead but so sure she won't make it alive, nerves frayed and breaths robbed and eyes forced open by the way her sinews pull, made more a doll a caricature a thing waning away in her death, catatonia in her death. He's suffocating himself, and panic swarms him as he watches Six girl die in front of his eyes, head gone and positioned so much like so and as he watches Chrys, blue-eyed, axe her alive and oh, isn't it so fucking ironic that he'd wished for Maeve to die by suffocation, and isn't it so fucking fun for the world, so goddamn karmic that he's dying, dying, dying, lungs constricted and his mouth open and breathing but he can't breathe, he can't breathe, he can't breathe—)

And Chrys's speaking, he's uttering words, his mouth's moving, through the shield of slashed white-glass that stands in front of his eyes, and it's so muffled, it's a buzz, he can't hear anything other than his attempts to breathe, and Chrys is shaking him, he's yelling, words he can't hear and words that don't matter, really, he's trying to bring Kiernan back into consciousness, trying to bring him alive again—

But all he hears is his shaking breaths and all Chrys sees is him, so close to death, and then he's falling, he's himself dropping, he's crashing, down onto the dirt but even then the earth slips out underneath him, swallows him, like a gruesome sea, so foul, so thick in excess, so much, too much, and it's dragging him down, and he's flailing, he's struggling, he's trying, but the earth sucks him in, and explosions environ his ears like he's in a battleground, a fucking battleground, so loud, so mad, so enshrilled in vigour and chaos and screams and shrieks—

The earth gives way under Kiernan Alcraiz, like a gaping maw about to devour, and he falls, and falls, and falls—

A rumble, an explosion, a roar, a cry.

And the earth's unholy shrieks swallow the dusk itself, and Kiernan Alcraiz is oh so dead.

(Did he expect, really, to be anything other than that—at all?)

Gamemaker Kathvarine Guthrie.

To say that the Gamemakers are in a frenzy would be an understatement.

Because they… are. Because their monitors are fizzing out, glitching every minute or so, disruption so evident in their control panels. Because a dozen clatters of feet are abound, and she can hear Elkavich's fury from her chair, her shouts and her agitation… practically radiation off her skin. Because the force-field fluctuations are going more than haywire, and Kathvarine knows that they should be worried about that, and yet they aren't.

Because an earthquake was never in the plan for the Games. And aren't they trying so… hard… to cover everything up. To remain in control. Clawing and screeching and tugging for any pretence of power left.

And they would try, they need to. They can't not remain in control, especially after Guthrie, especially after Kathvarine's father's died for the last Arena he made. And it's even more imperative, now, because this Arena isn't all that different from the last.

Kathvarine knows. She's seen her father, in the last Games, when she was unofficially registered as his assistant. Knows every nook and cranny of the 55th Games, the forest made of mist, at least, that was what he'd billed it. A classic, he'd said to her, but with a twist. And his fingers splayed across the hologram, and it took not one moment for gold to creep across the magnitude of trees and grass, as if enveloped by Midas's touch.

So? he'd told her, a proud smirk lining his lips, what do you think?

It's wonderful, was what she said, and she filed that information away for… later.

He revealed to her the secrets of his Arena. And she learns, she listens. Learns the mechanism for earthquakes, never used, which had undercut the grounds of the Games.

Three months was never enough time to make a new Arena. And Kathvarine is too aware of the template that Elkavich reused.

(Not just the template.)

And Elkavich would want to fire her, would want to blame her for the siege of the rebels, for the disruptions, for the chaos that reigns here. Kathvarine's the scapegoat. She's the one assigned to fix this. She's damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.

(She bites down the smile that edges by the corner of her lips. It isn't as if she's guilty of earthquakes.)

A/N: Oops. Sorry this chapter dropped two days later than when I promised it? Thank you so much for reading, and let me know what you thought! About what's happened? About Kathvarine? About the rebellion? The Arena?

Thank you to everyone that's read and to those that have reviewed - I love you guys so much.

(P.S, Slytherin - consider Sadie yours! xD)

See you next time!