District Seven

Training (I)

Jennings Holmewood (12)

this dream isn't feeling sweet
we're reeling through the midnight streets
and mum and dad let me stay home
it drives you crazy, getting old

ribs — lorde

Jennings almost dropped his tray when he saw the amount of food that lay in front of him, the scent of it all wafting up to his nostrils before he could even register what the Capitol was offering to him in return for his life. The Training Centre's dining hall was bigger than his school's auditorium, and every single counter in it had been filled with all sorts of breakfast foods and drinks, from warm bread baked from various types of doughs to all sorts of freshly pressed juices. Jenning's family had been through a couple financial struggles ever since his father passed away, and the boy almost felt as though he had never seen such an extraordinary amount of food put together at the same time. He marvelled at the fruit baskets and eagerly picked one of each, then helped himself to a bowl of cereal and a fair amount of scrambled eggs before wheeling around and trying to find a table for himself. Because sitting with Caylyn, if she even was there to begin with, was out of the question.

He didn't hate his District partner, but he did find her awfully odd and even a little disturbing. Caylyn was a quiet girl who seemed obsessed with death and the dissection of corpses; Jennings had even felt a little scared when the girl told him all about how she hoped she would get to watch a body decompose as the days went by in the Arena, only interrupting herself when the boy feebly pointed out that the corpses were quickly extracted and brought back to the Capitol by an aircraft shortly after the tribute in question passed away. He had avoided her ever since, and the girl had made no effort in trying to chase him; and just like that, Jennings had found himself with no prospective allies and surrounded by a group of kids who were generally a good four or five years older than him.

He studied the tables that had already been occupied, wondering if one of the small groups might be willing to welcome him in. The kids from One and Two were obviously out of the question — the boy from One seemed softer and perhaps more empathic than the average Career leader, but the girl from Two had struck Jennings as a deeply disturbing person from the very beginning; overall, he knew that he wouldn't click with a group of rich kids who were at least five or six years older than him. The tributes from Four and Six were also having breakfast together, and had only just been joined by the girl from Five, whose eyes were surrounded by eyebags; the five of them were laughing and splashing food at each other in an almost friendly manner, and Jennings gathered that, while they might not outright tell him to go away, they wouldn't be interested in forming an alliance with him, either.

He sighed, assuming that he would probably end up on his own, and took a seat by the window, observing the Capitol buildings that surrounded the Training Centre. He then wondered what Caylyn might be up to, because he hadn't seen her earlier that morning and he knew from their train ride that the girl was an early riser. She probably had breakfast on her own before the rest of the tributes were even up and headed directly towards the gym, eager to get to learn new ways to kill and scrutinise the inside of other people's bodies. A shiver ran down Jennings's spine, and he cast a glance towards the couple sitting at the table next to his. The girl was beautiful, with fierce red hair and bright blue eyes, and the boy — was it a boy? — sitting in front had dark blond cropped hair and striking brown eyes. What struck Jennings the most, however, was the long scar that went from underneath his right eye to his chin; he found himself wondering what might have happened, and he even smiled a little when the girl rubbed some cream off her District partner's cheek with her thumb. Jennings knew that they were the tributes from Nine, and that they also happened to be a couple; Jennings couldn't really recall what their names were, but he remembered the presenter saying something about the male tribute not being strictly male-aligned. Jennings hadn't understood what that meant back then, but he now wondered, as he observed the seventeen-year-old's ambivalent gestures and the way there was something undeniably androgynous about him whether it was possible that they weren't, well, a boy after all.

Jennings was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn't realise that a soft, female voice had just called his name from the end of the table.

"Hey! It's Jennings, right?"

The boy looked up and smiled a little when he recognised the girl from Ten, who also appeared to be sitting on her own. She was a few years older than him, but quickly scooted closer, until she was sitting right in front of him.

"I'm Araceli," she said, offering him her hand. "I'm from District Ten."

"Nice to meet you, Araceli," Jennings said as he shook the girl's hand. "I'm Jennings, yes. How do you do?"

Araceli smiled at the way the boy had introduced himself, perhaps a little too seriously for a twelve-year-old.

"I'm good, thanks," she replied. "I just saw that you were sitting here all on your own and gathered that you might want to come join me and my friends later? We're going to try and learn some survival skills, if that's all right with you."

Jennings pursed his lips, surprised by the girl's offer. "Who are your friends?"

"Oh, well, we're not… you know, friends, but we met at the party yesterday and thought it'd be nice to train together for a bit," Araceli explained, shrugging her shoulders. "They're Violetta and Turing, by the way — the tributes from District Three."

Jennings's expression softened a little, because he had seen the two of them the previous day, and they had seemed like perfectly nice kids to him.

"That would be nice," the boy admitted finally, shrugging his shoulders a little. "I don't really have any allies yet, so."

"That's all right," Araceli assured him, a soft, almost motherly smile on her lips. She reminded Jennings of his own mother, loving yet fierce and absolutely devoted to her three children. "I'm sure the four of us will make an awesome team."

Awesome. The word echoed through Jennings head, like a foreign concept that had once been part of his vocabulary but had faded away after his father's untimely passing. He munched on his cereals quietly, but ultimately offered the sixteen-year-old in front of him a genuine, almost childish smile.

"Yeah," he agreed meekly, acting like the twelve-year-old he was for once. "It's gonna be awesomesauce."

Araceli laughed and nodded her head in agreement. "Totally, yeah." She then placed a gentle hand on top of Jennings's — a gesture that even made the boy's heart swell a little. "Just let me know if you need anything, all right? I know this is all a little scary and strange, but allies have to be there for each other. Right?"

Jennings gulped, but nodded. "Sure. Thank you, Araceli."

They exchanged identical feeble smiles, and then simply went back to shovelling their breakfasts down their throats; a kinship, Jennings thought, already growing strong between the two of them.

Caylyn Wren (17)

i'm living in an age
that calls darkness light
though my language is dead
still the shapes fill my head

my body is a cage — arcade fire

Caylyn had never been great at socialising. She had always struggled at getting to know new people, and she hated the idea of being judged by those around her. She had been avoiding her mentors and District partner ever since she got reaped, and she dreaded the idea of being exposed to their entire country through live television. She was quiet, collected, and even a little antisocial, and she didn't know what kind of aura would perspire when she eventually got forced onto a stage and interviewed by the irresistibly popular Caesar Flickerman, now a man nearing his retirement age but still as affable as ever. She simply wasn't good at relating to other people's feelings, and would often come off as aloof and a little standoffish; she knew that her mentors didn't like her and that Jennings was a little scared of her after he found her dissecting a chicken breast during their first dinner together and she somehow ended up rambling on about how she hoped to get to observe a human corpse's decomposition after one of their fellow tributes passed away; she didn't want their entire country to label her as that year's psychotic tribute, even if some of her peers may have referred to her in such terms back in District Seven. She may have been a little strange, but she was still a seventeen-year-old girl with ideas and hopes and feelings, after all.

Much to her surprise, she thought of her brother Linus a lot over her first few days at the Capitol. Her brother was thirteen years old at the time, and Caylyn knew that he would have easily befriended Jennings and marvelled at every single Capitol building, hastily drawing sketches of them in his beloved notepad. He was the liveliest boy that Caylyn knew, and even though she usually struggled at showing physical affection towards other people she found herself increasingly wishing she had hugged him tight and promised him she would come back, like a normal older sister would do. But she was acutely aware of the fact that she wasn't a normal older sister, and she could only wish that Linus, in his infinite kindness, had understood that she didn't despise him the same way she despised their mother; that, deep down, she really did care for him and even liked him most of the time, which was already a lot coming from Caylyn.

Her eyes scanned the gymnasium quietly, looking for a task that might help her keep busy for the next few hours. She already knew her way around a knife, but she didn't want to let her fellow tributes know about her skills just yet — she didn't want to stand out and have the Careers hovering around her for the next few days, so she simply headed towards the survival area and eyed the earthy tones of paint that had been displayed on top of the table, along with a thick textbook on edible berries and poisonous mushrooms. She chose one of the thicker paintbrushes and toyed around with the earthy paints for a few minutes, mindlessly observing the other tributes from time to time. She noticed that Jennings was practicing some fencing with the girl from Three, who laughed and smiled shyly and told him he was doing great; the boy from Three was sitting close to them, focused on some circuit building, with the girl from Ten cheering Jennings and the girl from Three on as she read a similar textbook to the one resting next to Caylyn. She had also noticed that the kids from Four and Six had headed towards the pool earlier that day — neither of the kids from Six knew how to swim, and the other two had offered to teach them in case they found themselves in a flagrantly aquatic Arena, in a casual, almost friendly chit-chat over breakfast that put Caylyn on her nerves for no apparent reason. The boy from Five had approached her with a broad smile and a generally amiable gesture shortly after that, holding a tray full of fruits and bacon and eggs and even a couple cereal boxes, but Caylyn had quickly shut him off by ignoring him and his nonstop blabbering about the Capitol's exquisiteness; the boy, who seemed sweet but also a little dense, seemed to get that she didn't want to be his ally by the time she swept her tray away from his when the boy joked about grabbing one of her apples.

She wasn't actively seeking any allies, but she also wished she would bump into someone who might outweigh her lack of physical strength. She was quick on her feet and extremely smart, but she knew that she didn't stand a chance at a body-to-body combat — she considered the possibility of approaching the girl from Eight, who seemed older and stronger than her, but she promptly realised that they were too different for an alliance between them to work. She was extroverted and lively and perhaps a little too reckless from what she saw of her during her Reaping and their first hours of training; Caylyn knew that it would simply be too much for her to handle under the pressure of being short on food and water once they found themselves in the Arena. The couple from Nine were out of question, too — she had always regarded romantic relationships as a nuisance more than anything else, and she would rather die right there than have to put up with two teenagers acting all mucky and lovesick around each other all day long.

The boys from Eight and Ten, however, were an entirely different matter. She liked Eight's ambivalence towards killing and his open-mindedness on subjects that Caylyn deemed essentially vital to her way of seeing the world, such as death and the way it was inscribed into every single human being's genetic code from the moment they were born. To live is to die, and Caylyn sensed that Cairo was just as aware of it as she was; she wouldn't approach him, not in a million years, but it made her smile to think that she may stand a chance at forming an alliance with someone after all. As for the boy from Ten, she liked the fact that he seemed extremely cool-headed and analytical just like herself — he was a bulky, muscular young man, and there was something about him that made Caylyn think that an alliance between them could work, too. She even grinned a little at the sight of the boy wielding a machete and successfully tossing it at a dummy's head, slicing it off as swiftly and as expertly as a Career tribute would have.

Yes, she decided, she wanted them both as her allies. Which meant that she would have to make herself noticeable to both of them — because approaching them first was simply out of the question. And she would make herself noticeable, she resolved there and then, by showing everyone just how much of a skilled knife thrower she was.

She walked up to the table where most of the weapons had been laid out, and strapped a knife belt around her waist before swirling around and facing one of the dummies. Most of the tributes kept going about as they usually would, but the boy from Eight was already eyeing her with a certain degree of curiosity; Caylyn even had to hold back a smile before taking the first knife out and throwing it at the dummy, with it hitting square in its chest. By that time, Jennings had wheeled around and stared at her with a fearful expression; the girl from Ten had placed a hand on his shoulder, whispering words of comfort in his ear, and the girl from Three even ruffled his hair a little, probably thinking of a younger sibling that Jennings reminded her off. Caylyn almost scoffed at the gesture, and then threw several knives at the same time as she approached it; once she reached it, she slit its head off quickly and gracefully, and even let out a small chuckle when someone gasped out loud. She looked up and noticed that the boy from Ten was clapping cheerfully at her, and almost grinned when the boy walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, that was pretty awesome," the boy said, then offered her his hand. "I'm Kyle. You wanna train with me for a bit?"

Caylyn shook his hand and smiled a little — just enough for Kyle to know that she approved of his interest in her.

"Sure thing," she replied, nodding her head. "I'm Caylyn."

Kyle grinned, and she couldn't help but grin back, too — thinking that they would make an excellent team, and that she may, at last, stand a real chance at surviving the Hunger Games.

So that's that! I'm aware that Caylyn's bit may come off as a little boring — I've always read her as deeply analytical, and I wanted to give her POV that sort of touch. I hope it wasn't too much I guess? Anyway. Hope you all enjoyed it and thanks for reading & reviewing and yaddah yaddah yaddah!

Up next — District 8 + Training! (yup sorry I just really like the idea of exploring their POVs while training & forming alliances).