Dean Winchester rose into the arena. He was nothing. He was a boy who'd never live up to his parents' reputations. He was a boy with bruises on his wrists and his brother in his heart, thinking that his loved ones will make him stronger.
The Flaming Sword is lifted out of the arena. Not a one person in all of Haven doesn't know his name. He's bleeding from a hellhound's claws, he's got two stab wounds, and his ankle is swollen to the point that it's unbearable to put the slightest pressure on it. He's the only person in Haven history to kill a hellhound. He has his brother in his heart and he hates himself for that because of how weak it makes him and how it endangers Sam.
The Flaming Sword keeps mumbling words under his breath that people can't quite make out so they write it off as the crazy ramblings of a half-dead sixteen-year-old boy.
He may be rambling, he may be half-dead, but he's not crazy. He's as aware of his surroundings as he ever is and even more so because he knows that he loves his brother and it will hurt forever because his brother will never know how much. But that's love, he now knows, because telling him would hurt Sam and the Sword would rather die than Sam get hurt.
Someone touches his ankle and he screams. Someone else pours alcohol right into the wound in his side, saying things like "Barely missed the ascending colon," and "Need a blood transfusion stat!" and "It's so swollen because it's broken."
The Sword lashes out at the person nearest to him and then he feels the prick of a needle in his arm and finally, blessedly, he feels himself drifting away.
He's not even scared. He's just tired.
"Come on, Dean! Sam's got to be put down for his nap, and so do you!" Mary calls, smiling gently at her older son. Dean beams at his mom from where he's playing in the dirt in front of Uncle Bobby's house.
"But, Mommy, I don't wanna take a nap!"
"I'll let you sleep with Sammy, how about that?" Mary asks. "You can protect him in case a monster gets him, all right?"
Little four-year-old Dean puffs out his chest, flattered at the thought that he can protect baby Sammy. "Okay, Mommy."
Mary holds out one hand for him to grasp once he toddles over and moves it so that he's gripping onto the side of Sammy's stroller. The metal is warm from being out in the sun for so long, but Sammy doesn't seem to mind the heat.
Before the trio can begin walking, Dean pokes at Sammy's tummy to see the baby squeal. Sammy doesn't disappoint. His wide smile exposes toothless gums and Dean grins back.
Luckily, Uncle Bobby's house is only a few empty houses away from the Winchesters'. Unfortunately, with Dean's short attention span and even shorter legs, it takes a good twenty minutes to walk 100 yards.
"Mommy, is Daddy gonna be home when we get back?"
"No, Dean. Daddy's still at work."
"Is Daddy gonna be home after my nap?"
"He might, Dean."
"Awesome!" Dean exclaims. It's his new favorite word. He heard some people on TV saying it, and it caught on. Mary didn't have the heart to tell him to stop, even if he did hear it during a Games commentary. "Can I teach Sammy how to play ball yet, Mommy?"
"I don't think he's quite old enough for that, Dean-o." Mary spares a tired smile at an old Town woman walking by, and she smiles indulgently at the energetic blonde, freckled little boy. There's not anyone in all of District 5 that doesn't like Dean.
Dean stops short when he sees the house and Mary pulls him along. He almost falls. "There's something wrong with the house, Mommy."
Mary doesn't hear him. She also doesn't see what he's noticed: a steady trickle of smoke leaking from a window with a circular hole.
Dean tugs on her sleeve as the outside of the house starts to turn black. "Mommy?"
"Dean, it's almost time for your nap. We can't waste time or Sammy will fall asleep in his stroller." She stops short.
Dean looks to his right when the hairs on his neck start to stand up. A Peacekeeper stands at the corner of the street, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is that he's looking right at the Winchesters, and he's got his mask off.
Dean first notices the man's weird golden eyes. After that is the smile on his face. It doesn't look like a nice smile at all.
"Dean?" Mary suddenly asks, her voice tight. Dean looks up at his mother and sees that she's staring right at the Peacekeeper too.
"Yes, Mommy?"
"We're going to go surprise your father at work, okay?"
"Okay, Mommy!"
Dean turns around and follows after his mother amicably, but she's walking way too fast. "You're too fast!" he complains.
Their house explodes into flames. Dean tries to turn around but Mary's hand grips his arm too tight for him to do so. "Don't look at it," she commands tersely. "We need to find your father."
People start to scream around them, which makes Sammy start to cry.
"Shh, it's okay," Dean soothes between pants as he tries to keep up with his mother. "It's okay, Sammy. Look, we're at Daddy's work right now!"
A steady stream of people gushes out of the dam, all strong adults looking for the source of the noise. Mary pushes through the crowd. It takes all of Dean's strength to keep up with her and not get swept away.
He hears John's voice and jerks his head up. For a moment he can see someone that looks like his father yelling "Mary! Mary!" in the crowd, but then he blinks and someone else is blocking his view. The man, if it even was John, is gone.
Then everyone is gone. Mary, Dean, and a crying Sam all stand in the entrance to the hydroelectric dam.
"Mommy, where's Daddy?" Dean asks.
"He'll come," Mary whispers. She turns. "Dean—"
Dean turns and sees five Peacekeepers standing just behind them. Mary backs away, dragging Dean with her. "Dean," she says slowly, "I want you to take Sam and run."
"Mommy—"
"Don't argue with me!" she snaps. "Go now, Dean!"
But Dean's feet have been glued to the ground as the Peacekeepers draw ever closer, even when Mary tries to push him into motion. The last Peacekeeper to enter closes and locks the door behind him.
"We just want you, Mary," Yellow Eyes says.
"Then let my boys go!"
"If we feel like it." Yellow Eyes licks his lips as he looks at Sam. It makes Dean scared. "Don't resist, Mary."
Dean jumps when someone starts to pound on the door. "Mary? Dean?" It's John.
"Daddy!" Dean screams at the same time Mary leaps into action. She kicks a Peacekeeper in the stomach and he goes sprawling, but two more quickly take his place. Inbetween Mary giving a nasty uppercut to the left one's jaw and sweeping the feet out from the other, Yellow Eyes grabs Dean by the arm hard enough to hurt.
"Don't resist," the Head Peacekeeper orders again, "or we'll snap your boy's neck."
Mary stops short as the masked figures struggle to their feet. They force her onto her knees and she grunts.
Yellow Eyes throws Dean away. When he sits up, tears shining on his cheeks, he sees the Peacekeeper that threw him standing over Sammy's stroller. Then he looks at the back exit that the Peacekeepers hadn't bothered to cover.
"Stay away from Sammy!"
"GET UP, DEAN! GET UP NOW! RUN!" Mary bellows.
John breaks down the door. The Peacekeepers turn to face him. Dean sprints to Sam, picks him up out of the stroller, and runs as fast as he can out the back door.
Just as he exits, Dean hesitates and looks back just in time to see Yellow Eyes hit John right in the head with his discipline stick.
Dean turns to continue running but is drawn up short as another tall Peacekeeper blocks his way.
(white walls)
(boom-boom boom boom-boom)
(Don't hurt him)
(They're both valuable)
(boom-boom boom boom-boom boom-boom)
(He reacts well to the venom)
(boom-boom boom boom-boom boom boom-boom)
(He'll have no recollection of this)
(Just tell us what you did with the antidote, Mary)
(boomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboom)
(There's no way to escape the Capitol)
(Sam has the antidote)
(Let's wait and see how he reacts)
(There's no way to escape the Capitol)
(Tell us how to reach District 13)
(Who are the rebels)
(There's no way to escape the Capitol)
The blood is everywhere, drowning him, he's choking on it—
Dean wakes with a great shuddering breath. He's not drowning in blood anymore. He's in a spotless white room so well-lit he can't even see the creases between the walls and the furniture inside it.
He sits up, his clothes rustling, and examines himself. There's an odd space in his chest like a hole. He can't help but feel like he's forgotten something important.
A dull ache persists in his side and it takes him a moment to understand why.
Fighting the urge to wince as he remembers the pain of being stabbed, Dean hesitantly rolls out his bad ankle.
He's fine.
He's disappointed. He'd gone under thinking he wasn't going to come up ever again. Yet here he is. His hands are still bloody but none of it is fresh. As far as Dean can tell, all his injuries have been taken care of.
He remembers why he has blood on his hands and something folds inside of him. He teeters between Dean and The Flaming Sword—so close to losing himself in the madness of grief, so close to floating away from here to a place where Mary and Jo are still alive—and then the door opens.
Dean falls back into himself at the sight of the trenchcoat and he hates Castiel because of it. The sight of those blue eyes folds his heart into tiny pieces and makes his side ache. His ankle twinges with ghost pains.
Is this what it's like, Dean wonders, to be a Victor? Ghost pains from injuries expertly healed? The ache of losing more people so fresh I want to scream? Because that's not what Dean signed up for. He signed up to kill people and protect Sam.
Sam's all he has now. If anything happens to Sam Dean's not sure he'll survive.
The Victor tries to say Castiel but his throat gets clogged up and all that comes out is "Cas?" Somehow, it's perfect.
Cas opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out. Those blue eyes dart around, searching for something, and Dean pretends he's looking for Jo. That maybe she survived and Cas hasn't visited her yet.
That illusion is shattered as another person walks into the room. Still, the Sword can't rip his eyes away from the traitor. How had he fallen for his tricks when they weren't even tricks? He had known all along that Castiel is an agent of the Capitol.
President Naomi is beautiful in person, albeit in a cruel sort of way, and it feels like a betrayal to even think that. Her dark red curls are striking against the white background and her eyes, blue like Castiel's, are just as piercing. She sits down in one of the chairs the Sword had barely been able to see. Castiel hesitates by the doorway, two fingers rubbing the hem of his trenchcoat anxiously, before he settles and turns into a statue. After that initial moment of eye contact, he seems unable to meet the Victor's gaze again.
"You should know," the person the Sword hates most in the world says, "you were the one I was rooting for."
Like that's supposed to make him feel better.
The newest Victor wants to say a lot. He wants to call her names like a child. He wants to tell her he doesn't give a rat's ass about her opinion. He wants to tell her to go away because he only sees blood and Jo and Sam when he looks at her and he hates her for it.
The words would be so much effort to say, though. His lips feel sewn shut. He doesn't have the energy to pull out the stitches.
Then Naomi continues to speak and he suddenly finds the strength. "You can have my word that no harm will ever come to your brother in any way if we can come to an agreement."
In those words he sees the fatal mistake he made in the arena. If he had died Sam would be safe, but now that the president needs leverage over him, Sam will never be safe. He hates the strategy even more because he knows it's a smart move. However, the Sword keeps his voice and eyes steady as he says, "He won't be reaped, you mean." There is no point in letting his enemy know that he knows what she's doing. That he's smart enough to see through her manipulations.
"Exactly."
At least Dean knows what he has to do now. Once he's dead Sam will be in less danger. If the Sword is dead there's no use in threatening his brother. Then Sam would be used, as he and Dean were this year, as leverage against John.
So John needs to die too.
Then Sam will be safe. There would be an uproar if both the son of a Victor and the brother of a Victor was chosen for the Games. The Sword just has to wait until Sam turns nineteen. Wait...
"What about when he turns nineteen?"
The second the words are out of his mouth he's cursing himself. He's just giving her ideas.
Naomi smiles. It's a slow unfurling of the flag she's forcing him to kneel for.
"Well, the seventy-fifth Hunger Games—the fourth Quarter Quell—will declare that only males and females eighteen through fifty years old can be reaped for the Games. Good publicity, you understand? So now it's not children that are dying. There'll be less unrest on our hands."
She's smart.
The Sword knows he's not the brightest, knows even as his mouth opens that he's forgetting something important, but he speaks anyway. He knows what she's saying; that she can change the rules in any way so that Sam will always be in danger, and he calls her bluff. "You can't rig the balls. There are such an assortment of names in them that your threat is practically null." His voice betrays him, though, and lets everyone know how he's not exactly certain of that.
Naomi leans forward, extremely fake concern on her face. "Dean, I thought you were smarter than that. The Capitol can do anything. No matter what slip Castiel draws out of the ball, if I tell him to say Sam Winchester, he will say Sam Winchester. Just like how he said Sam Winchester this year."
Who—
Castiel looks down at the ground.
Angry color rushes up his neck and into his face. The Sword's fists clench in his lap as he begins to sweat from the rush of heat.
It all comes rushing back to him.
That Castiel is a traitor. That's not quite true, though. He's not, never was, and never will be on the districts' side. He's no traitor; he's an enemy.
That Castiel can't be trusted, no matter how his blue eyes reflect so much white light in this room that they turn white as well. No matter how trustworthy he acts.
That Castiel is working with and for the Capitol. He called Sam and Jo's names. He killed Jo. He almost killed Dean, too.
Dean looks at Naomi, eyes dull and dead, still with blood literally on his hands. He's possibly the most dangerous man in Haven at the moment. She's the most powerful woman in all of Haven.
He looks at Naomi, and she wields the sword.
That's it; we're done with Part 1! Thank you all for sticking with me throughout this journey. I appreciate each and every one of my fans and loved receiving your comments, even if I forgot to reply to them.
As of now, I plan to write around 23-24 chapters for the sequel, which will be called The Scars We Can't Hide. I am still in the process of writing it, but once I reach around chapter 16 I plan to start publishing again, with the same schedule (every Monday). I aim to be at that point by May.
Thank you again for all your support and I can't wait to see you all in May! :)