The Guardian Games: The Wrath of Five

Chapter 2: Rigor Mortis

Warning: Depression. Mild PTSD. Mentions of drug-use.

Arena

Cornucopia Grounds

1 minute before End

"Hiccup?"

It was that blonde Career, the one who used to carry an axe. She was a persistent creature, alright. Trekking all the way from the Summer Quarter with an injury like that. It's miracle that she hadn't died yet.

Hiro almost smiled at the odd sense of déjà vu washing over him. Hadn't it just been about ten days or more ago when he had snuck into the Cornucopia, only to be caught by her? Then she had forced him out in the snow to dig up mines to build something – some defense system for something. He couldn't remember anymore.

Now here he was, hiding inside the Horn, holding a mine in his hand, staying as still and silent as possible while she floundered outside.

He had nothing with him other than a quiver of arrows – which were useless without their archer and bow – and his ragged backpack with only a handful of dead mines and a breathing mask. Just before he had heard her call, he had been in the process of digging one arrow into his left arm repeatedly, spilling blood into the water below. If the audience from the Capitol could see him, they would be scratching their heads over this unnecessary self-injury – was it a suicide attempt? Fortunately, no such conundrum would be presented to these unwanted spectators, for the Horn had been burnt too well for any of cameras within it to be functioning. As long as he stayed in the Horn, he was out of the Capitol's sight.

He heard the District 2 girl sloshing about in the water. Did she honestly think anyone would survive that wreckage? Well, he survived, but that was purely by accident. Or maybe a more appropriate term would be, well, bad luck.

He gazed down at a little spherical explosive. After doing some fiddling with it, he managed to find an internal activation button on the device itself. Now, it was just a matter of deciding how to use it.

He could throw it at her. She would die, and he would be victor. The mission wouldn't have gone according to plan, but with all the data he needed in his head, it would be mostly a success. Better than whatever crazy thing he was trying pull off here.

But something stayed his hand. Maybe it was because of the agreement he had with Hiccup – after all, Hiccup did bargain for her to be the victor. Or maybe it was how lost and scared she seemed on her own - weaponless, companionless, even purposeless. Or maybe because Tadashi would have never done such a horrid thing.

It was strange that after all this time, he still considered his brother a role model. Tadashi did fail the mission, after all, and he didn't manage to prevent another year of the Capitol's violent tyranny. But even in his folly, Tadashi's heart stayed true. He still placed others before himself, displaying courage and love even when circumstances were against him. In a place which brought out the worse of people, it brought out the best of him.

Hiro sighed, peering down at the explosive that he held in his bleeding left hand. His eyes then turned to the silver band on his right.

Mr. Mysterious and his gang were going to be so mad with him. They would tell him what an unnecessary risk this all was.

Hitting the activation switch, he tossed the mine towards the mouth of the Horn, counting silently, '5, 4,-'

He pulled the breathing mask out of the bag and fit over his face. He made sure it was tight.

'-3,-'

He sunk himself into the water all the way, swallowing his own wince when the open wound on his arm met the murky liquid. The oxygen from the mask become his only life line.

'-2-',

He removed his 'body-shield', which was created from the cover of the Muttation Manual. Keeping everything underwater still, he held the leather cover in the direction of the blast with his left hand.

A second later, the mine exploded. Hiro was knocked backward upon impact , the wave of heat reaching him even below the surface. He swore that the murky water turned red for a second. But the ever-indestructible Muttation Manual protected him from the flames, as it was designed to do. His heart was ramming against his ears and he had to force himself to take slower breaths to conserve air.

He realized by the increasing volume of the sloshing that the blonde Career had run towards the remains of the explosion site, and now she was staring at the black gap that remained. She wouldn't see him hiding under the blackened water, thankfully.

At that moment, Hiro reached his right hand towards the wound in his left arm. He sucked in a tight breath, before digging his fingers into the wound. It hurt beyond belief, but he still grit his teeth as he searched the flesh, only ceasing once he found the smooth, cylindrical device, as small as his pinky. He clenched the tracker in his palm, and waited.

Five cannon shots would ring in the air – no doubt, the Gamemakers clustered them together for dramatic effect. He grinned behind the mask. Let the Capitol have its celebration. Let them think that the flat-line reading from his tracker meant his death, and not that he had simply dug out of his arm such that the tracker could no longer sense his heart beat.

Eventually, James Sullivan would then announce the end of the 74th Hunger Games, and hovercrafts arrived to retrieve their victor, and when that was done, Hiro could finally burst out of the water and rip the mask off. He sucked in the nice clean air – or rather, heavily polluted, soot-laced but oxygen-containing air – before beginning his task. He was pretty sure that Gamemakers reused the same Arena platform for every game, which meant that they would be soon shifting the landscape for a reset. He had to be out of here before that happened, or he was going to die a really, really horrible death once they discovered him. And District 13 would be nuked again.

The tracker in his hand was broken open by simply knocking it against walls of the Horn, and within seconds he was pillaging the tiny wires and circuits inside it. The most important of these really was its battery.

He had much experience working with miniatures all his life, so even he hadn't the instruments with him now, he was still able to dissemble the parts without destroying them. The perfect thing about trackers was that everything in it was designed to tiny so that it could be injected into the arms of the tributes. Thus, these parts were a perfect fit to his armband, which was all heavy-duty miniaturized tech. It took some careful reprogramming – especially tricky when he was doing these with his fat fingers instead of a needle probe – but he was able to replace the dead circuitry in the armband with the new parts. Whether it worked, however, was another story.

It might have been paranoia, but Hiro felt the ground below him shifting. He could almost hear the metal of the barbequed Cornucopia squeaking. He had to make his move now.

So as reluctant as he was, Hiro got to his feet. He slipped the armband onto his left arm, which was still a bleeding, gross mess. Then he pulled it off.

Nothing happened. He tried it a few times. Still nothing happened.

"Oh, c'mon," he hissed under his breath, repeating the action over and over, each time more desperate than the last. By how roughly he was doing this, he ended up scraping the band against the wound on his arm, but he didn't really notice.

Then, by some manner of a miracle, after probably the fifteen time he had slipped it off his arm, the armband, with a 'whirr', transformed itself into a globe in his hand. The globe was glowing. It was active.

"Finally!" He sounded frustrated, but he was very, very relieved.

He lifted the globe near his lips, then spoke the destination, "Thirteen."

The light in the centre of the globe began to change, forming the shape of the crater-like surface of District 13 – the one that Capitol showed on television from time to time as if to say 'Thirteen is still in ruins! We are still victorious! Muhahaha!'

Well, the Capitol lied. District 13 was very much alive and kicking.

He threw the globe into one blackened face of the wall, and at once that wall dissolved away, replaced by a multi-coloured, glaring swirl rolling itself.

He took a tight breath, made a quick prayer, then stepped into the portal.

As far as the Capitol knew, the District 3 male tribute's body was lost during the Games.

District 13

6 months after the 74th Hunger Games – Present Time

"So, that's it."

"Yep."

"I see." Hiccup nodded, his eyes still slightly glazed over.

"Sounds crazy, doesn't it?" Hiro let out a slight chuckle. "But yeah, it happened."

After Baymax had presented Hiccup with a glass water to hydrate himself and set him back on the bed, Hiro deactivated the robot for a while so that the both of them could talk alone; himself on the wheelchair and Hiccup's frail form reclined on the bed. The white-washed room beat its glaring lights onto their skin and sanitation spray filled their nostrils like an unwelcome stench. The tension between them however was what weighed most heavily on their minds, besides the millions of questions going through Hiccup's mind

"But if the armband worked, then where did-" without really meaning to, the brunette's eyes fell to the metal chair under the other boy.

"Right. That part." Hiccup noted how downturn of the corners of Hiro's mouth as the dark brown eyes hardened, his forehead creasing. The boy on the hospital bed tried to draw himself back, wondering if he had agitated his companion. Scrap 'wondering' actually. He could tell that the matter was a sore point for the District 3 boy.

After a cold silence, the young genius' answer was quiet, almost factual. "After the armband is activated and turns into a sphere, or as I like to call it, a 'snow-globe', and the person wielding it throws it into open space, the globe creates a temporary wormhole."

The term was unfamiliar to Hiccup. Perhaps it was some District 3 lingo. "What's that?"

"A wormhole is short-cut between two separate places through in space and time. Theoretically, it should allow a person to enter one wormhole opening at one place and step out of another wormhole opening at another place, even if the two places are miles away from each other. A simpler word we use to describe it is 'teleportation'. "

"Wow." Hiccup had to be amazed by this fantastic notion. You would never hear about these things in District 2. Then it occurred to him - "You said 'theoretically'."

"Well, yes." Hiro shrugged reluctantly. "My brother didn't actually get to experiment with the armband before he brought them into the games, and neither did I when I modified his creation. After all, the entire armband is destroyed in making the wormhole, and we could barely scrap the resources to make them as it was in District 3." He pulled a face, admitting, "So, yes, using those armbands was based mostly on theory."

"But it worked, right?" Hiccup asked, a sudden chill running down his spine. He glanced down at the blanket that sat over his own lower limbs, where one appendage was undeniably missing. He was getting an uncomfortable feeling these …'wormholes' were the reason for it.

Fortunately, Hiro was quick to allay these doubts. "Oh, the teleportation was fine for you guys. They were afraid that your coma might have been induced by particle transfer in the wormhole, but eventually it was settled that that was due to trauma, heavyblood loss and shock. Nothing unexpected."

"That's… reassuring," Hiccup said slowly, not feeling that reassured actually, even with the loss of leg no longer being attributed to these strange 'wormholes'. Then he realized that by saying 'you guys', Hiro hadn't finished.

"I programmed all armbands to have a fixed destination within District 13," the District 3 boy resumed his explanation soberly. "It was expected for the Endgame to be fiery, maybe even high-speed falling, so the programmed destination of the teleportation was supposed to be this particular point in space - five feet above a pool filled thirty feet deep in water. The idea was to reduce injuries, though Merida – that's the District 5 girl - got bad bruising upon hitting water surface. She was falling really fast, after all. Yours wasn't so bad, because your mutt protected you. His wings shielded you from impact."

"Toothless." Hiccup sat up straight despite his weariness. "He made it then. He's in District 13."

"Y-eah," Hiro confessed reluctantly, appearing rather peeved at himself for what seemed to be an unwitting reveal. "Yeah, he's here."

With that confirmation, Hiccup was ready to hop off the bed and race off, leg or no leg. "Can I see him? Where is he?"

"Um, no, you can't." This denial was spoken rather sheepishly, with the boy in the wheelchair seeming truly unhappy about his own answer. "And actually, I can't tell you where he is."

Quizzical was too mild a word to described Hiccup's mien. Try incredulous, or perhaps even angry. "Well, why not? He's my dragon."

Uneasily, Hiro squirmed under his companion's gaze. "Well, it's just protocol for the way muttations are treated here." Seeing horrified light filling Hiccup's eyes, he hastily added, "But he's safe! Safe and healthy! I promise! I know the person who cares for the mutts. You have nothing to worry about."

"But he'd be worried about me," Hiccup argued, the rawness of his throat muscles being all that kept him from shouting any louder.

"Well, we'll get to that after you've made a full recovery."

With that final note, Hiro was quickly steered them back to the previous topic. "Anyway, none of you guys really had problems with the teleportation process, but I did. Since I had to refit my armband in a hurry, the wormhole programming ended up having a glitch." Hiro let out a self-mocking smile. "When I exited the wormhole, I ended up being teleported twenty feet over the floor of the announcement hall – you'll see that place one day. There was only a table to break my fall."

There was a dismal dimming in his eye. "It was a miracle that I didn't break my skull, really, but I landed on my back so…" his lips shook, so he raised a hand to cover it, but the hand shook too. Hiro had screwed his eyes tight before he said, very quietly, as if the memory still hurt him now, "I broke almost every bone in my body. The doctors in Thirteen did their best, and it was a very good job, honestly. But they couldn't fix my spinal cord. If this was the Capitol, they would be able to – they have the resources. But District 13 doesn't have knowledge or the material to carry out such a procedure. In other words, -" resigned, like a speech he recited to himself in a mirror every morning "-I'm paraplegic. For life."

This was actually a word Hiccup knew. In the deep recesses of his mind, his dictionary on the injury-related words he had learned back in school resurfaced. And I don't mean the Career Academy, but normal school, where even wimps like him were expected to attend. Besides the usual language and mathematics, there were classes that were purely about Peacekeeping itself, though elementary knowledge such as names of weapons and types of military garb. There were also lessons about health, fitness and casualties. And from the casualty file, Hiccup drew out the definition of paraplegic – paralysis of the lower limbs.

"I'm-" before the sympathetic words could leave Hiccup's mouth, the other boy had already waved it away.

"Don't." Hiro shook his head. "You don't owe me anything. No apologies. No sympathies. I got what I deserved."

"You don't deserve to-" whispered conversations that seemed to have gone past just yesterday buzzed in Hiccup's head. "You chose to give me your working armband. You didn't need to that. You saved my life."

"I'm also fractured your left tibia bone during the Games – an uncalled for action - and I'm the one who ordered its amputation," was Hiro's crisp reply, placid and emotionless. The revelation of the latter news caused Hiccup's jaw to slacken, to which Hiro added dryly, "It was shattered beyond repair. Either you lived with a fractured bone stuck in your shin for the rest of your life, with high risk of infection and huge amounts of pain, or amputate." The bitterness was so thick that Hiccup could almost taste it. "I would apologise, but I don't think I even deserve that privilege even."

With his head still bowed, Hiro took adjusted the controls on his wheelchair, directing it to turn about and roll towards the door. The ward door drew open automatically when it sensed him, and he prepared to leave behind the stricken silence, but he took pause.

Without turning to face the other boy, Hiro said, "I'll arrange for a prosthetist to see you once Baymax deems you sufficiently fit. Don't worry. At least one of us will walk out of this room one day."

The quiet hum of the moving door closing behind the departed boy was hardly noticed by Hiccup as he sank back into the bed covers, completely at a loss.

'My name is Elsa Arendelle. I am nineteen years old. I grew up in District 12. I was born with powers over ice and snow. Out of carelessness, I hurt my sister when we were young with a blast of ice. My parents were killed in a fire when I was thirteen. When I was eighteen, my sister was reaped for the 74th Hunger Games, so I volunteered in her place. By some manner of a miracle, I survived the Hunger Games and have taken refuge in District 13. My sister, my District and the rest of Panem however still live under impression that I am dead. Perhaps it's better that way. At least I can't hurt them anymore.'

"Wow, that last line is pretty depressing," the psychologist's voice buzzed through the speakers in room. The words that she murmured to herself seeped through as well, "Actually, all of it's pretty depressing..."

After the Great War, the survivors of the old rebellion didn't all die off. Instead, they went underground to protect themselves from the radiation. Eventually, as their population grew, the leaders of the District 13 began thinking about survival for the long term. Proper infrastructure was carved into the stones and dirt. Steady pillars enforced with steel netting to prevent the inward collapse of their house. Stairwells and lifts installed to carry citizens up and around the cave-like District. Indoor gardens were constructed to grow crops below the surface, where it was safe. Technology was invented to dispose of and dissipate the radiation above ground.

As the living conditions improved, the number of people living there steadily rose. Like a civilization awakening into the enlightenment, District 13 began to arm itself - with its primary weapons being its people. It was seen to that, according to their abilities, everyone contributed to the District.

The defense department was one of the earliest to be established, in the constant threat of the Capitol's invasion. Though seventy-five years had seen peace for most part, District 13 was prepared. Almost every member of the physical capacity served on the force in addition to other duties. A nutrition department was step up just to control food distribution across the District, ensuring that everyone had the means to obtain the precise amounts of nutrients they needed – and nothing more. An education department was set up to educate citizens in anything ranging from mechanical engineering to medicine, as long as it was of use to the District. The research department was probably the most expensive department, but very important nonetheless. After all, without it, District 13 would have never been able to made itself completely sustainable - in terms of securing its oxygen, water and food supply while staying ninety-five percent of its time underground, to say the least.

Despite these successes, District 13 lived in a constant state of alarm, with patrols and parameter checks considered more important than rest sometimes. Everything that they had was rationed and distributed in the most practical manner, towards the goal of either survival or prolonging survival.

The amount that spent on her living quarters then could only be said to be a splurge.

For the safety of others, she had been installed in a sealed but spacious enclosure with advanced thermostatic features and insulated material lining its every inch. There was a corridor that visitors could walk into though – one protected from any spikes in her emotions. Here they could see her through the six-inch, double-layered glass display.

But that was only when she let them. There were cold-resistant switches on her side of the glass that allowed her to draw and withdraw metal shutters over the glass. If she didn't do that, she could still hide from public view by staying in the bathroom or bedroom, which could not be seen through the glass. The District 3 boy, Hiro, had been adamant that she was given privacy. Despite the confinement, he didn't want her to feel like a prisoner. This was District 13 – it was supposed her haven as much as anyone else's. She knew it had taken much heated discussion before he got the permission to install the shutters and the extra rooms in her quarters. For that, she was thankful. He was a sweet boy - brilliant too. Pity about that handicap.

She received her meals through a small, sliding door cut into the glass wall, where items to be moved between rooms without changing the temperature significantly. There was also a microphone at the visitor's corridor which could be used by guests to speak to her, and there was a frost-proofed microphone on her side which she could use to answer them back. Most of the time, she had no visitors and boredom filled the hours between meals and haunted sleep. The last of these often lead to unexpectedly large amounts of ice constructs accumulating around her. Sometimes those were in such large volumes that she needed attendants to come in and dig her out of the self-induced snowdrift.

There was no way to curb her powers definitely, but they had tried to reduce it. The psychologist who saw her from time to time suggested that she write about herself, as well as the troubles that she saw in the dark. It was hoped that written expression would serve as a more harmless catharsis compared to spewing ice, and so that she could finally move on.

To be honest, Elsa didn't want to move on. Call it childish, call it backward, but if she moved on, she was afraid that she would forget. Even if dreams of fire invaded her dreams, even if judging faces filled her fears, she didn't want to forget the Games. Much of the memories were bad, but there were pieces of it – people in it – worth remembering.

One day when she was comfortable, she would let the psychologist read about them. Read about him. But today, where she folded her arms towards her chest as she pressed herself back against her ice-coated chair, she didn't really feel like sharing her problems.

"Do you have anything that you can be happy about, Elsa? Surely, that must be something positive to get out of this all." The psychologist probably didn't mean to sound critical, but Dr. Joy wasn't exactly the most tactful person around. Hiro said that she was 'go-getter', meaning that she was more interested in getting people out of their mood-swings and back to some form of functional living rather than comforting them. It kept workers in the District efficient and motivated, so Elsa did see the practicality in such a work goal, but for someone like her who couldn't move an inch out of her allocated quarters, she wasn't allowed to take on any work anyway. There wasn't much drive for her to 'think positive', as Dr. Joy had prescribed.

Besides, any form of emotion, even positive ones, still resulted in sub-zero temperatures and icicle formation within her enclosure. No amount of therapy was going to undo a curse.

"I-I'm grateful to be alive, I guess," Elsa answered blandly into her microphone, staring down at her gloved hands. Those pieces of fabrics felt more like shackles than any other of the restraints she had been placed under during the first few days in District 13, where they had literally to strap her to the hospital bed while they added to salves to her burnt flesh. No one told her how much property damage she had caused during those months in the infirmary, but it had been hinted that the doctors were very reluctant to ever let her back in again.

"Yeeahh." Dr. Joy certainly didn't sound overjoyed at her response, but still tried to run with it nonetheless. "Wasn't it lucky of you to get that armband? You wouldn't be alive otherwise."

Luck? Perhaps it was. Those small, silver bands in the Games could alter the odds of surviving so drastically, from being a dead tribute to having a second chance to live in a District that everyone thought had been disseminated in the Great War. But Elsa didn't give luck all the credit. The band would have never entered her hands if it wasn't for the strange, skinny boy who in his dying breath told her to live.

The boy whom she had killed with her curse.

Her answer revealed none of her thought to the psychiatrist. "I guess so."

"That's the spirit!" Dr. Joy declared with all the enthusiasm Elsa didn't feel. "Now, how have you been spending your time?"

Staring at wall. Watching snow float from the ceiling to the ground. Trying to come up with scenarios where she wouldn't have shot Jack with ice and that they both survived in District 13, then trying to decide which of the surviving tribute she would kill in his place. "Reading."

It wasn't a complete untruth. Hiro had lent her a few books on what he called 'molecular chemistry'. He thought it would be useful if she could learn more about the particles that she apparently had so much yet so little control over, to which she did agree. The problem was that she couldn't understand the complicated diagrams and scientific jargon. Hiro promised that he would come by when he could to explain it better, but he was often busy with his own work. Elsa didn't really want to bother him. No point investing resources into a bottomless pit who couldn't contribute much in return.

"Not too bad. Good to keep mental stimulation. Have you been writing much?"

Only as long as she managed not coat the graphite tip on her pencil with ice. She had long given up on using pens for obvious reasons. "Yes."

"Well, we can keep doing that then. Any other entries you want to show me?" The psychologist waved a hand at the exercise book. It was sad, crumpled, book-eared thing that had suffered the consequences of damp and deep-freezing.

Elsa shook her head gloomily. "Not really."

Dr. Joy seemed disappointment about the lack of willingness to share, but didn't voice this. "Alright then."

Opening the small sliding-door along the table required the psycologist, who was on the outside, to unwind the safety clasp on the door and unhook it, then press the three buttons around the door to unlock it. The little door can then be slid open to reveal the compartment where the object, like the journal, could be laid. Dr. Joy then slid the door back shut, ensuring that all three locks are secure on her side and the safety clasp was fitted back on before Elsa undid the door on her side in a similar manner to retrieve the item from the compartment.

"Before I go, I hope you don't mind if we do some word-association exercises." It wasn't really a suggestion. Dr. Joy certainly knew how to be pushy. "I know we've done this a couple of times, but I just like to see how your progress is coming along."

In other words, Elsa wasn't progressing enough by Capitol standards. "Okay."

"Just relax. Answer with the first thing that comes to your mind when I read the word. It can be a word or a phrase." Through the glass, she noted how the psychologist had removed a sheet of paper from her file, and clipped it to her clipboard. Elsa leaned back in her chair, trying to relax, but only feeling tenser. Still, when the psychologist asked her if she was ready to go ahead, she said that she was.

"Okay, first word." Dr. Joy peered down at the sheet, then read out, "Bread."

"Food." The answer was self-evident, but the bread that Elsa thought of wasn't the coarse, hardened things that Anna and her used to chew. She thought of instead the delicately sugar buns in the sponsor's basket that she had feasted with her then-District mate. Food, at the price of a show. A show of romance.

"Ha," the psychologist chuckled slightly. "Next one - Red."

"Fire." She remembered the quiet fires in the snowy woods, with her brunette ally warming his fingers over the heat as she poured out the story of how she froze her sister head before him and the rest of Panem. But fire also swallowed up her childhood home while her parents had been trapped within.

"White."

"S-snow." But she really thought of hair - Hair as white as snow across the head of the boy who begged her to end his suffering. Her first kill – not counting the two indirectly caused by her before that.

"I should have figured that myself," Dr. Joy murmured amusedly as she scribbled this down. "Good."

Be the good girl, you've always had to be. "My parents."

"Luck."

Anna's face when the Capitol person read her name of that fateful white slip of paper. Out of the thousands of names, hers had been drawn. Out of the thousands of girls, only one would volunteer in her place. "Chance."

"Loud."

The collapse of her beautiful ice castle. The majestic pillars ripped apart by explosives and the crashing of the chandelier pieces over her own head. "Noise."

"You shouldn't just give synonyms," Dr. Joy chided. "What do you see feel about it, maybe?"

Scared. "Annoyed."

The psychologist wrote this down, then went to the next word. "Love."

"Anna." But Elsa didn't think of how much she loved her sister, though she imagined that she probably did. Instead, she thought of how her sister had once proudly announced to have found 'true love', and how by a cruel twist in the tale that the object of Anna's 'love' had instead declared his love for elder Arendelle girl in front of the whole of Panem.

"Hate."

The look on Hans' face as he glared at Jack across the lake of ice, then the grim satisfaction when his sword pierced his rival's chest. "The Capitol."

"Courage."

A staff gnarled at one end, shaped like a 'G'. 'G' for Guardian."Foolishness."

"Error."

An ice-blast that hit the head. An ice-blast that hit the heart. Her entire existence. "Inevitable."

"Fear."

Conceal, don't feel. Don't let them know. "Loss."

"Sleep."

Nightmares. "Rest."

"Evil."

"..."

"The first thing that comes to your mind, Elsa. C'mon, you can do this."

"...Monsters."

Me.

"He's awake."

Her fuzzy head took a moment to locate the source of the voice, and her bloodshot eyes took even longer still to focus on the face through the bars. A surge of indifference shot up her system just as nausea did.

"Oh, it's you. Again." With just that as a greeting, she shifted herself such that her back was rested against the bars themselves, so that there was no way for her to meet his gaze. "You should really stop getting guard duty here."

"Well, you stop getting thrown into here," he retorted crossly.

Light streaming in from behind cast his large shadow over her cell, but his form was not one she associated with fear. It was the skinny ones that carried gleaming axes. Or the short ones with giant maces. Or giant hairy brutes with wet fur and fresh blood on its fangs. Nope. She toyed placidly with her sleeves of her standard issue uniform. She wasn't scared of him. "Not your problem."

"Kid, this place stinks – like seriously. Don't you smell the pee in the air? It's unhygienic! And lonely! And … boring." She watched uninterestedly as his shadow copy gesticulated for emphasis. "Prison's not a place you should be aiming to visit every week."

Ralph. Ralph. Ralph. Well-meaning, heart-of-gold Ralph. Strong, muscular Ralph, who was immediately accepted into military training after leaving the infirmary. He was so proud to exchange the drab hospital gear for the trainee uniform, and he might have teared up when they had first addressed him as 'Soldier.' Such a gift it was to be needed, and in a fight against the Capitol too! What more could an ex-tribute ask for?

She could have the same too, he had told her often enough after she had been discharged. There was always a place for another sharpshooter. Besides, as a refugee in District 13, they all had been granted citizenship here. They were technically of age to serve on the force.

But even after all remnants of her stitches had been removed from her ear and scalp, and even after her mangled left arm was restored back to its moveable self, Merida still felt like a wreck. Like she was a heap of junk that was forced to move forward and back, and she just wanted to grab whatever pieces of her was left and toss them into something. A bonfire would be nice.

After she had been assigned her own compartment – a narrow, tiny room that was barely the size of her bathroom in District 5 - she had dreamed that she was stuck in a metal box. The box was shrinking down her rapidly, its walls unbreakable by her pounding on it. The only way out was a small door that she could just barely squeeze through. But the gap of the door was filled with the snout of a snarling black creature. Each time she just stuck one part her through the door, the beast would snap its fangs at it and she would recoil, frightened. And the room just kept shrinking.

'What more could an ex-tribute ask for?' Well, some peace, for one.

There seemed to be such a lack of it in 13. It was always hustle here, rush there, complete this task by this time and so forth. Everyone was so busy being uniformly productive and efficient while she was so clueless and bothered. She had pretty much given up on her third day of going with the program.

There were words inked on the smooth side of her forearm – her 'schedule'. Every normal resident of District 13 had these little contraptions in their compartment which tattooed personalized schedules on their arms before the day began. Like 7:00 – Breakfast. 7:30 – Kitchen Duties. 8:30 – Education Centre. This went all the way till 22:30 – Lights Out. It was so precise, so damnably organized, that it reminded her of the stringent schedules her own mother used to assign to her.

The plastic band on her right arm still read 'mentally-disorientated', and that had probably been the only thing that stopped her from getting disciplined for cutting out on her schedule. Even then, people started getting really impatient with her as time wore on. District 13 had a fierce dislike of 'free-riders', though not in an unreasonable manner. It was understandable that you couldn't do patrol duty or cleaning if you were a blind old man who couldn't talk or walk – the District would find something else for you to do. But if you were physically-fit young woman with strong working limbs, there was no reason why you should be skiving when everyone else was blistering their thumbs on the grinder. They didn't sent you to jail for breaking schedule, but they did other things - like giving you one bar of soap when everyone else got two, or removing private compartment rights, or refusing to help you get your heater fixed.

Because of her 'special status', breaking schedule didn't exactly result in her getting 'punished' - unless being assigned to see her doctor again was counted. She just skipped all those appointments though. She didn't like the doctors. One of them was so terrifying energetic and enthusiastic about everything that just put Merida off, and the other was so mopey all the time that she seemed to be needing help herself.

No, she'd rather deal with it herself. It might be inefficient by District 13's standards, but at least she wouldn't need to share her life with people who couldn't help her anyway.

"Why are you even here, Ralph?" Merida questioned tiredly, wrapping her knees in her arms. "You know I don't listen to you. Or anyone, really."

She heard his sigh and she watched as the large shadow slumped itself down on the visitor's bench. "I know. But I figured that you should know."

"Know what?"

"Like I said earlier. He's awake."

"Who's-" then it clicked. "Oh."

She couldn't really place how she felt, but the relaxation of her shoulders wasn't due to relief. It was an odd sense of completion, like an event that had been expected to happen had finally happened. That was all to it really. She took no joy to knowing the boy from District 2 lived to fight another day.

"I thought that you might want to see him after you're – well, - when you're released."

Merida allowed herself a wry grin. "Well, I'm suddenly thankful that that's three days from now."

Being useless and unproductive was not really a crime in District 13, but being a thief certainly was. She managed to get away with it the first three times thanks to her special 'condition', but after to many repeats in addition to her refusal to see the doctor, they had given her a choice to go to prison like 'sane' people would, or go back to hospital under the intensive care unit. They were quite surprised when she chose the former. Unlike what they thought, she did understand the preciousness of resources. She didn't want to take up attention and bed-space she didn't need. So really, everything would be a lot easier if they would JUST GIVE HER THE CURSED MORPHLING AND MAYBE SHE WOULD STOP STEALING IT!

Thank you.

There was puzzlement in Ralph's voice, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. "Don't you want to see him?"

It was only then that she pulled herself away from the bars, unfolded her arms and swiveled herself around, facing him. If she had thought him large in the Games, he seemed larger still in now, thanks to good nutrition and the bulky armor plates of his soldier armor. He had flourished in District 13 as much as she had deteriorated in it.

Perhaps a childish envy fueled her words. "Ralph," she spoke very slowly. "If by some miracle Turbo survived the Games along with the rest of us, and he was coma possibly induced by you, and you've been half-hoping every day that he'll be pushing up daisies tomorrow, or the day after. But then one day-" her body suddenly lurched forward abruptly and she slapped a hand over mouth. Ralph reached forward to help – not that his huge hands could fit through the prison bars. Her own hand was outstretched as a refusal just as quickly.

After swallowing down the icky bile, Merida continued, dry and soulless, "But one day, Turbo wakes up. Would you want to see him?"

"The Two kid isn't Turbo," was Ralph's immediate reply.

"Really?" Merida arched a brow at him. Her glare would have been rather intimidation if she wasn't constantly bothered by a gnawing in her gut. "You barely knew anything about Turbo. You definitely don't know much about Dragon boy. How do you both of them aren't the same type psychopathic-killers?"

"Well, I-I-" he struggled for a response. Just as Merida thought herself victorious in the debate – or it was a debate in her mind, he answered, "Well, I can't. But that's me. You can. You've seen enough of them both."

He was right. Unfortunately, he was right. Ralph could operate under the excuse of ignorance because he wasn't in the position to know, but she couldn't. She had spent enough time with both boys during the Games to know how truly different they were.

She wished that the District 2 boy was truly evil, or brutal, or guilty of something at least, the way Turbo was. But the Two boy wasn't and that was the problem. From whatever she had seen of the 74th Hunger Games footage, he was probably the most spotless of all. He didn't kill a single person himself! That made the actions she took against him just pure out disgusting. She was disgusting, and she hated feeling that way.

She wanted to go home – to District 5, not her compartment. She wanted to the hero again.

No, wait. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want them to see her like this, remember? To her Da', she was the pride and joy. To her mother, she was the little lady. To the rest of District 5, she was their hero. To District 13, she was a menace who should really stop stealing from the medicine cupboard.

Anyway, there was no point thinking about this. As far as the rest of Panem was concerned, District 13 was still a steaming pot of radiation and she was just another casualty in the Hunger Games.

"I don't feel like talking to you anymore, Ralph," she told him outright. She couldn't even be bothered to be tactful anymore. "Just leave me alone."

He didn't take it well, as expected, spouting another lecture about consequences, helping herself and moving on. She switched her attention off, keeping her face sufficiently blank that it infuriated him enough to make him leave. Well-meaning, heart-of-gold Ralph. He was no match to her incredible stubbornness and blatant disregard for his opinion.

Once he was gone, she took a brief reconnaissance of her surroundings. The cells within her vicinity were all empty and the only guard was standing somewhere near the lift landing, out of sight from where she was. Merida drew herself back a little, before pulling out the object tucked under her standard-issue shirt. When the guards had arrested her and confiscated the object of her theft, they hadn't known that she had hidden part of prize at that time. Doaty lot of lavvy heids, they were.

She tucked her knees in front of her before dropping the packet in from her, so that the packet wouldn't be immediately noticed by the passerby. She didn't bother reading the labels before she tore open the flap, which was why she groaned only after seeing the contents. Morphling came in three forms; tablets, injections and drips. She was never very good at handling the second form because of her shaky hands. This was a strange trait that she discovered about herself while in District 13 - strange, because an archer ought to have steady hands.

After unwrapping all the sterile packaging, she tried to jab the syringe needle into the vial containing the liquid, then realized after two tries that she hadn't removed the needle cover. She amended this error and pierced the vial cap, beginning to drawing up the liquid into the syringe. Once she emptied the vial, she removed the needle from it. She then turned the syringe such that the needle was pointing up. She flicked her fingers against the side of the syringe. She had no idea what it was for, but the nurses in the infirmary always did that before administering the medicine.

Some part of her knew inherently that all this was wrong, and that Ralph was right, but she didn't really care. She was sick, so she needed medicine. Simple as that.

She was held the needle near her forearm, where the printed schedule of perfect efficiency told her all the better, more productive things she could have been doing instead of trying to stab herself with a needle in a jail cell reeking urine.

It took around three times before she finally pressed down on the plunger, and even then, she wasn't sure if she stuck the needle in the right place. Once done with the deed, she couldn't be bothered to recap the needle and hide her evidence. She threw all the wrappings on the other end of the cell, leaving it in open view. Let them see how incompetent their guards were.

It was pathetic that such petty things were what she derived satisfaction from nowadays.

It took a while for the morphling to kick in after that, and even so, she might have still cried anyway.

S/N:

And that's how Hiro survived. It's ridiculously complicated, but I did try foreshadow all the stuff that he would use to survive. But being ridiculously Hollywood-influenced, I compensate letting him survive with crippling him for life. Aren't I a great author?

Oh, if anyone's confused, after the flashback, the events here continue on from those in the Prologue.

Elsa's journal entry and Merida's depression phase are inspired from Katniss' Depression in the Mockingjay book (I might hate this book, but I still reference to it anyway. This issue wasn't tackled much in the movies – which was good! I wouldn't have liked them otherwise). And the Depression/PTSD isn't going to stop here. I'm half afraid that this would become one of those dealing with mental disorder modern AU …oh dear. More about morphling would be revealed later, and yes, it is annoyingly present in the THG books.

Oh, yes – Inside Out cameos! I haven't decided how important they would be, but you never know…

Up Next: Life in District 13, probably. It mightn't be the Capitol, but it's still no wonderland.

A/N:

Still really busy person. Still no beta. I think I might have to accept that my beta is truly gone. (Be brave, Shar *sniffs*).

Writing all this rather depressing. I can't wait to get back to killing people again.

Guest Mailbox:

Tote awesome: Isn't it great? So many people are alive! Too many, really…

Guest (Apr 2): You like the first book? Awesome! A third book? I have considered it, and it might happen. Ideally though, I think I would prefer to finish this in just two books in total. As for power couples….I don't think I can say without it revealing something in the future chapters. If it helps, I usually stick with canonical ships, save the occasional dash of Jelsa (*huge cheers from Jelsa lovers*) – ahem, when necessary (*Jelsa lovers harrumph*).

So, thanks for reading all this! I love reviews, so if you still find it in your heart to like this story after this depressing chapter, drop one.

Review. Critique. Ask Questions.