Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. They belong to Suzanne Collins.
Note: Time to start off another decade! Joining us for her debut is Lyme, a character that honestly I've always had a bit of a keen interest for. A D2 victor having rebel status in canon is not something I had overly expected due to how Two likes the Games and all, so it presented me a fun challenge to explain how an assumed career tribute could rise to a spot within the rebellion and work towards taking down the Capitol. Read on and see what insanity I've come up with this time, haha!
Katniss and Peeta looked down at Lyme's imprinted face once again, unsure of what exactly they should have been feeling in that moment.
"How do you think she managed to rise to the position she had by the time I met her?" Katniss asked, uncertain.
"You've got me. I guess she just had a lot of layers to who she was, layers neither of us really got any chance to see," Peeta said, sombre. "Think she survived the battle for Two?"
"I have no idea," Katniss admitted, lost. "I never saw her die. All I know what that she really was committed to the rebellion. She would've done anything to get Two on the rebels' side."
The pair held a few moments of respectful silence for Lyme, neither of them having any idea about the irregular occurrences that led to her becoming a victor… or even a tribute to begin with.
51st Annual Hunger Games
Name: Lyme Rabe
Gender: Female
District: 2
Age: 18
Kills: 7
"I'm never going into those damn Games."
Those were the words that left Lyme's mouth every single day since she was forced into attending Machete Ridge.
Much like Runa from decades prior Lyme had no love for the Hunger Games nor the Capitol. All she cared for was her own little village and her direct family. She didn't need much to feel content, merely that her family and home remain in one piece.
Also like Runa she'd been forcefully dragged from her home and enrolled against her will in the grand career academy. Her might and fighting instinct had simply been too great to go 'wasted'. Whether she liked it or not she was going to have to spend her life from ages twelve to eighteen in the academy.
Unlike Runa she was not doing this without any complaint. Indeed, with her having such a high pain tolerance for whipping and other such punishments, it took a long time for the academy to be able to get Lyme to do a single thing. She was content to just stand in silence or occasionally, just to mix things up a little, sit and glare.
Only when Olga accused her of being a district traitor and threatened to have a gun put to her little brother's head did Lyme comply, two years later than when she had been supposed to.
Lyme performed, but they could not make her like it. She was strong, knew the tactics of battle, was a lot smarter than she looked and even proved to be incredibly adept with a scimitar. However, she openly despised the other careers who did all of this out of greed, a desire for fame or simply to hurt people and receive no consequences for their actions. She hated several of the victors as well, for that matter.
She just wanted to go home dammit!
As fate would have it, however, Lyme ended up being given the role of the female tribute for the Fifty First Hunger Games. She'd refused, but once again Olga had simply warned her of what would befall her brother if she did not get in line and serve the glorious Capitol.
But after having much of her youth taken away by the crazy patriot's murder school Lyme wasn't going to just back down without a fight and a half! Lyme had sat in Olga's office, a vicious leer on her face and not shown any fear at all. Olga was scary, true, but Lyme thought she was pretty intimidating herself as well.
"You do that and I tell the entire nation about it during my interview. You want to be known as a murderer by that city you love so much?" Lyme asked, cold as sleet and ice. "I'm not going in that damn arena. You cannot make me, pick some other sadist who wants to risk getting killed."
Lyme left Olga's office feeling like she had managed to get herself out of the damn Games. They could name her as tribute, but the rules clearly stated she had to verbally volunteer (or have a figure of authority do it on her behalf if she were a mute) to become a tribute. Sure, she could be reaped normally, but her name was in a mere seven times. Besides, other girls wanted to be a tribute anyway.
Olga was not one to be beaten. She did not want to mentor Lyme, no question about it, but she would always do what gave Two the best chance of winning. If that meant having Lyme as a tribute due to her sheer fighting ability then so be it. The only problem was how to get her to actually volunteer.
How was she to do that and not have Lyme trace a thing back to her? For once Olga didn't have a quick answer to her problem.
But like always, the Capitol certainly did. It all came to her at once four days later when she was half-watching a Capitol show about aspiring stage magicians.
One of whom used hypnosis.
"I know a magician like that," Olga smirked to herself, the plan ever so clear. "Blessed be the Capitol and… eh, tolerated be Nine."
Olga soon took out her phone and dialled up a number. Being the overall most Capitol trusted victor gave her certain perks. Perks such as the phone numbers of all the other victors across the nation.
"Hello, Tabbock?" Olga said. "I have a job for you. Do this for me and I'll ensure your tributes live past the bloodbath this year and that you'll get a twenty thousand cap payment."
Olga paused, listened to what the magician said in response.
"You only want the money? Hm, so be it," Olga said, shrugging. "I need you here in Two for just a few hours at some point in the coming week. There's a bit of an issue that you're the best suited to help me with."
Lyme arrived at the reaping with no intent to volunteer whatsoever. She got herself checked in and stood with a bored, slightly defiant look upon her face. She tuned out most of what was going on; what did it matter when she could finally get the hell away from the career academy and back home once and for all? One of the murderous brats around her could have the victor crown if they wanted it.
She didn't pay any attention to those who stood closest to her. If she did then she would have noticed that one of the other girls, a cadet who had decided to go on as a peacekeeper instead of a tribute, had made her way to stand so close to Lyme that she was practically touching her.
Right as the escort reaped a sixteen year old girl and asked for a volunteer the girl snapped her fingers.
Lyme suddenly went rigid.
She began to snarl like a feral animal.
She began to growl like a beast that had just smelled the blood of its prey.
She lunged forwards right out from the eighteen year olds section, sending more than a few other girls down to the ground in the process.
"I VOLUNTEER!"
Lyme was soon on the reaping stage, roaring and snarling like a wild beast. The burly boy who volunteered after her, Balthazar, was both amused and more than a little bit confused by Lyme's sudden ferocity.
Hadn't she always said she hated the Games? Was it all just an act or something?
He figured he didn't care, not when it meant a powerful ally on his side.
Lyme was still in a frenzy of rage, hatred and bloodlust when she was taken into the judgement building. She remained in this highly volatile state when her family tearfully came to see her off. She stayed this way as she boarded the train that would take her towards the Capitol.
She only snapped out of it once the escort snapped her fingers, having apparently forgotten to put on her make-up before dinner.
Lyme lay upon her bed in the tribute building, her mind reeling and her heart pounding horribly. How had this happened? How had she ended up here?
She'd seen the footage of herself volunteering of course, but that was exactly the problem. She couldn't remember any of it. She had a few memories of the train ride, but there would be times where her memory just… stopped. Hours where she couldn't recall a single thing.
Her mentor Brutus was just as lost as she was, but had simply advised her to put all the aggression to good use whenever it showed up. Playing the Games aggressively was, in his opinion, the best way to emerge victorious.
Lyme had no memory of it, but apparently she'd been easily accepted into the pack and had gone around mocking the outliers. Or perhaps tormenting was the more accurate term? They were all terrified of her.
Lyme spent the better part of her nights trying to work out what the hell was happening to her. She rarely had a single memory of anything during the day. It was like she'd walk towards the elevator leading to the training centre and suddenly she'd be walking back out again, daylight replaced by dusk.
"Come on, remember," Lyme told herself, straining as she attempted to dig deep through the recesses of her mind. "Try harder!"
It was a useless effort. There was almost nothing that she could dig up. She remembered Olga sitting near her on the train, but everybody had been eating dinner. Hardly out of the ordinary. Olga was also there when training ended on day one, but she always greeted tributes as soon as they came back according to Brutus.
What else was there?
The most she could recall was two occasions where Balthazar had been walking towards her, everything going blank right afterwards. Was he inflicting amnesia upon her? Crazy talk for sure.
The only other thing she could remember at all was a brief image of a magician in a mask. Hadn't there been some party she'd been dragged to by some of the other cadets? 'Mandatory attendance' or something? But the magician hadn't had a typical Two accent.
Lyme sighed. She was getting nowhere and she still had another training day to get through. She wondered if she'd even be able to recall what she did in private training once the time arrived, or if it would be lost to the ether like lots of her memories had been as of late.
Lyme awoke to find herself seated with all of the other tributes aside from the pair from One. She glanced around wildly, incredibly confused and more than a little alarmed.
It was mere minutes before her private training session was to begin.
"How did I get here?" Lyme whispered, starting to shake. She placed a hand to her head, terribly confused. "What's going on?"
From beside her Balthazar reacted with the briefest showing of alarm.
"Shit, she woke up," he muttered to himself.
Before Lyme could ask him what he was talking about – and, obviously, how she had gotten here – everything faded away in an instant. Whatever Balthazar had done with his hand behind his back had banished her awareness once again.
Lyme woke up to find herself back on the District Two floor, being congratulated for earning a score of ten. Brutus poured them both a glass of soda with an eager grin on his face.
"I've gotta know, what did you show them?" he asked, eager as could be. "It must have been awesome!"
"…I can't remember," Lyme whispered, feeling genuinely afraid. "All I can remember is waking up outside the training centre with no idea how I got there. After that I think I sat there for ten seconds… now I'm here. What's going on?"
Brutus looked confused. He mulled over this, lost as to what the answer could be.
"You've got me," Brutus said, awkwardly shrugging. "By all accounts it doesn't make any sense."
Brutus patted Lyme on the shoulder, a friendly grin on his face.
"You just focus on kicking some serious ass. I'll see if I can work anything out for you," Brutus replied, crossing his heart. "If I can do anything, no matter how minor, I'll do it. That's a promise."
"Thanks Brutus," Lyme said, smiling genuinely.
Neither of them had noticed the way Balthazar had been observing their short conversation. A ten scorer himself, he was feeling very pleased about his odds in the days ahead.
He was all the more pleased for having worked out what was going on with Lyme. Hypnosis, or some variant of it. At the snap of anybody's fingers she would become a bloodthirsty monster. He didn't know how this had come to be, only that it was just how things had played out.
He couldn't call himself a victor if he was not prepared to exploit this for his own gain. Naturally, he could call himself a victor as this was his entire plan.
Lyme was in a frenzy of panic from the moment she had started going up her launch tube. One moment she'd been waiting for her interview with Caesar Flickerman, the next moment she was going up the tube to the arena above.
What the fuck was happening to her?! Where had her memories been going?!
The interview. The final night. The hovercraft ride. Even being escorted to the changing room by the peacekeepers. Not one memory amongst the lot was in her mind. It was like they'd been literally erased from existence.
Or, had the memories never even existed?
Lyme had no time to mull it over. Not when her launch plate clicked into place and she had to fight her own psyche to gain her bearings before the bloodbath started.
As Lyme fought to stabilise her breathing she and the other twenty three tributes gazed around at the arena they had been condemned to this time around. A massive Arabian city towered over them, a marketplace surrounding the silver cornucopia and a grand palace not far to the north. Outside the city walls was miles and miles of desert. It was hot, far too hot for comfort.
Balthazar was on the pedestal directly to Lyme's right. He waved towards her to gain her attention when only fifteen seconds remained on the countdown.
"Lyme!" he called.
"Yeah?" she replied, readying herself to fight.
"Let's get ready to rumble!" Balthazar exclaimed, snapping his fingers.
Lyme went rigid and began to snarl like a feral mutt. From her other side the little girl from Ekeven trembled, quickly making the choice to turn around and flee from the moment the gong rang.
Sure enough the small girl ran for her life into the market while Lyme and the other twenty two tributes charged into the fray as the bloodbath began. Lyme got her hands upon a large axe after only ten seconds. She smashed it down upon the skull of the girl from Six not even eight seconds later.
From there on in it was pure and utter carnage until the dust and sand finally settled five minutes later.
It was another year of only four careers in the pack, but Lyme was fighting viciously enough for it to be as if there were six careers all along. She gutted the pair from Eight, decapitated the girl from Twelve and smashed the boy from Four against one of the launch pedestals. All the while she kept a blank, vicious look on her face.
It was rather like she was running on auto pilot.
With her own ferocity and the brutal skills of the other careers backing her up it was simple for the pack to kill a grand total of fourteen of the tributes between themselves. The pair from One cheered, Balthazar smirked in satisfaction and Lyme just took shaky breathes in and out with blood all over her.
She needed more blood. Now.
"Time for a break I think," Balthazar muttered, lightly snickering.
He snapped his fingers and suddenly it was like Lyme had awoken from a dream. She reacted with horror and panic at the sight of the corpses laying broken and beaten upon the sand. What the hell had happened?!
…Which of them had she been personally responsible for killing?
Once again the memories were gone.
A week of the Games passed by with a further three outliers being hunted down and killed. Numerous camel mutts were slaughtered as well whenever the gamemakers released them to keep things interesting. This wasn't what had Lyme concerned though.
It was how she was still having massive gaps in her memory. She would frequently 'fall asleep' while following her alliance around only to suddenly wake up with dead mutts scattered around or a butchered tribute left to stain the sand red.
She never knew how it had happened, only that Balthazar would be cheering and the Ones would approvingly call her a true monster.
"I don't understand," Lyme muttered as the pack walked through the market area for the fifth time.
"Understand what?" the boy from One asked, bored.
"I keep losing my memories. This is a pretty big deal!" Lyme exclaimed, clutching her scimitar tightly. "You keep saying I've performed amazing kills, but I can't remember any of it. It's all gone."
"Well trust us, it happened," the girl from One replied. "You went crazy."
"That's exactly the problem. None of that is anything like me! Literally every 'career minded' thing I have done I've got no memories of. I don't understand… how does this make any sense?" Lyme asked, her eyes widening from distress. "This never happened before the reaping."
"…What if it did and you just forgot?" the boy from One suggested.
"Idiot. She'd remember those memory gaps as well," the girl from One huffed.
"She might not! She might have forgotten to remember them!" the boy from One insisted. "You can't forget what you remember, but she didn't remember to not forget!"
An awkward silence arose in the marketplace, nobody quite knowing what to say in response to this. Even some of the Capitol citizens who were watching the Games started to cringe.
The gamemakers sorted things out by sending in a gigantic sandstorm to split up the pack for some cheap entertainment. The Ones were sent fleeing one way, Balthazar ran off further into the market and Lyme ended up running off towards the palace all alone.
She didn't mind being alone. At least she would be able to have the silence she needed to work out what the hell was going on with her mind.
She feared she was already going mad.
Two days went by with Lyme hiding herself within the upper floors of the Arabic palace. A cannon fired during this time and several mutts came her way, each one left in a pool of its own blood.
One thing that did not happen throughout this time was memory loss. Lyme was in complete control of her mind and there was no gap in time she had a suspicious lack of memory of. It was like her problem had just mysteriously vanished.
The sandstorms came to a stop during the second night Lyme spent within the palace. She looked out at the middle eastern city, counting on her fingers how many others were left.
"Just five more to go," Lyme muttered. "Games' almost over and I still don't know what's up with me. This sucks major ass."
Lyme glanced up towards the sky, lost.
"Don't suppose anybody knows if this is just one funky, shitty allergy?" Lyme asked, bewildered.
For a few moments nothing happened. A few moments of nothing later Lyme realised something had begun to happen.
A sponsor parachute was descending from the sky and homing in towards her. Lyme opened it up with relief.
Confusion was her only response when she took out a pair of thick earmuffs from the package. She held them awkwardly, scratching her head.
"The hell?" Lyme muttered quirking up an eyebrow. "Okaaaay?"
Lyme looked over the note, hoping that it may be able to explain a few things. The few sentences written upon it told her all she needed to know, enough for her to shove on the earmuffs and secure them tightly.
-Sorry for the wait, been hard getting the money to be able to write this letter. Information passing doesn't come cheap. I've figured out your problem Lyme – HYPNOSIS. Any time Balthazar snaps his finger you turn into a maniac. When he snaps it again you go back to normal. On the one hand it's kept you alive, but on the other hand it's probably a violation of your human (tribute?) rights? Anyway, keep these earmuffs on and you'll be unable to hear the sound of a finger snapping. If you make it back we'll see about tracing this problem back to whoever did it and working out how to fix it. Good luck, you're doing great.
Brutus.-
Lyme gnashed her teeth, her face starting to turn red. Almost like she'd been sunburnt by the arena's fake sun. She had an idea of what had caused this to happen. Or, rather, who.
She didn't know how Olga had managed this, only that she somehow did. She couldn't accuse her of doing this, not without any sort of proof. Olga had clearly been careful.
On the other hand… she could get back at her after she won in one very simple way.
Be a rebel and destroy Machete High.
She left the palace not even twenty minutes later, ready to do what it took to ensure she achieved this.
The Games ended on less of a bang and more of a whimper.
Camel mutts took out the boy from One and after this the girl from One and Balthazar hunted down the last of the outliers. Balthazar easily hacked the girl from One to pieces, thinking he'd be able to take advantage of the finger snapping trick to confuse Lyme and leave her wide open for his serrated sword.
They met in front of the palace on the eleventh day and within one minute Balthazar's plan fell to pieces, along with his absolutely broken body.
Lyme charged and, thanks to the earmuffs, did not respond at all to the finger snapping. Balthazar only realised this when Lyme was ten meters away and rapidly narrowing the already small gap.
He was only halfway towards stabbing towards her when she swung her scimitar against his neck… followed by his arms, legs, crotch, gut and then repeated the process three or four extra times just to be sure.
One could never be too careful in the Games after all.
Lyme discarded the headphones with a profound sigh of relief, more than happy the damn Games had finally come to an end.
"What a waste of my summer," Lyme muttered to herself as the hovercraft came down to collect her. "Could've been playing sports or hunting or somethin'."
Lyme was ever so tempted to tackle Olga to the ground and snap her neck the instant she saw her after the Games had come to an end. It would've been so easy to do it before anybody could react and stop her.
Instead she just spoke as little as possible, shaking her hand, nodding when necessary and acting like a good little victor. Lyme hardly even remembered what she said about 'Olga being right all along' and 'the Games not being as bad as her folks told her'.
It was less about memory loss and more that she didn't care to remember her time with Olga anymore than she really had to. She had work to be getting along with first and foremost.
Brutus was true to his word and managed to get somebody who could undo her hypnosis. He had no idea Olga surely had a hand in it and likely wouldn't have believed it anyway. Lyme didn't care, just being glad to still be alive and have her mind back to normal.
Unknown to her fellow Twos she arranged for another hypnotist, one of Spool's old friends by the name of Buckle, to hypnotise her again just in case anybody back in Two tried to bring out her bloodthirsty side again.
Anytime she heard the snap of somebody's fingers she's become even more of a rebel than she already was. An action never undone within her lifetime.
Lyme became one of the quietest and generally most reclusive of Two's victors of the fair heap they had over the seventy plus years of the Hunger Games. She wasn't loud, brash, a loyalist, outspoken in her ways or really much like the rest.
She was just a girl who had privately spoken to Mizar during the Fifty Second Games after the infamously horrific bloodbath and told him she wanted in on whatever sort of rebellious plans he had on the go.
A rebel of status within Two. Such a novel concept.
Such a vital concept for winning the war, as it turned out.
Lyme was glad she had met Mizar, very glad indeed. A friendly man with a heart of gold... and whom was quick to deduce that his wayward victor Tabbock had something to do with the whole hypnotism controvesy.
Lyme left Tabbock with a black eye that never fully faded away.
Bombs fell, screams filled the air and a terrible sight of smoke and fire filled up large areas within District Two.
What used to be the grand and famous Machete High had been reduced to burning rubble during the course of the Mockingjay Rebellion. Nothing was left of what had been Olga's pride and glory for many decades. Absolutely nothing had been spared from the volatile carpet bombs that had been dropped upon it by the rebels over one constant hour.
Lyme surveyed the scene with immense satisfaction and even let out a genuine giggly laugh for the first time she could remember. Olga had disappeared before the shit truly hit the fan and Lyme had no idea whether she was alive or not at this point.
She felt it did not matter. Either the women was dead or forced to be alive to know that everything she's worked for had been destroyed.
Lyme watched the wreckage for a few moments, contemplating what to do.
She snapped her fingers, loud and proud.
She walked away from the wreckage site two minutes later, having paused to satisfy her sudden rebellious urge to piss on the charred ash that had once been part of Olga's fancy desk within her office.
Katniss and Peeta finished their respectful silence for Lyme and, with nothing more to say other than wishes to have been able to get to know her better, continued down the street.
"You know, it occurs to me we're going to be at the fifty eighth victor soon," Peeta noted. "The year we were born."
"I guess so. Why's that suddenly coming up?" Katniss asked.
"Well… I don't know, it's just weird we've been seeing all these victors from before we were born and now we're coming up to our 'birth Games' before long," Peeta said, glancing off to the side. "Sorry, just talking aloud. Helps keep me grounded in reality."
"By all means, keep talking," Katniss assured him.
The pair exchanged a smile and swiftly arrived at the fifty second face imprinted within the sidewalk of the grand street. A bald teenager with a particularly scornful and intimidating glare looked back at them, a casual sort of fedora worn upon his head. He looked almost as vicious as a shark.
"Anchor Paddock," Katniss said, reading the name inscribed beneath the face. "The shark boy himself."
"Don't tell me he bit somebody," Peeta muttered, paling slightly.
"That's Enobaria's thing. Finnick just said this guy was particularly vicious," Katniss said, glancing sideways. "The bloodbath was 'unprecedented', whatever that meant."
There we go, Lyme leaves the arena with her life intact and her temper very much not! Hypnotism as a concept has been an ongoing sort of 'casual fascination' to me for a long time. Just the idea of having one's mind messed with and being unable to even know it… yeah, that kind of stuff is freaky and yet makes for really good story telling. With my own rather bizarre logic I felt that Olga having such a thing done to Lyme to get her to cooperate would make for a fun, if slightly chilling sort of chapter that could explain what made her go from simply hating the Games and the Capitol to taking an active role towards destroying them both. Hope you guys liked the tale we ended up getting. :) Next up, at long last, another victor from Four… and man oh man, are you guys all ready to see the Shark of Four? Stay tuned…
Stats
District 1: Peridot Gaudy (8th Games), Crystal McCree (14th Games), Bronze Marley (19th Games), Crown Martins (24th Games), Dollar Dettwieller (32nd Games), Mascara Court (41st Games), Platinum Twist (44th Games)
District 2: Baron Overwhill (4th Games), Runa Peace (7th Games), Olga Machete (10th Games), Rook Valiant (17th Games), Boulder Atherston (20th Games), Vercingetorix Carnby (25th Games), Dragon Batofel (27th Games), Rhyder Overwhill (39th Games), Mercy Gregor (46th Games), Brutus Gunn (49th Games), Lyme Rabe (51st Games)
District 3: Honorius Perthshire (5th Games), Pi Orbit (22nd Games), Beetee Latier (37th Games), Wiress Plummer (47th Games)
District 4: Museida Selkirk (3rd Games), Mags Flanagan (11th Games), Tide Luther (23rd Games), Librae Ogilvy (35th Games)
District 5: Shunt Gaspar (12th Games), Isobel Sparks (18th Games), Crimson Flanders (29th Games), Porter Tripp (38th Games), Neon Erg (48th Games)
District 6: Chassis Macalister (31st Games)
District 7: Pliny Aransio (2nd Games), Fir Buzz (9th Games), Jack Tylos (21st Games), Snag Nakamura (34th Games)
District 8: Woof Casino (16th Games), Paige Murphy (30th Games), Spool Nylon (42nd Games)
District 9: Mizar Aldjoy (1st Games), Gwenith Rosebud (13th Games), Teff Withers (28th Games), Laurel Flamsteel (36th Games), Tabbock Summers (43rd Games)
District 10: Stallion March (26th Games), Lammy Phyronix (40th Games)
District 11: Bear Redfoot (15th Games), Seeder Howell (33rd Games), Chaff Mitchell (45th Games)
District 12: Duke Saint-Rose (6th Games), Haymitch Abernathy (50th Games)