With thanks to deathless . smile , JadeRavenstone and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapters.
This chapter firmly hits the T rating in its stride due to scenes of impromptu medical procedures. If you're faint of heart, this may not be for you.
THREE DAYS EARLIER
N 50º 54.80544' , W 115º 51.70896'
A ringing in her ears; the echo of a crash. She frowned vaguely, tilting her head to try and place the sound, but frowned more as she realised the sound was ricocheting around her head. Frowning, stirring, she slowly started to sift together facts from the maze of semi-consciousness she was in.
Her name was Odyssea Ermintrude Kjaergaard, but she called herself Emma because neither name fit. Her mother had died three years ago. Her father had died three weeks ago. Her brother, Andreas, was probably still alive. She was probably still alive. She had volunteered for the Games to escape her arranged marriage- she had watched people die, so many, since then. She had killed, killed so many, since then.
She had been a Career. She had betrayed the Careers with her district partner Ronan, then betrayed him in turn. She had met six others, six rebels, who had reluctantly folded her into a plan to escape. They were-
Were they alive?
Now the memories started rushing back. Ronan submerged in mutts tearing flesh. An elevator shaft; climbing with six others through it, to the top of nowhere. The hatch to the arena. A shining metal dome with the hovercraft's bullets ripping into it, and forming a rope with her paracord to-
-"QUINT!" Glace screamed, her voice cracking in pain on the word. From Emma's vantage point she could just about see the hovercraft firing bullets into their ally; Quint collapsing in a heap, sliding out of sight on the sloping metal. Glace started to surge upwards despite her injured arm, but Theon yanked her back.
"You crazy?!" He gasped. "Quint's dead! We'll have time to mourn if we survive!"
"He could still-" Glace seemed horrified, reluctant to admit the truth to herself. Cesal and Emil slid down the metal to them, Cesal wrapping an arm around a support and helping Emil support himself against the scaffold. Emil's leg was slick with blood and seemed to be not quite in the right position. Emma's stomach threatened to heave.
"Oh, god," Elizabeth said heavily. "Emil?"
Emil was losing blood and fast. His face was already unnaturally pale, and he was barely conscious. Emma looked down at the paracord rope she was hastily fashioning inbetween climbing down.
"We have to get down, now," Emma called to the rest as she flung the rope across to Cesal, who barely caught it. "The hovercraft's gonna come for us next. Tourniquet his leg, then get him down or leave him. We don't have time to do anything else."
Perhaps it seemed harsh, but Emma was in this to survive, not make friends. Quint was already dead, they couldn't stop that. Emil probably had severe blood loss and a possible broken leg; even if they made it off the dome, he'd be nigh-impossible to save in the wilds, hundreds of miles from Panem.
Emma had enough training to save herself. She had never trained to save anyone else.
Elizabeth seemed to make up her mind. "She's right," she yelled, "We have to get down now. Cesal, you need a hand?"
Cesal had tied the rope tight around Emil's leg. "Yeah," he gasped out reluctantly- clearly his barely-healed injury was starting to affect him. Elizabeth groaned, half climbed and half slid over to Cesal, and together they lifted Emil and began moving down from support to support.
Theon looked upwards, half-helping Glace down the scaffold as Emma began to rush down it as fast as possible.
"The hovercraft's rising," Theon yelled. "Maybe it's leaving?"
Emma risked a glance upwards. The hovercraft was indeed beginning to rise. But the possibility of something far worse grazed her mind, and then stuck with horrible clarity.
Her yell was loud and high enough to disturb the birds in the tall trees around the arena. A number of jabberjays were among them; they took to the air and screeched stark echoes of her voice.
"IT'S DROPPING A BOMB!"
The jabberjays called her warning into the terrible sunrise.
And then six people started incoherently and inexpertly scrambling down the scaffold supports on the dome that held the arena. Some were yelling out, some were screaming; and one, she wasn't sure who, had taken to moaning 'Oh God' in a staccato, breathless tone. It took Emma a moment to realise it was her.
Emma was the first to reach the end of the supports; from there, the dome became a nigh-vertical drop of around ten to fifteen metres to the bottom. She helplessly started to put together some manner of plan; but none came to her mind, blanked as it was by adrenaline and fear. She looked up as the hovercraft rose to a hovering standstill; Theon and Glace made it to the bottom of the scaffold with her.
"What now?" Glace gasped. Emma grit her teeth and scanned the dome, trying to figure out a method. Her hair had come undone from its rough braid and stuck now to her back and face, obscuring her sight. She took a hand from the support to brush it away.
"We have to slide down it," she said. "We don't have any other choice."
Elizabeth, Cesal and Emil slowly dragged themselves down to meet the group. Emil was almost entirely unconscious now, and Cesal's face was pale with pain. Elizabeth shook her head.
"We can't slide down that, it's basically vertical," she argued. Emma rounded on her.
"Got a better idea?!" She snapped, her fear manifesting into anger. Elizabeth bit her lip.
"No."
"Then-" a whistling overhead, and every head looked up. A metal cylinder dropping from the hovercraft.
"GO!" Emma screamed, but it was lost in the sound of igniting air and cracking concrete, light around her, dust and fire everywhere. She was sliding down the dome now but so was the rest of the dome, coming down around her, a person whistling past her in the air- who was it? She reached out but instead of touching a person her fingers touched the ground and an almighty boom behind her and-
She was certainly awake now. Her eyes split open and she sat up with a gasp. She checked herself over first- no broken bones, at least none she could feel. She flexed her shoulders and groaned; every muscle in her back was on fire. Her backpack had cushioned the impact onto the ground, it seemed; the only major injury she could sense were the bruised and torn muscles in her upper and lower back. Her movement would be limited for a while, but she would recover.
She tried to stand up but promptly fell backwards again, wailing instinctively as her aching back hit the ground again. Her ears were still ringing and her balance had left her. She dragged herself over to a tree and used it as a support, pulling her shaking legs upwards until they were standing. She took one step, then another; then she could take in her surroundings.
Around her, on the ground, in the air, in her eyes- dust. A haze of debris had been created while she had been knocked unconscious; it obscured the grass beneath her feet, covering it in a thin layer of rubble and grit. Emma stood on the edge of destruction. Behind her was a huge, now slightly torn and broken pine tree; in front of her, partially obscured by particulates in the air, the remains of the arena lay crumbled at her feet.
Concrete and steel lay in twisted heaps; in some places, the curved structure of the dome had collapsed intact and taken the inner structure of the fake Capitol with it, but in some places buildings had survived- around ten floors of the Training Center, though significantly battered and likely to fall at any minute, still stood. A few buildings still stood, but none stood intact. Many were scorched, as if a fire had passed through them. Emma wondered if that was the missile or their own doing.
The wreckage had created a clearing almost larger than the eye could see; the damage was almost overwhelming. Emma started to turn, to try and discern any figures in the wreckage- she saw none.
She tried to speak but the dust had settled in her mouth and the words came out as a squeak. She mustered up what little saliva she could, spat out as much of the dust as she was able, then coughed and tried again.
"Hello?" She croaked into the dust and carnage. Her voice echoed uncomfortably among the soft sounds of dust clouds and harsh sounds of metal scraping against stone. "Hello?"
Nothing. Emma started pacing the edge of the arena, huge as it was; tried to pick out her location, the location of anyone else, anything. The arena had been surrounded on one side by a moat of water intended to represent the real Capitol reservoirs; while the stone had cracked the moat remained. Emma paced the debris-tainted water anxiously, calling out when she could. She could see nothing, percieve nothing, that lived. Everything was awful wreckage or dark, dense and horrifyingly tall trees; but nothing surrounding her visibly lived.
Emma was not one for panic. She had trained for isolated survival; the Training Center of District 4 had attempted to cover all bases. But it wasn't her- her person. Even after she split with the Careers she did so with Ronan. District 4 was a fishing district, and Zone 7, where she had lived, was the smallest but densest area of them all. Noise, clamour, urbanity; all of these thrummed of home.
This silent world of hundreds of miles of loneliness terrified her. She could die out here. She could die out here and nobody could ever know she survived the bombings- Andreas would never know. The panic came thick and fast and now Emma stopped pacing around the edge and started running, weaving through the trees and wreckage.
"Is anyone here?" She yelled despite her voice cracking on the words. "Is anyone alive? GUYS? ANYONE?!"
His consciousness swam in and out in bits and pieces, but it was undoubtedly there. If he squinted slightly, frowned, he could hear something; a trickling sound, but- not.
Ugh. His hair felt disgusting. He hated the feel of greasy hair. He scrunched up his face slightly in distaste, rolling slightly and trying to stretch out.
NO. NO NO NO-
He could hear what sounded like the echo of his own voice screaming as he was dragged into wakefulness. He tried to move and heard the start of a scream on his tongue before he bit down hard on it to still his own cries; the events of the past few days and a lifetime beyond that had taught him that above all else, to survive he must be quiet.
But the pain- oh god, the pain. The swallowed scream escaped as a strangled, pitiful whine as he felt his leg shifting slightly where he had moved it in waking. It felt like it was scraping against itself, god, had the gunshots really ruined his leg that much-?
"Sh." That voice was not his own. His eyes opened and focused on a boy- a man? A teenager, certainly. He was dressed in bloodstained grey clothing; a torn grey jacket, grey pants, grey plimsolls. His tousled brown hair half-fell in front of his hazel eyes as he looked up.
"Hey, kid," Cesal said weakly, but with an element of relief. "Mind keeping the screaming quiet?"
"Ce-s," Emil managed. He could feel the uneven ground beneath him; it felt like the soil he had left behind when he last went on his foraging trips outside District 12. Cesal was kneeling over him, bloodstained but clearly relieved. "Wha-"
His voice failed, but his intent had been clear enough for Cesal to pick up.
"We got down the dome, but the Capitol fuckers sent in a missile," Cesal said, spreading out his hands for emphasis of a blast radius. "Boom. Luckily we got out of the way quickly enough." Cesal smiled, and although it was smeared with blood and dirt and fear, it was the first truly genuine smile Emil had ever seen frim Cesal. "We're out, kid. You and me, we got out the arena."
"Then-" Questions were coming and going in Emil's mind, but one finally settled long enough for him to parse it into words. "Why do we have to be -quiet?"
"Hm." Cesal looked up from Emil and around. "Listen."
The sound was faint, then became stronger as Emil focused upon it.
"-UYS?! PLEASE?! ANYONE?" A female voice filtering through the dense treeline, familiar as a typically far less panicked, far more cocky voice. Emma Kjaergaard, the Career from 4; the final addition to the escapee group, the most potentially dangerous.
"She's leading us in," Cesal whispered, his mouth close enough to Emil's ear for his hair to tickle Emil's face.
"Why?"
"I dunno," Cesal snapped. "She's a Career. She's hostile. She has a huge sword, and that's no innuendo. What reason would she have for wanting our golden company?"
"What reason would she have to kill us?"
Cesal looked down at Emil with a kind of exasperated fondness. "You're kinda dying right now, dumbass, what do you know about that?"
The statement panicked Emil a little more, but it was really only piling on top of the panic he was feeling already. The pain was overwhelming, and he was starting to feel like he was floating. "She's nice. I know it."
"You don't know shit," Cesal retaliated. "You're a flower-picker with blood loss, kid." But the words were said with a kind of horrified sadness that scared Emil; like Cesal was already condemning him to death.
Well. Emil wasn't entirely powerless on the ground, in pain and weightless as he felt.
"HEY!" he called as loudly as he could before Cesal clapped a hand over his face. Emil looked questioningly at Cesal- really, why was he so scared of a Career outside of the arena?- but then it hit him why Cesal was so scared as he heard a person beginning to crash through the undergrowth towards them.
Hundreds of miles from home. The pain he felt in his leg. The weightlessness. Cesal's fear.
Emil had injured himself so badly he was losing blood. And the amount of injuries he had seen of blood loss, the blood loss he remembered losing before he had passed out halfway down the dome-
Emma was a pragmatist, and Emma might say that for the group to proceed they would have to make sure they did not have to proceed at the speed of the slowest.
Emil tried to sit up but Cesal shoved him down again, and now the half-shroud of trees burst open; but four people emerged, not one.
The dust had whipped into her eyes when she had run, but it didn't really bother her. Elizabeth had heard the sound of voices, of life, and after half an hour of regaining consciousness and trying to quietly search out allies, to hear the one person she was concerned of being an enemy calling out, and an ally she was concerned of being dead calling back- it had wrenched her heart and she had been sprinting before she could so much as think about it. Her muscles ached from the slide and collapse of the dome, but she wasn't injured and she wanted to see someone, to know that the others were alright. Elizabeth tripped and stumbled across the forest floor, the feeling familiar, like a homecoming.
A dense shroud of trees she burst through like a bullet; and she stood in a clearing.
And so did five others.
Glace Gratton, slim but strong, her arm wrapped in blood-soaked bandages from a mutt attack but no less imbued with a determined kind of energy, pushed through into the clearing almost as Elizabeth did. There were leaves in her hair and streaks of blood on her face but her typically emotionless face showed a flicker of joy.
Emma Kjaergaard, with her tanned skin and strong body, looked unlike herself with the look of panic and relief on her face. Her light brown hair had come out of its ponytail and now clung to her sweat-soaked face; so typically put together and cocky, to see her so dishevelled was a surprising change.
On the floor, Cesal Nesbin crouched over an unconscious Emil Reynolds. Cesal was pale and shaking but as defiant as he had ever been; he was poised above Emil as if ready to leap and defend him at a moment's notice. Elizabeth was comforted to see outlier district tributes like herself once more; but it was significantly less of a comfort to see Emil.
White as a sheet apart from the red-brown blood soaking his grey clothing, his pants leg had been pulled up by Cesal, revealing the extent of his injuries. The outside of his left thigh, just above his knee, was a mess of flesh and blood; his kneecap appeared to have pushed itself sideways, at least two inches to the right. Elizabeth could smell the blood still flowing despite Cesal's application of a tourniquet; it was an effort not to gag at the sight of his mangled leg.
A rustle of leaves and a rush of footfall and Theon Veux, tall and tanned and with a significant number of twigs sticking in his black-brown hair, burst through the undergrowth and into the clearing, almost tripping over Cesal and Emil in his effort to stop still. He looked around the group with an expression of shock.
"Holy shit," he breathed. "We're all alive-"
His gaze fell to Emil's leg.
"-Holy shit." He murmured. "That's- uh-"
"What?" Cesal snapped. He seemed wary of everyone in the group, but his eyes flicked especially between Emma and Theon.
"Dude, calm down. We're all alive, this is a good thing." Emma said. Cesal laughed slightly, hysterical.
"Not likely, Career girl."
"Oh my god," Elizabeth breathed in exasperation. "Cesal, we're out, okay? We're not even obliged to kill each other anymore. Just- calm down."
"No," Cesal grumbled stubbornly. His eyes, red-rimmed, flicked to Emil. And Elizabeth got it.
"Oh," she murmured, the selfsame protective drive that had brought her to the revos kicking in now. "Okay. Okay. We're going to stay here, guys, for a little while. We're going to pool our resources and see what we have, and fix everyone up. We stick together now; we'll figure out the rest later. But we stick together. All of us. Okay?"
The statement seemed to hit hard with both Glace and Cesal, who made a grunting sound to hide a sound that almost sounded like a sob. Glace fluidly stepped forward and shrugged off her backpack.
"I don't have much," she admitted, "But I have a suture kit, some ration packs; if I have it, it's the group's." She looked around the group; her calm, measured eyes flickered for a moment with something akin to worry.
And then she tipped out the backpack's contents, and after a moment's hesitation removed her empty belt of throwing knives and threw it on top of the pile. It was a gesture. Glace, of all of them the most enigmatic and suspicious of trust, was trusting them.
Theon stepped forward. "I have Emma's sword and that's it." He placed it on the pile, leaning it against Glace's backpack. "But if you want it back-"
"-Keep it," Emma said then; she too stepped forward, pulling her sword from her belt and putting it beside Theon's. "I have a couple of med kits, some ration packs; but I'm going to be honest, it's mostly weapons in here." She tipped out her belongings onto the earth, bouncing into the pile. "But, uh, I'll tag myself into this if you're willing to have me."
Elizabeth's axe dropped onto the pile unceremoniously, as she shrugged off her own makeshift backpack and dropped her plastic crate on top of the collection. "Ration packs, more than enough for us all," she said. "Emma, we'll have you if you'll have us."
Cesal gestured vaguely to a backpack that had already been sitting nearby the pile. "I have my dagger and Emil has his baton, and whatever the hell's in his backpack. Emil, what's in your-"
His voice cut off harshly. "Emil?"
Elizabeth's gaze was drawn to Emil. His face was almost blue. His eyes were closed now.
"Shit," Theon said, kneeling beside Cesal, who had frozen with wide eyes and shaking hands. "Emil? Emil, can you hear me?" He shook Emil's shoulder, then when no response came slapped him. "Emil?!" He looked up at the group. "Is anyone here a medic?"
Helplessly, Cesal gestured at Emil.
Theon groaned.
"Great. Just our goddamn luck. Have any of you taken med courses? Careers?"
"I skipped medical training," Emma muttered vaguely. "If he was drowning I could help, but-"
"-I have some training," Glace said, kneeling beside Emil and Theon. She placed her hand on Emil's neck, pressing down on the right side. She nodded.
"He has a pulse, but not much of one. We need to stem any further bloodflow or he may lose that leg."
"Christ," Cesal blurted out, sitting back on the ground. "Christ, he's gonna- he'll be okay, right? He's gonna be okay, right?" He was rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly. He kept making abortive movements towards Emil then stopping, pulling himself away, curling up further into himself.
Elizabeth wasn't a medic, but she knew people. Cesal was afraid; of losing Emil, of failing to save him, perhaps.
The former Careers were working in an unspoken tandem; Glace was dictating the work and checking Emil's vital signs while Theon prepped the suture kit and Emma started to assess the mess of muscle, skin and blood that constituted Emil's outer thigh. Elizabeth, entirely untrained in medical intervention and survival, sat down next to Cesal and tentatively rubbed circles against his back, like she would with her brother. Cesal tensed but didn't stop her. His eyes didn't leave Emil.
"He's been shot up, pretty badly," Emma murmured, her pallor faintly green.
"If I remember survival training, you need to figure out the bullet's path and remove it if it's still there," Theon muttered as he threaded a needle. "Man, I wish I could've had this kit when I sutured my chest."
"You sutured your own chest?" Glace enunciated with a frown as she tipped half a bottle of water over her hands. "With what?"
Theon worked his jaw slightly. "Paperclip, thread from a chair. Y'know."
"When I'm finished with Emil, I'm checking you out next," Glace asserted.
"Watch out, Lizzy, you have competition," Theon quipped, putting on a smile he clearly didn't mean.
"Quit flirting and sew up his leg," Cesal intervened with a panic-laced force. "He's bleeding out already."
"He's going to be fine," Emma assured Cesal, although her expression didn't seem to agree with her words. Her hands hovered uncomfortably over Emil's ruined flesh, and Glace shot her a glance.
"Emma, how about you search through Emil's backpack for anything helpful?" She suggested. Her tone didn't suggest weakness on Emma's part, merely pragmatism, and Emma seemed happy to fall back on the excuse. Glace turned to Cesal and Elizabeth on the side. "Can one of you wash up and try to assess his leg?"
Cesal, while perhaps willing, seemed frozen in time as Emil lay on the ground. Elizabeth had seen bullet wounds before; many of them inflicted upon her revo allies back in District 7. She wasn't used to dealing with them, but she was used to switching off her fear. She came forward, washed her hands quickly with splashes of water, and began assessing the situation.
His leg was bloody and his kneecap was sticking out two inches to the left of his leg, but it looked worse than it was; at least, she really hoped it was. Elizabeth first turned her attention to his knee. It was an injury she had seen once or twice- there were always people falling from trees in District 7, and a dislocation like this was simple, if horrible, to fix. Emil was truly out of it; he didn't stir even as she pushed at it experimentally. Elizabeth bent up his leg slowly, biting her lip at the sight of his muscles working against the unnatural protrusion of his kneecap underneath his skin. She positioned her thumbs on the patella, pushed; a grating feeling and a soundless connection into place and the kneecap was back in. It would be swollen and sore but that was irrelevant compared to the worst injury.
The bullets had half-destroyed his outer thigh. There were at least three paths of bullets that didn't go through to the other side, and blood was coming from all angles and pooling in the craters and lacerations in his leg, obscuring the bullet paths.
Elizabeth grit her teeth and began feeling into the pools of blood, searching the flesh for holes. She had no tools; she had to remove the bullets with her fingers alone. She felt a horrible shifting beneath her fingers as skinless muscles moved; she pinched, twisted and a shining piece of metal bounced onto the dust-layered earth. Blood resurged.
Glace had joined in now and two more bullets hit the ground in seconds. Glace shook her head.
"He's bleeding too fast; grab his jacket, stop it-"
Elizabeth pressed down diligently with Emil's balled-up jacket, but it wasn't working well. Emil had lost a horrifying amount already, and Theon had only just started to approach the torn skin.
"We need to stem the bloodflow," Glace snapped. For the first time, however, she looked lost; Elizabeth realised Glace had no idea what to do.
"We could-" Theon's voice trailed off.
"Cauterise it."
Cesal had finally gotten himself together enough to stand up. "I saw a guy do it once in the Black Bands. He cut up his hand and he heated up his knife and put it on the cut. It stops-"
"-How hot?" Elizabeth said, momentarily loosening her hold over Emil's leg in an abortive movement to get up.
"I dunno, pretty damn hot," Cesal said. "He put it in a fireplace."
"Emma, hold down on this," Elizabeth snapped. "Glace, check Emil's backpack for any med kits, see what you can find. Theon, start sewing up any minor wounds. I'm starting a fire."
Elizabeth was from District 7. Fire was all too familiar as both a help and a hindrance; and she could create a fire, if she wanted, without any problems at all. As she raced across the clearing collecting up dry leaves and twigs, memories flashed in her mind of the Presidential Mansion, the chariots- her dress aflame by her own hand, to destroy Snow's hold on the people.
It hadn't worked, but it had certainly brought her here. Perhaps here, the flames could finally help, not hinder.
Someone had added matches to the pile and Elizabeth snatched them up, lighting one and kindling a fire in seconds. Making it large took minutes, minutes they were starting to lose. Emma and Cesal were now both trying to stem the bloodflow from Emil's leg, but they were fighting a losing battle.
The fire grew under her watch and someone, Theon perhaps, handed her a sword. She thrust it into the flame, watched as the tempered metal grew red-hot and uncomfortably warm to the touch even at the hilt. When she couldn't take the heat any longer she pulled out the sword, cherry-red and almost spitting with heat.
"Sorry," she murmured to Emil.
And then she lay the flat of the blade across his leg.
Theon winced at the smell of burning flesh and the faint, half-unconscious moans of pain from Emil as Elizabeth finished cauterising the wound. The bloodflow ceased, but the wound looked as ragged and awful as it had before.
"I have medicine; something from Emil's pack. Anyone know it?" Emma held up a number of vials, and Theon was surprised to know them from training.
"I know that. It accelerates the healing process."
Cesal blinked in surprise, before pulling it from Emma's hand and liberally drizzling the vial over Emil's leg. "I know this shit, he used it on me yesterday. You think it'll work?"
"You better hope," Theon said. "I'm gonna sew it up now. I swear, if Emil gets better, I'm starting my own medical offices."
The group fell into a strange quiet as Theon began tacking together Emil's leg with the suture kit. Glace, paling, began to see to her own injured arm, bloodied as it was beneath the bandages. Elizabeth and Emma quietly unpacked a medical kit and began to help her; Glace slowly submitted to the help. Cesal, seeming at a loss, began sorting through the pile of belongings; he found what he was looking for in Emma's pile. Draping a large piece of tarpaulin across the trees and over them, he tied it on with paracord and then saw to the fire still burning just outside the makeshift shelter. He wasn't an expert in stoking fires, it seemed, but he seemed to be taking some modicum of pleasure from distracting himself. Theon hummed to himself, pinning his tongue momentarily between his teeth as he worked.
"So," he began. "I'm Theon."
Elizabeth frowned as she unwrapped bandages from Glace's arm. "Yeah, we know?"
"No," Theon said. "You know I'm Theon the Career, Theon the tribute-we all know each other inside the arena, when others are listening. But we're outside the arena now. Nobody's listening."
This revelation washed over the group with a soft buzz of surprise. Everyone was always being listened to, but not here; not hundreds of miles from home in a forest.
"So I'm Theon," Theon announced. "Theon Veux, but it's not really my name, I think. I'm from District 2. I was- I was taken off the streets, and trained by Peacekeeper Veux as his way of vicariously winning the Games. Didn't really work out for him, though." He tried to keep his tone casual despite the highly personal information he was imparting. He purposefully left out his fight for survival with his siblings of the streets, his killing of his sister; he couldn't stomach telling them that. He gave them only what he felt was necessary to understand him, to properly ally with him.
There was silence for a moment in the group. Theon quietly finished suturing Emil's leg and sat back, cleaning both himself and Emil with half a water bottle and some of the precious antiseptic in the vial.
"I'm Emma Kjaergaard," Emma said after a long pause. She sat back and looked at Theon, allowing Elizabeth to continue treating Glace. "I'm from District 4. I'm here because my father arranged a marriage and- I didn't really want that, not for me, I... I ran. I'm really here because I wanted to escape." She chuckled mirthlessly. "I think I managed that, at least."
"No kidding," Cesal sighed, sitting back down and regarding the group. "I'm Cesal- uh, Cesal Nesbin, if it matters. I'm from District 8. I'm- well, I was kind of a gang member, Black Bands if anyone knows 'em. I'm here because my friend, or- my boss, both- was reaped, and I volunteered in his place." He looked down at his hands for a long time. "So I'm kind of, yeah, not exactly a big player in this group, you know." He seemed distant; he sat apart from the group, but his eyes did not leave Emil.
"We talking height or importance?" Theon couldn't help the tiny jab, and Cesal looked up with annoyance, if not anger.
"Don't think I couldn't kick your ass, Veux. How'd you think I lost these fingers?" He held up one of his hands; some fingers were missing joints, and one was lost entirely. His smile was pained but faintly amused.
"Factory accident?"
"Kicking ass, Theon. I lost them kicking ass." He had a tiny, genuine smirk on his face; so did Theon.
"You kick with your arm?" He rebutted; Cesal snorted slightly, sharing a faint smile with Theon, and leaned back again. Glace interjected quietly.
"I'm Glace Gratton. I'm from District 1. I came to avenge my friend's death, and to try and understand his position of rebellion. Rhys." She paused to inhale sharply as Emma tipped some antiseptic on her wound. "I hope he would consider this to have been right."
"He would have, Glace," Elizabeth replied softly. "I'm Elizabeth Adews. I'm from District 7. I was probably reaped because I'm a member of a revo faction back home. I'm here because-" At this she paused. She looked around the group, resting her gaze momentarily on Theon before training it on the ground.
"-Because the Capitol doesn't control us."
This was the first time the Capitol had been mentioned. In fact, the fact they had all just defected from the entirety of Panem, the fact that they were hundreds of miles from anything; nobody had wanted to say anything about it until now.
A quiet rested on the group a moment.
"Yeah," Emma said then, "Fuck the Capitol." Her voice carried slightly louder than she probably intended, and it echoed in the air.
But no retribution came, from anyone. They were freed from the Capitol. They were free.
A short, surprised bark of laughter came from Cesal.
"Not quite as, uh, poetic as Elizabeth, maybe," he said, "But I like it. Yeah, fuck the Capitol!"
There was an almost collective exhale now; the tension had bled from the group. For once, they did not have to be careful, be ready from attacks on all sides; the Capitol was gone and they were free to stop being tributes, stop being scared, and just be people for once.
"I agree entirely. Fuck the Capitol." Glace asserted, with such intensity that Emma started giggling.
"Yeah, you know what? Fuck the Capitol, and fuck the peacekeepers too," Theon joined in; the words were like a release of his tongue into freedom, from his father and from Panem, and freedom tasted sweet. Elizabeth laughed, then, high and joyful.
"Fuck the Capitol; President Snow can die too," she joined in in melodic tones. Cesal pointed at Emil, who, while still unconscious, looked alive, and far better now he was freed of some of the blood he had been soaked in. He adopted a ridiculous Capitol accent and spoke loudly into the forest, disturbing a few birds at rest.
"That's Emil Reynolds, he's from District 12, and on his behalf I would like to formally announce- fuck the Capitol!"
They were all laughing now, despite the pain, despite the fear, despite being isolated and alone in a forest hundreds of miles from home. All these things were true, but one thing was true that was more important- they were free.
They were free.
And that was when the explosion happened.
I swear to god, this is memetic. I shoot Quint in the stomach, I'm put in hospital with abdominal pain. I dislocate Emil's knee, I'm in hospital right now with the same. I fear for next chapter, I really do.
Ugh. This chapter. It's way too long, strings together poorly, and answers too few questions. But I'm glad to reveal that, yes, all seven tributes are alive and- okay, not well, but alive. Would they have actually survived that in reality? Does surgery work that way? Has screening been too distracted yelling at her own leg for being frustratingly unable to bend to actually write and edit a coherent chapter? Make your own guesses there, folks.
In any case, bi-weekly updates aren't working out for me; I'm just not a disciplined writer unless I'm being made to write every day. So guess what? I'm going to start updating every day. Rejoice/despair, at your leisure. If the writing this chapter is sub-par, blame it on the painkillers. I mean, I'm not on any, but blame it on them anyway; and do give me constructive criticism if you wish to.
Also! I would like to welcome a new character to the group- thank you to LokiThisIsMadness for Viridian Calotte, who shall now take the District 3 spot. With that, submissions are closed- the fun may begin. ;)
As ever, thank you for reading this far.