With thanks to Glassgift, Katrace and akuhilangditelanbumi for your reviews of the last chapter.

Y 184-09-01 T 04:23:40

Day 2

Sleep had come shockingly easily to her. She had thought, with the horrors she had witnessed and made over the course of the last day, she would never sleep; but when she had found a large, marble building with carved columns, the words 'Rectam Iustitiam' inscribed in letters larger than her own body above her, and found within its winding corridors a small room she barricaded with a flimsy chair. From here, when she had laid her spoils of the bloodbath beside her- the small carbon-fibre box, still clasped together, and the shining steel axe she had used to reduce a person to sponged, messy flesh- the adrenaline that had sustained her finally cleared her bloodstream, and she slept on the floor without even taking the time to strip from her bloodstained clothing.

Elizabeth woke at dawn, the pale light of a fake sun mocking her awake. At first, only the groggy moments of half-clarity came to her- but slowly, small irritants told her something was wrong. Her back ached. Her left arm ached. Her scalp itched. Finally she stirred, and the events of a world so unlike her own at District 7 returned to her. She was a tribute. She had killed someone. Chal had tried to kill her and had died in return, and with his last words he had damned a revo group that had never existed, that she had apparently orchestrated.

And her scalp still itched. Sitting up, she instinctively pulled back her hand through her long, chestnut hair; but her fingers were caught and pulled short in the matted clumps of her hair, greasy and disgusting from the blood it had been washed in, from the Nine girl that had jumped and the Eleven boy she had slaughtered. She felt a small piece of gristly flesh in the nest of her hair, and she recoiled her hand away from the mess.

For years she had patiently taken care of her hair- her mother had always brushed it out, said how pretty it was long. But, Elizabeth mused darkly as she felt the bloodied mess her hair had become, her mother was likely turning in her shallow grave at the monstrous mess she herself had become. Elizabeth stood up in the small room. It was nondescript and tiny but nice enough- a crimson carpet that wasn't quite thick enough, a high slotted window, a mahogany desk. It seemed familiar- something she had seen, sometime that seemed so long ago. Where had she seen this building before? The question faded from her mind moments after it emerged, sinking beneath the malaise of sleep and drained irritability. Her back ached from a night's sleeping on the ground, despite the carpeted floor- her arm ached from using her axe, again and again, to-

Elizabeth cut herself off. Down that path lay a darker fate for herself, a depth of despair she could not afford to feel right now. She would not think of the Eleven boy- she would not think of Chal. It would be easier that way, easier to not feel anything rather than feel too much. She would internalise what she could until the release of either the Games' end or her death.

She focused instead on the small plastic box from the Cornucopia, her meagre spoils of war. She sat down and dragged the box to her, flicked open the clasps and released the contents of the head-sized box with rapid efficiency. Pouches of varying sizes spilled out, onto her lap.

She picked one up experimentally by its corner. It was metallic silver plastic, a slight perforation revealing how it could tear open at a corner; a stark label, marked with the seal of Panem and District 10 revealed it to be a 'RT Pk #18639'. With this obsfucating title, Elizabeth returned the pouches gingerly to their box and sealed them. A mystery to solve another time. For now, she was in an unknown area, perhaps too close to the Cornucopia, and she had lost the cover of darkness that a time prior to dawn could permit her. She wanted to move now, before the Career pack mobilised.

She reflexively dragged her hand through her hair again, and once more the blood and viscera matted into her chestnut hair caused her to rip some from her scalp. She winced, inhaling sharply- her hair was a mess of blood and the Nine girl's remains, and without water that she wanted herself for drinking, she had no chance of cleaning it.

One option remained to her. She crossed the room and picked up the shining, bloodied axe. Blood mingled with the crimson carpet as she wiped off the blade.

And then she raised it to the back of her head, bunched up a vast swathe of her bloody, matted hair, and swiped it back across the edge of the blade. Clumps of hair fell to the ground.

And so Elizabeth continued, because now she had started she could not stop. Thoughts of her fabricated revo group rushed through her head as she cut her head- the thought that her stunt with burning her dress, in messing up a Capitol tradition, would earn her recompense. She had little doubt her fate would come by the Gamemakers choosing it- her death would not come by anything but insitution.

She was left, eventually, with soft curling hairs at the base of her scalp, as far as she dared to go with the blade of even a small axe when it came to slicing her hair off. Clumps of bloodstained, flesh-matted hair lay around her in chestnut, crimson piles.

Elizabeth knew her little brother would recognise this for being against their mother. She hoped she was in this moment not seeming more a rebel than she was.

And yet- and yet. She was a rebel. She was almost certain that would be what it would read on her gravestone- if she had a gravestone.

Here lies Elizabeth Adews, a revo group member as her mother, except her mother was only harmless and Elizabeth was too. One executed by Peacekeepers, one by children- it seemed fitting in some way, their penance for the dead.

Elizabeth stood, axe in hand and box under her arm, and left the room. She wasn't sure where she was going, but her mind rebelled at the same factor- the revo groups. What had alerted her about those?

But, with slow burning realisation in her heart,she came to understand. It was not the fact that she had come to the Games in a made-up revo group- it was the fact that it had done nothing. Elizabeth stopped still, on the edge of realising her fate, her decision in the arena, in her remaining life.

But it was then, as she stopped still in the corridor, she heard the sound only metres behind her.

As ever, thank you for reading this far.