I stare him down trying to be tough, but he sees through the façade right away.
"Where's Hestia?" I ask him, breath coming harsh as the adrenaline in my system spikes, still and no longer running, the burn in my lungs virtually unbearable.
"I don't know," he says, looking sore. And then he adds, "I'm sorry about your friend– the girl from Októ."
"Her name was Hebe," I tell him, shifting nervously on foot. Neither of us have put down our weapons yet, the muscles in my legs beginning to cramp from staying crouched and on the defensive.
"Well, I'm sorry," he says.
I bite my lip at the comment and, despite my better instinct, stand to my full height, lowering the scythe in my hands just a little. "When did you and Hestia get separated?"
"After the chaos broke out back at the cornucopia," Hades says, bringing his sword down to his side; his forehead shines with sweat and his breath is as rapid as my own, like he's been chasing giant foxes too. "These bull-things were tracking us and I got her into a tree and tried to throw them off her trail. I ended up falling down a hill somewhere; passed out. When I went to look for Hestia after I woke up a few hours later, she was gone."
"Lucky those bulls didn't come after you then," I say, eye the helm on his head and figure the only reason he didn't die from what must have been a pretty large fall was because it kept his brains intact. "How'd you get here, anyways?"
For a moment, Hades' expression draws blank. And then he says, "You're gonna think I'm crazy."
"After everything I've seen in this arena, probably not," I tell him.
He wavers still, but just a bit before he says, "I was…um, uh– I was chasing this giant…fox."
My eyes turn wide; I blink the expression away and clear my throat after second's consideration. "I thought I was the only one who'd seen it."
Hades' gaze snaps up to meet mine, though I try to avoid direct eye-contact at the weight of his stare. "There must be two of them, then."
"Yeah," I agree, scratch the back of my head after I loop the scythe around my shoulder, because really, there is no threat between him and me. "But what are they made for? What's their purpose?"
"I don't know," Hades says, glances around us as if the foxes will be there waiting with the answers. "I wanna find out though."
"Mine headed that way," I say, pointing over his shoulder, a sudden tinge of anger that the fox is gone now when I was right on its beautiful, haunting tail. "And I was so close to catching it before you ran into me."
"Me?" he scoffs. "The running into was your fault!"
"Was not," I argue pettily, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Was too," he says, glaring at me.
We square off with equal glowers for a moment, nothing but tension, before Hades visibly deflates and shakes his head. "Look," he says after a terse minute of awkward silence. "We're both separated from our groups, and we both wanna get that fox– so maybe we should…"
"What?" I ask him with a raised brow. "Team up? I thought you didn't want to ally with me."
"I never said you specifically," he snaps. "Only your other allies. I don't like those twins, and I don't like your republic mate. What happened to him anyway? Last I saw you were runnin' off with him in tow."
I look away at that, clear my throat. "There was something chasing us," I say. "Pan was slow and so I sent him off and killed it. I don't know where he went."
"So he just left you?" Hades asks with a smug sort of tone, like that proves his dislike for Pan is valid.
"No," I argue. "I sent him off." I shouldn't really have to justify Pan, though, and Hades knows it. These Games aren't meant about having each other's back, and Pan was just a scared little boy who saw a chance to live another breath and took it. Besides, wasn't I the one that had thought about leaving him to die in the first place?
"Sure," Hades drawls, his self-satisfied tone making my blood boil.
"Look," I say, pointing an accusing index finger at him. "If you're going to be a jerk then I don't think it's a good idea we team up, lest I kill you."
He chuckles, turns on his heal and starts walking in the direction I signaled my fox went, calling over his shoulder, "One of us is going to have to do that job in the end, anyways."
My shoulders slump when his words sink in, mind dizzy as I hurry to follow after his steady gate.
We make no ground on the fox, even as dusk falls upon us, finding the creature a lost cause. There aren't even prints to track.
"Do you wanna stop for the night?" is the first full sentence Hades has said to me since we started walking. It seems his silence is not simply a guard against competitors like I thought it to be originally, but just the way he is. Stoic, like a piece of stone covered in the smell of blood and sweat and coal.
"Sure," I tell him, eyes roving up and down his frame. I can see the knives stashed on him, pressing through the folds of his tunic and leggings. "But if you try to kill me, I'll cut your cock off."
His expression pulls into one of amusement at that, shucking his pack off under a nearby tree and plopping down to the forest floor, long legs stretched out before him. I notice then he's probably about as tall as Ares, which is pretty tall, but he doesn't have that hulking kind of stature, couldn't overpower me easily. He's too lean, on the verge of starved but with wiry muscles which I guess is from working in the coalmines his republic are famous for.
I sit next to him after a moment, kick at some dirt under my boot and stare off into the distance, listening for any sign of threat. In my peripheral vision I see Hades digging through his pack, setting my nerves off. I have the knife I got in the beginning of the Games stashed at my hip underneath the new tunic I got during the Pantheon; press my hand against the hilt and watch Hades uneasily until I see him pull out…food.
My mouth waters as my hand drops to my lap with a heavy sigh, eyes lighting up when I see what he's holding: a pomegranate.
He watches me eyeing the fruit as he pulls it in half with bare hands, juice dripping down the tanned flesh of his fingers. "I saw you eating these like crazy at the Pantheon the other day," he says, handing me half. "We don't have them in Dodeka and I wanted to try one– they're good."
"Pomegranates," I tell him, biting into the skin despite the bitter taste, letting the sweetness of the seeds burst on my tongue to quell it. "We can only grow them in Énteka during the winter– my mother's gardens are one of the only places that produce them in Eleusinian."
"What's Eleusinian?" Hades asks, brows drawing together as he picks the seeds out and pops them in his mouth, humming with appreciation.
"It's the providence I live in," I say to him with a shrug.
"Like the Underworld?" Hades asks, giving me a hint of a smile.
"Yeah," I tell him. "But less covered in coal dust."
"That's right," he says, licking pomegranate juice off of his crooked teeth. "Your republic goes for flowers and produce."
"You say that like it's a weak thing," I tell him, feeling suddenly cross. "You do realize that even the prettiest flowers have thorns, don't you?"
He looks at me then, lets his eyes trail leisurely and I self-consciously cross my arms over my chest, making him chuckle. "You mean like you, the little maiden of all of Elláda?"
"Don't call me that," I snap, instantly closing my mouth and glaring at the ground. I know Prometheus is cursing at me through the television screen for it, probably pissed he's going to have to do some kind of damage control. I'm supposed to love the name after all, let the sponsors think it of me so they can bid for a go-round in the sheets and keep me alive.
"But isn't that your shtick?" Hades asks, smirking.
And it makes me blood boil so much, that little arrogance he has at suddenly getting under my skin, that I don't even think better of it when I tackle him to the ground, pomegranates left forgotten in the mud. I get my legs on either side of his waist, use my weight against him to pin him down and dig the heels of my pals below his collarbones, teeth bared.
"Don't think I won't kill you," I say, nose to nose and eyes hard.
He blinks up at me like he's looking in a new light before he shakes his head, hands locked on my hips and expression gone hard once more. "You won't; who would take care of Hestia then?"
And for a moment, I don't answer him; keep my stance atop him. It's only when his words sink in that I relax, roll off of him onto the ground and stare up at the rapidly darkening sky blankly. He sits up next to me, draws gangly knees into broad chest and sets his chin atop them. I look at him softly, the way he appears almost like a lost little boy in worry for his cousin now that he remembers she's off on her own somewhere out there with predators at all corners of the arena waiting to strike.
His sudden innocence doesn't fit with the ideas I have of him– the somberness and the unyielding eyes when he ran that boy through with his sword, spray of blood.
"Why did you save me?" I ask, distill the silence between us.
He doesn't answer me right away, keeps staring forwards before he eventually says, "Because I trust you."
"Why?"
"Because you're good," he says, glances at me with an unreadable expression. "You didn't have ta help Hestia the way you did during training. Hell, I almost got us killed the other day when I thought we could eat castor berries, but Hestia said that you said not to eat 'em. I ended up finding a few dead starjars by the bush when I double-checked. You coulda just not told her– killed us off easy. Why didn't you?"
"She looks like my little sister," I say. "They're both just innocent little kids. It'd be…hard to kill her." Because I can't say I won't kill her here in the arena, when cameras are on us from all angles, the Capital watching from beyond.
But Hades hears the hidden words, nods at me and picks up his forgotten pomegranate half, brushing the dirt off. "When we turn on each other," he says after a moment, "how do you want me to kill you?"
"Knife to the heart," I tell him tenderly, response instant. "How do you want me to kill you?"
"Slit my throat," he says, levels me with a measured glance. "Like a pig. That's all we are to everyone anyways. Pigs for slaughter, just to keep precious order."
My hands clench at his bold words– he knows he would be killed for them if he were to make it out of the arena. And it's in that moment I know he doesn't plan on making it out– plans instead on dying in this place to save Hestia, send his baby cousin home. I blink up at him, eyes shifting to his mouth where pomegranate juice drips like blood. And I have the sudden urge to kiss him, the first time I have wanted to kiss anyone since a girl named Daphne who was in my ninth year class of schooling because she shared strawberries with me at lunch and I liked her foreign fair skin and red hair.
I stave myself off from it now with Hades, unlike how I did with Daphne and the quick kiss I stole, sit up fully and reach forwards for my forgotten pomegranate half, dusting it off the same as Hades did his own. "What's your favorite color?" I ask him after a moment, hoping more than hope it isn't red, like massacre and violence.
"Blue," he says, easing my nerves. "When I was younger and wanted to get away from my older sisters– they're kinda vicious– I'd go to this meadow on the outskirts of town, sit and stare at the sky for hours. Came to like that color a lot 'cause it meant calm."
"Here is means heat," I frown.
He groans. "Don't remind me. I haven't ever sweat so much in my life, and I work next to fire every day."
"I know," I tell him, rustling my sweaty hair off shoulders for emphasis. "Even in the fields it doesn't get this bad, and this is coming from a girl who watched her stepfather die of heat stroke."
Hades glances at me out of the corner of his eyes, puckers scarred lips. "What about your real father?"
"He died of typhus," I say. "Cut his arm on a rusty combine."
"Did he pass easy?" Hades asks, eyes shining.
I shake my head. "I was young, but I do remember the seizures, the screaming, the lockjaw. He had a real bad infection, and no matter what herbs my ma and I used on him, it didn't help. He died after two weeks; we buried him out in my ma's garden, planted roses on top of him."
"Don't you have cemeteries in your republic?"
"The fields," I tell him, and at his confused expression I smile. "How do you think we get such lively crops? What better to fuel the soil than dead flesh?"
And Hades, so constantly stoic, grimaces. "You mean we're eating food fertilized by corpses right now?"
"No," I giggle despite myself, twirl my pomegranate half in my hands. "This is from the Capital. They only grow naturally in the winter, remember?"
Hades scowls none the less, takes more ginger bites from his fruit until it's gone. "You must have a lot of wheat in your republic too, then."
"Why do you say that?" I ask him, wiping leftover juice off the corners of my mouth.
He smirks. "Your hips," he says.
I glance at said hips in question, the plushness of them. And though they've lessened since my time in the Games without food, they're still substantial. There is still roundness to my stomach, fullness to my breasts and the curve of where my thighs mash together even when I space my legs wide apart. And suddenly a blush heats my cheeks, teeth worrying at lip as I look over to Hades with a soft glare.
"Pervert," I tell him.
He shrugs, leans back on his elbows with a content sort of laugh. "I'm not the only one who noticed. Hell, all of Ellada has noticed."
"Don't remind me," I say, his earlier words with a spin as I lie back in the dirt, shaking my head. I remember the glint in Hermes' eyes on stage during the interviews then, the threat of strange men and women in a lavish Capital bed.
They own you when you win.
"Isn't it a good thing?" Hades asks, shaking me of morbid reprieves. "I thought that's why you're getting so much attention– you don't look like the other girls. You're–"
"Country bred," I cut him off, grit my teeth. "Meat on my bones. Dark skin, wild hair, mothering hips, tight ass. Trust me, I've heard it before; Énteka boys are just as crude as the rest."
"I wasn't going to say any of that," Hades murmurs, staring at me with honest eyes. "I was going to say you're real."
And at that I'm caught off guard, eyes wide as saucers as we lapse into silence.
It turns out Hades can't climb trees well.
"I'm used to going underground, not above it," he admits at my frustrations when he keeps slipping on the branches and I have to catch him from falling. "Usually Hestia and I just sleep on the ground."
"That's not safe," I say to him. "In case you don't remember, I have a very prissy Demigod after me that would jump at the chance to kill us in our sleep."
"Maybe I shouldn't have teamed up with you after all," Hades says, but he is only joking, which surprises me.
I smile soft at him, think for a second before taking some rope out of my bag. "Loop it around your waist," I tell him. "I'll pull you up."
"Are you sure?" he asks, skeptical.
"Your scrawny ass?" I laugh. "No problem."
We only get him halfway up by the end of it, which is better than nothing I figure and help him tie in. "I'm gonna go up a bit farther," I say to him after he's strapped tight, can't even wiggle his way out unless I undo his rope because he's learned that when I was tying those ropes back in the training center it wasn't just for show. "Make sure you don't stab me in my sleep that way."
"No worries of that anyways," he says. "I need you alive for now."
"Why?" I ask, stilling my movements of tightening the ropes momentarily.
"Because I trust you," he says, earlier statement echoed as he meets my eye with sincerity.
And, stupidly, I answer him, "I guess I trust you too," strapping myself to the branch next to him to sleep.
A/N: I actually kind of love this chapter even though it's a bit scattered; tell me what you think?