When I wake in the morning, it's to find Hades hanging sideways and snoring, drool dripping down the side of his face.
The sight makes me smile despite better judgment; I can feel affection for him building in my chest the same way it did for Hestia, for Pan, Artemis and Apollo…Hebe. But no, I won't let my thoughts linger on the last name. The wound is still too fresh and I fear if I touch it the scab will rip, leak infection into my veins and threaten to poison the entire system, a parasite of loss sucking out the life in me.
Instead I untie myself from my resting branch after a few moments of watching Hades, whisper his name to rouse him. I am still weary of actually touching him, because besides the few amiable brushes passed between us while I helped him up the tree, or the press of bodies when I threatened him last night, we have yet to use physical communication. It's been nothing but words, guarded ones at that except in the few moments my honesty spills out.
He wakes after a moment, blinking bleary eyes at me and seeming almost startled before his expression composes. "Um, can you…help me out?" he asks, glancing at his ropes.
His fingers are thick with sleep so he's no help and eventually I just tell him to grab the sides of the branch so he won't fall once I get his ropes undone. For Hades' part, he only slips a little before righting himself when he soon has no support but his own keeping him in the tree. I don't put the topes away though, instead loop one around his thin waist again.
"Is this really necessary?" he asks as we climb down the branches one by one.
"Don't want you dead yet," I tell him. "I need you alive."
"Why?" he asks, eyes wide like mine when I asked him the same thing the night before.
"Because I trust you, remember?" I tell him, and the way his expression shifts to one of tender memory has my heart stuttering in ways it shouldn't.
We make it to the forest floor in less time than it took to climb the tree last night, Hades stumbling on the last few branches and falling, bringing me with him. We fall in a tangled heap of limbs, my body atop him and splayed. For a second I'm worried either one of us broke something, but upon further inspection of all of our ligaments, we're both fine.
Hades has a cut on the side of his face though, a bit of blood dripping down to pool in the dimple of his left cheek. "You have…" I say, reaching out with hesitance. "Can I…?"
"What?" he asks, blinking at me, flinches when I go to wipe the blood away with my fingers but settles on a hiss as he feels the pain set in. "Oh; is it bad?"
"No," I say, retracting my hand and wiping red against the edge of my muted brown tunic. "Just a scratch."
"It's getting in my eye," he says, twitching as a new round of blood drips down his face. "Great."
"We can make it stop with sap," I tell him softly.
"Won't that bring infection?" he asks.
"No," I say. "As long as we clean the cut first, it does the opposite."
After a moment of consideration, he nods, takes out one of the knives he has stashed on him and digs it into the trunk of the tree beside us until it leaks sticky sweet. "Lucky we made camp in a maple," I tell him as I rip off a piece of my tunic hem, dab a bit of iodine from my pack on it and clean his cut softly, before smearing my fingers in the sap. "This is going to sting a little."
"It's fine," he says, tilting the injured side of his face towards me. I reach out and cover the wound with the maple sap, bite my lip nervously as Hades hisses at the burn of it.
"All done," I say after a moment, dab the stray strands of sap away with my improvised rag so that it doesn't run towards his eye too, like the blood.
"I probably look like an idiot now, right?" he asks, trying to give a smile as I stand and begin untying the ropes connecting us together.
"What makes you say that?" I ask him, stuffing the rope back into my pack once we're both free of it.
"Well, I can't climb or de-climb trees, so I dragged you down with me, banged myself up in the process, and now I got sap on my face. I'm sure all the viewers are laugin' at me right now."
I shake my head at him, trying not to laugh myself. "Hopefully we won't have to go through the fuss of tree climbing much longer," I say, thinking that maybe, just maybe someone or something will finish Ares off for us and we won't have to worry about the threat of him anymore– can sleep on the ground. I know the cricks in my back from hard branches would really like that.
But at the comment, Hades' face seems to fall. "Yeah, sure," he says, and gathers himself to full, towering height. "We should get going. I don't think we're gonna find that fox anytime soon, but maybe we can find Hestia or one of your allies."
"Okay," I say, puzzled at the abrupt coldness of his tone. "Do you wanna try finding breakfast first?"
He shrugs.
I blink at him, hike my pack farther up on my shoulders and shake my head.
We walk in silence for a bit, no crunch under our feet from light footfalls. When we come across a grove of blackberries I pull him over to them with me, begin picking around for breakfast and glance at Hades out of the corner of my eye. The sap has dried completely on his face now, a thin line of browned blood. It's threatening to crack with how deep his frown has settled into his expression.
"What's wrong?" I ask him, licking blackberry juice off of my lips once we've settled down to eat.
"Nothin'," he says, grabbing a handful of dirt and letting it scatter into the morning breeze.
"No," I tell him. "Seriously. If we're gonna be a team, you can tell me."
"This ain't no bonding experience, Kore," he says, turning to glare at me. I'm taken aback by it, scoot away because I can feel the anger radiating off of him in waves. "We aren't friends. We're enemies. We're supposed ta kill each other by the end of this."
"You can still tell me if something's wrong," I offer, feeling a sudden ice creep over my sense at the way he is acting. I don't consider us friends exactly, but I thought we were at least amiable after last night. He trusts me and I trust him– in a Game where you're fighting for your life that means something.
"No I can't!" he snaps, standing up and kicking the ground like a petulant child. "Look, like you said earlier, we won't be together long anyways so let's not pretend to be buddies here."
"I never said that!" I say, standing up like he did moments earlier. "When did I say that?!"
"You said that 'hopefully we won't have to go through the fuss of climbing trees much longer' meaning you hope we split up soon!" he says, eyes downcast at the ground as if he is almost hurt at the thought.
And for a moment I simply stare at him, heat still boiling the earlier cold from my blood as I say, "Stop putting words in my mouth." His gaze meets mine, expression guarded and I shake my head at him. "Hades, when I said that, I meant it as hopefully Ares is dead soon, so we can sleep on the ground."
"We only teamed up to find the fox," Hades counters. "Now that we can't find it, what are we gonna do? I still got Hestia out there, and you have those twins and Pan."
"So?" I ask him. "We haven't found any of them yet, which means we can stick together for now. Why are you so upset about it?"
"I'm not," he insists, red tinging up his cheeks as he averts his eyes to somewhere in the distance.
"You are," I argue, then my tone softens as I think about it. "You…do you wanna stick together?"
"What?" he asks.
"Are you annoyed by me?" I ask. "You said you trusted me, but that doesn't mean you like me or anything, so I mean, if you don't wanna stick together I guess I can–"
"I like you," he interrupts, stance rigid and conflicted. "I like you more than I should, Kore. That's why we shouldn't stick together the moment we find other options. I don't…I don't wanna watch you die. I don't wanna kill you."
"What?" I ask, mirroring his earlier question.
He clenches his fist, inhales slowly. "Like I said last night, you're good. You're different from everyone else– you're real. I don't like watching real things be torn apart."
"What do you mean?" I ask him, limbs suddenly trembling under the weight of his words.
Sighing, Hades clears the few steps between us and looks down at me, shrugging with awkward movement. "When I was a kid, I liked catching butterflies. I know, it's stupid, but I just liked how they could be so ethereal and yet…not. It was like if I could touch them, keep them in a jar, then I had evidence things like that could exist. Were real. My mom always told me not to keep them though, that they needed to be let go. I didn't listen. And eventually, if my older sisters found them, they'd tear their wings off just to watch me cry about it.
"You're like those butterflies, Kore. Half the time I don't think you're real– I don't think anyone thinks you're real, but you are. And then these Games, they're like my sisters, trying to tear your wings off and I don't think I could watch again. My mom was right– you need to be free," he says, staring at me with everything and nothing that I can't read.
"Hades…" I say, knowing I should object with him, knowing what he's hinting at and the way it doesn't go along with our plans. "What about–?" I should ask 'What about Hestia?' but I can't make the words come out. My tongue is numb, sand in my throat as I stare up at him and feel the sting of tears at the back of my eyes.
What he's saying is treason.
What he's saying is something that makes my heart beat fast not because of danger, but because of the admittance behind it.
"Hades…" I repeat instead, branching up on my toes like I'm no longer in control of my body.
He seems to understand what I'm getting at right away, starts to close the space between us the same as me, noses touching before we stop, wild breaths and blinking eyes. He's waiting for me to finish this, to make the final move. And I wonder if we should we keep going? It's frivolous, both of us know– a stupid idea that will make everything that much worse when we have to watch the other die.
But then I think, if we're going to die anyways, why not give into it now?
Just as my resolve hardens, my lips quirk and touch his in the slightest, a veil of leather wraps around my neck, dragging me away.
I scream, habit I can't help as I'm yanked away from Hades' grip, choking and gagging at the binding around my neck.
I realize, all too quick, that it's a whip.
A whip– the catalyst that killed Plutus. A sort of panic sets in my chest then, fingers scrabbling to get the leather loose from around my throat as I'm dragged across the ground by it, gasping for breath as my skin burns under the bite of the weapon.
Hades is calling my name, diving after me to grab my feet. He's trying to hold me down but it's just making things worse, the struggle between him and the person pulling me back by the end of the whip's force is making the leather dig into my throat, strangling me that much quicker. In desperation I kick out, land my foot in Hades' shoulder and make him let go, trying to roll off of my back and onto my stomach, making the leather tear at the back of my neck instead of my windpipe.
It works, only just when suddenly the whip isn't even around my throat anymore. I sputter as the weapon cracks in the air, Hades shouting while I gasp for breath. Black spots dot my vision, clearing after what feels an eternity as I look up, finding a pair of boots stitched in blue with ocean waves and seashells. I follow the sight up to long legs, strong hips, narrow waist, ample chest, curved neck, pinched lips, until finally I meet the shining teal eyes of a girl with pale blonde hair.
Even in the fog of my brain, neurons put together her image– the girl from the river, the one that swam downstream and didn't touch me when she had the chance then, leaving the other Demigods of her pack behind.
But she has the chance to hurt me now, eagerly taking it as she pushes one long leg out and presses a foot between my shoulders from where I'm trying to stand on the ground, shoving my face into the mud. I groan, lay there for a moment as she laughs and the whip cracks, Hades cursing and footsteps moving through the foliage from beyond.
"Appears your boyfriend took the bait, then," the girl says, and before I can ask what she means, she grabs a knife from her belt and throws it.
I hear the sickening slick of blade embedding into flesh, the grunt Hades gives as he falls to the ground at my feet.
The girl standing above me takes her boot off of my back, calling, "Pan, tie her up."
My eyes widen, senses gone numb as I see a small form duck out from behind a tree, eyes downcast as Pan hurries towards me, steps on my back without a word. I'm still so in shock I can't move, air rushing anew from my lungs as Pan ties ropes around my wrists and Hades curses from somewhere at my feet, struggling as the girl does Gods know what with him.
"Pan," I say after a moment. "Pan, what are you doing?"
"He's being smart," calls the girl, laughing seductively. "Sticking with the right people instead of your lovesick ass."
I ignore her, instead start wriggling under Pan until eventually he steps off of me. "Pan," I say again. "Pan, please?"
"Don't waste your breath," the girl says. "Why would he help you? The girl from his republic who's sucking up all the sponsors?"
Her words trigger memory of that night in our republic's holding quarters back at the tribute center, when I received my score and Pan ran to his room, slammed the door after glaring at me like I was his death certificate. Prometheus had told me that the reason for it all was because Pan had realized how slim his chances of surviving were when I was his republic partner, that since I was taking all of the sponsors he would have none to himself.
And Prometheus had said not to trust Pan– that he would turn on me.
I trusted him anyways.
And look where it's landed you; should have listened, stupid girl.
I'm both angry and sad that Prometheus was right; I saw Pan as a lost child from my homelands and wanted to help him, bypassing all of the boy's obvious instinct for survival and thinking him harmless. I should have known better– he comes from Énteka, after all, where we learn from a young age you have to lie to survive, have to step in line and follow orders. Pan never received orders from Prometheus, so he's working under his own, and his own are ones that likely involve my death.
The forest echoes silence as Pan and the blonde girl work above Hades and I, and before long I hear the drag of body, the crunch as Hades falls next to me, sputtering with hands tied behind his back. The cut on the side of his face has split open again, and from the way he lays I can see the knife sticking out of his side, both wounds leaking blood onto the dirt below us and staining everything red.
"No," I whisper, and his eyes meet mine.
"I don't think she hit anything vital," he grits out, breath coming in rapid pants.
Tears prick my eyes as I look at him, how defenseless he's become in the span of just a few moments. "Hades," I say.
"Oh, he'll live," answers the girl instead, coming back into view with a wicked smile. "For now. See, your little lover boy there killed my republic mate. Shame– I liked Poseidon. He was very…attentive. So it seems since we can't find Dodéka's little cousin anywhere, we're going to have to settle for you, Maiden."
"Don't touch her!" Hades spits, only to land a sharp kick to the face, blood from his mouth spattering my cheek.
"Stop it!" I shout as the girl kicks him again.
She laughs. "Why should I?"
"Pan, please, do something!" I say instead of answering her.
And Pan, little, afraid Pan meets my eye for the first time with no hesitance, no fright as he takes a knife out of his belt. "I am," he says, angling the blade at me.
"Oh we're going to have loads of fun!" says the girl, flicks a strand of blonde hair over her shoulder and giggles. "By the way, I'm Aphrodite."