Previously in The Road Most Traveled: Ingrid Kolster falls in love with Jacob Everdeen, but eventually turns him down, not wanting to move to the bad part of town with him or disappoint her family by doing so. Phillip Mellark proves to be an excellent second choice, and she marries her new man the same day Jacob marries his new woman. Her and Phillip are incredibly happy together.
A/N
I focus more on the Games in general than Ingrid in particular; there's more of her in the previous and next chapters.
Chapter
There were only a few things to broadcast before they entered the arena, but the Games did not stop because my married life had begun. We tried to block out the pitiful appearance of the malnourished miners' children, but it was no use – the Capitol's power to make us remember all too often overwhelmed our desire to forget. The futility of their brave stance broke many a heart not already shattered by the pressure on us.
Amber and Onyx, luxury names from the low-numbered luxury district, both hoped to provide their district with consecutive wins, and Emerald last year had come hot on the heels of Star three years before that. It had happened once before, a girl and a boy from Two when I was younger. It was an angle that appealed to much of the audience, but it was a hard potion to swallow in the outer districts that were unlikely to have a Victor at all.
Livia was scary, and so was Julius, but he had a less noxious attitude which made us hate him not so much. We had all seen him quickly kiss a girl as he walked up to the Reaping stage. Caesar Flickerman had been a key figure in the Games media blitz for over two decades, and while interviewing Julius he observed "Seems you have a soft spot for a girl back home."
The confident young man responded with "Teresa Anthony. I also have a very hard spot for her." I doubted the wisdom of saying it, but I couldn't blame him for thinking it – we'd seen her on the reaping reruns, and she had a beautiful athletic figure. Many of the men and boys near me in front of the town square screens laughed heartily; I bet Teresa was blushing profusely wherever people watched the Games in her district. The Capitol audience devoured the ribaldry even more than the average male did – in their sex-soaked culture, it wouldn't be off-putting at all. What did they have to do all day besides fuck? And watch us die?
Rosalind Watson and Nicholas Edison, the pair from Three, had great intellectual conversations with Caesar. Conch and Neptune of Four were an inseparable team. Like Rosie and Nick, Jackson Thread of District Eight smartly parried Caesar in his interview. Diane Branch of Eleven opened her interview by repeating another theme. "Julius Adams isn't the only tribute with someone special at home. Mr. Flail Mackey was looking so forward to taking me to the Justice Building." Apparently, marrying right after the last reaping wasn't just a District Twelve thing. After that bit of wistful reflection, she said confidently "Well, I'll be taking him to Victors Village."
As usual, District Two's bloodthirsty volunteers were the favorites, followed closely by the tributes from the somewhat like-minded One and Four. We picked our own favorites here in the outer districts since we couldn't bear to support the Capitol's favorites. The clever District Eight boy and the stocky District Eleven girl seemed to have the best chances amongst the non-volunteers. Yet as another young adult in love, I sympathized with Julius as well as Diane.
Platforms in tubes raised tributes into the arena, a landscape of abandoned buildings and the countryside between them. The pile of supplies known as the Cornucopia was on the outskirts of one of the smaller 'settlements'. The timer counted down the last minute, the gong sounded, and the tributes rushed either towards some part of it or away from it as was their strategy.
Many tributes were slaughtered in the opening moments of the Games. Would that I could call it a battle, but it was really more of a massacre. The very first death was the little boy from Eleven, stabbed by Onyx. As was sadly commonplace, both of the District Twelve tributes were amongst the early fallen. Livia had literally shot both of them in the back as they tried to flee. Amber speared the girl from Eight. Julius impaled Track on his sword after the District Six male tried and failed to parry the blade with a staff he had pulled from the edges of the Cornucopia. Four butchered the pair from Five with the same weapons – thrown tridents, as would be expected from the fishing district. Onyx bludgeoned the girl from Six.
The Capitol heralded the deaths with cannons and retrieved the bodies, and the survivors regrouped. Jackson had formed an alliance with Diane and the District Three pair, opposing the usual alliance of volunteers. Jackson's and Diane's district partners would have joined them if they had made it out of the bloodbath.
The volunteers chased down some of the stragglers over the next few days. Livia got out her throwing knives again and killed the District Nine male the next morning. The day after that, Amber ran down the boy from Ten with her spear. The fourth day brought no cannons, no silent obituaries in the arena sky at night. The Capitol audience must be getting restless that we weren't dying quickly enough for them. Their sick wish was granted around the middle of the fifth day. The girl from Nine was gathering food when the wolf pack came down upon her. She ran to retrieve a crossbow, yet tripped in her haste. It appeared she made it to the weapon in time, but Julius still hacked at her arm with a sword in time.
The District Seven pair had stuck together, and the District Four pair was sent against them once the volunteers finally tracked them down. One and Two blocked the escape routes as Conch and Neptune's tridents found two more targets. However, the girl gravely wounded Neptune with her axe. We cheered at the first serious chance of a volunteer falling, but he made it through the night as Conch applied sponsor-gifted medicine to his injuries.
Trident 1 and Trident 2 found themselves fighting another district pair the next day, but this time it didn't work out quite so well for them. Jackson's countervailing alliance attacked them while slightly separated from One and Two – he and Diane distracted the other volunteers while Rosie and Nick went fishing. Their clubs blunted the points of the tridents – nevertheless, Neptune flipped the trident around and brutally struck Nick with the butt end of it. The District Three boy collapsed dead. Rosalind's club blows aggravated Neptune's injuries and gave Conch some new ones. Two brutal attacks two days in a row was too much for the District Four boy, and his death cannon soon followed Nick's. The opposing groups of separated allies reunited and converged on each other. Jackson put a crossbow bolt into Conch as Amber put a javelin into Rosalind. Rosie was dead, but Conch's allies had pulled the small arrow out and she lived for now. They dressed the wound as well as they could for amateurs in a constrained environment. Their success at the Cornucopia and with sponsors was the only reason they had the supplies to do even that. Nevertheless, her condition seemed critical.
A week into the Games, there were eight tributes left. The Capitol always made an especially big deal out of this stage of their cruel pageant. They interviewed people who knew the tributes back home. Those camera crews rarely visited Twelve; the last time they had was for Maysilee and Haymitch five years ago. This brought back the raw feelings from speaking to them about Miss Donner; the Capitol never let those distant memories rest, after all. As expected from the tributes' own interviews, Teresa Anthony and Flail Mackey were the stars of this part of Panem's circus.
Conch had barely made it to this stage, and fevered from her infected wound soon after. The District Ten girl had been a mystery, staying out of the way since the Reaping. This had brought her no trouble, but no help either – the same day Conch succumbed to injury, Laura succumbed to starvation. I knew the look – even living in the best part of Twelve, you couldn't avoid seeing it in Seam children.
Three days later, the twelfth day of the Games, Tribute Thread engineered another brilliant ambush on the volunteer camp. This one culminated in Diane stabbing Amber. They quit while they were ahead, separating as they retreated so the remaining Careers would have to separate to chase them down. Julius was surprisingly fleet-footed for such a big man; he beat Livia to Jackson and triggered the District Eight male's cannon with a swift sword slash. The District Eleven female was catching her breath against one of the support timbers of an abandoned building in the arena's ruined city. Diana wished she could have been so lucky once Onyx caught her, since he apparently had intentions of torture. Onyx kicked away her combat knife and whipped out pieces of rope to bind her. He roughly threw her arms behind her back and around the pillar, the cord digging into her wrists. Additional pieces restrained her neck and one of her legs.
*** Warning! This scene contains nonconsensual sex and especially graphic violence. You may wish to skip that; the end of the scene is marked by the next row of asterisks. ***
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He taunted "Imma kill you, bitch, but Imma have some fun first." We suspected what kind of 'fun' the sick bastard had in mind, but he made it crystal clear when he drew his dagger and began cutting her clothes off. He grabbed her shirt collar and slit the fabric down the middle as if it had a zipper or buttons. Then he tore it off at the sleeves. She was screaming, quite rightfully, and he stuffed the rag in her mouth. He cut her breasts free in a similar manner. He pulled out her belt and turned it into a metal-tipped whip, cracking it against the skin of her stomach. He yanked down her pants and underwear in one swift motion. He groped her crotch and said, "I think you want it, bitch".
"No," she whimpered, barely audible through the gag, at any volume clearly being broken by the torture. Mostly restrained, she didn't have the leverage to kick with the one leg that was still unbound. After he pushed her legs apart, he freed his bulge and thrust into her violently; the screams of pain were again clear through the mouth stuffed full of cloth as he hammered her several times.
The crime was particularly violent and traumatizing, so in some sick twisted way, it fit an arena. However, even the Capitol knew that this act would be repellent to the masses of sane Panem residents. A few years ago, a different sort of insanity had pervaded the games. Titus, a boy from Six, feasted on the flesh of his victims, and the Capitol had to stun him after each kill to be able to collect the bodies. Eventually he died in an avalanche that the Gamemakers had probably set up. They understood that such a repellent victor did them no good; did Onyx know that he had issued his own death sentence as he began to rape Diane? What had driven him to such depravity? Perhaps the sick bastard had thought it would play well to other sick bastards, which the Capitol certainly had plenty of. Maybe he hadn't been thinking at all as some of the basest human urges overtook him. He seemed full of blind rage over the fallen volunteers and uncontrolled desire for her body. He had the inflated sense of self to think he could get away with it, and he went about his sadism slowly. Especially since he was from a successful district, he could conceivably have developed an unhealthy obsession with the perks of winning the Games that he saw all around him. Wanting to ascend to the heights of being a Victor had driven many to mental depths, but usually not this dramatically. As he took more than his fill, it was hard enough to watch not even knowing her!
There was no one left to help her. Livia and Julius just as surely wanted her dead, although they certainly would not have gone about it in such a vile manner. With her ravaged body raw, Livia and Julius caught up with their fellow volunteer tribute. Had the Capitol steered Livia and Julius here to deliver Onyx's well-earned punishment? "I took care of Jackson!" Julius shouted, explaining the latest cannon to the remaining tributes. "Wait, Onyx, what the fuck are you doing?!" he screamed as he realized the nature of the remaining male tribute's crime. "Some 'man' you are!" he sneered as he ripped Onyx off of Diane's limp body.
"Thank you, thank you," Diane coughed as she finally spit out the gag.
Livia spoke gravely, offering what little apology she could. "Everyone knows how despicable that was; I would have at least killed you quickly and cleanly. In fact I will." She threw some of her knives at short range into Diane's forehead and another cannon sounded. Julius was not so charitable to the rapist. Onyx was still winded from being thrown on the ground. He was unarmed, and had literally been caught with his pants down. Julius drew one of his shorter blades and used it to cut off Onyx's penis, waving the organ in front of its former owner. It had still been fully engorged, and of a size that would have undoubtedly amplified Diane's physical sorrow, so Onyx quickly bled out. Would the Capitol morticians glue it back on the wrong way?
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*** end scene ***
With Diane tortured to death and Onyx killed in retaliation, these Games came down to Livia and Julius. It was a relatively clean fight by arena standards, Livia at range versus Julius hand-to-hand. Tribute Adams dodged Tribute Aurelius' bladed ammunition and deflected some of it with his own blade. He outlasted her knife supply and delivered the coup de grace with a cut to her leg. Throughout the fight she kept running away from him to get room to throw more blades, but eventually Julius had caught up with her. Those knives didn't have to be thrown, but Livia definitely would have been overmatched if she had tried that.
Livia's corpse was retrieved and another hovercraft came to pull Julius out alive. He had several cuts to show for it, from the blades he hadn't completely dodged and his injuries in past fights. Yet he lived, and the Victor hovercraft always had medics to patch up the wounds the Victor had received in the process of becoming one. Haymitch had been very near death when they pulled him out; this year's ambulance hovercraft had relatively easy work.
Once the Victor was stabilized, stylists and prep team fixed him up to display to the nation. Julius reveled in his success during a recap of the Games. "Teresa, I told you that would work," he announced into the camera to the girlfriend we all knew was watching. He then spoke to the general audience as represented by Caesar. "I made the last kill, and that's what counts. Most of them simply felt like doing what I had to do, but Onyx was a bad bastard who needed killing." Overall, while still brutal, he proved himself relatively humane for a District Two man. Though he might not know it yet, the Capitol were the real barbarians anyway.
Days after Julius was crowned, the year's Games broadcast was hardly over. Victors were a common sight in District Two, but Julius' return was still a popular event. He was flanked by that year's mentors, Flavia and Octavian. Octavian said "I know who you'd like to see first."
Teresa stepped forward, and Julius knelt in front of his woman. Everybody knew what this meant. "Teresa Anthony, will you marry me?"
"Of course I will!" He then presented her with some of the jewelry he had picked up in the Capitol. "Well, I had something important to tell you – I'm having your baby."
Those statements often went in the other order, and Julius took the news very well. "We'll be a wonderful family!" he shouted.
The wedding ceremony was another mandatory broadcast, the last of this year's Games season. Many District Two men and some women were Peacekeepers, which required what must be a horrible 20 years unmarried and childless. Perhaps that's one reason the Games were so popular in that district – winning them and/or being romantically involved with someone who did was a way out. So nineteen and eighteen was fairly young anywhere in the country, but especially so in their district. They were all smiles, as it should be, as it also was for the poor nobodies in our Justice Building 23 days ago. The broadcast gave a glimpse of the marriage certificate, and I noticed it was the same form used by even the humblest couples in Panem. Julius' mentor Octavian and one of Teresa's friends from way back signed off as the official witnesses. They were starting off right, and so had I.