AN: This fic is for Irish Luck, whose willingness to try her hand at non-linear storytelling (and the Hunger Games Universe) has challenged me to try something different as well. Turns out, girl, that non-non-linear storytelling is more difficult than it sounds.

This fic is rated T for violence and language.


The Key

It's late. I'm bundled into a compartment so luxurious it's suffocating. I now know the faces of all my competitors, and it just reiterates again that I'm completely fucked.

"Remember, your story is key." Tasha reminded me before she checked in for the night. "Ring me if you need anything." Story. Right. Like my mysterious bad girl image could stand up to any rigorous testing. I kill animals for a living, not people. I'm ugly. I only look mean. It wouldn't matter if my father was a butcher or a priest I'd still have this mug and this awful build. It's not like I chose to be this way.

It's also not like the Tributes from 1, 8 and 10 who are rocking the 'sexy' look will find it any more useful to them in the Arena. Good looking, bad looking, we all bleed and die alike. But it will buy them Sponsors. And Sponsors mean clean water, medicine, even food. They don't call them the Hunger Games for nothing.

I scowl begrudgingly into the bathroom mirror. These days a girl can't even practice proper hygiene without a visual reminder of how droll she is. I part my wet hair. Comb it out with my fingers. Goddamnit I try to smile, but my face goes all lopsided and my eyes get all squinty and disappear.

I drop my towel. Survey my lack of cleavage. Yup. Still there-not that you'd ever know if I wasn't butt-ass naked. I've known twelve year olds with larger ones. I sigh. No matter how many times I look into a mirror, I keep coming back for more. More torture. More agony. Like there's something wrong with the programming of the female brain that makes you think you might have suddenly become beautiful and all your problems would be solved.

What the hell. I push them together. Boost them up.

Nope. Still ugly.

So that's your genius plan, Petra? Something sarcastic in the back of my mind asks. Alter your tits and you'll win the Games?

My straight spine slumps, dejected. I'm ugly and there's nothing for it. My story is the key, Tasha insisted. Key to winning Sponsors. Key to winning the Games.

…but what the Hell is it? I ask my scowling reflection as I lean in, stare her in the eye. Who am I, really? Or who can I pretend to be? What is it those cameras see from yards away that I can't find less than a foot in front of me? But most importantly in this well of profound philosophy I wonder how in the name of all things profane did Xavier Malcovitch manage to sneak into my bathroom unseen.


"Get out you little creep!"

I grab the first thing my hand finds and fling it with all my might. A bottle of slick shampoo explodes against the wall behind him. "Pervert, I said get out!" Conditioner crashes into his chest, winding him and sends him sprawling.

"Get out get out get out-!" He starts running, but only goes in crazy, drunken circles. Never once does he bolt for the open door. "What the hell is wrong with you! Are you just that fucking stupid-!"

…and the answer, which should have been painfully obvious from the beginning, is yes.

I shout til I'm blue in the face, tears streaming, throat hoarse, dancing madly on the spot and I run out of bottles to throw. Malcovitch has now exhausted hiding places and the sink, the shower, behind the toilet and the interior of the small closet are now equally splotched with pungent, floral-scented slime. He keels over, either in dizziness or exhaustion, and before I can even cover myself another unwelcome visitor joins the fray.

Tasha Pushkina bursts through my bedroom door with preterhuman strength looking utterly deranged, her irate voice berating Victor Ivan Klerkov with terms I've never even heard of."YOU COCK-SUCKING SISTER-SHAGGING SON OF A WHORE YOU LAY ONE FINGER ON HER AND I'LL-!"

A naked eighteen year-old gawks at her, forgotten towel clutched limply in one fist.

She stops short.

"Oh." She manages weakly, eyes darting between me and my would-be attacker. "…so you weren't yelling about Klerkov, then?"

But before I can so much as collect my dignity or wits the man himself comes staggering through the doorframe. "What the helizgoinon?"

"GET OUT!"


Tasha Pushkina finally gets to fulfill her role as Hunger Games Chaperone for District 6. She gets to tell a contestant to calm the fuck down and go talk with their Mentor. She's bundled me into a robe, and called a 'family meeting' in the Galley. An Avox is probably scrubbing my compartment as we speak. Or rather, don't.

"I don't want to talk to him, he saw me-!" I insist.

"There wasn't much to see," he grunts.

"What did you expect?" She cries in exasperation, grinding the heel of one slippered foot into his instep. "You sounded half-raped in there! Of course we were going to come!"

"And you, Nataliya Pushkina," Klerkov fingers his beard thoughtfully. "Sounded half as if you suspected me of being the culprit."

She winces.

"So you heard a distressed female voice yelling about creeps and perverts and your mind just happened to wander to me." He states coolly. "How touching."

She blurts a lame-assed apology about him being the only man on the train. I tout another theory. "Or maybe it's because everyone knows you're dirty old man and a drunk."

"Petra, please, calm down-"

"I'm on a train with an addict, a voyagueristic 12 year old and a pervert who's already proposed I lap dance him on my way to get killed! I will NOT calm down!" My face is hot and flushed, but my knuckles have gone white and cold. My heart hammers in my chest, and my voice has reached borderline hysteria.

…I think reality's just caught up with me. I'm Petra Angelovna. I am about to die. Suddenly getting spied on by a dirty-minded mute boy and solicited by a drunk doesn't sound half bad. Hell. The anger all but evaporates. I feel stupid, sheepish, and a little bit ashamed.

So much for that tough-girl image, genius.

But far from being pleased, Tasha Pushkina stiffens. Her dark eyes shoot daggers. "Klerkov, is that true?"

Victor Victor Ivan Klerkov looks grieviously injured as he addresses me gravely. "Petra Angelovna, it was a joke."

"Did you see me laughing?" I snap.

"Alright, enough!" Tasha Pushkina demands authoritatively. For some reason it quiets us. Maybe there's a unwritten rule in the human psyche that you don't fuck with a woman in a samurai-style kimono whose painted on eyebrows have disappeared into her hair, elaborate wig though it may be."It's been a harrowing day. For all of us," she says, with an especially placating glance in my direction. "Go to bed. Both of you," she eyeballs Klerkov sternly. "We'll discuss this in the morning."

Klerkov harrumphs, and takes another swig of vodka. I turn on my heel, silently fuming. But it's only as I stalk away that I realize who and what started this whole mess and how he did it: Xavier Malcovitch isn't just mute, he's goddamn invisible. In five minutes he hasn't so much as even moved. We just had an entire conversation right over his head…and forgot he was even there.

We make eye contact. He smiles mischievously.

But I'm in no mood to be kind at the moment. "Go to bed, cry baby." I order. "Now."


I spring up when a beam of light falls across my face. Hell, I didn't even hear the door opening. And there's only one person on this train that invisible, and that unwelcome.

"Get out." I order the darkness.

But thirty seconds later, I'm beginning to think I imagined it. Hell, he'd still have to breathe, wouldn't he?

"Cry baby?" I whisper, feeling foolish. The large, pallid eyes of Xavier Malcovitch jump out of the darkness inches from my bedframe. I start. Damn, he's good. But I'm not in the mood to be impressed, or forgiving. "Xavier Malcovitch, get out of my bedroom. Now." I demand.

He continues to stare at me like the roaming, half-wild dogs of District 6 as they watch through the slats of the killing shack, begging for even the hint of scraps. They slink off tail-tucked when my father comes around, but somehow they always think they can charm a woman.

...sometimes they're right."Xavier Malcovitch, if you don't get out right now I'll-" what are you going to do, Petra? You've already decided you're going to kill the kid. "I'll scream." I finish lamely.

Those lamp-like eyes don't even so much as blink.

I lay down, bundle all my covers around me, and pull the pillow over my head. "You are NOT sleeping here." I count to 100. I open my eyes.

Malcovitch hasn't moved. "You are NOT staying here." I roll over and pull the pillow back over my face. Within a minute, a light, gentle weight pads across the bare mattress behind me. "Hell." Xavier Malcovitch has less than seven nights to live. I am Petra Angelovna, the Stone-heart, and I am either kind enough—or cruel enough—to let him snuggle innocently under my covers while I plot his execution.

But boyish or not, he's still twelve. "You so much as touch one of my tits, kid, and the deal's off," I growl. "I'll let you fucking starve." He yawns in response and nestles deeper into me. Great job, Petra. You're the world's biggest push-over. Now we're fucked. Both of us. Unless overnight someone's decided to re-write the rules to include leniency for things like weakness and sheer adorability.

Yeah. Right.


I lay awake. Cry baby's face has fallen awkwardly against my armpit. "Don't name them, Petra, if you're not strong enough." Father said after he'd killed and dressed Lilly. Hanging by her hind legs, gutted and gory, her linen-white wool now crisp with blood she looked nothing like the delicate flower I'd named her for. "Or better still, my Petra, become strong and do."

...I've never named another. Not until today.

Become strong, and do. I'm Petra Angelovna, and that's my story. That's my key. The world cringed when I went back for Xavier Malcovitch. Now they're going to reel in horror when I snap his swan-like neck. It'll be quick, Cry baby, I whisper in the dark as I kiss his forehead. It'll be kind. You'll never feel a thing.