~Tristabelle: Three of Clubs~
The next day, I wake up on my own body clock. Looking around, I'm about to go back to sleep when I hear Polymestor Treblanus's horrid, screechy voice over the loudspeaker. "Attention tributes!" My eyes snap open, and I know that I'm not going to get back to sleep any time soon.
"All tributes. Yes, Mr. Piccozzi, that means wake up Mr. Hollow already." There's a pause. "Don't give that look! I don't care how peaceful he looks, wake him up!" another pause. "I don't care about your weird man crush, alright, wake him up, he needs to hear this as well!" A pause. "Yes, I am the boss of you! I'll get ol' Solitaire to send some mutts after you! Because that's how good of friends we are!" Another pause, longer than the rest. "Finally, thank you. Good morning Mr. Hollow! Now, attention tributes!"
I roll my eyes. "Don't give me that sass, Ms. Baer!" I resist the urge to flip the bird, crossing my arms instead. Being nagged, like school students, by an overseer, just pisses me off.
To be honest, I've forgotten that we're always being watched. Well, I never forgot we were being watched, but I always forget what that entails. The fact that not only can my family see me, but so can the entire nation. People that have never met me before see me on their television screens. Some are analyzing my strategy compared to others, some are hoping I'd just die already, some are probably only concerned about my rack, but all are forming opinions about me completely based on my time in the Capitol.
Lyndon's family can see me, too.
My stomach drops. I wonder if they have any idea how much I've thought of him since he died.
Actually, I take it back, I don't wanna know.
"Tonight starting as soon as the sun's set, there will be a feast at the Cornucopia, all the way back on the beach. Now, you may think it's healthier for you to not attend, however, please reconsider. There will be plenty of food and water there, which may prove to become… Difficult… To come across."
I notice movement in the corner of my eye, and see the bushes around me starting to sprout bright red, yellow, and blue flowers in replacement of the berries that may have once been there. My heart sinks.
"Besides that, though, there's more. Tributes, think of the one thing that you need the most. It's here waiting for you in a backpack with your District number on it, colored based on gender. The feast will begin once the sun's set. I highly, highly advise you to be punctual." He laughs as he turns off the microphone and the normal sounds of nature resume.
They want action. This is a sure-fire way to get it. The Capitolites (damn them) love a good feast, so they're used very wisely. Only when the tributes start to get truly desperate.
I can't find breakfast (surprise surprise), so I go to the spring. When I get there, the pools are no longer filled with the clear water, instead it's full of the crackling electric goop that plagued the Arena earlier in the Games. Who even remembers how many days ago that was? It seems like an eternity.
There's nothing for me to eat or drink. Great.
I search more of the bushes, but they all give the same story: all the edible berries have been replaced by those vibrant red, yellow, and blue flowers. I know that anything I even touch now has the potential to hurt me, or worse.
Which means that, like all the other chumps, I have to go to the damn feast.
Great. I sigh to myself.
Well, maybe now at least I'll be able to get my revenge…
~.~.
~Pontifex: King of Spades~
I slept peacefully through the night. I don't realize it until Janie shakes me awake.
It's so unreal that I was actually able to rest, especially here. Puts me slightly more on-edge than I already was.
"Good morning Ponty," she says, running her fingers through her hair (it's hopeless. We all look like literal shit no matter what we do).
"Hrng." I wish I could have coffee or something to get me awake. I yawn when suddenly an announcement comes on. "Attention tributes! Yes, Mr. Piccozzi, that means wake up Mr. Hollow already!" I gag a bit. I knew they were still together. I just knew it. But if people don't know that Janie and I found each other, well, that's better for us. One petty one-sided argument later and Polymestor finally gets to the point: that there's going to be a feast once the sun sets at the beach.
Janie goes slightly pale. I wonder what's wrong and am about to ask when I suddenly remember why.
Magnus, her brother you know, the one that cause my coward brothers to lose their shit, he died at the feast. I remember watching it, later of course, when I was older and Thatcher and I were still on good terms, and rooting against him. Now I know I can't blame him for my brothers going nuts, but it was still a devious strategy. His ally, the girl from District 1, waited until the feast of their Games (they had theirs when there was 8 left) to collapse the alliance. Magnus took out the boy from 8, and was glancing darkly at his victory when she turned on him and killed him right there. He didn't expect a thing, and died with shock on his face.
"No," she says. "Ponty, we can't go. We can't-"
Polymestor interrupts, "You may think it's healthier for you not to attend, but please reconsider." I know he was talking directly to us, to Janie, and that makes me mad. I contain it, though, as he continues.
The translation of what follows is as follows: Risk it all or lose it all. Risking it all seems to be the better option.
"We have to go," I say quietly, to make sure she knows. "We have to go."
She nods, obviously trying not to panic. I can't believe I'm about to reassure her.
"Janie. We've got each other. I'm not going to turn on you." The strategy of that girl from 1 was horribly deceitful. But masterful. I have to respect her. Sponsor gifts rained down on her, but she ended up losing it all to the girl from 7 because her head got too big.
That seems to be a pretty consistent downfall for Careers.
Really, though, I've experienced the opposite through my time in the Games. I'm a lot more vulnerable now than I've ever been.
"Let's go see if we can't get some last-minute supplies before it all dries out." She nods hurriedly, and we maneuver the forest, keeping an eye out for anything to eat.
When we reach the spring, all we hear is the crackling of electricity, and find that all the water's been replaced by that wretched plasma from earlier.
"I know what they're doing," Janie says quietly. "By the end of today, with food gone and no water, we'll all be hungry, thirsty, tired, and, most importantly, desperate. They want us to be more violent. We're not violent enough." She stares at the crackling, blue and yellow goop, sighing.
Looking at it, I remember the day that it appeared all over the Arena. When Dream and Katherine and Empress were still alive. And Tuesday, too.
I was just waiting for Dream or Empress to have a weapon to my throat. I liked them so much I thought it was only to be expected that they'd betray my trust.
I guess we're just not your typical Careers.
"We're awful Careers," Janie says quietly, listening to the quiet crackling of the goo and sitting by it. I sit by her.
"We are not," I say defensively. "We're good Careers."
"Then why are we still together?" she challenges. She then realizes that it may've not been such a good idea to challenge me like that, but gets ready to brave the consequences by reaching for a knife from her belt.
I dismiss her worries with a wave of the hand. "We're still together because we're still a team. 3 and 10 are still together, and neither of us could take the two of them alone. Besides, District honor. Why would you or I want to kill our own District partner?" Pretty good rationalization for, dare I say, friendship. Not that I like that term, "friends." Anyone who's ever claimed to be my friend never stayed my friend. I don't trust the word, really. Anyways, that's not the point.
"Now I'm the one that's starting with the trust issues," Janie laughs a bit and messes with her hair.
I shake my head at her. "Janie, I've been stabbed in the back so much I could never do it to someone else." I laugh to dismiss the weight of the statement, half-humorful and half-bitter. Just like that, the truth I've been trying to avoid since we got here is out there for all to hear.
"Oh… Pontifex…"
I just keep laughing and brush it off as if it's not a big deal. "Don't worry about it. Come on, let's start to the beach." She nods, getting up.
We walk in silence for a bit.
"We're actually pretty damn good Careers," I decide.
"What makes you say that?"
"We are still the shining stars of the Arena, are we not? The cream of the Games crop, so to speak. We have so many kills under our belts," she pales a bit but swallows and nods. "Nobody outshone us, in skill or in charm. Which is what being a Career's about, no?"
"I guess that's one way of looking at it," she says, after a pause to consider it. She smiles gently.
"Besides," I add, "We made our-" it pains me to say the word (but I don't have the emotional energy to recount why I hate it)- "friends and family proud by even getting this far, no?"
"I guess, sure."
I pause. "Well, my father probably isn't shining with pride," I remark snidely, with a small laugh. "But fuck him." I didn't mean to say that, but it came out anyways. Janie stops in her tracks, looking at me. She's slightly shocked.
It feels like a giant weight has just been lifted off my shoulders.
I laugh. "That's right. I said it. Fuck him!" I can die in peace now. "Fuck him!" I feel energized again, taking off at a slightly gleeful run. "Fuck my dad! Fuck him and all he stands for! Fuck him! Fuuuuck him! Fuck 'im!"
Janie scurries after me, saying, "Hey, Ponty, wait up! We have some dried fruit to eat for lunch!
.
We munch up dried fruit (ick) as we walk, having random conversations to break the silence (mostly about how gross dried fruit is and how much I despise it), and reach the beach as the afternoon is turning to evening.
The light, tropical breeze is stronger on the beach, and it actually feels somewhat refreshing. It appears as if we're the first ones here, but I don't venture too far from our hiding spot.
"Get some sleep," I tell Janie quietly. "We've got time to wait." She nods a bit, curling up. Her eyes close easily.
I stay on guard through the evening, but nobody shows up in our spot. I wake Janie up when the clouds start to turn deep purplish blue. She wipes her eyes, looking out across the beach to the Cornucopia. I know that the tributes must all be hidden in the jungle surrounding the beach, like we are.
The sunset tonight is even more beautiful than it had ever been in the past. Janie takes my hand and squeezes it. "Thank you Ponty," she says quietly.
I smile a bit, despite myself. "It's all gonna be okay."
The moon appears in the sky, and suddenly two tables emerge up from the ground by the Cornucopia. One has food, huge platters, so much food my stomach rumbles at just the sight of it. The other table has the backpacks on it, assorted sizes and shapes, one for each of the five tributes left.
"Tributes… The feast begins!"
Nothing happens at first. Nobody wants to be the first to go out there. I take my spear, Janie her knives. She looks nervous when suddenly a ruckus begins as Tristabelle rushes to the tables. She gets her backpack, hurriedly putting it around her shoulders, and grabbing one container of food and jug of water.
I take Janie and together we go out next, in pursuit of Tristabelle who eventually runs out along the beach and disappears from sight. I swear but suddenly our problems become much worse as 10 and 3 come out from their spot.
"Watch yourself," warns Atty, but I don't listen and immediately go for the place that will hurt him the most: his ally.
And he strikes back in the same way, before I realize how impulsive that was. Janie's shriek pierces the air, and my heart pounds. What do I do!? I think, in a panic. Atticus takes Gio, who is awkwardly holding the sword he got from the Cornucopia, by the shirt and goes to get backpacks and stock up on food.
I can't really think of them right now, though. I can't think of anything. I hurriedly go to attend to Janie, but she's already so pale and the light's already going from her eyes.
"Janie!" I shake her a bit, trying to get her to wake up, keep fighting, but she's given up. I feel a rush of sudden, overwhelming rage. "I'm going to eliminate him," I promise her, taking her hand and fighting of tears (shit shit SHIT). "I'm going to avenge you." Another thought enters my mind, though, the fact that I was the one that was stupid and went for 3, which provoked it. In a weird, morbid way, this is all my fault. Tears squeeze out of my eyes and I try to get control of the waves of misery and anger and grief and self-hatred, but it's like a dam has opened and all the emotions have come out. A cannon booms and I let out a scream of grief. Go ahead, find me, I challenge anyone. End it.
Even when the body has long-since lost its life, I stay there, hunched over it, ready to kill someone, do anything to get my revenge, even though it was my fault that it happened in the first place.
"I'm sorry," I choke out, even though I know she's not there anymore, she can't hear me. She can't tell me whether or not she forgives me. She can't forgive me, even. She's gone. She had so much life, spirit, ambition, love, and it's all gone, whisked away into nothingness, it's all gone. The body is lifeless. She won't smile or laugh again, she won't sing or yell or make weird faces.
The body looks so different from the Janie I used to know. Her brown eyes are glazed over. I'm taken back to when I was just a fucking five-year-old and I watch the life drain out of my brother's eyes, so similar to my own it was haunting.
I can't take this. I can't. I just can't. I can't make myself do anything. I can't make myself leave the body, I can't even make myself close its eyes.
It's not until the tables start to lower that I realize that I need to get the backpacks if I even have a hope of hunting down the guy from 10. I want him dead. I make myself get up, sprint to the tables with tears in my eyes, and grab both backpacks with the number 2 on them, and the spear shaped like a spade on the table laying with my backpack. I take a platter of food and grab a jug of water just as the tables are gone. Then I hear the hovercraft there to take the body.
Defeated, I hang my head down, give one last look to Janie, who changed me so much in so little time… "Thanks Janie," I say, my voice cracking from tears. "Thanks for being a friend."
I leave the body and go back into the jungle.
They play the anthem as I'm walking away from there, and I don't look at Janie's face in the sky for fear that I'll do something destructive. I sit against a tree, alone, and decide to go through the backpacks. The sky stays fairly light, the stars brighter than usual, making it easier to see. I turn on a flashlight and look into the bag to see what might be there for me.
Inside, I find a small case that I open. Inside, I find… Oh fuck. It's my glasses. The ones I didn't want to wear in the Arena. I slide them on my face and suddenly things have details again. It's bittersweet, considering what I went through to get them. And what I threw away because of my own impulsiveness. The glasses fog up from my hot tears so I take them off.
Also inside, some provisional food, one single canteen, a tiny roll of bandages, a hairbrush and a toothbrush with a tiny tube of toothpaste (which I quickly use to feel slightly less gross), and a scroll of paper. I take it out and look at the words on it.
End it already. Just grow a pair and end it. Throw the spear. Don't hesitate. Eliminate them, all of them. Stop fucking up. –Father
More tears come, an odd combination between a laugh and a cry comes out of my throat and I tear the paper right across the words so I don't have to see them anymore. "You say it like it's fucking easy to steal lives away!" I say, my voice shaking, another laugh-cry coming out. "You say it like it's not scarring to see lives drain in front of your fucking eyes!" Another laugh-cry. "Maybe to you it's not! Because you didn't seem to care watching Atlas, or Mom, or even me!" Another laugh-cry, and it hurts like I've been hit with a knife instead of her, but I don't care. I can barely think straight at this point, the rage pulses through my blood with each and every heartbeat, I can hear it roaring in my ears, I don't care about anything else.
Until I see another block of writing on the scroll.
I'm sorry, and that I hope [you] can get home, and maybe find it in [your] heart to let me in again. From now on, I'll always be there for you. No matter how much you push me away. I'm sorry for leaving, but I promise that no matter what I will never leave you again. If it counts for anything. I love you, Ponty Pont. Keep fighting. –Pryderi
I stare at the words until my hand shakes so much the words are unreadable. More tears find their way down my cheeks and by now it'd be dumb of me to try and fight them. Even though I'm still crying, though, I feel… Calmer. I collapse, reading the words again when my hand stop shaking as badly. And again.
And I realize that people fuck up. A lot. And I'm the king of fucking up, really. I fucked up a lot. I know what it's like to fuck up. Especially now, when I fucked up enough to get my ally, one of the most well-liked people I'd ever met in my life, killed. She's gone. She's fucking gone and it's my fault. Yeah, I fucked up.
Pryderi fucked up, too. Something like that seems minor compared to how much I've fucked up in the 18 years I've been living. I don't even deserve to be alive, and yet here I am. The only way I'm going to be able to get anywhere as a Victor involves me begging everyone I've ever met for forgiveness. I read the words again, one last time.
I didn't think this is what I'd be in my Arena, and I didn't think I'd be crying in my Arena, and realizing how much I've fucked everything up. But life is weird like that, I guess. No, cruel is a better word, actually.
And so I say the hardest words I've ever had to say in my whole life, that I never thought I'd be saying, especially not here.
"Pryderi. I forgive you."
~.~.
A/N: AAAAHHH MY FEELS HURT SO MUCH RIGHT NOW. Thank you for her, Dreamer, it was a pleasure to write with her. I hope you cried- I mean, liked how I wrote her. Right. XD Anyways, it seriously was great to write her. Janie and Finnegan can be happy angels in heaven together now.
I'm so sorry for the feels. No I'm not I'm actually laughing evilly right now XP
So, if you want something to lift your feels after this horribly depressing chapter, I posted a bunch of holiday headcanons for these characters on my HG Tumblr, so check them out! You can either search Celtic's SYOT or you can just scroll past my Dress Like Your Characters Week because they should be right after that.
Let me know what you think of them! I think I may turn a couple of them into one-shots on the blog, actually.
There are still mentor/escorts open for my 84th Games full SYOT, so don't be afraid to check that out! And if you haven't voted on the poll for Victor, please do! Obviously Tuesday is out now, though.
Chapter Question: On a scale of 1-10 (1 being I laughed the whole time, 10 being drowning in tears), how much did this hurt your feels and why? Because for me it's probably a 9 or a 10.
Scores (alphabetized for more convenience!):
AbbyCorabby123: 10
A-Bookworm-Named-Steph: 26
Beauty. Is. Strange: 61
Blonde4ever: 62
calebbeers21: 6
Coolgal02: 61
CrissKenobie-the-Numenorean: 31
Dreamer: 247
dreams and desperation: 46
elisa. anya: 5
Emrys Holmes: 56
epictomguy: 14
fat necrosis: 22
falyn. oliver: 43
FlawlessCatastrophe: 12
xGred-Forgex: 21
hopefuldreamer1991: 144
Ibbonray: 35
Jalen Kun: 12
Jess: 311
Josephm611: 42
Kate: 203
Xx-Katerina-xX: 56
Kyoko Rose: 26
Lady Lysa Arryn: 97
LokiThisIsMadness: 16
magicharity: 163
Medium-Indigo (Guest): 60
Music Rules The World: 4
Mystical Pine Forest: 20
nevergone4ever: 2
xxPeppermintxx109: 41
Programming: 7
xQueen-of-Applesx: 40
rising-balloons: 75
Rosemarie Benson: 12
santiago. poncini20: 41
Seahorse8: 17
seaotter99: 22
Sinfonian Legend: 285
superneet1214: 6
Skyflapple: 11
ThisWorldWeHate: 17
We're All Okay: 31
W. R. Winters: 46