Rook is holding a knife bloodied with Dimitri's blood in his other hand and a shiny sickle is tucked into his belt. Blood is dripping from a cut on his cheek but he doesn't seem to notice it. Anya hurriedly shrugs the backpack onto her shoulders so she can run properly, and Rook releases her arm so that they can both sprint unhindered. And Anya sprints until the air won't come back into her lungs– and considering how harshly she'd been winded there really wasn't much to begin with.
She doubles over against a tree with pale bark and gnarled branches, gasping desperately for oxygen.
"We gotta keep running," Rook tells her. "Put as much space as we can between us and them!"
"Wait!" snaps Anya, clinging to the tree before she's suddenly heaving up the pasta she'd eaten into the thin grass at the tree's base. She feels Rook patting her back very awkwardly as she spills the contents of her stomach.
When she feels she finally has nothing left to give, she wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve, staining the dark green fabric with vomit. She looks up at Rook, painful tears stinging her eyes. Eyes which widen as she's finally able to take in the state of her ally.
"Shit, Rook," she says, standing upright and taking in the blood smeared over his face with worry.
"It's fine," he immediately dismisses, waving his hand. "It's mostly Dimitri's. I can barely feel it. You ready to keep moving? We needa find somewhere better to stop, this forest is too sparse to hide us."
Anya glances worriedly at the open gash, not believing that much of that blood actually belonged to Dimitri, but she spares a quick glance at the admittedly sparse forest, and she nods.
"Do we have to keep sprinting?"
"Think a brisk jog will outrun an arrow?" says Rook dryly, wiping some of the blood off his face with his own sleeve, a sandy brown colour that lets him blend in with the towering brown cliffs Anya can see eastwards. "Herminia got the bow."
Rook and Anya had made a particular note of Herminia in training, after watching her shoot for a little while. She barely missed a shot, and they had decided then that she was the biggest long range threat. But, only if Opalette told her to shoot. The blonde's blind obedience of the taller girl was actually sad– pathetic, in Rook's words.
Rook had predicted that if she lasted long enough. Herminia would inevitably snap and kill Opalette, which would be incredibly convenient for them. Because Herminia was a threat on her own, yes, but nowhere near as much as Opalette.
Anya takes a steadying breath, empty stomach still churning and lungs still burning. She nods, tightening the straps of the backpack so that it doesn't bounce so much on her back, and beginning to sprint again with Rook on her tail.
They don't stop running until they physically can no longer, finding the mouth of a cave filled with red dirt and stones. Rook declares it good enough for now, and they enter it, sitting down and taking heavy breaths. Their tongues are both dry, their throats scratchy. Anya's certain Rook would love a sip of water as much as she does.
She takes off the backpack, beginning to rummage through.
"Please tell me there's water in there."
Anya scowls as she rummages through, first finding a length of rope, a sleeping bag, a box of matches, some frighteningly dry crackers, a water purification kit, and a metal bottle.
"That's promising," Rook says, sitting up straight and picking up the bottle with a look of hope– a look which quickly morphs to frustration when he picks it up to find it's perfectly empty and bone dry. "The fuckers!"
"It's still promising," says Anya. "It means there's water to be found."
"They could make it a little easier to find." Rook sighs, leaning back against the wall of the cave and shrugging his jacket off his shoulders, revealing his sweat stained t-shirt. Anya follows his lead, feeling as though she may overheat if not. It's hot in the arena, and desperately dry.
It's nothing like the humid heat she's grown used to in District Seven, it's a horrible, all encompassing dryness that seems to leech all the liquid from her body. She knows that her education about anatomy in Seven was sparse and severely lacking, but she does know that the more she sweats, the more hydration her body is giving up. She doesn't know if it's hydration her body can afford to lose… she could be miles from fresh water. So she sits still, breathing slowly and trying to cool her body down in the relative cold of the cave.
She closes her eyes, and hears Rook panting softly beside her.
"Don't breathe so fast," she mumbles.
"I know what I'm doing, Anya A."
Anya cracks an eye open and sees him laying on his back on the ground, arms splayed out as he takes panting breaths.
"Doesn't it get hot in Seven? You don't learn how to cool yourself while you work?"
"I work in a factory, not out in the woods."
Rook opens his eyes and looks over at her, chuckling softly. "So you don't work out in the sun. I see. Well, trust me when I say I'm an expert on staying cool in dry heat."
"Are you an expert in ignoring injuries?"
Rook grins, laughing as he reaches up to touch the cut on his cheek. He winces slightly when his fingers come into contact with the gash. "Of course I am. Think the peacekeepers care if we get a cut in the paddies?"
Anya snorts, rummaging through the backpack again to see if there's anything that might help to keep it from getting infected. She finds a tin of strong smelling paste inside, grimacing. It may not be medicine at all, but she's willing to try.
"Let me look at it," she says. "If that actually is Dimitri's blood, it needs to be cleaned out."
Rook groans and sits up, using his discarded jacket to wipe away some of the blood, only really succeeding in smearing the quickly drying gore over more of his face. Anya moves over to him, scowling at how deep the cut is and dipping her fingers into the paste. She doesn't recognise the smell of it, it's nothing that Madame Clavell would have used on her, nothing she would've ever been able to get her hands on.
Clavell had herbal remedies, this smells clinical, like a… hospital. The smell feels familiar, in the same way peppermint does.
As she's lathering a small amount into the cut, a cannon sounds.
Anya's movement stops as twelve more sound off consecutively, one after the other.
"Thirteen," she breathes, equally frightened and amazed. That's a high number for any bloodbath, it means…
"Nine to go."
Anya meets Rook's words with a frown. Either she's really bad at maths, or Rook is.
"Ten," she corrects. "Ten to go."
"No," says Rook, grabbing the little pot of medicine and sniffing it with a displeased scowl. "Nine. 'Cause we're making it out."
"That isn't how it works, Rook."
Rook meets her with a pleased grin, capping the medicine and gently bumping her arm with his fist. "We don't follow rules, remember?"
Anya purses her lips, taking the medicine back and tucking it into the backpack. She doesn't say more on it, not interested in encouraging Rook's ambitious delusions.
"Who cut you anyway?" she asks instead of correcting him again.
"Boy from Two, I think," he says, shrugging. "Weren't focused on the who, more on the what."
Anya watches him gesture to the curved blade in his belt.
"Not a bad get," Anya compliments, and a new question suddenly burns on her tongue. "Did you… kill anyone?"
Rook hesitates. His mask of nonchalance fractures a bit, but only for a second.
"Pushed someone into a spear to get the scythe," he admits. "And… Dimitri, maybe."
Anya recalls the image of Rook tearing the blade from Dimitri's back, recalls the way blood had gone flying from the red stained blade.
"Maybe?"
"He was still alive when we left, and I don't know if I hit anything vital."
Anya zips up the backpack, settling back against the cave wall. "Guess we'll see tonight."
Now that she's able to sit and breathe without gasping in air, without worrying about the blood on Rook's face, she thinks of Dimitri.
You're her.
Dimitri knows who she is. He knows how she ended up in the frozen banks, who she was before the snow. She finds herself reaching for the book that's tucked into the pocket of her discarded jacket. She opens the cover, her fingers finding the name scribbled inside as they've done a thousand times before.
Only this time, there's something… new. Dimitri's confounding accusations have provided something new in the expanse of her imagination. The doors, once blank slates without even a keyhole to peep through, have knobs. They're still locked tight, but there's a way to open them now. All Anya needs to do is find the key.
She flicks to the back of the book, taking in the picture of the embracing family. It was a picture that once gave her hope, but now, with Dimitri' words echoing in her mind, it feels like a concrete reminder that she won't.
Anya knows now. Not who she is, but she remembers the very first thing she's remembered in three years. Her parents are not coming back.
But the girl who scribbled her name in this book could.
Rook isn't convinced they're safe in the cave. So as soon as they both feel they have the energy, they stand up and they begin to move again, taking a new direction but ensuring it's not the way they'd come.
Rook offers Anya the knife which is still covered in Dimitri's blood, and who knows who else's. She takes it, but she doesn't know what exactly she'll do with it if faced with danger.
"Make sure you stick 'em with the pointy end," Rook says, as though he's reading her mind. The cut on his face looks clean and as healthy as a gash possibly can.
"And you know what to do with that?" Anya asks, gesturing to the sickle, the flat side hitting Rook's leg with every step.
"Same deal, right? 'Sides, I use this thing all the time at home."
"I doubt rice fights back like a person would."
"You'd be surprised."
Anya can't believe that Rook is still managing to make her laugh when they've both almost died a few times today. It's like he hadn't driven a knife into Dimitri's back, like there's not a nasty, deep cut on his face. But he's pulling it off, compartmentalising the day's killings with precision and skill that even Anya's repressed memories have to admire, and making Anya snort with amusement.
The sun sinks behind them as they walk, and Rook ties his jacket around his waist. Their breaths both grow heavier. They're not rushing, or walking particularly fast, but even in the late afternoon sun, even with their jackets off, it's sweltering.
"Why'd we leave that cave again?" grumbles Anya as they trek through the dry brush.
Rook looks back at her as he walks a few paces ahead, curly hair falling from its bun as it always seems to. "You tryna hole up in a cave the whole time?"
"Yes. I think hiding is a perfectly acceptable method for victory."
Rook shrugs. "But it's boring. And we ain't boring."
"How did Meadowlea win?"
Rook glances up at the cloudless sky and hums in thought. Despite his insistence on hating the games and not wanting to fall into the Capitol's manipulations, he does pay attention. He has the odds of every other tribute memorised, she doesn't doubt he watched his mentor's games as well to further his understandings.
"Killing spree, mostly. She definitely didn't hide out. Neither did Canyon Archer… did you watch his games?"
Anya thinks she probably should have, but she likes Canyon a lot. Seeing the man who is supposed to keep her alive killing other innocent kids would probably ruin the image she has of him. Canyon cares so much for the kids in his care, it's evident despite how much he'll deny it. She doesn't think she could bear to watch him kill.
She doesn't say anything, glancing up at the sky, at the omniscient watcher, at the camera that could be trained on them right now.
Rook takes her silence as a negative, and continues, "He wasn't as brutal as Meadowlea, but he sure as hell ain't hide his way through it. He was smarter than that."
"Plenty of people have won by hiding, Rook, it's as clever as anything else."
"But we're not plenty of people, are we?" Rook states proudly, pausing in his footsteps and tilting his head. "We're Rook and Anya! Do you hear that?"
Anya opens her mouth to respond but pauses at the question, tilting her own head, lifting her ear to the open air. She can hear something. It's loud, like a constant roll of thunder, a steady roaring of something crashing. Rushing water.
"Water?" says Anya, looking at Rook.
"Could be. Or could be a thunder mutt."
"A thunder mutt."
Rook grimaces, glancing toward where they can hear the sound. He tilts his head back and forth, visibly weighing the options.
"Could fight a thunder mutt. Can't stick a knife in dehydration."
"You can't stick a knife in thunder either," Anya tells him as they turn and head towards the sound anyway. Rook snorts in amusement, but Anya can tell that the heat and the exhaustion is getting to him. He's not trying as hard as usual to make her laugh. He's still succeeding though.
The longer they walk, the louder the thundering noise grows. Anya begins to wonder if they're walking into a storm, while Rook loudly laments that it's too early for the gamemakers to be playing such cruel tricks. But they turn the corner of a towering cliff, and all the lamentations stop all at once.
Two faces light up, taking in the sight of the waterfall before them, a steady stream of clear water falling down the face of the cliff into a pool below. Fresh, cool. The spray dampens their faces, and Rook laughs.
He throws an arm over Anya's shoulder, tucking her close and guffawing in delight. Anya can't help but smile along with him, a small laugh leaving her mouth.
"You got that purification kit?" Rook asks, voice loud to be heard of the roaring of the falls. He lets go of her and rushes forward, wading into the cool water and rubbing it over his bloody face.
"Yeah," says Anya, not really loud enough to be heard. She looks up at the waterfall, and anyone could mistake her for admiring its beauty. But she's not.
She knows this waterfall. She's seen it. She's peeked through office doors and seen this waterfall on a computer screen, seen it pinned to a corkboard. She's seen the door slide shut to hide it, heard a voice whisper that this was confidential, super secret arena plans that were to stay between the president and the woman in the office.
Anya shakes her head. She pushes away the strange memory, puts it down to early stages of dehydration and rummages through the backpack for the bottle and the water purifier, trekking into the cool water behind Rook. She dunks the bottle, lets it fill, and drops the solution in before capping the bottle again to wait.
"Can you swim?" Rook asks, wading further into the pool.
"Yes," says Anya, even though she can't remember ever swimming before. She just knows she knows how.
Rook grins, reaching the centre of the pool but finding he's only up to his waist. He frowns in disappointment, and Anya isn't sure why he hoped for it to be deeper.
"Did you swim in Nine?"
Rook nods, letting the fresh spray wet his face.
"There's a river," he tells her, eyes closed and face turned to the pink sky. "Near where I live. Every year on the day of the harvest festival, my granny used to take us swimming out there."
Anya listens intently to his half-shouted words, glancing up at where the stream of water spills from at the top of the cliff.
"Us?"
"Me and my cousins. My little sister." A long pause. "You got any siblings?"
Anya shakes her head, before she remembers he's not looking at her and clearing her throat. "No," she says. "I don't think so."
"You don't think so?" Rook opens his eyes and lowers his gaze to Anya.
Anya looks back down at him as well. Their eyes meet, and she clears her throat again.
"You shouldn't have gone in the water. If it gets cold at night you'll freeze."
"Then I'll strip."
Anya raises an eyebrow.
"And we can huddle up in the sleeping bag for warmth," he adds after a moment.
"Uh huh." Anya rolls her eyes, but he's made her smile anyway. "It's getting dark. Where are we holing up for the night?"
Rook looks up at the waterfall, icy gaze trailing over the cliffs that surround it that tuck the little idyllic paradise away into relative security.
"We could sleep in a tree."
"Trees are too sparse," Rook counters, wading close to the falls. "Dunno if they could hold us."
Anya watches with a frown as he holds his arm out under the steady stream. He peers into the waterfall, gasping after a moment.
"There's something back here!" He declares, moving to the side edge of the pool.
"Something?" asks Anya, beginning to skirt along the edge of the pool in hopes that she doesn't have to wade in herself. She doesn't need to freeze to death as well.
Rook's laughter is almost drowned out by the thundering water, and Anya's face scrunches up in concern when disappears behind the stream.
"Rook!" She calls, shimmying along the cliffside to follow him. She ducks behind the waterfall, pausing as she takes in the sight before her.
It's not particularly grand, or beautiful, but before her is a cave, expansive and totally hidden. Tucked away behind the falls, and looking as though it's been untouched for thousands of years.
(Which, of course, is impossible, but the person who designed this arena did a damn good job of making it feel that way.)
She ventures inside, wondering silently why it's so bright when she turns a corner and is presented with a hole in the opposite side of the cliff face. It opens up the cave, and from it she feels as though she can see the entire arena. Rook is sitting at the edge with his feet dangling off. The red dirt stains his damp brown pants, and his elbows as he leans back and supports his weight on them.
The setting sun is more beautiful than anything Anya could ever imagine. More picturesque than any painter could hope to capture. It bathes the arena in orange light, and Rook too.
"As far as holing up for the whole games… this place probably wouldn't be half bad." He turns his gaze to her, the sun casting long shadows over his face.
Anya lowers herself to sit beside him, crossing her legs. She only nods.
"If anyone bothers us," Rook begins, then he gestures to the cliff he's dangling his legs off. "Built in home security."
Anya scoffs, shaking her head with a smile on her face.
"The water should be ready to drink," she says, lifting the bottle that's still in her hands.
"Ah, well, I think you've earned the first sip."
"How? I've barely done anything today, except get winded."
"You fixed up my face." He gestures to the cut on his face, which doesn't look as bad now that he's washed the sticky blood from his cheeks. "Just go for it."
Anya uncaps the bottle, lifting to her lips and taking a slow sip. It's cool, and it spreads over her dry tongue like rain over a desert. She lowers the bottle after a moment, sighing in content and handing it to Rook.
They take turns sipping slowly from the bottle until it's half empty and the sun has disappeared over the red horizon. Anya stands up with the intent of preparing the sleeping bag that they'll inevitably need to huddle into if the cool night turns to cold. She rolls it out, finding it looks relatively thin. She hopes it's some sort of thermal technology, or it's just a waste of space in her pack.
When she turns her gaze back to Rook, he's taken his pants off and is laying them out by the edge of the cave, and Anya immediately looks away with heated cheeks.
"Rook!"
"What?" Rook straightens up and looks at her. "I'm leaving my underwear on, calm down!"
Dimitri's face doesn't appear in the sky that night. If Rook struck something vital, or if the wound has begun to fester, he hasn't succumbed to it yet. He escaped the bloodbath, and he's still out there somewhere.
Anya shouldn't be glad, but she is. Dimitri might be the only one with the answers about who she is. And she wants to know who she is before she dies.
Rook and Anya spend the next day in the cave, drinking their fill of water from the falls and snacking every so often on the crackers. One cannon goes off throughout the otherwise quiet day, and Rook theorises about who it might be. He has a startlingly good memory, and he lists off who's left, what their odds are, their training score, and who they might have the ability to kill.
He considers Dimitri, briefly. But he decides that Dimitri is too smart to be dead. If he survived being stabbed, then he'll have made sure it won't 'bite him in the ass' later.
He lands on the boy from five, and tries to set a wager of two crackers on it. Anya shuts him down, saying the only thing he'll win if he's correct is bragging rights.
He's right.
The day after that, Rook is bored.
"I'm sick of crackers, Anya A," he declares. "And I don't want to be the ones who hide away and bore everyone the entire time."
Anya thinks their safest option is to stay right where they are, but she's bored as well. She's so intrigued by this arena, and the curious part of her can't bear to sit here and wait it out. So, they get up and they leave the quiet safety of their cave. They're going to run out of crackers eventually anyway.
The sun doesn't burn so bright today. It's still sweltering, but there's a spattering of fluffy white clouds in the pale blue sky, and it doesn't feel so overbearing because they know their bottle is full of water, and that they have an endless source to return to later on. They make sure to go in as straight a line as they can manage so that when they want to return, they can just turn around and go back without losing their little sanctuary.
Anya does have to steer Rook away from distractions a few times, refusing to lose sight of their path. After maybe an hour of walking, the sparse forest gives way to a grassy clearing, the pale brown grass as high as their ankles.
In the field, grazing and soaking in the sun, is an animal that Anya wants to say she's never seen before, but part of her doesn't think that's quite true.
The creature stands on two legs, has fur as red as the dirt, a long face, and big ears that stand upright as it lifts its head to look at the two tributes. As it rises, it grows taller, just about reaching Rook's height.
"The fuck is that?" Rook mumbles, hand going to the hilt of his blade in caution. The creature just watches them, observing the two as though there's a camera in its eyes.
(And there very well could be.)
Anya shakes her head, blinking a few times. It looks like a creature out of a work of fiction. Maybe it is, but she can't shake the feeling that she's seen it before. She feels a hand grab her shirt from behind, and she looks back to see Rook holding her shirt with confusion in his gaze. She'd wandered a few steps forward without realising it. She gently tugs herself free, and continues on toward the creature.
"Anya," hisses Rook, inching behind her with more caution than usual. "That thing is a mutt, what are you doing?"
Anya doesn't say anything, not stopping until she stands before the creature, which stands maybe a head taller than her, looking down its strange snout at her.
"I've seen this thing before-"
Her words are cut off by a yelp of surprise when the creature surges forward and pulls her into a headlock with its scarily strong arms. She cries out, scrambling to get free but finding its grip far too strong. Her feet kick up red dirt and dry grass as she struggles, eyes widening as its grip tightens around her throat.
Rook surges forward, swinging at it with his sickle with a shout. The curved blade buries into its shoulder and it releases Anya, but not before slashing at her cheek with its vicious claws. Anya gasps, scrambling to be free of the beast's hold and falling forward, right onto her face.
She hears Rook shout and looks up in time to see the mutt lift up on its tail and slam its powerful legs into Rook, sending him flying back a few feet at least.
"Motherfucker!" Rook curses through gritted teeth, curling up on his side and wrapping his arms around himself. Anya scrambles to her feet, intending to defend them both but by the time she's on her feet and blinking the blood from her vision, the mutt is bounding away, bouncing with incredible speed across the grass and into the distance.
Anya reaches up to touch her face, wincing at the sting of the claw marks, at the feel of blood dripping from them. She looks back, seeing Rook groaning in pain on the ground. The name of that creature sits on the tip of her tongue, she just can't seem to find it. She doesn't know, but she does know that the thing is deadly, and can kick hard.
"Are you okay?" She asks, crouching beside him.
"No! The fuckin' thing killed me!"
"You're not dead, Rook. Can you stand?"
"No!" Rook rolls over, groaning all the way. When Anya tucks her arms under his armpits, he shouts in protest. And when she forces him to be standing and pulls his arm over her shoulder, he curses at her. "Leave me here to die!"
"Stop being ridiculous."
"It punctured my lung, I'm bleeding internally!"
"Can you do it quietly? We're in an arena full of people who want to kill us."
Rook grumbles in protest, but goes quiet. They limp back to their waterfall, and Anya counts her blessings that they still haven't seen another tribute. A cannon sounds as they're walking, and Anya's gaze darts worriedly to the boy who's leaning so heavily against her.
He's looking right at her, brows furrowed in a similar way to her own.
"A career, I think," he tells her, voice a little strained.
"It's only the third day."
"And there's only been one kill since the bloodbath. They gotta be getting antsy, turning on each other."
Anya looks forward again, hearing the roar of the falls. "It could be Dimitri."
"Nah," he says. "Don't think it is."
Anya sighs. "No," she agrees, turning the corner to where their falls await. She helps him get around the pool and into the cave, setting him down against the wall. She shrugs off the backpack, sitting down beside her.
"You should go first," Rook says, wincing as he shifts to get comfortable.
Anya looks up at him in confusion, face scrunching up. Evidently, the scrunching serves as a stinging reminder of the bloody scratch on her face.
"You could be bleeding internally, you said so yourself."
"If I'm bleeding internally, ain't no helping me. What are you gonna do?"
Anya scowls, grabbing the medicine from the backpack. "I'm gonna kill you myself for making me drag you all the way back here, for starters."
Rook watches her fumble with the water bottle to rinse out the wound for a moment, sighing and sitting up with a pained wince.
"Let me do it, you'll waste it."
"We're inside a waterfall, Rook," Anya mumbles, but she lets him take the bottle and pour it slowly over her face, flushing out the blood.
"It ain't bleeding anymore," he notes, reaching for the pot of medicine, which is steadily depleting as the cut on Rook's face heals. "Which could mean it's okay. It doesn't look deep."
Anya holds her stinging face still as he spreads the medicine over it as generously as they can spare, watching him concentrate.
"Let me look at you now," she says after a moment, putting the cap on the tin. "Kangaroos can kick with hundreds of pounds of force."
"Sorry?"
Anya blinks at him, and he sees a haze in her eyes that he's never seen before. The haze had always… cleared around Rook.
"What's a kangaroo?"
Her gaze falls to the ground beneath them as her eyebrows knit tightly together.
(She thinks that by the end of this, she'll have frowned so much under the sweltering sun that she'll have the same tan line as Dimitri.)
"That thing was a kangaroo," she says, slowly, like she's repeating some words she'd heard long ago. "I remember. Because someone told me, and I told them what a stupid name that is."
"Who told you?"
Anya grips the tin of medicine in her hand so hard her knuckles go white. The name is so close. It's on the tip of her tongue.
"Someone important," she whispers, voice far away. "Someone I loved."
Rook gently takes the medicine from her hand, replacing it with his own hand for her to grip a bit too hard.
"A parent?"
"Yes," she whispers with a slow nod. "My mother."
She lifts her gaze to see Rook staring intently at her. "Did you hear what Dimitri said to me during the bloodbath?" When Rook shakes his head, she goes on. "He said he knew who I was. I don't even know that. I know I had a mother… I think she was a doctor. I don't know. I want to find out."
"And you want Dimitri to tell you."
She nods.
"He tried to kill you, Anya. He'll probably try again."
"Maybe. But I think he'll want me to know why first."
Rook purses his lips, trying not to smirk in amusement. "Just fix me up, would you? I punctured a lung."
"If you punctured a lung you'd be dead. And quiet."
"Ha!" Rook laughs, immediately wincing in regret but still finding the strength to add on, "Not even death could shut me up."
As badly as Anya wants to go find Dimitri and in turn find answers, Rook is too badly injured to wander around. He's not dead yet though, which is a decent sign that his broken rib didn't puncture anything.
As the days in that cave tick by, the thought does cross her mind that she could put him out of his misery and be done with it. But she doesn't allow herself to consider it. As stupid and naive as it is, she really doesn't want Rook to die. Especially not by her own hand.
They stay there for another few days, with Anya leaving every so often to find things to eat. Their cracker supply is growing low, and the water from the falls is keeping them alive but it isn't filling their bellies.
Rook tells her that he's survived a lot longer than this without food, but he doesn't elaborate so she just tells him that they don't have to.
She's lost count of what day it is now, maybe the fifth? Sixth? She only knows that the boy from Five died on the second day, the boy from Four died the day they were attacked by the kangaroo, and there was a small massacre of an alliance between the younger tributes yesterday. There's only 7 tributes left in the arena, she thinks. Every time she hears a cannon, she's terrified it may be Rook. But every time, she looks over and sees his chest steadily rising and falling as he sleeps on the cave floor.
She's out now on a hunt for food, hoping that she doesn't hear the haunting boom of a cannon where she can't see her friend. She walks in a straight line westward from the cliff, still wary of losing her way. The trees around her seem to thicken with every step, the towering branches that provide such little shade making it harder and harder to keep in a straight line.
She's found several instances of berries. But she's never seen anything like most of them, she can't possibly be certain that they're safe. So whenever she stumbles across something she had seen in training, she scoops it up and tucks it into her jacket pockets. It's meagre pickings, really, but it's probably better than the tiny bits of crackers she's been trying to ration fairly between herself and her healing ally.
She eats a few of the berries she's picked up as she walks, wondering if it's worth trying to set up any of those snares she had barely managed to put together successfully in training. She's decided against it when she hears rustling in the underbrush. She freezes, eyes wide. and grabs the sickle at her belt.
(Rook had begrudgingly agreed to switch weapons while Anya went out, so he was back in the cave with the knife.)
She slowly looks round, expecting to see a sword pointed in her face, but she finds nothing. She blinks, glancing up, searching for a bird and finding nothing, before gazing down and seeing a tiny little creature staring up at her, chewing on a little green leaf. It's similar to the kangaroo, only stumpier and about the height of her shin. It's also much, much cuter. It stares up at Anya, who stares right back.
"Get out of here," she says, shooing it away. It only ventures closer, seeming to smile up at her as it chews on its leaf. "Go on."
It doesn't go. It sniffs at her boots and bounds a little closer again. She doesn't trust it. Sure, it looks harmless enough, but she's seen smaller mutts do some terrible things. As she stares at it, it makes a soft chittering noise and lifts the leaf in its hands up to her.
Anya doesn't know why she grabs the leaf. She doesn't know why she sniffs the leaf (it smells like orange), and she especially doesn't know why she puts it in her mouth.
Maybe because she's surmising that a mutt designed to hand poison to people is a stupid idea and would never work, except perhaps on someone as desperate for good food as herself.
It doesn't taste like it smells, but it does taste good. It tastes like something other than stale crackers. If it's going to kill her, at least it tastes alright.
"Is there more of this?" She asks the creature, thinking she must be losing her mind.
The animal chitters, and turns away from her, beginning to bound forward on its little legs. It's taking her away from her path, but if she continues on the way she's going she'll probably just die anyway. So she follows the adorable little creature as it leads her to a little bush tucked away in the hollow of a dead tree, full to bursting of those leaves.
She grins, picking up the sickle and using it for its actual intended purpose and harvesting several handfuls of the leaves. She doesn't know how nutritious they are, or if she's actually just hallucinating the bountiful bush right now, but she doesn't care. She shoves several handfuls into her backpack and sighs in satisfaction, looking down at the creature, which is once again chewing on a leaf at her feet.
"Thanks," she tells it, making it pause in its chewing to watch her. "If you poisoned me, I'm gonna cook you."
Then the thing smiles at her. It should probably be frightening, but it's so cute. Anya expects that it'll leave her alone now, but as she turns and makes back toward the falls (or where she hopes the falls are) it follows behind her. She tries to shoo it away several times, but it just keeps following.
After a while, she gives in and lets it follow her. It's quiet enough, and it's not exactly demanding her attention. Besides, the thing probably saved her from starving. She thinks if the leaves were poison, she'd be dead by now. So she accepts the company and continues on toward the falls.
And when she hears voices in the distance, she ducks into the hollow of a tree, and it follows her, chittering softly.
"Shut up," she hisses, scooping it up and putting a hand over its little mouth. Miraculously, it doesn't bite her hand, it just lets her hold it tight.
"Who's left?" Comes a voice Anya's only heard a few times but she recognises it by its vaguely squeaky timbre. Herminia Florus.
"The boys," comes the response. Smooth, like velvet. Opalette Vivienne. "But they'll probably turn on each other soon. Both from Seven. And the boy from Nine."
Is that all?
When they put it that way, it seems like no one is left at all. And it's only the fifth – or maybe the sixth – day. But if Opalette and Herminia are alone out here without their respective district partners, it means the careers have split. It likely happened when the boy from Four died. How had it gone down? Who killed him, who cracked so soon into the games?
"How did the boy from nine make it this far? He got a four."
"Because he chose to, Herminia," Opalette says as though it's obvious, voice growing closer. "He was obviously very good. Don't you pay attention in training?"
"Why would I pay attention to outliers?"
"Because if you don't, they'll sneak up and get you when you least expect it. Underestimating outliers has been so many losers' mistakes."
Opalette is as perceptive as Rook gave her credit for, at least. Anya holds her breath as she hears their footsteps nearing, clutching the content creature in her arms and praying that they'll walk past the side of the dead tree she's pressing her back into.
"That's why we're looking for Seven." Anya tenses. "He's our biggest problem. You saw him in training."
"And the axe was gone from the cornucopia," Herminia agrees. Anya should be relieved that they're not searching for her, but she's not. If they get to Dimitri before she does, she may never know who she is. "Okay, well, where would you hide if you were a dickish rebel's kid?"
Anya doesn't hear any more of their conversation as it fades and they pass her by. Her ears are too busy ringing with those words.
Rebel's kid.
Dimitri's parents were rebels. Of course. Of course they are.
Inside the expanse of her mind, for the first time in three years, a door opens. It reveals the face of two people with guns, leering over the barrel of a rifle. One with Dimitri's face, only older, and somehow angrier.
She doesn't know the context, but she knows the face. And she remembers how loud the shots of their guns were. So loud she thought her ears might've burst.
As soon as she's certain that Opalette and Herminia are gone, she gets up and starts sprinting in the direction she hopes the falls are, the happy little creature still cradled in her arms because she simply forgot it was even there.
Miraculously, she makes it back to the cave and finds Rook sitting up by the cliff's edge. He looks over his shoulder at her, and his content expression changes to a confused smile.
"I think when you hunt an animal, you're supposed to kill it before you come back, Anya A."
Anya furrows her brows, and looks down at the animal nestled in her arms.
"We're not eating this," she says as though it's obvious, setting the thing down and letting it wander over to Rook.
"Then why did you bring it?"
Anya shrugs as the creature sniffs at Rook. "I didn't mean to. I was in a hurry."
Rook is smirking curiously at the creature until his gaze turns up, worry overtaking his features.
"Hurry? Did you see someone?"
Anya lowers herself to sit beside him, taking off her backpack and unzipping it, taking out some of the leaves she'd gathered.
"They didn't see me. It was Opalette and Herminia."
"Alone?"
"Yeah. They've split. Is it usually this soon?"
Rook shrugs, scratching gently behind the creature's ears. "Soon is relative to the length of the games, usually. There's only seven of us left, so we're over halfway. Things tend to either speed up or come to a few days halt around here."
"What determines that?"
Rook looks out at the sky. "How bored the audience gets."
Anya follows his gaze. "You can eat the leaves. They taste good." The little creature plops itself down between them, chewing happily on its leaf. Anya supposes they're stuck with the thing now. "How are you?"
"Better. Ready to get out of this awful place."
Anya doesn't know if he means the cave or the arena.
"Can you walk?"
"Probably."
She nods. "Opalette and Herminia were looking for Dimitri. We're going to find him first."
Rook grins, taking a bite from a leaf and nodding. "Hell yeah we are, Anya A. You and me."
They leave the cave behind the next morning, and the creature – whom Rook has affectionately named 'Bear' – follows them. He's like a strange little dog, really, and just as loyal. And Anya kind of owes him her life, but she also thinks her debt is repaid considering that she kept him from being found by the two careers who would almost definitely have cooked him.
She did briefly consider eating him herself, but Bear doesn't need to know that. There's definitely not a thought behind his little eyes anyway, so she assumes he'd forgive her.
Anya's almost sad to leave the cave behind the falls in a stupid, sentimental sort of way. It's just that it was safe there. It was warm(ish). They had a steady supply of water, and every night they were able to watch the sun set over the arena.
When she thinks back on the arena someday, that cave and the boy she shared it with will be some of the only things that she can remember that isn't surrounded by a red, bloody haze.
"So, run me through what you remember," says Rook as they hike through the trees.
"I remember a melody to a song," she begins to list off all the things she knows about her past. "The smell of peppermint. I remember reading Crimson Winter a thousand times. I remember scribbling my name that isn't my whole name in there. My mother was a scientist, she told me about the kangaroo. Someone with a face like Dimitri's. Gunshots."
"Is that all?"
"All I can think of right now."
Bear potters along beside them, happy to follow them on their aimless hike.
"A face like Dimitri's," Rook muses. "And Herminia said that he was a rebel's kid. So it's gotta be his rebel parents."
"Why would I have ever met his rebel parents? I'm from a tiny logging village on the edge of District Seven where nothing has ever happened."
"You woke up in a tiny logging village in District Seven where nothing has ever happened," he corrects. "Maybe you were somewhere else before. Definitely you were."
"How can that be definite? You don't know that."
"I feel it in my soul, Anya A!"
"How well has your soul served us so far?"
"I felt that cave in my soul."
"Felt that kangaroo in your ribs, though."
Rook bursts into snickering laughter, looking back at her with a grin. Though she's warm from the sun, seeing him smile does make her heart feel warmer.
"That thing almost killed me, you know?"
"I'd have saved myself a lot of food if it had."
"Yeah yeah," Rook dismisses easily. "Now, if you were Dimitri, whereabouts would you be holed up?"
Anya glances upward toward the clear sky, seeing the edges of the cliffs that tower over them. She doesn't know Dimitri well enough, and she doesn't have the kind of analytical mind that Rook does, at least not about this.
"What do you think?" Anya decides to ask the seeming expert on other people's behaviour.
As Rook opens his mouth to speak, they hear shouting from above. Both of their heads snap up to gaze up to the top of the cliff. They can just about see two figures struggling with each other at the top, but they can't make out much about them, their districts, or even their general appearances.
Rook only just manages to scoop Bear up and get him out of the way before a boy comes tumbling over the cliff. He screams as he falls, and the crack his bones make as he lands only feet from Rook and Anya makes bile rise in the girl's throat.
When she tries to sleep in the future, the sound of that boy's bones cracking will play on repeat in her ears. As they stare in shock at the broken boy at their feet, he releases a rattling exhale.
BOOM.
The echo of the cannon is the only thing that breaks them both from their stupor, propelling Anya to grab Rook by the hand and tug him away, sprinting as fast as she can manage with Rook still healing from what's probably a broken rib. If it hurts, he doesn't complain, he just does his best to keep up until they're coming to a stop in the thick of a grove of trees, panting as they lean against the pale trunks.
"That was–" Rook gasps for breath, wincing in pain and setting Bear down. "Two. From Two."
Anya looks back the way they came, and–
BOOM.
Both Rook and Anya's heads whip round to see each other still perfectly alive.
"Must've been whoever pushed him," murmurs Anya, sinking down against the tree trunk and sitting down, letting Bear climb into her lap. "He looked beat up. They may have been fighting."
"Armani," Rook breathes, carefully sitting down beside her, clutching his side with a face scrunched up in pain.
"What?"
"The boy from One. Armani. Was probably him."
"Oh," she mumbles. "It could have been Dimitri."
"Doubt it. But I guess we'll see."
They sit there in quiet respite for a long moment, the silence only broken by Bear's occasional chittering and the crowing of the birds in the trees.
"Do you know everyone's name?" asks Anya after a while.
Rook turns his head, taking a moment before he answers. "Yeah."
"...What was the boy from Two's name?"
"Orion."
"Orion," she repeats quietly.
Beyond how well Rook retains information, Anya is amazed with how he can carry that knowledge. Even if she had wanted to know all the names, she would have tried her best not to find out. To know the names of all the people who have to die would kill her inside. It's killing her enough to know that they existed at all.
Not that any of them have died by her hand. She knows, though, that if she wants to get home, that will have to change.
… When did she start thinking of District Seven as home?
But then, she doesn't think anything really felt like home before this. The closest to home she's ever felt was the cave behind the falls.
"I know the names of everyone left," Anya says softly.
"Three to go," Rook says, shifting until he's leaning on Anya's shoulder.
"Four, Rook."
"Nope. You and me, Anya A."
"That isn't how it works."
Rook only hums, closing his eyes as the sky turns pink. He doesn't open them when the anthem blares through the still night sky, doesn't open them when they show the day's dead in the darkness.
"Was I right?"
"Yeah," she murmurs, stroking her thumb gently over Bear's soft fur, the creature fast asleep in her lap, his beloved leaf clutched in his arms. "Will you tell me their names?"
He doesn't hesitate. Rook's voice is a quiet murmur as he lists off the name of every person who's died in this arena so far. He even tells Anya what they looked like. All 19 of them, and he remembers them all. When he finishes with the boy from District Twelve, Anya drifts off into a quiet sleep.
They're not safe here like they were in the cave. They're not in the embracing warmth of the sleeping bag, and it's cool out tonight. But she feels safe anyway. She feels peaceful, knowing that she's with her friend. She thinks Rook Cabot may be the first friend she's ever had.
She wakes to the sun rising next morning, and to Bear's quiet chittering as he rummages through her backpack.
"Bear," she chastises softly, trying to shoo him away from it. She's beginning to think the sweet little animal has no defence mechanisms at all, because it just continues on rummaging happily as she tries to pull it away.
"Man's gotta eat," says Rook, shifting to sit up and rubbing at his eyes. "I don't think we'll need that stuff much longer anyway. Top five. Audience is getting antsy."
Anya frowns, reaching into the bag past Bear's little head to grab their half empty water bottle, which they've been carefully rationing since they left the falls.
"Do you think they'll try to bring us together?"
Rook doesn't answer, taking the bottle when she offers it and taking a slow sip. "This should last us until the end."
"Sometimes things slow down about now, don't they?"
"Sometimes. Not often."
Anya takes a sip from the bottle herself. It's lukewarm now, not cold like when it was fresh from the falls.
"Finale, then. What do we do with him?" She jerks her head toward Bear, who pauses in his chewing to smile up at them. "He'll get hurt."
"Like anyone on the planet could ever have the heart to hurt him," Rook laughs, leaning forward to scratch behind his ears. "If anything ever happened to him I would find a way out of here and kill everyone in Panem and then myself."
"Dramatic," says Anya, reaching for a leaf of her own to chew on. "But I get it… maybe we should leave him behind. How would we stop him from following us?"
"Bribery," says Rook, reaching into the bag and grabbing a handful of leaves, holding it out to Bear. The animal sniffs it eagerly, following Rook's hand when he pulls it away and sets the pile down. Bear seems satiated by the offering, pouring all his focus ingo the big pile. Rook looks pained to have to do this, but he stands up and jerks his head toward the trees, gesturing for Anya to follow him. Anya smiles sadly at the sweet little animal who'd saved their lives, but follows Rook and leaves the curious creature behind.
He doesn't follow, and Anya feels a strange pang of familiarity. Having to leave someone behind when she doesn't want to. Though, this time she has a choice.
"So," says Rook once they're out of the thick of the trees. "Are we still planning to find Dimitri?"
Anya nods, then a thought occurs to her. Since she's known Rook, it's become harder and harder to keep them to herself. He makes her want to speak her mind, when she's tried so hard to let her thoughts be her own. "What if he doesn't actually know? What if he's wrong?"
For once, Rook hesitates before speaking. "Then you may never know. Tell me what you remember again?"
She lists it off again, but hesitates at the last. Rook glances over at her.
"Gunshots," he reminds.
"Gunshots. Yeah, they… shot my parents."
Rook stops in his footsteps and turns to her, eyes widening before they scrunch up a little.
"Dimitri's parents shot yours?"
"I… think so."
Her face twists into a grimace as her head pounds, memories flooding forth all at once. It's like a hundred doors have burst open and she wants to see through all of them at the same time.
"Anya!" Rook shouts when she stumbles and almost falls, surging forward to catch her. He places his hands on her elbows, holding her upright. "What is it?"
"I remember, I–" She blinks quickly, looking up at her friend. She stands upright, taking a deep breath. "I'm okay. But I… I remember. My parents, I remember…."
Rook's face breaks into a grin and he nods proudly. "Good, then you can tell me all about it while we go find Dimitri, and tell him we don't need him anymore. And then, we're gonna go home. Cause it's you and me, Anya A."
"Anastasia," she tells him. Rook's grin grows impossibly wider, prouder. "My name is Anastasia Arvenson."
BOOM.
The cannon goes off before Rook hits the ground. A bit of his blood splatters on Anastasia's face as the arrow tip cuts clean through his eye. As he collapses, she gasps and falls to her knees beside him. Another arrow whizzes past where her head has just been, and she can't even spare a moment to look at Rook.
Her gaze shoots up, and she sees Herminia standing on a ledge on the face of the cliff, reaching into her quiver for another arrow. She has a proud grin on her face, and she's all alone. No Opalette.
She's finally done something for herself, and she killed Rook. Anastasia would be impressed if red wasn't creeping into the edges of her vision. She snatches the sickle from her dead friend's belt and stands up, beginning to sprint toward Herminia. She quickly surmises in her head that if she makes a good leap, she'll be able to grab Herminia by the ankle and pull her down.
An arrow lands in her arm, and she grunts in pain, only slowing for a second before she's continuing toward her attacker. By the time Herminia nocks another arrow, Anastasia is leaping upward toward her. She gets a grip on the bottom of her pants, and as gravity pulls her back down she tugs Herminia with her.
The little blonde comes tumbling down from the ledge with a shout and lands in an ungracious heap in the dirt. Anastasia lands on her feet, snapping the arrow that's buried in her arm in half and turning to Herminia, who's scrambling to her feet and trying to grab an arrow from her dwindling supply. Before she can, Anastasia surges at her with her weapon raised and a snarl on her lips.
Herminia lifts the bow right as Anastasia strikes, managing to block it. Anastasia has essentially zero experience with a sickle, but she does like to consider herself creative. She hooks the blade into the limb of the bow and pulls, adrenaline making her an inkling stronger so that while her grip on the bow doesn't loosen, Herminia does come tumbling forward.
Unfortunately, however, it sends Anastasia tumbling with her, and Herminia lands on top. They both tussle for a long moment, but Herminia gains the upper hand, laughing as she pins Anastasia to the ground.
"So close!" Herminia's voice is a squeaky taunt. "But I'm done being pushed around."
"I don't care about your independence issues!" hisses Anastasia, swinging a leg up and hooking it around Herminia's shoulder, pulling her back and knocking her weight off of her. This time, when she scrambles up and toward her, she doesn't waste time with an upward swing. She brings the sickle around and thrusts it forward, burying it into the side of Herminia's ribcage.
Herminia gasps in pain, and Anastasia pulls it out, moving her arm around to drive the curved blade right into her chest, right into her heart.
(She hopes– she may have hit something else, but she presumes it's still something vital.)
Herminia gasps for breath, coughing up blood that splatters onto Anastasia's face and mingles with Rook's own blood and bits of grey matter. Anastasia drives the blade into her again. And again. And again, until Herminia finally falls still and the cannon echoes in her ears.
Anastasia rolls off of Herminia's bloody body, sitting back on her knees and looking over at where her friend lies, arrow still protruding from his eye. She gets up, and her feet carry her over to him. There's still an arrow stuck in her arm, but she doesn't care.
She drops to her knees beside her dear friend. Her first friend. Her only friend.
(Except perhaps Bear, who has probably eaten himself into a delightful, leaf induced coma by now.)
She doesn't know if she should say anything, but she wants to say goodbye. Goodbye wasn't a luxury she was afforded when her parents were slaughtered before her eyes.
"Thank you," she murmurs. She hates so deeply how the boy who was so full of life is now so lifeless. She knows, though, that in his very last moment, he was smiling. He was happy, he was proud of his friend. He was hopeful.
She'll never know if he truly believed that they could both get out of here. Maybe he just liked to say it as another way to break the Capitol's mould.
He broke it again by dying in joy, by refusing to suffer for their entertainment. Anastasia rolls him over as gently as she can manage, removing the backpack from his limp body.
She lays him back down as she tucks the blood soaked backpack onto her shoulders, watching as he lays there on his back for a moment before she stands back up, turns away, and starts walking.
There's only two other people left in here now. And Anastasia doesn't need answers out of any of them. She just needs to get out.
Anastasia Arvenson knows who she is now. She knows where she came from, and why she ended up where she did.
She knows that Dimitri's parents killed hers. She knows that his parents were rebels, and hers were Capitol scientists. She knows she escaped… somehow. That part, actually, is a little blurry. She supposes it's okay to not know the exact details of her escape considering how hard she hit her head in doing so.
What she doesn't know, is where she's walking right now. On that first day when she'd run away from the cornucopia with Rook, she hadn't really been looking where she was going. She basically has no understanding of the layout of this arena, but she's deduced that if the gamemakers wanted her to go in another direction, they would steer her that way.
The trees grow further and further apart the longer she walks, and this tells her she's sort of heading to where she wants to go. She can remember how thin the trees felt when she was escaping the cornucopia, how it felt like they had no cover as they ran. It hadn't mattered in the end.
It doesn't matter now. As far as she knows, the only long range weapon in the arena had been the bow that left the arena with Herminia's body. But then, an axe can be thrown. And so can a spear. But none of those can be fired from the same range as an arrow, so unless Dimitri or Opalette are sneaking up behind her right now, she should be okay.
She chances a look over her shoulder just in case. She's okay.
Anastasia should really be growing more paranoid now, more afraid, but she's not. There's a cool sort of determination running through her that freezes any fear in her veins and keeps it from forming into something tangible. It carries her forward until she can see the sun reflecting off the golden surface of the cornucopia.
And stood right there at the mouth of it, visibly emaciated and dark hair matted with blood, is Opalette. A shortsword caked with dried blood hangs loosely in her hands.
She turns her gaze – once beautiful and striking, now empty and terrifying – to Anastasia.
"It's you?" She says, taking a few careful steps forward.
Anastasia readjusts her grip on the sickle. "It's me."
"I thought…" She shakes her head, almost seeming disappointed that it's not someone else standing before her. "So… it's just us?"
Anastasia doesn't answer her, jaw set.
"And your partner," Opalette continues. "That doesn't surprise me so much."
Rook would be laughing, taunting her. Telling her that it usually always comes down to a career tribute and an underdog. Rook would have the exact statistics ready to go right off the top of his head. But Anastasia isn't interested in taunting her.
Rook is gone. Anastasia is left.
Opalette seems to sigh in vague annoyance, rolling back her shoulders and beginning to walk toward Anastasia like killing her is a chore she just has to get done.
She hears it before she sees it. A quiet whooshing, whipping through the air toward them. She flinches as something flies past her vision and slams right into Opalette's neck. Opalette crumbles as her neck snaps, the thing that had hit her falling onto her chest. It's a curved sort of plank, carved out of wood and clearly designed to be aerodynamic.
Anastasia whips around to see Dimitri running right at her, an axe clutched in his hand. The fear in her veins defrosts for just a moment, long enough to her to stumble back and hurriedly grab the knife from her belt, holding it up, poised to throw.
Dimitri stops, axe raised and eyes hard. They stand there in a silent stalemate for a moment before Dimitri finally speaks.
"So you know who you are?"
Evidently, since they last met, he's been doing a lot of thinking. He doesn't seem so angry at her now, in fact he seems to understand that she didn't know her identity any more than he did.
Anastasia nods. "And who you are."
Dimitri nods sharply. Opalette's cannon goes off.
It's just them now.
"It's not your fault," Dimitri tells her. "Not really. I know that."
"Not yours either. You didn't kill them."
"Right," he agrees. "But… only one of us can leave. So, this isn't personal. But I don't plan to let them take any more from my family."
Anastasia's brows furrow. She doesn't really have any family to fight for. She doesn't know who Dimitri has. Certainly not his parents, but there's likely someone. But she decides that doesn't make him more worthy of living on regardless.
"Okay," she says, tucking the knife into her belt. He can take it however he likes. A surrender, a challenge. It doesn't matter. Anastasia knows she's not going without a fight.
She holds her sickle, and eyes his axe. She lifts her gaze to his face right as he charges forward. Her eyes widen and she lifts her weapon, the curve of the blade catching the axe with a sickening scraping noise.
Dimitri grunts, pulling his axe back and driving his fist into Anastasia's solar plexus. A harsh puff of air is shoved from her lungs and she stumbles back, but Dimitri follows, swinging his axe again.
It lands deep in her side, right between her ribs. The pain is blinding, but she knows she can't let it get her. With eyes scrunched shut she swings, cracking them open when she hears Dimitri's grunt of pain.
The sickle has landed in his clavicle, and his eyes are filling again with that fire. His free hand shoots out and he grabs the broken arrow that she still hasn't removed from her arm, tugging on it and then pushing it in so hard that she feels it grind against her bone.
"Fuck!" She grits, pulling the sickle free and pushing him away with the blade. It cuts right through his shirt and slashes open his skin, and it makes him stumble back so there's a few feet between them. Anastasia gasps for breath, unsure whether to clutch her side or her arm, staring scornfully at Dimitri.
She notices that blood is pouring fast from his clavicle. But she doesn't have much time to process the consequence of this before he's lunging forward with deadly speed to strike her again.
She scurries back, tripping over Opalette's body and slamming down onto her ass. Red dirt puffs up around her as she scrambles backward to get away, but Dimitri is much faster on two feet.
Unfortunately, he doesn't seem like the type to taunt her when he has her pinned, so when he dives forward to get at her she can't waste time trying to think of how to outsmart him. As he swings his axe down toward her face she slashes at his hand with her sickle as hard as she can manage.
His scream of pain is sickening. The hand that had been holding the axe almost comes clean off, the sickle has sliced most of the way through the bone and his hand sort of flaps about as he flails his arm around. The axe drops, and buries into the dirt beside Anastasia's head.
With the hand that's still attached, Dimitri grabs Anastasia by the throat and squeezes. He tucks his half attached hand close to his chest as he uses all his strength to strangle her, eyes crazed. Anastasia's eyes pop open and she claws at his wrist, trying to pry his grip from her neck. She can't take in a single breath, and she was already so breathless from their frenzied fighting.
As spots cloud her vision, she lets his wrist go and drops her hand to her belt, blindly feeling for her knife. His hand pushes harder against her windpipe as her hands close around its grip and she pulls it in.
She drives it into his side, but he doesn't loosen his grip. She stabs him again. Again, and again. She keeps stabbing blindly at his side until she goes limp, and so does he. The hand around her throat goes slack and Anastasia gasps desperately for air. It's made harder by his weight collapsing on her, but it's only heavy on her chest instead of her throat.
She's still bleeding heavily from her side, and he's bleeding from the many holes in his torso, his clavicle, and his half-attached hand.
Anastasia is too exhausted to even push him off.
The arena is so quiet. The birds still crow in the distant trees, the wind still blows quietly through their ears. But all Anastasia hears is the shallow breathing of Dimitri Gleb. And then, she hears it stop.
BOOM.
Anastasia exhales, and closes her eyes. She loses consciousness before they even begin playing the anthem.