He runs out of the house, tripping on something as the vomit starts to come. It doesn't stop the tears, though.
He throws his knife across the street. He never wants to see it again. He wipes his hand on the stones around him. It creates more cuts and blood than he started with. He doesn't stop.
He looks back to the door. A small box lies crushed just behind him. It must have been what he tripped on.
He rips it open and wonders how long it had been there. It's small, so it makes sense why they didn't hear it come.
He doesn't recognize what it is at first. A small vial. Attached to the base of it is a small needle.
Grey Thornton isn't a doctor, but when he recognizes what it is, he lets it slip from his hand. Just as he let Kalara slip from this world.
He hears it shatter. He gathers the few things he has left, including the sword from the Career that took Devin's life. And he leaves.
He feels bad letting the antibiotic soak into the stone. But he pushes it from his mind as best he can.
He moves through the arena without issue. He can see the damage left by the bear. As he returns to the water fountain, he sees multiple houses along the way that have been destroyed.
But no sign of any other tributes.
He's not sure what compels him to keep walking. Maybe the sooner he can end this the quicker he'll stop thinking about his dead allies.
Maybe he's afraid if he sits still for too long, he'll just collapse.
So it's a surprise to Grey when he ends up at a tall, metal gate. He almost turns around to endlessly wander in a different direction, but he's tired and where else is there to go?
So he pushes the gate open and wanders on in. It's smaller than the one he has back home, and there's an uneasy freshness to the stones placed around the graveyard. Like it's a display instead of a place of final rest.
There's hardly any dirt crusted on the stone. The carvings are fresh.
He glances at the names. They're eerily familiar.
Aloisa Liba. Aryan Crus. Chantara Muerna. Calder Sibylla. Who are these people?
It hits him when he sees Devin Calloway. These are the gravestones of the deceased.
Keeva Gleeson. Kalara Volkan.
Grey wants to vomit again.
He rushes into the mausoleum, the only thing in the graveyard that stands in disarray. The door almost flies off the hinges as he enters. There's enough light peering in through the cracks in the roof that he doesn't see the body until it speaks.
"Grey…" his voice cracks and is so different from the last time Grey heard his voice, he almost doesn't recognize him.
"Ettan…" he kneels down towards the poor boy, his state not much different than Kalara's was when she found Grey.
The thought of the antibiotics sinking into the stone seeps back into his memory.
"Keeva…where is she? She…we were together. She told me to hide. She was…" he coughs up blood and Grey helps him adjust to a better position. It also allows Grey to better see the wound.
He wishes he didn't.
"She was fighting a Career. She led her away from here. But she was hurt. Did you see her? Is…is she okay?" Tears stream down his face as his question lingers.
"She's okay. When you're better…I'll bring you to her," he says. He doesn't know why he says it. Maybe because the truth is too devastating and he's already dying and there's nothing Grey can do to make his death easier or reverse Keeva's death.
Maybe because being a storyteller is all he's good at.
Ettan closes his eyes and his breathing slows. Grey isn't sure if the boy believes his words. Ettan can be described in a few ways, but Grey would never describe him as an idiot.
"Thank you," Ettan whimpers as the tears fall. For what, Grey doesn't know. Maybe for being there with him.
There he stays as the boy draws his final breath.
He slowly removes Ettan's limited supplies, knowing full well the boy would want his friend to take them.
And Grey ensures that Ettan's story will be told. He doesn't have a choice anymore. Grey Thornton will win this fight. And it may just be the last thing he does.
Grey doesn't know where the Capitol plans to host the finale. But with only two tributes left besides himself, he can only assume it'll be soon.
And since he feels most comfortable in the graveyard, that's where he decides to set up. He secures the gate and some of the unstable parts of the fence. He sharpens the knife he has. He organizes his supplies with Ettan and Devin's. And then he waits in the mausoleum.
More time passes. Grey isn't sure how much. The sun hides behind a dark cloud, making day indistinguishable from night. Grey was able to reorient himself for a few hours after the anthem, but quickly lost sense of the time.
He doesn't know how he's running on so little sleep. He doesn't know if he can separate what's fact from what's fiction. He'd like to think the white apparitions floating around are real, but he knows they're not.
He'd like to think they belong to those closest to him. His father. Ettan. Devin.
Even if those don't belong to him, he'd really like to believe they're still with him somehow.
He's so lost in the illusion he doesn't think the rising fog is real until it makes his lungs cold. He shoots up to his feet to save his lungs, assuming the worst from the Gamemakers. But the fog doesn't stop rising, and within seconds it reaches his shoulders.
He pushes out of the mausoleum, pulling his shirt over his nose to try and give him some protection as the gas continues to rise.
As he reaches the gate, he hears metal clinking against metal not too far from him. At this point, the gas has risen over his head and meets the top of the metal gate.
The gas reduces his visibility significantly, yet that doesn't stop the sound of the fight from echoing around the graveyard.
This is it. Every emotion Grey has felt over the last two weeks, ever since his name was called, amasses in his heart. It's all he can do to fixate on the noise.
This is the final three. The two people standing between me and District Twelve are on the other side of this fence.
He knows his shirt isn't completely blocking the gas, so it can't be that poisonous. At least not a fast-acting poison. He lets his shirt drop, grips his knife, and slowly moves in the direction of the fight.
BOOM.
Grey stops in his tracks. Who died? Who's left?
The gas starts to dissipate. Not completely, he can still feel the cold air touching his skin and flowing through his respiratory system. But the visibility of the area around him has increased significantly.
Except, it's not a dark and desolate graveyard anymore. The metal fence has transformed. Grey doesn't know how it's possible, or when exactly that happened. He places his hand on the newly formed stone.
It feels cold. It feels like stone. A stone Grey has some familiarity with.
The metal clinking. It distorts in Grey's mind.
Clink….clink….clink…
He looks up. There are no more clouds. More stone. He raises his hand in the air, but he can't touch it.
Metal on stone. The sound hits Grey in the chest like a boulder.
A coal mine.
Voices whisper throughout the air. The chattings of miners. Loud enough for him to recognize, distorted enough to not make out words.
A rail track. One that carries mine carts. Filled with coal.
What the fuck.
Grey grips his knife tightly, but there's no knife. There's a pickaxe.
He wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't looked. It weighed the same.
How does it weigh the same?
"Grey?" The voice. The voice punches him in the gut. Whatever grip Grey might have had, it leaves as the voice blows through.
"Dad?" he says. His own words sound foreign to him. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything except what could come.
Through the fog, an older man with a miner's hat and a mounted light nearly blinds Grey. He squints, the light barely dissipating through the cloud.
But he would recognize his father anywhere. And here he is. Walking directly at Grey.
Grey's head spins. Maybe the gas is poisonous after all. But it feels so nice on Grey's skin. It makes him feel like he's floating.
He's home.
"Grey." Another voice?
Grey is dizzy. He moves the pickaxe-why is he holding a pickaxe?
These aren't the mines of Twelve. Grey closes his eyes, but the mine doesn't disappear.
"Grey. Come with me," his father says. Grey faces…is that his father? The light is making it hard to tell.
A hand is held out in front of him. Then, a second. But it belongs to someone different.
How? A second figure stands besides the first. Her hair covers half of her face, but Grey recognizes her. How could he not recognize Kalara Volkan?
She's dead. She's dead, and Morys is dead, and they're both here with him, and isn't that all Grey has ever wanted?
"Just promise you'll finish our story," Devin's words, this time. But Devin isn't here. He's in Grey's mind.
Grey's mind is fighting with itself, and it's given him a headache. He wants to close his eyes again. He wants to escape. He wants to…
"Join us," both of their voices sound so wrong and so right in Grey's mind. He raises his hand up towards his ears but he has to remember he's holding a pickaxe and he doesn't want to stab himself in the head.
"Stop, stop, stop!" Grey's voice echoes through the cave.
The world spins and the man who has made the biggest impact on Grey's life stands in front of Grey and he could reach out to him and be with him again he's right there it would be so easy-
Except joining him would break his promise to his dead friends.
"Grey." Kalara's voice doesn't sound like her own. Grey grips the handle tightly. It makes his hand cramp up. But it grounds him in reality.
And this is not his reality.
He closes his eyes as he slices his knife through the replica of Morys Thornton. He feels the knife come in contact with something, with someone. The scream was too human.
The fog thickens and Grey backs up. A human-shaped shadow flails in front of him.
The scenery flickers between the graveyard and the cave.
What the fuck is in this gas?
Grey holds his breath in just for a moment, just enough for the world to stop spinning and flickering. He can't tell who's in front of him. But he knows he's real.
Grey takes a deep breath and advances. The boy's head swings back and forth, but it never lands on Grey.
It's a hallucinogenic. The gas won't kill them, but it will continue to mess with their minds until they're out of it.
I need to get out of this. Grey brings his knife down and lands a hit at the top of the boy's shoulder. He screams and shoves his own sword in Grey's direction. Grey barely dodges a fatal blow, the edge of the sword cutting into the side of his stomach.
He reaches for the knife but the boy pulls back. The gas has spread out just enough for Grey to recognize him as the boy from One.
"Stay the fuck away from me, Dad!" the boy screams and lunges again with the sword. Grey dodges as he's more alert this time.
He's still stuck in the hallucinations. Grey's head is pounding, but he's grounded in reality.
He uses that to his advantage and ducks deeper into the gas. The Career frantically jerks around, searching for Grey.
"COME OUT YOU COWARD!" His voice echoes and Grey prepares quietly.
He waits for the boy to turn his back. He doesn't have to wait for long. Wherever the hallucinations have taken him are too unpleasant for him to escape from.
The rock Grey picks up is small. But one swipe at the back of the boy's head, and the Career loses all balance. He falls to his side, yet tries to push himself up to standing. Grey brings the rock down on his head. Again. And again. And again.
He doesn't hear the victor announcement. He doesn't hear a cannon. It takes the hovercraft lifting him from the arena before his brain can make his muscles stop.
And when fatigue takes over, he finally lets it.
Grey's injuries are mild, or at least that's what the doctors tell him as they inject various liquids into his IV. His arm is disinfected and sewn, along with his various other scrapes and cuts. He's taught exercises to complete to regain full strength in his arm.
He doesn't say much to the doctors or the nurses, and luckily for him, they don't ask too many questions. His first night in the hospital, he's told he slept for twenty-four hours. It didn't feel like that, of course. Visions of the arena were too fresh. Nightmares of his allies dying replayed over and over again in his brain.
He's offered something to keep his mind blank while he recovers. Although it sounds peaceful, he declines. He needs those memories to stick around.
He has stories to write.
He does ask about the gas. The answers he gets are cagey, but he's able to confirm a few things about it. It was a heavily modified form of laughing gas, one that created hallucinations of all the senses. No permanent damage was done to his skin or his lungs.
Zara visits him once. It's a few days after his victory. When she walks into the room, he doesn't know what to say to her. So he doesn't say anything. And neither does she.
He's not sure how long she stands there for before something is finally exchanged, and frankly Grey thinks he would have been better off if she never visited at all.
"I can't believe it's you," she finally says.
Had she said that to him prior to his time in the arena, it would've stung. He would have cared.
But he's gone through too much to give a shit.
"Get used to it, Zara," he says, closing his eyes. He's not even tired. He just doesn't want to invoke any more conversations with his ex-mentor.
She takes the hint and leaves relatively quickly. And she doesn't visit again for the rest of his recovery.
Grey requests his journal from his old training room, and an Avox brings it to him. He opens it up to the last page he was on, the story about his father. His mind reminds him of his experience in the arena. Of the hallucinations. Of the death and the blood.
And it's not pleasant.
So he turns the page and starts taking notes on each of the people that have left an impact on him. And he soon hopes he can leave an impact on Panem.
He sits on the couch as the train departs from the Capitol. After all this time, he was finally released to return to his district.
His recovery was painless. He wrote a lot while he was in the hospital. His victory interview was painless. Panem had no perception of who Grey Thornton was, so he was able to sway the audience in his favor. Re-watching the Games might have been hard, but Grey was able to view it as a complete outsider.
He studied it for his stories. He watched every move his allies made, he poured over every word they said. He took notes on stage, in front of all of Panem. He's not sure they noticed. They too, were too intrigued by the story the Capitol was telling.
They went with a true underdog tale. A boy put up against the daughter of a victor. With all the odds stacked against him, how did Grey Thornton beat all the odds?
He owes it all to the people he surrounded himself with. Ettan never stopped searching for him after the bloodbath. Devin searched endlessly for medical supplies. Keeva went a day without food so he could eat. And despite her misgivings about him, Kalara never once tried to stab him in the back.
How unfairly he treated her. How he can never make it right. All he can do is make sure she's never forgotten.
The final fight was an interesting rewatch. At a glance, it was two boys talking to themselves in a drug-induced haze. But the Capitol was able to create the world both boys were transported to and superimpose it onto the actual graveyard. Grey saw himself talking to his father. Talking to Kalara.
He also saw the Career boy, Aryan, arguing with his dad. Grey never spoke to the boy once before the arena, but the fight he had with the hallucinated father figure told him all he needed to know.
The pressure his father seemed to put on that kid killed him. It put him into the Hunger Games, and he still couldn't escape it. Poor kid.
He still hasn't seen Zara since that one night in the hospital. He knows she's on the train with him. She's expected to help him settle into victor life. But she doesn't want anything to do with the boy. And he can't blame her.
Watching the recap also revealed when the sponsor gift was dropped. Grey didn't need to know it was outside for a full day before Kalara died.
At some point, he knows he'll have to see her. He'll have to have a conversation with her. When he writes Kalara's story…she'll have a part in it. And if he wants to capture Kalara as accurately as he can, he'll need those references.
But they say time heals wounds, and Grey can only hope that stands true for how Zara feels. Grey knows how long he mourned his own father.
He knows you never truly let them go.
Grey's journey has been long. And it didn't start when he was reaped. It started when he was born. It was cemented when his father was killed. And it's only going to get worse from here.
If Grey Thornton can survive the Hunger Games, he can survive anything.
am I adding an A/N many hours after posting? yes.
because I have to thank the Verses server for making this possible. Thank you to every single Verses mod for helping set up and run this event. It's a huge undertaking and I could not have done any part of it without you.
I also have to shoutout RB and Em for beta'ing this fic. RB I love you lots and I'm sorry I made you think I had Roxy for a bit oops. Em I seriously appreciate you keeping me in check throughout this event.
Grey will be in Extinguished! So if you'd like to see more of his story check out that SYOT it's on my profile. The Twelve's are in for a good time.
That's all. SYOT update coming next week.
~Moose