On the nineteenth morning of the Fifty-Eighth Hunger Games, the Capitol is a city on fire.
They call it Arena Fever; it always sets in during the endgame, when the arena dances with ghosts and only the strong remain. The city's chaos knows no bounds. The days blur. The parties do not end. They spill out onto the streets. Peacekeepers are pulled from patrol duty. They are too few, the revelers too many, too wild; there is nothing for them to do but wait it out. Some of the more experienced Peacekeepers even go so far as to claim they'd rather be in the Lower Districts during the last Quell than in the Capitol when it gets this bad. The city will be gripped in a state of near-anarchy until the trumpets sound and a victor is declared.
And today, as the mayhem reaches its peak, they know someone is going to win the Hunger Games.
Four tributes remain. Three are Careers. One of them, the girl from District One, slowly bleeds to death in the snow, staring up at a gray sky with glossy green eyes that do not see. Back home, her parents watch with taut jaws and watery eyes, fingers intertwined. They watched their baby girl come into this world. They will be there when she goes, no matter how long it takes or how hard it hurts to watch.
Even in a place like District One, parents still love their children.
The other tributes — D1M, D4M, D7M — may not be dying, but they are not healthy. Their wounds, long-untreated, are beginning to fester in the bitter cold. The boy from District Four, huddled in a snow shelter, is shivering so fiercely he's chipped a tooth. If he survives to see the end, the frostbite in his left ear and two of his toes will be so severe that the doctors will have to remove them.
If.
A mile to the west, the boy from District One pours the last of his lamp oil onto a pile of firewood and lights a match before retreating to rest under a barren oak tree. The fire starts slow, but blossoms in minutes. He takes care to avoid its warmth, fearing that he'll fall asleep if he feels its embrace. He is tired; beyond tired. His head pounds. Every time he blinks he must force his eyelids open. He has not slept in two nights. Last night, the Career Pack split. He knew it would happen. They all knew. Their cohesion had been slipping since the first week, but the exhausting, fruitless three-day search for the boy from District Seven brought tensions to a breaking point. A hushed argument between the Two girl and the Four boy turned into a shouting match, then a shoving match, and then steel was drawn. It all happened so fast, their years of training and discipline erased in the face of an argument over a misplaced jackknife. He can hear the Academy trainers scolding them now for their immaturity, as if dead kids can still learn lessons.
He is ashamed that the Pack split the way it did, but it brings him one step closer to home. Instead of five trained Careers he now only has to deal with two, except he saw Audney get gutted before he ran so it might as well just be him and Four. He kills Four, he kills Seven, he puts Audney to rest and then he goes home and spends the rest of his life away from the blood and the fear.
Not so hard, he thinks, cupping his hands around his mouth and breathing hard to keep them warm. Not so hard. Not so hard. Not so hard.
From the east, the boy from District Four spots the One boy's signal fire. He stares at it for a long, long time, thinking. Mulling over his options. It's difficult to decide. The cold has cast a fog on his mind. He can barely remember his name, let alone think critically. Even in his misery, however, the one thing he can still remember clearly is his mother's eyes, her kind smile. He can still remember the way she hugged him in the Justice Building, too. Come back, she said. Do whatever it takes. I'll still love you. My boy. My only boy. I'll always love you. Most Careers' parents give up on them once the Academies take them in full-time, but not her. Not his momma bear. She never gave up on him.
The boy thinks of his mother's smile for the thousandth time since the Games began. Still staring at the smoke, rising up from the faraway fire in faint tendrils. Still gripping his sword with numb fingers. Still thinking of District Four, of home, with its warm waters and hot sands and snowless fields. He stands, sword in hand. The decision is easy now.
Still shivering, the boy from Four begins to march towards the flame.
When the boy from District Seven was reaped, he prayed to a forbidden god — one that he no longer believes in — that his arena would be in a forest, or maybe some kind of boreal valley. Two years ago, the Games were set in a scorching desert. The tributes from District Seven cooked alive in the sun, begging for water that never came, for parents they would never see. Even now, thinking about those tributes boiling under a merciless sun makes his stomach turn.
He ended up getting his wish and sighed with relief when the pedestals rose up and he found himself surrounded by trees. He was so relieved that he barely noticed that the trees were barren and a light snow was already beginning to fall. Two days later, as he shivered in the dark with Grenier, the poacher's son from District Nine, he decided that if his god even existed, he was a pretty big asshole.
It has been seventeen days since he doubted his god's existence. Four days ago he lost his faith entirely when Grenier died in his arms, cut apart by wolf mutts. He had little time to mourn his friend; the hovercraft coming to collect the body meant the Pack had him zeroed, that they'd be on him within the hour. Since Grenn's death it's been a constant game of cat-and-mouse against the Career Pack, who happen to be the only ones left in this wasteland. Imagine that. You're in the Hunger Games and the only opposition left is trained, unified and wholly dedicated to killing you. I mean, come on. Give a guy a fucking break.
Except last night, three cannons fired, all at once, and then maybe an hour later faces began flashing in the sky. Both tributes from District Two, followed by the girl from District Four. The hovercrafts picked up their corpses maybe three or four miles away from his campsite. They were close. Too close. The boy still isn't sure what happened. Mutts maybe, except the Gamemakers would've sent mutts after him too and none came. Maybe one of them went off the deep end. He ain't sure there's such a thing as a well-adjusted Career, but the Two girl looked extra nutty this year. Tried to bite Caesar Flickerman. He's decided it doesn't really matter what happened, at least not now. He'll find out in the recaps if he makes it out of here. All that matters now is that he's got three less Careers to worry about.
Against every instinct in his half-frozen body the boy crunches towards where the hovercrafts picked up the bodies, machete in hand. He's assuming the Career Pack split, but even if they didn't he has to scout them out, keep the Gamemakers happy. He wasn't raised in some fancypants kid-killing school like the Careers were, but he knows that the mutts come around when things get slow. Other than whatever happened last night there hasn't been a death in four days, and Grenier wasn't even killed by a person. He can only imagine how restless they're getting in the Capitol. He'd much rather face a weakened Pack than endgame mutts. Recently the Gamemakers have been fond of bugs, particularly spiders. Giant ones that look like they're made of ice.
Fuck that.
The boy makes steady progress, inching his way up an icy creek towards where the hovercrafts picked up the bodies. He feels as if every exhale can be heard for miles, that each boot crunch is louder than the last. He becomes hyperaware of every sound in these haunted woods. The silence is deafening. The forests in District Seven have chirping birds and croaking frogs and howling coyotes. Nothing lives in these woods other than the tributes. He used to see deer and rabbits and squirrels in the early days, but they're all gone now. As he clenches his toes in a failed attempt to regain sensation in them, the boy decides that this shit is fucked and Snow better send him on a goddamned all-expenses-paid vacation to District Four if he gets through this mess.
He's about to consider asking the sponsors to send him down some hot chocolate when he steps around a tree and finds the girl from District One.
Three miles to the south, the boy from District Four steps into a leafless glade with a pathetic fire burning in the center. Just like he thought, he finds the boy from One, sitting near the fire but not within its reach. Smart. The kid's just as tired as he is. One rises to his feet at once and readies his sword, but he doesn't charge. Four doesn't, either. They've got a decent gap between them. Fifteen feet, maybe more. A long silence stretches between them.
The boy from District One breaks it first. "I'm sorry about Maya. She was a nice girl."
Four nods, swallows hard. "I'm sorry about Audney. Wherever she is, she doesn't deserve to suffer," he says back.
"Yeah," One says. A pause. "She doesn't." Another pause. This one lasts longer. "We could still get Seven together."
"I don't think I could take Seven and then fight you right after. I'm running on fumes right now. Best I can do is take you right now and hope Seven is worse-off than both of us. If that's even possible."
One coughs. "Yeah. Yeah, me too."
Another pause. Both lapse into silence. If they're supposed to hate each other right now, they're having a hard time.
"Guess we should get on with it, then," says Four.
"Guess we should."
Four pops into a fighting stance. His opponent does the same. "If you've got any cheesy lines prepared, I'll hear them now," he says.
One thinks for a moment, tongue probing his cheek, before he smiles lamely. "Any last words?"
Four smiles back. Can't get any cheesier than that. "Not today and not for you," he says back.
And then the dance begins.
He finds her next to the creek, sprawled out on her back in snow that's been stained red. He takes a step, then a second, then a third, machete at the ready, before he decides it's not a trap. He's never seen Careers play wounded.
The girl isn't just wounded; she's dying. There are two massive lacerations across her waist, deep and jagged and still trickling blood. A jackknife has been jammed into her thigh. Her breathing is ragged and uneven, as if each inhale is a battle. Her sword lies a few feet away. The weapon is just out of arm's reach but considering her wounds it might as well be a million miles away. She isn't going anywhere. Isn't killing anyone, not anymore. It's a miracle she's even lived this long with wounds so severe. The boy shuffles over to her, cautious but unafraid. He doesn't try to hide his approach. He went into the arena well over two-hundred and twenty pounds; even with most of his weight's melted off he's still too big to sneak around. She looks up and vaguely registers that someone is standing over her, but there's no recognition in her eyes. As if she's never seen him before, even though in training she gave him a deadly smile and told him that she'd let him fuck her if she could kill him after. He declined. Not his type; he doesn't usually go for serial killers.
Even now, she's still pretty. She looks like she's from District One, with golden hair and high cheekbones and soft lips. A butcher pretending to be a beauty queen. She's got the same emerald eyes as him, though hers are a bit brighter, or at least were before she began to die. They're glazed over now, though some stubborn life clings to them even as her body slowly shuts down on her.
This girl will have killed children that deserved long and happy lives, children that didn't do anything other than have their names drawn out of a fucking bowl. She may have even killed his district partner, who ran south when he ran north and died on the third night. It's guaranteed she's killed before that; he doesn't know for sure, but there's no fucking way arena tributes are the Careers' first victims. They do it too easily, with too much grace. Most of them don't even blink. He should hate her.
He doesn't. He's too tired. Too cold.
The kill is not clean, but it's quick. He plunges his machete into her chest and leaves a sucking chest wound that's going to take some serious work from the Capitol morticians to seal up, but the girl lets out a last gasp and then her cannon fires a moment later. He leaves her eyes open. He doesn't hate her, but he's not going to honor her, either.
He makes it about half a mile south when another cannon booms. Then young Claudius Templesmith's voice booms across the sky, calling for a feast.
...
Twenty years later, when the boy who won the Fifty-Eighth Hunger Games is a dead man and Audney's parents' hair has gone from blonde to gray to white, her grave in District One is still decorated with fresh flowers.
The fight goes to the ground. One sidesteps Four's thrust and counters by bringing his blade down on Four's falchion with such force that the boy's blade is knocked clean out of his hands. Four abandons any pretense of an armed duel and lunges forward, tackling the boy and scrambling on top of him. He finds his dagger and wrenches it deep into One's waist before yanking it out. One screams. It's a deep wound, potentially a lethal one given enough time, but it has no stopping power; through the pain, One wriggles himself up enough so his arms are free and swings with all the force he can muster, bloodstained knuckles colliding with Four's rosy nose. It breaks instantly; the crack echoes in the arena's silence.
In the distance, Audney's cannon booms. One barely registers it. Four doesn't at all.
Four's head snaps back, eyes squeezed shut in reflex, but his hand still holds the dagger. One lashes out, right hand clasping Four's wrist as his left shoots out to squeeze the boy's throat. Four's left hand, gripping the dagger and held in place by One, may be unusable but his right hand isn't; again and again and again his fist crashes into the One boy's head, frantically trying to get his opponent to release his grip on his knife hand so he can end it before he passes out.
Let go. Let go. Let go, screams a voice in the head of the boy from District Four. One tightens his grip on his throat.
Let go. Let go. Let go, screams a voice in the head of the boy from District One. Four gets closer to breaking his wristlock.
Four straights up a little so One can't choke him with as much force. End it. End it now. You have to end it now, bellows the voice.
One readjusts his grip on Four's wrist, squeezes it harder than he's ever held anything in his eighteen years of life. The voice in his head is shrieking, end it, end it now, you have to end it now.
With a final burst of energy, One gives up on strangling Four and instead throws his hips to the right. It forces Four to shift his weight. Out of instinct, he braces himself with his free hand.
And exposes the side of his head.
One screams when he throws the punch. He does not hear himself scream. The sound carries through the valley, through five miles of snow and leafless trees to reach the ears of the boy from District Seven, who freezes when he hears the sound. It all happens at once; the scream, the punch, Four blacking out for one half of one half of one second and dropping the knife, One frantically reaching across with his left hand to scoop up the dagger, Four realizing with wide eyes what's about to happen before One delivers one fatal slash above Four's collarbone that opens his throat. When Caesar Flickerman and Panem's newest victor watch the recap, the timer will show that the entire exchange only took 2.2 seconds. An eternity captured in the time it takes your average sponsor to inhale.
The Four boy's hands fly to his throat, gurgling as he tries to stop the flow. One tosses the boy off of him, scrambles to his feet, grabs his sword and drives his blade deep into the boy's chest. Three seconds later, his eyes roll back into his head and his cannon fires. The boy from District One collapses backwards into the snow, breathing hard. His jacket is drenched in Four's blood. His hands are shaking. His heart pounds in his ears. His lungs scream for air, his arms quake.
For reasons he does not fully understand, he stays with Four's body until the hovercraft comes. His adversary's body is halfway up in the sky when young Claudius Templesmith's voice crackles over the arena, announcing the feast.
Only then does he grab his weapon and trudge into the frozen waste, towards the Cornucopia.
Towards the end.
It takes the boy from District One the better part of two hours — the wound Four gave him hurts so bad he cannot even breathe without pain — but he makes it to the Cornucopia, wearing a tattered jacket that does little to stop the cold. When he reaches the clearing, he stops, takes a breath, tries to collect himself a little. Seven isn't here, not yet. It won't be long, though; the boy isn't Career-trained, but he knows to come when called to a feast. He's smart. Has to be, or he wouldn't have made it this far.
For the first time in nineteen days, the boy truly stops and listens. Takes it all in. The way the wind whistles through the lifeless trees and nips at his fingers and ears and reminds him that he's alive. How hauntingly gorgeous the opening clearing looks. How he never took the time to appreciate it because he was too busy killing children. How none of those children deserved to die. How he killed four outlier tributes which means he destroyed four families because he thought it would make him a better man, an honorable man. What honor is there in killing kids? These are terrible thoughts to have. Thoughts he has never had, not in the nine years he's spent training to be a Career. Treasonous thoughts, even, the thoughts that make you lose focus. These are not thoughts an almost-victor of the Hunger Games should be having.
He has them anyway. For his whole life he has done everything the Capitol has asked of him and more. The least they can do is let him think whatever he wants for a few precious moments.
In the distance, he hears a twig snap. He stops, listens. Instinctively, his sword hand flies to the hilt of his blade. He hears another snap, then a crunch, then another, then another, all to his ten o' clock. It's Seven. Has to be. He can't see him, but he's close. Very close. Not much longer now. This is it. The last clash of his Games. People will be watching from all over the country now, the Career districts rooting for him and everyone else rooting for Seven. He catches a glimpse of Seven as he weaves between the trees towards him. Not far at all. A hundred yards, maybe a little more. He's big, but not as big as when he went into the arena, which is what happens when you eat at an extreme deficit for three weeks.
The boy from District One pauses, stares at Seven as he shuffles through the snow towards him, machete bouncing against his back. He's waited for this moment, dreamed of it ever since he watched his first Games on his father's lap a lifetime ago. He imagined that, when the time came for the final showdown, he'd be thinking about the life that awaited him after he killed his last opponent. Claudius Templesmith roaring his name over the trumpets. Looking his mentor in the eyes not as a tribute but as a victor. Shaking the president's hand. The ceremony once he got home. Monthly, sometimes weekly trips to the Capitol to visit Panem's finest. All these things the boy imagined he would be thinking about when the grand finale came.
But now, as he stands in the clearing, all he can think about is a pretty girl from District One with a kind smile and a high, sweet laugh whose brown eyes look golden when the light catches them. Traitorously, desperately, he finds himself thinking that just a moment with her now would be worth more than all the fame and all the money in the Capitol put together. How stupid he is for choosing to slaughter children when he could be with her, lounging under the shade of a willow tree, dreaming of the life he's going to build with her. How fucking stupid he is for choosing the Academy that took took took took took over the only soul he's ever known that gave; that never expected anything out of him than his honest self. Even if he does win, even if he does come home, he will never have her the way he wants to. He'll come home with a crown on his head and enough trauma to last a lifetime and spend every other week fucking sponsors until Games season rolls around and all the healing he's done goes down the drain when his newest tribute goes down in a spray of blood, alone and already forgotten in the chaos of the arena. How he'll never be able to make her happy. How he'll love her endlessly and she'll love him endlessly and they'll fight like hell for the life they dreamed of but it will never, ever happen. How it makes everything he's working towards useless. Worse than useless.
He's insane for thinking these thoughts. Deranged. He's never had these thoughts before and yet here they come, crashing down on him like the waves of a vicious sea storm, throwing him underwater and bringing him up only to plunge him back down under the depths. To wish for a girl — a girl! — over a lifetime of fame and wealth and prestige. Back home, in the Academy, a thousand trainees watch him now and beg for the chance to be in his shoes and here he stands wishing it never happened. He's lost it. Lost it completely.
But there's always madness in love, isn't there?
He draws his sword, takes a step forward and nearly collapses as his heart cracks into an abyss and two words, two terrible words, rips through the whirlwind that is his mind and bites and kicks and screams until they drowns out the rest of his thoughts, reigning supreme over all for what might be the rest of his life:
I'm done.
...
In Mentor Control, the boy's mentor leans forward, sucks in a choked breath. His eyes are wild and desperate, fingers trembling at the desk.
Beside him, Audney's mentor leans forward, chin resting on interlocked fingers. She has not eaten since Audney died. She will not eat for a long time. "What's happening to him?" she asks, though she already knows the answer.
The boy's mentor turns to her, swallows hard, and says the word that no mentor — especially a Career — should ever, ever, ever have to say:
"his fire's gone out."
Ten years ago, when the boy from District Seven was a quarter of his current size and a tenth as brave, a boy called Nash Roscoe cornered him at lunch, told him to give him the homework answers or else he'd bloody his nose. The boy did; Nash was bigger than him and much meaner, with a glint in his eyes that chilled the boy to his core. Besides, it was just math homework. The boy was good at math, good at letting all the numbers swirl around his head as he worked through the problems, putting each number in the right place until it all made sense. Of course, later on down the line cheap beer and pretty girls became the primary focus of his life, but when the boy was eight all he cared about was making the numbers work.
Two days later, Nash cornered him again, mean and ugly and nasty, and snarled that if he didn't give up his homework he'd break his arm. The boy was still scared, so he relented. This happened again, and again, and again, and each time the boy became a little less scared and a little more heartbroken. He was a nice boy. Never fought at recess, always tried to treat everyone well. If Nash had just asked politely, he'd have gotten the answers and a friend, too. The boy's father taught him to love everyone, no matter how good or how rotten they were. It broke the boy's heart that Nash was so vicious, so harsh.
To offer love that you know is unreciprocated is perhaps the worst feeling in the world.
This lasted for three weeks until one day the boy came home from school and broke down on the couch. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for hours. Nobody heard him; both his parents were at work, his youngest brother was at daycare and his oldest was out with his friends.
Or so he thought.
His older brother, only fourteen but bigger and better at apprenticing than some sixteen-year-olds, walked in the door to find the boy curled up in a ball, sobbing into his lemon shirt. His brother stormed up, eyes wild, and asked what had happened. When the boy told him, his brother swallowed hard, nodded and reached out, squeezing him with a hand that was already calloused.
"Here's what you do, and don't tell Mom or Dad that I told you this," his brother said. "You fight back. Hard. No matter what, you keep fighting."
"I'll get beat up," the boy sobbed back.
"Yeah, you will. But it'll shock him when you swing. Then after that, it'll break him a little the next time you do it. Then a little more the next time. It'll fuck with him, the fact that he can't throw you around without a little pushback. Get in his mind. You ain't gonna win for a long time, but it's a lot better than not fighting at all." He leans forward, green eyes burning brighter than springtime leaves. "Whatever happens, you always keep fighting, promise?"
The boy sniffs a little, wipes his nose with his shirt. It takes him a moment, but he nods. "Promise," he says back, voice stronger than he thought.
His brother's right. Nash beats him bloody the first time he fights back. But as the boy lies there in a heap, he can't help but notice that Nash said he'd break his teeth and never did. From then on the fight's personal. The boy starts seeking Nash out, swinging without a threat. He loses — he always loses — but he follows his brother's advice, always keeps fighting. Nash has a nasty fire in him, the kind of fire borne from hate and abuse and neglect, but the boy's fire burns brighter. Again and again he continues to get up, and again and again he gets whooped.
"You just don't know how to give up, do you?" Nash asks once, knuckles stained with the boy's blood.
The boy looks up, blood shining in his teeth. "Not really," he says.
And then one day he swings left instead of right and it connects just right against Nash's face and he crumples like a sack of potatoes and Nash Roscoe never again tells him to give up his homework.
Ten years later the boy marches through the snow, shivering and half-broken but still alive, still fighting, still too stubborn to quit. He's got his flaws, but he's never broken a promise before. That promise drove him through three weeks of cold and hunger and fear, through the death of Grenier and the ensuing manhunt, and now to the final showdown.
"I'm still here," he mumbles. "I'm still here."
In the distance, the Cornucopia grows closer and closer.
"I didn't forget the promise," he keeps saying. "I...I didn't forget.
"I didn't forget one bit."
...
Millions of people hear his words, but only one of them, a big broad carpenter in District Seven with the same chestnut curls and emerald eyes as the boy from District Seven, understands. The carpenter isn't smiling, but his lips twitch upwards at the edges.
"I know you didn't," he says under his breath.
When the boy from District Seven arrives at the Cornucopia, One is already waiting for him, standing in the middle of the clearing. He's hurt; his jacket is stained with blood down by his waist. Beneath the leather, Seven can see that One's bandage is soaked through with so much blood there isn't any white left on the gauze. His sword is drawn but it's planted down in the snow like a cane. One hand rests on the hilt. The other is pressed to his bad side. More a ghost than a boy, thinks Seven, but he can't imagine he looks much better, either. Three weeks ago he was clean-shaven and could barely fit into his tribute uniform. Now most of his face is hidden by a frosted brown beard and his clothes feel two sizes too big. Seven advances on him until they're maybe twenty feet apart, two souls staring each other down in an arena that belongs to the dead.
"If you've got a speech, now's the time," says the boy from District Seven.
The boy from District One sighs and wearily shakes his head. "All your life you wait for your moment, and then it comes, and you realize you never wanted it to begin with." He readies his sword. It's still got the blood of someone's son it. "Come on, now. Let's end this."
Seven nods. "Let's."
Seven may have the size advantage — even after all this time — but One's a damn good swordsman, the best Seven's seen in all his years of watching Careers hack children to death. If One was healthy and well-rested, he would have killed him an instant and come home with a crown on his head.
But he's not.
So he doesn't.
...
Far, far away from the bitter winds and cold snows of the Fifty-Eighth Hunger Games, a young carpenter in District Seven and a pretty girl in District One begin to cry for the same reason:
A boy named Blight has won the Hunger Games.