TW: Language.

I had so much hope that my sister would be the one to make it home.

Sunny wasn't the absolute favorite to win the Sixty-Fourth Hunger Games, but she had really good odds. She scored high in training, gave a good interview, and immediately showed just how well her athletic pastimes translated to the mountainous arena.

I watched her kill two people. The boy from Two, Nero's brother, had jumped her on the sixth day. Sunny struck him on the head with a club hard enough to cause him to stagger off a cliff and to his death.

The second kill was a lot harder to watch. She made an ally with the girl from District Five, a little twelve-year-old named Dahlia Rhodes. I wasn't surprised. It was a lot like Sunny to want to protect others. What I knew, and Sunny didn't, however, was that she was not Dahlia's first ally. Her first ally was a girl named Cheryl Heaven, from District Seven. Like Sunny, Cheryl felt a need to protect little Dahlia.

Dahlia repaid her kindness by sticking a knife in her back. The way she smiled as she did, with no emotion in those once innocent brown eyes, still haunts me. It turns out that Dahlia was a child serial killer, suspected in three murders but nothing was ever proven.

When she tried to do the same to Sunny, Sunny moved at the last second and the knife struck her ribcage instead. Sunny was forced to stab Dahlia in self-defense. It really messed her up. That spark in her eyes had vanished, and I worried she would give up, but she carried on. She grit her teeth and kept going. Even after she watched her district partner die to the boy from Four, even after she lost two fingers to a mutt, she kept going.

She only had to make it one more day. One more day and she would have gone to the finale. One more day, and she might have won. Instead, she saw the boy from Four, the Token Taker. Something in her must have snapped upon seeing him again because she charged the boy without hesitation.

Sunny fought hard and dealt him a nasty injury that would later prove his downfall, but he got the upper hand and slashed her with his trident.

My sister bled to death on the ground, cursing at her killer, defiant until the end. She died in fifth place.

Her death left a void in me that I struggled to fill. I thought I had found a purpose after her passing. I thought that being more like her would help her live on in me.

While Nero's dying words to me have me doubting, as Jax's rapier presses deep against my chest, I try to do just that.

"You want to what?" I ask.

"You heard me," Jax replies, moving her neck so that my knife rests against her throat a bit more comfortably. "I want to talk."

"Really, now?" I retort, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. "Is that why your fancy sword is pressed against me like that?"

"High and mighty coming from the one with a knife at my throat. I suppose you get a pass though. I'm the one who ambushed you. Don't worry, Reeves. I'm well aware that if one of us acts, we both die. Now how about we lower our weapons at the same time and have the civilized conversation I know you're capable of."

"And what if I don't want to talk?" I reply, keeping my voice cold and level.

Jax smiles sweetly. "Then you're useless to me."

I have to fight to keep the sudden fear off of my face. "If my friends hear a cannon, they'll come looking for me and they'll find you instead. You may be all trained up, but I don't think you want to fight them all at once."

"Oh, honey, I'll be long gone by the time they realize what happened. Besides, Bronze is hiding out somewhere around here. If he hears a cannon, he'll shoot your friends dead, starting with your district partner."

I grit my teeth and press the knife as deep as I dare, drawing a bit of blood in the process. Jax responds by pressing her rapier harder into my chest, making a small hole in my shirt. "I swear if you've hurt them..." I growl, letting the threat go unspoken.

Jax rolls her eyes. "Relax, they're none the wiser of what's happening here, and Bronze wants to keep it that way. No one else has to die today, Amber. The ball's in your court."

I glare at Jax for a moment, but she doesn't once break her gaze or her smile. "Fine," I say. "On the count of three. One."

"Two," Jax replies.

"Three." We both remove our weapons at the same time and let them clatter to the forest floor.

"There, was that so hard?" Jax says.

"Don't patronize me," I retort. "I'm still armed. Now, what the hell did you want so badly that you had to pull the mutually assured destruction card?"

Jax just shrugs. "Like, I said. I wanted to talk, but first..."

Her hand clenches into a fist and before I can react, it slams into my face and my vision bursts into red and white. I stagger back, holding my now bleeding nose. I see the brief shine of metal and narrowly avoid a knife to the face.

"What the hell, Jax?" I shout.

"Sorry," Jax replies. "Just need to check something first!"

I try to dive for my knife but Jax is faster. She grabs me by my shirt and throws me to the ground. My lungs tighten painfully as I make contact with the hard earth. I gasp and shove myself to my feet. Jax casually picks up both my knife and her rapier and slips the knife into her belt. "That's not yours," I yell.

"Is now," Jax replies. She positions her rapier and runs at me. I duck out of the way and hook my foot under her ankle. She trips up but recovers quickly. She whirls around and laughs. "Not bad, Amber. Not bad at all."

She lunges at me again and I try to back away but she grabs my injured arm. I cry out in pain as the wounds are aggravated. She whips around and sends me flying right into a tree. One minute, I'm on my feet, the next, I'm sliding down the tree and onto the ground. I cough, trying to regain my breath, when the tip of Jax's rapier is pressing against the center of my neck.

I glare up at Jax, ready to spit blood into her face the moment she skewers me, but instead, Jax just laughs. "You manage well for an unarmed outlier. Brooke ran away and Camdyn stole Eleven from me, so I haven't had a chance to get a kill yet. I could make you my first one…" She smiles as if she's considering it for a moment, then shakes her head. "But I won't." Jax sheathes her rapier and kneels down in front of me. "You're not hurt too badly, are you?" She inspects me for a moment, pressing her knee against my chest so that I can't move to attack her, but is surprisingly gentle. "Okay, your nose isn't broken. Good. I was worried that I messed up your pretty face."

The adrenaline begins to fade, leaving me with a sore nose and very confused.

"You come to talk," I begin, "you punch me in the face, you try to kill me, and you still think this conversation will be two-sided? You're either stupid or delusional. Or both. I like both."

"I was never going to kill you, Reeves," Jax waves me off. "I promised Bronze I wouldn't. I trust him with my life, so if he wants you that badly, I'm not going to say no, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, considering the fact that you sort of screwed him over in training."

I don't know why, but I snort remembering that. "Sorry, but I couldn't resist. It was just so funny." This banter is going to get annoying, but the audience will like it.

"It was smart," Jax admits, "We both can give you that. In your defense though, Nero ultimately started it when he went after that thing you call a district partner." Rage floods me at the insult, but Jax doesn't give me a chance to respond. "Your friends will be looking for you soon, so I suppose I should get to the point. Despite the fact that you've gone and wrecked everything, Bronze still wants you in our little group. He hopes that now that the numbers have thinned out and Nero is out of the picture, you will reconsider."

"And if I say no right now?" I snap.

Jax shakes her head and pulls out my knife, holding it to my throat. "Now that wouldn't be a very smart thing to say, now would it? I believe the words 'Yes, I'll be more than happy to join you' would be a better choice, don't you think?"

I scowl at Jax, beyond angry at both her smugness and my own helplessness. "Why couldn't Bronze come and ask me himself?"

Jax shrugs. "He has his own way of doing things. Now, your answer, please."

What choice do I have? If I say no, she'll kill me outright. If I say yes, she'll drag me back to her friends. If I say I'll think about it, I'll have a chance to at least regroup with the others and come up with a plan, but I doubt she'll bite. Unless…

An idea forms in my head and it takes everything I have not to grin.

"How about this," I say, trying to keep my voice level. "I will join you, but I think we should go about this another way. I stay with my current alliance, and when the time comes, I'll betray them. I'll take a few of them out and find you. Then, I'll lead you to them. We can ambush them together, and finish the job."

Jax considers this for a moment. "That's…actually not a bad idea, but there's only twelve of us left. What happens if another arena event happens and beats you to the punch? What happens if you get cold feet?"

"Just give me two days," I say calmly. "I just need two days, and you'll get your cannons."

Jax considers this for a moment, then nods. "Okay then. Two days. If we don't hear any cannons by sunset…" She leaves the threat unanswered.

"Fair enough," I reply. "See you then."

Jax smiles as she pulls me to my feet. "I look forward to–"

Branches begin snapping nearby. Jax immediately raises her rapier to my chest. "Sorry about this, but it needs to look good," she whispers.

"Leave her alone!" Drake shouts. A knife is thrown and Jax snaps her head back to avoid it. She then slams me against the tree again, head first this time, and everything goes dark for a moment.

The next thing I know, someone is shaking me. "Amber? Amber! Can you hear me?"

I groan a bit and open my eyes. Drake, Camdyn, and Giemci are kneeling around me. Camdyn is checking me for injuries while Drake is holding both of my shoulders. "Are you okay?" Drake asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I reply. "Get me up. We have to find Bran and Link. They could be in trouble."

"Relax," Camdyn replies as she hands me a wipe for my nose. "We found them before we found you. Went looking as soon as we heard those cannons. They're at our new camp, setting up shop."

"Emily and Nero," I reply.

"We know," Giemci replies. "Bran told us what happened."

I sigh with relief. "Okay, good. That's good. Where's…"

My voice trails off as I look around for my life. My eyes go wide when I realize that Jax never gave it back to me.

"My knife! That bitch took my knife!"

"Well, that was kind of a jerk move," Drake mutters.

I groan. "Probably for insurance…"

"Insurance?" Giemci asks.

"That's...a long story," I reply. "Let's go back to camp. We'll talk there."

Hey, look! This chapter's relatively on time after all! Amber vs Jax was quite the curb stomp in the wrong way, but Jax is a trained Career while Amber is not. While Amber can handle herself, Jax is definitely the better fighter.

I decided to go ahead and provide a little background on the events of Sunny's games. She had a reputation as a determinator and almost made it. Had she not jumped the Token Taker, she could have beaten Cashmere and won. Still, she would have had a lot of trauma from killing a little girl, even if that little girl is a little murderer. When creating Dahlia, I took inspiration from both The Bad Seed, which is a book/play/movie about a girl who turns out to be a murderer while acting like a sweet and innocent girl, and a character from Ace Attorney (her name is actually a reference to that character).

We also find out what the Careers have been up to. Bronze still wants Amber in his alliance, especially since he's kind of short-staffed at the moment. Jax wanted to test Amber first though, hence their little scuffle.

On another note, I put a new cover on the story. It's only a draft, I'll touch it up and make it look better later, but it's meant to depict the waterfall at the arena's edge. (I'm trying to channel my inner Bob Ross with mixed results.)