IV: April: District Twelve.
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.
For nearly half of the countdown, Ravi believes himself to be alone.
When his eyes finally begin to adjust to the near impenetrable darkness, it doesn't get any better. The gloom comes around him like a cloak, stretching so far that he can't make out the top of the cavern above his head, nor the furthest corners. The only thing that is truly visible is the lone, flickering light a long, long way from his plate, down a snaking tunnel.
Well, and the girl beside him. A trembling, horrified little girl would be impossible to ignore in this situation.
It's the two of them, and a dead end-tunnel. A mine shaft. Just because Ravi's never been in one before doesn't mean he's dense enough not to recognize it.
Panic claws at his throat, but he refuses to let even a second of it show on his face. The girl, ten feet away, sucks in a huge breath. Ravi knows he can get out of this, but what of her?
What of Dulia?
There's no sign of his best friend. Ravi was prepared for some of this, but not the terrifying separation. Dulia is out there somewhere, surely alone just like he is save for a stranger by her side. And he has to find her.
He will find her. He told Aldon he would protect her, that they would get out of here together. The mere thought of letting go of that promise sits uncomfortably in his stomach, heavy like a stone.
First, he has to get out of here. Ravi looks to the girl at his left, who turns towards him with wide-eyes. "What's your name?"
Her mouth opens and closes a few times, gaping like a fish. "R-Rosemary."
"Right. Well, Rosemary, when the countdown finishes, I think you should get out of here. Go find your allies. You can go first."
His own set of fears, nestled in his stomach, calms somewhat when she seems to finally understand that Ravi is no threat. He's not about to kill a fourteen year old girl, not with his bare hands or otherwise. He refuses to be like his mother.
He can't help but wonder what's become of her, what he's done.
Most terrifying of all is that Ravi isn't sure he cares.
"Thank-you," Rosemary whispers. "Seriously, I mean it—"
"You don't have to thank me," he tells her. "Just be safe out there, alright?"
"You too."
They both mean it, too. Ravi doesn't wish for any sort of harm to come to this girl. If him and Dulia are to get out of here together, something must, but he can only hope that he's far, far away whenever it does. Rosemary deserves a quiet death, something painless. Not like anything his mother ever dished out.
Ravi almost misses when the countdown ends—there's no gong to announce it, no rush of movement or fanfare. Rosemary hesitates before she steps off her plate and into the dirt, casting a nervous glance his way. Before he can tell her anything else, she launches herself towards him.
When she entangles her arms around his middle, halfway hugging him to death, he feels every inch of her shake. "Thank-you," she whispers again, clinging tight to him for one last moment before she steps back.
He watches her race off, a bat out of hell. She passes beneath the light in the tunnel, bathed in garish yellow for a heartbeat, and then vanishes into the dark beyond.
Counting to sixty is no easy feat when Ravi is stuck on where Dulia is, what could be happening out there, but he forces himself to stay there and do it regardless. Let the others be the hunters preying on children in the dark, running after them like hounds. He won't do it.
At sixty-one, Ravi's feet find a home in the dirt. He steps calmly from the cavern and into the tunnel, so narrow that he can nearly touch both sides of it with his arms outstretched. There's no telling what's out there lingering in the darkness, what horror awaits him. Ravi's only certainty is that his best friend is out there, and he has to find her.
There's no other option.
Counting hours in the darkness proves to be an impossible task.
Is it morning? Night? Pietro has no idea how to tell. There's no way out of the labyrinth that the mine shafts create, no surface to discover.
It's not comforting that his eyes have adjusted entirely to the dark, after what feels like too many hours. He doesn't want to grow familiar to this environment to the point where it's more like home than anything far above it.
He hasn't seen hide nor hair of another human being since he took off from his pedestal; the boy that had been at his side had split the other way as soon as the tunnel did. Right now, his only friend is the wooden plank that he collected some time ago. When he allowed himself to rest some hours ago he had taken the time to peel away one side of it, splintering his nails in the process to sharpen the tip. It wasn't the best weapon, but it was better than being empty-handed.
This place was survivable. If you looked, you could find the smallest rations of food tucked into crevices in the wall, and enough water dripped down from the cavernous rooftops to ensure it wouldn't be a problem anytime soon. Only the temperatures have set him on edge—the cold so frigid it's icy one minute, and the next, in an adjacent tunnel, so blistering that he begins to sweat instantaneously.
But he's not dead yet. In Pietro's book, that's more of a win than it should be. Death has clung onto his family with rotting, plagued hands and never let go—whatever luck has kept him alive thus far is evidently still protecting him.
"Keep telling yourself that," he says under his breath. "Keep telling yourself that, bud."
Insanity is not a good look, and talking to yourself the way he is may have audiences thinking he's gone certifiably mad. If Ansel or Amaranth were here with him, though, he'd be talking. Amaranth told him two days ago that he talks more than anyone she's ever met before.
Neither of them are here right now, though. Possibly not here at all. With only two cannons, the odds that they're out there are high, but Pietro's not sure everyone else has the same luck he does.
So he forges on. Doesn't hesitate at bends in the tunnels, picks one when he comes to a fork or a branch-off without truly thinking about it. If he stops acting the way he always is, then he might as well dig a grave himself. So long as he avoided the metal tracks that line some of the tunnels, it wouldn't even be that difficult.
Somewhere far beyond him, a light buzzes and flickers. The cacophonous sound of wings fills the tunnels, bats that camouflage themselves into the ceiling above his head.
And ahead of him, footsteps.
For the first time, he pauses. The tunnel curves away, and the sound of someone's boots sticking in the vaguely wet dirt reaches his ears. Slap. Slap.
It won't be difficult. If they're still walking towards him so readily, they haven't heard him. If anything, this is the opportunity he's been waiting for—to do something other than walk around in what very well could be circles.
Pietro readies his makeshift weapon over his shoulder, preparing to swing. He'll take them down, first, and then stab them. Quick. Not necessarily clean, but it's not as if he's going to draw it out either. Opportunistic he may be, but Pietro isn't evil. If he wants out of here, wants something more than a meaningless life, then he has to.
So he might as well start now.
When the person rounds the bend to come before him, he nearly brings the bludgeon down on their head. They dive away at the last second with a wild shriek, and something in him falters before he can lunge forward to swing again. He recognizes that sound, oddly enough, the familiar lilt to it—
"Amaranth?" he asks, watching as she rights her willowy frame, hands held out towards him.
"Jesus, Pietro!" she snaps. "You almost took my fucking head off!"
"I didn't know it was you!" he yells back.
"You couldn't have checked?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't exactly think that was a good idea in the arena of death," he fires back. Amaranth bends forward, hands braced against her thighs as she inhales, letting the shock ease off. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah," she responds, her voice weakening in relief. "You didn't hit me."
Pietro backs away, even though there's no good reason to now. He's found one of his allies, somehow, and she clearly hasn't lost her spirit. She's got something secured in her belt, too, a narrow length of pipe. They're on the same wave-length, even if Amaranth wasn't exactly ready to fight.
"It's good to see you," he says. Amaranth stands tall once again, and this time a sharp grins comes across her face as she strides forward, knocking her knuckles into his shoulder.
"You too, asshole. No sign of Ansel?"
"None. If we found each-other, though…"
"We can find him," she finishes. "Maybe."
It's all a great big what if. With no faces of the dead, and no true sky to display them in, there's no telling who's still out there. Finding Amaranth was a miracle. How many people get two of them in such a short period of time?
The only thing Pietro truly knows is that they won't know until they try.
It doesn't seem possible that this many shadows can exist comfortably in one place.
Ravi's not afraid of darkness, not after how much of it he's seen in his own mother's eyes. At least with her, though, he knew he was safe. Not from her atrocities, but in her care. She would harm everyone else in the world, but not him.
This arena is not so forgiving. Rosemary may very well have been the only person down here that wouldn't have jumped at the opportunity to kill him.
The Capitol will make monsters of them all before this is over. There's no hiding for Twelve anymore.
He thinks he's gone deeper, somehow. Ravi can hardly see more than two or three feet in front of his face. The lights are gone. There's no rhyme or reason to explain why Dulia would have ventured even further into the labyrinth, but that doesn't mean he won't check. Until he's turned over every single stone, there's no reason to stop looking for her.
He can't help but fixate on all of her kind smiles, the gentleness in her eyes. How, on the train, she had encouraged him to tell the world about what his mother had done, all the while promising just a few seconds later that they would get back home, somehow, to Aldon and the District they had been helping along for years.
Ravi had little clue what spurned on her optimism—he may not have believed it, but he believed in her. What sort of friend would he be if he didn't?
There was no letting go of that. Even as Ravi pressed himself further through the ever-narrowing tunnel, it was all he could think of to keep himself focused. He had slept for a handful of times, wandered endlessly the rest. It had been too long.
No amount of thoughts in his head, though, could stop him from smelling it. A rank, putrid stench that seems to drift on the non-existence breeze, washing over him in a steady stream.
Ravi knows what a dead body smells like better than almost anything else.
He's sure most of the tributes down here with him would turn around if they had the good sense to recognize it, but he continues forward. There's nothing to fear from a corpse; the inherit terror of having one in your presence fades after months and months of caring for them goes by, loading them into cheap coffins or urns passed down through generations. He presses his shirt over his nose and mouth, stepping forward through the dirt as carefully as he can.
Still, he nearly steps on it. The body, that is.
It's an arm, outstretched, skin blotchy and discolored. He can smell the rot, the sickly-sweet stench of the flesh decomposing—the ground surrounding it is sticky underfoot, the sole of his boots sucked down when he tries to move.
It turns out that's for the best, as his eyes finally focus on the crudely woven twine bracelet just barely clinging onto the corpse's bloated skin. The pale green, the uneven charm dangling from one side.
Without thinking, he takes a step back. If he recognizes it, then he knows what it means.
But it can't.
Ravi lowers himself to the ground, clinging to the tunnel's walls so that his knees don't slam into the earth. He doesn't dare touch it. Not now. Instead he waits for his eyes to focus now that they're on the same level, willing something else to present itself.
What he sees before him, after a moment, is exactly what he expected. Dark hair plastered at the nape of her neck, eyes glassy and cast to the cavern's high ceiling. And the blood, so much of it that he can't quite make out where the wound is, at first, finally finding the bloody crater that's been dented into her skull, white fragments of skull scattered across the ground. By the state of her, she's been dead for some time. Days.
It's Dulia.
He blinks a few times. Each time he expects to see something different lying on the ground before him. Each time he expects himself to cry, or scream, but nothing happens the way he expects it to.
There's cold, all of a sudden. Ravi can't tell if he's been that way for some time now, or if his blood has turned to ice inside his veins.
"Dulia?" he asks, for no reason at all. As if he's going to get some sort of response.
His hands itch to reach out, to touch her, but Ravi can't make them move. Why is she still here? Does the Capitol care so little about them that they're leaving them down here to rot and fall to pieces? They deserve more than that—some type of ceremony, a funeral, a proper burial. The type of thing Ravi's given hundreds of people now in the past few years.
Why can't Dulia get that?
Ravi doesn't recognize the conscious decision to stand, but he's on his feet and moving before his brain catches up to the movement. It's gone on auto-pilot, chugging along so that his brain can work out the fuzzy details and try to piece them together. As if that was something humanly possible.
The tunnel threatens to cave in around him. His legs feel numb. They probably think he's heartless—his mother, like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the Capitol, and Aldon. God, fucking Aldon. His sister's dead and Ravi wasn't even there.
"Is someone there?" a voice calls, and he flinches. It's the first real reaction that has sprung forward in the last ten minutes, and even it doesn't feel genuine. There's no fear in him, only surprise as he stutters to a halt. Ahead, a light begins to bounce around the tunnel, cloaking two shadowy fingers beyond its reach. Ravi jolts again as the flashlight's beam cuts directly into his eyes, rendering him blind.
"He doesn't have a weapon," a voice says. "Or… or anything, I don't think."
"No," a smaller voice agrees. "Hey. Are you okay?"
Ravi thinks if he opens his mouth to speak, he might choke. As the spots fade from his vision, he's finally able to truly face the two newcomers—a lanky boy about his age, hair cut short, and a girl even smaller and slighter than Rosemary was, her blonde hair a bright shock.
She's the one holding the flashlight. She steps closer to him, no fear to be found in her stance. Not so much like Rosemary, it appears.
"What happened?" she asks. Perhaps Ravi's mask isn't as concrete as it appears. At least he doesn't have to answer—the girl's flashlight searches around him, and freezes when she finds the reasoning. The light stretches all the way to the tunnel's end.
Where Dulia is.
It doesn't take long for her eyes to fill with recognition. "Oh," she says softly.
Maybe she saw them on the stage together, when Dulia had gotten called up after him and squeezed his hand tight. Maybe she saw them huddled together on the train, or helping each-other out during training, or waiting anxiously before the interviews, Dulia's jittery leg bumping into his on every other beat. Maybe she saw them in the hundreds of times that everyone else did.
"Oh," she says again. "She was…"
"My friend," Ravi says plainly, emotion stripped from his voice. "My best friend."
There's nothing else for him to say.
"Do you think there's a surface?" Amaranth asks, somewhere behind him.
Pietro shrugs before realizing she probably can't see him. "Do you think we're ever going to find it?"
"If it even exists, no."
Optimistic. It's not as if he's thinking anything different. They've been trapped down here for what is definitely a handful of days; what chance is there, at this point, that a surface is out there somewhere? Unless they're the only two fools who haven't found it. Pietro's trying not to think about it too much.
The surface wouldn't be any better, even if it existed. Pietro knows all about how nasty Twelve is on the outside—there are many Dolokhov graves out there in too-full fields to prove it. His parents. Two of his younger siblings. Three of his elders. An unknown number of cousins and aunts and uncles and people he doesn't even recognize as family. In the end, the darkness of Twelve comes for them all.
How fitting that it's darkness still trying to claim them. Pietro just can't let that happen. There's more out there than his previously bleak existence, a light on the other side. He's going to find it.
"Hey, Ames," he calls. "I think there's water over here."
He can hear it, a louder and more steady gush than anything they've heard thus far. The only thing they've found so far to contain it is a horrifically dented metal container, but it's better than cupping his hands together to catch a few droplets. Pietro pushes himself up against the few wooden planks that block off the end of the mine tunnel, listening carefully. It's definitely somewhere just out of reach. If only he could…
"I'm gonna break this," he decides, reaching up his own sharpened weapon to begin beating at the planks.
Behind him, he hears a snort. "Have at it." Amaranth sounds no short of amused as he begins to work away the boards, tearing away the rusted and flimsy nails with little care. If she would deign to help it may go a little quicker, but apparently letting him get into things he has no business tearing apart is something she's quite happy with.
Board by board, the blockade comes tumbling down. When only three remain, Pietro thinks he sees something shift in the shadows, a mere flutter that has him almost reconsidering it as he kicks two more down.
But he doesn't.
The flutter turns into something bigger. Something obvious. "Oh," he says dumbly, before whatever it is sprints from the shadows and slams directly into him.
As he goes flying to the ground, Pietro recognizes a handful of things. It's a person, for one. A girl, stockier and heavier than he is. Blonde hair. Blood on her shirt. Knife in her hand. Where the fuck has she gotten a knife—
He's driven to the ground with the entirety of her weight crushing his chest, and Pietro nearly chokes. Definitely a Merch kid, this one. No way anyone still has this much power after a few days otherwise. The knife looks so dull in the lack of light, not even all that frightening as she levels it with his throat, preparing to cut him open ear to ear.
A silhouette rises above them. The girl on top of him shrieks as something swings down, colliding with the back of her head.
Right. Amaranth is still here.
Despite the lack of air in his lungs, Pietro drives a knee into the girl's gut, using the momentum to roll them so that he can flatten her into the dirt. Her cornflower eyes are dazed, blood seeping down her forehead. He pulls himself up a few inches, enough to gather the momentum, and drives his stake down into her chest.
She croaks something out before she goes still, a myriad of words that all jumble together and make no sense in the end. Pietro pries the knife from her grip before Amaranth yanks him up and away from her body, keeping one arm looped through his. In a matter of seconds, everything goes quiet once again. If there wasn't a corpse in front of him, Pietro would believe nothing ever happened at all.
"Next time, don't go poking around places you shouldn't be," Amaranth advises.
"You told me to."
That girl was waiting on the other side, more than likely watching him and waiting to catch him by surprise. Judging by the blood on her shirt, she's killed before—one of the three people in this place dead before her. She knew that neither of them had anything as impressive as a knife.
But he has one now.
Maybe it says something awful about how neither of them are all that upset. Amaranth sighs, the pipe hanging limply from her hand. Pietro was prepared for this all along. If the key to him getting out of here is leaving a few people in his wake, then so be it.
He's already survived more than his fair share of tragedies, and now he's survived something else.
Death is just going to have to try a bit harder if it wants him that badly.
Eira seems much less like a little girl now that he's spent some time with her.
She's doting on Ravi much like a mother would, evidently convinced that he needs one. It isn't exactly the most comforting situation, having a thirteen year old girl look after you, but it's better than being alone.
He doesn't remember them asking, or the moment he chose to go along with them. Ravi doesn't really think he had come back to earth until a few hours later, and by that time the three of them were far, far away from where Dulia's body was entombed. Sometimes Eira would hold his hand, or reach up to pat his back. All the while, Ravi couldn't shake the fact that this was the opposite of what should have happened, a role reversal that gnawed at his hungry gut.
Ravi was supposed to be the shoulder to lean on, the one to keep watch while Dulia slept. Now he can hardly tell which way is up, if they've walked in circles or made some sort of progress.
It's not for him to know. Eira hangs back with him while Robin forges on ahead with the flashlight. The other boy has something resembling a shiv tucked into his back pocket, and Eira's jacket is full of an assortment of snacks they keep stumbling upon—all in all, Ravi's never felt more useless. It's as if he's on the end of some sort of leash, dragged along by people who don't know him but feel obligated to keep him alive.
They started together, apparently. Weren't friends, had never spoken before, but they had made a pact to stick together until they found their respective allies.
Ravi didn't ask what had happened since then. It seemed obvious enough.
"There's someone up there," Robin says suddenly, and Ravi slams to a halt, Eira's hand tightening in his jacket sleeve. "Hey!"
There's no telling him to pipe down now. This is exactly what they did with him; there's no reason it has to be different now.
Except for the fact that there's every reason.
Ravi isn't able to get a good look at the approaching figure until they're standing nearly nose-to-nose with Robin, taller and much more menacing than his younger ally. All Ravi can be grateful for is that he hasn't attacked them—hammer tucked into his belt or not, he hasn't yet reached for it.
Something about him looks familiar, but Ravi can't quite place it. The itch in his brain is just persistent enough to keep him thinking about it, though he can't tear his full attention away from the scene in front of him.
"Are you alone?" Robin asks. "You can stay with us, if you want."
He doesn't move, at first, eyes locked with Robin's. When he finally looks beyond, allowing his gaze to fixate more carefully on Ravi and Eira, something in him noticeably shifts. Ravi can't even be sure that the others notice it, but he does.
"You're Morana Fusain's kid, aren't you?" the boy asks, head cocked to the side. Ravi hesitates before he nods, watching the boy's feet shift restlessly.
He's already announced it to the world—the only reason the boy is asking is so he can confirm it.
There's really one one reason he'd do such a thing.
"We dropped my sister off at your place, last year," the boy explains. "She had the flu. Your mother said it was bad, but she said she could fix her, and then she died two days later."
And just like that, he remembers. Somehow, even in the darkness, a light goes off. The girl had been no more than five or six, all skin and bones and scraggly hair. The coffin Ravi had eventually put her in had been pathetically light, and only two people had come to collect her. A grieving father, eyes wet with unshed tears, and a stoic elder brother.
The boy standing before him now. Gideon.
Ravi can't even remember her name, but he remembers cutting her open. She hadn't been the pinnacle of health, malnourished and struggling, but she shouldn't have died. Instead, while his mother was sleeping, he had discovered the crushed, pulpy remnants of two dozen belladonna berries in the girl's stomach. She had been the first he went investigating into, but she had been far from the last.
Ravi had admitted to the world the monstrous acts his mother had committed, and now Gideon knew the truth.
"Robin," he manages, a strangled warning, before Gideon rips the hammer free from his belt and strikes. Ravi isn't sure if his ally's flying dive manages to avoid the swing or not, but it doesn't seem to matter—Gideon doesn't want to kill Robin.
Gideon wants to kill him.
He shoves Eira to the side, who stumbles away with a squeak as Gideon lunges at him, the hammer brandished over his head. It glances off his arm instead of connecting with his shoulder as he backpedals, the emptiness of his hands all the more alarming. What would he do, even if he had something? It's not like Ravi wants to kill him—he doesn't want to kill anyone.
The only other option, then, is to die.
His body is moving, avoiding the blows that continue to rain down towards him, but his brain hasn't decided the true course of action. There can't be one. Nothing is ever so simple as just living or dying. Hasn't his mother proved that best of all?
If he gets a hold of the hammer, then Gideon will have no choice but to back off. Weaponless, one against three, he won't chance it. He'll leave, just as he should.
No one has to die.
Ravi stops backing away, letting Gideon swing once again before he lunges forward, bringing both hands forward to shove him hard in the chest. The other boy stumbles back, feet slipping along the dirt and tracks pressed into them, and Ravi drives his shoulder forward to push him back once again. Gideon's legs seem to slip out from under him, arms windmilling frantically, just before he tips back and slams back into the tunnel wall with an echoing thud. That's bad enough on its own, that simple act of violence, but Ravi watches in sickening slow motion as Gideon's head cracks back into one of the planks lining the wall, the resounding crack like a bullet that shoots directly through his chest.
He slumps to the ground, motionless. Before he can so much as move, Eira dives forward, snatching the hammer from Gideon's now-limp fingers. It feels like it's finished. It should have been.
But Gideon doesn't get back up. If Ravi strains, he thinks he can hear his wheezing breath, see his lips part in desperation, his fingers twitching feebly—
And a cannon fires.
Try as he may, Pietro is unable to ignore Amaranth shaking him so hard it feels as if the ground is trembling.
He grumbles something, turning his face far into his jacket as a makeshift pillow. Almost immediately, she shushes him.
Embarrassingly enough, it takes him a second to realize that Amaranth has released him. Everything is still quaking.
Pietro lifts his head, blinking the sleep from his eyes. Amaranth is risen into a crouch, their knife clutched in her hand. Sure enough, the ground beneath him quivers, just faintly enough to be noticeable. He can't shove his arms back in his jacket quick enough, gathering his wooden spike and Amaranth's pipe before he leaps up, staring down into the depths of the tunnel.
Somehow, it almost seems to be growing darker. Like the shadows are lengthening and changing shape, moved by some invisible force.
"Should we—"
"Go," Amaranth finishes. "Go now."
He's already running by the time she shoves him in the back, just for good measure. There's no telling what's behind them, and curious as he is Pietro isn't in the mood to find out by being killed by it. He's lost count of how many deaths there have been, but it's still not many. Not enough.
Of course the Capitol is getting bored.
No matter how fast he moves, Amaranth close by his side, it only seems to come faster. Even when he glances back, none of it makes sense. It's as if everything possibly down here is moving at once, rushing towards them with such speed and ferocity that the very tunnels around them are shaking.
He glances back, again, and turns just in time to spot the next intersection of tunnels.
Well, and the pair of tributes standing in the middle of it.
Pietro skids to a halt, grappling at the tunnel's walls to stop himself. Amaranth slams so hard into his back she nearly knocks them to the ground, fingers desperately clinging to his jacket. The tributes, to their credit, seem fixated not by them, but by what lingers beyond.
He turns. The cloud descends, blacker than the night. He hears screeching, the beating of a thousand pairs of wings—
It's definitely not a cloud.
"Truce!" Amaranth shouts. One second she's beside him, and the next she's gone. The colony of bats swallows them whole, each cry that emerges from their mouths only serving to deafen them further. Claws tear through his jacket, rip into his skin. Pietro feels blood begin to run down his arms as he swings out blindly—he can barely get his arms up to cut through them, the pipe finding a home against more bodies than he can possibly count.
Stinging pain lights up across his entire body. He closes his eyes as they flap closer; he's half-blind from their proximity anyway. Their leathery wings beat against his face, legs twisting into his hair. Pietro refuses to allow his arms to rest, beating his way through them like they'll never end.
For all he knows, they never will.
Finally, his back hits something solid. Must be one of the walls. He stays there, if only because at least they can't swarm him from all angles. Something rips across his temple. Blood drips hot into his eyes.
The next time he swings, his arm falters and falls. Fiery agony rips through his neck as something fastens in his skin—teeth, he realizes, a small, furry body pressed up against his neck and clinging on for dear life. At the same time, several more dive for his legs. Before he can so much as blink once more, he's on the ground.
It's at his throat. If it gets lucky, it's going to kill him.
Pietro looks up, and sees the ceiling. The swarm is clearing. Maybe the humans down here are actually winning.
As always, he's the lucky one.
Pietro doesn't so much as flinch when he sees a figure looming above him. Their leg comes down, foot descending towards his face, and he jerks his head away as their boot connects solidly with the bat whose teeth are still snagged in his throat, squashing it to the ground. It lets out a pathetic little squeak before Pietro, too, rolls over and smacks it with his pipe for good measure.
The boy, the new one, continues to kick at the bats that are still clinging to his legs. Pietro, for his part, lays there and lets the boy do it—he continues thrusting the pipe out every time one still in the air gets close, quickly knocking them from flight. Some ten feet away, Amaranth and the girl are back-to-back, still swiping warily at the last few survivors, who seem to take off as quickly as they arrive.
The ground is no longer shaking.
"Shit," he manages, letting his head thud to the ground. Two thin streams of blood trickle down his throat, pooling sticky at his shoulder. Not enough to kill him.
Pietro would feel much better about it if everything didn't hurt.
"You okay down there?" Amaranth asks, casting him a wary look. Pietro takes the hand the boy offers down to him, letting himself be yanked to his unsteady feet.
The other girl, too, looks just as cautious as Amaranth does. "Are we still on a truce?"
She helped Amaranth. For all he knows, this boy just saved his life. Regardless of the kind, there's an opportunity in this. You'd have to be dumb not to see it.
"I'd say so," Pietro offers. He gives the other boy's hand a half-hearted shake. "Pietro."
"Warren. That's Kenna."
"Amaranth." She raises a tired arm into the air, waving at no one in particular. If anything, she's bidding a not so kind farewell to the creatures that just tried to murder a few unsuspecting kids. All four of them look like they've been put through hell in just a matter of minutes.
Hell's apparently better, though, when you've got a few others to keep you company in it.
Robin died in the night.
Ravi, in the midst of his shock and horror and the sudden, overwhelming feeling of grief, hadn't even noticed that Robin was injured. Not until Eira had moved over towards him, hands reaching out to where part of his chest wasn't quite right anymore.
The hammer had hit him. Right where it counted.
That was what had torn him away from the sight of Gideon's body, even if there was nothing he could do about it. Ravi could heal anyone, normally. Not here. Not that.
When he died, it had been silent. Ravi had tried digging in the tunnel, but couldn't get more than a few inches before the ground became impossible to break through. Him and Eira had been forced to leave him there, and not ten minutes later she had started sobbing. Since then, she hadn't let go of his hand.
He still couldn't cry. Not for Dulia, not for Gideon, not for Robin. There had to be something wrong with him.
He knew what Aldon would say—you see death all the time, man. You see things no one should have to. The process of desensitization was a long and painful one, but like hell was it efficient. Not that anything Aldon has said to him has any merit, now, when Aldon more than likely hates him. The only person Ravi has ever allowed himself to care about in that capacity, and he was as gone as Dulia was.
Ravi couldn't be there with her. He couldn't do things right with Gideon. He couldn't even be so merciful as to put Robin out of his misery; the shiv felt like a stone in his pocket, threatening to drag him down.
Why had he bothered saying anything in his interview about his mother, anyway? For a while, it had all seemed like the cycle of life. A successful business, a mother demanding a raise in prices so they could put food on the table. It had never sat right with Ravi, making people fork out all that money just to bury their loved ones, but it had kept them alive.
His mother had never mourned the less profitable loss of the apothecary—when people came knocking, she would sell them whatever medicine and brews they asked of her, all with the sweet, weary smiler of a healer. And when they weren't knocking, she was killing them. Feeding them poison, letting them die so that Ravi could prepare their bodies for burial.
You write the kindest things, sweetheart. You always know what to say.
He knew what to say to a grieving family, over a corpse. Once he knew his mother was a murderer, he had no more words.
Ravi hadn't even been angry when he discovered her treachery; he wasn't an angry person. He had chosen to avoid her, instead, making small-talk only when he had to and eating meals in another room so that he wouldn't have to look at her. The only time he had been properly, rightfully furious was when he got up on that stage. She's killing people, y'know? he had said. She's a fucking psychopath.
He doesn't know what went wrong, if anything even did. Perhaps his mother was always like this. He never had a father to prove what a parent was actually like, as much as he longed for one.
She was evil—the only evil he knew. A deranged, immoral lunatic who cared not about him or the people around her, but only herself.
But Ravi had killed now, too. He had murdered Gideon, and he was still walking and breathing and thinking about it.
How could he call her any such thing, when he was now the same?
Pietro can't lie—it's more than pleasant to have someone to talk to other than Amaranth.
That's not the only reason he saw it fitting to keep the others around, though. There's opportunity to be found in everything. Strength in numbers. A fragile trust that makes things easier in the long run.
And talking. Talking is a plus, too.
Amaranth and him still have a pact. With Ansel still lost, dead for all they know, it seems simple. The two of them can go to the end; the two of them can win. Warren and Kenna, for all their usefulness, will have to go at some point. What's that saying, though? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?
Well, he's got an enemy really close right now, and Pietro thinks a certain end is approaching.
They made a weak attempt at a camp about a half mile back through the tunnels, in a narrow cavern just big enough to house them all. The girls took off one way, towards the east, and him and Warren took the west. After the bats, and the jagged wounds Pietro had acquired in his neck, no one was eager to be ambushed again so soon. It made sense to scope things out and make sure they were properly alone before they settled down.
He can't quite trust Warren at his back, silent and looming as he is. Pietro has gotten much too comfortable with Amaranth to trust anyone else like that. Warren says something behind him, hardly audible, and Pietro forces himself not to jump away, put more distance between them.
"Sorry?" he asks.
"You feel that?" Warren questions again. "The bats, you think?"
Pietro stops, for real this time, and focuses. The tunnel is shaking again, but it's not quite like last time. For one, it's more subtle. Fragments of earth and rock sprinkle down over them from the ceiling, falling like a gentle rain. He can't imagine that anything breaking apart like that is a good sign.
"Let's get back to the girls," Warren urges quietly. While Pietro is inclined to do just that, he doesn't find himself hurrying away like he should.
He knows things are about to fall apart, but surely not everything. Not like this.
"Pietro," Warren says louder, just as a chunk of the tunnel's roof splinters and breaks off, crashing to the ground before him. This is nothing like the bats, in fact—the tunnel collapsing in on itself sounds akin to a thunderstorm, his hearing reduced to a frantic cacophony of nothing as he feels Warren yank him back.
Pietro doesn't need to be told again before he gets moving.
He's not even halfway back up the sloping tunnel when he hears a cannon. Pietro can still hear Warren panting behind him, so he can only assume the arena isn't just falling down on them. He pushes himself faster, arms pumping back and forth as he makes note of each bend he rounds, the corners they turned to get here.
With each step, he knows that Warren is getting further behind. He's bigger. Slower. Warren is exactly the type of person who will kill him and do it quite easily, once they reach the end.
It's like Pietro said—everything's an opportunity. If it was Amaranth, perhaps he would think differently.
But this is every man for himself.
There's another cannon, and the resounding boom tears the ceiling apart even further. This time, Pietro doesn't bother turning around. By the time he catches sight of the cavern and the girls waiting for him, there's a third. He nearly trips over his own feet as he launches himself forward into the relative safety of the hollow cave.
Pietro is still sprawled out on the ground as the rest of the mine-shaft gives way into nothingness. He desperately forces air back into his lungs as he rolls onto his back, Amaranth staring down at him.
It's not her face that truly catches his attention. It's Kenna, instead, gazing at where the tunnel's entrance had just been, blocked off and reduced to merely rubble. There is no opportunity for horror to bleed into her eyes; it's already there.
He finally looks up, but Pietro already knows the truth.
Warren is gone.
Eira keeping tucked close to his side is the only thing keeping Ravi's head safely on his shoulders.
Caring for people, to him, is second nature. When they had first met, she had been so bubbly and positive that the darkness didn't matter; it was horrific to watch those innocent, child-like qualities within her disappear the longer they carried on.
If he didn't have her, someone he met only days ago, Ravi isn't sure where he'd be.
If he'd be anywhere at all.
With so much of the mine-shafts having collapsed in the last few days, the rest of his concentration and focus is devoted to making sure they're moving safely. It hasn't been easy to keep such meticulous track over which ways they've traveled, but it's better than getting stuck or running into yet another dead end. Even when it appears that they've lost their way, they can always find something—even if that something happens to be the smallest crevice at the very top of a debris pile, just big enough to squeeze through to the other side.
They've found one now, too. Ravi stays at Eira's back as she begins to scramble up the pile, her hands blackened from the dirt and coal dust alike. Each time she disappears through a hole that leads to the other side, Ravi's heart drops. It stays in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar place until she calls out to him, ready to grasp his hands as he shimmies through himself.
No such thing happens this time. Eira pauses mid-slither, her feet still sticking out directly in his face. "Ravi?" she questions softly, as if imagining him long gone. "There's someone… there's someone over here."
He lays a hand over her ankle, ready to yank her back down no matter how unceremoniously it may be, but there's no object panic in Eira's voice. No fear, no worry. If anything she just sounds… sad. Given that's not a far leap from how she's sounded since they lost Robin, but she's been trying otherwise.
If they're not a threat, it can only be a handful of other things. None of them are good.
"Keep going," he urges quietly. "And stay at the top. I'll be right behind you."
Eira finishes wiggling through with much less momentum than before, and Ravi puts on his best brave face as he squeezes through after her, the suffocating press of the ceiling against his back and the rubble against his chest making him grimace as he pulls himself out beside her. Her finger trembles as she points towards the bottom of the pile. There, half-buried beneath great chunks of rock and dirt, is a narrow little body, nothing more than the shoulders and head exposed. The boy is breathing, but doing little more. His breath comes out in even more of a wheezing rasp than Robin's had.
She won't listen if he tells her to stay put, now, so Ravi puts himself first on the path down, finding careful handholds until his feet are back on solid ground. The boy's battered and bloodied body shows no signs of movement as Ravi crouches down by his side. Judging by the state of him he's been unconscious for quite some time, if he was ever properly awake to begin with once the roof collapsed overtop of him.
How unlucky can one human being get, to lie waiting to die when a few more feet to the left would have put them out of their misery in mere seconds?
"He's in my history class," Eira whispers. "His name's Colm."
He's thirteen. Hardly a boy, lying half-dead in a night-like tunnel with no one in the world to comfort him. It's Eira that finally steps forward to be that person, rounding his other side. She takes Colm's hand in hers, squeezing it tight between both of her own.
When she looks up at him, her eyes are glassy with unshed tears. "Ravi…"
"I know," he says quickly, quietly as if Colm can hear him. "I know."
He has the hammer—Gideon's hammer, the one he couldn't bear to use now to inflict such brutality on an innocent boy. His hand grips unsteadily at the shiv instead, examining the point. Robin never did anything with it; how is Ravi even to know that it'll work the way he intends to?
He's cut open plenty of bodies before, but never like this.
His face shows no evidence of fright as he lowers the shiv to Colm's neck, but his hand trembles so hard he can barely hold it there, digging into the tender flesh. When it finally gives way, blood rushing forward over Colm's ghostly skin, Eira squeezes her eyes shut. Ravi forces the blade in deeper, cutting a jagged line across his throat. If he's doing this, he has to be sure. He can't leave Colm here to suffer anymore than he already is.
The worst part is, the boy doesn't so much as twitch. He's lost to another land, somewhere much more peaceful. He was never aware that Ravi or Eira were here, none the wiser to his approaching death. The last thing he likely saw was the tunnel collapsing around him before he never opened his eyes again.
He can't force words out, but that's the moment Ravi makes a pact with himself. If he gets out of here, somehow, he'll find them. He will give every single one of these kids the goodbye they deserve, the sendoff that nobody else will bother looking for. Whether he can stand tall or not, he will let them go peacefully.
It's the kindest thing he can do now, no matter if he hates himself or not.
If Pietro had his choice, he much rather would have been awoken once again by Amaranth's hands.
Instead, it's to her agonized screams.
He rolls, the dirt pressing into his arms and scratching incessantly along the scabbed over wounds that line his skin, fumbling blindly for anything. His vision is so hazy that he can only make out the vaguest brown-gray blur as he blinks frantically, trying to make sense of anything around him.
Kenna shouts something, and he moves away from it instinctively. There's no way for her to know that he left Warren behind so intentionally, but chancing it is not something he's particularly keen on.
Finally, Pietro finds the knife. He blinks yet again, regaining enough vision to see that there are three figures just before him instead of two—Kenna, halfway to her feet, and two entangled figures ten feet out. He can make out Amaranth's dark skin, but not who the stranger is.
Pietro hears a punched out, strangled gasp. He's tripping over himself in his haste to get to them, unable to tell who's been wounded or what weapons they're holding on one another.
Just as he gets to them, Amaranth staggers back. She slams into his chest, arms flailing as she tries and fails to regain her balance. Before he has a chance to steady her, Amaranth's legs give way. Pietro is dragged down to the ground along with her, dead weight trapped in his arms.
There's a knife in her chest, just beneath the breastbone. It's almost identical to the one still in his hand.
When he looks up, the unfamiliar girl is retreating. Kenna isn't far off her heels, shouting like a banshee. Not so much willing to fight as she is simply chasing her off. Within the relative safe circle of his arms, Amaranth lets out an ugly gasp, fingers grasping feebly at the knife's hilt.
"Shit, don't move," he manages. Carefully, inch by inch, he lets her free from his grasp, propping her gently against the tunnel wall to get a good look. It's bleeding, of course, but not that much—it doesn't mean he has many options, though. Pietro knows if he removes the knife, she'll bleed out. What is he to do otherwise, though? Leave it there?
She won't make it like that.
"Amaranth," he says quietly, only to be immediately shushed. Her mouth twists into a nasty grimace, a bubbling laugh pouring out from her lips.
"Didn't expect to go like this," she wheezes.
"You're not."
"Okay, idiot. Keep telling yourself that."
He presses his hands tight around the knife, the blood sticky against his palms. "I didn't even see her coming," Amaranth says. "I didn't hear her."
"It's alright."
"Is it?" She laughs again. "Fuck. Maybe you shouldn't have left Warren behind. Could've been him on watch instead."
Pietro can only blink. "I… I didn't."
"Okay," Amaranth agrees, but the simple word brings forth no indication that she really believes him. What use is there now in him lying to her, when she's spent so much time with him? "Listen to me, hey? Don't trust her either, when she gets back. She's probably thinking the same thing. You think about yourself. Get the fuck out of here."
"Ames—"
Instead of shushing him, this time, she reaches forward a hand to press it over his mouth. Each movement looks pained as she slumps back against the wall, allowing her eyes to slip shut. Even as she weakens, Pietro wishes she could deny it. Blood be damned, whatever's happening on the inside is nothing Pietro can control.
Kenna's footsteps are returning rapidly, but he refuses to look up. Watching the person he thought he was going to get out of here with slip away in such a lackluster, quiet fashion was not what he envisioned for his life. There's more out there, he knows. There's always been more.
But she's right. He has to think about himself. Evidently, there's no one else left to think about.
Amaranth is gone, and he has to do what she says.
Ravi's beginning to wonder if somehow he's already dead.
There's no clear-cut reasoning. Less, even, of a clear-cut explanation as to why he would wonder such a thing.
He's not sure he believes in an afterlife—despair enshrouds the masses of Twelve until they are no longer capable of thinking of a place better than the one they currently live. If there is a place after death, though, Ravi thinks it might look just like this. Dark and cold, no end in sight. Just wandering eternally in the darkness.
"D'you hear that?" Eira murmurs, hand gripped tight in his. Ravi hears nothing except the defeated thudding of his own heart, his boots scuffing in the dirt.
Until Eira steps away from him, that is, pulling her hand from his grasp. Ravi straightens himself, watching her shuffle a few paces down the tunnel until he can see nothing but the halo-like glow of her pale hair.
He can hear it, too, the only thing Eira could be referring to. A gentle melody, a song that drifts towards them and echoes off the walls, magnifying until it sounds like a hundred voices all at once. There are no words; only the call.
"Canaries?" he asks. Ravi has heard them before, of course—everyone growing up in Twelve has. He's seen the cages full of them carried to the quarries, loading up into the elevators to be shipped down to die.
A canary's song means no other thing but a warning. With no obvious danger presenting itself in the wake of the bird's calls, Ravi is led to believe only one thing.
They herald an end. They always have. He hasn't the faintest clue how many people are still down here beyond Eira and himself, but if their song is to be believed, the end cannot be far off.
A flash of gold cuts across his vision, passing between them to grip at the tunnel wall. The canary shakes out it's bright wings, cocking its head at them before it once again lets out it's eerie song. With one comes the rest. Within the minute it's joined by what seems like several hundred more until Ravi is deafened by it, finally unable to even hear his own heartbeat.
He holds out his arm, reaching forward for Eira once again, and the canary takes flight. It swoops down to grip at his forearm, a melody still trilling forth from its beak. There's no active danger. No poison in the air.
The poison may very well be inside of him.
"We should keep moving," he says, loud enough for Eira to hear him over the cacophony. He shakes his arm and the canary takes off with a cheerful warble, disappearing into the blackness the opposite direction holds. Back to it's flock, Ravi can only assume.
Their song does not dissipate. It's all he can hear, all he can focus on.
If somehow he's not already dead, hasn't been poisoned on the inside, something else will happen soon enough.
Insanity will likely take him before anything else does.
To be honest, Pietro really didn't think he had anything against birds.
He really has something against them right now, though.
They just won't fucking stop. It doesn't matter what time of day it is on the surface—it's all day, all night. It's incessant. Pietro thought he wouldn't be able to rest without Amaranth there to watch his back, but it turns out the real reason was the damn canaries.
His ears are in a permanent state of ringing; in the wake of his hearing being robbed, you'd think the rest of senses would only be heightened. Each trill seems to drive so deep into his brain, though, that his nerves are practically on fire, each one rubbed raw to the point where seeing, feeling, even taste doesn't matter.
The worst part is, you hardly see them now. A golden-feathered bird there, a flash of yellow in the darkness, but never an entire collection of them. For all they know, they're playing the sounds from the stupid walls, and the creatures themselves are just a part of the show.
That's what the Capitol is good at, after all.
He wishes Kenna would just go. They have no attachment to one another, no reason to be allies. It was a relationship of convenience, and their partners are gone. In fact, when Kenna had returned to the sight of Amaranth's lifeless body, something in the younger girl's eyes had almost been relieved.
He couldn't blame her. He felt the same solace with the thought of Warren being gone. The fact of the matter was, you couldn't be truly safe when the people around you were so strong you might never see your own death coming. Warren was one of those people—Amaranth, too. It made no sense that Pietro stood here instead; he could only chalk it down to the simple fact that for some insane reason, death didn't want him.
Death was his only friend now. A hooded figure, hiding in the shadows. Not Kenna or the stupid birds or anyone else in this arena.
And certainly not the bats.
Pietro isn't sure what gives their arrival away this time. Maybe the tunnel does shake, but he doesn't really feel it like he did once before. There's no urgency in him to turn tail and run—if they followed last time, there's nothing to suggest they won't do it again.
He made a decision, then, to keep Warren and Kenna around because the benefits were stronger than the drawbacks. Though he had little control in the rest of his life, Pietro could have control over how far they made it. He had refused to save Warren. Kenna was trailing on dangerously thin ice behind him.
These creatures weren't solely monsters of the night, searching for blood in whichever vessels they could find. They were Pietro's catalysts, his only signal that a decision had to be made.
He sees them coming. They swell in another giant mass ahead, plunging them into darkness.
Instead of raising his arms or a weapon to strike, Pietro dives to the ground.
As they rain down over-top him, he does not hear Kenna scream. He knows she does, though. Any sensible person would. He wonders how loud she'll scream when she realizes he's not coming to save her, not like Warren saved him. There's no time for truces anymore.
Pietro presses himself tight to the dirt and waits for the swarm to pass before he begins to drag himself forward, elbows digging in, knees wiggling forward. The birds never stop singing. Mud grazes along his cheek as he pulls himself along, refusing to look into the eyes of the death sentence that standing will bring.
He justifies it by telling himself that he hasn't killed her—there's been no cannon. If Kenna dies, there's no one to hold accountable but herself. A stronger, braver person could fight their way out of the swarm, if they were determined enough. It's the same with Warren. If you run a little bit faster, fight just a bit harder, you survive. That's the way the world works.
At least, that's how Pietro's always had.
The creatures do not follow. Pietro cranes his head back, still in motion, to find the throng dissipating. No human remains standing in their center, but he sees blood on the tunnel walls, hardly visible. When a few of the stragglers go swooping overhead, he swears he feels some of it drop hot across his back, staining through his jacket.
The cannon takes too long to fire. Longer than anyone really deserves.
But it's like Pietro said—what attachment did he have, really?
At the rate things are going, Ravi won't have a head left to lose before someone finds them.
There's no explanation as to how a song can be so sinister. A simple, repeated pattern that echoes up and down the mine-shafts, that wraps around them in a poor attempt at comfort. To any of the miners back home, perhaps it would be. If they were lucky, it would be enough warning to get them out. In their wake, the broken corpse of a poisoned bird, forgotten about for eternity.
He already feels like one of those corpses. Wings shattered. Calls silenced.
Walking and breathing has never felt quite this lackluster.
Eira doesn't seem to think there are many people left; Ravi isn't sure if that anecdote is supposed to bring him some sort of peace. If they really are close to the end, then it almost certainly means he's going to have to fight—he doesn't want to fight. When has he ever, and how is he supposed to make a thirteen year old girl do it for him in his stead?
Until they catch sight of another soul, though, he's trying not to think about it. Key word being try. He paces the length of tunnel past where Eira sleeps, hands twisting around themselves, legs jittering anxiously whenever he stops. Every so often, a canary swoops past him, singing that same song.
He doesn't want to fight, but if he could catch hold of one of them between his hands and wring its little neck, he wouldn't mind one bit.
Ravi doesn't think he'll ever quite know what gives it away. He's moving. If he looks, he can see her lying there, curled up with her head pillowed on Ravi's jacket. A soothing sight, if nothing else. It's not as if he's getting any sleep.
He can't hear a damn thing. Can't see more than ten feet in any direction. When something, someone, emerges from the darkness just behind him, Ravi isn't any the wiser to it. There's something like a shift in the air, truth to the statement that you can feel someone watching you from behind, eyes on the back of your skull.
But he never hears it. Ravi turns, about to pace back, to the sight of someone standing behind him, towering over Eira's sleeping form.
Eira's headless form.
The worst thing about it all is that he's still holding onto her, fingers tangled in strands of her hair as he lets her head dangle from his grasp, long strips of sinew and muscle gushing blood onto the ground. There's a sword in his other hand, long and narrow and rippling with carmine, the thickness of it gathering at the very edge before it wavers off.
When he drops Eira's head, he doesn't even hear the heavy thud as it collides with the ground.
She never even screamed.
Would Ravi have heard it, if she had?
It's not adrenaline that forces him to move, that makes him turn once again. There's only fear in him now as his legs begin working, pushing him into a run at a pace that makes pain rake at his lungs, knees threatening to knock together and send him to the ground. He can still feel those eyes following him, giving chase. Why wouldn't he? If he had no qualms about killing a sleeping little girl, what issue is he going to have in killing Ravi?
He deserves to die. For not protecting Dulia or Robin or Eira or the dozens of people that fell victim to his mother back home.
Ravi isn't good for anything, really.
Abruptly, the ground drops out from beneath him. Or maybe it was never there at all. Ravi's heart plummets down into his stomach as he's greeted, suddenly, with empty air. A slope too steep to be seen, or a precipice off into nothing. He can't be quite sure. He tumbles head over heels, feet and arms and head skimming the dirt for only heartbeats at a time before finally, finally, he stops. Something cracks in his arm. Pain explodes at his temples. Just like it had when he fell in the first place, the scream that wanted to emerge from his throat remains trapped.
But for a moment, it's silent. There's no boy coming after him, no sword descending to cut off his head. Ravi thinks he may have fallen into a type of hell, a place so deep that no one would dare follow, not even the birds.
He hasn't even caught his breath when the singing starts up again. The chorus emerges from the darkness, striking into him like individual little lightning bolts. She's gone. They're all gone. He can't possibly do this, or want to, not when he's going to go fucking insane first—
Ravi's never allowed himself to do such a thing before, but he does now.
He presses his face into the ground and screams.
Pietro found two corpses an hour ago.
Two hours? Three? For all he knows it's been about fifteen minutes. Time is a non-existent entity in a place like this.
What he knows is that he heard a cannon what feels like a day or two ago, and then a break. A few hours ago, two more. He can only suspect they belonged to the two bodies he found—killed each-other, by the looks of it. A sword was stuck in the girl's gut, but it looks as if she had beat the boy's head to a bloody pulp before she succumbed to it.
Pietro didn't know how many people were left. More than two.
Three? Four? More than that?
He just wanted it to be over.
He can feel things behind him, though—the bats, if he were to bet, or perhaps the canaries are following him too. Pietro lets them push him through the tunnels, turning in directions that seem quieter as more and more begin to congregate behind him, a massive herd that must be taking him somewhere.
He arrives, finally, at a cavern that seems nearly identical to the one he started in. And just like that time, too, there's another person waiting there with him. A girl, younger than him by the looks of it, curly hair tangled and wild and caked with mud. Her eyes are huge as she takes him in, drawing further attention to the bloody welt down her left cheek
It can't be just the two of them, but Pietro knows what the obvious move is. Cross over there. Kill her. By the looks of her, she's not going to be any use in a fight. Even if there's a few others left out there, he'll be better off on his own than bogged down by her.
The mere insinuation feels evil, but Pietro knows he's not. Just… realistic.
Practical.
Before he can so much as raise his foot, boots send the dirt scattering, a few stray pebbles rolling. Pietro jumps away before the newcomer behind him can get any sort of shot in, backing up until he's put himself square between them. This one looks like he could be more of a threat, even though he's bruised to hell and cradling one of his arms to his chest, wincing with every sudden movement.
They wait. No one speaks. It feels like ages, every second of which is spent with Pietro's skin crawling, heart threatening to break through from his chest. The other boy's hands shake around the makeshift knife he has trapped in his pocket, but he doesn't pull it free.
"Is this it?" Pietro asks. He laughs for good measure, hoping to disguise the nervous tremble to his voice. "Not exactly the field I was expecting but hey, that's good, right?"
He doesn't think either of his fellow competitors agree. The girl still looks terrified. The boy is fixated on her, his good arm finally reaching out towards her despite their distance. There's something worryingly familiar in the gesture, the easiness to the boy's face despite how stark he is, eyes unreadable.
"Rosemary, right?" he asks. "You can… you can come over here."
They know each-other. Shit. That's the first thing Pietro takes in. The second is the boy's voice, so jarring and recognizable that it brings him back to that exact moment—what had it been? How many years ago now?
It was wrong of him not to know.
But this is the boy who had stood behind the podium, the same podium, three days apart when Pietro's parents had died. He had said such kind things, like he knew them intimately, or perhaps wished he had. The speech was practiced, of course, but in Twelve it was pathetically easy to tell who was genuine and who was not. This boy had been. When his family was busy living and dying six days out of seven, fragmenting and falling apart, this boy had given him something to listen to.
He had been smaller then. They both had, really. Pietro's not sure if he ever even learned his name, not then and not in the days preluding the Games.
"You," he manages. "You're the undertaker."
The boy raises his eyes to Pietro. Rosemary halts in her tracks, having only moved a few feet from her original spot, arms wrapped tight around her ribs.
Pietro knows he's right. He also knows that it's fucked to remember more of the person that spoke at his parents meager funeral than his actual parents. He doesn't remember what they were dressed in, what flowers were put on their graves. He doesn't know if anyone even put flowers on their graves.
So is the life of a Twelve.
He was nervous before, but not now. The sword that he pulled from that girl's body feels light as a feather, merely an extension of his arm.
There's no time for a proper reaction when he lunges forward. If no one else is coming, this is it. The boy shouts, but it's not nearly quick enough; Pietro made sure of that.
The undertaker can live. She cannot.
Pietro plunges the sword through her chest, the narrow blade quivering like a reed in the wind. She gasps, quivering hands reaching up to grasp at the blade where it meets her skin. Pietro lets the weapon go with her when she tumbles backward, hitting the ground with a thud that pales in comparison to all the rest.
It's then that Pietro realizes how clearly he heard it. How clearly he heard all of it.
The birds have stopped, so that the announcement can ring throughout all the tunnels.
It's boom makes the walls tremble and shake. The voice sounds as alien as anything. Somehow, the words proclaiming him a victor don't—Pietro knew he could get here. A part of him even wanted to. He misses the undertaker crashing to his knees as he closes his eyes, finally allowing himself to relish in something more than all this darkness.
He may come to regret this, some day. His actions and his decisions, everything that brought him here.
But Pietro will never regret his own survival.
THE VICTORS OF DISTRICT TWELVE... RAVI FUSAIN (17) & PIETRO DOLOKHOV (16).
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Thank you to Erik and Avery for Ravi and Pietro. ❤
I feel like someone's going to hate me for this one on the principle that somehow it feels more depressing than all the rest so far, but consider it practice for the future depressing shit I'll be forcing you to read, I guess. Otherwise, I hope you at least semi-enjoyed, and I'll see you again next week!
Until next time.