XI: November: District Ten.
The night belongs to beasts of prey, and always has. It's easy to forget that when you're indoors, protected by light and solid walls.
If it wasn't for the moon, rounded in the ink-blotted sky, they would be faced with the possibility of being blind.
Far in the distance, in the windows and doorways of sporadic, low-lying ranch-houses, the yellow glare of oil lamps appear like fireflies, so small and insignificant that they might as well not be there at all.
It's a good thing Robbie isn't afraid of the dark.
He can't be so certain about everyone else, though. So many of the others look perplexed at the widespread darkness as if they've never encountered such a thing before. Even Marshall, who started two plates to his left, has a hand locked into his shirt-sleeve as if he's afraid the night is going to swallow him whole if they're separated.
Robbie's never had someone cling to him before, let alone a boy his age who can most certainly hold his own. Pierre was never the type back home—he was running instead of clinging, getting into whatever fight his boil-over temper led him to next. To have Marshall essentially using him as a shield now was jarring, to say the least.
That's exactly what he was doing, too. Practically cowering behind Robbie's back, not even attempting to move a few feet away to gather supplies. Anybody else might be touched by such an action, but Robbie was just annoyed.
Annoyed like he had been when he had been standing in that pen and Bellamy had read out the singular name Robertson with a verbal question mark left to hang in the air, before he had leaned back towards the mayor and announced, still loud enough for everyone to hear: is that a first name or a last name?
He had no real last name. Ever since some stranger had the good fortune to drop him at the orphanage's doorstep with no paperwork attached he had been Robertson and nothing more.
Until he had been properly old enough to hate it, anyway.
He had been annoyed, yes, but some of that had faded when Merride had announced him on stage and he had plucked the microphone from her dainty hand, said my name's Robbie Creston and shoved the stupid thing back into her hand, ignoring her owlish eyes.
If he got out of here, that would be him officially. The names he had always claimed but never had any proper ownership to.
But again, more pressing, was still that annoyance with Marshall holding into his sleeve. It only magnified when Robbie caught sight of someone barreling towards them, another older boy too manic in his pathing to truly see where he was going. Instead of bracing himself, Marshall shoves him forward instead, as if hoping Robbie's body alone will be able to stop his momentum. He's able to throw himself to the side just in time, narrowly avoiding the boy's swinging arms as he darts past them and further into the field.
When he turns, Marshall is standing there with his eyes blown as wide as Merride's had been. Guilt crawls over him like a shawl almost immediately, his body trembling in the face of what must be the shock in Robbie's eyes.
Not necessarily shock, though—anger.
He's been angry for so damn long. Angry at the shit hand he was dealt in life, at the fact that everyone who shared the last name he had chosen to grow up with was buried six feet under, at the feelings trapped forevermore in his chest if he didn't win twice over and get the fuck back home.
This anger doesn't seem comparable, but it's as if his body is moving of its own volition, his father's ghost turning him into nothing more than a marionette.
His fist cracks so hard into Marshall's jaw that something cracks; blood sprays from his mouth as the boy flails to the ground. There's a scream from somewhere that sounds almost too far away—Damaris, he can only imagine, wondering why her two allies are coming to blows not two minutes into the thick of things.
It would be easy to stop. He's good at fighting, thanks to Pierre, at throwing right hooks and uppercuts.
But it almost feels easier to continue.
His fist locks into the other boy's shirt as he leans down, slamming his fist down time and time again until blood begins to flow fast beneath his fingers, Marshall's eyes squeezed shut against the assault currently being launched at him. He has no weapons, nothing else to work with—the only thing lying in the nearby grass is a metal canister, devoid of water. It's not a weapon either, but it's enough.
He's certainly strong enough.
The edge of it slams into Marshall's skull, and only then does his ally make somewhat of a noise. It's as if he's realized, finally, that this isn't stopping, that Robbie's weight on his chest is only getting heavier and things are getting foggier…
There will be no cannons until after the bloodbath, but it only takes him a handful of hits to know that Marshall is gone. His face is a bloodied, pulpy mess beneath Robbie's looming form, and only when he finally allows himself to look back up into the darkness does he notice Damaris before him.
She has no eyes for him, though. She remains fixated on the stillness of Marshall's body beneath him. No doubt she's wondering how it all could have gone to such shit before she had even made it to them.
If he would survive speaking the words, Robbie would like to ask that very question himself.
Well… that's terribly messy.
Hawke can't tell who the girl is screaming at—the body on the ground, or the boy who put it there. Both were her allies, if he remembers correctly. Spending so much time alone meant that it was quite easy to tell who was sticking with who.
Though not anymore. The boy picks up and runs while the girl is still screaming, tearing off so fast that he ignores the supplies he hurtles past. There's still something about him that Hawke recognizes, an itch that has lingered in his brain for far too long.
If he is indeed someone from Hawke's past, it's not as if he's relevant. No doubt he's seen the faces of hundreds of kids bouncing around the orphanage, getting into fights with whoever looked at him the wrong way. The second he turned eighteen and got the hell out of dodge every single one of those people fell to the wayside, easily forgotten about.
The kids who hated him. The owners who would hurt abuse at him. The only person worth anything in this world besides himself is Bassel, and that's only because he taught Hawke enough so that he could earn some money, put a meager roof over his head.
Even Bassel, though, could easily be left behind. Hawke did it all the time when they would pack up the entire rusted, rickety fleet and fly off across Ten to the most remote corners, monitored at every moment and trusted by the Capitol for not even a second.
His job was a necessary one, though. Dangerous and unlikely and impossible for anyone who wished to lay down roots.
It was a good thing he didn't have any.
Truthfully, Hawke didn't plan on laying any here, either, but the horn is emptying fast, and no one is lingering. Once the girl finally stops her tiresome shouting, she picks up a large bag, one of the few left, and takes off. When he turns, surveying the area around him, he finds only one person left—a girl around his age lingering in the mouth of the Cornucopia, machete in hand. A fearful thing to look at, he supposes, if he didn't have half a dozen knives stuffed wherever he could be bothered to fit them.
"You can go," she proposes, voice firm.
Hawke takes as many steps towards her as he can before she readies her stance, machete pointed towards him. "Or what?"
"Or I'll fucking kill you."
Well, she can certainly try, but she's not going to succeed. If Hawke is correct, her one and only ally is lying dead some ten yards to his right. She's not doing this out of any sort of confidence or bravado—she's scared.
And, really, she should be.
"You can go," he says. "But that offer is only going to last for the next minute."
This girl is not getting out of here alive, whether she tries to leave or not. She gulps when he flicks one of the knives from his belt, feet shuffling anxiously. With every second that passes he can see the mental battle, practically hear her own brain counting down, trying to judge just how much time she has left.
Hawke hasn't even been counting when she decides to run, and unfortunately for her it's far too close to him for his liking. He's not the best shot with a knife, but he still would have chanced it had there been more distance between them—this, however, is almost sad. He juts his leg out, catching her in the shins as her feet thud through the grass, and she tumbles to the ground with a cry.
Any other person would say something. Most of the victors before him would either apologize or offer up some sort of snarky remark, a witty comment that would be replayed on the television for the next month until the audience's ears were bleeding. Hawke has lost count over how many of them he hates just on sight alone.
He grabs the collar of her shirt as she wriggles, shrieking frantically. At least he won't draw it out. Hawke is not the type to offer entertainment.
He was not wanted in this world. He's not going to give anyone else what they want, either.
The knife cuts easier into her throat than he would have expected. Blood gushes onto the grass, her body still twitching when he grabs her beneath the arms and begins dragging her further out to the edge of the plates. There's five more to do the same to—though there's not an overabundance of supplies left in the horn, Hawke doesn't plan on being disturbed as he goes through them, for a hovercraft or anything else.
Like he said—he's not planning on putting roots here. Sitting and waiting is not a style he is keen on learning. He'll decide what he wants and throw the rest of it somewhere where nobody else will never find it.
Unlike some of the others before him, Hawke won't be in here for weeks. This is just another job. Get in, get out.
By the time the sun has risen, he'll be long gone from this place.
It's still dark.
Robbie didn't begin keeping track of the hours until he had realized, belatedly, that there was no change in the sky. No lightening of the horizon. No sinking moon.
After what felt like twelve, he stopped trying to keep track. It was clear that such a task was nothing more than menial in here, a place in which he had rapidly begun to suspect was going to be as dark as a never-ending abyss until there were only two of them left to see it.
He didn't need the sun. He didn't need much, really.
The only thing he had to his name was that metal container from the very start, dented now and stained with blood, filled with water from one of the many troughs that lined the paddocks stretching into the distance. Certainly that wasn't the most healthy thing to put in his body, but there was enough of it that it couldn't be ignored.
Besides, it made it seem like more of a weapon, something that could almost be threatening. It had weight to it, now, made it seem more realistic if he had to put it to good use again.
There was every reason for him to put it to good use.
With hardly any cover to be found in whatever direction he looked, it seemed something like a miracle that someone was tailing him at all. It had simply been a feeling that had him looking around in the first place, hair raising at the back of his neck as if he was being watched. A presence was never something so easy to ignore.
He had only caught sight of her once before she had darted behind one of the barns, a slip of a girl, as young as she could possibly get. Why she was following him, Robbie had no idea. It wasn't like she was going to jump him. He just ran so far, and so fast, from Damaris that he hadn't even considered anyone following him.
This little girl must not have witnessed what he did. Nobody in their right mind would follow him after that.
She's being much more wary now, though, for no matter how often he turns Robbie doesn't see her again. Occasionally he'll hear a rustle in the grass, too quiet to be any of the distant grazing cattle but just loud enough to be out of place.
Robbie clambers over the next fence he encounters; a nearby horse snorts and trots away at the sight of him, leaving him standing there all alone. He has never been someone of a typical Ten origin, growing up in a house with several dozen other orphaned children and tending to a graveyard once he got old enough to hold a job. A part of him almost wished for that though. What was it like to climb onto the back of an animal and run free, just for a moment?
He wanted to know, but now wasn't the place to find out. He was destined for the night-time, where he worked and where he first discovered the Creston family plot, their headstones showing early signs of weathering.
It's no wonder the darkness didn't make him uncomfortable.
Robbie turns back, but there's still no sight of a little girl. It's almost as if she's the ghost of his would-be sister, little Daisy trailing after him and taunting him. She'll be responsible for his death, too, as if their parents weren't enough… Margaret and Wendall burnt to nothing so that Robbie could find them, years later, and take them as his own.
"If you keep following me," he calls out into the dark, uncaring for where she's stopped in her travels. "You'll find your own death."
A threat, of course, but not one as bold as anything else he could have uttered. It's not as if Robbie said he was going to kill her outright—if she happens to stumble into it by virtue of tagging along after him with some sort of hidden purpose, then it will be on her. Daisy, accidentally lighting the Creston house up into an inferno, and this little girl, doomed to die in some open field.
Robbie waits, but there's no sign of her. He forages ahead, easing himself over the fence on the far side of the paddock. The barn on the other side is the most welcoming of the lot he's seen thus far, walls intact and bright even without an ability to truly see them. Robbie wedges the door open, relieved to find that it hardly creaks.
He's clearly not a barn kid, either, but something about the place feels safe like nothing else has. The smell of weathered boards and fresh hay is preferable to the lack of anything he has found outside, the rungs beneath his hands steady and reassuring as he climbs the ladder into the hayloft. It's not so high that he couldn't jump, if need be, but he'll hear anyone else come up after him, in the very least.
All he can do is sleep. If the sun is never going to come up, there's no time like the present. There's no telling just how long he's been walking and wandering, but his legs ache something fierce, and his eyelids threaten to droop further with every passing second. Even his growing hunger has faded into something almost numbing, far more tolerable than the initial few hours.
It's been at least a day. Possibly longer. Exhaustion is only reassuring in its normalcy.
He settles down into a vast pile of hay, his body relaxing so thoroughly that it feels more like the fake plushness of a cloud that you could only imagine when you view iti from the ground. His head is hardly down when he swears he hears the barn door creak open once again, the tell-tale scrape over concrete.
Robbie wouldn't put it past the little girl to still be following him even after his warning. Either she'll realize he's up here and stay close, or she'll move on when she fails to find him.
Regardless, she won't kill him. She's proven that much.
Protect me, alright? his brain pleads. He never hears them answer aloud, but just like always his mother's answering voice rings loud and clear in his head, sweet like honey. Always, dear.
He will sleep easy, knowing that truth.
There are very few things that Hawke can say he truly detests in the world.
Most are just too trivial to waste time on. The situations that common people mull over, the simple everyman of Ten, are just not things he thinks about.
Nothing thus far has unnerved him. Not killing that girl, or knowing he was going into things utterly alone. Being at the Cornucopia with no one to watch his back hadn't been disturbing—in fact, it was almost peaceful.
At first, the howls hadn't bothered him. Every kid back home had seen the coyotes running rampant before, even helped build fences to keep them out. There were none of the sort here, though, just slots of wood more than far enough apart for them to slip between. Hawke had watched literal packs of them rove through the dark for hours upon hours now, but they had never come anywhere close to him.
It didn't take the brightest bulb in the bunch to figure out why.
The herd of dairy cattle in the next pasture over are more undead than not; chunks of skin and flesh hang from their mauled bodies, each step they take looking more painful than the last. Oddly enough, however, not one of them seems to be affected by it—none have dropped to the ground dead despite their grievous injuries, bloody trails left in their wake. One on the fringes is missing a leg, hobbling along and stumbling into its companions. All so bright-eyed.
Worse, somehow, is the sickly stench of rotting meat in the air, permeating every bit of it no matter where Hawke allows himself to go. Flies buzz in clouds overhead, flocking to the open, festering wounds.
He's never been squeamish; luckily for Hawke the transfixion remains merely superficial. Clearly, unlike him, they're wanted in some regard in this arena—for the aspect of horror, perhaps, or to entertain the audiences when no one is fighting.
He's not the only one whose attention has been captured by the mangled creatures, though. The other boy hasn't moved for some time, lodged in a tight spot between one of the many fences and the backside of a barn. No doubt he thinks such close quarters will protect him; from the coyotes, or another tribute.
How could someone sneak up on him like that, really?
Hawke knows exactly how, and it all comes down to the fact that the boy isn't paying attention.
Perhaps this is why the attacks are happening in the dark. For wandering eyes, for unaware and unsuspecting tributes too foolish to take note of the rest of their surroundings whilst they're too busy staring. In their last moments they'll be looking at nothing but destruction.
It's not even Hawke's fault. If the boy is too idiotic to notice his approach, then that's on him.
Besides, why the fuck would Hawke ever care about someone from a place that never bothered to care about him?
The boy must sense something upon his approach, for he turns at the last second as Hawke sneaks up to his back. It's just not quick enough. Instead of finding the nape of his neck, Hawke plunges the knife directly into his throat instead. Blood floods over his hand in a great torrent as he severs the carotid. His hands only manage to grip feebly at Hawke's wrists for a second or two before his knees give out; the weight of his body is awfully heavy over Hawke's feet, the slump of his body too awkward to be anything other than solely unnatural.
It's just like everyone else in here—Hawke has no reason to care who else lives and dies besides himself. If he gets out of here, the person alongside him may as well be faceless and nameless, another body to eventually add to the pile.
Hawke has never cared for rules. His own gain has been his number one priority since the second he was old enough to recognize that the world was a cruel, unforgiving place and it wasn't going to afford him anything he didn't work for.
He bends forward, wiping his knife clean on the boy's pant leg as the cannon fires over the night. Several of the herd before them seem to jerk in place, heads swinging to the side as if hoping to find the source of the noise. It seems to alarm them ten times more than any of the howling coyotes.
If they knew what was good for them, it would be the opposite. They would fear the running footsteps and gaping jaws, the sharpened teeth. Not a simple nose in the night sky.
They're just like the tributes, really. They don't understand that the rules of logic have been tossed aside in favor of chaos. They don't truly understand what to be scared of and what sort of things to trust.
And for most of them, if they ever do, it will be far too late anyway.
Regardless of the outcome, Robbie knows they'll always root for him.
He can't hear his parents right now, but they're somewhere close by, hovering overhead just before he encounters the boy lurking on the other side of the ranch-house, none the wiser to his blundering arrival.
Robbie's famished, alright? Sue him.
That's the reason he's considering it so heavily—the boy has a knife, which is concerning in itself, but more importantly he has a bag. If there's anything in there worth having, it would be food. Of course Robbie could go longer without, and he had. Back in the day, before he knew a thing or two himself, Pierre would get into scuffles with the other kids just to take their scraps.
How asinine it was to be considering such a thing now.
Scratch that—he was doing it, metal canister and all, nothing more to his name. Just a few more steps and he can do it.
He has to. His parents were everything, practical shining stars, and he has to live up to them. Who is he to claim their legacy if he can't even stand up and fight?
At the last second, the boy whirls around, so fast it almost seems like the speed of light. The canister, instead of colliding with the back of his skull, misses his temple by half an inch, swinging harmlessly through the air. Robbie narrowly avoids the knife as the boy jabs towards him, the breeze as it rushes by his face spiking adrenaline on his blood.
This could have all been over in one hit. Nothing in his life has ever been so simple as to just work out when it's supposed to.
Robbie throws himself back at the boy's continued assault; he's provoked anger now, fury brimming in the boy's eyes, and he has nothing but his bare arms to defend himself with. He throws himself around the side of the house without thinking twice about it, and then doubles back just as quickly when the boy follows, slamming him into the wall. The knife grazes his arm, blood trickling down his sleeve, but it feels like nothing more than a sting.
The canister has never felt more useless. Robbie fits his hands around the boy's shoulders instead and slams him once again into the side of the house. Each time his head cracks back into it relief floods over him, but it's still not enough.
He needs the knife.
Conveniently, the boy chooses that moment to shove him back, using the last of his strength to escape Robbie's grip. He grabs a hold of his arm, twisting, but no matter how much it bends the boy only grits his teeth and clings tighter to the knife.
His boot slams into Robbie's leg; he falters as pain shoots into his knee, fingers slipping.
The knife slips down, down down…
Agony explodes in his thigh as the blade rips through muscle. The boy still clings to it stubbornly, tearing it free with ribbons of Robbie's skin as he slams him back against the well yet again. This time, when his head tilts back into the planks, the knife falls from his loosened grip and lands abandoned in the grass.
If Robbie even bends forward to retrieve it he's not sure he'd make it back up to his full height; nausea washes over him in growing waves, head spinning like his axis has been broken. The only thing still left in his hands is the canister, and finally he brings it down against the boy's temple, fingers trembling but refusing to let go.
The boy disappears from Robbie's wavering vision as he falls to the ground. There's no immediate cannon, but he finds he can't be bothered to care, stumbling back a few feet. His spine lands against something that offers firm resistance, feet tangling together until there's nowhere to go but down. Robbie hits the ground with a thud, dizziness making his vision worryingly dark.
There's so much blood. He can hardly lift his head, but there's no need—Robbie can feel it, hear the sound of thick droplets hitting the ground beneath him in a steady stream. No matter how hard he presses his hands over the wound, the blood only seems to seep out faster.
Maybe he's not really holding on that tightly at all. His arms feel ready to give, and even the firmness of the earth beneath him feels less tangible by the moment, as if he's about to fall through, slip away…
He doesn't want to die.
He sees her over him suddenly, the sky above him empty one second and filled with her the next, the darkness blotted out by her image. His mother smiles, muted hair falling over her eyes as she leans over him. Though he does not feel her hand brush over his damp forehead, Robbie can imagine it all the same.
The comfort he should have had his entire life. The warmth, the safety, the familiarity… not the orphanage he grew up in, the nameless mother who either died or gave him up or never wanted him in the first place.
Margaret Creston was his mother now more than ever, and he had proof of it, no matter how hazy.
"Mom?" he whispers.
"I'm right here, baby," she murmurs, but as soon as the words cascade over him her ghostly visage is shattered into a thousand pieces, each one carried away by the wind. Robbie doesn't have any strength to reach out after her.
Her replacement is much smaller. The same pale hair, eyes bright like the summertime sky. His sister, realer than ever before. He was right, wasn't she? She got their parents killed years ago and now she's chasing them away yet again, leaving Robbie to die here on the cold grass, a body lying alongside him.
He can feel her though, unlike his mother. The too-real press of her finger-tips against his arm, the worry heavy in her eyes.
She's real.
Despite his terror, Robbie cannot move—it's as if he's paralyzed, left to the whims of the little girl hovering above him. He wants nothing more than to run from her, for his hatred to bubble over like it always does, but he can't even do that much. It's just the fear, and it's never-ending.
"It's okay," she tells him, but Robbie knows it couldn't be further than the truth. Nothing is okay. But it's not as if he's capable of sticking around any longer to find out.
Darkness, at least, is no longer as horrifying as it once was. It's every-day, now. Their new reality.
When it comes for him this time, Robbie welcomes it with open arms.
He really ought to do better at this whole sleeping gig.
Hawke knows how to function without closing his eyes—the perks, or rather the downfall of always being on your own up in the air, no co-pilot to speak of, is that you can't let yourself slip even for a second.
One second turns into ten. Ten turns into a minute.
By then you're on the ground, the wreckage a bright ball of flame in some unclaimed field. If you're lucky, someone on the rest of the crew will realize you never dropped off your supplies and come looking for you.
Most weren't so lucky.
Hawke has never been such a thing, though; he's not even sure he believes in luck. He earns money because he's damn good at his job, because he does what he's told and doesn't ask questions even if all he wants to do is rebel. They gave him a chance, just that once, and like hell he's going to fuck it up just because of what his brain is telling him to do.
Sleep, though, is still weighing heavily on said mind. The nagging sensation just won't leave him alone. He won't sleep out here though, no walls to guard him and no one to keep watch. You don't do that out in the field, either, on the longer trips, and you certainly don't fall prey to it in the arena.
Besides, the coyotes have made their presence known—Hawke now knows that they have zero intention of leaving.
If he has to die, he's choosing not to do so mauled to death while he sleeps, half his corpse eaten by a pack of wild dogs.
There are a number of ranch-houses to choose from, and Hawke allows himself to wander far, far into the distance before he picks one, slipping through the narrow space of a back window while he listens for the sound of breathing, a creaking footstep in the other room. He leaves a still-burning oil lamp in the meager bedroom he's chosen, easing himself down the wall so slow that he hardly makes a sound. It's not something he's ever been good at, but there's a first for everything.
If there was someone in here, it would be the same as all the others. Dead quickly, unable to do anything about it. Not necessarily painless, but more merciful than they could hope to get.
Far more kind than anything they would get if they made it to January.
The house is empty, though—smaller than he would have expected, upon a cursory glance. Hawke wedges a chair beneath both front and back doors, counting all the windows in the house until he's sure he's locked all but one in the room he's chosen. It's complete with a small wooden cot and a moth-eaten quilt, each spring squeaking obnoxiously as he sits down, but it's better than nothing.
He already knows it's going to take him forever to sleep; to allow yourself that privilege when there's no guarantee he'll wake up from it is dangerous, indeed. Hawke doesn't even bother removing his boots, nor does he let his shoulders take a break from the bag he's been carrying for so long.
A quick getaway is all that matters in the event of something serious; his comfort has never been a priority. The misshapen bullet deep in his pocket is a reminder of that. Any second, any day, Hawke could be as dead as the others.
Finding it embedded in the dirt six months ago had felt trivial. Now it was the only thing that held any meaning when Hawke would never previously bother to assign such a thing.
The second he hears the noise in the outside hall he's bolt upright, unable to rid his brain of the irony flooding through it. Death could have been inside this house the entire time, somehow hiding away from him. With no way to get in, that must be it. He clutches tight to the knife as he rises, wasting no time in throwing the door open.
Except there's no one there. A foot before his feet lies a parachute, a single small box attached to the end.
He wants to curse out whoever tricked him, whoever let him feel even an ounce of worry. There's no reason to feel shame when it wasn't his fault, but Hawke still itches to slam his fist into the wall even as he snatches the parachute off the floor. He's better than this, not so quick to scare.
Before he can even consider closing himself back into his room of choice, though, he slides the little cardboard box open. It's simple—too simple for the Capitol and all their tech and gadgets, but he doesn't have to wonder why for long. Three ancient looking bullets slide down to the center of his palm, golden as the day they were crafted despite their age.
Bullets. Ammunition just like the one he keeps tucked away in his pocket.
All of the pilots learn to shoot, always under heavy supervision of the 'keeper and never on their own. It's your job to protect your cargo—if you lose it, it's your fuck-up. Your pay-check. Hawke knows how to pull the trigger just like the rest of them.
Hawke pulls himself back into the room on silent feet, closing the door behind him with a soft click. Bullets only mean one thing. They're useless without a vessel.
There's only one thing in this room to check. He sits down at the edge of the bed and reaches for the bedside drawer with, for once in his life, painstaking slowness. It all feels too much like a practical joke for him to rush into it. Hawke won't be played for a fool yet again, twice in one night.
The drawer sticks and fights him every step of the way. When it pulls free it's empty save for one thing, tucked all the way up against the back panel.
A revolver, just waiting patiently to be held.
There's a unique sort of haze that comes along with not knowing how much time has passed.
Everything simply looks the same when Robbie opens his eyes, except… except he's not quite in the same place as when he passed out. When he lifts his head he finds the dirt at the other end stained with blood, flecks clinging to the wooden panels of the house.
It rings true as the spot where he pinned the other boy, bashing his head against the siding, but he's here now.
Why?
"It took forever for him t'die, y'know," a voice says behind him.
He jolts, and fiery pain tears up his leg. It only magnifies when he twists his head, finding the little girl leaning up against the side of the house, the very one that's been on his tail for so many days.
"You're welcome, by the way," she deadpans. "I didn't have any bandages, so I hope the cuffs of my pants work."
Said pants are rolled nearly to the bottoms of her knees, now, and when Robbie inspects his leg the tightness that brackets his thigh is proven to be layers of makeshift bandages, tied so tightly he can't even wedge a fingernail beneath him. Several of them are spotted through with blood, but they've held firm.
And he's alive. They clearly worked.
Nausea still encircles his throat, but Robbie presses up, forcing himself to sit. The girl nudges her foot out, kicking his even further dented metal canister towards him. She's silent as he chugs it down—despite its staleness, the water tastes fresher than ever. She really does look just like Daisy would have had she grown into early teen-hood, the little miscreant. They may as well be one and the same.
Robbie glances to the spot he had been previously, eyebrows furrowing. "How…?"
"Like I said. Took him forever to die. Apparently the brain damage you gave him dragged it out some. The hovercraft wouldn't come unless I moved you a bit away, so here we are."
"We couldn't have gone inside?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," she quips. "I didn't know you had a preference on location based on the fact that you were unconscious."
She's something, this one. It's all Robbie's fault for assuming so—only someone with guts would have still been following him even after he told her to screw off. By the looks of her, too, she couldn't have taken him much further anyway. Her rail-thin arms, the gauntness to her face… her strength is little, and all of it was used in saving his life.
She saved his life.
"Why?" Robbie asks. He doesn't have to further specify. There's reasoning behind all of this, has been from the very beginning.
"Two of us are going to get out of here," she reminds him. "Do you think I have a better chance on my own, or with someone older and stronger who can do the dirty work for me?"
"Is that why you didn't finish him off?"
She shrugs. "Not my job. No reason for me to have any blood on my name, either."
She's thought this through from the very beginning. No doubt she was observing from afar as he killed Marshall, choosing to follow not only because Robbie was older and stronger, as she said, but because she knew he was capable of murder. How can he fault her for searching out her best path to victory and following it as closely as she possibly could?
How can he fault her when she's saved his life?
Every part of Robbie that wanted her dead is warring with the logic, the almost-pity. This isn't Daisy, even if she looks jarringly similar. That girl killed their parents, and this one… this one kept him alive.
This one doesn't know the truth. She's never laid eyes on the headstones that he calls his parents.
"What's your name?" he asks.
"Sable."
The rage is gone, just like that. The fury he had felt upon hearing his single name called, the pity party he had been devoted to throwing himself for getting yet another shit hand… everyone else is in the same damn boat. At least he knows how to fight back.
He did, at least. His leg is throbbing, everything beyond the wound numb. It's not as if she'll be very much assistance in helping him walk, and that's even if he wanted it. He can't afford to be coddled—not now, and not ever.
"Is your name really Robertson?" Sable questions. She taps the knife—the boy's knife, against the tops of her knees. Seeing the weapon in her hands doesn't bother him as much as it would have a few days ago.
"No. Robbie."
"Right." She hums, tapping her fingers along the hilt. "I almost forgot. Here."
She reaches into her pocket and Robbie braces himself for no real reason that he can see, staring disbelievingly at her open palm when she reveals it to him. The brass knuckles lying there dwarf the size of her hand, clearly something not meant for her at all. Robbie reaches forward, his frigid fingers nearly the same temperature as the cool metal as he slips them over his fingertips.
"Where the hell did you get these?"
"Parachute, a few hours after you passed out. Guess once it looked like you were going to pull through someone decided it was worth giving you a legitimate weapon."
It's not a weapon most people would ask for, or even attempt to use, but to Robbie it's as good as gold. He's gotten through plenty in life using only sheer, blunt force—why should that have to change now?
The set is snug around his knuckles, right at home.
"Again, you're welcome," Sable says. "For not killing you and for not hiding those, either."
He looks away from his newfound weapon to find her eyes, each one not unlike ice, hard and frigid. Despite the gift of life she's offered to him, Sable is not some desperate little girl looking for someone else to save her. She's advantageous. Clever. Worrying.
Robbie can't be the one to kill her, now, but his blood chills at the look in her eyes. He can't kill her, but he can stand-by and watch someone else do it, if need be. He can let her go for the greater good.
She's not Daisy, not yet, but perhaps it's just something they're building towards.
If that's the case, better for her to go sooner rather than later.
It must be that this place is something akin to hell.
It doesn't burn, no, nor does it rage with fire, but the reek of death and the inevitable darkness makes it feel as such. After that night he spends tucked away in the house, able to catch a few hours of sleep, Hawke finds going outside not quite as enjoyable as it once was.
In fact, he's avoiding it. He's always been there, with the sun warming his face and the wind ruffling his hair, but there's nothing of the sort here.
Besides, there are things to be found in the houses and barns. Valuable things.
The revolver is tucked in his waist-band beneath this shirt, so that even if anyone were to see him, whether it be from a distance or a foot away, they would be none the wiser as to his little… discovery. Three bullets isn't enough to take out half a field, but Hawke is willing to bet that he's in better shape than most.
A steady hand and a desire to get out of here paired with a deadly weapon is all he needs.
Of course that hasn't stopped him from looking for more—until now Hawke had found little desire in even venturing near the houses. The lure of creature comforts meant the presence of living, breathing people, something he had no desire to come into contact with. There was food, though, trail mix and dried beef of questionable origin, fresh water running from the taps even if it came at an unsteady drip.
No more bullets, though he was still looking. Not a gun in sight. Though clearly he had no reason for another, having them in his possession was better than one being in the hands of some bloodthirsty stranger.
Hawke had every reason to shoot if he saw someone—the others were no different at this point.
He didn't have every reason, though. He cracks open the door to the next house with little resistance, scooping up the oil lamp by the entrance as he moves throughout the meager kitchen space. The drawers have already been cleaned out, and signs of human existence are minimal but nonetheless present. A chair at the dining table knocked slightly out of line with the others. A curtain pulled back half an inch from the front window.
And the sound of soft breathing, a barely-there snore drifting down the hall.
His hand drifts to the gun through his shirt, but he can't bring it in himself to pull it free. Whoever they are, they're fast asleep, someone who is capable of falling off even in the most precarious circumstances. Or maybe they're just exhausted, like he was. The difference was Hawke grew up in his own sort of hell-hole, sharing a room with at least a dozen other kids and never sleeping past the time the sun rose.
He can imagine the life they grew up in was a comfortable one. A bed to call their own. A layer of blankets to chase away the nightly chills. Safety behind a locked door.
There was none of that here.
Hawke trails down the hall until the source of the noise is unmistakable; he pauses there outside the half-open door, marveling at the fact that they haven't even bothered to close the damn thing. How stupid can one person be? He forces it open no further, slipping in soundlessly to regard the girl curled up on such a similar cot. She looks much more comfortable than Hawke knows he had—knees bent up slightly, arms curled beneath her head. Not even a pleasant dream to rumble through her head.
Nothing about what he's going to do is right, but it's easy. It's not as if he's about to walk away and leave her here when the opportunity has been presented before him on a silver platter.
Rarely has Hawke ever been handed things, if ever. He's not about to look a gift in the face and walk away.
He leans forward, swiftly, pressing a hand over her mouth and drawing a knife at the same time. Her eyes fly open as he tears the blade across the narrow column of her pale throat. Only a choked gasp presents itself against his palm, muffled so thoroughly he hardly hears it. There's no chance anyone elsewhere does.
She has the gall to look so accusatory, though, as if she wasn't the one who was so terribly ill-prepared, who allowed this to happen. Hawke can find no mercy in himself, no real reason to feel bad. It's not his fault anymore than it's the rest of theirs that they ended up here; your death can only be your fault if you allow it.
The first girl refused to give in to his demands. The boy, and this girl dying beneath his hand now, they just weren't paying attention. It's the little details when it comes down to life and death, and Hawke plans on noticing every single one.
Death was not his enemy, now. It was more a friend than anything. He could use it, wield it, call for it when it best suited him.
And it seemed, really, like that time was always.
It didn't matter how much pain Robbie was in.
Really, it was manageable. It made walking a bitch, especially when he wouldn't let Sable so much as touch him, but he was up and he was moving.
Or at least he had been. Now he was just waiting, at a stalemate until her return. His gift to Sable was that he hadn't killed her when he very easily could have and hers, in return, was finally playing something like an active role in all of this. They wouldn't admit aloud what they both know—Robbie was a hindrance. If something went down, he wouldn't be able to move fast enough.
He's just hoping the coyotes don't come. They're flitting about in the distance, but he can never tell if they're getting closer.
Robbie presses himself closer to the back wall of the house, easing his throbbing leg off the ground. If she would just hurry up and finish checking out the house, he wouldn't have to worry about the damn things coming at all. The Gamemakers may be a collection of sick bastards, but he doesn't believe they're about to let a pack of coyotes open doors.
And if they do, they're going to have hell to pay if he gets out of here.
His head continues to throb from the troubles of the past few days, but that doesn't stop him from wanting. Injured or not, that means nothing about desire. As long as he wants to escape this place, he can.
Margaret and Wendall might be as quiet as ever, their silence in rooting for him stretching so thin it's bound to snap, but he knows they're thinking it.
"Robbie!"
He jolts, unlike himself, and nearly falls flat on his face when he presses his foot back to the ground, leg shaking. Robbie grips the wall tighter as a chorus of screaming kicks up, interspersed with terrified shouts of his name. A call for help if he's ever heard it.
He almost moves. Almost.
But why should he, really? Sable was pegged as a dead girl walking the moment she was reaped, refusing to help her cause by going into things alone and hoping things would work out. She was clever, of course, but the same could be said about plenty of folks. Just because she saved his life does not mean he has to repay the favor.
If that is in fact what's happening, of course. He shuffles closer to the back door, still left ajar by her quick entrance, and listens. The heavy thump of something landing on the floor. Quiet whimpers. There are no longer any calls of his name. They are replaced, instead, by the earth shaking tremendously beneath his feet, a cannon that sounds so close it may as well be directly overhead.
The brass knuckles are a comfortable weight over his fingers as he steps over the threshold, refusing to let his wobbling gait betray him. Whoever's inside, if Sable really is dead, may be expecting him.
Or maybe they think she was calling out to a ghost.
He sees her from a distance, her body crumpled just around the corner, pale hair strewn across her face, her own knife planted in her stomach. There are slashes across her arms, a deep cut trailing across her collarbone. She looks smaller in death, as small as Daisy would have been if she hadn't been turned to ashes.
She deserved it, didn't she? They both did. Perhaps that's why Robbie didn't allow himself to move.
More pressing is the other girl standing over her, panting heavily. How she hasn't heard him yet is something of a miracle, but Robbie knows that his luck is about to run out. He has one chance to get her before she gets him.
He takes a deep breath and launches himself forward.
Pain screams through his leg, Robbie's teeth gritted in agony as he rushes towards her. The girl spins on her heels, eyes widening comically as she sees him so close, hands flailing up as if to ward him off. It's just not quick enough. Robbie's own fist strikes out, swinging around her arm and colliding with the plushness of her cheek.
Flesh tears. Something cracks. The girl lets out a shriek as something pops, fluid splattering across his fingers as the brass knuckles edge digs into her eye and carries over her nose.
Somehow, she keeps her feet, though she wobbles alarmingly, crying out as her hands fly up to the pulpy mess he's left of her eye. Her own knife, longer, clatters to the floor as quickly as can be, as if she forgot about the fact that she had been holding onto it. Something in him itches to strike her again, to do it just like Pierre taught him, but he's no monster. He can't be.
That last boy took hours to die, if Sable was telling the truth. He bends down, legs nearly giving way as he snatches up the knife, stabbing the girl in the chest before she can so much as recognize what's happening. Blood continues to trickle down the expanse of her face, landing heavily on her shirt to splatter across the knife he's left implanted there.
At her last step back he trips over Sable's sprawled out legs, careening to the floor. Her hands never once leave her face, as if even in her last moments she couldn't convince herself to be worried of anything else.
Robbie allows himself to slump back against the wall as her cannon fires, too, easing his leg off the floor. It hurts worse than ever, but at least there's purpose beyond it, a reasoning that justifies it. Their bodies, side by side, are convincing enough of that.
Something in him should feel hurt at the sight of Sable's body—not grief proper, for he hardly knew her, but an emotion other than this icy numbness, only relief at being able to relax now.
It's the opposite feeling of the fire that claimed Daisy and their parents. No raging inferno, the taste of soot ever-present in the back of his throat. The anger Robbie feels almost daily while he stares at the Creston family plot, wondering how such perfect people could have been taken from the world so prematurely.
Wondering, deep down, if they would have wanted him had they known of existence.
It's better though, this cool and gentle calm. He's not upset.
He's just ready to get out of here.
No matter where he goes, the entire arena resembles that of a butcher's shop.
Not even the shop, though. Nothing they display is this gruesome, this blatant. It's more like the frigid back room where the blades come out, the sound of them knocking against dull wood. The copper tang of blood singing in the back of your throat.
Somehow it's worse in the outdoors, Hawke has decided, which seems backwards. Instead of tainting just a room, though, it's stolen all the good air left in this place, each breath he takes stifling and getting stuck halfway down his throat.
The animals left in their paddocks are dropping like flies, now, sinking to the earth right before his eyes. There's hardly anything left of them except for scraps of hide and protruding bone, rib-cages splintered to the point where they can no longer stand. So much has been stolen from them before the entirety of their lives was finally taken.
Flies buzz past his head. Maggots crawl throughout the discolored flesh. The ground runs red with blood, trails of filthy pawprints crossing over one another before they disappear into the impossible distance.
The sky is silent, now, ringing no longer with the howls of the coyotes.
But something worse has taken their place.
Hawke can't be quite certain what they are—creatures black as the night above them, long and spindly, something oddly humanoid about the way they move if they dared to rise above all fours. They have no distinctive shape, no glaring eyes. Whatever they are, he keeps finding them, crouched low in the shadows beside each animal carcass, pointed teeth full of blood.
They don't seem to have any interest in them, but that doesn't stop Hawke from taking a wide berth. They may just be the only thing thus far that have managed to unsettle him.
Hawke likes simple truths, easy to explain scenarios. The coyotes, at least, were a part of him no matter the violence they carried.
He doesn't like this. Not the creatures themselves or the Gamemakers, so fucked in the head that they think it fitting to let the fields run wild with things that don't have faces or names. Despite his meager stash of food, Hawke had considered himself hungry still for a while, but not after seeing this. Not the gnashing of teeth and the rotting flesh.
Nothing would ever drive him to that. He's survived orphanages and caretakers screaming in his face, spittle flying. It's no fuckin' wonder you ended up here, kid. No one out there would have ever wanted you.
He still wonders sometimes what his life would have been like had the opposite been true, if a well-to-do couple from one of the inner towns had adopted him and claimed him as their own. It may not have changed his reaping, but it certainly would have changed his fate. Hawke wouldn't have had the drive, the daring, the gun in his waistband just itching to be used.
Each creature he encountered cried out for their face to be blasted in, but they weren't worth it anymore than wondering was. That wasn't the life he had been given.
That wasn't the life he was ever going to have.
Really, though, was it even the one he wanted? If anyone dared to ask, all Hawke would request is that they dropped him back into the exact situation he had left. Give him the keys to one of the cargo planes, tell him about his shipment, and he'd go. It's the exact life he'll return to if he survives January.
When, of course, should be his line of thinking. He'll be the one that robbed everyone else, the kid who had no love for life but chose to live it anyway.
They can call him whatever they want. Selfish. Frigid. Barbaric. The things people say have no effect on him any longer.
In the end, Hawke has survived much worse than people's words.
Robbie has allowed himself to become stuck in the what if.
That is… what if his parents would linger on the fact that he let Sable die so callously, her last moments filled with the very thought that Robbie hadn't bothered to save her after she had done the same for him. He had no love stored up for her, no true compassion.
He thinks his parents would be disappointed in him for it, and that hurts just as much as the strike that had brought him to his knees. At least Pierre won't think of him any differently, nor Colburn either. The older man had never questioned Robbie's motivations or decisions when handing over the keys to the graveyard's gates, only knowing that Robbie would take care of it when he couldn't.
He had never gone so long without stepping foot into that place, never imagined a time where he wouldn't be able to look at his family's graves because of the distance between them.
He had never thought that a graveyard could become a home.
That could be part of the reason he feels so weak now himself, as if the dead are trying to lure him back in. The never-ending throbbing in his leg each time he takes a step, the dizziness that lingers heavy in his skull. Sable could be here to help him with all of that if he had just bothered to save her.
Despite all of it, his worries and fears and nagging thoughts, Robbie still can't bring himself to feel truly sorry.
He hardly makes it to the side of the next crumbling barn, feet stumbling as he leans back against its wall, heart pounding like a jackhammer. More than anything he wishes he had a home to call his own—a proper home, with a bed so big that you could get lost in it. Just a place to rest where he wouldn't have to worry.
A place where his parents could return. Ever since Sable's person had shattered the image of his mother leaning over him, he hadn't seen her nor his father.
He just wanted to see them again. See them for real, not just their ghostly forms. He wanted the life that he should have had with them, growing up from the very start.
A crack like lightning makes him wince, head snapping up from where he's allowed it to sag down. The sky is the same when he looks up; no gathering clouds, no eerie bolts splitting through the darkness. There's no storm at all, really, no possible explanation—
Pain slams into his shoulder as he looks around, trying to find the source. A white-hot, burning sort of pain, something like a branding iron except there's nothing there, just the blood pumping from the hole torn in his shoulder, the frayed edges of his shirt…
Robbie drops like a stone. The pain in his leg is minimal, suddenly forgotten about as he crawls through the grass. He doesn't think twice about where he's going, can find no true path to forge ahead. Robbie just keeps moving, dragging himself further alongside the building until he finds the next. His leg aches. His shoulder threatens to split in two.
Only when he's moved a seemingly impossible distance does Robbie allow himself to stop, throwing himself even further down into the wavering grass. His hands find his shoulder once again, fingers prodding at the source of where blood continues to bubble over his skin. One of his ragged nails catches against something firm, unforgiving in its shape as it sticks, buried in his skin.
Robbie doesn't even have to lift his head to know what it is, fingers closing around the end of it but refusing to pull. The blood-loss from his leg was bad enough.
It's a bullet. Someone shot him. There's another person out there with a gun and Robbie wasn't even privy to their location. For all he knows they could have been so far away that he wouldn't have seen them even if he was truly looking.
He has no decisions anymore about saving and dying, about what options he has left.
Robbie is being hunted, and there's no way out of it.
He missed in all the ways that count.
He fucking missed.
Hawke saw the boy drop and dared to hope, for one stupid second, that it was enough. But there was no cannon as he crawled away and disappeared, no signal of death in the minutes that followed.
Now he's lost the blood trail, too. There was a thick splatter of it where the boy had fallen, a haphazard line of crimson leading to the end of the building, and then it seemed to stop, a few drops bright against the grass before there was no more.
He wasn't far, that much was clear, but he was gone.
It was enough to make Hawke want to scream.
Whoever it was, they were close. Hawke would hazard enough of a guess to say that they were all somewhere near, the few of them that were left. He should have kept a better count. For all he knows, landing that shot could have secured him victory, one long-distance line-up to finish this whole thing.
There are still enough things he can hear, though, to signal that he's not alone. Faint breathing. The rustle of the grass.
It's not the mutts.
Hawke rounds the next barn, expecting to find the injured boy lying on the ground, but it's suspiciously empty. Instead, further in the distance, he catches sight of a shorter silhouette easing themselves carefully over a paddock fence, head on a swivel. He's so tight to the wall that they must not see him, but they clearly heard the gunshot. They're wary enough to be looking.
This isn't the boy he was looking for, and he's certainly not in as much of a precarious position, but he'd be a damn fool not to take the opportunity that's looking him in the face.
It's just the same as last time. Turn the barrel, pull the hammer back, lay your finger over the trigger. It's still different from the simple pistols they were given back home, but Hawke finds his hands are as steady as ever as he lines up, tracking the boy's wavering figure across the field. He squeezes down on the trigger.
And fucking misses.
He has no idea how, but the boy jumps nearly a foot in the air at the noise, whirling about wildly as he realizes what just happened. The bullet whizzes harmlessly past him, perhaps mere inches from his head.
It doesn't take long for him to find Hawke, then, and despite the distance he can imagine all too easily the widening of his eyes. A foot to the right, and his brains would have been splattered all over the grass.
Most people would run. Any sensible brain would tell them to do so. This boy, though, unsheathes the sword hanging between his shoulders and charges forward—his only thought in mind, the only finish line he could possibly imagine, being the very place Hawke stands. Is this it, then? Is this boy so determined because he knows something that Hawke doesn't?
He's not stupid enough to run in a straight line; it's taking up precious time, but it keeps Hawke from lining up a perfect shot. But he's not going to miss again. Can't miss again. Halfway across the field, eyes fixated down the center of the barrel, Hawke fires once again.
The boy stumbles. Hawke's breath is held tight in his chest as he observes, as the boy halts for only a moment before he resumes his pace.
Blood blooms bright across his left bicep.
He missed in all the ways that counted.
Hawke is out of bullets now, and the boy is still running at him. He's not about to lay down and die, but what's a meager knife when compared to the intensity of a sword thrusted at him, only seconds away? His hand finds his pocket instead, the little treasure still nestled inside. Without taking his eyes off the boy's figure, growing larger with every passing moment, he pops the cylinder out and presses the bullet inside, such a small thing that may as well be his eldest friend. Inconsequential to anyone else, but possibly the most important thing that has ever existed. It doesn't make sense that it slides in so easily, that the cylinder slots back into place. The impossible is happening and he's not even watching.
The boy is twenty feet away. Fifteen. At ten, he raises the gun once again.
This time there's nowhere for him to go, and no chance in hell Hawke could miss.
He pulls the trigger.
The boy is halted dead in his tracks as the bullet slams into his chest, slamming him hard into the grass as he careens over with a strangled shout, curling in on himself before he's even stilled. It's as true of a shot as he could have hoped for, the boy curling around the blood seeping from the wound as his fingers press over it and dig in, each movement more feeble than the last.
It only takes a few short seconds, but each one seems to last a lifetime. The boy's cannon firing is the biggest relief he's felt thus far—for the first time it feels as if Hawke can breathe, the tenseness in his muscles finally easing away.
"May I present to you the Victors of District Ten—Hawke Rabanus and—and—"
There's a pause. An uncertain breath. Hawke can't quite believe his ears are hearing the proper thing as the announcement reaches them.
He hears what's behind him, though. A quiet, huffed out laugh. Almost disbelievingly.
When he turns, his eyes land on that of a bloodied shoulder. On instinct he turns, gun raised, but when he presses down on the trigger nothing happens. The revolver merely lets out a click, crying out at its empty chambers, and telling him that there's no more fight left to offer.
The boy before him laughs again, though, something almost deranged to it. "Was once not enough for you?"
It wasn't. Hawke's fingers still itch to finish the job, to ensure that he's done it, but he's not One or any of the brutes that have trained their entire lives for this. He's just Hawke and somehow, for the first time in his life, he's obtained something like a victory.
It almost doesn't seem real.
THE VICTORS OF DISTRICT TEN... HAWKE RABANUS (18) AND ROBBIE CRESTON (17).
thecentennialcelebration . tumblr . com
Thank you to Joseph and Para for Hawke and Robbie. ❤
After the amount of time I spent working on these things it feels sort of surreal that we're finally almost through them, but I guess that's a good thing. As always I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next week for the last one. Hopefully it's worth the wait.
Until next time.