XXI: Training, Day One (II).
Sloane Laurier, 17
Victor of District Three
Alia jolts as she sets her tray down.
It rattles, the dishes clanking against one another as they settle. Despite the at least five feet of distance that Sloane has kept between them all the way on the opposite side of the table, Alia still stares at her warily.
"Relax," she deadpans. "I'm not going to bite you."
For what it's worth, Alia seems to be looking more at her plate than anywhere else, listlessly stirring at the section of vegetables she's scooped onto her own plate. Evidently the sweets that Sloane has chosen are much more appealing—brownies with a thick layer of fudge, almond tarts topped with dollops of cream, cheesecakes dripping with sticky fruit glazes…
If Sloane can't have what she truly wants, she's going to enjoy herself in other ways. This food won't provide her the blissful ignorance she so desires, but at least it will stave off her irritation. Much as she tries to quell it, it grows stronger by the day.
"Isa would yell at you," Alia says quietly.
"That's why it's our little secret," Sloane says with a smirk, popping an entire tart into her mouth without blinking. Alcohol wouldn't be so bad either, but no go on such a thing either—an Avox, at least, had produced a steaming mug of hot cocoa out of thin air and presented it to her with a plastered-on smile, chocolate shavings and all.
She would feel sick after this, no doubt, but at least that would excuse her from charading around like a marionette with strings cast to the ceiling. She hadn't trained last time, and Sloane had done just fine. This felt like just a little too much bullshit for her to handle before noon.
If only Alia would stop looking at her, though. She's doing a piss poor job of maintaining subtlety, stabbing a carrot with enough force that it scrapes against the fine china and glancing over at the same time.
Sloane gets it. They're not allies. Frankly she doesn't even think Alia likes her. All of the other tables are much more occupied, though, and at least over here Sloane can stuff herself without also gaining a headache for her troubles.
"Sloane?"
"What?" she questions, mouth-half full with a brownie. She scalds her tongue on her first sip of hot chocolate, wincing as it burns all the way down.
"I know we're not allies, but…"
She swallows with much difficulty, waving Alia on as she nearly chokes. "If we see each other out there, can we make a pact—to help each-other out, or at least not say hello by stabbing?"
Alia is scared, though she's capable of hiding it. No doubt she's thinking of the time where she was forced to lie on the ground and risk bleeding out all because Sloane wouldn't just make a damn decision for once. No one would ask to be put in that position again.
Even if they're not friends, they've all the other has had for a long time now.
Sloane shrugs. "Sure," she says simply. Alia ducks her head back to her plate with a muffled thanks, and that's the end of that. For her sake, Sloane hopes she finds someone. Of course there can be no replacement for that little family she thoughtlessly created back in March, but there's always something. Even if, for now, it means sitting in silence with Sloane because she has no one else to turn to.
The bench beside her quakes suddenly as someone swings their legs over, and Sloane stares at the side of the boy's face as he fills the previously empty space, returning to his lunch without a second thought. "They never shut up, I swear…"
She considers getting up, but Sloane can't even be bothered. Too much work, if you ask her. "What?"
He jabs his fork in the direction of a table closer to the wall, the same of which has been emanating chatter since they all filed in here. "Eleven and Twelve. I don't think I've ever heard two people talk so much in my damn life."
"Reduced to numbers already?" Sloane asks. "Harsh, Ten."
At least he doesn't look irritated. "It's easier."
"Is it?"
"You would know."
Ah, that's a dig, isn't it? The whole six kills thing, not knowing anyone's name or face or anything about them because she had been higher than a kite. As if it matters, though, when it comes to murder. Killing three people is just as bad, and she's got said culprit sitting right next to her. She can't tell if he's here because he's that determined to avoid the noise, or if there's something else.
To be fair, Sloane doesn't know what's going on with most things. Never has.
She eases off the bench with her now-empty place, staring mournfully at the crumbs left behind. "Pot meet kettle, Robertson."
"Don't call—"
"Too late," she chirps, returning to the buffet table before he can retort with anything else. She scoops up two more brownies, dropping the spare on the edge of Alia's plate as she passes and sits once again. This time, much closer to her partner than any old Ten.
Neither are preferable options, but Sloane, for once, can tell which is smarter. The less she talks, the better—that's how it's always been. The second she started talking to Talos it became impossible to get rid of him, and then—
Well. She doesn't like to think about it.
Ten is still watching them, though. Her, if she had to guess. He was much the same; his allies abandoned or killed before he could make good headway with them, a little girl dead because he didn't feel the need to step in and save her.
They're similar in all the ways that matter within this place, but Sloane can't tell if it's enough.
She's not sure if she'll be able to before it's too late.
Zoya Ossof, 16
Victor of District Five
Surely they're not going to kick him out.
Because, really, that's about all Zoya can be bothered to care about in the current moment.
He can't help but stare at the clock on the far wall, the seconds ticking down. He knows they're going to announce the end of lunch any second now and let him tell you, it isn't fair in the fucking slightest to make him eat at the same pace as everyone else when he doesn't have two working hands. Hell, he barely has one.
Still, the bell rings regardless. Zoya raises his head from the fork he's dropped for the seventeenth time to watch as everyone gets up like obedient little soldiers, abandoning their empty plates to return to the gymnasium. There's enough left on his own to consider putting up a fight, but the chances of him winning? Slim to none.
"Did your legs stop working too?" a voice drawls behind him. "That's unfortunate."
"Tova—"
"Eh, Calm down. He can take it."
Zoya swings his legs free from the bench and nearly collides with both of the girls from One, his toes jabbing into Tova's ankle. "Sorry," he says loudly. "Didn't see you there."
Of course she's intimidating—at least Zoya can look her straight in the eye when he gets to his full height. She's not so scary without an axe in hand, stuck between luncheon tables. She grabs his hand and yanks it forward before he can draw it away, turning it to examine the mental contraption locked around his mangled fist.
"Tova," Maderia tries again, clearly hoping to draw her away. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she's not so lucky in her convincing.
"And to think you did that to yourself." She tuts, releasing him so that his hand falls back to the wayside, twinging with soreness. "Sucks."
"Y'know, if you're just here to make yourself feel better, I think you're perfectly capable of feeding your own ego. I'm sorta busy."
"Resorting to insults, Five?"
"I'm not insulting you," he clarifies. "I'm describing you. There's a difference."
Tova's eyes narrow, and if Zoya had any great deal of sense built up inside him he might have started to worry. There are too many people watching on though, waiting not-so patiently for them all to exit and get back to the task at-hand.
"You did it to everyone else too," Tova reminds him. She's swinging bigger now, trying to get under his skin. "How does it feel to know that you've got all that blood on your ledger? Even more than me. All those kids who didn't run fast enough, who got trapped… that's on you."
"For fuck's sake," Kai says behind him. "You think he would've done it if he knew?"
Zoya freezes, and he can't quite tell why. A part of him is staying still, stubbornly refusing to entertain her. The other is hyper-fixated on Kai's sudden appearance—not that he needs him to be there, or even wants such a thing. How they've gone from Kai nearly killing him to sticking up for him in a month's time is beyond Zoya's comprehension.
"He didn't know," Kai reiterates. "Get over yourself."
Bold words for someone who could trip over their own two feet and possibly not get up. Kai looks awful today, pale in the face and disheveled. He sleeps forever and never manages to look rested.
He misses Maderia finally getting a good hold on Tova's arm—watching that in itself is weird, her even willing to put a single hand on the girl who murdered her unnecessarily, but Zoya has learned that questioning other's decisions won't get him anywhere when he hardly understands his own. Even as Tova is pulled away, there's a sneer on her face.
"You're both dead, Fives," she informs them. "Good luck out there."
"See you in hell!" Zoya waves after her, disjointed metal fingers tapping against one another and digging further into his skin. At least he's gotten used to the newfound pain this last month. It's little more than an irritant now, even if it is bothersome.
"You shouldn't antagonize them."
"She antagonized me," Zoya insists, whirling on Kai. "Or did you miss that part?"
"Doesn't matter. You know it's not going to be easy for you in the arena. Don't make it any harder than it has to be."
"And it's going to be easy for you? Take your own advice, Kai. Don't defend me to them, because they'll kill you just as quickly and I sure as hell don't want it."
Not from him. He can still see himself on that concrete floor, the recaps of it. The tears streaming down his face and the noose tightened around his neck, his purple-red, blotchy skin.
Kai on the catwalk above him, hands wrapped around the knotted rope but not moving. Not doing anything.
Not saving him.
"Just leave me the fuck alone," Zoya mutters. He strides past him, no choice but to abandon his plate now. The rest of the room is empty, save for the fragile boy he leaves behind in his wake. And still, something in Zoya feels bad. He doesn't know which of the two of them is more pathetic; Kai, for his general state of existence, or Zoya in his half an inch of caring.
Even caring is too strong a word. There's truly no one here worth wasting that much energy on. He has to save it for confrontations like that, when people will poke and prod at him like he's some type of zoo animal eager to be stared at. He has to save it for surviving when he didn't even intend to the first time around.
Zoya doesn't know what he's going to do; he never has.
The familiarity, if nothing else, is at least slightly comforting.
Ravi Fusain, 17
Victor of District Twelve
It's hard not to believe that everyone is staring at him.
The truth is simple—no one cares about him. Objectively speaking, Ravi is about as much of a threat as Farasha Oriani, the look she casts at him as she settles on the other end of the table suspicious but not overly wary.
He may as well be invisible, but it doesn't seem sensible to be ignoring the existence of someone who can so quickly turn into something worse.
It's clear they just don't understand.
That's why it's easiest to stay right here; there was no reason to come back. Ravi has read these books over several dozen times and found he knew most of the things in them already. His mother saw to that from an early age. He knows all about medicine and healing, the correct way to suture a wound and how to bring someone from a fever. This is just where he's comfortable. It's familiar to keep his head down and pore over the words like he's actually absorbing them.
He can feel someone watching the table, but Ravi can't bring himself to turn around so blatantly to find out. In their shared quiet, someone eventually sidles up. Vadric places themselves at the very end of the bench, as far as they can possibly get from him.
It feels like a slight, even if it isn't. If Vadric had something against him, they wouldn't have sat down in the first place.
Perhaps they're all just looking for quiet. It would make sense amongst all this chaos. He can see Farasha's lower lip caught between her teeth, though, eyebrows furrowed as she looks back and forth between one of the books and the chart of plants. Clearly something isn't adding up.
He waits, the name repeating through his head over and over before he dares speak. "Coneflower," he tells her. "Echinacea."
Her eyes dart up to his before they return to skim over the age. "Good for colds and flu?"
"Infection, too, if you've got the right tincture."
"And how do you make one of those?" she asks curiously.
"Grain alcohol, usually. That's what was easiest to get our hands on, anyway. Vodka, if you can find it. I've heard of using vinegar in a pinch, but…"
Farasha nods, agreeing with his words before Ravi has even sorted them. At least she's receptive—that's more than he can say for some people out in the world. Clearly she's not some fragile little girl, not like Rosemary was, but something in him still feels bad watching her flip through that book, all the while hoping she won't ever need the information contained within it.
"I don't suppose there's one that helps you sleep," Vadric says quietly. Dare he say it, so quietly that it appears Vadric didn't intend to be heard at all.
"Valerian root," he answers. "If you can find it. It lasts fairly well in the cold, so we can usually find it in the spring along the fenceline. I'm not sure about Six; doesn't seem like much would grow there."
When he looks up, Vadric is blinking owlishly at him. Ravi wishes he could sink into the floor and never remerge.
"And you didn't ask," he realizes. "Right. Sorry."
Sometimes he just can't make himself be quiet no matter how much he wishes to. If Ravi had a choice, silence would be the only thing he existed in. He presses his fingers into the table's edge, drumming his nails along a wooden seam as Vadric nods just like Farasha had. At least neither of them have taken off. If they had, Ravi would have tried his hand at leaving no matter how much he would have been reprimanded for it.
Nothing ever seems to go the way he planned it. Ravi longs for a time when he can have a plan and stick to it without something falling apart in the middle. It seems like such a far-fetched thing to dream about.
"I'm sorry," Vadric says. They look just as nervous as he feels, eyes uncertain as they glance at one another one.
"You don't have to be—"
"No, no, not about that, about… about your mom."
Ravi feels his body go cold all over, his legs going limp as the feeling rushes out of them. The monster truly never dies, no matter how long she rots away in the ground, no matter how far away she is. She's always there looming over him, ready to bring the axe down.
And here Vadric is apologizing. Hadn't they said something about their own mother that first time around, in the interviews? If Ravi is recollecting it properly, it had been among the only things they said. How close they were. How much they loved each other.
How unusual would it be to have that, to not be the son of Twelve's latest villain, rapidly following in her footsteps.
Ravi swallows around the lump that's formed in his throat. "Thank-you," he croaks. No matter how far his efforts stretch to keep his face from contorting, his hands continue to shake where he's fit them around the side of the table. His eyes are foggy when he tries to glance back down at the manual, the chatter and the storm roaring in his ears impossible to fight through.
He should move. Go somewhere. Escape to the bathroom, even. Ravi can hardly make himself move beyond the occasional shake.
But it's so small, so imperceptible, that when Farasha leaves she gives them both an awkward smile as if nothing is wrong. Vadric is not long after her as they close their own manual—Ravi hears them say something, and he manages a response. What, he doesn't know. Whatever it is, it's enough to convince them that nothing has changed.
In reality, nothing is the same. It feels like the ceiling is going to come down on his head. It feels like he should be dead already.
For all Ravi knows, perhaps he already is.
Maderia Elvario, 18
Victor of District One
If she imagines it hard enough, this is just like old times.
The Academy back in One. The people around her, friends and fellow trainees. Blades clashing and instructions being called out, so many bodies moving at a frenetic pace in order to keep up with the best.
But who that is, now, Maderia has no idea. She just knows it's not her.
Of course this place couldn't less resemble what she was so used to. Her mother wasn't here, nor her closest friends. The trainers with their familiar coldness, Hanelle telling her to run faster, I know you can, never allow yourself to be the last one to fucking finish, Elvario—
Never the fastest, but never last either. It was the one thing that Maderia had always struggled with, watching people race ahead of her down the path and choking on the dust they left in their wake. To be someone of her name was to be the best—once upon a time, she had. No longer was that the truth.
Even Jordyn, with the same amount of kills to her name as Maderia and the burden of being reaped lingering overhead, seemed to slot in easier than she did. Where previously Maderia had felt that all of these people were to be her equals, she shared none of those sentiments now. She was the only one that had laid in the street, bleeding out, dying.
The cameras had cut before she had shuddered out her last breath. A part of her, though, wishes she could see it if only to come to terms with her own fragile humanity, to understand something that made no sense at all.
Unless she could have a secret glance into Tova's world, see it through her eyes, Maderia would never be given that. All she had was what she did know—how to keep moving. Chin up, shoulders back, a knife in each hand.
She had already failed once. Failing again was akin to something like doomsday.
Tova, though, was still as much of her nightmare as she was a savior. The same mouth that had torn so eagerly into the Fives could be so gentle when she kissed Maderia under the cover of darkness, both of them searching for a safety net that would break as soon as they let themselves fall into it. She couldn't deny that sometimes, with her eyes closed, both of them tangled as one beneath the covers, she imagined it to be Cat instead.
Those memories were fading with time. The waterfall of dark hair over her shoulder, her sparkling eyes, the strength in her arms when they wrapped around Maderia's slightly more narrow frame.
She wasn't Cat. Tova was more and less, all at once.
"If you're going to just stand there, mind if I cross over?" Levi asks suddenly, a roll of knives bundled beneath his arm as he passes before her to an identical looking target. In terms of people Maderia needs to be worried about, he's decidedly not one of them. If this were a normal year, they'd be allies. Perhaps even friends.
Clearly, in any case, that's not going to happen now.
"Didn't think you were a long-distance sort of guy," Maderia comments. Levi snorts as he selects one of the knives, examining it under the light.
"M'not. Rohana is still insistent on me being well-rounded, or some shit. Feels a bit late for that now."
That it is. It was beaten into Maderia from the first time she stepped foot into the Academy that she had to know everything, even if she didn't excel in it, but the Two's always seem much more selective. Why he's even bothering now is beyond her.
He clearly knows, as he said, that it's pointless.
"You're not really sticking with her, are you?" Levi questions.
"Sorry?"
"Tova," he clarifies. "I'm not convinced she's all there upstairs, if you get my drift."
In response to her silence, Levi draws a circle a few times around his ear with a low whistle. "I mean, she sort of killed you. Figured you'd remember."
"I remember," she says quietly. Absent-mindedly, her hand drifts overtop her uniform shirt, pressing down against the spot where she knows the bottom of the scar sits. Of course it doesn't make sense to him—it doesn't even make sense to Maderia.
It's just the best thing for both of them. Strength and unity is priority right now when they have little else to rely on.
The past is behind them; Maderia can only look forward. Unlike the Two's, who refuse to even look each-other in the eye based on something much less significant than cold-blooded murder, she's doing what she knows is right. Her personal feelings are of little magnitude, even if the acrid pit festering beneath her breastbone grows larger and more powerful by the day.
She cannot be a dead girl if she is going to see this through. To win means doing everything her mother taught her, being the perfect victor that One deserves.
"I guess all I'm saying is if you're really doing this, you might just be as insane as her," Levi says. The finality of it lingers heavy over them as he turns to face the line of targets, forgetting about her presence entirely.
Maderia is only what she makes herself out to be. What Levi says only has the ability to become true if she lets it. She can crumble and cry. Scream into the darkness and let herself be wrapped in Tova's arms and pretend nothing is wrong. At the end of the day, Maderia decides her own fate.
If that fate is to walk out of the other side of this, then so be it.
There is no telling if that is the path she is meant to forge now.
First day done. Yes, really.
Friendly reminder that I will be updating the blog with alliances after each day - that doesn't necessarily mean those alliances are going to stay as such, but they are confirmed for now. Do with that what you will.
Special shout-out to two people: David, for basically slapping me past one-hundred reviews with a mega catch-up, and Em, for her anniversary review of To Coda that she always promised she would give me. You two are the best (but also everyone else too).
Until next time.