Disclaimer: I don't own The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes or any of the characters.
Guess who's still writing TBOSAS stuff rather than A Traitor's Tale? Me! *cackles evilly*. My new year's resolution for 2024 was to be more of an evil author than ever before and I'm embodying that resolution in this story. I'm in my District 7 Era, and Sevens make the best villains. Like Names Crossed Out, this one is based more on the book than the movie. Unlike Names Crossed Out this time I'm not pretending I care about all twenty-four tributes equally. This is also… probably the most disturbing story I've ever written. Enjoy!
Trigger Warning: Mentions of underage prostitution and SA. Panic attacks. Suicidal ideation. Gore.
Vipsania's boy was the last tribute reaped.
The reapings took place from east to west, with District 12 being first and District 7 being last. Vipsania's hand was cramped and ink-stained from taking notes about the twenty-three other tributes by the time the mayor called her boy's name.
"Treech Fujiwara!" The mayor called. After a brief moment of hesitation, a boy slipped out of the front of the crowd like a shadowy ghost. Vipsania took note of the boy's name and age - eighteen years old, based on his position in the crowd - and then scanned his body for signs of physical fitness. He was tall and slim, long-limbed, not built for brute strength but hopefully built for speed.
Then Treech turned to face the cameras and Vipsania was suddenly distracted from her thoughts of strategy by a jazz song playing faintly in her head. A woman was singing in a smoky voice over soft piano chords and the crackling of radio static. She couldn't quite make out the lyrics.
Treech had beautiful eyes. When the sunlight hit them, they were amber-brown, like hazy streetlamps on a rainy night. For a moment he looked like a rabbit in the headlights on that reaping stage. Then he closed his eyes, took a breath, lifted his hat from his head and bowed.
When he rose from his bow with a wicked smile on his perfect lips, his eyes were like little black voids.
For the rest of the day, Vipsania's mind was full of headlights and static.
The day they met, Treech was rolling a coin along the knuckles of his cuffed hands.
Vipsania tried her best to focus on the questionnaire she'd been given but she couldn't take her eyes off that little silver coin or banish the piano and static from her head. How had he got it? Maybe it'd been in his pocket when he was reaped. Maybe someone had tossed it into his cage at the zoo. Treech had been doing tricks for the crowd, cartwheels and backflips and walking around on his hands, which had given Vipsania a surge of pride. Her boy knew what he was doing.
Treech asked the first question, asked why Vipsania hadn't come to visit him at the zoo. He brought up that Coriolanus and Sejanus had both been there before her.
"Maybe you can afford to be third best," he said. "I can't."
Vipsania insisted that she wasn't third best, she was a winner. She was the best athlete of her generation. She was always the first to raise her hand in class. She was as sharp as the weapon her family was named after.
Sickles had to be sharp. Because they weren't some illustrious founding family. They were comfortably middle-class, mostly academics. She was a P.E. teacher's niece rubbing shoulders with the children of CEOs and generals. Vipsania had fought for every opportunity her wealthy classmates had.
But it was hard to be sharp when Treech Fujiwara was fixing her with those dark eyes and everything was so hazy. The coin kept rolling. He said in that rich, deep voice of his he used to work at a circus. Then he moved to a lumber yard… but his opponents didn't need to know that. Vipsania just stared at the coin, the coloured lights flickering off it - red, amber, blue, so much sapphire blue. She wondered if Treech had ever been a hypnotist.
When she blinked, something neon-pink was twirling around Treech's fingers. There was a soft hissing sound in Vipsania's ears.
Vipsania could hear jazz music again. This time she knew where it was coming from - the radio on Io's little sister's bedside table. Vipsania had turned the radio to her favourite station.
Io's little sister wasn't here - she was at some other sleepover somewhere. The others were all in Io's room, playing kiss, marry, kill or something. Vipsania was alone with Arachne. They were kissing, their golden-brown hair mingling together on the pillow.
Arachne began to unbutton Vipsania's blouse. Vipsania swatted her hands away.
"We're not doing that in an eight-year-old's bedroom," Vipsania said.
Thankfully, Arachne didn't tease Vipsania for being a goody two-shoes like she usually did. This whole 'kissing in Io's little sister's bedroom' thing had been Arachne's idea, of course.
"Callie's eight years old?" Arachne asked. "Have you seen her drawings? She needs therapy. I guess that's what happens when you live with the Mad Scientist and her little experiments all the time."
Vipsania took a quick glance at the pictures on the walls. It was true that a lot of them were of mangled creatures that Vipsania could only imagine were Io's science projects. There were a few that didn't seem to have much to do with Io, though. A twisted metal wreckage with ghostly blue lights shining above it. An axe splitting a girl's skull. A pair of scarred and disfigured lips speaking into a communicuff. A neon-pink snake curled around the long, elegant fingers of a corpse's hand.
I thought Callie wanted to be a fashion designer, not a horror movie director…
"What the fuck is that one?" Arachne murmured.
Vipsania twisted her head around to see where Arachne was pointing. She caught sight of a drawing of a girl in red on the ground, blood spilling out from her slit throat. Based on the shadows of some bars next to her, she was most likely in a cage.
Suddenly, Vipsania heard a scream and turned back to Arachne. Blood was gushing from her slit throat, spilling onto the pillows. Blood was pouring from Vipsania's head. Their blood mingled. The static took over…
Vipsania woke with a start. Her alarm clock said it was midnight. She must've had a nightmare. Understandable, given that her ex had just died in front of her yesterday, though Vipsania had got over Arachne years ago. Thinking back to when she and Arachne had kissed in Callisto Jasper's bedroom as two fourteen-year-olds, she remembered that most of the girl's drawings had been of clothes.
The radio on her bedside table was playing jazz music. She must've fallen asleep with the radio on without her parents noticing.
"What's wrong with you today?" Vipsania asked. Treech had been acting weird ever since Arachne's funeral. Instead of holding himself with dignity like the other tributes, he'd lain down in the truck where he was chained up and cried. Vipsania didn't understand why. It wasn't because of Brandy's bloodied corpse hanging above him. He'd told her he'd seen dead bodies in District 7 during the war and he clearly wasn't scared of crowds.
Maybe if she focused on his problems, she could forget about her nightmares and the crackling in her head.
"Nothing," Treech said. He reached up and adjusted his hat with cuffed hands. "You just look good in this lighting, Doll-Face. Red's your colour."
Vipsania tried to banish the heat from her cheeks, grateful that nobody would notice she was blushing in the red light of the arena's tunnels. The piano in her head was reaching a crescendo, different dissonant notes clashing together. Treech flirted a lot. With Vipsania, with the crowd at the zoo, probably even with the peacekeepers guarding him. He'd told her last time she'd come to the zoo he'd sold his body one winter so he could pay rent. This was all just survival for him.
Vipsania wasn't sure why he felt like he had to flirt with her. Hadn't she convinced him she was going to do everything she could to keep him alive? Maybe he was just testing his material out on her. Maybe she was Treech's equivalent of that mutant rabbit who Dr Gaul kept in a cage and liked to poke from time to time.
"I always wear red," Vipsania said. "Have you not noticed?"
"Believe me, I've noticed."
He grinned. The way the red light his his dark curls reminded Vipsania of a busy street one a rainy night, the red traffic light reflecting off the wet tarmac. She could hear traffic rushing in her ears and sirens wailing. She was just a rabbit in the headlights.
For a moment, Vipsania hoped that earlier today had just been a momentary blip and Treech would be back to his normal confident self for the interviews.
Then the bombs went off.
Vipsania was suddenly on the ground. She'd hit her head hard. She swore she could see her brains spilling out. She also saw Treech. He was on the ground beside her, trying to catch his breath.
A man was yelling in her ear.
"Vipsania! Talk to me! Are you still with me? Tell me you're okay."
She couldn't talk. She couldn't find the words. This man's voice was familiar but she couldn't tell who was speaking.
Treech still wasn't breathing. Why couldn't he breathe? Was he dying? He looked her straight in the eye. His eyes were voids. Neon-pink liquid was leaking from them like tears. His perfect lips were turning blue.
"Help him," Vipsania whispered. She couldn't save him. She could only take his hand as he slowly suffocated.
A neon-pink snake was twining around her wrist. Blue lights flickered above her. The medics were coming.
"Listen to me, Vipsania," the man said. His voice crackled. "This is important. You told me you had dirt on Coriolanus Snow. What is it? I need to know. Tell me! Please! Don't let him win! Don't die!"
When she blacked out, she could picture him with a communicuff to his ear. His face was disfigured with terrible burns.
"We need to come up with a plan for the interviews," Vipsania said, pacing the room - her aunt's classroom at the Academy. She had a stupid headache that just wouldn't go away.
"I've told you, I'm not doing one," Treech said. He was holding one of his arms strangely. Apparently he'd dislocated one of his shoulders in the bombing, though it would hopefully heal in time for the games if he rested it.
It could've been worse. Treech's strategy was very reliant on him being one of the fastest tributes so it was a good thing his legs were fine. Still, his injury would make it harder for him to use an axe and it seemed to have affected his confidence. He'd already shot down most of Vipsania's ideas for interviews. He wasn't going to juggle. He wasn't going to do any backflips. He refused to tell Vipsania any of his other talents.
"But you're a natural performer," Vipsania said. "You'll put on such a good show and win so many sponsors."
"I… can't," Treech said. Tears spilled from his dark eyes. Was it Vipsania's imagination or was one of them neon-pink? "I can't do this anymore."
He retreated into a corner and curled up, knees to his chest. The fingers of his good arm tapped on his knee. Tap. Tap. Tap. It made a hollow, glassy sound in Vipsania's head.
"Can't you at least talk about yourself?" Vipsania asked. "You told me your parents were murdered by rebels because they supported the Capitol. That'd make you so popular."
Treech shook his head. He made a small, sobbing noise.
"Treech, you used to perform for a living. How come you can't do it when your life depends-"
"Because I've just had enough of it, okay?" He snapped. "Of everyone's eyes on me. All those people in the audience, they'll have seen me chained up and crying and helpless at Arachne's funeral and they'll be waiting for me to break. I'm not going to put myself in that position just to be Lucy Fucking Gray's opening act!"
"What if you outperform her?" Vipsania asked.
"I won't," Treech said. "She loves performing. And I… hate it. I didn't realise how much I hated it until I saw her. I only ever did it to survive."
"Then keep doing it! You want sponsors, right?"
Treech stared at her, eyes dark and haunted.
"I want to be forgotten," he said. "I want to just slip into the shadows and have everyone forget I ever existed. I've realised I don't like… being seen."
Vipsania sighed with exasperation. That was the exact opposite of her assignment.
"Have you given up?" Vipsania asked.
There was a long pause. Treech just looked completely empty.
"Have you given up, Treech?" Vipsania repeated.
"I don't know," he said.
"Unbelievable!" she snapped.
"Why?" Treech asked. "I've been dragged around the city in chains and gawked at and locked up in that filthy cage for days! Why is it so hard to believe I'd give up after all that? You know they made us all strip after Brandy killed Arachne so they could search us all for weapons. One of the peacekeepers… touched me. And I told myself it'd be okay because I talked him out of confiscating my scarf so I got something in return, right? I always get something in return. I always…" he let out a small, choked sob. "It's happened before. It's happened so many times."
He broke down. He started making these ugly, rasping, choking sounds. Vipsania tried to process what Treech had just said - a peacekeeper molested him, it'd happened before in District 7 - but she was distracted by the neon-pink that was beginning to streak across his face as he suffocated.
What's wrong with him? she wondered. Why does this keep happening?
"Treech?" She asked, kneeling down in front of him.
"Stay back!" he snapped. Suddenly, his face was normal again. Vipsania had been hallucinating again. This migraine was killing her. She must've shown how scared she was because Treech's expression softened.
"Just… give me some space," he said, weakly.
"Okay," Vipsania said.
She moved away from Treech and that was when she saw it. The radio that was sitting on her aunt's desk.
She turned the radio on and tuned into her favourite station. She needed to calm herself and soothe her aching head. Maybe she was having all these hallucinations and migraines because she was too uptight. The jazz song that Treech always reminded her of immediately started playing. Soon, there was an intricate piano melody on the air.
Tap. Tap. Tap. The glass would surely shatter soon and then someone would just b-r-e-a-k, just spill everywhere like Arachne's blood.
"I like this song," Treech said. The music seemed to have calmed him down. His good hand was tapping on the floor in time to the music. His long fingers were spread out elegantly, like he was a true pianist. Maybe he'd learned to play the piano back in District 7.
If only Vipsania could get him to play in front of an audience…
"You have good taste," Vipsania said. "I like it too."
Treech leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. His face was stained by tears but he seemed to have found some kind of peace.
"It's nice to hear some good music," he said.
"Doesn't Lucy Gray make good music?" Vipsania asked.
Treech shook his head. "She's really good at making bad music. That kind of 'three chords and you can sing it with your friends when you're drunk' rubbish is inescapable in Seven. I've always hated it," he paused. "Maybe it's because I never had any friends to sing it with. I notice you didn't even ask if Coriolanus singing the anthem at two funerals was good music."
Vipsania laughed. It'd been annoying when Coriolanus had been chosen to sing at Arachne's funeral but understandable. Vipsania doubted that Arachne would've wanted her ex singing at her funeral. She also doubted that she would've wanted a guy with a voice as bland as overcooked cabbage singing at her funeral, even if that guy was her friend. If there was one lesson Vipsania had learned from Arachne's death it was 'Write down who you want singing at your funeral before you leave your knife within reach of your angry tribute.'
Vipsania had hoped that she'd be able to sing at the Ring Twins' funeral, since she was let out of hospital in time and Coriolanus was still being treated. But instead someone high up decided they wanted to hear Coriolanus' mediocre rendition of Gem of Panem again and they had a hologram version of him recorded from Arachne's funeral sing it.
"I don't need to ask," Vipsania said. "I know it's bad."
"You agree with me?" Treech asked. "I thought I was going crazy. This might sound really dumb but I was trying to hold myself together after… all that ugliness after Brandy and being chained up but the moment I heard Fucking Coriolanus singing Gem of Panem I just… lost the will to live. It was the first song I ever learned. And then they had him sing it again at the next funeral… The whole time I was thinking 'Do you people have Fucking Coriolanus sing at every funeral? If so, can I die next so I never have to hear him again?'"
"Don't you dare die next," Vipsania said. "I swear, Treech, if you don't win the games, I will personally arrange for Coriolanus to butcher Gem of Panem at your funeral."
"You can be so evil sometimes," Treech said. He looked like he was holding back laughter. "You know that, Doll-Face?"
"You say 'evil', I say 'motivational'," Vipsania said.
They both burst out laughing. Treech patted the floor next to him, an invite for Vipsania to sit down beside him. She sat against the wall.
Their hands found each other in the gap between them. Vipsania drew her hand back.
She was sure she'd touched the warm and strangely soft scales of a snake.
"It's okay," Treech said. "You can hold my hand if you want."
"You sure?" Vipsania asked. She thought about what Treech had said before he'd broken down. It's happened so many times. He was abused back in Seven. Of course he was, he'd been selling his body to survive even though he was just a kid. He was trying to act like he was fine. She could picture fifteen-year-old Treech curled up in some grimy rented room, counting denarii bills and telling himself he wasn't hurt, that he was some mastermind who always got something in return.
He wasn't fine.
Vipsania made a silent promise to herself. She'd track down that Peacekeeper who'd touched Treech, who might've cost her the Tenth Hunger Games, and end that man's career in the most brutal way possible.
"Yeah," Treech said. "I liked it when you held my hand in the bombing. I think… I feel safe with you."
He pressed his palm to hers. It felt like he was tapping on the glass wall between them. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"You play guitar, don't you?" He asked. It was like he could tell just by touching her hand. Vipsania had calluses on her fingertips that any other musician would recognise.
"Yeah," she said. Her breath caught in her throat. Two can play at that game. "You play piano."
"Used to," Treech said, darkly. Then he sighed. "We could've made music together, if things had been different… Maybe there's one person I want remembering me."
He gave her a small, sad smile.
"Wouldn't it be nice, Vips," he said, "to be the only person who knew me? You can have me all to yourself."
Vipsania felt her cheeks flush. Those piano chords were hammering into her skull. She felt breathless. Why is he doing this? He says he can't perform anymore, why hasn't he dropped the act?
Do I know you that well? She wondered. To her, Treech seemed like some strange but beautiful forest creature she could never truly understand. Just thinking about him made her head ache.
But she wanted to understand. She'd been told that the people of the districts were simple-minded but Treech had a mind as dark and tangled and complicated as a bramble thicket and she wanted to untangle it. She wanted him to be more than just some shadowy ghost in her peripheral vision.
Vipsania felt something warm on her wrist and looked down. A neon-pink snake was trying to slide from Treech's wrist to hers. She screamed and started backwards.
"Snake!" She cried.
"Where?" Treech asked. Suddenly, he looked terrified.
"I…" Vipsania looked around. The snake had vanished. It was never there. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I think I… see things that aren't there. I'm going crazy," she sobbed. "I'm actually going crazy."
She broke down, crying. There was so much static in her head. She was losing her mind. It was spiralling out of control, spilling out through the cracks, the cracks…
"Hey, don't cry, Doll-Face," Treech said. His voice cut through the pain and static like that piano melody. "It's okay."
He wrapped his arms around her. He was so tall, strangely solid and muscular for a ghostly slip of a boy. His arms were so warm and comforting. Her face was resting against his chest. If Vipsania wanted to, she could tilt her head up and kiss Treech's face. Would he be okay with that? He seemed to like her, to like having her close, but would a kiss ruin that? Her head felt so heavy and strangely wet.
"I don't want to go insane, Treech," Vipsania said.
She'd never felt so small, even though she'd always been one of the shortest girls in he class. She'd always tried to be bigger, to fill up space. Maybe that was why she and Treech made such a good pair, because he was this big guy with a face beautiful enough to draw stares and he just wanted to disappear, to take up as little space as possible, to slip through the cracks like Vipsania's brains slop-slopping out of her skull…
"You're gonna be okay," Treech said. "We… We're gonna be okay. Just hold onto me."
Stay with me! (Crackle.) Talk to me, Vipsania! Please! (Crackle. Static.)
(Noise.)
"It hurts, Treech," Vipsania said. "My head…"
Too much noise. Too much noise. Too much noise.
He took her face in his hands and stared into her eyes. His eyes were like the void calling her. Neon-pink was pouring down his face, pretty pearlescent tears. Thick red stuff was spilling down her face onto his hands. Red's your colour, Doll-Face.
"Let me kiss it better," Treech said, an airless voice through blue lips. He pressed his mouth to her forehead and she tingled all over.
When he pulled away, his mouth was stained with red. He ran a long forked tongue over his lips.
"Your blood tastes like cherry soda, Doll-Face," he said.
Vipsania stared at her screen, waiting for Treech. He'd been out of view of the cameras for most of the games but that buzzing in her head told her he'd be appearing soon.
Sure enough, he appeared out of a tunnel shortly after Felix sent water to his sick tribute. He moved so fast, Vipsania couldn't quite get a glimpse of his face. But she saw that inky spill of hair, that hat, those long limbs.
He was fast. He was a blur. Like a 'drunk' driver on a rain-soaked road.
Treech scooped up the bottles Felix had sent to Dill without even pausing. Vipsania could already hear his long fingers tap-tapping on the glass. Tap. Tap. Tap. C-r-a-c-k!
Glass shattered. Blood spilled. Static.
Vipsania blinked and Treech had vanished again.
His master plan was working. Even though he hadn't given an interview and he didn't have that many sponsors, he still had a way to get food and water. Treech was a good thief. He had quick, clever hands.
Maybe he'd stolen Vipsania's heart.
Vipsania had made peace with the fact that Treech had refused to give an interview, though it annoyed her when Fucking Coriolanus (even she was using that nickname now, Coriolanus was just that annoying) and the six other mentors who'd been able to get interviews out of their tributes got so much praise and attention. The day after Treech's breakdown in her aunt's classroom Vipsania had asked Treech if he'd changed his mind over the interviews only for him to produce a note from the veterinarian. Apparently he'd been having panic attacks in the zoo over the thought of being on a stage, which was a pretty serious problem given that his lungs hadn't recovered from the bombing. Vipsania had finally given up on that interview. Better to have no interview than an interview where Treech had a panic attack the moment he stepped onstage.
Maybe all Vipsania's hallucinations of Treech asphyxiating had been a warning that putting him on a stage would kill him. She hadn't had one since she'd given up on the interview.
Maybe she'd saved him. Maybe Treech's plan would work and he'd steal the victory. The numbers on Treech's sponsor fund were already beginning to move up like a car's speedometer. They knew he was fast and opportunistic and ruthless. Maybe it'd be enough.
By the fourth day of the games, Vipsania knew it was enough.
There were seven tributes left. Treech was one of them, and he'd now picked up his dead district partner's axe. When asked for comments on her tribute by Lepidus Malmsey from Capitol News, Vipsania would talk about Treech's intelligence. Because he was smart. His parents were rich, educated and cultured. They'd supported the Capitol during the war. Treech must've taken after them, even though they'd died when he was only seven.
Such a clever boy. Such a shame he was born in the districts otherwise he would've been something.
While the arena was quiet, a fight broke out between Treech fans and Coral fans. Vipsania was overjoyed. Treech hadn't even needed to give an interview to become one of the most popular tributes. He was the enigma with the axe, tall, dark handsome and mysterious. Nobody knew quite what he was capable of.
Nobody but Vipsania. She knew he was winning.
In the late afternoon, Dr Gaul announced the death of Gaius Breen, one of Vipsania's fellow mentors who'd been hospitalised after the bombing. Vipsania had been shaken - she'd been in the same hospital ward as the dead boy just a few days ago. She'd been taken to the emergency ward after the bombing due to the overwhelming pain in her head and doctors feared she'd sustained a serious head injury. But then they'd checked her, found no sign of serious injury, concluded that the pain was merely psychological and released her the next day.
Now the only person left in hospital was Androcles Anderson, who'd sustained serious burns all over his body. He was the last one left hanging between life and death.
Vipsania was pretty sure she'd heard him talking to her over the communicuff in her hallucinations. But every time she thought about him, her head hurt so much she forgot who she was and why she was thinking.
Dr Gaul promised that, to punish the rebels for Gaius' death, she'd "planned something special for their children in the arena". Vipsania had the brief hope that Treech would be left unscathed. He was the furthest thing from a 'rebel's child' in the arena. But her hopes were dashed like brains and broken glass on the tarmac when Treech ran out of a tunnel, axe drawn, just as a drone carrying a large glass tank appeared above the arena.
Vipsania recognised the shapes inside immediately. A rainbow of neon snakes, like the one Treech was playing with in his hallucinations.
The drone dropped the tank to the ground. Vipsania waited for the glass to shatter but instead it just fell away and the snakes poured forwards.
Clemensia screamed. Like brakes. Like metal being torn apart. Vipsania was momentarily distracted.
When she looked up, the snakes were swarming a dark-haired boy and biting him.
It wasn't Treech. The boy was smaller. His skin was darker. His hair was much shorter. According to Vipsania's notes, he was Circ Pritchard from District 3. His wounds pumped out pink, yellow and blue pus as he fell to the ground, gasping for breath.
This is how he dies, Vipsania realised, with crushing finality. This is how my Treech is going to die.
She searched the screen for him, convinced that she'd see him dying on the ground. Instead he was up in the sky, sitting on top of the giant scoreboard, out of reach of the snakes.
For now.
Vipsania spent the night in Heavensbee hall. She'd been the only mentor who'd thought to bring a sleeping bag. She'd known when she'd left home that morning that Treech would survive the day.
How had she known? Because the song in her head was nowhere near over yet.
It rained in the night. Vipsania tried to sleep but she couldn't get the sound of the tapping raindrops out of her head. Tap, tap, tap. She wondered what Treech heard. She was sure he heard notes when he tapped away with his fingertips. Did he hear an orchestra now?
Did they hear the same thing?
We could've made music together, he'd said. That was the saddest thing. Vipsania never got to hear the music in Treech's head, all his songs left unsung. She wanted to remember him but all of the music in him had just slipped through the cracks. Like raindrops through broken glass. Like brains slop-slopping out of a skull.
Why were Vipsania's eyes so wet? Was it rainwater or blood?
We broke him, Vipsania realised. Treech was willing to perform when he'd arrived here. Then he was treated like an animal, an object, a freak, until he just couldn't bear feeling people's eyes on him anymore.
Was there a way she could've protected him? Something she'd missed? It made her angry enough to want to rip someone's eyes out with her fingers. It made her see red, red, red…
Yes, it'd be blood wouldn't it? Blood, warm and sticky like cherry soda. Red's your colour, Doll-Face.
In the morning, Vipsania sent Treech food and he wolfed it down. He sat on the edge of the scoreboard, swinging his feet like a child. He looked more innocent and carefree than Vipsania had ever seen him. Maybe he just liked being up in the sky, high above anyone who could hurt him.
Not that the snakes were a danger anymore. Fucking Coriolanus' tribute, Lucy Gray Baird had distracted them with her singing yesterday evening and then they'd all died in the rain before they could start climbing Treech's scoreboard. They'd only killed one tribute besides Circ - Coral Connolly, a vicious, trident-wielding redhead from District 4 who many had believed would win. Vipsania was grateful at first. Then she'd realised that if Lucy Gray hadn't distracted the snakes, they probably would've killed every tribute they could reach and Treech would've won the games by virtue of being the highest climber.
The first activity of the morning interesting enough to distract Vipsania from Treech sunning himself and wringing rainwater out of his tar-black curls on the top of the scoreboard was Teslee Urbańska from District Three playing around with some of the sponsor drones. Vipsania joined the mentors' discussion, trying to figure out what her plan was.
When Vipsania realised that Teslee had programmed the drones to attack Mizzen Murray, the boy from District 4, who was standing on a high, precarious beam, she felt a shred of fear. Mizzen fell to the ground and broke his neck Teslee reeled in one of the drones and hugged it in celebration but Vipsania knew it was only a matter of time before she chose her next target.
Treech was suddenly vulnerable up on his scoreboard.
It was only when a familiar shadow seemed to materialise at the edge of the screen that Vipsania realised that Treech knew it too. The sunlight glinted off the blade of his axe - red, amber, blue, so much sapphire blue. He was her hypnotist, her circus magician. Look at the swinging watch, the shining coin, the pretty scarf, look at the smoke and mirrors, don't look at my hands.
Treech moved through the air as gracefully as a silk scarf caught on the wind. His damp hair swirled around his face like smoke. There was sunlight in his eyes. They were the dark gold of some old heirloom pocket watch.
His hands drove his axe into Teslee's head.
Vipsania's head exploded with pain. So much delicious pain. Her boy had just made a kill. Everyone around her was patting her on the back and congratulating her. But her head felt like it was cracking open.
Treech paused for a moment to catch his breath. He sat beside Teslee's corpse and watched the blood spill from her cracked skull. Vipsania could feel the burn of his dark eyes on her, even though he wasn't looking at the cameras. She sent him food from his now substantial sponsor fund and he gathered up the parcels and vanished behind the barricade.
These were Treech's games to lose now. He had two opponents. Neither of them had killed. Reaper Ash from District 11 was big and intimidating but he was also stupid, perhaps to the point of insanity. He'd never attacked any of his opponents, despite being the strongest tribute there, and now he was refusing to eat or drink any sponsor-bought supplies. As for Lucy Gray Baird from District 12, she had a pretty voice, good for those three-chord drunken singalong songs. But she was a slip of a girl with no weapons.
Later that day, when Treech emerged from behind the barricade to chase down Lucy Gray with his axe, there was a way things should've gone. He was the hunter. She was the prey. He had an axe. She had no weapon.
She had no weapon, right?
Vipsania had forgotten that so much of sport was about mindset…
Vipsania watched as Lucy Gray dropped to the ground. Treech raised his axe. Ready to bring it down on her. A magician ready to slice a girl in half. It took a certain kind of magic to cut people in two.
It took a certain kind of magic to put the pieces back together.
Afterwards, Vipsania tried so many times to put the pieces of Treech Fujiwara she had in her head back together. But so many pieces were just missing. Even that last image of him standing above Lucy Gray - axe in hands, black hair caught in the wind, eyes hard like black diamonds, like twin voids - wasn't quite complete. It was like there'd been cracks forming in him since childhood, pieces of him chipping away with every tap, tap, tap…
Then Lucy Gray launched herself at him. She just stepped right into his arms, ducking his axe, and threw her arms around his neck. Suddenly, she was touching his face, touching his hair, touching his scarf. Her hips pressed against his. Treech was just frozen, eyes empty. But he was going to be okay. He was going to kill Lucy Gray and then he'd be okay.
She had no weapon. No weapon…
Why aren't you fighting her? Vipsania wondered. But she knew why. Treech froze up whenever someone unexpectedly stepped into his space. The peacekeepers at the zoo would always tell Vipsania how obedient her boy was because he never struggled or tried to fight back when they grabbed him. Lucy Gray must've noticed as well. That was why she was doing this, trying to delay the inevitable because she had no weapon.
Right?
Then Treech's eyes widened with horror. His lips parted. The microphones barely picked up his scream. He dropped his axe, shoved Lucy Gray away and grabbed something from the back of his neck. His hands moved so quickly, Vipsania couldn't quite make out what it was, she just saw a blur of neon-pink.
Her whole world turned upside down.
The song in her head was fading. The outro was playing. The static was getting louder.
Treech brought his hand to the ground again and again, frantic, panicked, desperate. His other hand clawed at his throat. He couldn't breathe. Soon he began to slow down and collapsed to the ground. His face was blue and streaked with neon-pink. There was a small pink snake clutched in his fist. Dead. He'd killed it.
He'd killed it too late to save himself.
It'd only taken Circ a few seconds to die from the venom. But he was small and he'd been bitten many times. It took Treech a minute or two to succumb to the venom. He lay on the ground, twitching, neon-pink pouring out of his eyes and nose. Blue lips barely moving, making airless pleas for help nobody would ever hear.
Vipsania could feel his eyes pleading to her. Was he reaching out for her?
Treech had told her he felt safe with her. He'd believed she could protect him. She'd let him down.
Everything just went silent. Something was ringing in Vipsania's ears.
Lepidus was asking her questions. She answered them through gritted teeth, trying to block out the pain. And the hatred.
Fucking Coriolanus. Vipsania's arch nemesis. His wailing little bitch had killed Treech, taken him from her, made him spend his final moments scared and confused and gasping for breath.
She saw red. Nothing but red.
She was going to make him pay for it.
Vipsania scanned her list of tributes to see who was next only to find a name highlighted in yellow.
District 5 Male: the list read. Luka Starkwain, 16 - the volunteer!
It was Vipsania's first year on the job as a gamemaker, after she'd got a degree in sports science at the University. Dr Gaul had given her the task of creating profiles for all twenty-four tributes so the gamemakers could better predict their performance in the arena and therefore have more control over the outcome of the games. Currently, she was watching footage of the tributes as they undressed for the tribute parade. It was a pretty disgusting job to have but it was the best way to get a sense of every tribute's level of physical fitness. There was only so much information she could gather at the reaping. A scared kid in baggy clothes could be hiding an emaciated husk of a body or lean muscle.
The volunteer boy from District 5 however, was obviously strong, strong enough to be the projected victor of the Fourteenth Hunger Games as of the reapings. Vipsania had been able to tell from the moment he'd stepped on the reaping stage to save his frail and blind twelve-year-old brother. The short-sleeved white shirt he'd worn to the reaping had revealed arms bulging with muscle and he'd carried himself with the stance of a fighter. He was obviously the fittest tribute in this year's games and Vipsania didn't need to look at footage of him in his underwear to know that. But she did want to see if she could guess what kind of athlete he was.
Vipsania pressed a button on the keyboard and footage from the District 5 male's dressing room came up. As the boy changed out of his Reaping Day clothes, she gave his body a quick scan. She was impressed by how muscular his legs were. As a fellow athlete, she had to respect him.
Nice work, kid, she thought. My guess is that you're a wrestler.
Vipsania took a look at the notes she'd taken under Luka's name during the reaping and simply underlined Very fit. Then she added a couple more notes, noting the scars on the boy's back and how his torso was a shade or two lighter than his tanned face.
Scars on back, presumably from peacekeeper whipping. Ask mentor about criminal record.
Very tanned skin. Probably works outdoors.
Having gathered all the information she needed to know about the boy, she was about to move on to the District 6 Female when she noticed something.
The peacekeeper guard on duty had his eyes fixed on the boy. And he had his hand in his pants.
Vipsania felt her lip curl with disgust. What a creep! she thought. He's sixteen years old you pervert!
She caught a glimpse of familiar dark curls out of the corner of her eye. Treech?
Sometimes she thought she saw him, in crowds or flickering across screens. Even four years later, he still haunted her.
But no, it was just Luka's halo of raven hair - the only feature the blue-eyed boy from Five had in common with Treech. It was disturbingly easy to picture Treech half-naked in a dressing room like that, though. He'd have probably noticed the eyes combing over his body, unlike Luka, who was seemingly deep in conversation with his stylist's teenage assistant. Would he be trying to ignore the peacekeeper and hide his discomfort, or would he be panicking and begging his stylist to let him cover up?
Vipsania knew she had to get this man fired. She checked the records to see which peacekeeper had been assigned to guard the District 5 Male's dressing room today and she came up with the name Priapus Graves.
That name seemed familiar. She checked her notes. She was startled by something stuck to one of the pages, a neon-pink sticky note saying 'Hey there, Doll-Face!' in handwriting that wasn't hers.
A familiar song started playing in her head.
Beneath the note was the list of peacekeepers who'd been stationed at the zoo the day Arachne had died. She didn't have access to that security footage so she had no idea which of the men on her list had molested Treech. But Priapus Graves was on that list and Vipsania had a gut feeling it was him.
And if it wasn't him and another peacekeeper on that list was also a pervert… Vipsania still wouldn't feel much guilt for what she was about to do.
Vipsania studied the face of the man in the video but all she saw was red. She'd never hated anyone more in her life. Maybe if this guy had kept his filthy hands off Treech, Treech wouldn't have panicked so much when Lucy Gray had locked him in her venomous embrace. Maybe he would've saved himself.
He'd been so close to saving himself…
Hey, Treech, Vipsania wrote on the sticky note, even if it was stupid. He'd been dead for four years. There was no way he'd written that note. I haven't forgotten you.
She turned back to the screen, wondering how to get her revenge. Then she realised the girl Luka was talking to looked familiar. Vipsania studied her for a moment. She had dark skin and her hair was in cornrows woven with golden thread and pulled back into a high ponytail. She was wearing peacock-blue stiletto heels and a very pretty gold dress with a peacock feather pattern on the skirt.
Vipsania vaguely remembered overhearing Io Jasper saying something about her artsy little sister winning a prize in a 'Design a tribute costume' competition when she was chatting to her friends by the coffee machine. The girl in the video was Callisto Jasper, Io's sister.
A few minutes later, Vipsania had summoned Io to her desk. Vipsania didn't talk to her fellow former mentor much, even though they shared a workplace. Io was in the muttations division and Vipsania tried to stay away from those mutt-breeding types as much as possible. Io had a tendency to brag about how, Circ, the tribute she'd mentored in the Tenth Games was the first ever tribute in Hunger Games history to be killed by mutts. She'd also admitted to Vipsania that she was a little disappointed that Circ and Coral had both died from the venom so quickly and it'd been nice to see Treech get bitten so she'd had more time to take in the symptoms.
That just put a bad taste in Vipsania's mouth. Specifically blood. Or cherry soda.
"Hey, Io," Vipsania said. "What are you working on at the moment?"
"Rats," Io said. "I'm working on these rats that are specifically designed to burrow inside you and eat you from the inside."
"That's nice," Vipsania lied. "Do you want to hear about what I've been doing?"
"Not really," Io said. "Unless there are rats involved."
"Trust me, there are. See this creep?" Vipsania asked, pointing straight at the peacekeeper on her screen. "He's touching himself while looking at your sister."
A normal person with a basic understanding of how the human brain worked might've noticed the very obvious half-naked elephant in the room and at least considered that Priapus was looking at Luka. But Io Jasper was not a normal person. She probably didn't even register that there was a third person in the video.
"What's his name?" Io asked.
"Priapus Graves."
"Thanks for the information. I'm going back to my rats."
Vipsania was able to resist the urge to shudder until Io was long gone. What an utterly terrifying young woman! But she was exactly who Vipsania had needed for her revenge.
She looked down at her notes, searching for the next tribute on her list, District 6 Female, but her eyes caught on the sticky note.
You're evil… but so am I. See you at midnight? was written on the bottom. A winking smily face was drawn beside it.
That night, Vipsania stayed up until midnight waiting for some sort of sign. Nothing unusual happened. Maybe it was just a prank.
Two days later, Priapus Graves was found dead with half a dozen rats nesting in his corpse, having eaten him from the inside. There was a brief scare about a new strain of rabies that made the front page, but all the headlines were about a drunk-driving incident that'd claimed the life of a gamemaker. Strange. Vipsania hadn't noticed that any of her colleagues were absent from work.
It must've one of the mutt-breeders. She'd never paid much attention to them.
Vipsania hadn't expected to be summoned to the hospital when Dr Gaul was taken ill but it was apparently the head gamemaker's final wish to see Vipsania before she died. Would she name Vipsania as her successor? Did she have the power to do that? Or would it be the president's choice?
If it was the president's choice, Dr Gaul's successor would obviously be Io Jasper. She had her head so far up President Fucking Coriolanus' ass, she might as well be one of her freaky burrowing rat creatures.
Dr Gaul looked smaller than usual in her hospital bed. Her hands were covered in bandages instead of her usual gloves. Vipsania wasn't quite sure what she'd come down with. People were saying it was an experiment gone wrong. Vipsania briefly wondered if she should hold Dr Gaul's hand as she died but Dr Gaul interrupted her with a cough as she reached over.
"No need to bother with that, Miss Sickle. I don't need to be comforted. There's just something I have to tell you, before I die."
"Am I your successor?" Vipsania asked.
"No," Dr Gaul said, irritated. "You've always been too squeamish around mutts. I've made it known that I want Io Jasper to succeed me as head gamemaker. There's just something I can't tell her. She's always been far too loyal to young Mr Snow. No, I'm sure you'd put this information to much better use. Coriolanus Snow cheated in the Tenth Hunger Games."
Vipsania gasped. She'd despised Coriolanus with every fibre of her being since his tribute had killed Treech and then won the Tenth Hunger Games. Maybe she was just being petty. Everyone else had seemingly forgotten the Tenth Hunger Games. Why couldn't she?
It had to be because of that ghost of a boy who'd haunted her for the last nine years.
And now Vipsania had the knowledge that he'd probably died because Fucking Coriolanus had cheated…
All she saw was red. Warm, sticky red.
"The first instance of cheating was when Mr Snow snuck food from the Academy's dining hall to feed his tribute," Dr Gaul said.
Vipsania nodded. That wasn't too egregious. Many of the mentors - Vipsania included - had brought their tribute extra food before the games, since their guards weren't feeding them nearly enough. But Vipsania had spent her own money on this food. She'd assumed that the other mentors had as well. It was pretty crummy to take food from the Academy.
"The second instance was when Mr Snow gave his tribute an empty makeup compact and encouraged her to fill it with rat poison before the games. When she entered the arena, she used this poison to kill two tributes - Wovey Lorenzo and Reaper Ash."
Vipsania nodded again. She was smiling now. If word of this got out, it would ruin Coriolanus.
"But the third instance is the one I think you'd most want to hear about," Dr Gaul said. "Before the games, Mr Snow became aware that my snake mutts would not attack someone if they recognised their scent. Before the snakes were released in the arena, he put a handkerchief that his tribute had used in their tank. Had he not done that… Well, let's just say your little circus boy was our projected victor from the moment he made it up that scoreboard."
Vipsania felt her stomach drop. Treech would've won. If Fucking Coriolanus hadn't cheated, he would've won. The snakes would've killed Lucy Gray. Then Teslee. Then Mizzen. Then finally Reaper.
Treech could've been a victor. A pretty unimpressive victor, perhaps, given that he wouldn't have killed any of his opponents, but Vipsania wouldn't have cared. He would've been alive. He would've had a nice house in District 7's Victor's Village and enough money to buy everything he wanted. She would've greeted him at the station every time he came to the Capitol to mentor.
Maybe he would've loved her.
"Are you crying, Miss Sickle?" Dr Gaul asked. Her voice was so thin and weak.
Vipsania touched her face. Her hands came away bloody.
She frowned.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Something's wrong with me. I don't know what. It just started…"
"When you saw your boy from Seven," Dr Gaul said, reading Vipsania's mind. "He was a fascinating little creature, wasn't he? I take it he's still on your mind, even after all these years."
Tap, tap, tap… Vipsania glanced around the hospital room, looking for the source of the noise. She couldn't find it. It was all in her head.
"I suppose…" Vipsania said. She turned back to Dr Gaul but the old woman was dead. The long piercing beep of her heart monitor made static in Vipsania's head.
What do I do now? She wondered. She had a piercing headache.
She decided to walk home to clear her head. She had information that would destroy her arch-nemesis' political career. She just needed to find someone she could tell. She couldn't stop thinking about Treech, about how so many things had gone wrong. If just one tiny thing had gone differently - if that peacekeeper had kept his hands to himself, if Fucking Coriolanus hadn't cheated, if Reaper had attacked the girl with the snake before Treech did - Treech would still be alive. Vipsania could've saved him.
The walk back to her apartment was longer than expected - Vipsania's usual route had been blocked by a traffic accident - but she made it home safe. When she got to her desk, the clock there said midnight, though it was clearly only late afternoon. There was a stack of pink sticky notes sitting beside the clock. On a whim, she wrote a message on one and stuck it to her bedroom mirror.
Treech,
Sorry I couldn't save you.
Meet me at midnight?
Vipsania.
She felt a little silly for writing it but it wasn't like anyone was going to come into her bedroom and see it. She hadn't had a partner since Arachne Crane dumped her the week before her fifteenth birthday.
Treech didn't count.
There had to be another reason why Vipsania had had no interest in dating - no interest in men or women or anyone - since she was eighteen. She told herself it was because that was the year her first (and only) girlfriend was murdered. It couldn't have been because of that boy from Seven.
Vipsania was sick of her job.
The Twenty-Third Hunger Games were no fun whatsoever. Vipsania wasn't squeamish by any means. She was a gamemaker! She enjoyed watching children hack each other to pieces with weapons. But Io seemed to prefer infecting the majority of tributes with the bubonic plague, which meant that they were all too sick to fight each other.
And maybe Vipsania didn't like the way they'd writhed in agony on the ground as they'd died. It reminded her of how she'd lost Treech.
After the victor was announced - some pathetic heiress from Six who'd scored a one in training and only survived because she'd somehow managed to avoid the plague like it was, well… the plague - Vipsania found herself at her favourite jazz bar. She needed to relax. She had a terrible headache again. She was on the verge of handing in her resignation and becoming a musician.
I peaked in the Academy, didn't I? She thought.
When she walked in, she saw a man sitting alone at a table, hat tilted over his face. She froze.
Treech?
But then the man took off his hat and tipped it at her. He had no hair, just a scarred scalp. He was wearing a mask to cover his disfigured face but she recognised him.
"Hello Androcles," Vipsania said. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"I didn't expect to see you here either," Androcles said. "I thought you'd be celebrating a job well done with your colleagues."
"What, Io and the mutt parade?" Vipsania asked. "I hate them all. Couldn't wait to get away from them."
"Want to get away from me?" Androcles asked.
"Not really," Vipsania said. Androcles had been a bit of a loner since he got out of hospital. He kept himself to himself, didn't cling to President Fucking Coriolanus like some of her other former classmates. Vipsania only ever saw him at funerals. Apparently, he was a freelance reporter.
She sat down at his table.
"Want me to buy you a drink?" Androcles asked.
"I'm driving home," Vipsania said.
"Smoke?" Androcles asked, offering her a cigarette.
She hesitated for a moment. She knew cigarettes were bad for her. But she also didn't really care.
"Fuck it, I'll have one."
She put the cigarette in her mouth. Androcles leaned across the table to light it for her. She inhaled… and immediately started coughing.
"Is this your first cigarette?" Androcles asked.
"Yeah," Vipsania said, coughing.
"You're thirty-one years old."
"Shut up."
They sat and listened to the band for a bit but they were playing some 'District 6 Soul' in honour of Six getting their first victor. What would they have done if Seven had got a victor? Played one of those 'three-chord drunken singalong songs' Treech had hated so much.
Vipsania almost laughed. Seven never got victors. Their only victor was that boy from the Fourth Games who'd killed nobody and was carried to victory by his district partner. No, District 7 specialised in tributes that Vipsania's colleagues had nicknamed 'movie theatre phantoms'. Tributes who looked good on paper and were always projected to do well - hence the 'movie theatre' nickname - but always seemed to fall just short of the victory. Occasionally, when he colleagues were discussing them, they brought up 'that boy from the Tenth Games, the one with the hat. Was he from Seven?'.
Maybe Vipsania had made a mistake coming here to escape her job. Maybe she should've gone back to her apartment to drink on her own.
"So?" Androcles asked. "How's the job?"
"Bad," Vipsania said.
"Got any juicy secrets from inside the gamemaker building?"
"I'm not supposed to leak information to the press," Vipsania said. "I'd get fired."
"What if you've already quit?" Androcles asked. "You hate your job. Your boss is a psycho. Why don't you just leave and go follow your true passion?"
"It's risky," Vipsania said.
"I'll pay you handsomely for the information. Have you got dirt on Jasper?"
"Better," Vipsania said. Then she lowered her voice, whispered in Androcles' ear. "I have dirt on Snow."
Androcles' eyes lit up. "That's worth a lot."
They exchanged numbers, planning to meet up once Vipsania had handed in her resignation. Then Vipsania walked out into the rainy night.
She got into her car at 11:36 PM according to her watch. There was a flash of pink on the dashboard. Vipsania picked it up and realised it was the note she'd written to Treech five years ago. Except now two more words were added to the bottom.
SAVE YOURSELF!
She looked around for any signs of danger but didn't see any. So she turned on the radio and started driving. The car filled with jazz music. After about five or ten minutes, she stopped at a red light. Rain was going tap, tap, tap on the windshield. Vipsania's communicuff began to ring. She fished it out of her handbag and answered.
"Hello, Vipsania," Androcles said, hurriedly. "There's been a change of plan. I need your dirt and I need it now!"
"I thought we had a plan," Vipsania said.
"Something important came up," Androcles said. "I need you to tell me about Snow right now, before it's too late. I'll repay you, I promise. If you've got any enemies, I can write a hit piece-"
The light turned green. Vipsania moved forwards, one hand on the wheel, one hand on her communicuff.
The news would say it was a drunk driver who'd run that red light across the junction with his headlights turned off. In reality it was an avox. One of Io Jasper's avoxes, to be precise.
Coriolanus would've sent one of his own, but he'd found that Io's were better for suicide missions. They knew all too well that there were fates worse than death, such as becoming one of her test subjects for new poisons and diseases.
But Vipsania would never hear the news. All she knew was that her car was crumpling under the weight of a sudden force hitting it from one side. Her world was turning upside down. Radio static crackled.
Her life flashed before her eyes.
"Hey there, Doll-Face. Long time, no see."
Vipsania blinked to see Treech sitting beside her and a lot of red, wet, sticky stuff. Her head hurt. She couldn't lift it off the ground. She couldn't feel her legs. Something was crushing into her torso.
She almost laughed. No wonder he called her Doll-Face. Her face had c-r-a-c-k-e-d against the tarmac like porcelain.
Had he known, even back then, before his veins had flooded with venom and his throat had closed up? Treech had always had that look about him, like he was staring into the void and seeing death.
"Please, Vipsania," Androcles' crackly voice came pleading from the communicuff. "Say something. I need to know what he did."
He killed my tribute…
"Sounds like you've got some loose ends to tie up," Treech said. "Go on."
With the last of her strength, Vipsania lifted the communicuff to her lips. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth.
"Snow… cheated…" she choked out, before letting the communicuff slip from her grasp.
(Androcles Anderson would assume this to mean that President Snow was cheating on his wife, Livia - which also happened to be true. It also happened that when Androcles investigated who was in the car that'd hit Vipsania's and discovered it to be one of Io Jasper's avoxes, he correctly guessed that Io was Snow's mistress.)
"Treech…" Vipsania said. She wasn't sure what to say. He was watching the blood and brains leak out of her the way he'd done with Teslee. His dark hair was brushing against the overturned passenger seat. His skin was pale and bluish. He was twirling the little pink snake he'd dragged into death with him around his fingers.
That familiar song was floating out of the car radio. Vipsania started crying. She knew she was going to die.
"Don't cry, Doll-Face," Treech said, softly. He lay down beside her and started stroking her hair with his free hand. His face was inches from hers. She could see the pink veins through his skin. "We're gonna be okay."
"Treech…" she said. "You're dead."
"So are you," Treech replied. "Or at least you will be, in a minute or two. And then…"
"Then what?"
"You get me all to yourself, of course," he said. A mischievous smile played on his blue lips for a moment. Then his expression darkened. "If you want… all this. Seriously, Vips, this is how you remember me? I look like a freak!"
"I'm sorry," Vipsania said. "It's hard to forget how you died. I… I let you down. I couldn't save you."
"Some people just can't be saved, I guess," Treech said. He shuffled a bit closer to her, nestled his head under what was left of her chin. "But can we pretend that I can? Can we pretend I'm… more?"
Light glinted off the twisted metal cage they were trapped in and the shards of shattered glass scattered around. The red of the traffic lights. The amber of a street lamp. The sapphire blue of the ambulance that was arriving far too late. They would be serenaded by sirens, by static, by soft piano and a smoky-voiced woman Vipsania had once known the name of but it'd slipped her mind. Just like her brains…
The light danced across Treech's face. More. More than just a corpse. More than just a victim. More than just pain.
She remembered him curled up in the corner of the classroom, tear-stained but laughing. Laughing at something Vipsania had said. And not some sad, broken laugh. A genuine laugh.
Maybe Vipsania had achieved something after all. She hadn't saved Treech's life or convinced him to give an interview or unraveled all his mysteries. She'd never even heard his music. But she'd made Treech Fujiwara laugh. She'd been able to coax a few genuine smiles out of him. Had that been saving him in a way?
"Did Fucking Coriolanus sing at my funeral?" Treech asked. Somehow, his skin had returned to its usual shade of golden brown. He didn't look like a grotesque, venom-bloated corpse anymore.
He looked how he'd done when he was still alive.
"No," Vipsania said. "He'd fucked off to District 12 for peacekeeper service."
"And you couldn't even get a hologram of him, huh?" He nudged her shoulder. "Do better."
Vipsania started laughing. Treech started laughing as well. His hand found hers. His snake curled around her wrist, binding it to his, but she didn't mind. He was looking up at her, starry-eyed and breathless. They were tangled together in the wreckage of the car, the woman with half a face and the shapeshifting ghost of a boy.
"I'm…" Vipsania said.
"You're beautiful," Treech said. Then he added. "Red's your colour, Doll-Face."
Vipsania was vaguely aware that she wasn't really holding Treech. She was probably just hallucinating as she slipped away. Of course she was thinking about him in the end. Losing Treech had ruined Vipsania's life. She could've gone into adulthood with the momentum from her tribute winning the Tenth Hunger Games, with a victor by her side. Instead she went into adulthood kicking herself for her mistakes and full of bitterness towards everyone who'd taken her victory from her. She'd never had the right mindset.
So much of life was about mindset…
Suddenly she came to realisation that she'd hallucinated so much of Treech. That kiss he'd given her in the classroom hadn't been real. All Vipsania remembered was Treech reaching for her hand, searching for some small moment of human connection in the days before he was sent to his death. That was why he'd flirted with her. That was what he'd wanted in return. Vipsania, scared of what she was feeling for this strange, lean and dangerous district boy, had pulled her hand away from his the moment his fingers had brushed hers. And she'd always regretted it.
You can hold my hand if you want, he'd said.
And why would I want to do that? She'd replied.
Had he been reaching for her when he'd died? What if he'd needed more reassurance from her? If she'd given it to him, would that have been enough? Enough to break him free from Lucy Gray's spell? Enough to save him?
"I love you," Vipsania said. Tears pooled in one eye. Blood pooled in the other. Treech had probably been told that lie a million times before, by people who'd used him. Vipsania just hoped that this time would be different, that it'd make him smile. She had loved him, right? What little she'd seen of her beautiful ghost boy before he'd slipped away from her forever.
Treech didn't answer. He just smiled and kissed her.
The clock struck midnight.
And he took her home.
I hope you enjoyed this story. It's a bit different to my usual stories because I took a bit of inspiration from some new places. I didn't mention this at the start of this story because I didn't want to ruin the twist but this story is inspired by a certain episode of Inside No. 9. I won't name the episode because I don't want to spoil it but if you know, you know.
In the spirit of TBOSAS, I decided to give this story an incredibly unreliable narrator. In Vipsania's defence, it's hard to be a reliable narrator when you spend the entire story hallucinating and having flashbacks as you die of head trauma in a car accident. I loved making Vipsania's narration as trippy and surreal as possible. I'll leave it up to you to decide exactly what her relationship with Treech was. Were they really star-crossed lovers, was it just one-sided, did Vipsania just make the whole thing up on her deathbed to justify how she'd let her pettiness over losing to Snow ruin her life?
I also had so much fun writing Treech as Vipsania's angel of death. I've always seen him as the foil to Lucy Gray among the TBOSAS tributes - the one who would've won if she and Snow hadn't cheated - so I decided to have him haunt his mentor in the same way. He just makes such a perfect ghost boy. I only realised this once I'd finished the story but he's kinda like Ranulf from the Beasts of Clawstone Castle but with a snake instead of a rat (Ranulf was my favourite character btw). Treech also left as many unanswered questions as Lucy Gray, with the biggest one being 'Why didn't he give an interview?'. His introductory scene was literally him juggling walnuts and performing for the crowd. How did he go from that to just skipping the interviews? My answer is that the Capitol mistreated him too much and it pushed him over the edge. It also provided an answer to my second big Treech question 'Why did he just let Lucy Gray hug him to death?' - because Lucy Gray getting into his personal space triggered his freeze response. Since these tributes survived the war and its immediate aftermath, it makes sense that most of them would have been traumatised even before they were reaped and Treech was definitely an example of that. Here, we only saw his trauma through Vipsania's eyes but next time I write about him, we'll probably be looking at it from his perspective. I love to write about Treech (he might actually be my favourite character in the entire Hunger Games canon to write about) so this probably isn't the last we've seen of our hat-wearing, walnut-juggling, water-stealing, axe-wielding, scoreboard-climbing robbed king.
One final note: It's actually scary how many songs about driving I put on my Treech and Vipsania playlist before I even decided to write this (e.g. Shark Smile by Big Thief, Your Daddy's Car by the Divine Comedy, Roadrunner by the Modern Lovers… I could make an entire playlist of songs about driving that I associate with this ship) but would you believe that the song that actually inspired me to write this monstrosity *gestures to the above story* was *drum roll*… Style by Taylor Swift?
*refuses to elaborate, leaves*