There's no time to say goodbye.
It all happens so fast; after the President's announcement the peacekeepers force the victors onto the transport, keep them quiet with threats and rifles and handcuffs, too far apart to touch one another, to whisper, no chance to come up with a plan, and Olivia just sits, bound, staring at Elliot across the aisle, their eyes locked on one another, horror rising in their bellies. She can't speak to him here but she doesn't know what she'd say, anyway. In this moment they are thinking precisely the same thing. This isn't supposed to happen. We shouldn't be here. I can't watch you die.
The transport lands and the peacekeepers descend, separating the victors-turned-tributes from one another. It's disorganized, a sea of milling bodies and reaching hands, tears and voices shouting. As they're pushed off the transport Elliot reaches for her, catches her hand in his, and he's warm, so warm, an anchor for her in the roiling madness. A big man pulls Elliot away, his fingers sliding from Olivia's grip, and she manages to shoot him a single, terrified glance before she's forced back, herded along by faceless men in white armor. It might just be the last time she ever sees Elliot's face, watching him disappear behind a wall of soldiers, his hand outstretched, reaching for her.
"You know the rules!" One of the peacekeepers, presumably the senior officer in charge, booms while he watches the chaos unfolding around him. Some of the tributes are silent; Johanna Mason isn't one of them. She is cursing a blue streak, and one of the soldiers tasked with wrangling her picks her up and throws her over his shoulder and carries her away, Johanna kicking and screaming all the while.
"You will have five minutes with your prep team!" the senior officer continues. "When you arrive in the arena you must remain in place until the opening shot! If you move too soon you will die!"
That's the last thing she hears; the soldiers march her across the tarmac and into a tunnel, and the world plunges into darkness.
If you move too soon you will die!
She knows that already. The man is right; they all know the rules. They've all done this before.
Only they've never done it quite like this.
Everything about this is wrong, that's what Elliot thinks as he's rushed through the tunnels, deposited in an empty waiting room with a platform on the other side of it, a platform he's meant to be standing on in five minutes' time. He knows how it works; the tribute stands on the platform, and the instant the platform registers their weight a tube like the old pneumatic tubes he's seen for delivering mail in government offices will descend, locking the tribute in place, preventing their escape, protecting them when the platform activates and lifts them into the arena like an elevator. In five minutes that platform will rise to the surface, and if he's not on it he will be killed. He knows the rules.
No one knows better than the victors, the mentors, how the Games are played, and that's why it all feels wrong. Not just that he's here, now, on the cusp of entering the Games for an unprecedented second time, but that it's happening this way. The Games are a pageant, a ritual, as much as anything else. The schedule is the same every year. The designers work furiously to craft outrageous costumes to suit the tributes' measurements, and the tributes are allowed to train while their mentors work the sponsors and drum up support. The parties, the interviews, the behind the scenes machinations, it's all part of the Games.
Elliot and the other victors, they have none of that. They have no time. No training; a lot of the victors are past their prime and out of shape, and he's pretty sure Haymitch is still drunk. No sponsors, no allies, and no chance to find either. He'll have to rely on Merope and Cinna, the only members of their team who will be left in the Capitol while he and Liv fight for their lives, and he doesn't trust Merope and he doesn't think even Cinna can save them now.
It's Merope who comes to say goodbye to him, fussing over the state of him.
"I'm sorry," she says, brushing an invisible speck of dust from the shoulder of his suit jacket. "Cinna made a uniform for Fender, but it will never fit you. If it's any consolation, I don't think many of the other tributes will be wearing uniforms either. You'll all go into the arena exactly as you are."
It's no consolation. Before the President's shock announcement all the victors were gathered together for the cameras, wearing suits and dresses, makeup and high heels. There's no time, and they haven't been allowed to change, and that scares him. The arena could be anything, a desert, a jungle, arctic cold or blazing hot, dry as summer or wet as spring. The uniforms are usually designed to protect the tributes - somewhat - from the elements of their arena, but this year's tributes will be arriving dressed for a party.
We're all gonna die, he thinks, and then wonders where Olivia is. Wonders if he'll see her again, before the end.
"We don't have much time," Cinna tells her, ushering her towards the platform at the back of the room. She hangs back, waiting, unwilling to step on the platform yet; once she does the tube will descend and block her off from him and she needs this, this one last chance to be near another living person, a person who doesn't want to kill her.
"I can't go in there like this," she tells him, gesturing to herself. She's wearing one of those ridiculous black dresses; it is - mercifully - not frilly or heavy, not drowning her in sequins or feathers, but it barely covers her, and she'll never be able to run in her sky-high stilettos. There is makeup all over her face, heavy and dark around her eyes, her lips painted red as blood, fake nails on her hands sharp as talons but delicate and liable to break, and her hair is loose and wild, teased and curled and heavy and full, and she has nothing to tie it back with. The last time she was in the arena it was a barren, rocky wasteland, and she doesn't think she'd last half an hour dressed like this in such conditions.
"They aren't letting us dress the victors," Cinna tells her apologetically. It matters, she knows, that he calls them victors, and not tributes. It matters that he is acknowledging how wrong all of this is. "And we've only got Lyra's uniform in here, anyway, and I don't think it would work for you."
"I can't do this," she says, shaking all over. "Cinna, I can't, I can't do this, I can't-"
She can't go back. The last time she was in the arena, the things she saw, children battered to death with rocks, their necks snapped from a fall, the terrible, evil eyes of the career crouching over her…it haunts her still, all these years later, and this will be worse, because the people who will share the arena with her are not strangers. They are her friends. They are the closest thing she has to family and she doesn't think she can - doesn't think she wants to - survive watching them hack each other into pieces.
"Listen to me," Cinna says fiercely, catching her by the shoulders and holding her still, forcing her to look into his eyes.
"You are a victor, Olivia," he reminds her. "You've won before. You know how the Games are played. Find Elliot, stick together. You'll be ok."
It's a lie if ever she's heard one, but it's a lie she's told herself, many times.
You'll be ok. It's the same thing she says to the kids, before they die.
The platform rises up through feet and feet of dirt and then the sun breaks suddenly through overhead and the walls of the tube descend and Elliot finds himself standing alone in the last place he ever expected to be.
It's a city.
A broad, tree-lined avenue spreads before him, and buildings rise up on either side of the pavement, brownstone townhouses and office buildings and shuttered shops, some of them as many as ten stories high, blocking his view of the sky. He looks around wildly, careful not to move his feet; if he steps off the platform before the opening bell sounds the whole damn thing will explode and he'll be dead before he can draw breath. Still though, he looks. He sees other streets branching off from the one he's on, at regular intervals, as if the city is laid out on a grid.
Up ahead the glint of sunlight on metal catches his eye, and he sees it, the cornucopia. It's vast, and terrible, rising up against the horizon.
All the streets must lead there, he thinks. He can't see any of the other victors, so he imagines they're all like him, stationed at the end of long avenues that wind their way to the cornucopia, its familiar dome a beacon, guiding them on.
That's where the gamemakers want him to go, he knows. There are supplies there, and the victors sorely need them; shoes, jackets, weapons, food, all those things are piled up inside the cornucopia, and whoever gets there first will have their pick of tools to aid them. The careers will go there at once, will try to set up camp there. It's what he heard them encouraging their tributes to do, before the first transport left. If the careers can get inside the cornucopia first they can defend it, take shelter inside and throw knives and shoot arrows at anyone who dares come close. Which they all will, eventually, because they all need what's inside the cornucopia to survive. A city isn't a forest, or a jungle; there's no small animals scurrying about for them to hunt, he doesn't even hear the call of a bird. The ground is all black pavement and concrete sidewalks; there are no streams or rivers to drink from. There will be food and water plenty in the cornucopia, and they will die without it.
He doesn't want to go there. It will be a bloodbath; it always is. Part of the ritual of the Games, half the tributes - the weaker half - dying in the first few minutes while the audience bays for blood.
It would be better, he thinks, to take his time. To find out if the buildings are safe, if he can take shelter there. He suspects not; probably they've been rigged to explode, or something, fitted with traps to lure unsuspecting tributes to their deaths. He's not gonna be the first one to open a door.
If he doesn't go to the cornucopia, and he doesn't go into the buildings, what then will he do? He can't stay out in the open, will need shelter and sustenance. He needs a weapon, too. If he hangs back too long everyone else will be armed, and he will be easy pickings, alone out on the street.
More than a weapon, he needs Liv.
He has no idea where she is, what street she's on, which direction he should run to get to her, and he can't risk calling out to her lest the careers find him. They'll be gunning for him. Some of the victors - Beetee, Haymitch, the morphlings - won't be interested in killing for the Capitol once more, but the careers? Gloss and Cashmere, Brutus and Enobaria? They want to kill, want to win, believe in the Games - or at least, believe that the Games should continue, believe that since they were made to suffer through the Games everyone else should be, too - and they know he's a threat. A strong man, an angry man, a dangerous man; they'll want to kill him, eliminate the threat, before they turn on each other.
That's why he has to find Liv. He can't let the careers get to her first, kill her or use her to lure him out. The outfit she's wearing is a liability, even more than his suit and the fancy shoes that pinch his toes; she's in danger, out there on her own.
The first time, her first Games, Elliot let her down. Let her get hurt, and has never forgiven himself for it. Some of the other Victors may not remember what happened to Liv but some of them might. Some of them, Gloss or Brutus, they might want to reenact her Games. They might think it's funny.
He's got to find her.
"Thirty seconds," a robotic voice booms above him.
Find Liv, he tells himself. Find Liv.
"Twenty seconds," that disembodied voice calls in robotic preciseness, and Olivia shivers all over.
This place; it's like something from a nightmare. From her nightmares. A city, vast and barren and empty, full of hidden dangers. A city that looks so much like home, but isn't. Familiar, but cursed.
It isn't home, isn't the city she was born in, where she lived before the Games, isn't the city she calls home now, with the Victor's Village just outside it, isn't the Capitol, which has never been home but which she knows, now, as well as she knows any place. This city was built for the Games, and that means that nothing is as it seems, nothing about it can be trusted.
She's spotted the cornucopia, and though the sight of it fills her with terror she cannot look away. The cornucopia was empty, for her Games. It was a trick, luring the tributes in only to die for nothing at all. The gamemakers like to keep things fresh, don't like to use the same traps and techniques twice, so she thinks this time there's probably some useful items in the cornucopia - maybe some goddamn shoes, that would actually be helpful - but she's not sure it's worth the risk.
There's no chance, she knows, that she makes it out of the arena alive. It isn't going to happen; even if, somehow, she manages to evade the other tributes and make it to the end, there is only one winner of the Games. The only way for her to win is for Elliot to die, and she will not go on without him. Even if someone else kills him first, even if he doesn't make it to the final two, even if there is never a choice to make between her life and his, she will not fight, will not kill, for the reward of a life without him. The thought of it, of returning to the Victor's Village in 6 without him, laying down to sleep without him, is anathema to her. Life isn't life, without him.
It's possible that the rebels mean to get the victors out of the arena, but somehow she doesn't think so. It took an enormous amount of planning and resources to intercept the tributes' transport, but the rebels had the advantage of surprise on their side. The Capitol knows the rebels are after them now, and the arena is the most fiercely guarded acreage in all of Panem. That's why the rebels had to take the transport; they couldn't get to the kids once they were in the arena. There's no way, Olivia thinks, that the rebels could've planned for this, no way they could have known that the President would send the victors to the arena, and getting them out will waste valuable time and manpower the rebels could better spend somewhere else.
We're alone here, she thinks. We're all going to die.
But if she is going to die, she wants to find Elliot first. She wants his face to be the last thing she sees. It's how it's always supposed to have gone, she thinks, him and her; they are one. Made together, meant to end together. They could climb up one of these buildings, she thinks; if the thing doesn't explode under them they could climb to the tallest roof, and jump together, hand in hand. Deny the Capitol the chance to kill them, and give their fans a love story for the ages. It might be nice. It might not even hurt.
"Ten seconds," the voice calls.
She has to find Elliot, and to do that she has to think like he does, anticipate his next move. So she thinks, hard, peering around at the empty street in front of her, straining for a glimpse of the other victors. What will Elliot do? She wonders.
He will not want to go to the cornucopia. That is a death sentence. It's different this year, the victors all spread out, unable to see one another. There may be some who think that if they run fast enough they can get in and get out without injury. There may be some who think that if they are stealthy they can sneak up on it from the shadow of the buildings, and save themselves. If they think that, they're fools.
He'll want to find me, she thinks. That will be Elliot's first move. As badly as she wants to find him she knows he feels the pull just as strongly; he will want to protect her, the way he always has. Even now he will be asking himself the same questions; where will she go? What will she do?
If they'd had any time to prepare for this they would've come up with a plan, would've arranged a meeting place. Go as far north as you can and wait for me there, that sort of thing. There is no time, no opportunity for them to pick a direction, a landmark, anything to anchor themselves to one another. But a landmark exists; the cornucopia, looming ahead.
All the streets lead there, she thinks. It is the carrot, designed to lure them all in so the Capitol can beat them to death with sticks. The gamemakers would've made sure to leave a wide open space all around it, put it in the middle of an empty paved square or something, so the tributes have to run out into the open to reach it. In her mind's eye she imagines it, the cornucopia sitting in the midst of a vast plaza like the one back home, all these streets radiating out from that epicenter like the rays of the sun in a children's drawing. It would be madness, to rush towards it.
But if she goes there, she will be able to see the other victors. Will be able to see which direction they are coming from, and where they are going. If she lurks in the shadows of the buildings at the mouth of this street, she may be able to look out across the arena, and find Elliot.
Go to the center, she thinks. It would be a fool's errand trying to run down each of these streets alone; she could be running away from Elliot. He wants to find her, as much as she wants to find him, and so he will go, as she will go, to the last place on earth they want to be.
"Five seconds," the voice calls.
We'll meet in the middle, she thinks. Or die trying.
It feels like a punch to the gut, the opening bell. As soon as he hears it Elliot is off the platform, running as fast as his legs can carry him, running towards hell and the end of all things.
He's faster than Liv, he knows that. Always has been but likely never more so than now, now when she's wearing those damnable stilettos. Maybe she'll take them off so she can run, but that'll leave her barefoot on the street and honestly he's not sure that's better, not sure how it could be. He's faster, and if he gives it all he's got and doesn't get killed on the way there, he'll get to the cornucopia first, and that means he'll be in position when she reaches it.
He is risking everything on this gamble. Everything he has, or ever will have, everything that matters to him, his future, her future, it all hangs in the balance now. If he is right and she meets him in the middle there's a chance, however small, that he can save her. If he's wrong, and she doesn't go near the cornucopia, she's dead already, and so is he. The only way they make it through this is together, he knows that.
She'll be there, he tells himself as he runs. She will.
He knows her, but more than that she knows him. She will go to the cornucopia not because she wants to, but because she knows he'll be there. This was only ever gonna go one way.
Off to his left he can hear the slap slap slap of someone else's feet echoing off the buildings. One of the other men, he thinks; it sounds like boots running, not spiky heels or bare feet.
Don't let it be Brutus, he thinks. Please, please don't let it be Brutus.
The first thing Olivia does is take off her shoes, and throw them away. The damn things will only get in the way, and she's not gonna risk a broken ankle.
Around her the city is deathly silent as she steps gingerly down from the platform. It's not usually like this; the first seconds of the Games are usually frenetic, tributes running, screaming, blood everywhere. Instead there is only this eerie silence, as if she is alone, the only person here. Maybe she is. Maybe she just wants to be.
Slowly she begins to walk down the avenue. She does not run; for one thing she's barefoot, and for another a peacekeeper shattered her ankle twenty years ago and the bone didn't set right and she's not risking herself this early in the Games. She'll run later, if she has to. Right now she thinks running will just draw attention to her, the sound of her feet hitting the pavement giving her away, and she doesn't want anyone to notice her. It's best if no one knows where she is, no one but Elliot. He'll be waiting for her at the cornucopia - please, please let him be waiting - but he'll be careful, too. They have to be so, so careful now. She doesn't think Haymitch would kill her but she knows Enobaria would and it's not a fight she wants to have. Let the careers murder each other over who gets the best supplies; she just wants to find her man, and then she wants to find a quiet place to die.
She walks on.
The street dumps out into a wide plaza with the cornucopia in the center of it, just like he thought it would. The plaza is paved with cobblestones and the cornucopia sits in the middle like some grotesque fountain, and it's a hundred yards in every direction from its sloping metal sides to the nearest buildings. Elliot doesn't go there; he takes a risk and steps onto the sidewalk, and when he doesn't get blown up he takes shelter in the shadow of the last building on the street, presses his back against the bricks and stares out into the plaza. Whoever was running off to his left has stopped, too, and there's an alleyway between the building he's chosen and the next one down that he thinks may connect the two streets. If it's Brutus over there, if Brutus heard him running, Brutus could come tearing out of that alley and end him right here, if he wants. Elliot has no weapons.
But Brutus doesn't, either, and trying to kill a man with your bare hands is risky. It can be done, but it means getting close, maybe too close, to an enemy whose capabilities are still unknown. The victors in the arena today have had no time to train, and that means they haven't seen each other work, have not been assigned scores by the gamemakers and don't know where everyone else's skills lie. No allies, and no sense of just how strong the other players are; everyone is vulnerable, right now.
Elliot's eyes rove endlessly, from the alleyway on his unprotected flank, down the street, across the plaza, back again. No one is making a run for the cornucopia. No one wants to be first. Someone has to be, though; if they don't move, the gamemakers will make them move. There is nowhere to hide, no safety in the arena.
There are twenty two other victors in the arena today, and Elliot knows most of them. Knows their names, and where they came from, and how they won their Games, has eaten with them, shared drinks with them, even if he didn't want to. Haymitch is a friend. Finnick is smarter than he looks and he'll be more concerned with protecting Mags, who is practically his mother, than anything else. Johanna is a bright burning ball of rage and Blight will do whatever she says. The morphlings from 5 are useless, and maybe dead already. BeeTee and Wiress are clever, but not particularly brave. Gloss and Cashmere are brother and sister, will want to kill everyone else but will falter when it comes to one another; neither of them will want to return to their parents with a sibling's blood on their hands, however much District 1 may love its victors. Brutus and Enobaria are half mad and don't care about anything, don't believe in anything. Seeder and Chaff, Woof and Cecelia, they're old and slow, not as old as Mags but too far past their prime, and they know it. That leaves Liv, and 4 question marks, the pairs from 9 and 10. The last few years the winners have been mostly careers; it's been a long time since anyone from 9 or 10 claimed the title, and that means those victors are like him. One offs who never should've won, who've spent their lives training children to die. That may make them willing to ally themselves with Elliot and Olivia, with those who do not want to fight. It may also make them desperate to win; no one knows the might of the Capitol better than those who have watched it kill for decades.
There's movement, out in the plaza; a man, hulking and heavy, is racing across the open space from Elliot's right. Elliot lets the man run, does nothing to stop him. He wants to know who it is. Gloss, he thinks, judging by the hair, and as Gloss gets closer to the cornucopia someone else comes rushing out from across the way; it's Brutus, and Elliot breathes a sigh of relief. That means Brutus isn't on the street next to his.
But who is?
Liv, he thinks, scanning the plaza, searching for signs of movement at the mouths of the avenues. Where are you?
There's a scream, from the north, and he swings his head, and watches the body of one of the morphlings tumble into the street to land in a useless heap. The cannon booms.
First blood.
Who did it, though? And how? He's got to find Olivia, got to get her away from the cornucopia before it's too late.
A whistle sounds, sharp and loud, from the alleyway behind him, and Elliot spins, finds Finnick there, waiting for him. Finnick holds up his hands in a gesture of peace and fuck it, Elliot thinks. 4 is a wet, watery place, and Finnick was made for it. The man is a strong swimmer, sleek and muscular and playful as a dolphin - or at least, that's the face he presents to the Capitol, the persona that was chosen for him - but he's slippery, too. Finnick won't try to brute force his way out of anything, and he knows Elliot is the better fighter, hand-to-hand. Finnick won't try anything. Or at least, Elliot thinks he won't.
Elliot approaches him.
"What do you want?" Elliot asks, not wanting to get too close.
"Don't shout," Finnick says, rolling his eyes. "You and me, we want the same thing."
"Do we?"
"We both want to find our girls."
That's true, Elliot thinks. Finnick wants to protect Mags as badly as Elliot wants to protect Liv. Maybe they can help each other.
"We need to map it out," Finnick says. "Figure out who's on each street, then we'll know where they are."
"Ok," Elliot agrees. "That's 12 o'clock, right?" he says, pointing to the street straight across the plaza from them. "This is 6. You were at 5. The morphling was killed at 3. Gloss came from 8, Brutus came from 11."
"And that's Cashmere, at 4," Finnick says, pointing to her figure running across the plaza.
"They didn't put us in order," Elliot muses. "The morphlings would've been between you and me, and Gloss and Cashmere would've been next to each other."
"What I'd give for a piece of paper," Finnick mumbles.
Elliot can't help but agree. It's hard to draw the picture in his mind's eye; even a stick in the dirt would be more helpful.
"Maybe we're across from each other," he muses. "Gloss and Cashmere, they're from the same District. She was at 4, he was 8. They were in a straight line."
"Wait a minute," Finnick says sharply. "12 o'clock. Twelve. There's twelve streets, for the twelve Districts, right? But there's two of us from each."
"Shit."
There should've been twenty-four streets, if they'd each had their own. That means they weren't all placed on streets facing the cornucopia. Some of them are on the cross-streets.
The pair of them look around wildly, and as they do Blight comes stumbling out about halfway down Elliot's street.
"Shit." They say it together this time.
She's about ten yards from where her street opens up onto the plaza when she hears the racing sound of footsteps behind her, and she turns just in time to see Panko, the male victor from 9, barrelling towards her, and the next thing she knows he's collided with her, knocking them both to the ground. Olivia screams when she hits the pavement and slams her knee into his stomach while he's trying to get his bearings, and the breath whooshes from his lungs in a great gasp, and she pushes him away.
It's not safe to stay here. She realized that looking out at the cornucopia; not everyone is on a street leading to it. There aren't enough. Some of the victors will be rushing in from the sides, and that means her flank is unprotected. But she needs to be where Elliot can find her. How can he do that if she goes running off into the city?
He'll see you out there, she thinks, looking out at the plaza. The cannon's only fired once, for the morphling; Elliot is still alive.
One way or another she's going to die today. At least if she goes out there, there's a chance she'll be reunited with Elliot before the end. It's better than waiting here for Panko to catch his breath and kill her, or risking an encounter with Enobaria in an alleyway.
She steps out into the sunlight of the plaza, and waits.
It's like something from a dream, the sight of her. Finnick rushes towards Blight, maybe intending to kill him, maybe to help him, and Elliot looks into the plaza, and there she is, Liv, standing alone near the street he designated 12 o'clock. All the way across the square, in a straight line from where he stands now, hundreds of yards and the cornucopia between him and her. She's barefoot like he thought she'd be, still wearing that beautiful dress, her hair wild and loose around her shoulders, and as he looks she tilts her face up to the sun and closes her eyes as if she is sunbathing, and she is, now and always, the prettiest goddamn thing he's ever seen in his life.
Let Finnick figure out what to do with Blight; Elliot has found his north star, his guiding light, his heart, and his feet begin to move towards her on instinct.
It is suicide, stepping out into the plaza. Brutus and Gloss have reached the cornucopia, and they may have bows or spears, may be able to kill him from a distance now that he's visible, but it's a chance he has to take.
He runs.
Not in a straight line, though that would've been fastest; he runs to the west, preparing to make a ring around the plaza, hoping Liv will catch sight of him before he gets too far, hoping she'll move towards him, that they can meet in the middle. There's sounds all around him now, voices calling, people running; they've figured it out, too, he thinks, that not everyone was facing the plaza, and there's probably fighting in the streets. The cannon will sound again, any time now.
Look at me, he thinks as he runs, his eyes fixed on her, willing her to hear him, unwilling to call out yet. Look at me, Liv, look at me, look at me -
She does.
And then she's running, too, arcing towards him, following the same path. They crash together somewhere around 9 o'clock. Right in the middle.
The second they meet his hands are on her; he clutches at her but does not stop to hold her, to cradle her close. Instead he pulls her with him, drags her down the street Gloss came from. There may not be anybody there now. They may be safe there, for a time.
His hands dig in hard enough to bruise and she relishes in the pain of it as he drags her down the street. The cannon booms above them; another victor dead, and no way to know which one, but at least it isn't one of them. At least it's not him.
On his own he could run faster but he slows his pace to match hers, and they run together, away from the cornucopia, away from everyone else. The street seems to go on forever, but really it's no more than a mile from the cornucopia to the place where this street dead ends in a line of buildings. No one else seems to be here but Olivia isn't foolish enough to think that will last; everyone else is going to arm themselves or die trying, and then they will come for her and Elliot.
"What do you think?" he asks, breathlessly, nodding towards the buildings in front of them.
Part of her wants to say yes. Part of her wants to slip inside one of those buildings, and hide, find a quiet corner to sit and wrap her arms around the man she loves and wait for the end.
It's selfish, though. The part of her that wants to die, that wants to give up, it's selfish. There are other people she cares about in this arena today. Mags, who is gentle and sweet and deserves so much better than the life she was given. Finnick, who is just like Olivia, his body bought and sold by people he despises, unable to marry the one he loves, unable to follow his own heart. Haymitch, who's lost everything and everyone he ever cared about. BeeTee, who is clever and shy and makes such remarkable things. Johanna, who is so full of fire, who only wants to be free. What kind of person would Olivia be, if she left them to die alone?
"They don't want to kill us, Elliot," she says sadly. "Our friends, they don't want to hurt us any more than we want to hurt them."
The Capitol is watching, and the gamemakers' fingers are poised on the controls, ready and willing to unleash horror at any second. If she says what she's thinking now they will hear her, and they will kill her for it.
But Elliot understands. Has always understood her, even when she cannot find the words herself, and he doesn't need her to finish that thought. It has always been like this, with him. As if they are one heart, one soul in two bodies, moving in perfect sync.
They do not want to kill their friends, and their friends do not want to kill them, and maybe if they band together, they can put a stop to this right now. Refuse to play the Games, and force the Capitol to take a hand. It won't be a good show, if they deliberately kill everyone's favorite victors; it will sour the audience's stomach, and the gamemakers know that as well as the victors do. I will not kill for them again, Olivia thinks, and maybe her friends won't, either, and maybe it'll mean something, if they stand together.
"Finnick is our ally," Elliot says, using the language of the Games to obscure his meaning. What he means is Finnick is their friend. "He wants to find Mags. We can help him, and then he'll have to help us. Strength in numbers."
"Strength in numbers," Olivia agrees. "Where is he?"
"This way," Elliot says, and then he takes her hand, and they walk together, away from the suspect refuge of the buildings, towards danger, towards their friends, towards their last hope.
When they find Finnick Elliot stops Olivia short, pulls her in close and presses her face to his neck so she can't see the nightmare unfolding before them. Overhead the cannon booms, and for a second he closes his eyes, breathes in the smell of her hair, forces himself to focus on the warmth of her in his arms, pretends, just for the space of a heartbeat, that they are home, in the garden outside his house, on a beautiful sunny day, without a care in the world.
The cannon booms a second time.
Liv is shaking.
It's not hard to ascertain what happened here.
There is Mags, her body in a crumpled heap, unmoving, a river of blood spilling beneath her head to pool on the pavement.
There is Finnick, kneeling beside her, weeping, clutching at her limp hand.
There is Bianca, the woman from 10, with her neck snapped.
He couldn't do it, Elliot thinks. All Finnick wanted was to keep Mags safe, and he couldn't do it. He's avenged her, but what comfort is there in vengeance? Vengeance will not bring Mags back to him. Vengeance will not lance the grief from his heart like pus from a wound. A man can't eat vengeance, or wrap himself in it like a blanket, or make love to it. Vengeance is a cold and empty thing. A necessary thing, perhaps, in cases such as this, but still.
Elliot's hand slips beneath the wealth of Olivia's dark hair, clasps the nape of her neck and holds her to him, tight, so tight. He never wants to let her go.
"We have to move," he says, pitching his voice just loud enough to carry to the place where Finnick is kneeling.
Finnick looks up at him with heartbreak in his eyes.
"She-" he says, "she - she - " he can't form the words.
"She was the best of us," Elliot finishes for him. "And she wouldn't want to see you die. Please, Finnick. We have to move."
The drones will come, to carry the bodies away. It will draw attention here, and someone may come looking, hoping to find them lingering near the site of the kills. If they don't leave, they may as well join Mags right there on the pavement.
"This is wrong," she says, furiously pacing in front of the monitors. "We shouldn't just be standing here watching, we should - "
"We should what, Lyra?" Fender snaps. "We should save them? Like they saved us?"
They tried to, Lyra thinks. They tried their best.
Elliot and Olivia, they tried. They didn't know how, maybe, didn't have the means to actually rescue their tributes, but in their own way they tried to help. Those two, they didn't want to see Lyra and Fender die, and now they are risking their lives in their tributes' place. It is galling, maddening, and she can't seem to sit still.
It happened so fast, the rescue, the start of the Games. It's only been, what, four hours, six maybe since the transport was hijacked? Most of the other tributes are on lockdown somewhere in the cargo bay of the transport, too dangerous to be allowed to wander, but Lyra and Fender and a few other tributes have been gathered together, brought here, to a central control room where every monitor shows a different angle of the Games.
On the monitor right in front of her the camera is zoomed in on Elliot and Olivia. They look like something from a film, the pair of them, devastatingly beautiful, clinging to one another, surrounded by death. They look, Lyra thinks, like gods. They look like the end of the world.
"Oh, I can't stand it," Merope sighs, dabbing at the tears spilling from her outrageously painted eyes. "They're so in love."
"And what good will that do them?" Lyra asks angrily. She's still not sure what Merope is doing here, how she even got here. "The Capitol is going to kill them anyway."
And they'll put on a show before they go. All those people who have spent so long hanging on Elliot and Olivia's every move, speculating and salivating over them, they must be going crazy, as Merope is now, to see the pair of them holding on to one another, to see how well they fit together, how easily he holds her, how easily she seeks comfort in his embrace. How brave they were, turning away from safety to go in search of their friends, how doomed their love is, since only one of them will be allowed to leave the arena alive. The Capitol probably thinks it's beautiful, in some fucked up, tragic, romantic kind of way, but Lyra aches when she looks at them, because she knows. She knows that Elliot loves Olivia. She knows how gently he speaks to her when it's late and she can't sleep, knows how he reaches for her when he thinks no one is looking, knows how he had to watch as she was almost raped, how he is the one she clung to when she stumbled off the transport after her Games. They love each other, more than anything in the world, and they are both about to lose the one thing they can't live without. It's wrong, and it hurts, and no one is doing anything.
"No," a voice says from over her shoulder. She looks; it's Plutarch, the rogue gamemaker who is leading the rebel faction Lyra has found herself thrown in with. She doesn't know what to make of him, but she's pretty sure she can't trust him.
"The Capitol won't kill them in there, not if we can help it," he assures her. "There is a way out. Some of the other victors know about it. If they can work together they can escape, and they can join us."
"Join us where?" Lyra spits. "In the air? I think we're running out of room here, Plutarch."
"In District 13," he tells her evenly.
Shit, she thinks. And then: wait, what?
"This is really something, folks," Caesar's voice says as the image of Elliot and Olivia holding on to one another plays out on screens all across the Districts. "I think we all knew Mags wouldn't last long but it is a surprise to see Elliot and Olivia like this. We all know what good friends they are, but see how close he holds her? And doesn't she look beautiful, folks, isn't that a lovely dress?"
For over an hour and a half they move together, Finnick and Elliot and Olivia, searching for some sign of Haymitch or Johanna, though they find none. The cannon does not boom again; four victors are dead, nineteen remain. It's unnerving, the solemn emptiness of this city, this nowhere place. A city is meant to be full of life, of people, but everywhere they turn they are met with blank brick and echoing silence and the gathering suspicion that something terrible is haunting their steps, moving with them between the shadows of the buildings.
Finnick hasn't said a word, not since they lost Mags. Olivia can't blame him for that, and it's not like there's anything to say. As they walk she holds Elliot's hand; the Capitol can see that, she knows. From their safe feathered nests in the Capitol her adoring fans are watching, and probably swooning over this, over what they see as evidence that their theories were correct. Which of course they were, just never in the way any of those overdressed peacocks could've imagined and she wants to tell them, suddenly, wants to tell them how much she loves this man, how much she loves their children, the forty - forty-one, her mind corrects, adding her baby to the count - children the Capitol has stolen from their arms.
It becomes too comfortable, the silence, and just as she is about to draw an easy breath and suggest they find a place to rest a terrible booming sound echoes from the other side of the city, and a vast plume of dirt and debris goes rocketing up into the air like a geyser.
The three of them turn and watch together, the unnatural smoke of human folly against a murderously bright blue sky.
One of the buildings, Olivia thinks. It must have been one of the buildings, suddenly collapsing in on itself, and before she can even wonder who triggered the trap the cannon sounds.
Five victors dead.
"We're just going in circles," Finnick says suddenly, stopping his tracks to look around with disgust on his face. "Just walking and walking and we can't see anything and nothing fucking changes and -"
"Finnick-" Elliot begins to reason with him, but Finnick won't listen.
"The buildings aren't safe so, what? We just stand out here on the street and wait to die?"
"We need a plan," Olivia insists. Finnick is right; they can't keep stumbling along with no goal in mind. The way it's been going they don't even have a clear map of the city in their minds, do not know its limits, its secrets, have no idea where the other victors are or where they can take shelter. The Games started later in the day than they were meant to and the sun will go down soon and they can't be on the street in the dark; she doesn't know what's coming but she feels certain that the night will not be calm and peaceful.
"All right," Elliot says slowly. "Let's think about this. We know at least one of the buildings collapsed."
"And we don't know who died when it did," Finnick grumbles, but Olivia ignores him.
"They'll be different," she says to Elliot. "There's traps in some of them, maybe all of them, but they won't all work the same. That would be too easy."
"What if there's a system?" he muses. "What if there's a pattern?"
It's the kind of thing the gamemakers might do, she thinks. Create a pattern, hide some series of clues or symbols in the bricks, so the clever victors can work out which buildings are safe and which are not.
"How are we supposed to find it?" Finnick demands. "You wanna just start opening doors?"
"We know one building collapsed," Elliot says. "We can start there. See if we can find anything there that might tell us what happened."
It's a long shot. They may go all the way there and find nothing at all. But they're tired, and hungry, and they need water, and Olivia feels certain the only place they'll find it is inside the buildings. They have to start somewhere, and the collapsed building seems as good a place as any.
"Let's go," she says.
So they do.
It's nice, walking along with Olivia's fingers laced through his. There's something comforting about it, the closeness of her. It's how they have lived the last twenty years of their lives, moving through the world side-by-side, and he's stronger when she's with him. Braver, when he can feel her moving next to him. There's nothing they can't do, as long as they are together. When they reach the mountain of rubble they've been searching for and begin to examine the debris he finds himself looking at her more than anything else. Looking at the way that black dress clings to her skin, the way her eyes narrow as she turns a loose brick over in her hands, the way her lips purse while she's deep in thought. She has always been beautiful but there is so much more to her than the enticement of her body; her heart is tender and her mind is sharp and he remains, as he has been since the day they met, quietly in awe of her.
The building that went down was one of the taller ones. It looks like it might have been an office building, the kind they have in the Capitol. He does not know who ventured here first, or why they chose it; maybe the poor bastard just gave up, and opened the nearest door. No insight comes to them, as they sift through the debris, and the sun is going down and there is a chill in the air and his skin prickles with the sensation of being watched. Of course someone is always watching, in the arena, but this feels different, more human.
Finnick has discovered a mostly intact filing cabinet, and comes away with a few sheets of loose blank paper and a pen. It won't feed them but it will help them map out the city, and that's something, at least.
"I think we just have to try," Finnick says. "Open a door, see what happens."
"One of those over there?" Olivia suggests, pointing to a row of townhouses on the other side of the street. If they're set up like homes inside they may have running water and beds. There may even be food in the kitchens. It's tempting. But maybe that's the point.
"The cafe," Elliot offers his own suggestion. There should be food and water in there, too, but it's smaller, and the wide windows offer little protection from eyes on the street. It won't feel as safe, as cozy, but they'll be able to keep watch better from inside it.
"Finnick?" Olivia looks to him to be the deciding vote.
Finnick thinks for a moment.
"The cafe," he says finally.
Here goes nothing, Elliot thinks.
"That was smart, right?" Lyra asks Plutarch, watching Elliot and Olivia and Finnick Odair as they gather around a workbench in the kitchen of an abandoned cafe, scarfing down hunks of bread and glasses of water from the kitchen sink.
"It was," Plutarch agrees. "They're safe there, for now. But they don't know why. They haven't figured out the system, and that means their safety won't last."
"What is the system?" Lyra demands.
"What good will it do you to know? You can't tell them anything."
"That's no reason not to tell me," Lyra grumbles. Why keep secrets from her, if she has no one to tell them to?
"You've got bigger things to worry about," Plutarch says. "We'll be in 13 soon, and there will be work for you to do there."
It can't be real, she thinks. District 13 was destroyed during the long ago rebellion, and no piece of it remained. How can Plutarch take her to a place that doesn't exist? And what will happen to her when she gets there?
At least it isn't the arena. But Elliot and Olivia are in the arena, alone and scared, and her heart aches when she looks at them, knowing they took her place, knowing she's the one who is meant to be dying there, and not them. They were supposed to be safe.
Maybe it's just another of the Capitol's illusions, safety. Maybe no one is safe, anywhere.
"It looks like everyone's found a place to hide for the night," Caesar tells the audience. The editors manning the video feeds flick from camera to camera, show Panem the careers, safe in the cornucopia, BeeTee and Wiress huddling together in the ruins of a collapsed building, Elliot and Olivia and Finnick in the cafe. They linger on Olivia; the way she's sitting her breasts are almost spilling out of her dress, and Elliot is leaning against her, his head on her shoulder. They look sweet together. The Capitol swoons.
"How can he sleep at a time like this?" Finnicks asks.
"He can sleep anywhere," Olivia says fondly, smoothing her hand gently over Elliot's balding head.
They are on the floor in the kitchen at the back of the cafe, Olivia and Finnick sitting with their backs against the cabinets, Elliot lying with his head pillowed on Olivia's lap, sound asleep.
"I always thought it was a game for the cameras, the two of you," Finnick says. "But you really do love him, don't you?"
"Since I was a kid," Olivia confirms, wondering if the gamemakers put cameras and mics in here, wondering if the Capitol citizens are listening to her confession. Not that it really matters, now. There's no point in pretending anymore.
"Why didn't you get married?"
She shoots him a dark look and he nods, understanding. There was no marriage because the Capitol would not allow it; Finnick knows what that's like. He thinks it's a secret, his feelings for Annie, but Olivia knows. He's not the only one who's traded sex for information, and he's not the only one who has been denied the chance to be with the one he loves.
There's a little tv high on the wall in the corner of the kitchen and it crackles to life then, plays Panem's anthem over a montage of the victors who have died on the first day. The faces flicker by; both morphlings, Mags, Bianca, and Chaff.
"Johanna's still alive," Finnick breathes in relief. Olivia shares in that feeling; she's always liked Johanna. Johanna is mean as a bag of snakes and deadly with an axe and friends with no one, but she is a bright, shining creature, a phoenix meant to fly, and Olivia does not want to see her die in this arena.
"Maybe we can find her tomorrow. Blight is probably with her."
Finnick mutters something under his breath, and then pulls out the paper and pen he found in the debris.
"Look," he says. "Let's map out where we've been."
They do it together. Start with the cornucopia in the center, and then sketch out the shape of the plaza around it. Then the twelve streets radiating out from there, then the 12 cross streets. The arena is laid out in a circle, because of course it is. The avenues that run from the cornucopia are each about a mile long, and they all dead end in a row of buildings, a ring that forms the outer wall of the arena.
"We've mostly stayed in this area," Finnick says, drawing a faint, winding line from the place where Mags died to the cafe where they are now.
"The careers will be in the cornucopia," she says.
"It's a standoff. They're going to want to push us together."
"But how?"
That is the question; what traps have the gamemakers laid to force the victors' hands? In her arena, her first arena, they triggered landslides and floods and earthquakes. What will they do here?
The answer comes at midnight; Olivia is awake, keeping watch while the boys sleep, Elliot's head still resting in her lap. The night is quiet, and still, and then she hears a sound like the roar of thunder and rouses the men from their sleep, and the three of them run to the front windows of the shop just in time to see a wall of water a hundred feet high gathering at the far end of the street, on the verge of rushing towards them. They may drown if they stay in the shop, and the building is only one level, its roof too low to afford them safety from the approaching tsunami, and the rush of the water is so powerful it may bring all the buildings down.
"Go," Elliot barks, and they race out the door.
It would be madness, a fool's errand, to run straight; the flood appears to be contained to this street, and they can't hope to reach the plaza before it drowns them. Instead they make for the nearest cross street, and run right across to the next avenue, where they discover there is no water, but instead a great, burning inferno sizzling close, far too close to them.
The cannon booms. Another victor dead.
A fireball erupts from a nearby building like a bullet from a gun and crashes through the glass window of a cafe, setting it alight.
"This way!" Finnick cries, and they move up another block, keep heading east. Olivia's feet are screaming and bleeding; she's barefoot, still, and freezing, and when the three of them stumble onto an empty avenue, mercifully devoid of fire and flood, her heart sinks; Brutus is there, hacking Panko to death with a sword.
No way out, she thinks. There's no way out. Burn, or drown, or die screaming, it doesn't matter; there is no way out.
"This way," Elliot hisses, and takes her hand once more, and they follow the line of the buildings, try to put some distance between themselves and Brutus before they step out onto the avenue.
He spots them, anyway; they hear him roar, and give chase, and then the three of them are sprinting, racing for cover.
The cannon booms again.
Olivia is lagging behind; she can't keep up, not without shoes, and the way Elliot is tugging on her arm hurts, and this is it, she thinks, Brutus is going to catch her, and cut her into pieces right in front of Elliot, and terror surges within her. It is not the physical pain, not her own death she fears, but Elliot's grief; he doesn't deserve this. She should've been better, for him.
She can almost feel Brutus's hot breath on the back of her neck, but then an axe comes screaming through the air, turning end over end, and Brutus falters, and Finnick and Elliot and Olivia pivot in the direction the axe came from. A doorway, the entrance to a townhouse, and Johanna Mason standing just inside it, another axe in her hand.
"Come on!" she screams.
The pause in Brutus's momentum gives the three of them just enough time to careen through the doorway, and then Johanna slams it shut behind them, and leads them deep into the house. The door is stout, but Brutus has a sword; he will hack it to pieces and then he will be inside, with them.
"Johanna," Finnick starts to gasp her name as they race through the house.
"No time!" Johanna barks. There is another door at the back of the house, and Johanna takes them there, out the door, into the street, down an alleyway, into a second building, deep into the basement where Blight is waiting and the five of them pause to catch their breath.
"Who-" Blight starts to ask.
"Brutus killed Panko," Johanna tells him. "I don't know who the other cannon was for."
"Will he find us here?" Elliot asks, looking around wildly.
"Maybe," Johanna says. "There's a lot of buildings, a lot of doors to try, and Brutus doesn't want to bring the whole thing down on his head."
"How did you know where to go?" That's the part Olivia can't figure out. Johanna has found two safe doors; how did she know? Or was she just guessing, just hoping?
"Blight found this one first. We've made it our base. I've been testing the other buildings."
"That's risky," Finnick says mildly, and Johanna throws him a dark look.
"We shouldn't be here," Elliot says. "Basement's not a good idea, we've got no exit."
"There's no cameras, either," Johanna tells him smugly. "They couldn't rig every inch of this place, there's too many nooks and crannies. We can talk here."
Or maybe she only thinks they can. Maybe she only wants them to talk. But what could Olivia possibly have to say that matters to Johanna?
"Have you found it?" Finnick asks urgently.
"No," Johanna answers.
"Found what?" Elliot looks as confused and frustrated as Olivia feels.
"The way out," Johanna says.
The rest of the night they spend in heated debate as the truth comes out. Johanna and Finnick are part of the rebellion as well, and they know more than Elliot and Olivia do. They know that at least one of the gamemakers is on their side. Beneath the arena there is a series of tunnels that will lead the victors to freedom, if only they can find the way out in time. It's maddening; Elliot understands why the rebellion has unfolded this way, why none of them have the full picture, why there are so many secrets. A person can't reveal what they don't know, even under threat of torture. But this, knowing there is a way out and yet having no idea how to reach it, it's driving him insane.
"Wait," Olivia says sometime around dawn. "We're talking about finding these tunnels. About us finding the tunnels. What about everyone else?"
"You really want to set Brutus free?" Johanna scoffs.
"No," Olivia allows. "I'm talking about Wiress and BeeTee and Seeder and -"
"I get the point," Johanna says darkly. "You want us to kill ourselves trying to save them."
"I know you're just trying to do the right thing, Liv," Elliot says. He loves her for it. "But we have to choose. Either we find the tunnels, or we find the others. I don't think we have enough time to do both. Brutus is out there, Gloss and Cashmere and -"
"And Enobaria can't wait to tear your throat out with her teeth," Johanna says.
Olivia looks around at the faces of her fellow victors, their expressions hard as stone, and then she turns her pleading eyes on Elliot, and his resolve wavers. When she looks at him with those big dark eyes he longs, with everything he has, to give her anything she'll ask of him.
"They don't deserve this," she says in a quiet, sorrowful voice. "They're alone, and they're scared, and we have to help them, Elliot."
Damn it, he thinks. She's right. What kind of people would they be if they saved themselves, and no one else? What kind of world would they be fighting for, if they leave more innocents to die?
"We will," he says, while Johanna rolls her eyes.
"You can do it alone," Blight tells them bluntly.
"No," Johanna says. "We need their help. The more people in our group the safer we'll be, and Elliot's a fighter. We need him."
"So it's settled," Elliot says. "We'll go together."
"Together," Olivia agrees, and for the first time in a very long time she looks at him, and smiles.
In the daylight they venture out together, all five of them. Johanna has an axe in her hand, and Blight was sitting on a cache of knives which he has distributed to Elliot and Olivia and Finnick. It's not much, the little six inch blade she carries in her hand now, but it's more than she had before, and she clings to it tightly. The pavement has cut her feet to shreds, and Elliot and Finnick and Blight have donated the ties from their suits to bind around them so she's at least not leaving bloody footprints behind her everywhere she goes.
They use Finnick's hand-drawn map as a guide, break the city up into sectors and begin to explore it one at a time. The cannon sounds twice before noon, but they find Wiress and BeeTee holed up in an alleyway in the rubble of a burned out building, and Haymitch joins them before the sun begins to set. They haven't seen so much as a shadow of the careers, not since Brutus killed Panko the night before. Haymitch fills them in on the two dead, it's Seeder and the woman from 9. There's fourteen of them left, and eight of them are moving together in this pack now. It's good odds, Elliot thinks. Even Brutus won't take on eight people alone.
If the careers are working together, though, they would. Especially if they have range weapons, like a bow. If the careers have figured out which buildings are safe they could climb to a rooftop and pick off Elliot and his friends one by one.
Woof and Rye are the only two victors left that Elliot would consider adding to their number, but there's no telling where the men are and the second day of the Games is almost over. Their luck is bound to run out soon, and Johanna agrees with him, and Olivia gives in to them reluctantly. They will not search for people anymore; the time has come to focus on finding a way out.
BeeTee has some idea, and they all listen intently like they understand him when they really don't; it doesn't matter how he came to this conclusion, Elliot thinks. All that matters is that he's clever, and they trust him, and he thinks the entrance to the tunnels will be buried in the basement of one of the buildings near the cornucopia. If they follow his advice they will have to draw within eyesight of the careers' fort, and that's a risk Elliot doesn't want to take, but what other choice do they have?
They venture off together, marching in a cluster down the avenue, and that is when disaster strikes. Partway down the street, maybe a half a mile from the cornucopia, the ground begins to buckle like the deck of a ship in a storm, and the buildings around them sway, their buttresses groaning under their weight. The ground opens up in front of Elliot's feet, and he jumps back in alarm, taking Olivia with him as the pavement they were standing on tumbles suddenly into an abyss. One of the buildings goes down, and pavers come crashing to the earth like hail, and a fissure opens up in the middle of the street. Wiress isn't quick enough and she tumbles into it with a scream, and the cannon booms, and the victors scatter, running for cover.
The gamemakers' trick has divided them; Elliot and Olivia are alone on the west side of what can only be described as a canyon now, the rest of them on the east. The two factions find their feet and start to run for the cornucopia, but then there's a sudden flood of arrows; it's Gloss, on a rooftop, and he lands a shot in the back of Haymitch's calf and Elliot watches his friend go down in horror.
"We have to get off the street!" Olivia screams when an arrow whizzes past her face; it's Cashmere, on another rooftop. All around them arrows are flying, pinging off the bricks, a sound like death on the air.
Elliot doesn't wait around to argue with her; he takes her hand, and they run together into the nearest townhouse, slamming the door shut behind them.
Shit.
After the chaos in the street the townhouse is blessedly silent. He takes a moment to get his bearings; they are standing in a grand foyer, with a winding staircase in front of them. A corridor runs towards the back of the house with rooms branching off of it; probably a kitchen, a bathroom, maybe a bedroom. The house is decorated as if someone lives here; there is a table near the doorway with a vase of flowers on it, and a coat hangs on a hook by the door, a pair of shoes stacked up neatly beneath it. The shoes draw his attention and make him hopeful for a second, but he sees they're too big for Olivia, and sighs.
The cannon did not sound again; Haymitch is injured, but he's not dead. That's good. Elliot has no idea what has become of his friends but they're still breathing; probably they did the same thing Elliot and Olivia have done, took shelter in a building somewhere. Gloss and Cashmere will have seen it, will know where their quarry is hiding, but they're too smart to give up their advantage and go racing into the buildings on foot. They will wait the other victors out.
We know where they're going, Elliot thinks. He can't cross the chasm to rejoin the group but he knows their destination. They can wait until it's dark and then pick their way towards the cornucopia, and meet up with everyone else there. Unless Gloss and Cashmere have some way to talk to Brutus and Enobaria, unless the careers come tearing into this house first.
Maybe they can't stay here.
Behind him Olivia whimpers, and he spins around just in time to watch her slide slowly down the wall, crumple into a heap on the floor with her hand pressed hard to her side.
"Liv!"
All thoughts of the careers are forgotten as he rushes to her, kneels beside her and pulls her hand away so he can see for himself what's wrong with her. It's a wide, deep cut; one of the arrows grazed her, and took a piece out of her side when it did, tore through her dress and her skin and spilled her blood, and the sight of it fills him with terror.
"Hurts," she chokes out.
"I know," he says. "I know, baby. Come here."
Carefully he wraps his arms around her, and lifts her off the ground, carries her deeper into the house.
There's a kitchen, just like he thought there would be, and he lays Olivia down on the table, sheds his jacket and tucks it up under her head for a pillow and then goes in search of a rag and water. Finding both he soaks the rag and then returns to her, and begins gently to wash the blood from the gash in her side.
"Get this damn thing off me," Olivia grumbles, plucking at her satin dress.
"Not sure that's a good idea." They may need to move again, and soon, and she'll need to be dressed when they do, and there may be cameras in here. The whole of Panem may be watching.
"I don't care anymore," she says. "Please just…please."
"Ok."
It'll make it easier for him to assess the extent of her wound without the dress, anyway. They do it together, carefully, tug the straps off her shoulders and free her arms, and then she raises her ass up off the table, grunting at the pain, while he tugs the dress off her hips, and then she relaxes, sighs like it's a relief, finally being bare. Elliot lays the dress over the back of the nearest chair, and turns his attention back to her, and he means to clean her wound and then if fate is kind to him maybe find some thread and a needle to sew it up with, but the sight of her stops him short.
It's been two days, and her makeup is all but gone now, her hair thick and wild and tangled. Her skin is golden and warm, and he can see her, all of her, soft tits, soft belly, the skimpy black underwear that hugs her hips, her battered feet still wrapped up in the scraps from the other victor's suits. Her dark eyes watch him knowingly, and he gives up, then, gives up any pretense, and bows his head over hers and kisses her once, gently.
"It's going to be ok," he assures her.
"Bullshit," she says, but there is no heat in it; she's telling the truth.
There was a sewing kit in one of the drawers in the kitchen, and food in the pantry. Elliot patches her up and they both eat, and then they wander together through the house, but truthfully her heart isn't in it. Her whole body aches, from the bruised and bloody soles of her feet to the roots of her hair. Probably they shouldn't linger here; anyone could burst through the front door at any moment, and they are so close to reaching their goal.
Only they aren't, not really. BeeTee thinks the tunnels are in one of the buildings near the cornucopia, but which one? What are the chances they find the right place before they get shot with an arrow or cut down with a sword or drowned or burned or swallowed up by the earth? It was foolish of them, she thinks, to ever imagine they could escape the arena. The very bones of this place want them dead.
The townhouse is nice, though. The townhouse is warm and their bellies are full and the taps all work, and she takes the time upstairs to wash her feet, between her legs, under her arms, and Elliot does the same. Elliot uses his knife to cut his jacket to make bandages for the gash in her side. Carefully he wraps her up; he sits on the bed and winds his arms around her, and he is so warm, and so close, and she sways into him without thinking. This is the face of the man she loves, serious and focused on his task, blue eyes, soft mouth, stubble on his cheeks. His shoulders are broad and strong and she holds on to them while he works.
It's not impossible that people are watching, she knows. That the President and the citizens of Panem can see her parading around this room naked, holding on to Elliot while he cares for her. Not impossible, but Johanna was right; every room can't be bugged. The manpower required to monitor that many feeds, splice it all together and show the audience all the most interesting pieces, would be such an extravagant expense even the Capitol might not be able to afford it. Olivia chooses to pretend they're alone here.
"I have to tell you something," she says as Elliot ties off the bandages at her waist. His heavy hands settle on her hips and he holds her there loosely, looks up at her with eyes warm and soft and sad.
"Last winter," she begins, but the words won't come; if they are going to die today she needs him to know the truth, needs him to know what she has done, and why, cannot abide the thought of keeping secrets from him even in death, but it's hard. It's not something she even wants to think about, let alone admit. "I was-"
"I know," he says, and to prove the point he lifts his hand and presses his palm to the bare skin of her belly.
"You know?" she asks haltingly, horrified.
"I know you," he says. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? I knew…I knew you were pregnant, Liv. And I knew when you weren't, anymore."
"No!" Merope cries. Around her people stop to stare; the folks in 13 are a grim lot, and they don't approve of her ostentatious displays of emotion. A few of them are gathered here in a kind of cafeteria, watching the Games while they catch a quick bite to eat before going to work. Even in 13 they're still watching the Games; they say it's because everyone needs to know the extent of the Capitol's brutality, but Lyra thinks that's just an excuse. They're no better than the rest of Panem, watching people die for their entertainment.
"I had to," Olivia says on the screen. She's naked, but her back is facing the camera, not that it matters now. Everyone has seen her naked already, and what Lyra can't figure is why the President is allowing this to continue, why they haven't cut to another camera feed. Maybe Plutarch isn't the only rebel involved in this year's Games; maybe the rebels want Panem to see Olivia like this, to hear her confession.
"I had to save our baby," Olivia says, and Merope begins to weep, her shoulders shaking. "I couldn't…I couldn't let them take her from us, Elliot. I couldn't bring her into a world where she might be reaped for the Games."
"I know," Elliot says again. His face is hidden from the cameras but his voice is heavy with grief.
"I loved her," Olivia chokes, beginning to cry. "I loved her so much. I still do."
"So do I," Elliot confesses. "I always will. She'll always be ours, Olivia. Just ours. They never touched her. She's ours."
There's such heat in his voice when he speaks, such certainty, such devotion, such love for a child whose face he never saw. And no rage, not even a hint of it, no anger for the woman who took that child away. It's a decision so profoundly devastating that Lyra's mind shies away from the grief of it. Lyra knows, what happened to Olivia in the arena, how her body is not her own, how the Capitol owns her, her every move designed to keep them happy, keep her alive. This one thing, this baby who never drew breath, is the only thing Olivia and Elliot have that's truly theirs, and she's dead.
"You see what they do," a voice calls from behind Lyra. "How they rob of us our humanity, destroy our families, murder our children." It's a woman speaking, a woman Lyra doesn't know, but everyone around her is listening in rapt attention. "Do you know what they do to Olivia in the Capitol? How the men there buy her body, and she must go to them or be killed by the regime? They've raped her, and now they've killed her child."
An angry murmur passes through the crowd, and Merope is crying so hard she has to excuse herself, walks away with her shoulders shaking.
"Their violation of that woman began when she was just sixteen years old," the woman continues. "Where will it end? How much will they take from her, and others like her?"
"No more!" A man's voice booms above the gathering din.
"No more! No more!" Other voices join him, chanting, and the crowd surges in an anger, and no one, even Lyra, is watching the screen to see what happens next.
It isn't only the crowd in 13 watching. Across Panem, Olivia's confession ripples through the audience like a stone cast into a pond, waves echoing out from each point of contact. The people love her, and her grief and theirs mingle together. Every mother who has lost a child, every man who's had the woman he loved ripped from his arms; they snap, together. The riots begin, as the people say no more. No more dead children, no more games, of any sort.
Even in the Capitol, trouble is brewing. The women look at their men, and wonder which of them participated in brutalizing Olivia. The women look at their children, and wonder what they would do, if they stood in Olivia's place, if they were forced to choose. She is not a faceless child, reaped from a place they've never been, known to them for only a few short weeks; they have shared food and drink with her, watched her dancing, admired her clothes and swooned over her love story, and their knowledge of her makes her grief real, and visceral. The men look at Elliot, and see their own faces reflected back at them, and discord begins to grow like a weed.
The President screams for someone to cut the feed. No one does. All of Panem hears the truth.
"I'm sorry," Olivia whispers brokenly.
"Don't be," he tells her, reaching up to brush the hair back from her face. "You did the right thing."
He meant what he said; he knew all along, about the baby, about what she had to do, and he has been grieving alone, waiting for the moment when she was finally ready to tell him. The moment has come and the combined weight of their sorrow is crushing, the Games forgotten, for a time, as they lament together.
Olivia begins to crumple and he pulls her to him, settles her on his lap while her arms and legs wind around him, cradles her close as she cries into his neck, as his own tears spill silently down his cheeks. It is familiar, the way she straddles him, the weight of her in his arms, and he draws comfort from the nearness of her. She is soft, and warm, and naked, and he loves her, loves her madly, loves her desperately, loves her with every piece of himself, and his body knows her, aches for her, responds to her.
Now is not the time, not when both their hearts are raw and their lives are in danger, but she must feel the stirring of his cock between her legs. Slowly she raises her head to look at him, and he opens his mouth to speak, to apologize to her, to tell her that he knows they would be stupid to take such a risk, but she doesn't give him a chance. Instead she leans in and kisses him gently, and in that kiss he can taste her sorrow, and her love for him.
Sometimes he thinks the only way he'll ever be whole is when he's inside her. Sometimes he feels like she's the other half of himself walking around on two legs, feels like they were meant to be one, one body, one heart, one soul. Sometimes his love of her is so big he knows words can't contain it, convey it; sometimes it feels like the only way he can love her is with his hands. It's like that, now, the love welling up within him so overwhelming his mouth isn't big enough to let it out; he kisses her, and drags his hands down the satin soft skin of her back and she rocks experimentally against his cock and their bodies know what this is, know what to do with this love better than their minds do.
But she's injured and tired and he won't make her work, now; he gathers her in close and rolls them both back across the bed, settles her beneath him and looks down on her face in wonder, and in sorrow. That face is her curse, that beautiful face that made the Capitol want her, it has brought her so much pain, but it is the face of the woman he loves, and it is the only thing in the world he wants to see.
"There is no me without you," he tells her. It is a refrain they have whispered back and forth to one another for years now, the truth that anchors them to one another. Without her he is nothing; there is no life, no hope, no him, without her.
"No me without you," she tells him, and then he ducks his head, and kisses her.
They make love slowly as the sun sets beyond the bedroom window; this may be the last time he ever gets to touch her and he savors it. Sucks her nipples between his teeth and worries bruises into the curve of her breast while her hands dance over his skin and her hips rock beneath him, teasing the hardening length of his cock with the warm wet heat of her. She strips him bare and he pulls her underwear off and he buries himself inside her with a groan, and with the long, slow, steady thrust of his hips he builds the pleasure up inside them both until they break, crying out and clinging to one another. He spills himself inside her for the very last time, thinking of the baby they made once, and wishing the world were different, wishing they could be granted the grace to try again, in a safer, gentler place.
If that dream is ever going to become a reality, though, they have to make their escape. The sun has gone down and plunged the world into darkness and the time has come. He kisses her one last time, and then they rise, and begin to dress. There's clothes in the bedroom closet to cover Olivia, and they leave her dress forgotten in the kitchen.
At the front door he pauses, looks at her and at the house beyond her, their temporary refuge. Something changed inside him, in this place; all this time he's been fighting because he has to, working together with the other victors because he has to keep Olivia alive, but he never really believed they had a chance. A seed of hope has been planted inside him now, though. Something, maybe the touch of her hand, the warmth of her body, maybe the trust she showed him in telling him the truth, maybe the relief he feels at finally setting aside the rules of the Games and following his own heart, something has changed him, and made him feel as if maybe they can survive. As if maybe there's something worth surviving for.
"Are you ready?" he asks her.
She's been ready to die for years, he thinks, hanging on just for his sake. There's been something hollow in her chest, the whole time they've been in the arena, something in her eyes when she looks up at the buildings like she wants to jump, but whatever hole had been carved in her heart he can see now that it's been filled in, patched up. Her eyes are clear and bright and resolute.
"I'm ready," she says. "Where you go, I go."
And so they will go, he thinks, to the very ends of the earth. Together.
"That was…uh…really something, wasn't it, folks?" Caesar says as the camera lingers on Elliot and Olivia in the townhouse where they have just fucked on live television, and cost at least two gamemakers their lives. "We do apologize for the…erm…illicit nature of what you've just seen, but I think I speak for all of us when I say I have been waiting a long, long time for that, and wasn't it worth the wait, folks? Twenty years, and we've finally seen them come together, the way we always wanted to."
The street is dark and vacant, and no arrows come whizzing at them as they step out into the night. She's still barefoot, but they used the remnants of Elliot's jacket to bind her feet, and it works better than the ties did. They slip silently down the sidewalk, keeping close to the buildings, and pause at the edge of the plaza.
Brutus is pacing near the entrance of the cornucopia, but there are streetlights blazing in the plaza, and they blind him to the dangers lurking at the mouth of the streets. A flash of something to the north catches Olivia's eye and she peers off into the darkness, straining to see.
"There," she whispers to Elliot when she realizes what she's looking at.
It's Johanna, using the flat blade of her axe to reflect the light at them, signaling them.
They go back a block, race down the cross street curving toward the north until they reach the street Olivia thinks Johanna was on. Once more they approach the plaza, and this time they find Johanna waiting for them at the entrance to a building.
"Here," Johanna calls softly as they run towards her.
They're maybe twenty yards out when the rumbling sounds again, and a building across the street is suddenly engulfed in flames, and fireballs come shooting out of it, rocketing through the buildings around them, sending embers and bricks raining down on them.
"Go go go!" Johanna yells, but as they run towards her they have to duck and dodge the fireballs, and an unholy roar echoes behind them, and Olivia looks over just in time to see Enobaria sprinting at them with teeth bared.
They have to kill her. If she follows them into the house she may kill them all, and even if she doesn't she may find the tunnels, may kill them down there, or escape herself, and that's a risk they can't take. But what choice do they have?
"Go!" Elliot says, pushing Olivia away and then turning towards Enobaria with his knife in his hand.
"No!" Olivia cries, distraught. He can't do this now, can't sacrifice himself right when they're on the cusp of escape. There is no me without you, she thinks. I can't lose you.
"Are you crazy?" Johanna shrieks.
"Two for one," Enobaria snarls as she draws near, a spear clutched in her hands. "Delicious."
"Olivia, go!"
"How sweet," Enobaria says. "Still playing your little game? Do you think they'll let you live if they believe you love her?"
"Go, Olivia," Elliot says again. They are standing side by side while Enobaria circles them, knives in their hands and no way out.
We were so close, Olivia thinks.
"You don't have to do this," Olivia calls to her. It's hopeless, trying to appeal to Enobaria's humanity; the woman had her teeth filed into sharp points for the express purpose of ripping out people's throats. There is no humanity left in her.
"Pretty little fool," Enobaria says. "This is all we are. This is all we're good for. This is what we were made to-"
She doesn't get to finish the thought, because as she circled them, as they moved with her, careful not to turn their backs on her, she forgot about Johanna. Johanna, who was standing in the doorway, holding her axe. The axe that buries itself suddenly, violently in Enobaria's back, and sends her crumpling to her knees. There's a moment, just a single second, when Olivia looks into Enobaria's eyes and sees the fear there, and then the woman crumples to the ground, and the cannon sounds.
"Let's go!" Johanna screams again.
This time, they do.
BeeTee was right. In the basement of the house, disguised beneath an old and faded rug, there is a trap door. Beneath the door there is a ladder, and beneath the ladder there is a dirt tunnel, leading off into darkness. Somewhere BeeTee found a lantern, and he leads the way, shining its dim light into the shadows. Finnick is behind him, and then Johanna, then Blight, then Haymitch, limping along, then Elliot, his hand outstretched behind him, holding on to Olivia. Single file they disappear into the shadows, chasing a hope as thin as a wisp of smoke. It is all they have; it is what they live for.