01
Marquis "Marq" Helem, 18, District 1
The smell of death always clung so thick in the air. No matter where he went in this pace, it was inescapable.
The hospital used to be his escape from home. From the Academy. At first he started out in the childrens' ward, entertaining sick kids and reassuring them of their treatments. Playing the clown, learning magic tricks just for them. But then the first child with a terminal illness came in, and she'd reeked of something indescribable. Something he loathed as soon as it hit his senses. The other nurses simply gave him a sympathetic look when they saw his reaction, almost like they could smell it too, but none of them said anything. They just pretended like she didn't smell like something about to perish, something that should've been prepared for the morgue. They gave her a false hope of life, and all the while he just covered his nose and tried not to look at her too long.
Home used to be a safe haven. But home was now empty. Home always felt so bare. Home always felt so barren. People died in that house, but not in the house. Every year since he turned twelve, a sibling or a cousin would volunteer, and he'd find himself cleaning out one more room in the mansion with a sense of longing trailing behind. Always the longing, never the mourning; it was easier to think they'd come back one day, that they were just having their things put in storage. It was easier.
The hospital didn't allow for delusions. Just false reassurances. Eventually a whole ward of kids were terminal when an outbreak of measles overcame the small hospital, and for the whole week he struggled to rid himself of the stench. Not even the pungent durian could get rid of the small, and it was supposed to smell like death. Eventually he told the head nurse he couldn't take it, and the head nurse gave him a month long break to decide whether or not he wanted to continue interning. Helping people was fine. Watching them wither away was a challenge.
But he persevered. He wanted to save lives, make the stench leave them. And he came back. And he regretted it.
Marq returned to the hospital the day a fire broke out at a clothing store. So many people had burns that fused fabric to skin, so many children had to be put into oxygen chambers to make sure their wounds weren't infected. He almost threw up on the spot, overwhelmed. It wasn't that the smell of death was repulsive. It wasn't rotten like decay or sour like bloating. The smell of death—of a person dying—was a lack of smell overall. No matter how much perfume one dabbed under their jaw or how many bouquets decorated their room, scents never clung to them. They were preparing to cease, signs of life ready to leave as nature's odor took over upon release.
It was never the eyes becoming duller. It was never the sound of their voice growing weaker. It was never their skin becoming colder. It was always that wretched lack of life to their scent that clued him off.
And Marq walked right back into it as soon as he saw the chance, like a fool.
The ER was too much for him, and being just an intern, no one would blame him if he slipped away to compose himself. A nurse who was unfocused was worse than a nurse who took care of themselves for the sake of taking care of others. His scrubs, a bright blue compared to the other nurses' own yellow, were pulled over his nose and he held his breath. There were no odd looks—anyone would be overwhelmed by the smell of burnt skin and raw muscle broiled in blood. He stumbled as far as he could, searched for any room that would be unlocked, and his gloved hands landed on a handle that didn't stall like the others.
Marq snuck inside the darkened room and let out a gasp of air. His eyes slid shut, the hand on the doorknob automatically turning the lock to keep the stench out, and he let his head rest against the glass as he heard the muffled sounds outside carry on. He hated how much he wished he could smell the children burning, how much he wished he couldn't smell how close to death they were. Surely that would be worse, wouldn't it? To suffer so excruciatingly just because one nurse couldn't handle knowing they were a goner?
He relaxed some, let his shoulder slump. He slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw, from the corner of his gaze, was a bouquet of flowers on a beside table—the vase was ornate, far too fancy to be originally from the hospital, and the bright sunflowers within normally would've done a well enough job of even masking the sterile smell of the room. But as he let his gaze wander further, as he looked to see who he'd barged in on and prepared to apologise to, Marq held his breath and did a double-take back to the sunflowers.
Flowers covered up the scent of the deceased. Flowers were always overpowered by those dying. He couldn't smell the flowers, nor could he smell the sterileness they normally covered up.
A nurse on the opposite side of the patient's bed rose, and he was letting out a relieved sigh as he did so. Marq's gaze darted left and right, from the patient—so unsick in appearance as she casually sipped a cup of water—to the nurse again, and then suddenly he was ushered closer by the nurse. "Thank God," he said, shoving Marq in the direction of the chair. Marq wanted to fight back, but what would the nurse say to that? Surely a reprimand, maybe even some choice insults delivered via disappointment. None of it would make Marq feel better about the situation. "Wait here with her—her family's supposed to be coming but we need someone to keep an eye on her till then. I'll help out in the ER."
The door was shut behind the nurse, and Marq stared, dazed, back at it as he sat upright in the chair. In his attempts to escape the smell of death outside, he locked himself in with a much, much more personal dose of it.
The woman set down her cup and let out a pleasant sound, unbothered by everything outside and her assigned nurse leaving. She just looked to Marq, a kind expression on her face, as she observed him from her spot. He couldn't tell what he hated more—that she smelled so different to how she looked, or that perhaps she didn't even have a clue she was dying.
"Thank you for staying here…" She leaned forward some, and Marq instinctively leaned back into the chair to get away. "...Marquis."
He looked down at his scrubs, alarmed, and realised she was just trying to read his name. Marq kept holding his breath, looked away from her and nodded noncommittally. How long would it take her family to get here? Surely if they said who their relative was, they'd be let in around the chaos outside and Marq could leave. She looked young enough to have teenage children, he thought, and perhaps even still parents. Someone had to be coming to relieve him any minute now.
"I must apologise, though," the woman went on, leaning back onto her pillows. "No one's coming to see me."
Marq looked at her, alarmed. She was watching him, and that kind expression turned sympathetic—she knew he knew she was dying, and she knew he couldn't stand being around death.
"I do have family," she told him. "But my husband is too busy preparing our daughter for the Games this year. And my parents… Well. Hard to imagine anyone could fault a person for a tumour they can't help. Alas."
A tumour? He swallowed thickly and sucked in the tiniest of breaths, trying not to take in the smell too much. People usually got tumours removed if they could, so where was hers that it was so inoperable she had no choice but to wither away? But worst of all, did her family truly not care enough about her to be with her in hospital? Blamed her for the tumour?
"I—" Marq pursed his lips. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she told him. "I knew for a long time they'd never come, but the nurses insisted on contacting them. I assume as soon as they found out about it, they pretended I never existed."
"When did you…?"
"Last week. Marvelous the things they find when you just come in for a checkup. Perhaps I should've booked myself in sooner."
That was an aggressive tumour she had, if she only just found out last week and was now dying. Marq pitied her. Probably more than the children burning outside. At least they knew what was going on with them. They knew why they hurt. This woman probably knew until she was given a countdown. Her whole world must have shattered.
And yet she looked pleasant, the drip the only sign she was actually sick when someone looked at her.
"The headaches are gone at least," she sighed. "They were unbearable. I just assumed they were cluster migraines but clearly I was wrong." And she laughed, soft and self deprecating.
Even she was blaming herself. She didn't do anything and she blamed herself too. Marq let out a long, tired breath. The patients outside at least had the doctors and surgeons with them, reassuring them, but Marq was so eager to leave he never even realised that she had no one. She was alone, would've been alone if he'd had the guts to sneak out and hide somewhere else.
The silence dragged on. He tried to ignore the lack of any scent coming from her. "Everyone calls me Marq," he said, quiet.
"Marq," she repeated, as though testing the name. "I quite like that. Sounds less pompous than Marquis."
"I think so too," he agreed. And as he thought of the other pompous names his parents had given his siblings, a bemused smile twitched onto his face. "I was the lucky one, though. My big brother was called 'Lord'."
"Oh, the poor boy!" She laughed, wiped at an eye as she relaxed as well. "Though I think my husband has you both beat. His name is Knight-Champion. Most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life."
Marq snorted a laugh. "Yeah. You win there. I hope your name isn't as ridiculous."
"Oh please, my name is perfectly normal. Giada—simple, elegant, and it doesn't make me look like I have my head up my ass when I introduce myself to people."
He nodded. He liked her name. And Giada seemed to like that he was relaxing.
"You're awful young to be a nurse, Marq," she noted. A hand reached out for her water again as she spoke to him.
"I'm interning," he told her. "I wanna go to medical school, but everyone insisted I get a trial experience in the field before bleeding my account dry for classes."
"A very expensive field of study," Giada agreed. "But also a very rewarding field of work."
He gave her a dubious look. She added, "Monetarily, I mean. God knows the horrors you see in the hospital to make that money worthwhile."
Now that made him chuckle, if a bit nervously. She wasn't wrong. One of the few perks, if you couldn't trick yourself into believing you were doing good, was the money. But Marq wasn't even sure if he could earn that money—get the money for classes to begin with. His family weren't poor, but Jesus, they were far from stable enough to afford medical school. And the horrors, she was right about them too. He'd been prepared for them, religiously watched past Hunger Games to make himself less squeamish, but it was the senses he least expected to be assaulted that became his undoing.
Marq licked his lips and glanced at Giada. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.
"I can handle seeing it," he tried. His fingers laced around each other and his thumbnail scratched at a knuckle. "It's what I expected would be the worst part. So I prepared. But… nothing prepares you for everything else. They told me during my first week that I'd—that the smell of death was easier to handle as the years went on. But I guess…"
Giada sipped her water. "You weren't expecting what it would smell like," she finished for him.
"I was positive it'd be something I could block out or just compare to something else, but there's nothing. It's like—like being in a forest and hearing nothing. It's not right, it makes you feel—rightfully so—like you're in danger."
Giada gave him a strange look. It was a look that made Marq pause, attempt to backpedal. He hadn't meant to offend her or make it sound so bad, but once he started he couldn't stop blurting out how it made him feel.
And then Giada just… put it all into perspective for him. Simplified it in a way Marq had never thought to: "You feel like prey around death. You feel like prey around even me."
"I—" Marq swallowed a thick lump in his throat. "I'm prey?"
"You don't want to be found by death when it's near. You're scared it'll cling to you when it's done with the last victim." Giada reached out, a cold hand taking his own in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but instead it made Marq shudder and freeze. Her hands felt more like bones than living flesh. And she was right. As soon as she grabbed him, he felt as though death itself had finally caught him. "But why would a perfectly capable young man like yourself be so afraid when you're in a place of healing? A place where more lives are saved than lost compared to anywhere else?"
Marq stared at her. Giada leaned back in her bed. Why was he so scared of death? So repulsed by its scent? She was right, he was healthy and capable and young. He had his own flesh and bone as proof he was safe from its clutches right now. But Giada was no older than forty, and suddenly she was on death's door despite feeling fine. Had she not come in for a checkup, she may not have even known until it was too late what would happen to her.
He was always afraid of dying. Maybe it was because he was raised by the Hunger Games. Maybe it was because he knew so many kids who died in the past, be it because of jealousy or accidents. Maybe it was just a primal fear of his that he never shook. But why was he so petrified now? Now, when he'd been trying to get used to it in the hospital and had almost overcome the stench with Giada?
Perhaps it was the choices he had to make that made him so afraid—the choices that would keep himself with a bright future, despite everything he had to do in order to achieve them.
The bones gripping at his wrist tightened, clinging to him not out of authority, but of fear. Marq started, wincing at the pain that shot through his arm, and caught sight of Giada's face just as it morphed from the once thoughtful, analytical expression she cornered him with to something primal, horror that possessed her and overtook her senses. She was afraid. She was terrified. And as her face began to sag and her breathing became laboured, Marq realised why.
Perhaps this was the stroke that would kill her.
Giada let out whimpers in between wheezing breaths, hand clamped around his wrist so tight that Marq saw his skin beginning to turn white beneath her own. He held his breath, chest collapsing in on itself, and all he could think as he watched was that death had found him. He hesitated, watching her as the fear in her eyes grew. She was pleading with him, pleading for her life despite how resigned she was to her death earlier, and Marq felt the tears well up in his eyes. If he didn't do something, she'd die in so much pain. But what could he do? He was just a trainee, barely a nurse—
He leaned over Giada's body, covering her and barely holding in his vomit as her cold body laid under his own, and with a desperate reach he slammed his thumb down on the button beside her bed. Despite doing so, there was no doubt someone had noticed the change in her heart rate. Giada was panicking, heart monitor going wild as she wheezed and gagged, and it was only a matter of time before someone came in to help her. But Marq still mashed the button to summon the nurse anyway, desperate to not be useless in Giada's time of need.
She was going to die. But Marq refused to watch the life fade from her eyes like this.
He finally had an answer to Giada's question, two hours after she died and her family had yet to answer the hospital's calls. He sat outside her room, face in his hands as bruises began to form on his wrist in the shape of bony fingers; he'd known the answer all along, just never wanted to say it out loud. What a pathetic citizen of District One he would make if anyone were to find out his anxieties and fears. Marq was going into the Hunger Games, even if Giada hadn't known, but it wasn't his own death he feared. Marq wanted to heal, to help people, to be respectable in the way killers weren't.
He wasn't afraid of death. He was scared of becoming death.
If you're here to tell me I shouldn't be uploading a fic because I haven't finished others in the past and yadda yadda, kindly fuck off. The harassment I got for trying to start fresh with a project I enjoyed in the beginning, which I even said why I was doing so on my profile at the time, was more than enough for a lifetime, thank you. God forbid people enjoy writing things for themselves I guess.
Anyway, for everyone else, hey there. I had to take a break for a while and sort some things out but I'm hoping to be back soon. I didn't want to jump into the SYOT community with my hopes up high after last time, so this time around my fic is only about my OCs, and the plot around them. Granted, I only have four, but aside from those four - if you really wanna put a name to an otherwise nameless background tribute who interacts with those four, feel free to PM me and I'll credit where credit is due. Otherwise, for those who stick around, hope you enjoy. I'll try to upload the other tribute intros and attempt to intrigue with my plot.