Frazier Nelson, 18, District Three, Aries
After the last notes of the anthem faded, Frazier attacked a tree.
He was still thinking about it in the morning after, or what passed for morning at any rate. The moon had once again started to glow in the sky in a thin crescent shape and more fireflies had appeared to shine above the placid water. It was beautiful, Frazier thought idly. But not beautiful enough to distract him from the fact that last night he had attacked a tree.
It was a silly response and he knew it. But rage fueled his body and the only thing he cared about at that moment was getting it out. Better a piece of foliage than himself or his ally.
Gideon sat in a squat a few feet away from him, tending to the fire. They had been lucky to find this island, which had a small ring of trees around the coastline that hid a wide valley where multiple goats grazed and a clear lake that they could drink from. Capricorn, Frazier surmised. He'd decided at some point that there were probably twelve islands, one for each sign. Most likely not all of them were as useful as the one Frazier found himself on. He knew he should consider himself lucky.
He didn't.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Gideon said, his eyes still on the fire, "I know you two were close."
How had he known that he was thinking about Bolt? Frazier hated how transparent he was. Life was a show, and if people knew what he was truly thinking it would be one more thing they would turn into a commodity. Even if Frazier wanted to talk about this, he wouldn't. Not when on camera. And also, Frazier truly didn't want to talk about it.
"We weren't close. We were just sleeping together."
"Acacia and I weren't even doing that. But I still miss her."
Frazier hated that he missed Bolt. He wasn't supposed to after all. The boy was just one in a long line of boys. Sex was like liquor, like applause, like a crowd full of people there for him and only him. It was an addiction, a hobby he participated in to feel needed. For a moment when lost in another man, he could pretend he was loved. But Frazier was smart enough to know there was no such thing.
Sex was all he ever truly wanted from Bolt. And perhaps some good publicity to gain him sponsors. Yet somehow, he'd gotten into Frazier's head. When he saw the boy's portrait in the air, the pain in his chest that had been there since his mother died burned with renewed fury.
Hence the tree thing.
"We should probably come up with a plan." Frazier said, avoiding the subject. It was something he was an expert in. There was an audience after all. If he mourned Bolt the way he wished, the Capitol would think him weak. If he seemed unaffected, callous. The first impression was deadly and given how many careers there were this year the second was oversaturated.
Best to say nothing. Let the Capitol draw their own conclusions. They could believe he loved the boy for all he cared.
Had he loved him?
Of course not. Even the notion was ridiculous. But as Frazier thought about it, he realized that there had always been a ludicrous spark of hope in their sham of a relationship. Bolt had seen through all his bullshit. And he'd still stayed. In fact, he had found comfort in Frazier for some reason.
It wasn't love. But it was possibility. Frazier had been drunk on dreaming he'd found someone who could care. And now that dream was snatched away on a hovercraft along with the body.
"Well. I have been thinking about it." Gideon admitted, "And with only two of us, we wouldn't be great at hunting. There's food here. Water. Some cover from the trees. Maybe we should just stay here."
"It would be awful boring."
Frazier used his best pompous rock star tone for that. It would sell better if he seemed self-absorbed with a small attention span. But Gideon understood. If they didn't give the Capitol a reason to watch them, the gamemakers would make something up.
"I'm sure the two of us can entertain each other."
"Doesn't seem like an appropriate venue."
"Get your head out of the gutter. You mentioned once that you did some of the effects for your rock concerts."
"Practically all of them." Frazier snapped.
"Point is, I'm a magician. We both can build things. Do you remember the battle at the cornucopia last year?"
It was an iconic fight. Part of the way through it, the girl from One triggered a trap and killed several people in a landslide.
"You want to booby trap the island?"
Gideon looked away, "You think it's silly don't you."
For the first time since the Games started, Frazier smiled. "On the contrary. It's dramatic. It's practical. It's practically perfect even. Let's get started."
Nate Fowler, 16, District Nine, Sagittarius
It was almost funny how well he slept in the arena. Perhaps it was because of how physically exhausting the bloodbath had been, or the realization that he'd managed to find allies who took his concerns about sleep seriously. Whatever combination of luck and planning had occurred, he woke refreshed and eager to prove himself useful.
Find allies, enough to make sure you sleep through the night.
He could still hear Peacekeeper Serpentine's words rattling around his head like a pebble in a shoe. Nate wanted absolutely nothing from the man, neither advice nor the genetic material he suspected they shared. Yet here he was, doing exactly what the man told him to do. His stomach twisted at the thought.
But he wasn't in any position to make decisions purely on his feelings about a person. The Hunger Games was a dangerous place, and a single wrong step could kill him.
Nate wasn't sure he'd processed it quite yet. The bloodbath was terrifying, but BV told them to head to the boats quickly. The whole day was a blur, but he was fairly sure that he hadn't actually seen anyone die. It was probably a gift, but Nate couldn't shake the feeling that all of this was just a bad dream he would wake up from.
Hopefully it would hit him soon. He didn't want to die while he was waiting for his survival instincts to kick in.
There was a mountain on their island, or perhaps just a very big hill. At the base of it was a small cavern with a lake inside it. His allies sensed a trap and avoided creating a shelter inside the area. But they had very few supplies and needed water, so Nate had volunteered to gather some in one of two buckets that a sponsor gifted BV. It would still need to be purified, which was the point of the second bucket, but it was a start and Nate wanted to repay the kindness of those who had let him sleep without a shift.
As he knelt down to fill the bucket, he realized that this was the first time in a while that he'd been truly alone. From the reapings onward, he'd felt like he was under constant surveillance. He still was, he knew, but it felt different. Less like a peacekeeper was ready to come in at any moment. He was under observation, but all the Capitol could truly do now was watch. His actions were his own again.
He dipped the bucket into the pond, feeling the coolness of the water against his skin, then brought it up to cautiously smell the contents. No salt, at least none that he could easily smell. It wasn't a guarantee, but most likely the water was fresh. Consus had mentioned at one point that there were ways to rid a water source of salt, but no one in their alliance actually knew how to do it. Which meant that he was willing to risk it.
"Nate."
He was standing and about to leave the cave entirely when he heard the voice. It was a soft whisper, so low that he couldn't be sure he truly even heard it. Yet there was something intimately familiar about the sound. Nate turned.
In the center of the lake, hovering with a stoic expression on his face, was Nate himself.
"Camping and gathering water. Such a waste, really. You're one of the larger alliances, with a Career no less. None of you sustained injuries in the bloodbath. Yet you piddle around with buckets. This is the Hunger Games, not a summer camp."
The figure spoke with Nate's voice, but there was a sharpness to the tone. And there was an all too familiar glint in its eye.
How had he never noticed how much he looked like Peacekeeper Serpentine?
"No." He said out loud, "You're not me. I'm nothing like him."
"Then you'll die. Are you such a coward that you'll deny the greatest gift he could give you?"
"It's not a gift!" Nate shouted.
His voice echoed through the cave.
Gift,
Gift
Gift.
Nate's doppelganger laughed. It was dark and full of scorn. Was this truly something he was capable of?
"It's nice to pretend you're not a monster, isn't it? To ignore the rage that builds inside you. But you're denying your own power, Nate. Serpentine's blood runs in you. And even if it didn't, like it or not he's always been one of the constants in your life. You can still hear him, can't you? I bet he's laughing at how desperately you're trying to believe that he hasn't shaped every inch of you. You're his creation, through and through."
He wanted to deny it. But he couldn't. Every step he took in the arena, he could hear Serpentine's advice. He would remember a time when the man would mention a survival skill, or go on a monologue about combat with a boot on his neck. More than the information, he remembered the cruelty.
Perhaps, that was the point. As much as it sickened him, Nate realized that he may need to be cruel to make it out alive. It was something he knew intimately, and if he tried, he thought it might be possible to replicate.
But Nate wasn't there yet. He wanted to survive, but would it really be living if he came back as the boy in the lake?
"No." He said out loud, "You look like me. But you aren't."
Nate grabbed his bucket and left the cave.
Eli Slater, 18, District Four, Virgo
The moon was disappearing again, and Eli was beginning to get nervous. No cannons was theoretically a good thing, but the lack of deaths put him on edge. The gamemakers did like to draw things out for a while, but they also appreciated at least one death a day. He worried about how fickle the Capitol could be. How long would it be until they found his alliance boring and moved to set it all on fire?
Eli was hardly a proponent of the Games, but if he was watching, he'd probably be bored too. The archery challenge had led to a cavern underneath the island, full of supplies and odd weapons. And… that was it. No guardian, no poisoned water. No earthquake when they set camp there for the evening.
He sat near the opening, a Kriss sword in his hand, watching for intruders as the girls talked among themselves deeper in the camp. It felt like a slumber party, not the Hunger Games.
Which, again, was theoretically a good thing. But he couldn't shake the dark cloud of his mood. He had come here for a very particular reason. It was a stepping stone on his way to changing the world. After his victory, he would have enough resources to go to law school and gain the ability to go to the Capitol. He would stand up for justice, and once he had enough influence would end the Games entirely. It felt fitting, using the tool of the oppressors to help fund their downfall. It wasn't about the Hunger Games themselves. They were a brutal tradition and had no place in a functioning society.
So why did he seem so disappointed about how well things were going?
Eli had always liked a good fight. Most of the time it was verbal. He enjoyed a good debate and would occasionally push things farther than necessary, or take up a position he didn't necessarily believe, just to get a rise out of people. But that was harmless, really. Antagonism was how progress was made. It hardly made him bloodthirsty. He was different from the other Careers. He stood for something.
This was something he had to remind himself repeatedly over the course of the day. Because he had killed someone during the bloodbath. The boy from eight. Bolt. And the most shocking thing about the entire situation was that he didn't feel anything.
"You know, we would have to worry less about intruders if we closed the door," Valency said from behind him.
Out of all his allies, Valency was the one who confounded him the most. Chenille had a dark side, but she was primarily an innocent. The type of person he wanted to protect. And Revalie was like him, focused and competent. But Valency almost felt like she was never the same person twice. Like Eli, she was a Career. Except he'd learned during training that she had far less training than the others from Three, only participating in the program after school. When they first talked he was thrilled to discover that she knew something of history, but as time went on he realized that everything she talked about was based on pre dark days musicals. She hadn't read the material like he had. Valency wasn't a rebel. He doubted she could sit still enough to be anything.
"I don't like the idea of us sealing ourselves up underground." Eli replied, "The passage may be airtight. Or it might trigger a mutt."
"Hm. I suppose so. Would you like me to take a watch then?"
Eli looked over at Valency, her hair tangled in a mess that barely counted as a bun and precariously attempting to carry a Yumi bow much taller than her on a back strap. He wouldn't trust her with a goldfish, let alone his life.
"I'm fine."
"Did you know there's no actual way to determine intelligence?"
He raised an eyebrow, unsure of where this was going.
Valency raised an eyebrow back playfully, "I mean sure, sometimes it's just kind of obvious. But when it comes to testing it we always come up short. Feed into our own biases. Decide what we value is the best form of being smart. And there's different types of intelligence too. Book smarts, street smarts, spatial reasoning, emotional intelligence, pattern recognition, subject expertise-"
"I know you're allergic to being straightforward, but for god's sake get to the point." Eli snapped.
"Fine." she said, "People isn't my area of intelligence. But even I can tell you don't want to be here."
Well shit.
"I wouldn't say that, exactly." he said. It was true, but he wouldn't say it. Because he needed allies. Because without a boat there was no way off the island. Because he was a good person.
"You don't have to say it. That's my point." Valency said, "The rest of us were talking earlier. About our Games strategy. Chenille and I want to run and survive. Play a defensive game. Revealie said she'd rather fight."
There were advantages to both strategies, but Eli didn't have to think hard about which one he preferred. There was something about the heat of battle, the way a weapon felt in his hands. It was straightforward, simple. He didn't enjoy killing, but…
Well.
"Then it sounds like we're split down the middle." he told her.
Valency nodded, "Lucky we found a second gondola."
Wait what?
"There's a second gondola? Where?"
"In the back. Chenille found it. Sharp girl. So, I figure our alliance should be less like people and more like countries. We don't attack each other, we help out if someone else attacks us. Occasionally we can share resources or information. But ultimately…"
"Ultimately we're independent entities with our own goals." Eli finished, "Thank you, Valency. I might not always like you. But I do respect your intelligence. However it's measured."
"Wait you don't like me?"
Eli decided that if he changed the subject she would probably forget, "So how about we stay together for the night, then Revalie and I can leave in the morning."
"That sounds good to me. Will you let me take watch now?"
He didn't see any particular reason not to. The girl was incredibly untrustworthy, but he doubted that any hunting parties would be able to find them once the arena went dark. So he stood up and allowed Valency to take his seat.
AN: And this ends day two! Which… I'm not even going to do a Capitol chapter as a buffer between days like I usually do. Because there were no kills today. No kills, just talking and the introduction of my favorite island. Day Three will be more exciting, I promise. Anyway, thank you so much for reading!
