Chapter 6: The Victor

The rain kept up steadily for two days.

Hob, Peeta, and Katniss periodically left one at a time while another guarded the entrance to the cave. So far, no one had seen the smoke, and so far, they'd been able to find and dry out enough loose wood to keep the fire going.

Whether or not Katniss was serious about Peeta, Peeta was definitely serious about her. Hob had learned a great deal about reading people over the years, and Peeta was devoted to Katniss, to maybe even just the hope of keeping her alive.

The 'Star-Crossed Lovers' thing was a nice touch. It certainly didn't hurt with the sponsors, and Hob couldn't help but notice they seemed to be the more favored of the trio, especially after they shared that first kiss in front of the fire, when Hob been outside to relieve himself.

The sight didn't bring any particular jealousy for Hob. He'd had thoughts about Katniss. She wasn't bad to look at. But he could also tell she didn't like him. Distrustful of anyone outside her small mountain community, the girl from Twelve rarely took her eyes off Hob when he was around. It was a whole different world from the way she looked at Peeta.

Slowly getting better at moving quickly and quietly out here in the wilderness, Hob crept back to the cave in the afternoon of the second day.

Rain still was coming down, but Hob's windbreaker kept him dry- mostly. His pants were pretty well soaked.

"Well, evening, everyone," Hob announced, putting on his best smile. The crossbow was slung on his shoulder, but the throwing knife Clove had lost stayed inside his waistband, a makeshift scabbard of cloth wrapped around it.

"It isn't evening," Katniss Everdeen returned neutrally.

"Sun's coming down soon enough, Princess," Hob sassed.

"How did he help us, exactly?" Katniss suddenly asked Peeta, keeping her eyes on Hob.

"He's been working with me this whole time," Peeta explained with forced calm. "He's kept us both alive- he knew I was leading the Careers away from you. He didn't tell anyone."

"He's also gotten a lot of Tributes killed. He got Rue killed."

"That's my job, Princess," Hob returned sarcastically. "It's also your job, in case you forgot." Hob scoffed. "How did you think it was gonna end for her? That she'd win and go home? How were you gonna fit into that, genius?"

"Listen-" Katniss began heatedly, but Peeta raised his hands to both of them.

"Easy, easy!"

"I'll be if she is," Hob insinuated.

"Wonderful," Katniss huffed. "This is wonderful. You picked a great ally, Peeta."

"You heard the new rule they said," Peeta responded diplomatically, still trying his best to control the situation. "Three of us can win, and there's two teams of three left. Hob's a good shot. Those mines of his- you know he's smart. We can win this. I know we can."

Katniss didn't reply for almost a minute.

"I was there when he killed the boy from Ten. Several of us teamed up. We hadn't had any food in days." Her face darkened. "Did Thresh know it was you?"

"He didn't need to know," Hob answered flatly. "Now, were you done bothering me? This is a waste of time, Katniss. I don't want to be here, either."

"Nobody wants to be here," Katniss grumbled, looking away. She seemed to want to argue more, maybe a whole lot more. But Peeta was just as plainly not willing to remove Hob from the alliance, so she was stuck with it.

"Hey, Hob," Peeta said suddenly.

"What?" Hob asked, still not advancing any further into the cave, hands still hovering by his sides.

"That was a great entrance you made when you got off the train. Haymitch said you'd done your prep work."

"Of course," Hob answered. He moved over and sat down, leaning back against the cool wall of the cave. He decided he'd throw a compliment out there, too, play along as Peeta tried to play peacemaker again. "You both did great at the interviews."

"Cinna did most of that," Katniss said.

"And Caesar," Peeta added. "He knows what he's doing. He made you look great out there."

"I heard you can shoot," Hob told Katniss.

"I heard you can, too."

"You heard right."

"Did you do it on purpose?" Katniss asked, and she clearly had been waiting to ask. "Rue?"

"I just pointed out there in the dark and shot."

"He didn't know, Katniss," Peeta promised.

"Only Tribute younger than you," Katniss remarked. "She deserved better."

"We win, first team win in history," Hob answered, avoiding the issue of Rue. His stomach still roiled when he thought of finding her. She had looked even smaller in death. Hob didn't like thinking about it. Mostly because the girl from Twelve was right.

Rue had deserved better.

"And- youngest Victor since Finnick Odair," Peeta added, nodding to Hob.

"Give me a few years," Hob vowed. "I'll be prettier than Finnick and stronger than Cato."

"Those are some goals," Peeta responded, visibly awed. "You're really gonna do all that when we get outta here?"

"When," Hob agreed, emphasizing Peeta's choice of words. "When is good."

A tree- a huge one from the sound of it- took just that moment to fall.

The impact atop the cave was thunderous, but the noise was the least of the three Tribute's problems. The opening atop the cave was closed, and the fire still burned brightly. Smoke billowed, rapidly filling the small space.

"Out!" Hob shouted. He may not have liked both of his teammates, but they were his teammates, at least for now, and that meant he needed them alive. Coughing hard, Hob sprang up, fled the cave entrance. "This way!" Hob shouted.

"I-I can't-" Peeta staggered out behind Hob, his arm around Katniss. "That just-fell. How?"

"Maybe the Gamemakers thought it'd be funny to drop a tree on us," Hob managed hoarsely, watching smoke pouring from the entrance to their shelter as light rain continued to fall.

"Yeah, maybe," Peeta said. "I wonder how long before we can get back in there. Assuming it doesn't burn all our stuff."

"At least we have our weapons," Katniss observed.

"This isn't good," Hob said, shaking his head. "We need to get out of here."

"Why?" Peeta asked. "We can just- I bet we could get in there. Put the fire out."

"Peeta," Hob said with all the patience he could muster. "There's six of us left. Nothing's happened for two days. What're the odds a tree that tall just drops on its own? We were forced out."

"He's right," Katniss said suddenly. "I don't like this."

"At least we agree on something," Hob deadpanned, managing not to roll his eyes.

The sky darkened. From late afternoon to pitch-black-night, the Arena changed in an instant. Hob heard shouts of surprise in the distance; the remaining Careers had been out, looking for them.

Howls sounded in the distance, and Hob instantly knew something was terribly wrong. Those weren't animals. They weren't human. Yet those sounded like something of both, a dog, a human scream, blended together.

"Run!" Hob shouted. He turned, ran uphill. Peeta, following close behind, reminded Hob how incredibly strong the baker's boy was, and just lifted him under one arm, running hard uphill all the way with Katniss right beside him.

"You're crazy!" Hob yelled, fighting to get free, verging on panic.

"Hold-stop-hold still!" Peeta shouted back. "You need to live to grow up!"

"Peeta, come on!" Katniss cried, spinning around suddenly to face the heavy footfalls racing toward them. She drew her bow, prepared an arrow, and fired it, all in a handful of seconds. Something heavy hit the ground with a pained grunt.

I don't want to know where she'd be if she'd had that this whole time, Hob thought with a mixture of fear and awe.

One glance backward showed a group of hulking, hunch-backed animals racing toward them. Hob could see. He saw.

They had human eyes.

One, the boy from Ten. One, Glimmer. One- Rue.

From off to the right, as they neared the top of the hill, as the clearing began to come into view, the three Careers were running back to the long-standing prime base of the Games, just as fast as their legs could carry them.

Maybe they had been out looking for the other three Tributes, hoping to score the last win they'd need. They were all running for their lives now, unable to spend any time or effort on the normal rivalries of the Games.

Another pack was closing in on the Careers. One squatted on its hind legs, lunged into the air, and landed just as Marvel spun to face his attacker. The tall, athletic boy managed to bring his javelin to bear, but the creature still crashed into him, taking him to the ground, its jaws snapping away. Marvel screamed.

Impaled as it made its landing, the mutt did not rise again, but neither did Marvel. A cannon sounded a moment later.

"Over here!" Hob screamed. "Cato! Clove! Get over here!"

The two Careers left snapped their heads his way, and for a moment it looked like they meant to refuse. But the rest of the mutts were closing too fast. The last five Tributes merged into one group, forming ranks.

A last, desperate alliance, made as the mutts threatened to kill them all. Both teams might have wanted to climb atop the shining metal of the Cornucopia, but there was no time. The fight was here, and like all battles in the Arena, it was for keeps.

No words were exchanged. Neither Cato nor Clove bothered saying anything to each other, or their teammates. But Cato and Peeta moved up, a longsword and shortsword at the ready, going to one knee as Clove dropped a mutt with a knife throw that struck right between the eyes that looked just like Glimmer's.

Hob and Katniss fired at the same instant, and together they felled the mutt sharing Rue's gentle eyes, eyes that had no business set in such a ferocious, merciless creature.

A third and fourth charged in, and Hob struggled not to panic as he worked to reload. The next shot went wide, while Katniss struck one mutt in the shoulder. Working with the same ferocity that he'd used battling Thresh, Cato impaled one mutt on his own, assisted Clove and Peeta in bringing down another.

With each victory, the five Tributes lived a little longer, retreated just a little further, until they stood in two ranks just past the treeline. A brief pause allowed them to flee further into the clearing, and even in this moonless dark, Hob could see better in the open.

The mutts never stopped. They never grew tired. Hob lowered the crossbow, drew a bolt, yanked the mechanism back, raised, fired. Lowered, drew, loaded, raised, fired. He worked until his arms were on fire, and then he kept going.

I didn't come this far just to die here, Hob thought fiercely. I'm not gonna die. Dying really sucks. I don't need to do it myself to know that.

That last thought- for some reason- lifted Hob's spirits. Amused at his own mental choice of words, Hob started giggling, then laughing, even as he and the others still fought for their lives, but no one heard him over the shouts and cries of the Tributes, the roars and growls of the muttations.

Cato got tackled by a mutt; all four Tributes turned and brought it down. Another tried to maul Peeta a minute later; the process repeated, with a battered Cato driving his sword into its side, then reaching down, clasping hands with Peeta and hauling him back up.

At last- at last- the fighting stopped. The last mutt, the one sharing Thresh's immense size, power, and dark, blazing eyes, fell to the combined efforts of the final five Tributes.

It was now or never.

Hesitation had always meant death.

Hob could barely believe it, could barely comprehend it, as he shifted on his feet and shot Clove in the neck.

With a pained cry that quickly choked off into a horrible gurgling sound, Clove collapsed to the ground, though no cannon sounded.

Cato turned on them with a shout, and Peeta lunged forward, his sword clanging against Cato's. The swing would have cut off Katniss' head had its aim not been interfered with.

Powerful and skilled, Cato was more than a match for the last Tribute team now standing, but the last stand against the mutts had lasted for… hours. Some of them had even backed off into the dark, only to charge in again from another direction.

All the Tributes left alive were exhausted, whatever rest they had managed to gain from the two days of quiet a distant memory. But the mighty fighter from Two was on his own now; a cannon sounded as Hob's fourth kill was registered.

Clove was dead. Hob- some part of him- was surprised. Startled it had been her and not him. The odds had been far more in her favor.

Right up to the moment they hadn't been.

Only now was Hob, the little Gentleman, the nobody from Three whose very name sounded small and humble, going to stand as a serious contestant. Only now would his ranking in the Games get the respect it deserved.

There were probably some unhappy sponsors and betters out there now. And the few who'd placed money on Hob had to be stunned at their own good luck.

Even when he barely had strength left to stand, Cato fought ferociously. If he was going to die, he was clearly determined to take the alliance of Three and Twelve with him. His eyes blazed, promising vengeance and death.

It looked like he might manage it, too. Katniss shot him again and again- Hob shot him at least three times by himself- but the boy from Two just shrugged it off, didn't even seem to react.

"Shoulders!" Peeta shouted desperately, having found out what Hob and Katniss were just learning. Among Cato's many sponsor's gifts was a light but powerful set of body armor. The bolts, arrows, and sword cuts went in no more than surface-deep.

"Say goodnight, Baker's Boy," Cato taunted savagely, striking Peeta in the head with the broad side of his longsword. Peeta fell in a heap on his back, hands up.

"Katniss!" Peeta screamed. "Go! Run!"

Katniss was about to fire. Whether or not it would be enough to stop the towering boy from Two, Hob didn't know, and he wasn't about to risk his chances on finding out. Losing a teammate might well be enough to invalidate the team-victory exception. They hadn't said two could win- only one of the two teams of three that had existed some fifty-five hours ago.

Without giving it a single thought whatsoever, Hob dropped his crossbow, sprinted forward, scrambled up onto Cato's back. The instant he reached Cato's broad shoulders, Hob clapped the other boy's ears as hard as he could.

It all happened blindingly fast after that. Cato shouted in surprise, threw his right hand back, striking Hob in the face. Hob fell to the ground, all the air he had left knocked out of him. Peeta rolled to get away.

And Katniss shot one of the last arrows left in her quiver.

Yelling as much in pain as from anger, Cato lost some of the movement in his right shoulder. His sword arm was his left, but he could no longer move or block quite as well as before. Peeta, back on his feet again, finally battered against Cato's defense, broke through. Cato quickly fell back, but Peeta moved in with surprising speed, swung, and just the tip of the end of the short-sword connected, but it was enough.

Cato dropped his sword, clapping both hands to his throat, but blood rushed out between his fingers all the same. For a moment he looked frightened, horrified. He didn't look like a vicious killer, the pride of a District, or anything else that the Careers' academies had probably trained them to be.

In his final moments, Cato was just a boy. No more or less of one than Hob, or Peeta. Just a frightened boy who knew his end had come, and that he could do nothing about it. Cato took two steps forward, fell to his knees, then on his face. He didn't move.

The cannon sounded as the sun rose over the trees to the east. A new day had dawned in the Arena.

ΩΩΩΩΩ

Hob looked around at his teammates, and knew he had to be as battered as them, tired beyond all endurance, like them, and yet still on his feet, just like them.

Bloodied, filthy, bruised, and yet- alive.

Katniss looked around them as the sun rose, bow hanging limply in one hand. "That's it. That's all," Katniss said, sounding like she couldn't quite believe this was real.

Peeta smiled at her, to Hob.

"We did it, guys."

"Yeah," Hob managed. He took a few halting steps forward, limping slightly on his right side. "We did."

Despite himself, despite his lifelong aversion to allowing any real connection or trust to anyone after being let down so many times, Hob solemnly shook hands with Peeta Mellark.

"Congratulations," Seneca Crane's voice boomed from the sky. "Through your individual and collective daring and perseverance, you have proven yourselves masters of the Arena. Take pride, each of you, in knowing that there are none stronger or braver in all the lands of Panem."

"As you stand on the pinnacle of your achievements, know that only one thing stands between you and victory."

"Each other."

"Prepare to fight."

Stunned silence followed. Hob turned. None of the three Tributes left standing seemed sure what to do.

But the distrust. The guarded looks. Katniss still held her bow. Hob noticed. Katniss noticed he noticed. Hob started to go for his crossbow, only for him to remember he'd dropped it to leap on Cato's back.

But in the startled, renewed tension that had followed the announcement… that look toward the crossbow, the initial movement- nothing else was needed. From there it was back on.

In an instant, Katniss drew one of the only arrows she had left, turned toward Hob.

I knew I couldn't trust you! Hob thought fiercely, and Katniss Everdeen's eyes said the same.

"Hey!" Peeta shouted frantically. "Stop! Stop!"

Hob's right hand shot into his waistband.

Came back out with Clove's knife.

Calling on everything he could remember, all he'd ever seen of Clove in training and in the days while the Career Pack held together, Hob aimed, threw, knowing his chances weren't great. With no crossbow available to him, a slim chance was all he had.

No, it was more than that. A slim chance was all Hob had worked with his entire life.

Katniss Everdeen fired in the same instant Hob had thrown Clove's knife, and Hob felt white-hot pain as the arrow struck him hard in his stomach. He howled.

Then the knife struck Katniss Everdeen. Hob's aim had been perfect, the throw meticulously poised. A stunned, disbelieving expression was Katniss Everdeen's last as she fell to her knees, a throwing knife planted deep in her chest.

The cannon sounded as Katniss fell on her back, eyes staring blankly up at the clear sky.

It was a warm, sunny morning. A pleasant day out, except for the bodies, the dirt and blood caking the two boys left alive. Peeta had been racing over, maybe meaning to separate them. He stopped, maybe six feet away, maybe less, horror, grief plain on his face.

"Peeta," Hob managed weakly, both hands clutching the fins of the arrow. "I'm sorry. There was no other way."

Fury twisted Peeta's handsome features, so commonly marked by calm, by a smile, into someone else. Something else.

Peeta closed in, hands outstretched to destroy. Hob tried to back up, but he had needed Peeta to carry when he'd been stronger, when he hadn't been shot, maybe fatally, with an arrow, and barely an ounce of energy left to him.

Knocked flat like he weighed nothing, Hob could do little about it as Peeta Mellark roared, closed his hands around Hob's throat.

"You," Peeta hissed furiously, getting up. Bleeding on the right side of his head, he lifted Hob off the ground with one hand, threw him. "It was you. Picking us off. I should've drowned you myself!"

Those last words emerged as a hate-filled, agonized scream, and the wild look in Peeta's eyes was nothing Hob had ever imagined he'd see in the gentle, honest baker's son from District Twelve. Peeta Mellark had nothing to lose now. Hob knew he was going to suffer before the end if he didn't come up with something fast.

Hob managed to ball one hand into a fist, and struck Peeta as hard as he could, right where Cato's sword had hit him. Peeta shouted, fell back, and Hob scrambled to get away.

Strength ebbing, but his will to survive as powerful and relentless as ever, Hob rolled away as Peeta closed in again. He managed to put out a foot, trip the older boy, and began hobbling away desperately, breathing hard and fast, coming out as a panicked whine.

Hob realized where he was, remembered the map. Cato had needed one drawn in the dirt for him to know where the mines were. Hob knew. He had worked for so long to get this one planted deep in the ground, so deep in a field few might ever see it, ever know it was there. One of many backup options he'd made for himself.

He hadn't told anybody about this one. The mound of dirt a few feet to the right was the real one, he'd said.

A circular patch of clear soil, even after all these days, surrounded by rich green grass. Hob managed to put one foot over it, managed to launch himself into a feeble, laughable attempt at a sprint. He went straight, hoped Peeta would do the same, would stay to the left of the obvious lump in the ground.

Hob had made it maybe eight or ten feet when the mine exploded.

A blast like the end of the world shoved Hob from behind, threw him through the air. He landed hard on his stomach, wailed as the arrow was shoved deeper. He managed to turn over, crying desperately, hoping the end would be quick.

He had made it so far. He had done so much.

No one had ever been there. No one. Only Hob.

The sky above had never looked so clear.

No longer able to stand, to even sit up, Hob listened as the cannon's boom echoed across the sky.

Then Hob heard those words. Those words he knew so few had ever expected to hear since this had all begun.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you… the Victor of the 74th Hunger Games."

Maybe now they'll give a shit, Hob thought with a mixture of amusement, bitterness, and… indifference.

Hob lay there and wondered if he would hear his own cannon before he died, but the lights, the roar of the hovercraft's engines said otherwise. Hob laughed as they brought him up, as he was brought into this white room with bright white lights. He laughed at them as they worked to save their precious dying Victor, so matter-of-fact as they went about it.

These medics, these doctors- they'd doubtless seen this before, and the business of avoiding a Victor dying and ruining the ratings after the Games was important indeed, so these staff were some of the best in the Capitol.

Realizing, faintly, that he'd live after all, with powerful anesthetics numbing the pain, Hob began to think. He began to wonder what would happen now. Maybe he'd try to forget. Maybe he'd never want to forget.

All his life he'd been nobody, with parents he never knew. Poor even by the typical standard of the Districts.

After this, he'd be someone. Forever.

The Victor of the 74th Hunger Games.

A/N: Completed 12 January 2025. First uploaded 23 January 2025.

Seneca Crane's speech as he revokes the three-can-win rule is drawn almost verbatim from the 2002 video game Unreal Championship. I always loved that speech and the plot twist it announces, as you and the team you've made it to the end of the Tournament with are made to fight to the death for the crown. Peeta and Katniss were willing to threaten to die together when the same-district-win rule change was revoked in canon. Hob had no such willingness to die for somebody else, and not only had he and Katniss never fully trusted each other, they had all just seen how quickly Hob turned on the Careers after the battle with the mutts.

Seneca Crane was a rookie Head Game-Maker at the time of the 74th Games, but he would have perceived a different opportunity to put a spin on things knowing Peeta's connection to Katniss, and seeing the steady alliance between Peeta and Hob. But Hob and Katniss only were allies for a short time and never liked or trusted each other very much, hence they found it easy to turn on each other when the "Alliance of three" rule was revoked, revealed to be a mere bait-and-switch to induce additional drama for the benefit of the audience. Peeta and Katniss built enough trust and affection during the canon 74th Games to be willing to die defiantly together, but Hob, dedicated as he is to his own survival and accustomed as he is to working as a lone-wolf, would never have agreed to go out like that.

It was difficult imaging a scenario where Katniss Everdeen does not make it to the end of the 74th Games, and neither does Peeta, but I do believe I came up with a fairly plausible one. Peeta certainly would have behaved quite differently if Katniss went first, when his last, greatest hope- to see Katniss go home alive- was taken in front of him. That it was at the hands of a boy Peeta personally saved made it all so much worse, so much more infuriating, hence Peeta gave in to sheer rage at the end- he had nothing left to lose.

Hob has made it to the end now, the surprise underdog alternate Victor of the 74th Hunger Games.

Reviews are always appreciated. If I missed something, left a typo, or if you simply would like to talk about this story or any of my work, please feel free to send me a message.