The Member

I'm cold. It's been an age since I started walking, even longer since I stopped, and still the wet warmth seems to be seeping through my clothes like we're in some kind of sauna. It's not a nice feel, and already I can hear Catawba's whining passing through all of our ears. She's kept this up near on since we left the Cornucopia and started walking through the forests. She has the map we found at the start, and has so far pointed us true, but that's probably just because there's a massive river next to us and it's not exactly hard to navigate by using it.

"I said we shouldn't go! Look at the weather, you can see the storm coming in and it's just going to get worse! We don't even have coats, we're not dressed for this and now that it's properly descending if we have the money for anything it won't be enough to get this! Even if we did, the parachute gets blown away, and you're going the wrong way, Jan!" That last part is directed at Jan, and seems specifically calculated from the glare it elicits to have caused the maximum issue possible. The voice continues, directing us, until finally someone snaps.

"Shut UP, Catawba!" Marq's voice is loud, and he glares daggers at his District Partner in spite of the arguments we've had earlier about solidarity between partners. Those daggers are reciprocated, even as he expands on the yell. "What are you actually contributing? All of us can read a map, all of us are competent enough. What makes you so special that you have to be the one with the map, the one giving us all the orders and the one who gets to have a tantrum because she doesn't like the specific direction our team is taking? What are you actually contributing?"

Stutters, and I can't help but suppress the same grins as most of our team is struggling to hide.

"I, I." "Nothing. Sounds about right. Now, we're going to keep you around because you are One and I'm not abandoning my District Partner, but until we get another kill you're not going to issue another complaint about group decisions, ok?" There's another attempt to form words of protest, but in the end she lapses back into a sullen silence. The trickling of the river we're walking alongside is the main noise, a low-level whisper that's just. Always, always there. Always in the backgrounds, toddling along with our footsteps.

"Yes."

With that done, we can begin to talk about things that actually matter, lively discussion even if not necessarily my dream. "So, where do you think they're hiding?" Lara poses the question to me, and I know she's meant to be our ally and meant to be a friend, but the girl from Nine has gotten on my nerves near as much as Catawba has. All too eager. Was very excited to help Catawba by holding down her District Partner, and the information we got from that boy was near useless both from terror and from the fact he legitimately didn't know anything no matter how much damage the knives did.

It was a mercy when he finally got to use the spear he'd carried throughout the entire game and let the boy die. But that was the Games. Every man dies. It was the least he could do to make that dying kinder than what the rest would do.

Pestering words from Lara still flow around me though, and eventually I have to turn to her with a tone filled with false friendliness, false joy, false… well, energy. "Lara, I'm not entirely sure. Not like I've been able to track them via drone or such, unfortunately. They're probably up in the caves, though, we know there's some people over this way unless they did a big loop. That's why we left the Cornucopia."

"And why was Marq so far behind? He took like two hours to reach us, and he can't have been that busy? What was he doing?"

I really shouldn't tell her, but it's not like it'll help. "He was putting it all in the river. Dumping the supplies so nobody else could get their hands on them if they did think to come back and scrounge the Cornucopia. After all, it'd be a shame if we got back and they'd completely cleared us out, what the hell could we even have done in response? Gotten angry. We'd be down the loot, they'd be up."

A faint expression of shock settles over her face, but all that I can see is insipid confusion. The kind of confusion that doesn't come with a question or curiosity or agreement that the plan was the right one, but with the kind of trusting acceptance that's going to get her killed.

Idiot. I'm going to win.

That much is certain. No way she wins this, not when she's like this. It's going to be Scipio Mordaunt on top, that much I can be certain of.

And I'm certain that that victory is going to come. Once upon a time, the little boy who was scared of the Games even at the Center would have cringed away at this, at the thought of 23 children dying so that he could make a better life for himself even when he knows he doesn't need to.

Maybe that little boy's still in my center, but I'm not going to let him take over. That little boy lives down there, and sometimes he can come up.

Sometimes. Not today.

It's another three hours of the sun bleeding through the sky, light tracing over us, when we're able to stop and catch our breath. Talking has gotten more boring now, more routine, and realistically? Well, we're too knowing about each other to be able to actually get along with new information. Catawba and Marq had a brief competition as to who would be able to tell a better story, but that storytelling petered off after Marq referred to a blonde lunatic getting eaten by a wolf and Cat responded with a story about a brave young hero going out to fight the orcs and getting murdered?

Well, it puts a damper on our situation, even if to me it all seems a bit petty. We're all allies, all Squad. Why shouldn't we be working together to handle this situation? Makes a hell of a lot more sense than sticking apart, as these two seem intent on doing.

We're all distracted, and that's my mess because keeping eyes on the trail was meant to be an idea, when the water comes rushing down. A frothing wall of it, rolling towards us with an inevitability that proves it almost too final for anything to be done.

Scrambling up to higher ground, hands grasping at the floor and walls, takes all of a few seconds. I toss my spear up ahead of me, hear it clatter against higher ground, panicked shouts from both sides prove the others are about as concerned by this development as I am. We're all scrambling, rushing to the escape. There's yells, demands to stick together from Marq that go unheeded as we rush apart, rushing for any ground. I can hear footsteps behind me, can't tell who it is but there's two pairs rushing behind me. Two friends, probably. Two allies, definitely.

Reaching higher ground, I all but throw myself onto it like a fish on the deck. Hear the roar behind me, feel myself covered from the splash as the wall passes and doesn't stop, keeps flowing and flowing, excusing all other voices from my hearing. Until I hear one, a shrill one, one I've forbitten to talk and for fuck's sake does it really have to be. Well, her.

"Skip!" Catawba's stuck, holding onto the map as the flood rushes at her gripping hands. "Help! Trust me, I'll work with you, I'll get on with it all, we just need to work together if we want to survive this! If the alliance breaks now!" She lets it trail off, and I can see her chest heaving as she soaks to the skin beneath a never-ending wall of water. Marq is still coughing his share up on the opposite bank, Jan and Kelvin with him. On my side Lara looks like a drowned rat, but that's about to be expected after the soakings she just took.

She looks over at me, a smile painted over her face as she sighs in gladness. The machete she was carrying at her hip now nests in her hand, but she begins to put it back slowly. After all, I'm her ally. There's no reason for me to betray her.

Stabbing regret burrows into me, as she reaches out a hand for me to take and haul her up, to prove she trusts me, isn't out for revenge.. A hand that I stare at for far too long, but she waits.

More regret at what I'm about to do. The shaft of the spear is warm, soaked in sweat from my palms and almost ready to slip from my grip. Liable, in fact, to slip from my grip at the slightest provocation, and I heft it with an uncertain worry, holding it in my left hand.

I take her hand with my right, pull it up. Point to Catawba, One girl visibly slipping and beginning to cry as she does so, big wet tears. "Please, I don't want to. To." She's terrified. Wide-eyed, and that little boy tells me I should take pity. Be nice, try and help her. But the big man inside me tells me that that kind of weakness will only lead to defeat, issue. Only force us to take on another mouth to feed.

Lara's silent. My eyes flick to her, and she's not going through with it is she?

I can see Lara's eyes flick back to the struggling girl trying to hold on, feel a frown slip over my lips and see one pour over hers, realize that maybe this won't be as easy as I'd hoped it would be, that maybe after all I'd need to handle this myself. Split and go my own way, it may not be the best option in the world but if it's that or some kind of shitty mess then. Well, disposing of one person, maybe pushing Catawba just so I can claim two kills and probably some more Sponsor money into the bargain?

We walk away. Both have our bags, and I can hear Catawba's final scream as the river flushes her back towards the Cornucopia. It fades away, until we hear the snap of a cannon and now it's over. Now it's ended.

The Ally

"And then I said, 'what cow?'" We're both laughing, perched on opposite logs as the fire blazes between us. The fact I'm getting along with Lara, that we managed to get two rabbits between us rotating over the fire, is a feat in and of itself. That's not the truth of the Games, not the expected truth. The truth, I was always told, is that the strong should defeat the weak, take their things and take the crown. Take the pride and power of being Two, seize that and wear it with honour because the Out-Districts don't care. Don't like us, hate us.

But Lara's from Nine. From one of the engines of rebellion, one of the Districts an uncle of mine died in before I was born, during the war. And yet we're getting along like a house on fire, because we've had to open up. I'm sputtering with laughter, and she's doing much the same. "I thought cows were from Ten? What was it doing in Nine?"

She laughs back, rolls slightly back on the log before stabilizing herself with another laugh. "I don't know! Some of the families kept them, good source of meat and milk and such. Not exactly the worst thing ever, and it was always good to trade when we had a surplus! I like mil, but we didn't exactly get it much."

Her tone is mournful, and as I've done far too much over the last few days my tone is almost encouraging. "Chrys? We've got a request, any chance you could?"

The answer isn't long in coming. A chime announces a silver parachute, one I know has been dropped by a hovercraft. After all, it's not like the mentors are wanting for money. Not this early, not a week in. I catch it, feel the cold on the can, hand it to Lara who responds with a polite smile that bursts into a more spontaneously genuine one. "Thank you, Chrysaor! I'll take good care of this!"

That's a lie. She takes back the tab, begins to drink with a smile and a rare wink. "Just like home. Trust me, if this was anything to go by I'd think the Capitol had a neighbour's cow up there just so they could milk it themselves and send it down to me."

Another few minutes pass by, minutes of idle chatter and smiles and joy that seems to burst into the sky and just for a moment fend off the inevitable truth that this has to end.

The rabbit tastes fabulous, once she's deployed some of the salt we were given at the beginning to keep it a little nicer, a little fresher. It's an extravagance, but (as we were told), flavourings and such are cheap so that the Capitol can get 'authentic' Arena recipes made and because they don't actually provide much of a benefit. So we can eat the salted rabbit with some gusto, enjoy it like it's our last meal on earth because it could well be.

It's around a mouthful of rabbit that Lara pops the question, voice politely lodging questions at me in the manner that suggests she is genuinely curious. A more subdued version to the Lara we saw around multiple people, but that's probably borne of her general nature. Borne of time spent away from allies who pressed her to become something else, and I roll my eyes for a second at the thought of Catawba before ignoring her entirely. She's dead, now. A corpse. A memory. I'm not here to think about the future, can do that once I'm out. For now, it's present and future.

And maybe that little voice is telling me I should apologize to the memory of Catawba, but that voice can shut up. I shouldn't apologize. I should just go forward, keep going forward. Ignore the voice yelling at me to work harder, and keep going forward.

So I do. Take another bite and listen to her question. "Scipio, what made you want to be a Peacekeeper? And why did you throw it away."

It's another few thoughtful munches, a chewing that goes round and round in my head, before I finally deign to respond with a smile and a nod.

I've practiced this. Practiced the answer, in case it came up in interviews. I can answer this, do well at that and then go to bed. Or, in my case, to first watch because it's my turn to take the first four hours.

"I wanted to be a Peacekeeper because." I wanted to be strong. I wanted to beat the bullies. I wanted to prove them all wrong. "Because I want to protect the innocent. Because I don't think crime should be accepted, and if I can protect every good boy and girl in Panem from the things that go bump in the night, criminals and monsters and the rest? Then I'd have done a good job. That was what I thought, that was what I wanted. Plus, it pays well enough I could give a little something to my parents."

Laughter, and then she poses the second question again, chewing on her rabbit. "And your Volunteering? It's a brave thing. Was it to protect anyone?"

Yes. It was my duty to go and do such, my duty to bring pride to his District, my duty to protect the boys and girls and bring pride to Two. And help my family.

"No. Hell no, do you really think I'd extend that to anyone? No, I'm doing it a little bit out of duty, I won't lie. But the main thing? The thing I wanted to do the most? It was to provide for my parents, and when I saw that boy it gave me the edge I needed to go up and work with you. Go up and do my thing, go up and be a hero to my District and help myself. They'll understand, always do. But it'll look good enough that maybe I can go home a champion, with a bit more money in my pocket and a bit more pride for myself. And that's good enough."

I get to smile, lets the confidence wash across me, and I get that pride that she was that interested. But she should be. Lara smiles back, genuinely, and with big eyes. "You're brave."

How much she read between the lines, I can't tell. Either way, she's admiring, and nodding. Nodding respectfully. "Really brave, I mean it. Trust me, I don't just say that. So, um. Thanks for taking me along. Why did you take me along?"

The question is a shock. One that stumps me. I took her along because.

Because.

"Because you're my friend." His voice is weak at first, but there's some real conviction behind it. "Because we didn't get along, but given the Gamemakers wanted us separated. Well, I could have killed you both and taken myself and your bag. But, realistically, that'd leave me overburdened and underdefended. Nobody to watch my back, nobody to talk to, nobody to share rabbit with. Rye has even gotten you a couple of good Sponsor gifts. Why'd I risk a good thing, this alliance, when we can get along just fine as a pair."

She waits for a second before nodding, leaning back and thank the stones she does. Else there could have been some annoyed discussion, some harsh words.

"And why have you stayed? Why not cause issue, why not turn and flee because then you'd be able to take everything and leg it. Is that a little bit of actual friendship, or am I reading far too much into you being a decent person like you'd be for anyone?"

Lara waits a second, two before responding with cool words. "I think it's because I like you. Because you're a good weapon, because you have that spear and know how to use it. Because we get along well, and because like you I'd feel a damn sight worse off navigating alone. Best to stick together, right? Lara and Skippy." A half-laughing growl, and she repents. "Lara and Scipio, against the world. A way easier to say than Lara, Scipio, Kelvin, Catawba, Marq and Jan against the world, wouldn't you say?"

We both laugh, and soon enough it's time for her to stand, me to do the same. "Time for bed?"

She nods, gets out her sleeping bag and lays it on the ground before I take my position at a tree, fire dying out but moonlight illuminating the fields around me. "Night, Lara. I'll see you in a few."

She makes some noise, but is already halfway to sleep.

It takes an hour, two, before there's any excitement. Specifically, the kind of excitement you never quite want.

There's a scuffling in the bushes, the kind of noise that suggests someone is out there, skulking around. A yelp, a muffled 'fuck', the kind of noise that's clear someone is trying to adventure and hide and scout them out, and failing absolutely miserably at it. A boy, I'd assume, it's high-pitched but in more of a teen boy way than a girl way. The noises continue, fading out and in, pathetic in the care I can tell is being given to hiding something that's about as stealthy as a truck going into a maternity ward. It's not a good luck.

The little boy, hiding but brave enough to speak up, pushes me to let him go. To do something like take whoever it was hostage, use them to get information and hide, to run away, to do anything but. Well. What I'm about to do.

I grip the spear. Feel the shaft cool against my hand, grip it with a steady hand and consider the barbed end. Wind back my arm.

Throw. Let the spear glide through the air, and it's wobbly but I can hear something go down, and the noises made aren't screams but are loud enough I can track them.

My walk through the forest is chased by the sounds of pained whimpers, muffled, and dragging of something.

I get to the boy cringing on the ground, don't even have the grit to look down and face him for a second because my stomach is biting in anticipation. I've killed, I think at least, but this is the first, at least the first I've had the gall, the need to come up and face. He's scrabbling frantically in the dirt, leaving trails of blood where his fingers touch against a rock – a fatter one like a snail's trail from the spear buried in his side. He's crying, softly, and for an instant I feel bad. Then both hands clasp around the spear, and I give it a tug that elicits a scream I'd swear sets the birds flying in the trees and for an instant brings moonlight screaming through each branch to show his broken body to me. The spear's out.

I don't hesitate. Look away, do everything in my power to ignore the feel of spear punching through spasming body and struggling child. Plant my boot on his head an jab it down, aiming for the neck but I'm looking away. The blade goes through his back instead, hits the spine as I can feel and then drives down, body struggling beneath my boot as my heart screams this is wrong, screams for me to stop until I get deep enough and a cannon fires.

I tug out the spear, feel a spray of blood over me and in an instant it's all too much, all too overpowering. I tug away, turn to the side, feel something welling inside me as I stumble a few paces and drop my spear. Feel that horrible taste in my mouth.

I'm sick. Everywhere, because this is different. This isn't throwing spare spears into the crowd and turning away, and knowing a few cannon fired and maybe one or two too close for it to have been anyone else and claiming those kills. How could it be? This isn't letting Catawba slip away despite her crying, because I had no active hand in that, I just. Didn't. Didn't do anything, truth be told. Might have been cowardly, sure, but she's dead and I'm here.

Sick coats everything. My hands. My face, my lips, my shirt. Sick pours up and down the forest floor, and even as I grip at it to keep from having to release emotions any other way I can feel it pool around my hands. Flow along them, already cooling, and there's splinters digging into my fingers and tears burning my eyes and. And.

It takes what must be the better part of an hour for me to calm down. For me to run out of steam, and the corpse is there the whole time, already smelling something awful that I have to ignore. A buzz, and a parachute is soon landing by my face. Inside it is enough to make me tear up just a little, the kind of gesture that has to have come from too much sponsor money on Chrys' end. A new shirt, one that means I can toss the old one aside after using it to wipe my hands and face down, and at the least enough water I can wash out my mouth. It's a thoughtful gift, even if there's no note included I can get the message. I think I can.

Good job

The Finalist

She fled. Had to flee, there's only four left now and half of us were in one alliance. It only made sense to break, flee and head for the hills in hopes someone else would take me before she'd have to fight. Well, fight me. Try and use that machete she kept on hand at all times to fend me off.

It isn't fair, wasn't fair at the time to me. To abandon our Alliance, abandon me because she's too scared to go through with it. She could at least have put some honour into it, fled in the day after a long talk so we could arrange what the plan was for a break-up. Instead, she'd run in the night. Like a coward. Taken her half of the food and such, no more and no less. Hadn't even had the balls to take me in the chest and finish the threat once and for all.

Which was why, I keep telling myself, I am going to win. Going to kill her and prove that no, this kind of treason wasn't allowed. That if she'd wanted to win, she should have killed me when she'd had the chance.

Instead, she's somewhere and I'm out here hiking through brush and the shade. Looking around, and even though before it was hot and humid, now it's hot and humid on a scale never before seen. Well, at least for me.

The boy wants me to go back. He's welling through my chest, screaming at me to turn around. Let the other three clash it out and fight the winner, but I'd got the note with what was promised to be my last sponsor gift. That I wasn't making it out, that if I didn't follow the path they'd make sure I'd follow it. I'm not, truth be told, entirely certain of the veracity of that statement, but my stomach told me it was better not to chance it and for once I agreed.

So I'm out here, trailing up the path through forest, stepping on the occasional stick and hearing it crack under my boot in an angry sort of fashion. I can feel sweat pooling on my skin, except it's not cooling me down thanks to the water hanging in the air thick as a blanket and only half as comforting.

My legs are burning by the time I reach the top, and yet I go forwards, only forwards. Nearly fall, and the Cornucopia looks about the same as it did in the beginning but I'm still standing staring at it. Well, again, like I did in the beginning. It'd be almost humiliating, really, but I'd never expected to be back here, so seeing it again feels. Well, it doesn't feel like what I'd wanted.

They're here. Lara, I can see her staring at me from across the mouth of the Cornucopia. Her machete's in hand, and she's eyeing me like a threat. With some worry, the kind of glares she's sending me have enough force behind them to bring an oxen down, or do whatever else she wants to do with them. Probably disembowel me, come to think of it, bring that last remnant of my conscience into the open out alongside my guts.

It's a threatening glare, it takes me some time to tear my eyes away from her and turn them to the next enemy. Marq, namely, and though One's boy is still breathing he looks about as alive as the average stone. There's a gash across his cheek exposing his jaw and teeth, there's a slash across his shirt that still weeps the occasional blood. He looks all the worse for wear, stumbling forwards slightly, but the silver sword in his hand is still deadly, still a threat, still lethal. He shoots the both of us glares.

Eight's gone unnoticed the whole game, truth be told I didn't think she was still alive. There's a short knife in her hand, silver, and the kind of wild insanity in her eyes that promises hate and rage. As if something's gone horribly wrong for her, as if there's the kind of story behind those eyes that just waits to be unleashed and told to the world.

The kind of story that's never going, ever, to be told. Not if I have any say over it, at the least. I'm going to win, even if I have to kill these other three and let their bodies rot.

Because if I don't win, what do I have left?

I lunge at Eight near immediately, see her step back with a scream before I lunge forward again. IT's a matter of moments for me to close the distance, hear a distant scream and cannon shot and hesitate for a moment. Enough for her to drive the knife into my side before I can draw the spear back and shove it into her throat. There's no scream for Eight, and there's a second cannon. There's nothing left to come up, yet the taste in my mouth is still. There's no need for me to do anything more to Eight.

There's no need for me to turn, either. Danger comes to me.

I feel cool steel sink into my arm, feel warm anger for a second and then pure anguish that seems to linger on and on, crawl up my arm and bite at me, drag hope out of me and in an instant press in the pain.

Lara's standing there. Machete in hand, and that covered in warm red blood. My blood. It hurts, hurts indescribably with arm dangling by my side. Bending to pick up my spear in my weak hand, feeling it weigh as I'm unable to lift my arm? It's hard, really hard. Humiliating, even, because instead of an easy grip I'm holding it like a child, like it's a stick so I can poke people. I'm not exactly in the best state now, and even though I heft my spear and try to raise it? I can do nothing, know there's nothing to stop her from bringing down her blade and finishing me off.

She stops. Even as I try to hold up the spear to resist, she raises the machete and then brings it down, letting me do the same with my spear and thanking all the stars that she's decided to to draw this out. Her voice, when I hear it, is almost broken and for a moment I'm thrown. This is the girl? This is the girl I was friendly with, the girl who was so sure that she was fine? No, this can't be.

"I don't want to. We were friends, Scipio, really. We were. But, well." Trembling, she finishes her sentence.

"Now it ends." There's tears in her eyes when she raises the machete, and with my arm like it is I can't exactly lift it to fight.

The tears blind her. I feel a stab of regret that this is how it ends.

I'd expect she feels a stab in her gut when I thrust the spear. I'm weak, too weak, but nonetheless the tip lodges, finds purchase and I push it forwards. I'm bringing up my second hand to shove the shaft now, and I'm screaming with pain and rage and adrenaline and a cannon's firing.

Author's Note: Heya guys! Longer chapter today, Scipio's one I've looked forward to for a while ^^. Hope you're all well, feel free to leave a review or PM me (favouriting also never goes amiss)!

Also, if you'd like to check out my other big work, To Fish in Murky Waters is a Submit Your Own Tribute - we're accepting submissions until the 21st of March, ideally on google docs!