you can always bleed a little more.

❛ your worst sin is that you have 
destroyed and betrayed yourself . . . 
for nothing. ❜
───────────────────────────
crime and punishment , fyodor dostoevsky.

┆彡ೃ✧࿐ chapter fourteen, act two

Somewhere. After the Games.

                    𝔗he world is dark beyond belief. Midnights in the arena don't compare to this. It's as if a heavy curtain has been pulled over the world and blocked the sun, moon, and stars ─── leaving Mara with nothing. Shadows drape over the forest, inky black. Something is beating. The sea? Drums? Her own heart? There's no way to go other than away.

She puts her arms up to shield her face from branches that try to pull her back and reclaim her as their own. After all, she really ought to be dead. Mara wished for survival, and this is what she got ─── purgatory.

Mara is aware of three things. The first is that she's alive ─── her whole body aches so deeply, so painfully, and she imagines death doesn't let you feel anymore. Every step on uneven ground that sends jolts up her legs means she really is running. Every scratch and scrape that stings and draws blood means she must still be alive. Pain, after all, means there's something left.

The second is she's either asleep, or hallucinating. After seeing ghosts for so long, she can't be sure which.

Horrors chase her ─── wolves run circles around a helpless ghost that begs to be saved; the blood of a beautiful boy rains from the sky; a high, cruel laugh echoes in the background. There are bodies, broken and ruined, wearing her own face. Her own eyes, unseeing, stare up at her from the shadows. She dreams of forcing knives into girl's throats, of their blood running down her hands ─── but what really is the difference between dreams and memories?

They always catch up. As they're doing now, climbing up her heels and worming their way into her thoughts. Mara cannot keep running forever.

The third is she's scared. That, she's most sure of. Fear is familiar, never ending and cold; it claws up her throat and makes its home there. 

There are slight interludes to her dreams, ones she can't explain ─── unbidden, stark lights flood her vision and mechanical beeps interrupt her terrified sprint. Maybe she even tries to sit up, but hands grasp her arms and force her back down. She feels a pricking sensation in her arm, and the world goes dark and lucid.

Ghosts are waiting for her, and the chase resumes again. It doesn't end when she wakes up.

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

Darkmoor, District Eleven. July, 72 ATT.

               𝔗he reaping is as morbid as ever.

Wind howls softly around the Justice Square, a faint whistle that sets Mara further on edge. She plays with the smoothness of her skirt while she sits on the chair, posture rigid. She has had a year, almost, to prepare herself for this. The low hum of people shuffling and murmuring dully resonates around the square. Mara hasn't been in the security of a crowd for so long ─── she is on stage, where she's alone. Where she can feel every gaze lingering on her.

Eleven hasn't had a victor in so long that they don't know what to do with her. Offer her condolences? She's mourning beyond belief. Give her a gift to commemorate her survival? Mara now has all the money she could ever want. What are they meant to say? What is she meant to do?

Beside her, Seeder squeezes her hand. Mara squeezes back, almost trapping her fellow victor's hand in a vice.

Chaff is still not here. He wasn't when she was reaped, either ─── but Mara wishes she had done the same. Being on stage is like being fifteen again; so who could blame Chaff?

Her survival became a particularly heinous crime on her victory tour ─── she had dreaded visiting Five, because that would make Amira someone's daughter rather than just the enemy who hunts her in nightmares.

There had only been one man on the platform for the families of the deceased. One man holding a writhing, wailing bundle of blankets.

She wasn't just someone's daughter. The mother was butchered in the arena after begging to go home. Was her son watching? Could he even comprehend what was happening? Mara set three things in motion by killing her: she won the games, she avenged Avens, and she ruined any hope of a child knowing its mother.

She can barely look at her own Mama because of that. 

To her, the reaping has sprung from nowhere, because it doesn't seem right that the world doesn't mourn as she does ─── that already, every sacrifice made for her crown has been forgotten. The seventy second Annual Hunger Games are about to start. There are no memorials for those who died in her games or in last year's, just headstones in the bleak plots of the graveyard. Little care for the slaughtered lambs.

And Chaff has been enduring this for nearly three decades. Seeder has managed two decades, Mara can barely handle two years.

Antonia has been speaking the whole time. The Mayor delivers his part of the speech. "Happy Hunger Games!" He says, and she flinches at the phrase.

Though she hopes it doesn't show, Mara is pushing against the back of her chair, hands neutrally arranged on her lap. Her time of stunning outfits and prep sessions have come to a close ─── there are always more tributes to dress. Her wardrobe mostly consists of clothes that are sent from the Capitol, since there are hardly any victor-worthy pieces for sale here.

It's almost like she's trying to hide away from the bright sunlight and the crowd before her. Usually, the sunlight burns her skin and lets her know that she can still feel things, but now it just shines a spotlight on something she wants hidden. It's an unjustly brilliant day. Terror hangs in the air, and for once it's not her own. 

It used to be. But Cayden will never be written within those reaping drawers again.

Mara no longer has to worry about the reaping, other than what to wear. She wills herself to go blank, to show and feel nothing. Everything seems to have become a lie. Telling Alec that she slept just fine, not meeting Mercy's unreadable gaze as she heard retching again, looking at Mama and saying that she's a bit better today, she really is.

(Her dreams say otherwise.)

The months of silence from the Capitol, their lack of investment in her story after the games, are not unwelcome. They think she's recovering from madness. She supposes it could be worse.

Sitting on the other side of the reaping, she realises that it can always be worse.

Were it not for the formalities being spewed by Antonia ─── who, she's realised, has only ever played her part in the games ─── the area would be silent. Dead silent. Beyond the cordoned-off sections for the children, among those lucky enough to have not made the cut, there is also an unnatural hush. Fear is familiar, and it rings as clear here like nowhere else. Fear is paralysing.

"And now, the moment we've all been waiting for!" She's right, of course, but for all the wrong reasons. Her breath starts to shake as the escort totters over to the glass ball on the left; a few hysterical sobs escape the crowd. It could be either the children or the parents. She is solely focused on shutting out the world.

"The female tribute is Summer Layfield!"

There is a moment of silence, of searching. When she was eligible for the games but not reaped, those three lucky times, she let out a held breath. Split between being glad and then guilty. But now there's no relief. No way out. 

The area sectioned for eighteen year old females part around a girl like she's covered in poison. The girl, Sommer, doesn't move. Her eyes are glazed over, unseeing, not receptive to the world. Her face is scrunched up, holding back tears. Abruptly, two Peacekeepers march into the area ─── the girls there scatter away from the shiny white armour, the faceless helmets and barrels of guns that are supposed to be pointed at the ground.

At gunpoint, she takes a few steps. As she walks up the stairs, she sees Mara's hairstyle, neat braids done by Mercy the day before and pulled into an updo. And there's resentment there, in her gaze, amidst the tears. Perhaps from the simple fact that she is now in a living hell, or that Mara has the time and the money for hairstyles, something she has to forgo. Her mouth falls into a frown, a pale slash across her chestnut skin.

She realises where she knows her from ─── Robin's older sister. Mama had helped that family on reaping day so very long ago. He's somewhere in the crowd of fourteen year old boys. He's probably grieving already.

The Peacekeepers only relent when she is on stage and Antonia begins speaking, the usual routine.

"What's your name?"

"Sommer." She answers shortly ─── the tears on her face have started to dry. She's tall, all long legs and hair cut close to the scalp. Well-built, too, after a lifetime slaving away for the Capitol's sake. Mara pictures her with a machete in her hand and suddenly she's got better odds.

She hates thinking in the way Capitolites do ─── but Seeder has told her this is inevitable. To play the game, you must understand it and take advantage of it.

Antonia doesn't seem to pick up on this. "And how old are you?"

"I'll be nineteen in a month."

And that is all she's willing to say; Antonia asks for volunteers ─── predictably, there are none ─── and moves to the glass ball on the right, interest already lost. She doesn't even bother to clap, because while Sommer may be older and have better chances she'll still be dead on arrival at the games.

Once more, she dives her hand into the heap of paper slips, and Mara watches from behind, immobilised. Every inch of her screams silently ─── but she has left one cage for another. Antonia's nails, painted a shimmery turquoise, flash among the death sentence, and hold up the chosen piece.

Surely she knows what it means when she says: "The male tribute is Oren Fallow!"

There are more than a few stifled sobs. It seems he will be missed and mourned. The boy in question cannot be older than sixteen, and he looks like Avens in that sense. But the similarities end there. Where Avens was tall and lean, Oren is shorter and more stocky. Broader nose, longer hair. She recognises him. Though, for all the differences Mara can find and distract herself with, her thoughts invariably lead back to her dear, departed district partner.

A cold, stabbing pain blooms between her ribs, where they had once been so warm.

Briefly, he is frozen ─── like when a Peacekeeper's baton comes into contact with the back of your head, and for the briefest second there is nothing but dull shock. And then he starts to walk. Still that odd look on his face, somehow empty yet agonised, but forcing his muscles to move.

And she realises that they were in the same year at school. That they'd sat in the same classrooms for years, because he was smart enough to move up a year. She'd copied his homework on a few occasions.

According to his answers, just as brief as Sommer's, he's just shy of seventeen. He nervously plays with his hands, scratching at his skin, until the ceremony is over and a group of Peacekeepers escort the pair away. Chaff never turned up ─── but while he and Seeder have never been exemplars, Mara has never forgotten the gift of the matches.

"Well!" Antonia says, "see you all again next year!"

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

Train Station, District Eleven. July, 72 ATT.

                    ℌer body won't cooperate. Mara can't bring herself to get on the train. She knows, logically, that it's not hard to stand up from the bench, and walk a few steps. Yet, her muscles are immobilised. She stares at it and wills herself to move but she just doesn't. 

Mara isn't a tribute anymore. She won. The arena does not wait for her at the end of the journey. There is no reason to be reacting like this.

Except the more she thinks about it, there is something like that waiting for her.

That was what Finnick Odair told her the night of her victory party with an extended hand. Welcome to the next arena, Mara Cayden. My advice? Pick your allies well. 

She had promptly told him to go fuck himself and walked away in the other direction.

But he wasn't entirely wrong. The fear she felt in the arena never left her, just as she carries the ghosts with her too.

Antonia has already tottered onboard after trying and failing to coax her onto the train. She now waits for the next part of her duties; schedules for the tributes, identical to the ones she gave Mara and Avens two years ago. And to last year's, whose names Mara couldn't afford to care for.

(Juniper and Alden.)

She can guess which carriage Chaff has gravitated to ─── maybe if he drinks himself silly he'll forget his duties completely. Sommer and Oren will hate him. She did.

Footsteps. Her bout of paralysis abruptly ends as she tenses, reaching into her sleeve for the knife tucked there before she's even realised what she's doing. Footsteps mean threats, that someone's going to kill her ─── until she looks up and sees it's only Mama and Alec.

"There you are," Alec says, walking beside Seraphine, not behind or being dragged as he once would've.

He hasn't had an episode since her games.

It would be easy to resent how long it's taken him. How it took being reaped and torn apart to properly bring him back. But since she's been in unfriendly, foreign Victor's Village, she's tried to mend her relationship with him ─── asking him to do things for her instead of brushing aside any offered help; letting him handle all the money she won. Her time in the arena showed her that there are things people simply can't deal with.

After all; like father, like daughter. Both of them resort to feeling nothing at all ─── as she understands Chaff, she now understands her father. And it's hard to hate someone you're exactly like. 

"We came to say goodbye." He says, sadness in his eyes. Mara will take his sadness over nothing any day. "Though you won't be gone for long."

Her mouth goes dry; she is unused to being loved by him like this. "You didn't have to."

"I know."

Mama sits beside her. She, on the other hand, doesn't say much ─── Mama can fix illnesses of the body, but the mind? In the first few months after the games, she put Mara through various treatments; aspirin to calm her, cherry juice for the nightmares, other pastes of herbs and special kinds of water that would normally work wonders. But Mara's body was fixed by Capitol doctors ─── leaving only scars draping down her arm from the badger-wolves, a mess almost resembling a flower on her thigh, and an ugly slit where Amira slid a knife between her ribs.

Mama gave up after about a year. And since, she's become more distant, because living with Mara is like walking on eggshells. She had always tried to ignore Alec when she realised there was nothing she could do to help him. It stands to reason that she would do that again.

She wrings her fingers together. "We'll wait for you, darling. You ─── you can call us, all right? You know the home number?"

Mara nods. The phone in Victor's Village is connected to places all over Panem, including other districts and phone boxes in the Capitol. She won't be calling, but she lies anyway because that's the only way she knows how to talk to her parents any more.

"This is all . . . new." Her father watches intently, as if itching to say something, but he waits. Mama continues: "You're . . . not just going to . . ." She sighs again and cups Mara's face and it's heartbreaking to see her pained expression. "You'll make it."

Did she say that to Lian?

"I doubt it." Mara says dully.

"I don't." Her father replies without missing a beat.

"Thank you." She says quietly. "Really."

On the other side of the platform, closer to the road, there is the sound of car tyres over dirt. The tributes of this year's games don't have to walk to the station; they get nearer, having already said goodbye to their own families. She stands up, knowing she can't stay much longer. Once they get onboard, the train leaves ─── she must be on it.

She smiles sadly at her mother and father. Turns to leave, dread coiling in her gut. But then, as she has been for most of the afternoon, her thoughts stray back to the day she was reaped. How she wasn't sure she would ever see them again, and how bitterly she regretted their hasty goodbye.

So Mara turns and wraps her arms around him. He's surprised, for a moment, but reciprocates. Mama clasps her hand and she feels like a small child again. Not helpless, though. Just safe. Warm.

She's not sure who holds on more tightly. Or who regrets it more when she has to get on the train.

When it lurches forward, her stomach goes with it. The sickness clouds her once more. She swallows, nauseous, and wonders if she might actually throw up. She stumbles into the escort as it starts to move; Antonia's false nails, plastic and clawed, dig into her skin as she clutches onto her to regain balance.

Once they do, Mara is quick to push her away. Her stomach twists uncomfortably.

She hadn't even heard the escort approaching. For someone usually so hyper aware of every little noise, she'd made herself an easy target. Stupid, she curses, and stupid gets you killed.

"Someone's clumsy!" Antonia says shrilly. She looks at her reflection in the window and rearranges the curls of her wig. Once satisfied, she turns back around, the clatter of her heels bouncing around and grating the inside of Mara's skull.

"Watch where you're going." Arms crossed over her chest, which stretches her jacket since it's a little small, she thinks that might have been a bit harsher than intended.

"It's too small, isn't it? Good. That makes this easier." If Antonia is affronted, she doesn't show it. Years with Chaff will have probably given her immunity to harsh words. She pulls Mara along by the wrist. "I'll show you. Your compartment is this way."

Mara feels uncannily like a child, unsure and out of her depth, while they walk down the train. She makes no move to weasel out of her grip. It's strange, really, especially now that she's taller than Antonia. Even with the heels, which give her an extra inch, the escort only comes up to her forehead. She is still that scared tribute being dragged along to wherever she's needed. "Makes what easier?"

"Changing your wardrobe."

"My clothes are fine."

Antonia gives her a pointed look, brows raised, and laughs. It's irritating but at the very least genuine. "You're serious?" She looks like she's about to laugh again, but presses her lips together. "Oh no, Mara. They're not. But I suppose you wouldn't know much about fashion."

Mara scoffs, looking the escort up and down. Antonia dons pale blue tulle falling around her in layers with painted lips to match ─── her skin is powdered a stark white, and it smudges in a few places. She cannot tell if the curls are real or just a wig, and she looks like she is made entirely of ice.

"And you would?"

She doesn't seem to recognise the sarcasm dripping off Mara's voice and does a little curtsey. "Oh, thank you," She opens the door to a compartment and ushers the victor in. "I picked out your clothes myself!"

Antonia opens the wardrobe and places a few options on the bed. "You'll need to be there for dinner. Seven o'clock. I'd say get to know them, but ─── I'd wait a while."

Mara nods, downcast. For a moment, so is Antonia, until she seemingly flicks a switch and perks up. She claps her hands together and chirps: "Well, get dressed! There are certain standards and those . . . won't do. I'll leave you be."

And she is alone. Mara takes a look at the clothes Antonia laid out for her. They're mildly modest, at least, not like some of the Capitolites she remembers seeing during her victory party ─── but that's all she can appreciate about them. They're either colourful, sparkly, or just plain ugly. Her lip curls into a sneer as she discards the outfits on the bed and looks through the wardrobe. It's mostly dresses, something Mara doesn't think she's pretty enough for.

She eventually settles on a navy knee-length dress, then she digs through the bottom of the wardrobe for the smallest heels she can find. And after that, what more is there to do but wallow?

Mara lays on the bed, limbs outstretched, unease clawing at her stomach. The tributes are probably doing the same thing as her ─── miserably contemplating the future. Wondering if they'll survive the upcoming weeks and not daring to think of what'll come after. Her thoughts go around in circles.

For all Seeder's coaching in the past few weeks, she's still been pushed into water without knowing how to swim. And as the minutes crawl by, she sinks further and further.

"But I'll have to choose, won't I? Who to bring home in the end."

Seeder is quiet for a long time. Eventually, she says: "It usually doesn't come to that."

"Between me and ─── him," Mara is hesitant to ask a question she already knows the answer to, and she has not spoken Avens' name since he died in her arms, "who was it?"

"You know." Seeder says, pained. She knows lying is pointless. "But I'm no less grateful you made it out of there."

And Mara goes back to thinking of him again.

She can sometimes go for days without remembering, only to double over from a sudden onslaught of grief. It catches her in the middle of the street on a sunny day and suddenly she can hardly move. He'd be eighteen now, had he lived.

Why isn't it him counting the scratches in the metal ceiling and why isn't she rotting away beneath the ground instead?

Mara asked for survival, and this is what she got. Laying in the softest bed, with the best food waiting for her, and ugly, choking sobs streaming down her face. She thought that she'd be used to it by now, and when it doesn't simply go away, she forces herself to sit up and rummages through the discarded pile of her old clothes. There, in the pocket, is the flask she brought to the reaping, half-empty from calming herself on the walk there.

She told herself she would at least wait until after dinner, that she can wait a few hours. Mara does not need to drink ─── yet she isn't aware of what she's doing until she's tipping the last few drops out of the flask and onto her tongue. After only a few minutes, she can feel herself calming and slowing down as the alcohol brings her whirring thoughts to a halt. The burning, as always, means she's still alive. Still breathing, heart still beating.

None of her family knows about her flask. Nobody in Victor's Village does. She couldn't buy any, or else it would spread from vendor to visitor and eventually to Mama and Alec. She visits Chaff every day to make sure he hasn't choked on his own vomit or passed out in the garden, and when she does, she siphons some of his whiskey or whatever, as long as it's strong.

She drinks until every memory of Avens' face feels more like a distant dream than a ghost. Until grief goes blurry at the edges. It takes a while.

Eventually, after huddling against the wall for so long that her limbs ache, Mara forces herself to get up. She stiffly walks out of her compartment and down the corridor, the wilds of Panem blurring by. Into the dining carriage, where she's a few minutes early ─── Sommer and Oren will hardly be delighted if the other mentor doesn't turn up ─── and down at her seat. 

Antonia, Seeder, and Chaff are already there when she arrives; the latter complaining about being dragged here. Oren arrives only moments after her, face solemn and freshly washed. He sits opposite and starts eating straight away, piling food onto his plate, murmuring a few words of greeting. The mentors and Antonia, who've had regular meals for years now, have the will to wait for Sommer.

The dining room hasn't changed much. They've gotten rid of the grey curtains, she notes. Replaced them with shutters. There's a new table, probably a more expensive wood, and new tributes. But other than that, she may as well have been transported back two years ─── however much she had in that flask wasn't enough.

Antonia gives her a strange look. Mara has never seen her brows draw together like that.

"I see you chose in the end," she says, eyes darting over to the door. She hated a lack of punctuality then and still does ─── maybe it makes her feel more important when her job is mostly useless. "A bit dull, but much better."

"Thank you." Mara says stiffly. Her limbs feel locked shut, like a corpse in rigor mortis.

More than ten minutes pass, with Sommer still not making an appearance. Chaff starts to dig in; Oren carries on wolfing down as much as he physically can. Antonia sighs. "We were supposed to wait."

Chaff waves the stump of his left arm while chewing, little flecks of food spraying from his mouth. "She doesn't want to. Why bother?"

Mara can't understand the escort's disgust. Her memories have warped as she tries to forget them, but it's engraved in her bones how she was born hungry. How horrid table manners mean that there's something to eat.

Antonia purses her lips. "I'm going to get her."

He scoffs, eyes bloodshot. "You still don't get it, do you?"

She leaves anyway. Mara looks up from her empty plate to see Oren looking at her intently, studying her. Probably wondering why she's been so useless so far. There is little more to hear than the sounds of scraping cutlery and chewing food; was she that voracious too? Is this what Antonia and Chaff saw last year, and the year before that, and the year before that?

"I watched your games," Oren says.

Mara is thrown by the statement, but she's well practised in masking her emotions. She can't quite bring herself to look at him. "Everyone did."

"How do I win?" He asks. Cutting straight to the point ─── straight to the bone. 

Her mouth goes dry. How does one win the Hunger Games? There are twenty three deaths that could have been hers. Should have been hers. And the odds, of late, haven't been in anyone's favour but the Capitol's.

"Mara," he says, voice cracking delicately down the middle. Begging her to look at him, to offer anything ─── to do her duty. "How the hell do I win?"

But she won't look at him. She won't do anything; a carved statue, lonely and useless. Oren implores her the way she'd once begged him to let her copy his work back when they were at school, but she can't, she physically can't speak.

"Stay sharp," Chaff remarks gruffly, staring at the table. "Don't trust anyone."

Oren glances up, a flicker in his eyes, drinking every word in like his life depends on it ─── because it does. She and Chaff and Seeder alone hold every shred of his hope in their hands. The reaped tributes are her responsibility. So in the arena, it will be her fault when they die. 

"Okay," says Oren, thinking, as if trying to do sums in his head. He holds a piece of glass in his hands, fingers absent-mindedly running over it, worn smooth. "Why make allies in the first place if I can't trust them?"

Chaff's help ends there. She glances at him, catching his eye, but he looks away and downs another whiskey in one swallow.

"They're useful," Seeder says, taking the weight of bearing advice. "Skills. Company."

Hope is a dangerous thing to have ─── it keeps you marching on to the next day, but when it's gone, there's simply nothing to live for. That darkest night in the arena. As Mercy used to tell her, expect disappointment and you'll never be disappointed. A roundabout way of telling her that nothing good is coming her way. Isn't it better to prepare him than to make him feel better?

The door slides open and in walks Antonia, and behind her, Sommer. Very displeased, the escort sits with a sour expression on her face and gestures for Sommer to do the same. "Right," she says, barely hiding her frustration. "Now that we're all here, we can start."

Sommer sits at the end of the table, silent, though her face does briefly brighten at the sight of all the food. Mara continues to eat and Oren carries on with his questions. "Is it better to ally with my district partner or somebody else?"

"Depends."

"Okay," he says, chewing on his food, still holding that piece of glass. She assumes he's taken it as his token. "And ───"

"Don't bother, Oren." Sommer cuts in while she eats, hardly looking at her mentors. "She won't help. I could've told you that."

"Don't say that." Antonia snaps quite suddenly, cutting her meat into little squares with considerable force. Somehow, she's been whittled down very quickly by the tribute ─── she can only imagine what was said on the way here. "Mara is your mentor. As are Chaff and Seeder."

Mara's victory is fresh, after all. She should know better than anyone. Except maybe Annie Cresta, the girl who won last year.

"Of course," says Sommer, holding her fork with pale knuckles. She doesn't look like she's hardly breathing now that Mara pays attention. "Drunkard one and depressed two and three."

A mild sting compared to her own fractured heart. Disheartening to know she has failed already. "I'm not ───"

"They won't help us," Sommer says to Oren, and to him alone. As if she can pretend they're not here, as if she's not in the games. "Only we can."

Oren seems unconvinced, gaze darting between his district partner and Mara, who has gone very cold. She stills as flashes come before her eyes whenever she blinks. A blazing sun. He says they're better than nothing. Sommer carries on speaking; she barely hears it. Knee deep in salt water.

"Why are you being like this?" He hisses under his breath. "They're all we've got."

"Don't you see?" Sommer's voice raises a note with every word. "He's drinking himself silly. And the other two aren't saying nothing. We're on our own, and you know it."

"Why am I still here?" Mara then cuts in. It takes all she has not to scream at the, to not reach for the bottle in the bucket of ice as her fingers itch to. She keeps herself still, measured, but there's strain in her voice.

"I wasn't talking to you."

"Why am I still here?" Mara isn't exactly speaking to her either.

A melody floating away on the breeze. An empty grave she dug herself. "Why? I killed four people. Four!"

She'd expect Sommer to argue back, to say something, but the tribute is uncharacteristically silent. There's no more clutter of cutlery against dishes as the carriage goes quiet. "I played that game and I won. I won!"

"Mara," Antonia says, tense. It doesn't suit her Capitol accent. "Please put down the knife."

"Stop it! The mutt is dead!" Hestia's lamenting voice echoes as she pulls at Mara's arm, but to no avail. This has to be a trick. It's playing dead, nothing more, and she doesn't know if it's still alive. The knife seems to have melded to her fingers, the metal seeping into her blood. The darkest night, where the monster and the girl are not so different. The night that won't ever end.

She hasn't let go of it, even while she cradles Avens' broken body. Even as he too is fearful of what she has become, what she did in the name of avenging him. How he hardly recognised her. They were all afraid of her in the end.

Chaff strides over from his side of the table, unfazed. He plucks the table knife from her hands, discarding it onto the floor. He then takes Mara's wrist with his right hand and stands her up, leading her away from the table and tucking the chair back in with his leg, giving Seeder a certain look only the two of them can understand. Excuses them both for the evening. She starts talking. Mara doesn't hear it. 

The hours blur into each other. She feels herself walking numbly. There was a lot of walking, wasn't there? Until she found the stolen supplies and crimson drowned the pale halo of Mikayla's hair. She got what she needed and carried on walking.

Chaff takes her into an empty compartment and sits her on the bed. He knows exactly what this is like ─── as the first victor from Eleven, he had no choice but to mentor the very next year. No kind Seeder to take some of the burden.

Mara waits for the lies that everything will be okay, but Chaff has never been so eloquent with words. The little lies never come, because he knows better than to try. "Just . . . cry it out." He says, and she does.

This is what you do, isn't it, Mara? Run from the tributes you've killed.

Chaff sits next to her. What else could he do? Outside the compartment are two scared children that need help she can't offer. Beyond the train is a cruel, cruel world. Every moment, they get closer to the Capitol, where Mara will have to watch it all over again. Nothing can stop the games happening; she was afraid to board the train because she knew it is bound for tragedy.

Sommer Layfield and Oren Fallow are in the same position as her two years ago, to the very day, hour, and minute.

Eliya's Notes:

── :: 5,824 words!

── i: welcome back to act ii! while the previous versions weren't bad, they were slow and a bit unnecessary at times ─ plus, i don't think i gave mara's addiction enough development or justice. the plot has been slightly rehashed (particularly towards the later chapters. i can tell they weren't as good bc engagement went down.) old readers will have seen how mara initially reacted in the first few months, but i thought it best to leave that part of her story up to interpretation. either imagine it or fill in the blanks ig 🤷‍♀️ bc we have the 72nd games to get into!

── ii: but we see mara as a victor now which means less action and more angst bc my poor bby mara just can't get a break 🥺. the life of a victor is such a unique form of torture, BUT her family's gotten a bit better ... ish. ofc with seraphine alive in this version, the dynamic has been altered somewhat. it's a loving but traumatised family not really knowing how to support each other but trying ... live laugh love the caydens.

── iii: as mentioned earlier, i skipped over the 71st games (in this book, annie's) bc we already know what happened ... but johanna's have been left largely up to interpretation so the next few chapters cover those, as well as behind the scenes politics of mentoring, victorhood, and ofc the beginning of rebellion