you can always bleed a little more.

Tell me, Father, which to ask forgiveness for:
what I am, or what I am not? 
Tell me, Mother, which should I regret:
what I became, or what I didn't?

UNKNOWN.

﹙ chapter fifteen, act one ﹚

eastern island, the arena.
july, 70 att.

                    IN A SINGLE MOMENT, SOMETHING DELICATE SHATTERS. She can hear it quite clearly: a soft sound of shattering glass in the distance. Not at all loud or consuming the way she'd dreamed this would be. Instead her mind goes white, static, blank ─── she's seizing up and floating away, far away. She stands there, gasping for breath that won't come, until it all bursts into a throat-wrenching scream. No. This can't be happening.

                    Amira, doe-eyed and nervous, every part the snivelling fool, is the one to drive the machete into his abdomen. Her mask is shedded like a second skin, falling away in tattered pieces. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry." She says quietly to Avens, who stares up at her, saying nothing. His eyes so dark and wide; the agony of his raspy breath, the crimson beginning to stain his shirt.

                    But it is happening. If she wishes for survival, then this is what she gets.

                    The hollow, inhumane scream that escapes her, clawing its way up, garners her attention. She was so close to seeing him again. Mara had thought to beg the sky, the cameras if they could go home together. As Amira pulls the machete out, blood rushing out, over her arms, her face ─── his blood, her sweet Avens' blood ─── her head whips around. From guilt to resignation to horror as she realises what Mara has witnessed. Her own vision is too blurry to tell precisely what she does in those few tender moments before the snap. This must be how it feels to die.

                    Is this how she dies?

                    Despite being frozen to the ground, rooted to the spot, some things instantly become crystal clear. She lied, she lied, she lied. That, Mara realises with a sinking feeling, is all Amira has ever done. She isn't the scared, admittedly strange girl everyone thought she was ─── the one she was led to believe she was, the one she had almost accepted as an ally. It becomes sickeningly obvious. Everything was carefully considered and constructed and played to near perfection, in such a way that Mara believed her. It hadn't mattered when her words, her actions, her past, hadn't quite lined up ─── she put it down to fear of the inevitable end. Wasn't it natural to be a little odd when you were to die in a month?

                    She'd dismissed it when a small voice wondered to question Amira further about her motives. She'd shoved that all away because she'd underestimated her. Only as Avens lays dying at her feet, does she see how blind she's been ─── but it's too late.

                    When will it be over? When the mockingjay sings, and for the longest moment, there is nothing but silence and Avens struggling to breathe, convulsing on the ground.

                    And this, this is the snap.

                    They say grief comes in five stages. First, there's denial followed by anger and then bargaining. Then comes depression, and finally acceptance. But Mara has had a month, almost, to know the end was coming. To prepare herself for this, but she'd pulled a blindfold over her eyes and let that week before the games pass too quickly. She hadn't even searched for him at the bloodbath, too busy concerned with her own survival, too selfish to see what she had done. Mara's negligence left him with no one to turn to but Amira. If she had been here, would Amira have attempted the kill?

                    She passes through denial with startling ease and comes up headfirst against a wall known as anger.

                    The hanging silence is broken by a footstep forwards; the knife, now familiar between her fingers, trembling but steadfast. She lurches forward, wildly stabbing outwards toward the blonde. She shrieks, a short and sharp sound, as she rolls and then scrambles away. Panic is a knife's edge. It either makes you alert and sharp or, in Amira's case, sluggish. Her limbs don't move the right way, and when Mara reaches out to stab her again, she hits her wrist, pinning it to the earth.

                    She twists the knife, scraping dirt, enjoying her screams as it scrapes and cuts her flesh, her tendons. Everything is so cold that it burns, shutting out the world in a red tinted haze; everything but the blonde before her with the consuming desire to make her hurt as she does. Amira's left hand is rendered thoroughly useless, but Mara underestimates her tenacity as the tribute kicks out, legs connecting with her arms. Her bones crack from impact but she doesn't think they're broken.

                    Her lungs crush inwards as she springs up, matching Amira, making a wild slash at her leg. Amira parries ─── again, far more skilled than she let on ─── bringing the machete over the knife and towards Mara's unprotected face. Anger, while useful, has made her sloppy, and that could just be how she gets killed. She leans away, the tip of the machete slicing her forehead; a curtain of blood falls over her eyes. Any deeper, and she'd be in real trouble.

                    She stumbles back, free hand coming to wipe it away, when Amira lunges forward in a stabbing motion, which she barely manages to deflect away from her torso. Mara attacks. Amira blocks, before counter-attacking. And so they continue like that, their blades clinging off each other, echoing around the clearing, ringing like bells.

                    Out of the corner of her eye, Mara sees Avens on the ground, still like a corpse. There's no way to tell if his heart is still beating.

                    They've been fighting for a while, and both tire in the sweltering heat of paradise. Avens lies dying at their feet. The afternoon air is stifling, and sweat runs down the side of Mara's head, along with her own blood. Her breath comes in short little puffs that never seem to last long enough, but Amira has it worse. Mara has infinitely more stamina than her from working all those summer harvests, and it shows. Their blades gleam as they come into contact again, one pushing forwards, only to be pushed back.

                   Amira's eyes narrow, searching her opponent for a weakness to exploit. Only last week, she had looked at Mara with the hopes of being an ally ─── now, there's nothing but grim determination in them. Maybe it was the arena that did this to her, but Mara suspects it all started long before that.

                    She feels it before she sees it; for a moment, there's nothing but an odd sensation. Then it explodes under her skin, setting her on fire. She can't breathe, stumbling, hands flying up to hold the knife. She doesn't dare pull it out. It's the only thing keeping most of her blood in, apart from the few, large drops that well at the sides. Mara bites back a shriek, which leaves her mouth as a whimper. A cold, foreign knife; disgusting, invading, and painful more than anything else.

                    A knife she never saw coming. How many more are stashed in her jacket? While she reaches for another, Mara staggers forwards, pressing on; a flurry of attacks that Amira is always a moment too slow to deflect. She hasn't been using the machete for long enough, her inexperience showing as she tires and starts to slip up, her movements becoming slower and more clunky. A few hits land true, cutting her fair skin and earning gasps of pain.

                    "How do you like it?" Mara shouts deliriously into the wind, not waiting for an answer as she grasps Amira's ruined wrist and pries her fingers in. Halfway between a howl and a whimper, she stumbles back. "Huh? Quiet now, are you?"

                    Mara hardly recognises the girl who seems to be winning. She's not the kind of person who relishes in drawing blood, not the sort to abandon mercy. So, then, who is the girl that brings Amira to her knees, knife pressing harshly against her neck? Who is the person that enjoys seeing her confidence melt away, replaced by the gut-wrenching knowledge that she's lost?

                    Maybe it is her, after all. Who is the girl that holds Amira's life in the balance?

                    She is.

                    "And now," Mara bites out, anger escaping through the consonants of her words, restrained by a thin leash. "You die."

                    What she says next shocks her beyond all measure. "Please," she begs, and Mara feels the blood rush out of her face. Her legs feel as if swept out from under her as Amira tries to repress tears that look a little too real, "I have to get back. I have to."

                    But her crying has been her mask, and now that she's unveiled, Mara's shock fades quickly. "And I don't? Avens doesn't?"

                    Her face contorts beneath the blade, more pitiful than anything she has ever seen. "Please."

                    Mara looks on, knowing that this will forever be seared into the back of her eyelids. Knowing that she struck a chord ─── but for all she knows, it could just be another ruse. "No."

                    And so the world learns what fury a teenage girl can hold. What happens when someone, by all means prey from the moment she was born, becomes predator. She doesn't leave Amira's body alone until long after the cannon fires.

                    A groan disrupts her from her thoughts, and the adrenaline in her veins dissipates, leaving her brittle and ready to shatter. Because it's too late. Mara is too late. He's already on the verge of death, and deep down, she knows there's nothing she can do.

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

cornucopia, the arena.
july, 70 att.

                    THE NEXT CANNON IS A WELCOME SOUND TO HIM. It almost catches him off-guard, echoing around the arena, originating from some unseen place in the sky, causing several startled birds to take flight. Octavian, downing a canteen with a face of sour thunder, discards the empty bottle and smirks at the sound. He drums his fingers on the empty bottle, a habit of his, and moves on to downing the next one, drinking half of it in several large gulps, before setting it aside and going through the numbers, the possibilities. Each is as welcoming as the next ─── the end nears, and he readies himself to hunt once more.

                    The final five run rampant in the arena: himself and Desiree; Avens, Amira, Mara. Up until a few days ago, he had never bothered to learn the names of the latter two tributes who somehow survived this long. Which of them is dead? He knows who threatens him the most, but that's also the one he'd like to kill, not letting somebody else do it for him. The other two can rot for all he cares.

                    It seems, to be honest, a little pathetic how grateful Octavian is to hear the cannon; his muscles loosen, not realising how tightly wound they had been until now, allowing himself to slouch against the pitched tent. Of course, he straightens his spine as soon as that happens ─── the cameras are watching, lenses trained on him; even if the audience isn't viewing, his father always is. Augustus Gallohair, his father, has studied the Games his whole life. He's a man carved purely from stone, from the sharp cut of his jaw that Octavian inherited to the perfect parting of grey hair. Augustus is fashioned like the masonry works from his district ─── perfect, cold, untouchable.

                    He would know how best to play this, but Octavian has some faith in his own tactics. A hand drifts up to his hair, pushing back the sweaty strands, a result of practically swimming in the humidity. Everything seems to be soaked in sweat and blood ─── he can't stand it here, wishing to be back in cold, mountainous District Two. He aches for home; he'll be there soon. But he doesn't dare express any of these desires.

                     Shoulders back. Breathe in. Blank slate.

                     A mantra practically tattooed into his skull by his trainer, when they chose his tactic for the Games. A strong, brilliant killer ─── there's no room for emotion. One he finds himself repeating internally as the days wear on.

                    The Cornucopia is a mess. It was never organised to start with, and he and his fellow Careers ─── now, whittled down to merely one other ─── didn't bother to pack things up as they used them. It simply never occurred to him. Supplies that others would have killed for lie on the ground, untouched. As the land dips down the sinkhole that forms the centre of the Cornucopia, the pile increases in volume and height. Weapons even he doesn't know how to use, medicine that could probably kill him, waterproof sheets, endless canteens of water. Food in crates sectioned away by Yoselin ───as they depleted, the empty boxes were also added to the pile.

                    Except she's not here to try and tidy up any more. When he closes his eyes, he still sees the vicious yellow spines pinned on her body. He still hears how they snapped off as he dragged her body ashore and, as is custom, put some bread crumbs in her mouth. He never had any love for Yoselin, and nor does he now, but that was the first funeral rite he's ever led. Though he didn't bother burying her.

                    Shoulders back. Breathe in. Blank slate.

                    He grits his teeth, suppressing a snarl. The Games come with glory, that much is true, but they never told him about the gore. He doesn't mind blood, but he's grown quite sick of it. Just three more to go.

                    Their purpose is to provide entertainment; Octavian's is to win. His victory, not theirs. And not Desiree's either.

                    She is a credit to her district, but it's clear she's not in line for the crown. Across the Cornucopia, binding and rebinding her knee for the tenth time, she's in a constant state of muttering. A long, messy braid runs down her back, ebony strands hovering in front of her face; she doesn't bother pushing them away. No, her thoughts are occupied by Amira, the one who threw a knife into her knee and rendered her useless. Part of him mentally thanks the blonde, because it will make this far easier.

                    For a while, he had humoured her anger; finding it amusing to see a sharp look cross her features and her fists clench at her sides. Every time he mentioned her name, a storm passed over her face ─── Desiree, he realised, is too proud for her own good. She takes every little offence too personally, and forever needs to prove her strength. Which, with an injured knee is difficult, and infuriates her further. He wonders when that same anger will be directed at him.

                    Even hours later, as the afternoon stretches on into twilight, he can hear her muttering under her breath, swearing viciously. Finally satisfied with the wraps on her knee, she glances at him. And Octavian knows he can never turn his back towards her again, lest he receive a knife in some undefended spot.

                    "Which one d'you think it is?" He asks, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest; the picture of arrogance and power.

                    "How should I know?" Desiree snaps, brown eyes searching the dark sky, and then meeting his.

                    He shrugs, which seems to irritate her further. "We'll see who it was at midnight, and get the rest after."

                    She nods tersely, but it'll be easier said than done. During the days of training and sparkly costumes, he was careful to evaluate potential assets ─── mostly focusing on Dakota from Seven, Roland from Eight, and Deacon from Ten. They were the most imminent threats, so he studied them, learning their flaws and weaknesses. And now they're dead.

                    The only other tributes left are the ones he knows nothing about, except Avens Fida. He was always taken more seriously with a score of nine, and Octavian knows about the slight weakness in his left foot, perhaps from an earlier accident.

                   But, chances are, Avens Fida is dead, and Octavian doesn't know anything useful about his opponents.

                    And when Avens' headshot is displayed in the sky, neutral and impassive, he doesn't know whether to be glad or not. In death, Avens Fida will always have humiliated him by slipping away, and he will never get to prove himself. That face will always be on his list of failures.

                    Shoulders back. Breathe in. Blank slate.

                    But when he goes in for the kill, he doesn't expect Desiree to fight back so viciously. She dies but leaves him wounded, and he bleeds out in the sea before he ever manages to cross it. The kelp takes to his body, wrapping around him and pulling him under.

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

eastern island, the arena.
july, 70 att.

                    MARA DOESN'T CARE FOR VICTORY ANY MORE. "No." She chokes out, sinking by his side, gently caressing his bloody face with one hand. So gingerly, so softly, as if any more pressure will cause him to vanish. As if she can't believe he's really there. His breathing is laboured, and his heart beats slowly beneath her hands, a lazy pulse that steadily flows with blood. She presses her hands to the entry point, but there's more than one and her feeble attempt does nothing. Every intrusive thought, every image of his corpse starts to become corporeal.

                    He's lost too much already ─── how much? Two litres? Three? She can't tell since it coats his body and her hands, the coppery scent invading her nostrils and making her eyes water more. Mara doesn't know the exact point of no return for blood loss, but seeing Avens so beaten and helpless, she can't imagine he's far from it.

                    He grunts, lolling away from her hands. He must know why she's doing it, despite the agony it puts him through ─── so why does he resist? It hurts, but pain means he's still alive. Mara will take that over dead any day.

                    "Stop it." She whispers, a broken beg. "It─── it'll hurt, you'll be okay, but ─── you'll live."

                    But Avens isn't looking at her, just the ruined corpse of Amira. Immobilised, he watched her brutal murder and now there is nothing but fear in his eyes, she realises. A reason why he avoids her touch. Once again, Mara is the monster in this arena, and she starts to choke on a thousand things all at once. There's a long silence, touched only by his wheezy breaths, his heart-wrenching groans. Mara has heard stories of soldiers crying for their mothers, but this is worse. He doesn't cry or beg or speak, and that scares her more than anything else. "I did it for you." She tells him, pleading: "Don't let it mean nothing. Stay with me. Stay."

                    His dark, familiar eyes flutter open just enough to see her. A plaintive gaze of sorrow, and the most terrible, faint smile she's ever seen. He's always been attractive, as she knew but didn't care much for, but in his dying moments, he's so terribly beautiful that it hurts. The line of his jaw, the cut of his hair. That awful, awful smile. How did Mara not love him earlier? Why didn't she, when she still had time? When he didn't look at her like a stranger?

                    "I'm gone." Voice carried by the breeze, she has to bend over to hear it. She'll cling onto them with every fibre of her body, because words mean alive. Pain means alive. But no more words come; his eyelids flutter shut, and don't open again.

                    Such words have been said to her before. She doesn't think she'll be able to bear him haunting her as well.

                    "You will." She says, repeating it over and over. A mantra, a spell, a lie ─── one that she doesn't know what she'll do if she doesn't believe it with her whole soul. "You will. I'll find a way."

                    The face that smiled when she couldn't, listened when she screamed, offered so much solace by merely being there ─── starts to go limp, and she knows she's losing him. "Mara." He whispers, raspy, coughing up blood. She cradles his head in her lap, and he's too weak to fend her off. Again, his eyes gravitate towards the mangled remains and his breathing quickens.

                    "Yes?" She'll do just about anything.

                    Nothing. More silence. His eyes are unfocused. A weak hand gestures around him, before falling back to his side.

                    At first, her mind is blank. Then, as she looks around, she realises what he wants ─── it makes a small part of her heart splinter off. Because, they could almost be back in the orchards, back home; he wants to hear the song of the orchard, of childhood, and of death. The feeling of the early summer sun before harvest season kissing their skin, the soft breeze in the trees, the rustle of the wheat and cotton fields. If it was unfair that the arena is beautiful, then it's disgusting how close it hits to home.

                    The hazy afternoons spent keeping an eye out for patrol, then hanging off the branches and chasing each other over and under the branches. Pretending to duel with sticks, throwing fruit between them. As they grew older, the games slowly left ─── until they were forced into another horridly familiar one.

                    He wants her to sing the song of when things were easier and simpler, when blood stayed in their bodies, let out only by scabby knees; when mothers tucked their children in the tattered sheets and sang until they shut their eyes and languid sleep took over. Mara's no singer, being taught to hold a tune for the mockingjays that always flew in the orchards. But she's not here to sing well ─── farewell. Her voice is a note away from breaking.

"Little soldier boy, falling so slow /
brave soldier boy, come marching home."

                    Her tears have stopped. Her body feels as if there's no fluid in it at all. Something about the melody is so beautiful and tragic; it makes her want to both smile and cry. Everyone, from the smallest child to the most weathered elder in District Eleven knows the tune ─── thanks to the mockingjays, it frequents the orchards and fields. Once, the Peacekeepers tried to stop the melodies, but they caught on far too quickly. There was no way of stopping it.

                    It makes her think of Lian, but not of his unseeing eyes, his impaled body floating in the tropical water of his arena. Rather, how he taught her the words, how to keep in tune. How he carried her on his back because it made her feel tall. When they curled up together at night, after the first real argument with tears and fists. Avens smiles; she has to stifle another dry sob before continuing.

"Fragile broken heart, taken from home /
forced to fight a war that was not his own."

                    Avens is not afraid anymore when his last breath leaves him, a wispy little thing, leaving his body dull and limp. His eyes are rolled back, glassy and unseeing and calm; a trembling hand gently shuts them. Another shrugs off her jacket and pulls it over him, struggling to zip it up for shaking so hard. Most of his blood is hidden from sight. There, like this, he could almost be sleeping.

                    Almost.

                    She plucks a nearby flower with a thorny stem, exhaling sharply as the serrated spikes press into her flesh. Gently tucking it behind his ear, she lays him on the ground, arranging his limbs so that he looks comfortable. A scream works its way up her throat, almost on her tongue, but she must finish this. For him, for herself, for everyone in Eleven watching.

"Empty soldier souls, fallen in the war /
Brave soldier boy, I need you more."

                    She can't say for sure how long she sits there, covered in blood, holding his body. Something compels her to stay by his side. Something keeps her limbs bound to the ground, sitting on her knees with his body sprawled before her, even as they start to ache and cramp. But that something also didn't let her bury him. Mara left him the moment the bloodbath started.

                    She will not leave him now.

                    A cannon fires distantly. But what does winning mean any more? She waits for the last tribute, the future victor, to hunt her down and kill her. Maybe she'll bleed so much that they don't have to bother. She waits to die, and yet it never comes ─── another cannon fires, jolting her from her numbness as she realises what this means.

                   There is utter silence. Dreadful, hanging silence, one that says more than a thousand words. It tells her what she's done, lets her relive every moment in this beautiful, terrible paradise. It threatens to shatter her completely. The silence continues to scold her, until it's broken by an announcement far too jovial.

                    "Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to present to you the victor of the Seventieth Annual Hunger Games, Mara Cayden!"

                    She thinks of what she lost ─── who she lost ─── to get here.

                    What a pyrrhic victory. 

END ACT ONE 

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 :

( 4,225 words! )
pyrrhic : adjective. ( of a victory ) won at too
great a cost to have been worthwhile for the
victor 💔 mara's games are over and omds
has it been a heartbreak and a half. next part
is fresh content ( at last ) but this chapter is
pretty novel as well, since it used to be two
chapters ─── which just went on for a little
too long for me.

so now amira is dead by the start 😬& while
i kept it vague,, know it was a brutal murder.
you can argue whether or not amira deserved
such a thing, but that's not the point. none of
them should have been in that arena in the 
first place. no more trapping her in kelp out
in the sea, because i couldn't realistically see
her leaving avens' side at all. 

desiree and octavian were always going to
be the ones to kill each other. there's no real
way mara could kill them. it's tragic, & i hope
it didn't seem too convenient because it was
meant to be this way. they couldn't get along
which was  what let avens & amira survive  so
many times ─── and, eventually, what killed
them.🤺

and amira. my days, where do i start with her
it makes sense that she hardly regrets killing
avens ─── she didn't know him. not the way
mara did. she's interesting ( her motivations
 are going to be explored in act ii ) but it felt 
good to finish the act with her death as what
pushes mara over the edge and makes her 
a victor rather than a player. while i did like
the idea of using the arena to win, i couldn't
fit it in. and don't worry, there are plenty of
other things mara will do to contradict the
capitol.

and speaking of avens, i don't own the song 
mara sings to him ─── it's called 'leaves from
the vine from the show a:ta. all rights to its 
owners. i only modified lines to fit. he's dead,
but he's got plenty more to do with haunting
the narrative !! as mara knew back when they
were reaped, he will be mourned and missed.

vote & comment if you enjoyed <3