j-thegiant​:

.

There was no time for him to register anything else, not even a familiar voice coming from somewhere deeper in the room. The dagger dug into his right shoulder as soon as he turned around to face Poppy, tearing into flesh and muscle, deep, painful. Jupiter screamed something awful.

“Come on.” He finally clocked the voice as he watched blood seep through his jacket. It was Gideon. How was it that he was hearing his best friend’s voice here in the arena? The shock was almost enough to distract him from the pain. “Don’t be so dramatic. Just… keep a distance, alright? Fall back.” Finally, Gideon walked into his field of vision just next to Poppy, and he obeyed.

Jupiter staggered back, unlodging the dagger. His eyes darted between Poppy and Gideon. There seemed to be real concern in his friend’s face, but he played it off well, the way he always did, the way they always did in the face of adversity. But surely they both had to admit that they had never faced adversity quite like this before, didn’t they? Something was not right. Gideon was not right.

Yet his advice was. For lack of a better option, Jupiter kept stepping back and away, as far as he could get from Poppy as his unsteady legs could carry him. Blood continued to pour out of the gaping wound on his shoulder, making him feel lightheaded already. He then fell back as his foot tripped over something on the floor, or maybe it was nothing and he was losing his balance because of the pain, and the back of his head found the leg of the table in the centre of the room. It provided him the opportunity to re-orient himself.

“Settle down, J,” Gideon spoke again. “Here comes another.”

@caroleyre​

As he walked into the casino, plunging onto darkness, the grasp on his trident changed from passive to active, in case he needed to use it immediately. Things were already in motion. Carol could hear, not yet see, that people were already in there. The fountain cried tears of blood, and the pouring water was a distracting enough white noise, but he could catch sounds of motion as well.

“It looks like we’re a bit late to the party, dear,” he muttered, still at a distance and almost inaudibly, but this Rio didn’t need ears to hear everything inside Carol’s mind. Careful and trying his best to feign a collected state of mind, the young man from District Four stepped ahead and, suddenly, he could see them. Jupiter was already bleeding, but he didn’t care about Jupiter. Rio did not care about Jupiter either. 

He looked behind, over his shoulder, as if he had anything real to see. As if the figure stepping soundlessly existed anywhere other than in his own perception. Still, he could catch a dark glimpse of Rio’s everlasting smug expression, and sucked confidence from that. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have done it otherwise. It was that it was easier to pretend he was not completely alone.

“Look,” Rio instructed, “Is that a knife in her hand, or is she just happy to see us?” A dark chuckle left the ghostly apparition. Carol did not turn. He pretended to be focused, so he could actually shift into that state. "I don’t think she can see you, my dear. I think it’s just me,“ he breathed out, slightly taken aback, but not enough to turn around. That was not even an option he had. Everything behind him turned jet black dark. 

Carol tried hard to separate life from death. "How do we kill her?” The words came out in a nervous hum, trying not to make noise. Luckily, the distance still allowed for it. The sight of Poppy’s back of the head lit up his face. 

Rio hummed. “Ah, well. Maybe that’s for the best. We’ve always been the best team, especially when no one expects it.” Perhaps only the young man’s ghost could afford to be supportive, in the most twisted situations there were. His head slightly tilted forward, nodded at the trident. “You shove that thing in her stomach. With my weapon." 

Carol didn’t have the time to roll his eyes properly. To get her attention, he executed an intentional clicking noise with his tongue, the exact same one used for stray cats you wanted to pet. He didn’t exactly want to pet Poppy. It had more to do with wishing to drag her braided hair all the way through hell and worse.

There was an easy grace to how he carried himself towards her without hesitation. As if not scared out of his mind. “I really hope you’re ready for showtime, little shark,” he cocked his head to a side, in a half-shake, but didn’t have time for a more complex gesture as he attacked. Objectively, he didn’t know what to expect. A trainer for the Hunger Games was supposed to be capable of all sorts of sharp edges. Her quick aim led to Rio’s demise. Good. Promising. He wanted to see it.

Carol pushed his trident with all the strength he had towards Poppy’s abdomen, no further warning.

@poppy-battenberg

This is not the story of a girl who wishes to be a hero, who fights for the less fortunate. This is not the story of a girl who has known pain and wants to rise above it. Poppy will fight, tooth and nail and skin and bone and everything that she has, to keep her remaining family alive.

This is the story of a girl who has decided to go to war.

No further convincing was required to get him to follow the lights. Like moth to a flame, Jupiter willingly let the himself be led, back to the casino, back to where it had all started. Only this time, he was completely on his own. There was no more Elm to challenge him to be brave, no more Maggie to complain about the cold with, no more Troy to help him solve a riddle, and no more Smith to save his life a second time. His tale was his alone to write now. It had always been in a way, he knew that, but what he understood now that he had not quite before was that he had only made it so far because he chose to let his orbit intersect with others’, and because they returned the favour in kind.

But there were no more favours left now. He had to create his own luck.

The sharp end of the sword made a grating sound as he dragged the weapon by the handle across the pavement. It would not bring him the luck he needed, he knew that. Even if he somehow managed to find himself alive on the other end of whatever was waiting for him inside, it would not be because of a sword. So, not being able to think of a good use for it, he carefully slid  the weapon behind one of the sleeping tigers by the doors before stepping inside the building. Maybe that could be his souvenir if he got out of the city alive.

The casino looked messy, to say the least. At first glance, he thought that it was in disarray because of the quake that had rocked the arena yesterday night, but something seemed off upon further inspection. The way that all the tables except for the one in the centre had been flipped upside down screamed deliberate, maybe even purposeful. It quickly dawned on him then that this was no quake aftermath. No, this was another life-or-death hurdle that he had to jump over if he wanted to go home, another game that the gamemakers wanted him to play. Only this time, he was playing alone.

But that was not quite true, was it? He might be the only one playing for himself, but he had to be playing against someone else. And judging by the faint sound of footsteps behind him, at least one other player had arrived to join him, just in time.

@poppy-battenberg

He turned to face her properly, legs crossed in a half lotus position. And he paid great attention, even though she seemed to be elsewhere, her mind travelling faster than his words. Carol minded. He felt ignored. Even the conversation she picked from what she wanted to answer to. Who would have known the President’s niece was camera shy?

For a little, he wondered what her game is. But it couldn’t have been that deep. She simply didn’t think to dignify him with enough attention for a solid conversation. Suddenly, he didn’t want to say anything, back. Her justification was fair enough, in every way. It upset him that she had been the one to walk out of the fight, but there was nothing he could do. Those were the rules of any sort of combat, mortal or not. Despite the pout on his face, he understood. Not that he wanted to.

For a little, he didn’t say anything, either. Something about imagining the fight. There was no way he would ask Poppy about it – he’d see the tapes once he got out of there, and if he didn’t get out of there, then it didn’t matter in the first place. Problem solved. When he became aware of their deafening silence, he scoffed. “Why this silent? Don’t tell me I’m this unworthy of one last quality conversation. Since, you know, I reckon we won’t be doing much talking from now on.”

The silence that followed felt electric to Poppy. Her grip on the knife was so tight her jagged nails were starting to cut through the skin of her palm. Cuts from her first day in the arena were reopening along her hands and wrists from the tension. Her mind was reeling as she focused more on the large weapon than the man holding it. After so much talking, the quiet felt like the most daring threat. If he approached, she would need to act quick. 

.

Could he trust her? In spite of her words, and even if he wanted to let his guard down, he felt like he should not. Just watch out for them, Jupiter. I know a thing or two about narcissistic assholes. Smith’s warning from a different lifetime echoed in his head, reminding him of the danger of trusting others, of exposing vulnerability. Only now did the words make him feel a little naïve. Now, after every tribute that he trusted had likely died. Now that Smith had. He knew then that he had been lucky so far, but if he was not careful moving forward, that luck might very well run out.

Her question reminded him of something she had said in her interview. Even if he no longer remembered her exact words, the bluntness of the remark had left a lasting impression, along with the audience’s reaction to it. “Are you surprised that I’m getting gifts?” he asked, returning the favour of replying to a question with another question. “Because everyone out there is supposed to like you more than their own tributes?” Rather than venom, his voice was mostly tinged with caution. Most of his gifts had come from Selene. If Poppy, with her connection to the president, ended up winning and getting out, he did not want her to give Selene any trouble for supporting him.

“Honestly, I don’t know who sent many of them.” It was not a lie, not exactly. There had been a couple gifts with initials he did not recognise and gifts with no initials at all. “Doesn’t matter. You can take whatever you want if you let me go this time. I’m only here because I followed the lights, but I can scram before you can spell Las Vegas, if you want me to.” It was getting dark anyway. As much as he wanted to solve the mystery of what lied beyond the fence, being stranded in the desert at night would be terrible for his survival.

Poppy was impressed by his response, and embarrassed with herself. Her cheeks warmed up a little more beyond the desert heat as she thought about the things she’d said in her interview. It was probably the most she’d talked at once, on her own, in months. She couldn’t recall her own words exactly now, only knew that they were not the boost of confidence she needed for herself or sponsors. The interview felt almost like a nightmare that she’d accidentally shared with too many people, like it was a brilliant dream.

She had a way of being funny unintentionally that Carol couldn’t ignore. A simper formed on his lips, almost genuine, almost giving in to tiredness and dehydration. “No, I don’t think so,” he confessed, almost distracted in an attempt to appear nonchalant. He wasn’t. Poppy Battenberg became, without notice, personal to him. Instead of treating her just like another tribute in the way of victory, the hovering, dangerous need to make it count somehow was sitting on his shoulder. And she always did give him so little, barely a couple of words and some passive, impersonal glares. 

So he sighed. And he was about to say just the snarkiest comment ever, if it weren’t for Panem’s pompous anthem interrupting. Carol tightened his grip on the trident, just in case, as he looked up. Smith, Elm, Troy, Maize, Brigit’s faces flashed before them, seconds worth of mentions before they would forever be forgotten. The feeling weighed heavily on the boy from Four, who could only think of his dead district partner. Had he seriously missed Rio’s face, as big as the moon, broadcasted on the night sky? Pity. That would have been a sight.

Maize had to be addressed. Carol didn’t know what the deal was between the two, but, if he trusted his gut and what he’d gathered from Maize just moments before she passed, it was, once again, Poppy’s half-doing. His finalization. They did have this unspoken deal going on, it seemed, but Carol no longer wanted to participate. He never wanted to, in the first place.

“Let’s get some things out of the way. If you attack, I attack back. At best, you’ll be all holes when you meet the, um, the remaining one. If my count is correct, it’s just us left. Just us and…” His mind delayed his calculation by a few seconds, until he could finally recall whose face hadn’t been shown on the sky. “Five.”

“So, you can shoot your shot now, but I’m not Rio. He’s always been…” A soft sigh exited his mouth. It had a villainous perfume to it, though Carol seemed just plainly sad about his own revelation. “So brutal. Instinct is great, but, Poppy, you don’t want to fight someone who actually plans ahead. Not yet, at least. It’s not the right time for either of us.”

Carol was talking too much already, as opposite to Poppy’s vertiginous silences. It didn’t matter. The sound of his own voice gave him strength. It was almost as if his mouth was no longer dry to the point of being one with the sand. “If you attack, I attack back. And you won’t make it, Poppy, not right now, because right now I’m quite upset with you still.”

The pause was to clear his own mind. Without even having noticed, his heart started booming, almost out of his chest. “You should have left him to me. That was rude of you, intervening. I was hoping we could address that.”

Poppy was ready to take his statement as a threat to leave, and took one step backward when the anthem began. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to crouch down and dig out a hole in the sand to bury her head. She didn’t want to see this. Even without looking up from Carol, some of the images still caught her periphery. The unique shape of Elm’s jaw, but without the swelling from their bloodbath fight. A stray curl from Maize, not matted down by her time in the arena. Elm who kept trying to help her; Maize who somehow always meant well without ever being honest. 

He eyed the knife in her hand; sharp, shiny, dangerous. Even if he knew how to fight, his glass shard likely would not hold up against an actual proper weapon–and he did not. Besides, this was Poppy Battenberg, the president’s niece, a tribute with a ten, someone capable of knocking Elm’s teeth out. He might as well just wave the proverbial white flag now. It was what his exhaustion and frustration compelled him to do anyway. The rest of him, however, was not quite ready to give up just yet.

His brows furrowed at the question she asked in response to his own. “I don’t need to give you a reason. You want to be the one to get out of here alive as much as I do.” If she did not, she would not have made it so far, would she? It was probably unwise to point out why she should want to kill him, but he was in a testy mood to say the least.

That said, he realised that this was not the direction where he wanted to encourage the conversation to go, and tried to switch gears. “I’ll give you a reason not to. People tend to not love older tributes who kill the younger kids, even if they end up winning.” He did not actually know that, he was mostly talking out of his ass now, but it sounded right enough.

His eyes drifted back down to the container she had pointed at. He no longer felt as sick as before, but that did not mean his appetite had returned. With one foot, Jupiter gently pushed the container closer towards Poppy. “You hungry?” he asked with a tilt of his head. “It’s a proper meal, larger than what I normally get back home even. I ate some of it but there’s more than half left.” If nothing else, perhaps a peace offering could work in his favour.

Maize considered it for a moment. She did have the darts, tucked away in a pocket of the armor, but she didn’t want to give those away. “I have nothing,” she told her, a final lie for the road, perhaps, for old times’ sake. “But if I see something I’ll keep your wish in mind.” She lifted the canteen to her lips, tilted her head back, opened her throat, and poured the water into her mouth, fully expecting the refreshing taste, almost wanting to show off that she’d gotten this from Poppy, that she wouldn’t give anything in return — and instead, her entire mouth and throat were on fire immediately. She coughed, choked, tried to spit it out but she’d already swallowed some, it was her fucking hubris. “What the fuck—” she coughed out.

He couldn’t breathe anymore. It was as if every breath was sticking to the insides of his mouth, like gum way too chewed. In lack of water, in search for water, desperately. This time, for less damage on his brand-new shoes, Carol decided to follow the highway, but after a few hours of walking and after enough swallowed dust that it became clear he’d never be hungry again, he began to think it was all pointless. Deserts roads led nowhere. The Gamemakers were making a solid point.

In the distance, a pool of water glimmered. Carol actually blamed it on his eyesight, not quite expecting it to be real. As he approached the spot that bathed all the moonlight, he became convinced that he hit the jackpot. With his last soundly, determined steps, he rushed to get there. The reality was quick to become depressing. Carol collapsed (almost dramatically) in the sand with a heavy sigh. He had his trident with him. He had his dagger with him. What he didn’t have was the slightest source of water.

All of a sudden, the possibility of dying of thirt became palpable. And so damn dumb. He knew it could happen, even though he had never seen it happen before in the Hunger Games. It was a long-lived myth of faded days. However, it felt as if he was going to become the first one in a while. What an undeserving ending.

With no cacti in sight, maybe he was doomed. There was something sisyphic in his quest that he couldn’t help but appreciate. There it was, human nature at its finest. With his driest chuckle yet, Carol stretched out his neck, as if to catch a camera’s attention. His words were less suffering than he thought they’d come out. For that, he was grateful. Finally, a drop of dignity (and no drop of water). “I could really use something to drink, thanks and please. I might actually die, so…”

Then, something in the distance moved. Carol looked back, his neck snapping in the direction of where the noise came from. Having expected a coyote, he was both intrigued and alarmed to recognize the President’s niece. “Oh, please, find your own part of the desert to die in,” he sighed out, exasperated but suddenly revitalized enough to jump back on his feet and give his best attempt at a fight, if needed.

@poppy-battenberg​

His fingers clawed into the chain link fence and rattled it against the bolts, as if demanding a way in, knowing nobody would answer. He had stopped crying at some point. Grief still pooled behind his eyes threatening to spill over again at a moment’s notice, but anger and exhaustion had taken hold stronger now. He would find out what those lights were if it was the last thing he would do.

With his hearing still partially impaired, the sloshing sound of water only reached his ears when it was already far too late to run. Jupiter turned around to find the president’s niece there with a canteen over her shoulder. His eyes briefly darted to the identical one on the ground by his feet, along with the jacket he had not yet worn and the container of half-eaten meal he might never get to finish. Shame.

She was dangerous; he knew that much from Elm and her training score. Perhaps this was it for him then. The storm had not returned since yesterday, it would not conveniently save him again. There was still the shard of glass nestled in his pocket, but what good had it done him last time? “Are you going to kill me?” he pointedly asked, voice coming out more tired than scared.

Poppy continued to squint at the boy, this time trying to take in all of his appearance, everything littered around him. She assumed it was all gifts. Enough gifts to be left lying around. Sponsors liked him. It was easy enough to understand, from all she’d observed in training and interviews. And there were always sponsors with a soft spot for the young kids, for the underdogs left in an arena full of people who knew how to kill efficiently. Even her fucking aunt would probably have preferred to bet on him than Poppy.