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𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑅𝑇𝐸𝐸𝑁 ᴛʜᴇ 72ɴᴅ ʜᴜɴɢᴇʀ ɢᴀᴍᴇs
❦
Darkness entrapped the arena, spreading like fog over the landscape. It seemed to go on forever, with no tell as to where the boundaries lay and what was only a projection. The tributes themselves rose from hollow platforms, the movement slow and allowing them to glance across the arena, to each other and to what lay ahead, enshrouded in shadows.
Around the room, murmurs of excitement soon spread into full conversations and shouts. Cillian shared a look with Joanna, nodding with reaffirmation- they'd managed to arrange a good number of sponsors that morning. Joanna had procured the most, speaking with such urgency, that she was hard to deny. From atop his throne, Snow watched with an added interest. He watched with a narrowed eye, a gaze that Cillian did not wish to interpret. It would be the last time they would see him before the end of the games.
Joanna did not seem to notice the president's watch, or if she did, she did not care. There was an erraticness to her movements, a desperation that did not simply span to the need to protect the tributes as mentors once had her. Cillian could understand her want for sponsors- it could mean life or death- but he did not understand her added vigor, her distressed need. That was something else entirely.
The arena was sickening just by the sight of it. They could almost feel the heat from the screen as a chorus of awe spread through the exotic crowd. The dull and dark colours on the television made the capital people seem so much more absurd, dressed for the occasion in floral ensambles of neon and bright pastel.
In a jagged line, the tributes stood at the bottom of a vast plain. There was no cornucopia in sight at first. Only the great, looming shape of a mountain, rippled with dense, black clouds, of which at the bottom sat a vast lake. The only water source, he would guess, thinking of the game makers and their cruel rules.
As the screen panned over the waiting faces of the tributes, Cillian seemed to find the cornucopia at the same time Freyja did. The strange building was as dark as it's surroundings, protruding oddly from the floor in black spikes. With walls made of black, lustrous rock, the cornucopia blended in with the ground it sunk into, the only entrances seeming to be thin gaps parallel to the ground.
There seemed to be no life. No bird in the sky, not rat scurrying across the ground. Only towering fumaroles gave a sign of movement across the vastness, sprouting out a yellow glow and a tongue of mist.
Even with the cacophony of noise around him, Cillian was absorbed in the silence of his own head. There was no sound, just one clear, noise-less image. Something about staring up at that huge screen, mentors and sponsors alike crowding around him, drew Cillian back to the memory of his own games, refusing to let him leave. He seemed to blink in the training centre one moment and return to the podium the next, flickering between the two as if in a simulation.
Cillian drew in a sharp breath and screwed his eyes shut. Even without Freyja and Otis' face staring across the screen, he was still brought back into those memories. Of the heat and the sand and the dryness, the scratching of his throat, the stinging of his eyes, and the throbbing of his stomach. They had watched him once as he did now. Cillian wondered if that was all they could see when the looked at him now: a scared, starving tribute with a wretched need to survive.
He could not leave this image, could not free himself from the cage of his own mind. There was no sound, only that image, only the feeling of his chest raging as he struggled to take in panicked breaths. Then the countdown sound came again and he was fighting the urge to reel backwards, to run from the booming sound and threatening faces. He was more than this, Cillian had to remind himself. He was a victor, a victim.
As the starting canon was released, a hand snapped him from his trap, forcing him back to the present. Cillian let out a haggard breath and stared back into the eyes of his district partner. Johanna's lips were pulled into a thin line- a simple and secretive show of worry, he's realised in the weeks he'd had to notice. Still he felt breathless, and not even her grounding touch could give him his life back.
This year, the blood bath lived up to its name. Two were gone within the first five minutes- a young boy of only eleven from district eight, and the tall, feeble tribute from twelve- both murdered by the careers. Their pack swiftly formed, stalking together like wolves to the cornucopia.
But with Otis nowhere in sight, Freya was already by the base of the strange structure, scaling for an opening into the weapons holding. Cillian felt a hand grip his, nails digging white crescents into his skin. They watched as slid down against the black, chalky ground and disappeared inside. Attention moved back to the careers, to the destructive path they began to lay out. This is good, he thought, they're safe enough to not be focused on.
The careers split up early on. The district four tribute- Rafe- stalked along, looking so out of place as they headed towards the lake, away from the supplies. A risky move, trusting the other careers to collect enough and then to share.
He'd spoken too soon, it seemed. There was a wobble of the camera, an aerial view of the arena, projected from the force field, and then Freyja's face stared back at them from the darkness, illuminated only by the slit of light that fell from the thin, cave-like entrance and the red glow of the walls. There was a pack in her hands, ready to be slung across her back, and a small hatchet in her hands, tested between fingers.
Freyja let out a gasp just as another face entered the screen. The capital audience let out a frivolous murmur. Johanna gripped him tighter.
The girl from District Three slid through the cornucopia, landing against the dark, red walls. There was a knife in her hand, long and sharp, ready to slice across her front. Freyja ducked quickly, sliding beneath her arching arm in time to push the other girl by the side.
With the pack and weapon in hand, Freyja made a run for the small, crawl space that was the exit. But the other tribute came toward her again, movements desperate and frightened. Words came from Freyja's lips- something indiscernible from the other side of the screen- but as the girl from Three came for her again, she could do nothing else.
Freyja lifted the hatchet and brought her arm swinging downwards, landing the blade straight into the girl's shoulder. They both seemed to scream at the same time. Freyja stumbled backwards, taking the spare knife, grabbing anything in sight, and tumbled through the crawl space. Then she was gone, sprinting across the barren land, hair falling down her back in long, dark tresses that made Cillian think of his sister.
There were hands on his back, wrapping around his shoulders as comfortably as if they were friends, as if he was anything more than an object to them all. Cillian could hear their voices: excited and jovial, far too casual considering the nature of the games the betted on. They were celebrating, congratulating him as if he had anything to do with the District Seven tributes' survival.
Only then did the death canon ring out through the noise. That ominous sound which felt like a bad omen.
