The Beasts of Us [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

ARENA IX. Joy.

"What do you mean, captured?"

"Well I don't think she means they sat down to a tasty feast and swapped tales of their adventures."

"Shut up, Haze." Sapphire looked tired and sounded irritable. Her daemon snapped his teeth at Stunner, just to make the point clear, but she didn't even look around. "How do you get captured?"

Heather didn't like explaining, that was obvious. "He's camouflaged. Well. Mud on his face, leaves too. I was washing my hands and the water distracted us. Next thing I know, there's a hand around my mouth and I'm being dragged backwards."

Lin, lounging on the floor next to Joy, whistled. "He's got to be strong, to drag you."

"I was taken by surprise. He took me to his camp and tied me to a tree, but he forgot to take my weapon. When he fell asleep I cut myself free and ran."

Probably to these dumb puppets she was convincing. Joy knew better. She'd heard this story twice already, once when Heather had first reappeared, and then again when Sapphire and Nin had returned from their comfort break, and it had been told virtually identically both times. And she was much too wooden. Heather was lying through her teeth.

She was terrible at it, too.

"I wonder why he didn't kill you," Joy said. Roger had cheeped the same thing in her ear on first hearing the story, but she'd been saving it for when Sapphire was around.

Heather huffed. "I don't know. Information?"

"About us?"

"I didn't stop to ask." Abruptly, Heather and her daemon stalked off into the Cornucopia.

The moment hung in the air. Sapphire, arms folded over her chest, hair braided in two tails over her shoulders so that the grease didn't show so much. Her ferret daemon – Joy had discovered that he was called Tillen – draped in a similar way, watching with beady eyes. Stunner in his habitual place, on his back on the roof of the Cornucopia, dangling his head so that he could see, his shirt open to the waist. Caspar, the good little Two boy, had been hacking at an invisible enemy with a sword but now he stood watching his district partner go with the faintest of scowls. Nin was sitting with her bare feet dangling in the water, looking troubled. After a pause in which it became obvious that none of the rest of them would intervene, she stood up, stepped back into her shoes and went off after Heather.

Joy snorted.

"Now there's a thing," Lin mused. For all that Sapphire had snapped and snarled about how untrustworthy she was, he was still happy enough to sit next to her. He told jokes which weren't funny, but which she laughed at anyway, and proposed tricks that they both decided it was safest not to do. His guard was well and truly down. "And all of last night for nothing. How are you feeling?"

She flapped a hand: oh, nothing of note. "I'm fine. It was just a very tense moment. I'm not surprised Sapphire flipped, and of course she'd flip at me."

"Well, now she knows you didn't do it, maybe she'll leave you alone and turn all her fury on Charles."

Joy doubted that. Sapphire had enough fury for the whole world, and growing. The attack last night had been the first crack in her façade that she'd seen, but it was enough. The girl from One was losing her composure. Joy intended to keep it that way.

Stunner was proving helpful in that. Rarely lifting a finger himself, he did a good job of keeping Sapphire right on edge, giving her no chance to relax. She wondered if there was a grudge there, or whether this was a tactic he'd adopted – but no. He wasn't that bright, and their arguments had the feeling of a long-standing battle about them. After all, they'd have known for a while they would be rivals. The proximity was probably driving them both crazy.