The Beasts of Us [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

ARENA X. Dannie.

Dannie watched Tesla disappear from the sky with tears streaming down her face.

She'd said she wouldn't cry. She'd promised Sal and Sofey, neither of whom could cope with tears. After the dress incident, where the Capitol people had stared at her blotchy cheeks and watery eyes as though she'd been walking on her hands, she'd told Lyam to give her a good strong peck if she thought she was about to start blubbing, and she'd thought that she might actually manage it. But the sight of her district partner's photograph fading into nothingness had made the tears impossible to dam.

It wasn't even that she'd liked Tesla. She hadn't. No more than she liked most people, anyway. He'd just been...there. But he was from home. He knew the shadows of the factories and the feel of the Chip when it was crowded full of people; he knew the side-routes that would get you around the back of the Justice Building, where the number-crunching officials who worked there sometimes handed out their leftovers if they were feeling generous. He knew where the Peacekeepers stood and which bits of Three good people from working families should avoid. He knew her life in a way that Kei never would, and somehow she'd ended up feeling responsible for him. And now he was dead.

Kei, perched on the rock next to her, hadn't even looked. Guilt, or something else? He'd never been particularly jovial but now he was completely withdrawn. Having a conversation with him took effort. He always seemed to be listening to someone else as well.

"Crying won't bring him back," his daemon hissed to her. The first time she'd spoken to her Dannie had nearly fallen over her own feet with surprise. It was rare for daemons to speak to other people's humans without their own person joining in; that was normally reserved for families or lovers. Nobody from outside Dannie's family circle had ever done it. But Dana seemed to have taken over Kei's communicating with others.

"I don't want him back," she said.

The snake flicked her tongue. They got snakes in Three, but none like this one. She was jet black from head to tail, and at night her scales seemed to absorb what little light there was. It was more like looking at something that wasn't, in fact, there. Watching a hole that moved. She looked more threatening than her person did, and Dannie wondered if there was something about Kei she didn't know that would suggest why.

Sensing her discomfort, Lyam alighted next to her to make it a conversation of three: two daemons and a human. "There's other things to cry for," he said gravely.

"Tears don't help anything."

Kei had remained dry-eyed throughout, Dannie remembered. "Maybe they do for me," she said.

"They won't take you home." If she'd had fingers, she'd probably have been counting on them. "They won't give you food or weapons. They won't find you shelter."

"I don't care."

As if only just realising that the conversation was happening, Kei stirred. He glanced from human to daemon and back again. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing," Dannie sighed, before Dana could speak. "Go back to sleep."

"I wasn't asleep."

She'd known that. Dana wouldn't have been awake otherwise. Either Kei had opted to overlook that or he'd missed it completely. She wouldn't have been surprised whichever way. Both of them were slipping. Dana had hit the nail right on the head. Despite the food packets, they were hungry; despite the relative peace, they were tired. The suddenness of Tesla's death weighed heavy in the air and they'd gone out into the flat, rocky landscape and found the tallest flat rock to rest on, so that nobody could creep up on them. She knew it was all affecting her. She was woozy and torn between the need to stay alert and the need to sleep for days. It must have been affecting Kei as well.