After The Storm (A Hunger Games Fanfic)

Don't Touch the Fort - 3

He fucking asked for it. Literally.

Mercedes stumbles through her old path, spitting out as many swearwords as she can think of and several that she's just made up. It doesn't help. Usually swearing brings some kind of relief, but now there's nobody to tell her off and she suspects that the Capitol don't care. The words that she normally spits with such venom fall flat. They don't help the heavy, fluttering feeling inside her that her, the notorious Mercedes Fadle, is looking death in the face for the first time.

She throws herself onto the floor, looking back at the sky. Clouds scudd across her vision. Her stomach grumbles. She should have got something from the second bloodbath, but something had snapped when that prat from Nine had just stood there and let her shoot him. How fucking pathetic of her.

She'd promised herself, a long time ago, that if she ever, ever had the fucking awful luck to get reaped, she wouldn't get all dopey over a kill. After all, it's them or her, and she'd much prefer it if she lived. Rafe was armed; he could have hurt her. But Gavin?

He fucking asked for it, she reminds herself. If he wanted to die, that's his problem.

Martin didn't.

"Fuck off," she mutters to nobody in particular. Only the wind replies, brushing warmly over her head. The weather today is perfect, now the ground has dried out. She must stink; she needs a wash. As soon as this thought crosses her mind, she laughs. Anybody who gets close enough to her to know what she smells like won't be thinking about the stink at all. Besides, what she needs more than a wash is food. She's not as hungry as she'd expected. The majority of her stomach seems to be filled with a dull weight, as if she's swallowed a stone. They didn't cover this in training. Or maybe they did, perhaps that woman mentioned it after she'd stormed out of the room...

The door slams behind her with a satisfying clang. The stupid woman! 'Miss Fadle' indeed; she'll fucking show her. Just let her back in there, let her get a sword in her hands and that woman in front of her and she'll show her 'Miss Fadle'! Actually, no. She'd rather not go back in there with them all staring at her like she's some kind of freak show just because she's not going to bow down to any authority, even if it is the fucking Capitol.

Her room stretches out, a mess in front of her even though she's only spent one night in it. The bed was too comfortable; trust the bastards here to spend a lot of money on a dead girl's bed, it's probably a new one every year as well, so instead she'd dragged off the covers and the pillows and set herself up a fort, like she used to when her parents were arguing. Just to make things feel a bit more homely, she's strewn the contents of the drawers - enough training kits for a whole parade of tributes - all over the floor. She sneers when she sees it. Let the Avox deal with it.

As she hurls herself onto her bed with as much force as can be packed into such a small body, she notes with a gleeful pride her initials, carved into the side of the stupidly elaborate dresser with a knife stolen from the dinner table. After all, if they're going to demand her life for something she didn't even fucking do, they may as well give her the right to wreck their furniture.

Satisfied that she's caused enough destruction to make them at least frown, and pleased that she's already got under the skin of the instructor, but still restless with malevolent energy, she lauches a volley of punches at the mattress, each one aimed at a different face that has pissed her off at some point.

When she stops, panting but gleeful with the effort, somebody coughs in the doorway. She spins around and thuds onto the floor, fists raised, but it's only Martin, arms folded. His training kit isn't even creased, and he takes in the mess on her floor with a raised eyebrow.

"Is this necessary?" he asks. She scowls at him; she won't go back! She appreciates him trying, but she's not going back into that room.

"Fuck off," she snaps, "Is it necessary for us to be here?"