Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“How well do you know 528?” Junmyeon asks from across the table, swirling a glass of red wine in his hand. He’d come to wake Minho up before dawn, at least a full hour before they have to leave for the training center. It’s difficult to find other times alone to mentor, apparently, and Junmyeon is so busy with prior engagements and meetings with potential sponsors anyway. 

“No better than you, I guess.” Minho shrugs. A hologram of Dahyun’s tribute ID lights up between them. Her picture stares him down, unsmiling, unblinking. “You’ve seen her file, right? So maybe even less than you.”

Junmyeon purses his lips. “I don’t mean personally.” The fingers of his free hand drum silently on the table. “You two spar a lot?” 

Minho nods. 

“Which one of you is better?” Junmyeon asks bluntly. 

Minho shrugs again. “Depends.”

“Which one of you has won more,” Junmyeon clarifies. Minho’s ID flickers to life beside Dahyun’s and he realizes just how long it’s been since he’s properly looked at his face. It’s easier through a picture, like he can divorce himself from the image. The cold eyes and sullen mouth that had doomed him to poor first impressions as a child have stayed with him, only deepening over time. It’s no wonder aloof has been taken to fit him so well. 

“We’re tied,” he finally says, pulling his eyes up to look at Junmyeon, bathed in blue light. He makes an amused smile at Minho, tinged with something flat.

“I wondered why you two were in this year’s picks.” He takes a sip of his wine. “It’s a good story. They don’t usually like to put both of their top trainees in the Games. It’s a waste, you see.” He sighs when Minho says nothing in response. “Keep an eye on her. She’s very…” His mouth twists in thought as he searches for the right word. “Competitive.”

“You mean she’ll kill me first chance she gets,” Minho snorts, leaning back in his chair, arms folded.

“That’s not what I mean, but yes”—Junmyeon’s smile is less amused and much more the one he’d worn in the Arena—“that too. She likes to be on the offensive.” 

“If your advice is to join the Career pack, I’ve already done that.”

“It isn’t.” Junmyeon keeps that smile, all too placid. 

“Well, what is it then?” Minho huffs. “You woke me up just to talk?”

“You aren’t wrong to consider her a significant threat to you,” Junmyeon continues, as if Minho hasn’t spoken, “nor the other Careers, but you should remember that you’re a Career too. They asked you to join the alliance.”

Minho furrows his brows, blinking at Junmyeon. “Yeah, obviously I know that.” He’s all too aware of the fact that he’s a Career. He’d like to be a little less aware of it sometimes.

“Do you, Lee Minho?” 

His brows furrow deeper. 

Before Junmyeon can say anything else, around the corner and down the hall one of the bedroom doors opens. He raises his brows as he lifts the wine glass to his lips and stands, the hologram on the table whirring softly as it shuts down.

“Think about it.”

🜲

“Come on.” Dahyun’s smile never once shifts, so still it may as well be plastered onto her face. Her stance is relaxed, far from that of an aggressor. She glances at the knife Minho is poised to throw, then back at him. With a sigh that sounds more vaguely amused than anything, she puts her hands up in surrender. “If I wanted to kill you, don’t you think I would’ve done it already?” Her eyes drift down to the boy in front of her. “Or have let him do it. We can be civil, can’t we, Lee Minho?” 

He can feel his eye twitch. It feels like Dahyun wields the name the same way she wields her swords.

“Hyung.” Minho can feel Seungmin’s presence behind him, either for support or safety. 

“Why should we be civil, Kim Dahyun?” He remains poised to throw, ready should Dahyun launch herself into an attack. She’s always had an element of unpredictability to her, one that had served her extremely well in sparring matches. “One of us has to die sooner or later. I don’t see why you shouldn’t die right now. Maybe it’s time to settle our score once and for all.” 

“Well, you could kill me”—Dahyun shrugs, her confidence unchanged—“but if you do that both of you will be dead in days. I hear thirst is a horrible way to go.” She lowers her arms, but keeps her distance. “I want to make a deal. A temporary alliance, let’s say.” 

“Because the last one ended so well,” Minho says dryly, eyes narrowing. “You stab Joonyoung in the front or the back?” 

“Who says I killed him?” 

Upon closer inspection, there’s the shine of a parachute wrapped tightly around Dahyun’s bicep, a faint stain where blood has seeped into the fabric. The hair on one side of her head isn’t pulled back like the rest, falling at an awkward length at her shoulder, the ends choppy. Her shirt is sliced open at the shoulder, the edges of the tear discolored and some sort of patch covering the skin beneath. 

“One of the Twos got him. Probably Soobin, since Yeji tried to do me in.” Dahyun’s smile curls into something irritated and she rolls her eyes. “Maybe if Joonyoung wasn’t so useless Soobin would be dead too.”

A long silence befalls the three of them.

It would be so easy to kill her right now.

But there’s no denying that Dahyun is fast. No matter what Minho feels towards her, he knows better than anyone how capable she is. 

And if someone has to die, he would rather it be her. 

A loud sigh hangs heavy in the air. Dahyun lays her swords on the ground and presents her empty hands to Minho exasperatedly.

“Take her swords,” Minho murmurs over his shoulder to Seungmin. Seungmin is clumsy in his hurry and Dahyun rolls her eyes again, tapping her foot impatiently. Only once Seungmin has returned with the swords does Minho lower the knife. 

“Fine,” he says. “What kind of alliance?”

🜲

Despite how tired Minwoo is when he gets home from work, he still sits on the bedroom floor to play cards with Minho. Today, the usual fun that accompanies it is nowhere to be seen. It all feels like they’re both just running through the motions, hoping the other doesn’t see the emptiness with which they play. 

Minho tries not to look at his brother, face drawn with worry and fear. It’s so intense that it permeates the air around them. If he looks at him, he’s terrified Minwoo will see right through him, will see traces of the blood Minho had spent 20 minutes desperately scrubbing at.

“You can’t let them make you into a Career. Don’t be a Career, Minho. You can’t, okay? You can’t.”

So Minho lies, even as he feels it sink its teeth into his stomach, into his bones, gnawing like a starving dog. 

How can he tell the truth? 

How can he be honest? 

It’s not just for his brother’s sake, but for some desperate semblance of his own as well.

Relief bleeds guilt bleeds relief bleeds guilt. Something twists and knots in Minho, so tightly he doubts he’ll ever be able to untie it.

It makes him so sick he wishes he could just throw up and be done with it, to expel everything within him and start all over again.

When Minwoo hugs him, tight like Minho will be taken away from him, Minho just buries his face into his chest and cries silently. 

“You’re not like them,” Minwoo whispers, a reassurance to moreso to himself than Minho as he strokes his hair. “I’ll never let them make you into a Career.”

In the end, it just makes Minho cry harder.

🜲

“We figured they’d have a feast sooner or later.” Dahyun holds her hair tie in her mouth, swiping at the shorter section of hair that falls in her face and plasters itself to her sweaty skin with frustration. “Two will be at the Cornucopia, or at least stake out somewhere nearby. May as well be a feast for them,” she huffs.

“And you’re helping us how, exactly?” Seungmin asks, arms folded. He shrinks back under the scathing look Dahyun gives him. 

“But,” she continues, “Soobin’s knee is pretty fucked. He won’t be able to do much, so they’ll have him guard the packs.” Her brows raise at Minho. “They’ll go after whoever makes a break for it. We wait until someone else is stupid enough to try to get a pack so they’re distracted. We’ll sneak up behind them; you cover me so Yeji can’t get a good shot, I’ll kill Soobin, and I’ll get your packs for you.” Like she can hear Seungmin’s mouth open, Dahyun fixes the glare on him again. “I’m faster than you are.” The glare shifts to a rather unimpressed look as she sizes him up. “They’d crush you like a bug. All you have to do is stay out of the way. You can do that much, right?” 

“You think I’m stupid enough to try to attack Yeji?” Minho makes a sound of disbelief in the back of his throat, an incredulous look leveled at Dahyun. “There’s no way she’ll be in my range before she sees us.” 

“Her aim’s not too good these days,” Dahyun says with faux sympathy. “A cut to the eye will do that to you, you know. That’s why you’ve gotta do it right the first time if you’re going to try to kill someone. You should be able to get close enough before she’s actually going to be able to hit you. Besides, you don’t have to kill her”—the look she gives Minho is mocking, challenging almost, and he can practically hear her saying something along the lines of “Well, maybe you don’t have it in you anyway”— “you just have to keep her off my back for long enough for me to kill Soobin. That shouldn’t be that hard for you, right, 1025?”

It’s not a great plan. It’s not even what Minho would consider a good plan. But at the end of the day, he’s not really sure what choice there is other than to agree to it.

There’s no chance he’ll make it alone, and no chance he’s letting Seungmin try. 

“Okay,” he concedes with a sigh. “You swear you won’t try and take the packs for yourself?”

A promise will do no good. Things like that have never mattered in the Games, regardless of who they’re made between. Trust does not belong here.

Dahyun sighs, but puts one hand over her heart and holds the other up, her thumb against her palm. “Scouts’ honor.” 

When the clouds part and the sky is painted in the bright oranges and pinks of sunset, Bae Joohyun’s voice echoes through the Arena, clear as a bell, to invite them all to a feast at noon tomorrow. “Before you decide not to come, I should inform you that we will be providing refreshments for you all,” she titters, “so you should think long and hard about rejecting this generous invitation. Some of you may not live to get another.” 

“Hyung,” Seungmin whispers, leaning over, “can I borrow some of your knives?” 

Minho hums, pulling a few and handing them to Seungmin. He watches Seungmin stand and scurry off towards the woods, making only a short, sharp explanation of “I need to piss” when Dahyun asks him where exactly he thinks he’s going. 

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” she says when Seungmin’s disappears into the trees, a self satisfied smirk on her face when she looks at Minho. 

“Maybe I’m just waiting for the right time,” Minho responds coldly, narrowing his eyes at her. “Thinking about the bigger picture. Making a good narrative.”

“Right.” Dahyun snorts. “Or maybe you just can’t do it.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I know the things that matter.” She blinks at him, the smirk as sharp as any knife. “You still cry when you kill something?” 

Minho bites the inside of his cheek. Dahyun likes to needle, to get under his skin. “Does it matter? They’re still dead at the end of the day, and I’m still one step closer to winning. Why don’t you just kill me if you think I’m so weak?” 

“Thinking about the bigger picture,” Dahyun says breezily. “Making a good narrative. You’re useful. You’ll die sooner or later, so what difference does a day make to me?”

Useful. 

“Remember that you’re a Career too.” 

Something clicks.

“Now, will you give me my swords back?” Dahyun reaches for them, on the other side of Minho. “I already told you I’m not going to kill you. We are allies after all.” 

They’re uniquely designed—hook swords with straight longsword blades extending from the top—and clearly a pricey gift from a sponsor. As another favorite, like all Careers, there’s no doubt in Minho’s mind that her potential future is exactly the same as his. 

He wonders if it bothers her at all—if it bothers any of them—or if it’s a price they’re willing to pay to win. 

What’ve I got to lose? is a favorite saying among trainees in the Facility. 

“So why do you want them back?” Minho pushes them further out of reach. He doesn’t miss the way Dahyun’s eyes narrow at him for a fraction of a second. “Afraid I’ll kill you?”  

Her eyes narrow again, longer this time. “If you had any sense, you would have done it the second you saw me,” she says after a beat, face smoothing out into the saccharine sweetness she had presented to the Capitol. She stands with a huff and in a few short strides retrieves her swords herself, pinching one of the blades between her fingers as she tilts it this way and that a few times and watches the light of the setting sun hit the metal. “But the guilt would eat you alive, wouldn’t it, Lee Minho?”

Then she swings the sword, halting it so the tip is a mere inch away from an unflinching Minho’s throat, a remarkably empty look on her face. The sort he’s much more used to seeing from her. They’ve been here before, countless times in the Facility, watching each other go from children to teenagers, from clumsy to well practiced and deadly. 

Minho stares at Dahyun. Dahyun stares at Minho.

The sword glints as it’s removed from his throat. 

“You’re lucky you’re useful, 1025.” Dahyun digs something out of her pocket and tosses it to him. “Because you’re not much of anything else at all.”

🜲

“I don’t trust her,” Seungmin murmurs, eyes fixed on the cave entrance. Though she’d rolled her eyes, Dahyun had agreed to sleep outside with very little fight.

Minho is glad. She can’t be proved right if she cannot see him.

“I don’t either,” Minho sighs, “but she’s our best chance.” He turns over the pouch that she had thrown him earlier. It’s some kind of fancy plaster, apparently. Dahyun had shown him the one on her shoulder, holding together a fairly large gash like pseudo-stitches.

“There’s no way you can run like that. Use it on your leg,” she had told him. “It’s only temporary, but you’re fucked otherwise.” 

Just like the swords, Minho can only think of how expensive each and every gift is. Someone must really want Dahyun to win.

It makes sense. She has all the makings of a quintessential victor. If things weren’t as they are and he was the sort to bet, he would put money on her.

“I have a really bad feeling about this, hyung,” Seungmin says. “It feels like some kind of impending doom.”

“Aren’t the Games just like that?” Minho pokes at his leg with his fingers, the gauze itchy against his skin. He winces. 

“This is different.” Seungmin shakes his head. “Why would she help us? She doesn’t even like us.”

“I don’t know,” Minho says wearily, “but it’s too much of a risk for us to try to get anything by ourselves.”

“There’s gotta be a way.”

“Look, Seungmin-ah”—Blue moonlight streams in through the mouth of the cave. It looks far too cold for how unbearably hot the night is getting—“sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do to survive.”

“What if she betrays us?” Seungmin asks after a pause. Quiet. Hesitant. As though even speaking it is dangerous. 

That is the question, isn’t it? There is no way to tell how honest Dahyun is in her intentions. Minho is under no illusion that Dahyun isn’t playing this game just as much as he is, if not moreso. And she’s playing just for herself. He wouldn’t trust her even as far as he could throw her. At one point or another, Dahyun will be their enemy again. All that remains to be seen is when exactly she’ll show her true colors.

“I’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.” He shrugs. 

“Won’t it be hard for you?” Seungmin’s voice remains quiet, dampened. It isn’t pity, but more of that bleeding heart that Minho cannot stand. 

“Depends on how much of a fight she puts up.”

“I mean because you know her.” 

Minho feels his jaw tense minutely. “I told you none of us are really people. Careers least of all. Dahyun is just an obstacle. She’s always been an obstacle. It’ll be easy.” He grins at Seungmin, tries for that sharp one Dahyun is so good at. “I’m a Career too, you know.” 

“You’re not like that,” Seungmin says softly. 

“You’re not like them.”

“The thing is,” Minho sighs, “I am.” 

“I know you, hyung,” Seungmin insists. “You’re not.”

“Why?” Minho huffs, a flicker of irritation burning on his tongue. “Because I’m your friend? I’m your friend so you have to see the good in me, is that it?” His jaw tightens. “I’m no better than any of them, Seungmin. It’s not like I can pretend that I am. A Career is a Career.” 

"Fine," Seungmin snaps, weary and strained. "Fine, you're just like them. You’re a Career. You’re the least human of anyone.” Though the light that reaches his face is faint, his eyes are unusually intense. “But you're Minho. You're Lee Minho and even if I'm the only one who really knows it I'm not letting you forget it." He jabs Minho in the chest, strips through layer and layer of him in search of the withering core. "Not just a Career, not just a Capitol Favorite, not just 1025. Even if you’re all those things, no matter what you are, you're still Lee Minho. And I know Lee Minho.”

Nine. Sixteen. Seungmin still looks at him the same.

“Well, don’t worry,” Minho mutters, eyes falling to the moonlight that reflects on his knife. “Even the Lee Minho that you knew could kill a fish.”

🜲

Minho has only just fallen into bed sheets too soft and plush—skin still itching from the feeling of thousands of eyes on him despite a thorough shower and the way he had washed his face three times—when a bloodcurdling scream and sharp crash jolt him right back up. He nearly trips on his way to the door, legs tangling in his sheets in his panicked hurry, and grabs the closest thing his hand finds in the dark. 

His door opens at the same time as three others do. Dahyun, like Minho, doesn't seem to have been awoken, her posture tense and prepared, eyes alert though confused. There's a pen clutched tightly in her fist. Just in front of her, Yujin has her fingers wrapped around a paperweight, her face still dulled by sleep but sharpening with every passing second. From the sharp edges that dig into Minho's fingers, he figures he must have grabbed the same thing. 

Seungmin has nothing in his hands, his eyes bleary but wide with alarm as he puts a hand against his door jamb to steady himself. The four of them look around at each other before the door in between Minho and Seungmin's rooms slams into the wall and Junmyeon stumbles out. Like he doesn't even see them, he opens the door across from the hall with equal force. 

“Taeyeon, stop!” He grabs her wrist, the light from the hall glinting off a shard of ceramic vase clutched tightly in her hand. A thin stream of blood trickles from her palm down her arm and drips into the puddle of water and flowers and the rest of the shattered vase. Taeyeon tries to pull her arm away, but Junmyeon’s grip only tightens. “Stop! It’s not real!” 

“But it was!”

Taeyeon seems to freeze, her whole body shaking minutely. Unable to see her face, fixed firmly on the wall in front of her, Minho can’t tell if it’s from the tense stillness or something else. 

“It was.”

Then, like she’s exhausted, her knees go weak. Junmyeon lets her fall, tremors in his own hands. Her shoulders shake.

Hair obscures Taeyeon’s face as her head turns a fraction, seemingly to look towards the doorway. Her voice is all knotted up — twisted like Minho assumes her mouth to be — and impossible to understand despite the simplicity of the words. “It still is. You know it fucking is.” 

Junmyeon looks over his shoulder towards the hall and curls trembling fingers into fists. His eyes are red rimmed, bloodshot. 

Minho has seen the look in them before, under the table all dressed in black. Despair and anger and hurt so inextricably crushed together that they may as well be one and the same. 

“Go back to bed.” Halting and dripping with cold. Junmyeon has never sounded like he hates them more, like he despises them.

The four of them stand in the doorway, frozen. Nothing feels quite real, and Minho doesn’t know that his legs remember how to move. All he can do is stare. 

“I said go back to bed!” Junmyeon snaps with sudden, sharp heat. 

The moment shatters and all four of them are scrambling away like puppies with their tails between their legs, ready to pretend that this was all only part of a dream. 

Through the sliver in his door as he shuts it, Minho can see Junmyeon sink to the ground as well. 

Something in the way he hunches his shoulders reminds Minho of that boy from One all those years ago.

Miserable. 

In his dream they crown him the victor. He lives that life a thousand times over.

There is not a single one in which he can raise his head.

🜲

As the sun climbs higher and higher in the sky, Minho grows dizzier and dizzier. Even in the relative shade at the edge of the treeline, he feels like he’s being cooked alive. There is no relief under the trees, not from the heat and barely from the blinding sunshine and empty, impossibly bright blue of the sky. 

He blinks as sweat drips from his hair into his eyes. Another drop falls from his nose to hit his hand and makes it jolt involuntarily. 

Dahyun gives him a sharp glare of silent admonishment, but there’s not much she can say when she’s in the exact same predicament as him, eyes vaguely hazy and so drenched in sweat she looks like she’s had a swim. 

A swim would be nice. Suddenly Minho misses the chilly ocean of a few days past. 

One? 

Two? 

Three? 

Everything feels like it’s one big mush, all blurry and out of focus. 

His mouth practically waters at the memory. 

“Hey.” There’s a brief, dull ringing between his ears and he shakes his head to bring Dahyun back into clarity. The side of his head aches faintly where her hand falls away. “Snap out of it. You’ve gotta keep it together. Two’s not gonna just leave you sitting around daydreaming,” Dahyun hisses, voice thinner than usual. 

“I’m thirsty,” Minho defends. It comes out as a slightly embarrassing croak, but it’s hard to properly talk when every swallow just feels more drying than the last. “It’s like we’re in a fucking oven.”

“No way.” Dahyun rolls her eyes. “I hadn’t noticed, ‘cuz I’m absolutely fucking peachy.”

“No need to have such a fucking attitude about it.” 

“I don’t have a ‘fucking attitude’ about it.” The ringing returns, even more faintly. Dahyun has pushed his head more than she’s hit it. “You can’t go delirious on me, Lee Minho.”

“I won’t,” Minho mutters. His tongue pokes at dry, cracked lips and catches the salt of sweat. It’s unpleasant — disgusting even, given that Minho hasn’t been properly clean since the Games started and seawater can only do so much — but something in the back of his throat wants to cry out of desperation. 

It’s barely been a day, if that, since the rivers went dry. 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he had a proper drink without worries about rationing his water. 

Looking at the Cornucopia — rippling and glinting in the hot air — and waiting for noon, Minho finds no guilt or shame in admitting to himself that he would kill for even the tiniest amount of water. Hell, he’ll admit it to the whole nation right now if that’s what it takes. 

Maybe it is pathetic and desperate, but Minho has never claimed that he isn’t just that. 

Who in the Games could? 

“You can’t get sick.” Dahyun hits him in the leg. It’s not particularly near his wound, but it still sets his whole thigh on fire. 

“I won’t.” 

Morning had begun with Seungmin throwing up, hardly able to prop himself up on his arm. Flushed, feverish, and skin absolutely burning to the touch despite the sun not yet reaching them in the cave, it didn’t take a genius to know leaving him hidden there would be the only chance he wouldn’t get killed. 

Minho had left what little water had remained with him. The only other thing he can do is get more water, and hope Seungmin can last that long. 

“If you slow me down, I’ll leave you to die too,” Dahyun says lowly. 

“Seungmin’s not gonna die,” Minho feels himself say, eyes sliding to Dahyun. They sting with sweat. “He can’t die until I kill him.” 

Dahyun smiles at him condescendingly, like she knows something he doesn’t. “Whatever you say, Lee Minho.” They’re silent for a beat. 

The sound of a cicada rings through the air. 

Dahyun scans the sky.

“You left your sick friend behind; isn’t that the same as killing him?” 

“Not my friend.” Noon has to come soon. Minho’s skin practically crawls with heat like it’s tangible. “Not anymore.”

“Good as dead, no matter what he is.” 

“What did you do?” Minho grabs a fistful of Dahyun’s sleeve. He’s dizzy, so dizzy, as he stares at her as hard as he can, trying to pick every single part of her face apart. It melts and comes back together. “What did you do to him?”

Nails dig into the bones of his knuckles until Minho lets go. “I didn’t have to do anything,” Dahyun hisses. “You left him behind all on your own.”

Minho’s fingers tighten around the hilt of a knife, white hot anger adding to the burning under his skin. There’s something grounding about it. Dahyun is right, but he still chases after it. “He’s not-”

“Tributes”— Jinki’s booming voice shakes the trees, making both of them flinch. A table with seven packs rises from the ground, right at the mouth of the Cornucopia—“refreshments have been served.”

There’s what feels like a collective breath, as if the Arena itself is holding it. No one dares to make the first move. Dahyun’s eyes dart around, narrowed and searching. 

On the other side of the clearing, a girl breaks through the long grass at the treeline and sprints. A glint from the top of the Cornucopia hits Minho squarely in the eye and he jerks his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. In the moment he does, Dahyun grabs him by the back of his shirt and half hauls, half throws him out into the field.

“Go!”

It’s not possible to run with the iron grip Dahyun has on his shirt. She marches determinedly, dragging Minho along as he stumbles, one sword clutched tightly in her hand. 

“What are you doing?!” He snaps at her. The girl gets closer to the Cornucopia. An arrow embeds itself into the earth her feet have left only a moment ago, a little closer every few paces. 

“Making sure you don’t betray me,” Dahyun says lowly. Her fist tightens around the fabric.

“Me?” Minho tries to claw at her arm, but his free hand doesn’t have the right angle. He glances at his knife, more than half a mind to use it, if only to cut her. “You think I’m going to betray you?”

“You did last time, didn’t you?” It’s almost angry, almost genuinely betrayed. As if Dahyun has any right to be. “We could’ve made a good pair, 1025. You know me just like I know you.”

“We still can if you would let me go,” Minho snaps. “Do what you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do, and then we never have to see each other again.” 

There’s the sound of an arrow hitting flesh and a cannon goes off. Dahyun freezes, just for a split second. She looks at Minho, a flash of something he’s never seen in her before crossing over her face, then looks off towards the trees and her mouth goes tight with determination. 

“What goes around comes around, Minho,” she whispers. Then, at the top of her lungs, shouts, “Hey, Two!” 

Minho looks towards the Cornucopia to see not Yeji standing atop it but Soobin, a bandage wrapped tightly around his knee, a set of shining, silver spears strapped to his back and an arrow nocked at the ready. Yeji sits beside him, one knee up and Dahyun’s second lost sword catching the sun in her lap. Half her head is covered in bandages, but even from here Minho can see the rage that burns in her one visible eye. Dahyun waves at them.

“Four’s going to win this year,” she says, quiet. She releases his shirt and draws her other sword. Yeji slides down the Cornucopia, spinning her blade in her hand. “It’s time someone ended Two’s reign. So you can do me a favor, and stay out of my way while I deal with her.”

Yeji charges, a scream of “Kim Dahyun, you fucking-” and various other expletives trailing behind her. Minho takes the chance to run for the water. 

An arrow buries itself into the ground right in front of him with a spray of dirt and he nearly tips over as he lurches to the side and throws his knife as hard as he can towards the Cornucopia. It’ll be a miracle if he gets even close to Soobin, at this rate. 

Another few steps, another arrow— each one a little closer— sending him off course, another half-blindly thrown knife. After who knows how many arrows, Minho’s not able to course correct, leg nearly buckling under him as he struggles to keep from sprawling forward. 

A quick glance tells him the ground around him is littered with arrows and the knives that haven’t reached their goal. Despite the fact that he’s standing still, closer to the Cornucopia than ever, he’s still alive. 

A shadow stretches towards him, and Minho looks up to see Soobin at the very edge of the Cornucopia, head tilted slightly as he looks down. He smiles a bit, but it doesn’t feel threatening, even after all this. It still looks kind, looks like that timid one he had been giving in interviews. 

It’s like Soobin’s playing with him, but like he’s not really aware of the game they’re actually playing. 

He tosses something in his hand and pulls back the bowstring without an arrow in sight. There’s a sharp crack that rings in and between Minho’s ears and he blinks and—

A static feeling overwhelms his tongue as the ground near him shakes and Minho’s eyes open from darkness to a blinding blue sky. His head feels thick and slow, but he realizes that he’s on the ground, and that it would be much better not to be on the ground if he could just—

“Hm, seems like Dahyun’s left you behind.” Soobin says. Minho turns his head to see him helping a blood spattered Yeji up. It’s impossible to tell if it’s her blood or not. If it is, she’s not bleeding fast enough for his taste. “Shame she’s such a traitor, isn’t it?” He crouches next to Minho’s head and cocks his own again. He blinks a few times. Minho can feel blood trickling down his forehead into his eyes. “Shame you are too. We make good allies, you know?”

“I’d rather die,” Minho grits out. 

“That will be arranged,” Yeji all but snarls behind Soobin. 

Soobin stands and sighs, head turning towards the forest. His knee seems far better than Dahyun had made it out to be. “Suit yourself.”

“You better kill her.” If the Games were won on vengeance alone, Yeji would be an undoubted victor. The hatred that radiates from her is nearly palpable. “If I don’t see her fucking face in the sky tonight then you’d better hope I see yours or I’ll put you up there myself, Choi.” 

“Play nice, Hwang.” Soobin raises a brow at her. “There’s kids watching.”

It’s somehow worse when Soobin turns his back to head after Dahyun, as though Minho could maybe find some kind of brief allyship with him, some savior hidden in his enemy. Yeji has none of Soobin’s niceness — real or pretend — but all of the Career ability to kill, and an abundance of willingness. 

She turns her head from Soobin’s receding figure back to Minho — bow once again in her hands — and rolls her neck once. Minho can hear each and every single crack from the move like a gunshot.

Something jolts back to life in him.

Without a moment’s thought, Minho sweeps Yeji’s legs while she’s reaching for an arrow and uses the momentum to dig his foot into the ground and scramble up, making a break for the packs. 

A hand closes firmly on his ankle and pulls back. He catches himself on his hands when he falls, head whipping back to see Yeji’s eye burning with fury.

Minho kicks at her hand. She lets go before he can make contact and uses the chance to regain her footing.

If he puts distance between them, he’s playing to her advantage. The closer he stays, the more he keeps her hands occupied, the harder it’ll be for her to even get a chance to get an arrow. 

The first punch Minho throws meets only air, the meeting of his and Yeji’s dirt covered forearms loud and painful. She seems taken aback for a moment, like she can’t fathom that he would punch her instead of trying to stab her or run. The moment is still and long, impossibly hot under a burning sun and cloudless sky. 

Sweat drips down Minho’s chin and onto his neck. Yeji’s face blurs slightly. 

Then she raises her knee between them and kicks Minho in the stomach, sending him stumbling back and bile into his throat. 

He grabs her foot on the way, twisting it. Yeji retaliates by twisting her hip to counter and swinging her bow at his head. 

This time it’s Minho’s forearm that comes to meet hers. The blow is weakened, but Yeji is still able to knock his skull with the tip, painful enough that he bites his tongue and releases her in surprise. 

She lunges forward as she swings again, this time not fast enough to block when Minho ducks to the side. The feeling of his knuckles meeting her skin is almost gratifying, so satisfying in a way he cannot describe but recalls from sparring matches he’d had in the Facility. 

Like something in him missed this, despite everything.

It’s much less gratifying when Yeji headbutts him in the chin. Immediately there’s a painful, sharp sting of his teeth drawing his own blood, a tang across his tongue. Minho spits the blood at her and grabs her arm, sidestepping to twist it behind her back. And twist it and twist it and twist it and—

His shin blooms with pain, the heel of a boot nailing it with perfect accuracy. His face again; this time her head gets him right in the nose. With all his might, Minho tightens his grip on Yeji’s arm. He only needs to get one out of commission. She can’t shoot with one hand. 

Yeji growls in frustration and slams her head back against Minho’s so hard he nearly blacks out. She must punch him when she slips out of his hold because the next thing he feels is a solid blow to the side of his head. 

A mostly blind kick finds her stomach by the sound of it. He’s able to see enough to follow through with an uppercut to her solar plexus.

In retaliation, Yeji stabs the end of her bow right at the wound on his leg and all the pain that the Dahyun’s plaster had masked returns immediately and tenfold. 

A strangled cry comes from Minho’s throat as his hands fall to clutch at it, unable to see anything other than white, absolute pain. Yeji kicks him backwards again, but this time there’s no way to keep his footing. 

“It’s not personal,” Yeji says, her head breaking through the white haze across Minho’s vision, bloodstained teeth stark against it all. She steps on his wound, gentle at first and then with more weight, until Minho practically writhes, a sob bubbling up from his chest. 

Yeji moves her foot to put all her weight on his chest. 

Draws an arrow. 

Spits into the grass and wipes her mouth. Looks at the blood on the back of her hand. 

Nocks the arrow.

Her head obscures the sun.

“Well”— her eye narrows, bowstring pressed right up against her bandages, her foot pressing on Minho’s ribs like she wants to crush them—“maybe just a little.” 

A cannon booms. 

Something spatters Minho’s face. The sun suddenly returns to blind him. 

Yeji falls back, a spear through her chest, her hands still curled around her bow and arrow though her arms are limp in the grass now, a pool of sticky blood rapidly soaking into the dry, desperate earth and reaching Minho’s fingers. 

There’s footsteps, sharp, panicked intakes of breath close by, the choked gasp of someone about to cry. Minho rolls over — fist curling into the grass and nails digging crescents into his skin — to see Seungmin. Still feverish and pale, he falls to his knees barely a foot away from Minho, eyes never leaving Yeji’s still body and his body shaking with every breath. 

“It’s not like a fish, hyung,” Seungmin barely manages to whisper. 

Minho makes it the rest of the distance and pulls Seungmin into a hug just as he starts to truly sob, holds him tight like he’s the only tangible thing, the only sure thing in the world.

“No.” 

Blood from his nose hits his tongue. 

It tastes a lot like guilt. 

He can feel his mouth twisting and pressing together, his eyes stinging. Minho squeezes them shut and curls his fingers into Seungmin’s shirt, pulling him closer.

“It’s not.”

🜲

There are a handful of deaths that stick in Minho’s mind amongst all that he has witnessed. 

The first he remembers is from when he was four. 

A polar arena, full of ice and snow. Many tributes had been mauled to death by one of the mutts and any that weren’t slaughtered each other brutally in fights over food that the Gamemakers would drop every few days, driven to near madness out of the desperation the unforgiving Arena had created. He knows this from years of reruns. Their faces always pass him by, just blur together with so many others that he’s seen on screen. 

He knows nothing about the one face he can never quite shake — not his name, not even his district. No matter how many times he watches, he never remembers them. Every passing year, those things matter less and less.

It had snowed that day. The warm orange glow of a fire against the boy’s face had highlighted the snowflakes that melted against his skin as he’d curled up, unwilling — or perhaps unable — to move. 

Unlike with most tributes, Minho doesn’t know what killed him, whether it was the cold or hunger or something else entirely. 

Maybe it had stood out in its peace. 

The boy had cried, muttered half delirious apologies to his mother and his siblings. 

“I just want to go home,” he had barely managed to whisper into the snow, his eyes already shut. “I just wanted to see you again. I just wanted to come home.” 

At four, Minho had insisted on sleeping altogether that night; his parents and his brother and him all squeezed into one bed, him tucked in the middle as though they were protective shields keeping the outside world away.

At sixteen, he still would if he had the chance.

🜲

They don’t make it back to the cave. It’s half a miracle they even make it as far as they do — exhausted, injured, sick, dehydrated, and utterly spent — each holding the other up and using each other as support. 

Minho’s fingers are white around Seungmin’s shirt, pulling him down with him when he eventually melts to the forest floor. He lets go and lays back, the green canopy swirling with the blue sky and his new backpack digging uncomfortably into his spine. If he just lays here, he wonders how long it would take to just decompose, to go quietly, like falling asleep. 

It probably won’t take long. He has no desire or will to move, barely feels like he even can anymore. The lack of water should get him soon, and if not then maybe his leg will do the trick. If it didn’t hurt so much, he thinks he might just stay like this. No more running, no more fighting, no more trying. 

“Come on,” Seungmin pants after a moment, shrugging off one of his own backpacks and fumbling with the zipper. His voice still sounds wet and frayed, thick with snot. Minho can hear him open a water bottle, hear him swallow, both desperate and controlled at once. His fingers prod at Minho’s shoulder, then tug at it when Minho groans. “Up ‘n at ‘em.” 

With all the shit he went through to get this, Minho owes it to himself to at least reap the reward. He swings his upper body up and reaches behind him. 

They had been lucky, in a sense. Yeji’s pack had been tucked in the Cornucopia, easy to miss if you were running by, but easy to see at their pace. Someone had beat them to Five’s, and Minho figures that they hadn’t wanted to bother trying to carry around the two meant for him and Seungmin. 

It’s hard to drink slowly when Minho wants to gulp it down like a drowning man gasping for air. He doesn’t for a few moments, nearly drains the first full bottle before Seungmin grabs his wrist and tells him he’ll throw up. 

He knows that, but the water feels so good he mostly doesn’t care.

Still, Minho forces himself to take a break and pours some of the water into his hand to splash on the back of his neck. He makes a kind of half-hearted attempt to rub off whatever blood and dirt is likely on his face, then swishes some water in his mouth before spitting it out. Then to the wound on his leg, still as ugly as the day he’d gotten it. Yeji’s bow had punctured the plaster anyway, so he just finishes the job and tears it off, biting the inside of his cheek as the adhesive clings to and rips at his skin. 

The remaining bandages and numbing cream are still somewhere by the cave, in the backpack he’d left with Seungmin and every intention to return. This had not been part of the plan. 

But what is there to do except to keep going, just like he has been? Minho barely even sighs before he pours the water onto his leg and cuts off a strip of his shirt to at least act like some kind of bandage, if a poor one.

Beside him, he can see the way Seungmin’s glassy eyes are fixed on the spear, tremors running through his hands every few seconds. If it wasn’t practically necessary for them to have, Minho would have left it to be collected with Yeji’s body.

“It’s not your fault, Seungmin-ah,” he tells him quietly, grabbing the spear and dumping the remaining water all along the blood that has stained it, watching diluted droplets of red drip from it. 

“I killed her,” Seungmin says miserably, just on the edge of tears once more. “I did that to her. Of course it’s my fault.” 

“You shouldn’t have had to.” Minho bites his lip, his brow furrowed. I didn’t want this for you. “I should have been able to do it. I should have done it.”

It probably doesn’t help, shifting the blame. He doesn’t think it would comfort him if he was Seungmin. 

But shouldering the blame is all Minho knows how to do when it comes to Seungmin. 

Even if the blood on his hands makes him sick, at least he’s used to it, expects it. Seungmin just isn’t like that. He’s not someone like Junmyeon or Younghoon either, someone desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to win, no matter the price. 

“I want to go home.” Seungmin’s head is hidden in his arms, propped up on his knees. Maybe he’s crying, maybe he isn’t. His voice is wobbly, thin and tired, like a rope pulled too taut for too long. He sounds like a kid again, like the eight year old Minho used to know.  “Hyung, I just- I just want to go home.”

Minho tilts his head back up to the sky. 

You will, he thinks. 

“Yeah,” he says. He remembers being four, curling up in bed with his family. His chest aches. 

Me too. 

🜲

A cannon goes off as the sky turns from pink to purple. 

Seungmin has long since fallen asleep, head resting somewhat awkwardly against his backpack, but wakes up groggily as the anthem begins to blare out into the Arena. 

“You let me sleep?” He asks, slightly hoarse. There’s no longer a fevered sheen to him, an increased clarity in his eyes when he looks at Minho. The water must have helped.

Minho shrugs. “What was I supposed to do?” 

Staying here is the simplest option. They have water and weapons, and at least somewhat decent cover among the trees.

Staying here is the easiest option. Minho doesn’t really want to limp back to the cave. There’s always some kind of twist towards the end. They have a straight shot back to the Cornucopia, just visible from where they are.

Staying here is the smartest option. The Gamemakers almost always push the last few tributes to the Cornucopia when they want to wrap things up. The farther away they go… truthfully, Minho doubts he would be able to make it if they had to run back here with mutts at their heels.  

“Hyung.” Seungmin nudges his foot with his boot and jerks his head towards the sky. 

Dahyun’s face stares back.

Minho starts. There’s no way. It’s kind of impossible to comprehend. Even as her face fades into the girl from Five’s, its afterimage remains burned into Minho’s eyes. 

It just… it doesn’t make sense. Dahyun is the kind of person who really could have won. Soobin may have been taller and stronger, but Minho has grown up with Dahyun, has watched her win fights with trainees just as big as him. 

He can’t wrap his head around it. 

“She wanted someone for Four to win this year,” he finds himself saying. It comes out less steady than he’d expected. 

Though they had never been friends, had never liked each other, he thinks he understands what she had meant when she’d said they know each other. It’s an odd feeling to know that constant presence somewhere in his periphery is simply gone. Not a sad feeling, but a strangely lonely one for a fleeting moment.

He hopes that Seungmin won’t be lonely. 

“Just Nine and Two left.” Minho finally manages to blink Dahyun’s face away. “Maybe they’ll just kill each other.”

“Still no good end,” Seungmin murmurs. He rubs his throat absentmindedly. 

No. There never was, was there? Regardless of the outcome, Minho has realized the impossibility of a “good” end.

“Some ends are better than others,” he says.

“Better for who?” Seungmin mumbles bitterly — sadly — as he turns his away and folds his arms. 

Minho looks out into the dark, towards the direction of the Cornucopia. It’ll only be a matter of hours, perhaps day or two at most if the Gamemakers are really determined to drag things out, before someone has to win. 

Someone always has to win. 

Better for who indeed. 

🜲

The day before interviews, Junmyeon and Taeyeon let them drink after dinner. Not much — no more than a shot glass’ worth — because they’re technically not allowed, but they let them nonetheless. Invite them even, with brief, uncharacteristic levity. For once, Minho thinks Junmyeon might even be completely sober. 

“What’s the catch?” He asks warily as the four of them eye the selection of drinks with mild confusion, as though this might be some sort of test. 

“No catch,” Taeyeon says brightly. A little too brightly. Like she’s trying to convince herself this is a happy moment. “It’s just a tradition we have, since you’re all a bit older. A lot of the mentors do it.” 

“Your first drink,” Junmyeon further explains when the confusion doesn’t lift. “We know we’re not your parents, but we thought…” The corner of his mouth drops a little as he trails off, just for a second, before he perks up again and flashes that too perfect smile. “We thought it would be nice.” 

Minho ends up picking soju, because that’s what his dad always drank and what his brother’s first drink had been. He figures it would probably be his too. 

It’s always been easier not to think about his parents. Minho’s chest aches when he thinks about his dad. It’s a dangerous ache, one that he avoids for his own good.

Soju doesn’t taste particularly good, and kind of burns at the back of his throat. He understands the face Minwoo had made when he’d tried it because he’s pretty sure his is the same. 

Based on the face Seungmin is making a few feet away, he’s having a similarly unpleasant experience. 

Junmyeon laughs and ruffles their hair, something distantly sad in it all. He looks exhausted when he looks at them, a long-held, impossibly heavy grief in his eyes even as he smiles.

“It tastes better when you’re older,” he tells them, as if the future is a promised thing. “The first time is really just about the experience.” 

The experience. 

There’s a lot of experiences that they all have a measly 2% chance of having. Of all things, that makes Minho want to cry. Even if he never really thought about the future before, it had still existed, still been there if only he could make it. But now there’s so many things that 47 of them will never get to do, so many things that countless other children never got to do. 

He would rather envision no future at all then one he can’t have. 

🜲

For the first time since Seungmin had found him, Minho manages more than a few hours of sleep. It’s not intentional, but there’s nothing to abruptly jolt him awake, no ever looming fear that they’ll be ambushed by someone. 

He still feels guilty when he wakes up to find the sun high up above, still knows that Soobin or Younghoon could easily find them, but it’s fewer people to worry about and that counts for something. He doesn’t remember seeing Younghoon yesterday, but he knows Soobin had gone after Dahyun in the direction opposite to the one he and Seungmin had gone in. And he likes to think that Dahyun had done some damage to him even if she had been at a disadvantage to his spears. 

It doesn’t matter now anyway. He’s awake, and Soobin and Younghoon aren’t here. 

“Wake up, Seungmin.” He shakes Seungmin’s shoulder lightly. There’s tear tracks dried on his cheeks.

Minho almost wants to apologize that he couldn’t do more, but what can he even say that he hasn’t already? He doubts there’s a single thing in the world he could say that would make anything better. 

In a way, he’s glad the Games are coming to a close. After Yeji, he thinks that Seungmin has reached his limit. 

Physically, Minho knows he’s reaching his own. He’d meant it when he talked about Soobin and Younghoon killing each other; unless the two of them are injured too, there’s a sinking feeling in his stomach that a fight with one of them will be his last. 

His hand shakes a little at the thought. He just grits his teeth and makes a fist. 

There’s shouting in the distance as Seungmin finally begins to wake up. It echoes all around them like birdsong and Minho’s eyes dart every which way trying to figure out where it’s coming from. 

Then it’s two different shouts, getting closer and closer, but still impossible to pinpoint. 

And then there’s a clash of metal.

He whips his head towards the Cornucopia, but only the golden tail is visible through all the brush around the clearing. 

“I’ll go see,” he wants to say, but though his mouth opens the words just won’t seem to come. Instead, reality socks his chest, the weight suddenly heavy amongst his ribs, pressing on his lungs. It’s like the boy from Eight, like Saerom, like Yeji. 

Everything is suddenly very real. Minho starts to sweat at the thought.

“Um”—Seungmin tugs at his sleeve urgently—“maybe we should-”

There’s a crackling behind, a sharp crack overhead. No sooner does Minho’s head whip around than Seungmin’s yanking him back and they both watch a flaming branch crash to the ground right where Minho had just been, burning leaves far too few inches away from his feet. 

The fire is slow moving this time, crawling towards them with a lazy threat. It laps at their heels as Seungmin helps Minho scramble up, nips at their ankles like a dog as it drives them towards the Cornucopia. You can practically hear the Gamemakers waving a hand and saying it’s time to wrap things up.

It’s not their lives, their precious minutes. There’s no skin off their backs to push Minho and Seungmin towards an inevitable fight. 

He wonders if they’re allowed to bet. Then he wonders who they’re rooting for. 

People like an underdog, right?

The fire stops with barely a foot left from the clearing, trapping them in the margin. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere left to run or to hide. 

“You don’t need this!” Younghoon is shouting, so desperately angry it hurts to hear. He keeps swinging his sickle with every ounce of strength he has, no matter how many times it only strikes the metal of Soobin’s spear. One of his arms is limp by his side, forearm at an odd angle. “I need to win. Nothing changes if you die! Your family doesn’t need you!”

Even from here, the crack in Soobin’s face is visible. He practically snarls as he abruptly twists his hands, flipping the butt of his spear right into the side of Younghoon’s head. It cracks against his skull and sends him stumbling away, one hand pressing to his head with a howl. 

“You don’t deserve this!” He shouts right back, voice nearly breaking. “This is my one chance to prove that I’m worth something; I have given everything to these Games! You think I give a shit about your family? I haven’t seen mine in years!” The spear hits Younghoon in the face this time. The way his nose instantly gushes blood leads Minho to believe that it is broken. He falls to the ground with a groan, a hand cupped around his nose. “We all need to win! You aren’t special! You were never, ever special!” 

With frightful accuracy, Soobin whirls around and points his spear right at Minho. “And you!” There’s hardly any time for Minho to process the fear that freezes him in place before Soobin is hauling him up by the front of his shirt. He no longer looks nice and timid, but utterly frenzied, lost and panicked and angry. 

At the end of his rope. 

There’s blood running down his face from a cut that runs the full length of his forehead and nearly hits one of his eyes. The tears that cut through the blood and grime are all the more stark. 

“I thought you were like me,” Soobin growls. “The way Dahyun talked about you, I thought we were the same — too soft for Careers.” He throws Minho to the ground. “I thought we could have been friends. I was nothing but nice to you and all you did was betray me! I’m tired of playing someone else’s game. I’m sick and tired of it all!” 

He raises the spear above his head and Minho flinches, throwing his hands over his face. His head goes numb, unable to think, unable to even panic as his own death stares him in the face. 

Instead, there’s a cry of pain. Minho’s eyes snap open to see blood blossom on Soobin’s side, Younghoon breathes heavily beside Soobin’s leg, the fire from the trees reflecting in his eyes and his bloody sickle clutched in a white knuckle grip.

“So die!” Soobin steps back when Younghoon swings again. “Just fucking die, Two, if you hate this all so much!” He keeps swinging and Soobin steps back, and back, and back. Minho tries to scramble back to safety, searching for Seungmin amongst the treeline. He can see the fire inch closer and closer, tightening the margin. Seungmin is backing away from it towards the fight. Minho wills Soobin and Younghoon not to notice him. “Just die! Do the world a favor! Do your family a favor! Die like you’re supposed to and let me-”

The shouting abruptly goes quiet. Younghoon is cut off by the boom of a cannon. 

Minho grabs a knife as his arm is grabbed and he finds himself once again pushed against the ground, Soobin’s forearm pushing down against his throat. He looks even worse now, even less like himself. Minho hadn’t noticed how gaunt he’s become since the night of the storm. He looks half dead as it is.

“You don’t even want to win.” Soobin’s voice shakes with the rest of his body. Minho manages to wedge his arm between Soobin’s and his throat and he squirms desperately. Things can’t end like they began. “You’re here, and you don’t even want to win. You’re not like me. Just give up already, Minho.” His bottom lip trembles. Minho can almost see that shy, nervous kid that Jinki had interviewed. “Please, just give up.” 

“What would you know?” Minho spits in Soobin’s face. There’s a split second when Soobin flinches back, and he uses it to slash at him. His knife cuts his cheek, right under an already healing scratch. Soobin hisses, but only doubles down on his efforts to crush Minho’s throat. “What the fuck would you know?”

“Oh, cut the shit. Everyone knew,” Soobin whispers darkly. “When all you want is to survive, I think it’s pretty fucking obvious who doesn’t even care. So just give up.” 

Minho claws at his arm, black spots beginning to pepper his vision as Soobin presses down. He can’t tell if the words are slurred or if he just can’t process them anymore. 

“You have nothing to live for anyway. It’s… no wonder… Four never… wins.” 

The pressure on Minho’s windpipe goes slack, and Soobin’s eyes unfocus. Faint blue tendrils creep from his cheek down his neck and under his shirt. He sways dangerously, blinking rapidly and brows furrowing.

“‘S no wonder… ‘sno…won…der.”

Maybe it’s just Minho’s imagination, but he swears there’s the ghost of the kind of smile he’s used to seeing on Soobin’s face just before he slumps to the ground. He stares up at the cloudless sky as Soobin mumbles incoherently beside him, voice softer and softer until it’s just his breathing. It evens, then slows, then fades. 

Softer and softer until there’s nothing more. 

A cannon goes off.

Minho’s breathing is still ragged despite the freedom in his throat and lungs. Everything is far too real. Everything is far too close. 

“Hyung…?” Seungmin says from behind him, tentative. 

It’s not over yet. 

Minho makes himself sit up. “I don’t understand,” he says. The knife is held so tightly in his hand that his fingers have begun to ache. He barely even touched Soobin. “I didn’t… I don’t…” 

“The knives.” It’s quiet. Almost ashamed. As though Seungmin is admitting guilt. “I put poison on your knives.” He gnaws at his lip, fists opening and closing at his sides. The spear drops into the grass as Minho stands and swallows. “At least it won’t hurt, right?” 

Heat courses through Minho’s veins as though the fire has caught within him. He can feel it prick at his eyes. 

He swallows it back down instead of allowing it to come to fruition. He’s not a spectacle. He won’t be a spectacle. 

“Fight me,” he says, drawing a shaky breath. It’s like he’s nine again, pointing out Seungmin across the mat. 

At least this time, it won’t all be for nothing.

Seungmin just stands there, arms by his sides. Like he expects Minho to just kill him. 

“Hyung-”

“Fight me.”

“Hyung, I-”

“Fight me, Kim Seungmin!” Seungmin looks so hurt, shaking his head and his eyes darting around. It infuriates Minho, angers him more than he thinks anything ever has. “For fuck’s sake, I said fight me!” 

“I don’t-”

“Or are you just gonna do nothing, just like noona?” Minho spits out with vitriolic purpose. It doesn’t matter whether or not he means it, whether or not he actually thinks badly of Sora. The desired effect is instant as Seungmin clenches his jaw. "Just gonna be another embarrassment?"

It hurts more when Seungmin hits him now than it had when he was eight. They’re not weak little kids anymore. 

The punch flips a switch in Minho. He moves on autopilot, the only way he knows how to. 

It’s as though nothing has changed, and he’s just sparring one of the other boys at the Facility. His leg makes him clumsy, makes him slow, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. They jab and block, twist and turn, but no hit lands more than a graze. 

When Seungmin grabs his collar, Minho grabs right back. He sweeps Seungmin’s leg out from under him and sends them both to the ground. 

Minho breathes heavily, has one hand dug into Seungmin’s shoulder, pushing him down, down, down into the dusty earth. Seungmin’s face is streaked with dirt, his skin tanned and sunburned all at once from the hours upon hours he has spent in the sun and bandages several shades off the pure white they had once been. He doesn’t even struggle now that he’s fallen, just looks up at Minho with shining eyes, all the fight bled out of them.

It would be so easy. So easy. Despite everything, this is what he knows how to do. This is who he has been made into.

Minho raises his knife above his head.

Seungmin closes his eyes and tilts his head back to expose his throat.

Fabric bunches in Minho’s fingers as he swings down.

“Why did you keep me alive?” Seungmin’s voice cracks through tears. Minho’s eyes bore into the dirt, his face hot and teeth chattering.

“I just played the game.” His fingers ache around the knife he’s sunk into the ground beside Seungmin’s head. “I had to.”

“Only one of us can win, hyung. You know that.” The crack grows. They skate over thin ice. Seungmin looks the same as he did at four, crying when he realized how the food on his table got there, looks the same as he did when he’d watched Sora die, looks the same as he did when he’d walked past Minho in that hallway. “Why am I still here? You… you promised. Why are you doing this?”

“You have something left,” Minho tells him, throat aching. “There’s something out there for you, Seungminie.” His knees press down on Seungmin’s arms and he looks down on the last shred of himself. “I can’t kill you.” 

“Hyung,” Seungmin urges. A drop of water hits his face. When Minho brings his hand to his own, he realizes that he’s crying.

The game is over. 

“I can’t , Seungmin.” 

If he had only himself to look out for, he thinks would have thrown it a long time ago. Minho has long since learned there’s no freedom to be had at the finish line.

In the end, it’s the Capitol that always wins. Only the Capitol.

“Hyung,” Seungmin all but whispers. “Come on. It’s okay.”

“I was never going to kill you.”

“A person and a fish aren’t so different.” The weak attempt at a laugh Seungmin makes can barely qualify as one. “Come on. It’s really okay.” He blinks sharply, tears trailing down the side of his face faster and drawing lines in the layer of grime on his skin. “Really.” 

It's just like his nightmares. Only the nature of the begging has changed.

Minho sits up to look at the sky, at the camera drone he’s sure is somewhere just watching them. He frees his knife from the soil, knuckles white around the handle.

 “Hyung?” Seungmin’s eyes widen a bit, and his muscles tense as he tries to protest. “What are you doing?”

“Hyung is sorry, Seungminie.” He smiles at Seungmin, knees pressing down harder against his arms. Even as he smiles, he can feel his chest lurch with a sob. This time he doesn’t care that the whole nation can see him cry, can see every layer of himself that he had wanted desperately to hide away and keep to himself. 

It doesn’t matter anymore. 

The only version of himself that matters is the one only left in Seungmin’s memories. The only one not crafted by anyone for anyone. The only one that no one can touch, that no one can lay claim to, that no one can own.

The only one that really belonged to Minho.

“Hyung, why?” Seungmin asks, his voice shaking, desperate. “Why? I ruined your life. I don’t understand.” Tears well up in the corners of his eyes and trickle down into his hair. “I owe you. You’re… you’re supposed to…”

“Then live, Seungmin.” Minho can feel his hands tremble, fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of his knife. “If you want to repay me, then you’ll live.”

Seungmin’s chest heaves with a violent sob.

“I won’t forgive you,” he says through forcefully gritted teeth. Angry, sad. Everything all at once. His voice is weak. “I’ll never, ever forgive you, hyung.”

“I’ve never asked for your forgiveness. Even if you hate me, that’s okay, Seungmin-ah.” The corner of Minho’s mouth lifts. He has to blink against blurry vision, focuses on the pressure of the knife as he presses it against his palm instead of on anything else. “You have to live to hate me. That’s good enough for me.”

“Please don’t do this.”

Seungmin cries. 

And Minho cries with him.

“I have to.”

“Don’t.”

“Only one of us can win.”

“Don’t!”

“You know that.”

“Please. Don’t. Minho-hyung, don’t! Hyung! Hyung! Don’t! DON’T!”  

Win or lose, Lee Minho was always going to die in the Arena.

In an end of his own making, at least he doesn't have to die quite so entirely. 

Maybe no one else can see it, but Minho thinks that this way, he can be a victor too.

🜲