Chapter Text
Suicides happen on the day of the Reaping.
Yes, even in District One, where it’s practically guaranteed that the name pulled from the glass bowl will not belong to the one who goes into the arena. Even there, suicides still happen.
The vast majority of those suicides belong to 14-year-old girls, untrained, who decide that the negligible chance that they will both be Reaped and that no one will volunteer is simply too high for them to take.
These suicides are discovered after the Reaping, when the officials go over the Attendance Records and find that Amethyst Gallobloom or Ruby Whitlock or Amber Ardent was suspiciously absent. The Peacekeepers make a visit to the house [if the screams of the families don’t summon them first] and the body is removed. It is senseless, but then, it is difficult to fathom the mind of an untrained, the mind of one who stands no chance.
So yes, even in District One, there are cowards.
Madison decides, on the morning of the Reaping, that she will not be one of them.
Her voice echoes through the square, as vibrant and resplendent as the District from which she hails.
“I, Madison Saros, volunteer as tribute!”
Off to the side stands Levine, arms crossed, a sparkle in his eye that says I approve. You have, for the first time, made me proud.
Maeve watches the Recaps from a velvet couch, and from the moment she sees this brilliant creature with eyes of onyx and a mouth full of pearls, she knows that she is looking at the Victor of the 55th Annual Hunger Games.
[She does not see the scars which hide, opalescent, under her Reaping dress.]
Even on the train, as Avior stalks off to his room, angering his mentor [his lifeline in this death match], Madison Saros trains.
She stands on her tiptoes, just as she was taught. She tosses knives at the slats between the floor panels, relishing in the satisfaction of each one hitting its mark. She replays the look on Levine’s face, the one which tells her you have succeeded, at last, you have made me proud.
She decides every pain, every ache, every hour on her tiptoes, was worth it to bring her to this moment.
[They offer her desserts. She politely declines.]
[There will be plenty of time for dessert once the Games are over.]
When her stylist greets her with swathes of black fabric, she quirks an eyebrow, bites back a smile.
“Since when do One Girls get black?”
Usually they are adamantine, glimmering in the light, dainty and fuckable and lacking in any sort of substance. The legacy of a One Girl, largely, is style over substance.
[They sent a girl blind into the arena one year for fear that her glasses would make her lose sponsors.]
[Madison isn’t sure what’s worse; that they did so, or that she won, even still.]
The point is that the Capitol will do anything to keep a pretty girl alive. She is not sure she will be a pretty girl in this getup.
“Ah, darling. This was… a special request. From your mentor.” Says her stylist, with a wink.
Somehow, she doubts they are referring to Aoife.
Levine was right.
She is downright terrifying, all dark locks and dark eyes and dark armor.
She is not a diamond, she is a death sentence. And with that reputation, well, who needs to be fuckable anyways?
She is supposed to team up with Two Girl.
She does not want to team up with Two Girl. She justifies this to herself, saying she is dainty, she is expendable, she is from Two; this does not make her a Career.
But then Two Girl severs three dummies with one axe, and Madison has to settle for well, there’s something about her that I just don’t trust.
The moment she meets her, she knows she is right not to trust Two Girl. [Maeve, is her name. Address her by name. She is your ally until she is not.]
Yes, she is right not to trust Maeve. Nobody smiles that wide the week before a death match.
[In spite of herself, when Maeve calls her pretty, she returns the compliment, flushes red because she’s embarrassed, and moves on.]
Oh, Two Girl, you just signed your death sentence.
Maybe you should’ve called me dangerous instead.
As quickly as Two Girl [Maeve, Maeve, Maeve. Call her by her name, Madison. You don’t want your allies to hate you before the game even starts] signs her death sentence, she revokes it.
It is when Quinn comes over, all haughty and brutish and lacking in tact, that Maeve redeems herself, and Four Girl becomes, well, Four Girl.
It is everything Madison has not to defend Maeve at first. Levine’s wisdom follows her now, echoing in her ears, telling her defend your allies until the moment it does not serve you, but Maeve must prove herself first.
And prove herself, she does.
“Okay, but, like! Who d'ya think you are? What makes ya think that you'll be in the pack?”
What part of Two is she from, to have that accent? She must be closer to the forests, further from the mines—
“I'm the pack leader. You can't just… overthrow me like that. I'm in control. Not you.”
Madison almost laughs at this, but Maeve beats her to it.
“Who says? Just sayin'. Maddie's in charge. Not you.”
Maddie. Oh my god, that is magical. Maddie, Maddie, Maddie. Surely she should tell her not to call her that, right?
She lets it go. What does it matter what Two Girl calls her?
She’ll be dead two weeks from now, anyways.
“Whatever you’re about to ask, the answer is no.”
Maeve steps back with her hands up, jokingly, as if she’s not afraid. Which is hilarious, because Madison feels she’s given her plenty of reason to be.
“Easy there, Maddie. I was just comin’ to say hi, is all.”
Madison looks up at her as she finishes lacing up her boot, wiping the sweat and blood from her brow after a melee match with one of the trainers.
“Why do I doubt that so heavily?” Madison asks.
“Because I’m lyin’ outta my ass, that’s why.” Maeve says, easing herself down next to her, and all Madison can think is where does this girl get away with thinking she’s my friend? She is not my friend. We are allies and barely that, and—
“Why d’ya hate me so much?” Maeve asks.
Madison stares at her, incredulous.
“Hate you? Maeve, if I hated you, believe me, you’d know.”
“Would I, though? I mean, you talk to Randy like you’re best friends, all tossin’ spears back and forth and stuff. I’ve seen you get more words outta Avior Stolvania than I’ve gotten out of you so far.”
“And that’s my problem because…?” Madison asks, standing up to ready herself for another round of training.
“Because for a moment, I saw that light in your eyes, and I thought ya were different.” Maeve says. With a disgruntled look on her face, Maeve turns to walk away.
“So sorry to have disillusioned you then, princess.” Madison mutters under her breath, and then Two Girl turns around and pushes her against the wall by her shoulders, hard , and Madison smiles because finally, Two Girl’s got some fight in her, and then she’s leaning in, and Madison is leaning in, and—
It’s sudden, brash, reckless, like the crunch of metal when a knife hits a weapon rack in training after being tossed by an incompetent hand, and she likes it .
Two Girl pulls away, seemingly satisfied, like the cat that got the canary, and Madison is breathless and pissed to be the bird in this scenario.
“You are lucky—” she stops to catch her breath, wipe her mouth, “You are lucky I don’t kill you where you stand.”
“Really? ‘Cause the way ya’ can’t get yer breath back says otherwise.” She says, and fuck, why did Two Girl’s accent get so much thicker after that kiss, and why does she like that so much?
Against her better instinct, Madison raises her voice one last time above the din of the empty Training Room.
“Rooftop. 10pm.”
Maeve nods assent, and walks away, and Madison picks up a dagger, rips a target to shreds.
“So, I’m guessin’ you didn’t bring me up here to tell me why you’re so goddamn ornery all the time.” Maeve says.
Madison’s lips stay set in a thin line, her eyes fixated on a spot off on the distance. She does not answer Maeve’s question, because in all honesty, she’s not sure why she brought her up here.
“I know you’ve gotta have a sense a’ humor buried in there somewhere, no?”
Madison laughs, then, high-pitched and crazy like an arena mutt [because really, isn't that what she is, in the end], and says “What do you want from me?”
Maeve, of all things to say, says “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Madison opens her mouth to speak, to retort, but nothing comes out [nothing, nothing at all] because she cannot remember the last time someone wanted nothing from her.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I’m just here, Maddie. We all know you’re the winner. I just figured even Victors need friends, y’know?”
And Madison knows, knows, with all her heart, that she is not supposed to have friends. But she sighs, brushes her hair back with her left hand, and says “Did you know I’m supposed to go blind soon?”
Their shaky alliance grows between them, like a dandelion between two panes of concrete, a peace offering, a white flag.
She expects questioning glances, sideways looks, but it turns out when everyone knows you’re the Victor they tend to keep their mouths shut, and Madison loves the power, she relishes in it.
Maybe, she tells herself, this is why she keeps Maeve around. Maybe the starstruck look in those dumb blue eyes gives her some sick sense of power. But then, that would make her no better than any of the other One Girls, winning because the Capitol won’t let a pretty girl die.
Madison Saros does not have to explain herself. If she wants to keep Two Girl around, she will. She answers to no one.
[Or at least, it is very easy to pretend so when her captor is a million miles away.]
“We all know it’s you, Maddie, but let’s say it wasn’t, right? Because deadly pretty girls still get sucked into quicksand, okay? Deadly pretty girls still get caught in crudely-made snares and die by outliers’ hands, and jeez, Maddie, I’m not tryin’ to be morbid, but the arena could flood, and—”
“I can swim.”
“Not the point. If I die tomorrow, I wanna have the best memory of my life to replay in my head. Do you have a good memory?”
Maddie wracks her mind; comes up empty. Maeve is the only one she will admit this to.
“Right. So let’s have the best night of our fucking lives.” Maeve says, nudging a glass of champagne in her direction.
And Madison sips it. And she tastes the stars. And she decides, on the rooftop, that she deserves one, one, good night.
“M—Maeveeee. Maeveeeee.”
“Wha’s that, darlin’?”
“Oh, nothing. Your name is just. sooooo pretty.” Madison says, and she giggles, and Maeve is absolutely positive she has never heard a better sound in her life.
“If I die tomorrow, that’s what I wanna hear. That giggle, over an’ over in my head.” Maeve says, and if they were sober Maddie would probably roll her eyes, but she smiles and somehow that’s worse.
Deep down, Maeve knows Maddie is so much more dangerous to her now that she is human, but then, would it really be so bad? To die by her hand?
She looks over at Maddie and the glass of champagne perched precariously between her 2nd and 3rd finger and decides that no, no, it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Maeve, can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course, darlin’. I won’t tell nobody. Cross my lips and hope to die.” She says, and she does. She hopes Maddie lives.
“I wasn’t always like this, all cold and wiry. He made me this way, Maevey.” she says, and the confession hangs so dark between them, but Madison is just giggling and giggling like Maeve just told the funniest joke in the world.
“Oh, Maeve, I get it now! Hope to die. Because you’re in love with me, right? You want me to win, don’t you?”
Maeve is captive now, her tongue caught in some crudely-rigged outlier snare.
Maddie leans in close to her face, her breath all light with flowers and champagne, and whispers “Well, that’s okay. Because I love you too.”
And then she leans her forehead against Maeve’s, and Maeve’s arms wrap around her, lightly, ephemeral, and there they sit. Waiting for the sun to rise and send them to their deaths,
and Madison won’t die, she won’t. But if she does, this is the moment she’ll replay in her head.
It is at launch when Levine Saros makes his reappearance.
She tenses in place. waiting for him to tell her that he knows all about her rendezvous with Two Girl, all about how weak she has become.
Instead, he curls a cold, leathery hand against the side of her face, his thumb just under her eye, and says “You are going to make me so, so proud.”
It’s funny; as the tube encloses around her, brings her up to a death match, she sighs with relief.
Later that night, long after crimson has desecrated the layer of frost on the ground, long after she fights brilliantly and kills beautifully and keeps a smile on her face the whole time, her and Maeve sit in the warmth of the glimmering coals, warming their hands as close to the embers as they can without getting burned and really, is that not what they’ve been doing this whole time?
“My god, Maddie. You are beautiful.”
“You aren’t worried they’ll hear you?” Madison asks, and to anyone else’s ears it would sound accusatory, but her and Maeve know each other better than that by now.
“Ya know, I don’t really care what they say about me.”
“Did you ever think that maybe you should?”
“Nope! They can laugh all they want. They get the laughter, I get the crown.” she says, and Madison knows she’s just talking it up for the cameras, for the people whose laughter actually matters, but it’s kinda nice to see Maeve act like she’s gonna win this thing for once.
[Later, in the night, huddled together in their shared tent: Maeve? You’re beautiful too.]
They split off, go hunting, and Maeve and Madison have developed this thing where they speak in half-sentences, in murmurs, all the while knowing just what the other means.
Another dusky, strange arena-bird flies off into the fog, “We got too close.”
What if we’re too close?
“Nah, that’s not it. It heard our footsteps.” Maeve mutters.
Nobody has to know.
“Different directions?” They split up then, approach a sable-colored rabbit and when it runs from Maeve’s axe, Madison’s knife catches it in the eye,
No. We work better together.
“What if the fire dies?” Madison asks later, as they char the rabbit over flickering coals.
What if it doesn’t? What if it’s just us left?
“Oh, Maddie. That’s easy.” Maeve whispers, running a hand over her blood-crusted knuckle. “We will kiss. Until the end.”
Later, in the tent, they do just that. When Maddie falls into a dreamless sleep, Maeve whispers,
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you home safe and sound. ”
When it is down to just three, when two people stand between Madison and the crown she has dreamed after since before she could speak, she stumbles on Six Girl gathering shrapnel off the ground and says “Your plan’s gonna get us all killed, and you know it.”
But when Six Girl scampers off, like an arena-bird into the fog, Madison makes no move to pursue her, and she can’t seem to justify why. Maybe the cold has frozen her limbs, she thinks, moving in a shuffle back to her camp.
When she sees Maeve, sharpening an axe next to the fire that died a day ago and refuses to come back now, she knows why she let Six Girl get away.
Dread creeps up in her chest, the knowledge that someone has to die soon and it can’t be her , but god, she doesn’t want it to be Maeve either.
“What, no witty remark? Nothin’ clever to say?” Maeve asks, and her smile is betrayed by the pallor of her lips, the blue tinge to her fingers.
“You were always the one with the witty remarks, remember?” Madison asks, and why is she already talking about Maeve in past tense? “Six Girl—she’s still alive.”
She adds this as an afterthought, one of their half-sentences, her way of saying I am not ready to kill you yet.
“I promised.” Maeve responds, her way of saying you will never have to.
But isn’t it so funny, the way the arena goes? Isn’t it funny, how everyone makes these grand dying plans to kiss until the end?
Isn’t it funny, Maeve thinks, as Jordyn Moriau’s dart pierces Maddie in the neck, isn’t it so fucking funny, when all you can do is watch as your plans crumble under you?
“Just try to hang on.” Maeve says, because other than the dart protruding from her neck, Maddie is stable. She is not bleeding, still has a tinge of color in her cheeks.
Maeve does the only thing she can think to do. She sends an axe through the heart of Jordyn Moriau.
And it is only the two of them left.
Madison is fine, at first.
The dart leaves nothing but a pinprick to suggest its presence, and Maeve laughs like a maniac because she thought Maddie was dead and she is so very alive and now she can die for her, and they can kiss until the end, and Maeve can die happy.
And then the seizures start.
She is awake one moment, laughing and giggling and joking like tomorrow is but a sunrise away, and then she’s foaming at the mouth, all her limbs locked up, her lips slack, her breaths short. Poison.
Maeve tries to sink a dagger into her own stomach, but Maddie’s fingers stretch out towards her.
“Maeve, no. No. Listen to me.”
And Maeve, does, she listens, because no one else has ever listened to Madison Saros.
“He has taken my dignity from me—my whole life, Maeve. What kind of life will this be?” she says, her eyes motioning down to her body, locked up in rigor mortis though its owner lives on.
“The Capitol, they can fix it!” Maeve exclaims, brushing at Maddie’s skin like she’ll be able to help this somehow.
“Listen to me, Maeve.” She says. Her words are slurred now, her face drooping. “If you die, and I live, you’ll haunt me, yes?”
Maeve nods, tears streaking down her face, a promise.
“Do you want to watch me hurt forever?” she asks.
“No. No, Maddie. I don’t want ya to hurt at all…It hurts. Seein’ ya hurt.”
“Then kill me. Kill me, please, and it will be the kindest thing you’ve ever done.”
Maeve grabs her hand then, strokes her face.
“I’ll make it fast,” she says, and Maddie nods, squeezes her eyes shut.
Maeve presses the tip of her dagger against Maddie’s heart. Maddie is delirious now, thinks 4 inches in, 4 inches in and you’re dead, and Maeve counts 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and it is over.
Up in the sky, a silver parachute floats down, lands right into Maeve’s bloodstained hands.
Anti-Paralytic Agent, reads the vial.
And then the cannon booms, declaring Maeve Alcraiz the victor of the 55th Annual Hunger Games.
Her words come back to haunt her, in the end.
They get the laughter. I get the crown.
Except there is nothing, nothing on this wretched earth that is worth laughing for now.