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The thing is, Isaac doesn’t even mind everyone looking at him anymore. He’s gotten so used to it in the past two years. He’s grown a shell, or an amour, and as long as that stays in place, everyone can do whatever the fuck they want. He’ll be fine. He’ll always be fine.
“This years male mentor, Isaac Lahey!” Corwick Marsden bellows.
There’s applause, he distantly notes. A lot of it. What are they applauding? The fact that he killed four other people to survive? They should really stop clapping. His armour just might crack, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Megara Ashton, a tall woman with thick, dark hair, tanned skin, and dark eyes is the female mentor this year. District seven doesn’t hold the most victors, but there were seven of them still alive, including himself and Megara, so they switched off every year. This was his first year mentoring, only two years after winning his games.
Meg smiles and actually pumps the air when she walks on stage. She’s been doing this for years, he knows, and she’s long since past the time when she would hide or cower or even attempt to be modest. In this world, it was kill or be killed. Meg killed, and therefore she believed she should be worshipped.
Isaac had been subjected to watching her games during his year as tribute. He remembers watching the video of her getting trapped in a net by a pack of careers. They didn’t kill her though, obviously. They just poked, prodded, tortured her. When the boy from her district, someone whose name Isaac didn’t remember, stumbled upon the camp one night while only one person was taking watch, he managed to get her free. She killed them all. Isaac didn’t blame her. Not for any of it.
The mentor’s chairs are hard and uncomfortable, but Isaac doesn’t care. He tries to get as comfortable as he can while he ignores everything else. He’s watched reapings his entire life. This one shouldn’t be any different, except it is. He’s about to become responsible for two lives.
Of course, the national anthem is played, as well as a message from the Capitol. Everyone is supposed to stand respectfully. Isaac doesn’t, and no one makes him.
Eventually they get to the main event, the reaping of the tributes. “You thought it was bad enough in the arena?” Meg whispers to him, still staring out at the crowd with a dazzling, cruel smile on her face. “Just wait. This is worse, because now you’re going to be responsible for their deaths, too, but you can’t do anything about it. You just have to sit and watch.”
Isaac swallows but doesn’t answer her. He gets the impression that Meg is more than a little unstable. But then again, how many people made it from the arena with their minds still in tact? That was like the compromise. No matter what, in the end, no one survives the arena.
Everything is completely silent as the first name is being drawn. Hundreds upon hundreds of people stand in the crowds just below the stage he sits on, but not one of them makes a sound.
“Marcy Bornwood,” Corwick calls.
There’s a scream from a woman somewhere, and then hushed whispers and indignant cries spread throughout the crowd as a small girl steps forward. She’s shaking, head to toe. First reaping, Isaac guesses. She can’t be older than twelve. No one steps forward to take her place. No one ever does.
A woman tries to break through the crowd to get to her. A peacekeeper stops her. Isaac squeezes his eyes closed. He sees her in his mind, the dark curls on her head laying on a flat bed of grass, eyes open wide and glassy. Dead. Because it’s inevitable. She won’t live. Everyone watching right now knows it, too.
Corwick can tell that he’s going to lose the crowds attention due to Marcy if he doesn’t quickly move on, so he does. He quickly grabs for a boys name while Meg makes a sound under her breath that sounds a hell of a lot like the sound of a cannon being fired.
Marcy is now standing on Corwick’s left, sobbing into her shirt, which she‘s pulled up to cover her face. “Scott McCall!” Corwick calls, and you can see his visible sigh of relief when it’s not a child that steps forward.
No, Scott isn’t tall, but he’s got wide shoulders and a mature face. This one, Isaac thinks, could have a chance. Of course, that’s until Scott stoically walks onto stage and meets his eyes for the briefest second. They’re brown and wide and wet, and they’re innocent. So innocent.
He, too, will die, Isaac knows.
There’s a speech, given by Corwick, and then the tributes are whisked away to the town hall to say their goodbyes.
“Want some?” Meg asks, holding out a flask to him as they descend the stairs behind the stage.
Isaac can smell the alcohol, and it makes him wrinkles his nose. “No,” he says.
Meg shrugs and swings back a sip. “You will,” she tells him. “Maybe not now, maybe not this year. But eventually you will.”
It’s less than an hour before they’re being boarded on the train. Isaac has to clench his eyes closed as he climbs aboard. Every terrible memory he has, and for him, there’s a lot to chose from, comes to the surface and he has to fight to push them down.
Maybe Meg was right. He hopes she’s not. He can deal with this. With all of it. He didn’t do what he did just to lose his mind afterwards.
“Ready to meet with the kids?” Meg asks, bumping his shoulder as she easily enters the train.
Isaac narrows his eyes, because really, she’s so upbeat it’s offensive. “Not really.” He admits, shrugging. “But I don’t think I ever will be.”
Meg barks a laugh. “I haven’t gotten to spend much time with you, Lahey. You’re so honest.” She smirks and walks past him. “Honesty is a very stupid character trait,” She adds over her shoulder.
—
His first up close encounters with his tributes is at dinner. Marcy is still crying on and off at this point, which actually brings out a softer side of Meg. She sits next to the girl and whispers to her quietly, words that Isaac can’t pick up but that apparently calm the younger girl.
Scott is silent, too, but it’s an angry silence. His hand, holding his fork, is clenched tight, like he might stab it into the next person who manages to get his attention. From a strategic stand point, this might actually be a good thing. Isaac didn’t think, from first glance, that Scott would be capable of hurting anyone at all. There was just something about him that exuded safety and not violence.
He decides to test that. He puts his hand on Scott’s arm.
The fork comes just inches from his face before Scott’s eyes go wide and he releases it. It falls to the carpeted floor with a muffled thud.
“I’m sorry,” Scott gasps, like he’s been running for miles or something instead of just sitting there at the table, staring at nothing. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry.”
Isaac stares at him steadily before bending down to pick up the fork. “You should be,” Isaac tells him, “because you hesitated. If this were the arena, you would be dead right now.”
He hands the fork back to Scott and then pushes away from the table. None of the food is looking appetising at the moment. He just wants to get out of here.
Footsteps follow closely behind him but Isaac doesn’t turn until he gets to the door of his room. “What do you want?” He asks with a sigh, not bothering to turn to face Scott.
“I want to know what it’s like,” Scott tells him. His voice is low. “Isaac—,” he says, like he knows Isaac, but he doesn’t. Really, no one does. Not his mother, who took one look at him when he returned from the games and grabbed his father’s shoulder and sobbed. Not his friends, who didn’t meet his eyes anymore.
No, Isaac didn’t even know who he was after that.
“You want to know?” Isaac snaps, whirling to face him.
Scott’s face is steely. His skin is dark, caramel coloured, but there’s red in his cheeks and neck, flushed with anger. “I need to know.”
Isaac raises his eyebrows, pushes open his bedroom door, and leaves it open so Scott can follow him. Unsurprisingly, he does.
“No matter what you’ve built up in your mind, you’ll never be able to accurately picture what it’s like.” Isaac says conversationally, moving to sit on the soft bed in his room. Scott closes the door behind himself and stands in the middle of the room awkwardly. “The best you can do is think of it like a dream. It’s not reality in there. If you let it become your reality, you’ll go insane.”
Scott blinks and nods. “But— what about the—,”
“The killing?” Isaac laughs and looks down at his hands. “It’s funny, because before hand you think, ‘I could never do something like that. I couldn’t kill someone.’ but then your own life is being threatened and you surprise yourself. It’s easy, you know, technically. Stab someone, shoot them with an arrow, poison their food, strangle them. They’ll die. But so do you.” Isaac says, finally looking back up at Scott.
“Not if you win,” Scott points out, but he looks terrified, like Isaac’s words, or maybe his eyes, scared him.
“Especially if you win.”
—
“So, are you good at anything?” Meg asks when the next day after breakfast. They’re sitting in one of the lounge cars, the television quietly playing in the background.
Marcy is tucked under Meg’s arm. Scott sits alone on a chair, legs pulled up and arms wrapped around them. The position makes his already wide shoulders look impossibly bigger.
“I’m good with an axe,” Scott says, lifting those shoulders a bit in a shrug. “I’ve been using one as long as I can remember.”
Neither meg nor Isaac are surprised by this. In their district, that’s common. It’s also extremely helpful. Knowing how to properly swing a weapon, how to put force behind a hit, could be the difference between life or death.
Marcy, it turns out, has no sort of training at all. Nothing that could help her. She comes from one of the wealthier families in their district, and hadn’t been put into work. Isaac tries not to dwell on that, because he’s already accepted her death.
Eventually Meg gets up and disappears. Marcy gives him a sad, lost look, but Isaac isn’t like Meg. He doesn’t know how to comfort kids. Instead, it’s Scott who gets up and wraps his arms around her.
“I had a younger sister," Scott says, voice hard and thick with emotion. The tense of the statement makes Isaac’s mind whirl.
Isaac tries to think and he vaguely remembers the year before his own reaping, and he feels like an asshole for not realizing it. Scott’s sister was twelve, and she had the same thick, dark hair as Scott, and the same innocent brown eyes.
“What happened to her?” Marcy asks.
Scott smiles down at her. “She’s back home,” Scott lies. “When you get home you can be her friend for me, okay?”
Isaac has to pull his eyes away from that, because something in his stomach clenches and for the first time in forever he feels something other than anger and pain and fear. And it’s sadness.
Eventually Meg comes back, carrying two tapes in her hand. Isaac notes that they’re both labelled with a number, and he goes tense all over.
“You want to go first, or should I?” Meg asks, holding the tape with the number 67 on it up and waggling it in his face.
“Whatever,” Isaac says, because he doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of freaking out.
“What is that?” Marcy asks, and Scott meets his eyes over he shoulder and they lock there, holding his gaze, until finally Isaac blinks and turns away.
“This is how we won.” Meg says simply, and she pops Isaac’s tape in the player.
He leaves the room almost immediately. He can’t watch that. And, for some reason, he doesn’t want to watch Scott watch that. Doesn’t want to see those stupidly innocent eyes look at him in horror from what he’s done because, while it’s not exactly a secret, and he’d probably watched some of Isaac’s games when they premiered, it’s different to watch every moment, focusing only on him the way the tape is edited to.
So he shuts himself up in his room and tries to sleep.
He almost passes out, maybe an hour later, before a knock sounds on his door. “I’m not hungry,” he calls, assuming it’s just an Avox checking if he needs anything.
“Good thing I didn’t bring any food, I guess,” Scott says, pushing open the door to peak his head into the room. “Can I come in?”
Isaac shrugs. “Why?”
Scott seems to take that as a yes, and he comes into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. Isaac closes his eyes again and keeps them that way, even when the bed sinks a bit under Scott’s weight.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Scott asks, surprising him. Isaac’s eyes pop open as Scott lays down on the bed beside him so their arms are touching.
“Maybe,” Isaac says, turning to look at him. “Probably.”
Scott nods. “Okay.”
“It’s really not,” Isaac says quietly, turning back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s not.”
“So then help me win.” Scott’s voice is low and determined. “You did it. You know what it’s really like. A video isn’t going to help anyone. It’s not real. But it’s real for you.”
“You can’t win without killing someone,” Isaac points out.
He can feel Scott tense beside him. “Obviously.”
“You really think you could?” Isaac doubts it.
“You said it was easy, remember?”
“In theory. It’s a lot different to actually watch the light go out of someone’s eyes. To know that their family members are back home crying, realizing they’re never coming back. That it’s all your fault.”
“It’s not like you have a choice,” Scott hisses quietly.
“You can choose to die instead.”
Scott props himself up on one elbow so he’s leaning over Isaac. His eyelashes cast a shadow on his face that flutters every time he blinks. “Do you wish that you died instead?”
Isaac looks up at him slowly. “Every day,” he says, and then he rolls over and away from those brown eyes that somehow always manage to trap him.
—
Isaac remembers when he was awed by the first sight of the Capitol. Even now, it’s breathtaking. Marcy coos and gasps and Scott’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open. It is beautiful, in an alien way. As long as you try not to think about the fact that every resident inside is going to be calling out for their blood in a weeks time.
“Wait until you see where we’re staying,” he says instead of pointing that out. “The train is nothing compared to the tribute building.”
There’s an actual train station in the bottom of the building. That way all tributes are moved safely (and without chance of escape) from their district to the building. The building itself is all sleek glass and metal. Isaac much prefers the wooden build of their houses back home. Everything in the Capitol feels cold.
The four of them, he, Scott, Marcy and Meg, all pile into the elevator. Meg allows Marcy to press the 7 button to bring them to their flat.
It’s different from how Isaac remembers, as if it’s been redecorated. Everything inside is red and brown and warm colours that almost remind him of the trees back home late in the year before they fall. But the colours are artificial and too bright.
Meg laughs easily as the two tributes go off to explore. Corwick comes in the way they just passed. Every district is assigned a sort of… representative from the Capitol. For District 7, that person is Corwick. He’s not a terrible person, Isaac knows from the years he’s known him, but he, just like everything else in the Capitol, is fake. The smile, the hair, the skin tone.
“Everyone settling in?” He asks, clapping his hands together.
“I think the boy might be trying to hang himself with the sheets,” Meg tells him.
Corwick’s face goes white.
“She’s kidding,” Isaac assures him, rolling his eyes.
“Right,” Corwick blushes. “Anyways, I apologize for not being with you during the train ride. I had important business to take care of.”
“You weren’t there?” Meg asks, flopping onto the large, blood red couch. “I didn’t notice.”
“Nice to see you never lose your spark, Megara.” Corwick says tightly.
Isaac leaves them to it, since he’s not included in this little banter that they have. He’s not upset by that fact at all.
“We’re so high up,” Scott comments when Isaac walks into his room.
He’s not even sure why he’s there, but he just leans in the doorway and watches Scott’s face as he turns back to the window. “I wouldn’t lean against that,” Isaac warns. “The glass could shatter and you’d fall to your death.”
Scott raises his eyebrows and then pounds his fists on the glass and even kicks it once. “I think we’re good.”
Isaac lets out the breath he’s been holding. He doesn’t like heights. At all. “What’s wrong with you?” He demands, taking a step towards Scott, hands clenched at his sides. “You didn’t know for sure that it would hold.”
There’s the glint of a challenge in Scott’s eyes. “What’s the worst that could happen? Death’s inevitable, right? So why bother being afraid of anything anymore?”
Isaac crosses his arms over his chest for something to do. The button up shirt he’s wearing strains against the move and he has to remind himself to start wearing a larger size. “So you’ve just accepted it, then.”
Scott shrugs and looks back out at the city. “I guess.”
Isaac doesn’t mean to do it. He doesn’t even think. He just grabs Scott roughly by the shoulders and turns him around and holds his arms tight, too tight, there will probably be bruises tomorrow where his fingers clench around Scott’s surprisingly hard and strong biceps.
“You never give up. Do you hear me?” He meant to sound strong, almost threatening, but it comes out much weaker than he’d like. “Promise me.”
Scott looks taken aback, as he should, but he nods. “I-I won’t.”
Isaac lets him go. “Good.” His voice sounds gruff even to his own ears.
—
The first day of training Isaac spends most of the day in bed. When Scott and Marcy gets back he can hear Marcy’s excited chatter as she relays the day to Meg and Corwick. He doesn’t hear Scott’s voice, though. At least, not until he walks into Isaac’s room without knocking.
“How’d it go?” Isaac asks, not getting out of bed.
“The guys from District 1 and 3 kept watching me, so I didn’t really do anything. I just stuck with Marcy and tried to show her some basics to see what’s she’s good at.” Scott answers, and he sounds tired despite the fact that he just said he didn’t really do anything.
“And what is she good at?” Isaac wonders, sitting up just a bit.
Scott shrugs and, just like on the train, he comes and sits on Isaac’s bed without asking. He’s quiet for a long time and he runs a hand over his face.
“Nothing,” Scott admits finally. “Her legs are short, so while she’s small she’s not very quick. Her arms are too thin to do much throwing. She refused to stab anything when I asked if she wanted to try out the knives.” He looks helplessly at Isaac. “She can’t identify any plants, except for the basics, the ones that everyone knows back home. The only thing she’s good at is building a shelter. That might help her last a couple days, maybe, but she— she doesn’t have a chance. Not if it comes to combat. Unless everyone else in the arena drops dead from sickness or something it’s impossible.”
Isaac doesn’t mention that he figured this much since the first day, because Scott had obviously held on to every strand of hope. Why, Isaac has no idea. Because even if she was capable, if she won, that meant that he couldn’t.
“What about you?” Isaac asks, only because Scott looks so tortured. “You figure out any hidden talents?”
Scott shrugs. “I’m good at throwing, apparently, but I didn’t do any of that today because, like I mentioned, I had spectators. I can lift pretty large amounts, too. Shelters aren’t my strongest point, but I’m definitely better at it than anyone else I saw go to that station, except Marcy.” Scott’s head tilts back and he looks at the ceiling. “Is it stupid to think I might actually have a chance?”
Isaac isn’t sure if he should lie or tell the truth. In the end he tells the truth, but it’s not an answer to Scott’s question. “I think you’re capable.”
Scott looks at him, eyebrows scrunched with confusion. “But?”
Isaac sighs. “But I don’t think you will.”
Scott looks hurt. “Thanks,” he spits, standing up. “It’s really good for my confidence that even my freaking mentor—”
“I don’t think you have it in you to kill someone, Scott,” he says, lifting his hands in his own defence. “I have no doubts that if you wanted to—,”
“I want to,” Scott says, voice hard.
“I don’t believe you.” Isaac counters.
“Yeah, well, you don’t even know me,” Scott snaps, whirling around. He slams Isaac’s door behind him as he goes.
—
The day of evaluations Scott doesn’t eat. Isaac pushes a plate towards him, eyes narrowed. “Dry heaving hurts more than throwing up breakfast.” He advises.
“How are you even a mentor?” Scott asks, and he’s using that tone again, the angry, uninterested, cold tone he’s been using since after their first training session when he came to Isaac’s room. “You’re only two years older than I am.”
“You can be a mentor at thirteen,” Corwick says, smiling, like this is nice information. “There’s no age limit, as long as you’re a Victor, you can be a mentor.”
Scott mutters something that Isaac can’t hear. He’s kind of glad about that. He’s also kind of glad at Scott’s cold shoulder, because Meg had cornered him earlier today and told him that he was being stupid. Apparently, the first rule of being a mentor, according to her, was not to get attached.
Too late, Isaac knows.
“What do you plan on doing in the evaluation room today?” Meg asks Marcy. Isaac thinks that Meg’s broken her own rule on this one, too.
Marcy smiles brightly. “Building a shelter and throwing knives, like Scott taught me. He’s really good. You should have seen those big guys from 1 and 3 watching him. They looked pretty scared.”
Both Meg and Isaac quickly look at Scott and then away. First rule of training: unless you’re a career, showing off is a sure-fire way to get a target on your back.
“What about you?” Meg barks at him.
Scott lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just wait until I get in there.”
Isaac remembers his own evaluation score. A six. He knows better than anyone that the score isn’t really about your chances at winning, it’s about sponsors. He hopes for both Marcy’s and Scott’s sake that they get good scores.
—
Marcy is seated between Meg and Scott, holding both of their hands tightly. Isaac sits alone on the chair. Corwick is too antsy to sit.
“A seven,” Meg says, eyes wide. “Good job!” She squeezes Marcy’s hand.
Marcy looks delight. Isaac’s impressed. How she got that high of a score from just a bit of knife throwing, he has no idea.
Scott gets a ten. Meg looks as proud and impressed as Isaac feels. Only one other tribute got a ten, the large, mountainous guy from District 3.
“Are you excited for the interviews?” Meg asks afterwards. “And what about the ceremony? What does your stylist have planned?”
Scott makes a choked noise and Marcy narrows her eyes. “We’re going to be trees,” she says in a clipped tone.
“No, we’re not,” Scott says, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’re going to be wearing leaves and they’re going to make our skin a bit darker.”
“I’ve seen your costume,” Marcy says to Scott. “I’m wearing leaves. You’re wearing a leaf.”
Isaac frowns and tries to figure out how that’s going to work. Is the costume just going to be one giant leaf, or—, he ends up making the same choked sound Scott had moments before. Scott glares at him.
“It’s not funny,” he says, flames in his eyes. “It’s indecent.”
Meg bellows with laughter. “Good! The sponsors will love it!” She pinches Scott’s arm. “’specially a cute little thing like you.”
Isaac pretty sure he’s as uncomfortable as Scott is by that comment.
—
The costumes are just as bad as Marcy and Scott had implied. It’s worse on Marcy, because she’s so young. Their stylist didn’t seem to care, though, and she’s showing much more skin than Meg, Scott or Isaac feel comfortable noticing.
So Isaac decides to just look at Scott instead. That’s a bad idea. He’s more toned than Isaac had thought, and his stomach is a washboard of hard muscles that pull tight against his now even darker skin. There really is only one leaf, and it only just covers Scott’s lower area. Thankfully the leaf is apparently sewn onto a pair of underwear, so when Scott turns it’s only his ass that’s on display, and not everything.
Isaac has to tear his eyes away from that, too. He can’t look anywhere, apparently.
They don’t have the most ridiculous costumes, though. District three is dressed as horses. What that has to do with their district, no one apparently knows. They just look stupid.
Scott doesn’t talk to anyone when the ceremony is over. He just stomps to the elevator, gets in, and doesn’t wait for anyone else. When they get back to their floor, he’s fully dressed in his clothes and his skin is red and raw looking from where he roughly cleaned off the paint.
Their stylist isn’t completely incompetent, though, Isaac learns on the night of the interview. Marcy’s dressed in a very appropriate red dress that’s all ruffles and sequins. Scott wears a suit with a red tie covered in the same sequined material as her dress.
“They love her,” Meg comments as they sit together on the District 7 couch in the large room for mentors.
“She’s absolutely adorable,” Markquelle, the woman from District 3 comments. “Not like the barbarians I’ve got. The one only managed to score a 4.”
Meg laughs good naturedly. “Don’t be so hard on them, Markie,” She says.
Marcy handles all the questions easily. Caesar asks her easy questions, like what she likes to do at home, about her family and friends. Nothing about the games, which is good, because Meg and Isaac were both betting on him to act like that and hadn’t really prepared her for any hard questions.
Eventually she’s waved off the stage and Scott walks on. He’s all smile and openness that it’s impossible not to instantly like him. Or maybe Isaac’s biased.
The other mentors chat amongst themselves, only occasionally commenting on the tributes from other Districts. Isaac ignores them and pays complete attention to Scott.
“How are you feeling, Scott?” Caesar asks, leaning forward like they know each other well.
Scott chuckles. “There’s not really any good answer to that question that wouldn’t be a lie, now is there?”
Caesar leans back and lets the laughter die down before continuing. “Now, sure there is.”
Apparently the look Scott gives him changes his mind. “You’ve got a sweet face but there’s a fire inside you, isn’t there?” Caesar comments. “I’d watch out for this one!” Caesar calls, as if warning the other tributes. “Don’t let the pretty face fool them, right?”
Scott shifts uncomfortably, but the easy smile stays on his face. “They definitely shouldn’t.”
“So, Scott, tell me about your mentors,” Caesar says, and Isaac feels Meg narrow her eyes at that. “I know you’ve got Megara. Lovely woman, really. Bit insane, though, isn’t she?” The crowd laughs again and Meg hisses something in retaliation. “But what about the other one, huh? Not bad on the eyes, am I right? It’s his first time mentoring. How’s he doing?”
Isaac’s body goes tense as he waits for the inevitable, “Horrible.”
“He’s great.” Scott answers, and it sounds sincere. Caesar raises his eyebrows at that and Scott coughs, cheeks turning just a bit red. “They’re both great.” He corrects, and Meg lets out an indignant huff before sinking back into her seat. “But he’s— he’s really smart. Sad, though, you know?”
There’s a sympathetic sigh from the crowd that makes Isaac furious, because they don’t have a right to pity him. He doesn’t need pity. He’s stronger than any of them.
“I wanted to ask you a question, and feel free to pass on it, okay?”
Isaac’s eyes widen because neither him nor Meg had prepared for this, because they’d agreed it wouldn’t come up. It’d be too cruel. They should never underestimate how cruel the Capitol can be, though.
“Your sister, she was in the games, wasn’t she?”
“Pass.” Scott says, and Isaac can see even over the screen that he’s gripping the sides of the chair so hard it’s a surprise his fingers don’t tear through the material.
“So, what about back home, huh? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Caesar asks, almost as if he none of that just happened.
“No,” Scott says quickly.
“Does that have to do with a certain smart, great mentor?” Caesar teases.
“N-no,” Scott says again, and Meg nudges Isaac in the ribs with her elbow.
“Any of you buying that?” Caesar asks the crowd. There’s a chorus of “No!” before Caesar turns back to Scott. “It was nice chatting with you, Scott, best of luck in the games.”
Scott nods stiffly and gets up. It could have gone worse, Isaac decides. That doesn’t keep the blush from rising to his pale cheeks, though.
—
Isaac wonders if he should start locking his door, because apparently Scott doesn’t understand what privacy means. But it’s the last night before they head out to the arena so it’s not like it’ll be a problem anymore.
“He was wrong, just so you know,” Scott says, walking into the room, looking like he’d been working himself up to come and say that all night.
“I know,” Isaac shrugs. “Caesar likes to grab onto things and run with them. You should be grateful, actually, because it could have been worse.”
Scott snorts. “How? I’m pretty sure telling the entire nation that I have a crush on my mentor is the tip of the embarrassment iceberg.”
“Well, if it’s not true it shouldn’t matter, right?” Isaac points out, but he feels heat in his own cheeks and tries to control it but fails.
Scott bites his bottom lip. “Okay, say it is true. Would that— would that be weird?”
Isaac sucks in a harsh breath. “Why would you?”
Scott shrugs and sits beside Isaac’s legs. Without asking permission he grabs Isaac’s hand from where it lays on top of the covers. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “Maybe because I have a thing for wanting to help people who need it, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who needs it more.”
Isaac tries to tug his hand back. “I don’t need help,” he denies. Scott doesn’t let go of his hand, though, and Isaac’s finally seeing a demonstration of just how strong he is.
“Okay, but you need someone. And don’t say you don’t.” Scott orders. “Plus you’re— you’re good, you know? Like, deep down. You don’t really show it a lot, but you are.”
Isaac lets his hand go limp in Scott’s. “You should be sleeping,” he says, because this conversation needs to stop now, before he loses control of the situation.
Scott nods. “Okay,” he agrees and lets go of Isaac to stand up. He doesn’t head for the door, though, he just pulls his shirt over his head, slips out of his jeans, and pulls back Isaac’s covers, waving his hand to indicate that Isaac should move over.
And he does, because he knows this is the only chance he’ll ever get at this, and he’s selfish enough to want it.
They just sleep. Scott’s arm goes around his waist, and it’s nice. It’s good. Isaac can’t remember the last time he let someone get this close to him. Or the last time he slept so soundly.
—
The goodbyes are painful. Isaac can hardly form words, his throat is so tight. Scott doesn’t even say anything, he just stares at him hard, like he can convey everything in one look.
“Remember that you promised me, okay?” Isaac says quietly.
Scott nods and then he moves on to hug Meg, who wishes him good luck, and to thank Corwick.
Marcy throws herself into Isaac’s arms and then does the same to Meg, but she’s sobbing when Meg actually has to push her clinging arms away.
“Be brave, tough girl, okay?” Meg orders, and she’s crying. Not hard, just uncontrollable tears slipping down her face. It’s painful to watch, so he doesn’t.
And then they’re being escorted away.
“We fucked up, didn’t we?” Meg asks, watching them go. She wipes furiously at the back of her eyes.
Isaac nods, stomach clenching. “Yeah,” he says thickly.
Meg claps him on the back. “At least you have something to look forward to if he makes it back.”
It’s the ‘if’ that breaks his heart. He knows that it’s the last time he’s going to see Scott in person. Accepting that fact is difficult, though.
—
Marcy’s death is instantaneous. She doesn’t make it five minutes. Despite the fact that both Meg and Isaac told them both not to go near the Cornucopia, she takes a quick run for a knife lying not too far from her. She’d probably have made it, too, if the girl from District twelve, a tall, lithe one with long legs that moved her quickly across the field, made it there first. The knife goes into her neck. She falls. The cameras don’t even stay on her after that.
Meg doesn’t cry at this. She just takes a large sip from a bottle and squeezes her eyes closed. Isaac doesn’t say he’s sorry, because he feels Marcy’s death, maybe not as harshly as she does, but still. And you only apologize for grief that doesn’t hit home, and this one does.
Isaac can’t watch, but he can’t look away, either, as he waits to see the whether or not both of their tributes are going to die during the initial battle.
Eventually the bloodbath ends, leaving only four tributes standing, besides the ones that initially ran from the Cornucopia. The girl and boy from 1, the boy from 3 and a girl from 5. He’s not sure how many bodies lay surrounding the Cornucopia. He doesn’t really care. He just needs to make sure it’s not that one body.
They’ll have to wait a few hours until that night, though. He doesn’t even have dealing with sponsors to distract him, since usually the calls and donations aren’t counted until after the first day. Barely anyone bothers before that, because you can never count on any tribute living through the first night.
The mentors from every District are forced to have the games on every television in their flat. There is nothing else to do but watch and wait. At least they don’t have to sit in a room with the other mentors, like Isaac had thought. This way they could mourn or cheer on their tributes in private, without causing rifts between them and the other mentors.
“Go to bed, Isaac,” Meg says, and she sounds tired, but she looks wide awake. She hasn’t left the couch, except to use the bathroom. An Avox brings her food or drinks whenever she asks so she doesn’t need to move her eyes from the screen. “I’ll wake you when I find out what happened to him, okay?”
Isaac is exhausted, but he ignores her offer and instead goes into his room, picks Scott’s shirt up off the floor, thankful that it hadn’t been taken away for washing or anything. It smells like him, so Isaac pulls it on and tries not to really think about why that should matter so much to him.
He grabs the blankets and pillows off his bed, and stops to grab an extra one from Meg’s room. He throws it to her and then pushes the coffee table away and makes a makeshift bed on the floor.
He falls asleep to the sound of a young boy screaming.
—
He wakes up when a foot hits his back, hard. He jumps up, instantly alert, hands grasping blindly for any sort of weapon until he realizes where he is. Meg looks down at him, not even caring that he’s crouching and ready to attack.
“He’s alive!” She cheers, grabbing Isaac’s shoulders and pulling him into a hug. She pushes him back seconds later and grabs his arms, twirling him in a circle, like they’re dancing, chanting, “He’s alive!” The entire time.
It takes longer than it should for the words to sink in, and Isaac feels warm all over. “He’s okay?” He gasps.
Meg nods, dark hair flying, and she seems almost young now, despite the fact that she’s got at least ten years on him. “He wasn’t in the death toll, and they showed him on camera for a few minutes.” Her face drops. “He was crying.”
“Marcy,” Isaac guesses.
Meg’s happiness is completely gone at this point. “We all knew it was inevitable. Better it happened when it did, because it could have been drawn out.”
That doesn’t make it better, but it makes it easier to accept.
Scott, it turns out, is a favourite amongst sponsors. “It’s because he’s cute,” Meg says knowingly. “The Capitol eats guys like him up. Guys like you,” she adds. “They loved you. I remember.”
“Do we send him something?” Isaac asks, because every time the camera has closed up on Scott, he’s looked okay enough. There’s a gash in his leg, but Isaac thinks that’s from the arena, not another tribute. But he hadn’t had luck in finding food.
Meg shakes her head. “We save it up. We can’t afford to waste anything, in case he ever needs medicine, because that stuff’s expensive.”
The second night, when the faces flash in the sky, Meg announces that over half the tributes are dead. The girl from 1 was killed when the careers took down the girl from 12 who killed Marcy. Isaac watches her die and wishes he could feel satisfaction at that. He doesn’t. And she takes down the District 1 girl with her.
Scott has an axe. Neither he nor meg know where he got it, but when he goes to sleep that night, passed out in a small outcropping of rocks that look like a terrible hiding place, but actually protect him fairly well, it’s clutched in his hands.
On the third night, Scott commits his first murder. Isaac doesn’t watch. Meg replays the event for him, and he’s grateful because he needs to know what happened, but he couldn’t— couldn’t witness it first hand.
“Had to,” Meg says, eyes glued to the screen. “It was life or death. Hopefully that will help him sleep at night.”
Isaac looks at her when she says that. “Does it help you?”
Meg laughs. “Honey, I don’t have issues sleeping at night,” she assures him. Isaac thinks it’s a lie, that she puts on a brave face. Or maybe she really is insane.
Probably both, actually.
On the fifth night there’s only six tributes left. Scott gets attacked.
The guy from District 3 rushes him and knocks him to the ground. He was drinking from a stream at the time. This time, Isaac has to watch, because he knows that this is really it, this is the actual last time he will see Scott alive.
The axe swings hard and the head of the boy from District 3 rolls away from the body. Isaac throws up then, all over the floor and the bed that he made there. But Scott’s alive, and that should count for something. Except Isaac has trouble looking at his face when the camera zooms up on it. The eyes are dead, even though he’s still very clearly alive.
—
Scott’s injured. The girl from District 5 managed to get him good in the arm with a spear before Scott pushed her off the edge of the cliff. It was a good spot to hide, Isaac thought when Scott first made his way up the rock formation. He would see everyone coming.
It’s his good arm, too, the one he uses to swing the axe. That’s an issue.
“We’ve got enough to send him bandages and something to sooth the pain," Meg says after conferring with Corwick, who is in charge of keeping track of all sponsor donations. “I think we might want to.”
Isaac nods and lets her handle it. He has his legs pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. He’s so close, Isaac thinks. So close to making it out of there. Until this point, he’d never really let himself believe that. Now, it’s all he can think about.
—
“This is it,” Meg comments on the seventh night. “It’s down to the two of them. I’m telling Corwick to send him something to eat.”
Isaac nods mutely. He will not move from this spot until it’s over. He refuses to. Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t even go to the bathroom, though his bladder is a constant pain now. He ignores it.
Isaac smiles at the shock, awe, and grateful look on Scott’s face when the package falls in front of him. It’s filled with potatoes, meat, and a roll. He eats it all instantly, like he knows exactly what it is. His last meal in the arena, either way.
It surprises even Meg when Scott manages to find a hidden camera and locks his eyes on it. “So, um, I feel really stupid talking to a camera,” Scott says, and it’s almost like they’re back in Isaac’s room, having a normal conversation. “This is it, right? So, I just— I guess I wanted to say goodbye, just in case.” He sucks in a deep breath and Isaac notes, again, the way that no emotions reach his brown eyes. “I’m sorry, mom. I know— I know how hard this is for you, okay? Meg, you take car of her. You’re both strong, you’ll be fine. Isaac—,” his voice catches. “I kept my promise, so that’s got to mean something, right?”
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Scott says goodbye once more and then looks away from the camera, and Meg is pressing Kleenex into his hands.
“I was wrong, you know,” Meg says quietly. “I don’t think it’s because he’s attractive. I think it’s because you can’t help but root for him.”
“Yeah,” Isaac agrees.
—
The final fight is brutal. And close. The boy from District 1 gets his knife stuck in Scott’s shoulder blade. It’s the only reason he wins, because he’s already losing at that point, and Isaac counts at least three gaping wounds on his body.
But the District 1 boy makes the mistake of trying to get his knife out of Scott’s shoulder, and Scott kicks him, right in the chest, with both feet, and he flies back. He pulls the knife from his own shoulder, not even wincing at the pain.
The District 1 boy dies the way Marcy did on the first day. Stabbed in the throat. The cannon sounds. It’s over.
But it’s not really ever over.
—
The hardest thing is waiting for the interview to end so he can finally touch Scott and assure himself that he’s okay. That, and watching Scott mutely go through the interview. He doesn’t speak, not once. He just watches the replaying of the games with a stoic face,
Caesar attempts to question him in every possible way, even asking him how he felt about seeing Marcy die, and replying it over again, trying to get a reaction out of him. Scott just stands up and walks away while Caesar is mid sentence.
Isaac’s moving to his side the second he can, and no one attempts to stop him.
Scott’s warm when he wraps his arms around him, but he’s shaking. His whole body tremors and he looks up at Isaac.
“Scott,” he says, because it’s all he can say, really.
“Kept your promise,” Scott says, shrugging.
Isaac can’t stand looking into the blank depths of his eyes any longer, so he does something he knows he should have done a while ago. He didn’t, though, because he couldn’t do something like that when he’d figured Scott was going to be taken away from him right afterwards.
He kisses him, hard. It’s like kissing stone, at first. Scott doesn’t move, or react. Isaac squeezes his biceps hard, though, like that day in Scott’s room at the tribute building, and maybe it’s because of the memory, or maybe it’s for other reasons, he doesn’t know, but Scott kisses him back.
His arms are tight around Isaac, like he doesn’t want to let go ever. He’s happy to oblige that, if he really does.
His lips are slick with something the stylist put on them to counteract the chapping that happened in the arena. Isaac doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind anything at the moment. Not even the cough Corwick lets out behind them, or Meg snapping at him to leave them alone.
Isaac feels wetness on his cheeks and he’s not sure if they’re his tears of Scott’s. A mingling of both, he realizes when he pulls back for a second just to check.
Scott doesn’t let him get far, though, before pulling him back in for another kiss, this time more urgent, like he’s afraid to lose him, the way Isaac’s been since the moment they met.
He’s panting when they finally separate. Scott keeps a hand around his waist though.
The cold in his eyes has melted, just a bit. Or maybe that’s only when he looks at Isaac. Either way, he’ll take what he can get.
“Can we go home?” Scott asks quietly.
Meg rushes forward and wraps her arms around him, but it’s awkward because he’s still not letting go of Isaac. “Yes we can,” she says fiercely.
—
He’s not the same Scott, or so anyone would tell you if you asked. Anyone, except Isaac, or Meg, or Scott’s mother, Melissa.
He’s a harder person. Those once innocent eyes have now seen things, things that Scott himself has done, and it’s impossible not to be changed by that.
But when he wants to, those walls of ice that he’s put up melt and the warmth returns to his gaze. Isaac loves that it always happens when Scott looks at him, because Scott melts his walls, too.
“I still don’t see why I can’t just donate my house to someone who needs it.” Scott says as his finger trails a lazy circle over Isaac’s back.
Isaac sighs. “I know, but that’s just the way it is,” He kisses Scott’s shoulder, right above the scar. “But if you did, where would your mother stay?”
Scott chuckles deeply. “We both know she practically lives here anyways. She likes to supervise us. Make sure we don’t do anything bad.”
Isaac laughs, too. “Like what?”
Scott pulls him in for a kiss, slotting their mouths together like they’ve done hundreds of times. “Would you like a demonstration?”
“Yes,” Isaac nods so quickly his curls bounce.
Both of their laughter echoes in the nearly empty room and they both let themselves forget, for a few moments.
So yeah, maybe it’ll never be okay. But it’s easier to deal with that together.