Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One greasy morning, not unlike all of the other humid and grey mornings at the orphanage, Emme woke up sweating and restless.

She blinked, her eyes immediately aching as she took in the grey ceiling above her bunk. The deep purple bags under her eyes seemed to force them to droop, and her whole body stung with the pain of getting up. Despite the orphanage’s meagre sources of tesserae, she’d still gone through a few inexplicable growth spurts over the years, until her limbs were lanky and long at fifteen, sticking out at awkward angles when she laid down to sleep each night. It didn’t help that this bed was best suited for a ten-year-old. She stuck out like a sore thumb, and so she was always trying to make herself smaller, and smaller, and even smaller than that, folding herself in at the long wooden table downstairs where her fellow grubby orphans ate their sad-looking grain. She always wanted to be so small that there was nothing left but a speck of dust — and especially so in the next few hours, as the yearly reaping was upon the districts once again.

Emme pulled herself from the pool of sweat that had accumulated on her mattress and looked around. There were too many bunks in the room, mostly filled with children from the ages of eight to ten. Too many limbs, too many mouths, too many kids who still cried in their sleep. The early July heat stuck to everything like glue, and it would only get worse with the progression of summer. Their thin mattresses would grow mold, the sheets would cling instead of cool, and that thin layer of something — dust or sweat or both — would coat every surface. It made the whole room look sticky: you wouldn’t want to look at this room under a blacklight.

It was so early that no one else in the room stirred yet. Not even tiny Louie in the cot by the window, who usually started whimpering before dawn. She always got up obscenely early to either comfort him or head outside, but as she looked at the tiny, grime-coated window that separated the rows of tiny bunks, she realized the sun hadn’t even risen yet.

Emme glanced at the clock on the wall, brushing a red lock out of her face. Five in the morning.

Still time.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bony knees bumping into the metal railing — clang! — and she winced.

Correcting herself, it was the only sound that came from her bunk as her bare feet softly hit the mercifully cold floor.

Small. Smaller than that, she reminded herself. It was something like a mantra.

She didn’t bother reaching for shoes — they wouldn’t matter in the orphanage, she was quieter without them, and looking prim and proper wouldn’t matter until that afternoon. The dusty Mary Janes that she would wear to the reaping would be kept under lock and key in Mrs Corrin’s office several floors down. There was only half a dozen reaping-age kids that the orphanage would be forced to offer this year, and lucky her, as she had sarcastically thought to herself when she first realized, she was the only girl. Quite surprisingly, Mrs Corrin had selected one of her old reaping dresses for her. Usually, Emme would’ve appreciated it in her own wordless way, if not for the unspoken fact that it meant that all of her other clothes were too ragged to wear to the reaping — yet another reminder that she was district trash — and Corrin was likely trying to avoid getting arrested above all else. Ever since it became apparent that the head matron couldn’t force speech out of her, she’d hated her. This would likely be her only kindness until Emme was inevitably booted out of the orphanage and onto District 5’s streets when she turned eighteen.

Plus, the dress that was locked in the office downstairs was a sort of off-white cream colour, which only accentuated her fiery red hair and sunken amber eyes, which kind of contradicted her whole “I just want to disappear” thing. It felt like a curse.

Whatever. She’d hold her breath in the girls’ pen as that ghoulish Quintessa Brightmore drew from the enormous glass ball of name slips, and eventually two poor souls would be selected to head off into the arena, and Emme could continue her horribly monotonous life in the orphanage, safe for another year, while she tried to decide what to do once she turned eighteen. She already had an ideal in mind, of course, but she seriously doubted that the odds were in her favour. Orphans never got what they wanted anyway, and that wasn’t just a District 5 thing.

Stepping out into the barren and equally grey hallway, Emme immediately looked down. Her shirt was soaked through, and it was quickly becoming unbearable.

And so she peeled it off her back like it was a second skin and tossed it behind her onto the floor of her dorm, leaving her in her stained but-at-least-somewhat-better undershirt. It was still hot in the hallway, but with where she was going, she’d quickly cool off.

She crept down the several winding staircases, holding her breath as she went, tip-toeing past Corrin’s office and the wooden table on the ground floor that could fit a hundred orphans on each side. If there was anyone else up, Emme couldn’t hear it. But it wasn’t like it mattered anyway — she had mastered the art of sneaking around, and so even though she was still careful, she knew that she wasn’t about to get caught.

She made it to the screen door towards the back of the orphanage without incident, and she unlatched it with careful fingers. Practiced in the motion; she’d done this a million times.

And then she was outside, her bare feet on cool grass, breathing in the flowing cold air. It felt like a refreshing cold glass of water compared to the suffocating humidity of the orphanage. If she looked up at the black sky, there would’ve been power plants, wind turbines, and solar panels clinging to the roofs of civilian homes as far as the eye could see.

District 5 harnesses the energy of the earth and the sky in order to power our great nation, President Snow had said once in one of those televised speeches that the whole district had been forced to watch. Emme couldn’t remember the context. She didn’t care.

In stark contrast to all the machinery and pollution that choked the land around her, there was a small expanse of green grass in front of her, and a hut where she knew she’d find Mrs Meynell.

She stepped forward, her bare feet used to the sensation of grass, and knocked softly on the door, still holding her breath.

It swung open immediately, and there she found tiny Mrs Meynell — the one person besides her who was up at all hours, it seemed like — her face weathered with age, beaming up at her.

“Emme,” she said as a greeting, squinting, taking her in. She probably needed surgery for her cataracts, but that was a luxury reserved for the ultra-wealthy in District 5 — i.e., not here. “How lovely. I was just about to plant some zucchini.”

A warm emotion that she could never really put a name to flooded her, and she felt the corners of her chapped lips moving upward. Smiling was really easy with Mrs Meynell, and miraculously, speaking even more so — she was one of the only people she was comfortable speaking to on a regular basis, and not just the necessary word or two. “How are the tomatoes?”

In the doorway, she was already pulling on a set of gardening gloves patterned with sunflowers. “I was saving them for you, my girl.”

She stepped aside respectfully and let Mrs Meynell hobble out of the hut, taking the lead. She felt stupid grinning like this, but when no one else was awake, it didn’t seem to matter, and the old woman never judged her for it anyway.

The truth was, this was the ideal. Something about plants came naturally to her, and maybe, just maybe, if she was able to play her cards right and save enough under-the-mattress money, she could make a life out of doing just this. She’d age out of the reaping and then she could (impossibly) set up a shop and sell fresh-grown fruits and vegetables. She’d transform her love into her currency, and she’d avoid the back-breaking work in the powerplants. Somehow. Somehow.

Emme wasn’t a dreamer, though, and reality tended to come crashing down on her head whenever she thought about this fantasy for too long, so she pushed the thought away and followed Mrs Meynell over to the modest garden beds, picking up a bucket as she went.

Should be at least something ready for harvest, she thought. Something to brighten up reaping day.

“You see this little thing?” Mrs Meynell said randomly as they walked, gesturing to a wilted stalk with curled, yellowing leaves. She didn’t immediately recognize what it was, but she crouched to get a good look at it.

“You didn’t pull it?” she asked.

“Didn’t need to,” the old lady replied. “It’s hanging on. Roots are good, even if the leaves aren’t much to look at. Sometimes, what looks like the end isn’t.”

Emme stared at it for a long time, not sure what to say.

“Looks dead.”

“Lot of things do,” said Mrs Meynell, in her weird, cryptic way: she wasn’t always the most straight-forward person, and the other matrons at the orphanage had shunned her for it; they found her exhausting. “Doesn’t mean they are.”

It felt like a strangely ominous thing to say on reaping day of all days, and before she could help it, she gulped. Past reaping days flashed in her mind, of Quintessa’s pale, long-nailed, spidery fingers descending upon one crisp white slip…

Stop it, her thoughts hissed.

As they moved on to the emerging tomatoes in a neighbouring bed, the first cluster of which were a weird blend of green and pale orange, Emme realized that her heart was suddenly racing.

She bit her lip. If she wan’t careful, that panic would overtake her again, just like it had during her first reaping, and she absolutely could not afford that. She’d always managed to get through it, anyway: she’d get through it by ignoring the rush of terror that came from being cooped up in the girls’ pen, pushing the unthinkable as far under the rug as it would go, and then two other kids would be hauled off to their deaths, and things would end up okay.

Small. Smaller than that.

She couldn’t think about the reaping, because it meant thinking about her tesserae and her name, Emme Matley, neatly written on twenty-two slips among thousands. She had had no choice but to take out tesserae for the orphanage and the hopeless faces of kids younger than her.

It’s for the good of everyone, said Corrin in her unyielding voice.

She clenched her eyes closed and forced herself to focus. They were hours from reaping time. She had hours to get herself together.

She extended her hand, twisted a perfectly crimson tomato off a nearby vine, and threw it into the bucket a bit too hard.

Hours later, when the sun had risen high in the sky, Emme had returned from the garden mute once more, and all of the children had eaten their mushy, tasteless tesserae grain, Mrs Corrin had given her a stern look from across the room that meant follow, and feeling her heart leap into her throat, Emme got up from the table and obeyed.

“None of that ridiculous wheezing from last years’ reaping, do you understand me?” Corrin snapped as soon as the door had swung closed. In front of her, her reaping dress was resting on a hanger, crisply ironed, not a speck of dust clinging to it like everything else in this place. “You will not make a fool of my establishment, nor your district.”

Mute once more, like something much more powerful than her was keeping her mouth shut, not an active choice she made, Emme stared straight ahead at the dress. It looked stiff and foreign, like something that belonged to someone else’s life.

Corrin didn’t wait for a response — she never did anymore — and marched over, thrusting the hanger into Emme’s hands.

“Shoes are under the bench,” she barked, already turning to dig through a drawer. “Comb your hair. Wash your face. I’ll not have you looking like a vagrant from Thirteen who clawed their way out of the rubble.”

District 13 was dust. No one was left; everyone knew that. 

Still, Emme said nothing, holding the dress at arms length, like it might bite her. The fabric was scratchy, and cheap lace lined the collar. She tried to think, briefly, of a young Corrin wearing this dress — back when she was young, and probably afraid of the bowl too.

It was nearly impossible to imagine.

She crossed the room in silence and knelt at the bench, reaching under it for the locked shoebox. Corrin, without looking, tossed her a rusting key.

It clattered against the floor, and Emme froze for a moment before picking it up.

She unlocked the box and took out the shoes — dull, black Mary Janes, the leather cracking along the edges. She quickly slipped them on without socks.

“Mirror,” Corrin said sharply.

Emme stood in front of the mirror hanging on the back of the office door. Reflexively, she wiped at her face with the sleeve of her undershirt. Her reflection looked like a typical orphan’s — hollow cheeks, heavy eyes, her vivid red hair a tangled mess around her shoulders. She ran a hand through it, trying to flatten the worst of it down. It didn’t help, but the Peacekeepers wouldn’t accuse her of disrespecting the Capitol’s war dead, at least.

She pulled the dress on over her head, ignoring the rough texture as it caught on her shoulders, and smoothed it down with trembling fingers.

“Better,” Corrin muttered, looking her up and down. “You’ll line up with the others when the bell rings. Stand straight. Chin up. Say thank you to the Peacekeepers after you check in.”

Emme just stared at her. If she wanted her to say something, she wasn’t going to.

There was a moment of silence, like it was a test — but Emme had been at the orphanage for much too long, and Corrin knew that she would not speak.

“You may go,” Corrin said, already turning away, dismissing her. She walked out without a sound.

Back in the hallway, she moved slowly. The younger children were already murmuring and shuffling around the table. It would soon be time to walk to the square. Time to stand there in the scorching summer sun, sweating through her dress, watching the names get pulled from the bowl.

Somehow, Emme drifted back into the dormitory and sat down in her bunk, the mattress still damp with her earlier sweat. She didn’t care. She just sat there, still in the awful off-white dress, her knees by her chin. Her head brushed the ceiling, and not for the first time, she wondered if her name would be pulled today, if this would be the last time she'd sit in this cramped bed.

A few of her other dormmates glanced warily at her, but none of them spoke.

She closed her eyes.

Small. Smaller than that.

She imagined herself folding inward, tighter and tighter, until there was nothing left but her name — curled on one of those crisp white slips, waiting in the bottom of the bowl.

The square was already full by the time the orphanage arrived, marching in a neat little line under Mrs Corrin’s stiff posture and watchful eye. The sun was blindingly hot, absolutely merciless this time of year, and it was possibly made worse by the red Panem flags on all sides.

Emme kept her eyes on the ground as they filed into the crowd. The district square always smelled like copper and concrete — a strange combination of rust and overheated wires, probably from the powerplants all around them. She hated it. It felt like stepping into a trap built out of steel.

She was led to the girls’ pen, specifically the section sort of in the middle, where every girl aged fourteen to sixteen stood in stiff rows. The ones closer to twelve were in the front, and the ones closer to eighteen in the back. Emme was the only fifteen-year-old from the orphanage this year, and she found herself flanked by strangers from other parts of the district.

Some of them looked terrified. Others looked like they had already checked out of their own bodies.

She recognized a few faces — girls from grain lines or shared tesserae deliveries. No one met her eyes.

She folded in again, her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed behind her back, her head down.

Small. Smaller than that. She’d get through this.

The names would be in the bowl already. Her name would be in there twenty-two times, not like she could forget.

A hush fell over the crowd as the anthem began to play from the screens mounted on the stage. The District 5 seal spun slowly. The screen flickered with the things Emme had seen every year: peace, prosperity, Snow’s face, footage from previous Games spliced with carefully chosen clips of smiling Capitol children.

Then the show started.

She emerged from behind the curtain like a creature exhaling glitter. Quintessa Brightmore wore a towering headdress shaped like a wind turbine, painted silver and gold, catching sunlight and throwing it back into the crowd, probably blinding some of the twelve-year-olds in the front. Her lips were a shade of purple Emme had only ever seen in rot, but was probably fashionable in the Capitol for whatever reason she didn’t understand. She moved with the kind of grace that only Capitol people seemed to have, waving with a jewelled hand and flashing a dazzling smile.

“Happy Hunger Games, District Five!” she trilled. “What a lovely day for tradition.”

No one cheered. No one ever did: this wasn’t a Career district, why should they? That didn’t stop her from pausing for it, letting the silence hang like a drawn breath.

Emme stared at the hem of her dress and wished for it to be over. She thought of the garden, and the flourishing vegetables, and how she’d be back to the orphanage soon enough, waiting for everything she’d planted with Mrs Meynell to sprout. 

A few more formalities from her and the mayor, the reading of the Treaty of Treason, and then: the bowls.

Two massive glass spheres — one for boys, one for girls — stood gleaming in the sun, filled with thousands of slips. Emme’s stomach clenched: she couldn’t help it. Somewhere in that swirling storm of names, hers waited, again and again and again. And again and again and again—

Quintessa gestured to the girls’ bowl first, as she always did.

“Ladies first,” she sang, greedy fingers plunging into the bowl.

Emme stopped breathing.

She didn’t even realize her hands had clenched into fists until her nails pressed bruises into her palms. The moment stretched, as though the world held its breath too. She always wished there was less bravado to it, but that would never happen. The sound of the paper being unfolded was impossibly loud.

Quintessa’s lips curved into a delighted, painted smile as she read the name.

“Emme Matley.”

…

What?

For a moment, it didn’t sound like her name. It sounded like someone else's, like a stranger had borrowed her identity for the afternoon.

Emme stood there, frozen. For a heartbeat, the crowd was silent. And then heads began to turn.

She felt it before she moved — her throat closing as though she was suddenly having an allergic reaction, a roaring in her ears, a strange cold that settled in her hands despite the overwhelming heat. She would've bolted had it not meant being gunned down — well, actually, should she try that? She didn't even know. Dying like that was probably more desirable, but her feet were stuck to the ground, unmoving. She couldn't have gone for it if she tried. 

No. No. No.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. She always made it through.

She wasn't ever meant to be in this position.

Someone nudged her from behind, gently. Another girl, definitely older than her. Her eyes were wide.

“Go,” she mouthed.

Emme’s legs started moving before her brain caught up. The crowd parted down the centre like it always did, in silence.

She walked through it in that awful cream dress, her Mary Janes clicking softly against the concrete. One step, then another. It was so quiet in the square that it was all she could hear, stretching for what felt like eternity. All eyes on her.

Eventually, she mounted the steps to the stage. Her legs trembled, but didn’t give out, and as she turned to face the crowd, she felt like she might projectile vomit on all of the young faces.

But her lips were clamped closed. If she was to look at the broadcast later, she wouldn’t have been surprised if there was any emotion passing through her face at all. Maybe she'd even look like she knew what she was doing.

Weirdly, she felt as though she was hovering somewhere outside of her body, like this wasn’t happening to her at all. She was so freaked out that her thoughts came weirdly calmly.

Well. This is happening.

From behind, she heard the murmurs begin — quiet at first, then hushed into stillness as Quintessa placed a hand, cold and feather-light, on her shoulder. It was a reminder that she was in the Capitol’s choking grasp, and she was going to suffocate.

Emme stared out at the sea of people that seemed to go on for eons. There were at least a hundred thousand people in her district. She couldn’t see the orphans, and she didn’t want to.

Her mouth was dry. If someone looked closely, they'd see her chest was rising and falling too fast, but she didn't make a sound. Corrin’s words rang somewhere in the back of her skull like they would cause a migraine: None of that ridiculous wheezing.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She didn’t question why this was happening to her: she already knew that this was just the way things were. The way they had always been, the way they'd continue to be long after she was gone.

No one knew who she was. And it wasn’t like someone was going to volunteer for her. She just stood there.

A body. A name. A tribute.

Chapter Text

“Lovely!” Quintessa Brightmore’s voice rang out after what felt like some time. “What a promising tribute we have here. And now, for the male tribute…”

Promising tribute? What?

Emme’s thoughts spluttered. Surely everyone could see the pallid colour of her skin, and her sharp limbs from all angles — everything about her screamed unfed. It was a miracle her ribs weren’t poking through the thick and unyielding fabric of the dress. Emme had been malnourished all her life, and she wasn’t foolish enough to believe she actually had a chance in the arena; not like this, anyway.

Not unless she could figure something out, the thought of which terrified her beyond words.

Later, she told herself, clasping her hands together in order to appear less awkward on this humongous stage. Figure it all out later.

Her face was grim as Quintessa’s long fingers plunged once again into the glass ball. Only six or seven boys were old enough to be eligible from the orphanage this year, and they hadn’t taken out nearly as much tesserae as she had for reasons that only made sense to Corrin, so two orphan tributes felt unlikely. Emme didn’t look at the bowl as the slips shuffled, being on the stage was vomit-inducing enough.

Quintessa plucked one with a delicate flick of her wrist, held it up, and read in her shriek-like voice:

“Ricardo Volt!”

There was a pause — a strange, unnatural stillness — and then a sharp, wet inhale from somewhere in the crowd. Emme couldn’t immediately tell from where, but she immediately that it was a whimper.

She turned just slightly, enough to see the small, hunched boy standing frozen a few rows back. Closer to the front than she had been: he was younger than her, but not by much. Fourteen at most.

Ricardo Volt looked pale. Paler than her, if that was even possible. His eyes were wide and glassy, his mouth working soundlessly like a fish. He clearly wasn’t an orphan, but he wasn’t terribly privileged, either. 

Then, with all the grace of a child who’d tripped over his own feet more than once in his life, he stumbled out of the crowd. A few kids snickered, and he flinched at the sound.

Quintessa gave him a dazzling Capitol smile as he climbed the steps.

“There we are. A strong pair from District 5 this year, aren’t we?”

Emme tried not to cringe: Ricardo was already crying before he reached the stage.

Not the loud sobbing of someone desperate to be saved — just silent, pathetic tears that streamed down both cheeks as he stood next to her, trying very hard not to look at her. His hands trembled at his sides. Immediately, he reminded her of Louie in a way that made her stomach turn.

Fragile, scared, and much too young. She already knew he wouldn’t last a day.

“Lovely,” Quintessa repeated, like the boy wasn’t crying, posing them with outstretched arms as the cameras zoomed in. “Let’s hear it for our tributes!”

Even though no one looked totally thrilled, the applause was thunderous then, mostly for the sake of the Panem-wide broadcast, the snipers lining the roof of the Justice Building, and the Peacekeepers on all sides. The threat was unspoken: everyone knew what would happen if someone were to not applaud.

There was a quiet, sharp twist of dread in Emme’s chest as she realized with a unique horror this was being broadcast to the whole nation.

It was beginning to sink in that she was royally fucked.

As the anthem blared and their faces were broadcast to the Capitol, Emme did the only thing that she could really do: she closed her eyes and thought the one phrase that kept her grounded.

Small. Smaller than that.

But there was nothing she could do now that would make either of them invisible.

After the cameras cut and the broadcast had moved on to the reaping of District 4, Ricardo and Emme were ushered through the doors of the Justice Building without much ceremony. No more forced applause from the audience behind them; just the echo of their footsteps through marble halls and Ricardo’s muffled tears, still streaming down his face at a slightly more accelerated rate ever since it became clear that the cameras were off.

Someone vaguely annoyed from the mayor’s office gestured toward a pair of couches in an unidentified, ornate room, then told them someone would be in shortly. Then the door swung closed like she was glad to be rid of them, and they were finally alone.

The moment the door clicked shut behind them, the dam broke. Ricardo collapsed onto the nearest couch like he’d been shot, burying his face in his hands, and he started sobbing. Loud, open-mouthed, wracking sobs that echoed off the tall ceilings, while he clutched at his shirt like he couldn’t breathe, like the fabric itself was suffocating him.

Emme couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what it felt like, but she also knew she couldn’t let it swallow her, not at a time like this.

“I— I can’t—” he choked out. “I can’t die. I don’t want to die — I can’t—I can’t—”

Not sure what to do, Emme drifted to the window, her arms still stiff at her sides. She stared at the reflection of herself in the glass and watched his quivering form blur behind her. She wondered vaguely who would come to visit her for the goodbye, mostly because it was the most imminent thing, but it was hard to form thoughts in the midst of his impossibly loud sobbing.

The minutes went on, and he kept crying. He wouldn’t stop.

Again, she understood it, really. It might’ve been kind of pathetic, but she couldn’t pretend like it wasn’t how she really felt each reaping until Corrin had to beat it out of her with a stick.

It was that thought that made her finally turn.

“You’re making it worse,” she told him, flatly. Quiet, but sharp enough to cut through the sobs.

She wasn’t even sure how she managed to speak: she almost never did to strangers.

Ricardo looked up, his eyes red and wet. He stared at her like she’d just slapped him.

Feeling defensive, Emme crossed her bony arms. “It’s not going to help.”

“I’m not like you,” he whispered, and he sounded impossibly young. “You’re not even — you’re not even scared.”

God, he was so like Louie…

She didn’t answer, not at first. Then:

“I’m terrified,” she admitted. It was the truth, but that odd feeling of hovering somewhere outside of her body had come over her again, and so the statement lacked the emotion it needed.

The silence hung thick after that. Sniffling, Ricardo wiped at his face with shaking hands, as if he was trying to process that.

“Then why aren’t you crying?”

She shrugged hopelessly. “Because it won’t change anything. You know this is just the way it is.”

She sat down on the couch beside him, a full cushion between them. She didn’t look at him again.

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The silence was only broken by him sucking in a breath, and the lone hiccup.

“I didn’t mean to cry in front of everyone,” Ricardo said softly, searching for validation she was incapable of giving when she had a million more pressing things to think about. “I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” she muttered, staring at the plush carpet. Again, lacking the emotion it needed.

There was a pause. Then:

“I just don’t want to die without anyone… remembering me,” he admitted, so quietly Emme could barely hear it.

“They will,” she told him, her eyes still on the floor. Her red hair hung limply in her face, and she didn’t brush it away. “You were the boy who cried onstage.”

It came out harsher than she meant. He made a wounded noise in the back of his throat and turned away. Emme said nothing else, because she didn’t need to. She had been trying to help, contrary to popular belief, but she’d clearly done a poor job. Maybe if her mind somehow wasn’t disturbed by all of the panicked thoughts barrelling through her skull, she could’ve helped more. But she was undoubtedly in survival mode now, so she had to think about things differently.

Sequestered in the Justice Building, her first post-reaping decision came to her easily: no alliances. No attachments. If she wanted to survive for at least a few days, she had to be selfish, she supposed. That meant not allying with obvious weak links like Ricardo, since it would slow down the whole process.

And if he was going to die — which he almost certainly would — then she couldn’t let herself care about this little boy and his frightened sobs. It stung, but when she was thrust into an impossible situation like this, she had to make some sacrifices. If she had to choose a way to die, she’d rather it be straight and fast.

With some dignity, she thought bitterly. If she’d even have any in the arena.

Some time after that, when Ricardo’s cheeks had dampened a considerable amount and his eyes had puffed up to the point where Emme wasn’t sure if he could even see anymore, the annoyed intern from the mayor’s office came back and separated the two tributes.

Behind her, Corrin, Mrs Meynell, and even tiny Louie stood in the doorway, confirming that it was time for the goodbye, and Emme’s mouth opened in surprise. She’d been preoccupied with thinking about the upcoming train to the Capitol that she’d forgotten the possibility of people coming to see her.

For the first time in her life, she had a million things to say, but she couldn’t decide what to say first.

Immediately, her eyes fell to Louie, who was holding Mrs Meynell’s hand tightly, his gigantic blue eyes full of an emotion she’d never quite seen before. When he saw Emme, he tried to smile, but it wobbled too much at the edges and fell away before it could form properly. Still, he ran to her, as fast as his tiny legs could manage, and threw his arms around her waist.

She stiffened. Then slowly — carefully — rested her hand on his hair. He smelled like the orphanage: old dust and sweat and something faintly metallic. In a room where everything smelled like anguish and velvet, it nearly made her cry.

“I made you this,” he mumbled into her dress. From his little fist, he produced a wrinkled, folded square of paper she recognized as the kind they used at the school. It was a crayon drawing, sloppily coloured in. A red-haired stick figure with a crooked smile stood in what could only be a garden beside a giant green tomato.

“It’s me,” he said. “I think it’s you, too.”

Truth be told, she felt as though she’d been suckerpunched in the chest.

Emme swallowed, folding the paper carefully, and slipped it into a pocket of her itchy dress. Her voice came out calmer than she felt. “Thanks, Louie.”

In response, he clung tighter.

“Louie,” Mrs Meynell said gently, “let her breathe, sweetheart.”

And so the boy let go, reluctantly. When he did, his eyes were shining bright with tears, and Emme felt like someone had wrapped an iron fist around her heart and squeezed.

This isn’t fair, something primal and desperate screamed from inside of her. You know this isn’t. You know this needs to be stopped.

Mrs Meynell stepped forward next. She looked even smaller than usual under the weight of the moment, and she wore her gardening apron even outside of the hut.

Emme looked down reflexively as soon as she saw the tears forming in Mrs Meynell’s eyes. Her gardening apron had been fashioned out of an old tesserae flour stack years and years ago, and COURTESY OF THE CAPITOL had ended up stamped diagonally across her front. It only made her feel worse, so she just stared at the floor.

Mrs Meynell’s eyes may have been watery, but her voice was clear. She’d never sounded stern before.

“Emme. Look at me.”

Her tone left no room for argument, so Emme clenched her eyes closed, willed the tears back, and straightened. She couldn’t cry, not like Ricardo. If the tears started, she wasn’t sure if they’d ever stop.

Swallowing again, she opened her eyes and forced herself to look at the woman who had made her life worth living. Her life, which was soon about to end. She had told Ricardo this was the way it was, and they’d both known she was right, but — why?

Don’t think about that, a voice inside her hissed.

Despite their impossible situation, the edges of Mrs Meynell’s lips raised in a sad smile. “I wanted to give you this. For the arena. They let you bring in a token, you know.”

She reached into her apron pocket and held out a tiny cloth packet, so small that it fit neatly into her palm when it passed hands. If she made a fist, she could conceal it entirely.

“Just mint leaves,” she answered when the question formed on her face. “From my hut, so they’re not modified with anything. You chew them. It helps with nausea, if that were ever to be a possibility.”

Emme took it in both hands, unsure how to hold something so full of kindness. Now that she thought about it, she could definitely conjure a memory or two of her following Mrs Meynell around while she was chewing something green, and a minty fresh smell had accompanied her. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

“Hopefully they let you bring it in,” she said when Emme didn’t say anything. “I can’t think of any reason why they would disqualify it. But if they do, at least you have something from Louie to take with you.”

Emme nodded. Her throat ached. She’d had so many words rise up inside her at once, and suddenly speaking seemed impossible again.

Mrs Meynell stepped closer, and she closed her shaking, pale hands within her wrinkled, age-spotted ones. Her voice lowered to a whisper.

“You’re clever, Emme. And quiet. You can survive this. Just stay sharp. Stay you.”

Emme opened her mouth to say something — thank you, maybe, or I’m scared, or please — but the words bunched up and clogged in her throat. Maybe that was why she was so certain she would puke. All she could do was nod again.

“You’ve been the best student I ever could’ve asked for,” she whispered, that sad smile still on her face.

Emme’s eyes stung.

Corrin was last, but just as she opened her mouth — what would she even say to a doomed girl she clearly had no patience for? — the door opened behind her. Time was up, and a Peacekeeper would drag her kicking and screaming to the train if she refused to move.

Corrin closed her mouth and chose to nod curtly. She would never know what she had been about to say.

Not really sure how to respond to that, Emme nodded back. She couldn’t spend much more time with them anyway. The Peacekeeper’s presence in front of her was kind of terrifying, so she turned one last time to Louie, to Corrin, to Mrs Meynell’s warm, worn face.

“Thank you,” she whispered, then she turned on her heel and went for the door.

She didn’t look back. Not because she wasn’t hurting, but because it would’ve made it worse.

By the time the train was speeding away from the Justice Building, Emme was certain there was a gaping hole in her chest. She could feel the wind whistling through it.

She sat by the window, but she wasn’t looking out of it. This would be a somewhat long journey, and the sights so far were unchanging: the landscape of District 5 flickered past in smears of grey and factory-smoke brown. This was not thrilling, so her eyes were instead fixed on the polished wood of the table in front of her.

To put it bluntly, she felt like shit. Dehydrated, hungry, in need of a good nap, and more stressed out than she’d ever been in her life, it was no surprise that a throbbing, red hot ball of pain had emerged at the back of her skull. And it wasn’t like there wasn’t food or water available, or like she couldn’t force herself to fall asleep in the bunkbed towards the back of the train — she was here because she couldn’t bear to get up. Because she felt trapped.

Across from her, Ricardo sniffled again. Loudly.

Surprise surprise, he was curled against the velvet seat like a kicked dog, his knuckles white from how tightly he was clutching the cloth napkin someone had handed him. This was a luxurious train, with plenty of cars to explore, and yet he’d been stuck to her like glue ever since they’d boarded. Why? She’d hardly offered him any comfort, and if she was dehydrated and hungry, he probably was too.

She didn’t want to look at him, but she did anyway.

He was a skinny, freckled thing. Maybe five feet tall, maybe not even. She couldn’t tell if it was due to malnutrition or because he was simply meant to be that short. The sleeves of his wrinkled shirt were too long, and he kept tugging at the cuffs like he wanted to disappear inside them. His eyes were as red and blotchy as they had been in the Justice Building, and he looked like he might throw up.

She wished he would. At least then it would be quiet afterward.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, voice hoarse, breaking the silence. “I’m not usually— I mean I didn’t think I’d—”

Emme didn’t say anything.

Ricardo pressed the napkin to his eyes again, sniffling miserably. “It’s just...I don’t even know how to fight, y'know? I thought maybe I’d get one more year, just one—”

“I don’t know how to fight either,” Emme said, quietly. It slipped out before she could stop it.

Ricardo froze. Slowly, he looked up. “You don’t?”

She shook her head once, looking back down at the table. Her head was still aching. Why had he assumed she could? They weren’t a Career district.

He laughed, a high, nervous sound that immediately turned into another wet sniffle. “Then we’re really screwed.”

Welp. No argument there.

The door at the back of the train car hissed open. Emme didn’t look up.

Footsteps. Heels clicking. And then, a tired voice that made her stomach curl:

“Oh good, you're already depressing.”

Their mentor.

She didn’t know his name yet. A man in his thirties maybe, tall and glass-eyed, wearing a Capitol-cut suit that looked like it had been slept in for a week. His dark hair was too perfect, his teeth too white, and he held a tumbler of something amber in one hand. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t for the man to be this surly.

He looked at her, then at Ricardo. Ricardo wiped his face and tried to sit up straighter.

The man sighed like it was all too much work. “Right. Here’s the deal. I’m not here to hold your hand or tell you you’ve got a shot, because you don’t. I won my Games because I electrocuted a girl with a fence and broke a boy’s neck. Can you do that?”

Ricardo gaped at him. Emme didn’t move.

“No?” the man said. “Didn’t think so.”

He took a long drink.

“I’m supposed to train you. Capitol rules. I’ll do what I can, but you two aren’t Careers. You’re not charming. You don’t have sob stories good enough for sponsors. So unless one of you turns out to be a freak with a sword, I’m not wasting my time lying to you.”

Emme stared at him. Her fingers curled under the table.

“Great pep talk,” she muttered.

The man blinked. “What?”

Emme looked up at him, finally. Her voice was flat. “I said, great pep talk.”

Their mentor raised an eyebrow. Then, to her surprise, he grinned. “Didn’t think you could talk. That’s something, at least.”

Ricardo whispered, “Her name’s Emme.”

She ignored that. She didn’t want him using her name. Not yet.

The man took another drink. “Emme. Good. You’ve got bite. That might help. What’s your story, Emme?”

She looked back out the window, the wasteland of her district finally fading into endless fields, and refused to respond. She was district trash, and she hated everything that got her here. And this man was clearly more Capitol than district anyway. 

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Okay. So I’ve got an Avox tribute.”

He didn’t say anything after that. Just turned, muttered, “Well. May as well enjoy the food while it lasts.”

Then he was gone, heading towards wherever the food was being served.

Emme let her fingers drift to the mint leaves in her pocket, ignoring the questioning stare of Ricardo opposite her. Again, survival mode, she didn’t owe him anything. If whoever visited him hadn’t bothered to give him a token, that was his own fault.

She knew she was going to have to treat this small packet like gold in the arena, but there wasn’t any harm of taking one now, right? Not when she was sure she wouldn’t last long anyway?

Feeling pathetic, Emme popped a leaf in her mouth and bit down hard.

The taste exploded against her tongue. Sharp, bitter, comforting. Her headache eased slightly, which was a plus.

She still wasn’t looking at Ricardo, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him stand up. Probably going to the food car like their mentor. She wouldn’t follow. Honestly, she was looking forward to being alone for the first time since she’d been reaped.

They had seven days until the arena.

And Emme, teeth grinding mint into pulp, started counting every one.

It was hours later when the ache in her stomach grew too loud to ignore.

She stood, her knees stiff, and moved through the train as quietly as she could, trailing her fingers against the velvet-lined walls. The dining car was farther than she thought, and everything here was soft, useless, beautiful in the wrong way: the contrast made her queasy. For the first time in her life, she wished she was back in the humidity and grey that was the orphanage. It wasn’t much, not without Mrs Meynell, but at least it was familiar.

When the doors to the dining area split open, her senses were immediately assaulted — warm lights, the clatter of silverware, the gleam of actual glass. Rich smells curled toward her from every possible angle: roasted meat, cinnamon, coffee, things she couldn’t put a name to, things she could only dream of in the orphanage.

It was wrong. Everything was wrong. 

Her mentor, whose name she still didn’t know, was already halfway through a plate of steak, legs kicked up on another chair, wine glass refilled and untouched for now. Across from him sat Quintessa Brightmore, still in full Capitol garishness, daintily sipping tea like they weren’t heading to a child slaughter.

And in the corner, sitting apart from them with a heaping plate of food, also looking like he’d never had so much to eat in his life, was Ricardo. He glanced up when she entered and gave a small wave. She didn’t return it.

Their mentor noticed her too. He tilted his head, amused. “Well, look who speaks and eats. Miracles happen in threes, you know.”

“Don’t talk to me,” she muttered.

“Ooh. Bite and bark.” He looked over at Quintessa. “I like her.”

Quintessa didn’t even blink. “Don’t antagonize her, Cassian. She’s a tribute. She’s had a strenuous day.”

Emme wasn’t sure what to make note of first: her mentor’s name being Cassian, or Quintessa somehow being…empathetic? Somehow, it only added to the wrongness of the dining area.

Cassian snorted. “Strenuous is one word for it.”

She couldn't help but think her mentor was supposed to be more helpful than this.

Emme sat at the farthest end of the table and wordlessly reached for the nearest bread roll. Warm, soft. It crumbled too easily when she tore into it. Her throat felt like sandpaper, but it went down anyway, somehow.

It took the roll to realize she was utterly ravenous.

She didn’t look at the others as she loaded her plate — another roll first, then a third for good measure, then thick slices of buttered potato and a pile of roasted carrots that glistened under syrupy glaze. She ignored the cuts of meat, though the smell made her stomach twist in a weird, primal way. Instead, she tore a chunk off a golden-crusted tart that oozed red berry juices when she touched it, smearing sticky jam across her fingertips.

Her hands moved like they didn’t belong to her. She shovelled a spoonful of something creamy and white onto her plate that she didn’t even have a name for and eagerly poured herself a glass of water from the crystalline carafe. No wine, no tea, no mysterious Capitol nectar. Just cold water, clear and heavy in her hand.

Ricardo was still watching her, wide-eyed, but had enough sense not to say anything. She could feel his gaze like heat on the side of her face.

“So,” Cassian said, slicing through his steak with surgical precision. “Do we talk strategy, or are we all pretending to be dead until it’s official?”

Neither tribute answered. Emme didn’t even glance up. Cassian smirked.

“Still not talking?” he demanded of her, swirling his wine lazily. “You’re going to make people think you’re an Avox.”

Quintessa tutted. “Please. Avoxes have better posture.”

Okay. Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking. She’s still definitely Capitol.

Ricardo’s voice sounded as small as he was. “She’s just tired.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Spokesman for the mute now?”

Ricardo blinked, flustered. “N-no, I just — she’s not an Avox.”

“She’s not anything yet,” Cassian muttered. “Not until the Capitol decides what she is.”

He turned his gaze back to Emme, who hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even acknowledged Ricardo’s awkward defense. Her fork paused mid-scrape on the plate, then kept going.

She chewed, swallowed, and went to spear another carrot on the glistening fork. The mint leaf she’d eaten earlier had helped settle her nerves, but food was filling in the cracks where grief and fear still festered. It was a weird kind of survival instinct. Something to do with her hands.

“Silent and brooding,” Cassian went on. “That’s your angle then?”

Quintessa stirred her tea. “It’s better than sobbing like a sponge. Like the boy.”

Ricardo flinched visibly. His fork clinked against his plate.

Emme glanced at him — briefly. That was the most she’d give. She wasn’t about to defend him. Not here. Not now.

“You know,” Cassian said, leaning back and tapping his fork against his wine glass, “if you don’t do something in training, you’ll get a zero. Or worse — a pity score. The Capitol eats up the tragic orphan type, but only if they cry on command.”

Emme blinked at him once, then resumed chewing.

He waited a beat. When she didn’t respond, didn’t even shrug, he exhaled through his nose — something more like a tired laugh than real amusement.

“Fine,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Let me spell it out for you, since apparently I pulled the Avox girl and the anxiety sponge this year.”

Ricardo shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Cassian kept going. “The only people who get out of the arena alive are the ones who make themselves useful. That means you’re either a killer, a charmer, or a cause. And since I don’t see you slicing necks or batting lashes anytime soon, you’d better figure out what your story is — fast.”

Emme’s jaw moved slower now. The carrots were starting to taste bitter.

“People in the Capitol love a pretty girl,” Cassian said, which didn’t feel like much of a compliment at all. “They’ll eat your shit up if you give them a bite. You don’t have to smile. But give them something. A look. A word. Anything.”

Still nothing from her. Just the sound of a fork scraping porcelain as Ricardo timidly returned to his food. He seemed to be following her lead.

Cassian stood, downed the rest of his wine, and stretched like this had all been some long, boring lecture he’d given a hundred times before.

“Don’t give them anything, and they’ll give you nothing in return. No medicine. No food. No parachutes. Just silence.” He gave her a look, sharp and unblinking. “Which you should be pretty used to by now.”

That one landed. Not because it was cruel — which it was — but because it was true.

Small. Smaller than that, she reminded herself.

Cassian pushed his chair back and added flatly, “You’ve got a week to figure it out. Otherwise, the only people who’ll remember you are the ones who bet on how fast you’d die.”

Then he was gone, his empty glass swinging casually from his fingers as he disappeared into the next car.

The dining room was quiet again. Ricardo didn’t speak. Quintessa poured herself another cup of tea, smirking a little.

Emme wasn’t a violent person — hence why she was doubting she’d last long in the arena — but she suddenly felt the urge to fling her food-filled plate at her head. Like a monkey throwing shit.

But Capitol people already thought district people were rabid anyway, so she didn’t do that. Emme stared at the jam on her plate, blood-red and congealed.

Her fingers curled around her fork, and she continued eating, feeling weirdly motivated to win the Games purely to spite him. If her mentor wasn't going to be helpful, that was fine. It wouldn't be the first thing she'd had to figure out on her own.

Later

Quintessa had left and Emme had just cleared her heaping plate of food when, without warning, the lights dimmed all at once.

Ricardo jumped in his seat, Emme didn’t. She just stiffened slightly, like someone had dropped a bucket of cold water down her spine. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the wide windows, which had previously been nothing but stretching grass. 

Now, outside the windows was black nothingness. Just solid rock, a tunnel that swallowed them whole.

“We’re in the mountains,” Ricardo whispered, even though they were the only ones in here. “This is it, right? The barrier.”

Emme didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the glass, but not because of the view — there was no view. Only her faint reflection staring back at her: pale, sharp-edged, hollow-eyed. Capitol lighting made her look like a ghost.

Quintessa was in her cabin, probably coating herself in glitter or perfume or whatever it was that Capitol creatures did before appearing on camera. They were alone. For the first time in hours, it was quiet.

Ricardo fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve. “Do you think… do you think they’ll cheer for us? When we get there?”

Emme blinked slowly. She could hear the wheels grinding against the tracks, a low mechanical growl beneath her feet.

“They’re excited,” she said flatly, “because we’re going to die.”

Ricardo flinched. “You don’t know that.”

She didn’t reply.

The train started to slow. Then, all at once, the world outside exploded with colour.

They both shielded their eyes for a second. Then, inevitably, stepped closer to the window.

The Capitol rose like a hallucination out of the tunnel — a gleaming fever dream of impossible towers, burning skies, and buildings that looked like jewels stacked on top of one another. Cars slid like beetles down polished roads. People moved in flocks, dressed in colours Emme couldn’t even name, their skin powdered and painted, their hair dyed every colour of the rainbow, twisted into impossible, sharp shapes clearly meant to be stylish hairdos.

Ricardo pressed his face to the glass.

Emme didn’t. She watched the crowd with narrowed eyes: people were pointing, waving, grinning.

Like they were welcoming guests to a party.

Ricardo whispered, “They’re waving at us.”

She said nothing.

“I think… I think they like us.”

She turned to him. He was still staring out the window with wonder on his face, like a child seeing fireworks.

“You know they’re going to cheer when we die, right?”

Ricardo looked at her, lips parted. Then he looked away.

The crowd vanished as the train pulled into the station, and just like that — the glass turned reflective again, two gaunt faces trapped behind it.

Ricardo stepped back from the window, and Emme looked glumly to the sliding doors: they were surely departing from the train soon.

A few minutes later, the train doors slid open with a hiss.

Emme blinked against the sudden light — too bright, too white, everything overstimulating. The platform was already teeming with people: cameras, stylists, Peacekeepers, all buzzing around like insects. Cassian and Quintessa were nowhere to be seen, so for a moment they just stood there, Ricardo short and nervous, Emme gangly and awkward.

She didn’t move at first. Her legs didn’t want to. Not until someone — probably a Peacekeeper — barked an order and Ricardo stumbled out ahead of her.

It was maybe the first time she’d actually appreciated the sight of him. He was still wearing the same wrinkled shirt from the train, and he still looked like he might burst into tears. At least he looked real, because everything else looked fake.

Holding her breath, trying not to breathe in the sparkly, strange air for too long, Emme stepped off the train and let her Mary Janes hit the marble road.

The air smelled like perfume, electric wires, and roasted sugar — sweet and artificial. Banners hung from every column, huge LED screens displaying the names of each district in official-looking fonts alongside glowing red Panem flags.

“District 5 — Energy and Innovation!” blinked in bright green beside her face.

Cameras zoomed in. She flinched.

The Capitol citizens lined the platform. They were immediately an overwhelming crowd, all of them glittering, gawking, pointing, some holding signs with hearts drawn on them, as if this were a concert and not a death march. They’d only been reaped in the afternoon. Surely their names hadn’t gotten out that fast?

She could hear some of them shouting. Laughing.

“Ooh, she’s pretty in a ragged sort of way, don’t you think?”

“She looks a bit like a fox.”

“Hopefully she can run like one. It’d help in the arena.”

“Oh, they’re so skinny this year…”

Before she could even think about uttering a goodbye, Ricardo was ushered toward one sleek black limousine, while she was guided toward another — not roughly, but with practiced hands.

Bizarrely, Emme immediately started to panic at the sight of him being led away.

Wait, she wanted to say. I need him.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” someone cooed as the door opened: she didn’t have much choice but to climb inside. “They’ll fix you right up. Skin like that? You’ll glow by the time they’re done with you.”

Emme didn’t answer as the door slammed shut, and then they were sailing away.

Step one must be beautifying, she thought tiredly. She had no idea if it was just the female tributes who got to be beautified.

She sank into the seat, watching through the tinted windows as the Capitol whirled past in a dizzying amalgamation of neon and gold. She didn’t pretend to know how cars were meant to sound like, having never been in one before — why would orphans didn’t get that luxury? — but the limousine’s engine purred quietly beneath her.

Every building seemed taller than the last. Every person seemed to have eyes. And every eye was on her.

She craned her neck, and a short distant ahead, the Remake Center loomed.

Emme bit her lip. She was about to disappear.

Chapter Text

The limousine doors slid open on their own.

Emme stepped out and was immediately swallowed by the smell as she entered the building — antiseptic and something sweeter, almost like synthetic lavender. The lobby of the Remake Center gleamed as though it had been scrubbed with diamonds: everything was white and glass and chrome, with no windows. Just doors, and people.

Her prep team was waiting for her in the lobby. Three of them standing there, all Capitol, all grinning.

She wasn’t sure why she was surprised to see them: maybe it was because they all looked so odd. They descended on her like a flock of jewel-toned birds — chattering, adjusting her sleeves, poking her cheekbones.

“Oh, stars above,” gasped the woman with glittering blue eyeliner that wasn’t limited to her eyelids, but swirled all around the edges of her face in decorative circles. “She’s dry. Can someone moisturize her?”

“She’s worse than dry,” said the man sporting bright purple eyebrows with a melodramatic gasp. “She’s... matte.”

“Poor thing,” said the third, with stiff cheeks artificially puffed up to the point where she looked like a cartoon. “We’ll have to start from the very beginning.”

“Beauty Base Zero is definitely in order,” Blue Eyeliner agreed.

Still kind of in shock more than anything, Emme didn’t fight when they led her away, still talking about her in the third person like she wasn’t even there.

When they reached a door marked with F5, she was practically hauled inside, and it hit her that her heart was pounding harder than ever.

As soon as the door swung closed, they didn’t ask her to strip. They just started unzipping Corrin’s itchy dress, peeling it off with gloved hands like she was something to be processed, not undressed. She was thankful to finally be out of something so cursed, sure, she just didn’t imagine it would be somewhere like this.

Cold air hit her bare skin as she stood there in nothing, her arms crossed tightly over the areas she felt shouldn’t be shown, trying to pretend her body didn’t exist. There was a floor-length mirror in front of her as her prep team rushed around getting materials, and in the bright, unyielding light, she could see absolutely everything.

Like every other time she was forced to look at herself in the mirror, she hated it. Her pursed lips; her vivid red hair which had been much too long for months now, split ends hanging sadly in front of her face; her ribs sticking out jaggedly, and her bony forearm trying to conceal her bare breasts. She didn’t know why she tried; it wasn’t like modesty mattered here.

She was only staring at herself for a few moments before she was led over to a bathtub filled to the brim with scalding water.

There, a scrub brush rasped across her skin until it stung, scrubbing harder than anyone ever had back home — like they were trying to flay her into someone new, someone smooth. Someone sellable.

At least they were hauling her out of it soon enough, and as they made her lay down on a crisp white table, still completely naked, Emme clenched her eyes closed. She was trying to hide how much her breath was suddenly coming in short bursts.

I can get through this. I can get through this.

And then—

“Oh, stars,” someone said brightly. “We’ll need to remove all of this.”

Hands forced her legs apart. A wax strip was pressed down without warning, smoothed firmly, and Emme only had a second of wondering why this was necessary before—

Ri-i-i-p!

The pain was white-hot. A jagged shock that lit up her spine.

She gasped — barely — but one of them chuckled like it was charming. “Sensitive, aren’t we?”

Was it somehow possible not to be?

Before she could even think of anything to say — because what do you say when a stranger is doing this to you? — another strip was applied and smoothed in the blink of an eye.

R-i-i-i-p!

She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.

Again. Rip. 

And again. Rip.

And again. Rip.

Her whole body was on fire now, but she didn’t cry. She wouldn’t give them that, not when she was a tribute and there were plenty of other worse things waiting for her in the arena.

Every time a new strip was applied, whether that was on her legs, arms, torso, underarms, or parts of her eyebrows, she grit her teeth and stopped herself every time she was about to think that this was torture.

Because no, it wasn’t. She didn’t know what torture was yet. The more she thought that, the more she’d regret it; she’d been cursed enough by getting reaped in the first place.

Even though she hated it, this was how Emme stayed perfectly still, her lips clamped together as the pain bloomed over and over, raw and bright and humiliating.

By the time they were done, every inch of her skin felt like it had been sandblasted, and all of her nerve endings screamed in harmony. She had no sense of time anymore.

A cold gel was slathered on next, too little, too late, and someone cooed, “There we go. Isn’t that better?”

Truth be told, it was, but she wasn’t used to the sensation of being totally plucked. Or the sensation of several pairs of eyes scanning her body while she was totally naked.

Emme was more than a little annoyed now, but she didn’t say a word — she didn’t trust her voice not to break. Aside from being annoyed, she was mostly just glad she finally had a breather.

But still, the stylist wasn’t here, which meant they weren’t done with her yet.

Purple Eyebrows — she was pretty sure his name was Vesper? —  grabbed a pair of tweezers and clicked them in the air with a flourish.

“We’ll shape the brows and clean the hairline. There’s no frame for her eyes at all right now — poor thing.”

Saphira, the one with swirly blue eyeliner, hummed in agreement and turned to her. “Close your eyes, sweetheart. And don’t move.”

Sweetheart.

Emme obeyed because that was all she’d been doing for the last hour and a half, and shut her eyes tight.

The pulling began, because somehow the waxing wasn’t enough. The sensation was sharp and repetitive, a constant pinching above each eye that had tears bubbling up despite herself.

It lasted for a while, yet not nearly as long as the waxing. At some point, mercifully, she checked out of her own body.

Somewhere to her left, someone laughed at a joke that required a lifetime of living in the Capitol to understand. Someone else wiped a cloth behind her ears, under her arms, between her toes. Her toenails were clipped without warning, the sensation jarring. Something was filed. Something was buffed. The split ends and the other dead bits of her hair were snipped and swept away. Above all, she was a body being processed — a mannequin.

One of them tapped her cheek twice. “Time for dental.”

“What?” Her voice cracked for the first time in hours.

They didn’t answer. Just tilted her chin back and pried open her mouth with gloved fingers like they were checking a horse’s teeth.

“Yikes,” muttered the one with the puffed-up cheeks, the sight of whom undoubtedly creeped her out the most. She knew her name was Liora, but it seemed like such a cute and dainty name for someone so grotesque-looking. “Poor thing’s never had a proper cleaning.”

“Don’t worry,” Saphira said sweetly, already holding what looked like a tiny chrome wand. “It won’t hurt.”

Emme then wondered what hurt by Saphira’s standards, because to hers, it did. Not in the obvious way, but in the raw, scraping, cold metal against her gums way. In the way it made her jaw ache. In the way the suction tube made her feel like she might choke on her own spit.

And then came the acid bite of whatever whitening agent they used — a gel smeared onto her teeth, left to fizz and burn for the longest two minutes of her life while they wrapped her in damp cloths and rubbed creams into her raw legs.

“You’ll thank us,” Vesper chirped. “You’re going to look stunning.”

She wasn’t sure she even remembered what that meant.

When they were done — how long had it been now? — they rinsed her again. Lukewarm this time, which was a mercy, even though the water ran pink down the drain. Emme didn’t want to know if it was blood.

Only once she was patted dry and slathered in a heavy, perfumed lotion that stung every fresh patch of skin, did they finally let her sit down — a bare, cold stool in front of the vanity. She had a robe on now, thankfully. Thin, but a comfort compared to what the last few hours had held in store.

The mirror showed her body like it was someone else’s, and for a speechless moment, all she could do was stare at her reflection.

Her hair was abnormally sleek, smooth and shiny, a glistening, unbroken red curtain hanging from her shoulders and finishing in a slight, polished curl. Her skin, for the first time since she’d started a malnourished child’s version of puberty, was blemish-free, scrubbed of flakes, and glowing, and even her eyelashes were somehow longer than they’d used to be thanks to some strange Capitol science. Somehow they’d even managed to get rid of her heavy dark circles that had been under her eyes since forever, and their absence only accentuated just how wide her amber eyes were. She was totally glossy and stripped of context.

Not sure how to react, Emme just blinked.

Was it a job well done? Yes. She looked like something out of the Capitol; people would love that. Run a poll in a Capitol magazine and the vote for the after version of her would be overwhelmingly popular. And sure, if looking nice was something that had ever been important to her, she would have been pleased. You couldn’t tell that she’d grown up in an orphanage because all of her physical flaws had been erased.

But was it a job well done for a girl who had been trying to make herself disappear ever since she woke up this morning? No. She felt as big and as awkward as she did sitting among the much younger orphans at the wooden table that was now thousands of miles away, and something about it made her stomach churn. She hated being noticeable.

"She's ready for styling," said Saphira, gently lifting her hair. "Just in time."

“Our canvas is primed,” said Liora.

Canvas.

Emme didn’t react. She just sat there, her back aching, her hair dripping, her face glowing faintly from all the Capitol chemicals still soaking into her pores.

Her reflection looked new, but not better. Just hollowed out.

Then, as though sensing the prep was done, the door opened with a soft creak. At the sound, all three prep team members straightened immediately.

“Stylist on deck,” Vesper whispered, adjusting his rhinestone cuffs like he was about to be inspected by royalty.

Saphira, who had been just about to grab a brush off the counter, froze mid-motion. Liora shuffled out of the way, smoothing her swollen cheeks with both hands, as if that would help. 

Then, without the billowing smoke or dramatic music Emme was half-expecting, she walked in.

She didn’t know what she’d expected from her stylist — another overdressed Capitol eccentric, maybe, or someone shrieking about colour palettes — but this woman was nothing like that.

She was tall, first of all. Not towering, or lanky in the way Emme had been at the orphanage, but upright in a way that made her seem like she had somewhere better to be. Her eyes were so thin they were basically slivers, and her hair was a sharp-cut bob the darkest possible shade of black, not one strand out of place. She wore minimal makeup except for a violent slash of lipstick — deep red, like blood on snow. Her outfit was tailored within an inch of its life, dark fabric with silver seams that caught the overhead lights, glinting slightly. She looked like a blade of a woman.

No sparkles, no feathers, no drama. She didn’t have to do any of that. Vaguely, Emme got the feeling that she was the drama.

The woman didn’t say anything at first, just stared at her. Not her robe, or her vanity. Not the prep team frozen behind her.

Her.

And Emme — who had just been waxed raw, who had been scrubbed until her skin stung, who had not spoken more than five words since she’d entered this sterile room — felt her shoulders tighten. Instinctively, she knew this wasn’t the kind of look you got when someone wanted to mock you, but it wasn’t pity either. It was colder. Clinical, almost.

Like she was a shape. A material.

“You left her eyes,” the woman said flatly, her eyes still on Emme.

“We were going to—” Vesper started, then stopped.

“I’m not criticizing,” the woman replied. “Just noting. Good call.”

She walked forward — not rushed, not slow. Just direct. Then she reached out and, without asking, gently tipped Emme’s chin up between two fingers.

Her gloves were warm, and her touch was light. Emme didn’t flinch, but she hated how still she went, like an obedient animal. There was something inexplicably feline about her, though not as literal as other Capitol citizens she’d seen in the crowd at the train station — she hadn’t had whiskers implanted in her cheeks, for example, and her skin definitely wasn’t tattooed in cheetah print and inlaid with fur.

After a moment, the stylist let go.

“She’s ready. You’re dismissed.”

The prep team hesitated like they didn’t quite believe it.

Saphira blinked. “Already?”

“You’ve done enough,” the woman said.

That was apparently all it took. In a blur of swishing coats and mumbled goodbyes, they were gone, leaving the air behind them undoubtedly more perfumed than it had been before.

Then it was just the two of them.

The stylist moved to stand behind Emme in the mirror. She didn’t lean in or smile or offer her name like she was trying to be relatable: she just stared, for what felt like a long time, like she didn’t need to blink.

“I’m Mireille Voss,” she said at last, like it was a fact Emme should already know. “And I don’t waste time.”

Emme didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she could.

Mireille tilted her head. “Good. I like silence.”

She moved around the chair once, appraising. Not in a cruel way — more like she was measuring something no one else could see.

“You’re not what the Capitol would call pretty,” she told her. “But that’s not a problem. In fact, I would say it’s a gift. All pretty girls do is blur together.”

Emme blinked.

“You’re sharp,” Mireille went on. “You have edges, I can tell. People remember edges. I’m not going to hide them.”

She turned and grabbed something from the wall — a long garment bag, the kind stylists used for important things. Emme expected her to unzip it with a flourish, but she didn’t. Instead, she paused.

“Do you know what happens to a person after they’re electrocuted?” she demanded.

Emme, startled, shook her head.

“They glow. Briefly. From the inside.”

With that, she unzipped the bag harshly, and Emme got her first glance at her parade costume.

The first thing she noticed was that unlike previous District 5 costumes she’d seen, it didn’t sparkle. Not in the obvious way, at least. There were no gaudy sequins or rhinestones, which was kind of a relief, and it didn’t light up or shimmer like she'd expected from Capitol fashion. Instead, it gleamed.

The cut was asymmetrical: a single sleeve on one side, the other arm bare to the shoulder, with a high collar and a sharply angled neckline. It was modest, but not soft. Nothing about it was soft.

Threaded through the fabric were tiny silver veins — not thread, exactly, but something finer. Metallic filaments, almost like wire, trailing through the suit in quiet patterns. Like circuitry. Like lightning mid-strike.

Beneath the main garment, a layer of sheer mesh covered in mirrored panels shimmered faintly. The mirrors were jagged, irregularly shaped, and scattered like they’d broken across her skin. Not reflective enough to blind, but enough to catch the flash of a camera. Enough to draw the eye, which Emme supposed was good for potential sponsors.

Mireille’s expression was unreadable. She couldn’t tell if the stylist had wanted a certain reaction out of her.

“That’s the image I want: not a pretty little girl in a costume. A current. Moving through the Capitol before they know they’ve been touched.”

Emme wasn’t totally sure how she felt about it, not yet. The monologue was way too dramatic, but she mostly felt grateful that she wasn’t wearing a duplicate of Quintessa’s blinding wind turbine headdress.

Mireille laid the garment bag across the operating table where Emme had spent hours being prodded, then looked back at her, her expression unreadable.

“Put this on, then let me know. I’ll need to know if I need to make any alterations. The parade is in a few hours.”

And with that, her stylist turned to leave. True to her word, she hadn’t wasted time.

Just before the door creaked open again, she added without looking back:

“You did well with the prep team. They always talk too much.”

Then she was gone.

Minutes later

The silver getup was cool on her raw skin, and oddly heavy. She pulled it on in pieces. The fit was tight around the ribs, glove-like at the wrists. The fabric didn’t breathe, exactly — it felt like wearing condensation, like something slick and artificial had chosen to wrap itself around her and wouldn’t be coming off easily. There was weight in the seams, a slight resistance when she moved her arms. It clearly wasn’t meant for comfort.

The mesh collar settled around her neck not unlike the collar of her reaping dress, prickling faintly when she shifted. A constant reminder that it was there. It would be much harder to dissociate from herself when she was dressed like this, she supposed.

There were boots, too — flat-soled, not clunky. More practical than some of the costumes she’d seen in previous Games. They clicked quietly when she walked across the polished floor, a whisper of sound with each step. Even the noise felt sanitized.

Emme was thankful for the room being silent as she dressed. A steady, buzzing quiet. For a second, she let herself pretend she was alone in the world.

When she was finally dressed, Emme turned to the mirror again.

By now, her hair had dried into a curtain of glassy red. The colour didn’t look real anymore, considering it was too bright against the silver getup, like an alert, a warning sign, a flare. And somehow, that made it worse.

Her eyes — amber, unblinking — looked too wide now. Too alive. She both hated it and somehow didn’t at the same time.

She looked… charged. Like she’d been rewired. Like someone had reached in and replaced her spine with copper.

Not pretty, not soft. But visible. Hard to look away from.

It could’ve been worse, she supposed. Emme thought back to previous years of Games — tributes paraded out in burlap, in fake hay, in vinyl butcher’s aprons and whatnot. District 12 had shown up more than once in shapeless black overalls with soot smudged across their faces, because there wasn’t much fashion you could create from the mining district. Some poor girl from District 10 had once been dressed like a literal cow. Even if she felt like she didn’t belong in this silver getup, at least she didn’t look ridiculous. At least she didn’t look forgettable.

Whatever it takes to get sponsors, she thought, resigned.

Several hours later, as the parade drew closer and closer, she was finally permitted to see Ricardo.

At first glance, Emme didn’t recognize him. He looked taller somehow, though she knew he wasn’t, it was just the posture. His shoulders were straight, his head was held like someone had told him he was allowed to take up space, and for once, he believed them.

His suit complimented hers nicely — not identical, but clearly part of a set. The fabric was a clean silver that clung to him in sharp, even lines, like it had been vacuum-sealed to fit just right. Thin strands of pale wiring traced over his chest and down his arms, stitched into the seams like veins of light. Small silver bolts had been embroidered near his cuffs and collar, subtle enough not to distract but obvious enough to be part of the design. 

He gave her a look she couldn’t name — halfway between are you okay? and should I be okay?

She didn’t answer, because she didn’t know how. Seemingly sensing this, he nodded back, and that was enough.

They didn’t speak as they were guided down the corridor by some escort that wasn’t Quintessa. They passed other stylists, other prep teams, voices fluting through the marble halls like birdsong. Somewhere nearby, the anthem started to swell, and Emme felt it in her bones more than her ears.

It wasn’t clear where they were going until they hit the bottom level of the Remake Center, a vast, echoing space that looked like a stable crossed with a stage. Chariots waited in rows, each paired with sleek horses so still they looked mechanical. By the time Emme and Ricardo got there, other tributes were already climbing aboard their chariots: she caught flashes of gold, fabric the colour of flames, a girl whose skin had been painted silver. She heard someone laughing, and another crying. A camera flashed.

Then it was their turn to climb into the chariot.

The two of them stepped up onto it and took their places, Ricardo on the left, Emme on the right. They didn’t touch, or smile. No one told them to — if Cassian or Quintessa were meant to be here, they weren’t.

She couldn’t pretend to care about them. Vaguely, Emme was relieved that she wasn’t from District 1 and she didn’t have to go first.

Overhead, the world was screaming — cheering, drumming, music swelling — but here, in the shadow of it, everything felt still. Solemn, almost.

Emme could hear the horses snorting, shuffling in place. One let out a sharp, high breath that echoed against the tunnel walls. Someone, probably a Capitol technician, barked something incomprehensible as the line slowly crept forward. Somewhere ahead, the first chariot was about to breach the surface.

Emme stood tall, but every muscle in her legs ached from being locked in place. The tension in her shoulders had gone beyond pain into numbness, and her hands were flat against her sides. She wasn’t holding onto anything — that had been Mireille’s one and only direction. No clutching, no bracing. Let them see you stand on your own.

She swallowed.

Beside her, Ricardo adjusted the fit of his collar with a small, nervous twitch. He glanced sideways at her, and this time, she met his gaze. At least he was just as scared as she was.

Not that there was time to dwell on that. The tunnel was quickly narrowing ahead, and then, one by one, the chariots were called forward.

"District 1.”

Thunderous applause as the horses started on their course.

"District 2.”

Drums now. Someone howling a tribute’s name.

The sound shook the stone around them, and Emme could feel it in the soles of her feet.

"District 3.”

Three chariots gone now.

“District 4.”

The last Career chariot was met with overwhelming noise, and Emme bit her lip. She knew what came next.

The technician raised his hand. “District Five — you’re up.”

With that, the horses jolted forward, and the chariot began to move.

Then the tunnel fell away, and they were in it — the heart of the Capitol, with all its gleaming streets, towering screens, camera drones, fireworks, and petals raining from the sky like ash. The sound hit her like a wall, a scream wrapped in celebration.

She didn’t look at the crowd, and she didn’t blink. She just stood in the storm of it all, glittering like a live wire.

The wind caught her hair as they rolled forward, the gloss of it catching the light like a wire pulled tight. The mirrored panels on her legs reflected the faces in the crowd. Her hands stayed still at her sides, but her eyes moved.

People were pointing.

Not with disgust. Not even quite with awe.

Curiosity. That sharp, aching kind.

As if they weren’t looking at tributes, but at something just barely human. As though they were in a zoo.

Meanwhile, Caesar Flickerman beamed into the lens, his posture perfect, his powder blue hair shiny with hairspray, midnight blue suit twinkling like it always did.

“And here they come, folks — the Parade of Tributes!” he trilled. “We’ve already seen stunning debuts from District 1 and District 2 — my, my, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much molten metal in one chariot!”

He laughed, bright and rehearsed, then leaned just slightly to his co-anchor. “Claudius, is it just me, or are the tributes bringing a whole new voltage this year?”

Claudius Templesmith chuckled beside him, a lower register to Caesar’s sparkle. “Voltage’s the word, Caesar. I hear District Five’s got something that’ll really light us up.”

“Oh-ho-ho!” Caesar turned to the camera. “You heard it here first. Get ready for a jolt!”

Behind them, the screen was split — feeds from multiple angles playing live footage from the tunnel. Caesar’s own monitor showed the quiet, eerie rollout, with horses stamping and chariots easing forward. The hush before the spectacle.

He’d seen it all before — dozens of Games, decades of ceremonies — but the Parade always made his pulse tick up. It was theatre, after all. It was spectacle. It was Panem.

“District 3 now entering the Circle,” Claudius noted as a pair of teenagers rolled into view, decked out in gear that looked to be built from common factory materials. Caesar nodded.

“Curious choices there, Claudius. Not the most flattering cut on the girl, but I suppose that’s the price of innovation.”

Claudius snorted lightly. “They look like half-assembled toaster ovens.”

The camera shifted again.

“And now District 4 — ooh, now this is fluid fashion!” Caesar declared, delighted.

Onscreen, the girl was glittering in seafoam and sequins, gauzy fabric trailing behind her like jellyfish tendrils in slow motion. The boy beside her had been styled more aggressively — bronze hooks draped across his chest, netting slung over his shoulders, giving the effect of a living anglerfish. He looked like he was hunting.

“Strong maritime theme, as always,” Claudius said. “But that boy’s giving us predator, not sailor.”

Caesar gave a pleased sigh. “District 4 knows their strengths. And by the crowd’s reaction? That’s a splash.”

And then—

“District 5,” a voice crackled in Caesar’s earpiece.

The screen cut to the chariot just as it began its ascent.

“Oh…” Caesar leaned in. “Now that’s interesting.”

The girl was striking, though not in the classic way Capitol audiences usually adored. A razor-slim frame, too red hair gleaming like signal lights, her outfit gleaming and strange. She didn’t wave or smile. She just stood tall, her expression unreadable, like she was bracing for a hit that hadn’t come yet.

“Look at her, Claudius,” Caesar murmured. “Like a live wire. Is that — static she’s wearing?”

“And her partner,” Claudius added, as the camera panned: the boy’s suit flared silver under the lights, subtle lightning bolts stitched into the cuffs. “That’s a matched pair if I’ve ever seen one.”

“They’re like opposite charges,” Caesar said. “I’ll say this — District Five has never made this kind of entrance.”

The crowd was reacting now. A few oohs. A handful of cheers. Murmurs starting to spread — not explosive like the Careers that had just passed, but curious. Eyebrows were raised, and heads tilted.

“They’re not here to dazzle,” Caesar said, almost to himself. “They’re here to hum just under your skin.”

He let that sit for half a beat, then brightened back to full wattage. “And we still have so much more to come! Who will burn brightest tonight? Who will fade before the Feast? We’ll have all the coverage — don’t touch that dial!”

He threw the camera a wink.

“Coming up next — District Six, and you will not believe what they’re wearing—!”

Awaiting the end of the parade, President Snow sat alone in the dimly lit drawing room of his mansion, not too far from his balcony. The soft glow from the large screen above the mantel cast a pale light on his sharp features. His hands rested calmly on the arms of the leather chair.

The parade played out in vivid colour — a procession of tributes from each district, flashing costumes and gleaming chariots.

Snow’s eyes flicked briefly to the two from District Five. The girl with the striking red hair and the boy clad in shimmering silver drew his attention, though he said nothing.

His gaze lingered a moment longer on them before shifting away, his expression unreadable.

The broadcast moved on. Snow remained still, quiet, taking in every detail.

No applause. No words. Just watchful patience.

Much later

That evening, feeling weirdly like a different person, Emme stepped into the District 5 floor of the Tribute Center with her limbs aching and her soul hanging loose inside her body. She was grateful to be out of her parade outfit — she’d left it behind with Mireille as quickly as possible.

Everything in the Tribute Center, including her, was too clean, too soft, too quiet. The carpet muffled her footsteps. Nothing creaked. Nothing smelled like smoke or oil or sweat or rot. It smelled like…well, nothing. A sterile nothingness.

Cassian was still nowhere to be seen, and neither was Quintessa. She knew they were probably meant to be here, offering up more useless advice, but all she felt was relief. She couldn’t pretend to miss either of them. They were likely partying it up while they still had the chance.

She wasn’t completely alone, though. There were Avoxes — okay, now that she’d actually seen the real thing in person she could understand where Cassian was coming from — who she was probably meant to order dinner from, but all they did was creep her out, so she avoided them. That was hard, considering they seemed to be poised dutifully in eyeshot wherever she went.

Not sure where to go when she had the whole floor to herself, Emme drifted into the lounge where the walls were glass and the couches looked like mounds of fluff ready to swallow you whole. To her surprise, Ricardo was already there, curled up sideways on one of the velvet couches, not really doing anything in the quiet room. For the first time that day, his eyes weren’t puffy or red, and his face was mysteriously vacant. Adjusting already. Well, it had to happen at some point.

Even then, Emme didn’t say anything.

Instead, she sat across the room, on the edge of a too-soft chair, and stared at the Capitol screen already glowing at the far end of the room.

THE REAPINGS: DAY ONE HIGHLIGHTS

Someone had left the remote out like a trap.

“You wanna watch?” she asked Ricardo. “We should get to know these people sooner or later.”

Ricardo nodded, fast. “Good idea.”

And so she picked up the remote and pressed play.

She didn’t remember all the names, not even most of them. But some moments stuck.

For District 1, both tributes were all perfect teeth, sleek blonde hair, and smug waves. They looked like they’d been raised on steak and swords, unsurprising of a Career district. Unlike their own reaping, she felt as though she was watching something out of a game show: there was thunderous applause that had to be quelled at every other moment, and a brief montage of the confusion that had broken out when at least five girls volunteered at once.

Emme glanced at Ricardo when this happened, and immediately felt relief when his face shared her confusion. 

When a tribute had finally been plucked from the crowd — no clue how they’d managed that — the girl practically danced up to the stage with a dazzling smile like she’d already won the Games, her blonde curls bouncing as she went. Shiny and beautiful and never having had to go hungry in her life.

Emme rolled her eyes.

She’ll die eventually. Probably. Hopefully.

For all the emphasis this playback put on the girl, there was only a brief shot of her equally blond counterpart, with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Emme took note of how he threw his arm around the girl after he reached the stage. Like they were headed to a party, not a slaughter.

For District 2, the other Career district, there was slightly less bravado, but that didn’t mean their kids wouldn’t be a threat.

The dark-haired, freckled girl that eventually emerged victorious from the volunteering confusion looked smaller and possibly younger than Emme, but everyone who saw her could immediately tell that she was confident.

Scarily confident. There was a glint in her eye that made Emme’s stomach turn, and something instinctual told her to avoid this girl at all costs. At least Blondie had played up the cameras, smiling and waving. This girl, though she was also smiling, self-assured, and prideful like District 1, almost looked like she was daring someone in the crowd to try her. Just because she was small didn’t mean she couldn’t fight.

And then there was the cut to her district partner, who had lunged forward to volunteer and made it onto the stage. Blond, smug, not to mention horrifyingly enormous and muscular, already eating up the camera with all the ease of a Career who knew he would last to the final four. Emme hated him instantly.

And soon enough, there it was again — her reaping, the memory that would haunt her for her final weeks. Her stiff shoulders, and her blank expression. Her too-sharp elbows poking through the dress. She hadn’t even looked human as she climbed the stage.

Across the room, Ricardo sniffled, but didn’t say anything. When his reaping came, he looked small. Smaller than she remembered him on stage.

Maybe she looked smaller too. The thought of it made her disoriented for the next four districts, who all seemed to be the same genre of poor, underfed kids.

Then came someone who made her stomach twist.

District 10. A boy limped onstage.

She didn’t know his name yet. Wouldn’t, until it mattered. But he walked with a bad foot and tried to smile anyway, though it hurt. There was something brittle about him that Emme instinctually noted — maybe, against all odds, he would survive.

Before she could really take him in, however, there was a smash cut to the District 11 reaping, where a little girl’s name was called, and Emme stopped breathing for a second.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her brown eyes were too wide, and her hands were clasped tightly around a carved pendant as she walked up to the stage. She looked terrified, but when she smiled, just for a second, the whole room felt colder.

Emme looked away as her stomach squirmed and considered turning off the TV. That District 11 girl was currently somewhere above her, close to the roof of the Tribute Center. A foal. A baby. A better tribute would be thankful that she was easy for the others to take out; she knew she wasn’t much of one because she only felt sick.

Beside the little girl, a massive, dark-skinned boy whose size and muscularity rivalled the male tribute from District 2 mounted the stage, and that was District 11.

Finally, the last district showed up screen, which she knew from years of watching the Games typically had the runts, more often than not slathered in coal dust.

It hit Emme then that she was much too tired of seeing the same sort of terrified teenagers being sent to the slaughter by now, and Ricardo must’ve been too, because he didn’t object when she stood to turn the TV off.

The remote was in her hand when something completely unexpected happened.

“Primrose Everdeen!” called out a woman in a pink wig that was either fashionably or accidentally skewed severely to the side, looking up towards the crowd.

Cut to Primrose beginning to make her way to the stage when a different girl starting shouting, her voice hoarse and strangled, staggering towards the stage as though to pull the young blonde girl back.

She volunteered in a splutter. Screamed what had to be her sister’s name. People gasped, looking horrified. There was a sweeping shot of the shocked faces in the crowd.

Emme was more shocked than she’d like to admit. Outside of the Career districts, volunteering was practically unheard of. The unbearable silence and the sound of the wind whistling as Quintessa waited for a possible volunteer was still fresh in her memory, after all. District 12 always died immediately in the bloodbath, were known for being the poorest district in Panem, and here this girl was — she volunteered? When had that ever happened? What was the point of that?

In the next shot, Emme and Ricardo got a better look at her. Her dark hair was braided back, and she was in a faded blue dress that looked like it hadn’t seen the light in a while. She was on the smaller side, but with that same haunted look Emme had seen in her own reflection all day.

Unlike her, she looked unshakable.

They cut to the male reaping, which went without the dramatics of the one Panem had just seen. A name was called that she couldn’t help but immediately forget, and the boy walked the stage. He was blond, soft-faced. Emme didn’t know him, but she got the sense that he was the kind of person who’d help you carry something heavy without asking.

Still, she wasn’t about to let that fool her. She caught sight of his arms, mysteriously toned for a District 12 boy. He wasn’t as big as District 11 or 2, but she knew immediately, instinctually, that he was strong. That he could kill if things came down to it.

She noted that.

The anthem blared for the closing of the reapings, and Emme blinked slowly, trying to take in everything she just saw. If her mind hadn’t been scrambled from the chaos of today, she would’ve grabbed a notepad from somewhere, taken notes. But she hadn’t.

After the reapings, the screen flickered back to Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith, with shiny, unnaturally white smiles that took up their whole faces. Knowing what her own teeth had just gone through that afternoon, it made her flinch.

She glanced over at Ricardo, who was quiet now, staring blankly at the screen. They both looked like they'd aged a few years just sitting there.

Feeling like he wouldn’t argue, Emme shut off the TV.

"I'm going to bed," she said, not because she was tired, but because there was nothing left to do but try and sleep through it.

Ricardo said nothing, just kept staring at the black TV.

“FIRE, FURY, AND FASHION: The 74th Tribute Parade Sizzles”
By Calliope Shyne, Style & Spectacle Editor at Panem Today

Well, darlings, the tribute parade is over — and what a parade it was!

The chariots have rolled, the fireworks have fizzled, and the Capitol is absolutely buzzing about this year’s tributes. From glittering gowns to roaring flames to the heartbreakingly young faces we’ll soon see in the arena, the 74th Hunger Games are already shaping up to be unforgettable. Let’s break it down, district by dazzling district!

First and foremost — yes, yes, yes — District 12! Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark emerged from the tunnel like twin infernos, dressed head-to-toe in flickering flame. And this wasn't your standard faux-fire special effects: this was cutting-edge textile tech by the legendary Cinna (making his debut this year — can you believe it?) and the impact was nothing short of explosive. The crowd roared. People wept. I myself screamed. If you weren’t watching it live, you missed history.

But they weren’t the only ones to turn heads.

District 1 dazzled as usual (as if they could do anything else!) with sequins and shine that left everyone blind with delight. Glimmer Aurelie and Marvel Corvin are Career kids through and through — their synchronized waves and smug grins had everyone betting they’ll be this year’s “it” couple.

District 2 brought a brutalist vibe with Cato Hadley looking like he could punch through a hovercraft, and his counterpart Clove Kentwell dressed in scarlet armour with sculpted plating that left little to the imagination. Word from the Remake Center is she insisted on the real metal. Ouch. We love a girl who commits to the bit.

District 3’s Alix Cray and Orion Vale were a bit more… literal with their interpretation. Both tributes wore clunky, boxy ensembles that looked like they’d been assembled in a basement workshop — complete with blinking lights, tangled wires, and what we can only hope were decorative bolts (though a few viewers feared electrocution was imminent). Orion’s outfit even featured a full breastplate made of repurposed keyboard keys — a bold choice, if not a particularly graceful one. Alix, meanwhile, seemed swallowed by a cape made of caution tape and holographic circuit board print. The concept was clear — “technology chic” — but the execution? Not quite up to Capitol runway standards. Still, there’s something endearing about a good old-fashioned misfire. And hey, every Games needs a tribute or two who accidentally trend as memes.

Moving on, District 4’s Isla Quayle was all seafoam and sequins, with flowing gauze that trailed like jellyfish tendrils. Her partner Talon Marrow, draped in netting and bronze hooks, gave us strong “angler fish but make it fashion” energy. Ratings suggest a solid fanbase forming already.

And then came District 5. Emme Matley stepped out in a sheer, gunmetal-and-mirrored bodysuit threaded with thin, pulsing blue lights. Her red hair was ironed flat and glinting, her eyes heavy and mysterious. Her stylist Mireille Voss is known for her restrained drama, and it shows. By her side, Ricardo Volt — yes, that’s his real last name, we checked twice — looked charming and nervous in a structured silver suit that sparked faintly as the chariot rolled forward. He waved. She didn’t. We’re already obsessed with the contrast.

District 6 gave us Mira Jarn and Tessar Shaw, both decked in chrome leathers with transit glyphs and glowing signage details. Stylish? Debatable. Memorable? Absolutely.

From District 7, we met Calla Wren in an actual carved bark corset (we hear she cried when they painted over the wood), and her partner Reef Thorne, bare-armed and scowling, practically radiated lumberjack rage. Capitol viewers ate it up.

District 8’s Junae Mott wore jagged seams and high-thread-count glam — think fabric goddess — while her partner Kerrick Hollow showed off sleeved tattoos designed to look like stitching. Seamstress chic!

District 9’s Brisa Kern wore a skirt shaped like a grain thresher blade (questionable!) and Ellix Dent had a full wheat crown — they were charming, if a bit literal.

District 10 brought tears to our eyes, especially seeing Jeremy Vane, who limped onto the chariot but still managed a salute. His stylist kept things simple: cowhide and resilience. His partner, Nellie Brae, wore calfskin dyed coral and managed a shy smile. A few Capitol hearts broke on the spot.

In District 11, we saw the tribute who’s already being called Little Rue. Everyone’s talking about that carved wooden pendant and the way she smiled at her reaping. Her partner, Thresh Barrow, all brawn and stone-faced composure, stood behind her like a bodyguard. He could probably lift a Peacekeeper tank with one hand, so Capitol bets already favour his survival.

So who lit you up, Capitol? Who made you gasp? And who left you cold?

We’ll be breaking it all down in this week’s “Tribute Trendwatch” — including a look at this year’s colour palette (spoiler: metallics are back) and a full retrospective on Past Parade Fails (who could forget District 9's edible grain hats of ‘67?).

Until then — stay stylish. Stay starved.

And may the odds be ever in your favour.

The next morning, the  TV was already on when Emme walked into the lounge to find Ricardo. Capitol News was blaring, an endless replay of the festivities from the night before.

Surprising no one, there was the pair from Twelve again. They had undoubtedly been the standouts. 

Slow-motion flames burst from the girl’s shoulders as she passed in her carriage, beaming almost as brightly as the District 1 girl had when she’d been reaped, her hand firmly clasped within her district partner’s. The crowd roared so loud the speakers buzzed.

The District 12 boy at her side, also smiling, cloak sparkling and flickering with orange and gold.

The girl on fire, the screen read in shimmering Capitol font. And the boy who burns for her.

Emme sank into a velvet chair, still slightly damp from her morning shower, an unknown phenomenon to her until this morning. She could get used to it, she figured, as long as she didn’t accidentally blast herself in the face with scorching water again. The Capitol really insisted on stuffing strange, unmarked buttons anywhere they could. 

“She’s all they’re talking about,” said a voice to her left — Ricardo, tucked into the same corner of the couch as last night, already dressed. “The girl from Twelve.”

What was her name? She wondered blearily.

She kept watching. As it turned out, it would be nearly impossible not to know Twelve’s names, considering the broadcast plastered it on screen whenever they could. Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark.

The footage looped again. Katniss. Peeta. Their faces illuminated by the firelight emanating from their costumes. Burning, smiling, waving.

“She’s prettier than I thought she’d be,” Ricardo said, almost absently. “Not like you, though. You looked kind of… scary. In a good way.”

That got her attention. She turned.

He winced. “I didn’t mean that bad.”

“I know,” she said. It came out quiet.

The screen flashed images of the District 12 tributes waving for the millionth time as Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith babbled on. Capitol kids pressed against the barriers, screaming. Someone had painted a flaming heart onto their bare chest.

“I don’t think they even noticed us,” Ricardo muttered. “Even with the suits.”

They hadn’t. She didn’t know how that would play out sponsor-wise, but she felt relieved.

Small. Smaller than that, she reminded herself.

Emme looked at her hands. The nail polish still gleamed like circuitry, and her hair still smelled like ozone and citrus and Capitol chemicals. 

“Should we see about breakfast?” she asked. That she could control.

“Sure.” Ricardo smiled as he stood. “I’m pretty sure Cassian and Quintessa got to our floor last night.”

That makes sense, Emme thought drily. Probably enjoying the festivities instead of giving a shit about their tributes.

Figuring she’d be largely on her own for the Games, she’d started developing her own strategy last night. She’d get on without them if she had to.

The breakfast spread was obscene. There was no other word for it.

She and Ricardo stepped into the dining room of the District 5 floor, and immediately stopped short at the sight of the table. Emme blinked. She’d never seen this much food in her life, not even on the train.

It was positively overflowing. Towering plates of fresh fruit, cut into perfect hexagons and fanned out like flower petals; eggs in glass domes that steamed when lifted; an entire roast bird, still sizzling; rows of pastries filled with things Emme couldn’t identify, and honestly didn’t want to. The air smelled like sugar, citrus, and something faintly floral. There was coffee — four kinds, apparently. And tea, probably whatever kind Quintessa liked. And some kind of fuchsia smoothie shimmered faintly in the light in yet another crystalline carafe that felt way too shiny in her hands when she went to pour something.

Cassian was already there, dressed like the cover of a magazine, leaning back with a cup of something pale and steaming in one hand. A hangover remedy, maybe. Whatever it was, at least he hadn’t completely given up on them.

Quintessa sat nearby, flipping through a silver tablet, not acknowledging anyone as she daintily scooped forkfuls of a chocolate croissant. Sure enough, she had a teacup filled with steaming black liquid.

A new addition, Mireille was also seated — crisp, precise, sipping black coffee like it was ink. A man who had to be Ricardo’s stylist sat beside her as well, pouring an indulgent amount of hollandaise sauce on the fluffiest, whitest eggs Emme had ever seen. Nothing like the sad, charred bits of egg whites the orphans got on rare occasion at breakfast. 

And beside the stylists sat both of the prep teams. The three that belonged to Emme looked somehow even shinier than they’d been yesterday: Vesper’s eyebrows had been reshaped into pointed wings, Saphira’s eyeliner now had actual glitter trailing to her temples, and Liora had added pearls to her cheeks like she was trying to sprout a second face.

“Oh, look at them!” Saphira chirped as soon as Emme and Ricardo entered. “They clean up so well.”

“Like brand new tributes,” Vesper said. “Shiny, sparkly, sponsor-ready—”

“They’re still a little matte,” Liora cut in.

Cassian didn’t look up. “They’re tributes, not bronzer.”

No one laughed, though Vesper made a high-pitched humming sound that might’ve been an attempt.

There were only two empty chairs. Emme sat, and so did Ricardo.

She looked at her plate, waiting in front of her, empty and gleaming, and tried to ignore the way the prep team was still watching them like proud, deranged parents.

Emme couldn’t help but be thoroughly disturbed by everything as she tried to figure out what to take for breakfast. Back home, there was barely enough food to go around even with their tiny, illegal garden, and here, there was an abundance of it. A sickening abundance.

Even worse, the buffet trays refilled automatically as soon as she took something, which meant it didn’t matter how much she grabbed. That was a novelty in itself.

Still feeling incredibly hesitant, Emme took a slice of toast, a little scoop of fruit, and a sliver of pale cheese. Best not to take too much when her stomach wasn’t totally prepared for it — she’d learned that the hard way last night — and she didn’t want to overeat just before their very first training day. Beside her, Ricardo extracted a stack of pancakes with shiny tongs and stared at them like they might bite him.

The whole time, no one else at the table stopped talking.

Quintessa was complaining about the fabric used on a tribute’s costume last night, waving a hand dramatically as though it had personally offended her. Vesper was recounting the exact weight of the gold thread in Katniss’s costume, as if it were an Olympic stat. Liora said the flames were cheating, but Mireille finally spoke up:

“It wasn’t the flames. It was the narrative.”

Everyone shut up for a second.

Emme glanced over. Mireille wasn’t looking at anyone. Just sipping her coffee, eyes on some point across the room.

Cassian snorted. “Well, the Capitol loves a good story.”

“And a good girl,” Quintessa added. “Tragic, protective, pure-hearted. She volunteered for her sister, you know. That makes her memorable.”

“And he’s in love with her,” Saphira said dreamily. “Did you see the way he looked at her?”

Emme focused on spreading butter on her toast.

She didn’t feel threatened by Katniss, not exactly. But she could feel herself disappearing behind her already, and she hadn’t even gotten the chance to exist yet. Which meant she’d be even more alone in the arena.

Ricardo had already finished half his pancakes, syrup on his chin.

Cassian finally looked at the two of them. “Eat up. You’ll need the calories.”

It wasn’t said kindly. It was said like a warning.

Like there was a price for all of this, and it was coming soon.

And so Emme finished her toast slowly, chewing longer than she needed to, just to delay the inevitable. The back of her neck was hot — not from shame or nerves, exactly, but from the way the table kept glancing at them. Watching them eat like it was a performance.

Ricardo was licking syrup off his fingers when Cassian stood. 

“Training starts in thirty,” he said, draining the last of his drink. “Suit up and be downstairs.”

Knowing she had to get it over with at one point or another, Emme pushed back her chair, the wooden legs scraping against the marble.

Ricardo stood too, wobbling a little as he did. He looked at his plate as though he’d forgotten how much he’d eaten.

“I think I made a mistake,” he mumbled.

“You’ll survive,” Emme muttered, not unkindly.

The two of them left the dining room, their footsteps quiet on the white tile. They passed an Avox on the way to their rooms — a young man with a tray of crystal glasses — and Emme tried not to look at him too long. She still didn’t know how to look at them. What terribly strange things they were.

When she reached her room, her training uniform was already waiting. Folded neatly on her bed like someone had snuck in while she was gone. It was black — close-fitting but not tight, with reinforced panels at the knees and elbows and a stretch that promised she could move in it. Emme changed quickly, tying her hair back with a band she found on the nightstand. Even though her split ends were gone, she still had a lot of hair, and she wondered if she could convince Mireille to chop it off before the Games.

In the mirror, she once again looked like someone else. Not the girl from the reaping, not the ghost in a static dress: just a tribute. She was quickly adjusting to the idea that she may not ever look like herself again.

There was a knock at the door, and before she could say anything, it opened.

Ricardo stood in the hall in the same uniform. He gave her a look she recognized from the train: nervous, but trying not to be.

“Ready?” he asked.

“No,” Emme said, stepping into the hall and letting the door close behind her. “But let’s go anyway.”

And together, they started down the corridor — past mirrored walls and glowing sconces, toward the elevator that would drop them into the depths of the Tribute Center.

Chapter Text

Emme stared at the glass wall in front of them and tried not to look like she was thinking too hard as the crystal elevator gracefully lowered them into the lowest floor of the Tribute Center: the tribute gym. Her stomach was coiled tight, but she didn’t feel nervous — not exactly, at least. It felt more like anticipation than anything, especially as she’d forced herself to seriously start thinking about what she’d do when she was in the arena last night. She would have to pay very close attention to everyone and everything over the next few days.

When the elevator doors opened, Emme squared her shoulders and plastered what she hoped was a nonchalant expression on her face as they stepped out.

And... she wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

The gym was utterly enormous — more like a stadium disguised as a gym, with concrete floors and towering ceilings, every inch seemingly designed to make tributes look small. The cavernous room was divided into zones, some with dummies and spears, others with climbing walls, nets, ropes, camouflage stations, and survival tech. Even a fire pit. Everything was sleek, curated, brutal. Not to mention full of tributes. Not everyone was here yet, but there were enough people here to be intimidating.

The Careers were already huddled by the weapons rack like they owned it, which, in a way, they did. They looked sharp and overfed and disturbingly relaxed. Emme tried not to stare at the girl from District 2 who was spinning a throwing knife between her fingers like it was a habit. And even though training hadn’t formally started yet, the blond boy from 1 was showing off his aim with a spear and pretending it was no big deal that it stuck clean into the dummy’s chest every time.

They laughed loudly, talked over each other, radiated that easy confidence that only came from knowing the odds were in their favour. Emme felt her gut twist as she walked by, Ricardo on her heels.

“Careful,” she heard one of them snicker as Ricardo passed them. “Pretty sure he’ll cry if you throw a knife too close.”

Emme didn’t stop walking, and neither did Ricardo. But she heard the laughter that followed, and she could feel Ricardo’s embarrassment like a pulse in the air beside her.

District 1 boy is good with spears, and the District 2 girl likes throwing knives, she noted as they found an empty spot in the gym, just to feel productive. 

Soon enough, all of the tributes had entered the gym, and by the time the Capitol official had finished giving them the basic rules — no weapons outside designated zones, no maiming your fellow tributes (yet), staff will intervene if needed — Emme had already made her decision.

She turned to Ricardo. “I’m gonna check out some of the plant stuff.”

He blinked. “Okay, cool. I’ll — uh, come with you.”

Of course he would.

“I think I wanna work alone today,” she said, carefully. “Just to focus.”

Ricardo’s face faltered for half a second, then recovered. “Right. Yeah, no problem. I get it.”

With that, they went their separate ways. Emme didn’t look back to see where he was going.

Barely two minutes had passed since they’d been given the lowdown on rules and the gym was already alive with noise: metal clanged against metal in steady rhythms, swords and spears slammed into dummies with hollow thwacks, and somewhere off to the right, a girl shrieked in frustration, followed by the crash of something plastic splintering against the wall. Without missing a beat, a whistle blew sharp and fast. Emme didn’t look up to see the argument.

Somewhere else, boots thudded against the floor. Bodies collided with pads, with sandbags, with each other. Every breath of air reeked faintly of sweat and something artificial — oil from the weapons, maybe, or the too-clean Capitol polish on everything. The sound was relentless, like the Games had already started and nobody told her.

Only when she stood alone, in the shadow of fake trees and racks of potted weeds, did she exhale properly.

This, she thought, I understand.

At the edible plants station, Emme crouched beside a Capitol trainer who wore lime-green, Capitol-issued gloves — so shiny and clean in comparison to Mrs Meynell’s — and smiled too much.

“Tell me what you know,” the woman told her, gesturing to a tray of roots, berries, stems, and leaves.

Biting her lip, Emme looked down.

There were a few things she recognized immediately — wild chervil, for one. Dandelion greens. Something that looked like chicory root. There was even a clump of mint, though its colour was paler than what she’d seen back home, and its edges were too trimmed, too precise.

She pointed at each in turn. “Edible. That one too. And the berries. But definitely not that.” She gestured at the bright red seeds with a black spot on each one. “Rosary peas. As little as one seed could kill you.”

The trainer blinked, clearly surprised. “Correct.”

Emme didn’t smile. She just nodded and moved to the next row.

It wasn’t all easy. The Capitol had clearly thrown in regional variants — mutated versions of herbs that had grown under different soil or light conditions, as well as things she’d never seen in her district. There was one sprig that looked like yarrow but gave off a sour, chemical smell; her gut told her that was poisonous. Another plant had identical leaves to sage but turned her fingertips yellow when she touched it. She made a mental note to avoid anything that stained.

Still, the more she worked, the more the anxiety drained out of her. Her fingers moved faster, and her brain kicked into gear. She wasn’t just guessing. She was remembering things — the garden back home, the way Mrs Meynell used to quiz her with foraged plants.

You’ll never know where you’ll end up, she had said. At the time, Emme thought she was being her usually cryptic self, not to mention overly cautious. But here, she was grateful.

At some point, she looked over and spotted the boy from 1 yawning through the station beside her, barely listening as the trainer explained the difference between mugwort and wormwood. He clearly didn’t care. Why would he? More often than not, the Careers took control of the Cornucopia early in the Games.

Instead of feeling terror at having to encounter the Cornucopia within the week, she was resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

When she turned to head to another station, she spotted Ricardo again, now perched at the edge of the climbing area with a nervous sort of intensity. He wasn’t climbing — no surprise there — but he was watching everything. When Emme looked closer, she realized he was mouthing names to himself.

Interesting, she couldn’t help but think.

She approached. He didn’t notice her until she was right behind him.

“Are you…taking notes in your head?”

Ricardo jumped slightly. “Oh — yeah. Sort of. Just trying to keep track of who’s good at what. ‘Cause, like — that District 3 girl is weirdly fast. And District 7’s boy keeps pretending he’s bad with knives, but he’s not. I dunno. Just thought it’d be worth doing.”

Emme narrowed her eyes at him. “Say that again?”

Ricardo repeated it, a little sheepishly, and Emme nodded, committing it to memory. It was the first time she thought her district partner might actually be useful in the Games, and while she didn’t say it, the realization softened her a little. Once they got back to the District 5 floor, the first thing she was doing was finding a notebook and writing all of this down. She wasn’t willing to divulge that right now, though, not with everyone around, so she just folded her arms.

“You’ve got the right idea,” she told him, smiling a little, and he flushed.

At lunch, Emme and Ricardo sat at one of the long white tables near the edge of the cafeteria, both still in their training uniforms. Emme wasn’t willing to sit by anyone she didn’t know, and Ricardo, as always, had been difficult to get off her back. Every now and again she glanced around, and tried to put names to faces.

Their food was Capitol-standard — unsurprising, though in less quantity than their luxurious breakfast upstairs. Emme’s plate held grilled protein that might’ve been chicken, something green pretending to be a vegetable, and a triangle of bread that tasted vaguely like cake. She picked at it absently. After all she’d learned and everything she’d seen that morning, she didn’t feel like eating.

Ricardo, on the other hand, was still eating like he hadn’t tasted food in days — she still didn’t know what his background was for him to be eating like this. Maybe he was just in awe of all the food. Or maybe he just had poor self control.

They didn’t speak for the first few minutes, mostly because Ricardo looked too scared to, and Emme didn’t know how to start. She was still thinking about Katniss Everdeen, the girl from 12 who’d a) made such an impact at the parade last night, and b) come to the edible plant station shortly after she’d left it and passed the test even faster than she had. The Careers had already locked down the deadly-looking weapon stations like they owned the room, so they were sure to be threats, but being the standout of the parade and having survival knowledge? Emme was sure to write it down as soon as she found paper.

She was deep in thought thinking about it Ricardo finally broke the silence.

“You see how the tall one from 9 can’t even hold a trident straight?” he muttered with his mouth half full. “I think he might be faking the arm strength. I’m not sure though.”

Emme blinked. “What?”

Ricardo swallowed, then leaned in, his voice lower. “That guy — the one with the scar? He hasn’t landed a clean hit all day."

“Huh,” Emme mumbled, mentally noting this. Ricardo smiled warmly.

Across the cafeteria, nowhere near them, a boy Emme recognized from District 6 stumbled sideways, nearly tripping over his own feet. 

Cato — unmistakable in his armour of muscle and smugness — was standing a few paces away, grinning like he’d just made a joke. She’d learned his name because of the sheer amount of times she’d heard it from the Careers that morning, their voices gleeful and smug and triumphant. A couple of the other Careers were laughing too, still grouped together like a clique. Cato’s district partner leaned back in her seat, her arms folded, smirking like she’d just thrown a knife and watched it hit.

The boy from 6 flushed red, muttered something inaudible, and ducked his head as he returned to his tray. Emme couldn’t see what had happened exactly, but it didn’t matter. She knew bullying when she saw it. You didn’t have to live in an orphanage to recognize that dynamic.

She glanced sideways at Ricardo, who was now silent, his eyes on his plate. She was sure he’d realized it too.

So. They weren’t the only ones being hunted before the Games had even begun.

If step one is to take notes, she thought to herself, step two is to avoid whatever that is.

Later

Emme sat cross-legged on the couch in her room, one of the plush throw blankets pooled around her shoulders since they were so damn soft. Her red hair was still damp from the shower — she was beginning to understand the panel of buttons with more than a hundred options regarding water temperature, pressure, soaps, shampoos, scents, oils, and whatnot — and her arms ached in places she hadn’t realized could ache, probably from the awkward climb up the climbing wall or her half-hearted axe-throwing, just to say she’d tried it. Her stomach was full from dinner, that kind of full she had never experienced before coming to the Capitol, her bones were sore, and her eyes felt exhausted.

But she was awake. Wide awake.

The notebook sat in her lap — it had been on the night stand when she’d first walked into this room, with a Capitol seal pressed into the corner as a reminder that everything came courtesy of the Capitol. She hadn’t touched it until now, but it was quickly going to become important.

As soon as she opened it, her pen hit the page. She’d always been a deft writer: the page filled up with her tiny, barely-legible-to-anyone-else-but-herself scrawl.

District 1

Girl: Glimmer — knives, throwing. Saw her at the archery station but she wasn’t as good as I expected her to be. Laughs when she hits the target. Gets bored fast. Pretty but cruel. Def gonna use her beauty to her advantage.

Boy: Marvel (?) — spear. Confident. Strong. Didn’t train much today.

Why do they both have ridiculous names???

She kept going. District by district. From memory.

District 2

Cato — brute force. Shoves, intimidates. Doesn’t wait his turn. Actively dangerous. He seems like an idiot, which could be an advantage for later, but for now, avoid.

Clove — knives. Ridiculously accurate. Could kill someone right now if she wanted. Avoid at all costs. Not touching that with a ten foot pole.

She left space beneath each district for updates and patterns. Ricardo’s name came last, not because she thought he was a threat, but because she couldn’t help herself.

District 5

Ricardo — weak on balance, decent in knots. Tries to watch everything. Kind. Will get hurt if he doesn’t keep quiet. Can’t be his ally but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a good kid. Sucks but is what it is.

Emme — …no strengths yet. Plants? Maybe.

She stared at that for a while, then underlined the word maybe.

The room hummed quietly around her. Somewhere far below, a train passed. A soft chime went off in the hallway — maybe the elevator? Could a tribute be wandering around? She wasn’t sure if they were allowed, and it wasn’t like she’d been spending enough time with Cassian or Quintessa to ask.

She flipped to the next page and wrote one word in all caps at the top.

STRATEGY.

Then, underneath it:

Survive the first day. No bloodbath. If needed, get something far away from the centre.

Don’t run.

Don’t freeze.

Use the environment.

Make them underestimate you.

She stopped there; let the pen rest between her fingers.

She wasn't strong, and she still couldn’t fight. But she could watch. For now, the strategy she had devised looked to be viable.

The next day

The rope bridge groaned under the weight of the tribute ahead.

From her post near the climbing wall, her mind a typewriter in wait, Emme watched Ricardo inch his way forward.

It was day two of training, and he was trying: she had to give him that. He wasn’t fast, and he definitely wasn’t graceful, but each step was deliberate. He double-checked each knot before he moved, his skinny arms tense, his lips pressed together in concentration. With more practice, he could definitely be nimble. He was small enough for that.

Emme pretended to be lost in thought choosing her next station, but she kept one eye on the bridge.

Then came the sound she already hated.

Boots. Heavy, purposeful. A rhythm too self-assured to be anyone but—

Cato. Ugh.

He strode toward the foot of the bridge like he owned it, and maybe he did, considering the Careers had claimed half the gym by now — the weapons, the strength tests, even some of the instructors. Emme had caught glimpses of him tossing spears like darts, hitting dummies with such force their heads spun. If he had been arrogant on day one, he was even worse now. Emme had grit her teeth and done her best to ignore it, since it wasn’t like there was anything she could do.

He stepped onto the rope bridge while Ricardo was still three-quarters of the way across. Nevermind the rule of one tribute at a time per station, and the blind eye of both instructors and the platform of Gamemakers above them.

Ricardo looked over his shoulder, visibly startled. The bridge rocked under the added weight, and his hand scrambled to grip the nearest rope. Cato was already climbing up the bridge with the ease of someone who had already done this sort of thing a thousand times before.

Which was when he did it: not with a shove, not even particularly loudly. Just a quiet, deliberate stomp on Ricardo’s hand as he moved past. Emme winced, and a few tributes laughed as Cato zoomed past him.

Ricardo sucked in a breath and slipped a rung. One leg swung loose in open air before he scrambled to recover. His knuckles scraped against the unforgiving rope, and his breath came hard.

“Better hold on,” Emme heard Cato taunt him, already through the rope bridge. “Wouldn’t want to embarrass your district.”

The trainers were focused elsewhere — like a girl from District 3 trying to steady a throwing axe. No one intervened, though she saw the boy with the bad foot from 10 frowning. No one said a word.

Anger prickled up her spine, hot and useless. It wasn’t about Ricardo, not really. Again, she wasn’t planning to team up with him, but watching someone get stepped on — literally — like they didn’t matter made her stomach turn. The Games were already cruel, there was no need to speed that up.

And she knew Cato wouldn’t even remember Ricardo’s name when he died.

For the first time since she’d arrived at the Tribute Center, the District 5 lounge was empty by the time Emme got there. Ricardo had been in the men’s shower for the past hour: she didn’t want to think about what he was doing, or how he was feeling.

Like always, the lounge was quiet, low-lit, with soft couches and glass walls that displayed a city skyline so gorgeous, it almost made her forget about her predicament. Still, it was better than isolating in her dark room, better than the downstairs cafeteria with all of the tributes there, and certainly better than having to listen to whatever stupid thing her prep team had concerned themselves with. At least here, she could think.

She’d taken a plate from the snack spread an Avox had prepared that they kept out at all hours — a few bite-sized Capitol sweets, pale crackers that didn’t taste like anything, and some kind of spiced cheese shaped like a flower. She hadn’t touched most of it, but it was there so she could avoid meeting everyone at dinner.

Her now-worn notebook sat open on the low table in front of her. She’d opened and closed it more times than she could count, and her handwriting was more cramped than it had been yesterday — so frenzied, some of her lettering had smudged. She’d scratched some things out from day one, written more descriptive things in. Thanks to her keen observation, she’d been able to learn more names, write more about other tributes, not just the Careers. Even though they threatened to take up the forefront of her mind.

Emme paused, tapping the pen against the corner, trying to think. Day two of training had left her rattled — not just the stations, but the vibe of the room. The noise of it, the feigned brutality she’d watched. The tension from everyone who wasn’t a Career. 

And Cato.

She’d already written his name in all caps. Not that it had meant anything special, but it was a symbol of how much he’d aggravated her. She hoped, without much conviction, that she’d outlive him, somehow. Purely out of spite. If she could evade everyone else long enough…

Her hand hovered above the paper, debating whether to underline his name again, when she heard footsteps behind her.

Not soft ones. Ones she’d quickly come to recognize, purely so she could avoid him.

Cassian.

He strolled in like he lived there, his shirt half-buttoned, a mug of something brown and steaming in hand, his expression unreadable like always. He gave the snacks on the table a glance.

“Cheese flower,” he muttered, setting his mug down beside it. “Used to love those.”

Emme didn’t look up from her notebook, already annoyed.

“Better than what I’m used to,” she said, because she supposed she couldn’t avoid him forever.

“Sure,” Cassian said. “But nothing here’s free.”

He stepped around the low couch and leaned back against the armrest, not quite sitting. Just looming.

“I figured you’d be with him,” he said after a moment. He didn’t have to say who he meant. “Watching the highlights, pretending to bond.”

“He’s still in the shower,” Emme replied, flipping to the next page. Even more scrawled writing; a lot of bullet points that she would force herself to memorize. She felt as though she had a good grip on who might survive the bloodbath by now.

“Trying to drown himself, probably.” Unconcerned, Cassian nodded toward the notebook. “What’ve you got?”

She hesitated. “Notes.”

“On?”

“Everyone.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow. “Efficient.”

She didn’t answer. Just scribbled something about District 3’s boy — fast on foot, bad aim — and kept writing.

“I heard about what happened with your partner on the rope bridge,” Cassian added after a beat. “Cato’s charming, isn’t he?”

Emme pressed harder with her pen, the ink threatening to tear the paper. “And nobody does anything.”

Cassian gave a humourless smile. “Of course not. That’s the point. The Games aren’t fair, they’re a spectacle. And he knows how to perform.”

“He’s a bully.”

“He’s a future victor, if you don’t get smarter than him.” He leaned in slightly. “But you’re already trying. I respect that.”

Emme glanced at him, unsure if that was a compliment. He didn’t seem capable of giving one.

Cassian just sipped from his mug. “Keep watching. Keep writing. And if you’re smart — make sure someone’s writing about you, too.”

He stood up, the fabric of the couch creaking slightly behind him.

Then he paused, looked back at her once, and said, “Just don’t mistake information for power. The audience doesn’t love strategy. They love stories.”

Then he was gone again, and Emme stared down at her notes for a long time before she finally added a new line under Cato’s section:

Performative. Audience might love him. That makes him dangerous.

And then, quieter, just beneath it:

They’ll never love me. So I’ll have to be smarter.

Late that night, Emme lay on her back in bed, staring at the dark ceiling.

The room was nearly silent. Somewhere, high above, a vent hummed. The sheets beneath her were too smooth, the pillow was too soft, and the temperature was too perfect. Every part of her body still ached from training — rope burn on her palms, a blooming bruise on her elbow from where she’d slipped off the climbing wall, all stinging enough to the point where she was worried she’d go into the games with her body hurting. The last thing she wanted was her ability to run impaired, but that was just something she wouldn’t allow herself to think about right now.

Her muscles wanted sleep, but her mind wouldn’t shut off.

Across the suite, Ricardo was snoring faintly through the thin wall that separated their rooms. She hated that she was comforted by the sound. It reminded her of her dormmates in the orphanage. Probably her last bit of home, considering she wasn’t planning to ally with anyone.

Her notebook sat on the nightstand, its corner peeking out like a secret. She hadn’t seen the point in letting Ricardo see it, after all. Even though she knew she wasn’t going to sleep any time soon, Emme didn’t reach for it.

She kept hearing Cassian’s voice from earlier, lazy and sharp all at once:

“The audience doesn’t love strategy. They love stories.”

At the time, she’d shrugged it off, or at least she’d pretended to. As soon as he’d left, she’d gone right back to jotting notes about spear form and body language, and when Liora had wandered in for something a few minutes later, she’d commented on her poker face. But now, in the stillness, the comment hit harder.

The Capitol didn’t care about smart, not really. She wouldn’t kid herself about that. If there was anything the opening parade had taught her, it was that they liked fire, drama, loyalty, love stories. Something investable. Beautiful bodies and brutal deaths. Tragedy, if it was pretty enough. Neat enough.

She turned onto her side, scowling at nothing. She knew she hadn’t flirted, hadn’t cried, hadn’t made any brave declarations about avenging a dead sibling. There were no grainy hometown videos of a little sister weeping on a porch, no sentimental clips of a mother waving goodbye. She didn’t have those things, because her earliest memory had always been being at the orphanage. Corrin had mentioned once that her mother was a prostitute, and that was about it. Even now, she couldn’t tell if it was meant to be an insult, or just the ugly truth.

All she had was observation. An attempt to reuse her skills at sneaking around the orphanage here. She had notes, and she was quiet. Which wasn’t a story — not the kind the Capitol remembered, anyway.

She rolled onto her other side, pressing her face into the pillow, frustrated. It’s not like I’m trying to win them over, she told herself. I’m just trying to survive.

But if no one liked her, no one would sponsor her. If no one sponsored her, she’d be gone in a matter of days.

Maybe she didn’t need to become someone else. Maybe she just needed to pick what version of herself they’d accept. What story they’d buy.

Smart orphan girl? Maybe. But that was quiet. Too soft.

Loner from nowhere? Unremarkable. She’d fade too fast.

What about the girl who’s watching everything?

The one who’s calm, calculating. Who sees the world like a machine and already knows where the weak screws are. (It didn’t matter if Emme actually did or not.) The Capitol liked archetypes — what if she leaned into it? She couldn’t do fire, like Katniss, or warrior, like Cato. But maybe she could do this.

Emme shut her eyes.

She didn’t know yet how to sell it. How to make it feel like a performance and not a ploy. But tomorrow, maybe, she’d start figuring it out.

Just in time for her private session with the Gamemakers.

The dining room was quieter the next morning. Both of their stylists and the prep teams were gone, likely off polishing some Capitol socialite or crying over frayed glitter. Good. Emme wasn’t sure why they’d decided to hang out here for so long anyway.

But Cassian wasn’t here yet, and Quintessa hadn’t shown either. Emme couldn’t help but be mildly annoyed at that: she’d seen other escorts corral their tributes around the Tribute Center, making sure they got everywhere on time, so why hadn’t she had that luxury? Where even was she? And where was Cassian?

Emme sat at the dining table, doing her best to ignore the Avoxes positioned in the corner of the room, waiting for a command. She’d gotten up early — force of habit — and had just emerged from her room for food when the sun filtered through the glass walls. Before that, she’d been thinking, hard. She wanted to talk to Cassian, which even she found unexpected, but of course she couldn’t when he was nowhere to be seen.

She picked at her toast — buttery and slathered with strawberry jam — and weakly sipped her orange juice, deep in thought.

Ricardo arrived a moment later, still in his pyjamas. He looked tired. Not the shell-shocked kind of tired he’d worn on the train to the Capitol, but the steady, physical fatigue that meant he’d actually tried yesterday. That meant something, especially for such a small boy. If she hadn’t been forced into survival mode, maybe she would’ve been proud of him.

He dropped into the chair across from her and reached for a bowl of sliced fruit without a word.

Emme watched him for a few seconds, then asked — casually, deliberately, like she wasn’t testing anything:

“What do you think so far?”

Ricardo blinked at her over a piece of star-shaped melon. “Of the Games?”

She shrugged. “Of training. Of everyone else. You’ve been watching. Got any theories?”

He seemed to brighten a little at the question — maybe no one else had really asked. He set his fork down.

“I think the girl from Ten is also hiding how strong she is. She’s fast, but she keeps acting clumsy. It makes sense, ‘cause ranching district and all that. And the blond guy from Eight? He’s always watching people’s hands. Might’ve been a pickpocket.”

Emme raised an eyebrow. “Anyone else?”

Ricardo hesitated, then grinned. “The Careers are a mess.”

“Well, obviously.”

He laughed, nervously. “No, I mean, yeah, they’re good at everything, but they’re too obvious. Loud. They talk like the arena’s already theirs. They’ve got no clue who to watch.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing that. Maybe she didn’t need to do all the watching herself. Maybe she just needed to ask better questions.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “about the narrative.”

Ricardo blinked again. “What?”

“The story,” she clarified. “That the Capitol wants. What they remember. I don’t think they want quiet kids, or survivors. They want characters.”

Ricardo leaned back a little, clearly contemplating that. “Like Katniss.”

“Exactly.”

She looked down at her orange juice, at the depths of the bright, citrusy liquid. “I’m trying to figure out what I am. What I’m supposed to be.”

Ricardo tilted his head. “You’re the smart one,” he said, like it was obvious.

Emme gave a dry little smile. “Smart girls die all the time.”

There was a pause. Then Ricardo said, more softly, “Not all of them.”

They sat in silence for a moment more, eating while Capitol light spilled across the marble.

In the end, she shrugged. “I dunno. I’m just trying to come up with something the Gamemakers will see.”

By afternoon, they’d started calling tributes from the lunchroom one by one for the private sessions: a chance for them to show their skills, with no one but the Gamemakers to see. Then the ratings would be broadcast to Panem, which would then influence the bets. It was hard not to find it all incredibly intimidating.

First the boys, then the girls. One district at a time. No one came back after they were called, so Emme knew she would be reunited with her notebook that sat on her nightstand soon enough.

Simultaneously, that was the worst part — the vanishing. Like the Gamemakers swallowed you whole.

With nothing else to do, she sat near the end of the long white table, not eating.

Even before people started to be called out of the room, there were fewer conversations than usual. Everyone was conserving energy for one reason or another — recovering from the brief morning session, for the Games in general, or just because by now, words felt like a waste. Even Glimmer wasn’t bothering to pretend to be charming, but checking her perfectly-filed nails every so often with a look of insurmountable boredom.

Emme watched tributes get up when their names were called. Some were stiff and silent, and others — or, well, the Careers — cracked their necks like they were about to head into a sparring match. 

It didn’t take long for Ricardo to go. He gave her a thumbs-up before they called him, like that would make it easier. She wanted to smile back, but somehow she couldn’t.

She wasn’t nervous, not really. Nervousness felt too warm, too alive. She just felt… alert.

When it was finally her name — “Matley, District Five” — she rose without a word and followed the Peacekeeper that had appeared by the door out of the room.

Even if it didn’t look like it, she’d rehearsed this. She knew what she wanted to do.

The one who’s calm, calculating. Who sees the world like a machine and already knows where the weak screws are, she reminded herself.

It doesn’t matter if you actually do or not.

She stepped into the gym, a room she had gotten to know so well over the last few days. She knew where everything was — her strengths, her weaknesses, the dummies, the weapons.

Above her, on an ornate platform that only reminded her of their godly superiority, the Gamemakers watched. Men and women in purple robes, eating and drinking from the luxurious banquet that had been set out in front of them, not unlike the spread on her own floor or on the train, talking amongst themselves as they ate.

For a moment, it didn’t look like they’d noticed her. It didn’t take long for her to deduce that she was a ten-minute interlude between bites of glazed duck and sips of spiced wine. Well, that was unfortunate, but at least it didn’t look like they were too far gone yet.

Truth be told, she hated them immediately, but hate wasn’t useful. And as far as she knew, hate didn’t earn scores, so she got to work.

First, she walked past the weapons. She didn’t even glance at them, which she previously thought might get their attention. The Careers might’ve been the type to hack apart dummies and strut in front of the throwing axes, desperate to show off, but she wasn’t. For the Gamemakers, she was calculated. Plus, she wasn’t strong, and pretending like she was would only make herself look worse, so what was the point?

Instead, she walked to the botany station. It looked half-abandoned — just a few plants left, in comparison to the spread she’d examined on day one of her training. But the identification table was still intact, and the poisonous ones had been replenished.

Perfect.

Emme opened a box under the counter and retrieved a blank board and some twine. Then, in full view of the Gamemakers above, she set up a simple display.

She separated five plants — some edible, some deadly — into labeled glass jars, carefully handling them. She plucked two berries from one of the plants, crushed them gently, and let the red-black juice bleed into a napkin. The colour darkened into something ink-like. She pinned the stained cloth to the board and wrote under it in large handwriting:

Rosary Pea — extremely toxic. Contains abrin. One seed can kill. 

Next to that, she placed a second cloth, stained pale orange. Then another, dark purple. Each sample came with its name, its symptoms, and whether or not it was safe.

She didn’t smile, or look up at all. She just wrote.

When she was finished, she stood back and folded her hands behind her back..

Miraculously, her voice didn’t shake when she spoke.

“Most tributes will kill with knives,” she declared, in a voice quite unlike her own. She sounded so sure of herself, so unlike the girl in the orphanage who struggled to speak. “I’ll kill with knowledge. I believe that no weapons can match a brain.”

There was a terrifying beat of silence. Emme could hear her heart pounding frantically and hoped wildly that they couldn’t see that her confidence was fake.

It took a solid second for them to say anything, but some of them were definitely staring at her. Hey, at least she had gotten their attention, right?

“Very well,” a man in a purple robe replied after a few Gamemakers had finished murmuring to themselves. “You may go, Miss Matley.”

Feeling vaguely like she was going to puke, Emme tried not to run out the door.

Later that night, the air on the District 5 floor was thick with unspoken expectation. Safe to say everyone knew what was coming.

Emme sat stiffly at the edge of the long couch in the lounge, a seat she was now used to during her stay at the Tribute Center, her hands curled into her lap. Someone had dimmed the lights for “ambience,” which only made the glow of the Capitol broadcast ahead of her feel brighter, too bright, like it could burn her face off if she stared at it too hard.

The Capitol seal spun slowly, but it didn’t stop everyone — Cassian, Quintessa, Mireille, Ricardo’s stylist, the prep teams — from staring at it. It was a full house tonight, and for one reason: the reveal of the scores.

Suddenly, the anthem blared, and Caesar Flickerman’s face appeared soon after, beaming as always. His blue hair was so vivid that Emme thought she might get a migraine if she stared at it for too long.

“Welcome back, Panem! The Gamemakers have made their decisions — let’s take a look at those training scores!”

She heard someone — probably Vesper — gasp faintly and clutch a pillow.

Ricardo sat beside her, his knees drawn up, his shoulders hunched like he wanted to disappear into the couch. He hadn’t asked about how her session went, so she hadn’t asked about his, but judging by his reaction, he wasn’t getting a twelve.

As for the others, Cassian was drinking again, staring at Caesar’s glee with an air of annoyance. Quintessa was acting as though she was watching a particularly dramatic soap opera. Mireille stood by the window, her coffee in hand, motionless. Saphira, Vesper, and Liora all looked in various states of excitement and worry.

Emme didn’t say a word. Then the scores started rolling.

District 1 — a 10 and a 10. Of course.

District 2 — a 10 and a 9. Shocking no one.

The tributes scrolled by. There were some 6s. An 8 from District 4’s girl that made Quintessa raise her brows and murmur, “Lower than I expected."

Then:

“District Five — Ricardo Volt: Four.”

Ricardo let out a slow breath like he’d been holding it for hours. 

“Could’ve been worse,” he said under his breath.

Emme blinked once.

“Emme Matley: Five.”

Silence.

A small, almost invisible sigh escaped her, but otherwise she didn’t move.

Five.

Not great. Not awful. But most importantly — not surprising.

She didn’t look at anyone else in the room. She just stared at the screen as it rolled on to District 6.

Quintessa clicked her tongue. “I told you not to play it so safe.”

She was right: she had. Not that it had meant anything to Emme.

Cassian, by contrast, took a long sip of whatever he was drinking and said nothing.

Mireille murmured, “Predictable. But not a disaster.”

“It means nothing until the bloodbath,” Cassian added after a beat. “People don’t know if you were trying to get a low score on purpose, y’know.”

Emme kept watching the screen. It didn’t matter. The score didn’t change what she was already planning. Let the Careers swing their swords and earn their tens: she had other things in mind. She thought back to the mini speech she’d given the Gamemakers and forced herself to believe in it.

“Anyway,” Cassian said, already looking over it, “We’ve got a day off tomorrow to practice for the interview, which happens the day after that. You two meet me at nine tomorrow morning. We’ve got a lot to go over.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Emme woke before dawn.

She slipped out of her room while the floor was still quiet, walked barefoot past the glass lounge, and wandered into the dining room, where someone — probably an Avox — had already set a breakfast tray. This time, it wasn’t the overflowing spectacle from the first day: just soft eggs, a roasted tomato, a biscuit, and a little saucer of jam, all on a silver plate. A carafe of coffee steamed quietly at the center of the table.

Huh. Maybe an Avox had noticed her long hours of writing in here, which was weirdly touching.

Emme sat alone and ate slowly, though she could hardly taste anything since she was so deep in thought. Her notebook was open beside her, turned to the last used page. 

SCORES was written in capital letters at the top.

She’d written them all down the night before, of course. Maybe it wouldn’t be of much use to her in the arena — she hadn’t forgotten what Cassian said about faking scores — but it felt necessary for her to write down anyway. If anything, it only confirmed her prediction of who was to die in the bloodbath.

District 1

Marvel – 10

Glimmer – 10 

District 2

Cato – 10

Clove – 9

District 3

Orion – 6

Alix – 6

District 4

Talon – 9

Isla – 8

District 5

Ricardo – 4

Emme – 5

District 6

Both – 3

District 7

Reef – 5

Calla – 6

District 8

Both – 4

District 9

Brisa – 5

Ellix – 4

District 10

Nellie – 4

Jeremy – 6

District 11

Rue – 7

Thresh – 9

District 12

Peeta – 8

Katniss – 11 (!!!)

She stared at Katniss’s name for a long time.

Eleven. She’d never seen a score that high. And she knew without asking anyone that the Capitol would be buzzing about it. Whatever she’d done in that room, it had worked. If Emme hadn’t seen the glares she’d gotten from the Careers after the parade, having outshone them all, she’d almost wonder if she’d be joining their alliance.

But she knew the more likely option was that she’d be top priority to kill in the arena.

Emme sipped her coffee and flipped back through her notebook, cross-referencing the skills she’d seen in the gym with the numbers in front of her. They didn’t always match. Some of the quietest tributes had scored better than expected, some of Ricardo’s predictions were wrong, and certainly no one had expected for Katniss to get eleven. She was pretty sure that was making Hunger Games history.

It meant nothing. Or everything. She hadn’t decided yet.

Her hand hovered over the page. Then she jotted:

Jeremy — watch. Stronger than he looks. (?) How does that foot affect him?

Glimmer — my gut says she won’t last long. Curious to see how/why she got a 10

Rue — high score = underestimated threat. Hard saying that about a little girl tho.

Katniss — wildcard. Resourceful. Knows plants. Might have lots of sponsors after parade. Try to figure out what she did. (?)

Peeta — still think he can kill. Esp. with Katniss. Watch

Cato — dangerous, but predictable. Still an idiot. Not a surprise.

Me — nothing special. Blend in. Stay boring.

She heard him come in, but she didn’t acknowledge him: she was too busy scribbling.

“Up early,” Cassian said, not as a question, but a statement.

Emme looked up. He wasn’t in full Capitol costume yet — no suit, no shimmer — just a loose shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and his hair only half-styled, like he’d rolled out of bed and stopped pretending halfway through. It was the most natural-looking she’d ever seen him, and briefly, she wondered why he wore those Capitol suits all the time. Was it to pretend he wasn’t district? There was still so much she didn’t know about him.

Too full of thoughts, she didn’t answer.

Cassian sat across from her without asking and glanced at the notebook.

“Doing inventory?”

“Something like that,” she answered.

He didn’t push. Just sipped his tea and let the silence hang between them for a while. 

“You know,” he said at some point, “there’s a reason most tributes sleep in the day after their scores.”

Emme didn’t look up from her notebook. “I’m not most tributes.”

Cassian glanced down at the table. Her plate was half-eaten, the scrambled eggs cooling, pushed to the side.

“You’ve got their scores memorized already, don’t you?”

She nodded.

He exhaled through his nose. “Of course you do.”

Okay, that definitely felt like a compliment.

“Five’s a decent number,” Cassian added, running a hand through his strawberry blond hair. Without the gel, it seemed hellbent on sticking up in all directions — making him seem younger. “Not a death sentence. Not a promise.”

“I know.”

“Middle of the pack means they’re not looking too closely. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Emme finally looked up.

“I don’t know what I want,” she said.

Cassian blinked. Not in surprise, but in understanding.

“You don’t have to decide yet,” he said. “But when you do — decide like someone who deserves to live. Not like someone who’s already been buried.”

It was the most encouraging thing he’d said to her since they’d met.

Cassian stood abruptly, collecting his cup.

“Finish your eggs,” he said as he turned away. “It’s a big day. You’ll want something in your stomach when they start dressing you like a cake.”

Then he left her there. Still, quiet, and more awake than she had been five minutes ago.

Several hours later

Emme stood on a low platform in the middle of her Remake Center room, her arms out, her legs slightly parted, as if she were about to be scanned or measured for something scientific. Which, in a way, she was.

Turquoise fabric rustled around her in gleaming sheets, some sheer, some satin, some with glints of thread so fine they looked like light. 

Her prep team circled her in a flurry of motion — adjusting seams, pinning panels, tucking and smoothing and stepping back to murmur, “No, no, the neckline’s too passive,” or “Should we jewel the belt?”

She didn't say a word. Just breathed. Let them work.

Compared to the full-body waxes, tweezer plucking, and intense teeth whitening, her own prep team had been surprisingly merciful this time around. The dress was sleeveless, cinched high at the waist, with a long skirt that shimmered when she moved, catching light like the surface of water. It was the kind of thing she might have dreamed about as a child, before reality had gutted her sense of fantasy.

Liora clapped her hands, looking delighted as she stood back. “The colour really works with her hair!”

Vesper adjusted the shimmering ruffles of the dress and gave her a surprisingly gentle smile. “You’re going to be dazzling, darling.”

She didn’t respond to that either.

Across the room, Mireille sat cross-legged on a velvet stool, her arms folded. She hadn’t said much, but Emme felt her gaze on her like a weight. In comparison to her parade outfit, she felt more like a teenager in this turquoise dress, and she wasn’t sure if this was meant to be a good thing.

Finally, Mireille stood. Walked over. Circled her once.

Then: “Her neck looks pretty bare. No jewels on the belt. Let the colour do the talking.”

Saphira sighed but obeyed. Liora nodded solemnly like a priestess.

After the turquoise dress had been adjusted, plucked of belt gems, and declared “actual perfection" by Liora, the prep team turned their attention to the real debate of the hour: what to do with the red.

Saphira had wanted curls. Big, bouncing ones, like polished flames. The strategy was to make her red hair as big and noticeable as possible, her one striking feature. (Emme tried to hide the relief that flooded her when it was vetoed.)

Vesper suggested a sleek braid crown that wrapped like a halo — “to make her look angelic, but clever, you know?”

In the end, it was Liora who found the Mireille-approved compromise. As freakish as she looked, she did seem to have an eye for fashion.

“What if we pull the top half back?” she said, her fingers already moving. “Pin it clean, leave the rest down — keep it soft, but not too soft.”

The others hovered as she worked, parting Emme’s hair with uncanny speed and precision. The upper section was twisted back into a small, sculptural knot near the crown of her head, while the rest of her hair was brushed until it gleamed and left to fall around her shoulders in glassy red sheets.

And then it was done.

Emme stepped down from the platform in her bare feet — surely a pair of turquoise heels were waiting for her somewhere — and caught her reflection in a mirror by the door.

She didn’t recognize herself, not completely. She wasn’t frightened in a Capitol robe, nor a tribute in a chariot. Not even a girl from District Five. Just someone about to be fed to the nation on live television.

Saphira sighed happily. “She’s cunning. Like a little fox.”

Ricardo was already waiting outside the prep suite when she exited, pacing around and around like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Emme took note of what he was wearing immediately.

His suit was white. Not ivory, not cream — pure, gleaming white like freshly bleached marble. It had a sharp silhouette, tailored to his frame, and caught the hallway lights like polished bone. His undershirt was silver, collarless, the material soft and satiny, open just slightly at the neck. The shade of white only accentuated his tan skin and his dark hair, which she supposed was intentional. He looked like a Capitol statue come to life — ceremonial, almost otherworldly. 

But he was still Ricardo. His hands were shoved into his pockets. His hair had been trimmed and pushed back, but not too severely. He looked good, but a little like he didn’t believe it yet.

Then he looked up, saw her, and froze.

His mouth parted slightly, just a breath — not exaggerated, not performative. Just honest surprise.

“…Whoa.”

Emme blinked. “What?”

“You — uh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, visibly trying to think. “You look amazing. Like…like an actual victor. Like if you walked onstage right now, Caesar would forget everyone else exists.”

She’d been so caught up in planning for the Games that she hadn’t let herself think about beauty, and if she did, it was completely detached, objective. Still, his words still caught her off guard.

“You clean up okay too,” she said, quieter than she meant to. It was still objective; not really her own opinion. But she supposed it was the truth.

Ricardo grinned. “They say white makes you look innocent. Let’s hope the Gamemakers are gullible.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.

Down the hall, someone called that they were due in the greenroom. 

Ricardo straightened slightly, adjusting his sleeves. He huffed out a breath, like he was preparing for something nearly impossible, then he glanced at her, to which she nodded back.

Wordlessly, they walked toward the greenroom. Cassian was waiting, and Emme would have to go first.

Cassian didn’t look up when Emme entered the greenroom, just gestured vaguely with one hand while staring at a live feed from the stage on what had to be Quintessa’s tablet. 

“I’ve seen worse,” he said dryly when he glanced up. “The turquoise works. Not the most predictable colour, exactly, but… disruptive. Unexpected. We’ll take it.”

Emme didn’t answer. She was already bracing for whatever performance he was about to pull from her.

Cassian finally put away the tablet, turning his full attention to her. “You know what I did during my interview?” he asked.

She blinked. “No.”

“I cried.” He smiled faintly. “Big, shuddery, beautiful tears. About my sister. Who didn’t exist.”

That stunned her into silence.

“And the Capitol loved me for it,” he added, setting the tablet down. “They practically bathed me in gold, so I laid low for most of my Games until the time came for me to act.”

“You lied,” Emme said, unsure if it was disgust or awe in her voice.

“I told a better story than anyone else.” He adjusted the cuff of his jacket. “That’s what this is. Theatre. Caesar’s stage is made of glue — say the right thing and you stick in their heads for days. Say the wrong thing and they won’t remember your name by tomorrow morning.”

He stepped toward her, meeting her eyes without flinching.

“You don’t have to be charming. You don’t have to be funny. You just have to be memorable. A twitch. A smirk. A pause at the right moment. Let them guess what you’re hiding, even if there’s nothing there.”

He tilted his head.

“And for the love of all that’s artificial, don’t ramble.”

She smirked before she could help it, and Cassian rolled his eyes, even though he was smiling. “Yeah, I know. Pretty unlikely. But I had to warn you anyway.”

Just then, there was a soft knock, and the door creaked open an inch.

Ricardo poked his head in, his eyes wide, his posture sheepish. His suit still looked crisp, except his collar was askew like he’d tugged at it too many times. When Emme stared at him, he smiled awkwardly.

“Hey. Uh… just wanted to say good luck.”

Cassian sighed, not unkindly. “Not now, Ricardo.”

Ricardo gave a shy little wave anyway. “You’re gonna do great, Emme.”

She didn’t say anything, but she nodded, just once. That seemed to be enough for him. He ducked back out just as quickly as he came.

Cassian exhaled through his nose. “He’s lucky he’s cute.”

He turned back to her, business again. “Anyway. Where were we?”

He cocked his head towards the stage, where tributes were lining up.

“Oh, yes. Show them something worth feeding.”

Emme stood in the long, grey corridor behind the stage, the music and Caesar Flickerman’s merry voice drifting in from the auditorium ahead. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, fingers curling around the edge of her turquoise dress. She was going to be standing here for a while, but not so long that she wouldn’t feel her nerves.

Meanwhile, the other tributes ahead of her in line didn’t seem to be nervous at all.

The very first to be interviewed, Glimmer flounced on stage, throwing practiced waves to the cameras, her smile sharp and bright like polished glass. Directly after her, Marvel chatted animatedly with Caesar, flashing teeth and perfect posture in such a way that it made Emme wonder if the Career kids were trained for interviews like this prior to the Games.

Even Cato cracked a grin when it was his turn, exuding confidence like a second skin. Still arrogant, but maybe not as arrogant as he’d been in the Tribute Center. Cassian had been right — he was performing. And by the look of it, not only would he easily control the Cornucopia, but he’d get plenty of sponsors too.

Emme watched quietly, memorizing how each tribute performed their role — the practiced ease, the rehearsed charm, the attempts to be adored.

The lights on stage shifted, and a new tribute’s interview began. 

Caesar’s voice was light, teasing, coaxing stories out like candy from a jar. Emme caught snippets — a laugh here, a sympathetic gasp from the audience there — but none of it belonged to her.

Her turn approached. The line shuffled forward. The air grew heavier. The buzz of cameras clicked and whirred.

Emme took a slow breath and smoothed her dress, the fabric cool and shimmering against her skin. Her reflection in the mirrored wall showed her amber eyes calm and steady, even though she didn’t feel like that at all.

A stagehand called her name.

“Emme Matley. District Five.”

The words echoed softly in her ears as she stepped forward, each footfall measured and deliberate.

She emerged into the blinding lights and the sea of faceless people. Immediately, her dress shimmered under the spotlight, and she heard a few gasps. Turquoise, iridescent, and fiery red hair — it caught the light like a lure. She could only imagine what she looked like to these people.

Caesar Flickerman greeted her with a toothy grin and outstretched arms. “Emme Matley! From District Five — and might I say, absolutely stunning this evening!”

She smiled — barely. A twitch of her lips. The kind that could mean anything.

Caesar tried to draw her out, of course. “You’ve been quite the mystery this week! I’m dying to know — what makes you tick? Any secret hobbies back home? Any childhood antics? Tell us something we don’t know!”

Another small smile. She tilted her head just slightly.

“You won’t see,” Emme said softly.

Caesar blinked. “Sorry?”

“That’s all,” she added. “You won’t see.”

Caesar, ever the professional, recovered with a charming little laugh. “Oh, very mysterious! A woman of few words! I like that. Leaves us wanting more!”

She didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Just kept smiling, cool and unreadable.

The interview wrapped up fast after that. Caesar tried another question or two, but she never gave him more than a clipped, polite answer. Just enough. No stories, no tragedy, no tears, no giggles. She wasn’t trying to be Katniss, or Glimmer, or anyone else the Capitol already thought they understood.

She felt like she was understanding her character more and more as the days went on, maybe because she found parts of herself in it. Always memorizing things at school. Being a fast writer. Sneaking around at the orphanage. Always trying to be small, and smaller than that.

By the time she exited the stage, she could feel the looks: the male tribute from District 4 was outright sneering, and Glimmer gave a tight little smirk like she thought it was a joke. But she found herself not caring about any of that, because Ricardo was already mounting the stage.

Through the thin walls, she could hear Caesar’s booming voice, welcoming him on.

“And here we have Ricardo Volt from District Five! Now, Ricardo, tell us — what’s something the audience might not expect about you?”

There was a pause. Then Ricardo’s voice, quiet but steady.

“Well… I’m not the strongest, not the fastest. But I learn. I watch. I listen.”

Caesar chuckled softly. “A thinker! We like that. So, what’s your secret weapon?”

Ricardo hesitated a beat longer this time. “Maybe… knowing the others. Their names. Their moves. That’s how you survive.”

A few light laughs from the audience, but Emme caught the sincerity in Ricardo’s tone. It wasn’t flashy, but it was real.

“And what do you think of your district partner, Emme? Any words for her?” Caesar teased.

There was a sharp intake of breath — and then Ricardo said, “She’s smart. She’ll figure this out.”

Right after Ricardo’s words, the sound of applause swelled through the thin walls. Caesar’s voice floated back in, still lively, as he wrapped up the interview.

“Well said, Ricardo! Keep an eye on that one, folks — District Five might just surprise us all this year!”

There was more applause, the sound of the anthem blared again, and Ricardo reappeared in the corridor, looking out of breath.

Outside, the crowd’s cheers quickly faded into the distance as the Capitol prepared for the next tribute to take the stage.

Somewhere above Caesar and his stage, Quintessa leaned against the glass railing in the VIP lounge, swirling something purple, glittery, and syrupy in a crystal glass. Both mentors and escorts were here, talking in low voices, especially when the music swelled to welcome yet another tribute.

“I don’t care what you say, Effie — she had presence,” she declared, her voice already thick with Capitol wine and irritation. “The audience loves a little mystery.”

Effie Trinket, who’d been deep in conversation with the District 8 escort, gave a startled blink, but she recovered fast.

“That’s a gamble, darling. She barely gave Caesar anything to work with.”

“She didn’t need to,” Quintessa snapped, a little too quickly. Effie always had a lot of gall for someone who was the representative for District 12 of all places. “A little silence can be a statement.”

The District 2 escort — all gleaming teeth and lacquered nails — gave a condescending chuckle. “Or a mistake. Personally, I like a tribute who knows how to perform.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, would you prefer for her to smile like a maniac?” Quintessa shot back, setting her drink down with a sharp clink. “She’s not trying to be Glimmer or whatever your little district brats are doing this year.”

Effie frowned delicately. “That’s a bit uncalled for—”

“I’m just saying,” Quintessa cut in, straightening the hem of her plum-coloured gown, “you people always want tragedy or flirtation. Why not let a girl be smart for once?”

No one had a good answer for that. The bar went momentarily quiet, save for the hum of distant cheers as another tribute exited the stage. 

Then the District 11 mentor  — a remarkably tall man with a deep voice and one arm that ended in a stump — cleared his throat. “Well… she’s certainly got people talking.”

Quintessa’s smile returned, tight and triumphant. “Exactly. Thank you, Chaff.”

She turned to face the stage monitors, where a delayed broadcast showed Ricardo’s closing lines — She’s smart. She’ll figure this out.

Quintessa’s fingers tightened slightly around her drink and hoped that she wasn’t putting in this effort for nothing. She’d barely seen the girl since she’d arrived in the Tribute Center, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t working.

“She better,” she muttered under her breath.

Some time later that night

“Well, folks,” Caesar began, his voice smooth and theatrical, “Emme Matley from District Five certainly left us with a mystery tonight. Three words — ‘You won’t see.’ Cryptic, yes, but oh so compelling! It’s those little enigmas that keep us coming back, don’t you think, Claudius?”

Claudius chuckled low, his voice gruffer. “Absolutely, Caesar. It’s not always the big, flashy moments that grab attention. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones — the ones who say less, but mean more. Emme’s playing the game with subtlety. That kind of silence can be louder than any shout.”

Caesar nodded, leaning in closer to the mic. “And the dress! That turquoise shimmer — unexpected, a real standout on that stage. It’s a look that lingers in your mind, just like her words.”

“Of course, the other tributes weren’t exactly thrilled. I caught a few glaring looks back there. You could almost hear the whispers — ‘Who does she think she is?’” Claudius added with a knowing smirk.

Caesar smiled wide, the studio lights glinting off his perfect teeth. 

“Well, Claudius, if there’s one thing we know, it’s that the quiet ones are full of surprises. And I, for one, love a surprise.”

Claudius gave a short, dry laugh. “Just hope the other tributes are ready for it.”

The camera panned out slowly, capturing the golden set, the glittering crowd, and the wide Capitol skyline behind them — all artificial, all gleaming.

“Tomorrow,” Caesar said, raising his voice with a showman’s flair, “twenty-four tributes enter the arena. Who will rise, who will fall — and who will leave us wondering? Tune in to find out!”

The anthem began to swell under his words, just before the screen faded to black on the Capitol seal — bold, gleaming, and absolute.

Truth be told, Ricardo and Emme weren’t looking at the TV. Neither could bear to, though the recap reel played anyway — a montage of smiling tributes, dramatic music, and lingering shots on faces that would soon be dead. Emme’s clip was short: that cryptic moment on stage, her lips curled into a hesitant, almost fox-like smile. And then it cut to Ricardo’s, which was slightly longer. She could tell the Capitol liked sincerity.

They sat side by side on the lounge couch, the lights dimmed low. A silver bowl of untouched fruit sat between them —  Emme couldn’t help but take note that Ricardo had loved the fruit throughout the duration of their stay.

No one spoke. The air felt too still, too heavy.

Ricardo spoke first.

“They liked you,” he said quietly, looking down at his knees. “The Capitol people. I heard some of the prep teams whispering. They said you gave them chills.”

Emme didn’t respond. She was watching the carpet, her eyes half-lidded.

There was a pause.

“Did you mean it?” Ricardo asked, softer now. “What you said to Caesar?”

“What?”

“‘You won’t see.’”

She shrugged. “It was the truth.”

Ricardo nodded slowly. Then: “You’re not scared?”

She finally looked at him. Her expression was unreadable.

“Of course I am. I just don’t see what good it does to say it out loud.”

He exhaled through his nose, his fingers tightening in his lap. The silence stretched.

Then, he said it — not dramatically, not loudly, just a simple sentence dropped like a stone into water:

“I think I love you.”

Emme blinked, caught completely off guard. It felt like someone had pulled the air out of the room.

What the fuck?

“No, Ricardo,” she said after a beat. Not cruel, just clear: it felt surprisingly easy to say. “You don’t.”

His face twisted slightly, caught between confusion and something worse. “I — what?”

“You’re scared. I get it. I’m the only person who’s been decent to you all week, and you want to grab on to something. But it’s not love.”

He flinched, just barely. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she said. Then, a bit more gently: “And I don’t like boys, by the way. Never have. Not you, not anyone. You’re not the exception.”

Ricardo looked down at his hands.

“I’m sorry,” she added, quieter. “But I’m not going to pretend for the cameras.”

He nodded, jaw tight. She could see him trying not to cry.

“And even if I could,” she said, because she had to, “I wouldn’t. I need to be thinking about myself tomorrow. You… you’re not going to last long. And I can’t afford to forget that.”

She knew it hurt him. She didn’t flinch away from it. 

But she also didn’t lie.

The recap ended with the anthem, as it always did — swelling, triumphant, hollow. Onscreen, twenty-four faces stared out from the montage, their names glowing beneath them. A few hours from now, most of them would be dead.

Neither of them looked.

Ricardo wiped his face with his sleeve. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”

Emme nodded once. “You deserved that much.”

Then she stood, walked quietly to her bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

Still in the lounge, having watched her go, Ricardo didn’t move for a long time.

He sat there on the couch, his hands clenched between his knees, blinking hard at the muted TV screen. It had cut to Capitol commercials — hovercar ads, glittering lip dye, a new line of genetically-engineered pets — but none of it registered. His ears rang.

I think I love you.

No, Ricardo. You don’t.

He let his head drop into his hands. Not dramatically — he wasn’t trying to be tragic. It just… hurt. Deep and dull, like the kind of pain that starts in your chest. Like someone had punched a pane of glass, and it had cracked on impact. Naturally, the cracks would start spreading until the pane shattered entirely.

Maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was just desperation — wanting someone to see him. Wanting to be real to someone, even for five minutes. When Emme had looked at him in the training gym, with that little smirk on her face, like — like he wasn’t actually as stupid as the rest of them thought, that had felt like enough to hold onto. Maybe he had been inadvertently inspired with whatever District 12 had going on, whether that was fake or otherwise.

He wasn’t sure when it turned into something else. Maybe it was back in training, when she quietly corrected his footwork instead of mocking him. Maybe it was when she listened to him at breakfast. Really listened.

Plus, it helped that she didn’t even know how beautiful she was.

Not the Capitol kind of beautiful — not the powdered faces and jewelled eyelids and painted-on giggles. Emme never tried for any of that, because she didn’t have to. It was the way she looked when she was quiet. Her slender nose and her wide amber eyes and the way her red hair caught the light when she wasn’t paying attention. The way she spoke like she already knew things you didn’t.

It made him want to be braver. Smarter. Better.

But she’d never asked him to feel anything. Never promised anything back.

And now she was gone.

Ricardo leaned back on the couch, wiping at his face like he could erase the moment, scrub it out before it settled in too deep.

She’s smart. She’ll figure this out. That’s what he told Caesar.

And he still believed it. Even now. Maybe especially now.

She would figure it out. She’d last longer than him. Maybe she’d win.

And if she did, maybe she’d remember him. That would have to be enough.

He curled onto his side, his knees drawn up on the velvet cushions, staring at nothing. The Capitol anthem played again, muffled through the suite walls. He could hear voices in the hall — maybe Peacekeepers, maybe prep teams, whoever. Maybe he was hallucinating this whole thing, and when he woke up tomorrow, he’d be back in bed, the long brown quilt over his small body. Maybe Ma was making a fresh batch of oatmeal in the kitchen, making the whole place smell like apples with a hint of cinnamon.

Ricardo closed his eyes and pretended he was home. He didn’t know what else to do.

Meanwhile, when Emme closed the door to her bedroom, she stood there for a moment, her hand still on the steel handle.

The silence in the room was different — heavier somehow, like the air had thickened with everything she didn’t say.

When she moved further into the room, she didn’t turn on the lights. The faint glow from the city outside filtered through the curtains, casting long blue shadows across the floor that felt more spooky than anything. Her turquoise dress was still on, mostly because taking it off meant admitting that the Games were tomorrow, and she wasn’t trying to think about that. Luckily, she now had a lot else to think about, because Ricardo had a crush on her, or he thought he did. She didn’t know which was worse.

No, she corrected herself. He doesn’t love me. He just needed something to hold onto, and I happened to be close enough.

She meant the thing she said about boys, too. Back home, she’d watched the men who worked the powerplant shifts walk home with grease under their fingernails and that smell that always lingered with them — burnt wires, engine heat, and a muskiness that only seemed to belong to grown men, that sort of thing. Some girls younger than her used to giggle about factory foremen or apprentices with strong arms like it was something inexplicably desirable; they’d stare at them as they passed the orphanage. Emme couldn’t imagine anything worse. Even then, and as long as she could remember, really, the sight of them made bile rise in her throat. 

Plus, it wasn’t the first time someone had mistaken her for something she wasn’t — a friend, a confidant, maybe even a leader. Back in the orphanage, it happened more often than she would admit, especially in such a grey, desperate setting. Even though she would almost never speak. Quiet girls were easy to imagine things about, apparently. They could be anyone you needed them to be.

But Emme had learned a long time ago not to take that personally. People projected. That was their problem.

Still, it made her stomach twist, just a little. Not because she felt bad for him — or maybe she did, in a weird, abstract way — but because she couldn’t afford to feel anything more.

She moved to the bed and sat down slowly, her hands resting on her knees.

She was thinking about the arena. She was always thinking about the arena now. Ricardo wasn’t going to make it, she’d known that since the train. But she might.

And if she had to step over him to do it — if she had to let him die — then that was the truth too.

Emme lay back on the bed without pulling back the sheets, staring up at the ceiling. Somewhere above her, Capitol helicopters were already humming through the sky, delivering nightmares in crates and hovercrafts.

She didn’t cry.

She just counted the breaths until morning.

Chapter Text

Sometime after the sun had risen, there was a knock. Cassian’s voice, muffled but calm.

“It’s time.”

Emme sat up slowly, unsure whether she’d actually slept or just laid there all night watching shadows crawl across the ceiling. Her body felt stiff, and she was peculiarly cold, even though her bedroom had always been warm.

Well. Here comes the inevitable.

Trying not to feel doomed, she dressed in silence, in grey Capitol-issued clothes that she found waiting for her on a chair. They weren’t much to comment on, probably on purpose, other than the fact that it reminded her vaguely of a prison jumpsuit. This wasn’t the uniform she’d wear in the arena, not yet. That would be waiting for her in the Launch Room, a hovercraft ride away.

When Emme stepped into the hallway, feeling grim and awful and exhausted with her chapped lips clamped together so tightly she might not ever speak again, Ricardo was already there.

Neither had it in them to acknowledge the other. They just moved around each other — brushing teeth, pulling on boots, zipping up jackets, trying to breathe. Their hands trembled in tiny, invisible ways, and how could they not? The terror she’d been forcing herself to think practically about was in sheer hours, and all of her primal feelings were back. They were at the end of the line. Everything from the notebook was in her head, now. They were going from the hypothesis to the experiment.

Emme couldn’t help but notice how pale Ricardo looked, even though she was doing her best not to look at him. His eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were also pressed tight like he was holding something back — panic, tears, nausea. Maybe all three.

“I couldn’t eat,” he muttered eventually, eyes on the carpet. “Did you eat?”

She shook her head.

The dining table in the suite was set, just like every other morning — fresh fruit, warm bread, something that smelled like honey and mint, but neither of them could go near it. If they survived the bloodbath, they’d already be at a disadvantage, but Emme wasn’t about to think about that right now.

From behind them, Cassian cleared his throat. He was waiting. Remarkably, so was Quintessa. Maybe she’d finally decided to give a shit, considering it was likely the final time they’d ever see her.

Ricardo fidgeted with his sleeve. “Do you think we’ll see each other again? After the—”

He stopped.

“You know. In the arena?”

Emme glanced at him. Her throat tightened. “Maybe.”

You planning to make it out of the bloodbath? she wanted to ask, but she knew she couldn’t. She meant it sincerely, but she’d already been too cruel to him.

Well. Ready as I’ll ever be.

With not much else to do, they walked together toward the elevator.

Cassian looked almost as exhausted as they did — was he up all night, trying to secure sponsors? — while Quintessa looked perfect in a glossy lavender wig that fell in an unbroken curtain down her shoulders. The one thing Emme knew about her was that she favoured all sorts of purple — lavender, plum, lilac, violet, mauve. For the first day of the Games, she was an exemplar of the colour in a fitted corset of deep plum leather, cinched so tightly it made her waist look almost inhuman, and over it, a silky amethyst shawl was draped around her shoulders. Her high-waisted trousers were cut from a fabric the colour of crushed grapes, with gold stitching in the shape of thorny vines that coiled up her legs, and her gloves were elbow-length and dyed a dusky mauve, tipped at the fingers in gold.

The air around her smelled faintly of lilac. Artificial sweetness layered over tension, no doubt.

A bruise, Emme thought. She looked like a bruise someone dressed up.

Everyone stared. No one tried to say anything right away.

Then Quintessa reached out, pulled Emme in by the shoulders.

“You did everything right,” she whispered, her voice low and urgent — completely surprising her. “Whatever happens next — you remember that.”

Emme nodded. She wanted to speak but couldn’t trust what would come out.

Cassian pulled Ricardo in first. Their goodbye had more motion to it — a pat on the back, a firm grip on the shoulder, that look on both of their faces like they were sharing something unspoken. But he looked over at Emme, too, as the elevator doors opened and Ricardo stepped inside. Differently. Was it because he believed in her more?

“You stay quick,” Cassian told her as she stepped inside. “No matter what happens, you move. Understand? Every second is invaluable.”

Feeling weirdly outside of her body again, she gave the smallest nod. She had that feeling like she couldn’t do much else, but Cassian seemed to understand.

He nodded stiffly. It was a weird feeling, not knowing if they’d ever see each other again. “Good luck, guys.”

With that, the doors slid shut behind them.

Later

The hovercraft that would carry them to the arena was cold.

Emme stood near one of the side rails, gripping the metal lightly, not for balance, but to anchor herself. Her knees didn’t feel entirely reliable right now. The interior of the craft was silver and white, all hard lines and hums of machinery. There were no windows — just flat, opaque panels that pulsed faintly, like it couldn’t wait to get going and transport these tributes to their death.

The other tributes were lined up rigidly, district by district. Easy to identify when the Peacekeepers would inevitably pass through with the trackers. A few were crying quietly — not loud sobs, just tears that slipped down cheeks, wiped away quickly as if someone might take points off for fear.

Ricardo stood not far from her. He looked green, like he might vomit, but at least he wasn’t crying. The little boy who had cried at the reaping was long gone by now.

When the Peacekeepers entered, silence dropped like a stone.

One by one, the tributes were called forward to receive their trackers. The Peacekeepers carried silver trays — surgical, shining — each with a syringe loaded with a long, vicious-looking needle and a small cylindrical chip. They didn’t speak unless absolutely necessary. The first few to receive their trackers barely flinched.

“Matley. District Five.”

Emme stepped forward, and rolled up her sleeve without being asked.

She watched the Peacekeeper’s gloved hands — precise, practiced. The needle slipped beneath her skin with a small pinch, and the tracker slid into place with a push of the plunger.

It burned, just for a second. A strange, mechanical warmth pulsed in her upper arm, like she’d been tagged like livestock. Despite the searing pain, she forced herself not to flinch.

The Peacekeeper nodded curtly, and Emme stepped back, lowering her sleeve.

Ricardo winced when his turn came. She caught the way he bit down on the inside of his cheek, like that small pain would distract from the big one.

When he returned to her side, he didn't look at her, just mumbled, “Hurts more than I thought it would.”

She gave the smallest nod in reply. By now, she was actively trying not to stare at the small lump on her arm.

When the trackers were done, the hovercraft continued forward — a low, constant hum beneath their feet.

No one talked much after that. Some stared at the floor. Others at the wall. A few, like Emme, stared at nothing.

They’d be in the arena before they knew it.

Some time later

The hovercraft door opened with a hiss of pressurized air.

Cold light poured in, and Emme squinted as her boots hit the steel of a narrow landing ramp, which extended down into what looked like a underground docking bay — cavernous and sterile, carved deep into the arena’s infrastructure. The walls were a smooth, stainless white that reflected everything.

Two Peacekeepers stood at the base of the ramp, rigid and impassive in their gleaming white armour, claiming pairs of tributes as they stepped out. Beside them were two Capitol officials in pale grey uniforms — handlers, Emme guessed — both with tablets in hand, looking impassive.

“District Five,” one of them barked as soon as District 4 had been swept away. “Launch Rooms. Now.”

Beside her, Ricardo’s fists clenched at his sides, his knuckles white. He looked smaller than usual now in the grey clothes. She hadn’t said anything to him during the flight, there hadn’t been time — there still wasn’t.

But as the handlers approached, he turned to her quickly.

“Emme—”

His mouth opened, then closed again, like he wasn’t sure where to start. The seconds were slipping away too fast. He looked like he was trying to memorize her face.

“I don’t— I don’t know if I’ll—”

He shook his head, like he hated how weak that sounded.

She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him. The air felt thick and sour in her lungs.

“I meant what I said last night,” he said, finally. “About you figuring it out. You will. I know it.”

Emme felt her throat tighten: it was the worst possible time for honesty.

Her hand twitched at her side, like maybe she’d reach for him, but she didn’t.

“Don’t get yourself killed trying to be brave,” she said back. Her voice came out flatter than she meant it to. “No one’s watching for that.”

He gave a breathy, half-laugh, like it hurt.

Then the Peacekeepers moved, shoving them apart. One hand on Emme’s shoulder, one on his.

Ricardo called her name one last time, more like a breath than a word.

She didn’t turn around.

But just before she started being led away, she let herself think it, softly:

Goodbye, Ricardo.

The Launch Room felt like a morgue.

White walls, white floors, and a long, sterile ceiling humming faintly overhead. Not to mention the silence — deep and unnatural, like the room had been scrubbed clean of even its own sound. The overhead lights were soft, diffused, but everything else was harsh: the smell of bleach, the metallic tang of steel, her own footsteps echoing louder than they should have.

Having met her inside, Mireille said nothing for the first few minutes.

It was all business, Capitol procedure. She expected it: Mireille was the last person to be sentimental about the Games. She probably just wanted to get her into the arena and be done with it.

Emme stood still as she double-checked the knot on her boots, secured her belt, and confirmed everything mandatory was on her person. She barely noticed, considering her skull felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Everything felt weirdly distant.

Then, Mireille reached into the pocket of her uniform coat and pulled out something small. She held it out to her.

Wordlessly, Emme took it — a tiny cloth bundle, barely bigger than her palm. The scent of it immediately. Mint, sharp, bright, and clean. The very same bundle that Mrs. Meynell had pressed into her hands at the Justice Building, wrapped tight in linen. It must’ve passed the inspection, somehow. Clearly it wasn’t much of an advantage against her other tributes.

Mireille’s voice came quietly, low enough that Emme almost didn’t hear.

“I said it was a keepsake,” she murmured. “They let it through. I think… maybe someone on the board still has a heart.”

Emme blinked. That didn’t sound like something Mireille was supposed to say.

She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded once and curled the bundle tightly into her hand before slipping it into a narrow inside pocket of her tribute jacket, just over her heart.

And then: a faint hum beneath her boots.

A voice — distant, artificial, disembodied — echoed from somewhere overhead:

“District Five female. Prepare for launch.”

Mireille straightened immediately, her face wiped of her previous expression, posture as crisp as a robot. Capitol procedure was back.

“You’ll be in the launch tube for approximately thirty seconds,” she told her. “Do not crouch, do not sit. Once you rise into the arena, the sixty second countdown begins. Do you understand?”

Emme nodded. Her mouth was dry, even though she’d made a point to drink plenty of water that morning. Her heartbeat wasn’t fast — it was slow, steady, heavy, like someone was sitting on her chest.

Mireille looked at her for a long moment. Something softened behind her eyes — not quite pity, but not quite hope, either.

“You don’t have to win,” she said. “You just have to try. That’s more than most people ever do.”

Emme didn’t reply, considering bile was starting to rise in her throat. She thought back to what Ricardo had said at his interview:

She’s smart. She’ll figure this out.

Trying to appear braver than she was, she stepped forward into the launch tube, her heart hammering. The tube was smooth, circular, and a little too cold once she was inside. Emme looked up and saw the opening of the arena above her — wide, waiting, daunting.

Her arena.

The one she might die in.

The one she would probably die in.

Her hands curled into fists, and her lungs drew a single shallow breath. The robotic voice had already started the countdown.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

She didn’t close her eyes, just continued staring up. She wanted to see it coming.

Three.

Two.

Mireille’s lips were clamped together. “Good luck, Emme.”

One.

With a whoosh, the platform lifted, and inch by inch, the Launch Room disappeared.

For the next fifteen seconds after that, there was just darkness. Then Emme was being pushed out of the cylinder by the metal plate, into the open air. 

The sunlight hit her the moment she was out — white-hot and immediate, flooding her vision. The sun was already high in the sky, no clouds, no cover. Just raw heat and open air pressing down on her shoulders. Her eyes adjusted slowly, but her breathing didn’t. The arena opened around her like a sprung trap: her first glimpse included pine trees on all sides, a long stretch of green grass,  and at the centre of the circle, right in front of her — the Cornucopia.

Golden and gleaming, containing things many tributes would die for at its mouth. A silver gleam immediately caught her eye — an assortment of blades, probably meant for Clove if she had to guess. Next to it, a dull, dented axe. A coil of rope, as well as mysterious crates and simple sacks, not glamorous but enough to keep a tribute alive. The further away from the Cornucopia, the worse the supplies got. Easy enough for even a panicked mind to understand.

And of course there were the others. They stood in a wide circle on their metal launch plates, unmoving, looking like statues in the sun. It made sense, after all — the launch plates were ringed with landmines. One foot off too early and you were done, blown open in a gory display for the whole of Panem. 

To her left, Emme spotted Glimmer, with her shiny blonde hair braided in two fishtails. Cato stood further on, barely fighting his grin. The girl from District 9 was squinting hard, already balling her fists.

Ricardo wasn’t visible right away. He might’ve been half-hidden by the humongous Cornucopia for all she knew.

There was barely any time to adjust before the countdown began.

Emme inhaled slowly through her nose and looked away from the weapons. That was what everyone wanted, where everyone would be heading, certain death. Instead, she looked at the terrain. Her train of thought was already coming clearer now. 

She saw the expanse of pine trees to her right and immediately knew that was where she would go. If she could get something on the very outskirts of the Cornucopia, nowhere near where all the others would be sprinting — 

Fifteen seconds already.

Beside her, Glimmer crouched slightly, like a predator getting ready to spring.

Emme spotted Ricardo at last — four platforms to her right. He was looking at her, not the Cornucopia. His expression was tight. Fearful.

She didn’t look back. Just kept breathing.

Ten seconds.

The air grew sharper. The heat, heavier.

She had to get ready to run. Her life depended on it.

Five.

Four.

She shifted her weight slightly. Legs tense. Body ready.

Three.

Two.

One.

The second the gong sounded, Emme bolted.

Her legs pushed off the metal plate as though they were on fire, and she sprinted — not toward the Cornucopia like so many others, but at an angle, her eyes fixed on a small satchel closest to her metal plate.

The panicked thrum of her heartbeat filled her ears, louder than the screams suddenly coming from all directions, louder than the footfalls pounding against dirt and metal. She didn’t look at the Cornucopia, because she didn’t want to see the weapons, or the tributes who were about to become murderers, or the ones who would already be dying.

Each second is invaluable, Cassian’s voice rang in her head once again, which only made her more frenzied. 

She snatched the remarkably light satchel, not even caring what was inside as long as she kept running, towards the woods, towards safety, as far away from the shitshow unfolding behind her as she could get.

But instinct tugged at her, just once, to glance over her shoulder, and she did.

In the fleeting glimpse she got, all she saw was fists flying into faces as kids collided with one another in a violent clash of skin and blood. She saw the glint of a blade, a boy’s scream cut short, someone staggering with an arrow buried deep in their side. Someone — maybe from District 3? — was on their knees, hands slick with blood as they tried to crawl away.

Keep moving! the sensible voice inside her screamed.

Emme bolted again, clutching the satchel to her chest, her lungs burning with overexertion. She was closer to the violence than she would’ve liked, she had to move fast.

It was then she heard Ricardo behind her — sobbing already — calling her name like she could save him. She didn’t look back.

She didn’t see it happen, but she heard it — the sound of metal being swung, a slick, wet crack, then the thud of a body collapsing.

She knew it was him. Of course it was h—

THUD!

—except she didn’t have time to process it, because she was suddenly face first on the grass, having tripped hard, her foot catching on something soft that she somehow hadn’t seen in her panic. Something in the grass that hadn’t been there before.

She writhed in a tangle of limbs, trying to get to her feet as fast as possible when the air had just been knocked clean out of her lungs.

As Emme scrambled up, it became impossible not to notice what she had tripped on, what had caused her precious seconds in the bloodbath.

Ricardo’s severed head stared blankly back at her, his mouth slack, his dark hair matted red. She had no idea how close he’d been when she’d died, but it was obviously too close for comfort if she managed to trip over him. She was close enough to see that something red and gloopy was already sliding out of the base of his neck. 

Emme could’ve screamed at the nauseating, gory sight, but she didn’t. Instead, she forced her body in the direction of the woods, her legs already burning as she sprinted as fast as her body was willing to go.

She didn’t look back again. She couldn’t.

Keep moving, that voice determined to survive ordered. No more setbacks.

Crazed, she made it to the woods like a rabid animal, pushing wildly into the trees, too fast, too loud, crashing through brush and branches that clawed at her legs and arms. Her lungs were shredded, to the point where she could taste blood in the back of her throat, and her body felt like hell.

This is hell, something primal in her screamed as she sprinted, half-blind with panic. This is hell.

Her only comfort right now was the way the satchel bounced against her ribs as she tore through the blurry greenery. She still had no idea what was inside, but she at least had managed something, so she wasn’t completely fucked. Not yet.

Right now, all that mattered was moving, especially when the chaos of the Cornucopia still echoed behind her, all screams and thuds and otherwise awful noises.

She turned sharply around a dense cluster of brambles, and—

SLAM!

Because they both had been sprinting at top speed, she and the other tribute both went down hard.

Emme hit the ground with a broken gasp, her limbs tangled with someone else’s, sharp elbows and bony knees and fists flying out on instinct. Her breath was knocked from her chest once again as she fought to get up.

By the time she scrambled up, ready to swing her satchel or bolt if needed, the other girl had already rolled back and was doing the same — wild-eyed, dirty, her face streaked with sweat.

For the most electrifying second, they stared at each other, out of breath, each overtaken by some animalistic instinct they clearly hadn’t had prior to entering the arena, and in that moment, Emme immediately knew who she was.

It was Katniss Everdeen. Who had an eleven she didn’t understand. And right now, her grey eyes looked just as frightened as Emme’s amber ones.

Something flickered between them — understanding, maybe. Or fear. Or some shared, immediate instinct to live.

Neither of them said a word.

Then, just as fast as they’d collided, they sprang apart and bolted in opposite directions, the woods swallowing them both again.

Emme didn’t dare look back.

Her lungs screamed. Her throat burned. Every inch of her skin felt raw, stinging with fresh scratches, and sweat pooled under her arms and behind her knees as she tore through the woods. The satchel dug into her hip with every stride, but she didn’t let go. She had to go.

Eventually, the sounds of the massacre behind her dulled into silence, and figuring that she was more than far enough now, that was the only reason she stopped.

Immediately, Emme collapsed beside a thick pine trunk, chest heaving, her knees buried in leaves and mud. She doubled over and dry-heaved until saliva dangled from her lips and her ribs ached like they’d been cracked. The image of Ricardo’s head — his eyes staring blankly, his mouth slack — kept flashing behind her eyelids, like a wound in her brain that wouldn’t clot.

Don’t think. Move.

She forced herself upright, wiped the saliva from her lips, and kept going, even though her body hated her for it. Her legs stung with overexertion, but walking was better than nothing. She didn’t want to stay in the same place for too long.

As she went on, the trees around her grew taller, closer together, with uneven ground beneath her feet. Moss crept up the trunks, the shadows deepened, and the air turned thick with the smell of loam. She didn’t know if it was north or east, but the terrain began to slope, and a breeze cooled her burning skin. A gentle downhill incline — not a steep cliff, but a long descent.

The forest thinned slightly as the trees gave way to larger, heavier shrubs. Through a break in the canopy, she saw it: a valley, nestled low between two ridges, carpeted in dense greenery and guarded by trees on all sides. From up high, it almost looked peaceful. Distant. Removed.

Exactly what she wanted.

She half-stumbled, half-ran the rest of the way, slipping once on a patch of loose dirt, catching herself just before her knee smashed into a rock. As she reached the outer edge of the valley, she ducked under a low branch and found herself ankle-deep in clover and ferns.

Then she heard it.

CRACK!

A tree snapping in the near distance.

Emme flinched and dropped into the brush without thinking, crouched low. Her hands shook. Her pulse thudded painfully in her throat. She dared to glance up, and —

Thresh.

A hulking silhouette maybe fifty yards off, wandering around the same clearing.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit –

Biting her tongue, trying not to panic, Emme stayed low.

With nothing much else to do while hiding in the bushes, she watched him, this giant hulking beast of a teenager, as he stomped around a cluster of trees with a glinting blade in hand. She was so alarmed by the sight of him, gigantic and daunting in the wild, every inch of him muscular and foreboding, that it took her a second to realize what he was doing: taking the flimsy-looking blade to the trunk of a tree and clumsily sawing it back and forth, creating a sizeable cut in the bark. Sweat shimmered on his dark skin as he worked with the sunlight drenching him, his arms flexing with exertion until the tree finally hit the ground with a loud CRASH!

Emme’s heart skipped a beat, seizing with panic in her chest, and she sank further into the bushes on the off-chance that a Career or some other form of trouble came running towards the noise, but Thresh must’ve been confident that he was the only one in this valley, considering he barely paused. 

Truth be told, Emme was impressed: with the same blade in hand, she seriously doubted she could’ve made any sort of dent in the tree, let alone tip it over entirely. This boy was easily over six feet, maybe even closer to seven. In a world where she hadn’t already promised herself not to make alliances, and she wasn’t certain that he’d kill her if she tried — hadn’t he avoided everyone in the Tribute Center? — she’d want him on her team. She was quick, small, smart, a strategist and an evader. He was huge, clearly knew what to do in the wild, and most likely a brute of sorts, like Cato. Plus, they both barely spoke and clearly, neither of them wanted to be here. It sounded crazy, but it could work.

Well, in another world at least. Not this one. She preferred to stay alive for today and not die a brutal death.

Emme bit her lip as she watched him move on to another tree. He was from 11, a whole world away from her district — they represented agriculture or something, right? Prior to stepping into the arena, she’d barely seen any trees in her own district because of all the powerplants. It must’ve been different for him. Did he work with trees back home? His bulging form seemed to suggest that, and never once did he hesitate when moving from tree to tree — he looked like he knew what he was doing.

She wasn’t sure how long she remained there, crouched behind the thick bushes until both her ankles stung with pain and the rest of her body had fallen asleep, but her mind was awake and alert, and that was what mattered. She told herself it was good to stay in one spot while she came up with a plan for herself anyway, and she couldn’t help but admit that she was interested in whatever Thresh was doing. She’d avoided the bloodbath, she wasn’t starving yet, and she was safely holed up behind the bushes where he couldn’t see her, so for the first time that day, her heart slowed a little. If she was stupid, she would’ve called this peaceful.

She’d never seen anyone haul around trees like this, let alone so effortlessly, but one by one, they all came crashing down. She wasn’t totally sure why he’d spent so much of his time brutalizing the wood around him until close to sunset, when he started methodically selecting a few misshapen wooden planks he’d carved from the pile.

He was making a hut.

Various tributes were out there in the other corners of the arena, struggling to survive, shivering or starving or being hunted by the Career pack, and here he was, building a hut in the middle of nowhere, his biggest problem being choosing which piece of wood to go where. Emme wondered if Thresh understood just how lucky he was to be in his situation.

The realization made her want to work with him even more, but it also locked in the decision that she had to leave this valley before she did anything rash. Perfect timing: night was fast approaching, meaning the anthem would blare and she’d have her moment to dash, and she was sure the Cornucopia would be abandoned by now anyway.

If it wasn’t, even better. She preferred to know where the Careers were at all times.

Finalizing it, Emme uncurled her aching limbs and prepared to bolt. Her legs prickled with pins and needles from crouching too long, but she shook them out, her eyes locked on the way out — the way she came from. She held her breath and prepared herself.

She didn’t dare look back at Thresh. There was no telling how good his hearing was, and besides, she’d seen what she needed to: he was strong, self-sufficient, and, most importantly, deeply alone. If he wanted to fuck off and build a hut, that was his own choice. He seemed like the kind that wouldn’t be a threat until much later, anyway.

When the anthem’s first swell of notes cracked through the sky, Emme launched herself from the thicket and took off at a sprint under the cover of the orchestra — low to the ground, careful but fast, clutching her satchel to her ribs to keep quiet. The anthem wouldn’t last forever, she’d still have to take note of which tributes died, and her heartbeat pounded in time with her feet. 

As she was going, Emme chanced a look up just as the first face appeared.

The District 3 girl. Alix. In her notebook, she’d had a nervous tick — bitten her nails during training. She had five seconds in the sky before she disappeared.

Next came Talon Marrow. District 4. The one with the trident and the booming voice. Dead, and how? Careers usually lasted much longer than the bloodbath.

She was barely able to process that a Career was dead when it happened.

She skidded to a stop when Ricardo’s image filled the sky, and her stomach hollowed instantly. The sight of his face — soft, unsure, way too young to be up there — sent a crack through her. Obviously she knew he was dead, but for the first time that day, it hit her in full force.

Ricardo was dead. Ricardo, who stammered through his sentences and held his hands too tightly and had looked at her like she was something safe in a world that wasn’t.

Dead. One of eleven.

Her throat ached. Her legs stung from running — screw it, she’d put enough distance between her and Thresh anyway — and still, she just knelt there in the dust, her eyes fixed on the fading glow of his image, as if she could stretch those five seconds into a minute. A minute into an hour.

But there were more images to be shown — both tributes from 6, and both from 7. The dude from 8. Both from 9.

When the sky darkened again after the girl from 10, she swallowed hard. The tears didn’t come. They couldn’t — not out here.

She stood, slowly. Every part of her body wanted to crumple back down, but she knew what Ricardo would say if he could see her now.

You’ll figure this out.

She wasn’t sure she would. But she kept going anyway.

The stars were dim, glittering dully in the arena’s artificial sky as she ran through the terrain — quietly, carefully, a shadow weaving through gullies and dry scrub and uneven rocks. There was no wind. No moon. Just her.

She didn’t cry, but she wanted to. She wanted to scream until the arena shook. But the sound of her own breath rasping in her throat was loud enough already.

Ricardo.

She’d seen it coming. She’d known it ever since he’d been reaped, but knowing didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

He died the same day she ran from him. And now she was here — alive, her heart hammering — with no idea how long that would last.

Once or twice, she caught sight of movement in the distance — maybe a bird, maybe something worse — but no one came close. The farther she got from the valley, the quieter things became. Not peaceful. 

Just… hollow.

It took hours to come back to the Cornucopia. Half of the night, at least.

Emme was exhausted by the time she saw the gold horn glinting in the distance, but she was still alert enough to drop to her stomach instinctively, heart thudding, praying that her red hair wasn’t visible in the long grass. If the Careers were still wandering around, she’d have to play her hand very, very carefully.

Even from here, it looked like a graveyard: the blood of the first day had long since dried into the dirt, but she could still feel the residue of it, thick in the air. The memory of screams, of weapons clashing, of bodies staggering away.

No sign of the Careers — they must’ve been off hunting, but she didn’t immediately trust what she saw.

Holding her breath all the way, Emme rose, just the tiniest bit, looped around the edge of the clearing, and took shelter in the scrub. From there, she could watch, just like she had with Thresh in the valley.

It was then that she saw him. The District 3 boy. Wasn’t his name Orion or something?

Pacing silently in the empty Cornucopia. Still alive.

Wait, what?

Chapter Text

Needless to say, Emme hadn’t expected anyone to be here, but here he was.

The boy — his name was Orion, if she remembered correctly — drifted across the bloodstained plain with no apparent urgency. She couldn’t immediately understand why he wasn’t scavenging, why he wasn’t arming himself. Instead, he kept stopping at intervals, crouching near seemingly random patches of earth, doing something with his hands.

Then he’d rise, pace a little further, and stop again. The most bizarre part was he didn’t even seem worried about someone coming out in a lunge and taking him out, so he had to be protected, somehow.

Emme watched, squinting.

It was too far to see clearly, and he didn’t linger in one place long enough to make his intentions obvious. She thought he might be collecting something at first, but there was no movement sharp enough for that. No hurried hand motions or loot-greediness.

What are you doing?

She stayed perfectly still, low to the ground, nestled in the cover of overgrown weeds and brambles at the Cornucopia’s perimeter. Close enough to see him, but too far to be seen unless she made a sound — and she wasn’t planning on that. Not yet.

Whatever he was doing, he didn’t seem armed. And he clearly wasn’t looking for a fight, so Emme made the decision to stay and watch. For all she knew, maybe he was like her. Quiet, observant. Maybe he had a plan that she could plagiarize.

Plus, she needed the rest. Her muscles ached from the run in that way that told her they’d be hurting for a while, her feet throbbed in her boots, and her thighs were still trembling from the adrenaline of the day. But here, in the dark, she felt like she could breathe — just for a moment. She was fairly certain that she’d survive for the first day, which was better than she’d secretly expected.

Laying in the grass, Emme wracked her brains about Orion. He’d gotten a six in training, only slightly better than her. Not bad, but not dazzling. Just enough to be dangerous, she supposed. She remembered scribbling a line in the notebook because she needed something to write about him: “Quiet. Doesn’t seem to need to blink. Hangs around the traps section a lot. Not talking to his district partner, or anyone.”

But she hadn’t paid much attention to him after that, and if she had to venture a guess, no one had.

Emme kept still, crouched in the brush, the satchel pressed tight against her ribs, and watched as he wandered around. In past years, District 3 tributes had their own kind of weapon — not brute force or blades, but ideas. Quiet ones. The kind that got you killed before you knew you were in trouble. She’d have to keep that in mind.

If Orion noticed her, he didn’t show it. He turned, slow and deliberate, then walked a few steps back toward the Cornucopia and crouched. His hands brushed the dirt. Carefully; purposefully. Like he was… counting?

Her breath caught.

Was he laying something? Recovering something?

Whatever he was doing, she needed to understand it before she got anywhere near that structure.

Some time later

Emme didn’t remember falling asleep, but she remembered the dream.

Ricardo stood in the woods. No brown tribute jacket, just his shirt, soaked through. His face was pale and smiling, but wrong — more slack-jawed than his original smile, and his mouth was slightly agape like it had been after the blade had hit him.

She tried to run to him, but her legs wouldn’t move. The dream held her in place.

He lifted a hand to wave, and when he did, his head slipped sideways, teetering unnaturally — like it hadn’t quite been reattached right. A wet sound followed. An awfully loud thunk. Then silence.

Blood bloomed at her feet.

When Emme looked down, the forest floor was littered with heads. 

Smiling, open-eyed, slack-faced. They all stared up at her like they were waiting for her to join them.

She woke suddenly with a choked gasp, her hand fisted in the weeds, damp with sweat despite the relatively cold night. She clearly hadn't been sleeping for very long; it was still dark outside.

Water, her thoughts managed to rasp. I need water.

Hoping desperately that her satchel had some, Emme finally ripped it open and stared at the contents. Sure enough, she found a metal canteen with a sizeable dent in the side — from when she’d crashed into Katniss? — that she opened eagerly. When she tipped the water into her mouth, trying not to gulp it outright, she immediately noticed that the canteen was only half-full, and the water was lukewarm. But it was water nonetheless.

If having water wasn’t as luxurious as it was, she would’ve dumped her whole supply onto her face just so she could fully shock herself out of the horror of her nightmare, but she didn’t. Simultaneously, she knew that it wasn’t that easy. Ricardo’s severed head would remain imprinted on her memory for the rest of her time in the arena, and she’d likely be reminded of it every time she slept. She knew with a grim kind of acceptance that there would be no escaping it.

Emme let the canteen rest against her lips for a moment longer before capping it and stuffing it back in the satchel. Then, slowly, carefully, she unpacked the rest of what she had.

The single strip of dried meat caught her attention first. She stared at it for a long moment, then bit off half — just enough to keep the gnawing emptiness in her stomach quiet. It was spicy-sweet, artificial, chewy. Not satisfying at all. In fact, it was the kind of thing that would turn sour in her mouth if she let herself think about it too much. She forced herself to swallow it and moved on.

Next was a length of fraying string, about three feet long. She rubbed it between her fingers, testing the roughness. Cheap. Probably meant for tying down a flap or something, if a tribute had scored a tent that definitely wasn’t in this tiny satchel. But her brain immediately ticked through possibilities: a snare, a tripwire, even a signal cord. Not much, but at least there were possibilities.

Then came a small plastic pouch with one iodine tablet inside. One.

Emme’s lip curled. One tablet meant she could purify a single canteen’s worth of water, once, and that was it. Any more water after that, and she'd be guessing. Might as well have given her none at all. The Capitol had a sense of humour like that.

At the very bottom of the satchel, she found a whistle. Standard issue, silver and shiny, probably meant to call an ally or something. Emme stared at it, then shoved it back down into the corner of the bag where it could disappear into the fabric. It was useless for a person who wasn’t about to have allies, and honestly, probably useless in general.

Not much, all in all. No surprises there. The Cornucopia had been chaos, and her satchel had probably been a consolation prize to keep someone from dying in the first five minutes. She was never going to find a long-term survival kit so far away from the good stuff.

Tearing her out of her thoughts, a sudden gust of air teased the leaves nearby, and with it came something acrid and unfamiliar — smoke. Faint, but real. Somewhere nearby, whether recently or otherwise, someone had built a fire—

BOOM!

Interrupting her thoughts, the cannon echoed across the dark sky, followed by a long, deliberate silence.

—and, well, someone had seen it. That meant twelve were dead, but she wouldn’t know who it was until tonight. Probably no one notable, if they died to a simple mistake like that. She’d have to keep her eye on the trees in case the killer came this way.

And sure, the fire might have been a simple mistake, but so was sleeping out in the open. She could practically hear the District 5 viewers shouting profanities at her from here. She'd been incredibly lucky that she hadn't been discovered, as well as incredibly stupid to let herself fall asleep like that in the first place — it didn't matter if she didn't remember falling asleep. She'd have to be more alert than that from now on to survive.

Feeling burdened by everything, Emme wiped a hand across her face, trying to shake off the fog of sleep. Her skin was clammy, even now, and her brain still felt caught between the nightmare and the forest. But instincts were louder than grief, louder than fear. She knew she had to move soon, and she knew she had to keep watching Orion.

Carefully, she shifted just enough to peek out between the gaps in the tall grass.

There he was, still pacing the perimeter of the Cornucopia, still stopping every few feet like he hadn’t slept at all. She still had no idea what the hell he was doing.

Well, at least she had all the time in the world to figure it out. She didn’t feel like sleeping anymore.

The Careers came back around noon.

Emme was still awake, now crouched low in a different brush near the Cornucopia, half-shielded by tall, sun-bleached grass. She’d watched Orion disappear for the second time that morning, retracing his strange circuit around the Cornucopia, and she’d just started sketching a mental map of his pattern when laughter shattered the stillness.

Footsteps — loud, confident, unhurried — preceded the arrival of Cato, Clove, Marvel, Isla, and Glimmer. Completely out of left field, Peeta was there too, trailing slightly behind them with a stiff sort of silence that made her eyebrows rise.

That was unexpected. What was he doing with them?

They were hauling gear — packs, weapons, a coil of rope, maybe something mechanical she couldn’t quite see from this distance. It didn’t matter. They were armed, fed, and loud. That made them dangerous.

They didn’t react at all to Orion being there, so they were evidently in some kind of alliance. Huh.

The Careers were still laughing as they dumped the gear near the Cornucopia — a few packs, an empty canteen, a shiny silver spear.

“I told you she was gonna trip,” Marvel snorted, shaking dirt from his boots. “She looked right at me, then ran straight into the tree. Easiest kill of my life.”

“She was screaming before you even touched her,” Clove said, like that detail amused her. She unfastened one of her knives from her belt, twirled it once, then sheathed it again. “You should’ve let me finish her.”

“You already got one today,” Cato reminded her, stretching his arms over his head with a casual groan. “Let someone else have fun.”

Clove rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue.

It was then Glimmer’s voice rang out, gleeful as the rest of them:

“What about the fox bitch? She’s still out there, right? I say we smoke her out by tomorrow. Y’know, take care of all the weak ones first.”

Emme rolled her eyes at her new nickname. They could at least try to come up with something original, she thought. She’d been called worse by the kids at the orphanage, and they were smarter than Glimmer.

More laughter. Marvel’s voice followed:

“Bet she’s eating grass.”

That got a bigger laugh. Even Clove cracked a grin.

Orion came into view again, appearing from the far side of the Cornucopia, twitchy and silent as ever. He stuck close to the outer edge of the group, holding some device in both hands like it might shatter if he dropped it. He didn’t laugh, and he didn’t speak. She was reminded of an Avox in the Tribute Center, positioned carefully at the corners of a room, waiting for an order.

Emme studied him closely. He didn’t belong with them — not really. He flinched every time Marvel shoved past him or Clove barked an order. When he crouched to fiddle with something near the ground, he didn’t look like a teammate. He looked like a tool.

They were using him. That much was obvious.

He spoke only when spoken to, his voice too low to carry across the distance, and even then it was short. Curt. Hesitant.

Loyalty? She doubted it. Fear, more likely.

Emme exhaled slowly through her nose, keeping still even as her thighs started to ache from crouching. She kept her eyes on Orion, committing everything to memory — the pace of his movements, the direction he looked when someone barked his name, the way he recoiled ever so slightly when Cato threw a pack down beside him.

She’d always known that alliances were fragile. What she hadn’t fully appreciated until now was how often they were built not on friendship, not on trust, but fear.

Fear was loyalty’s cheaper, shakier cousin. And it never lasted long.

Later, closer to late afternoon, Emme slipped away from the Cornucopia while the Careers thundered off to hunt, their voices fading into the distance like a bad memory.

She made sure to move in the opposite direction, skirting low across the terrain, alert for traps, cameras, or worse. When she finally found a shaded grove — quiet, still, tucked beneath the wide reach of a leaning pine — she crouched low and finally allowed herself to just breathe. The smell of the pine trees filled her lungs as she inhaled deep.

The moment she stopped moving, Ricardo’s face came to her. Not the head she’d tripped on, not the slack-jawed mess in the grass — his real face. The one she’d known since the train. Eyes always too wide with fear. Lips trembling when he smiled. The way his voice had cracked when he told her he wasn’t ready.

Emme exhaled slowly and pressed her knuckles into her thighs, grounding herself. She was still trying to save her mint leaves for the very worst of scenarios.

She didn’t want to picture his head, but it came anyway — a flash of dark hair, blood, his gaping mouth, his lifeless eyes. She closed her eyes and fought the image back down.

He’d been fourteen. Just a kid. The Capitol would clean it up for the cameras, if they even showed it at all. Maybe his family wouldn’t even get a body back, depending on how intact his body was to retrieve. Just a name in the sky.

Maybe this was the only funeral he’d ever get.

Emme sat there for a long time, her arms wrapped around her knees, letting the quiet wrap around her like a shroud. Not crying. Not moving. Just… remembering. And trying to forget. She hoped desperately that the Careers were doing something much more exciting, and she wasn’t being broadcast to the whole of Panem at this moment.

Dipping her head into her knees just in case she was, she clenched her eyes closed and took a deep breath.

“Sorry, Ricardo,” she mumbled, so quietly that no one else could hear it. Not even the high-tech Capitol cameras.

The wind just whistled, and that felt about right.

The arena was quiet for a while. It was just Emme and her rumbling stomach, sitting under that tree.

Eventually, her gaze drifted up the length of the tree above her — a crooked pine with sun-bleached bark and a web of branches that started too high off the ground. The needles whispered in the breeze, way out of reach.

She’d seen tributes climb trees in past Games. That little girl from 11 had practically floated up a mock one during training like it was second nature. But District 5 didn’t have trees. Not really, at least. There were a few scraggly ones grew between powerlines and concrete back home, but they didn’t really count — you couldn’t climb them. You barely even noticed them. They didn’t make the air any more breathable.

Still, elevation meant visibility. Safety, sometimes. If she managed to get high up without scaring the shit out of herself, she could see if the Careers were circling back to camp. Maybe even catch a glimpse of Orion’s path from a better angle. At the very least, she wouldn’t be visible from the ground. And with no camp, no real shelter, it was something.

Making her decision, Emme stood and brushed her palms on her pants, then circled the tree. The first thing she noticed was that there were no low-hanging branches. Fuck.

Come on, said a voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Cassian’s. How hard can it be, really?

Emme took a deep breath, accepted that she was probably going to look like an idiot on national television, then slung the satchel diagonally across her back and jumped.

Her hands slapped bark — rough, splintered, tearing into the skin of her palms — and she barely managed to grip it before her feet slipped against the trunk. Her body sagged instantly with her own weight, and for a second, her arm muscles burned like they might give out.

Huffing, she scrambled again, getting one foot to catch against a knotted ridge in the bark. The angle was awful, but she had to keep going. The alternative was falling flat on her back and making a fool of herself.

And so Emme grunted and hauled herself upward — an awkward, graceless movement that scraped her knee and knocked her satchel into her ribs. She clung there for a moment, panting, her elbows locked and thighs trembling, not even halfway up. Maybe, like, two feet at most.

But she didn’t stop. Once she caught her breath, there was a few more laboured feet. Her arms ached from the unfamiliar motion of climbing, but at least there was the sensation of going up. Her shoes couldn’t always find solid footing, and bark bit at her palms, flaking and peeling beneath her fingers, but she was moving.

There was sap, sticky and sharp-smelling, that felt awful on her hands. Her lungs were loud in her ears.

Eventually, Emme made it high enough to wedge herself into the crook of two branches. It wasn’t comfortable — one branch dug into her ribs, and another poked at her spine — but it was certainly high off the ground. High enough that she didn’t want to look down for fear of being dizzy. Feeling accomplished, her heartbeat began to slow.

From here, she could see more: the glint of gold metal back at the Cornucopia, the area still flecked with drying blood. The valley where Thresh had built his hut was beyond that, though she couldn’t quite see him or the hut. Even a mysterious sliver of dark smoke curling up from the east. She didn’t know who had built that fire, but she knew someone had died for it.

It took her a second to realize her sap-covered hands were shaking.

She wiped them on her jacket and pulled her knees in tight. It wasn’t graceful, and it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable — but it was high ground. And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

Emme spent the better part of the last hour nestled between two sturdy limbs near the top of this pine tree, her satchel wedged between her knees, her arms sore from the awkward angle of holding herself steady. Climbing had taken more from her than she wanted — her palms were scraped, her boots had slipped more than once, and she was sure stray pieces of bark still clung to her jacket — but even after an hour, the view was still worth it. It was quiet, and she felt powerful up here, too high up to be noticed, high enough to see everything. It was a shame that there weren’t trees like this in her district, that she hadn’t been able to experience this before the arena.

For a while, there was no laughter from the Careers, no cannonfire, not even Orion methodically pacing around at the Cornucopia as far as she could tell. Even the birds were quiet.

Until suddenly, they weren’t.

“Emme?”

It came from above her. Not shouted, not spoken — called, in a voice that was too soft and too familiar.

Immediately, her heart stilled.

She turned her head sharply, scanning the treetops. No movement.

“Emme!”

Louder, more urgent this time. The exact pitch of his voice, the tremble in it. Hearing it, her stomach dropped so fast it felt like she was falling from the tree all together.

Ricardo.

The branch beneath her creaked again as she shifted. She wasn’t breathing properly anymore; her fingers tightened on the bark so she wouldn’t fall out of the tree entirely.

No.

She knew she was alone, and that he was dead. It wasn’t like her brain would let her forget that she’d seen his head. She had shoved the image down deep — tried to stuff it into the place where nightmares live and keep it there — but now it was clawing its way out through the pine trees.

“Emme, wait for me!”

He sounded exactly the way he’d said her name in the bloodbath — full of panic, full of desperate belief that she could do something, anything, to help him.

Her pulse roared in her ears.

Below her, something moved. Just a flicker of feathers in the underbrush. A bird darted from shadow to shadow, sleek, black, gleaming. Then another. And another, and another, and another — until it clicked.

She’d seen jabberjays on replays of past Games, but only in passing — small and unremarkable unless they were mimicking screams. But no one had ever warned her they could talk like this.

The calls multiplied in seconds.

“I don’t want to die,” one sobbed, voice cracking just like Ricardo’s had that day on the train.

“You left me. Why did you leave me?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

Each voice echoed from a different direction — some from below, others from the neighbouring trees. Dozens of black shapes flitted between branches like shadows, and wherever they landed, Ricardo’s voice spilled out of them. With each bird, the cacophony of sound just flooded upward.

Up here, above the world, Emme was trapped with it. She couldn’t hide, couldn’t muffle it. The voices wrapped around her, closing in from all sides.

She curled tighter against the trunk, pressing her palms hard over her ears. It didn’t matter.

“Help me, Emme!”

“Please, don’t leave me alone!”

The birds were screaming now — overlapping, circling, shrieking pleas at her over and over again. Ricardo’s voice warped and looped and bled into itself until it wasn’t even words anymore, just pain.

She squeezed her eyes shut and did her best not to scream.

She knew it wasn’t real. It’s not real it’s not real it’s not real —

So then why did it feel more real than anything had since she entered the arena???

She couldn’t breathe.

“Emme, they’re gonna hurt me—”

“Help me, please—”

“I thought you were my friend—”

She couldn’t take it, not for one more second, not the birds screaming his name, not the way they mangled it, stretched it, twisted it into something too sharp to be human — “Emme! Emme, help me! Please don’t leave me, I’m not ready!” — and she couldn’t breathe because her ribs felt like they were collapsing inward, like her chest was a cage with no key, no way out, and all she could hear was his voice, except it wasn’t his voice, it was the Capitol’s funhouse-mirror version of him, and she knew it wasn’t real but it didn’t matter, not when every screech felt like it was tearing through her skull, not when her name was being shrieked over and over by someone she never could’ve saved.

Half-blind with panic, she launched herself downward, because staying meant listening and listening meant losing her mind, and she would rather break her legs than stay in that tree another minute.

She didn’t so much climb down as she slid, much too fast and too sloppy, her boots slipping on bark, her palms slamming into rough wood, her shoulder catching on a branch, her knees bruising against the trunk as she dropped, one branch to the next like a rock bouncing down a cliff, no rhythm, no plan, just motion, just down, just get out, get out, get away —

A jabberjay flapped past her ear — loud, sudden, shrieking “Why didn’t you help me?” in a perfect mimic of Ricardo’s voice, and she screamed back at it, not words, just noise, feral and guttural and raw. It didn’t matter anymore that this was an arena, and anyone could’ve heard her.

She lost her grip on a lower branch, went weightless for one second, maybe less, and then crashed into the ground so hard that her vision went white, her breath left her, and the pain in her side made her think this is it, this is how I die, right here, broken like a stick in the dirt while they play his voice — but she didn’t stop, she couldn’t, because the jabberjays were still screaming.

Adrenaline was the only reason she managed to scramble upright, hands clawing at moss and bark, boots skidding as she pushed off, and then she was sprinting through the trees like a maniac, lungs burning, her throat torn raw from panting or yelling or both, and still the trees echoed with “I’m not ready! I’m not ready! Please don’t let them take me!” and her brain was on fire because that wasn’t what he’d said, not exactly, but it was, and hearing it now made her chest twist so violently it felt like something would burst.

Branches lashed at her face as she barrelled through the trees, stumbling, tripping, catching herself again and again and again, the satchel bouncing wildly at her side, her breath a series of gasps and chokes and panicked sobs that didn’t fully make it out of her mouth because there was no room for anything but the noise.

She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t care. She just had to get away.

Emme ducked under low-hanging limbs, crashed through tall grass, ran with her hands over her ears even though it didn’t help, because they kept screaming, because he kept screaming, because some broken part of her had started believing he was screaming — like maybe his ghost had gotten stuck here with her, and this was what the Games did, it locked your soul in the woods and made you scream forever while the birds laughed.

“Why didn’t you help me?”

“We were supposed to look out for each other—”

She ducked a branch, slipped on loose earth, righted herself with a gasp, and in less than a second she was back on her feet again, but still the jabberjays screamed as they chased her through the trees with his voice, his voice, his—

“EMME!”

She tripped but didn’t fall, stumbled forward with the full force of her momentum, the scream echoing in her chest like an explosion as she barrelled downhill, feet barely catching on the uneven earth, and all she could do was keep running, keep fleeing, keep trying to outrace the sound, because if she didn’t keep moving, if she stopped, even for a second, then the forest would—

The forest would—

The forest would—

The forest would—

The forest would—

The forest—

would—

Eventually, the noise faded, probably meaning she outran it. Or the jabberjays simply stopped. She didn’t know.

By the time Emme collapsed again, gasping, her limbs were trembling and her throat was raw. She crouched behind a fallen tree trunk and buried her head in her arms, too tired to do anything else when her lungs were drained of air. She half-hoped that a tribute would come along and put her out of her misery right then and there. 

Even with the silence, she could still hear it. Faint, rattling around in her bones. Echoing from the inside.

The jabberjay attack wasn’t random, she quickly realized. She’d lingered too long, probably, so the Gamemakers were pushing her forward. Out. Into danger, into visibility.

Of course they were, she thought. She was hiding too well.

And the audience needed a show.

Meanwhile

The lights in the Capitol studio gleamed brighter than the sun ever had in the arena. Dressed in a sapphire-sequined suit, Caesar Flickerman turned toward the hovering camera drone with a practiced, melodramatic flourish, looking merry as always.

"Good evening, Panem!" he announced with his usual beaming smile. "Day Two in the 74th Hunger Games, and what a spectacle it’s been! We’ve had fire, we’ve had alliances, and yes — we’ve had breakdowns!"

Sitting in the chair beside him, Claudius Templesmith chuckled deeply. “Breakdowns, Caesar? That’s putting it lightly.”

The screen behind them shifted to aerial footage of the arena: scorched terrain, blackened trees, and a tribute darting through it all — Katniss Everdeen, her jacket smoking, one arm shielding her face as literal balls of flame erupted around her. Some flames seemed to miss her by literal inches.

"A little girl from Twelve running through fire," Caesar narrated, his voice tinged with awe. "And not just any fire — it’s pure Gamemaker artistry. Precision pyrotechnics. That’s what it takes to keep tributes moving… and viewers on the edge of their seats!"

“She outran it all,” Claudius added. “Singed, coughing, but still running. I don’t know what she’s made of, but it’s certainly tougher than most. Keep your eyes on her, folks.”

The footage changed, now showing the Cornucopia under the midday sun, the Careers returning with laughter in their throats and blood on their boots. At the edge of the frame, a smaller figure skulked behind them, clutching a device: District 3’s Orion Vale.

“Next, a new face in the Career pack,” Caesar transitioned smoothly. “Not the usual muscle, but brains are just as valuable. Maybe more.”

The camera zoomed in on Orion’s face as he crouched beside the mouth of the Cornucopia, his hands moving delicately over seemingly a random patch of grass. He never spoke, just looked deep in thought.

 “Now, District 3 may have been overlooked in the betting pools, but this one’s a wildcard. Quiet, careful. And it looks like the Careers know it,” said Claudius, looking pensive.

“Or they’re using him until they don’t need him anymore,” Caesar said cheerfully. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t be the last.”

A pause, then a slow fade into a new scene. The forest. Green, quiet.

“Now,” Claudius said, his voice lowering, “we have to talk about District Five’s Emme Matley.”

The playback changed. High in a pine tree, Emme was curled between two thick branches, half-shielded by greenery, only distinguishable by her fiery red hair and pale skin.

“She's been quiet,” Caesar said, “deliberate. Smart, even. But the arena doesn't reward silence forever.”

Then came the sound. Ricardo’s voice, echoing around the forest. “Emme?”

The audience couldn't hear Emme gasp because of the highly-edited video, but the camera caught the way her body jolted.

In a blink, the jabberjays arrived in swarms. Their black wings cut through the canopy, their beaks wide open as Ricardo’s voice poured out of every single one of them.

"Help me, Emme!"

"You left me!"

"I wasn’t ready!"

From the safety of the Capitol studio, Caesar’s tone softened into something almost reverent.

“The jabberjays,” he said, “a classic choice. But rarely deployed this early.”

Claudius nodded solemnly. “It’s been said that some Games break the body. Others break the mind. This year’s Gamemakers seem interested in the latter.”

Onscreen, Emme lunged out of the tree like she’d also been hit by a fireball. Bark scraped her hands, her shoulder clipped a branch, her body crashed through the undergrowth, but still the jabberjays followed, shrieking Ricardo’s name, divebombing her every few seconds.

“She didn’t stop running for almost half a mile,” Caesar said. “No direction. No plan. Just pure, beautiful instinct.”

The camera caught her again when she finally collapsed behind a fallen log, gasping, her eyes wild.

“She may still be alive,” Claudius said, “but she won’t forget this.”

Caesar smiled again, bright as ever. “Twelve tributes remain. And Day Two has made one thing very clear — no one escapes the Games unchanged.”

“FROM THE ODDSMAKER'S DESK: WHO’S HOT, WHO’S NOT” (DAY 2 EDITION)
by Licinia Ring, Capitol Betting Weekly

Two days in, and the Games are officially heating up — both literally (sorry, District 12) and figuratively. With twelve tributes still breathing, we’re already seeing a dramatic shift in the odds following today’s scorched-earth surprises. Let’s break down who’s climbing, who’s crashing, and who’s got everyone whispering in the sponsor lounges.

TOP 5 TRIBUTES BY CURRENT ODDS (UPDATED 3:00 PM CAPITOL TIME):

Katniss Everdeen (D12) – Odds: 5:2

A fireball chase that didn’t kill her — and left her with barely any burns? The girl on fire is still burning bright, and Capitol hearts are ablaze. She’s not talking much, but she doesn’t have to. Her every move is sponsor bait. Betting surged 24% today alone.

Cato Hadley (D2) – Odds: 3:1

The golden boy still glows. Brutal, efficient, and undefeated in any confrontation so far. Today, he helped take out a tribute and then casually led his crew back to base like it was a stroll through the Training Center gardens. But whispers of tension in the alliance could shake things up soon…

Emme Matley (D5) – Odds: 7:2 (up from 12:1 yesterday!)

Who knew psychological collapse could look so… captivating? After the jabberjay incident went viral this afternoon (trending as #MatleyMeltdown), Emme has become a crowd fascination. Half the Capitol thinks she’s fragile, but the other half thinks she’s unpredictable — and that’s even better. She's being compared to previous wildcard victors like Johanna Mason or Cassian Graves. Expect her odds to keep shifting wildly.

Clove Kentwell (D2) – Odds: 4:1

Still sharp. Still deadly. Still terrifying. But after not getting her second kill this morning (Cato beat her to it), some are wondering if she’s playing second blade to Cato — and if she likes that.

Orion Vale (D3) – Odds: 8:1 (formerly 18:1)

The dark horse of the hour. What’s he doing at the Cornucopia? Why won’t he make eye contact with his allies? No one knows, and that’s why bets are flowing. Gamemakers love a wildcard, and the Capitol loves a good mystery.

WHO’S LOSING FAVOUR?

• Glimmer (D1) – Odds dropped to 20:1 after her second “fox bitch” comment sparked backlash among District 5 sympathizers. Also, hasn’t scored a single kill.
• Peeta Mellark (D12) – Odds: 25:1 and dropping. Viewers are still confused by his allegiance with the Careers. Either he’s playing the long game… or he’s already playing for someone else. Sponsors aren’t biting.
• Thresh (D11) – Odds: 18:1 and steady. Hasn’t been spotted on cameras since the bloodbath. A few Capitolites call this "strategic." Others are wondering if he’s alive at all.

WILDCARD WATCH:

• Jabberjay-Related Trauma
  Thanks to this surprise deploy from the Gamemakers, nearly 40% of the Capitol audience is now betting which tribute will be next to break under psychological pressure. Current favourite? Marvel (odds of breakdown: 3:1), after his taunting started sounding a little forced today.

BONUS: SPONSOR BUZZ

A certain anonymous sponsor reportedly sent a vial of pain suppressant toward one of the quieter tributes. No confirmation on whether it was received… or intercepted.

And yes — someone just put 500,000 credits on Emme outliving Marvel. You read that right. Not winning. Outliving.

Capitol citizens: place your bets wisely. The arena shifts fast. And remember — as we like to say in the booths: “Today’s underdog is tomorrow’s Victor.”

Back in the woods, Emme sat with her back against the bark, her knees drawn tight to her chest, the earth damp and cold beneath her.

The jabberjays had gone quiet, but she could still hear them, faintly.

Not in the trees — in her skull. In the marrow of her bones. In whatever part of her still believed that maybe, if she'd done something different, Ricardo might've made it.

She wouldn’t cry, because she hadn’t forgotten about the cameras. She couldn’t cry when she didn’t even know where they were — there were probably thousands, all invisible, all trained on the tributes that were still alive.

Maybe they’d gotten what they wanted. A breakdown; a spectacle that wasn’t guts and blood. The red-haired girl from Five, sobbing in the dirt while a dead boy screamed at her. That seemed to be enough for Caesar or some other Capitol ghoul to talk about.

Briefly, because she couldn’t help herself, Emme wondered how they’d cut it together for the recap. What music they’d use, what angle they’d pick — whether they’d make her look haunted, or dangerous, or just pathetic. It didn’t matter, really. None of this was hers anymore — not her story, not her body, not even her grief.

It belonged to the audience now.

Chapter Text

Emme didn’t know how long she laid there, half-curled against a fallen log, her cheek pressed into the cold dirt mostly as a dull reminder that even if it didn’t feel like it, she was still alive. Now that the adrenaline had started to wear off and the realization that she’d fallen several feet was settling in, the weight of her own body was a burden she wasn’t sure she could bear again. It was definitely dangerous, but it was better for her to just lay here for now.

As she was splayed there, the fire in her lungs eventually dulled to an ache, and her heart — which had felt like it might explode in her chest — slowly returned to its normal pace. The birds were definitely gone by now, sucked into whatever hatch the Gamemakers had opened, and she was pretty sure she was alone in this corner of the arena, which should have been a relief. Instead, it felt like a silence thick enough to choke on.

When Emme shifted the slightest bit, pain flared through her ribs like she’d just been stabbed, and her breath caught. For a second, the world narrowed to that one point — sharp and deep, just under her right side. It wasn’t broken; or at least probably not, anyway, but something was cracked, bruised, wrenched out of alignment. Her shirt clung damply to her skin, and she didn’t want to know if it was blood or sweat or both.

Slowly, she moved her arm to press against her side, her fingers shaking as they hovered over the worst of it. Her palm was torn open — bark burns and embedded splinters, the skin raw and slick. When she tried to close her hand into a fist, her wrist gave a strange, warning twinge.

Sprained. Maybe worse. She flexed her fingers again and bit back a gasp.

Her knees throbbed where she’d slammed them against the trunk. Her shoulder was still on fire even though she’d been splayed on the ground for at least fifteen minutes. Her ankle… just felt wrong. Definitely not as bad as whatever was going on with her ribs, but still swollen, and stiff.

Emme tugged her boot off with a grunt and winced at the sight of her sock already darkening around the joint. She had nothing to ice it with, nothing to wrap it. Nothing but the clothes on her back, and those were damp, torn, and coated in forest debris.

Working with what she had, Emme tore off one of her jacket’s sleeves and wound it around her wrist first, then repeated the process for her ankle, her teeth gritted the whole time. The urge to survive was the only real thing keeping her going.

Needless to say, everything hurt. Her satchel sat nearby in the undergrowth, tossed during the fall — the strap half-torn, the flap open. She reached for it slowly, her ribs loudly protesting the movement, and checked for damage.

Even in her terror, everything was basically unchanged, and she still had that canteen with a few hot mouthfuls of water she definitely wouldn’t be risking for the time being.

It was then that she laughed. Just once. It came out bitter, dry, and too close to a sob, considering her situation was morbidly ridiculous, not to mention incomprehensible to a sane person, but she couldn’t help it.

Being reasonable, she covered her mouth with the back of her hand and hoped wildly that no one heard it.

It was almost dark again. The second day was almost over, and it already felt like she’d spent a century in this arena.

Her legs refused to stop trembling, and her ears rang with echoes that weren’t real. Her throat was still raw from screaming. Her hair was plastered on her forehead with sweat, a darker shade of red than usual. She didn’t want to run her battered fingers through it, feel how tangled and matted it was. Dealing with her hair was relatively low on her list of priorities anyway.

Maybe the Gamemakers hadn’t wanted her to run into anyone, considering for all the time she’d spent splayed on the ground, no one came. Maybe the goal was simply to rip her open, make her run herself raw until she could barely stand. They must’ve put two and two together that her strategy was to evade, not fight. It made sense that they wanted to make that difficult.

Emme rolled onto her back, wincing as her bruises met the earth, and stared through the canopy of leaves at the deepening dusk. The air was colder now, and her jacket was no longer fully intact. A headache had begun to pulse behind her eyes.

In the distance, something cried out — not a cannon, not a bird. Just some animal with a death rattle, the kind of sound that made her teeth clench.

She’d escaped death, but not pain. And certainly not the cameras. Somewhere, she imagined, someone was already betting on whether she'd make it through the night. She’d already given the Capitol a show, so unless there was something crazier going on outside of this cluster of trees, all eyes would be on her.

Her body ached. Her head throbbed. She was so, so, so tired.

But still, she didn’t cry.

She just lay there, her jaw clenched, sweat plastering her hair to her forehead, waiting for the next thing to hurt.

A few minutes later?

Emme couldn’t stay here.

She knew that, even through the haze of pain in her ribs and the slow throb of her ankle, but that didn’t mean she was magically able to get up. She knew the jabberjays had flushed her out like a hunter’s hounds, and if she didn’t keep moving, something worse would come next: a natural disaster, or mutts, or maybe even one of the Careers, grinning like they’d just been served a steak so expensive that it came with a name tag and a eulogy.

Her battered and bruised legs protested when she tried to sit up, and her side screamed in agony. It was so intense that her vision dimmed at the edges, but still she forced herself upright, one hand braced against the log, the other clutched to her ribs.

Despite everything, she moved.

Slowly, pathetically, and purely because her survival depended on it, she staggered forward, dragging her uncooperative and limp foot while she weaved between trees like she was drunk, one hand outstretched to catch herself whenever she swayed too hard to the side. If she faceplanted right now, she wouldn’t have the energy to pull herself up, and that terrified her.

The longer she moved, the more she realized that the forest felt different now. Less like something she was hiding in, and more like something was watching her back. Despite what she hoped was a calm and cool demeanour on the outside, every sound made her flinch.

She didn’t know how far she walked — maybe a mile, maybe less — before she found it.

Not shelter, not really: just a place to hide for now. So far, she hadn’t set up camp so much as she’d set up observation posts, so this would be the first thing that qualified as a camp.

Camp was a shallow crevice in the earth, tucked behind a mossy rise and sheltered slightly by overgrown roots. The dirt had been worn down by water at some point — a dry runoff gully, now mostly filled with leaves and stone. If she crouched low, she could wedge herself into the side of it, half-hidden by the slope and the roots curling overhead. Better than open ground, where she’d fallen asleep previously and miraculously managed not to be murdered. She couldn’t take that risk again.

It took her way too long to get in. Her ankle sent fresh stabs of pain up her leg every time she moved it, and her palms were slippery with a mixture of dirt and blood. The roots scratched at her face and jacket as she ungracefully crawled in, and for a terrible second she was sure she was going to get stuck — wedged between dirt and roots and bruised bone like some pathetic animal.

But eventually, Emme settled, curled in tight. Cold and scraped and pulsing with pain, but out of sight. The glint of her red hair was barely visible with all of the dirt and leaves and stone all around her, which was good. 

It didn’t matter that it stank faintly of old leaves and damp rot, or that it was freezing out. She just felt glad that she wouldn’t die in the open. A spider moved near her elbow, and she didn’t even flinch.

This wasn’t shelter. It was a grave someone had forgotten to fill in. But it was hers, for now.

She didn’t eat, she didn’t drink — she wouldn’t be able to reach for her satchel without her whole body screaming in pain, anyway. She just lay there, curled like a question mark, watching dusk bleed into night through the tangle of roots above her, and waited for the anthem.

The anthem came just after the last of the light drained from the trees.

It started low and slow like always, before it swelled, crawling across the broken canopy in a song Emme had grown to dread more than thunder or footfalls or even her own heartbeat. The more she heard it, the more she thought that ghosts were singing it.

She couldn’t sit up, because her whole body still throbbed too deeply for that,  but she still wanted to know who was dead, so she turned her face slightly and squinted, glimpsing the narrow gap of sky overhead.

Sure enough, there was only one face tonight. It took a moment for her to place the face because she had been so unremarkable, but she had managed to take notes on everyone, after all.

Junae Mott. District 8.

The portrait lingered in the sky for barely five seconds. Junae had wide cheeks and a nervous expression, like she hadn’t expected the flash when the photo was taken. The number eight glowed beneath her chin, along with a soft wash of blue light.

She was up there for all of five seconds, and then she was gone.

She’d barely noticed Junae in training — just another girl with a low score and a quiet disposition, forgettable in the way people are when you’re trying to calculate who might kill you and who might die first. It was a no brainer for Emme to put her in the die first category.

That could’ve been me.

Her ankle throbbed incessantly, her ribs felt wrapped in broken glass, and her throat was raw. She listened to the unbearably loud anthem fade out as she crossed out Junae’s name in her head. 

Twelve tributes remain, she thought wearily. She didn’t have the energy to do much else.

At some point, hunger crept in under the pain.

It started as a gnawing feeling at the edge of her ribs — nothing new. She’d gone hungry before, and sometimes for days on end during particularly nasty, wintery days at the orphanage, but the longer she lay there, the louder it got. And that was dangerous. Her body, aching and bruised and filthy, still wanted to live. It still expected something. Calories, fuel.

Back home, she’d spent three summers bent double pulling weeds in the illegal garden, getting scolded for tracking in mud and sneaking beet greens straight out of the soil, so when she saw a patch of wood sorrel growing by the gully’s edge — heart-shaped leaves clustered low, half-hidden in shadow — her fingers reached for it like a reflex.

She pulled up a few, crushed one leaf in her palm, and sniffed.

Clean. Sharp. Lemon-bright.

Feeling certain, she popped it into her mouth, and the flavour immediately zinged across her tongue.

Not food, not really. But it would help her think. It told her one thing, at least: she wasn’t completely helpless here, even if the Capitol wanted her to break.

Ugh. The last time her ribs had ached this badly, she’d been thirteen, curled up on the third floor of the orphanage in winter, with frost coating the window glass and an ugly chill drifting inside every time someone opened the door. One of the boys had stolen flour from the kitchen that week and gotten caught — so none of them were allowed seconds. Not even the little ones, the ones who needed it most. They barely had enough for firsts, anyway.

She’d spent three nights pretending she wasn’t hungry while the smaller kids whimpered in their beds, their stomachs hollow, their lips cracked. She remembered chewing on the edge of her blanket just to stop the feeling, and the bitter humiliation of finally sneaking down to the garden in the middle of the night to gnaw on frozen kale stalks, her fingers raw from the cold, her legs shaking.

No cameras had watched her then. No audience waiting to be entertained. Just silence, and shame, and that same defiant urge to survive anyway.

Back then, she’d told herself it would get better. Here, she didn’t know if it would.

District 5

The screen crackled faintly in the corner of the common room. Its image was grainy, almost three seconds behind Capitol time, and the audio hissed anytime someone walked past too quickly, but it was still working — and that was all that mattered tonight.

Mrs. Meynell stood in the doorway, her arms folded tightly over her chest, apron still dusted with flour from dinner prep. The room behind her smelled faintly of boiled greens and stale bread. Most of the children had already gone to bed, though a few older ones lingered on the threadbare couches, knees drawn up, eyes wide. Their breathing was so quiet that the soft static from the set seemed loud by comparison.

From the far end of the couch, during a particularly quiet moment, a girl’s voice broke the stillness.

“Why does this have to happen?”

No one moved. The question was small, almost swallowed by the hiss of the speakers, but it seemed to pull the air out of the room.

Mrs. Meynell’s head snapped toward her, her eyes wide with something that wasn’t quite anger.

“Don’t,” she told her, sharper than she meant, and the girl shrank back into the cushions.

Not having said anything for the past hour, Mrs. Corrin lingered by the window, where a thin draft crept in. Her face was impassive, her knotted hands wrapped around a chipped mug gone cold. She didn’t speak. She just watched the screen with her lips pressed together, staring like she didn’t need to blink.

On the broadcast, Emme was tearing through the woods, sobbing, raw-throated, feral. The jabberjays shrieked that boy’s voice from the trees — words looped and looped again until they almost stopped sounding like language.

Help me. Why did you leave me? I wasn’t ready.

She was going so fast, the camera rarely showed her face for long, but every glimpse was worse than the last. A smear of dirt across her cheek. A jagged tear in her sleeve. The frantic way her head jerked from side to side, as if the forest itself was closing in. She was scraped, bruised, and probably bleeding under that windbreaker. No matter how injured she might have been, though, she was still running.

On the opposite end of the room, a sharp breath caught in Mrs. Meynell’s throat. She pressed a hand to her mouth and turned away from the screen, just for a moment, long enough to fix her eyes on the chipped paint of the doorframe instead. 

She told herself she was checking the kitchen — making sure nothing was burning — but her legs wouldn’t take her there. She knew she couldn’t watch them do this to her, but at the same time, she couldn’t look away.

The feed cut from Emme mid-stride to Caesar Flickerman in his powder-blue suit, leaning forward with a glittery smile as he cooed into the camera about how “the mind is just as fragile as the body.” His co-host laughed politely. A sparkle graphic spun across the screen — BETTING ODDS UPDATE — and the names of tributes rolled in bold Capitol font.

Mrs. Meynell stepped forward then, as if pulled in by the movement. She crossed the room, and none of the kids on the threadbare couch complained when she blocked their view.

When she made it to her side, she didn’t touch Corrin. Just stood beside her, close enough that their sleeves brushed.

“She’s still alive,” she said quietly, more to herself than to anyone else.

Corrin’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile, not quite a frown. She nodded once, still watching the numbers flicker across the screen.

Impossible to know what that woman’s thinking, Mrs Meynell thought as the betting graphic zoomed off the screen with a flourish. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d thought that.

The truth was, somewhere behind her stillness, Corrin could see a smaller Emme — no more than three — crouched in the orphanage garden with her red hair tumbling loose from its ribbon, the sunlight turning it into a little crown of fire. Quiet as always, but never shy, she’d hold out a twig or a flower petal like it was worth showing, then tuck herself back into a corner to watch the world go by. 

She had a way of making order out of the smallest things — lining her wooden blocks in perfect rows, stacking cups so their rims matched exactly, smoothing the hem of her dress before she sat down. And always those eyes, round and unblinking to the point where it was kind of unnerving.

Corrin remembered calling her name across the yard and watching her turn, slow and deliberate, before coming in — never running, never flustered, always with her small hands clasped behind her back like she was keeping a secret.

Of course, Corrin had thought, back then, that the quiet needed firming up, shaping. She’d made Emme redo her chores when she didn’t sweep quickly enough, sent her back outside if she tracked dirt through the hall, told her not to linger so long in the garden. There were sharper words than she meant, days when she forgot how young she still was.

I was too hard on her, she thought. Remorsefully; much too late, the kind of thought that settled like a boulder in her chest.

Now, on the screen, that same child was running through a forest like it might swallow her whole.

Early morning light filtered softly through the canopy, pooling in pale gold on the forest floor. The light urged Emme awake, still in the open grave, her body stiff and sore from yesterday’s run.

Day three. She’d made it this far.

Feeling weirdly accomplished, she pushed herself up on trembling arms, the ache in her ribs sharp but familiar now. Every movement reminded her of the bruises blooming beneath her skin, the scrapes that still stung when the cool wind brushed over them.

It was then she heard the faint whoosh drifting through the air — the unmistakable sound of a sponsor gift parachute descending, its fragile cords fluttering like a ghost in the breeze.

Wait, what?

The package landed with a muted thump nearby, nestled between fallen leaves and broken branches. Emme crawled forward cautiously, her fingers brushing aside twigs as she reached for the brown cloth bundle.

Someone must have seen her staggering through the bushes the other day, clearly. It was obvious to everyone, tributes and audience, that she was injured. She didn’t want to think about how expensive this gift must have been, whether it came from some Capitol ghoul betting on her survival or the people of District 5. 

Carefully, she untied the thin cord and peeled back the wrapping to reveal a tightly wound roll of gauze — sturdy, lightweight, and practical. It wasn’t a miracle or a whole cure, it wouldn’t magically erase the pain or mend the torn fabric of her sleeve, but it was a tool. Enough to wrap a cut before it festered, to keep a joint steady, to hold herself together for another stretch of ground. Absolutely better than nothing.

She looked up through the branches, catching a glimpse of pale sky between the leaves, and let the smallest nod lift her chin.

Thank you, she thought, but she didn’t dare open her mouth. Her lips felt cracked, and her throat was raw — she needed hydration. She’d have to risk the rest of her canteen.

This was a lifeline. It was enough to keep moving, to survive a little longer in the forest’s relentless grasp.

She paused, letting the sounds of the waking woods settle around her: the distant call of birds, the rustle of leaves, the steady pulse of her own breath.

And then she stood, clutching her pack close, and disappeared back into the shadows, the day’s fight waiting just beyond the trees.

She was due to see what the Careers were up to.