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“Did you plan to kill her?” Asks Mia, breaking the silence, gaze leveled unwavering at Roy.
“What?”
Everyone in 12 remembers Roy, and remembers the girl who was his district partner. Jade, a slight girl from the seam like him.
Roy and her must have crossed paths before the games, might have even known each other. Might have been friends.
And he’d strung her along, striking a partnership for the first half of the games. Then he bashed her head in while she slept beside him, and before they could pick up her body he had tried to siphon off her blood into his water flask.
There’s a reason, Mia thinks, that only one Victor is ever in the district. She feels a disgust just thinking about him.
“Oh, don’t ask him that.” Scolds Ollie, swatting her hand where it rests on the silverware.
“I didn’t plan anything.” Says Roy, not even seeming bothered by the question. He looks back out the window, where the train passes along a wild landscape. “Things just happened.”
Roy Harper’s lying to her- everyone saw the traps he laid. They were smart, for the barren desert he was working with. He stayed too close to the bodies for them to be taken, once they were dead, and scavenged them.
He would drink their blood, and if that’s not the horror of it. A lot of them did that games, but none of them like Roy- none of them would try to hoard bodies, none of them were so systematic about it. None of them would grin at the cameras and go on to talk about how they hadn’t felt a thing on national television. And this is the man who’s meant to mentor her through the games. She might as well be on her own.
Deep breath. It can’t be that different than killing Richard.
—//
Roy scarcely believes that he’s going to see them again until the train pulls into the station.
Even as he catches a glimpse of someone from the window, standing on an empty platform, he doesn’t let himself hope. His brain, the part of him that has been running nonstop since Jade, doesn’t let up. It’s a trick, it whispers, the Capitol would never let you have them. They’ll have starved while you were gone. They’ll hate you for what you did.
They’ll hate you.
They’ll hate you.
It sticks in his chest, as he pads down the luxuriously carpeted halls. The gaggle of staff- camera crew and handlers, that’s been with him the whole journey, are still close behind, but their chatter is nothing to the inside of his head.
Until the doors slide open, and everything goes silent.
He steps over the grate automatically, closer to the lone man on the platform. Him, that man that Roy would imagine rocking him to sleep every night in the arena. He breaks into a run, crashing into the arms of his dad.
Bo smells slightly different, and his hairline has creeped a touch higher since that last meeting before he was sent away. But when he wraps his arms around Roy tightly, tucking his chin over Roy, it’s so painfully familiar. It’s everything he’s ever wanted.
“Roy.” He croaks. “Royboy.” And Roy sobs. His brain scolds that that’s not what Roy The Tribute would do. He feels eleven, and half his actual size. He feels enveloped in warmth.
There is no one else at the station, not even Bird, and he surely isn’t supposed to be playing their reunion like this, but Roy can’t care. Not when his dad is rocking him back and forth and petting through his painfully short hair. Murmuring soothing platitudes.
“God. You’re back home.”
—//
He finds he can’t sleep on his own.
The house he’s been gifted is lavishly furnished, his bed large and warm and soft. Large gates surrounding the village, that no one could get through.
Still, Roy’s wracked with night terrors, and when it’s not that, insomnia. His brain catastrophizing every creeping shadow into an attacker, every noise into his imminent death.
The only place he feels any amount of safe at night is with Bo, wrapped in his arms. He can’t stop the night terrors, and he can’t stop his increasingly paranoid brain, but when Roy is breathing in his scent- even though he’s fifteen and far too old to do this, even though Bo seems uncomfortable- he feels protected.
It’s a stupid notion. Bo has always been sickly, and between the two of them the only one with any experience in proper, even violence is Roy. But night after night, he creeps into Bo’s bed and nestles under the covers with him.
He’s always hesitant, just the slightest bit wary beyond even the fact that Roy’s too old for this. Everyone is, around him, and that’s the few people who will still talk to him. Bird, though he’s trying, is particularly obvious about thinking he’s disgusting.
Roy feels disgusting. He can’t blame them. His stomach clenches with guilt every time he thinks about Jade, and when Bo had told him he needed to apologize to her parents and brother, he had almost thrown up.
He tries to put it out of his mind, but it actively resists. It feels like everything demands his attention at once, until and after it’s solved, and this is the easy part. The part where he won.
He wonders if it ever stops. If the only solution is stopgaps like these.
—//
The first thing they did when he won was put him into surgery.
He’d lost his arm in the final skirmish- and though there’s an unsettlingly realistic recreation fused onto his real body now, complete with the little freckles on his hand, he remembers thinking as he went under that he might be a goner after all. But he woke up with it shiny and new and completely void of scarring.
So he tries not to use his arm.
Well. He tries not to use the arm, because this one feels nothing like his. He remembers his arm, in startling detail like he does with everything else- he remembers watching it tear off, discarded like a piece of trash to the dirt.
And he remembers waking up and realising it was back. It was back, and that fooled him for all of five seconds- before he moved it and realised that it didn’t feel at all the same. It’s slow, inarticulate, and just heavy enough to notice. Though he can’t ever see it, he’s constantly checking in the mirror for a sideways list to his walk.
He’d been distracted soon, by the exit interviews and the drive home and the reunion, but the issue had followed him into the weeks when he lived at home and then the victory tour after. Bird had kneaded the fake skin with a disconcerted expression- how did they do that? Can you feel it?
Years later, he’s banged it up enough that the pinky twitches constantly. Whenever someone tries to touch it, they look surprised at how cold it is, how square the bones are. It’s pretty, and it’s adequate, but it’s nothing he wants. He wishes he’d just kept his stump.
—//
“You need to apologize to Jade’s parents.”
There’s a certain voice Bo adopts, when he doesn’t want to be having the conversation he is. Roy, almost absurdly now, associates it with the dread of scoring low on a test, but it makes sense that it would come out for this.
He sounds heavy, tired. He doesn’t look up from the broadcast they’re watching, but Roy can feel the weight of his attention even if it’s physically absent.
He’s been dreading this. He doesn’t- like remembering what he did to her. What her face looked like, when her eyes shot open just before she gave out.
And the character he was playing- Roy, the tribute, hadn‘t felt sorry. He’d loved it. He was one of the ones who relished in violence, and to look at Jade’s parents after they’ve watched him say all that…
He can’t even walk down the street of the Seam. Maybe someone would hurt him, but that’s not what it’s about. He’s ashamed. It was the Hunger Games, but you don’t kill your district partner. You don’t learn to stomach hot blood. Everyone in the districts knows that, no matter how much the Capitol gets off on depravity.
“…they’re mourning.” Says Bo. “They need an apology. They had to watch their daughter die on live TV.”
Roy nods, numbly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me.” He says. “But their daughter didn’t come home.”
—//
Ollie, on principal, tries not to get involved with the games.
He mentors, in theory, sure. He’s required to be there for the Reaping, every year. But he’s not gonna make these kids think they’ve got a chance. They’re slated for death, and they’re terrified, and lying to them only serves the Capitol bastards who get off watching it.
(He can’t stand to be in charge of a child’s life and fail.)
But it was a shock, to him, every time he learned something new this year. Both tributes made it past the bloodbath. The boy killed the girl. He’s taken down the tributes from 1. He’s drinking human blood. He’s in the final 8, 5, 3, 1.
Ollie’s supposed to be coaching him through the closing ceremonies, and... he’s never gotten the opportunity to flake on that before. It’s just been year after year after year of letting the families know what they already saw on TV, and then checking out completely until whichever career asshole’s Victory Tour.
The kid wakes up from surgery slowly, marveling over his repaired arm, and then- even with the IV in, guzzling the pint of orange juice that was by his bedstand. He’ll throw all that up later, Ollie thinks, but- he much have been thirsty. He’s not sure what the little butcher was thinking, but drinking blood is the kind of thing that people only do when they don’t have other options. He thinks he’s heard about cannibalism in the games before, but it’s… really caught fire with him. It honestly isn’t the most objectionable thing he’s heard, of what he’s done, but the Capitol’s gone wild with it. He bets in a few months there will be vampire books in every shop window.
Ollie feels bad. Roy’s got no idea what’s going to happen to him for winning.
When the kid finally looks at him, the very edge of his mouth still has a drop of orange. His tongue darts out to catch it.
“You.” He says, like he’s not sure what to do with the fact that he’s there. “…well.” and he doesn’t sound happy, or triumphant, but maybe something like it. Like he’s just won the Hunger Games. “It looks like I’m alive.”
—//
“What’re you still doing up here?” Asks Ollie, a few hours into the games. “Get some sleep.”
“The girl isn’t dead, Ollie.” Says Roy, not looking up from the monitor screens. The boy had died in the bloodbath- stupid, the exact opposite of what Roy had told them to do, they were too skinny and fragile to fight anyone- but Mia was still out there. Running.
Ollie frowns, looking over them. “Huh. Well, it’s only been a few hours.”
“I know.” He says, and he’s not getting his hopes up- he just likes to keep half an eye on it, even though god knows he’s not that much help. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have some girl to fuck?”
“Don’t you have some drugs to shoot?” He retorts, instantly. Looks him up and down. “Your brother said hi, back in Twelve. I didn’t get the chance to tell you.”
Roy sighs, watching as Mia scrapes a pile of mushrooms off a rock. His hindbrain gives him a vague poke, but they don’t… look poison. He thinks he’s had them before, albeit cooked and doused.
He doesn’t want to think about Bird right now. Not ever, but especially not this time of year. Not since he stopped going back to 12.
—//
Dinah rolls the small tube of lipstick in her hand. “And he isn’t bluffing.” She says, into the uncomfortable silence. “Luthor will kill them, if you don’t do this.”
He pulls his lips back, teeth bared. It’s not an angry motion- it looks more dreading than anything, staring at his feet like he is.
“You’re… hazing me, aren’t you.”
“I promise I’m not.” She says. God, she wishes Ollie had just sucked it up and had this conversation with him. “It’s real.”
“You can’t seriously want me to- to sleep with them.” His eyes flick to the door of the restroom, where you can faintly hear the party outside still going.
She exhales. “I don’t want you to have to do this. But it’s our reality.”
“This can‘t be real.” He looks agitated. She really, really doesn’t want to get in a fight with a teenager because his mentor was too chicken to do his job.
“Listen-”
“What’s it like?” He interrupts, face blush red. It’s so different than how he acts in public. “I’ve never- I mean. I’ve never done this before.” She doesn’t know what she expected- it’s not like he’s had a lot of time in the last year to have a girlfriend his age.
“It’s…” she uncaps her lipstick, not for any particular reason. It’s one of those fancy Capitol ones she treats herself to, the ones with entire little scenes suspended inside that are more art than cosmetic. “Not like the games. It’s more like an endurance test.”
“An endurance test.”
“You just need to… perform, and go along with it, and eventually it will be over. And your family will be safe.”
Silence. He looks entirely overwhelmed, and she wishes that she was just hazing him. To say, no, surprise! It was all a poor taste joke. You never have to do this. She wonders how she looked when her mother told her about this.
“I can’t-”
—//
Sleep.
He can’t sleep.
Bo’s chair is empty- the one he always sat at, when they ate dinner. The house changed, but the seating arrangement didn’t- they stayed clustered at one end, Bo at the head of the table and him and Roy on either side.
Every time he lies in bed, he sees the blood spilling over the square. Illegal trading, was the official charge, which is punishable by death. But almost everyone in this part of the district does it, and the Peacekeepers have turned a blind eye to it so far.
Bird knows that there must have been something else. He knows who must have had something to do with it.
Roy saws at his pheasant quietly, across from him. Every time Bird watches him drink, he’s transported for a split second back to their old house. Sitting on the couch with Bo, watching Roy do… things, that they all refuse to talk about.
Roy wouldn’t kill their dad. He knows that much. For everything- everything that must be wrong with him, he’s not mindlessly evil. Bird just doesn’t understand him. Or anything he does.
It’s getting harder and harder to tolerate. Their dad is dead. He can‘t keep doing this. There’s no one to deal with Roy besides him anymore. He doesn’t think he’s sleeping either.
“I’m gonna go to bed.” He mutters suddenly, pulling his jacket around him. He feels the need to leave the room often, since they moved- not just around Roy, but mainly with him. Sometimes the house is just too unfamiliar. Smells like wax. “You didn’t finish.” Roy points out almost immediately.
“I’ll do it for breakfast tomorrow.” Bird says- one thing that neither of them have lost in the last year is their hatred for wasting food. It feels like a small truce, a piece of his brother back from someone who he can’t recognize, most days. Some things are maybe too deep to get rid of.
Roy’s hair is so short, now. He cut it, apparently, the minute he got to the Capitol for his games, and has only been growing it out in the short intervals when he’s back in 12. Which are growing more and more infrequent, as he travels up more often for thinner and thinner excuses.
“…okay.” Roy says.
—//
He’s so thirsty.
They’ve been lying in this cave for what must have been days now, trying to preserve energy and stay out of the baking sun over the arena. Until…
Until what. Water is not going to magically appear for them, something that surely he and Jade both know.
He can feel himself wasting. He needs to drink something. He’s going to die.
He doesn’t want to die.
Jade shifts next to him, huddled up by him for warmth. He can barely focus on it, between the noise in his brain. Why did it have to be a desert? He would have taken anything else. Freezing to death, as he‘s gotten so close to so many times in 12, must be preferable to this.
He thinks of Bo and Bird watching him. Having to accept an impersonal apology from his useless mentor, and move on with their lives. His stomach cramps.
Jade shifts again. She’s so warm.
She’s so warm. He looks over at her, at the slight blush that’s always present on her cheeks.
There is a rock just by his hand. He would have to throw the body out of the cave before one of the drones could get to it. His tongue is dry, and feels impossibly big in his mouth. His thoughts feel light, like he‘s grabbing them as they slip out a window. He must have lost so much water sweating already.
(Stop it. This is his district partner, he went to school with her. She has a brother and two parents. He’s so fucking thirsty.)
He grips the rock.