Chapter Text
“My brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side–a little happier, anyway–and children and all animals, if you yourself were nobler than you are now. It’s all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive your sin.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The 10th Hunger Games had been, in their time, a reckoning, but people were already starting to forget. One could blame that on the fleeting memory of the population, or the poor electricity in the districts, or the simple fact that people still didn’t really want to watch children die. A better culprit would be Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, and her enigmatic intern Coriolanus Snow, but no matter. There was work to be done.
First of all, there were too many tributes dying before the Games began. If they were to be spotlighted as candidates, they would have to be not only alive, but in good condition. That meant food. Water. A better place to sleep–the floor of an empty gymnasium, in this case. And, an idea of Coriolanus Snow’s, a training session. An hour where the feebler tributes could learn how to swing a sword. That way, betting on a long shot wouldn’t necessarily mean burning cash.
Mentors and interviews stuck around from the previous year, but instead of Academy students, past Victors had to guide the tributes from their district.
District 4 had a victor, Trawler Castillo, but the Capitol hadn’t kept tabs on him and nobody in his district knew where to find him. So Mags Flanagan and Liam Keaveny, the two tributes from Four, were stuck with a disinterested University student, who dryly explained to them that she got the course credit whether or not they survived.
Mags was eighteen and Liam was fourteen. In her interview, she calmly told Lucky Flickerman that she was glad she had been reaped, because it meant she could protect Liam. They were neighbours back at home. This drew awws from the crowd, but confusion as well.
“Do you mean to say that you would let him win? If you were the last two tributes?” Lucky asked, completely perplexed.
“I don’t just mean to.” Mags crossed one leg over the other. “I will let him win.”
Liam’s interview was controversial as well, but in a different way. He, too, described his devotion to Mags and his gratitude for her protection. Then he went on to recount his older sister’s death in the previous Games. Her name was Coral. She and Mags had been friends.
If Liam’s goal was to get sympathy from the audience, he succeeded. District 4’s story was too compelling, too heartwarming. An older tribute, prepared to selflessly give her life for her district partner, so he could make it home when his sister hadn’t? Neither tribute had many bettors, but they had plenty of donations.
Interest in District 4 only increased when the Games began. Another change: the arena. The Gamemakers had spent months toiling away, figuring out how to adapt a natural landscape into a contained battlefield. The terrain and weather would provide new difficulties for the tributes. But for Mags and Liam, the terrain was nothing less than a blessing. The tributes were blindfolded, transported in a van and a hovercraft, and deposited in a ring around a pile of weapons. When Peacekeepers removed the blindfolds, Mags gasped out loud. It was an island.
Craggy hills dotted with palm trees gave way to sandy beaches, the tide lapping eagerly at the shore. The harsh sun beat down on the tributes. Nobody was quite sure how the Games would unfold. The hovercraft lifted away, and all 24 children stood there, uncertain. Across the circle, Mags looked at Liam and nodded.
District 4 didn’t bother with the bloodbath. They took off, hurtling down a nearby hill, stumbling and rolling into the sand. Nine died on that first day, many of them picked off by an alliance formed between districts 1, 2, and 10.
Mags and Liam managed to find a secluded sea cave on a shore far from the bloodbath. Both were exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, their knees bleeding from scrambling up rocky cliffs and trampling through bushes. It was their popularity in the Capitol that granted them salvation, at the beginning–fine-tuned drones gifted them bottles of water, to sustain them throughout the night.
While the big alliance roved through the arena, finding and slaughtering the weaker tributes who had managed to hide, Mags and Liam weaved nets from seagrass. Liam went beachcombing and found a rusty but thick fishhook washed up on the shore.
“The arena must be off the coast of District 4,” Mags speculated. The line was cut from future tapes of the 11th Games.
They spent the day fishing and trawling the shallow waters, and the evening roasting their catch over a sputtering fire. The Capitol’s gifts were mostly divided between the pair from 4 and the larger alliance, who were relentlessly purging their half of the island. As Mags took first watch that night, eating a bread roll from the Capitol, the surviving members of the alliance chased down the boy from 5 and rolled his gushing body into the sand. There were twelve left when morning rolled over the arena.
“Our odds are twice as good as they were at the beginning,” Mags said, voice tiredly, morosely cheerful. “In a few days you’ll be home with your siblings again. And you’ll be a Victor! Better start thinking of how you’re going to fill up that big house.”
She leaned forward and ruffled his hair.
Liam smiled softly and hesitated a moment before saying, “I don’t want you to die, Mags.”
Thousands of Capitolites leaned closer to their television sets, enraptured.
“I know,” Mags murmured. “But only one of us can survive this. And I don’t want you to think I’m being selfless, Liam. I’m doing this for myself as much as I’m doing it for you. If I lived–if I couldn’t protect you–it would be worse than dying for me.” She blinked tears out of her eyes, then grinned again. “So do us both a favour and survive, alright?”
Everyone in the Capitol was rooting for them. But two quiet days of fishing and splashing in the water was enough.
It was the second time muttations were released into the arena; the beginning of a longstanding tradition. On the alliance’s side of the island, a large drone descended from the sky, carrying a gigantic tank full of thrashing creatures. The fanged, amphibious mutts only killed a couple of tributes, but they scattered the rest. That afternoon, Mags and Liam snapped to attention at the sound of footsteps coming up the hill.
When the pair from District 8 staggered over the hill, to the cave’s aquatic entrance, Mags and Liam were ready. They fought in the water, and though the District 8 tributes had weapons, they couldn’t swim at all. The female tribute managed to pierce Liam’s leg with a spear before Mags tackled her with a net and held her underwater until she stopped breathing.
It ended when Mags speared the boy through the shoulder. But not before he could drive his axe into Liam’s side.
Hauling a sobbing Liam out of the water, Mags made for the shore. They were slow, but thankfully the boy from 8 was too injured to follow. When they stumbled upon a grove, tucked away from the rest of the arena by thick foliage, they collapsed on the ground. Mags bandaged Liam’s wound with gauze from a Capitol drone. By morning, the gash was dripping pus and Liam was incoherent with fever.
Mags was just managing to coax some water into Liam when the alliance came. They heard the group tramping through the undergrowth and staggered away, Mags practically dragging Liam.
“There’s a lake up there,” she huffed. “They can’t follow us into the water.”
But the remaining members of the alliance–the boy from 1 and both from 2–were faster. Mags and Liam were nearing a cliff that dropped down to the lake when they realized that.
Liam grabbed Mags by the shoulders. “You go, Mags. I can’t run, and if you don’t go, they’ll kill us both.”
“I’m not leaving you to die!” Mags hissed. She glanced at the tributes, coming swiftly up the hill. “We can still get down the hill. Maybe we can…”
She trailed off. Liam, too, was looking at the approaching pack of tributes. She knew what he was about to do only a split second before he did it, and it wasn’t enough. Liam reached out and shoved Mags down the tumbling cliffside.
When she came up from the water, he was dead.
She spent the rest of the day lying in a crevice of wet sand, tucked away between rocks and water. There was no easy way for the alliance to get to her, so they found other targets. Three cannons went off at nightfall. They returned to the lake’s periphery, planning to find her in the morning before splitting up.
They left the boy from 2 on watch. He didn’t notice a disturbance on the surface of the water, and was almost nodding off when the shadow crept up behind him. Mags slit his throat with Liam’s fishhook and left him burbling on the shore. The girl from District 2 went the same way. Mags grabbed the dagger from her hand and plunged it through the heart of the boy from 1, just as he was blinking awake. For a moment, no victory was announced. That was it? Mags kneeled in the sand, chest heaving, bloody and bright against the darkness. She looked up in horror as a hovercraft descended from the sky. The claw had to snatch her from the water, swimming furiously away from its grasp. It was the first time they sent a hovercraft for the Victor.
“Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Victor of the 11th Annual Hunger Games, District 4’s Mags Flanagan!”
She would eventually become known as an institution of the Hunger Games, famous across Panem, the gem of the Victors, the best mentor any tribute could wish for. But as the claw lifted her into the air, she was paralyzed with terror. Just before the hatch opened up to swallow her, she began to scream. The broadcast cut off after a second, but for that second, everybody in the Capitol heard her calling for Liam, and asking desperately to be forgiven.