"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves," she said back, her voice falling into comfortable skepticism. She inched forward again, trying to make her steps as light as possible.
But what would she do? If this person wasn't Juno? It certainly sounded like Juno. And all things considered, it wasn't like she'd be able to fight particularly effectively in her current state. If this had been someone else, they would have run or rushed her, right?
"I lied," she said quickly, by way of providing an olive branch out. "I don't have a weapon. Had a knife, but the girl from the Capitol got it from me."
She couldn't help but let out a short, nervous laugh at the admission and a pang of surprising disappointment. "Oh. I was hoping you might. If we were going to be... not enemies." Friend didn't seem to land well with Indie, and it made her cautious of the term ally too. "I have tweezers. That's it." She frowned at the small instrument in her fingers-- or where it would be, in the dark.
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Indie's breath caught in her throat at the sound of her name called out from the darkness. She blinked rapidly, clawing at her eyes to knock blood and mud out of them. The voice was small and squeaky - it had to be:
"Juno?" Her voice cracked as she called back into the tunnel. "Is that you?" Stupid. Stupid question. Who would say no in response? Indie pressed her back against the wall and started inching forward as her eyes began to adjust.
"Yeah," she breathed, tensed still-- just in case. "We're still... you know. Friends, right?" she asked into the darkness. She wasn't exactly sure if they'd ever established that they were friends, but... she supposed if they weren't she'd be finding out soon enough.
It felt as if Indigo had been running forever. Her shoulder was warm and painful, her blood seeping through to mix with the dried blood of a past soldier. Her wrist was in agony, but she could still close all her fingers, so it wasn't broken. But when she found a tunnel to drop into, she knew she had to take that option. It would be easy enough to defend an entrance, even if she had no weapons of her own to do so. The only risk would be someone coming through the tunnels on either side.
Which - of course - someone did. Indigo heard the splat of something off to her right as she stepped to the other side of the tunnel, and she dropped low. It was no use - they both knew the other was there. Willing as much confidence into her voice as she could, she called out a lie:
"You turn around, now. I've got a..." she almost said sword, but would that be believable? Also - what if they had a ranged weapon? Her voice faltered. "Bow. And arrows, too. I'm a good shot. Don't come any closer."
Juno sighed out a breath of relief at the sound of a familiar voice. She should be cautious (and she was), but Indie had really seemed to be on her side, right? And considering what she'd just been through, what she'd just done... she didn't want to be alone. She was afraid to be alone.
"Indie?" she squeaked, still holding the tweezers tight in her fist, but peeking her head around the corner, squinting in the darkness and praying it wouldn't mean an arrow to her forehead.
Juno had dropped into the tunnels in the wake of the bloodbath. She didn't want to stay long, she imagined that most of the other tributes would have the same idea, but she needed to take the risk to catch her breath, recover, and regroup her thoughts to strategize her next move.
Juno had never been much of a strategist, that had always been Jade's job as the eldest sister, and Juno hadn't inherited any of that. She caught herself with a prickling, betrayed feeling in her stomach-- she and Jade weren't even related, apparently.
In either case, all she could really do was try to parse out her next best move. She scooped up some of the snow, clumped on the ground near one of the holes in the ceiling, packing it together and pressing against her swollen cheek. It was probably blossoming into a deep purple-red, where the tribute had punched her before she--
She swallowed back bile. Next best move. She continued to move through the tunnels, getting a lay of them, moving carefully and quietly with the tweezers gripped tight in her dominant arm.
After about twenty minutes, she saw something move just beyond her in the shadows. With a soft, unbidden gasp, she dropped the snow, which hit the ground in a soft, slushy splat, and pressed herself against the wall, tweezers at the ready in case she needed to use them.
Drenched in blood and back wet from the snow, Juno struggled to her feet. She could feel her limbs shaking, but it was more of a distant fact, something she didn't have the luxury of acknowledging just yet. Her number one priority right now was to get out, and get out alive.
It had benefitted her once already in the short minute these Games had been alive, so she reached down to snatch the tweezers back out of the snow. Instead of finding the cold metal, her hand intersected with another arm, reaching for the same item.
Juno threw herself to the side by the shoulder, into the body approaching from just behind her, hoping the other tribute might get the message: This is mine, I won it, I earned it, don't take this from me. She didn't want to hurt anyone else, but she certainly didn't want letting go of her only weapon, no matter how small and makeshift, be the reason she died.
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She had failed. Cress had not seen her side. The Gamemakers had not seen her side. The tributes certainly held little sympathy for her, they saw themselves as either equal victims or enthusiastic volunteers. So much for the Vox seeing reason, having empathy for the people hurt by broken systems.
After everything she'd done, everything her family had done, she still stood now in a tattered Vox uniform, shivering from nerves and cold on her platform, blinking as her eyes adjusted and took in the form of the battered Cornucopia in...
The Arena. Not an Arena, the Arena, the one from just after the Dark Days, the one that was outlined in the skyline of the Capitol, emblematic of Panem's history and an architectural staple. Even children who had never seen the Capitol and never would recognized it from schooling, pictures in books, television coverage over the years as a pilgrimage site during other, more elaborate Games. We must remember from whence we came. We must respect the rich history of the Games.
The Vox logic for using it was in there, somewhere, but she didn't have the time to focus on that, wrestling through the fog of fear and panic to focus on what she did next.
She spotted Lyra not far away. Remembered their conversation about what would be expected of each of them, respectively. Juno should run.
As she pulled her eyes away from the Career, her eyes fell on something glinting in the white snow, not far from her. She didn't know what it was-- could barely process any thoughts around the pounding of her heart in her ears-- but it was so close, she could reasonably reach it, and anything was better than nothing, right...?
The gong sounded, startling Juno from her internal world. She hesitated before jumping off her platform-- critical mistake.
Something slammed directly into her, knocking her roughly to the mushy snow. She tasted blood where she hit her cheek, but didn't think much of it, rolling to her back and raising her arms defensively against her assailant.
The other tribute landed roughly over her, knees on either side of her chest. Juno let out a yell, something strangled between a "Stop!" and "Don't!", but her forearms and protests did little to guard a punch landing on her cheek.
Pain bloomed, hot and sharp, and in surprise she choked out a gasp. Her arms dropped in startled reflex, and in the flash of lucidity between the pain and fear, she was pretty sure she recognized the tribute as a boy from the outer districts. Probably used to manual labor. Stronger than her, grittier than her.
She was going to die.
She turned her head the opposite direction in instinctive avoidance of another blow, where something shiny caught her attention again in the snow, not far now. It winked at her, and somewhere nearby there was a scream. Then another. Juno feared the next would be hers.
She shot her arm out, clawing at the ice and snow for the item. She yelped as another punch landed near her collarbone, but her fingers closed around something metal, the freezing smoothness of it biting into her palm.
Juno moved on faith, on a prayer. She didn't know what the thing was, but it was better than nothing, because she was nothing that could fight back on her own. The item closed tightly in her fist, her arm arced up into the neck of her attacker, where she hoped the item might create enough pain for him to relent, for Juno to roll out from beneath him and escape.
Instead, she felt skin give, felt resistance as the metal object sank and sank and sank into flesh.
Juno yanked her arm backward in surprise. Above her, the tributes face went slack, and a horrible, wet choking sound gurgled up from his throat. The item dislodged, and with it came a spurt of blood in a horrible, dark fountain, staining the snow in crimson and the front of Juno's dark green uniform.
He keened, then fell off of Juno, hand weakly clutching his gushing neck.
Juno's stomach turned, and for a moment, she lay beside him, as though stabbed too. The item fell from her hands, and she only then recognized them as a long, sharp pair of steel tweezers, nicer than anything she'd ever seen-- medical grade, perhaps.
Another scream ripped her back into reality. She sat up, trying to not vomit from the adrenaline and putrid, metallic scent of blood covering her front and steaming in the snow around her.
Juno was right. She'd eventually hurt her. Or someone would. It was the Hunger Games. But the fear in Juno's eyes...Sable couldn't hurt her. Sable was supposed to be a threat, supposed to be Brighton. How could she be Brighton if she couldn't even stand to threaten someone in training?
She'd have to talk to Ty about it later. He'd berate her, for sure, but she had no choice.
In the meantime, though...
"Then let's teach you how to not get hurt," she found herself saying. "By me or anyone else." Except Ty, probably. Sable gestured toward the spot on the mat next to her - an offer. "A lot of people think sparring is memorizing different attack combinations, but the basics are really just about weight distribution."
Juno didn't move, not trusting her. "Why help me?" she asked instead, suspicious, afraid the second she stepped on that mat, the Career girl would have her pinned to the ground and humiliate her. Not only did Juno prefer to keep herself uninjured prior to the Arena, she really didn't want to be made an example of to the entire Training Center. And Careers had a history of doing that on screen, so she imagined it wasn't much different behind the scenes, either. "You're not... we're not friends. We're not allies. I don't even know your name."
Cat wanted to chastise the other woman; if she kept thinking down on herself she'd die, that was what happened with nearly every Tribute who didn't see more in themselves, wasn't it? That was how they found their downfall, believing in the lie that Panem, The Capitol, Snow, society – hell even the Vox now sold people. If they weren't of value, if their families couldn't serve whatever the new "greater good" was, they were useless.
She studied Juno for a moment, really taking her in, watching the ripple of emotions over her face that she couldn't fully read and then nodded, gentle, perhaps more gentle than she'd felt with people in months and spoke, "Yeah, yeah of course." Cat's lips tugged up into something that was vaguely a smile and offered, "How's this – step one, we're gonna break some rules, yeah?"
Juno couldn't help herself-- she cast a nervous look in the direction of the nearby Peacekeepers. Her only way out was following the rules, right? And pointing out where maybe, just maybe, they'd actually been breached and that's why she was here?
Still, the urge to prove herself to Cat won out, and she squared her shoulders in a way that Jade might have-- a way she thought looked confident. "Okay," she replied, masking the waver in her voice. "What kind of rules?"
Indigo refocused on the wall ahead of her, pulling herself up another rung. A strained laugh bubbled out of her. "No," she replied. "Back home they hit harder. And I've got sisters who they all know. So."
She slipped for a moment, but her feet found purchase. She grunted as she pulled herself against the wall. "Here though? What are they gonna do? If they put me in prison, great. I don't have to play their stupid little Games. If they kill me? Then great, I don't have to play their stupid little Games." She grit her teeth. "But they won't do shit, because the Games are like only a few days away and I'm irreplaceable at this point. They need me."
The topic was, if nothing else, terrifying enough to distract from the adrenaline coursing through her body, pooling in her stomach as she forced herself to not look down, do anything but look down. She reached for the next handhold, clinging enough to eke a foot up the wall to another fake rock only inches up, but still up.
"I have sisters too," she replied, keeping her mind occupied. Her expression twisted, having nothing to do with the effort of the wall. "Or... or at least, I think I do. It's complicated now."
Colt raised an eyebrow, some things that they got wrong? That was a new one, he hadn't quite heard of that before. "Oh, wait! Do you have a family member fighting with the Vox? Because I know the only reason y'all got put in the bowl was if someone wasn't fighting for Vox. If you do and you ended up in there then I totally think they'd be willing to send you home."
Vox wasn't like the Snow Regime, they weren't supposed to be evil. Surely they would fix an accident like that, and not send someone who was innocent off to die or face the horrors within the arena. "My only worry is will they really pay attention right now? And everyone else will hear you too. If you try and talk to them too loudly."
Juno chewed on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. Colton had a point. As relieved as she was that someone saw her perspective, that indeed it was not fair that she was here, she would have to approach this conversation with the Gamemakers tactfully if she wanted this. She'd have one chance, and she'd have to do it right-- and if she got it wrong in front of everyone else, she might embarrass herself in front of the other tributes at best, and draw enough attention to make herself a target at worst.
She wished she could ask Jade what to do. Jade always knew what to do.
"When else can I talk to them?" she then asked, conceding to the idea that she might need to pursue a more creative route.
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"I do," she nodded confidently. "I can understand why you wouldn't take my word for it, but yes, I really think so." She could understand why Juno would be distrusting. Lyra was a career, and she wasn't so blind to the dynamic of their country that she couldn't see how that would divide them. "I believe in the Games. I think they can be a powerful force for good, and I think we should be proud of them," she continued. "But it doesn't mean everyone who participates willingly has to be a monster. It's not why I volunteered, anyway."
"So why did you?" Morbid curiosity was all that was keeping her from turning and walking away from this girl at this point, because every other instinct in her raised alarm bells. Or, perhaps, this was her survival instinct, what had her sister called the third type of danger response? Fawn? "Why would you want to be here?"
Indigo hoisted herself onto the wall, gently placing her feet on the holds. She pulled herself up one more step before glancing over her shoulder towards Juno. "Yeah, well, I don't like fighting for my life in a state-sanctioned death match that serVES NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO INTIMIDATE ITS CITIZENS!" Her voice steadily grew through the sentence until she was shouting it for all the room to hear.
It caught the attention of one of the guards, who glared at her. She stared back at him, adding: "WHICH WE WERE TOLD WOULDN'T COME BACK!" The guard backed down, sensing that Indigo was ultimately not going to do anything other than shout. With a slight smirk, she returned her attention to Juno.
"But unfortunately, we've all got shit we don't like, and you can either submit to it or face it. And let me tell you: I'm gonna face it." She pulled herself up another few steps. "And I'm hoping you will too."
The outburst startled her, and for a moment, she was afraid the Peacekeepers stationed... well, everywhere, were going to come grab them or haul them away for Indie's insubordination. Eyes wide, her gaze flickered from Peacekeeper to Peacekeeper, fingers frozen tight around the first rock.
Nothing happened.
Something inside of her released, if cautiously, but something new was there too. Her entire life, she'd stayed well out of the way of Peacekeepers for survival, but here... the rules seemed to have changed. This sort of behavior in the power plant would have earned someone lashings, no doubt, but here? Or... under Vox rule?
She frowned, looking back to Indie with a wild thrill coursing through her. They were getting away with this.
Maybe it was the high of being a part of this sort of disobedience for the first time in her life, but it gave her enough push to heave her leg up too, find a hold, then the next. And just like that, she was climbing, following Indie up, if with her heart in her throat.
"You talk to Peacekeepers like that at home?" It wasn't judgmental, instead her tone was filled with an earnest curiosity.
Cat's face fell, because she knew those words from so many Tributes over the Games she had been a part of, bloodied her hands in. No one ever thought they were special, but there was the inherent nature of becoming immediately special by having their name plucked from a bowl to seal a fate. Twice a year certainly made it seem normal, but Cat never forgot who those people were, who the unfortunate children – peers – led like lambs to slaughter were.
"Everyone's special," Cat argued, "Not in that, like, way your parents tell you when you're a kid to stop you from feelin' bad about yourself, but – everyone has their own thing, you – you probably just ain't know it yet, s'okay, you will figure it out though, everybody does."
"I don't have a lot of time to find it." She'd thought she'd had her whole life to figure things out, figure out who she was, what this new Panem meant for her, for her family. Instead, now... now this journey was accelerated and in the name of life or death.
She looked around them, as though the answer might present itself. "Unless being a boring, stupid rule follower is a skill." A pause, then, more hopefully, "Will you help me figure it out?"
She'd forgotten. Sable had been so worried about transforming into Brighton, so determined was she that no one discover her secret sacrifice, that she had forgotten that this was a fight to the death, and that as much as Sable wanted to be the fun, popular girl in the room, that popular girl was a killer. A threat. It was an instinct Sable had always lacked, which was part of why she'd never advanced as far as Brighton had, and part of why Brighton and Tiberius looked down on her as much as they did. But here in this room, Sable was a Career. She wasn't looked down on. She was the one who was supposed to be looking down. And the fear in the other tribute's eyes forced Sable to take her own step back, trying to mask the shock of reality with indifference, or something else that wouldn't betray her true feelings.
"Hey, it's just training," she said softly, thoughts racing. "I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."
"It's-- training for the Hunger Games," Juno couldn't help but blurt. That felt like a very important detail to all of this. Plus, she knew the girl was a Career-- if her mentor hadn't been drilling her on the other tributes already, she would have guessed it by her look. Upper District kids held themselves different. "You're eventually planning to hurt me. So I'll... stay here."
"Nothing physical," Cress assured, though perhaps that only complicated the matter, given their destination. She stepped out of the elevator and moved through the room, peering over her shoulder, "tell me more about your situation, about the ways you've been wronged."
Somehow, that was worse. Not that she'd have been particularly good at any physical demonstrations, either.
"I was-- I helped the Vox. I helped cut the power to the Capitol a few months ago. I couldn't do a lot, I'm just... nobody from Five, you know? But I did what I could. My sisters did too. And then when the war started, my older sister volunteered. We did everything right. We even did more than most people."
Her voice snagged there, on both frustration and a longing pang for her sisters. And... betrayal. She focused instead on keeping up with Cress, not letting herself fall too far behind that she, somehow, broke Cress' willingness to entertain her protest.
"I guess... I guess I was never... I was adopted, but I had no idea, and I have no other family than them. It should count, I should've never been in the Reaping bowl. I'm loyal, we're loyal."
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The harness was terribly uncomfortable, and seemed pointless - it wasn't like the Gamemakers were going to provide such equipment in the Arena. Hell, they'd probably love if someone fell from a cliff face or something like that. But all the same, it was important to learn.
"Juno," she greeted shortly. "Can't say I have." She stepped up to the wall and threw a hand up as high as she could, just barely reaching one of the holds with her fingertips. "But I can say that about a lot of things, all of which are gonna change in the next week. May as well get at least this into the 'yeah, I've done that,' territory." She looked back over her shoulder.
Still, spurred on by the pressure of Indie's eyes on her, she took a step forward and experimented with closing her hands over one of the artificial rocks. It felt strange, manufactured and plastic, but gritty and colored in a way it might be a real rock. She looked up the wall, to where way, way, way up there, there was a ledge for tributes to pull themselves up onto. Her stomach swooped. "I don't like heights," she blurted, a confession she didn't mean to make, but maybe she was trying to spare herself from even more humiliation around Indie when she inevitably couldn't do it.
"Hi, Indigo," Juno greeted, glancing over after a... long stint of staring up the climbing wall. She should climb it. Just go for it. Start. But she'd never climbed anything in her life, and despite the harness that sat around her hips, rigged to catch her instantly and let her down gently if she fell, her hands still trembled and nerves buzzed. She was actually relieved to see Indigo there, even if they'd left things on an awkward note in the cafeteria. She seemed well intended, normal, if nothing else. She could use a dose of normal right now after a morning of being unable to ignore the Careers-- so loud, so strong, so deadly. "Have you ever done anything like this?"
