martyrdom

Pepper had just finished an afternoon run down the mountain, hands on her knees, when she looked up and found herself wandering through the tall grass over by the mill. It was on the other side of the town, but Pepper didn’t even think to question it, putting her hands out and running them along the blades that reached nearly waist height, remembering when Lumba used to tease her when she was still shorter than the tallest of them. She giggled, and spun around in the sunlight until a noise startled her. She looked up and saw Rhea. 

It didn’t occur to her to try and place where she knew Rhea from. She let out a mad giggle and ran over to the other girl. “I just live for days like this,” Pepper said with a grin. “If you stand still enough you can feel what it really means to be alive!” She grabbed Rhea’s hand and held it as she let the warmth of the sun wash over her.

@rheassurance​

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As much as she wished to stand still and count the seconds passing, Rhea knew she couldn’t. Any moment now, she’d encounter another tribute taking an attempt at her life. Any moment now, she’d have to kill again -- did the boy from District One as much as count as that? She didn’t want to consider it. 

As much as he wanted to offer a comforting squeeze back, Cecil didn’t think he had it in him after what he’d seen during the bloodbath. These people weren’t his friends. They’d sooner stick a knife in his back. Could he say the same about Rhea? As nice as she was, he didn’t trust her any more than the others. Cecil pulled his hand back slowly, offering her a curt nod instead. Though he was never the trusting type, it was near torture having to be so wary of people he was supposed to consider allies.

“Do you think they’d do that? Throw some green, big-eyed freak in here to fuck with us? I don’t like it—this.” he said, gesturing around the room. “Is any of this even real? Are we actually, you know, floating a million miles above Panem?”

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Rhea’s mind was spinning mercilessly just at the consideration. She shook her head with firmness, as if to interrupt Cecil’s spiraling. “No.” The answer was too harsh. She didn’t want to doubt the Gamemaker team, the Capitol. Clearing her throat, and feeling on the verge of crying for no reason, she stepped away from the drawers and compartments. “Are you hurt? Why do you even need the thread?” she drifted off to something else entirely, to distract herself from the very real possibility of encountering aliens. But if the aliens were in the arena, it meant they were made by Gamemakers. And if the aliens were fake, didn’t it mean that the arena was, too?

Rhea’s voice was projected into her helmet, tinny speakers blaring in her ears. Summer’s heart rate sped up further. She didn’t need this stupid mirror, but getting away from this empty handed would feel worse than seeing how tired she looked every time she’d catch sigh of her own reflection. The Capitol was watching her as the sister of a victor. Gatlin was watching her and banking on her to get out of that Arena. She wasn’t about to disappoint anyone. “Then let go,” Summer croaked out, wondered how her own voice sounded to Rhea. “Let go of the mirror and you can get out of here. I won’t do anything to you.”

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“Where the hell am I?”

Cecil had spoken aloud only to find a robotic voice answer from a speaker system above him. After having escaped the bloodbath in one piece and shedding his heavy suit, the ship was eerily quiet now that he was by himself. He whipped his head around expecting a hologram, a robot, a mutt—anything. The disembodied voice only made him feel that much lonelier. He knew that they would be watching, listening, but it annoyed him that he couldn’t even be alone with his own thoughts. Worse was that someone else might hear it too, like a homing beacon telling everyone within earshot where he was. Well, shit.

Ducking into the quarters lined with workstations and monitors, Cecil waited as if the robotic voice would provide him further instructions. When nothing followed, he decided to take his chances on another question. 

“Where’s Rhea? The tribute from the Capitol?”

Silence. No, that would have been too easy. He would have to find her himself, probably scoping out one of the areas she would be most familiar with.

“Is there a medical center here or some kind of hospital wing? Can you tell me how to get there?”

The directions came quickly and Cecil had to move fast to keep up. Eventually, he reached the med-bay only to find that the first floor was empty. He’d be shit out of luck if he didn’t manage to meet with Rhea at the one place he thought she would be. Climbing up the stairs to the second floor, Cecil let out a sigh of relief as he spotted her and approached with his hands up as if to say that he was unarmed. 

“It’s just me. I have some thread from the cornucopia. It might be of better use to you, though. Did you find anything useful up here?”

@rheassurance​

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Rhea walked and walked, lighter after removing her space suit, and exposed, and grateful to be alive. Her own steps took her down a tunnel, seemingly never-ending. A couple of right turns later, there she was, somewhere loosely resembling what she knew best. It was dumb not to stick around.

When a voice broke through her frozen meditation, she turned around with panic. It didn’t relax her significantly to see Cecil, even though they’d talked about allying. They did, but now Rhea almost died. Still, a gasp of relief exited her lips. Then, he offered thread, and she wanted to argue that she didn’t need any, but her hands were already stretched out, taking any help she could get. Howsoever, thread wasn’t useful for now. All she could feel was that her wrist was probably splintered, courtesy of her encounter with Summer. Thread didn’t help, but emotional support did. With her hands stretched, she squeezed Cecil’s hand. The move hurt.

“I did not look in the drawers. I keep worrying a monster-- a mutt is going to come off. How are you feeling? Are you ready?”

Rhea doesn’t have time to look up and admire the skies. The stars are invisible from the Capitol and its lights anyway. This immediately makes no sense to her, but she imagines it’s a simulation. She imagines this is an exciting opportunity. She doesn’t regret pulling strings to be Reaped. She really doesn’t, she shakes her head and lies to herself. 

No, instead, Rhea purses her lips together. It’s difficult to breathe under such a costume, and it’s the skin she’ll be wearing for the rest of her life or until enough people die. Either way, brutal. It makes her real skin, deep deep underneath, crawl. The black can swallow them. And it will. She’s sure it will. Immediately, she dreads this, although the apparent lack of insects serves as comforting enough for her not to lose it on spot. 

Before her stand the other tributes. It’s insane. The countdown never comes, but somewhere in time, as they all keep waiting, Rhea figures out there’s a tick, a something with rhythm and sense. When it stops, people start moving, jumping, making an air bridge between the pods they found themselves in and the shining Cornucopia. The lights never blinded her, but at this point, she cannot look in the direction of the gap, in the direction of everything dangerous. There it is, one jump to count for all steps she’s ever taken. One jump that could potentially end it all.

Rhea braces herself, closes her eyes shut, and dives in. The floor underneath her soles she can hardly feel, but she is alive. There are no stars here as well -- which is a disappoint, though not a very educated expectation. Someone else -- someone taller -- grabs her arm. It’s a boy with a plan, and it takes her two seconds to recognize he is a Career. All the panic alarms ring off. The boy breathes something into his helmet and, to Rhea’s surprise, she can hear it microphone-clear.

“Sorry, dear, Capitol always goes first.” He’s pitiful in his tone, and he pulls her hard to push her off the platform for no reason other than a thirst for survival. Rhea finds herself hurt and offended. There is virtually no chance for her to pull through, but she cannot have done all this just to die in the first moments. Breathing heavily, she glues to him. She tries to cling to him. The air is weird. She grabs at his shoulders, not to be sent off to a slow and painful death. 

Vix followed her, pulling the band from her wrist to tie up her hair away from her face as they walked. “There is an insane amount of waste” she commented, nodding to the rubbish bins at every corner that most likely contained things Vix would never think to throw away in a million years back home. “The bathroom on my floor is bigger than my whole apartment in six, so it’s a lot to take in”

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Pepper watched the Capitolite carefully. She didn’t know what “fine” meant for someone from the Capitol. “What, um, what did you manage to do?” she asked. She wasn’t sure if she trusted her to tell the truth, but it seemed like a good question. Besides, she was supposed to be making friends this week.

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For a moment, wariness passed through her mind, but she figured there was no point to it. This was no secret, and she was speaking to someone visibly younger. Rhea simpered with mature radiance, suddenly. “I bandaged and cleaned the dummies’ wounds. What about you? Did you handle it alright?”

Like Moxie, Rhea seemed too optimistic for his liking. Maybe it was a Capitol thing. He’d like to see them last a week in Twelve then hear what they had to say about human decency. “Rhea. I like that,” he repeated. “I’m Cecil. You’re from the Capitol, right? You have that look about you.”

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“My name?” she was thrown off, unsure whether shaking hands was a custom in Twelve as well, and so making a vague half-gesture, ending up with her hand on her waist. She then dusted off her white tennis skirt slightly, once appearances were brought up. “Oh. Thank you. You too, even if you’re not from here. I’m sure people like you very much already because you’re so pretty.”

He nodded with interest at the names she mentioned. “Well, I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we’re very excited to see those alliances prosper in the Arena.” The crowd gave an affirmative cheer, after an inviting swipe of Calix’s hand. 

“A healer?” Calix raised his brows and gave the crowd a moment to react to the statement. “So you must be an invaluable asset in any alliance, in that case. Would you say your training has prepared you to survive in the Arena, more so than others?”

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“I actually don’t think I’m better or worse prepared than the rest. Just very differently. I know there have been plenty of impressive nurses, doctors and healers from all over, but I studied in the Capitol, and I have more experience with modern medicine, as well as the natural.” Rhea tried to play the card of what she had that the others didn’t, but she stopped, not wanting to come off as boastful. 

Instead, she threw Calix a disarmed, good girl smile, and shrugged, as to say this is me. “We’ll see if I can survive better. I definitely hope and think it should be the case!”

Rhea stepped in, careful with her every step, as if the floor were some sort of lava. Looking up at the Gamemakers made for a vertiginous sight, but she smiled through the anxiety, trying to focus on whatever little plan she had sketched for herself. This wasn’t going to be a Ten, but she had to make sure it wasn’t about to be a One either. Without the slightest clue on what they were expecting, she stepped ahead.

“Do you have any dummies that the other tributes--?” she inquired, basing her plan on other people having hurt a ton of the props. But a lot of people haven’t gone in, only Avenue. The Gamemakers didn’t even shake their heads. Rhea’s cheeks faltered, but she understood. She nodded, and then looked back at the trainer assisting. They shrugged, a wordless apology.

And so Rhea went on and grabbed, against her will, a knife -- the least dangerous thing she could be wielding out of the weapons. She never did plan to get to weapons, but now that the original plan was jeopardized, she had to do something, anything. The knife shuddered in her hands, but it wasn’t too heavy, and the chances of herself getting hurt were minimal. Then, she went to the dummy corner, where they were placed on pillars, and trailed her free hand over one’s abdomen. As if having forgotten, she placed the knife down and hugged the doll from behind. It was thicker and weightier than expected. She didn’t even flinch, though.

With her fingers pointing to different spots on her abdomen, she started explaining. “You stab it here, and here, and here, and he’s almost dead. Exactly here, he loses so much blood it’s practically unsavable. Obviously the heart is deadly, but not the lungs. Not the stomach right away.”

But this was all talk. She let go of the dummy and knew she’d gotten to the part she dreaded, the part she didn’t think she’d get to. “Are you sure you have no already holed dummies? From... training, at least?” Looking over her shoulder, she could catch the trainer firmly shaking their head. “That’s a shame. I would have cost you way less money.” As if money were the issue.

By this point, she was stalling, and she did not want to be. So she took the knife back into her hands, and she pushed it, staple-like the way she’d seen doctors, into the dummy’s chest, slashing a diagonal line that was barely avoiding the rib cage. The sight of blood stunned her -- she didn’t expect there to be blood. But, luckily, she was not afraid of blood of all things. Even on her hands, she could keep her focus. The dummy fell flat on the floor. 

Rhea stabbed and inflicted strategic wounds to the rest of the still dolls -- four of them were bleeding by the end of it. A cut throat, the chest slash, a long cut spread down the leg and the knife, now resting into one specific spot of a dummy’s back, lying on its face. Then, she rushed to the medical area of the training room, and quickly grabbed all she could in terms of supplies. Barely able to carry the improvised kit, she dumped them on the floor and knelt by the cut throat. The cut wasn’t so deep -- and for that, she only had her hesitance to blame -- but red was still spreading all over.

Rhea applied pressure to the wound, patting it with a sterile cloth and holding it over for a few seconds at a time before slightly changing the position. After doing this a couple of times, enough for the cloth to be soaked in blood properly, she just held it over the wound, pressing slightly, to stop the hemorrhage. “This is where I’d have injected ranitidine 50mg, metoclopramide 10 mg and, dexamethasone 6mg, but that’s probably not available in the Games,” she said and smiled a little, not particularly looking at any Gamemaker rather than at their shadows from above in perspective.

Then, she passed by each of the other dummies and patiently tried to patch them up, in the order of the severity of the injury. One she stitched up. One she tied a couple of rubber gloves together, then tying them around the dummy’s leg in order to stop the bleeding for the moment being. The last one, with her knife in its back, she was graceful as she removed the knife and then immediately covered the wound and held a chunk of gauze against it with precision. 

“Yeah, but it’s also luck. And I’ve never been the luckiest,” Summer chuckled awkwardly. “I mean, I’m here. Look at me.” The encouragement of the tribute made something warm settle in her chest, something equally lightweight as it was heavy. “You’d be the first Capitol victor, if you won,” she pointed out. 

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“Luck doesn’t cover it when you’re Reaped for the Hunger Games,” she smiled sourly, though being Reaped had nothing with chance in her case. Rhea had planted it, taking tesserae without as much as needing it. In hindsight, that wasn’t the smartest cry for attention. “I know. Is it not strange, thinking it was never done before? It puts things into perspective.”

“Would you mind giving us a glimpse into those potential alliances?” Calix leaned forward a little, while his body was still half angled towards the crowd. Any secret he heard, Panem’s people were also privy to. “Is there anyone in particular you’ve set your eye on for a kill?”

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Rhea simpered, wondering whether the people she talked to and that she considered to be viable options would still go through with it in the arena. It drained the blood in her cheeks to think about potential rejection or, even tonight, them claiming they aren’t actually going to ally with her. Yet, she couldn’t tell Calix that, so she preferred to drop the names. “Cecil from District Twelve, for one. Potentially Vix from District Six, too.” She wasn’t even sure, having talked to the boy once about it, and never at all quite approaching Vix. It was more something Rhea assumed than something that was ever confirmed. 

“As in for killing...” She simply shook her head. “I have nurse training. I’m more a healer overall,” she pressed her hands against her chest, still with a somewhat affected modesty she was not aware she was staging slightly.

“The pleasure is truly all ours,” Calix took her thanks with a gracious bow of his head. “Perhaps you’ll find your way into the Presidential mansion on a victory ball?” A cheer went through the crowd at his words. “But tell me, Rhea, are there any friendships you’ve already formed? Or better yet, found some competition?”

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“I like to think I formed a couple of possible alliances, but we have to see how things will go in the arena. I don’t like the thought of facing the Hunger Games all alone, you see?” she pursed her lips together into a meek, confessional smile, and shrugged sheepishly. “As in for competition, I hope no one wants to kill me particularly, so I’ve done well avoiding that.”

Knox looked at the girl speaking to her and sort of just shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t really call us friends..” She started. Sure, she loved Jeannie and outside of her job, she would consider Jeannie her friend, or even best friend.. But it didn’t seem too professional to be friends with the person you’re hired to guard. “I was her soon-to-be guard.”

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“And you did this for your job? At the expense of your life?” she was surprised, but her tone didn’t lean towards judging, rather than being in awe of the dedication. Truth be told, she hadn’t volunteered, but the stunt she’d pulled was even sadder, and for no reason, too.

Surya liked her tributes this year. They were both promising and unique in their own ways. She imagined both interviews would be attention-grabbing, that Games-lovers would gravitate toward Avenue and lovers of love would gravitate toward Rhea. And they were both very pretty, which always helped. Pretty smart, as well, to be asking a question like this. “You need to know the difference between an ally and a friend, but let your allies think you’re friends. I had good allies, even if they were only my allies for a short while. But I knew not to look at them as my friends. It’s a very difficult line to draw.”

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“I don’t think it’s possible to make friends in here,” Rhea retorted, mainly because she suspected this was what Surya Mirga wanted to hear. She wanted to do well, to woe her mentor and make sure she would help her once she stepped into the arena. “I think what is going to be a little difficult is... stabbing people in the back? If that makes sense? I’m not... I would need to get a little tougher to be able to pull that.”

“this is just your first outfit. I still have to make your second, do you have anything you want out of it?” she held up the piece to rhea. her parade outfits were always a little bit less personalized than her interview ones, but she just didn’t know them as well yet. this was something she could fix.

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“No, of course, I’ll wear it proudly,” she was quick to reassure her stylist, not wanting her to take it personally or think that her work wasn’t much appreciated. “It looks amazing, anyway! I’ve watched your designs for a while now and... your evolution is impressive!”