#118.games

The words echoed in Kelvin’s head as Barrett’s limp body fell to the ground. His own face was still bleeding, the blood that had been slowly dripping from his face to his neck finally landing on his hand. Blood on his hands, literal blood, and the thought of it made Kelvin sick once more. He stood there for a moment, unable to move, his eyes locked on Barrett’s immobile body on the ground, and although he could barely see through the stream of caps flying through the air, he swore a bee landed on Barrett’s nose as Kelvin finally got the courage to move away.

He had to find Viola in this mess, that was the only option here, so as he slowly inched away from his former ally, he grabbed Mel’s ax and his discarded knife from the ground. “It was going to be you, or me, and the moment I realized that, I couldn’t get it out of my head. You would’ve done the same thing, Barrett,” he muttered under his breath as he walked away. And though that may have been true, he did not believe the words leaving his mouth.

Making his way through the mess that was the outside, he searched for Viola in the crowd, trying to remain as silent as possible as to hope to sneak up on her.

It took him awhile to make his way to the principal’s office, his injuries making it hard to travel fast, but he still moved as fast as he possibly could. In his head, he knew that he was the only person left and that there were no more threats or dangers for him to deal with, but that didn’t stop him from worrying that danger was lurking around every corner his passed, that there would be another test he had to take to prove that he was truly victor material.

There was no additional test, the Principal’s office had no trap or trick to it, it was just full of a handful of paramedics, there to help him make his way to the hovercraft that would lift him back to the Capitol. The words being told to him floated in his head, not making it to his brain. He heard “intense blood loss,” “almost dead,” and more phrases of the sorts, his eyes flutterings closed as he was led to a stretcher.

It felt like moments later when he opened his eyes in a hospital bed, his clothing changed to a white hospital gown, the blood stained clothing he was wearing no longer on his body. His backpack was gone, the weapons he had used to take the lives of so many gone, but the two necklaces and the bracelet remained on his person, something to remind him that what he had gone through had really happened, that he hadn’t dreamt the whole thing.

The doctor came in, explained the next steps for a full recovery. His leg would take a bit longer to heal than the rest of his body, he would be in a bit of pain for a while, he would have to come back in a few weeks for a follow up appointment, but that he would be okay.

And then he opened the doors, and his mom and dad and brother filtered into the room, babbling about how proud they were of him and how grateful they were that he had made it out alive, saying that Cyprian was waiting for him back home and that they were so excited to move to the Victor’s Village and how great it was to see him again. For a moment, Kelvin could think about something else than the games, but once his family left, letting him get some more rest for the night, the first nightmare came.

Every nightmare after that would be similar, something to do with someone’s death he was involved in, their last words haunting him, the bees refusing to leave him alone even after he had left the arena for good.

Doctors could fix his body, but they couldn’t fix his mind.

For each stop on his victory tour, there is something that nags at Kelvin’s heart. In the Capitol, he thinks of Melpomene’s smile, the way her hair shines when the light hits it, the children that she would have been able to teach. He thinks of Milo, his intelligence, his obsession with history. In One, he thinks of Orion, his bracelet burning the skin around his wrist. He refuses to take it off. At this point, his life was worth twenty-six, but the bracelet still weighed heavy on his arms. He thought of the twins, Olivia who didn’t deserve to die in the manner that she had or quite frankly at all, the life she could have lead had she not been forced to take her sister’s place, and Viola, who in the final moments of the games had forced Kelvin to stand up and take the victory for his own. As much as he hated to admit it, he would be dead in the ground if it were not for her.

In Three, he thinks of Maeve, of how he would not have gotten anywhere without her compassion and her willingness to trust new people. In Three he seeks out her younger sister, he gives her Maeve’s hat, he tells her that she’s special, and he gives her money and a card for her birthday. He breaks the computer chip necklace in two, so that each of them can have a piece of it, and he makes sure that she knows how much her sister meant to him. In four, he thinks of Sybil, he thinks of the burial traditions in four, of the fact that even if heaven doesn’t exist and even if her and Sierra are not together in the sky, they are together at sea, and he hopes that they are resting peacefully now that they are together again. He thinks of Sed, he thinks of his kindness, of the fact that he would never know who killed Orion for sure, of the guilt he felt when he found out they were friends.

In Five, he thinks of the boy he killed in the first few minutes of the games, he thinks of who he had been then and who he is now, he thinks of how the entire course of the games could have been different if that boy had killed him in the beginning. In Twelve, he thinks of Barrett, his anger and frustration and all the faux niceties that Kelvin had been fed by him throughout his time spent with the tributes, how he hadn’t seen the imminent betrayal earlier.

Each District, it is the same speech, met with similar reactions, some of the crowd cheering for him and some seeming half-hearted, as if Kelvin wasn’t the victor they would have picked if they could.

By the time he gets back home to his family, things are different. Their home is under constant watch, life doesn’t seem the same. He is more aware of the time he has on this earth, more aware of the opportunity he was given that day when Viola refused to take the victory for herself.

There is not a single person in Two who is not ecstatically proud of him, who is not overjoyed to finally have a victor to claim as their own. They shake his hand, pose for pictures, ask him probing questions that he doesn’t want to relive ever, let alone only a few months after the events in question occurred.

And by the time he ends up back in the Capitol for his Victory Ball, a celebration for things that he doesn’t believe are worth celebrating, he’s put on a blank face, he’s gotten better at grinning and bearing it, and he is ready to face the games to come.

If he can help one person from his home come back alive, that will be enough to make it all worth it in his eyes, that will make him understand why Viola got him to stand up and keep fighting.

And then he could swear that he heard the door open.

His head whipped towards the door to see if anyone had come in, confused to note that the room was still uninhabited besides him and the librarian. Suddenly feeling compelled to stand, he tucked his pen in his waistband, his eyes wandering as he slowly rose to his feet. 

That’s when he heard the bees. He couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from, and his head began moving rapidly to try and figure out where they were. The buzzing seemed to get closer and closer, making the hair on his arms stand up and his shoulders hunch closer to his neck, his eyes fluttering closed as he tried to block the sound out.

It seemed as if the harder he tried, the louder the sound was, and then it turned to the sound of explosions. They were small, they were in the distance, but Kelvin still ran for cover, hiding under the table due to the sound. He sat there for a good thirty seconds before poking his head out from under the table, checking for any damage, and then the bees started up again. 

He needed to leave, that was his one thought, so he shoved the books back on to different shelves haphazardly, not caring about returning them to their original position, and ran to the door, almost running away from the insects himself. He pushed open the door, grateful to hear the sound of something besides himself, and collapsed to the floor next to Mel.

No words left his mouth, he wasn’t sure if she would be able to hear them, but he held his ink covered arm up to her, as he began to throw up on his blood-stained shirt. // starter for @melpomenexrhode, sector 5, the main corridor

Death was something that Kelvin had never been good at facing, purely due to the fact that he never had to face it until now.

He never knew his grandparents, they had died long before he was born, so there hadn’t been any deaths in his family for ages. Even Intel, the family cat, was about twenty years old and healthier than any animal he had ever seen.

Death was not something Kelvin Greengrass knew how to handle, but now he was forced to handle it.

Walking in to the gym, his finger was still running its way along the bracelet on his wrist. He could barely take his hands off of it, afraid that if he did it would crumble to dust on the floor below him. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, was focusing more on Orion’s blood on his pants and Maeve’s blood on his shirt and the feeling that everything was going horribly, horribly wrong, so when the ball first hit him in the stomach, it took him by surprise.

His head snapped up, taking in the gym. It was then he looked at his arm and remembered reading about the dodgeballs. This was not a place he wanted to be in, but as he turned around to leave, he stared right in the eyes of the guardian mutt, letting him know that leaving was not an option.

Kelvin wanted to desperately step past it, leave this stupid place and hide away and catch his breath for a moment, but he had dealt with death enough in the past thirty minutes, and facing his own was something he didn’t think he could handle.

So, he turned around, walked back in to the gym, and lied down on the floor just as a computerized voice spoke.

“Five pushups.”

This was easy, Kelvin thought, and he flipped over onto his stomach, easily following the instructions and completing the task asked of him.

“Ten sit-ups.”

No break, Kelvin thought to himself with a sigh, but easily flipped over and began to complete the next task asked of him, digging his toes in to the gymnasium floor to keep himself grounded as he did them.

This went on for a while, the tasks remaining at a similar level of difficulty, until something in the computer voice switched, making it sound sterner and more serious and more dangerous.

“Three hundred sit-ups.”

Kelvin’s attention shifted to the ceiling. “Seriously?” he asked out loud, unclear if this was supposed to be some sort of joke.

The mutt standing by the door growled at him, as if to tell him that it wasn’t a joke, that this was mandatory, and that if he did not comply, there would be a bigger punishment waiting for him.

He sighed, rolled on to his back and closed his eyes, trying his hardest to focus on the task at hand as he began, counting out loud and under his breath.

One. Orion’s home.

Two. The number of people he had killed in the last hour.

Three. Maeve’s home.

It took all of his self-control to refrain from crying.

Four.

Five.