#location cornucopia

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. 

The Cornucopia should have burned from day one, Hunter concluded with a glare as he was swimming on the island with his mace hanging heavily, in the role of an anchor he didn’t need. That was going to steal a lot of energy that he needed, according to the Eleven male tribute. He didn’t know what he was going to find, but he was so eager to see anyway. And oh, so thirsty: for water, for blood, for a revenge for nothing in particular other than how privileged the two One tributes have been to camp out in the heart of the arena. 

The only refuge during bloodbath was running, it was a lesson he had learned even without actively watching the Games in his time in the Capitol, but it wasn’t a shield he was seeking. As he hurried to find a safe spot to mend his injury in, Hunter decelerated, pressing his heel against the dry earth and turning around, trying to gain control of his well earned weapon by waving it with the healthy hand as the other one hanged without curve by his body, still so it would sting less. 

He was furious, disappointed even, that the arena just opened to them and his body was already aching and that the wound was only going to get worse by the looks of it, without him having done anything worthy of a little bit of compassion from the sponsors in form of bandages and medicine. But of course nobody would waste their money on the idiot who hurried straight into a mace and didn’t scheme his arena actioning beforehand. He was an idiot, and he felt like squeezing the open wound that has soaked his rags in blood and felt soft and gelatinous at touch, just to punish his own stupidness. No time for working against his own demons, howsoever, when he was in open field, staring into the eyes of the scared girl he had ever seen. A year or two older than Jeannie - even resembling her in everything but the jet black hair, but what did Hunter know about Jeannie? He’s seen her for only a short period of his life and his mind could have been setting traps even cleverer than the ones designed by the Capitol. That girl wasn’t Jeannie. She wasn’t his fucking responsibility and blinking at him didn’t make him feel anything but straight fury because she thought she could soften him of all people up with a bit of eyelash batting and a clueless expression. 

There were no words. He left them outside of the arena and undressed his human skin, not even weighing on the fact that he has just killed a killer’s child from District Two. Who cares about killing a stranger? He killed his own family and learned to live with it. There was no more remorse left for him in the world. He ran out of things to be sorry for. He couldn’t ask her what she was staring at, because he didn’t care enough to. If he didn’t kill her, somebody else would, so what was the point in delaying the inevitable?! She was so young, maybe fourteen - but he wasn’t judge of her age. He was judge of her death time as she stood frozen before him. Hunter recognized shock - he’s seen it in himself several times to the point where there was none left - but it was a mistake she, not him, committed. It was a mistake that she was going to pay for like he paid for the mace mistake with the Three female tribute. 

Hunter didn’t bent as he smiled once at her, looking almost down to see her - that was how short she was, just like Addison. His smile was an entire monologue displayed on his face that he couldn’t spell out. You think you’ll find mercy in a non-career tribute. In a rebel with no chance of getting out because defying the Capitol marks your fate before you even take the first mace hit because you’re stupid enough to? You’re expecting soul kindness and a personal weakness because I have more dead siblings than you have thoughts in your pretty little head. Then, his healthy arm stretched out lazily as the expression on the former avox’s face turned surprised, albeit still amused. His arm fell heavily, the mace in it delivering a powerful, cruel, raw blow, like the flesh exposed after it took away the first few layers of thin skin off the District Six girl’s upper side of the neck and jaw. He hit once more, as if he was playing improvised golf at fourteen with Eleanor, seeing red without feeling guilty and finding it fueling. He hit the third time, imagining it was every Game maker that sent that District Twelve idiotic boy Addison’s way and there were parts of the inoffensive, staring girl everywhere. Holed completely at the bottom of her face, the girl didn’t even have a last breath to give or a mouth to give it through the moment the second canon chanted Hunter’s name. Full of blood and with his arm aching more than before because of the effort he put alongside the anger. Luckily, as he glanced near the corpse he has made that way, he spotted a small package filled with bandages. Just what he needed. He could kiss her open cheek of happiness. Making sure every remaining tribute in the Cornucopia was busy fighting somebody else, he turned his back and continued running, covered in blood that mostly didn’t belong to him. 

After a while, you stop running. After a while, it gets boring - but he didn’t need to wait the while to slip into that state. Only moments after climbing down the platform, he slowed down in favor of the other agitated children trying to race to the Cornucopia corner in a competition of who dies first. Hunter was down with just watching - because he considered himself taller, smarter, better prepared - and only wanted to intervene after they’ve played with each other enough. He was thirsty and his mouth was dry and empty, but he knew turning on everybody and killing them while the number of living souls was getting close to his age was only going to drive him crazy in a direction he wouldn’t have known how to escape. He could also not afford being outnumbered. One at a time, so the spilled blood would taste sweeter. The Capitol must have understood that decision, since it was more often than not a Games strategy that kept them on the edge. He was only sad there were no pockets to bury his hands into.

That thought of arrogance, howsoever, was about to be his downfall and let the dagger penetrate his skull, catching him off guard because his concern was pants pockets in a murder scene in all its beauty. He felt the air strike his face as it went out of the blade’s way and a shiver climbed briskly down his spine. Ducking almost immediately, but with no effect, he saw the one trying to make a salad out of him and started running with drive towards her. She was a tall, boring girl with a goat face, who felt extra brave at the moment and was going to lose her head herself - Hunter promised. As the District Two girl saw him approach her, she turned around swiftly to take a better weapon, for daggers were only effective and managed to stop the victim from distance, like more personal arrows that cut in depth, but he was getting close fast, and she needed something better, something sharper. The soft breeze against his skin as his soles pressed against the dry ground was awaking something vivid in him. The feeling of running for your life, of being in the arena and not knowing if you were going to catch the last moment alive was making him feel more alive than ever and he decided that, in spite of everything, he digged it. He didn’t understand why every victor had nightmares. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was legendary, exuberant, vibrant, effervescent. Nightmares tasted of ashes. 

The girl whose name he didn’t even bother to memorize - Shame, goat face. I’d have lit a candle for you when I got out otherwise - managed to pick up another sharp toy. Squinting as he hurried to get there, Hunter recognized the medieval mace and smirked for himself. How old-fashioned. She waved it around as soon as he entered his area and even hit him in the arm - excruciating pain let loose as he could feel his flesh tremble and blood slide down his arm. Now he was angry. Instead of going for the arm as he tried to dodge the rest of her attacks - swift, but unsure and not at the maximum strength; it was clear to Hunter that she picked up the nearest weapon, not the one she was most familiar with - he hit her leg, causing her to lose balance, but not collapse. She seemed to be a strong one, hence the warrior face. Probably girls as ugly as her had no option but to be fighters because what else was there for her? Hunter found the random thought amusing and for that, the mace touched him again, lighter, but enough to remind him to keep his mind unoccupied and focus on taking her down. How dare she come to attack him?!  Avoiding the mace last moment as it flew by his head - it would have been a mortal hit and that froze the blood in his veins, but adrenaline was stronger - he grabbed her right wrist and squeezed with as much force as he could, causing her to squeal of pain, but only worsen in temper. The mace was now, in spite of his attempts to control her arm, even more desperately trying to get stuck in his skull, but one lucky moment of hesitance - one right break in her fighting back - and he managed to twist her arm the other way.

They dressed him with rags and pink and still expected him to take their Games and arena seriously. Hunter missed the gadget he borrowed Anastasia forever for the first time as he wanted his stiff stylist to know just how much he appreciated her art. I used to make clothes too, you know, Pansy, my love? I used to hole cotton too and call it art. Except it was fucking ugly, so we’re equals. He hadn’t touched a sewing needle in ages, and probably didn’t even remember how to hold it between his fingers - if he ever learned to properly - but one glance at the arena clothing and every District Eight impulse and train of thought he has ever had came back just to criticize the piece of fabric put into terrible use. He gave out one short laughter - like a bark - as he heard his mother’s superior woman laughter that would have imminently be provoked by the ugly creation. The stylist looked at him like crazy and he wagged his eyebrows charmingly. He spent the year embracing the crazy instead of running away from it. The arena wasn’t going to fill him in with sanity and a good moral sense. The arena was going to make sure there will be none of that where once was too little. He meant it when he said, with crazy eyes, that he couldn’t wait to slip through that tube inside a big murder stage. He meant every word. 

Three, two, one, good-byes being said with plastered on smiles, and Hunter just looked coldly at the woman that dressed him up with spite for days, refusing to participate to the lying game she started playing. There was no regret in the tips of her cold, metallic blue painted fingers - the only thing of hers that even dared to touch the poor, District boy who did atrocities as big as rebelling and was more disgusting than the fact that the Hunger Games only happened once a year and she was getting bored for the rest of the time, not doing anything relevant. Hunter couldn’t wait to escape her company and sink into the arena. He had thought quite a lot about it lately - what it was going to look like, how he was going to kill and die in it, what he’d eat, what he’d drink, how he’d do it without a tongue to make it easier. He couldn’t even recall what his last word transmitted to another human being had been. Sad. The last word he would have transmitted to another human being by the time he found his peace would be death. A good word. No need to spell it out. The only thing he didn’t need was the time between what was really happening in his life. 

He passed from the waiting room into the tube with ease - he didn’t care to wait anymore. He’s waited almost a decade. Whistling as the tube started moving up, cracking his knuckles with detachment only to warm up, Hunter was counting the seconds for the machine whose job was to do it. Yet, his counting, overlapping the robotic voice’s, was always faster. Maybe because he was rushing into things the way he was nobody has been able to catch and stop him.

His first reaction seeing the dusty red sole and the breathtaking blood river was to yawn - not of boredom, but because he knew he was being filmed and he wanted that reaction on everybody’s screen, so they’d know Hunter Twill didn’t go scared and that he had never been impressed by the Capitol in his life (no true) and he wasn’t going to ruin that accomplishment now. Truth be told, he felt like shuddering, but the weather made sure here was no need for shaking. Thirty seconds left, and, incidentally, the longest thirty of his life. He was already feeling thirsty looking into the arena, but he swallowed dryly and fooled himself that it was enough. The longest thirty seconds of his life, because he knew they were the last ones he had to spend with himself in comfort. The last ones that weren’t occupied by thoughts centered on him and his every mistake. After the long thirty seconds, he’d sink into silence. No voice in his mind would blame him again. He was thirty seconds away from freedom in form of violence. His odds weren’t so bad after all.