A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Fight - Caitlin

Caitlin

We all froze. We stared at him. He stared at us. His eyes were huge, wild, brimming with a kind of twisted madness that made me shiver and back away even though he didn't appear to be armed. He should have looked terrified. There was Thalia, to my left, and then Columbia and Titan to my right, and I knew from the sound of footsteps that Sylvester had emerged from the Cornucopia. There were five of us, and one of him. And yet he just stood there, as if he was hardly seeing us at all...My heart was thumping against my ribcage, I'll admit it.

And then Milo screamed.

I'd never heard an Avox scream before, and I hope I never have to again. In Garnet we only get the best Avoxes, the ones who wouldn't scream if you broke their fingers, and anyway the Knopes have always been against using them. But that scream...I've heard some horrible things in my twenty years. I've heard politicians lie outright in interviews and then order around their staff as if they were born better. I've heard the people my family supported initially supported destroying our homes with reckless disregard for the innocent. I've heard crying children fleeing from gunshots. I've heard a husband sobbing over the body of his wife.

Nothing, none of that, compares to the sound of an Avox screaming.

It goes right to your core. Right to the soul. It's like someone is raking a knife down your spine. It's a life of pain, anger and fear all rolled up into one piercing, tongue-less sound. It's a weapon all of its own. Milo stood there with madness lurking around the edges of his eyes and he opened his mouth and that came out, and I could tell by the expressions on the faces of the others that they were as stunned as I was.

Thalia was closest; perhaps she knew she would have been his first target. After all, it was too late for him to run away. From the moment every eye turned to him, there was going to be a fight. Even though we were unarmed. We'd let our guard down. With the cold and the headstones and the clothes it was impossible to forget that you were in the Games, but somehow we'd fooled ourselves into thinking we were safe. That we could make ourselves comfortable. That we could make friends.

Milo was going to tear all that apart, though of course we didn't know it then.

Funny how this hits you only every so often. The rest of the time it hides away, waiting to pounce. Letting you get along, letting you laugh and joke and grow fond of people.

That's half the torture.

Milo prowls forwards, towards Thalia. She's backing away, waving the stick in a just-identifiable parody of a sword sweep, and her face doesn't seem to be able to find an expression to stick to. It sneers briefly. "Back away, or I'll use this! I'm warning you!"

He doesn't even pause. Perhaps he hears the wobble in her voice. Or perhaps he senses, like I do, that these aren't her words at all, that they come from years and years of past tributes and bear as little link to Thalia's personality as I do to his situation now. She's visibly shaking. I don't blame her. If I had Milo creeping towards me silently with that look in his eyes, I'd be counting down the seconds until my courage gave out and I ran for it. I won't even try to pretend that that isn't part of the reason I'm hanging back now. Even Titan looks alarmed.

We're going to watch Thalia die.

There's no point even trying to pretend that this is going to end any other way. We all saw Milo wrestling Walt, and compared to him Thalia is skinny and suddenly looks a lot more fragile than ever. And there's no Probus Fidelis here to intervene this time. And Thalia isn't quite all there anymore.

I like her. She's kind and funny and probably a good actress, though nowhere near the best. But I don't like her so much that I'll risk whatever is driving Milo along to try and rescue her. The boy looks as though he's possessed, his dark eyes burning, his hands clenching and unclenching so that even under the arena clothes his muscles flex. We can hear every single one of his footsteps, crunching on layers and layers of dead leaves, and the high keening noise in his throat. Thalia casts another glance over at us.