ACT I, CHAPTER TWENTY ❛bullet for the lamb ❜ content:blood/gore/injury, major character death, violence, heavy angst.
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Even Caesar Flickerman admits that it's hard to believe that fifteen-year-old Madaket Rosales, of all the twenty-four tributes thrown into the arena, was the one that clawed her way to victory. Despite the best efforts of her stylists, the royal blue dress and the heavy eyeliner doesn't make her look mature. She looks like what she is—a child. In that chair, she looks every bit as small as the day her name was chosen from the bowl.
But underneath the expressionless mask, there's something else. It moves practically unseen behind her frayed edges and the cracks in her skin. Though one cannot touch this new entity, it's there, as real as evil men and stars. Something dark and rotten glints in her brown eyes and curls her trembling fingers into fists. The look of something that shouldn't be there. The look of something that has been corrupted.
It's all she can do to stay silent.
Here she is, bleeding to death on live television and nobody tries to stop it. She watches the screen that shows the deaths of allies and strangers, feeling the blood pooling around her chair. Every scream of agony carves a knife further into her chest, more of her life draining from her limp body. Caesar quips to the audience at the right time, and they howl with laughter. When the mood grows somber as Wylan gets an arrow to the neck, he reaches over and places a steadying hand on Madaket's wrist. As if his hands are the only bandages that could staunch her wounds.
As if his hands could do anything against the torrents of blood rushing, hot, thick, out of her on this stage. As if he could heal the festering wound that tears apart every cell of her being; fractures her face, boils her blood, stirs her insides.
She knows that there is nothing that anybody can do for her anymore. She's dead already. And nobody. Fucking. Helps.
"And, of course, everybody here in the Capitol is absolutely raving with theories about what you'll do once you return home to District Six," Caesar remarks with one of his classic smiles that makes the crowd lean forward. "Tell me, Madaket, how will you spend your victory?"
Her answer is simple. She speaks it clearly, directly into the lens of a camera: "Learn to live with all the death."
Caesar quirks an eyebrow, and it's clear that he's genuinely caught off-guard by this response. "'Live with all the death?' What would you mean by that?"
"I'm glad you asked," Madaket says, and suddenly all her fury and agony spills over. "I was taken from my family and put into a battle arena against my will. I came to the Capitol with so much hope, Caesar. And I felt all of it die in that arena. I made friends, I watched them die, and I'll never forget how they died, I'll never stop hearing their voices, seeing their eyes. . . Every single happy part of me has burned to ash now, and all you. . . you people. . . laugh like their deaths mean nothing. Like my death means nothing; because I know I died with them. I'm not rotting, but I'm dead. And all you heartless people can do is laugh. Nobody in this auditorium—nobody in the entire Capitol—is human."
A moment of silence lapses as Caesar tries to figure out how to de-escalate the situation. Madaket simply looks at him with not the slightest indication of fear or regret. She knows that she has said the wrong thing, she knows that this is not good.
But she's bleeding to death, and she can't be bothered to think rationally.
Caesar manages to play it off in a joking manner by poking Madaket's arm, as if afraid that his finger would phase through her skin like through a ghost. "Well, you seem pretty alive to me."
The crowd laughs unsurely and tries to move on. But her words don't go entirely unforgotten. Because now she's brought attention to it—the bleeding. Maybe they're looking into her eyes and seeing just how deep the wounds run.
In his ivory tower, he watches the screen with a distinct resignation. Stitched to his imported suit is a white rose that taints the air around him sickly sweet. He has seen plenty of proud victors like Madaket who believe that being out of the arena means they have autonomy over themselves. He has proven each and every one wrong.
His nimble hand reaches to the underside of his desk, and with a blind precision that can only be performed by politicians, he pushes down on a single button. Somewhere in District 6, a Peacekeeper's comm radio fires with a new instruction. The Peacekeeper reaches for his belt, grabs his revolver, and funnels one bullet into the barrel.
When she arrives on the new front doorstep of her home in Victor's Village, she finds a body laid out like a cut of dry meat on the ground.
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a/n . . . that was the end of act 1! but who got killed?? :O i am changing the plot so much from the original. old readers know that i initially killed off 2 characters at the end, but looking back in hindsight, there was no reason for two people to die for madaket's outburst. soooo i think you can guess which special special character lived to see another act ;)))
