[act one; chapter four - game over]
She was covered in blood. She could feel it caked against her skin. Her vision was, and had been, tainted red for a while now. She worried she had grown accustomed to it.
Bloody tracks in the snow told anyone and everyone where she was headed, and Leda, despite any ounce of fear or worry about being followed, didn't seem to care. She couldn't find it within herself, within the heart that stuttered in her chest, to truly worry or ache or mourn. She felt as though the cold had seeped past just her skin and into her heart.
Leda had killed. She had murdered. Just as President Snow had wanted her to. But she supposed, then, that they had all done exactly what he had wanted. At this point in the game, she assumed most of them had.
Solace, or what she imagined as such, lay just ahead in the form of trees. A snow-ridden forest like the ones from her home. She stumbled towards them, fighting to break through the snow, the powdered white reaching to her knees.
She collapsed to the forest floor as she breached the woody area, breath shuttering from her as though she had just submerged from the water in District 4.
Just as she felt herself start to warm within the sheltering protection of the trees, she heard snow crunch and crumble. She heard it give way beneath someone's feet, and her blood ran as cold as the snow beneath her bare hands.
Just as it gave way even more beneath the strangers' steps, Leda burst to her feet, spear in hand, pointed at the person who is, no doubt, an enemy. The weapon is braced on her arm, set against her shoulder, fortified, not by her fear, but anger.
"Two steps back," she spits in the boy's face. He is older than her, the same age as Saylor; only eighteen. Issac Monroe, from District 5, stands before her, skin pale, eyes cold, but his face, his expression...he is plagued by fear. Pure and undoubted. "I said two. Steps. Back."
She does not repeat herself again. He does not take two steps back. So, she takes two steps forward. She presses the blade of the spear against the plane of his chest, and whispers, "Where are they?"
Issac hesitates. She sees it in the furrow of his brows, the downturn of his lips. "Who?"
"Athena, Malachi, Birdie, and Cassius."
"I—"
That is when an arrow pierces his throat, blood gushing, crimson spraying upon her face. She can't find it within herself to even flinch.
A laugh splits through the air. Birdie, pale skinned and with long blonde hair, approaches, bow in hand, spinning an arrow in the other. She chuckles, watching as Issac crumples, as a canon echoes throughout the entirety of the arena.
Another life lost.
The blonde shakes her head as she approaches further. "You are a pretty one, aren't you?" She runs her tongue over her lips, eyes dropping and then rising. "Too bad I think you're a little fucked in the head."
Leda keeps her spear pointed, chin high. Defiant. "Aren't we all?"
"Spoken like a true Career, if you ask me."
Leda spins on her heel, blade raised, ready to strike. Her blood has turned to ice. She is surrounded by those just as capable of killing as her. Together, she is heavily outnumbered. From behind the trees, the other Careers follow—Athena, Malachi, and Cassius. Their four to her one.
"I'm not like you." Leda says. She refuses to be like them. She will not murder with a smile on her face. She will not find joy like them. She will not feel pride, not even if that somehow connects to the great legacy of her grandmother, Minerva.
Cassius shakes his head. He is the same age as her. Fifteen. But much larger. Much more dangerous. He is tall and well-built. More so than Malachi or Athena or anyone else in the arena. He, frankly, does strike fear in her. His face is sculpted in a way that reminds her of her father—sharp jawed with, somehow, round edges. She figures Cassius is more like her father than he appears; rigid on the outside, but all too soft on the inside.
Athena shakes her head, a frown pulling at her lips. "You think you're so...perfect, right? Too good to be like us. That because you were raised differently it means that you don't have the ability to just...shut it all off. Go numb. Just because you didn't spend your childhood in an academy doesn't mean you're so different." She leans against a tree, her dark braids reaching for her hips. "You're parents, dad or mom, maybe a grandparent. They taught you how to hold a knife? Or a bow. They taught you how to tie knots, to throw rocks further than the average person. Then how to make a fire. Keep it going. How to kill a deer and gut it. To boil water to avoid poisoning. I know it. And so do you."
Leda says nothing. In fact, for the first time, she finds herself looking eye to eye with someone who has maybe lived a life parallel to her own. Something in Athena's eyes, something about it, is the same as what she sees in hers every time she looks in the mirror.
The woods around them are silent. She can hear her heart in her ears, feel the cold air biting at her skin, sinking into her gut. She hears the arrow notch in the bow before it whistles past her face.
Leda swings her arms out, the spear slicing through the air, lodging itself in Birdie's arm. The blonde lets out a shriek, but pulls the spear from her arm. Without another thought, she lunges for Leda, hands reaching for her throat.
But before she can, Malachi has tugged her dark hair with his hand, pulling her into the snow. A cry falls from Leda's lips, a cry of shock. She reaches back as his arms circle around her throat, her hands reaching for his hair just as he had for her. She grabs on and tosses her head back into his, hearing the crunch of her skull and his. She can feel her head split from the force, and the next thing she knows, she is being thrown several feet away, and Birdie is back for her life. Except this time, Birdie is missing an eye.
With a blind spot on her side, Leda pushes herself to her feet, just behind the blonde girl, and pulls fishing line from her pocket. Winding it around her fingers, she wraps it around Birdie's neck and pulls. She pulls so hard that it cuts into the skin of her hands; so hard that she starts to cry. But not from the pain. From the fact that this is what she had to resort to. That fishing line is how she is forced to kill. To slit a throat just enough that it cuts an artery in just the right spot. Just enough.
By time the world has gone silent, two canons have echoed through the air.
Leda lays silently in the snow, Birdie's body strewn out a few feet away. Malachi's is not far from her, either. She shouts when a hand lands on her shoulder, arms blinding reaching out and shoving away.
It is Cassius, she realizes, pulling her up from the snow. But he is not killing her. He is not even trying to harm her. He is speaking to her, eyes wide, shaken.
"I didn't—" Leda gasps. She takes a step back from him, hands settling against her chest. She cries. She cries for the massacre that just occurred. The slaughter. "I—"
Cassius nods. Wipes at his forehead, which is covered in blood. The same with the rest of his face. He is ashen and shaking. His skin is ice cold, just like hers.
But the blood on his hands is worse. The blood that is not his own. But Athena's.
She is a few feet away, sitting against the base of a tree. There is a dark, bloody patch of her clothes. A machete lay a few feet away, near Malachi. Athena's eyes are gaunt and empty, yet her chest just barely rises and falls.
She looks between Cassius and Leda, accepting defeat like a tree accepts losing its leaves. She nods and says, "It's okay."
Cassius crouches in front of the girl and grimaces at the sight of her wound. Presses his hand to it, as he had just minutes prior, but this time, in his other hand, he grasps a knife. He points it at her heart and drives the blade home.
A third canon reverberates around them, and Leda no longer feels anything when it does.
———
They have not looked away from one another, not for the entire hour in which they have sat in silence, a few feet between them. Snow was falling from the sky in large clusters, caking into Leda's hair like flour when tossed into the air. She could feel it clinging to her eyelashes, and everytime she blinked, just for a brief moment, she would get just a little colder.
"Are you going to say anything or psycho-analyze me this whole time?
Leda blinks. Stares blankly ahead at Cassius. And smiles. "I thought you were insane like Malachi and Birdie."
"Me? Insane?" Cassius grins.
She can't help it. She laughs. It bubbles in her chest without any hesitation, and, soon, Cassius also begins to laugh. Loud and boisterous. They sound like children again. Laughing, carefree, not worried about the possibility that they're names, out of so many, are the ones to be called in the Reaping.
"I think we're all a little insane." Cassius murmurs. Their laughter has disappeared now, cast away in the wind. "I never thought...I never thought that I'd be thrown in here."
Leda was surprised by that. Most people, depending on their status and intelligence in District's 1 and 2, are trained to fight and kill, to get selected for the so-called honor that is the Hunger Games. So she asked just that: "Did you want to be picked? For this?"
"For a time," he responds quietly. "Just a short period of time. For the most part, I wanted it in order to get my parents attention. My dad's. He had been trained to fight, too. If he'd been selected, he would have been a Career. But he never was. So when I was old enough to hold a knife or learn the meaning of death, my dad decided it was time for me to learn. So I got picked with all of the other kids and began learning to fight. To survive. For a while, I loved it. I got to prove to my dad that I could do what he wanted me to, because it was what he wanted. But then one of my friends got picked, and I realized I didn't want it so much anymore."
Leda thought back to Finnick. She thought that maybe he had been the one to eliminate Cassius' friend. To be the person that caused the canon. And then Leda thought of what it would have been like if Finnick had been the one who was murdered. If he had been the canon in the air, not the other person. That thought was, single handedly, one of the most terrifying things. That was a kind of fear that she never wanted to feel.
She would rather die than ever stick around long enough to witness such a thing.
Cassius seems to have the same thoughts as her. He tilts his head and asks, "What about you? Did you ever think you would be picked?"
"No. I mean, I always wondered, but I never thought it would really happen. I figured I wasn't really who they wanted for this. Or that I would be someone who could survive. But here I am."
"Here you are."
She didn't even realize it when it happened. When her eyes began to shut. When they finally drifted closed. But the next thing she knew, she was being shook awake by hands on her shoulders and a voice in her ears, one that was strange yet familiar, and she was running and the ground was crumbling, and the world was on fire.
Gone was the snow-blown tundra. Ahead, now, lay miles and miles of sand and hot, blistering sun.
Leda didn't stop to think, neither did Cassius, not as the ground beneath them began to split in two, caving in on itself. She could hear screaming, hear the cannons in the sky. People were fighting and failing, they were dying. Yet Leda and Cassius still stood. They kept going, all the way until they couldn't any longer. Until they collapsed to their knees and tore off their clothes.
She rips the jacket from her body, tearing at the sleeves, hearing the fabric tear seam from seam until they lay on the ground beside her. She pulls the hat from her head and gloves from her hands, and breathes. She pulls a knife from her pant-leg and splits her jacket, pulling the inner layer from the outer layer. Sun protection is her only objective. She rips the hood off, tugging it over her shoulders, keeping herself shielded. She shows Cassius how to do the same, and he thanks her with a silent nod and handing her a small piece of bread.
He has food.
And now, so does she.
They keep going. Keep walking. Leda can feel the sun beating down on her. Burning her through her clothes, no matter any strategy she tried to prevent it.
The only semblance of rest came when they found a small bit of shade behind jagged rocks protruding from the blistering sand. Leda was on watch, her fingers rubbing over the blistered skin on her hands and arms. The patches were angry and red, the skin raised and all too bumpy. She hated how it felt, both on top of the skin and under.
She looked up at the sound of...something. Stared at the moon, watched it as it began to perch in the sky. She figured they had been there a few days—the moon had come and gone four times over now. And just as the sky began to darken, faces appeared in the sky. Faces that she knew, yet faces that were all strangers to her.
The only people that remained were herself, Cassius, Saylor, Pearl Moreau from District 3, Axel Holzer from District 7, Lennox Miller from District 10, Uma Dalal and Asher Levy from District 12.
Eight of twenty-four remained. A drastic decrease in people. In only a few days. But now, so little time remained, and Leda could feel the clock ticking towards its end. The time was running out, and they all knew it.
Her head perked up once more. That sound, the one had heard before, caught her attention. Not in a good way. She pushed herself to her feet, hand reaching for her spear, tugging it with her. She braced it in her hands and crept forward, keeping herself low to the ground. Just as she rounded the corner, someone else came at her.
Leda swung her arms out, spear colliding with someone's head, arm pushing against their neck, shoving them to the ground. With her arms around them, she braced herself on her knees atop the person. The person she recognized as Lennox Miller was under her, face bloody, hands bloody, clothes torn, eyes feral. She reached for her pant leg as his hands reached out, bracing against her neck, shoving up. Just as he was about to shove her off of him, she grasped one of her knives and swung.
She swung with all of her might, with everything she had in her, not even paying attention to where she was aiming. All she knew was that her blade had met skin, found home in—she realized when she looked—Lennox's cheek. He screamed out, hands reaching blindly for her, metal brackets on his knuckles, as she scrambled away, shouting, "Cassius! Cass, run!"
Just as she got to her feet, she grasped her spear and swung in a wide arc, holding back any flinch as the blood from his throat sprayed down on her, like a waterfall over a cliff. All she knew was, when she looked down, that she could no longer see the black of her clothes or the tan of her skin. All she saw was blinding red.
She could hear fighting several feet away, grunts and shouts of the other children in this cage with her. Flight of fight, inevitably, took over. She felt it rush within her blood as though the waves of District 4 had followed her, clung to her like the memory of her mothers hands, her fathers voice, her brother's laughter. She could hear it and feel it, she could remember the soft sand under her feet and smell the beach breeze like it was the last thing she had witnessed.
She ran. Ran like she did when she was a little girl running from the waves. It was a game then, it's a game now.
But when she bursts into the open abyss of desert, Leda finds herself joking on fear. She feels it crawl into her throat and grab ahold of her. She is suffocating when she sees who lies ahead, dead on the ground.
Saylor, his head five feet from the rest of him.
And Uma and Asher are a few feet away, throat to throat, knife to knife. They are fighting each other to the death, and then, within a few seconds, Death comes for them with the toss of a knife and the whip of a rope, a knife tied at its end. Leda swings and Death follows, shadowing her every move until Asher is dead and gone, and Uma is holding her intestines inside of her.
The girl from District 12, sixteen from Leda's knowledge, is crying, reaching for her, begging her for relief. She collapses at her feet, hands splayed against her stomach, and Leda finds herself on her level without a thought.
She cups her hands over Uma's and shakes her head, whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
But Uma shakes her head back and says, "You have to win. You. Have. To."
Leda doesn't understand. She never has. The point of winning this game feels pointless to her, it always has. What was the point of living if you're constantly tormented by the memories? That was not winning. That was hardly even surviving. It was torture, whether people saw it that way or not. Whether they acknowledged it or not.
And with a determined nod, Leda drives one of her knives into Uma's heart and sets her free.
And now it is her, Cassius, Pearl, and Axel. Just them. Just the four of them.
Leda finds Cassius, next. He is kneeling on the ground, hands clutching his bleeding side. He had been stabbed in an all too sensitive spot, and the blood was never ending. She stopped in front of him, staring down at him in shock. Mouth agape, she reached for him, but paused.
He was pale; too pale. She knew it, he did, too.
He grasped her arm and tugged her down to him, to where he was knelt. He said, "I saw them. The last two. Pearl and Axel. They're working together."
"Where?"
"Just ahead. There's a quarry. They're there."
Leda glanced around, looking in the direction in which the quarry lay. She looked back towards Cassius and frowned. She felt herself give in to every ounce of exhaustion in her bones. She fell back onto her legs, shaking her head, tears in her eyes.
"No."
"Yes."
"No." She shook her head again. "No. I am not leaving you here."
"You have to. I'm not—I'm not going to make it, Leda. Okay? I'm going to bleed out before anything else happens, and neither of us can stop that. The only thing that could is surgery. Stitches, or something like that." He looked down at the blood pooling over his hands. At the way it flowed like little streams in and out of his fingers. It was thick and hot. His skin had turned clammy, almost feverish.
Before he could say anything else, the world fell silent. Too quiet. It was too quiet. But that was when they heard it. The low in the chest growl. Something was out there, following their movement. Or someone else's.
That was when screaming erupted around them. It was wild and erratic, belonging to so many others that Leda thought her ears may explode from the pressure. And with a push from Cassius, she was running, hands clamped over her ears, weapons forgotten.
She ignored the nagging in her gut that told her to stay, and she waged war against that part of her that tried to turn back when she heard a familiar scream, one belonging to a new friend. She strangled any ounce of a scream that she felt rise in her throat alongside bile as a canon rang in her ears like a gunshot.
She ran for a quarry and did not look back.
———
There had been one more canon before the sun rose on the fifth day. Leda was numb to the sun. Numb to its blinding heat and light. No longer did it pain her skin—blistered, raw, and red.
She found herself crouched up above, looking down. She felt somewhat like a bird of prey, waiting to strike. Gone was any protective sun layer, gone was any semblance of humanity within her. All that remained was the monster President Snow had crafted; all that could be found was a pawn.
But pawns are made to be strategic. Made to indicate where something was weak. And Leda had found her target.
The only other that remained was Axel. From District 7, he truly was a competitor in their game. But Axel had spent too much time in the sun. He had no water or food. No help from the outside world—same as her. Leda didn't know if that meant that Finnick had failed her, if that meant that she truly had been on her own. She wasn't sure what anything meant anymore.
All she knew was this: the weight of the shark tooth around her neck—hidden under what clothes remained—was grounding and cold, bringing her back to memories of wading through the water in search of lunch with laughter filling the spots the waves left blank. She knew that, now, she had to be the last one out. She had to be. There was a necklace that needed returning.
She watched Axel stumble into the quarry, skin bright red, covered in blood and burns. He had faced whatever creature lingered over night, while Leda had managed to avoid it.
She realized then that, this arena alone, had featured no creatures or outside influence. It had been enough. Just them had been enough.
She began to scale down the rocks, reeling in the reminder that time was ticking and the clock was nearly at its end. She hopped down from the rocks and braced her hand on her very last knife. It was hot against her skin, warmed from the sun. It was not much, but it was better than nothing.
But then she realized something more...she had lost Axel. His tracks disappeared in the sand of the quarry, vanishing.
It was Axel that found her first.
With a hit over the head, Leda was crumpling to the ground, limbs bending and breaking, ribs cracking. She felt blood rise within her mouth, pooling, dribbling down her chin. Her knife was knocked from hand in a blissful moment of relief, which came to a swift close.
Axel kicked his leg out, foot meeting head; head meeting rock. Leda cried out, hands reaching back for his as they grasped her hair and dragged her. He pulled her away, dragging her. He began to laugh, and something went off inside of Leda.
She screamed and scaled back her attack. She used her smaller size to escape. To slip through the cracks. She shoved him forward, watching him crumble in the dirt.
But like his name, Axel carried an ax.
Clasped tightly in his hand, like he would not part with it, not even in death. He swung at her, and, for a brief moment in time, Leda considered what would happen if it came down upon her. If she let it follow its intended course.
But then she swore she could hear Finnick then. She hears him saying that she or Saylor needs to win; then Saylor making her promise she would. She can hear it, remember it all too well.
And that is why she tugs and pulls and bites and kicks and fights, even splits her skull. All for that stupid ax.
She feels the weight in her hands as she kicks him one more time, as she raises the weapon over head. Leda thinks of nothing as she brings it above her head. Thinks of nothing as she says, "Game over."
Thinks of everything as it slices clean.
And a new monster is born.
This is the end of Act 1!
So, I specifically wrote this in a way that mirrored Leda's thoughts and memories surrounding her first Hunger Games. It's not super detailed or organized, because those are what her memories are like. They are very scrambled and all over the place, because she dealt with a lot of trauma here, as one does. And if it feels sped up or rushed, that is because of the same reason. I wanted them to feel like her anxiety, like her experience, and I think that it does!
Anywho, I hope you enjoyed this, see you soon for Act 2!