Titan
"I bet you think I'm stupid, don't you?"
"Hmm?" Sylvester looks up from whatever it is he's doing and tilts his head sideways, even though he's got a reasonable view of me anyway. "No."
"Serious?"
He nods. The two of us are inside the Cornucopia; Thalia is on guard outside while Columbia and Caitlin have gone on a bathroom break. Sylvester has been charged with counting everything, which is fair enough except he's been doing it since morning and it's now getting on for midnight. The two pictures will be going up in the sky soon. And he's still counting, repeating his earlier checks, going over all the stock, mouthing the numbers to himself as if his life depends on it. This is the first time anybody has managed to get him to say anything else. I narrow my eyes at him in case there's any hint that he's lying - it wouldn't be the first time someone has lied to protect my ego, as if it needs protecting in the first place - but his face shows nothing but honesty.
"Serious. She's..." He drops the rope he's knotting - why? - and makes a vague womanish shape in the air with his enormous hands. If it was anybody else I'd guffaw and nudge them and perhaps wink a bit too but this is Sylvester and I don't doubt that he means it innocently.
I wouldn't know how else to describe her either. Pretty isn't right. Striking doesn't explain it.
"Stunning?" I offer.
"Yep," he says, suddenly flashing into life and raising an eyebrow at me. "It's a hormone thing, isn't it? Sex and death...there's a link, people say." His cheeks flare up red even in the darkness. "So basically, it's not your fault." Piece said, he turns back to the rope. One knot. Two knots. Three knots...
Three knots and I can't cope with the silence anymore. My muscles ache with the effort of constantly trying to arrange myself so I look as attractive as possible for the cameras. I used to hate not being watched, not having to think about this sort of thing. I thought the only time that was worth anything was the time in the spotlight. After only one full day in the arena, I'm starting to think I must have been mad.
Imagine it! Titan Illiant, bored! In front of everybody!
I throw myself down onto a crate that I think contains bottle after bottle of water, hands behind my head, limbs splayed just enough to show off my torso, and...
No. I curl myself up. Sylvester watches this process with a distant curiosity and then goes back to counting. He might be okay with this stillness but it's driving me insane. Correction: it's one of the things driving me insane. I can't stand having nothing to do, nobody to talk to, no appointments to keep.
"Are you jealous?" I ask.
He gives off a deep rumbling sound which it takes me a second to work out is a laugh and my ego prickles. Feeling unkind, I make a mental note that his fluffy eyebrows are already starting to grow back in and it looks stupid. Then I try to tell myself that I'm not thinking this because he's possibly the only tribute in this whole arena who is more bulked-up than me. He passes the rope through his hands again and slaps his hands down onto his thighs.
"Of you?" he says, mouth pursed as he thinks it through. When Sylvester thinks it's as if everything else in his body has to stop first. I've pretended to be that clueless a few times, because there's always some dippy girls who love it, but it's not one of my favorites. I prefer the cocky, arrogant personality. It's more...me. But Sylvester looks like any kind of acting is beyond him. He finishes thinking and grins at me. "You and Columbia? Serious? Nah."
Remembering Gina, the way she floored me a few minutes before the first time I kissed Columbia, I add, "Prefer boys?"
Another pause for consideration. "Nah."
I sneak a glance at him, trying not to make it obvious that I'm watching. He's practically bursting out of his clothes, all bulging shoulders and thick calves, and he should exude testosterone, except he doesn't. Most of the time he hunches over as if he'd rather be less noticeable. He's doing it now. He's back on the counting, mouthing the numbers as if he can't do it otherwise. When he's not counting he's staring into space, pale, eyes sliding away from any of the weapons.
He might be bigger than me, but at least I don't go to pieces at having to kill people.
"Then who do you like?"
"Nobody." He shrugs, a movement which starts somewhere in the mountain of his shoulders and ripples right down his arms, finally ending somewhere near his wrists. "But I'm familiar with the idea."
He's joking. He's got to be joking. The boy looks like one massive bag of hormones - though I know some of the Health+ guys and that doesn't mean that they're actually legal hormones, if you know what I mean - and there's no way you get to nineteen without wanting to rip someone's clothes off at some point. I'm less than a year older than him and...
But that was before...
"You asked me a question," he says. "You actually asked me a question that wasn't about yourself."
"I'm just that bored."
"Sleep."
We both look at each other and laugh. The sound bounces back at us from the rocky walls of the Cornucopia, making it feel smaller. And I'm not faking it. It's genuine, feel-good laughter, right here in the middle of the Games. Sleep. As if.
"We could play a game," I suggest. "Hey, Thalia!"
Her head pops around the corner of the Cornucopia, illuminated by pale moonlight. Her face appears longer, her nose stretched out, her eyes small and narrow, and in her hand the sword is ready. She says she worries that just because she can pretend to do something doesn't mean she can do it, but so far she's stayed calm and composed. That old Platinum saying: fake it 'till you make it. Unless it was her who was crying this afternoon. It was definitely a girl. But Thalia is an actress, a live-event actress. I think. She should be good at hiding that sort of thing.
I grin at her. She gives me a look that I can't interpret. Caitlin is openly provocative, jokes about me and Columbia so that even if I'd hoped to avoid it I couldn't, but Thalia is quieter and keeps her opinions to herself. If we hadn't run into her at the knife throwing station, I doubt she'd be here at all.
When she makes a run for it, I won't care.
"What is it, Titan? Only I'm doing a job here."
Pah. It's nighttime. The others will either be sleeping or they'll be frozen with cold. In here it's warm, but I've had to go outside to piss and let me tell you, I thought I was going to get frostbite in some very uncomfortable places. I pat the crate next to me out of habit to let her know that in Titan Iliant's world this isn't a valid excuse. She wrinkles her nose.
"So say the Games is over..."
Sylvester is sneaking backwards as unobtrusively as he can, counting packets of dried currants even though he must have counted them at least ten times already. Thalia raises her eyebrows but doesn't interrupt.
"Don't give me that. So say the Games is over and the re-enactments are up and running."
"Here?"
"Here." This is more like it. A proper conversation, where I'm not having to pause and wait for the other person to think for a few seconds every time they have to say something. A nice distraction, if Columbia isn't around. "Yeah, other people traipsing around here pretending to be us. Who plays you?"
"Caralina Opulont," she replies quickly, then chuckles to herself and shuffles. "Not that I've thought that much about it. Of course."
"What about you, Syl?"
He gives one of those mountain-range shrugs again, but his eyes have already taken on the distant, panicked sheen and his fingers are flying over the nut packets, counting furiously. Now that we're back in the Games, he wants to be out of it.
"Whoever it is, they'd need some serious protein shakes," Thalia comments. "Go on then, Titan. I bet you're just dying to tell us."
She's right, too. Why wouldn't I be? It's a brilliant answer. It'd have sponsors falling over their feet, if we had any. If the rebels hadn't denied us that.
Okay, so. There's probably a camera perched right on the rim of the Cornucopia - I worked that out earlier; it's the only place you'd be able to see the whole of the inside - and at the moment it hasn't got my best angle, not curled up like this. I stretch myself out, but my heart isn't in it and the movement is almost automatic. Still. A camera is a camera.
"Me?" I say. "Thalia, dear, I'll be playing myself."
Thalia huffs, flicks her hair over her shoulder and flounces off again, displaying a rare streak of anger. She thinks none of us saw her decapitate the girl from Graphene. But then who did she think cheered?
"Nice going," Sylvester says. His voice is startling; it sounds like his old self again. "Did you snog her too or does she just hate you anyway?"
And that brings my mind, momentarily distracted, back to Columbia. It snaps back as if that's where it wanted to be anyway. I close my eyes. I can't even be bothered to snap at Sylvester and even if I did it'd be like kicking a puppy. I'd much rather remember her. Her hair, silky smooth even after a day or so of not washing, gleaming black in the frosty night. Her heartbeat against my own. Racing. The heat inside me. The feeling of her skin. The look on her face as she pulled me to her.
Back home, before this punishment, I loved this stage. The bit where you can't eat or sleep, where all you want to do is think about them, the bit that borders on obsession. But here and now, it won't do. It cannot continue. I used to laugh at the saps who did this in the Games. Never thought I'd be one of them. Hey, I'm Titan Illiant. I'm above that!
"I could kill her," I say, more to myself than to anybody else because I'm aware how wrong it sounds. "That way I wouldn't have to watch her die."
"Because that makes sense," Sylvester mutters.
But it does. One of us will have to die, won't we? We can't both survive. And I don't care about her enough that I'd rather she lived instead of me. And yet...I can't stand the idea of watching the life drain out of her, knowing that there was something I could have done. So the only answer is to be the one to do it. Sounds odd, I suppose. But it makes sense.
Then, maybe, with her out of the way, I could concentrate. I could focus completely on winning and surviving. Because...because. Just because.
I'm startled out of these thoughts by the trumpets playing Horn of Plenty. For a moment I'm disorientated and confused, but only for a moment; of course! It must be midnight. Time for the pictures. I roll off my crate and stumble outside in a hurry, needing to know who died today. Who I'm up against. That way I'll be able to pretend that she isn't one of them.
Like I said. There's a lot of things that feel like they're driving me insane.
As soon as I emerge from the rim of the Cornucopia I'm hit by a blast of freezing air. I first saw this place in the dark and even though Thalia seems fascinated by it, it's not that interesting. If I focus on it too much, it'll just seem creepy. Better to focus on the physical sensations: I'm hungry and it's freezing.
And the two girls are returning from their bathroom break.
Caitlin, tall and dark and pretty and sharp, grinning so widely that I can see her teeth glinting. She seems completely comfortable in these district-style clothes. But I only notice her out of the corners of my eyes, because next to her, glaring away and glowing slightly in the dim moonlight, is Columbia.
My pulse pounds in my temples.
And suddenly I feel like the worst person in the nation for ever thinking I could hurt her, let alone kill her. And with this comes another realisation, a bolt straight into my heart, into my gut, into the very fibers of my being: I have never wanted anybody more than I want Columbia Germanis. Out of all the girls, all the one night stands and short-term flings and the very few that I wondered if they were actually going to be serious, not one of them has ever gone straight through me the way Columbia does with just one look.
She looks as though she actually thinks there's someone in here. Someone behind the muscle and the teeth and the attitude.
And she looks as though she definitely doesn't want me to know that.
Damn Riffton. I did an ad campaign for him once. If I'd have known, then...well, I'd still have done it, because coverage is coverage, but I'd have been sour about it.
"You're back," I say, more relieved than I'd like, and dodge forwards to peck her on the cheek. She stands there and stares straight ahead as if she's waiting for it to be over, but I feel the intake of breath as our cheeks brush. She's lucky. The reaction in me is nearly indecent.
"Excuse me. I hate to disturb the tender moment" - Caitlin is doing that thing again, where she says the exact opposite of what she means and thinks this is funny, simply because it's the only way she can make herself look clever - "but...you know. Pictures."
I look up just in time to see the face of the boy from Five, the little rodentish one with the nice dark curls and the baby-face but the wrong nose and chin, disappear from the arena. A weak one. I expected him to go fairly soon. At a guess, I'd say he was the first cannon.
"Saw that coming," Thalia says, but quietly. She sounds vaguely sad.
The picture fades away into the clouds and is almost immediately replaced by another one, so startling that I just about manage to hold back a flinch. Columbia shivers.
No. Focus.
For a moment I can't place the face; it's a boy, just about my age, angry, with orange eyes and hair just starting to grow out blonde at the roots. He was rushing around the bloodbath like a lunatic. I'd considered going after him but the two fighting shadows had been too good to miss and besides, the guy had been armed. I'm happy to do strange things - you have to be, as a model - but I'll draw the line at attacking someone who looked as though they might attack back.
"Gold," Caitlin says. "Kula Bartlett. Bit of a surprise, that one. Thought he might last a bit longer than that."
I put an arm around Columbia's shoulder to warm her - and myself! - up, and she doesn't pull away. Suck on that, Riffton.
For tonight, anyway.