Embrace the Fire: The Avenger Games

by lorata

Summary:

"Trust me, and I'll give you something better than a Mockingjay. I'll give you the Avengers."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Trust me, and you'll see."

Avengers/Hunger Games fusion crossover/AU.

Chapter 1: Prologue: Loki

Notes:

They laughed at him, at his District Twelve accent, at his attempts to lose it, at his clumsiness with a staff the first time he chose a weapon. Loki didn't care. He was an exception -- the exception -- in a district that never made them. As far as Loki was concerned, that made him a god.

This is just the prologue. Loki's backstory is the only one that matters -- everyone else's can be implied. Dear lord have mercy.

The other characters will show up next chapter.

It didn't matter how much you bathed in Twelve; you could never get the stink off. Not the stomach-heaving stench of manure, like Nine or Ten, nor the nostril-stinging engine grease of Six, but the ever-present tang of coal. It ground itself into your skin, found its way into your eyes, your throat, your nose, and itched and itched and itched forever.

Not that anyone in Twelve noticed. They crawled through it with the filth up their noses, never looking up at the sky. Never dreaming of better. Loki didn't blame them; he pitied them. They saw nothing but the darkness and the coal and their rations of grain. He pitied everyone, from the grit and grime of the Seam, where his parents eked out a living, to those who lived in the richer areas and thought themselves above it all -- but the same dust sat in their lungs.

Loki didn't pity his parents. They had ambition, but they didn't squander it on themselves -- an intelligent move, considering it wouldn't have done them any good. Instead, they used it toward the only asset they had: their son. For that insight, he didn't pity them -- but nor did he thank them. If they hadn't, he would have found a way. Loki knew from the time he first stared at the marks on the paper and connected them with the words his parents said aloud that the world extended far beyond the borders of Twelve, and that on the day of his birth, the world gave a sigh of relief. The deliverer had come.

Odd thoughts for a six-year-old, perhaps, but Loki's parents had told him he was special since before he knew the meaning of the word. For nearly a year he'd thought it referred to him only; now he knew better -- that the dictionaries were wrong.

District Two's sponsor program persisted every year, but the paperwork mostly gathered dust in a council office somewhere. Two had more skilled children to fill its Career farm than it needed; every year, each pool of applicants reduced themselves from the initial hundreds to the final two. They had little need for outside talent, but at the same time, if anyone made it onto their radar, they wouldn't turn it down.

Over a year, but finally, Loki's parents succeeded in securing Loki a place at the Career Academy. The Farm, the kids in Twelve called it, snickering with their precious superiority. Two sent forms, and tests -- not academic ones, but aptitude and personality profiles -- and evaluations, and finally actually sent a representative to Twelve to check Loki's physical ability. That almost failed him -- Loki's mother had inhaled too much coal dust during her pregnancy, and the toxins soaked into him and stopped his growth, or so the doctor said. Loki didn't care about the reason, only that the other children his age grew taller, stronger. It almost failed him, but the interviewer sat down with Loki and talked with him -- really talked, like an adult who knew about the world, instead of walls and tunnels and canaries -- and in the end, they received the letter with Two's seal inviting him.

"You're going to make us proud," Mother said, brushing Loki's hair back from his face. He detested the touch even if he didn't detest her -- why would one detest a stepping stone on the way up a mountain -- but he forced himself to remain stoic. A tribute from Two had to deal with far worse than unwanted caresses. He would learn.

"I'm going to make the Capitol proud," Loki corrected her. Part of the papers they signed included an agreement, that from the moment Loki stepped onto the train, they relinquished all claim to him. Forever. If he won, they would receive no compensation, no reward. "I'm going to make Snow notice me."

Father gave a short nod. He and Mother both agreed to send Loki away, but for different reasons; Mother out of that most debilitating of human frailties, while Father thought only to get something from the world in exchange for the stunted son who couldn't swing a pickaxe. Two paid handsomely for candidates, whether they made it through to Volunteers or not. At last, Loki had given them something they could use.

"Farewell," Loki said, indulging in a bow. Mother sniffled, and began to say something else, to call out one last time, but the conductor shut the door.

Loki spent half the train ride being bathed and groomed, as though the beauticians thought they could scrub the olive from his skin as well as the dirt. He tolerated the indignity of it only because they promised not to perfume him; he was going to Two, a district that understood priorities, rather than to the glitz and glory of the Capitol. He did not wish to smell like someone's pampered lapdog.

He did his best to clamp down on his excitement as the train rounded the curve and District Two glittered in the distance. Surely they would change his mind if they saw him bouncing in his seat like an infant. Loki forced himself to stay in his seat and only just avoided sitting on his hands to stop himself from pressing against the glass through sheer will. He needed to look like he deserved this honour -- which he did.

At last the train arrived, and despite all his attempts, Loki's heart still tripped an embarrassing jig in his chest. He breathed slow and deliberate, ran a hand through his slightly overlong hair -- too long for training? He didn't know the regulations -- and hoped that not a speck of Twelve had been left on him. The new clothes they'd given him were simple enough, but even the fabric of the plain cotton shirt he wore would have required a month's wages back home.

No. Not back home. Home was here, this venerable heaven where men understood the priorities in life, and fought for glory instead of grubbing in the dirt. Loki put Twelve from his mind, once and for all.

He knew nothing about his new adoptive father, only that a mix of families applied to host children in the program. Some, Victors who'd never managed a family or to find a mate who understood what it meant to have seen death so close. Others, parents who'd given up a tribute to the ultimate honour, and wished to try again. Still others, Loki guessed, did so because their own children had failed even to make the cut; he hoped, desperately, that he would not have one of those. He would not fail his new parents, and by extension, hoped they would not fail him.

Loki stepped off the train and nearly into the arms of a god.

At least, that's how it looked; an enormous man, bigger than Loki had ever seen, blond and handsome with a face cut out of rock; he wore his hair long in defiance of common fighting sense, but he was no enthusiast only. Not unless he'd put out his own eye to look impressive, but the scars puckering around the patch he wore to cover the missing organ said otherwise. This man had not gone to the Capitol to have his scars removed, his eye replaced. He'd fought for his wounds, and he embraced them, and dared anyone to say otherwise.

Loki would have recognised him even without the eye patch, for he'd watched the tapes of Odin's victory so many times that the exasperated woman at the dilapatated archives in Twelve said he could keep them -- ridiculous, since where in his little shack would he have the equipment? Still, he knew Odin's Game so well he could probably list the tributes in the order that they died.

That year, everyone knew from the beginning: from the Reaping day, where the proud, tall, oak-chested teenager stepped in to Volunteer for a terrified twelve-year-old; to the parade, where even the ridiculous helmets and shields could not mask the boy's power and confidence; from the training, where audiences gasped as the boy hefted a spear the same height as he and heavy as a small child, and skewered a training dummy to the wall; to the Games themselves, when he pulled another, larger boy from torturing a child from Five and tore his head half from his shoulders, then gave the other child a quick, merciful death. Those who watched the Games that year saw a spectacle of honour and glory, not a mad scrabbling for victory; even Loki, who only watched the tapes years later, the footage spotted and aged, had felt the true beauty of the Games suffuse him like sunlight on his skin.

Odin: Victor, Mentor, legend.

The instinct hit him before he could think it through, and Loki dropped to his knees before this man, his saviour.

"Stand up," the man said, the voice rumbling in his chest, at once commanding and amused. "I have no need for someone who grovels. If you're good enough, then you're good enough, and that's good enough for me."

Loki stood, and clasped his hands behind his back to hide the shaking. Weak, weak, he looked weak. "Thank you, sir," he said, and bit down on his cheek to stop the breathy admiration from leaking into his voice. The pain sharpened him, reminded him where he was.

"Thank you, Father," he corrected, giving Loki a small smile. He turned to the side. "Thor, here's your new brother, Loki."

The boy who rounded Odin's side could have been his clone, and Loki's heartbeat increased until he thought they might hear it. He'd never heard that Odin had a son, but why should he, when the news from Twelve carried little more than weather patterns and Capitol bulletins. Thor had perhaps two years on Loki and at least a head in height; Loki's thigh nearly matched the circumference of this boy's bicep.

Thor carried himself with the confidence and easy authority that Loki envied, so strongly that it nearly choked him. This boy didn't need to posture or threaten, and he didn't look intimidated by his parentage, but seemed only to take it as his right. He inclined his head in a nod and offered Loki his hand.

Loki took it, fearing for a split second that Thor would attempt to crush his fingers in a petty show of strength, but he didn't, merely grasped Loki's hand between both of his. "A pleasure to meet you, brother," he said, in a voice that sounded much grander than his actual young-boy's tenor. "Together we will bring glory and honour to the Capitol. I'm sure of it."

Loki smiled. "I'm sure we will, brother," he said.

Odin watched them, approval in the smile that creased his face. "Come," he said. "I will show you to the Centre. Someone can fetch your things."

Loki straightened his shoulders. "I have no things," he said. "Nothing of consequence, nothing that could not be left behind."

Odin studied him with narrow eyes, then his smile broadened. "Good!" he thundered. "I like a boy who doesn't cling to his toys. You will do well here."

He knew he should say something humbling, something like 'I will try' or 'I'll do my best', but Loki couldn't bring himself. "I will," he said. "You can count on it -- Father."

Odin -- Father -- clapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Loki nearly toppled, but he caught himself. A test, albeit a friendly one, and he would not fail it. He would not be the weakling who could not even endure his father's affection.

"You will die when you see the weapons room," Thor proclaimed, eyes shining. "It's beautiful."

Loki laughed aloud. District Twelve faded from memory and reality, and he followed his new family toward the shining citadel.

 

One Year Later

Loki predicted hard work, humiliation, struggles, muscle pain, broken bones, bruises -- but not mind-numbing intellectual boredom. He probably should have -- if Two lost the Games for something other than a natural catastrophe, it was usually because someone from an outlier district outsmarted them -- but he'd been so stuck in the idea of getting out of Twelve that he'd blinded himself for a while.

The initial level of the program appeared to be designed to suck the young ones in, to make them fully committed to the Capitol and their responsibilities. Loki didn't need that. He didn't need to be bribed with juice and rough playtime and the promise of knives one day. At the same time, the other children didn't care that they couldn't think their way out of a maze with a map and a hovercraft; they just knew Loki was small, and while even the dullest of them could see he was mean, he didn't have the physical skills to back it up.

Loki wished he could just skip all this and move to the useful training; he saw the first tier exercises for what they were, innocent games designed to train their balance and endurance and flexibility. The trainers didn't need to pretend, for him; they didn't need to hide strategizing sessions behind games of dodgeball. He knew they were watching, looking to see what qualities each candidate had that might translate to the Games in ten years.

The dodgeball games nearly drove Loki to his wit's end. Being smart enough to taunt but not, perhaps, smart enough to avoid taunting bigger, heavier children, Loki had learned early on how to be fast, and his stature helped with that. He was rarely the last man standing in dodgeball, but never one of the first, either, placing him squarely in the middle -- in the forgettable zone. The zone of tributes who didn't get sponsors because no one could remember their names or districts.

And so he tried strategy, which might have worked except that his teammates may as well have been hulking animals from Eleven, for all the good it did. "No! What are you doing?" Loki screeched, as one boy barrelled a ball across the room at the opposition, taking out one of the slower, but heavy-hitting girls. She sat up, clutching her nose with blood pouring down her shirt, but moved to the position behind Loki's team without complaint. She caught Loki's furious glare and grinned at him through bloodstained teeth.

"Winning," said the other boy, giving Loki an incredulous stare for a second before grabbing another ball. 

"No, you idiot!" Loki snapped. "Her advantage was her aim, not her speed! The only thing stopping her from destroying all of us is that she had to keep moving. Now you've captured her, and she's right behind our lines! She can pick us off without --" but a ball hit him in the back of the head, and Loki stomped off to the other end of the room.

His team lost, and rightly so. Afterward, Loki fumed all the way to the free time, eschewing the games the others played in favour of sitting alone in the grass and ripping up stalks in angry chunks.

"You know, there's a difference between being a competitor and being a sore loser," said a voice from above, and Loki tilted his head up, squinting at Director Fury. Formerly a Victor and one of Two's most illustrious Mentors, alongside Odin, Fury now worked behind the scenes, but still came back to Two to train the candidates because, he said, he loved the potential. He hadn't lost his eye in his Games, only damaged it, but they said he'd refused to have it replaced or fixed because it helped him remember that a tribute could overcome obvious physical weakness if he really tried -- that it reminded him not to overlook certain candidates simply because they had a defect that crossed them off the list.

If Fury had another name, everyone had long forgotten.

"I'm not," Loki said, more sharply than he might have dared to Fury, whom otherwise Loki would occasionally spy on by peering around corners. "There's a difference between losing by one's own failings and by one's teammates' idiocy."

Fury chuckled and lowered himself to the grass. "I see. And what would you have done?"

Loki told him about the stupid decision to take out the slow but accurate girl, dropping her behind her lines where she had no distractions, nothing to dodge. "They ignored the fast one, too," he said, warming up to his subject. "They let him go because he was fast, even though he couldn't throw so he wouldn't be any danger to us behind the lines. They should have taken him out first, when the floor was crowded with the weaker players, because he'd have less room to move."

"I see." Fury tilted his head. "But you're not sure."

"Not exactly." Loki gnawed the inside of his cheek. "The problem is, there are two ways to win. One is to win the game as effectively as possible. In that case, taking out the fastest ones first, then the weakest, then the slow but strong ones means they have less of a chance of beating us. But the other way to win is to make for the best entertainment, and that means leaving yourself open so that it can be exciting. I can't figure out how to mix it up. Maybe sacrifice one of our strong ones early on, so they can take them out behind the lines? Bait them with someone who looks weak, then turns out to have throwing power from behind?" He glanced up at Fury, but the man's face gave him no clues.

"You know that's not your job," Fury said at last. "That's why you have Mentors. You should focus on your own training."

"I can't," Loki said, and he knew, he knew he shouldn't complain to one of the directors, but he couldn't help it. "I can't just stop thinking and do pushups and run laps. I'm always thinking. I'm never going to be as strong as them, but they're never going to be as smart as me. I hate that it doesn't seem to matter."

Fury said nothing for a moment. "It does matter," he said at last. "It's not just about brawn. But it's also about trusting the orders given."

"What orders?" Loki demanded, forgetting his place. "If we'd had a coach, I would have listened to the coach. He would have known how to strategize, instead of throwing balls around like unevolved primates."

"And if he didn't?" Fury's voice had an edge to it -- not of anger, or even warning, but one which tripped Loki all the same. Something in this conversation went deeper than dodgeball. "What if your coach gave you orders that made no sense? That you knew would cause you to lose?"

"Well, I don't know." Loki looked over the field. A girl tackled a boy so hard they both went flying, and stood up laughing hysterically. He shook his head. "I'd find a way to do what I wanted to do without technically disobeying, I guess." His eyes flicked to Fury for a moment. "Are you going to report me for insubordination?"

"Not this time." Fury smiled at him, and Loki smiled back. The expression always looked like a shark about to attack, with Fury, and it comforted him. "Next time, see what you can do. If you can't rely on your teammates, do what you can on your own."

"Yes, sir," Loki said, and felt better. Maybe not everyone was an idiot.

 

Not every candidate got personal advice from Director Fury, and Loki wasn't about to sit around and let it go unused. He started studying the others, and realised that he could get people to do almost anything he wanted them to, as long as he convinced them it was their idea. It worked so well, and so routinely, that Loki felt rather like an idiot for not discovering it sooner.

The seven-to-nines played a lot of allegiance games, though of course they were never framed as such, not outright. Survival games in the woods, the players armed with paint guns that stung and bruised but could not kill, where players were free to change teams if they chose, and the trainers double-crossing encouraged. Loki enjoyed that one the most. He tore through the game with precision, never once firing his weapon but always convincing the other to join with him against the others. By the end, Loki was the last man standing; each of the other candidates had destroyed each other, having sworn allegiance to him. They sulked, but all but the most petty admitted to being impressed.

After that, he found the trainers watching him more than ever. Loki welcomed the challenge.

He still found himself behind in the physical challenges -- especially grating since Thor routinely bragged about his growing skill with weapons -- but Loki merely searched for what he could excel at, and ensured that he did. Early on, he discovered that even if he could not do one hundred chin-ups without breaking form, he could still use his mind to defeat the tests.

"What's that?" one of the girls asked, gaping.

"It's to test your pain endurance," said the trainer, indicating the bucket filled to the brim with icy water. "You're going to stick your arm in it, up to the elbow, and see how long you can leave it there."

Loki glanced around the room, found most of the faces a mix of fear or dismissal. He scoffed at the first and rolled his eyes at the second -- of course it would be painful, but this sort of thing only required mental discipline. Any idiot could do it, provided they had the proper motivation. Loki raised his hand. "Who has the record?" he asked.

The trainer smiled. "Thor. Before that, your father. I won't tell you what it is, but just know that you have a lot to live up to."

And, just like that, Loki had his motivation. He watched the others cringe and shout -- the trainers said they were allowed to scream and curse, if they wished, just as long as they didn't leave their seats or move their arms -- and shook his head. Wrong, all wrong.

At Loki's turn, he pictured Thor's face. The way the camera practically made love to him every time it captured him on film. He pictured him bouncing home to Father and proudly declaring his score. Loki plunged his arm into the water and clenched his teeth to avoid gasping. He would not cry out. The most he allowed himself was to twist his fingers in the fabric of his training suit, digging his nails into his thigh.

He counted in his head. One minute. Two. The ice burned, and he thought for certain his heart would give out. How could ice water be so painful? The ache went all the way up to his chest. Three. His breath shuddered in his chest, as though he had to pull each one through a wall of knives, but he kept on. Four. Tears stung his eyes, but Loki blinked them back. Around him, the room had gone silent as candidates stopped roughhousing to watch him.

How long until nerve damage? He'd lost all feeling in his arm; he didn't think he could remove it on his own even if he wanted to. Well, it didn't matter. They would stop him before it got that far; no point in ruining a candidate so early. He stopped being able to count the seconds as each one stretched into infinity; spots danced at the corner of his vision.

"Time!" the trainer called, and Loki finally allowed himself a gasp. As predicted, his arm wouldn't respond; he reached over with his free hand and hauled it out manually. His arm had turned a mottled, furious red, purpling at the fingertips. He enjoyed the mix of awe and fear on the faces of the other children as the trainers hustled him over to the medics.

"I broke Thor's record with the ice endurance test today," Loki said at dinner. He forced himself to look neutral, though he couldn't manage modest, and thus didn't bother.

Father raised his eyebrows. "Good," he said. "Don't let it go to your head."

 

Two Years Later

They laughed at him at the Centre, the other children, but what did it matter? They were bugs, worse than bugs, they were worms, only fit to eat and shit and have their shit turn into something that could be used to help their betters.

They laughed at him, at his District Twelve accent, at his attempts to lose it, at his clumsiness with a staff the first time he chose a weapon. Loki didn't care. He was an exception -- the exception -- in a district that never made them. As far as Loki was concerned, that made him a god.

And his brother, dear Thor, mighty Thor, glorious, beloved Thor, laughed loudest, and thought it was all right because he did so with love.

Hating Thor would make life so much easier, but alas, Loki didn't have the conviction in him to take it all the way. Typical; he felt the weakness every day when Thor made him laugh, or coaxed a smile in spite of everything else. In those moments, Loki forgot his discontentment, his jealousy, and immersed himself in his brother's loud, contagious laughter and the feel of Thor's strong hand clapped against his shoulder.

Except it never lasted. Time in the shadow of a mountain could be pleasant for a time -- it blocked out the harsh sun, and weathered storms so that you never got the worst of it -- but after a time, the chill set in, the need to get away and feel the light on your face. To stop being sheltered and start living.

He'd thought, maybe, that when Thor turned thirteen and began living at the Centre full-time, that the weight of his shadow would decrease, that Loki could finally spread his wings and prove himself to Father. A naive, foolish thought, underscored daily by Father extolling Thor's virtues and regaling the table with tales of what Thor had accomplished in weapons training that day. Loki sat straight in his chair and waited for his turn, when Father would tell Mother how Loki's spear-work had improved -- a skill that emulated Father's own, and at which Thor remained laughably insufficient -- but it never came.

But still, Loki could not hate him, even if he didn't know if his feelings ran straight to love. Envy clouded everything, made it too difficult for Loki to parse, and the Centre didn't care about his emotional breakdowns.

A boy -- Loki didn't bother with their names or identifiers, as all were rude and loutish and beneath him, save for their physiques -- crowded Loki against the corner. "Hey runt," he said, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear, but sadly only in the metaphorical sense. Loki imagined doing it for real, but he wasn't allowed to use knives against other candidates, not yet. For now they practiced on dummies and the occasional animal carcass. Shipments of pigs from District Ten showed up by the truckload for them to work on their weaponry; their target practice could have fed all of District Twelve for three days, a thought that Loki pushed from his mind. Twelve was no longer his concern. One day, but not now.

Loki rolled his eyes. "How plebeian," he drawled, knowing it would only irritate the boy for not knowing its meaning. He could give a high-worded compliment and it would have the same effect. As always, ignorance was faced with bluster, rather than an attempt to capture and attain it for themselves.

"Whatever," the boy scoffed. Definitely done his first animal kill, if he didn't let Loki get to him. The others who hadn't, they tended to be more defensive, lash out quicker. This one had that air of smug confidence to him, and Loki's alarms blared in his head. "You sure you know how to use that spear? It looks pretty heavy for you. I could give you a hand."

Loki gave him a flat-eyed stare, eyeing him up as subtly as possible. This boy was bigger -- almost as big as Thor, though not quite -- and Loki still hadn't hit his growth spurt, so brute force wouldn't do the trick. He'd need something else. He glanced at the floor, at a tangle of rope, and followed it to where it looped around a hook on the wall. It was used to hold up a net full of weights, used to test upper-body strength. Perched on a ledge on the ceiling, trainers would add one weight at a time to the net while a candidate below struggled to hold it steady as long as possible.

The last person to use it had put things away improperly, missing one of the weights in his eagerness to move on to the next task. Not enough to kill someone -- not without a very precise hit -- but with the net behind it, could at least knock a boy over and stop his laughter for a while. Meanwhile Loki couldn't even be scolded for it, because he wouldn't have laid a hand on him, either in person or with a weapon. Anyone who saw would know his guilt, but the rules said nothing to forbade it.

He smiled. They never liked that, the boys who searched for fear in Odin's pet's face, and this one was no different. He scowled. "Yeah, I think that spear's too heavy for you," he said, and snatched it out of Loki's hands, held it up high. As if Loki would demean himself to jump for it. Honestly. For a thirteen, this boy hadn't much in the way of wits, or knowledge of human behaviour. Loki guessed he wouldn't make it through the training.

Loki edged sideways, hunching his shoulders in false submission. The boy grinned and advanced. Just a little more. Loki reached the rope and curled his fingers around it, as though using it for protection. The boy laughed. "Not so special now, are you, Odin's pet?" he grinned. "What are you going to do without your daddy here to save you?"

Father had never saved him from the bullies. Not once had he stepped in, or said a word, or so much as quelled another's mocking with the force of his glare. He'd stood by and watched it happen, studied Loki to see his response. For that, even if nothing else, Loki loved him.

"I suppose you'll have to see," Loki said, tightening his fingers on the rope and preparing to pull it free.

Thor leapt down from one of the climbing mazes on the ceiling, and Loki bit his tongue to stifle a curse. "What be this?" Thor demanded, dropping an arm around the other boy's shoulders, as companionable as an anaconda. He was still using that affected manner of speech that he'd picked up a few weeks back. It made Loki want to hit him.

"Just some fun," said the boy, and he didn't flinch in body, but Loki saw it in his mind.

Thor tilted his head and pretended to consider. "Doesn't look like fun. Looks like a waste of time. Should you not be attending heavy weapons training at the moment?"

"Shouldn't you?" the boy shot back, but he edged out from Thor's arm and dropped the spear with a clatter against the floor.

"I have finished," Thor said, unperturbed. He watched to make sure the boy had gone, then turned to Loki and shook his head. "One of these days, I will not be there," he said, blond eyebrows furrowing. "You should not antagonise them."

"I had it under control," Loki snapped, and shook off Thor's hand on his shoulder. "If you'd just stayed out of it, you would have seen."

Thor snorted. "Do I look a fool to you?" he asked, but without rancour. "Still, if that be your wish, next time I will sit back and watch you work."

Loki blew out his breath in a sigh of frustration, picking up the spear. "You should stop talking like that. You sound like an idiot."

"Father doesn't think so," Thor said, and his eyes glowed at the mention of their parent's praise. "He thinks it's perfect. It makes me memorable, and if I am memorable, the sponsors will fight over me."

Loki couldn't help but gape at him. "Are you serious? You're enormous, and son of Odin, besides. You really think some ridiculous diction is what's going to get you sponsors?"

Irritation flashed across Thor's face before he smoothed it away, the older, mature brother to the end. "Fine, I'll knock it off around you," he said, losing the deep rumble and reverting to his normal tone. "Happy now?"

"No," Loki grumped, but Thor only laughed and punched him in the shoulder. "You shouldn't treat me like a child," he insisted. "If you keep protecting me, that will only make them think I'm weak"

"So next time, enact your scheme before I get worried they're going to smash your skull in," Thor said, in the sort of tone that said he thought he was being perfectly reasonable. "I waited to see what you were doing, but you just hid behind that rope. I got worried. You have these elaborate tricks, I've seen them, but they take too much time. All this effort to set up traps when you could smash their skulls in with a rock."

"Now who's not worried about sponsors?" Loki countered. "I'm not a giant; I can't win them by looking like I stepped out of Careers Monthly. I have to use what skills I have, and while the appeal of intellect might escape you, dear brother, it is nevertheless useful."

Thor waved a hand. "You're never going to make it to Volunteer if you can't prove you can handle yourself without your tricks," he said. "But enough of this. What say you --" Loki cleared his throat, and Thor stopped. "Why don't we skip afternoon activities and go swimming?"

"We can't skip!" Loki protested, aghast. He didn't even want to know what sort of punishment that would incur, not that Thor ever seemed to think about that, given his position as Two's golden boy. No one in all of Loki's years had been as certain to be a Volunteer as Thor. He searched for something that might actually change Thor's mind. "We have nothing to swim in. Are you actually suggesting we go naked?"

"And why not?" Thor demanded, puffing out his chest and placing his hands on his hips. "We're youths in our prime! Nature should be honoured to see us thus."

Moments like those were exactly why Loki couldn't hate his brother, no matter what happened. He sniggered, pressing his hand over his mouth to catch the sounds before anyone heard. "You're mad," he said.

"Madly handsome, perhaps," Thor said, with a thirteen-year-old's breezy confidence. "Come, let's have fun. Everything's getting so serious. What are they going to do to Odin's sons, anyway? Scold us?"

Indeed.

"I should cut you both from the program right now," Father thundered, and Thor flinched. They both knew he didn't mean it, but even to speak the words brought the clouds of ill omen into the house. "What are you thinking? That you're above the rules, just because you're my sons? Just because you do well on your test scores? Because you're stronger, handsomer, or smarter?" He skewered them both with a glare; Loki had the fleeting thought that if he lifted his eye patch now, lasers would shoot forth from the empty socket and kill them both.

"I'm sorry, Father," Thor said, but Odin waved him off with the same unconcern that Thor had done their imaginary punishments.

"I want obedience, not apologies!" Father roared. "Any fool can snivel and grovel, but only a true soldier does what is asked of him at all times. Do you understand that? The Capitol wants tributes who understand their responsibilities, not ones who shirk, and that is exactly what the Capitol deserves! Do you honestly think I will let you sail through just because of your lineage? I will not hesitate to cast you out the same as I would any disobedient brat who doesn't know what has been given to him."

He got himself under control with visible effort, straightening out his shoulders and taking a long breath. "My sons, there is no shame in being cut from the program because someone is better. Of course, I want my sons to succeed and carry on our legacy, but if you don't make it for those reasons, I would never shun you. However. If you're so stupid as to flout authority and make yourselves unsuitable, I swear to you, you will never set foot in my house ever again."

Loki's ears burned. Part of him wanted to protest -- it hadn't been his idea, and he had tried to counsel Thor against it -- but he knew he deserved the abuse just as much as Thor. He could have refused, instead of going along; he could have told Thor no, and stayed at the Centre like a good soldier. His failing was just as strong as Thor.

"You shouldn't chastise Loki, Father," Thor said, and Loki nearly gasped at the risk. "It was my fault. I urged him on."

"With a knife to his throat, I suppose, hm?" Father said, giving Loki a shrewd stare. "Loki. Even if my other son is too foolish and secure in his own bloodline to see it, you, at least, should understand that favour is precarious, and can be snatched away at any time. I took a risk with you, and would not wish to see it proven false by your mischief."

"Still, the fault is mine!" Thor broke in.

Father rounded on him. "Then you, as elder, must bear your punishment!" he snarled. "For as the older, and the one with the blood connection to me, you must know that any of your shared transgressions will reflect the worse on him. If you lead him astray, it will be he who bears the consequences, not you. Your punishment is to know that you nearly cost your brother the life he worked so hard to earn. If you are so willing to reap the consequences on yourself, then you shall have them."

Loki trembled, and even Thor paled. But as a summer thunderstorm, Father's rage abated, replaced by weariness. "Out of my sight!" he commanded, turning away. "I tire of your foolishness. You're excused from this evening's training, since it seems so odious to you."

Both boys flinched at that. It was the same as when the trainers allowed a struggling candidate to rest while the others ran laps; it was not a kindness, but rather a public nod to the candidate's weakness. Not everyone understood that. Loki did.

"I'm sorry," Thor said to Loki, who just shook his head. "I really didn't think we'd get in trouble."

Loki barked out a laugh. "I know. But maybe you should be careful, brother, or one day you'll wind up in the Arena with a knife in your eye, because you didn't really think you could die."

Thor said nothing for a long time after that.

 

Four Years Later

Everyone knew when a fourteen came back from their kill test. Even if Thor hadn't bragged about his upcoming for at least a week beforehand, Loki would have known when he returned, silent and shaken, eschewing conversation and friends in favour of sitting with the others who'd gone through theirs. They huddled together, not speaking, until gradually, the others in their year joined them.

Loki couldn't understand why. They'd all killed animals beforehand, but Loki took no pleasure in that. What honour, what glory came from murdering something incapable of thought or speech or reason, no matter how large or vicious? Had they put him in a room with a lion and no weapons, he could not have felt much satisfaction in the victory. But people, now -- to match wits against the pinnacle of evolution -- that was something different. He wanted to know how it felt, to watch the life slip from another thinking creature's face, to watch the thought processes dim as the film slid over the eyes.

Loki was the last in his year to have his kill test, and he chafed at it. He had no friends in his group, so their withdrawal didn't bother him, but it chafed him to wait. He knew there had to be a reason, that the trainers did everything with a purpose in mind, but he could not fathom it this time. Surely there could be no crime in eagerness, in straining to catch any tidbit from the mouths of those who'd done it, as few as they were.

"He pissed himself," said one. "I smelled it on me for days. Even after I showered until my fingers wrinkled."

"She didn't even scream. She just looked at me."

"He tried to beg. It was disgusting. I couldn't even feel proud -- if he'd fought me, maybe. But he tried to bribe me to let him go. How am I supposed to feel with that?"

Loki drank in every detail. Each day that passed with him untested rankled until he felt it like an open wound -- but then, at last, he understood. They left him for last because they wanted him to impress them. After seeing his entire year, they would not be satisfied with knives or rocks or spears, or even tricks and traps. From Loki they required something greater, and by making him wait, they were giving him the chance -- and increasing the pressure -- to do so.

In a music recital, the first performer must be good, to set the bar, but the final one must be a virtuoso.

And so, when they dropped him in the corralled-off forest with no weapons or anything to guide him, Loki didn't run, or search. He picked dead twigs from the ground and built a fire, then covered it with a thin layer of green leaves and fresh shoots to set off smoke, and waited.

They'd chosen an impressive target for him. A physique that would make Thor feel the need to hit the weight machines for a few days, fists the size of Loki's head, and a number of improvised tattoos -- including a crosshatch that Loki guessed was either number of murders or times in a penitentiary.

No surprise there -- a candidate's target was always chosen to have a direct relation to the candidate's weakness. Always convicted criminals, of course, to keep things humane, but beyond that, they were always picked to be the most difficult for the candidate to overcome. Thor's, Loki had finally pried from him, had been a woman, raped and impregnated in prison, promised freedom for herself and a home for her baby if she managed to kill Thor and survive. No matter how much Loki pressed, Thor refused to tell how he'd killed her.

No snivelling sympathy-grubbers for Loki; anyone who watched him as much as the trainers did would know he'd have no compunctions about that. No, for Loki, his weakness was the same as it had always been -- his size. In any battle, Loki must always have the upper hand, because once he lost that, he would be finished. His tricks wouldn't save him with a three hundred pound wall of muscle crushing his chest.

His target rushed out of the trees, clutching a knife that looked small in his hand but which was half the size of Loki's forearm. He stopped short when he saw that Loki wasn't running, eyes darting about for traps, and he actually stopped, rather than charging. Interesting. They'd chosen someone with at least the minimum allotment of active brain cells. Well, all the better.

"Hello," Loki said, giving the man a pleasant smile. The man winced. "You're a murderer, I suspect."

The man shifted his grip on his knife and didn't say anything, but adjusted his weight so he could dash forward or back, whatever the situation required. Loki continued. "Judging by the number of tattoos -- not professionally done, those -- I'm guessing you were slated for execution at this point. I suppose they've promised you immunity if you kill me?" The man said nothing, but the muscles next to his eye twitched. Loki nodded. "I thought so. You do know they're lying."

The man didn't answer. Loki saw him gauging the situation, looking to see if Loki was talking in order to stall him while something else happened. Yes, this was an appropriate enemy indeed. He must remember to thank them later.

"You're a convicted criminal, likely on death row. They're not about to let you out on the streets with a new identity because you've killed a child," Loki said, using a reasonable tone. "Especially not the son of Odin."

This time, the man flinched hard enough that Loki saw it. Loki smiled. "They didn't tell you that, I suppose. I'm Odin's younger son. I don't think you're getting out of here, whether I kill you or not. I know desperation can make a man forget, but you need to remember this. People lie, especially when you have something they want. Even our lords and masters -- especially them." He paused, tilted his head to the side. "I suppose I could be lying. I might not be Odin's son. But either way, I don't think it matters. How many times have you heard about someone being released because they defeated a candidate? The answer is never, because it never happens. But people play along and buy into it, because the fiction is better than the reality -- that there is no easy way out. No magic wand to erase your mistakes and give you the chance to start over."

The man growled, and Loki watched his feet to see which way his weight would be leaning when he charged. Loki still straggled behind many of the others in sheer physical prowess, but he practiced martial arts that allowed him to use the other's power and body weight against him. Even Thor, who fought low to the ground, couldn't always avoid Loki throwing him when they sparred -- it happened rarely, but when it did, Loki couldn't keep the grin off his face for hours.

Child's play, really. A grip of the wrist, a shift in balance, a step this way, and the man was on the ground with a broken wrist and Loki's foot against his windpipe. "I'm going to offer you a proposition," Loki said, and the whole time he kept his tone conversational. The man struggled, but Loki had his knife. It wasn't a foregone conclusion, of course -- the man could still throw him off -- but Loki made allowance for the possibility even as he discounted it.

"The unfortunate thing for you is, I have to make this look good," Loki said. "It needs to be entertaining. Any fool can kill, but not everyone can make it interesting for the audience, and we all know that's what the Games are about. You're a killer; I'm sure you understand. So when I kill you, it can't be a merciful death. That's not memorable, or interesting. I'll have to make it take a long time, and inflict as much pain as possible." The man's eyes were wide, panicked, but he didn't have the desperate look of someone about to make a last rush for survival. He'd accepted the inevitability of death, but feared the means.

"Or." Loki paused, giving the word weight. "Or, I return your knife to you, and let you end yourself quickly. If you make a mistake, I promise that in this case, I will finish the job without preamble. The choice is yours. We can spend the next few hours together, learning how much blood a person your size can lose before losing consciousness -- how much pain he can stand if he has no vocal cords left to scream -- or you can give yourself the easy way out. I promise you this, I am not lying. It's not a trick."

Loki removed his foot, backed up, and tossed the knife down. The man lurched to a sitting position and stared at the weapon. "I suggest the femoral artery," Loki said. "If you get it, you should bleed out in less than two minutes. Though if that's not fast enough, you could strike here --" he indicated a spot in his abdomen, beneath the ribcage -- "and aim upward. You would hit the heart or lungs without having to go through bone."

The man's breath heaved. Loki lowered his voice, gentling his tone. "It's a good death," he said. "An honourable one. Many ancient cultures considered this to be the ultimate glory for a warrior. There's no shame in it."

Maybe not in ancient cultures, but definitely in Two. One or two tributes had gone insane and taken themselves out, and their names were the only ones not on the Wall in the Centre -- though their absence spoke volumes, and ensured that their stories would always be told, albeit in hushed whispers. But no point in mentioning that.

The man picked up the knife. Loki nodded. "I swear to you, if you miss I will end it quickly," he vowed, and let the man hear the truth in his voice.

He didn't miss. Loki watched him thrash and sputter for a few moments, before jerking still. Only then did Loki lean forward, dip his fingers in the pooling blood, and rub his fingers together. He sat back and waited for the hovercraft to pick him up.

 

"He's dangerous."

"All our candidates are dangerous. If they weren't, they wouldn't be here."

"Not that kind of dangerous. You know what I mean. He sees too much."

"We're not just interested in raising drones, you know. And we have his loyalty -- without us, he'd be digging in the mines in Twelve. He'll never forget that. We should be grateful, really. It shows that he sees what's behind the curtain, but he's not disillusioned by it. If anything, it's encouraging."

"He killed a man without touching him -- he convinced a serial murderer who'd been promised acquittal to kill himself. He told him we lie. You really think that's encouraging?"

"Well, maybe. We'll have to watch him."

"Believe me, we are."

 

"That was impressive," said Loki's trainer, when he returned. He didn't look impressed, his arms folded and lips thinned. "Unfortunately, it wasn't what we asked you to do."

Loki frowned. "Was it not entertaining enough?" he asked. He couldn't believe that. A man that size, taking his own life when faced with a teenager who only came up to his chest? Surely if that had been televised, the audiences would have been craning forward in their seats and fighting for the better viewpoint.

"Oh, it was entertaining, all right," the trainer said. "But we also need to see that you know how to kill yourself, not just convince others to do it. You might get away with that once or twice in the Arena, but not forever. You need to show us you can handle yourself in a fight you can't talk your way out of. You'll have to take your kill test again, and this time, show us you can do it right."

That made sense, but Loki still burned at the injustice of it. He'd done something no other candidate had managed to do in the history of District Two. "Yes, sir," he said.

He didn't intend to take the kill test again. The other candidates, they would hear about it and think that he failed, that his opponent nearly defeated him, or perhaps fell on his own knife or over a cliff by accident. They already whispered when Loki didn't return from his test pale and withdrawn. He needed to show them, to show everyone, that he could do it.

The next day, during training, they paired Loki against a much larger boy, one who had tormented him in the past, and enjoyed taking the smaller candidates down. During their sparring, Loki watched him, studied his movements, the way he stepped, how he balanced. When the boy lunged, Loki adjusted for it, and got his hand under the other's chin.

The snap and ensuing thud reverberated through the training room. Loki stepped back, letting the medics and trainers run forward to check the corpse, and looked up to where he knew the camera watched him. He narrowed his eyes at the lens, then smiled.

 

"Now do you believe me? The boy is dangerous. He's too smart, too self-sufficient. He's more interested in showing off than obeying the rules. We need to bring him in."

"What about his brother? If anyone exemplifies that last one, it's Thor."

"Thor didn't kill another candidate to prove a point."

"Still. Thor is cocky and thinks he knows better than his trainers. He deliberately ignores orders if he thinks his plans will work better, whether they do or not. He's far more interested in bringing honour and glory to Thor than to District Two, let alone Panem. But we can't scrub both of Odin's sons. There'd be a riot."

"We won't have to. Thor is rash, but if we tell him how close he is, he'll smarten up. His problem is he thinks nothing can touch him; once we take that illusion away, he'll be fine. But Loki -- I don't think there's any way we can use him. He's too intractable. There's no indication that he wants to serve the Capitol."

"He wants the Capitol to love him."

"That's not the same, and you know it."

"If we cut him, we'll lose him, and I don't want to think what will happen then. He's not going to be satisfied with a Peacekeeper job."

"No. We'll need to be careful with this one. I don't think it would take much to drive him insane. I'm half-convinced he's there already."

"Insanity can be useful."

"Only if you can control it. We want precision grenades, and he's a nuclear bomb. I'm not convinced he wouldn't tear the Capitol down if he thought we treated him unfairly. He might think he loves us, but it's conditional. That's not what we need."

"Fine. But you're in charge of finding a way to do it without setting him off."

 

In spite of everything he'd done, Loki was not stupid. He didn't expect a commendation for his actions, and when he was called in to see Director Fury and the others, he didn't expect an award and a standing ovation.

At the same time, he didn't expect to be faced with a line of all the trainers and the heads of the Centre, either, with one single seat in the middle reserved for him. Loki sat, and for the first time in years, fear beat in his chest.

"Loki," Director Fury began, and just that word carried the weight of a thousand reprimands. "This is going to be difficult."

Uh-oh. Loki's chest contracted. He looked at Father, but Father merely stared at him, impassive, and revealed nothing. Most of the other trainers averted their eyes. Fury winced, as though he had to work himself up to speaking. "Loki, we've made a decision, and in the light of your actions, and in reviewing your files, we've decided you are not fit to take the place of Volunteer."

Loki leaned back in his chair so fast he nearly toppled it over. "What?" he demanded, though he knew the proper answer was to be silent. "Why? I've done everything you asked me."

Several exchanged glances at that. "The fact that you feel the need to contradict us is perhaps the best contraindication of your becoming a Volunteer," said one. "You're a little too in love with yourself, for one."

Loki clenched his jaw. "I wish for nothing but to bring honour and glory to my district, and to the Capitol," he said, parroting the motto.

"But will you serve it?" Fury asked him, eyes hard. Loki's hesitation lasted less than a second, but it was enough. The others sat back in their chairs, and several slumped their shoulders. "We're not releasing you from the program," Fury continued. "We want you to continue to train. We think you could be an invaluable asset to the Centre, as a teacher and strategist. You could help other candidates a great deal."

"I don't want that," Loki said, even as his mind screamed at him to stop, to take their offer with the gratitude he knew a loyal servant of the Capitol would do. "I want --"

"To show the world you deserve to be here. We know." Fury nodded. "And you do, because you are here. There are other ways to bring honour than being a Victor. You can do great things. Look at this as an opportunity to do something more with yourself."

Loki stood up, the chair clattering against the floor. "I'm sorry," he said. "I -- I can't." He turned and ran from the room, unable to see what expression sat on Father's face.

A failure. He was a failure -- except not, because others failed because they couldn't meet the demands. Loki had met them, exceeded them, and they feared him. Loki failed because he had become too great for the cage that housed him.

On his way back to his room, he ran through the lounge -- or tried to. The room was packed with candidates, whooping and clapping each other on the back. With a jolt, Loki knew what had happened: this year's Volunteer had been posted.

Loki pushed through the throng, his stomach heaving. He knew what he'd see on the paper, knew which name would be scrawled there. Still, he needed to see. Needed to sink the knife into his breast himself.

Volunteer, female: Wanda Maximoff

Volunteer, male: Thor Odinson

The scream built in Loki's throat, and once the door closed behind him, he let it loose. He knew they watched him, even here -- nowhere in the Centre was free from cameras -- but he didn't care. He ripped the blanket from his bed, hurled the single pillow against the wall. The chair soon followed; the bed and small desk toppled to the side. Everything that could be removed and hurled, Loki did, until his room lay in shambles.

Still, it was not enough. Since they hadn't barred him from the Centre like most of the washouts he still had access to the training rooms -- he could throw weights until his arms turned to lead, tear the training dummies to ribbons -- but he couldn't bear to go back there. Not anymore. Not when every candidate would know that Loki had failed, that he would never be a Victor. Those in Thor's year still had the ghost of a chance -- Thor might be killed, he might drown in his field test, might break a leg climbing the stairs on Reaping Day. Loki had none, and they would know it.

Fists hammered at his door. Loki ignored the distraction, smashing his lamp against the wall until it exploded into a thousand fragments. The door swung open, and in the entrance stood the last person Loki wanted to see.

"Have you gone mad?" Thor demanded, gawking at the mess. His friends gaped at Loki from behind him. Loki crossed the room, crunching on broken glass, and tugged Thor inside, slamming the door. "Do you want to get sent back to Twelve?" Thor asked him.

"Don't speak to me." Loki shook with rage. His mind darted about the room, cataloguing every available weapon, every piece of glass big enough to jam into Thor's eye. At the same time, he knew he didn't have enough control of himself to land a blow, not now. "Don't even open your mouth. Already they've broken their promises to me. They told me no one would know I'd been cut, but they obviously told you. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't heard."

Thor only shrugged, damn him. "I'm your brother -- of course they told me. They were worried you wouldn't handle it well, and I have to say they're right!" His expression softened into something like anguish. "I can't believe it. They must still be willing to change their minds, or surely they wouldn't keep you here. It can be undone."

"It won't be." Loki let out the ghost of a laugh. "I do my job to well for them, it seems. They want us to kill, but only on their terms. I think they're afraid of me."

"I'm afraid of you!" Thor cried, and gripped Loki's shoulders with his massive hands. "Please, brother. Loki. You must calm yourself. This isn't the end."

"What, you think if I ask nicely, they'll reconsider?" Loki asked, acid on his tongue.

"No." Thor took a deep breath. "But they might, if I do."

Loki froze. Thor saw that as encouragement, for he continued, words tumbling over each other in excitement. "I'm the Volunteer. They'll listen to me. If I tell them I wish you to have a second chance -- if I tell them how important it is to me, they'll change their minds. I'm sure of it. I can help you. I could go right now, if you like, before the others have the chance to hear --"

"GET OUT!"

The force of Loki's shout actually drove Thor backward a step. "What --" Thor began, but Loki cut him off with a wordless scream.

"I didn't ask for your pity, and I don't want your help!" Loki searched for something small enough to throw but large enough to bruise; everything had been smashed to pieces. He balled his fists and bit back tears. "The last thing I want is the scraps from your table. Get out! Get out and never speak of this again!"

Thor opened his mouth, but Loki lunged at him, and he made a hasty exit. Once the door closed again, Loki collapsed and gave himself over to furious sobs. Thor didn't understand -- how could he? He'd never lost anything in his life. He'd made the cut. He would go on to be Volunteer, to Tribute, to Victor. Anything but a freak act of the Gamemakers could cut him down, and they'd never do it. Thor would never understand the sting of loss, of failure, the weight of inevitability and his own insignificance while another took the stage --

Wait. Loki stopped crying with enough force to make him choke. Wait.

Just like that, Loki knew what he must do.

 

He should have known it would fail. If the gods existed, Thor sat firmly in their favour while Loki cringed in the shadows. Loki had only half-expected his attempt to succeed, but with nothing left to lose, he'd had to try anyway. Even the slightest chance of victory meant a lifetime of peace for him, no matter if he saw it for the next twenty years from a prison cell, or for the next few days before execution. It didn't matter.

Except that he didn't expect it to fail so spectacularly.

With his assured status as Volunteer, Thor's training went into overdrive. The next week he took his field test, a mock Games with everything except other tributes; in this game, the volunteer fought against the creation of Gamemakers, the elements, and the body -- starvation, dehydration, exhaustion. Before the test, Loki broke in to the command centre and looked at the parameters of the test, searching for something he could use. It didn't take him long to find it.

A river, covered over in ice, which Thor would have to cross at some point during the games. Each candidate had to endure cold-water tests, plunged beneath the ice to see if they could survive the shock, but that had been in controlled conditions. This time, Thor would be alone, and no one would pull him out if he struggled. If they did, that meant he failed. His Volunteer status would be revoked.

Loki picked the lock to the room where Thor would be permitted to change before taking the hovercraft to his destination. It didn't take him long to split the lining of the jumpsuit and sew in weights along the hem, the kind the trainers made candidates wear in ankle or wrist bands during laps. Thor wouldn't even notice when he put them on -- or if he did, he would assume it part of the test.

The next part would be more difficult. Loki threw himself into a fine sulk in the days before the test, so that no one would question if he refused to watch the footage with the others. The morning of, Loki sneaked outside and into the hovercraft while the preparations were made elsewhere, lugging a bag of salt that he'd stolen from the kitchens. Yes, he knew this was ridiculous, that anyone watching would think him a madman -- but the time for sanity had passed.

The hovercraft dropped Thor into the testing grounds, then lifted back off. With the cameras all trained on Thor, Loki waited until it began its ascent, and tumbled out the door before it closed. He landed cleanly, albeit with a thud hard enough to jar the breath from his lungs, but no matter. He'd memorized the layout of the testing area, and he ran. Sooner or later Thor would find the river. The Gamemakers would make him cross it -- they wouldn't have put it there if they didn't intend so. Thor hated swimming, and he hated ice; they would not be able to resist the challenge.

Thor didn't find it for days. Loki hadn't brought any food with him, but no matter -- what was the gnawing in his belly over the chance to see Thor fail? He sucked chips of ice to slake his thirst and waited. At last, Loki was rewarded with the yelping of mutts, and he knew the time had come. The Gamemakers would use the mutts to force Thor to cross the river. Judging by the sound, he had several minutes to complete his task.

The cameras would see him, of course, but the Gamemakers would not; they would be trained on Thor, manipulating every angle. They wouldn't waste time looking at random locales. Loki slid the bag across the ice; it crackled, but held, and he crawled out on his belly. He withdrew his knife and slit the bag along its seam, then dumped the salt and spread it with his hands. The ice bubbled, and water began to seep up.

The mutts howled closer, and Loki bared his teeth in a smile. He shifted to get out of the way --

-- and the ice gave out from under him.

Loki had dressed for the cold -- he wasn't the one being filmed, after all -- and his coat dragged him down. The cold knocked the breath from his lungs, and he thanked his training for the ability to stop himself from gasping in reflex, filling his lungs. He fought to clamber upward, but the current had swept him to the side, and his quickly-numbing fingers scraped the underside of the ice. He couldn't find the opening. His lungs burned.

A hand closed about his wrist. A voice roared in his ears. The ice creaked and cracked, then the world tumbled all around him as Thor dropped into the water with him, the weights Loki had so carefully sewn dragging him down.

But Loki had underestimated his brother. He tore the soaked fabric and let it sink without him, and with one hand he pulled himself free, dragging Loki up with him. Loki, shivering, palsied, impotent, shook while Thor pulled them both to safety along the bank.

"Have you gone mad?" Thor demanded. Water dripped from his hair, slowly freezing. Steam rose from his chest into the chill air. "What were you doing? Why are you here?"

Loki couldn't respond. His teeth chattered too hard to allow him to speak -- and even so, his shame ate at him until nothing remained. He'd failed. He'd failed, and Thor had saved him. He knew, then, what he'd been too stupid, to blind to see: that he'd been observed, and permitted in this indulgence. They'd allowed it to see how Thor would respond. Thor had saved him, which wouldn't earn him high marks -- no one saved another tribute, for any reason -- but even that was little consolation.

Thor pushed Loki away from him in disgust. "I have a test to win," he said, and jabbed a finger at the sky, where a hovercraft already descended. "Go home." Away he ran, half-naked, and Loki knew he would win.

They beat him for his insubordination, but Loki didn't even feel it. Nothing they could do would erase the feeling of Thor's fingers around his wrist, hauling him from the water into a pit of never-ending shame. After they beat him, they pulled him in and told him he was officially released, but that they would still find him employment, if he so chose. A second chance.

Loki spat directly in Director Fury's face.

 

"Brother. Don't do this."

Father hadn't come to the station to see him off. No one had. Thor had even been forbidden from going himself, but, assured of his own invincibility to the very end, he'd come anyway. Loki would give anything to see his brother lying twisted and broken at his feet. Would, and had. Not that Thor would understand until the morning of the Reaping.

"It's already done, brother," Loki spat. "Crawl back to Father, to your precious Centre. Whatever bond we had is gone. Remember that."

Thor's face screwed up in agony. He actually believed the lies, that he and Loki shared something deeper than blood. Well, then. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Loki stared him down until Thor, the Golden God, dropped his gaze. "You know the answer to that, I think," Loki said.

"Still!" Thor wiped a hand across his eyes. He could weep, and no one would think him any weaker for it. It only drove the ice deeper into Loki's heart. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to go, leave everything behind. You could stay here. Father would find you a job, a good one. You could be a trainer, or even work as a Director one day."

"Enough!" Loki thundered. The word that Father so often used on him, the one that Thor would no doubt grow up to use once he had his Victory and placed himself on a pedestal that Loki would never have the chance to climb. "What's done is done. Just know this, brother -- what Father said to us as children holds true. It is your fault that I leave here, your fault that I have lost everything that was rightly mine. Know that, and never forget."

"Boarding now!" the conductor called, and Loki stepped back. He brought nothing with him, just as he had all those years ago.

"Farewell," Loki said, and curled his lips in a smile. "Take care of yourself. This will not be the last time we meet. I promise you that."

"I still love you, brother!" Thor called out, and Loki flinched. "I always will!"

"In that, you are alone," Loki said, and turned away. His hands trembled, and he slammed a fist against the carriage wall.

 

They expected him to crawl back in disgrace, and surely, Loki met with jeers rather than ovations as he stepped off the train. Loki held his head high and walked past them like the insignificant maggots they were. What could they do, toss coal dust in his face? He'd grown up in the Seam. He knew how to work with lungs full of rock and ash and not cough, to save it until he could hack up the dark gunk from the depths of his chest in private. A god should not have to deal with such things, but at the same time, a god could be expected to overcome his trials with dignity.

The mocking did not last long, as Loki predicted. The denizens of Twelve had too little energy after their days in the mines to devote much time to active alienation. He gave Twelve credit for one thing, and one thing only: these were a people who understood what it meant to bend their backs under the yoke of another. If they did not like the taste of servitude, it was only because their noses filled with soot. When Loki won, when he changed everything, they would understand, and they would kneel. Oh, they would kneel, and thank him for it.

"What happened, couldn't cut it in the big city?" one boy sneered. Loki took a full second to blink as he regarded the boy, but the boy's mental processes were too enfeebled, too weakened by the lack of oxygen as he spent day after day underground, to take the warning. "Couldn't kill after all, I guess?"

"On the contrary," Loki said, the tones of his cultivated District Two accent like velvet over the boy's unsophisticated flat vowels and sharp consonants. He smiled, and the boy flinched behind his dirt-ground skin. Loki reached over and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, friendly, and squeezed. Squeezed, and pushed, until the sickening pop and crunch of bone disconnecting from socket filled his ears, sweet as strings wafting through an empty concert hall. He missed the entertainment. "I killed too many, too soon. They worried I would not mind the leash if they let me loose, and turn on my masters."

The boy collapsed to his knees, writhing in pain with tears smearing the grime on his cheeks, and Loki's smile widened. Yes, kneeling looked good on Twelve. Very good indeed.

Chapter 2: The Reaping

Summary:

"My name is Loki Odinson, and I am here to watch you burn."

Twenty-four tributes. Only about six are having anything remotely resembling a good day.

District One

If the Capitol could do one thing well, it was manage people's expectations. Every Hunger Games had a good mix of the usual with a sprinkling of the surprising, but a few things always stayed solid. District Two's Careers, rock-solid and strong and competent and a little sociopathic, but lacking the polish of One, was the first. District One's Careers, charming and witty with ridiculous names, was the second.

They were going to have one hell of a time trying to figure out this year's District One Volunteers, Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton, but they could get in line.

Natasha stood back on the stage, dressed in black and silent, making no move to cheer or blow kisses or tilt her shoulder and glance at the camera from a seductive angle. The only hard part was keeping the smile off her face as Pashmina raged below her, screaming so hard that spittle flew from her mouth, ruining her makeup and perfect hair with the tiny jewelled beads braided into her sculpted curls.

"You bitch!" Pashmina shrieked. "This was my year! Mine! Not yours, you jealous self-centred whore!" She struck out at the Peacekeepers holding her back, taking down three and making it halfway up the stairs before they got her. They let her struggle for a minute before pressing a hypnospray to her shoulder, where she collapsed in a shower of glitter.

At least the Volunteer whose life Clint ruined took it a little better. He didn't fight, or scream, just walked up to the stage and stared. "You'd better die in there," he said, all calm, which was pretty impressive for a guy named Platinum. Then again, they'd gone the ironic route with him, so. "Because if you come back here, you're not going to make it to the Victor's Village. I swear on the Capitol."

Clint didn't even look at him -- not that Platinum or anyone else could tell, with those sunglasses.

Platinum was right, though. Natasha and Clint weren't walking away from this. Neither of them was going to waltz back into District One and buy a mansion like the others. They knew that. But they had a job to do.

 

District Two

Wanda so should have tried to get her name in last year. Bad enough being paired up with the Golden God, Son of Odin over here, who practically ate cameras for breakfast, but with the brother-rivalry that he was too stupid to see -- unless he was a way better actor than Wanda gave him credit -- well. She might as well just take herself out right now, since the audience would forget her immediately. Thor didn't know what his brother had planned, and no one was going to tell him, because it meant his genuine reaction would soak the underwear of every Capitol citizen from here to the fringe districts.

She almost considered telling him, but she was too damn professional for that. It meant, though, that Wanda didn't have much time to retool her thinking. Every year, District Two had two tributes -- the one that you root for to win, and the one you root for to die. Originally, the plan was that Thor, with his outdated notions of honour and chivalry, would be the one to munch it, since no way could he spin killing his partner without breaking his image. But now, with the brother-on-brother stuff they'd be shoving down everyone's throats, Wanda couldn't afford that. She didn't have time to smile and wave and be the one to die for Thor.

No. She had to be the one he had to defeat after grinding his stupid little brother into the dust. If Thor was a god, and Loki some sort of imp from hell, Wanda had to be the devil herself.

And so, when she Volunteered, she didn't give the girl she'd saved a second glance, just brushed past her with a vague sneer of disdain, like she judged her for being weak -- like the girl was so unworthy of the honour Wanda had now taken that she didn't even get it. All true, but Tributes didn't usually go so far as to make it text. Wanda did, sweeping her hair over her shoulder as she crossed the stage and curving her lips into the most wicked smile she could manage. Her stylists had dressed her in red, blood red, with none of the gold that accented Thor's clothing. Anyone watching would know they were not a pair.

Thor smiled at her and extended his hand. "I look forward to doing battle with you," he said, and the crowd roared.

Wanda looked him up and down and let her smile turn even nastier. "We'll see," she said, and licked her lips.

 

District Three

Half an hour left, and Tony would be done with this stupid ceremony forever. Oh, sure, they could make him go when his name was in that bowl up there, but good luck forcing him to show up once he was old enough. What were they going to do, fine him? Throw him in jail? Right, sure, do that, then see how much they liked it when all the lovely electronics Stark Enterprises sent the Capitol dried up.

Maybe he'd get a job in the Capitol directing the propos, if only so that the poor suckers still stuck out here, staring up at the screen and watching that boring excuse for a motivational soul-crushing tool, could at least have something interesting to waste their time. Too much guilt, not enough explosions. Or nudity. Any good PR stunt needed naked models. Throw in a few of the hotter tributes, that would get people paying attention.

Not that this was funny -- even Tony didn't laugh when twenty-three kids bludgeoned themselves to death every year -- but what could you do? No sense in crying over it. Tony drew the line at watching, at least -- he'd turn the Games on, because the Capitol monitored households to make sure everyone tuned in, but then he'd go down to his workshop and start tinkering. Once he got the arc reactor working, he'd make a deal with Five. They could supply the Capitol with more power than they needed without taking a hit from their own resources, and maybe even send it out to the other districts, too.

Or maybe he'd just sell it directly to the Capitol, if they made it worth his while, except not really. Always sell to someone who couldn't take it from you, bonus points if they weren't completely sleazy. He had no desire to wake up without his legs. Either way, the sale from the arc reactor and all the money from the patent would give him the capital to continue working on his baby -- enough advanced weaponry to take Stark Tower and protect it from whatever the Capitol threw at him. He'd turn all of District Three into an autonomous collective; nothing like nuclear standoff to take some of the pressure off.

Really, though, they should change the rules. It made no sense for Tony to stand here, in his final year with no tesserae -- with his money, please -- when the odds of his being picked were inversely proportional to those of his getting laid tonight. At least he had that to look forward to. Even if it was a sick excuse for the Capitol to flaunt its power -- and for the people of Panem to show they really weren't any more evolved than insects who gathered around an injured companion to tear it to pieces -- Tony did have to give Reaping Day credit. The "thank god we're alive" sex that night was always tremendous.

They called the name of the girl, but Tony didn't pay attention to the tribute. Whether she died or not, his watching wouldn't make the difference. He checked out the girls who hadn't been chosen instead, to see which of them fainted or sagged in relief or burst into tears and which would grab the nearest living being and kiss the life out of him out of the sheer joy of being spared. He found a promising one -- red hair, nice, Tony had always been partial to redheads -- when the entire square went still.

Whoops, he'd missed the boy being called, too, and that wasn't good; the cameras usually went to him to see his reaction, him being the sole heir to the Stark fortune, and Tony usually put on a show of looking sympathetic. He composed his features into an appropriate grave expression and looked around for the poor bastard. No one stepped forward. A coward, nice; that always looked good for the district.

Madina, on stage, cleared her throat and tried again. "Ahem," she said. "Anthony Stark? Anthony Edward Stark? Come on, don't be shy, now."

 This time, the cameras found him, and the crowd began to turn. The redhead Tony had been eyeing gasped, a hand flying to her mouth.

The toothpick he'd been chewing fell from Tony's mouth. He tilted his chin so his sunglasses slid down his nose. "You have got to be kidding me."

 

District Five

Typical -- he'd been clean almost a year. No incidents, no slip-ups, barely even a backslide. And look where it got him. He could've spent the entire year in a rage and remembered none of it, with none of the shakes and the repression and the fear of letting go, even a little, in case the other guy came back. He could've spent the whole last year as the other guy, and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.

He should've known those self-help classes were full of it.

Nobody volunteered, big surprise there. Who'd step forward for the addict who'd trashed his classroom and almost killed a kid? Nobody, and nobody could be expected to, either. Anger bubbled under the surface, but he couldn't do anything about it, not here. Not on the stage. And once he was on that train, not much he could do there, either.

And so, because he had nothing else to do, and he was going to die and no one was ever going to sponsor him and he'd never finish his research, Bruce Banner smiled for the cameras.

 

District Six

It was all a joke. It was always supposed to be a joke, a strange, alternate fantasy world that never came true, but gave them something to do other than work in the factories and skirt the morphling dealers who hung on the street corners. Theirs was an escape that didn't require drugs or give them the shakes or pull them into strange artistic trances, though it had been just as addictive, in its own way.

But it was only ever a joke.

Ennis, the Capitol representative for District Six, frowned and read the name again. "James Barnes," he said, more clearly this time, though his enhanced vocal chords, meant to sound like a wind instrument, floated hollow over the square.

Steve turned, looked down at his best friend's face. Bucky stood frozen, eyes wide as dinner plates, and he took one step forward. He was only fourteen. He had no tesserae -- Steve hadn't let him -- while Steve had over thirty. Bucky swallowed. One more step. The crowd noticed him, parted to make room.

The sun never set in District Six; too many buildings, the above-ground train line and the monorail and the high-rises blocking out any light from the horizon. It was daylight, then it was dark, in Six, especially in the neighbourhood where Steve and Bucky grew up.

Another step. If Bucky's parents protested, the six feet of dirt between them and the open air stifled any sounds. Bucky's father had made District Six history by being the first tribute to be a parent at the same time. He hadn't made it past the bloodbath; after the Games finished, his mother dropped the infant Bucky at the doors of a church and walked out into traffic.

Steve knew it was a little weird that he hung out with a kid four years younger, but he'd never found anyone who understood him like Bucky. Not in the orphanage where they met, and not ever since. Plus Bucky was younger, but he had a full, healthy, non-asthmatic set of lungs that meant he could run faster, climb higher, make it up the twisted fire escapes and over rooftops while Steve struggled behind. He had energy, and life, and hope.

Another.

"There's a brave boy," cooed Ennis. The crowd stayed silent, judging. A morphling addict cackled somewhere, only to be silenced when the person next to him smacked him in the head, hard.

The training had been Bucky's idea, something to distract them when not in school -- or, after sixteen, working in the factories. "We should pretend we're Careers," Bucky had said one afternoon, when they'd both returned to the foster home. Back before Steve was old enough that they sent him out on his own. "There's an abandoned gym down on 37^th and Slope, I've been there, and all the equipment is still there. Good condition. Guess it's too heavy for anyone to carry away."

Steve had laughed and pressed a hand to his chest. "What? Why would we want to be Careers? We've got such a swell life right here!"

Another.

"I don't know. It'd be fun to train, wouldn't it? Pretend we were rich and living in a city that sees the sun. I heard the Career Centre -- in the Nut -- I heard it's up in a mountain so it gets sunlight longer than anywhere else in the district. Wouldn't it be a laugh, though? Train ourselves up, and then if the foreman tries to hit you again, we can show him."

He'd turned his face up to Steve, sincere and wide-eyed, and Steve couldn't tell him no. And so they'd started going to the abandoned gym whenever they could, using the machines and running on treadmills until they actually started building some muscle under the big-city pallour. Not that it mattered with Steve's asthma, not really, but Bucky took to it like District Four and water.

Another. A few more, and he would reach the stage. He didn't turn back, didn't waver, but his fingers plucked at the hem of his shirt, and Steve recognized that from when the monitors at the group home would yell at him.

Last year, the District Six boy died on the first day. He'd escaped the bloodbath by being fast, but that evening the Four girl stopped him, trapped him against a cliff face and gutted him with the harpoon she'd received in the Cornucopia. His guts had spilled all over the ground, glistening red, so red. The cameras zoomed in while the life faded from his eyes. Blue eyes, dark hair. Like Bucky.

Bucky had one foot on the bottom step when the scream ripped through the square. "I VOLUNTEER!"

Everyone stopped, looked around, the cameras zooming and panning as they searched for the one who spoke. It took Steve a second to realise that his breath scraped in his throat, that the words had come from him. He forced back the panic attack that closed his lungs and walked toward the stage. The same silence followed him, and Steve was glad for it. If Ma hadn't overdosed all those years back, she still wouldn't have understood. Steve had no memories of her without the yellow skin and rolling eyes of an addict. She would have ruined this, somehow.

"NO!" Bucky shrieked. "Steve -- Cap -- no!"

Bucky had started calling him Captain -- something he read in an old book once -- as a joke. Always the jokes. Steve looked up at the stage, at the row of Peacekeepers, and gave them a hard nod. He stopped in front of Bucky and held his shoulders. "Listen, you're going to stay here, and you're going to stay alive, and stay smart, you hear me?" Steve demanded. "No morphling, I don't care what happens. Stay in school, get a job when you're old enough."

A Peacekeeper took Steve's arm, but he shook them off. "Promise me!" Steve commanded. "I want you to promise me that you'll be smart. You'll be okay."

"I promise," Bucky choked out. "Just, no, Cap, it should be me, your asthma, you can't --"

They tugged him away, then, and Steve mounted the steps up to the platform. The crowd moved closer, milling, but still left a wide, almost respectful space around Bucky. Steve kept his eyes fixed on his friend. When Ennis called the name of the female tribute -- Carol Danvers -- Steve hardly registered it.

Steve had no possessions, no tokens, nothing. He waited, alone, for over an hour after the Reaping, and though with every breath his lungs threatened to close and make this whole game irrelevant, he knew that at least he'd kept Bucky safe. At least he had that much. The door opened, and he jumped, but the Peacekeeper only stepped aside, revealing Bucky standing behind him. "You have five minutes," said the guard, and the door shut.

Bucky flung himself at Steve, wrapping him in a hug so tight that Steve coughed. "You shouldn't have done that," Bucky said, eyes red, but he'd set his jaw now, and forced the tears to stop. He stood up straight and gave Steve the sharpest, most military salute. "In return I get to ask you a favour, right? That's how it works?"

Steve didn't know about that, but at the same time, he couldn't say no, either. "Name it," he said.

"Come back." Bucky's voice broke, and he swiped an angry hand across his eyes. "Come back to me. You'll be rich, and I can leave the orphanage and stop being sent around to foster homes, and you can quit your stupid job and we can do whatever we want. Okay?"

"You got it," Steve said, the words sitting heavy in his stomach. He knew he couldn't kill anyone, and Bucky knew it, too. Their Career games had never actually gone into the Arena for a reason. Once you saw your share of overdosers lying in pools of their own vomit, or stepped over your tenth mugging victim, death lost the sheen and glory it held for the Capitol.

"You're allowed a token, right?" Bucky said, and Steve nodded. They all knew the rules. "Well, it's stupid, but it's all I could do, and I had to steal some metal from the factory, but -- here."

He held out his hand, and Steve took the pin from Bucky's palm, a crudely-fashioned circle, hastily hammered into shape, and painted -- circles of red and white, with a white star on a blue background in the centre. "What's this?" Steve asked.

"It's your symbol," Bucky said, and his voice stopped trembling. He stuck out his chin. "For you. For the Captain. For people to remember you. They'll make merchandise, and people will buy it, and then you'll get sponsors, and then they'll help you and then you'll win. All right?"

"Of course." And he knew Bucky needed to be strong, to be a man, but Steve allowed himself one moment of weakness and tousled Bucky's hair. Bucky sniffled, but clenched his teeth. "You watch me," Steve said. "I'll fight for you. I promise."

"Just win, that's all I want," Bucky said, and then the door opened and the guards pulled him back.

The door shut again, leaving Steve alone and staring at the pin. He let out a breath, felt his chest squeeze, and attached his token to his shirt. He turned, and it glinted in the morning light, casting a light reflection on the wall opposite. Steve closed his eyes.

 

District Seven

Finally. Finally finally finally! Nobody ever told you how long twelve years could feel.

Jan practically skipped to the sign-in table, where she took the large pen -- chained to the table, because people stole things, and the Capitol didn't like people who stole things -- and signed her name in proper cursive, like Daddy taught her before he died, getting all the loops right: JANET VAN DYNE. She stood still and straight while they pricked her finger and pressed it to the paper, to verify she wasn't lying. Janet didn't lie.

She looked for the nearest camera and gave it her best smile, tilting her head and flipping her chin-length hair back out of her eyes. She had a sound bite prepared, how proud she was and how excited to be eligible at last, but the person at the table just said "Next" in a bored tone and she had to go. Jan winked at the camera as she passed it, and hoped that at least somebody in the Capitol saw.

It was so exciting, being part of it. Not that Janet actually wanted to go into the Games -- even though she practiced with her tiny knives, small enough for her to conceal and throw and dip with poisons that she'd learned herself. That was all for fun. She just liked the excitement, like standing on a branch that was almost, almost, almost too thin to hold her and looking down down down at the ground. Feeling the wind rush through her hair and make knots in her stomach.

Jan played Arena sometimes, on her own, but in her Games all the other tributes were big and mean and tough, none of the tiny ones who cried for their mothers or the big ones with lots of little sisters to protect. In her Games, all the tributes were Careers, and if they didn't want to be there then they were mean, real mean, like maybe they used to steal puppies back home or hit little kids, and it didn't matter if Jan killed them. In her Games, she darted in and stung them with her daggers before dashing off. They would never know she'd been there.

She peered through the crowds for Hank, but he was somewhere in the boy's side. Hank had worked with Daddy at the lumber mill -- he owned District Seven's biggest, and a bunch of the rest too, and so while Seven wasn't the richest one in the Capitol, Jan never had to worry -- and next year, once he was too old to be Reaped, Daddy had said he could take over. It was in the papers and everything.

Hank was smart -- too smart for Seven, Daddy always said in a sad kind of voice, he belonged somewhere like Three because he liked to make things. But he wasn't born in Three, and so in Seven he worked at making the machines faster, the paper stronger, and how to recycle all kinds of plants. He liked insects, too, and could name you any kind of ant in the world just by looking at a picture of one of its legs.

"I like ants," Hank said to Jan once, when she asked him why he spent so much time studying something so tiny. "Did you know, there are some ants that if even one bites you, it feels like you've been punched in the stomach? Some fire ants, if you get enough of them, they'll run right over you and you'll die, whether you're a mouse or a human or a horse."

"Wow!" Janet had breathed.

"See?" Hank had smiled at her, and his smile punched her in the gut, so maybe he was part ant, too. "There's a kind of wasp that looks like an ant, too, in District Ten. It's called the cow-killer. Can you guess why?"

"Wow!" Janet said again.

Hank knew so many things. She wanted to be smart like him, which gave her another reason to be excited she was old enough for Reaping. Anyone too young for the Reaping was a child, but Reaping-age children were practically adults. And Hank couldn't ignore her anymore if she was an adult. She'd told him she would marry him someday, and he'd just laughed at her and pushed his safety goggles up his nose and changed the subject. But Janet didn't mind. She knew.

Up on the big stage, Corona tossed a coin to see whether they'd call the boys or the girls first. Jan bounced on her heels. She knew the Games were scary, but the TV screens helped. It wasn't really people on those screens getting killed, Daddy had said, the first year she was old enough to understand and started to cry at the footage. They stopped being people as soon as someone called their names. Once they stepped up on that stage, they became Tributes instead, and that wasn't the same. Not the same at all.

"Heads! Looks like we start with the boys," said Corona, with a big belly laugh. He made that joke every year, and Jan never got it, but oh well. She stood on her toes, trying to see the stage itself, but she was too small. She looked at the big screen the Capitol brought in instead.

"Isn't this exciting?" Corona continued, talking to nobody since nobody ever said anything back. Jan really wanted to shout "yes" in answer, but was too afraid. Oh well. "All right, boys, drumroll!" He beat a pattern on his legs, then reached into the bowl and pulled out a slip of paper. "Henry Pym, you lucky boy, come up to the stage!"

No.

Janet gasped. She stared at the screen, watching as the camera swooped around to find him. Maybe there was another Henry Pym. Nobody called him Henry anyway; if anyone did, he just chuckled and said that Henry was his father, and please call him Hank. But then the camera round him, and Jan's heart started skipping rope, because there was his face, right there on the screen, the blond hair and the blue eyes and chiseled jaw. He looked good on the screen, like he was made for cameras even though he almost never stepped outside his workshop. Jan swelled with pride looking at him.

Except no, because the camera wasn't here to show everyone how handsome Hank was; they were going to show them how he was going to die.

Last year, the tribute had been Jeremy, from a few grades higher than Jan. When they were little she would chase him around the playground and threaten to kiss him while he shrieked and ran away. Still, once he stepped onstage, Janet remembered Daddy's advice, and even Jeremy stopped being a person to her.

She waited to see if it would happen with Hank, but the only thing that did was that her chest squeezed with every step he took toward that stage. Jan knew she couldn't let him. "I volunteer!" she shouted.

Everyone stopped. Corona cleared his throat. "Only boys can vote for the male tributes, little miss," he said, and chuckled, looking up at the camera. "Sorry about that."

Hank's eyes went wide when Jan shouted, and he tried to find her, but everyone was so, so tall. The cameras hadn't seen her yet, to put her face on the screen for him.

"Well, that's exciting, isn't it?" Corona said, offering Hank the microphone. "Do you have anything to say to your District or the Capitol, Henry?"

"It's Hank," he said, blinking, but then he got control of himself, and managed a smile. "My father's name is Henry."

"Well, well, my mistake. Welcome aboard, Hank!" Corona shook his hand and turned a big grin on the cameras. "Looks like we have quite the handsome tribute this year. And now, for the girls --"

"I volunteer!" Jan screamed again, and this time people moved out of their way, trying to find who had shouted. Most of them didn't look down far enough, and Jan got to see their eyebrows furrow and their foreheads wrinkle in confusion.

"Aren't you eager!" Corona exclaimed. "I haven't even picked the name of the girl yet!"

The cameras saw her, finally, and Jan quailed a little to see herself thirty feet high on the screen, but she clenched her jaw and raised her chin and tried to look brave and strong. She was pretty, Daddy always said, and would grow up to be stunning, so there. "I don't care," Jan said. "I volunteer."

"I suppose, if you want it so badly, you may as well," Corona said. "All right, then, come on up!"

"No!" Hank burst out. "No, she's just -- she's just a little girl! She's my boss's daughter, she doesn't understand what she's doing. Please, you can't -- don't let her."

"Oh, but look, she wants to! Would you ruin all her fun?" Corona said, giving Hank a pout, and for a second Jan thought Hank was going to punch him right in his painted mouth.

Jan didn't care about having fun. She just knew that if Hank turned into a tribute instead of a person, she wanted to be there with him. She'd lost Daddy. She couldn't lose him. At least if they died, they would die together.

"You don't get it," Hank babbled, and he gripped Corona's sleeve. Corona made an alarmed face and tried to peel Hank's fingers off before he tore or mussed the fabric. "Look, two years ago, my girlfriend got Reaped. She never made it back. Last year, Mr. Van Dyne died in an accident at the lumber mill. Jan, she's -- she's like my little sister. Please don't do this."

Corona cleared his throat, and Jan thought he might actually be uncomfortable. "It's a bit late for that, I think," he said, cheery. "Everyone, let's give a hand for this brave little girl, shall we?"

Janet climbed the stairs, though it took her a second because they were so high. She ran across the stage to Hank and clung to his arm. "What do you think you're doing?" he hissed, pausing at the end to toss the cameras a quick smile. "Are you crazy?"

"I love you," Jan proclaimed, throwing all the weight behind it that she could.

"Oh god, not that again, please!" Hank's eyes were wide and scared. It made her think of a time a bird had flown into the mill by mistake, and battered itself against the windows trying to get out. By the time someone caught it and released it, the panes were smeared with red. "Jan, no, you don't understand what you're doing."

"I'm helping you," she said. "I'm fast, and small. We can win."

"Don't you get it?" Hank burst out, but he kept his voice down. Corona was talking in the background about the glory of the Capitol, and nobody listened to them. "There is no we! Only one of us could win, and honestly, what's probably going to happen is that we're both going to die on day one! Your father would kill me if he were still alive."

"I don't care. I want to be with you." Jan's eyes prickled. "Anyway, you heard Corona. It's too late now."

Hank swore under his breath. He caught Jan's hand in his and squeezed her fingers, then raised both their hands together -- Janet's straight up, his bent at the elbow. Somewhere, in the Capitol, Jan knew people cheered.

 

District Eleven

They told him he had five minutes.

"You can't come with me," Sam said. "You know you can't." He looked out the window instead of making eye contact, because it hurt too much. His wrist ached from the other's grip, but what else could he do? He swallowed. "I want you to have a good life. You hear me? Go, live, find a girl, have lots and lots of kids. Shit on Peacekeeper helmets." Sam's eyes flickered to the door in case they heard that, but the houses in Eleven were solid.

"You're gonna be fine. If I make it --" (he wasn't going to make it) "-- I'll come back here, and I'll find you, and we'll go somewhere together, just you and me, find a house and get a farm and just, I dunno, be happy."

No answer, but Sam expected that. "Okay, buddy." He stood and opened the window. At least the Capitol could only take one of them. He had that comfort, and small though it might be, he'd use it to keep him warm at night. "Time to go."

He reached over and scritched his fingers in the soft feathers behind Redwing's head. The falcon let out a low keening noise, tilting his head to the side. Sam closed his eyes. "I'll come back for you," he said, and Redwing lifted his wings and flew out into the fields.

The Peacekeeper opened the door. "You still have some time," she said. "There's no one else?"

Sam shrugged. "My parents are dead," he said. "I had no one else. He was my best friend."

The Peacekeeper stared at him for a few seconds, impassive behind her helmet, then shook her head. "All right, then. Let's get you to the train."

 

District Twelve

Loki saw the Reaping at District Two as clearly as if he'd actually watched it. They would rig the drawing twice -- once, of course, by choosing the Volunteers ahead of time, but in a rare move, Loki knew they would pre-select the initial tribute, too. Well -- he didn't know, exactly, but they'd be a fool not to. Odin first made a name for himself by stepping in for a terrified first-year, and anyone with brains would wish to do the same with Thor. So they would select someone to draw parallels -- someone young, or weak, or disabled. Perhaps all of the above, a tiny, armless twelve-year-old unable to walk. Whatever would make Thor look all the more heroic.

Well, let them have their hero. They'd all see soon enough, and oh, wouldn't Thor be surprised. Loki would give anything to see the look on Thor's face when he saw Twelve's Reaping -- how lucky for him that they always filmed the Careers watching their competition, and Loki would access to that footage any time he liked.

Poor Twelve. Poor, soot-filled, ground-underfoot Twelve. Upon his return, Loki hadn't attempted to visit the strangers who birthed him, but instead moved into an empty house in the Victor's Village, an optimistic name for a run-down, abandoned neighbourhood if Loki ever heard one. It served his purposes well enough. The only other Victor in Twelve spent his days underneath a bottle of whatever he could get, and never noticed Loki's presence. Likely if he did, he'd only assume Loki was a ghost.

He only barely restrained himself from tapping his foot with impatience as they suffered through the Capitol film. He didn't need the reminder that someone else owned his very soul, that he only lived but for another's indulgence. Loki had that lesson ingrained in him nearly a decade ago. Those who didn't know already would never truly understand, making this nothing but a waste of time.

The female tribute, older than Loki but starvation-thin and skittish, would never last the bloodbath. Loki spent no more thoughts on her. After his years in the Career Centre it seemed sick, almost an abomination, to send these untested children into the same Arena. If the Capitol were truly interested in showcasing glory -- and if they wanted to remind everyone that even the strongest must fall -- they would have spent the effort to train Careers in every district. Ah well. Loki wished her a quick death; none of this was her fault, after all.

At long, long last, they called the name of the male tribute. A hush, then a series of anguished cries, too young and female to be his -- Loki checked the screens and saw a tall, strong boy stride away from his four younger sisters. "No!" the girls cried, clinging to him. "No, you can't go!"

Loki watched the screen for parents, but saw no one. This boy raised his siblings on his own, then, the parents likely casualties of a mining accident, or perhaps a plague. Everyone around them averted their eyes or muttered to themselves about the unfairness of it all. He waited to see if anyone had the courage to do something, rather than talk or sag in relief that they'd been spared, but of course no one did. The boy continued walking; the littlest girl screamed herself hoarse while the oldest held her, silent tears streaking her cheeks.

Loki waited until the boy reached the stage, then stepped forward. "I volunteer," he said, putting the full weight of import behind his words. He felt the shock of everyone in the district hit him like a palpable thing, and he smiled. He crossed the square and stood on the first step, facing the boy, his sisters, the villagers. Everyone stared at him.

"I volunteer," Loki repeated. "Because it's clear to me that not one person in this district has the spine of a disabled kitten. You're all willing to feel the tragedy, but not a one of you will put your lives on the line. You're weak. Disgusting. But I volunteer, to show you that the boy you hate and revile is greater than all of you put together. On one condition." He paused, backed up one step. "You will kneel before me. All of you. Kneel and acknowledge me, and I will be your sacrifice."

"Like hell!" someone shouted, and a rallying murmur swept the crowds.

Loki was no fool, and he expected this. "Will you really send this boy to his death for the sake of your pride?" he demanded. "Will you condemn his little sisters to starvation and despair? I know none of you will take them in -- you won't spare the food from your own precious babies' mouths. Instead they'll become nothing but a relic of tragedy, and you will walk past their bony carcasses and tell yourselves it is the Capitol's fault, that there was nothing you could do. You will all be cowards, and liars. I can stop that. And al you have to do is kneel." He waited, and this time, he shouted, his voice reverberating through the square: "KNEEL!"

The oldest of the little girls stepped forward and bent her knee. "Please," she said, and while her voice trembled, it did not crack. She tugged her sisters forward and down, their skirts brushing the dusty ground. "Please," she said again, and "Thank you."

Her brother, the boy Loki's life was about to save, twitched for a moment, but then he, too, dropped to his knees. The crowd rumbled, then, in a wave, found itself at half height. Power surged through Loki like a wave, and he forced back the laugh of triumph. He held out his arms, acknowledging their gesture, and bowed his head.

"Thank you," he said. "Of all the districts, Twelve, you are forgotten. You are hated. You are despised, when you are remembered at all. But I promise you this -- from this moment on, no one will forget you ever again."

Loki ascended the stairs. He wondered if his birth parents knelt in the crowd, or if time had taken them away. He didn't bother to look, only taking the microphone from the startled Capitol lapdog. "My name," he said, looking straight into the camera, "is Loki Odinson. And I am here to watch you burn."

Chapter 3: The Journey

Summary:

The nice thing about Capitol trains was that they were always well-stocked. Tony made his way to the dining car and found the liquor cabinet.

Notes:

This was supposed to go all the way to the parade, but I think it stops at a good place. Good lord, what be this productivity.

The nice thing about Capitol trains was that they were always well-stocked. Tony made his way to the dining car and found the liquor cabinet. They'd stocked the whole thing with froofy Capitol stuff that fizzed on your tongue and tasted like raspberries and never actually made it down your throat and into your system. What a waste.

"Right, no, that's not going to work," Tony said, taking the bottles out and setting them on the floor. "Nope, nope, definitely not, nope, nope, I don't even know what that is." Footsteps fell behind him, and he raised his voice a little to address the whole room. "Seriously, when the bottle itself is shaped like a tropical flower? There's nowhere near enough alcohol content. Oh, hey, now we're talking." At the very back he found a simple bottle, etched glass, filled with clear, amber liquid. He pulled it out, grabbed two glasses as an afterthought, and dropped down into a seat.

The girl from the Reaping eyed him. She looked fourteen, fifteen maybe. Hard to tell, but at least in Three she was less likely to be an underfeed sixteen like she might have been in Twelve. "You want some?" Tony asked, offering her a glass. She shook her head; he shrugged. "Suit yourself." Tony poured himself a glass and took a swig; it went down smooth, with a hint of vanilla. He stared at the bottle in betrayal. "Why?" he lamented aloud. "Why would you do that to a perfectly good whiskey?"

"You shouldn't be drinking that!" Madina gasped, mincing over and snatching both glass and bottle from Tony's hands. "You're too young!"

The girl sputtered a bit of laughter, but it quickly turned into a choked-off sob. Tony gave Madina his best over-the-sunglasses stare. "Seriously? You're telling me, a minor on his way to the Capitol to murder twenty-three other minors -- or get murdered by them -- that I can't have alcohol because I'm underage?"

"Rules are rules," Madina said, raising her nose in the air. "Of course, if you win, you'll be granted full privileges to all legal avenues in society, including alcohol consumption."

"If I win, she'll be dead," Tony said, pointing his thumb at the girl, who burst into tears for real. "Honestly, you do this every year, you'd think you wouldn't suck so much at talking to us. I mean, not that I think you should sugar-coat it or anything, but c'mon."

He felt a little bad for making some kid cry, but honestly, the whole thing pissed him off. Fine to prance about and pretend this was some kind of game where everyone got cake and ice cream and unicorns with Tony, he could handle it, but this kid? No way. Maybe if Madina saw her tears she'd let up a little, start taking things seriously. Not that Tony cared.

"Oh, come now, don't cry, you'll puff up that pretty little face," Madina said, handing the girl a tissue. Her lips thinned as she studied them both, and Tony remembered that Madina had being doing this since he was born. A few tears weren't going to crack her facade. Well, he'd just have to try harder, then. Tony was good at taking things apart, even if he didn't always remember to put them back together again.

"So here's the question I've been wondering," drawled a voice, and Tony turned to see a tall, bald monolith standing in the doorway. "You talk a good game, Mr. Stark, but can you back it up?"

Tony tilted his head. "Obadiah Stane," he said, and the man tipped him a salute. "The Iron Monger."

"You've watched the tapes," Obadiah said, crossing his arms. "I'm impressed."

"Well, you know, sometimes it's late, you're bored, and you've seen all the porn already." Tony studied him, the way he held himself, like nothing in the world could touch him. Tony hadn't seen that kind of confidence since his father -- though look how that turned out. Howard Stark had owned District Three, but that couldn't stop the car that hit him. Then again, Howard had never been a tribute; never won the Games by a mix of physical strength and psychological manipulation. "You play a mean game of chess. You psyched out one of the tributes by killing a dog that looked like his and hiding it in his training locker. Nobody knows how you even got the dog in there."

"And nobody ever will. Nothing spoils a good story like too many details." Obadiah smiled, toothy and dangerous, and Tony decided he liked him. Well, like might be a strong word -- Tony wouldn't turn his back on Obadiah even if it doubled his fortune -- but useful? Definitely. Not like Twelve and their sole alcoholic mentor. "I'm here to take you to the top, son, provided you can hack it."

Tony leaned back and flicked his sunglasses back into place. "Bring it on, old man," he said. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Now that's what I like to hear." Obadiah glanced at the girl and dismissed her just as quickly. "Rhodes will be here in a minute to deal with you," he said, then turned back to Tony. "Come on, I've got a few things to talk to you about before we hit the Capitol."

 

 

"Was he your brother?" Carol sat down next to Steve, not touching him, but Steve felt her presence, body whipcord straight and tense. 

Steve didn't raise his head. His fingers dug into his scalp, tugging at his hair. "Close enough," he said, choking out the words with effort. He didn't want to talk about Bucky. He didn't want to think about him. At the same time, he wanted to spill every memory he had of his best friend into the open air so that he wouldn't be the only one with them -- except that the girl next to him would die, too, so it wouldn't do any good. He wondered what Bucky -- or the other kids at the orphanage, the little ones who rushed to him and clung to his arms and legs whenever Steve visited -- was doing now.

"I'm sorry," Carol said, and sounded like she meant it. Like she understood there were worse things than being condemned to death, than getting on a train and knowing you were never coming home. "I have a family, but." Carol shrugged. "They'll be all right. Nobody who needs looking after, anyway."

She didn't say anything about Bucky, like she was sure he was fine. She spoke with quiet resignation, and didn't talk about meeting her family again once this was over. Cheeriest car on the train, between the two of them. Steve choked back a laugh.

"It's horrible, isn't it." Carol wrapped her arms around herself. Outside, in the centre of Six, the weather had been stifling, humid with the thick of city grit and smog in the air. Despite that, she wore long sleeves and gloves. Steve spent a second wondering why, until deciding it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. "All those years, I never really thought -- I mean, you have that moment of fear, and then you move on, and then you're so relieved that you don't really think that it's someone up there, someone real. Someone's sister, or brother, or child. Or boyfriend, I don't know. It never feels real."

"Not a lot does," Steve said with a shrug. "I guess if you live in the Capitol, it's all just entertainment. But me, it just seems like another part of life. Like walking past your fifty millionth homeless guy and looking the other way."

"Or being raped, having nobody believe you because the guy told them he bought you flowers and chocolate and romanced you so you obviously wanted it, and then delivering the baby by yourself behind a restaurant." Carol gave him a thin smile, and just, god, Steve wondered how many people walked by him every day, bent but not broken, fighting to keep their heads above water. He wanted to take her in his arms and shield her from everything, which was stupid, and sexist, and old-fashioned besides. "Funny, it used to be hard to say that out loud. I guess in some ways we're lucky, you and me. Makes you wonder how much worse the Arena can get, in a way."

"Yeah." Steve swallowed, tasting acid. "You don't think you'll be the one to win?"

Carol pressed her lips together. "I wouldn't still be here if I didn't have some fight in me," she said, and toyed with the ends of her gloves. Steve tried not to look, but suddenly he had a few ideas about what the layers of fabric might be hiding. "Still, against a Career? I don't know. You?"

"I don't know." Steve regretted bringing it up, since both of them contemplating their victories meant that the person sitting next to them had to be dead. He didn't want to think about that. "I can't imagine everybody else dead. At the same time, I just, I promised I'd come back."

"At least you've got that, though I don't know if it's a good or bad thing." Carol lifted her shoulders. "Me, I'm good. I've done my deed. I had my baby, and I made sure he got a home with people who took care of him. I didn't leave him behind a trash can when he opened his eyes and I saw his father staring at me." She shuddered. "So I dunno. I guess all my unfinished business, it's about done. I'm not saying I'm going to roll over, just that if I don't make it, it won't be that much of a tragedy."

Steve swallowed. He couldn't imagine having nothing to fight for, nothing to give him purpose. Even if it was stupid and hopeless, even if chances were he'd never see Bucky again, never get to see the drawings and sketches that Bucky showed him -- shy at first, then slowly blossoming with pride -- at least he knew he wanted to.

Not that it helped him, when Steve could no more kill somebody than he could jump from the top of one skyscraper to another. Maybe he could hide himself somewhere and wait for the others to slaughter each other, like playing the world's most dangerous game of hide-and-seek. That had always been Steve's plan as a kid, find somewhere good and stay there until everyone else got caught.

A nice fantasy, but it wouldn't work. The Gamemakers would never allow anyone to stay hidden that long. There'd be a fire, or flood, or tornado, or wolves, or something. Plus hiding meant Steve had to be fast enough to escape the bloodbath, and unless the Remaking Centre gave him a new set of lungs to go with whatever weird haircut they inflicted on him, that wasn't going to happen. And whether Steve liked to admit it or not, the idea of hiding during all the slaughter just didn't sit right with him. While Bucky would be happy he came home no matter what, Steve didn't know if he'd deserve to come home after that.

The worst part was, a miracle might get him through this, and Bucky could still be called up next year. Or the next. Or the next. Even if Steve did survive, he'd still have this in his gut for the next four years.

"So what's worse?" Carol asked, leaning back and looking out the window as power lines flashed past. They were nearing District Five. "Having something to fight for and knowing it won't do much good, or having nothing to lose so it doesn't matter?"

Steve couldn't answer that. He just wished there was a way -- any way -- to stop it.

Carol blew out her breath in a sigh. "Well, never mind, this isn't helping anyone." She raised her voice. "Do we have a mentor around here, or what?"

"Chester Phillips, young lady, and if you want to survive this game, I suggest you quit your moping and concentrate on the task at hand." The man who rounded the corner had a craggy face, the broad accent of someone from the farming districts, and the carriage of a soldier. He certainly hadn't turned to morphling after his victory. Steve had absolutely no idea what to do with him. "Your mentor is currently conversing with the lovely delegate from the Capitol, but let me give you a bit of advice. Nobody on the field is going to care how hard your life is back home, so you listen to everything she has to say."

Carol's breath caught, and her fingers curled against the soft leather of the seats. The colour drained from her face, and she swallowed hard. "If it's all right with you," she said, her voice shaky, "I'm going to wait in my room. Steve, if you could tell my mentor when she gets here -- thanks."

She fled, and Steve watched her go, confusion settling over him. He glanced at Phillips. "Don't look at me like that," the man snapped. "Whatever happened to her, I didn't do it. I just obviously remind her of the man who did. That's post-traumatic stress for you. Most people wait until they've come back from the Games for that, though." He sighed. "Hopefully we can do something with her, otherwise she's going to have a hell of a time when she gets into the training room with the big guy from Two. But enough of that. Let me take a look at you."

Steve sat still, not sure if he was supposed to stand at attention or go through his paces like some kind of show dog. "Uh," he said.

"Articulate, nice; I like that. That'll go over well in the interviews." Phillips had a way of speaking words dripping with sarcasm in a clipped tone that sounded completely sincere. Steve's head swam a little bit already. "So you've got a friend back home that you volunteered for. That makes your angle easy. We play you up as the underdog hero."

"I -- sir, no," Steve said, braving dissent, because honestly. "I'm no hero, sir. I'm not even a soldier. It just -- it was the right thing to do, that's all."

"Sweet, but save it for the cameras. We're talking about what might get you out of here alive." Phillips squinted at him. "Unless you're serious. My God, you are serious, aren't you? Completely sincere. The audiences really are going to love that. Now tell me, can you fight at all? Street-brawling, anything like that? You obviously didn't come from the nicer part of town."

"No, sir." Steve ducked his head. "They discouraged fighting at the orphanage, and I was pretty sickly as a kid, so even the bullies thought I was too weak to be much fun. I only got up to height about a year back, after my last growth spurt."

Phillips made a face like he'd just bit into a lemon. "Well then, we've got a lot to work on, but nothing we can start here. For now we'll just work on your angle. It starts as soon as the train pulls up, and you can't be sulking back here thinking about your friend the whole time."

"I can't exactly stop it," Steve said, his voice coming out a little sharper than he'd intended. "What am I supposed to be thinking about?"

"How to get out alive so that the defining memory your little friend of yours has won't be your guts splashed across the screen." Phillips didn't care very much about keeping people's feelings in tact. Then again, neither did the Games. "Every Games needs a hero. Oh, sure, the Career districts will set theirs up to be the warriors, and everyone loves them because they know how to play the crowd, but you, you're real. You're everyman. And those coiffured nuts in the Capitol have no idea what real is, but they know it makes them all warm and fuzzy inside. If you listen to me, we'll get you so many sponsors you won't be able to spit without one of them sending you a tureen to put it in. Capisce?"

For lack of anything else to do, Steve nodded.

"Good," Phillips said, with a short nod. "Let's get started, then."

 

 

Loki's mentor dropped into the chair opposite, clutching a bottle to his chest like he was afraid Loki would steal it. As though Loki required artificial relaxants -- as though he needed relaxing. "So you," he said, pointing one finger at Loki's face. "You're dead."

Loki smiled, an expression crafted to show he felt no amusement or kinship with the other party whatsoever. "I highly doubt that."

"No, really. You're dead. Possibly suicidal. Most probably insane. But whatever you are, you are dead. Dead, dead, dead." The man shook his head and took a swig from the bottle. Loki watched the movements of his hands and calculated that the man may be soused, but he was faking the clumsiness and slurred speech. This man had stewed too long to be done over by a few shots of scotch. Interesting.

"And why do you think that, old man?" Loki asked, leaning back in his seat. The train ride would take the exact amount of time whether he sat alone or engaged in pleasantries. May as well get to know the local peasants on the way.

"That kneeling nonsense. If defecting and volunteering and all that else wasn't enough to put you on the Capitol's hit list -- and lemme tell you, it was -- then you making yourself out like some sort of god descending to play in the muck, well. That sure did it. I'd watch my food at the Capitol if I were you. I'm not even sure they'll risk putting you in the Games."

"Yes they will." The girl spoke up, and Loki spared her a glance. She caught it and sat up straighter. "They will. They're counting on the showdown between him and his brother. If he didn't have Thor, he'd be dead already. But now the audiences want it, so he'll be alive until game time."

The thought of his continued existence being owed to that lout crawled like insects beneath Loki's skin. He dismissed it. Regardless of Thor, the Gamemakers would want Loki because they knew he could give them what they wanted -- a compelling Victor. That he didn't need to be trained with the Capitol song-and-dance, the leash and treats that kept most Careers in line, could only be the icing on the cake.

"I like you." The mentor grinned, and waved the bottle in the direction of the girl. Loki did his best to keep the irritation from his features; why bother with someone like that, obviously not meant to survive past day one, with the actual Victor right here? "You're spunky. Of course, that won't stop you from getting a knife in the eye, but you know. What will, hey? What's your name, girl?"

"Jean," she said, sitting up straight and holding herself high. "Jean Grey."

Immaterial. All this, immaterial. But if the alcoholic and the meat wanted to have a heart-to-heart, well, Loki was content to let them do it. He stood and left the carriage, heading for his private room.

The opulence of the train car set several emotions warring in his brain, none of which he needed at the moment -- vague shock, left over from his beginnings at Twelve no matter how hard he'd tried to scrub them, that anyone would waste so much money on pillows that could feed a family; disgust, coming from the Centre, at the amount of comfort that the human body did not need in order to function, and which in fact did its best to leech strength from the muscles with its satin and stuffing; and, he had to admit, a certain sense of belonging, that all these riches, while not appropriate for a warrior, somehow befitted the station to which he knew he would rise.

Loki sat on the bed, drumming his fingers against his knees since no one watched him, not until he made it to the Capitol itself. The mentor's words, as much as he tried to dismiss them, still rankled; that the Capitol would want him dead, once this had finished. Loki discounted the idea that they would try to kill him, of course, because the audience loved a show, and Loki knew how to give them exactly that. Still, once he won the Games, then what? Perhaps he'd been hasty; perhaps they knew his ambitions did not stop at playing the dutiful pet.

Perhaps it was time to play a little humility. Loki could do that well enough, though the truth would stick in his throat. He could pretend to be the grateful boy, wanting only to repay the multitude of favours given to him in exchange for their continuance. And if he asked District Twelve to kneel, then what of it? It was no worse than what they did on a daily basis, even if they did attempt to dodge their rulers by poaching and smuggling and building stills.

No, Loki didn't have to worry. They wanted a show, and a show they would get. And in the end, Loki would stand over his brother's body and see defeat writ in those handsome features, right before Loki stamped the life from him forever.

 

Thor settled into his bunk and turned on the television set into the wall across the car. District Two had one of the shortest train rides to the Capitol; just enough time to watch the Reapings from the other districts. His bones thrummed with anticipation as he loaded the proper channel, flicking through the various commentaries and fashion shows. Other than the actual Games, this was the best part -- checking the competition, seeing which of the other Tributes would issue the best challenge, and which Thor would end quickly in order to spare their suffering.

He always watched the Reapings from beginning to end back in Two, even commandeering a television to himself so he could check the channels broadcast to the other districts, in case the official Capitol feed missed something. The parade, the interviews, even the training lost most of its appeal for him, and he rarely paid attention until the Games started, but the Reaping -- ah, the Reaping. The time when the audience tried to pick out the Victor from the line of brave and noble youths.

Wanda passed by his room and glanced in. "Care to join me?" Thor asked, though he knew she would refuse -- which she did, with a roll of her eyes. Away from the cameras, Wanda treated him with indifference and vague dislike; not unusual, if rather childish. You could not blame a mountain for his shadow, or the Earth for blocking out the moon during an eclipse. In front of the cameras she turned sly and snakelike, and Thor knew to watch her. She would not be his ally once the countdown ended, though she thought he didn't see it.

No matter. Time for that when they reached the Centre. Thor found the proper channel at last. He sat back and watched.

Right from the start, Thor knew these Games would not be the usual fare. Rather than the pomp and frills typical of District One, this year's Volunteers stood silent, unadorned, and entirely indifferent to the cameras in their faces. Thor wondered that they'd made the cut at all, until the proper Volunteers lunged at the stage, screaming epithets. Ah. Well, that explained it. Thor made a mental note to deal with these ones early. Waiting to the end would make the best show, of course, but anyone willing to deal with the retribution that came from bucking District One's orders could not be sane. Thor would rather the final showdown be with someone worthy, not a pair so obviously desirous of suicide.

Ah well. His own Reaping was splendid, as he'd expected; the young boy whose life he'd saved had wept in gratitude, and Thor was certain that not a dry eye remained in the Capitol after seeing the footage. Every detail of his costume, his stance, the lighting, it all sung perfect. He watched Wanda, dressed in blood, with narrowed eyes. Yes, he would have to be careful. Like as not she'd try to have a knife in his side as soon as she left the platform.

Thor couldn't help harrumphing in amusement at the male tribute from DIstrict Three, a cocky youth who thought himself above the entire process. Still, his shock only lasted a few moments before he turned on the charm, dazzling the cameras with a smile and stage patter designed to win hearts and kindle jealousy at the same time. If he had any fighting skill at all, he could make for an interesting opponent, but Thor doubted it. Anyone with that much flash could not have much to back it up, or he would act more, talk less.

The girl was small, frightened, and in tears. Thor marked her for the bloodbath; he would make her death swift, and as painless as possible, and above all, ensure that Wanda did not get to her. Even in training, Wanda enjoyed torturing her opponents a little overmuch; Thor did not think she would afford this little girl his level of consideration.

The same went for the girl from Five, both the children from Eight and Ten, and the girls from Nine and Eleven. Small and frightened, all of them, but less than half the assembled Tributes. Not a bad mix, though perhaps not enough for Thor to handle on his own, if any of them decided to run for it instead of freezing. Still, he'd be able to give a fair share of them decent deaths, and do his best for the rest.

The girl from Four intrigued him; sun-browned skin mixed with fiery red hair, green catlike eyes, and the lean, muscled build of a swimmer, she would likely make for a good fight, but Thor disliked killing women. He would leave her to Wanda, or perhaps the strange duo from One, since she looked a good opponent, rather than sport for Wanda's baser tastes.

The Five boy, who would be even taller than Thor and bigger built, if not as well trained, on the other hand, impressed him, even if he had the twitchy, cautious, half-vacant look of one with a few pieces missing. An addict, perhaps, or mentally deficient; if that were the case, then not a proper match for Thor after all, no matter how physically intimidating. Let one of the others handle him.

District Six gave the Games their first non-Career Volunteer, and Thor sat forward in interest. The boy had a camera-handsome face and not entirely unimpressive build, but he was clearly untrained, and looked harassed, unsure. Still, he'd Volunteered for a child, willingly putting himself in danger, and Thor gave him credit for that. That, if nothing else, earned him an honourable kill, perhaps nearing the end, before the final showdown. Wanda's self-appointed role as villainess meant she would take her time with this one, were she to find him, and Thor thought that an unworthy end for anyone so brave, no matter how frightened. The girl he couldn't quite pin down; she had a mix of world-weary cynicism and desperation that Thor found compelling, but did not seem vulnerable enough to warrant a mercy killing. She looked as though she would fight well, if backed into a corner. Perhaps she could give Wanda a run for her money.

If he'd been standing when the little girl from District Seven Volunteered, Thor would have fallen over in surprise. In all the history of the Games, he couldn't remember any child who'd done so, save perhaps once, on an ill-advised dare, and the foolish boy had vomited all over the stage once he realised what he'd done. This girl did not appear coerced or harassed, and she clung to her district partner with a fierce protectiveness that made Thor grin. He would let her live past the bloodbath. She was small, and unskilled; likely she would poison herself early on, but she deserved a bit of time to charm the audiences and give them a show, at least. After that, the boy -- generic, handsome, well-built but bookish -- hardly bore any scrutiny.

But District Nine -- oh, District Nine. Thor stilled and watched the footage again and again. The boy, seventeen or eighteen, stared at the cameras with a quiet menace and confidence that matched any Career Thor had ever known. Interesting. This was a farmer, not a warrior; he could not have had the time to train, but his arms bulged beneath his sleeves. He spent hours slinging heavy bales of grain, swinging scythes and axes, toiling in the hot sun. Here was a boy discontented with his lot, who saw his chance to change his life and make his fortune, and he took it. He would make a thrilling challenge indeed. Of course, with three districts remaining Thor could not yet know for certain, but barring something spectacular, this man would be Thor's final opponent.

The silent, possibly half-witted boy from Eleven and his tiny, wide-eyed companion only verified Thor's theory, and while the girl from Twelve glared at the cameras and balled her fists, she seemed half-starved and would never make it past the rigours of survival. All that remained was the Twelve boy, but considering the last time Twelve had a Victor had been over two decades ago --

Then Thor's brother took the stage, inciting a spectacle so blasphemous that Thor was surprised the Peacekeepers didn't gun him down right there. The world slowed until eternities passed between heartbeats, and Thor watched Loki -- foolish, proud Loki -- stare into the cameras and deliver his challenge.

Thor offered a silent apology to the boy from Nine, now relegated from triumphant final battle to penultimate warmup. Thor had to confront his brother, and the only way to do that with any satisfaction would be to wait until everyone else had died, lest someone interrupt them. The Capitol would surely approve of the final showdown, and would likely not interfere with his plans, but oh. Oh.

"Oh, my brother," Thor said aloud, and pressed a button to pause the image, frozen on Loki's madman smile and burning eyes. "What have you done?"

"Called it," Wanda said from the doorway, and Thor jumped. That she'd sneaked up on him at all was a testament to his current mental state. Not good. He must deal with this before they reached the Capitol -- and the cameras. "You really didn't know, huh? Pietro owes me a fifty when I get back." She gave Thor a poison-dripping smile before sauntering off.

The train could not be more than an hour away from the Capitol; once it arrived, Thor would be whisked off to the Remaking Centre, but not before thousands of spectators and journalists had the chance to see him. At that time, Thor must be composed, poised, and perfect, with no hint of any weakness or turmoil behind his breast.

Forty minutes, then. Thor stood and closed the door, despaired briefly at the lack of a locking mechanism, then wept and pounded the bed with his fists until the supports cracked in half. Fifty-three minutes later, when the train swept around the last curve into the Capitol, Thor stood with Wanda by the large windows, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds.

Chapter 4: The Tribute Parade

Summary:

"Virginia? That's a terrible name. I don't like Virginia. It sounds like cologne for old men, or cigarettes."

In which the author attempts to justify using the original Marvel costumes in the Hunger Games universe, with questionable success.

Notes:

Gah. With so many POV characters, this is less a contiguous story and more a bunch of vaguely-related one-shots. Hopefully it's still readable. After this they start intertwining, at least.

"Well, aren't you just the dearest little thing?" the prep team cooed, fussing over Janet and tugging at her hair, raising her arms to look at her figure.

Janet beamed. These tiny, airy people with their feathery hair and fluffy clothes and delicate wrists would almost look at home in Seven, though not swinging a hatchet or working in the lumber mill -- they would be flitting from tree to tree, chittering at each other and diving for insects. The image made Jan giggle.

"And you're a Volunteer, even!" said one of them, eyes wide.

Jan nodded. "I came here with Hank," she said, then craned her neck, but his team had dragged him away, sputtering and protesting. She wondered if he'd come out covered in glitter and wearing a floofy costume, and tried not to giggle. "Is he okay?"

"Oh, he'll be fine, dear, they're going to make him look gorgeous." The prep time darted around her like hummingbirds as they led her into a room with the biggest bath Jan had ever seen. She gasped. "That's right!" the woman called Felicia exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "It's all for you!"

"It's like a swimming pool," Jan said, eyes wide. She'd thought she grew up in a rich family -- and she had, for District Seven -- but the Capitol was like a whole other world. "How long can I stay?"

"Well, not forever, because we have to get you ready for the parade," Felicia said, pulling out so many shampoos and oils and soaps that Jan couldn't even imagine what they were for. Maybe they had one for each body part. "But later, you can have a nice long soak. For now, let's just get you in and get you clean, shall we?"

They didn't move, and Jan blinked. "Are you going to stay in here with me?" she asked. Even back in Seven, no one had watched her bathe since she was really little, and too young to leave alone in water without supervision. "I'm twelve, you know. I'm a tribute. I'm not going to drown in the bath."

They tittered. "Oh, darling, we're not worried about you drowning. We're here to make you look pretty."

"Oh." Jan thought maybe about arguing, but it didn't seem to make any difference. "Okay, then." She stripped out of her Reaping dress and climbed into the bath. The suds smelled like vanilla, with a hint of cinnamon. She raised her arms and scooped up a handful of bubbles. "I'm going to smell like a cookie!"

"And you're going to look so scrumptious, everyone is going to want to eat you right up," Felicia said, with a slightly crazy grin. She took out one of the bottles and poured the liquid into her hands, massaging it into Janet's scalp. At the other end of the tub, the mauve-skinned Anastasia lifted Janet's foot and scrubbed it with something soft and tickly.

Jan imagined Hank in his giant bubble bath, being poked and washed by a whole team, and she couldn't stop laughing. He wouldn't like it, especially if he came out of the bathroom smelling like a flower or a dessert. Then again. Hank was a boy, and surely they had different smells for boys. She tried to imagine what it might be, but the best she could manage was the deep, earthy scent of the forest after a good, hard rain, when the green growing things seemed greener and everything felt more alive. Jan remembered wiggling her toes in the dirt and watching the birds sing in the dewy air.

She wondered if she would ever see that again. But then Felicia asked her to stand so they could rinse, and the rose-smelling washed over her and made her lose her train of thought.

"She just has to be a bird," one of them whispered to each other. "It would fit the tree theme nicely, don't you think?"

"A hummingbird, maybe," said another. Jan sat up straight and tried to look beautiful. "Or a butterfly!"

Those did sound pretty, but not like the kind of thing that could help Hank. You couldn't even hold a butterfly without them dying. Janet frowned. "I don't like that," she said, but they ignored her, talking about gauzy wings and filmy skirts. "No!" Janet said again, louder, and stomped, and how silly did she feel stamping her foot while standing naked in a bath, especially when her heel skidded and she almost fell and DIED, but she was not a butterfly. She wasn't anything you could kill by touching. She'd volunteered!

"Well, it's not up to us, anyway," Felicia hummed, wrapping Jan in a big, fluffy towel that was the softest thing she'd ever touched, then dressed her in a bathrobe. "We don't do the actual designs, even if I do think you'd be absolutely darling as a dragonfly."

A dragonfly sounded better, at least. Closer to something that people might remember. Still, though.

"No," said a voice from the door, and Janet turned. The man had skin like coffee with lots and lots of cream, the only kind that Daddy used to let Jan drink because it would stunt her growth. No hair on his head except a trim white beard, the style that Jan liked because its name -- Van Dyke -- sounded almost the same as hers, and his bald scalp glittered with jewels. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, lined with black, a swirl of birds flying off his cheek. Janet held her breath. "No, she's not like that at all. This isn't a butterfly who'll get crushed and can't fight back." He smiled. "This little one has a sting. This is a wasp."

Jan clapped her hands together. "Yes!" she cried. This man understood her. His clothes would make all the Capitol gasp, and Hank would have to stop thinking of her like a little girl who couldn't protect herself. "What's your name?" she asked.

He held out his hand. "I'm George." Jan giggled, because it wasn't a silly name like everyone else she'd met here. "And I think we're going to get along fine. Let's make you memorable, shall we?"

 

Carol screamed. She screamed, even though the cameras would be watching. Even though she'd likely get hit with a tranquilizer in a few seconds. Even though it was too late now, and it wouldn't do her any good. She screamed and wished her sterile room in the Remake Centre had something -- anything -- she could throw or break, but all she had to work with were the smooth grey walls and the smooth grey table and herself.

She did what she could. She flung herself against the walls hard enough to leave bruises -- they wouldn't like that, now would they -- and split her knuckles against the door. She spat out every curse word she'd ever heard, in her house and in the streets and hollered at her by addicts whose advances she turned down and spoken into her ear by the man who'd raped her.

Until the door finally opened and white-uniformed security staff held her by the arms while her remaking team fluttered about like a flock of panicked flamingoes. "Whatever is the matter?" One of them -- Carol didn't know her name, she didn't give a damn about learning it -- tried to put a hand on Carol's shoulder, but she lunged, growling, and the woman startled back.

"You know damn well what's the matter!" Carol wrenched her arm free of the security staff and held it out, showing them the smooth, pale, unbroken skin of her forearm. "This! The hell is this?"

The woman blinked. Her eyelashes had been lengthened to four times their sizes, and she'd affixed jewels to the ends. She looked like an insect. "What's wrong with your arms?" Ignorance. Always ignorance.

Carol stuttered out a laugh. Maybe if she went insane they'd just shoot her instead of putting her through the rest of it. "You know what's the matter!" she spat. "I didn't look like this going in! What happened to them?"

Finally the discomfort was too strong for denial to combat, and the woman cleared her throat. "Scar removal is standard procedure for the remaking. We thought you'd be pleased! They -- well, they were so ugly before, and now look!"

"Yeah, they were ugly!" Carol's chest heaved. "They were ugly and they were there on purpose. Those scars are the only way I got through -- the things I did. They helped me remember. They helped me survive. They're the only reason I'm here and not in a crematorium somewhere!"

"Well, if you were so proud of them, why did you hide them with those big old gloves?" she countered, clearly pleased with herself. She exchanged knowing glances with her teammates.

"Because," Carol snarled, moving in close. The security staff pressed her shoulder in warning, and she backed off, just a little. "Because they weren't for you. They were for me. Unlike you people, I didn't do it to make a statement, but they were part of me, and now I'm not me. Now I'm -- I'm a doll!"

"You had a lot of damage," the woman said, pouting. "We fixed it all up for you. Now you won't need to worry!"

Carol froze. The flimsy gown she wore -- like the one at the hospital that day, the one where the doctor had sneered at her and told her he wouldn't authorize a kit because why would she dress like that if she didn't want exactly what she got -- didn't protect her. She fought the urge to curl into the corner and sob. "What do you mean, other damage?"

"Well, you know." The woman made a shooing gesture to the security team and leaned close, conspiratorial. "Down there." She winked.

Another scream tore itself loose from Carol's throat, making everyone jump. "What, you mean you fixed my hymen, so I could play your perfect Capitol whore?" But she couldn't talk after that, only spew out more invective while the prep team burst into tears and the security man holding her jabbed a syringe into her arm. The world faded to white, then black.

They could fix her scars, but they couldn't stop her dreams. Carol woke up in a different room, covered in sweat and sobbing. Someone's breath caught at the edge of the room, and she sat up, wishing she had something -- anything -- to protect her. Back in Six she'd kept a knife under her pillow. Though give it a few days and she'd have more weapons than she'd care for. A laugh bubbled up in her chest, but she clamped it down. "What do you want?" she demanded.

The person cleared their throat, and Carol relaxed, just a fraction, when she recognised her district partner. Unless that guy was a real sociopath, she didn't think she had to worry about anything from Steve. "Stay on your side of the room," Carol said.

"Yes ma'am," Steve replied immediately. "I just, I'm sorry. You were crying out. They're coming to wake you soon, to get us ready for the parade, you know. You missed the Reapings."

"I don't give a fuck about the Reapings."

Steve chuckled. "I figured that much." He sat in a low crouch with his back against the wall, arms draped across his knees. "Listen, uh, I know it's probably too early to be talking about strategy, just -- when we're in the Arena, I think we should separate."

Carol ran her fingers over her forearm, still not used to the absence of puckered scar tissue. "What, sick of my company already?" She meant it light-hearted, except she didn't think she could do that anymore. The words twisted in her chest.

"No!" He sounded almost anguished, and Carol would have laughed if she remembered how. "No, I just -- I don't want it to be you and me, at the end. I don't want us to be the final two."

"You don't want to kill me, you mean?" Carol asked, studying the outline of his form in the darkness. It was a pretty funny thought, really. "You hope I die somewhere else so you don't have to do it. A little optimistic, don't you think?"

"I just don't want to think about it, all right?" Steve said, his voice getting an edge to it. "I just don't want to have that choice. It's tempting to stick together, but sooner or later, one of us would have to attack the other. Believe me, I'd let you kill me, if it was down to it, except --"

Carol let out a slow breath. "Except you promised that boy you'd come home."

Silence, then -- "Yeah. I did."

Carol didn't know what to say to that, though really, what could she possibly say.

"They fixed my asthma, you know," Steve said, and Carol blinked. "Yeah. During the Remaking. Did something to strengthen my lungs, said I'll never have to take an inhaler again. I guess it wouldn't look too good, having a tribute who runs five steps and then passes out from coughing. And one hand, I guess I should be grateful, but on the other -- they don't have the right to do that. To -- to change me."

Boy, did Carol understand that one, but they'd already done their whole bonding thing, and Carol wasn't eager to do that again. Especially not with cameras all over the place. At least the train hadn't been bugged, she was pretty sure.

They sat in the darkness, not speaking, until Carol finally pressed her hands to her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Might as well go back out there before they break the doors down. You know, with their tiny, tiny fists."

She still couldn't see him in the darkness, but a smile tinged his voice. "You never know, I think Cordelia has diamond fingernails. Not fingernails with diamonds on them. Fingernails made of diamonds."

"God help us all," Carol said, an ancient oath that people said pretty much ironically nowadays, and never where the Capitol could hear. Well, screw them. What were they going to do, kill her?

 

Tony lounged on the table, naked, waiting for his stylist. They'd left him a horrible hospital gown, and even though it was longer than the standard issue ones back home, he kept expecting to turn around and see his ass hanging out. Not that that would be a crime or anything, but a man had his dignity, and so Tony had tossed the robe entirely.

The door hissed open, and a stunner of a redhead slipped through the door. Tony had been hoping his stylist wouldn't be a crusty old granny who'd seen the world, and it looked like he still had some cache in the karma department. "Good afternoon, Mr. Stark," she said, and to Tony's dismay she kept up the professional stance and the faint, polite smile, not even giving him the satisfaction of rolling her eyes.

Tony huffed and sat up. "Hi," he said. "We who are about to die salute you, or something. What's your name?"

She couldn't be more than twenty-four, which was right in the middle of Tony's usual spread -- too low for MILF and cougar territory, but definitely, assuredly, no-need-to-sneak-a-look-at-her-ID legal -- but her pupils didn't even dilate. Impressive. "Virginia," she said. "Now, Mr. Stark, I think we should talk about your costume for the parade."

"Virginia? That's a terrible name. I don't like Virginia. It sounds like cologne for old men, or cigarettes." Tony leaned back and studied her. Professional, this one, not fazed by him or his attitude. Young, sure, but this wasn't her first Game. "Let's call you something different. Ginny? No, that's horrible."

Not-Virginia-That's-Awful smiled, the expression appropriately polite, amused, and no-nonsense. "My father used to call me Pepper."

"Let's just be glad he didn't call you Garlic," Tony said. "Or Coriander. Did you know, the flower of the coriander is supposed to represent lust? I saw it in a book once. I wonder if that counts for the spice, too."

Pepper-not-Virginia cleared her throat. "If you please, Mr. Stark. I think we should talk about your image. The parade is the first time that the audience -- and the sponsors -- will see you for real. You have a very short time to make a very big impression. We can't waste it."

"Well, if you want to make a big impression…" Tony trailed off and gave her a grin, though it would be better if they hadn't taken his shades.

This time Pepper did roll her eyes, though it was more like an upward flick than anything. "Mr. Stark, I'm sorry to tell you, but some things are best left to the imagination to avoid disappointment. Shall we?"

Well, he'd walked into that. Tony gave up trying to rattle her and reached down for the gown, slipping it over his head. He gave her a toothy grin. "There, I'm decent. Ready to behave, Ms. Pepper."

"Thank you." She folded her hands. "I spoke briefly with your mentor, Mr. Stane. He thinks your -- special brand of charm will win you sponsors, but it won't help you with the other tributes, especially those from the Career districts. They'll need a reason to fear you, and bluffing them isn't going to cut it. I agree. I think we need to remind them exactly what the Stark name means."

"And what is that, exactly?" Tony asked, curious in spite of himself.

"Power," said Pepper, matter-of-fact.

"Kind of stealing the thunder from District Five, aren't we?" Tony asked her. "You see what I did there, with the power and the thunder? It's because they produce --"

"Not that kind of power. Mr. Stark --" Pepper gave him a hard stare. "I've been in this business longer than you might think. I've seen my share of tributes, and while I recognise that babbling is how you keep your nerves under control, I would appreciate it if you could deal with the jitters in a fashion that doesn't make me want to kill you before the Games even start."

Tony shut up, though she'd got the nerves thing wrong. Tony just didn't like silence; he blasted music while tinkering in his workshop for the same reason. He never understood how people thought it was calming; in Tony's experience, silence was the loudest time of all. He saluted instead of giving her a snarky comeback, the sacrifice of which he hoped she'd appreciate. "You gonna make this work with the girl, too?" he asked. "Unless you're going to dress her like a dam, because I don't think she's stopped crying since we left the city."

Pepper pursed her lips. "Your costumes will complement each other, but they won't be identical. The point is to showcase the strength your family name gives you, without making it into a crutch. We're going to go with something bold, something the audiences won't be able to look away from."

She showed him a sketch. Tony swept his eye over the designs, the plates of maroon and gold covering most of his body, the pulsing blue over the heart. A perfect mix of the electronics District Three was famous for and the secrets that both Tony and his father had been working on. Maybe he wasn't as subtle about that as he'd thought. "Huh," he said, impressed, and Tony Stark might have a lot of flaws, but he gave credit where credit was due. Usually to himself, but there were always exceptions. "An Iron Man to succeed the Iron Monger, huh?"

Pepper's smile looked a little more natural this time. "Something like that."

"I think we can work with that," Tony said. "I don't suppose we could give it sunglasses?"

"I think that could be arranged."

 

"Can't you give me anything?" Sam's stylist pressed a hand to her forehead like she was fighting back tears, or maybe giving herself a headache. "If you don't, I'm going to put you both in overalls and you can forget about getting sponsors. Come on, anything."

Sam's stomach twisted for a second in guilt, but he shoved it away. Not his fault he didn't ooze charm like the kids raised in career farms; not his fault he spent his days in the orchards, picking fruits until well after sundown, instead of learning how to smile properly. He shrugged. "After my parents were killed, I joined a gang," he said, trying but not really to be helpful. "We skipped work and stole things. Beat up a few Peacekeepers. Stopped that, though, when they killed a friend of mine. Went back to the fields."

"Yes, well." She sighed. "No offence to you children, but your district is impossible to work with. How can I make agriculture interesting? How can anyone? No wonder everyone just gives up and does the same old thing every year."

The little girl, Sam's district partner, spoke up. "He can talk to birds," she said, and Sam swung around to stare at her. "We all use mockingjays to pass messages, like when to end a shift," she continued. "But him, he talks to birds. I've seen it. And they listen to him."

Sam blinked at her. "I didn't know you watched me," he said. It made him feel naked, somehow, knowing that someone had seen him with Redwing. He'd thought those moments were private. "I didn't know anyone saw."

"I see a lot of things," she said, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "I've tried talking to the birds, but they don't answer me. Not like you."

"Hm, I like that," the stylist said, tapping her jewelled finger against her mauve-tinted chin. "We can't use mockingjays, obviously, that's too controversial, but the bird thing, we can work with that. It's still in keeping with the district's theme, but it'll be fresh, different." She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Sam. "You'll make the strongest impression, since you're the bigger one, so we'll have to do something different with you, something to make you striking." That last she said to the girl. "How do you feel about dyeing your hair?"

The girl touched her hair out of reflex, then shrugged again. "Sure," she said, then smiled. "How about white?"

"Oh, yes, that would be so striking," the stylist gushed.

So they'd have their mockingjay after all; Sam gave the girl a small smile. "I'm sorry," he said, fighting a rush of embarrassment. "I don't remember your name. I'm … not good with people."

"I know," she said, and smiled. "It's Ororo." Ororo turned back to the stylist. "I think you should make him a hawk," she said. "That's the kind of bird he has."

"Falcon," Sam corrected her, without meaning to, but Redwing became cranky if people got it wrong. He'd spend a whole hour preening and pulling at his feathers. Sometimes Sam thought he probably was at least a little crazy, but he'd take being crazy if it meant he could guess what Redwing was thinking. It wasn't magic, at any rate. You just had to spend a lot of time with a bird and really listen, that's all. No different from the people from Ten who said they could understand their horses.

"That could work, but we'd have to change the colours, of course, to make it truly outrageous. Nobody's going to pay attention to something brown." She tilted her head, looking kind of like a bird herself as she studied them. "I'm thinking red and white, maybe a hint of gold or silver for you --" she said to Sam, then clapped her hands and pointed to Ororo -- "while you can be a little cardinal! Won't it be darling?

Ororo caught Sam's eye and winked. He wished now he'd noticed her back in Eleven; Redwing would've liked her.

 

All of this would be so much easier on drugs. Not that living with veins full of crystal meth had made his life peachy before, or anything -- he wouldn't be clean right now if it had -- but Bruce missed the confidence, the delusion of empowerment, that he was untouchable and unbreakable. After all, he was going to die anyway, who who cared if he got aggressive and lashed out, and he didn't even need to worry about withdrawal. He wondered what the Gamemakers would think if he spent the whole time in training brewing up a batch.

If nothing else, the other guy wouldn't have felt so completely stupid in the costume the District Five stylist had come up with. Bruce fought not to cross his arms as he stood, waiting, in the chariot, wearing nothing but a pair of spandex shorts. Though at least they'd backed off a bit with Jenny, the little girl who'd been Reaped with him, giving her a full-coverage one-piece bathing suit-looking thing in white, to contrast with Bruce's black. They'd each been painted scalp to toenails with grey body paint that glowed toxic-waste green when the light hit it.

"What does this have to do with power?" Bruce had asked, confusion and exasperation overwhelming his crushing sense of indifference for once.

"Look at you," she'd said, gesturing at Bruce's arms, nearly half the size of Jenny's waist. "If you don't scream 'power', I don't know what does. Why add extras when you say everything on your own? It would only take away from the effect." Well, at least she hadn't made him go out naked.

"What about the green?" Jenny picked at the collar of her suit.

"Nuclear power is the strongest, most pervasive of all," the stylist said, tossing her head. "They're not going to be able to look away from District Five this year, oh no!"

The other guy would probably enjoy this. Bruce didn't remember a lot of his meth rages, but for some reason the day he lost it and nearly killed a classmate for laughing at him stuck with him. Not so much the feel of the bones giving way beneath his hand as he sat on the guy and pounded his head against the pavement, but that he hadn't been able to stop laughing the whole time. Even when the teachers pulled him off and held him back. During his comedown he couldn't get that out of his head. Bruce shook it off.

"I don't feel very powerful," Jenny whispered, the triumphant music and Caesar Flickerman's voice-over nearly drowning her out. She wrapped her hand around two of Bruce's fingers, and he'd never felt so clumsy and so helpless at the same time.

The other guy wouldn't care about a little girl with a head not much bigger than his fist. He wouldn't know that her favourite drink was grape soda, wouldn't have listened to her talk about her dreams to become a lawyer on the train to the Capitol. Bruce felt a ghost of the old rage stir up inside him when he looked at her, because she'd ruined everything. He'd planned to step off the platform early and kill himself, because why not -- the Capitol didn't like that, and usually punished the dead tribute's family, but Bruce had no one -- except now he couldn't, because now he did. Jenny would never make it out alive, no matter what he did, but Bruce couldn't leave her to face it alone.

Stupid. But the sort of thing that made sense, when you considered just how much cosmic baggage Bruce had hanging over his head. He didn't really think trying to save a little girl would make much difference to where he ended up -- if he even had a choice -- but it couldn't hurt, at least. The other guy would probably find that thought funny, too.

They'd put Jenny on a box, because otherwise she'd barely see over the top of the chariot, and even then, she only came up to his shoulder. Bruce glanced at her, at the sparkling green filaments they'd twisted into her black hair so it glowed under the light. Likely as not, Bruce would see her stretched out in a pool of her own blood soon enough, but he'd be damned if he made it easy for them.

The chariot ahead of theirs moved out. Bruce took a breath, and he crooked his arm so Jenny could rest her hand on his elbow. Whether this 'power' scheme worked or not, the contrast between them would be enough to turn a few heads, at least. "Here we go," Bruce said.

At the last second, Jenny got a funny look on her face, then scrambled up the front of the chariot and onto Bruce's shoulders. He nearly toppled in surprise, then shrugged. "Sure, what the hell," he said, and Jenny laughed, bracing herself with her hands on his head. If even one person looked at them, remembered they were sending kids into battle to the death and woke up hating themselves -- well, nothing would change, but it would make Bruce feel the tiniest bit better.

 

Wanda grinned as her chariot drove out into the City Centre. She kept her eyes narrowed, allowing only a hint of teeth, one side of her mouth quirked higher than the other. Up ahead the District One tributes -- dressed in a surprisingly restrained skintight black leather ensemble with glittering jewels all over -- stood stock-still, not waving or acknowledging the crowd at all; Wanda rolled her eyes at them. If they wanted to forgo actual personality for an attempt at being intimidating, let them. At least Wanda didn't have to worry about Na-what's-her-name stealing the title of most iconic redhead this year. The girl from One had barely even cracked a smile the whole time. Well, whatever.

Wanda, on the other hand, knew she rocked this parade, even with Wonder Boy, God of Dumbass by her shoulder in his gold and red armour and that stupid helmet. They always gave everyone bizarre headgear, but Thor's thing with the silver wings over his ears had to be one of the weirdest she'd seen in a while. They'd left his arms bare to showcase the muscles of the masonry district, though everyone watching would have to know Thor had never spent a day in a quarry in his life.

Thor turned to her. He had to know she didn't intend to be his backup this time -- that when people remembered District Two in these games it would be for her as well as, or even more than, Thor -- but it didn't change his attitude. He gave her a grave nod. "May the odds --" he began, but Wanda cut him off.

"Oh, knock it off," she said. "You're so by the book, it's almost sad. Shake it up a little."

"There's no call to be rude," Thor said. He turned back to the cameras and raised one fist, pumping it in the air to the sound of tens of thousands of people calling his name. If they chanted Wanda's name she couldn't hear it, but that was partially bad luck -- much easier to yell 'Thor' than 'Wanda'. It just sounded better. She'd have to come up with something else before the interviews. Meanwhile, Thor raised both arms and turned to make sure all cameras got a good view.

Honestly, sometimes Wanda thought Thor had been cut out from the pages of the District Two playbook. She rolled her eyes, then flicked her blood-red cape over her shoulder and tossed her head. Her stylists had foregone a full-out helmet for a red mask that at once echoed both devil horns and her father's famous helmet, back during his Games, though the red PVC corset and heels were all Wanda. She looked like the angel of death clothed in the blood of her victims, reminding everyone that District Two was just as much about maintaining the Capitol's power as it was about providing a good show.

She held her head up and didn't shy from the cameras, grinning until the audiences would be absolutely wetting themselves. The crowds roared. "Well done," Thor murmured to her, as though praising a particularly gifted pet. Wanda smiled at him and imagined driving a knife into his eye.

 

"I think you're taking too much of a risk with this one, sir," Coulson said in an undertone.

Fury turned his head back and forth as the various images flickered across the screens. "I don't."

He knew Coulson was too much of a soldier -- the textbook District One golden boy, really, too bad about that strong moral streak -- to roll his eyes in front of Fury, but he'd likely be doing it inside his head. "I know that, sir, or you wouldn't have chosen him, but are you sure he has the strength to pull it off? You might be better off with one of the others. Both Two and Three are much more charismatic at this junction."

And vaguely sociopathic, a useful enough skill to be sure, but not what they needed now. Fury shook his head. "I'm still not sure about Two. He might be in too deep; I can't tell if we'll be able to turn him. And Three --" He blew out his breath in a sigh as the cameras zoomed in on Tony Stark, teeth flashing in a smile as he blew kisses to the audience. "If we could get him, he would be invaluable, but we'd have to reach him, first."

"He does seem a little more self-centred than the others," Coulson admitted, a man of understatement as always. Fury snorted, but left it at that. No, while Stark would be an inarguable asset if they could convince him to join their side, he would not be the appropriate frontman.

Fury held his breath until the chariot for Six appeared on the screens. Clad in an eye-catching costume of red, white and blue based on the pin he'd brought as a token, Steve Rogers certainly made the most sheepish and reluctant-looking potential leader of the people that Fury had ever seen. Then again, that was exactly what the people needed. They didn't need another dictator to crush them under their heels, even in the name of freedom. The face of the rebellion had to persuade, not bully, and Rogers' abashed sincerity was part of that.

"He looks scared to death," Coulson said, referring to Rogers, and his tone held a measure of reproach. "And once he finds out about the Arena--"

"Good," Fury said. "They'll respond to him better if they remember this moment and see him grow."

"Assuming he does."

"He will," Fury insisted. "He just needs something to fight for. Look at the way he volunteered for that boy; he was obviously terrified, but he put it behind him and did what needed to be done. That's exactly what we need to galvanise the people. Someone who struggles, but comes through in the end."

Coulson nodded, though his brow furrowed, indicating he wasn't yet convinced. "At least his demands would be less ridiculous than Stark's."

Fury could only imagine what Stark would ask for in return for his cooperation, and really, he didn't want to. Some headaches should be saved for the future.

"Shame about the Twelve boy," Coulson said, tracking the progress of the parade with a practiced eye. "Wouldn't take much to turn him against the Capitol completely, after what happened in Two, but there's no way to guarantee he wouldn't spin right around and betray as well. If anyone is only in it for himself, it's that one."

"I'm not so sure," Fury said. Loki Odinson stared directly at the cameras, having an uncanny ability to tell which ones would be focused on him at any given time. The result would make the audience shiver in their seats. If he'd stayed, if he'd had all the camera training that Thor had, he'd be formidable indeed -- and if Fury had been permitted to give him the few extra nudges he'd been planning before Loki lost it and got himself expelled, they would have had the perfect spokesman.

After years of watching Loki, of studying him and the way he fought, the way he thought and acted, Fury knew that the boy did, in fact, fight for a higher purpose than mere glorification, but the question was, could Fury turn that to his own purpose. At the moment, he couldn't tell. At this point, Fury couldn't even vouch for Loki's sanity, not anymore.

"I'm going to watch Stark and Rogers," Fury said, and Coulson nodded. "I'd like you to keep an eye on Banner. It's possible we could use him, but recovering addicts are always unpredictable." Though easy to control, if it came down to it, though Fury's long-dead mother would roll over in her grave to hear him thinking such things. "As for the others, we'll both have to watch them during training. We'll recruit during the Games, if we have to, but we only have one shot. We need to be sure."

Coulson hesitated, then evidently decided speaking his mind was important enough to warrant risking an unasked-for opinion. "Are you sure we want to leave it so late? It seems expedient to make our choice and lock it in now, in case he says no. We don't want to be stuck with no one."

"I said we'll see," Fury said, and that ended that.

Either way, the people -- and the Capitol -- were unlikely to forget these Hunger Games for a long, long time.

Chapter 5: Training

Summary:

"You shouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"Care. You know she's going to die. It's only going to hurt more if you let her get to you."

The tributes choose their weapons, Steve has Feelings, Wanda and Loki have a chat, Tony Stark is fabulous, and Nick Fury chooses his Mockingjay (or not).

Each District Two candidate had the lesson on choosing their weapon. Every tribute would have the choice of selecting a weapon to represent them, to weave that in as part of the package they would sell to the sponsors, to the nation -- or to rely on other skills to make themselves memorable. Odin had chosen a spear for his range weapon, wielding it as though it were an extension of his arm, and a small mace for close encounters. Every kill he made in the Arena that year happened with those weapons or his bare hands. To the contrary, Director Fury used anything and everything, from a sword in the Cornucopia to a broken-off tree branch to the severed hand of another tribute. Both made memories in their own way.

In the beginning, Loki had decided not to choose a weapon; not to limit himself to one image but to be flexible, intractable, unpredictable. He no longer had that choice. Now, he strode across the room to the rack of spears, looking for the largest, modelled after the one Odin had used in his Games. Loki knew they left it on the rack every year, just as he knew that no tribute ever, ever touched it; no one attempted to make that legend his.

Loki reached out, and as he did, he found the closest camera and gave it a sharp-toothed smile. His fingers closed around the smooth handle and he lifted it, steeling himself against the weight.

"Brother, no!" Thor cried out from across the room, the words tearing themselves from him unbidden. As though he had the right to speak, to address Loki with authority, to speak of their kinship here, now.

Loki turned, and for the first time since leaving District Two, faced his brother. "Your turn," he said, and stepped aside with a gracious wave of his arm.

Thor's face tightened, and he marched past Loki to snatch up a large, square hammer. Predictable, but then again, that was part of Thor's appeal; sponsors knew exactly what they would be getting. No surprises, but no shortcomings, either. Thor had chosen the hammer the year after Loki arrived at the Centre, though he hadn't stuck to it with the same determination as some of the tributes in previous years. A hammer was not the most versatile of weapons, and Thor too good a candidate to risk on too narrow a specialisation. Still, iconic, he could do that.

"Subtle," said the Two girl, rolling her eyes and picking up a pair of throwing daggers. Loki had studied her movements some and knew she wouldn't restrict herself to those. He also knew she wouldn't make it out of the Arena alive, as much as she thought she would. She took the knives across the room and threw them with pinpoint accuracy at the dummies against the walls, but that wouldn't thrill anyone. That sort of thing was required from Career children, and she had the strong, corded muscles of someone who joined the Program as young as possible with the intent to win, not just for the prestige and money that came with making it even partway through.

Loki hefted the spear and backed away from the group. The others he didn't care so much about; the younger children avoided the weapons entirely, gravitating toward the other stations. The gigantic thug from District Nine picked up a sword the size of the smallest tribute, and Loki recognized the hunger in the other boy's eyes. This one Loki would have to watch; this was not a child ripped from his District, nor a Career poised to win; these were the eyes of a hunter examining his prey. The boy caught Loki's eye and pulled back his lips; Loki deliberately turned his back. Making a point.

He'd had a few months in Twelve to train on his own, nothing compared with the four years he would have had at the Centre had he stayed, but after the kill test it was mostly how to be a good Two yes-man. Obedience training and grooming and how to look good in front of the cameras, but Loki knew how to fake the first and excelled at the second, so what did it matter? He'd skirted the electric fence in Twelve, gone into the woods and fashioned himself a spear from a tree branch, purposely making it heavier than the one he wielded now.

No guarantee that the sponsors would put a spear in the Cornucopia for him, or that he'd receive one attached to a silver parachute like that District Four golden boy a few years back, but no matter. Time to shine. Loki tracked Thor's movements as he stalked into the middle of ring of dummies, intending on caving their rubber heads in with his hammer. Loki waited until he got into the zone, closing his eyes and practically praying over his weapon, before letting fly with the spear.

"No fighting!" one of the trainers shouted, and Loki gave him a withering look. As if he would. As intended his throw went wide, but barely, hitting the target Thor had aimed at. Thor actually jumped, but by the time he turned around to look, Loki had wandered off to try something else. He caught Director Fury watching him, and forced himself to hide his smile.

 

"Just what do you think you're going to do with that, Cap?" Tony Stark leaned against the weapons rack and crossed his arms.

Steve bristled, but he forced it down. "Please don't call me that," he said. He knew Bucky had said it live on television and people must have heard it, and trust a Stark to make it a thing, but no. He had so few things the Capitol hadn't taken from him.

Tony spread his hands. "Sorry, didn't mean to step on your toes, there. It's just such a cute nickname. But seriously, a shield? This isn't self-defence 101, this is the Games. You really think you're going to get through this without offence? I mean, you know what they say is the best defence."

It made perfect sense that Tony would make that his maxim, even if Steve didn't know much about him other than the times he made Capitol news for some scandal or other. Impressive, given he wasn't a legal adult yet. Steve pressed his lips together. "I'm still working on it," he said. He kept the shield between him and Tony, but Tony was right -- the weight was too much already, and his arm muscles wouldn't be able to hold it forever. He'd have to train harder if he was going to carry it.

Not like it really mattered. The conflict in his head -- killing is wrong vs he promised Bucky -- roared until he winced and looked away.

Tony tilted his head. "Seriously, put the shield down or those kids over there? The ones looking at you like you're made of their favourite dessert? They're gonna make sure you never get the chance to use it. Try some weapons, will you?"

Steve shook his head. He couldn't. Tony rolled his eyes. "Okay, look, fine, then just come here and show me what you can do." Steve stared at him, not understanding, and Tony managed to look that despite being reaped in his final year and brought into the Games Steve was the biggest thorn in his side. "You're from Six. You had engine grease under your fingernails at your Reaping, which means you lived in the city. You really gonna tell me you've never been in a fight? Even with a dewy-eyed kid you need to protect?"

And the thing was, Steve was not stupid. He knew when someone was trying to get him riled; the guys on the line at the factory did it every day, after finding out he'd been raised in an orphanage and had learned the kind of politeness where he said "yes ma'am" and "no sir" without thinking. Trying to see if they could get him to break. They never did, because fighting at work got you fired and Steve had savings so he could take Bucky out of the orphanage and find them somewhere, if not nice, then at least not on the same street where morphling deals went down.

Tony grinned at Steve, all teeth, and he'd brought his stupid shades into the training room, just, why, why would anyone do that, and Steve had spent all of last night squeezed into a skintight costume, smiling and waving at the people who were lined up to watch him die. Steve whispered an apology to Sister Catherine, then hauled off and punched Tony Stark right in his smug face.

"No fighting!" the aggrieved trainer shouted again. "C'mon, guys, knock it off!"

Satisfying for a second in a shameful kind of way, at least until Tony bounced back up, checking his nose for blood and cackling like a maniac. "I knew it! I knew you were too interesting to be boring!" And Steve had just played into Tony's hands as surely as those jerks down at the factory, and it stuck under his skin and wiggled there. "See, didn't take that long to break through that whole 'good boy' thing you've got going. You'll fit in here just fine."

Steve let out a long breath, glad that the full set of camera crews weren't there for this session. The weapons-choosing times usually weren't broadcast to the public, to keep a few things a surprise for the audience, Steve guessed. Right now they would be showing the Reapings over and over again, as well as footage from the parade and interviews with past Victors who weren't mentoring this year for commentary on their potential favourites so far. He thought of Bucky, sitting in the orphanage with the other kids and looking for footage of Steve every second. Hopefully he'd understand that Steve's ridiculous costume had come from the token Bucky painted.

Back in Six, Steve had almost always managed to solve his conflicts through talking. But this was different. If he was going to win the Games -- a thought that made Steve sick to his stomach -- he couldn't expect everyone else to just, what, step off the platforms immediately? He turned, gave Tony a grim smile. "Thanks for the reminder," he said, and turned his back. He wouldn't be able to do that into the Games, but until then, Steve didn't have to give Tony Stark any more attention than he had to.

Steve found one of the children, a tiny little girl from Eight with her small face scrubbed clean and pink, giving a punching bag a dubious look. Steve's heart cracked, but he shoved the feeling back and knelt down next to her. "Hey you," he said, and the girl jumped but gave him a small, tentative smile. "You're holding your fist all wrong. You put your thumb behind your fingers like that, you're gonna break it as soon as you hit anything. You don't wanna do that, right?"

She shook her head and uncurled her fingers. Steve closed her hand, making sure to tuck her thumb across the front of the fist, between the index and middle finger. "There, see?" he said, and drew her arm back, getting her to mime a slow punch. "You want to hit with your knuckles, not the flats of your fingers, or you might hurt yourself. Keep your arm in close; push, don't swing. Make sure your shoulder and torso support your weight; don't just hit with your fist. Got it? Here, now try with me."

He helped her adjust her stance, went through it a few times with her, and then told her to hit him. She balked, but Steve just grinned. "I promise, I'm big and strong. It's okay. Just try it." She did, and Steve let out an exaggerated 'ooph!' and doubled over. "There, see, just keep practicing that." He ruffled her hair, thinking of Anna back at the orphanage, and swallowed around the rock in his throat. She smiled up at him, the telltale tears in her eyes long blinked away, then hit the punching bag with gusto.

Steve turned away and pressed a hand to his eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath. He couldn't cry here, not now; the Careers would be watching for anything like that, and they'd only use it against him. He sucked in air, fought down the hysterical sobs, and calmed himself. When he opened his eyes, the big guy from Five -- Brian? Brandon? no wait, Bruce -- stood in front of him, a weird expression on his face.

"You shouldn't do that," Bruce said, his voice quiet, but taut and restrained as opposed to soft.

"Do what?" Steve asked, brushing hair away from his forehead to hide the swipe at the corner of his eyes.

"Care." Bruce looked at the girl, then back to Steve. "You know she's going to die. It's only going to hurt more if you let her get to you."

Steve closed his eyes again. "I know. But I just -- I can't. This is wrong, this is all wrong."

"It is." There's something strange about Bruce's voice, like the careful calm is nothing but a veneer, like a spring coiled tight and held down by a ribbon that might not stay forever. "But the thing is, it's not just about you. They'll kill her quickly, but if they see you care, they might make it slow. Just for you, to hurt you. Because that's the way they are." He looked across the room, where the girl from Two stood staring at them. She gave them a wicked grin and actually licked her knife. Steve was too busy thinking about germs to be much intimidated, but the message was clear enough.

Bruce's district partner, not as small as Eight but still, tugged at his sleeve. "You were going to show me how to use the climbing ropes," she said. Bruce rested a large hand on the back of her head, nearly dwarfing her skull, and nodded.

Steve winced. "So how do you do it, then?"

Bruce hesitated. "I never forget where we are, who we're with, and who put us here," he said. "Get angry, Rogers. Stay that way. Hold it in until there's nothing else, and maybe you'll get out of here alive."

Steve held both hands over his mouth and nose, the tips of his index fingers pressed to the inside corners of his eyes. "Right," he said out loud. He left the weapons area and joined the quiet guy from Eleven at the survival station.

 

"Look, Hank, look! Look, it's perfect!" Jan bounced up and down, running over to the rack of tiny knives. Slender and shiny, they looked like the ones Daddy used to use to slice the skin off fruits for her, but even just looking at them, Janet could tell they were strong. She picked one up, balanced the handle on the end of her finger and moved her hand around, trying to keep it steady. "It's like they were made for me," she breathed.

Hank didn't look too happy, crossing his arms and jigging his eyes all over the room. "They might be," he said with a shrug. "You never know, they like to play games like that. And you did make an impression last night with your costume." He smiled a little, a private smile just for Jan, and she puffed up, pleased he noticed.

"That's right," Jan said, bouncing on her toes. "I'm the wasp! And these are my stingers. Zoom!" She threw one at the target, but it didn't go anywhere near. One of the big kids snickered at her, but Jan didn't care. That's what practice was for.

Hank covered his mouth, laughing a little bit too, but with him it wasn't mean so it was okay. "You're gonna need to work on that," he said, and ruffled her hair.

Janet pouted at him; the stylists had worked a long time on her hair, making it cute and fluffy and pretty, but there must be something magic in the shampoo they used because when Jan ran a hand over it, everything went back the way it was, smooth and shiny. "Well, we have time, and that's what trainers are for, silly," she scoffed at him, but then something else caught her eye.

A silver tube, hollow and shiny like everything else, and just the perfect size for Janet's hand. She picked it up, turned it over in her hand, and looked up at Hank, puzzled. "What's this?"

Hank took it from her, peered through the centre of it, then blinked. "Oh, it goes with these," he said, and pointed to a handful of small, feathery-tipped needles. "It's a blowgun, I think. You shoot the darts. It might be easier to aim than the knives, though you'd have to be closer."

Janet picked up one of the darts. "Is it poisoned?" She held the pointy end up to her nose and sniffed it, but she still couldn't really tell. It just smelled like metal.

"Probably not yet," Hank said. "If this were in the Cornucopia, probably there would be poison with it for you to dip them in. Or you'd have to make some yourself."

"Hm." Janet slotted the dart into the blowgun, held it up and looked around. The big boy from Two, with the blond hair and the beard, took swings with a hammer the size of Janet's head. She narrowed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew.

The dart flew across the room, headed toward the boy's leg, but at the last second he swung around and blocked it with the hammer. He picked up the dart and studied it, puzzled. "NO FIGHTING!" screamed the trainer, but Jan ignored him. This wasn't fighting. Hank let out a choked sound as the big boy spun around, but Janet wasn't afraid. She put her hands on her hips and grinned at him.

"Nice shot, little one!" the boy called out, waving his arm, his smile wide and proud. "I like your sting. I shall see you in the Arena!"

Janet waved back, then hopped and grinned at Hank. "It worked! See?"

Hank just stared at her as though she'd turned into a horrible monster. "Jan -- he noticed you. The Career, he noticed you. You don't want them to notice, you want -- oh my god." He swallowed. "We're leaving right now," he said. "No more weapons, I don't care. Put those down. We're going to learn how to tie knots, okay?"

That didn't sound like very much fun, but Janet recognized Hank's angry face when she saw it, and she'd promised Daddy she would listen to him. Already she'd disobeyed him lots of times, so she should probably be good for now. "Okay," she said, only sulking a little bit. Daddy would be so proud.

 

Wanda just wanted the Games to start, already. Weapons training was supposed to be the fun part for the Careers, but it just meant a lot of play-acting, and while she could do it as well as anyone, that didn't mean she enjoyed it. It felt kind of like sacrilege, showing just enough skill that the other tributes would wet themselves at the sight of it, but not so much that the Gamemakers knew exactly what they'd be getting. No surprises during the scoring meant low scores no matter what.

Not to mention, now and then they'd bring camera crews in to film them for the actual Games broadcast, and while Wanda enjoyed showing off a little more, it was just one more nuisance. Not that they would know; she smiled, twirled her knives, and beheaded dummies with the best of them while the reporters squealed with glee and clapped their hands.

Making alliances didn't take too long. No matter how boring and uninterested in winning the Ones were, it took a lot more than that to dissolve the traditional One-Two combo, and that didn't change this year. They didn't say anything when Wanda asked, just nodded, and that annoyed her, too. Usually the Careers stuck together, providing a united front in the training rooms, laughing at the other tributes and psyching them out. These Ones didn't bother. The girl from District Four asked to join them, and Wanda said yes, because why not? Plus she liked having a higher number of women on the team. Yay feminism, or something.

A few days into training, Wanda caught the traitor watching her. "If you're going to ask for an alliance, you've got another thing coming," she warned him, because honestly.

The boy rolled his eyes. He had the black hair and olive skin of Seam trash, but the bright blue eyes of kids from the merchant quarters. Mixed blood. Wanda didn't care, but she knew the cameras would love those eyes, and anyone the camera would love was worth keeping an eye on. "I know you've been instructed to make sure I don't make it out of here alive," he said. "I'm not an idiot."

"Well, that's good to know." Wanda took a break from training, grabbed a towel and draped it across her neck, rolling her shoulders and stretching her muscles. The kid's eyes didn't even flicker; too young, too gay, or too Career, Wanda couldn't tell. Either way. The idiot from Three certainly would've enjoyed the show; not much of a threat from him. "So what do you want?"

"To give you some advice." The kid tilted his head and studied her; Wanda barked out a laugh. "No, really. You're being too obvious. Everybody knows you want to kill Thor."

Wanda narrowed her eyes at him. "Only one of us gets out alive, kiddo. That's not a crime."

"Killing your district partner is, at least in Two," the kid pointed out, and she ground her teeth a little. "You really think if you kill him, you'll be welcome back in the Village? You'll be knifed to death your first night, when you're out of it and screaming from nightmares. Or maybe they'll do something to your medication. Or maybe you won't even make it back to the Village at all. You can't kill him."

Wanda's nostrils flared, because she knew that was true, at least. The only acceptable time to kill another Two was if neither of you managed to get yourselves knocked off before there were no other options, and that generally was considered poor showing on the part of the lesser favourite. In this case, her.

"I know they want you to die so that Thor can win," the kid continued. "You know it too, and so does Thor. That's probably why he's being so nice to you, because he's grateful for the honour and wants to make sure you're sensible of it. But you can't kill him. Not just because of what the other Victors will do, but because you know as well as I do that this isn't how these Games are meant to be played. Not this year."

And she did, too. Not that she was going to listen to a silver-tongued traitor. Wanda curled her lip and sneered at him. "And you're proposing what, exactly?"

"You know who's supposed to kill Thor," the kid said, and gave Wanda a smile worthy of the cameras. "It's going to be me. I'm offering you an alliance of mutual ignorance. I don't kill you, you don't kill me. We go our separate ways. You let me have Thor. I'll make it worth your while to let me do it, I promise you. He's not just going to get a broken neck two seconds in. Then, when that's done, you come find me, and I'll wait for you. We'll give them a show worth watching. You kill me, you've bagged the traitor instead of the Golden Boy, and you'll come home the greatest Victor Two has had in a decade. I kill you, I promise I'll make it look good. No tricks. No traps. Something worthy of the girl who was too good to be Thor's sacrifice."

The thing was, Wanda knew this kid. She knew the traitor, the one who brought Twelve to its knees. She knew he got his way by talking -- the rumours of his kill test -- but it didn't change the fact that it made sense. "You're dangerous," she said. "I should kill you as soon as we're off the platforms."

"You could." He nodded, his expression thoughtful as though he was really considering the statement. "But you do that, you might as well step off the platforms early, for as good as you're going to survive. The Gamemakers want their brother-brother battle, and if you take that away, they're not going to look kindly to you. There will be a rock slide or a tornado or an avalanche with your name on it. You have to know that."

She did, damn it. Wanda hissed. "Fine. Mutual ignorance is this. But know this, traitor, I'm going to carve your skin from your body before you're done. The hovercraft won't even know it's you they're picking up."

"I look forward to it." He grinned at her. She almost believed him.

Wanda waited for him to leave, but he just stood there, watching her. "What?" she asked finally. He had the kind of look on his face like if she walked away, he'd follow her. "Got some more sage advice for me?"

"Just one, actually," he said. "Change your name."

Wanda raised her eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"I'm serious. Wanda is a stupid name. It sounds like a middle-aged cleaning lady. It doesn't sound like a Victor, and definitely not one from Two."

Well, that didn't count as advice because Wanda had already considered it, but that wasn't her job. It was Caesar Flickerman's. "Nobody gets to choose their own nickname. It doesn't work that way."

"Oh, I know." He tossed his stupid long hair out of his eyes. "But you're good; you can make him choose the one you want." The kid looked down at Wanda's blood-red training outfit. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

And that, Wanda guessed, was all, because he sauntered off. "I'm going to enjoy killing you," she called after him.

He skipped around, swept a low bow in her direction, and headed back to the camouflage station. Wanda clenched her jaw and imagined holding him up by that hair of his and separating his pretty head from his body.

 

Tony returned to his room after another day in the training centre and flopped back on the bed. His schedule was clear for the night, other than dinner and some mentor time, which gave him exactly what he needed. He ordered the lights dimmed and grabbed a pillow, letting it rest on his face as though the training had worn him out. Maybe they'd think he was trying to cry in private; Tony didn't care. He'd spotted at least six cameras in the bedroom alone, and that was without making a sweep with anything electronic. Well, if they wanted a show in the bedroom he could give them one, but it probably wouldn't make it on the air. He grinned a bit.

He cleared his throat, then turned his head to the wall and made the series of mouth movements that activated the implant in his throat. The doctor who'd placed the subvocal receptor in his throat and the digital one in his ear was living large on an island off the coast of District Four right now, a happy millionaire thanks to a heaping share of Stark stocks. Nobody at the Capitol would be able to detect Tony's implants or the signals they output, not without equipment better than even Director Fury could come up with. Howard Stark made sure of that. Tony didn't get along with the old man all the time, but he couldn't deny that as a kid he got the best toys.

Subvocalization, the way of the future. Too bad nobody knew it yet, but in a few years Tony would make it public and he'd be even richer. By that point he'd have his nuclear defense system in place and the Capitol would have to buy the technology, instead of sending in their goons to take it.

"Jarvis," Tony said, glad good old dad had had him practice this since he was little, because he'd hate to be learning how to talk without moving his lips or making a sound now. "Jarvis, are you there?"

"Yes, sir, though you could have waited a little longer before making contact. I doubt I would have had a heart attack for at least another day."

Tony bit back a grin. Jarvis had been working for Stark Enterprises since Howard's day, and he'd raised Tony more than Howard had, really. Being able to contact him here made everything a little more solid. Tony liked that. "Sorry about that. I needed to make sure they didn't have anything set up that could detect us, but we're clean. What have you got for me? Any news on the Arena yet?"

"Nothing concrete, but evacuation orders have been given for a city in District Six. All citizens are being moved out to an undisclosed, temporary location beginning yesterday morning. One does not like to draw hasty conclusions, but it does seem probable that this will be the stage."

"A city, huh?" Tony closed his eyes and mimed dozing, keeping his patented thinking scowl from his face. He didn't like it; it made him feel like he didn't really have his brains working at full throttle. "They haven't done that in what, a decade or so? Well, that'll be interesting. You're sure that's where it is?"

"Fairly certain, sir. They've begun moving supplies into Six quite steadily, including mass shipments of your own surveillance equipment, among other things."

"Right, okay. See if any of the bugged ones make it in, do what you can if it looks like they'll miss them. Getting some eyes and ears in there would be really handy, not to mention internet access if I can get it. Something the Capitol can't detect."

"Do you doubt me, sir?" Jarvis asked, managing to sound implacable and wounded at the same time.

"Never, and you just got yourself a two percent raise because you made me feel guilty, so congratulations. Buy yourself a boat. Go sailing. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment, sir. But if you leave your implant on wakeup mode, I'll contact you as soon as I find something."

"You're a good man, Jarvis." Tony let out a breath and clicked his tongue, cutting off the subvocal connection but leaving his earpiece running in standby just in case. Six, huh. Tony wondered what they were doing; usually they didn't bother going for a city, at least not a populated one. The last one had been abandoned. If they wanted something really apocalyptic and weird they could have gone to the ruins of Thirteen; that sure would've made a point, though the nuclear fallout might make life interesting for the Victor later. Well, whatever, Tony didn't need to figure out the Capitols' reasons for doing what they did, just how to work around them.

Tony's task, while Jarvis ran all his voodoo back home, would be to get into Fury's backdoor in the Capitol network. Not too many people knew that Fury had something on the side, and even Tony didn't know what, but lots of electronics and munitions had gotten siphoned off over the years since Howard's time, even, and Tony was going to figure it out. He'd never planned on getting reaped, damn it, and he was going to use everything he had. If it took hacking a federal database in order to hack a secret operative database to bribe said secret operative, well, he'd do it. Tony was walking out of here, and it wouldn't be with the blood of twenty-four other people all over his cost-half-as-much-as-District-Twelve suit.

He couldn't do that yet, not without his equipment, but it had been over twenty-four hours since the Reaping now. Tony figured eating a big dinner, chow down on some roughage and fibre, and he'd have his stuff back in hand soon enough. He grabbed his shades from the bedside table and put them back over his eyes. A stupid-looking token, sure, and if he'd been caught he'd probably be dead, but they'd examined the shades and given them back without detecting the HUD in the right lens, the one networked to the implant in Tony's skull. When Jarvis found him any information, he'd send it directly to Tony, and Tony could page through it on his own.

Oh yeah. It felt good to be a genius.

 

"All right, it's time. I think it's fairly clear that we have our Mockingjay," Coulson said, looking over the files. He flipped through pictures of the candidates, scrawled over with notes on their temperaments, their past histories, medical records, anything that they'd been able to dig up. "We can contact the others during the last day of training tomorrow."

"You agree with me about Rogers, then." Fury said. He should be happy; he'd spent half the evening of the parade trying to argue Coulson around to his point of view. Now, dissatisfaction gnawed at him as he stared at the files.

"Have you changed your mind, sir?" Coulson flicked one of the images at Fury. "You were absolutely right. Look at him. Look at how the people are responding to him; he hasn't had interviews, training score, anything, and already he has sponsors lined up around the block. Phillips doesn't know what to do with them; the waiting list alone is more than last year's tribute got altogether. Plus, you saw him in training, with the little Eight girl. If that doesn't make him our guy, I don't know what does."

"Compassion is good," Fury acknowledged. He scrolled through to a still from the security camera in the training room, Roger's face frozen in an expression of barely-repressed anguish. He thought of Coulson's words at the parade: He looks scared to death. "Stability is better. We can't have a Mockingjay if we can't rely on him. He's getting too attached to those kids too fast. We can't guarantee save them, and we don't want him to fall apart when that happens."

Coulson tilted his head, and Fury would bet he narrowed his eyes behind the safety of his mirrored sunglasses. "I seem to recall making this same argument to you during the parade, and you reassured me it would be fine. What's going on, sir?"

"Well, maybe I'm having second thoughts. It's not as though this is something we'll get a second chance at."

Coulson shook his head. "With all due respect, sir, I'm not sure what other options we have. Stark seems detached enough for our purposes, but he has an ego the size of District Eleven. I think you were right at the parade; I don't know if we can rein him in, especially not if he discovers how he got here."

"We wouldn't have brought him in at all if we weren't willing to take that risk." Still, Coulson had a point. "Regarding Thor, I think I might have been too hasty. I wouldn't count him out either, not yet. I've been watching him since he was a youngster, and I saw some flashes of that boy today."

"You don't think he's in too deep, sir? Before you said --"

"Maybe, maybe not. But we won't know until we see how things play out between him and Loki."

Coulson hesitated, and Fury heard the tension in the silence as the other man chose his words. "After all this, you still haven't ruled out Loki, either. Are you sure that's wise?"

"No." Fury tapped the screen, staring at the image of Loki grinning at the camera, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure at all. But I still think he's crucial. Since his break from Two he's been on edge, drifting. We could give him a purpose, which is exactly what he needs."

"If you say so, sir," Coulson said diplomatically. "I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, sir, but we need to make a choice, and we need to make it now. Of course no one candidate is going to be perfect, but we have to balance their good and bad qualities with what we want. I think Rogers is our best bet."

Fury paused, then smiled. "Maybe not." He crossed behind Coulson and activated their communications network. Within minutes he was connected with the rest of the rebellion leader base on a secure channel. "I've made my decision," he said, and Coulson looked up in surprise but didn't interrupt, a good soldier to the end.

"You've decided on Rogers?"

Fury stood up straight, clasping his hands behind his back. "No. As of this moment, I'm proposing we shelve Operation Mockingjay."

Coulson straightened, and the channel exploded as everyone began talking at once. Fury let them for a moment, then silenced the microphones of everyone but himself. "Trust me," he said, "and I'll give you something better than a Mockingjay. I'll give you the Avengers."

"What's that supposed to mean?" one of them demanded.

"Trust me, and you'll see."

"That's a tall order, sir, if you don't mind me saying. We're supposed to go along with you on a hunch after you've thrown away years of planning, and for what?"

Fury cleared his throat. "I don't ask you to join me on faith. Tonight I will write up a report and send it out. I want all of you to read it, and tomorrow we will confer again. If we can't reach a consensus then we will choose Rogers as our Mockingjay and I'll say no more. But if I can convince you, then tomorrow we continue with the Avengers Initiative instead."

The others muttered their consent, and Fury cut the connection. "What do you think?" he asked, turning to Coulson.

Coulson rolled his shoulders, giving himself time to think. "You're not going to choose," he said slowly. "You want all of them. And not just to protect Rogers. You want them all out."

"It makes sense, doesn't it? A group of Mockingjays, instead of just one, whose strengths and weaknesses complement each other. It's our best chance."

Coulson sighed. "Except now instead of getting one person out alive, you're talking about a quarter of the tributes."

"More like a third," Fury said, and Coulson very carefully did not choke. "Well, not including our helpers, who I'm sure will be glad to survive. It's all right; we have several contingencies in place. We'll just have to switch them around."

Coulson nodded, lips thinned in a way that he thought Fury was insane but was too polite to say so. Fury appreciated his loyalty, not for the first time; it certainly didn't come about because of Coulson's impressive paycheque. "Whatever you say, sir."

"Trust me," Fury said.

"Believe me, sir, I do, or I wouldn't be here."

Chapter 6: Interviews/Training Score

Summary:

Hank would have been named official heir to the Van Dyne estate when he passed Reaping age next year; now he'd be fertilizing the ground by some time next week. Life really knew how to kick a guy in the balls.

Twenty-four tributes. Fourteen interviews, ten training sessions. Four recruits. Two delusions. Several resignations.

Natasha Romanov was born and bred a soldier, and so when Director Fury showed up at her room past lights-out, she didn't even blink. "I'll get Clint," she said, slipping aside to allow Fury in. She didn't bother to fix her clothes, because Natasha hadn't slept in nightclothes since she was a toddler, and she didn't have to break the habit now because it fit with her image. Being a Career had its perks.

"Please do," Fury said, and bent down to place the jammer in the middle of the floor. The small device, a mix of reverse-engineered Stark Industries technology and Fury's own team's innovation, stored imagery and looped video from every floor, room and vantage point in the Games building. When activated, it uploaded that footage into the security cameras at multiple applicable angles so that Fury could walk through the halls or conduct meetings entirely unobserved. Natasha had recorded the footage for these types of incidents already, and knew that now the security monitors would show her returning to her room, puzzled at the door's malfunctioning chime.

"Fury's here," Natasha said to Clint, the jamming safely in place for the whole apartment, and though just a few seconds earlier he'd been sprawled out on her bed, dead to the world, he sat up, wide awake in a moment.

"He say why?" Clint asked, finger-combing his hair, though the question was a reflex one. He knew the answer to that.

"Not yet." Natasha moved close to him, letting their shoulders brush together, the contact understated and comfortable. Barring twins who actually shared uterus space, no two people could have known each other longer, or gone through more together, than the two of them. They'd known their mission in life when most children were mastering not wetting themselves. They were ready.

Still, all the professionalism in the world didn't stop Natasha from wishing it could be different. It just meant she'd never voice the thought, let alone act on it.

"There's been a change in plans," Fury said, and while Natasha's posture and expression stayed exactly the same, her heart rate kicked up a notch. Beside her, Clint stayed just as frozen and noncommittal as her, but his wrist brushed hers and their pulses matched. "You're still tasked with getting Rogers out safely, but this time you're all out."

You're soldiers first, humans second was the phrase Natasha had learned as soon as she was old enough to parse sentences, and she swallowed. "Sir?"

Beside her, Clint shifted just slightly, and his pinky finger brushed the side of her hand. "Is that wise?" he asked, carefully. "It seems an unnecessary risk. If you're worried we aren't prepared --"

"I know you're prepared." Fury clasped his hands behind his back. "That's why I've changed my mind. You'll get the full debriefing when it's time for you to know, but for now, just know that I'm not making your lives easier by letting you live. You might wish for the original plan by the end."

Natasha's eyes almost flickered to Clint, but she stopped, narrowing her eyes to stop them from moving. "Sir?" she said again.

Fury actually smiled, which to an uneducated person might be a comfort, but which struck a chill down Natasha's spine. Coulson smiling meant someone was likely to get their jaw caved in; Fury smiling usually meant someone, possibly many someones, were going to die. "Your new assignment is to facilitate the safe retrieval of a maximum of nine of the tributes. You will, of course have reinforcements. Details will be released to you in time."

The only response either of them allowed was the intake of breath that Clint choked off halfway through. Fury stopped smiling, and this, at least, reassured Natasha somewhat. "At ease," he said, as an afterthought, and neither of them moved but for Clint to close his fingers over Natasha's wrist, gripping tight.

"We begin recruitment tomorrow," Fury said. He withdrew two portable data devices, which he handed over to them. The computers in their rooms had been disconnected from the network before they arrived, with dummy processes set to run during the times they were in the room. "I'll contact Stark myself; he has an authority problem and I think it's best I deal with him. Widow, your assignments are Five and Six. Talk to them, see if you can get them to agree with us without divulging enough to place us in danger. You know the drill. Hawkeye, your recruitment assignment is the male from Eleven, and the female from Twelve. You're also to watch Seven, see if the pair of them would be useful."

"Yes sir," they said.

"Dismissed," Fury said with a nod. He picked up the jammer and flipped open its screen. Pattern Delta-7," he said. Natasha and Clint headed to the sofa and turned on the television, Natasha resting her head on Clint's shoulder so that when Fury left the room the images would match. Sometimes Natasha laughed at what the other Career tributes -- even the ones from their own district -- considered "training".

"So what do you think?" Natasha asked, gesturing at the screen where some Capitol drama was playing.

"Doesn't make much sense," Clint said, wrinkling his nose. "I'm not sure the writers thought this through. I'm betting they write themselves into a corner by the end of the episode."

"I don't know, I usually like their stuff," Natasha said. "Guess we'll just have to see where it goes."

Clint nodded. "Guess so. I'm tired, though. Let's go back to bed."

The Capitol didn't have strict no-opposite-sex sleeping arrangements like the training centre in District One, which brooked no distractions -- on the contrary, the Games relished any chance for scandal, and so Clint slipping into Natasha's rooms every night, while technically against the rules, went unchallenged because it made for good television.

The cameras never caught how Natasha slept with one hand under her pillow for easy access to her knife, or that she always faced the wall with Clint's arm draped across her waist so he could grab the beretta strapped to her back beneath her shirt. They'd slept like that for nearly as long as Natasha could remember, and that constancy was one of her few comforts.

"You first," Clint said, low enough that the cameras wouldn't catch him. Sleeping in two-hour shifts was another habit that started young and never faded. Natasha nodded and closed her eyes.

They might actually make it out alive. Hope was foolish and counterproductive in a soldier so Natasha clamped down on it, but even so, the thought sang in her veins until she finished her breathing exercises and fell asleep exactly three minutes later.

 

"Get lost," Stark said with a sharp flick of his hand. "Play martyr to your cause? No thanks. One way or the other I'll get myself out, but I don't need your help, and I won't make myself your pawn to do it." He smiled, shark teeth and flashing sunglasses. "I guess you could make it worth my while, but that'd take more than you've got, I think. A mountain of strippers, maybe. Or a yacht. Oh, I know, a yacht made of strippers. Whaddaya say?"

Fury didn't twitch, though in his mind he imagined knocking that smart-aleck smile from Stark's face.  "I think we find ourselves at an impasse."

"I think we do." Stark tapped the side of his nose. "Don't worry about me spilling the beans, though, you guys have fun and I won't say a peep, I swear. Good luck dying for the sake of principles that nobody believes anyway. I'm all for people killing themselves for a cause as long as they don't ask me to do it."

 

"I don't think you really want me," Banner said warily. "I'm not -- I'm not exactly stable."

"We don't need you to be stable." Natasha said. She took the rope from Banner's hands and fixed the knot he'd just botched up by not paying attention; Banner blinked and tried again, this time getting it perfectly. "You're intelligent -- genius. We've seen your work back in your district. We could use someone like you."

Banner's mouth thinned. "How badly do you want me? Because I have some conditions."

"I'm authorised to agree to almost anything," Natasha said, because it was true.

"Then I want the kids out. Not just Jenny, all of them. As many as you can save." Banner's eyes hardened. "That's not negotiable. I know you can't  save everyone, but I want your word that you'll try."

Natasha nearly cursed out loud -- talk about making her job infinitely more difficult -- but she held her ground. "That can be arranged."

"If Jenny dies in the bloodbath then the deal is off," Banner said, and left for the herbs table.

 

 

"No," Carol said, folding her arms. "I'm done playing games, I don't care what or who for, and I'm done owing people anything. You find someone else." She paused. "I'll help you with Rogers. He's good people, and he doesn't deserve any of this. Neither does his kid back home. But I owe you nothing, you understand me? If helping him is enough of a karma boost that you take me with you, then find. But if me not being your puppet means you have to leave me there, well, I don't really care."

Natasha nodded. A shame, but she respected the girl's decision. Besides, Natasha had read Carol's file, and if she weren't a soldier with the ability to turn that asshole's balls into pudding to feed him after she ripped out all his teeth, she might not want to come home, either. "We'll see what we can do."

"You do that."

 

Steve listened with wide eyes, and when she finished, he let out a slow breath. "I'm in," he said, "but I want something in return. Bucky's name gets taken off the list for future Reapings. If this fails, he's not becoming a target. I don't want him picked next year, or the one after next, or any years after that. So if you want me, he's never going to be Reaped, not ever."

"Done," Natasha said. Fury had expected that anyway and put through the paperwork last night, according to the dossier he'd given her.

Steve relaxed a fraction. "Then count me in. Just tell me what I have to do."

 

Clint watched Seven all day. The little girl flitted from station to station, babbling anything that came into her head and making no effort to hide any of the skills she'd picked up. No good; she'd never be able to keep her mouth shut. It would be too exciting for her to hold to herself, and one triumphant word to the wrong person would end this all. Her district partner was no better, not with the way he hung around her, scolding and warning like he was her dad.

Clint turned away from them. He caught Fury's eye and shook his head.

 

Wilson rolled the decision around in his mouth, tongue poking his cheek. "You're saying the little ones don't have to die? And if we win, this never happens again?" He looked down at the plants in his hands, which he was separating into poisonous, edible, and useless.

"That's right."

"Then I guess I wouldn't be a very good person if I said no, now would I." Wilson squared his shoulders. "But whatever happens, I want Redwing safe."

"Redwing?"

"My bird. I'm not becoming part of anything if I can't take him with me."

Clint didn't know what to say to that for a second. Wilson, like everyone else, had the ability to ask for anything in return for his cooperation, and what did he want? A bird. No matter what else happened today, nothing else could top that for the best combination of weird and, well, just plain sad. "Not a problem," Clint said, and Wilson smiled.

"Then it looks like you got yourself a deal."

 

"I'm not sure you want me as the face of anything," Jean said, crossing her arms.

Clint just shrugged. "It wouldn't just be you. Anyway, it's not my call. Look, it means you get out of here, and you get to do something better than go back to Twelve and watch your friends and family starve. That's got to be worth something."

"It is, but you don't get to throw it in my face to get me to join your cause," Jean pointed out. "Fine, I'll help you."

Clint waited for the terms, but she must not be that smart, because she didn't actually give him any. Finally, a simple assignment. "Good," Clint said. "We'll give you more information in the Arena, so stay alive."

"Pretty sure keeping me that way is now your job, soldier, so have fun with that," Jean said dryly, and snapped off a salute.

 

Fury watched Loki, who was spending his last day of training doing everything he could to irritate his brother, shadowing him and hitting every target Thor aimed at before the older boy had the chance to let fly. Still too soon to tell whether Loki's loyalties could ever extend past himself, or whether he was too unhinged to be of any use at all. A shame, and Fury blamed himself for not seeing the festering in his soul sooner; perhaps if he'd stepped in when Loki was still a child, he would not be the bitter, brilliant, beautiful boy who teetered on the edge of madness.

Thor reined in his impatience and irritation with a mastery that Fury didn't expect from a son of Odin, despite Loki's best efforts to drive him insane, and Fury noticed that, too. Too soon to say with them either way.

 

District One, Female. Score: 11/12

"I have to say, Natasha -- may I call you Nat? -- that we're all a little surprised by the District One tributes this year. Care to explain why you and Clinton have broken the mould so thoroughly?"

"Of course," Natasha said, and tilted her head. The cameras and floodlights filled her vision but it didn't matter; she could kill Flickerman and the first two rows of audience members without needing to see them. Not that she would; Natasha had been trained in excess and schooled in temperance. Only three people in all of Panem knew the height of her skill. "District One has become a bit of a joke in recent years. People seem to think that because we're beautiful, that we win without talent. That it doesn't take just as much work to look like this as it does for the Twos to pop some steroids before the Games start."

She knew Thor, in the wings, had narrowed his eyes -- Thor was famous in his refusal to sully himself by using performance enhancers -- but she only smiled. "Clint and I are here to remind people that District One is not something to be trifled with. The audience has gotten complacent; they expect us to be pretty and provide a good show, but they don't cheer for us to win. We want to remind everyone that just because something is beautiful doesn't mean it can't be deadly. Like a poisonous flower, or a spider."

"A black widow, even," Caesar said with an obvious shudder, picking up the lead Natasha dangled for him, and the crowd shouted encouragement. "Well, I think there's little doubt, with your training score, that you can back up your words. Would you care to tell us what we can hope to see in the Arena this year?"

"Where's the fun in that?" Natasha smiled. "No, I think it's safe to say that everyone will be pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't change that channel once the buzzer hits, if I were you."

 

District One, Male. Score: 9/12

None of the trainers liked the bow. Ranged weapons were for cowards who didn't want to get too close, they said, and yes it looked flashy to fire a certain number of arrows per minute, but you know what else were flashy, swords, and they required a lot closer combat and up the excitement and the danger. The audience loved swords; they would not love a candidate who hid in the trees and fired clandestine shots.

Well, Clint wasn't in it to win sponsor approval, now was he, and so he could give a rat's ass about what looked good for the cameras. He was here to do the job he'd been trained for since he could draw a bow, and he would do anything he needed to get it done. Natasha was the muscle and Clint the backup -- her backup -- and the bow his best means to protect her and their mission. Let them think he was phoning it in.

He went through the motions for the Gamemakers, firing each arrow straight into the eye of every training dummy, then he picked up a new set and repeated the shots with the other eye. Last year he'd timed himself and he held Panem's record for fastest draws, and he emptied his quiver before the closest Gamemaker could finish eating their sandwich. At the end Clint fired an arrow up; smiled, bowed, and caught it on the way down. He tossed it lazily over his shoulder where it landed in the bulls-eye of the closet target.

 

District Two, Female. Score: 11/12

The non-Careers always worked themselves up into a near-panic about the training scores, especially the private session with the Gamemakers. Wanda had no problem letting them and hoped no one burst their bubble soon, but really, if they thought that the Gamemakers reached their consensus after a few minutes of play-acting, they deserved the anxiety.

The training scores, of course, were important, but the private time with the Gamemakers was more a confirmation of what they'd already observed during the weeks before. Since Wanda had spent every minute of her time in the Games complex excruciatingly aware of their presence and acted accordingly, she had no worries. Some tributes held back and only showed themselves now, which was fine if you were an outlier who had no chance but to cling to some bizarre strategy -- hey, it worked some years, look at Johanna Mason -- but for a Career, there was no point to that.

Being a Career meant giving the audience what they wanted, and to do that the Gamemakers had to know exactly what kind of show to expect.

"Be ruthless," said Enobaria to Wanda before the session, and her altered teeth gleamed bright in the fluorescent hallway lights. "They know what they want from you, so give it to them."

Wanda had no problem with this. By the end of her session she'd used every weapon in the room -- even the ones traditionally too heavy for her frame -- but for the mock-up of Odin's spear. Wanda wasn't stupid. She attacked every target, destroyed every dummy save one, and all with the same lithe grace another girl her age might dance the ballet. She finished without breaking a sweat.

She'd left herself one minute at the end, and Wanda snatched up some red and gold paint and a swatch of red fabric from the camouflage station. She draped the fabric over the remaining dummy's shoulder, and, with careless ease, painted blonde hair and a beard on its face. Once she was sure the Gamemakers knew exactly who she had turned the dummy into, Wanda picked up Odin's spear and drove it straight through mock-Thor's crotch.

One of the Gamemakers actually winced aloud, and at least two flinched. Fury did not, but Wanda of course didn't expect him to. He only watched her, and she directed her final bow and flourish to him. "The name is Scarlet," Wanda said, and struck a pose. She walked out smiling.

Thor, waiting behind her in the hallway, asked how it went. "I think it went just fine," Wanda purred, and trailed her hand across his shoulders as she sauntered past.

 

District Two, Male. Score: 10/12

"They're going to ask you about Loki. You know that. This is going to happen." Brutus narrowed his eyes, and he laid the flats of his fingers against Thor's face, not hard enough to leave a mark right before the interview but to get his attention. "Hey! Look at me. You know what you have to do."

Eighteen years, Thor had trained to be the perfect tribute, never disobeying a single order. He'd given them everything, every minute and every thought and every word from his mouth since he was old enough to understand what the Games meant. If Thor died in combat he would die full in the knowledge that he had served them well, that he'd brought honour and glory to his father, his district, the Capitol, and Panem, and he would die with a warrior's smile on his face, without regrets.

He would not give them this.

Thor kept his expression neutral, polite and blank, like the behaviour version of the stylists' favoured Beauty Base Zero. Brutus hissed. "What was that? I didn't hear you."

Thor sucked on his teeth and stared straight ahead. He couldn't remember the last time he'd so much as ignored a command from Brutus, though he still had to actively speak against one. He looked past Brutus' furious attempts at eye contact and concentrated on breathing exercises.

"Thor! I don't have time to kick your ass right now before they can Remake you all pretty for the interview, so help me, but if I have to tell them you got in a fight with Barton or somebody and just couldn't help yourself I will," Brutus snapped. "You know what you have to do. You disapprove, you distance yourself, and then you move on. "

"He's my brother," Thor said at last.

Brutus waved a hand. "He's adopted," he said, then stopped. "Actually, that's good, say that. That's your line. Big smile, too, look sheepish and they'll forgive you."

And thus to the grave went Thor's perfect backtalk record, previously non-existent, as he growled and bared his teeth. "Mind to whom you speak!" he snarled. The prep team hovered in the back, flitting around and looking for the exit like a flock of confused butterflies trapped in a jar. "I do not care what treason he is said to have committed. He is my brother and I will not dishonour him in front of all of Panem. I will not!"

Brutus whipped around, and his foot smashed into the backs of Thor's kneecaps, bringing him down hard on his knees. No visible marks from that, nor from the blow to the kidneys that left Thor reeling. "You will," Brutus said, his voice low and dangerous. "You will because you're a goddamn Two, and I will beat it into you if you've forgotten."

Thor clenched his teeth but stayed kneeling, braced his hands on his thighs and bowed his head. Brutus stood down because those were the rules in Two; a mentor never continued a beating if the tribute didn't escalate it into a fight. "Yes sir," Thor said, and the words made him sick to utter, but Brutus was right. Thor was a Two, the son of the greatest Two who'd ever lived, and he knew his duty.

Forgive me, brother, Thor thought.

"Get up," Brutus said, the anger gone from his voice now. He'd won, no sense in gloating or lording it over Thor's head now. Thor knew the other districts didn't understand the mentors in Two, but their loss.

Thor stood and allowed the stylists to brush the dust from his knees and the backs of his legs. They straightened the wrinkles in his suit and adjusted his cape so it lay flat across his shoulders. Brutus clapped Thor's shoulder and squeezed it. "I know it's hard," he said, and no, he didn't, not really, but Thor appreciated the gesture. "But you're a Two, and you're gonna do your job. You can do this."

He honestly intended to do it. No one understood the rules better than Thor, the importance of group cohesion, of toeing the line. No one better comprehended the danger of going rogue, of the anarchy that could befall if someone decided to do things on his own just because. Thor had seen his brother fall, saw where he ended up. Saw the fate that awaited him. The same death that would stretch out its hand to Thor, no matter his service, if he did not show them he was a loyal soldier.

At first it was easy, Thor's strategies for the Games and what food would he eat forever once he was a victor and could do anything he wanted, and Thor smiled and showed his teeth and everyone at once loved and feared him. And perhaps, perhaps he could make it through -- but no. Caesar leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"So tell me," Caesar said, exaggerated sympathy in his tone, and the world fell out from under them because Thor knew it was coming. "I'm dying -- we're all dying -- to know what you think of a certain scandal that's been floating around since the very beginning."

"What be this?" Thor asked, sitting back in his chair with feigned surprise and confusion. "If it's the rumours of myself and Ms. Maximoff, I've been instructed I must refrain from commenting." Wanda would kill him for that, but she would just have to wait until tomorrow, wouldn't she, as then it hardly mattered.

"Ha! No, though once the Games are over we'll have to hold you to that one," Caesar said with a wink. "No, I'm referring to the actions of your brother, Loki, who, I must say, brought more than District Twelve to his knees during his Reaping. What do you have to say to that? It must have been hard, watching that. Can you give us any comments? What's it like to see your brother turn on you like that?"

He's adopted, said Brutus' voice in Thor's head. Four syllables, the same as Thor's full name. He spoke more than those when he demanded pie or another drink. Say the words and smile and the interview would be over. "He's my brother," Thor said, and he allowed the pain to creep into his expression. He hoped Loki watched him If only they could have talked sooner, but no. This would have to do. "Of course what he has done is --" unforgivable, said his inner Brutus, there was still time to fix it -- "unfathomable, especially for a citizen of District Two. I neither share his thoughts nor condone his actions. However." And this was the precipice, and Thor barely needed to look over before he jumped. "He is my brother, and will be to the end, whether that be my end, or his. I only hope that I can reach him before then."

A silence, then Caesar reached across the gap and jostled Thor's knee in a comforting fashion. "I'm sure you will," he said, all jovial sincerity. "So can you give us a hint of what to expect from the two of you? What can we see if you and Loki are the final two tributes?"

Gods help him if it came to that; Thor would rather the Gamemakers call down a bolt of lightning and strike them both. He forced himself to smile, though he could not make it anything but grim. "And ruin the surprise? Please, Caesar, we both know better than that."

The crowd cheered, and Caesar spread his hands in mock-embarrassment. "Well, I guess you told me!" he joked.

Brutus said nothing when Thor reached the wings of the stage, the applause thunderous behind him. He said nothing as they returned to the Two floor; said nothing as the door shut behind him and Enobaria pulled Wanda into another room for a private conference. Said nothing as he backhanded Thor across the face and fixed him with a long stare.

Thor bowed his head. He didn't apologize -- no point to that, and Brutus' blow let him know that no more words were necessary tonight. As far as taking hits went, this was a light one -- Thor had worse when he mouthed off to the trainers at the age of ten, really -- enough to tell him that he'd messed up, that Brutus saw it and would not put up with that again, but like backstage, Brutus didn't intend to harp once Thor understood the lesson. Some of the tension drained from Thor's shoulders.

Brutus snorted. "Put some ice on that," he said gruffly, shaking his head. "And then sleep, you hear me? Do you need anything?"

"No," Thor said automatically, then paused. "Perhaps," he amended. Even with Brutus' rebuke having calmed him, he knew that without aid he would lie awake, thinking of all the ways Loki was likely to die -- not the least of which was at Thor's own hands.

Brutus nodded, stepping out and returning with a glass of water, a pill, and a bag of ice wrapped in a towel. "Good," Brutus said, approving, when Thor downed the pill and water in one go. "Now sleep."

"Yes sir," Thor said, a little more forcefully than he might have, but he had disobeyed a direct order while knowing exactly what he was doing. He knew the higher-ups in Two had spent the entire week trying to distance Loki from the district, and Thor had just tied them right back together again.

Brutus clapped his shoulder on the way out.

 

District Three, Female. Score: 3/12

She sat on the floor and cried. The Gamemakers watched her in awkward silence, because really, fourteen was borderline too old for that sort of thing, but there was always one. She cried while they sat and shifted position and thought about lunch and whether they could order more snacks for the table.

Finally her time ran out, but she just kept crying. Fury, silent and disapproving, waved a hand, and a Peacekeeper stepped forward. "Let's go," he said, and reached down to grab her arm and haul her to her feet.

The girl sniffled and wailed, then grabbed the closest weapon to her -- a dagger the size of her forearm -- and drove it into the Peacekeeper's calf. He shouted and backed off, hopping on one foot. The girl curled back into a ball and burst into tears anew.

 

District Three, Male. Score: 9/12

"So Tony, you're eighteen, this has to be a bit of an upset for you," said Caesar, mugging for the camera. Tony hoped he never got so obsessed with aging that he stuck himself full of chemicals and looked like that -- then again, Tony didn't really expect to live that long, and if he did, he wasn't going to waste time thinking about it now. "The odds weren't in your favour on Reaping Day, but I think it's safe to say that based on your training score, things might be looking up for you."

"I admit, Caesar, I was looking forward to going back to any number of the lovely ladies glad to be around another year," Tony grinned, and Caesar chuckled. "But you know, life happens, I get it. Things don't always work out. That's why I'm not too worried this year."

"Well, aren't you confident!"

"You don't get to be a billionaire CEO before you're past Reaping age if you're not confident." Tony turned his million-dollar smile (no seriously, insured for a million dollars, take note, sponsors) and refused to let the rage show on his face. Tony had been raised to be a professional, and he was more than capable of making it through the usual stage patter with all the deceptively-artless charm that helped him build his name even if his mind was spinning elsewhere.

Fury and his minions were lucky Tony didn't tell them to go fuck themselves with that stupid spear the kid from Twelve favoured, or just turn to the cameras and repeat everything they said to him. How they expected him to go along with their rebellion was beyond him -- doomed to failure if ever Tony saw one, and while he appreciated risky ventures in business on occasion and in fact helped make his millions with them, that didn't mean he wanted to strap himself to a nuclear bomb and wait for it to go off. Even if he had agreed, knowing what he did, no way Tony would ever do anything for Fury except help him bend over and tell him where to stick it.

Tony finally got through into Fury's private files last night, and ironic that Caesar was asking Tony about his odds of being Reaped in his final year because Tony was possibly the only person in this room, other than the volunteers, who had the express privilege of knowing exactly his odds, and said odds were stacked at a cozy 1:1.

The Reaping bowl held thousands of slips of paper, but this year, every single one of them said Tony Stark. Fury wanted Tony in the Arena to recruit him for his Rebellion, but if he thought Tony would do anything but flip him off from here until eternity after finding that out, he had another thing coming. Not that he knew Tony had found it, but he would, soon enough, and he'd regret playing with fire just because he thought no one could ever stand up to that eyepatch of his.

"Do you have any predictions for the Games, then?" Caesar asked, and Tony spared half a second from his dual-wielding swords of rage and charm to wonder who would win if their smiles challenged each other to a fight to the death. He guessed his own, as he knew from experience that he could have blood staining his teeth and still look handsome as hell. "As a businessman, you must have experiences. Is there anything you think we'll be likely to see?"

"I think you're going to be surprised," Tony said, and he wouldn't blow Fury's cover yet, not when he still had to decide which horse to back, and whether he could use Fury's stupid cause to benefit himself somehow, but that didn't mean he would be polite about it. He grinned at the cameras. "I get the feeling some people have a few special things cooked up for us this year. And, not to be a tease or anything, but I've gotta say, you're looking at one of them."

 

District Four, Female. Score: 9/12

Greer grew up in the part of Four where the ocean touched the cliffs, and had learned to climb almost before she could walk. The soft, artificially pock-marked walls of the training room weren't anywhere near close to the cliff faces she'd scaled as a girl, first for fun and then for training with fifty pounds of weights on her back and more on each wrist and ankle, but that just meant she could scamper across them without even thinking about it.

When she entered the room, Greer packed as many weapons into her training jumpsuit as possible, then lifted herself up by a low-hanging rope and climbed up to the ceiling. She'd seen some of the children try it, scampering about like squirrels, but she was a Career, and she moved with grace and ease. She couldn't afford to be likened to some rodent who'd acquired this skill by accident, and Greer made sure that the Gamemakers had every opportunity to see her lithe, agile figure.

She destroyed every training dummy without ever leaving the walls or the ceiling, darting and swinging and leaping, and once she'd finished, she dropped down to the ground, sliding her legs out and landing on her toes and fingers like a cat. She smiled and held their stares long enough to be sure they caught her eyes with the green, slit-pupil contact lenses, then leapt to her feet and turned a cartwheel into a bow.

Let's see her borderline-insane district partner top that. She didn't even know what his skill was because he'd chosen private training, but she doubted it could be anything as eye-catching as hers.

 

District Four, Male. Score: 8/12

John bet the Gamemakers had his score and notes written down already without even seeing him. He was the last of the Careers anyway, which meant eight districts of frightened kids and a couple of maybe-interesting outliers, but after him, all the real fun was over. They were probably getting bored by the time he walked into the room, thinking ahead to the evening of utter tedium ahead. John could understand that; he lost interest in things pretty quick, too.

The problem with the Games was that it had been too many years, and everyone knew what to expect by now; sometimes they even got disappointed when things didn't go the way they predicted. Careers from District Four, in years when they had a tribute old enough to volunteer, always excelled at water-based strategies, tridents and nets and fish-hooks and spears, and the Gamemakers would know to look for that.

Well. Screw that.

He didn't waste time once he got into the room, grabbing wires and various electronic devices and scattering them around, looping some fishing line here, adjusting a fuse there. It took him only a few minutes to set up, and they watched him idly, probably wondering if he was going to juggle spears or something cute and provincial. Something befitting of his District.

John grinned. He caught the head Gamemaker's eye, pressed a switch, and set the room on fire. They shouted and jumped back, flipping over their chairs and backing up against the wall, but he'd been careful, and the flames didn't come anywhere near their table. After that, John executed a series of jumps and flips through the dancing flames, letting them brush him but never staying long enough to burn.

All they had to do was give him something that could start fires -- that wouldn't be hard to put in the Cornucopia, and the others would have no idea and probably pass it up, so he wouldn't even have to argue with any of them. Do that, and they would have themselves on hell of a Games.

John danced in the flames until the building's security caught on, and he darted out of the room before getting drenched in the fire-dousing foam. "Thank you for your consideration," he called through the door. That's right, a pyromaniac from the fishing district. Let them chew on that while the rest of the tributes snivelled and fumbled their way through their training.

 

District Five, Female. Score: 6/12

"So, Jennifer! Tell us a little something about yourself," Caesar said. "What was it like growing up in District Five?"

"It's almost never dark," Jenny replied, because she couldn't think of anything else to say. Most kids didn't have to take tesserae because of all the factory jobs available for grown-ups, but that didn't seem like a good answer. She didn't even know if Caesar would know what tesserae was; she'd hard that they didn't have that in the Capitol at all, even if they wouldn't have to trade it for a Reaping slip.

Jenny thought for a moment, then continued. "All the power plants, they're always on, and the sky glows, sometimes orange and sometimes green, depending on the time of year and which kind of energy is being produced at the time. When storms come you can feel the electricity building up on your skin, because we have rods everywhere set up to capture the energy from lightning strikes." She smiled. "I used to climb up to the roof and watch the storms come."

Caesar clapped in delight, the audience with him. "Sounds fascinating! I'm sure many of us would love to visit and see that. I've heard District Five has the best skyline in Panem with all those buildings."

"Well, I like it," Jenny said. "it's -- comforting. But I've never been out of the city. I would've liked to visit Seven to see the forests, or maybe the sea in Four."

"Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll give you a forest or ocean Arena," Caesar said, and Jenny tried not to wrinkle her nose. That wasn't really the same thing, was it. "Now Jennifer, what can you tell us about the people back home? Who's watching your interview right now?"

Jenny winced. She thought maybe Caesar would have a file with the information like that, but maybe that made it less fun for him if he knew the answers. "Well," she said carefully, "there will be lots of people watching, I think, but not family. Not technically. My parents were killed in a car accident. I live at an orphanage. So I think the other kids will be watching. Does that count?"

"Oh, you poor dear," Caesar said, and his mouth pulled down in a sad face. Jenny didn't think that was very nice; the orphanage wasn't a bad place, and the people who ran it were friendly and very kind to all the kids. It wasn't like the stories she'd heard of the one in Twelve, where the children got starved and beaten. "You're very brave. I'm sure you'll do very well."

"I'll try," Jenny said, and she threw a glance at the wings, where Bruce stood with his arms crossed, waiting. He'd promised to protect her. He said he would get her out no matter what, that he had a plan. She didn't know what that plan was, but something about Bruce made her want to trust him.

 

District Five, Male. Score: 5/12

Nice of Fury to tell Bruce that he had a plan, but not give him any details about what it might be. Give Bruce just enough information so he could hope, but hold back enough that he had no choice but to trust and wait for directions. Bruce had spent the night before deep in thought, but it hadn't got him very much except that he'd probably been stupid asking for the kids' safety, particularly Jenny's.

When you were nothing but a pawn, it didn't make much sense to deliver ultimatums; it seemed like a good way to make yourself expendable. He'd said that without Jenny they could count him out, and Bruce knew that not even two Careers -- assuming that the girl from One was in on it as well -- could guarantee that, not in the bloodbath. So that meant he had to do something himself to make sure they were both still in the game.

During training he'd wandered around the room, nicking bits of equipment here, small electronics there. They had cameras, but they were for entertainment, not security, and he'd taken nothing explosive. Now, under the Gamemakers' watchful stares, Bruce stood in the centre of the room until they got bored and started chatting with one another, and then he did the same. He weaved in and out between the stations, picking up wires and various materials, palming them whenever the Gamemakers turned their gazes away, which was almost the whole time.

Finally at the end, Bruce walked over to the weights, picked up the heaviest one and, with little effort, launched it across the room, where it dented the far wall. The Gamemakers jumped, and he soon followed that weight with another, then another, until the rest of them were gone. There, that ought to give him something interesting enough to keep him in the running without making him a target, and now he had the rest of the night after the interviews to work. It would mean no sleep, but that didn't mean anything; Bruce had been an addict for years, and he knew how to work through the night even without the drugs in his system.

He missed what they said to him, if anything, and left the room. Jenny was waiting in the hall, next in line, and he ruffled her hair as he passed. "I heard some big thumps," Jenny said. "Was that you?"

"Yeah," Bruce said, and grinned, mostly for the benefit of that big guy from Nine, since he didn't like the look of him at all. Not the way he kept grinning at all the little ones. "Knock 'em dead, kid."

Jenny beamed at him, and Bruce only hoped his plan would work.

 

District Six, Female. Score: 6/12

Carol pushed down the panic as the boy from Four left the stage. She'd almost prefer the actual Games to this; at least then she could fight, instead of standing under a spotlight with thousands of eyes dissecting her. It felt like the trial all over again, and really, she couldn't hope it would go much better. Her stylists dressed her in a tight, backless, sleeveless gown that set off every warning that Six girls learned as soon as they were old enough to totter around the house in Mommy's heels -- don't dress like that or no one will believe you when you say it's rape. At least she'd convinced them to give her opera gloves that stretched up over her elbows. With her forearms covered, she could pretend the scars were still there.

Rogers moved around in front of her, and his hand twitched like he wanted to touch her shoulder but didn't. She hated him a little for making her like him, for making her like any man after what Marcus had done to her, but she couldn't help it. He was so respectful, so careful, and if being treated like she was made of glass was irritating, it sure beat everyone in the Capitol who touched her without permission or consent and invaded her space like it was nothing. Rogers never laid a hand on her unless she had time to see it coming and avoid it if she wanted to.

"You'll do fine," Rogers said, and he was pale beneath his stage makeup -- they'd give him dramatic swathes of blue across his cheekbones and over his eyelids for some reason, not that Carol could talk with the black mask they'd painted around her eyes. "They'll love you. I do -- I mean, I don't love you. I mean -- you know what I mean."

"I got you. And I'm not worried about them loving me," Carol said wryly, and Rogers winced. "But thanks, Cap, I appreciate you trying."

And she did, which just made this all the more irritating. Rogers held out a hand, again not touching her, and Carol relented and took it, allowing him to squeeze her fingers. "Good luck," he said, and the announcer called her name.

"So tell me, how do you plan to win?" Caesar asked her. "If you don't mind sharing a few secrets, of course."

Carol sat back and fixed Caesar with a hard stare. "I'm just going to think of a certain someone back home," she said, and smiled a little.

"Oho!" Caesar chortled, and he rested his chin on one hand. "Would this be a … male someone, perchance?"

"It would." Carol smiled wider, lips still pressed together, and she left her eyes narrowed. "I'm going to picture his face on every other tribute's body. That way when I kill them, I won't feel bad."

Caesar blinked. "I see," he said, and it took him a second to figure out what to do with that one.

During the interval, Carol found the camera pointed at her, and this time when she smiled she showed her teeth. Yeah, Marcus, she thought, I'm talking to you.

"Well, I'm sure whoever that is will be sorry he lost you," Caesar said finally, jovial and joking. "And we'll all be on the edge of our seats watching you, I'm sure! Why don't you show us your dress one more time?"

Carol stood, allowed Caesar to take her hand and twirl her around, even as she hunched her shoulders. Marcus would be watching now, she knew, and thinking about how his fingers left bruises on her shoulders. "Carol Danvers, isn't she a marvel, everyone?" Caesar called out. "Good luck, Ms. Marvel, and we'll see you out there in the Arena!"

Carol gave Caesar and the cameras another hard smile, and when she waved goodbye, she shaped her fingers like a pistol. It gave her the strength she needed to exit the stage without tugging at her gloves.

"Well, now I've gone and wet myself," Steve said, and so help her, Carol actually laughed.

 

District Six, Male. Score: 7/12

Before the interviews began, Phillips put his hands on Steve's shoulders and gave him a shake. "Rogers! Remember what I told you. The best thing you've got going for you is the kid, so use that. If they ask how the hell you're going to win, deflect, you hear me? You don't want to talk about how many kids you're going to kill to get back home."

"Yes sir." Steve swallowed. He'd scored a seven, which Phillips said was more than respectable for a non-Career tribute and the highest he could hope to get -- more than Steve had expected, given that he hadn't touched a weapon the entire time. He'd picked up a shield, turned on the target-practice machine and blocked every projectile it flung at him. Flashy, maybe, but not victor material, and he knew it, but Steve couldn't bring himself even to pretend.

If Fury was right, maybe Steve wouldn't have to kill after all.

A scuffle and a shout from ahead of him, and before Steve could move, Tony Stark broke the line rushed back to Steve's side. "Listen, Cap. Rogers. I don't care what anyone's told you, you don't give them anything personal, okay?"

"Excuse me?" Steve jerked back, shaking off Tony's hand. "What are you talking about?"

"Look, anything you give them, they can take away, do you understand?" Tony held Steve's gaze with the strength of a madman, his eyes burning right through him. "Nothing real. It's too dangerous. You play them or they play you, those are the rules."

Steve didn't have the chance to answer, because the handlers caught up with Tony and ushered him none too gently back to his place in the line. "Looks like someone has a crush on the Captain," Carol said dryly, and Steve was too bewildered to do more than shoot her a confused stare. "Seriously, what did you do to Stark?"

"Maybe he just can't stand watching someone make a fool of themselves," Steve said, running a hand through his hair. It certainly seemed likely. "He's a public relations guru. Maybe I just give him a headache."

"Hush," hissed a trainer, and they fell silent.

"So, Steve, you're certainly a surprise favourite this year," Caesar said later, flashing his teeth. Steve just thought of Bucky back at the orphanage, watching their ancient television with the flickery screen. "I think we all knew we had something special from the moment you volunteered. Care to tell us about it?"

Somewhere in the lounge on the Three floor Tony Stark was probably screaming at a television screen, but what else could Steve possibly say? "His name is James, but I've always called him Bucky," Steve said, and he did his best to forget that the audience was there at all, that there were cameras and flashbulbs and and heaven knew what else. "I've known him since I was eight and he was four. We grew up in the same orphanage. We're -- we're basically brothers, and since he never knew his folks and mine died young, we might as well be. I couldn't let him get Reaped and not take his place."

"We were all moved at that scene; I know I shed a tear. Isn't that right, folks?" Caesar played to the audience, who cheered. "I said at the time, and I'll say it again, that moment truly represented what the Games are all about."

Steve didn't know about that, but he kept his mouth shut. Caesar turned back to him and leaned forward, arms draped across his knees, conspiratorial. "So tell me. What do you plan to do after the Games?"

That really was a horrible question to ask any of the tributes, but nothing to be done about it. Steve let out a breath. "I'm going to donate most of my winnings to the orphanage, first of all," Steve said, and the entire crowd let out a collective 'awww'. "We had it good growing up, really, but you can never have too many beds, you know? More toys, a nicer roof. And then, well, Bucky and I will move into the Victor's Village, I guess. I haven't really thought much more after that."

"I hope you're watching at home fight now, Bucky, because it sounds like Steve is going to do his best to win for you," Caesar said, giving the cameras an indulgent smile.

Steve winced. The knowledge of Fury's plans beat in his chest, and gave him courage to say what he never would have dared to otherwise. "Well, that's the thing, Caesar, I'm not going to win either way. Either I die, or I kill some of these kids in here with me and lose part of myself. Either way, the Capitol wins, not me."

A strangled shout that could only be Tony Stark attempting to throttle himself with his own tie broke through the pin-drop silence that fell over the crowd. Caesar blinked, but then the smile came back. "Well, I think your Bucky is a very lucky young man to have a friend like you," he said, smoothing it over as if Steve had never spoken. "I hope to see you both up here on the stage at the coronation."

"I'll do my best," Steve said, and the crowd erupted into cheers.

Phillips had the camera sense to wait until they were back in the District Six lounge before hitting Steve so hard across the head that he saw stars. "What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded. "Do you want to die? Do you want to be the victim of a faulty platform mine 'accident' before the Games even start? What the hell are you on about, talking about the Capitol winning?"

"I -- you said to be honest," Steve protested.

"That was before I knew you were so stupid!" Phillips snapped. "You're just lucky they can edit that before it makes the final broadcast, and that the live audience is too dumb to put two and two together. You start talking about who's behind these Games and what it means, you can kiss your little friend goodbye. And be prepared to do it at least five times, because that's how many pieces he'll be in when they're done with him."

Carol pushed herself up from where she'd been leaning against the wall and squeezed Steve's shoulder. "C'mon, lay off. They're not going to kill the Captain that quick. He's our big, dumb, sincere heart of gold. Just tell them he didn't know what he was saying and they'll eat it right up."

"They'd better, because I'm going to spend the whole night on my knees like I'm Twelve's bitch to clean up this mess," Phillips raged. "You two, you stay here tonight and you keep out of trouble and keep your mouths shut, do you hear me?"

"Yessir," Steve said automatically, and Carol rolled her eyes.

"Damn right that's a 'yessir'," Phillips said, but he lowered his shoulders. "Get some sleep. It's the last chance you'll have for a long time, and I want you up before breakfast for one last strategy session."

"Yessir," Carol said, snapping off a salute, and for a second Steve couldn't breath thanks to the concentration of sarcasm in the air. Phillips pointed a warning finger at her, then stomped off. The automatic door hissed behind him, and Steve wondered if it annoyed Phillips not to have something to slam.

 

District Seven, Female. Score: 7/12

Jan skipped out onto the stage, twirling around until she got dizzy and smacked into Caesar, giggling. "Whoa, there!" Caesar said, catching her by the shoulders and holding her steady. "Careful, you don't want to fall off the stage."

"I won't!" Jan reassured him. She skipped back another step, reached back to make sure the wings that George spent so long designing hadn't gotten crumpled, but they felt fine. Satisfied, Jan pounced up into the big armchair, tucking her feet under her. She looked for the cameras so she could put herself at the best angle, but she couldn't tell where they were.

"So, Jan," Caesar said with a big smile, and she matched him. "How are you liking the Capitol so far?"

"It's amazing," Jan said with feeling, and she spread her arms to show how much she meant it. "There's so much food, and so many fun things -- I love the showers, I take showers every time I have nothing to do because it's so amazing and I still haven't even found out what all the buttons do -- and everything is so shiny and pretty and it's all so high. It's beautiful! I wish I could live here forever." She stopped herself there, tilted her head to think about it. "Well, no, I don't, because I'd miss the trees. I love the trees, and you don't have any here, not real ones. Just the tiny ones in the middle of the city, and they look so sad." She brightened. "Maybe if I could move the Capitol into the middle of District Seven, that would be perfect!"

Caesar chuckled like Jan was the most charming, funny person he'd ever met, which could very well be true. Jan wiggled in her seat. "I suppose we could start up a petition," he said, giving her a big smile. "So, I know you're not allowed to talk about your private training, but could you give us a hint about your score? Seven is a big number for such a cute little girl like you."

"It's not a secret!" Jan beamed. "I just --" but then Hank was there in the side of the stage, waving his hands at her with panic in his eyes, and she cut herself off, hands over her mouth. She wasn't supposed to tell them. Hank said they'd both get in trouble. She turned her wide-eyed horror at Caesar. "You tried to trick me," she gasped. "You're a naughty man!"

Caesar held up both hands, a sheepish smile on his face. "You caught me! But you know we're just starved for details, so you can't blame me for trying. How about a hint?"

Jan smiled. "All I'm allowed to say is that they won't want to get close to me," she said, winking, and thought about her tiny shiny knives, the ones that her mentor said they would be sure to give her because she did so well in training. Though he said that if they were closer than twenty feet from the Cornucopia she wasn't allowed to get them now, but should sneak back and get them later when the Careers were gone. None of them would need knives so tiny, or even bother with the darts.

"I'm sure I wouldn't!" Caesar held a hand to his heart like Jan had just stung him with one of her darts. She giggled at the private joke.

They talked for a little while more about what Jan found the most fun these last two weeks -- the training sessions -- and what she missed from back home -- running out into the woods to play, looking for birds' nests and rabbit burrows -- and finally Caesar took her hand and kissed the back of it. "Well, my dear, we'll all be watching you tomorrow, and I hope I'll see you again on this stage soon."

Tomorrow. The Games started tomorrow, not the part with the food and the fun stations and Hank rolling his eyes at her and the showers with a million buttons and soft, soft pillows and silky clothes. The part where the training dummies became people -- except not people, tributes like Daddy used to say, except not because Jan and Hank would be one of them, and surely Jan was still a person, wasn't she? 

Tomorrow. It was usually such a nice word, full of promises, like upcoming birthday parties and holidays -- tomorrow there will be cake, tomorrow everyone will have the day off, tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow -- but now it twisted, grew edges with knives.

Suddenly the stage lights stopped being shiny and pretty like a host of fireflies, and instead turned into a blinding wall of glaring eyes. Jan couldn't breathe, like when she was little and she got stung by a tracker jacker in the woods and she thought she was going to die before Daddy ran in and grabbed her, took her to that doctor who gave her lots of medicine.

But no. No. Jan pushed it back, wouldn't let it get a grip on her. The Games only had one winner, but that was because they'd never seen her and Hank before. They would win and they would win together, and the Capitol would love them so much they'd have to let them both out. They would.

(Winning. Winning meant blood, lots of it, on Jan's hands and in her hair and on her clothes, and lots of dead people-tributes-people-children-people-tributes-children with empty, staring eyes lying on the ground, and Daddy wouldn't approve, what would he think about his little girl, what was she growing up into, but he'd want her alive, wouldn't he, wouldn't he --)

"Are you all right?" Caesar asked, and Jan's eyes snapped open. He still had her hand in his.

"Just excited," Jan said, and smiled. She smiled wide enough that it hurt, and that snapped her back. Yes. Everything would be fine. She had Hank. She was fast, she was clever, she was pretty and the Capitol loved her.

Everything would be fine.

 

District Seven, Male. Score: 6/12

Hank didn't have a chance out there. Maybe if he'd been Reaped alone -- he was strong enough, he supposed, compared to the kids in the other districts his age, at least the ones who weren't Careers -- but no, Jan had to go and do that thing she did, where she didn't think and just followed that spaztastic brain of hers straight into trouble. Sometimes Hank wished Vern had given custody of her to someone else, because honestly, taking care of Jan felt like trying to herd a rabbit to safety on the side of the road, only for it to spin right around and dart back into traffic as soon as he turned around.

He couldn't save Jan, let's be real -- the youngest winner of the Games was fourteen, and he'd been a Career and a Capitol favourite and the recipient of the most expensive tribute gift in history. Jan was just a kid, and all that time running around and playing with darts wasn't going to get her out of there. It probably wasn't going to get her past the bloodbath at all.

Still, though, Hank couldn't make it back without Jan, either; Vern had helped bring District Seven into the modern era with his innovations, and none of the kids had had to take tesserae in years because of it. He was a hero, and his daughter just as loved by the people. The best Hank could do was keep her safe as long as he could, and make sure that when he died it was clear he'd done so trying to protect her. Heaven help him if Jan died first; he might as well just kill himself as soon as it happened, for all the good living through it would do him.

Jan was a good kid, but she'd really screwed this one up. Hank was good-looking -- he knew because if he ever wanted to get married all he'd have to do was think the word 'marriage' in the vicinity of any girl within ten years of his age on either side -- and the sponsors might have liked him, if they hadn't had Jan, bouncy and adorable and devoted and absolutely clueless to steal their hearts. If she'd just kept her mouth shut for once and let him alone -- ha, what a first that would be -- then maybe, maybe Hank could have figured something out and made it home. But not now.

The thought annoyed him so much that he forgot about the Gamemakers watching, and the best way to impress them. He crossed the room to the pile of weapons and found a hatchet, which was close enough to the one he'd used when working in the forests before Vern picked him up to be his right-hand man at the factory. Hank let his irritation at Jan, at the Capitol, at everything, flow through him, and he let the hatchet become an extension of his arm. Sometimes he threw it, striding forward to retrieve it from the target with a long, hard pull; others he twirled and buried it in the dummy's chest without letting go, loosing it in the same movement.

By the time he finished demolishing the targets, Hank didn't feel any more powerful, but he felt a little less impotently angry, and maybe that was something. He could pass his interview well enough by talking about Vern and how much he owed him, how much he wanted to protect Jan, and hopefully the sponsors would eat that up and take pity. There hadn't been an eighteen-twelve team up in a while, at least, and let's be honest, even if they asked him what would happen if they were the final two, everyone had to know that would never, ever happen.

The Gamemakers nodded for him to go, and Hank stormed out, fists at his sides. He would have been named official heir to the Van Dyne estate when he passed Reaping age next year; now he'd be fertilizing the ground by some time next week. Life really knew how to kick a guy in the balls.

 

District Eight, Female. Score: 4/12; District Eight, Male. Score: 3/12

Their interviews were at once a relief and incredibly painful. A relief because for once Caesar didn't have to sit through six minutes of sobbing and tears and mucus, didn't have to fight to turn even the smallest word into anything that might turn a sponsor's mind to pity. The girl was animated, chattering about how much she'd learned in training and how Rogers from Six had shown her how to throw a punch.

The boy wasn't quite so cheerful, looking around with wide eyes, but Caesar coaxed a decent interview out of him by getting him to talk about his big brother, who worked in a textile factory and who came home with scraps of thread and fabric so the boy could learn to weave. So that when he grew up he could have a trade making things for himself, instead of in the factories. The mention of the future choked him up, but Caesar got him past it without tears.

Still, neither of these children were going to be victors, and the fact that they were distracted from thinking about it didn't help the reality. Caesar smiled, called them adorable and plucky and told them the Capitol was proud of them. He thought of the freshly restocked minibar in his room with grim anticipation.

 

District Nine, Female. Score: 2/12

She was a pretty little thing, she knew this because they kept telling her, cooing and playing with her hair and giving her a dress with gauzy wings so she floated onto the stage.

Caesar asked her questions but the lights were bright and the music loud and she could hear the laughs and the cries and the cheering but she couldn't see the faces, and she hid behind her wings.

"Do you have anyone watching back at home?" Caesar asked her, and she nodded but couldn't say their names. "Come on, if you had them right here on this stage, what would you say?"

She raised her head, blinked against the wall of lights in her face and pretended Jeremy was there, sitting with his fist in his mouth even though Mama told him not to. "I'd tell them not to worry," she said, lifting her chin. "I'd tell them it's going to be okay. Because Jacques said he's going to look for me in the Arena. He said he's going to take special care of me."

She looked at the wings where Jacques, her district partner, waited, and he gave her that slow shark's smile that made her shiver, but he said, he promised, and Mama always told her she shouldn't accuse people of being liars. The big cameras behind her zoomed in on Jacques' face, and the audience went quiet. Even Caesar had to stop, take a minute before he could speak. Maybe he couldn't believe Jacques would be so nice; she wasn't sure herself. Maybe she would run away from him anyway.

"Well, I'm sure we'll all be watching you on Game Day," Caesar said finally, and she turned her best smile to the cameras. There. Her trainer should be proud of her.

 

District Nine, Male. Score: 10/12

Jacques went straight for the swords. The first time he'd taken hold of one during training, it was like the angels had descended to show him his true path. Every minute with empty hands since then made him twitch, itching to feel that weight again, to swing the blade and hear the whistle as it swung through the air.

He had no formal training, but that meant nothing when one had passion, purpose. He'd studied the books on where to strike to cause the swiftest -- or the slowest -- deaths, making sure the trainers saw him. Now, under the Gamemakers' watchful stares he whipped the sword at the targets, striking each in deadly but prolonged places, ensuring that his imaginary opponents would lie bleeding for several hours before finally expiring. Then, Jacques drove the sword into the soft training mat so it stood on end, and in quick succession tore the head from each training dummy with his bare hands. With effort, he lifted the sword and jammed each severed head onto the blade until it resembled a grisly shish-kebab.

"A gift for a beautiful lady," Jacques said with a wide smile, handing it to the prettiest female Gamemaker. She took it from him with consternation, and Jacques only grinned wider.

 

District Ten, Female. Score: 2/12; District Ten, Male. Score: 2/12

Another pair of children; bad luck to have two in one year, though at least it made the bloodbath an easy choice. Both children sobbed all the way through their interviews. Caesar did what he could -- it happened every year, after all, and sometimes he could break through it with a lucky question about family member or hobby or beloved pet -- but in the end there was nothing but to let them cry until their time ran out.

The boy from District Two watched them with a determined pity, and Caesar bit back a wince. Well, at least he didn't have to fear that these ones would die a slow and painful death for the sake of someone else's amusement, and really, they could hope for nothing better.

 

District Eleven, Female. Score: 5/12

Caesar said her name wrong -- he called her Aurora, she could hear the spelling in his pronunciation -- and that probably shouldn't annoy her when she was going to die in the next few days, but funny what a person could get stuck on. "So how are you liking the Capitol so far?" he asked her.

Ororo winced. She'd been hoping he wouldn't ask her that question, since several of the other tributes had already answered it. "It's -- different," she said. "There are a lot of buildings. I wouldn't want to get caught in an earthquake here. There's nowhere to run."

She didn't tell him how the buildings pressed in on her whenever she had too much time to think, how when she looked out the window and saw nothing but glass and concrete she'd had a panic attack, remembering the revolt, years ago, that had left her buried in the rubble of her house for days before the rescuers dug her out. She still remembered choking on the dust, trapped under a beam while the water from the emergency sprinklers crept higher, higher, higher until she stretched her neck out and strained to keep her nose level. How she honestly thought she would die there, forgotten under the rocks.

How she'd lived through that only to die now. It wasn't fair.

"Well, we haven't had a quake here in a long time," Caesar reassured her. "Now, I must say, you're quite lucky to have come from District Eleven! The apples there are absolutely to die for, sometimes I think I could just eat them all day. Don't you agree?"

Ororo stifled a hysterical giggle at the idea that she or anyone else was allowed to eat the apples her district was famous for. Once she'd seen a little boy, Fennel, set to work in the orchards because he was small and could climb to the tops of the trees to get the apples without needing a ladder, sneak a bite of one of the fruits. Not even a good one -- it had been wormy and pitted -- but they beat him anyway, actually whipped him until the blood ran down his back and into the soil. She'd heard that it was good fertilizer, so maybe that was why they did it.

"The apples are delicious," Ororo said finally. Not the place to give anyone a lecture, and it would be a waste of time because back home they always said that you could shove a Capitolian's face in the truth and they'd only puke it up again and forget all about it. "I've heard people bake them into pies and cakes and things, but I think they're best raw." She was one of the only children who could steal apples on a regular basis and not get caught; she liked to keep a knife in her belt and slice the fruits up into bite-size chunks, pass them out to the little ones during breaks when no one was watching. That way everyone got a taste of the crisp, tart fruit without the risk of what happened to Fennel.

That satisfied Caesar anyway, and he moved on. "So tell me, are there any hidden skills you could give us a hint about?"

 Ororo smiled. "I'm fast, and most people don't notice me," she said. "And I have fast fingers."

"Fast fingers! What does that mean?" Caesar gave her an encouraging smile.

Ororo reached into the pocket of her dress and held up the slim, leather wallet she had lifted from Caesar's jacket when he gave her a hug as she walked on stage. Caesar rocked back with a comical look of shock on his face. "Fast fingers," Ororo said again, and this time she grinned and tossed the wallet back.

She didn't have much of a chance in the Arena, not unless the whole thing was one giant orchard, but even Careers had to sleep, and if they slept, that meant Ororo could steal from them. It might give her a little bit of time.

 

District Eleven, Male. Score: 4/12

Sam had seen more death up close than any of these painted pretties sitting in front of them. He'd seen Peacekeepers with their skulls cracked in by field tools; he'd seen his friends stretched out half-naked in the dirt, their hands still fastened to the whipping post and straining their arm muscles once they'd fallen, backs open and laid bare by the Peacekeepers' whips. He knew what it felt for a man's nose to burst beneath his fist, for the jaw to dislocate and the cheekbone to fracture.

Sam had spent a lot of his life angry, and had both taken lives and seen them stolen in front of him. Except that being angry didn't solve anything; it hadn't stopped the Peacekeepers from coming in and telling the citizens of Eleven that they couldn't eat their own crops, that farmers who held back seed in case of a bad harvest or late frost were in violation of the treaty between Eleven and the Capitol and would be fined the rest of their holdings. It hadn't stopped them from killing Sam's friends when they resisted, or even his friends from killing his father when he tried to tell them that violence was not the way to secure peace and justice.

He'd vowed, after the deaths of both his parents, that he would never cause another death again. And of course, two years later, he'd ended up here. Sam gritted his teeth. He couldn't even pretend to kill the training dummies, afraid that he would fall into his old pattern again. He'd spent the last few years with Redwing, trying to undo what he'd done as a youngster, but that path was slippery and the old days seemed closer than ever.

The Gamemakers shifted, bored, and he supposed he might as well show them something. He headed to the plants station and sorted them: edible and nutritious, edible but with no nutritional value, poisonous, and non-poisonous but with adverse effects, including expectorants, emetics, and diuretics. After a minute he separated out the fast-acting poisonous plants like nightlock to the ones that would kill you slowly, like farmer's bane, which did nothing but make you expel more water than you could drink until you dehydrated without treatment.

Once that finished, Sam went back to the centre of the room and stood there until they told him it was safe to go.

 

District Twelve, Female. Score: 6/12

"So, Jean, what do you think of the Capitol so far?" Caesar smiled, and Jean stared at his enormous, white teeth and wished she could knock them out of his face.

"I think I've never seen so much wasted food in my life," Jean said, and crossed her arms. Haymitch had told her that charming would not be her strong point, and she was better off with 'fiery'. At sixteen she was old enough that it wouldn't be written off as cute and misinformed, but not so old that it could be taken as a threat. "The amount of food left on the table after a meal could feed five families for a week back in Twelve."

"I bet that's a shock," Caesar chuckles, riding right over that one. "Is there anything you'd like to bring back to Twelve with you, if you win? After all, your district will get a year's supply of food, and I'm sure they could slip in something special for you."

Jean couldn't win them over with her personality, but she could at least make them feel sympathy -- or at the very least a bit of guilt, since she got the impression that people in the Capitol thought starvation something that only ever happened on television, once a year when a tribute ran out of food. "My friend Annie loved cakes," she said. "When we were little we'd go to the Mellark bakery and look in the windows until Mrs. Mellark shooed us away. She would love the cakes here. There are flavours I didn't even know existed."

"Well, I'm sure we can arrange something," Caesar said, and gave Jean a conspiratorial wink angled so that the audience could be in on the joke. "Do you think your friend would like that?"

"She's dead," Jean said, and watched the room fall flat. "But if she were still alive, I'm sure she would. Maybe I'll get a pastry named after her or something, I bet that's fitting."

Caesar recovered quicker than Jean would have given him credit, and whatever he was paid in order to spin this stuff, it definitely wasn't enough. "I'm sorry to hear that, Jean. But I'm sure wherever she is, she'll be proud to see what a strong, brave girl you've become. Don't you think, folks?"

The audience cheered, and Jean smiled. In the wings Loki rolled his eyes, and while Jean disliked him -- kneel, indeed! -- and hoped a tree would fall on him in the first ten seconds of the Games, she had to agree with him there. And even though she was pretty sure it would fail miserably, Jean hoped this whole secret plan thing succeeded.

 

District Twelve, Male. Score: 12/12

Loki stood before the Gamemakers and smiled. All but Director Fury twitched, either in their faces or their posture; Fury only stared back, impassive. Loki hoped he would enjoy the show. He started the countdown in his head, mentally blocking out his allotted time without looking at the clock behind him. An easy skill, mastered by Career children by the age of ten. Even Thor with his gerbil-like attention span could do it.

"You want me dead, I suppose," Loki said, his tone friendly and conversational. "I'm sure it chafes you leave me alive this long, and several of you are just itching to let me know it's only because the audience wants to see the conclusion of the Odinson brotherly rivalry. Rest assured I'm well aware of that. I'm also aware that that isn't enough of an excuse; if you really wanted, you could kill me early and use Thor's mourning as the focal point of his character. No, I'm still here because you know I'll be entertaining. Even if you kill me in the end, you know I'll give you the best show."

He wandered about the floor, picking up various weapons and tucking them into his belt, his sleeve. He passed by several targets but didn't attack them, not yet. Loki allowed the anticipation and confusion to fill the room; he sensed the Gamemakers' impatience and irritation like a physical presence, a taint on the back of his throat like rotten meat. He relished it.

Loki stopped next to a spear and ran his hand over the tip, lifted it and found the balance point along the handle, resting it on his palm. "These training scores are a joke, of course." He smiled again. "I can tell you what you'll give the other tributes without even seeing what they show you. Thor will get a ten, because if you give him higher he'll get too cocky. You'll give his district partner an eleven, to frustrate him and to give her an edge. Three will get a nine, and Six with the boy back home, a seven. You'll give the little Five girl a six to throw everyone off, wonder just what it is she's hiding. I know." 

Loki put down the spear and hung a small hatchet from his belt. "I know what you'll give me whether I do or not. It just depends on whether your goal is to humiliate me or to signal me a threat. I"m sure you'd like to give me a one, just to spite me and show me that I'm nothing, but you won't. Give me a one and the others won't believe you even if you order them. You'll give me a Twelve so they know to kill me. And because giving me the top score will be all the more satisfying when you grind me into the dirt later. It will remind the citizens of Panem that no one can escape your wrath."

He checked the time; two minutes left. Loki let his gaze sweep across the assembled Gamemakers, marked the confusion and disbelief and anger on their features. Again Fury was the lone exception, watching Loki with an expression that not even he could penetrate. Compatriots, the two of them, even if they sat on opposite sides of the table. Fury, at least, knew how to recognize genius, even if he couldn't do so when in the company of these plebeians.

"It has to get boring, doesn't it? Same old Games, same old tributes, pretending to be excited because this one used a brick and that one used a spear. Or a hammer, as it were." Loki picked up a long, slender dagger and balanced it on the tip of his finger before twisting it into his hair like a girl might a rose or a ribbon. "You must crave something new. Something different. I bet every year you beg the tributes to give you a reason to watch, but no one ever does. I also know that no matter what you score my brother, he is not the one you want. I could tell you exactly how Thor's actions in the Games will go without watching. Moreover, I would place money that the girl from Two could do it, too. Thor is predictable. He's the meal you order from the place across the street after a long day at work or a breakup because it tastes all right and you can't deal with surprises. But that's not enough. You want someone with edges. I'm that person."

Anticipation thrummed through Loki like a drug, but he forced it not to show. Madness, yes, but he mustn't give them a hint of what was to come. Not yet. "Even these training sessions. Twenty-four children pretending that attacking inanimate dummies means a thing. Not even the precious Careers understand that, in the end, it's all just play-acting. I'm sure most of you are thinking about what you'll have for supper, or what you're going to wear tomorrow. You're wishing I would just hurry up and stop talking so you can all go home. You're irritated that it's taken even this long because, as usual, nothing interesting has ever happened. Well. Allow me to indulge your fantasies."

Loki made his move. Every weapon he'd placed on his person or within arm's reach shot outward and found its mark in the shoulder, arm, calf or thigh of a Gamemaker. The Peacekeepers by the door each got a knife in one foot, pinning them in place. The room soon filled with shouts of surprise and pain, bitten-off curses as everyone struggled to pull the blades free and stanch the blood.

Apart from the Avoxes standing by with drinks and snacks -- no honour in attacking them -- Loki left only Fury untouched. He bent low to the ground without ever breaking eye contact. "Thank you," Loki said, "for your consideration." He turned and left the room, yanking the knives from the Peacekeepers' boots on the way out and tossing them back through the door before it swished shut behind him.

Notes:

Next time ... the Arena.

Chapter 7: The Bloodbath

Summary:

Dying sucked, but death wasn't so bad.

Nine down. Fourteen to go.

They'd treated the glass; that just might have been the strangest part. Steve pressed his palm against the clear material, tried to hold it steady, but it slipped right down as though coated in oil. No tributes would buy themselves a few precious seconds by bracing hands and feet and back against the sides. For some reason, that detail -- above the weapons, the training, the interviews and ridiculous outfits and cameras at every corner -- that hit him worse than the others, brought everything home even though he thought he'd understood it before. No matter what magic Fury managed to pull, he would still be playing against the Capitol -- a place that had the Games down to such meticulous levels that they thought to treat the glass in the tube.

"Hey. Hey! Rogers. Breathe." Phillips' hand hit the other side of the tube, and Steve jolted, sucked a ragged breath into his lungs. "Focus. They're going to try to tempt you, but don't do it. I don't care if they give you the shiniest, prettiest shield in the shape of your boy's face, you do not go for the Cornucopia. You grab whatever supplies are closest to you, and you get the hell out of there, you hear me?"

Steve nodded, the action more automatic than anything.

Phillips clicked his teeth. "No, I mean it. Most of the bloodbath deaths, they happen because the kids freeze. The buzzer sounds and they just panic, they don't move, and by the time their brain kicks in the Careers have got the weapons and they're dead. I don't want that to happen to you. I will find your grave and I will spit all over it, I am not even kidding."

Steve tried to smile, but his face had forgotten how to move his muscles into anything but a terrified grimace. "I won't," he said. "I don't know how to use the weapons anyway. Not well enough to make a difference."

"Damn right you can't, but that's not your strategy, so don't worry." Phillips' face hardened. "Also, I don't want to see you being a hero, got it? Those kids, what's her name from Eight, they're as good as dead. You go back for them, you try to save them, that just means you're all dead."

Steve closed his eyes, only to open them a few seconds later when the image of the girl from Eight, smiling up at him as she formed a proper fist, swam up behind his eyelids. They said they would try to save as many tributes as possible, but Steve knew the bloodbath had to look real or Fury would never have time. Some of the kids would have to die, and little Eight, a score of four notwithstanding, was not going to make it out without help.

Especially given that Steve was one of the main priorities as the centre of a rebellion he hadn't even really thought about; in order for them not to kill him, that meant others would have to die. Steve's chest tightened and his lungs closed, and the Remake Centre fixed his asthma but it couldn't fix the reflexes that came with a lifetime of panic attacks, but Phillips hit the side of the tube again.

"Think of your boy!" Phillips barked. "He's at home watching you right now, and if you want to come home you do whatever you need to do to get back to him, all right?"

"Yes sir," Steve said, but then a buzzer sounded and one of the Peacekeepers raised a hand. Phillips nodded and stepped back, face twisting.

"I broke my own rules for you, kid," Phillips called out as the hydraulics began to hiss and the platform beneath Steve's feet gave a jolt. "You don't care before your tribute comes out a victor or the Games will tear you apart. Well, you screwed that up for me big time, so you better come out or I swear to God I will find you and kill you all over again."

"Yes sir," Steve shouted back. He dropped to his knees, pressed his forehead against the glass until the platform rose high enough that Phillips disappeared. A metallic hiss above him, and a disc of light widened, bright enough that Steve winced, but not enough to blind him, not the way it should at nine in the morning. Not a good sign.

Steve straightened up, bent his knees and settled into a ready stance as best he could, holding himself steady with his fingertips against the sides, not pressing hard enough that they slid. Bucky, Steve thought, imagining him at home with the other kids in the orphanage, chewing his knuckle until it bled and refusing Sister Catherine's offer of a hug because he needed to be brave. At least Bucky was at home, safe, not here. Even if everything else went to hell -- even if Steve died, even if the Gamemakers killed him and everyone else or a freak volcano explosion wiped out the entire Arena on day three -- Bucky wasn't here. For the rest of his life, whether that be one minute or fifty years, Steve could at least say that he'd done this.

The platform ascended -- Steve blinked against the light -- the mechanical-voiced countdown boomed 'sixty' -- and when Steve's eyes finally focused and he got his first glimpse of the Arena, the shock of it hit him in the chest. He screamed and nearly fell off the platform, almost ending all Fury's plans and Phillips' advice because of some clumsy feet.

He staggered, dropped to all fours and held himself there until he trusted himself enough to stand. When he did, the countdown fell away, and even Bucky's face slipped from his mind. Because the Careers had narrowed eyes, taking in the Arena with measured glances and sizing it up, checking the Cornucopia and gauging the distances to the nearest worthwhile weapons, and the other tributes stood frozen in fear. Nobody else had any idea. Steve risked a look at Carol, and while she frowned, even she didn't have the recognition that Steve searched for in her eyes.

Only Steve. Thirty seconds to go and he hadn't even located the closest supplies yet, because when he looked around, all he saw was home. The bank that closed down two years ago and couldn't find a new tenant. The sandwich shop that opened at four in the morning so factory shift workers could get breakfast.

They'd brought the Arena to District Six, but worse than that -- they'd built it in Steve's backyard. "Bucky --" Steve choked out, the word tearing itself from him unbidden, and this time, he no longer knew if Bucky was alive to hear him.

 

Three platforms over, Cap was having a complete meltdown. Great. Though Tony didn't know why he cared anymore; the guy seemed bent on getting himself killed before anything even started, and really, if he wanted it so bad Tony should just let him, but he had a thing about hopeless cases, and something about a guy so desperate to die just got under Tony's skin. Screw you, no, you don't get to decide that, especially not with the Capitol willing and ready to oblige.

Again, though, not that he cared. Tony just liked delivering the universe a nice, good fuck you every once in a while.

Still, though, Steve was doing a bang-up job of marking himself as Career roadkill as soon as the countdown stopped, and Tony could not for the life of him figure out why. His performance had already scared the kids from Ten, who started crying already. Crazy-scary Two girl gave all of them a toothy smile and drew an imaginary line across her throat before lowering herself down into a sprinter's crouch, balancing back on the balls of her feet.

"Connection reestablished," said Jarvis in Tony's ear, and some of the knots in his chest loosened. Good, everything wasn't shot completely to hell after all if the link hadn't failed. Maybe Tony really could do this.

What the hell is up with Rogers, Tony asked, subvocalizing and licking his lips so any cameras watching would think it was just nerves, and yeah that was a bad time to ask, risking precious seconds, but it was a distraction and if Jarvis could clear it up Tony would be better off.

"I've cross-checked records, and it appears that the Arena is his home neighbourhood," Jarvis replied.

And oh. Oh those sons of bitches. Tony knew they chose that sort of thing at random, and just Steve's luck that his number had to come up twice, but come on! Still, Tony had his answer, and he shook it off. Jarvis had managed to keep the wifi going, disconnected from the Capitol network so they couldn't monitor Tony, and there would be electronics and a laptop stashed around. He had to focus, and that meant getting the hell out of here when the count hit zero.

He just hoped whatever Fury and his blank-faced black-clad District One minions had up their sleeves included rescuing a hysterical and semi-catatonic Steve Rogers, because Tony couldn't do anything for him now.

 

Twenty seconds.

Bruce didn't look at the watch on his wrist, his allowed token -- or, well, the one he'd built with scraps from the training rooms and swapped out this morning for the one that passed the inspection, the real one somewhere in the depths of the Capitol's plumbing by now. He couldn't set them off, let them know his plans, not until the very last second.

He'd timed it last night. He only needed fifteen seconds, maybe ten depending on where Jenny was in relation to him, and Bruce might be recovered now but he still had an addict's hair-trigger reflexes. When the count reached sixteen, he pressed the face of his watch. No way to know if it worked until he tried it, and Bruce had been clean for over a year but oh, oh he wished for a hit of something right now, some courage in his veins to make him forget how close death's ugly face stared at him, breath reeking in his nose, but too late, too late.

Fifteen seconds. Bruce stepped off the platform.

"Banner--!" Stark shouted from across the circle, and if Bruce was still alive to hear that and not in pieces all over the Arena then that meant it worked. He dug his feet into the concrete and ran, bisecting the circle until he got to Jenny, stopping just outside the range of the mines. At least the city streets meant they couldn't dig and bury them, and he knew exactly where he could or couldn't step.

"Give me your hand!" Bruce demanded, and, wide-eyed, she held it out. Bruce grabbed her, yanked her hard and caught her just before she hit the ground, his arms shuddering as her weight hit him. Lucky she wasn't any bigger. Without pausing, Bruce hefted her up into his arms and threw her as far as he could, out of the range of the mines. "Go!" he shouted, and Jenny hit the ground and rolled, coming up with a wince and a stagger but no broken bones. Good. He'd practiced tumbling with her in training the last day without telling her why, and she'd obviously remembered what the instructor showed her. "Run! I'll find you!"

And Jenny, Jenny was a smart kid because she didn't try to argue, didn't gape or gawk or cry or anything else, just turned and ran as fast as her legs could carry her, regulation boots slapping against the asphalt. Bruce spun, grabbed the nearest pack that looked it might contain supplies like food and water, darted in a little further for a short sword, and ran.

"I'll find you!" the girl from Two shouted as he raced by, and her nails snagged his arm, leaving trails of blood that burned, and he realized she'd managed to paint her fingernails with poison. Clever, but it didn't matter now. He'd had worse in his bloodstream, far worse.

He caught up to Jenny, scooped her up in his arms without breaking stride, and ran. The rest was up to Fury. Bruce would wait for parachutes with instructions, but until then, he'd done what he came here to do. Jenny wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her head against the curve of his shoulder, and for now, for now, it was enough.

 

John rolled his eyes when the big guy stepped off the platform. He knew it was coming -- he'd tensed up too soon, counting down the seconds way too early to be getting ready to run for the Cornucopia, and that meant only one thing: suicide. Not that that ever meant anything good for the tribute's family -- the Capitol didn't like reminders that any of them could bend the rules in their favour, even when that meant a quick death on your own terms -- but maybe the big guy didn't have any. Hard to say.

Still, though, John absolutely goggled when the big guy landed on the mines and nothing happened. There had been upsets with the platforms in other years -- one memorable one where they didn't deactivate when they were supposed to and all the Careers died in the first four seconds, leaving nothing but the ones too scared to move at first; not the most exciting year, and John would bet his best harpoon that someone in the Games complex died for that one -- but this was a first.

Big Guy didn't waste any time, either, and John had to give him props for ingenuity. Suicide plot foiled, he made the best of it by grabbing the little girl from his district and hightailing it off. The other Careers stayed where they were -- trained puppets, really, the Ones and Twos, incapable of seizing a good opportunity when they saw it just because it wasn't in the precious rule book.

Well. John had already proven to the Gamemakers that he was one to watch, that he wasn't afraid to stretch convention in order to make an impression, and if no one else was going to do it, he would. Yeah, the other Careers would have their precious moral high ground but he'd have the best weapons, and if they wanted them they could fight him for it. With five seconds left, John tensed up and leapt off the platform. "Suckers!" he shouted gleefully as his feet hit the ground.

As it turned out, getting blown to pieces hurt a hell of a lot more than you might think it would, but at least it didn't last long.

 

Missy saw a tornado once, a real one. District Ten got the most in Panem, or so she'd heard. She saw a lot of hail storms, too, and Papa actually hated those more because tornadoes were awful and scary and killed lots of people but they didn't always destroy a whole field like hail did, and if you could get the cows in the shelter then as long as it didn't land on you you were probably okay.

But she saw a tornado. She sneaked out of the shelter to peek through the cracks in the door and it was big and loud, louder even than the train she took to the Capitol because that was sleek and shiny and just sort of hummed, and this was a roar that hurt her ears and everything shook and then Papa found her and dragged her back and said never do that again, never ever ever. It was the scariest moment of her life until they called her name on that stage and there was nothing but quiet, when Missy looked over at her sisters and they just stood there, eyes and mouths big and wide and frozen and no one said nothing.

The explosion next to her now felt like the tornado if it was put into a jar and let out all at once. The noise made her scream and her ear popped and the pain in her head was so, so bad and something wet and hot came flying at her and hit her in the face and Missy screamed again and stumbled back

and she slipped and her foot slid off the platform

and something gave beneath her boot

and

 

Devon didn't hear the countdown reach zero because of all the explosions, and first the scary boy from Four disappeared and then Missy fell and Devon screamed but she couldn't hear him and then Missy, oh god Missy, and Devon froze froze froze (pretend a bull was staring you down and you don't move) because if he moved he'd fall and that was like Missy but then the big ones, the Careers, they moved, and Devon looked up and saw a big zero on the screen and it was time to run.

He'd practiced with his mentors, running fast, but he couldn't. It was like he tried so hard not to move so he wouldn't fall that now his legs wouldn't move at all.

The Cornucopia was a small building, some kind of shop maybe, and all the stuff was inside on the shelves. The big kids reached the weapons first, grabbed a few and headed back out. The girl from Two with the razor smile cut down the boy from Eight and he went down but didn't die, he lay there twitching and crying and bleeding and the Two girl just winked at him and Devon knew she would be back later but not any time soon, and you didn't even do that to a cow or a sheep because that was just cruel.

He still couldn't move.

The big blond one with the hair and the beard and the arms the size of Devon's waist got the girl from Three. But unlike the Two girl, this one was quick and the Three girl just fell and her eyes went glassy and Devon knew she died. Maybe she didn't even feel it. The big one had such a big sword and it was sharp and at home they always shot the cows in the head before starting the butchering and they had eyes like Three's.

Still not moving.

Others started un-freezing finally, and some of them ran and some tried to get supplies and Devon needed to move, he really, really needed to move. The dark boy from Eleven grabbed a pack and ran, and no one stopped him. At least the two from District One hadn't killed anyone yet -- the girl kept rooting around in the supplies, then she yelled something at Two girl and they got in a fight -- and the boy crouched by the door to the Cornucopia, putting something together.

The biggest, scariest boy, the one from Nine, the one whose face gave Devon nightmares, snatched up a sword bigger than Devon's leg and looked around. He saw the girl from his district and he waved -- she ran over to him -- and he sliced her low across the belly so her insides fell out, but she didn't die. It took her five seconds to fall, she just stood there staring as her guts splattered, and then the blond boy -- Two, Devon thought, he was from Two -- ran over and cut her throat and she died, fast.

Now Two and Nine argued -- Nine took a swipe at Two with his sword but it didn't connect, and Two lunged at Nine but he ducked and ran -- and Devon finally managed to take a step back, then another. He started to run backwards, but no good because he couldn't see behind him, and while turning he crashed into someone. The boy from Twelve, with the dark hair and the bright, scary eyes, and he carried a pack and weapons and Devon probably had five seconds before he'd be dead, so, so dead.

"Hello, baby," said Twelve, smiling. "It's getting messy. I suggest you run."

Devon didn't need anyone to tell him again. He ran, not even trying to find supplies, but then came a sting between his shoulder blades and his back froze and everything twitched, and his legs didn't work right and he fell down but didn't die and now he wished he had because he knew who it was, it was the Two girl and she would take her time with him just like with Three girl.

Devon scrabbled at his back but he couldn't reach the knife, and it hurt, it hurt so much, and he coughed and something bubbled out of his mouth. Then a yank, and he screamed but the knife was gone, and someone pushed him over onto his back. Twelve boy again, and his eyes were blue, so bright blue, brighter than the sky in Ten on the clearest fall day at the harvest.

"That's so unnecessary. Barbaric, really. At least my idiot brother gets something right," Twelve said, turning and shooting the Two girl a long, distasteful look. Pain pain painpainpain and now Twelve was back, and his eyes froze Devon to his spot. "I can make it quick for you. She won't."

And Devon didn't want to die at all -- he wanted to go home, Moonbeam his favourite cow was calving when he left, and he wanted to help with the birth and see the calf stand up on its little wobbly legs and drink for the first time -- but then pain again, so much pain but not enough to kill him, and he knew how much blood a human body held because one time one of the new hands thought it would be funny to taunt a bull and Dad tried to get Devon to look away but he saw it anyway, the body with the hole in its chest and the blood, blood everywhere, and he knew how much blood even a cow can lose before it died if you didn't do it the humane way and yes, yes, yes --

"Yes," he gasped, and he sobbed, and stuff backed up in his throat and made it hard to breathe and this wasn't fair, it shouldn't be like this.

"It's all right," Twelve said, soothing, and he gave Devon a smile. "It'll be all right soon." He covered Devon's eyes with his hand, then one more flash of fire in his chest and then nothing.

 

Carol watched the Games each year like everyone, and after years of it she'd developed the same kind of coping mechanism she imagined anyone with a soul did, which was to treat it like some sort of fictionalized event, not real kids dying on her screen. And because sometimes life kicked you in the teeth and left you with a really twisted sense of humour so you didn't turn around and slit your wrists until you bled to death, Carol sometimes yelled advice at the screen whenever a tribute did something really stupid, like build a big fire in the middle of the night.

The biggest sources of obvious failure came at the bloodbath, when the smart move was to grab whatever was closest -- the Careers always went for the stuff in the middle, which meant even if they were the fastest kids in all of Panem and you the slowest, you still had time to get something on the outside before they got a weapon -- and then high-tail it the hell out of there. But so many kids thought they'd be smart and get something better, figuring the Careers would attack someone else, not them. There was a reason why upwards of half the tributes didn't make it past the first five minutes.

Carol intended to follow her own advice -- not that anyone would be screaming at the screen about her -- she really did. But it turned out that watching it from the dubious comfort of her living room was not the same as seeing it. Nobody ever told them they could smell the blood, that in an empty city the screams bounced off the buildings and echoed in the alleys. Nobody told her that the Arena would be in Six, either, even if it wasn't her neighbourhood so it took her a second to clue in, and that just skewed everything sideways. It hit a lot closer to home, which was a dumb thing to think when she'd been splattered with gore after the boy from Four stepped off his platform too soon.

Well, screw this. Carol didn't have a plan and she wasn't going to be part of anyone's suicidal cause, not when she was already smack in the middle of one big ball of death anyway, but that didn't mean she wanted to stand around and let herself get killed. The Cornucopia was in a tiny newsstand convenience store -- cute, guys -- and Carol didn't even bother with that, but jumped over a -- well, that was a leg, but no point concentrating on that, just be glad she didn't eat this morning -- and snatched up a backpack. Hopefully it actually had stuff in it and wouldn't be filled with balloons or underwear or something as someone's idea of a joke. Depending on the Gamemakers that year you never knew.

She turned to run, but then Thor, the big guy with his big teeth and big arms and big smile that sent shivers down Carol's back and straight through into her heart, Thor stopped in front of the little girl from Eight, the one Steve had taken a fancy to because volunteering for his friend wasn't masochistic enough. "The Capitol thanks you for your sacrifice," Thor intoned, and seriously, like this was some sort of honour for this kid to spill her guts everywhere, and the girl squeaked and stumbled backwards, but she tripped on an upturned paving stone and fell, and well, that was it, and Carol was too far to help and anyway at least Thor with his stupid honour would make it quick, and what more could a tiny tribute hope for.

"Hey!" The high-pitched, furious shout cut through everything else, and a tiny knife sang through the air, the blade whistling as it flew and embedded itself in Thor's calf. Carol whipped around and found the little girl from Seven, the crazy one who'd volunteered, holding a vest bristling with throwing knives. "You leave her alone! You pick on someone your own size!"

Really. She really said that. And Carol needed to run now but her brain had just shut off and she couldn't help watching, and anyway she was far enough from the action that she'd have a second to get away before anyone reached her, and this was almost funny, except of course it wasn't.

Thor plucked out the knife and tossed it aside, turning around to face Seven-with-a-death-wish.

Seven-without-a-death-wish, the boy, shouted "Jan, no!" and he picked the girl up around the waist and hauled her over his shoulder. She screamed and beat her fists against his back, but he just turned and ran as fast as he could, and apparently those lumberjacks in Seven were good for something because nobody bothered to follow him. He careened around a side street and disappeared.

Thor shook his head and actually clucked his tongue, then glanced back down at the little girl from Eight, who'd twisted her ankle when she fell and was trying to stand. This whole thing was sick and Carol should do something, but what, what could she possibly do. Thor hefted his sword again.

-- And apparently someone in the universe really liked this girl, because a second shout ripped through the Arena, and this time the avenging angel wasn't a little girl with half her sense missing but a big idiot with a shield and a hero complex, and Carol actually had to choke back a scream. Steve had actually gone for the shield -- Phillips would kill him if he made it out -- and he dove in front of Eight girl, taking the full brunt of Thor's swing with his arm. The shield shuddered but held -- damn, good material there -- and Steve scrambled to his feet when Thor fell back, reevaluating.

"Later, then," Thor said with an actual bow, and was he for real because Carol almost couldn't believe it. "I look forward to meeting you in battle, son of Rogers."

"I can't walk," Eight sniffled. "You should go."

"Not without you," Steve said through gritted teeth, and he knelt down, let her climb on his back with her arms linked around his neck, and picked up the shield again.

"A weapon, Cap!" shouted Tony Stark, and Carol hadn't even noticed him because he'd ducked out of sight once the bloodbath started and was watching, waiting for the right time to grab something. "Leave the stupid shield and grab a weapon, are you out of your mind?"

Steve jumped, and while he didn't drop the shield he did snatch up a short sword, holding it awkwardly under his arm.

"I've got it!" cried little Eight, grabbing the belt, and she hooked it around her chest before clinging to Steve again.

Fire tore itself through Carol's stomach, and she looked down to see the tip of a spear, covered in blood -- and right, this wasn't television, this was real, Carol was here and other people were here and they were killing each other and she'd just watched, she'd watched like an idiot, and now her time was up.

"Don't you go anywhere," called the bitch from Two in a singsong, and Carol dropped to her knees. "I'll be back for you!"

Carol tried to speak, to say something scathing and memorable, but everything went black instead.

 

Funny what experiences did or didn't actually make a damn bit of difference when the blood started flying. Jean would've thought -- would've given money, even, and looking at the odds on her on that big flickering board in the training centre showed that at least someone agreed with her -- that being from the Seam would give her some credit, maybe. At least she wouldn't be the one turning green and puking when the first body dropped, since Jean had seen her first corpse at she was six years old, rooting through a garbage can for food. She'd come across the result of what came from taking a tumble behind the sheds, as Ma used to say, hastily wrapped in cloth and dumped in the trash. After that -- and back then Jean had vomited, for days after, even -- it would take a lot more than some Career carving up a twelve-year-old to turn her stomach.

But it didn't put muscles on her arms, didn't put fat around her ribs, and it didn't mean she could run without wheezing thanks to years of growing up in a house lined with coal dust. And the rebel agents or whatever had promised to get her out but they didn't say how, or when, and Jean sort of assumed that would start when the countdown went off.

Except it didn't, because unless letting the Twos kill all the kids first was some weird, sociopathic strategy, it looked like the rescuing wasn't going to start until much later. It made sense, in a depressing, calculating sort of way -- if they were just going to blow their cover in the first five minutes why bother sending in the tributes at all -- but still, she hadn't expected to see the same boy who'd promised to keep her safe ignoring the carnage and focusing all his energy on putting together a stupid bow.

Starvation was also a quiet death, no screaming and gurgling or choking on blood and vomit. By the time it got there most people didn't even have the energy left to cry, much less shout, though sometimes the babies whimpered when the pain in their bellies got too strong. She didn't think it would be so loud in the Arena, the slap of feet against the asphalt, the zing of weapons cutting through the air. Jean never knew the sound of a sword slicing someone open before, or the wet slap and squish of insides hitting concrete, but she did now.

She hadn't expected the city, either, which was stupid, because the trainers had told her that the Arena could be anything, and if they could have that year where everything was on platforms floating in the water then why not a city. Still, Jean had survived in Twelve like most of the Seam kids who actually managed to make it to Reaping age, by sneaking out past the electrified fence and hunting and trapping and foraging in the woods. Jean knew every kind of edible plant in Panem and how to coax moisture from dry dirt, but no idea how to find any of that in cracked concrete and abandoned buildings, not unless they were nice enough to leave food in the fridges.

Running likely meant she would just starve or dehydrate herself to death in a few days, unless the magic rebels had some means of feeding her when she had no way to forage, and there was a pack in front of her. Jean risked a glance toward the centre of the carnage; the Twos were both engaged, the Ones still being choosy as hell about the weapons, and everyone else was dying or fleeing.

Right. Jean grabbed the pack and slung it over her back, shoving her arms through the loops as she took off toward the closest side alley. The shouts faded behind her, and soon all she heard was her own laboured breathing. She stopped sooner than she'd've liked to, and bent over double with her hands braced on her knees, gasping for breath. She couldn't stop here for long, but knowing she had to get farther wouldn't help her if she had an asthma attack and died first.

Finally Jean got herself under control, one hand pressed to her chest, and even though her breath still rattled in her lungs, it was enough she could keep going for now. She turned, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream when she nearly ran into the person who'd been waiting behind her.

"Hello," said the girl, and Jean honestly couldn't remember which district she was from except that she looked confident and lean and muscled, and that meant Career, and she wasn't One or Two, which meant Four. Gold-skinned and green-eyed and twirling a sword in her hands, and suddenly Jean couldn't breathe all over again. "I like to wait and pick off the ones who run," she said. "More sport than just gutting the little ones who are too afraid."

"How nice for you," Jean spat, fighting to keep her breathing smooth and even as her airways threatened to close. "Hope the starving kid from Twelve with a lung problem is sporting enough for you."

"Ah," the girl said, mouth turning down in disappointment. "I suppose that means you can't run."

"Nope." Jean's heart pounded in her chest, and she fingered the straps of her pack, wondering if there was a weapon in it. If she could even get it off and open to look inside before the girl killed her. Probably not. "Don't suppose you wanna let me go and turn this into a game of hunt and seek or something, huh? I'm good at hiding."

The girl smiled, mouth closed except for her incisors, which glinted behind her lips. That had to be cosmetic, just like the cat pupils, and sometimes Jean just did not understand people. "I'm not that sporting," she said, and lunged.

And she'd thought just hearing someone get their stomach sliced open was bad. Jean's last thought before everything went white was that she was going to have to send the rebellion a strongly-worded letter about their rescuing skills.

 

Well, they weren't going to get bonus points for completion, that's for sure, not with four of the kids down, but in Clint's defence, they hadn't expected two tributes to blow themselves up before the thing even started. Technically that counted as one hell of a distraction, but not the one he'd planned for -- not that he'd consider that an excuse, to a soldier that word didn't exist but as an insult to spit at someone unworthy -- and the series of explosions had actually messed with his charges, meaning he had to rewire the whole thing manually while pretending to be blind-ass stupid about putting together his bow.

Blowing up the Cornucopia seemed like the best way to throw the Careers off, to even the playing field a little bit and give the younger ones the chance to run by removing the temptation to stick around. He could still pull it off, but not within the first few seconds, and that meant that while Clint realigned wires and calibrated hair-trigger mechanics, kids were dying around him. He gritted his teeth and bent his head. Nat pulled an argument with Scarlet Histrionics from Two, keeping her from getting any more in the meantime, but without a break in the alliance -- too soon, if they were going to keep the rest of the kids alive -- there was nothing else Nat could do.

Kind of hypocritical for the guy who'd known since he was a toddler that one day he'd die for the Rebellion, who learned the word sacrifice before he learned want, to feel bad that the collateral damage was getting its guts spilled, but sue him, it happened. Sweat trickled into Clint's eyes and he shook his head. Almost there. Now he just had to reset the trigger mechanism in his bracelet-token -- amazing what you could get away with when Fury was on your side -- and he could put everything back on the rails.

Clint snapped the last piece of the bow together -- hopefully none of his trainers were watching him too closely, since he'd just taken about five times as long as he needed to put the thing together, and they'd know he was stalling -- and stood up. He fired off a shot at Rogers' retreating back, making sure to miss, but not by much.

Then Scarlet shoved a spear straight through Carol Danvers' back, the point bursting through her stomach, and the girl's face went rigid before she collapsed. Clint cursed out of reflex -- Fury would not like this -- and had to toss off a quick "I'll get you later, Rogers" just to make it look like he was annoyed about missing his shot, and not about losing one of their mockingjays.

Damn it. He'd liked Carol, too, or at least thought they might get along once this whole Arena thing was taken care of. She couldn't take out Stark with his mountain of strippers on a yacht made of strippers, no, she had to go after the girl with the sarcasm strong enough to melt steel. Clint made a note to check what the proper burial rites were in Six -- assuming they had any -- and give her those when it was all over.

For now, he dashed out into the fray, letting his wrist knock against his hip to activate the demolition.

 

It was like giving birth on her own in the parking lot all over again, except worse, so, so much worse. It came in waves the same as childbirth, though. Sometimes everything felt floaty and woozy, maybe like being on her back in a big pool, except that was dumb because she never learned how to swim and she'd never even been in water, so why would she even think that.

No flashbacks, though, thank god. Worst thing ever, to relive your whole life again, unless you'd spent it lounging around in the Capitol eating exotic fruits and fucking past victors or something.

And then it wasn't floaty or woozy or anything but pain, worse than Carol had felt in her life, and it got into her lungs and her stomach and her blood, fire everywhere, and her skin itched and she just wanted to tear it all off, all of it, so there would be nothing holding her together and she could just explode everywhere and be done with this, done, done --

and Fury promised he'd get her out, but that was men for you, Carol should have known, even Rogers wasn't there in the end, not like she cared

(now a mix of the dizzy and the pain, pain so strong it hummed in her bones like the time someone was jackhammering the sidewalk when she tried to go past and it felt like her knees were going to vibrate right out of her body)

And then, in the middle of it, a burst of lucidity, everything going very sharp with shiny edges. Carol dragged herself toward the Cornucopia -- not sure why, except that the linoleum might not hurt as much under her knees as the broken asphalt and crumbling stone -- and the door hissed open like she was just here to buy a newspaper and some chips, and it was funny, all so stupid and funny, and laughed, but blood and spit burbled in her mouth and she only didn't choke on it because she was leaning forward and it dropped from her mouth instead in long, shiny streams --

Two-bitch was there, going through the weapons, and she glanced back when Carol stumbled in, collapsed against the door. "Still not dead, huh?" she said amiably. "Well, good for you. Fighting spirit, that's always nice to see. I'll be with you in a minute."

Carol wasn't sure which was stronger, her pain or her hate, or maybe pain was hate or the other way around because it felt like she was made of hate, a quivering being of rage just shaped into human form, and she had to do something or she would just fizzle and there would be nothing, nothing, nothing --

-- nothing hovered at the edge of her vision but she fought it off, gripped the spear -- still protruding out through her stomach -- to ground herself. A long knife on the floor, discarded by Two-bitch as being too boring or something, and Carol snatched it up, felt the blade dig into her palm. No idea what to do with it

(and pain again, blinding, and she tried to scream but there's nothing left in her lungs to give)

but it felt better than nothing, even though Two saw her and chuckled indulgently.

And then again with the bright and shiny, lights blinking in weird places -- except no. No. Not a hallucination. Carol blinked, wiped a shaking hand across her eyes, and no, those were real. Red lights around the Cornucopia, blinking, and as she watched they began blinking faster. Carol grinned.

She dragged herself back to the door and dropped down on her side in front of it, heaving herself at an angle where the spear stuck out into the air, making it impossible for Two to pass. Two caught her and rolled her eyes. "Well, that's real mature. Can't just die like a woman or anything, you've got to make it inconvenient for others."

Carol just grinned again, her mouth a mess of blood and saliva, and she hoped the cameras were filming this. The lights blinked faster and faster. Finally Two had the weapons she wanted, and she got up, stood in front of Carol with her hands on her hips. "Get out of the way, the boys are having all the fun," she complained.

Carol coughed (insects beneath her skin now, nausea and dizziness and she couldn't really see anymore, no idea how close the lights were or how much time but if she was still here then not time yet, not yet) and rolled her head back. She couldn't see Two but she pretended she could. "Make me," she said.

Two hissed in irritation. "You say that like it's a problem," she said, and instead of stepping over Carol she did what Carol guessed she'd do and stepped on her, planting one foot on Carol's thigh and pressing down with all her weight.

And ha ha for Two because that didn't even hurt, not with the rest of her on fire, and Carol put all the energy she'd been saving into her arm and swung it, drove the knife down as hard as she can. She felt it connect with Two's foot, slide right through until it dug in to Carol's own leg, and Two shrieked but Carol held on tight. More pain but that didn't even matter anymore.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Two demanded. "You really think that's going to help? I'd stab you in the head right now but it would just be more annoying for me if you went all rigor mortis on me. Once I'm out, though, you better believe I'm carving you up and making you into a sandwich, and when I find your district partner I'm going to make him eat it."

A jerk, and the knife slid out of Carol's thigh and -- she assumed -- Two's foot, but then the blinking turned into beeping, a bunch of loud, frantic tones all at once, and Carol had just enough time to hear Two shout "What the fuck--" before the explosion.

Dying sucked, but death wasn't so bad.

Notes:

This took a long time because it was emotionally draining. Yes, I'm probably too involved in this.

Chapter 8: The Arena

Summary:

It wasn't that Tony cared about Steve Rogers and his ridiculous, pathological and in all actuality psychologically disturbing and no really Steve how fascinating why don't you tell me about your childhood desire to get himself killed. It's just that he was so damned bad at it.

The bloodbath's over, and tributes like us, baby we were born to run

It wasn't that Tony cared about Steve Rogers and his ridiculous, pathological and in all actuality psychologically disturbing and no really Steve how fascinating why don't you tell me about your childhood desire to get himself killed. It's just that he was so damned bad at it, doing every possible thing he could to ensure he'd get himself splattered across the pavement in the first five minutes, yet somehow managing to escape the bloodbath like he was some kind of miracle. Well, maybe he was; the big blue eyes might even make old Obie turn into a wibbling monkey. Or maybe Rogers was some kind of secret genius sociopath, playing them all, and halfway through he'd turn vicious and cut down the remaining tributes in a number of hours.

See, this is why the ladies loved Tony; his sense of humour was so good he cracked himself up.

"Jarvis, see if you can get me a readout on the nearest toy store, something like that," Tony said into the subvocal receptor, pushing Suicidal Steve from his mind. "I need to start picking up supplies and making myself some friends."

"Sir, the Arena appears to be in the middle of the slums," Jarvis said, sounding apologetic. "There are no toy stores. There is a pawn shop perhaps half a block away that likely has a security system you could pilfer; other than that, your best bet is the automotive factory. It should take you about an hour on foot."

"Wonderful." Tony blew out an annoyed breath and looked around. "You patched into the cameras yet?"

"Yes, sir, I have made successful contact. Would you like to know the location of the young man from District Six?"

"What? No," Tony said, nettled. "Why would I want --" he sighed again. "Actually yes, tell me what he's doing, and you might as well keep an eye on him for me. He's the one Fury was wetting his pants over, I bet, so it'll be good to keep tabs on him. And give me a feed for Banner, too; I want to know what it is he did to disable the grenades, and if he's got any more tricks up his sleeve."

"Of course, sir." A pause, as Jarvis checked the various camera feeds. "Rogers and the girl from Eight appear to be heading off in the same direction as Banner and the girl from Five. I can only assume he is attempting to meet up with them and create an alliance."

Jarvis sent the camera imagery to the HUD in Tony's sunglasses, and sure enough, there was Rogers, running through the streets with the kid on his back. Tony clicked his tongue and blinked twice, shutting off the feed and sliding it off his screen with a sideways flick of his eyes. "Of course he is. A nice, big, suicidal slumber party. He and the big guy and their little girls can hang out, toast marshmallows, wait for the Careers to come knife them in their sleep. It'll be cozy. That's just great." Tony ran a hand through his hair. "Are they close? Where's the nearest tribute to them?"

"They do appear to be closing on Banner, sir," Jarvis said, pulling up a map of the Arena, filled with moving dots. As Tony watched, one of them flickered and changed from white to red, probably indicating a mortal injury. Jarvis isolated and enlarged a corner of the map, where two dots converged on another pair. "As for the nearest tribute likely to pose any danger, that would -- oh dear."

"Oh dear? What 'oh dear'? Don't say 'oh dear', you know what that does to my blood pressure."

"I have reason to believe an explosive has been activated at the Cornucopia. I'm disconnecting from the cameras in the area, lest they damage the network. One moment."

Tony kept walking as though Jarvis didn't say anything, not letting the cameras see that he had any foreknowledge. He even jumped when the explosion actually happened, though it was loud enough that it actually wasn't much of a stretch to look surprised. "Jarvis?"

"A series of grenades, buried amongst the weapons, linked by a single detonation point that spread throughout the system," Jarvis said. "Attempting to link back to any remaining cameras to survey the damage."

At last a grainy, static-ridden feed showed up in Tony's glasses, the camera having fallen to the ground and cracked a lens. The building housing the Cornucopia was nothing more than rubble now, and the bodies of the tributes that had bitten the dust too close to it were now in pieces. Tony swallowed his disgust. He was a textbook narcissist, not a psychopath, and just because he could be detached about the whole thing didn't mean he wanted to look at some kid's arm lying in a chunk of concrete. The Careers poked about in the rubble, ignoring the corpses and picking through the litter looking for weapons. Some of the bigger swords and a few knives might have survived, but it looked like the bounty of food had been destroyed at least.

He imagined the hovercrafts and their giant claw-hands dipping down time and time again to retrieve the pieces, no easy one-stop pickup this time around. They might even have to send a tech down with a bag to gather up all the parts and put them together, otherwise it might take too long. Tony double-blinked to cancel the feed and ran his tongue over his teeth in distaste. "Well, that's something, anyway," he said. "They'll have to start looking or begging for food a lot sooner than they thought, so that means fewer dead kids I guess. Unless they decide to eat the tributes." That's the sort of thing that sounded funny in Tony's head, but now just made him wince. Better not to think about it; cannibalism was one of the few things that got a tribute Gamemaker-killed nowadays, but that didn't mean it would never happen.

"As soon as the Career tributes are clear, I believe the hovercrafts will come and remove the victims, and then the official count will begin," Jarvis said, and Tony avoided nodding, squinting off into the distance instead.

"Right. Time for me to get on that automotive factory and make me some friends, I guess. How lucky Six is such a picturesque district so I can enjoy my stroll." Tony rolled his eyes behind the safety of his glasses. "Jarvis, if you don't mind, pull me up the fastest, least likely to get me killed route to the factory and cross-reference it with tribute activity, will you? I'd like to get there in one piece."

"Yes, sir."

"And I don't suppose you've made any progress on why the hell Fury rigged the Reaping to put me here, given that my response was pretty much guaranteed to be a) not the one he'd want to hear and b) unsuitable for television?"

"Not yet, sir, but I'm still looking. I'll alert you as soon as I manage to come up with the relevant information."

Tony's jaw twitched, and he forced himself to unclench his jaw. What Fury thought he could accomplish by forcing Tony into the Arena, he had no idea; was it a threat, telling Tony that not even a Stark was safe, that he'd better join the rebellion or Fury would burn his labs down? Maybe Tony was never supposed to find out, the whole thing leaving him pathetically grateful for Fury's offer to save him. Not that any of it mattered.

As an afterthought, Tony added, "Also, once I get out of here, I think you deserve either one hell of a raise or an extremely lavish retirement."

"Indeed, sir."

The sword Tony had stolen banged awkwardly against his hip, and he'd likely have a bruise there by the time he actually got to the factory, but it was better than walking around unarmed. Not that Tony knew what to do with a sword other than 'hold the end with a handle and shove the dangerous end into the other person', but he was a genius. He'd figure it out.

 

"Have you absolutely lost your mind?" Hank fumed, tightening his grip across the backs of Jan's legs. She'd stopped shrieking at him and trying to pound his spine through the his chest, at least, otherwise he didn't know what he would've done. Probably wouldn't look too good if he knocked her unconscious, but for god's sake, these Careers had ears. "I'm trying my best to keep you alive, okay, and what do you do, you throw a knife at the biggest guy in there?"

"He's a bully!" Jan protested, her voice thick and semi-hysterical. It's the voice she used to use on her father when he scolded her, the one that made him apologize and kiss her on the forehead and promise to buy her a new dress. Unfortunately for Jan, Hank's priorities were a little different than dear old dad's now that they were, you know, running to their deaths. "He was going to hurt that little girl!"

"I don't know if you noticed, but you're a little girl," Hank snapped. He stopped running for a second to evaluate their surroundings, try to figure out which would be the best way to go. He'd been in cities before, on supply runs with Mr. Van Dyne, trying to draw up new contracts with potential clients, but he never really got the hang of them. Too much to ask that the Gamemakers ever advantage Seven by having a woodland Arena, apparently.

Jan sniffed, and her elbow knocked against Hank's back as she crossed her arms in a sullen pout. He shifted his grip, hefting her a little bit higher so she didn't hang all the way upside down. "I'm a Van Dyne," she said, as if that meant anything -- Hank used to think it did, used to think being named successor to the business actually meant something, but look where he was now -- and Hank didn't know what to say to that.

All right, so Jan didn't seem to get it. She had some massive kind of privileged daddy's girl denial complex going on, one that only started to slip a little last night but that got put back on twice as firmly after, and Hank didn't think it was a good idea to tear that down. Not that the lumber mills had much use for psychology or anything, but it seemed like a bad idea to force an Arena meltdown this early on in the game. Jan had managed to miss the worst of the little kids dying by rooting around for her stupid knives and blow guns -- and Hank did not miss that those were there, fairly close to the edge, but no hatchet as far as he saw, so thanks for that, Gamemakers -- but give it a few days, when starvation hit and the streets ran with the blood of the fallen, and, well, it would happen.

Hank sighed and started walking again. The city was empty, eerily so, and so the sounds of the bloodbath -- the screams, the hacking of metal -- were faraway and almost dreamlike. Hank shuddered. "Jan, I'm sorry," he said, and he set her down. Jan's face was blotchy from the effort of holding back tears -- angry ones, Hank recognized that look in her eyes -- and he winced. "I'm sorry, I'm stressed, I shouldn't yell at you, okay? It's okay."

At the end of the day, Jan was just a kid. Kind of annoying, spoiled by her father, and it was no end of disturbing how she kept telling him they'd get married one day, but a good kid with a good heart, and it wasn't her fault she ended up here. Hank hadn't done enough to explain the Games to her after her dad died. That would've been Mr. Van Dyne's job, after her twelfth birthday, to sit her down and talk about the Hunger Games, what they meant and what happened, about volunteers and Careers and everything else. She should never have thought it was a good idea to stand up in that square and march up those steps to be with him.

This was all so messed up, and Hank couldn't think about it. Not if he was going to -- well, whatever he was going to do, probably die messily, but oh well.

He turned to suggest to Jan that they find somewhere to hole up and hide for a while when an explosion sounded from the direction of the Cornucopia.  No shockwave, so nothing huge, but the sound still smashed through the air loudly enough to startle Hank and make Jan stumble. "What was that?" she demanded, whipping back around. "Was that one of the cannons?"

Hank shook his head. "I don't think so, there's only one, and we know more tributes died than that. If I had to guess, I'd say somebody blew up the Cornucopia."

"Really?" Jan stood on her toes, as though that would help her see over the skyline, and Hank felt a flash of guilt for thinking unkindly at her over the last week or so. It wasn't her fault, any of it, and he'd be just as dead if he'd gone in alone, what with the Two giant and his demonic district companion. "Who do you think blew it up? That was fast."

"No idea, but now we definitely should hide," Hank said, looking around. "If that was the Cornucopia, you can bet it wasn't the Careers that caused it, and they'll be angry and looking for whoever did. And now they won't be sticking close for the rest of the day, picking out the best weapons. They'll be trying to take ours."

He had a short sword, the kind they left for anybody, and it had been far enough from the Cornucopia that he'd been able to get it quickly while snatching up a pack, and Jan had her tiny knives and blowgun and a small pack of supplies as well. All things considered, things weren't looking too bad.

"We should go up high," Jan said, looking at the high rises with their crumbling facades. Wherever this was, it sure hadn't been the ritzy area of town. "We could see anybody coming, and it would take longer for them to get at us."

"Yeah, and if they found us, we'd have nowhere to go but off the roof, and that's a short trip with a predictable ending," Hank countered. "Better to stay closer to the ground, preferably somewhere with back exits." He racked his brain, trying to think of the cities he'd visited, what sort of structure would serve their purpose best. "Maybe … a parking garage? That's where lots of people put their cars. There should be places to hide and lots of ways out."

Lots of ways in, too, but no helping that. Hank wasn't good enough to be able to hold a single point of entry; that was for someone like a Career, who could hold off an assault with a sword and block the entrance with his massive body. They were better off trying to run and hoping it never came to that in the first place. Hank wished the tracking device in his arm came with an alert system so he'd know when another tribute came close, but that would make things too easy, of course.

It could be worse, he reminded himself. There was the desert year where all the water was poisoned with a hallucinogenic, so that the choice was die of dehydration or slowly go insane. By the end, tributes were wasting all their energy fighting enemies who weren't actually there. Trust the Gamemakers to find something even scarier than just being hacked to pieces; he would choose straight-up sword to the stomach over losing his mind any day.

They wandered, finally coming across a big open building with lots of ramps and levels that Hank vaguely recognized. "I think this is what we want," he said. "It should be far enough away that we can stay here without trouble, I think. We can sleep in one of the cars, that should give us a little more protection, too."

"Okay," Jan said agreeably. She had one of her little knives out, and Hank couldn't decide if it was funny or sad that she thought it would help. Sure, the Gamemakers had favoured her by giving her weapons in the first place, but without poison on the tips, all they'd do was annoy whoever she hit.

"Let's stick to the second level," Hank said, glancing around. "Ground is too close. Second will give us that vantage point you were talking about without killing us if we have to jump." Not that he particularly wanted to, but he and Janet had both fallen from trees higher up than this. The only difference was hard concrete instead of soft dirt and pine needles, which, admittedly, was not a small thing to worry about.

It went well until Hank tried to open the door of a car only to find it locked, along with every other car on the level, putting an end to his idea of finding somewhere hidden to sleep. Right. This was the slums, and nobody was going to park their vehicles and leave them open and ready to strip down or hot-wire or whatever it was people did with cars. This whole city thing was looking better and better.

"Oh well," Hank said, and climbed up onto the front of one of the cars instead, leaning back against the windshield. He gave Jan a hand up and they sat together, then spread out the contents of their packs. A thick hunting knife, some rope, matches and a tin of fire starter, a compass and flashlight, two thin blankets made of a shiny insulated material, some dried food -- fruit, meat, nuts -- and a container of water, and a vial of some sort of cream that Hank wasn't going to test on his skin, thanks. Burn treatment, maybe, or antiseptic, or maybe absolutely nothing, if the Gamemakers were feeling especially sadistic.

"Huh," Hank said. "We hit the jackpot there. Good. Let's pack this stuff up and maybe we can look for food, now that we know where we're going to sleep. They should still have grocery stores in the slums."

Assuming, of course, they hadn't been cleared out, but it wasn't like tributes could hunt deer or forage for mushrooms in a city, so the Gamemakers would have to throw them a bone somewhere. Hank guessed there was probably one main supermarket or something like that, well out in the open so that everyone would have to come out and be vulnerable to get there, plus a few smaller ones for those smart enough to look for it.

They made their way back down the ramps and were almost to the exit when Hank heard it, a low humming sound, like an exposed power line. One time back home, a wicked storm had brought down a tree that in turn took down a utility pole, and they'd had to cordon off the entire area until an emergency team from District Five could be brought in to clear the whole thing away. The sound now was remarkably similar, but without the crackle of electricity that made the hair on Hank's arm stand up.

"Do you hear that?" Hank asked Jan. She had better ears than he did, and she nodded. "It might be a trap. You stay here, and I'll go check just in case."

"No!" Jan said, stamping her foot. "If it's a trap, that's just what they'd want us to do. I'm coming with you."

The sad thing was, she was probably right. "Fine, just stay behind me," Hank said. If this place was rigged to blow as well, he wanted to know now, not when he and Jan were asleep.

They followed the noise to a low-hanging metal beam, Jan pausing and tilting her head to listen whenever Hank wasn't sure which way to go. When they finally reached the source, it wasn't a bomb, booby trap, or anything else, but Hank still had to clap a hand over his mouth to hold back a shout anyway.

"Tracker jackers," Janet whispered, and even though she was too naive to know that sticking a knife in the thigh of a Career tribute was a bad idea, she knew enough not to mess with jackers. Not since one of the neighbour kids had poked a hive with a stick when she was little and had to spend weeks in the hospital with a face that looked like it had been chewed up and swallowed. He'd never fully healed, thrashing in pain and screaming with hallucinations, unable to recognize his own family, and in the end his parents opted to take him off life support.

"We need to go," Hank said. "And fast."

"We should destroy the hive," Jan said urgently. "It's not safe here now, and it's the best place we've got. And I can use the poison for my knives!"

"That's great, if it weren't suicide," Hank snapped.

"No, it's okay, I know what to do! Daddy showed me when we found one in the backyard!" Janet shrugged off her pack, pulled out the matches and one of the cubes of fire starter, then lit a small fire under the hive.

"Jan!" Hank hissed, muscles tense. He knew he should pick her up and run right there, except she did almost have a point. Getting venom from the tracker jackers to put on the tips of her knives and darts would turn her tiny weapons from a joke into something actually lethal, assuming she could get close enough to hit anyone. Still, that didn't mean he was going to let the twelve-year-old be the one to do the honours. "Get away and let me do it!"

"Daddy said the smoke will make them sleepy and some of them will suffocate," Jan said as she darted back. "Wait until they fall asleep, and then you put another piece of the fire starter just inside the mouth of the hive and light it. The whole thing will go up really fast and then we can collect the bodies and I can get the poison."

"This is a horrible idea," Hank muttered, but so was being in the Games in the first place, so what the hell. If nothing else, maybe a show of moxie would impress the Gamemakers or the sponsors and they'd get a treat out of it.

The smoke from the fire drifted upward into the hive, and sure enough, the pitch of the buzzing lowered and slowed. The tracker jacker who'd been wandering around the outside of the hive slowed to a crawl, its antenna twitching sporadically. Finally the humming stopped altogether.

"A horrible idea," Hank said under his breath, as he stepped closer and placed the cube of catalyst in the small opening. It took him three tries to light the match, his hands were shaking so, and Jan was practically vibrating with anxiety. Finally the flame caught, and Hank stumbled back when the cube ignited.

The hive exploded into a mess of activity, the suffocated wasps dropping to the ground and the sleeping ones struggling to get away as the flames licked the sides of the nest. "Okay, now we go!" Hank said, grabbing Janet's hand and running. "We can come back and get the bodies for the venom later!"

They were almost to the exit when a sharp pain stabbed Hank through the neck, as though someone had lit a sharp stick on fire and jabbed the flaming end into his skin. He screamed and stumbled, dropping to his knees as waves of agony flowed through him.

"Hank!" Jan cried out, her hands on his face, but how could she be touching him when her voice was far away, so far away, and underwater, too?

Every kid in Seven had the lecture on tracker jackers as soon as they were old enough to go outside on their own. One sting wasn't the problem; the tracer venom that would draw the rest of the hive to hunt the victim down, was. One sting should not have Hank on the ground, writhing as the world shimmered and wavered before his eyes, except for one fact.

Hank was one of the small percentage of the population allergic to tracker jacker venom. His hand slapped at his thigh, looking for the emergency anti-venom he'd kept there daily since being tested as a child, except of course it wasn't there. It was such a habit that he hadn't even thought about it when he saw the hive; his allergy was always under control, always able to be treated, and the hypodermic syringe at his side as constant as clothing.

His throat closed and his tongue swelled up, choking him. Hank looked at his hands and saw giant, purple, oozing hives forming and bursting across the backs of his hands, the palms, the fingers.

Jan was screaming something, far, far away, and Hank tried to look for her. When he saw her, he screamed again and scrambled back; as he watched, tracker jacker wings burst out of Janet's back and started flapping, buzzing in the air, and her yellow and black jacket transformed into chitinous armour, closing over her stomach, spreading out to her arms and legs. "No!" Hank cried. "No no no nonononono --"

Tracker-Janet darted up into the sky and grabbed another jacker from the air, this one silver and the size of a small infant. "I'm going to help you," she said, venom dripping from her mouth.

Hank tried to run, but his body was changing, too, curling in on itself, extra arms sprouting from his stomach, and he couldn't. He rolled into a ball and hoped he would die soon. Please, please, please let him die soon, anything but this, anything but turning into some kind of monster, some tracker jacker muttation like Jan, who didn't even know she was already dead.

Then something cool, amazing, like life and health and beauty poured into a bottle, pressed against his skin, and Hank gasped. His body shifted back to normal, and when he opened his eyes the pustules were gone, as were Janet's wings, though her face was blotched and pale and tears ran down her face.

"I got you anti-venom," Jan said, holding up a silver parachute with an opened container attached to it. "The sponsors. They gave it to us. But you still didn't wake up. It's been a long time, a real long time, hours maybe. The sun moved all the way from there --" she waves to her left -- "to there! I was scared. Are you okay? Please tell me you're okay."

"I think so," Hank said, drawing in a shuddering breath, but his lungs felt open, and when he checked both sides of his hands they appeared clean. "Thank you."

Jan flung herself at him, sobbing, and Hank wrapped his arms around her. The worst of the pain from the sting was ebbing, and all that remained was a low buzzing in the back of his brain, like there was a hive somewhere inside his head, but he could ignore that. "You saved me," Hank told her, running his fingers through her hair, and Jan squeezed him tighter. "You're a good kid. Your dad would be proud."

"I got the bodies of the wasps, too," Jan said, hiccupping a little, and she held up her pack. "I put all the supplies in your bag and I put the bodies in mine. I can poison my weapons now."

Motion flickered at the corner of Hank's eyes, and he whipped his head around only to see nothing. Hm. Must be his imagination. The anti-venom would've stopped his allergic reaction and chased away the hallucinations, but it made sense he'd be a little jumpy from now on. It was okay.

"Let's get some food," Hank said, forcing himself to stand, and his legs were shaky but otherwise held him. He had one hell of a headache and one of his hands trembled when he held it out in front of him, and as soon as he thought about food his stomach flipped in a way that didn't make sense considering he'd eaten breakfast just a few hours before. "I could eat a whole groosling raw right now."

Janet laughed and stuck close, both arms wrapped around one of his, making it tricky to walk, but Hank let her. Again he saw movement at the edge of his vision, but again it was nothing. Food. He just needed food. And the sponsors had shown they liked him and Jan, which was a good sign. Hank adjusted his pack over his shoulder and started walking.

 

Eight cannons. Eight kids dead who hadn't been dead an hour ago, except that wasn't really true, was it, because they were all marked for death as soon as the Reaping started. Fury said he would get as many people out as he could, but Sam saw at least three children go down before he ran, and he didn't mean to run -- he meant to stay and fight, to see if he could save some of the little ones -- but the fear took him, and the screams, and the frenzy, and suddenly Sam was sixteen again with his father's blood soaking through his jeans as the man who was everything Sam aspired to but never would become bled out into the grass.

The next thing Sam knew, he was running. Away from the bloodbath, from the slaughter, away even from Ororo with her dyed-white hair and her big eyes in her dark skin, and Sam wouldn't know until nightfall whether she'd made it out. He hoped so; she was small, and fast, and clever, and if anyone had the chance to dart out before one of the others caught her, it would be the girl who picked Caesar Flickerman's pocket.

Still, that didn't give Sam much comfort, and he wished for the reassuring softness of Redwing's feathers beneath his fingers. He and Redwing understood each other -- he didn't actually have some sort of magical power to talk to birds like Ororo seemed to think, but it didn't take one; all a guy had to do was listen, and ever since his parents died Sam became very good at that. If Redwing were here, he would have company inside this mess; would have an extra set of eyes and a pair of talons to help him hunt, even if it was just rats or whatever ran around in the city and you probably shouldn't because who knew what filthy diseases lurked in those critters. Give Sam a good, honest District Eleven squirrel any day, but they almost never had Arenas that advantaged the outliers. No Gamemaker-tended orchards for Ororo to hide in, no apples to eat until her stomach burst with no one to stop her and no fear of a public beating -- at least, not until another tribute's spear flew through her heart.

Sam wondered what it was like for victors in the central districts. In Eleven, the year's worth of food would be nice and the big, plantation-style house a good perk, but even a victor still couldn't eat the apples without being horsewhipped. In Twelve, if they went out beyond the fence and got caught with so much as a rabbit, not even a victor could avoid being lashed to the pole and beaten until their bones cracked and the life drained out of them onto the cobblestones.

Not that any of this made a difference now. Sam didn't know the going rate for rebellion members these days, but he highly doubted the pension plan was any good.

Sam's feet slapped against the concrete as he ran, the sound shockingly loud and reverberating off the buildings around him. He used to run back home in Eleven, up and down the orchards before work started at dawn, and when he moved into town after his parents died he went running there, too, but it was nothing like this. The towns in Eleven still had open spaces, not enough people or money to urbanize the whole thing, and so there were none of these cramped alleys and twisting streets, buildings half falling apart as the twisting train lines and electric wires for the trams ran overhead.

He ran, but the bloodbath kept a hold on him, a fishhook in the skin, dragging him back, and the farther he got from the Cornucopia the tighter it pulled. Sam felt like a sapling, tied down so it would grow into the proper shape, straining against the rope and doing its best to spring free. He stopped running, doubled over with his hands braced on his thighs and fought to choke back the rise of bile in his throat.

How could he run? How could he run and hide and wait for the others to die and Fury to save him? How could he be worthy of being saved when he didn't do a thing to help others to the same fate? Sam's father had been a preacher, a dangerous profession in these times if ever there was one, only avoiding execution, he used to say, because his words gave the citizens comfort under the yoke of oppression. Never enough to galvanize them into rebellion -- not when slipping a grape into their mouths resulted in fifty lashes and four broken fingers -- but enough that they could drag themselves out of bed and into the orchards and still feel like there was a point to life. It was something he struggled with, before he died, and the kids who'd stabbed him had said the same thing -- said he did nothing but make the people content to be cattle, that Eleven needed to writhe and scream under the master's boot, not lick it and be content to root for scraps in the dirt.

What would he say, knowing Sam had turned his back when he could have helped? Sam was big, and strong, corded arms from working in the fields, and he had his weapons, two short, curved swords hanging at his sides. He'd run and eight children were dead. His father would not be looking down at him with pride. Sam clenched his fists, but he knew what he had to do. He turned and headed back toward the Cornucopia.

He didn't expect to find it in pieces. He'd heard the explosion but assumed it was part of the end of the bloodbath ceremony, didn't realize it had actually be a real, physical thing that would tear apart buildings and bodies and leave the street in ruin. Sam jarred to a halt in a side street, looking out at the destruction. Nothing left, not even the Careers, who'd obviously given up trying to look for anything useful in the wreckage, and apart from dark splashes of blood mixed with the dirt and grit of the concrete, no sign of any of the bodies of the fallen.

Fool and a coward.

When he was young, Sam's father cut him a new one for only offering to help with a chore or task when it was almost completed, so he could have the self-righteous boost of trying to help without the disadvantage of actually doing it. Sam assumed he'd learned his lesson, but apparently not.

He turned to go, sick with fear and disgust when he heard the noise, a low choking sound, and Sam spun around, sword at the ready -- what was he going to do with it, well, he didn't know -- only to see a foot disappear, pulled back behind the dubious cover of a large trash can. He gave the ground a closer look, and noticed a large, still-sticky smear of liquid that started close to his boot and ended up somewhere in the middle of the trash bins.

Sam sheathed his sword, since he was mostly kidding himself with it anyway, and, keeping an eye over his shoulder, edged his way around to find the victim. He recognized the girl from Twelve, redheaded and sharp-faced with the mark of starvation in her protruding bones, now curled in a ball with her stomach a mess of red. He barely made out her hands, splashed dark with blood, pressed tight below her ribs.

"Here to finish me off?" Twelve asked, her face bone-white, breath coming in short gasps. Shock, Sam guessed, not that he had any experience with it. "She would've done it, but then that stupid explosion."

It couldn't be long now. In the twisted world of the Games, the best thing Sam could do for her would be to end it quickly. No one could ask him for anything more than that. Sam shook his head and dropped to his knees next to her.

Twelve girl gave him a baleful look. Her jacket had a large slash in the fabric, and Sam could only guess that whatever weapon had done this to her had caught on the material, and that was why her hands were soaked with blood but not full of intestines. Her breath hitched in her chest, and sweat stood out against her skin. "Stop staring," she gritted out, and her head lolled to the side before she jerked it back upright. "Th' cameras're enough."

Sam hadn't bothered to check his bag before running, and he opened it now, sorting through the supplies and dried food. At the very bottom was a basic first aid kit, meant for the Arena and not for household injuries, and that meant large self-sealing bandages and, glory of glories, a needle and thick, black thread for emergency stitches. Sam had seen kits like this before -- field accidents, either with actual farm equipment or a mistake with a scythe, were nasty -- and the materials at hand to combat an injury like this one had to stop someone from bleeding to death before they could be taken to someone with more supplies.

He'd once helped a kid with a mangled hand from an apple-picking incident, but that was nothing on this. Still. "I'm going to help you," Sam said. Twelve didn't say anything, just stared at him with wide, glazed eyes that didn't seem quite able to focus on him. The upside of this scenario was that Sam couldn't actually make it worse; if he left her alone she'd be dead within the hour.

"Could've used those swords before I got sliced up," Twelve said dryly, shaking, but she let Sam peel one hand off her stomach in order to peer beneath it. He saw nothing but a mess of pink and brown and red, so much red, hot and stinking and pulsing with every heartbeat, but when he pressed his hand to the wound he didn't think he felt the slippery slide of guts against his palm. It might be all right.

No way to sterilize the wound or his hands to any doctor's satisfaction, but they didn't have time to be picky. Sam's backpack held a metal container full of water, and the first aid kit a small bottle of alcohol or something like, and if he couldn't get her fixed up then finding something to drink didn't make much difference, did it. The kit also contained a small amount of antibacterial cream, but that wouldn't help them now, not yet.

Sam tipped a small amount of the disinfectant into the thermos and shook it, poured it slowly over the gash in Twelve's stomach. She didn't wince, which Sam thought was impressive until he saw her wide, dead eyes staring at nothing, and only the heave of her chest let him know she was still with him, at least nominally.

Sam had big hands, not clumsy exactly but not meant for work like this. Sweat dripped into his eyes as he worked, and Sam leaned his head to the side to wipe his forehead against his jacket sleeve. Twelve's eyes fluttered back, nearly closing, and her breathing narrowed to low, shallow rasps as her head fell back against the wall behind her.

He managed to close the final stitch and apply another round of the treated water before staggering back and vomiting into the street. He listened for the firing of the cannon that would make this entirely useless, but the skies stayed empty and silent, and finally Sam straightened and turned back.

Twelve stared at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending, but then her hand twitched, moved to tug her ruined jacket closer over her. "Thanks," she said, her voice thin, but she gritted her teeth and pressed her hands to the ground to hold herself upright. "Even if I die of infection or blood poisoning or internal bleeding, that was some good television."

"You won't," Sam said, even though he had a lifetime of knowledge to tell him that sometimes the best, most long drawn-out efforts toward good can come to nothing. The universe had a sense of humour, and the Gamemakers' was even worse. "We should get out of here."

"Wouldn't want all your hard work to go to waste," Twelve said, and Sam missed the quiet, understated strength and wry humour that Ororo displayed, but he could work with fire, too. Rather than bothering waiting for her to try to stand, Sam got his pack firmly settled on his back and lifted Twelve into his arms. She hissed aloud and cried out in pain, but shook her head when Sam started to set her back down. "No," she said, her face tight. "No, it's fine. Better than dead. Let's go."

"I'm Sam," he told her, standing slowly and settling her in order to jostle her as little as possible.

"Jean," she said through her clenched jaw. "Let's hope this show of friendship is worth something to the sponsors." Sam didn't know how to answer that, so he said nothing.

The whole time they walked, Sam felt like someone had painted a target on his back, even as they stuck to the dark side streets and back alleys. Wind whistled through the empty streets, occasionally sending paper, trash and other debris swirling around Sam's feet. "They didn't clear everything out," Jean remarked at one point, opening her eyes long enough to take in an upturned trash can spilling over with garbage. "They just -- the people, it's like they disappeared."

Like they'd all been called to heaven, though Sam hoped that wasn't the case, that they were all alive and well somewhere, watching from a secure Capitol facility until they could return to their ruined neighbourhood and start again. He hoped they'd be compensated, but wouldn't bet on that.

Wait. Sam stopped and studied the streets, looked at the signs. He couldn't read well -- his father had taught him, but it wasn't a skill he needed much, and the letters swam in front of his eyes and gave him a headache, and he'd much rather be out with Redwing than staring at books -- but he could sound out the words if he tried hard enough. He looked for one word in particular, and finally, eyeing every sign he could find, he saw it:

SUBWAY, NORTH STREET ENTRANCE.

He nudged Jean, gently, and turned her so she could see the sign without having to move her head. "Huh," Jean said. "Do you think we could hide down there for a while? Won't save us if somebody else gets the same idea, but at least it feels safer than walking around up here."

Sam had heard of subways, even though he'd never seen one, as Eleven had no need and he'd never been out past the district border. Even in the cities it was never populated enough to justify the cost, but he'd seem them in books. A subway was a train that ran underground. He didn't think the Gamemakers would leave the trains running -- likely they'd shut off power to the whole Arena so they could control it at will -- but that just meant a labyrinth of tunnels that would be much easier to hide in than skirting around aboveground.

"We should try," Sam said.

Jean let her head fall back against his arm. "Hey c'mon, guys," she said to the sky, and for a moment Sam's heart clenched at the thought of her losing her mind from pain until he realized she was talking to the cameras. "That's a smart idea, right? Plus all that heroism earlier, and my plucky never-give-up attitude. Gotta be worth something. It's the first day, stuff's still cheap. How about a reward for ingenuity and inter-district harmony? Isn't that what these Games are all about?"

Sam stared at her, and Jean gave him a toothy smile. "What? Worth a shot. Just wait a minute, see what happens. You never know."

She shook in his arms, full-body tremors as her body fought to deal with the shock and the blood loss and the trauma and everything else. "Please," Sam added, looking up to the skies, like he might have to God before the universe turned its back on him.

A high, metallic tone, and a silver parachute dropped from the sky. Jean's laugh sounded like the screech of a prey bird diving through the sky, and Sam manoeuvred them so that Jean caught the silver container before it hit the ground. "That was quick," Jean said, and her tumbling, trembling fingers struggled to open the canister. "They must've been trying for sponsors since you started to help me. Heroes make a good show, I guess."

She finally managed to pry it open, and inside was a large, terrifying syringe filled with electric-blue liquid. Jean pulled back the plunger and inserted the tip into her arm, shaking her head when Sam made a noise of protest. "So maybe it's poisoned," she said. "Maybe this is the biggest, most expensive joke our two districts have ever pulled, but it's this or infection, and I've seen that happen." She pressed the plunger, and Sam closed his eyes as the liquid disappeared into her veins. Jean sucked in a sharp breath, but when Sam opened his eyes again she looked calmer. "Okay," Jean said, face pale but not looking quite so drawn. "That's all the help they'll be able to afford a while, sorry. We should get inside."

Sam carried her down the stairs into the subway station, where everything was grey and concrete and artificial, even stranger than the streets because at least there the sky was visible, dirty and smoggy though it was. The lights flickered when he reached the bottom stair, and Jean raised herself enough to grope over his shoulder for the zipper of his bag, where she pulled out a flashlight. The lights died once her hand closed around it, and she cursed softly before flicking the switch, casting the beam around around.

Nothing, no one; just the sound of Sam's regulation boots against the floor, occasionally hitting a ticket stub or piece of litter and sending it skittering over the tiles.

The walkable part of the station soon stopped at a wall, with no way to go around it. "Well," Jean said, looking up at him, her face ghoulish in the harsh circle of light. "Only one way to go. And at least if a train runs us over it'll be quick."

Sam swallowed, looking over the edge of the platform into the darkness behind. His heart hammered, and panic built up in his chest until he heard it: the soft, insistent cooing of pigeons, nesting somewhere along the tunnel. His fear eased. All was not dead and lost. Redwing would sulk for days at the thought of Sam taking comfort from pigeons -- common, dirty birds, at least in cities, riddled with parasites from eating trash and drinking polluted water -- but that meant Sam would have to be alive to tell him.

"I can walk, if you help me," Jean said. "Maybe not the whole time, but I can give your arms a break. Put me down, and then you can lower me onto the tracks and jump down after. I'll hold onto the edge and it'll be fine."

Really, walking along the subway tracks wasn't any more suicidal a move than anything else a tribute might try, and maybe the dark tunnels would actually give them some privacy. "All right," he said. "But I'll go first and lift you down."

"Whatever grows your crops," Jean said lightly, only hissing a little when Sam set her down on the ground. He slipped down onto the tracks, getting his footing, then reached up and helped her down. "Thanks," Jean said again, and she sounded stronger than she had in the alley, though it could just be Sam's imagination or wishful thinking.

"It's not a problem." Sam took a deep breath of the stale, artificial air and looped his arm around Jean's waist. It didn't make up for turning his back on Ororo and the others, but hopefully he would be less of a stain on the Wilson family name now. He and Jean could lie low for a couple of days, heal up, and then Sam would try to find Rogers and the others. Hopefully by then Fury's plan would go into effect and they could be out of here.

Chapter 9: The First Night

Summary:

"It's just, there's only one winner. If you help me, it just means you'll have to kill me later."

Opportunity means different things to different people.

Thor gritted his teeth and drew his knees up to his chest as he and the others in the Pack sat under the orange glow of a flickering street lamp. At this point in the Games, they should have been sitting together by a roaring campfire, swapping stories of their greatest moments in battle or daring one another to prove their strength with entertaining and slightly-dangerous stunts. Miss Wanda should have been there trading barbs with Thor, who would pretend he couldn't see that she dearly wished to stick one of her knives in his eye because his affability was part of his charm, and the audience would enjoy thinking they knew something that he did not. Thor and the Hawk, as the young man from District One styled himself due to his propensity for perching in high places, could exchange tales of pranks they had pulled in the past -- Barton had proved himself quite the trickster in training, and Thor had the sad thought that Loki would have liked him, in another lifetime -- while the ladies eschewed such trivial matters and sought to make the male audience members uncomfortable by simultaneously titillating and terrifying them, a pursuit which Thor did not understand but nevertheless found amusing to watch.

Instead, Wanda was dead, his companions taciturn, their supplies nonexistent and the campfire impossible, and Thor cold, hungry, and irritated, thanks to the Gamemakers' inscrutable decision to destroy the Cornucopia before they had the chance to retrieve all the supplies from it. That alone would not have been so unfortunate had this been a traditional Arena with some manner of natural element to it, but this, the abandoned city, all concrete and steel and glass with nothing to burn, this was hardly sporting. Thor knew better than to question the Gamemakers' motives or attempt to understand the larger game in play -- he was but a piece, after all, in a chess tournament he could never hope to parse -- but he had, at least, thought himself a knight, not a pawn. Perhaps this was his punishment for such arrogance, something which the trainers and even Mother had long sought to drill out of him.

He could not, Brutus' voice in his ear giving him a verbal hiding notwithstanding, completely ignore the thought that the eldest son of Odin should not have to sit on cold cement and gnaw on packets of dried meat and berries from whatever backpacks hadn't been destroyed in the explosion. Still, as Father had reminded Thor on the admittedly not-so-few occasions when he let the circumstances of his birth blind him to his own foolishness, a birthright entitled one to nothing as soon as the counter reached zero.

That did not mean Thor could not be unsettled, for unorthodox Games rarely meant anything good for the players who made the Games their livelihood. Unorthodox usually meant the Gamemakers wished to shift the audience interest from the Careers to one of the outlying districts, and this year the choices were myriad. From Rogers, the desperate martyr in District Six to Stark, the wisecracking genius from Three, to the little girl with the tiny knives from Seven, all the way down to Thor's own brother in Twelve, well. With a cast like that, it made sense that he and his compatriots would not be the automatic favourites, that they should be made to fight in more ways than one.

It would make Thor's win all the more glorious, having overcome such odds and such formidable -- in terms of popularity, not in battle prowess -- opponents, but for the knowledge that by the end, Loki's blood would be on his hands. Thor could not allow anyone else to do the deed for him; if Loki had to die, the least Thor could do was ensure that he himself perform the task. He owed Loki that much, for all his failure to protect his brother from his own poisonous ambition.

Thor should not be having these thoughts at all -- they were a distraction, and the Arena far from an appropriate venue -- but this was the effect of having the natural order of things so badly shaken, and it showed how much his brother still managed to crawl beneath his skin. In all actuality, Thor should be grateful; it was not the year of the desert with nothing but maces, nor the year of pitch darkness when the most expensive sponsor gift had been a pair of night-vision goggles that allowed the surprising fan-favourite tribute from Three to systematically slaughter the others. This was unexpected, and required some mental gymnastics, but nothing that Thor had not trained for, nothing he could not handle.

He pushed the thoughts of Loki from his mind, burying them far, far down where they would not show on his face, nor divert his attention from the things that mattered.

"Found a bunch of street signs, it'll have to do," said Hawkeye, dropping down from the building above them and landing on the balls of his feet. He let loose an armful of boards that hit the ground with a loud clatter. "Too bad that Pyro kid jumped off the damn platforms. He probably could've figured out how to set the asphalt on fire."

"Yes, well." Miss Tigra, the fire-boy's district partner, waved a hand, her green, cat-pupil eyes glittering in the light. "I'll do it. I don't suppose you managed to come up with any food or anything useful."

Hawkeye shook his head, eyebrows furrowing above his sunglasses, which -- Thor's brain pointed out -- he still wore despite the sun having set an hour ago. Thor would say he did not understand the point of such affectation, but he himself had not spoken using standard grammar patterns since he turned thirteen, so really, he had no more of a leg to stand on than Pyro after stepping on those mines. "No, and I notice you weren't doing anything but painting your claws, so don't look at me."

"Never fear," Thor said, forcing himself to sound hearty. "I am confident we shall find provisions on the morrow. For now, let us enjoy this fine weather on this first night of our grand opportunity." Hopefully that would not be enough to tempt the Gamemakers into making it rain.

"Yeah, the others will be too busy freaking out and hiding," said the female from One. He would keep an eye on her, yes he would, and it had nothing to do with her sinuous movements. His initial impression of her had not changed: she was too dangerous to be left until the finale. When the alliance broke, Thor would look for her. "No point in looking, they'll all be buried in their caves of panic and wetting themselves. By tomorrow night they'll have started to get hungry, and we can hunt them then."

"Indeed. A most astute observation, Lady Widow." Thor gave her a sharp smile, showing just enough teeth to let the audience know that he had thought of the most fitting and appropriate manner to cause her death, and was running through it in his mind at this very moment. He had not, not at this point in the Game, but they did not need to know that.

"Thanks, Wonder Ape." She shot him a look, blank behind her mirrored glasses, and shook her head.

The fire crackled to life, and Tigra sat back with a satisfied 'aha!' and held her hands above the flames. It was too early to talk about strategy -- the first few days were relegated to the Careers running amok and creating as much entertainment as possible to detract from the tears and panic and wet, messy breakdowns of those who had been Reaped -- and Thor had no way of knowing what any of the other audience favourites were up to at the moment, so that meant they needed to create a reason for the sponsors to watch them instead.

They had no food, no Cornucopia, and Thor's brother was still out there somewhere, waiting for Thor's hammer to split his skull, but they also had a game to play. Thor unsheathed his sword and laid the tip in the fire, heating the metal to a red-hot glow. "Shall we amuse ourselves?" he said, leaning back and holding the blade aloft, making a show of admiring the craftsmanship. "Perhaps a game to pass the time?"

"Sure." The Black Widow smiled, slow and dangerous, and Thor wondered how any man might be foolish enough to draw close to her in order for her to earn such a name. Thor might not have wasted time in the active pursuit of carnal activities, but he was not a fool; he knew what that moniker implied. "How about truth or dare?"

"You suggested, it, Nat, that means you go first. So which is it?" said Hawkeye, nudging her with his foot, and Thor marked the easy companionship between them, something which all their training could not mask. Though they kept the evident affection from their expressions, they moved in each other's spaces with a confidence and a comfort that spoke not of a need for reassurance but instead years of habit.

Friends who volunteered together; Thor would never understand it, and for that alone, he knew he had to beware them. Cross-gender friendships were discouraged in Two, lest they be chosen to participate in the same year, thus causing a conflict of interest, but this -- he could not forget them standing strong and silent on the platform while the chosen volunteers raged below them -- this Thor had no frame of reference for. Yet another thing about these Games which was non-standard, which gave Thor cause to be uneasy.

He would take out the Widow first, for while both seemed dangerous and the male the one with the less varied skill set, he feared her retribution at the loss of her comrade more than Hawkeye's. She had one foot in the sea of insanity and the other on shifting sands, and Thor would not face her alone if he had the opportunity to arrange it otherwise. She reminded him of Loki, content and even eager to dabble in the dark for the sake of the killing arts, and Thor doubted she would suffer the death of her district partner with sanguinity.

Thor could, of course, be dead wrong, and at this juncture he would hardly be surprised, but until proven otherwise, he would follow the course of action that he and Brutus had determined to be best.

"Fine." She tipped her chin in a nod of acceptance. "Dare. Give me your best shot, loser."

"Okay." Hawkeye grinned. "I dare you to get Thor's hammer away from him, without him noticing, by morning."

"That's the stupidest dare I've ever heard. You're supposed to pick something hard."

"Well, you're the one who was too boring to pick 'truth'."

"What, are we twelve? Fine, I'll steal his stupid hammer."

"You are too hasty," Thor said, amused in spite of himself, and he let his hand fall to the handle of the weapon at his waist. "I am not, perhaps, as much a fool as you seem to think."

She gave him a long once-over that, despite all his training, despite the blood of so many still drying beneath his fingernails, nevertheless sent a chill straight through to Thor's bones. "We'll see."

 

"Steve?"

Steve turned his head, Sharon's hair tickling his chin. "Hm?"

"Should you be helping me?"

Steve frowned. He shifted and glanced down at her, but the darkness was too complete to make anything out. Once he managed to fight through the panic of finding himself in his home neighbourhood, Steve decided to use it to his advantage. He knew the best places to hide, which buildings connected to others and which were death traps. At the moment, he and Sharon had curled up together in the kitchens of Mr. Yang's restaurant, which was built upon an old abandoned sewer and had a secret exit downward that they could escape into before anyone coming in through any of the other entrances would even know they were there. Even better, whoever had taken over the city in order to build the Arena hadn't bothered to gut the place, and he and Sharon had feasted on canned goods. When they finally had to leave, they could take as much food with them as they could carry, and know where to find more.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked her. Somewhere in the room a sink dripped, comforting Steve with the knowledge that the water remained on in this part of town. If they'd left it on here, then that meant a fairly strong likelihood of electricity elsewhere. Maybe the Gamemakers staggered the power grids based on which tributes were currently in what position; maybe later they would turn everything off except for one block in order to corral everyone together.

Steve stopped feeling quite so comforted.

Sharon let out a low sniffle, attempting to disguise it as a regular intake of breath, and only then did Steve register the growing spot of heat against his shoulder and recognize it as tears. "Sharon, hey," he said, running his fingers through her short blonde hair. It was cropped close, clumsily, with blunted scissors, she'd told him, after another girl at the textile factory where Sharon worked got her braid caught in the machines. Sharon, the smallest worker in her section, had to crawl in and untangle the bloodied strands of hair and chunks of scalp from around the turbines; when the overseer accidentally kicked a switch and the machines started up, she lost two of her fingers. She'd been eight years old at the time.

"It's just, there's only one winner," Sharon said, hiccupping and curling her fingers in Steve's shirt. "If you help me, it just means you'll have to kill me later."

Steve's chest caved in on itself, and he reflexively began counting his breaths to forestall the asthma attack that he was no longer in danger of having. "It's not -- I'm not going to kill you," he said, horrified at the thought. At least now he could say that with certainty, knowing Fury's plan would get them both out if he could only keep them alive until then.

Even without that knowledge, many tributes paired up at this point, the reality of the one winner remaining somewhat in the distant future with the Career pack running around. Sharon thinking about it now was a rarity, and showed that she'd been giving this much more serious consideration than most twelve-year-olds seemed to do.

"I watched last year," Sharon said, and Steve winced. Most children started watching the year or two before they reached Reaping age, in the hopes that preparing themselves mentally would allow some kind of cosmic justice system to sway in their favour. Like taking an umbrella in the hopes it wouldn't rain. "I saw it. One of the bigger boys kept a little girl with him, and they waited until everyone else killed each other, and then at the end it was just them, and then he killed her."

Steve remembered that, but he'd tried his best to put it out of his mind before it gave him nightmares forever. The boy was from District Ten, the girl from Eleven, and the only reason they'd survived as long as they had -- or so Steve guessed -- was that the sponsors had paid to see the touching friendship come to its inevitable, bloody end, and the Gamemakers had pulled a few strings in order to make that happen. The boy was not a popular victor; Steve didn't even remember his name.

He didn't remember the name of the girl who'd died, either, or any of them, last year's Games or the ones before, and he'd been watching since he was about ten. He doubted anyone did. It was just too much otherwise.

"I'm not going to do that," Steve said, and he wished he could tell her why. "I promise you, I'm not going to kill you."

"You shouldn't promise," Sharon said, her small voice resigned and bitter. "You can't keep it."

"I'm going to." Steve curled his hand at the back of her head, stroking his thumb across the nape of her neck.

"You shouldn't." He hadn't thought it was possible, but Sharon's voice turned even more brittle, like icy puddles on a frosty morning that crackled above the concrete. "You have somebody to go home to. Your friend, the one you talked about."

Steve wondered if the cameras pointed at them had night vision, if they could read the dumbstruck horror in his expression. He imagined the audiences sitting straight in their seats, craning forward. He pushed the thought away. "What do you mean? You're not -- you can't tell me you're alone."

"No." Sharon gritted her teeth. "I wish."

Amazing that in the middle of a game designed to kill twenty-three children in a matter of weeks, one of them could come out with something that made Steve sick to his stomach for a different reason. "What do you mean?"

"My aunt was a victor," Sharon said, and Steve's eyes widened. Most victors moved their families into the Village with them, but if Sharon had worked in factories since she was six years old, then obviously that hadn't happened. "I don't know how she won it, Mama doesn't let anybody talk about her unless they're spitting. But Mama and their parents moved into the Village, and Mama said it was amazing. They didn't have to work or anything."

She fell silent, and Steve rubbed a hand across her shoulders. When she started talking again, Sharon's voice was flat. "But then she died. An explosion, somebody bombed a factory. Mama said it was protestors. She said they don't care about nothing, they just wanna make a point and they don't care about people. But aunt Peggy, she was walking past, and she got hit. She lost her memory and stayed in the hospital for a long time and then she finally died."

Steve closed his eyes. He knew the loophole about family members as well as anyone: the house in the Victor's Village belonged to the victor alone, which meant that when he or she died, any extant family members had to find themselves somewhere else to live. It was a real fear in the outer districts with very few victors as they grew upward in age, that the other victors wouldn't take them in -- or, worse, that there would be no one else alive to even make the offer.

"Yeah," Sharon said, when Steve didn't respond. "So Mama and everyone had to move out, but she never forgot. She always tells us we're useless and we need to work harder because she used to have a good life and now it's all wrecked. And when I got reaped --" Sharon stopped, sucked in a breath, and let it out in a low hiss. "When I got reaped, Mama said I better win, because then we'd get the money just like we should've had. And then she hit my sister for not volunteering because she's bigger and she would've had a better chance, and I would probably die and be useless but at least this way I wouldn't be wasting any more food."

Steve's arm tightened around Sharon without him intending it to. "I'm sorry," he said, choking on the uselessness of it. Bucky used to say Steve should come standard with a shock collar that zapped him whenever he apologized for things that weren't his fault.

"It's okay," Sharon said, sounding exhausted, and she slumped against Steve's chest. "So see, it's probably better if you kill me. At least your friend wants you to come home because he loves you."

Right then, Steve made the snap decision that whatever happened, wherever he and the others who escaped managed to go, Sharon would not go back to her family. He couldn't let her, not after she'd said all this in front of the cameras -- and she had to know they were there, had to be aware that everything she said would be sent back home, because they wouldn't miss the chance to air petty drama like that. "I'm not going to kill you," he said again, helpless to say anything else.

"Then that means you're going to die," Sharon said, her voice a little stronger now as she challenged him. "Because we can't both win."

No, they couldn't, and if Steve said anything else he was in danger of putting everything in jeopardy, so he only sighed. "Try not to think about that right now," he said, and Sharon let out a wet kind of sound that he guessed was supposed to be a snort. "I mean it. There's -- it's just the first night. Let's just try to stay alive right now."

Sharon's arms tightened around her waist, giving the lie to her earlier bravery. "We're probably both going to die anyway," she said.

"Stop it." Steve let his voice go sharp, just for a second. "Nobody's -- not right now, okay? Let's just get some sleep."

Steve stayed awake after Sharon finally cried herself to sleep, thinking. She was right about one thing; last year's winner meant that the audiences would be bored by the same act this time. And yes, Fury might have a plan to get them out, but that was contingent on Steve not getting himself killed in the meantime, and that meant they had to figure out something else. If they attempted to follow the same pattern as before, the Gamemakers would surely intervene, and Steve didn't think so highly of himself and his potential as rebel symbol that he thought Fury would risk everything to save him just because he'd been too stupid to keep himself alive.

This wasn't Steve's expertise. He had never been good at strategizing, not like this, at playing himself at different angles in order to please people. Bucky was better at it; he used to sit back and critique the tributes' strategies, tell Steve what it was they were thinking and which parts of their actions were for show. He called the Ten boy's strategy a week before he slit the little girl's throat, his lip curled in disgust, and Steve had moved closer on the creaky sofa and wrapped his arms around his best friend, giving thanks that Bucky was here, safe with him, and not out there.

He wondered what Bucky would be thinking now. Likely Bucky would be agreeing with Sharon, shouting and crying at Steve to leave her, because he knew Steve better than anyone, and if this were a traditional Game without an exemption clause, with one winner and no way around it, this would be a dangerous situation.

That is, if Bucky was even watching -- if he was alive to watch. Steve pushed the thought down; he couldn't afford another panic attack, not now. It had nearly killed him at the bloodbath, and only the possibility of Bucky's being alive somewhere and needing Steve to pull himself together had allowed him to get hold of himself long enough to get away.

Steve was just beginning to drift off when he heard the crunch of boots against the cracked asphalt outside. He froze, Sharon still dozing against his chest, and listened for any sounds, voices or footfalls or weapons that would tell him if this was one of the people he could trust or the ones trying to kill him. Nothing. The smartest choice was to stay silent and still and wait for them to go, but what if it turned out to be one of his allies? He'd tried to find Bruce Banner and the girl from his district, but after following in the direction they'd disappeared for over an hour, Steve had accepted that Banner really didn't want to be found.

Two sets of footsteps, Steve was fairly sure, one with longer strides than the other. Steve dislodged Sharon, left her curled up on the floor with her head resting on his balled-up jacket, and crept out of the kitchen to the nearest window. The inside of the building was pitch-black, so as long as he didn't press his face up against the glass -- or the Gamemakers found it hilarious ot turn the lights on all of a sudden -- he should be able to glance out without being seen.

Steve's heart thumped. At least the orphanage had taught him to walk quietly; when the rooms were full of sleeping kids who would wake up and cry if startled, he'd learned fast how to sneak through to use the toilet or get himself a glass of water without making noise, even in the hallway with the squeaky floorboards. Here, with the tile flooring, he almost didn't have to try. The only danger was knocking against something, and so Steve moved with agonizing slowness.

Voices, now, low near-whispers. Not Careers, then; they wouldn't bother with stealth. Why should they? Leave the sneaking for the ones who had to hide; much more fun to chase prey that was running. Probably not the pair from District Seven, either; the little girl didn't seem like she knew how to be quiet, and Steve didn't know if he could trust them. The boy seemed nice enough, if a little aloof -- not that Steve blamed him -- but the girl, oh dear. She made Steve's chest hurt, and selfish as it was, he didn't want to be there when her walls of denial came crashing down.

Finally, Steve reached the window, and when he peered out his breath left him in a huge whoosh. Banner and his companion, keeping out of reach of the streetlights, but Steve recognized his frame well enough. No better chance than now; Steve darted for the door and hoped none of the Careers were following. If they were, at least Steve could run back inside and get Sharon out through the secret entrance before they caught him.

Probably.

Steve opened the door but kept it between him and Banner, just in case; the boy jumped, shoving the girl behind him and holding his sword in front of him.

"It's me," Steve said, and only afterward realized that was inane as they'd only ever had one conversation together. "Uh -- Steve Rogers. District Six. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Stay behind me," Banner told the girl. His sword glinted in the light, and he winced, turning to shield the blade from the street with his body. With his bulk, that wasn't hard. "What do you want?"

And just like that, Steve had it. The angle. The way to keep the audience interested until Fury put whatever it was he had planned into action. "An alliance," he said. "Why should the Careers be the only ones who get to work together?"

"Because they're the only ones strong enough to keep up a state of mutually assured destruction," said Banner. Steve couldn't read his expression, not in the dim light, but he sounded hesitant, and anyway, he hadn't run.

"We have food," Steve said, risking it. "Lots of it. And a safe place, at least for now. We wouldn't just be dead weight, I promise. If we work together, we could figure something out."

Fury's girl hadn't given Steve any way of telling if others were in on the rebellion -- probably so that if one of them got captured they couldn't give up anyone else -- but it made sense for him to try to get Banner. Banner was smart, even if he kept quiet. He'd figured out how to work the platforms so he could get away early, and if he was still alive now that meant someone liked him enough to stop the Gamemakers from killing him for his tricks later.

"He's a volunteer," said the girl, piping up from behind Banner, quiet and serious. "He has someone to protect. We can trust him."

"Someone to protect means he has someone to kill for," Banner snapped, and Steve winced.

"Same as you," the girl said, and laid her hand on Banner's arm. "Please. We could use friends. And you're hungry."

"I'm fine."

"You let me have all the food."

"I'm fine."

"Either way, you should decide fast," Steve said. "The longer we stay out here, the more risks we're taking. Come in, have something to eat, and sleep. I promise we'll be safe, and even if I try anything, you're bigger than I am and you can just kill me."

Banner stared at Steve for a moment, then he lowered his sword, though he didn't sheath it. "If Jenny dies, so do you," he said, and Steve believed him.

The girl -- Jenny -- clicked her tongue. "That's an awful thing to say," she said, and moved out from behind Banner's sheltering bulk to slip past Steve inside. Steve held up his arms as she passed to make absolutely sure. "Don't use dead me as a threat."

"Sorry," Banner said automatically. Steve stepped back from the door to let it pass, then closed it behind them and slid the chain into the hole.

For better or worse, they had the start of an alliance now, and an uneasy one at that. Hopefully that would provide enough tension that everyone would keep watching -- and hopefully Steve hadn't made the wrong call with Banner. Maybe Fury would send him some sort of sign.

Steve glanced out the window at the empty streets one more time before leading the others back into the kitchen. He wondered where Tony was, and if Fury had managed to recruit him, too. Steve doubted it, but then again, Tony had risked it to shout at both Steve and Banner during the bloodbath, so he was more involved in other people than he said he was.

"Here, help yourself," Steve said to the others, showing them the pantry to get his mind off thoughts of Tony and his mirrored sunglasses. "I'm going back to sleep. You guys should get some rest."

 

Loki could go for four days straight without sleep before his performance degraded enough for it to become a real hindrance, and three before he could be considered impaired at all. The Centre had done endurance and deprivation tests for everything from nourishment to rest to exposure, and Loki had outperformed everyone in his class. Thor, of course, did better in the cold by dint of his bulk, but Loki only had to remember his early years in District Twelve -- more now a nightmare than anything else -- to bring himself into the proper mindset.

One night spent setting up his various plans was scarcely more than a Capitolian skipping breakfast in favour of more sleep, though Loki knew those painted idiots well enough to know that could be considered a true catastrophe. Fools. Likely those of them at home not from districts where the citizens had to toil in the dust in order to raise a handful of half-rotted food to their whining children's mouths, they would watch him in a mix of shock and horror, wondering how it was he could go so far, so fast, on so little.

Ridiculous, all of them, but they would see -- oh, would they see.

They'd mocked him, in training, for his trickery; Thor had turned the word into something filthy, something almost to be ashamed of, as though there was no honour, no glory, no skill in fooling warriors whose only training was to make them unkillable. As though all Loki had to do was lay some string upon the ground for them to trip over; that might work for the underfed fools from the farthest districts, but for the other Careers, no.

Just whom, exactly, did Thor think Loki intended to hunt? Not the stick-thin denizens of the starvation realms; no glory there, no matter how the Capitol spun it, despite all the speeches Father might make about how no one's sacrifice was greater than any other. Nonsense, that, intended to keep his children humbled, grovelling at his feet for the least scrap of validation, to keep them low and unaware of their power when they were so, so much greater, even Thor. The only difference was that Thor was restrained by the scope of his imagination; he believed what they told him about his limits, and thus he made it so. Loki was not such a fool.

The children, he would let them pass unless he had no choice; if he caught them in his traps then so be it, but he would not seek them out. The Twos left that to the Ones, who played the line between beautiful, jewelled dolls and death-crazed killers. They could afford the hit taken by murdering the children who looked like children rather than the ones who fooled the audiences into assuaging their conscience by being built larger, having genes that thickened their bones even if their lives couldn't put meat on them. But as for the others --

The Capitol had been warned about Loki, and that made this all the more glorious. From the very day he boarded the train, a message must have been sent west, heralding his eventual triumph, and they had built this Arena for him. Why else? No trees, no scrubby deserts, but a city, vast and broken but filled with everything a trickster could use to ply his trade. Already Loki had constructed pits and cages and every kind of trap imaginable. He would only have to bide his time.

And then, of course, had been the explosion, the one that took out the Cornucopia. Loki had not seen it, having slipped well out to begin weaving his nets, and so he did not know what excuse had been given -- whether another tribute had found grenades, or a platform malfunctioned, or whether the Gamemakers had out and out decided to turn the tables -- but either way, that, too, only worked in his favour. The Pack would be off-guard, irritated, for nothing threw the Careers more than the unexpected, particularly Thor. The pair from One, perhaps not -- they already broke the mode with their silence and cool, spider-like efficiency, and Loki almost had respect for them, as a greater being might appreciate the scramblings of a lesser because he could afford to. But Thor, poor, rule-abiding Thor, he would be chafing, knowing that already things had gone so wrong. Loki only wished he could see his brother's face.

He would, and soon, but not just yet.

Loki tied the last of the wire -- liberated from a factory -- around the lamppost. He tilted his sword so that the orange light glinted off it, and only then did the silver thread make itself known. Not his most sophisticated endeavour by any means, but it would serve. At any rate, the meat tended to panic and lose their focus.

As he left, Loki heard the sound of footfalls, quiet in the manner of those who'd discovered stealth for themselves as opposed to having trained for years. His pursuer no doubt thought he was as silent as a shadow, but to Loki he may as well have been trampling a floor full of broken glass and dried leaves. The footsteps were slow, deliberate, and Loki smiled to himself even as he kept his posture natural. So the other fancied himself a stalker, did he, thought he was the predator and Loki the prey. That narrowed things down considerably.

Loki waited until the steps quickened, no doubt matching the heartbeat of the other as he anticipated his kill. At last excitement overwhelmed caution and his opponent abandoned all attempts at quiet; only then did Loki draw his sword and turn, but on a hair trigger, and he was well in time not only to block the blow but also to shove a knife in between the boy from Nine's ribs.

"I suppose you didn't expect that," Loki said pleasantly. He'd chosen the dagger well, a clean blade, smooth and straight, no hooks or serrated edges, easy to insert and pull free without causing lasting damage. The place he'd struck was free of any internal organs; this wound would bleed, but not fatally, not if the boy had any sense.

Nine snarled, but he couldn't move, not unless he wished to unlock their blades and give Loki room for another hit. He towered over Loki but his was the rage of one long caged and finally unleashed; wild, undisciplined. He'd never held a sword before, though likely he'd had other things that might have sufficed. Still.

"It is not your time yet, Swordsman," Loki said, grinning wide enough that the street lamps would catch his teeth. "You don't want to die on the first night, and nor do I. We're both of us too good for that. Let us play a game of cat and mouse, you and I, and see which one becomes the victor."

"Who's the cat and who's the mouse?" Nine asked, and without breaking Loki's gaze or weakening his stance he turned his head and spat upon the ground.

"Well, I'll leave that up to your imagination, don't you think?" Loki pushed his blade against the other's, then pulled it free of the stalemate and stepped back, at the same time yanking his dagger out. Nine grunted but didn't move; Loki would give him credit for that. "You make your traps, I make mine. Let's keep it interesting, shall we? After all, we have our fans back home to consider."

He snorted. "Big talk from a Twelve."

"Even bigger from a Nine," Loki said, unperturbed. "District Twelve is the poorest, the weakest, the smallest. Many, many 'est's for little Twelve, and ignominy is its own kind of fame, is it not? District Twelve lives in infamy, and people fear it, yes, they do, for its barbarism, its cruelty, its callousness. Death falls in District Two like the rain that grows your crops. Or is it livestock? What is it your district does, Nine? You see, no one can ever remember because you've never given them a reason to care. Unless you do something quickly, you will be naught but one of those unlucky, temporary bright lights in a sea of forgetfulness."

Nine eyes narrowed, his mouth tightening, and Loki knew he'd hit his mark as sure as if he'd had the throwing knives that Mother procured for him on his ninth birthday, the ones with the handle smooth and fitted to his palm. "I think killing you now would change that."

"It might, if you could kill me," Loki said, giving him a pitying smile. "But you won't. You can't. Not tonight. I'm fresh and full of energy, and you are bigger, yes, but your bag of tricks is not so large as mine, I think. And unlike those who have never known hunger, never tasted the tang of desperation on your tongues, you know that trickery is a virtue, not a vice. You know you cannot kill me, not yet, and that would be a waste. And we must keep our masters happy."

"I think you talk big," Nine said, with the tiresome bluster of the very large. "I think you talk big to hide the part where you can't back it up."

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes, exaggerating the motion so the cameras could not help but catch it. "If you wish," he said, and brought his sword up at the ready.

Nine lunged, but Loki, after half a year of nearly starving in District Twelve during his self-imposed exile, had come back to the Capitol, the land of plenty. He'd spent every minute training, sleeping just enough to allow his body time to repair any muscle damage, and he'd instructed the idiots who brought his food to take away all the desserts and rich cream stews and provide him with exactly the same tailored fare as Thor received. He would not be worn down, not now, by a boy who, while admittedly terrifyingly large, had devoured nothing but useless Capitol delicacies.

Loki had always been quick, and while the sword was not his chosen weapon and he would never have the bulk of Thor or the usual Two volunteers, it would suffice. He remained on the defensive, but nonchalantly so, making it clear to both Nine and the audience that he was not fighting for his life, not scrabbling for victory but playing a game that failed to engage his interest, let alone his survival instincts. Every so often he struck, just once, enough to warn but not to cut; it would not do to enrage Nine into a blood frenzy. Too soon. Too boring.

At last Loki feinted, played a stumble, and Nine grinned and followed, ready to strike the killing blow. "I'd stop if I were you," Loki said mildly, and his tone, devoid of all pleading or anything else that a victim on his back might throw at his opponent in desperation, stopped Nine where all his begging would not.

"Why?" Nine demanded, eyes narrowed. "Going to beg some more? Want to change my mind?"

"Indeed not." Loki shifted position and traced one finger across his throat. "Step back, carefully, and look down."

Nine did, and in the darkness managed to catch the flash of the wire that had been pressing against his throat, now rimmed dark with blood. His free hand flew to his neck, and his fingers came away wet.

"Mm, you see," Loki said, and smiled. "I could have allowed you to die there. I could have given you the most anticlimactic and unwarriorlike of deaths simply to save myself, but I did not, because I know how this game must be played -- as, I think, do you. So once more, I present you with an opportunity. We part here, now, and when we do meet, let it be in battle much more grand and glorious than this. Let us wait until we have whetted their appetites to the fullest before we allow them access to the feast."

A long pause, during which Loki calculated whether he would have to kill the idiot after all, but finally Nine grunted and took another step back, then another. "Fine," he said. "But you'll pay for that."

Loki climbed to his feet, graceful, and swept himself into a deep, mocking bow. "I await your recompense," he said, smiling. Nine snorted and ran off. Loki sent a smile to the closest camera -- considered a wink before deciding that was over the top, and a little too  much of Thor's easy charm besides -- and sheathed his weapon.

One more task to fulfill for the night, and then Loki could find somewhere to rest. This city with its crumbling edifices, its stink and filth, was not the environment he was used to, but Loki could still track, and a few hours later he found the Career pack, fast asleep and gorged on their own confidence. Not surprising. Had Loki remained in Two and gone through the proper channels, he, too, would be bound by Pack Law, requiring them to put up a facade of trust even as each planned the other's deaths.

Loki much preferred his new role: the chaos-bringer.

Their sleep now was not the bone-deep exhaustion of later, when exposure and lack of food would take their toll; they would still be wary, now, despite the assurance that no Career ever died that first night. No one had ever hunted the Careers so quickly; they preferred to wait for time to wear them down. Well. Loki was not some underdog from nowhere, and he made his own rules.

He knelt over Thor, beautiful and blond in the firelight, his features perfect, his musculature sublime. The perfect Odinson, the paragon of Careerdom. Next to him Loki looked stunted, small, his dark Twelve colouring even more apparent. Loki's lip curled. He could kill Thor now; drive the knife into his heart, stop his breath, take back all the degradation, the ignobility, he had suffered at his brother's hand. Loki actually reached for the weapon, his hand trembling, but no. Not yet. Not yet.

Instead, Loki pried his brother's fingers from his precious hammer, easing the heavy weapon free. Thor didn't so much as twitch -- ahh, the privilege of those who think themselves invincible -- and neither did he move when Loki closed his hands around the twin sai chosen by the girl from District Four. He gave Thor's hammer to the girl from One; the archer's crossbow to Four, and One girl's knives to the One boy. Loki stood back and smiled, admiring his handiwork, as each of the Careers held the other's weapon. It took him perhaps half an hour, moving with the utmost care, to complete the task.

Not enough, not yet. While it was patently ridiculous for anyone else to have accomplished this -- the stealth and precision required was well beyond any of the other idiots who happened to be chosen -- Loki wanted there to be no doubt. The asphalt of the road meant that he could not carve or draw anything on its surface, but no matter. Another painstaking twenty minutes and Loki had removed Thor's cloak and torn it into strips; he twisted the fabric into ropes and dipped them in oil he'd collected from an abandoned garage. Loki arranged the cloth into a sigil that resembled a pair of snakes twined around the other -- as children, he and Thor had designed symbols for themselves, calling cards, as a bit of fun, and this had been Loki's.

Loki reached down and extracted the longest remaining fragment of signboard from their pitiful fire, then stepped back; with it, he lit the coil of fabric and watched as the oil caught fire. He danced backward, found the closest building, and scaled the shaky drainpipe; when he reached the roof, Loki removed the smallest throwing dagger from the One girl's collection, which he'd stashed in his pocket, and let it fly, hitting Thor in the calf.

Thor shouted and sat up, attempting to brandish his hammer and nearly stabbing himself in the eye when he found himself with two hands full of pointy weapons. The others, likewise nonplussed, stared down at their weapons, then each other, and tension crackled among them as they tried to decipher who between them was the trickster.

"What is that?" spat the One girl, pointing at the burning sigil. She held Thor's hammer one-handed, ready, her wrist not even appearing to strain despite its considerable weight. Loki, safe in his perch, had the luxury of allowing himself to be impressed.

Thor stared at it, then let out his breath in a hiss. "Loki," he said, the word twisted and dark; long had it been for Loki to hear anyone say his name as though it were not a curse or a spell of dark magic from the depths of hell. "He was here. He did this."

"He's gotta be pretty damn quiet if he didn't wake us," said the archer, and he held out his district partner's knives to her without bothering to reach for another, before he caught himself and drew them back. Interesting; they trusted one another, and didn't wish anyone else to know. Loki could use this to his advantage somehow, he was sure.

"Loki can do many things if he puts his mind to it," Thor said, darkly, and Loki wondered which particular incident he was remembering. "Miss Tigra, I believe these are yours." He transferred the sai to one hand, kept the other on the pommel of the sword at his hip, allowing the weapons exchange to begin.

Loki chuckled to himself and crept away into the dark. The first night and already things were more interesting than they'd ever been; he had no doubt that by the end of these few weeks, the nation of Panem would never scoff at the name of Loki Odinson again.

Chapter 10: Waiting

Summary:

Sometimes Clint wondered what it was like to live in the outlying districts and not have those kind of thoughts trained into him, not to have been raised to watch the Games and write essays on who that year he would kill in what order and why. But those thoughts never lasted too long, since before Fury and the Academy was before Nat, and before Nat nothing mattered.

Over 48 hours without a kill; the Gamemakers are getting antsy.

Notes:

Warnings for Loki. That's all I'm gonna say.

Tony didn't love his old man, hadn't for a long time. Not since he was a kid, too young and dumb and starved of touch and attention and all those things kids actually wanted and that couldn't really be replaced by shiny toys and nannies that were in it for the cash and not because they were fond of the mouthy little kid who kept building robots to steal their shoes. Back then Tony thought if he was good enough, smart enough, quiet enough, if he was everything Howard wanted, then maybe Howard would love him.

Yeah, well. Tony was a genius, and he learned fast. By the time he was ten, it was pretty clear that it didn't matter what he did, Daddy was never gonna love him and Mommy was never gonna remember he was there. It wasn't bad -- nobody hit him, nobody hurt him, Howard didn't even insult him personally, just snapped at him with the same casual disregard he did the maid who came in and moved things on his workbench. So Tony was a disappointment; so the only real things he remembered Howard Stark saying to his son was that he was a failure. So what? Howard was disappointed in everyone, himself most of all.

The arc reactor was the Stark secret, the ticket to everything. Howard had been working on it when he and Maria were killed in a car accident that was so obviously arranged a Peacekeeper may as well have walked into the house and shot them both right in the head. Except that wouldn't have made the point, either. That made it an execution, would have made them martyrs -- because like Tony in his wake, Howard knew how to work a crowd and make people love him even if he couldn't care less if they fell out a window tomorrow -- whereas an accident, oh, how tragic. How unfortunate. Well, you know how things are. You know how careless people can be.

Stark Enterprises stopped all work on the arc reactor, burned all the plans and destroyed the equipment. Tony Stark, fifteen, flipped off the Capitol representative at the funeral, went home, and turned his bedroom into a laboratory. He hadn't slept a full night since.

"Son, I know you don't think I care about you," Howard had said once, and Tony had laughed like he'd just told the wittiest, most biting of jokes at a cocktail party. The bench had been cold against the backs of his legs, his arms; the thin medical gown he wore not much protection against the chill. "I do. I care about you, and about the future of this family and this company, and you might not understand now, but you will. This is to protect you. You never know when you'll need it."

The syringe of anaesthetic had slid into Tony's skin like the kisses his mother never gave him.

The best part being, of course, that he'd been right. Well, when Tony got out of here, he'd pour a full bottle of his best scotch all over the old man's grave. Tony clenched his teeth over the cloth-covered wrench he held in his mouth and dug the knife into his thigh, dragging it along the path JARVIS had shown him and that he'd marked with a grease pencil.

He'd found a doctor's office -- if you could call it that, what the hell was up with District Six anyway, they were practically one step away from hacksaws and cheap hooch as anaesthetic -- and managed to find some stuff to numb the leg, but it sure as hell didn't feel like the stuff he was used to. He wished he could just get himself good and drunk -- nothing worked as a better pain-number than good ol' whiskey -- but steady hands were more important. Still, Tony had felt worse -- well, probably, well actually probably not, but if he didn't do this then he sure would soon -- and he cursed under his breath and did calculus in his head while he eased the tip of his liberated forceps into the gash.

Blood should not be so slippery, Tony thought. That just didn't seem fair. Not when it dried sticky, it really should make up its mind. If JARVIS had given him the wrong place, Tony was really going to let him have it as he slowly bled to death, that was for sure -- but then no, there! The forceps hit solid metal, and Tony pulled out the sliver of vibranium from its subcutaneous hiding place.

"Pops, you were one paranoid son of a bitch," Tony said so only Jarvis could hear him. "Thanks for that, you bastard."

"Sir, you must close the wound now or the possible consequences will be dire," Jarvis said, ever the ray of positivity. "I will direct you how best to proceed."

"Thanks," Tony said, and this time he meant it. "Maybe I should've taken up sewing like that one therapist, what's his name, wanted me to."

"I believe Doctor Samson suggested you take up knitting, as it's at once productive, focusing and calming, with the added benefit of resulting in fewer rogue AIs or mad cleaning bots," Jarvis said. "Of course, knowing you, that would likely result in a robot manufactured entirely of yarn. Steady hands, sir."

"Yeah. Right. Of course." Tony swallowed, placed the metal on a tray, and dunked his hands into the near-boiling water to wash off the blood from when the forceps slid in his grasp.

Once he had the reactor done, Tony could start on the rest. Then Fury could do whatever the hell he wanted, fly in his rescue crew and grab all the good, selfless little heroes, and it wouldn't matter because Tony would have gotten himself out. Let them wonder what he was building; let the Gamemakers argue whether or not to stop him. Tony knew they wouldn't; it would be too interesting, too tempting for the audience, to shut him down. As long as he kept the different parts around the city, that meant he would be moving around and putting himself in danger; hopefully that would be enough.

"Look, I know we've never gotten this to work before," Tony said to Jarvis, sliding the needle into his skin and pulling the thread through. It hurt less than he'd expected it to, all things considered. "I just never had the right motivation, that's all."

"Of course, sir."

Finally, Tony finished stitching up the gash, and then he allowed himself a generous swig of the terrible, terrible brandy that apparently went for an astonishing price here in the slums of District Six. You'd think they'd drop the prices to keep people from sticking to their moonshine and rain-gutter hooch, but then again, that's why they weren't Tony Stark. "Jarvis," he said, feeling the burn of the alcohol against his throat. "When was the last time you slept?"

"I've been taking stimulants, sir. I wouldn't worry."

"Uh-huh. Pretend I just said that, now what would you tell me to do?" Tony waited for the answer -- a conspicuous silence -- and nodded. "Yeah, I thought so. Look, I'm going to pass out now, so you should, too. Set up a proximity alarm or something, get it to wake you if anyone comes within that radius, but other than that, I want you to rest. You're no good to me if you have a heart attack from exhaustion."

"Your concern is touching, sir," Jarvis said, but he looked the same today as he did in Tony's memories from childhood, and that meant if Tony didn't order him to sleep he really was a complete jackass. "I will have the system alert me if any of the other tributes come within a three-block radius."

"Thanks." Tony took another swig of the stuff -- not even that strong, and tasted awful, besides -- and leaned back against the wall. He should probably find a bed somewhere, but Tony had slept sitting up in his lab countless times, and it actually comforted him more to do that here rather than crashing in some stranger's abandoned bedroom, especially someone who for all he knew could be executed by now. He made sure to move back out of the camera's blind spot first -- no sense in them sending mutts or something after him because they couldn't see him for too long -- and slumped against a crate of painkillers.

Before he drifted off to sleep, Tony blinked and turned his head. "Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir."

"I knew you weren't asleep, you liar. After this I really want you to rest or I'm going to force you to use all your saved vacation days at once when I get back. How are the others?"

"Banner and Rogers appear to have teamed up. They are safe for the moment; no other tributes have ventured too close to their location, and the building where they are hiding appears to have been a restaurant, so I assume they have adequate food."

"Good," Tony said. "If they munch it, that's more pressure on me to be interesting and way less time to be secretive and mysterious. G'night, Jarvis."

"Good night, sir."

 

It probably said something about District Twelve that recovering from a gut-splitting stab wound in an underground train route, lying on gravel with Sam's jacket spread over it, was more relaxing and less traumatizing than any of the healing houses back home. No sickly-sweet smell of infection, badly masked by the herbs Mrs. Everdeen's little girl hung over the doors to try to keep things at least seeming fresh; no cries of pain or wails of mourning from others stuck in there with her. The healing room was small; they only had the one healer, Mrs. Everdeen, at least for those unlucky enough to live in the Seam. Jean had heard of a fancy doctor over in the merchant's quarters, but Jean didn't even want to know how much work she'd have to do to afford a visit there, and she'd heard he didn't make house calls anyhow.

That terrifying blue stuff in the sponsor syringe had done its work, and a good thing, too. Jean and Annie used to go herb-picking for Mrs. Everdeen -- she never asked where they got them or what they had to do to get them, and she couldn't afford to give them any money, but her daughter always managed to come up with squirrels to trade and Jean likewise never asked where she got those -- and Jean knew what to look for to combat blood poisoning. She remembered the one time a boy had gotten whipped too hard and the sickness set in, burning fire all down his back, and Jean spent days hunting around the woods for the scarlet lobelia flowers, white-belled lily of the valley, and pointed green chickweed leaves.

If this was a forest Arena, Jean wouldn't have had to beg the sponsors for medicine, and maybe her ingenuity could've racked up a few more dollars, who knows. Still, no point crying about it, and whether by her own hand or not, she'd managed to come back from the dead. Not too many tributes could say that.

And she had Sam, big and quiet, but Jean couldn't tell if he was naturally that way or if that's just the sort of thing that happened when you spent years talking to nobody but a bird. He was a good guy, anyway, and she wondered if they'd recruited him for their little hero adventure but had no idea how to ask without tipping off the audience or the Gamemakers. Jean was smart, especially for District Twelve with its 'can you count to one hundred and add double-digit numbers without using your fingers, good enough' education, but not smart enough to devise some kind of one-sided verbal code that Sam and no one else could decipher.

Still. Jean actually had no way of knowing how long they'd been down there; the cannons and the anthem and all that were supposed to reach everywhere, but apparently they hadn't counted on anyone running deep underground and hiding in tunnels, so go Sam. That might not actually be a good thing, if Fury wanted to do his whole rescue plan and she was holed up in the subway, but Jean told herself that he would find a way to get her out if everything was going down.

Sam went up every once in a while when they got hungry and managed to grab some canned goods or slowly-softening fruit -- not a problem for either of them, though the Capitolians watching probably nearly vomited at the sight -- but he never actually managed to get aboveground during the anthem or the list of the fallen. Oh well.

He left one of his swords with Jean whenever he went up, though Jean wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to do with it. Enough time had passed that she felt a lot better, stronger and less inclined to pass out if she tried standing up too quickly, but she still couldn't run, and if anyone came down and challenged her she may as well just use the sword to fall on it herself and save them all the trouble. As it stood, Jean kept the weapon across her lap and let its presence act as a comfort, like the world's most twisted security blanket.

Jean dozed until she heard the sounds of Sam's return, echoing down the tunnel. Except no. No, Sam didn't sound like that, Sam was quiet and careful, not wanting to attract noise; whoever was coming was running full-tilt and possibly scrambling up the sides of the tunnel at the same time from going too fast. Jean's breath caught, and she pressed herself back against the wall. She could try to stand and heave herself over the platform and up into the main part of the station, but she'd never manage it; the reason why Sam left her down here was because if she needed to run, the tunnel was longer and had no walls or dead ends. They hadn't expected anyone to try coming through the actual tunnel.

Then again, people didn't usually howl, either, the sound bouncing off the walls of the tunnel and sounding like something out of a horror film. At least not sane ones, and Jean might have gotten sick of His Royal Highness Loki really fast, but she didn't think even he was the kind to imitate the coyotes who sometimes tracked the district border fence. The sounds grew closer, and Jean pressed a hand to the stitches in her stomach. Great. Just great. She was about to become lunch for some Arena-crazed asshole who'd lost his mind and thought he'd become a mutt --

-- or wait. Jean bit back a curse, and now she knew what was coming for her, and why. She and Sam had stayed down in the tunnels too long, and the Gamemakers had sent one of their muttations after them, either to kill them or let them know it was time to go up to the surface and join their friends. Whether they'd purposely waited until Sam left Jean alone or that was just a happy accident Jean didn't know, but either way, this really, really sucked.

Not that she didn't know that, having been sliced nearly in half and known what it felt like to feel her own insides from the outside, but the last while had been almost nice, in a way. Sam was good company, and she hadn't had to listen to Effie Trinket or any of the other Capitol idiots ramble about how this was such a great opportunity for her. Jean had let herself do what she'd seen countless other tributes do in years past: focus too much on the moment and not the part where everything around her was designed specifically to kill her.

She shifted the sword, holding it in a two-handed grip. The howls and yelps came closer, as far as she could tell with everything ricocheting like that, but it only sounded like one. Why bother with more, really, when one would do the job. Jean started to pull herself to her feet, then changed her mind. She had one chance, and the size of it was about the same as the piece of cheese she had once stolen from a shop so Annie would have something for her birthday, but still. Better than nothing. Instead of standing, Jean braced herself as firmly as she could against the wall and pulled her legs up, digging her boots against the subway rail to keep them steady. She balanced the hilt of the sword against the ground and held it steady with her knees and both hands.

Closer, closer, and the hair on her arms rose. Jean never liked coyotes even when she was dubiously safe inside her family's shack in Twelve, with the walls and the mines and the fence between them; the calls would pierce through sleep and enter her dreams, where she was much less protected and unable to fight. Jean's breath rasped in her chest, sounding unnaturally loud in the dark tunnel, and when she shifted her foot, the rattle of gravel seemed like a thunderous rockslide.

One of the tunnel lights, maybe a hundred feet away, flickered on, and Jean hissed. Of course. If she'd needed any more proof that this wasn't an accident, this definitely took the cake. Even if they had infrared cameras or something like that, it wouldn't be dramatic enough to see her get torn to pieces in washed out hues of green, grey and black. Blood just wasn't blood unless it was scarlet, even if Jean privately thought she'd spilled enough for their entertainment already.

And then, finally and too soon all at once, there it was, a big hulking thing that looked like somebody took a bear and a dog and a wolf and rolled them all together, smashing things together and taking out extra body parts until they were left with something muscled, ugly, and terrifying. It barrelled toward her and stopped just inside the circle of light, the shadows starting about twenty feet away from Jean's boots.

They stared at each other, and Jean hadn't had a lot of school or done much reading about wild animals, and she couldn't remember if eye contact was a good or a bad thing with wild dogs, whether it established dominance and made them respect you, or if it made them enraged or what. It probably didn't count if they were genetically engineered anyway with weird, round eyes that took Jean a good ten seconds to realize looked weird because they had too much whites, like a human's.

Jean had just enough time to clue in that if she could see the eyes this thing was way too close before it lunged. Plan or no, Jean screamed as it came for her, a skull bigger than hers and teeth the length of her thumb, its breath heavy and panting, and she wondered whether it would go for her throat, tear out the jugular or snap her neck, if she'd die fast and relatively painlessly, or if it would just dart in and keep biting bits of her of while she screamed and took hours to die before Sam came back and cut her head off to spare her.

When it came for her, Jean gathered all her strength and kept the sword steady, the shining blade hidden between her knees; at the last second she forced herself, arms trembling, to shove the weapon upward, and it caught the mutt right in the chest. It let out a piercing, horrible howl that went through her like the worst scraping of fingernails on a blackboard, like the quiet wail of a newborn baby left out in the cold that everyone pretended not to hear. Blood gushed out from the wound, hot and thick, spraying out over Jean's hands and nearly burning her forearms.

Whoever built the thing hadn't skimped on the muscles, and Jean's whole body shuddered from the force of it. She took a second to thank her past self for bracing the sword against the ground and not her stomach before the whole thing collapsed on top of her. The mutt's jaws landed against her shoulder, and Jean screamed again before realizing that it was nothing but gravity, that the mutt's muzzle was slack, its tongue lolling wet against her neck.

"Don't let me be crushed to death," Jean said out loud, mostly testing whether she had enough air in her lungs to do that. "That would so not be cool."

The mutt was heavy, but Jean had once carried a whole deer from the middle of the woods right out to the edge of the fence before finding a place to hang it up safe from predators, and it wasn't much worse than this. At least its weight hadn't pulled at her stitches, and after some painful wriggling she managed to shift herself so that she could breathe without much trouble.

Jean lay there, the gravel from the tracks poking into her back, as first pins and needles and then total numbness crept into her limbs. By the time Sam's cautious footfalls sounded on the platform above her, Jean was about ready to start hitting her head off the ground until she passed out just so she wouldn't have to deal with any of this.

"Jean, are you all right?" Sam called out, and his footsteps quickened. "There's -- what's the light doing on? And do I smell blood?"

"I'm fine," Jean replied, only a little bit strangled. "Just slowly being crushed to death by a dead mutt. No big deal."

"What?" Sam scrambled over the side, finally coming around into Jean's field of vision. His eyes widened, and he bent to heave and push the mutt off of her and onto the tracks.

Jean groaned, but she couldn't feel any of her body parts, and Sam had to drag her up into a seated position. "Thanks," she said shakily. Now that the thing was finally off her, everything slammed into her all at once, and she started to laugh, horrible and hysterical and tearing through her chest. "This is insane. You know this is insane, right?"

"Yeah, I got that memo," Sam said. "Well, I was going to tell you I found some canned pasta, but I think your day has mine beat."

Jean kept laughing, pressing her hands to her eyes before she remembered they were covered in the mutt's blood. "Oh, gross," she said, hiccupping and gasping. "This is disgusting. I hate my life."

"Well, there is a bright spot," Sam said, and Jean wiped her hands on her thighs and gave him a dark look. "How do you feel about mutt steaks, courtesy of the Capitol?"

"Can you eat mutt?" Jean asked dubiously, though she'd eaten rat and dog and a stew made from what was quite possibly a homeless guy who'd annoyed Greasy Sae by freezing to death outside her back door and making it impossible for her to get into the shop in the morning. Sae was probably kidding about that last one. Probably. Either way, at least this was guaranteed fresh.

"We can try," Sam said, and he actually grinned at her, the first expression besides a serious frown she'd seen on him since this all started. "I think I've got some tinder in here somewhere."

"We are sick," Jean said, and couldn't help but grin back.

"We're opportunists," Sam corrected her. "Do you want to light, or carve?"

Jean looked at the corpse, and sue her if she shuddered. "I'll make the fire, you do the chopping."

"Here, I'll take it out of the way," Sam said, and he dragged the body into the shadows where Jean wouldn't have to watch.

Jean hoped Fury didn't mind his heroes being more than a little weird.

 

"Actually, it's not bad," Jean said, chewing thoughtfully. She'd never eaten meat medium-rare before, or even meat that hadn't been put into a stew or soup with vegetables to hide how thin and stringy it was. She could get used to this. "A little bit tough, but I've definitely had worse."

"It's too bad I don't have any apples," Sam said. "A couple of apples, baked and glazed, you'd have a right good dish, I think."

Jean grinned at him. "Maybe we can go looking a little later. Me, I think I'd get some root vegetables, cook it in some gravy. Some good seed bread like they make in your district, not the stupid fluffy Capitol kind."

"I like the way you think," Sam said, and they clinked their canteens of stale water together.

 

They couldn't keep this up much longer. Clint and Nat had been tasked with keeping the Pack off-guard, for making sure they found as few of Fury's recruits as possible except in situations that the pair of them could control and manipulate to their advantage. Give Rogers a few more days to get really attached to the girl he was with and they could force a confrontation where he could come out looking like a hero and not a murderer, but in the meantime, all the meat needed time to settle and get their heads in the game. That meant no killing.

Not usually a problem -- the first week or so was always just the Pack running around and pretending to have buckets of fun, killing maybe once every day or two -- except that this time the numbers of accepted kills were way down. Clint wouldn't ever question Fury -- well, that's a lie, he would more than Nat, who would probably have a heart attack first, but Clint didn't have quite the same blind faith that she did -- and if the big man wanted his group of heroes, well, Clint wasn't going to complain. Not when it meant he got to walk out of this one -- that Nat would get to walk out -- after years of thinking the opposite. Still, Fury sure knew how to push a guy's ability and trust to the limit.

But day three without a kill, and Clint didn't know how much more distraction he could provide before people started getting antsy. Already the sponsor gifts had stopped, and that was the biggest sign they were going to get before the Gamemakers set something on fire or dropped acid rain on them. They'd played truth or dare, they'd played 'I never' with a bottle of sparkly champagne not worth the cost some sponsor forked over for it, they'd tested each other's skills and patience to the near breaking point. Clint had led them out hunting, managing to 'miss' every single trail that would lead them to one of the tributes Fury wanted them to save.

Their best bet, like it or not, was the pair from Seven. They wouldn't last forever, and while Clint sure as hell didn't want to kill the twelve-year-old, it was better him or Thor than the fucked-up Nine swordsman or Fury's failed-in-Clint's-opinion exercise in eternal optimism, Loki from Twelve. The other guy, Hank, well, sorry buddy, but he wasn't part of Clint's protection detail and no hard feelings, but Clint had a job to do. He was big enough, strong enough, that killing him should at least sate the audience for a little while.

Sometimes Clint wondered what it was like to live in the outlying districts and not have those kind of thoughts trained into him, not to have been raised to watch the Games and write essays on who that year he would kill in what order and why. But those thoughts never lasted too long, since before Fury and the Centre was before Nat, and before Nat nothing mattered.

At least they got to play their closeness up for the cameras -- it kept Thor and Four nervous and it titillated the audience -- even if they had to make sure to keep their gazes sharp, like they were friends who couldn't wait to tear each other's hearts out. It was what everyone thought the Careers were like, anyway, so it wouldn't ruin any bubbles.

Well, one big one, but that wasn't until later.

"I thought you were supposed to be good at tracking," snapped Four. She was getting more antsy than the rest of them, probably because Four was never quite as beloved as One or Two and her partner was already dead from stupidity. She was gorgeous, sure, and had the whole cat thing going for her so they could expect some prowling, but that didn't mean she could just walk around. When the Alliance split, she would be one of the ones on her own, and that meant she had to make her mark now.

"I am," Clint said, laconic, because that was his shtick. Yeah, he was in the Arena, yeah, his chances of survival were like four percent, and no, he did not give two shits. "This isn't exactly the woods you know, or following footprints in the sand."

"Ha, ha."

"And for the record," Clint turned and gave her a triumphant look behind his sunglasses. "We're close."

"Are we?" She straightened, eyes narrowing, and raised her head almost to sniff at the air. Affectation, but a good one; it made her look predatory and terrifying. "You're not bullshitting me?"

"Take two more steps and you'll find out," Nat said, inviting, and Clint loved her, he really did.

Four was not an idiot, even if she wasn't one of them, and she stopped dead in her tracks. Clint waited for her to get it, and when she did her eyes widened. The wire that somebody had stretched out was right about level with the bridge of her nose. Those pretty contacts she wore wouldn't be much good if her eyeballs were bleeding out.

She clucked her tongue in distaste. "Anyone wasting their time on traps like these isn't going to be worth ours," Four said, irritation thick in her voice. "We should just find them, drag them out, and punish them for the inconvenience."

Nat caught Clint's gaze behind Four's head and rolled her eyes. Both of them knew who had made those traps -- Clint would bet his life on it, and he was about to bet Four's, just not the way she thought he might -- and neither of them were going to go charging in until they were absolutely ready. "Then let me get him," Nat said, bored, and twirled one of her knives around her finger. "I'm the fastest."

"Like hell you are." Four gave her a dirty look. "You'll wait your damn turn, is what you're going to do."

Nat got all up in her space, and they scowled at each other, prowling in a slow circle with their hands on their weapons, and Clint admired the performance from both of them until Nat finally broke the eye contact, shrugged, and stepped back. "Fine, but hurry. Don't take all the fun for yourself."

"Depends on my mood," Four called over her shoulder, and stuck her sai in her belt, instead pulling on the metal claws that fit over her fingers.

"That was unkind," Thor said once she'd gone. "You know very well what's about to happen."

"I didn't see you stopping her either," Clint drawled, and Thor gave him a small, wicked smile. Yeah, the big guy wasn't all fun and FOR THE GLORY OF THE CAPITOL, I THANK YOU FOR THE OFFERING OF YOUR SOUL either. He knew how to play, and no matter how much he drummed up the honour thing, he wasn't about to save somebody from diving into a suicide leap.

Thor shrugged, his muscles rippling. "She would not have listened. And her constant antagonism was tiresome."

"The Fours just don't get how the game is played, do they," Clint lamented, shaking his head.

Nat stretched out on the ground and pulled out a whetstone to sharpen her knives, which she did more than any weapons master could tell her was necessary, but they didn't have to keep the audience interested. "You know that's your brother making these traps, right?"

Thor's expression darkened. "I do."

"Not gonna go after him?"

He shook his head, and his fingers tightened on the handle of his hammer. "Not yet. It is not time."

"Should we start the countdown?" Nat asked, trimming a loose piece of hair with her knife.

"Give her a second, be nice." Clint checked his watch. "Actually, no, start now."

Nat sheathed her knife. "From what, ten?"

"No." Thor drummed his fingers against his arm. "I know my brother. He'll take his time. Make it sixty."

They got to three when the cannon sounded, and the skin around Thor's eyes tightened. "As I said," he said, and turned his back, his shoulder muscles bare since Loki had taken his cape to make that weird-ass symbol thing. All a little too on the nose for Clint, but whatever got your juices flowing.

"That's weird," Nat said, standing up and shading her eyes with her hand. "The hovercraft hasn't come yet."

Thor let out a long breath, and his posture, already ratcheted up as tight as Clint thought was possible, stiffened even further. "They can't collect the corpse if it's being interfered with."

Clint whistled, low and impressed. Nat was crazy -- he loved her, but yeah, seriously crazy -- but it looked like Loki had the market cornered on this one. "What do you think he's doing?"

"I cannot say."

"Maybe's fucking her."

"No!" Thor rounded on Nat, who only quirked an eyebrow, unimpressed by the sheer bulk as he towered over her. "No, it is not so."

"What, not into that?"

"He is not." Thor collected himself. "Sexual pursuits before or during the Games are a waste of time for an Odinson, and he is young, besides."

"Well, I hate to say it, but having some old-fashioned fun with the corpse is probably the least disturbing thing he's doing," Nat pointed out, and Thor grimaced.

And to think, Fury wanted this one on his team. Clint loved his boss, but sometimes he thought him a little nuts.

 

Ororo had been lucky so far. She'd gotten away from the Cornucopia fast -- she hadn't tried to follow Sam, even though she liked him, because Ororo was smart and practical and she knew that you didn't pair up with the people you liked, not in a game like this, not when it meant one of them would only have to kill each other later -- and she'd even managed to snatch a pack without getting stabbed. The only weapon she had was a small hunting knife that had been in the pocket of her pack, but honestly, Ororo knew that if she was close enough to another tribute to use a weapon, she already had bigger problems to worry about.

Right now, Ororo's biggest problem was the gnawing in her stomach. Ororo was used to hunger, and not just the everyday pit in her stomach from never, ever having enough to eat, either; she hadn't had anything to eat in the days she'd spent trapped under that building, and she still remembered having time to feel the ever-growing twisting in her gut even as she worried about not suffocating or drowning or bleeding to death.

Ororo, like anyone in District Eleven, knew how to function on an empty stomach, but that was working in the orchards, picking fruit or weeding, not running and hiding and trying not to die. She needed to eat something. Like it or not, she had to find the Careers, because wherever they were, that's where the food was. At least she'd found enough water that she wasn't dehydrated; she'd done that before, too, one of the days when she'd annoyed the overseer and he'd decided she didn't deserve her morning's ration. She'd worked in the hot sun, dizzy and swaying until she actually fell out of the tree and landed, stunned, on her back in the dirt. The man who'd come to help her had dribbled water into her mouth while pretending to check her for injuries, and that had gotten her through the rest of the afternoon with nothing more than a wooly brain and a pounding headache.

Food, food. Ororo wasn't used to cities, not like this, no green things anyway, not even any weeds -- nowhere for them to blow from, she figured -- and she knew the Capitol had parks, big patches of green with tiny, contained woods and artificial lakes, she'd seen them, but wherever this was had nothing but grey and stone everywhere. Ororo had to think. She had to be clever.

She kept to the roofs, creeping across the tiles and shinnying down drainpipes whenever she needed to make it to the ground, but that wasn't often with the buildings as crammed together as they were. She'd slept inside the highest windows she could, and all in all hadn't had to make landfall more than a few times. She watched for the parade of the fallen every night from the rooftops, leaning against chimneys. The second night had been freezing cold, frost forming on the windows even as she watched, but she found an apartment with a bed and rolled herself up in all the blankets she could find until the morning sun burned off the last of the ice.

The worst part was that it had been the two days since the last cannon fired. That meant everyone was playing it safe and hiding -- and this Arena was at least good for that, even if it meant most of them were going to starve to death before anything else -- but the audience would be getting bored soon. One year, Ororo remembered, they'd added an extra rule, that if at least one person didn't die every three days, they'd send down a rain of fire and kill everyone. That year had been fast and brutal, the winner an outlier just because the Careers had been so frantic to kill everyone that they'd missed one in the middle.

When a cannon finally fired at midday, Ororo let out a sigh of relief so hard it nearly knocked her over. She got through the thought that hopefully it was a messy one to keep them interested before it hit her what a horrible thing that was to think, and then Ororo was on her knees, retching and dry-heaving onto the roof. The Games changed the tributes, turned them into monsters even before they killed anyone, and the longer a tribute lived the less chance they had to come out human. Ororo knew that; she'd seen the Games before. But just like the Reaping, she'd always thought that happened to other people, not her.

She swiped at her eyes, wiped her mouth on her jacket sleeve, and headed off again.

Just after sunset, Ororo caught the smell of food; not just any food, but meat, cooking on the stove, and her stomach rumbled and turned over, growling into the silence even as Ororo clutched at her midsection and tried begging it to hush. Being skewered because her stomach wouldn't shut up would just be too ironic for her, though they'd probably love to watch that. She stayed crouched until it stopped, and only crept forward a few feet at a time.

Ororo followed the smell as best she could through the streets, tracking it to a large garage. No kitchen that she could see, and Ororo frowned in confusion until she caught the orange glow and heard the crackling of fire, and saw that someone had made a crude fire underneath a mid-sized barrel. One of the Careers, it had to be; where else could they get enough meat to need a pot that big? Ororo glanced around -- a trick, of course, it likely was if it was unguarded, but the pangs in her stomach drove her forward.

No booby traps, but there was a note, printed carefully on white paper and propped up against the side of the barrel. "PROPERTY OF LOKI ODINSON," it said, and Ororo sounded out the words slowly. She'd learned to read like most of the children her age, on her own time and taught by others who didn't much know their letters themselves. "DO NOT TOUCH."

Loki Odinson, the boy from Twelve, and he'd put a 'keep out' sign on his food. Ororo rolled her eyes so hard it actually made her head ache. Well, maybe he'd rigged the pot to explode, maybe he would leap out of nowhere and skewer her as soon as she touched it, but this was the best chance she had. She could scoop up the broth and put it in her thermos and that would keep longer than the meat itself.

Ororo lifted the lid and set it on the ground. The contents were heated to a rolling boil, and the smell was intoxicating. Pork, maybe, even though Ororo had only had that once, and nowhere near enough to make a stew this big. Still, boiling meant she couldn't just dip her hand in it, and she reached down for the enormous ladle, nearly the length of her arm, that Loki had left balanced on a brick.

She stirred the mixture, searching for a bit of meat to take and eat now before stowing the broth, and finally the ladle connected with something solid. Ororo grinned, looked side to side one more time, then scooped it up --

-- and screamed, flinging the remains of a human hand away from her and scrambling backwards until she fell, hard, against the pavement. She screamed and vomited all over again, strings of bile and spit hanging from her mouth, and half the Arena must be able to hear her but she couldn't stop. The smell -- not pork, oh god, not pork at all -- curled in her nose, and Ororo knew it didn't matter how hungry she was. She'd never, ever be able to eat meat again.

"I told you so," said a voice, low and silky and chiding, and Loki from Twelve uncurled from his perch in the rafters and dropped to the floor. "That is a problem with the world, isn't it? Nobody does as they're told."

Ororo should run but she couldn't, couldn't even move, and Loki might as well kill her now and add her to the soup. She sobbed and pressed her hands over her mouth. "You're eating the tributes?" she choked out. She thought that was forbidden.

"Goodness, no," said Loki, rearing back. "What kind of barbarians do they raise in your district, anyway? I'm not eating her. I'm making glue."

"You're --" Ororo gaped at him, and she'd seen crazy people before, watched them on television and seen them lose it in the field and run at the Peacekeepers keeping guard over the best fruit, but she'd never been this close. Never been so certain that the person in her view was undeniably evil.

"Indeed. Bone and connective tissue, you know," Loki said, sounding pleased with himself. "It has to boil for a while in order to set, though, and I need to add a few other things to get it to really stick. It's a tiresome process."

Ororo couldn't stop sobbing, but she managed to get herself on her feet. Loki made no move after her, only watched her with amused, slitted eyes as she backed away.

"I'll count to five, shall I?" Loki called out, but Ororo ran before he had the chance to start.

Chapter 11: Bored

Summary:

"All right, I get it. No more hiding. You want me to go out and play, fine, I'll go out and play."

Tired of waiting for the tributes to do something entertaining, the Gamemakers make their move. Meanwhile, Loki makes his.

Loki turned his face away from the cameras, tilting the angle of his head into the blind spot he'd located earlier, and allowed himself the luxury of gagging. The smell of flesh had long burnt itself into his nostrils, filling every inch of his nose and lungs until nothing else remained; Loki imagined he could start an electrical fire and not even smell the stinging stench of ozone. In all likelihood he would not be able to eat meat for some time.

Not that it mattered. A victor could command any kind of menu or cuisine he liked; if Loki so chose, he need never eat any kind of meat ever again, though of course he did not think it was so dire.

Having gotten his revulsion under control, Loki arranged his features back into his chosen twisted smile as he turned back into the range of the cameras and dragged the scoop across the bubbling vat, sifting off the fat and transferring it to the pans on the floor. This would not win him any love from District Four, and likely wouldn't result in any gifts from his home districts either, but the Capitol loved it when things got twisted, and that was who Loki was targeting. The ones who clapped their hands when the first odds were posted, who made scoreboards and brackets and laid money not just on the victor but which tributes would die in which day spreads, how many deaths by violence, how many by starvation. They would appreciate his show.

Not for the first time, as Loki ladled out the fat and spread it smooth in the pans, Loki felt a stab of envy for his brother and the other traditional Careers. If Loki had been allowed to stay -- if they had not all been fools, if Thor had not been so damned good at playing anyone, if Father had not failed him, if Mother had not left, if, if, if -- then Loki could have played the game he was best at, trained killer with a sadistic streak, and not needed to push it this far. Loki could, of course, sell anything, and if Loki Odinson, traitor, exile, triumphant returnee and absolute madman was what he needed then he would do it, but how much easier would it be if all he had to do was frolic through the city making songs about playtime.

Thor, the golden tribute from District Two, the perfect son from a family of heralded victors that went back three generations, had advantages that not even the other Careers could boast. No one would go so far as to call him a shoo-in -- too much emphasis on foregone conclusions and the audience lost interest -- but Loki was no fool, and he knew his brother to be the favourite of the Capitol by far.

Ah well. Loki knew his job, and it was simple. Thor had one weakness, and Loki planned to exploit it with as much skill and precision as he had sliced out the connective tissue from the Four girl's arm.

All Loki had to do was make Thor look boring.

Thor was his father's son; blond, gorgeous, perfectly built, honourable, and utterly by the book. In an off year, particularly following a run of nonstandard victories or ones by outlying districts, this would have been comforting for both the Capitol audiences and those who ruled them. Look, a Career who plays and wins by following the rules. See, the system is in place for a reason. The system works. In a political climate where revolution bubbled under the surface, where a fifteen-year-old boy could shout for a district to kneel and have them obey him, that would be reassuring to those in power and threatening to those outside it.

But this year, with its ragtag outliers and charming, tiny children, Thor would soon be forgotten if he did not do something memorable, and the more Loki emphasized that fact -- that yes, he might be insane, his morals even looser than the normal last child standing, but he at least was interesting, he was good television -- the better his chances. Sometimes that meant making traps, even though he could kill much quicker and more effectively with his bare hands.

Sometimes it meant making the remains of a fallen tribute into soap, despite that requiring Loki to reach a point where he actually disturbed himself. That took special effort, but Loki didn't think much of it. Mother would be happy if she knew, that her boy still had some lines left to cross, but of course she would have to be here to see it.

The glue, at least, was not so bad, once Loki had added the other materials he'd gathered to complete the process. He'd crushed up the rest of Four's bones and coated his trip wires in the mixture; completely an affectation, of course, as the wires would slice through flesh and arteries on their own just fine, but the bone and blood and human glue made for an extra touch. If he were watching in another year, Loki would have snorted overkill, but this year he had not much choice.

It would take some time for the fat to cool and harden, and so Loki left it to gel. He climbed up into the rafters, leaning against the roof supports and leaving one leg to dangle, his knives held loosely in his hands. Let the cameras see him, catch the expression of pensive melancholy on his face, and wonder what he was thinking. It would add depth to his character, keep them talking, and unless the Capitol had magical mind-extraction technology in their cameras that no one actually knew about, his thoughts remained safe.

All tributes went through moments of weakness, where the cold nights and long days and the constant threat of death and the pressure to be interesting wormed its way into their psyches. There was no shame in Loki allowing himself to succumb for a few moments here and there when he did not allow it to affect his performance. He rubbed a hand over his bare wrist, the one that had held his candidate bracelet from the training Centre and marked him as a potential volunteer to any who might see it; the bracelet he had discarded when he turned his back on the facility that betrayed him. That bracelet would have been his token, and after his victory, would have been replaced by a tattoo of the same on his wrist so that all would know Loki for the victor that he was. Father had one, and Mother, too.

When Loki won, he would not. He had abandoned District Two for good -- and good riddance, of course, away from Father's posturing and Mother's weakness -- and he would not be accorded that honour no matter how great his victory. He could commission one himself from an artist in the Capitol, but it would be hollow, all but meaningless, an would garner him nothing but scorn from the other Two victors. Hardly any point unless he wished to thumb his nose at them, and Loki did not wish that.

They would understand, when he won. They would understand when he stepped back from Thor's fallen body, that they had all been wrong -- so terribly wrong -- that they had misjudged and put their faith in the wrong son of Odin. Father would see that despite his censure Loki had fought to please him regardless, and while Loki no longer sought Father's opinion nor courted his good will, Father would feel proud that his son had accomplished so much with none of the support and love he had heaped upon Thor.

And Mother -- Mother would see that she, too, had been mistaken.

Loki's lip curled as he thought of his younger self at Mother's knee, learning to read with his cheek against the soft velvet of her dress, her hand resting in his hair. Loki had eschewed touch even as a child, with Mother his only exception; she had not forced her affection on him, but rather allowed him to draw it from her. Loki had spent hours with her, reading and devising tricks, for which she would applaud and praise his cleverness rather than deriding them as useless time-wasters as Father and Thor tended to do.

Loki had striven to please Father because his appreciation and approval was always out of reach, but he only ever wanted to keep making Mother smile. It was a weakness Loki had since excised but not forgotten. He wondered if she was watching the broadcast now, and if so, which of her sons she hoped would walk out alive. A few years back he would have said Thor without hesitation, but now --

Mother had abandoned him, Thor, Father, the whole family and everything they stood for the night she'd left. Loki still recalled her face, wild and undisciplined and nothing like the kind, firm woman who commanded the cameras instead of letting them dictate what they wanted to see from her. She'd held his shoulders, told him she was leaving Father, that he had lost his mind, that he was sending Loki into the residential program to train to be a volunteer like Thor and that she would not lose both her sons to his madness. That Loki could come with her now, leave the Program, leave Father, leave Two, even, hide in the mountains -- she obviously hadn't thought it through, something Loki hadn't even bothered to point out to her -- and be free together.

As if freedom and running were the same thing; as if freedom could be found by abandoning one's family and obligations and heading for the hills. Freedom could not be chased; it must be seized, taken, and twisted to suit one's own purpose. Mother had left without him; Loki had no doubts that she had discovered this particularly painful truth of her own accord by now.

Loki still remembered the knife in his heart as he realized Mother didn't think he could win. She thought him a monster, one of those whom the Arena chewed up and spat out and whom the Gamemakers killed because there would not be enough hope left in him for the audience to be pleased. She thought him the villain, who no matter what the fools in Twelve with their underfed, scrawny heroes thought, never won the Games if the Gamemakers had a better choice.

"The Centre is taking you," Mother had said, brushing his hair out of his eyes and holding his face. "You don't see it, but I do. It's got you deep, and if I don't get you out I'll never get you back. Loki, I love you. Don't let this happen. Don't go into residential. Don't take your first kill."

Loki had looked at her, tall and proud and allowed a sneer of disdain to curl his mouth. Father used to talk about how Mother had gone soft since having Thor -- Loki knew better, having learned to fight at her hand before he entered the Program so he would not be hopelessly behind, but Father's standards, as Loki had learned himself, did not always make sense -- and Loki had used that against her. Called her weak, called her a disgrace to her title as victor, and watched as hurt twisted her face into a mask of pain. She'd considered taking him anyway, Loki had seen, but in the end she hadn't.

Mother had believed in Loki when no one else had bothered; she'd indulged him in his fancies, teaching him to read when Father said he knew enough to get by and that was all that mattered -- look at Thor, Thor didn't waste time sticking his nose in books when he could be training instead and didn't Loki want to be strong like Thor?

The day Mother lost faith in Loki's humanity was the day Loki decided he didn't need it.

He would show her the same as everyone else, assuming she hadn't actually followed through with her ill-conceived idea to flee. He'd heard vague rumours that she'd taken a house in the Village, but that sort of gossip had been a distraction and Loki had done best to shut it down. Either way, Mother would see. She would see that yes, perhaps her son was a madman, perhaps he understood ambition and the true evil inherent in the lie of freedom a little too well to make him a suitable member of polite society, but that he was great, greater than everyone and everything that had tried to drag him down.

Mother was not evil herself, only foolish, and Loki believed she would be proud and chagrined, not that it mattered to him one whit on either score. Father, on the other hand, Loki could never manage to read. Loki no longer grubbed for his approval, and so after, if Father chose to give it, let him choke on it like he would a mouthful of bones and dust. Perhaps then, when Loki flung Father's forgiveness back in his face, he would be able to believe it himself.

No matter. These thoughts did not belong with him here, now; they were the product of the Arena, too much time to think and not enough to do. He usually did a much better job of burying them, of convincing himself of their absence. Loki had some time before the soap cooled and set; he needed to occupy his time lest he sink too far into contemplation and be unable to focus. He'd spent more time alone in District Twelve since leaving home, but he'd taken every moment of his time with training, testing his pain tolerance, the limits of his endurance to exposure, even collecting tracker jackers to inject himself with the venom and take notes on what the hallucinations made him see. Very little time for self-reflection there; Loki needed to take a note from his earlier self and do the same now.

In his survey of the Arena, Loki had found an abandoned warehouse, filled with various building supplies, including numerous old mirrors. Loki enjoyed mirrors; he'd managed to work out several tricks with them as a child, to Thor's undying irritation -- Thor always rushed straight at them, if Loki managed to conceal them well, and once Loki had turned the backyard of their house into a funhouse maze of madness that drove Thor nearly to tears. Perhaps he could create something fun to keep his mind off things.

The reminder of their childhood would no doubt dig Thor deep, which at least ensured that Loki would not be the only one haunted by the cobwebs of the past. That, if nothing else, would brighten Loki's day, since he couldn't kill any other tributes so soon after the death of Four. He hopped down from the rafters, adjusted the 'DO NOT TOUCH' sign on the soap, and gathered his weapons belt tight about his waist.

 

Tony tilted the screen toward him, tracing his finger over the blurry image. The surveillance bot he'd sent out had the simplest mechanisms because he didn't actually need it -- not with Jarvis in his head -- but he had to have something to explain to the people watching why he could see things he shouldn't be able to. It would give him just enough plausibility that they wouldn't look too hard.

"Where is everybody," Tony muttered out loud. "Don't tell me they're hiding from the robot. Does this look like a killer drone to you?" He tapped the screen. "Poor Vision. It's okay, buddy, I love you."

Hopefully the crazy genius, hidden away and talking to his makeshift robots would be enough entertainment while the others were out killing each other, except it had been a couple of days since the last cannon -- the girl from Four -- and even that had been about forty-eight hours since the one before. Not exactly a bloodthirsty bunch, this one, which seemed weird given how many absolute psychos were in their ranks this year.

Fury was taking his sweet time with this 'rescue', and maybe that was it, the Gamemakers who were in on the scheme manipulating things so that the fewest number of people died. Not that it mattered. Tony still wasn't interested. He hadn't gone into the Games to be the entertainment -- that would be the crazy brothers from different districts, weird story there he was sure and if he lived he'd pull up the files and get all the details, or the guy from Nine that Tony really did not want to meet until his plans finished. Or, you know, ever, what were Careers for if not for killing the terrifying guys with swords? Were they sleeping, or what?

The smell of engine oil and squeak of poor treads jarred Tony from his surveillance, and he looked up to see his fetch-and-carry bot dragging a bag of groceries. "Hey Baconator," Tony said out loud. "Bring Daddy the bacon. Whatcha got for me?"

Yeah, not the best name or pun, but this was the Arena. Sue him if his jokes weren't quite up to snuff. Up to scratch? Whatever.

He'd programmed Baconator with the basic parameters to avoid foods that would poison him or kill him with microbes, and for a rush job it wasn't actually too bad. Tony discarded one apple for being too soft and smelling a little funky, but other than that, the fruit and bread was stale but overall okay. "Good boy," Tony said, patting the bot at the join of his articulated arm.

He missed Dummy and his other bots back home, and Tony found himself having an idiot moment and wondering if they somehow managed to watch him, and if so were they jealous he was building new friends without them. That was just plain stupid; Tony might talk to his bots and they might respond, but he knew better than that. This was just plain old Arena crazy, like the worst days when he'd get in an engineering frenzy and lock himself in his workshop, except that here if he eventually dragged himself outside it wasn't a fridge of slowly rotting food but a city full of people who wanted to kill him.

Dummy and the others might not be watching the Games or even know what they were, but they did know when Tony was gone, and they missed him whether he'd programmed in that subroutine or not. He had the image of Dummy continuing to do maintenance on the workshop, accidentally breaking things and sweeping them back up, and slowly running out of power as the Stark mansion's bills went unpaid and his charging station stopped working. Except that was an even stupider thought than the bots watching the Games, because that wouldn't happen. If Tony didn't come back, the Capitol would commandeer the entire Stark laboratories and all its assets unless Jarvis managed a miracle, and Dummy and all the bots would be tossed in a scrap heap somewhere.

Cheerful. Tony clicked his teeth in annoyance and tore into an apple, annoyed when it didn't crunch like it should. This was ridiculous. Nothing but the Arena in his head, that was all. Of everyone in here, Tony was the best equipped to make it out, and without signing away his soul to Director Fury and his schemes, too.

At least his plans were working well enough. Tony wore the finished chest piece under his shirt, the bulk of it hidden by his jacket as long as he didn't do anything dumb like go running out into a rain storm, and he had one gauntlet complete and the other half-done. Tony had done faster and better work at home, but with all his resources; he fully expected a trophy when he got home. As a matter of fact --

"Jarvis, make a note for me, when I get home I want a trophy. An actual trophy, I don't care where you get it, rob a sports store and pay for engraving, whatever. But I want a trophy for doing the world's trickiest engineering work in the world's stupidest environment, you got that?"

"Of course, sir," Jarvis said, and the Arena was definitely getting to Tony because all he could think was that one day Jarvis would be gone, and since he looked exactly the same in photos with Tony now as he had when Tony was five that day was coming sooner rather than later. Not helpful. So not helpful. Tony gritted his teeth and banished the image to the shame cupboard, the place in his head where he locked away thoughts and memories that made him want to drink until his head exploded.

Tony started to make another smart remark -- the best way to slam the door on the shame cupboard -- when Jarvis sucked in a sharp breath in his ear. Jarvis, by definition, did not gasp. Ever. Tony had dragged himself into Jarvis' office in nothing but scraps of clothes and missing three fingers and the man just stood and offered him his jacket and a bandage while calling for an ambulance at the same time. "What?" Tony barked, nearly forgetting to subvocalize.

"The Gamemakers have triggered a geomagnetic storm," Jarvis said. "I think it's safe to say they have become bored with you and wish to send you a message. The storm will, by my calculations, knock out every bot you have in operation."

Tony's heart jumped on a treadmill and started running at full tilt. "And you?"

"Our connection will also go offline if I do not disconnect. I will sever all connections now, and I suggest you disarm your glasses manually. Wait until the storm has passed before attempting to come back online. I will contact you if I can."

Tony swore. "I could save the bots. I could take them offline. How much time?"

"The storm is building. I estimate three minutes. You cannot take the bots offline, sir, then they would know you have an extra source. It's possible they're suspicious and wish to force your hand. You cannot, cannot allow them to discover what resources you have on hand. The bots are a necessary sacrifice. This link is not."

"All right." Tony pretended to scratch his head, brushing his fingers against the arms of his glasses and shutting down the camera links. His chest squeezed as the various feeds died, leaving him blind and helpless. "You'll come back, won't you Jarvis?"

"I will do my utmost, sir." Jarvis let out another breath loud enough to carry over the speaker. "Sir, in the eventuality that I cannot make it back online --"

"Can it," Tony snapped, and this time he had to fake a sneeze to cover the sound. Subvocalizing was not meant to be done while agitated. "You'll come back. It'll be fine."

"Yes, sir. I'm disconnecting as soon as I finish the backups." A pause, then the smooth professionalism in Jarvis' voice broke, just a little. "Sir, your father would be proud of you."

"Fuck my father!"

"I'm proud of you."

"You're coming back," Tony said, his hands tightening into fists. Calm. Calm. Don't let them get anything from his reaction. "You're coming back, I'm getting out, and we're going out for drinks and I will find you a nonagenarian stripper with the flexibility index of a teenager, do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir. Disconnecting in five. Good luck, Master Tony."

"See you on the other side, Jarvis," Tony said.

Jarvis disconnected with a quiet 'click' that nevertheless jarred Tony straight down to his bones. He swallowed once, twice, three times, but still couldn't work up enough saliva in his mouth to spit.

A matter of minutes until the storm hit and Tony just had to sit there, helpless, unable to do anything to save the bots lest he tip his hand. They weren't his most sophisticated creations by far, the AI not even sufficiently developed past the simple rendering of commands, but they were his, and letting them die felt like leaving a crying puppy out in the rain. Worse, really, because Tony had never really liked dogs after his old man said he couldn't have one and he should build one for himself instead if he wanted one so badly. Tony had abandoned the idea of a robot dog and built Dummy instead, and he'd never looked back.

Lightning flashed overhead, filling the semi-darkened room and leaving imprints on Tony's retinas, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder that rattled the walls. Baconator whirled his treads, agitated, reacting to the new stimulus with unease. "It's okay, buddy," Tony said, and rested his hand on the chassis. He had to use all the strength he possessed not to clench his fingers, not to reach for the 'off' button. He could come up with an excuse, he could. People powered down their electronics during storms all the time.

But not like this, Tony knew. A bot wouldn't be affected by lightning as long as it wasn't connected to a charging station if a bolt hit nearby; there was no reason to shut down a freestanding robot like Baconator for a little lightning. Tony closed his eyes behind his sunglasses, the one luxury still afforded him.

The geomagnetic current would be building now; Tony went to check the HUD in his glasses before he caught himself, grinding his teeth. "Looks like we shouldn't go outside for a little while, huh," he said aloud so the cameras could catch it, forcing unconcern into his voice.

Geomagnetic storms caused radiation sickness, Tony realized, the thought hitting him like one of Six's most prized high speed trains. Not always, but they had done in the past; maybe seventy years back there'd been a bad one that knocked out the communications in half of Panem. The outer districts had done the best, funnily enough, since they were used to living without all that stuff, but the inner districts had been chaos. Worse still was the outbreak of cancers and other health problems that plagued almost a whole generation, but which in the end helped the Capitol's bio labs leap a good hundred years in technology.

No, they wouldn't do that. Not in the Arena. Not when the Capitol would have their favourite and Fury his own hand in the pot. There was no glory in winning the Game only to hack out your lungs and die on a bed covered in lesions, was there? Tony itched to ask Jarvis to monitor the level of radiation forming in the storm, the need so strong in him he felt it like a physical thing, like hunger, like the restless edge when he hadn't gotten laid in way too long, the twitch in his fingers when he went too long without designing something new.

No way to know. They wouldn't be able to give him a fatal dose without hitting everyone else, and if the Capitol learned one thing after the disastrous 70^th that nearly caused an uprising, you didn't just kill everyone in one go by Gamemaker intervention.

A pigeon flew straight into the window, hitting hard enough that it left a red smear of blood across the panes. Tony cursed aloud and jumped back, nearly running into Baconator when the bot pressed up against his legs, whirring his treads in an approximation of fear. "It's okay, buddy, it's just a storm," Tony said, and hated himself, hated his stupid issues and everything else that made him unable to stop thinking of his creations as people.

Lightning flashed again, and this time the hair on Tony's arms stood up and he actually felt a little sick. His chest plate and the prototype reactor would be fine -- should be fine -- but it still nauseated him to know what was coming.

This time it was Vision who hit the window as his systems shorted, ramming again and again against the glass. "Vision, stop," Tony cried out, but the bot couldn't hear or understand, or maybe just couldn't obey regardless, and continued smacking into the wall. Tony swore and grabbed him, holding tight as the robot fought him.

Behind him, Baconator drove in circles, his claw-hand opening and closing on nothing, and that was enough. Tony couldn't save them -- their processes would be shot now, and he'd have to do far more work tinkering to bring them back than the Gamemakers would ever allow him -- but he could at least end their misery. Even without Jarvis' warning he would have known what was happening by now, and that was enough.

Tony dug his fingers into the access panel on Vision's underside. A hack job like this didn't have an easy emergency shutoff -- why bother programming that in -- and so Tony had to find the wires and chips and physically tear them out. Every time a piece left its socket with an audible grind of metal or tear of copper, Tony nearly gagged, but finally Vision lay limp in his hands.

"Okay, buddy, your turn," Tony said to Baconator, and he thought he'd shut his glasses off -- double-checked, quickly, and yes, he had -- but the displays were blurring, dimming, and that didn't make any sense.

He held out a hand but Baconator ran from him, panicked, and rammed straight into the wall, jamming itself into the corner. "Hey, buddy, hey, it's okay," Tony said, coming closer, and Baconator might be losing his processes but he still recognized Tony's voice, and held out his arm, closing the joints over Tony's sleeve. "Yeah, it's okay. Just let me in and I'm gonna fix you right up, okay?"

He had to duck when Baconator took a swing at him with his arm, but finally Tony ducked down, getting an arm under the chassis. Thunder roared in his bones, and Tony groped blindly as lightning struck and the lights in the building sparked and flickered out. The same sawbones process, ripping and tearing, and Baconator whirled his treads helplessly as Tony held him still.

At last Baconator stopped fighting him, his claw-hand still wrapped around Tony's bicep. Tony pulled himself free and curled up in the corner next to the dead bot, pulling off his sunglasses and swiping his arm across his eyes. The cameras would have night vision, giving the folks at home and everyone at the Capitol a good, long look at the crazy genius' breakdown over a couple of robots he'd only known for a few days, but you know what, Tony didn't even care. He only hoped that his other bots, scattered throughout the city, went down quickly.

"All right," Tony said finally, his voice rough and painful in his raw throat. "All right, I get it. No more hiding. You want me to go out and play, fine, I'll go out and play." He choked back the 'you sick bastards' just in time and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

He had his chest plate. He had one gauntlet. That would have to be enough. Tony grabbed his things, shoved them into a bag, and hung his sword at his belt. He didn't look back at the remains of the only two friends he'd ever make in this godforsaken place that he could trust, and strode out into the storm.

 

Jan huddled against a support strut in the parking garage, the concrete cold underneath her, but she didn't dare sit on one of the cars. Daddy always said that when a bad storm came she should stay away from metal, and cars were made of metal so she shouldn't sit on them, right? At least the garage itself had lots of stone instead, but it still made Jan nervous. Especially now that the rain had started, hard and lashing and scary, the kind of rain that might drown you if you held your face up too long.

Worse, she couldn't even sit with Hank. Back home, Jan liked storms, even if all the trees around meant that a bad one usually ended up with something on fire. Daddy kept candles around the house, and flashlights in every room, so if the power went out -- and it usually did in every storm, at least for an hour or so -- they would light the candles and have a party. If they had ice cream or other frozen desserts in the freezer they would sit together and eat everything before it melted, even if it wasn't time for supper or was the middle of the night, and Jan would curl up on Daddy's lap and cuddle him while he worked on new plans for the mill by candlelight.

They didn't have candles, or ice cream, or anywhere comfy, but that didn't mean Hank and Jan couldn't cuddle, and when the first flash of lightning tore the sky, Jan had almost looked forward to it. Except that no, it was wrong, all of it, because Hank was jumpy and cranky and didn't want Jan to touch him, and it didn't make sense.

Even now, as Jan sat with her back to the wall and her hands over her ears, Hank paced up and down the lane, taking long, angry strides and muttering to himself. He'd been like this for days, jumpy and spooked, and whenever Jan even lay a hand on his arm he yanked it away like she'd burned him.

"Hank, come back," Jan pleaded, lowering her hands. "Come sit down."

"Why, so you can push me over the edge?" Hank snapped. "Yeah, no, I don't think so."

"Why would I do that?" Jan demanded, and tears pressed at her eyes but she blinked them back. She wouldn't cry. She was a Van Dyne and she was brave, and she wouldn't let something silly like one of Hank's moods get her upset. He had them, sometimes, when the things he was fiddling with in his workshop didn't work out right, and Daddy always said to leave him alone because he would come out of it sooner or later. Except this wasn't the workshop, this was the Arena, and they had to stay together. They had to. If they stayed together then everyone would see what a good pair they were and they'd be allowed to win together, Jan just knew it.

"Why does anyone do anything?" Hank shot back. "People have done worse, and that's without a nice, pretty crown as a prize if they kill everyone else."

Jan held a hand against her chest. "It's not like that," she told him. "Hank, I love you. Come back."

"You say that," Hank sneered, and Jan gasped as he took the one thing, her most important feeling, and threw it back in her face like garbage. "You're just a kid, what do you know?"

And so much for being brave, because finally Jan burst into tears. They'd been hiding for days, sneaking out to get food and to watch for the anthem and the parade of the fallen at night, and so far none of the Careers had found them but they would sometime. When they did, Hank and Jan had to work together. The Arena was a big, mean place, not shiny or soft like the Capitol, and it took people and changed them, and maybe this was what Daddy meant when he said tributes stopped being people and became something else, except he couldn't mean Hank. He couldn't.

Hank whirled, glaring at Jan, but then his expression crumpled and he ran to her side, falling on his knees and pulling her close. Jan jerked back and cried harder. "Jan, I'm sorry," Hank said, and he held out his hand but didn't try to touch her again. "I really am, I don't know what's happening. It's the Arena, it just, it messes with you, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry."

"I don't care that I'm crying," Jan spat out, her shoulders shaking hard enough that they ached. "I care you think I'd push you off the roof!"

"I don't think that," Hank said, and he shifted, sitting beside her properly and holding out one arm. Jan knew she should stay mad, let him know just how not okay this was, but she found herself curling up against his side anyway, sobbing with relief when he let his arm wrap around her. "I don't. I don't even know why I said it. I just, I keep hearing people. I keep thinking I see the Careers coming, or someone laughing at me. It's just the Arena, it's psyching me out. It's not you, I swear."

"Well, of course it's not me!" Jan pulled back to glare at him. "I'm not stupid!"

Hank laughed, but not the nasty, sliding sound he'd made before, and he kissed her hair. "I know, I'm sorry. That's my fault."

"You're darn right it is," Jan sniffed, but she felt a little better now. "I wouldn't ever kill you."

Hank went quiet, his body very, very still, and Jan wondered what he was thinking. "I know," he said finally.

"But not because I'm weak," Jan said, and this wasn't just for Hank; she knew there were cameras, watching, always watching, and she'd just cried like a baby. That wasn't good. She remembered George, her stylist, telling her not to let them forget she had a sting. "I'll kill anybody else who tries to hurt you. I mean it. I'm small. They'll never see me and then boom, they'll be dead, and you'll be safe."

"Don't be so eager to grow up," Hank said, and Janet felt a flare of anger all over again. Would he never take her seriously? What did she have to do? "It's not like smoking out tracker jackers."

Jan drummed her fingers against her arm. "I'm not going to throw a party," she said, peevish. "I just mean that if I have to, I'll do it. I'll do anything I need to do."

She looked up at Hank, watched his expression harden. "Me too," he said, and Jan knew that was supposed to make her feel better, but for some reason an uneasy chill settled in her chest instead.

Thunder crashed again, and this time Hank was up on his feet, pulling his sword free. "There!" he yelled, pointing across the lot at some shadows on the other side of the half wall. "There, someone's hiding there, don't you see them?"

Jan didn't, but that didn't mean anything. She leapt to her feet as well, holding her blow gun in one hand and quickly slotting her knives between the fingers of the other hand. She'd practiced throwing them that way, tossing them from between two fingers, and she was good now. "Where?" she asked.

"There!" Hank shouted again, and off he ran. He held his sword the wrong way, Jan thought, gripping it like it was an axe, but she guessed it didn't really matter. She followed, hanging back, because if they attacked Hank up close he could fight them off, and then she could get them from behind and they'd never even see her.

Except.

Except, there was no one there. Hank attacked the shadows, screaming and waving his sword, but nothing but a car looked back at him, the headlights shining in the next flash of lightning like a pair of open, surprised eyes. Jan craned her eyes in the darkness, searching, hoping to see what it was Hank fought, but she couldn't see anything. "Hank!" she screamed, terror flooding her, and this was worse than Daddy died, worse than her teacher pulling her aside at school and telling her what happened, because it was here, in front of her, and she couldn't do anything.

Finally Hank stopped and staggered back, chest heaving. "Scared 'em off," he said, panting, and Jan's heart tripped in her chest. "That'll show them. It's okay, Jan, we're safe for a while. They won't come back here again." He looked down at her, his expression fond. "Hey, hey honey, don't cry, it's okay. You're safe with me."

"Don't," Jan said, holding her tiny knife in front of her. Hank's face twisted with suspicion and rage, and Jan forced herself to think. "They might still be here," she said, thinking fast. "We should stay alert, that's all."

"You're right." Hank let his blue-eyed gaze flick over the building, and he was handsome, so handsome, and Jan loved him and he was scaring her to death. "You should sleep first. I'll take watch."

Jan nodded. "Okay," she said, but she curled a hand around her knife and kept one eye open even as she lay down on the ground. This was not how she'd planned it. Not at all. But when they got out of here they would be victors, and they could afford the best doctors in all of Panem. Jan would get Hank a doctor, and they'd be alive and safe and no one would try to kill them and he'd be okay. They both would. She just had to make sure she got them out to get there.

 

Natasha didn't jump when the first crack of thunder split the sky, but only because she was a professional and had done exposure training out in the mountains during a thunderstorm as a kid. That didn't mean she wanted to repeat it now. "We should find shelter," she shouted. No rain yet, but plenty of lightning, and with all the metal she had tucked away on her person, she really didn't want to make herself a giant target.

"Yeah, I don't like this," Clint said as the wind picked up, whipping dust and bits of asphalt at their faces. He raised an arm to ward off a chunk of flying concrete. "This isn't a normal storm. I don't think it's for us, but whoever it is for, we don't want to get caught in it."

"I agree," Thor said, how nice of him, but Nat let it pass. "I know a little something of lightning, and this is not found in nature."

Nat bit off an irritated 'no shit', since she and Clint planned to hold the alliance out for another day or two before breaking it. Not long now, and after that they could round up the strays and start getting them ready, but best to keep Thor on their good side until they killed him.

Shame about Thor; Nat didn't mind him as much as some of the monkeys Two put out, and maybe in another world they could be pals, have coffee sometime, maybe arm wrestle and compare training stories, but not here. She'd tested him as thoroughly as she could over the past few days without tipping him or any of the Gamemakers off, asking him questions and making pointed remarks, but he'd shown himself to be a loyal Capitol dog after all. They couldn't afford that, not now, and at least he'd die knowing he'd done what he came here to do.

Natasha didn't make a habit of crying over things. It sucked, but what could you do. She was far angrier about losing Carol, anyway; Thor hardly signified next to her.

"At least this will drive your brother inside," Clint pointed out. He gave his bow a fond pat as he stowed her on his back -- no sense even trying to shoot an arrow in this gale -- and drew his sword instead. Natasha used to give him hell in training for choosing a katana, mocking him for the long, slender blade instead of the short, heavy falchions she preferred when in close range.

"I doubt it." Thor's expression darkened, and he didn't let go his hammer. His hair whipped around into his eyes, and he grimaced and pushed it back with one broad hand. "This sort of weather is my domain -- I used to love wandering about in storms as a child -- and he will no doubt do so just to spite me."

"I think you think your brother thinks about you more than he does," Clint said, and Nat had to agree with him there. Thor had more than a little bit of an obsession with his brother, and while Nat knew from watching Loki and reading his file that Loki did hate Thor and want to kill him, he did seem to have other things on his mind.

"Nevertheless," Thor said grimly. "We must be cautious. It would not do to let down our guard merely because of some inclement weather."

Well, Nat wasn't going to argue with that one. Clint just rolled his eyes -- tell him to be careful and two seconds later you'd find him hanging by his toes from the rafters just because he liked to screw with people -- and strode on ahead.

Lightning, so bright it lit the entire sky as bright as daytime, and every street light flared up and died, leaving them alone in the dark street. This time Nat did swear. No electricity -- she bet this was meant for Stark, somehow, or maybe Rogers and his band of merry men, safe in hiding the last time Nat had run across them and carefully led Thor in the opposite direction.

As soon as the lights died, the skies tore open and rain dumped down on them. Nat looked up at the clouds, shading her eyes, and gave the closest camera -- on the lamp post to her left -- an unimpressed look. "Thanks, guys," she muttered, and pushed her damp hair out of her eyes.

"I don't like this," Thor said, low and conspiratorial, and Nat wondered if she should stick a knife in his ribs now, end the alliance early and get the hell out of here before the Gamemakers finished whatever it was they were doing. "This city is not built to withstand such rainfall. It will flood before long."

Nat watched the rain sluice off the woefully inadequate gutters of the building across the street, pouring into an open sewer grate. "Yeah," she said. "I'd hate to be in the subway tunnels right about now. Those are gonna flood for sure."

"Well, no matter," Thor said, forcing heartiness into his tone, and Nat was about to respond when Clint screamed.

Not shouted, not yelled, but screamed, full of pain and shock and terror, and Nat had lost sight of him in the wind and rain but now she ran forward, yanking free the sword that she almost never used. Her feet slapped against the soaked concrete, visibility less than two feet ahead, and so she actually ran into him before she saw him.

"Clint!" Nat grabbed him by the shoulders. She never called him anything but 'Barton' or 'Hawkeye' in the Arena but she threw that away now. "Clint, what happened?"

She looked down at her feet, at the river of rain washing over her boots, black rain, thick and swirling, and no, no no no -- Nat turned Clint around in her arms, saw his pale face and the sword sticking out of his stomach. This time it was Nat's turn to scream, and she held Clint with one arm while he clung to her shoulder and blood bubbled out of his mouth.

Behind him stood the goddamned traitor from District Twelve, grinning at Nat with his hair plastered to his face and Clint's blood spattered over his neck. "Greetings," he called to her over the roar of wind and rain. "Would you care to play?"

"Get him," Clint said in her ear, and his hand scrabbled at her arm. "Leave me. Get him, get out. Mission. Don't abort the mission."

"Mission fucking aborted," Nat hissed, and she held him up while brandishing her sword. "You'll pay for that, you twisted motherfucker!" she spat at Loki, who danced out of reach and lowered himself into a bow. "Come here where I can kill you!"

"No, I think not," Loki said, grinning. "I think I will send a dagger into your friend's throat and finish the job. I would have done so the first time, but the wind is so troublesome --"

And this sick bastard had sent Thor soap, homemade soap from a dead tribute's body, delivered with a handwritten card that said 'Compliments of District Four', and now he'd stuck a sword into Clint and was acting like this was all some kind of joke, and Nat was supposed to let Clint go and kill him. She knew it as well as she'd known her own death sentence for almost seventeen years; knew what she had to do like a litany in her head, like programming, but she couldn't. Not Clint.

For the first time in her life, Natasha Romanov froze. Clint sagged against her, his blood running hot down her leg; much more time and this would all be academic because he'd die whether she left him or not. Loki smiled at her, teeth white in his Seam-dark face, and he twirled his other sword in his hand. "Shall we dance?" he asked, and lunged.

Except he didn't make it, because the rain and wind whirled itself together, spinning up and up and up into a tornado of air and water that drove Loki back, back, back, a clear sign as any that he wasn't meant to kill them, not yet, and Fury was a genius. Too many Careers dead too soon meant a boring Game; it made sense for the Gamemakers to stop him now he'd had his fun, and Nat's sob caught in her throat, thankfully torn from her mouth and tossed away, unheard, by the wind.

She didn't waste time. She shoved her sword back at her waist, hooked her arm around the backs of Clint's knees and hefted him, careful not to jar the sword as much as she could. Far more awkward than a fireman's carry but she'd have to pull the weapon free for that, and if she did that Clint would bleed out right there.

"What are you doing?" Clint asked, gasping the words out.

"Saving you," Nat gritted out. "So shut up and don't die on me."

She didn't wait for Thor, didn't wait to see if he managed to find Loki, because she knew how it would play out. They'd let the brothers see each other through the wall of water, but refuse to let them fight, not yet. They'd allow Loki to throw a few taunts out, maybe Thor to plead with him for reason, but then they'd force them apart, saving their confrontation for later after giving the audience a taste of things to come. Nat didn't care, not anymore.

She carried Clint, heavy and awkward, until she came to the first closed-off structure she could, a parking garage, and dragged him under, into a small cave that used to be a maintenance elevator. "Okay, you bastard," Nat hissed. "You're not going to die on me, do you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"You can't tell me what to do," Clint gasped out, and he slapped a blood-soaked hand against her face, cupping her cheek and gripping at her hair.

"I fucking well can!" Nat snapped at him. She shrugged off her bag, digging through it for the first-aid supplies. She found a self-sealing bandage, not much, but it would at least stop the bleeding for now and they could work from there. "I'm pulling the sword free, so bite on your sleeve. Now!"

Clint huffed a laugh, delirious, but he closed his teeth over the fabric of his jacket, and when Nat yanked the weapon free all that escaped him was a muffled yell, blocked by his jacket and the arm he held pressed over his mouth. Nat tore at the ruins of his shirt and pressed the bandage down over the wound, hoping, hoping, that Loki had missed any major organs.

And then, someone shouted on the far side of the garage. Clint giggled, and Nat held her hand down over his mouth, shaking her head. "Typical," Clint whispered when she moved her hand. "The whole Arena, and you found the one garage with somebody already in it."

"Shut up, you loser," Nat hissed at him, and she pushed him down, straddled him with one knee opposite his thighs and elbows braced against the ground, covering his body with hers as best she could. The audience would like that, too, so bonus. "Shut up shut up shut up --"

The voices -- two of them, male and female, and that meant either the pair from Five, Seven, or Rogers and his girl -- started arguing with each other, and finally they died down, moving far enough away that Nat couldn't hear them anymore.

Nat risked a small pocket light, biting back another curse when she saw the extent of Clint's pallor, the slow spread of wine-dark red across the bandage. "How bad is it, doc?" Clint asked in a whisper. "Am I ever gonna play ball again?"

"Oh shut up you asshole," Nat hissed back, pushing back hysteria. They were always meant to die, the two of them, before Fury changed his mind and decided to let them live with the others, but even back then it wasn't supposed to be like this. Not bleeding to death in a parking garage because they'd gotten sloppy, before they'd even accomplished their mission. This wasn't going to happen. She wouldn't let it.

One chance. Nat had one chance, to appeal to Fury, to the Gamemakers, to everyone, and she knew what she had to do. She held Clint's face in her hands and kissed him, angled her head so that the kiss would look deeper than it really was from the nearest camera, and when she pulled back and he goggled at her in horror she held her fingers over his lips. "Don't," she said, because that sounded romantic enough if you didn't know that Nat could no more think of Clint like that than she could kill him, and Clint kept his mouth shut. Good. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going --" Clint tried to sit up, but gasped and lay back down, biting down on his fist to keep from crying out.

"Saving your sorry ass because I love you," Nat snapped, and that, at least, was true, just not the way they'd take it. She slipped out, avoiding any exits near where she'd heard the voices, and went back out into the gale. "I've given you everything!" she shouted at the sky. "Everything you want from me, I've done it. Give me this. Don't take him from me, not after everything I've done." She pushed her hair out of her eyes, held out her hands in open supplication. Let the Gamemakers think she was talking to them about giving them a good show, exactly what the cameras wanted for the highest ratings. Let Fury hear her as his perfect soldier made the only demand she'd ever made in her entire life.

Nat swallowed and played her trump card. "Please," she begged, and she didn't have to try hard for her voice to crack.

She stood there in the howling gale until the silver parachute, weighted to avoid being tossed by the winds, floated down to her. "Thank you," Nat choked out, holding it to her chest like a baby. "Thank you."

She could save him. She could save him and still complete the mission, and that meant that Nat could actually be alive and sane at the end of it. Nat clutched the parachute like the salvation it was and ran back inside. Once she disappeared into the safety of the parking garage, the storm stopped and sunlight streamed through the dark clouds.

"What's that?" Clint asked when she crawled back into their hiding place.

"Your ass, delivered fresh from the Capitol," Nat said, opening the capsule and laying the supplies out on the floor. "Looks like it's saved this time, loser."

"Good," Clint coughed, wiping at his chin. "Does it come with a miniature doctor, because you can't sew worth a damn."

"Shut up," Nat said, and Clint grinned at her with bloodstained teeth.

Notes:

Full disclosure: I'm more upset over killing the bots than I am with most of the dead tributes. What is wrong with me.

Chapter 12: The Push

Summary:

"Of course I'm going to break him. They need to see him break. They'll never accept him as a hero and a leader if they haven't seen him crawl from the lowest place he can possibly fall. Once they see that they'll be no stopping him. Anything he says they'll be falling over themselves to listen to."

All it takes is a nudge. Director Fury, Pawn to D6.

The rain stood between them like a wall of water. Behind it Loki stalked back and forth, a cat eyeing its prey, slashing at the ground with his sword so that sparks danced before being extinguished by the storm.

"Greetings, brother!" Loki shouted above the gale. "How did you find my gifts? I hope you liked them, as I made them especially with you in mind."

Thor forced a growl from his throat, glad for the rain coursing down his face as it mingled with the hot, salty tracks that would otherwise mark him as too weak to survive. "Have you gone mad?" Thor called back. He did not put away his hammer, holding it at his side in a defensive position. "There are lines, brother! Even in the Hunger Games, you have gone too far. The tributes' bodies are not objects for your sport! Have you no respect for their sacrifice?"

"Ever the good little soldier." Loki grinned at him, his face a death's head mask, his dark hair soaked and plastered to his forehead. "Always so willing to pretend you play by the rules. They don't know, do you, how quickly you used to cast them aside when it suited your purpose? The oldest son of Odin, above it all. You play their obedient servant, but I know the truth. I, the mischief-maker, the liesmith, and yet you were always at my side playing tricks with me. The only difference is that your blood acquitted you of every crime for which I stand accused!"

"That is not so!" Thor retorted. "I was punished along with you when our crimes were naught but pranks. It was only later, when you allowed yourself to be taken with obsession, with this sick jealousy, that you alone were singled out."

"Is that so," Loki said, his voce low and dark, rasping in his throat, and Thor thought there must be some trick of the wind, some machination of the Gamemakers that the storm could rage so yet Thor still overhear. It would not be beyond them. "Oh how little you know, brother. How blind you are, how blind you allow yourself to be so that you might sleep at night."

Thor's first memories include cameras, Father's hand on his shoulder, fingers tight, reminding him to smile, to stand up straight, to look tall and proud and do his district just service. As a young boy, he and Father used to play at camera angles, with Father pointing out imaginary lenses in their living room and telling him to play through a scene while turning himself to the best advantage. Thor could no more forget the presence of cameras in the Arena now than he could lose the perception of his own limbs.

He did not forget now. What Thor did was stop caring.

Thor cast aside the image of Brutus, standing behind him with a look of warning; his district, his father, everything about him as a representative of Two and all it stood for. He held out one hand, the rain at such driving force that his fingers blurred in his vision even at this distance. "Loki!" Thor called. "Whatever wrongs I have done beyond the ones I acknowledge, accept, and attempt to atone for, please allow me to do right by them. Don't let this end in hate."

"Oh, but it is too late for that." Loki smiled at him, his mouth tight and grim, teeth hidden. "Far too late, I'm afraid. Why don't you tell those watching what happened when I left you? How you dusted off your clothes and forgot your brother, the boy brought to your home as a child and raised ever in your shadow, how you condemned him to a life and death in the cold, black dust of District Twelve? Tell them all, and let them see their hero."

"You are wrong!" Thor nearly screamed. "You speak madness, Loki! You speak as though I did not mourn. You speak as though I did not spend days alone in my room, weeping for you, for everything between us that you -- not I! -- cast aside. As though they did not have to threaten me with expulsion, before I turned my pain into motivation to train lest I run mad from grief myself."

In truth, Thor remembered very little of the days following Loki's departure. The entire time had been nothing but a wash of grief, until Director Fury himself had come to Thor's room, laid a hand on his shoulder and reminded him of his duty, that he must carry out his responsibilities as chosen Volunteer. Each night he'd dreamt of Loki in a thousand permutations, and whether they ended in Loki's death at the hands of a pack of muttations or Thor's own successful bid to convince him to stay, either way Thor woke with screams, soaked with sweat and shaking.

"I weep for you," Loki drawled. "Truly, your pain is an inspiration. The noble sufferer, driven to distraction by his insane relative. How lucky for you that we are not of blood, so that you might distance yourself from me."

"Never!" Thor shouted, and only when Loki flashed his teeth did Thor realize what he had done. Yet again he had allied himself with the traitor, driving the wedge between himself and his district, and Thor cursed under his breath. "I will never distance myself from you," Thor said, mind racing, and he could fix this. He could. "I will be with you to the end, my brother."

"Oho. And what, exactly does that entail?" Loki ignored the rain lashing at his clothing, even though he had not received any gifts of warmer gear as Thor had after the destruction of his cloak, and he must be freezing. Loki's childhood in Twelve had always rendered him susceptible to illness, though of course he was loathe to admit it. "Will you let me kill you, then, and finish the path I have begun? Give me the ultimate victory so I might take your place as the favoured Odinson?"

"No," Thor countered, for of course he could not. Whatever remained of Loki now, of the little boy who had laid intricate traps down by the river to catch frogs and snakes but who had never, ever hurt them, choosing instead to speak with them and insist he understood them before letting them free, he did not stand before Thor now. That boy was gone, and the least Thor owed his memory was that the monster who had slain him did not walk free.

If anything of Loki did survive, buried deep in this well of insanity, the miasma of twisted thoughts, Thor would find it, draw it out so that Loki might remember himself before the end, but Thor knew his duty. Not just as a tribute, as a representative of District Two, but as a brother.

"No," Thor cried, drawing himself up straight and proud. "I will find you, and I will kill you with my own hand, as is just and proper. An Odinson to end an Odinson, and all will be restored."

Lightning crashed overhead, and Thor flung an arm in front of his eyes to shield them from the glare. Through the tearing and howling of the wind came the high-pitched note of a silver parachute, and when Thor looked again, a hammer stood at his feet. Not the one he carried with him, crude and cheaply manufactured, meant for anyone who might be bold enough to enter the Cornucopia; this one was large, and heavy, with an intricate design carved into the side.

Loki bared his teeth in fury; as the gods had spoken; Thor was in favour, and this gift was meant to remind everyone of that. The ending of the game was foreordained, though of course it was up to Thor to see it done, but Loki was not meant to win it, and now he knew. He knew the truth, the bitter futility of his own actions.

Thor bent, turned over a small capsule next to the hammer with his foot. A light projection message flashed, as the storm was too great for him to read anything printed with ink upon paper. "THIS HAMMER IS CODED WITH THE BIOMETRIC DATA FROM THE MALE TRIBUTE OF DISTRICT TWO", it read. "NO ONE ELSE MAY WIELD IT UNLESS THEY PROVE THEMSELVES WORTHY."

A tingle ran through his fingers as Thor curled them around the hammer; for a moment it resisted him, remaining stubbornly affixed to the ground, but after the current passed, the weapon became light enough for him to lift while still having enough weight that it did not feel like a toy or prop. Thor hefted it, still feeling the twinge of energy running up his forearm, and out of instinct he raised his arm high.

The lightning in the sky surged and crackled, raising the very hair on his body, and then it travelled down, fast and terrifying, but Thor did not allow himself to flinch. The bolt struck the hammer but it did not throw him back; the weapon absorbed the electricity, and Thor lowered his stance, swung his arm and thrust the hammer forward. The lightning flew out of the top of the hammer toward Loki, knocking him backward. Thor's breath caught in his chest, heart pounding, but in the dimness he saw Loki struggle to his feet, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

"Heed my warning, brother!" Thor called through the pouring rain. "It is I who will take your life, and I will hold you as the last breath passes from your body."

Loki snarled, but the power of this exchange was not with him, not anymore. Thor would feel heady with it save that it meant the death of his brother, writ as plain and clear across the heavens as though Thor had done so with the lightning now under his command. "You are too certain," Loki spat, and he turned and fled into the darkness.

Thor stood in the middle of the street until the rain stopped, the sun breaking through the black clouds. He half expected birds to twitter, but of course it was not time for that, not yet. He let out a long breath, gave the nearest camera a meaningful, long look, then hitched the new hammer to his belt and strode off down a side street.

He left the old hammer there, upended on the cement, and did not look back.

---

Coulson straightened his spine and prepared for his least favourite part of the job: questioning Director Fury. Fury stood with his back to the door in front of the various televisions, flicking footage around from screen to screen with his fingers. On one, Tony Stark trudged through the streets with furious determination etched into his features; Coulson had watched him murder his creations, and he didn't like the chances of anyone who might run into Stark in the next little while. On another, little Ororo Munroe crept across a rooftop to where she'd managed to trap a pigeon in a handmade snare; she snapped its neck with her delicate hands and took out a tinderbox from her pack to cook it. Coulson made a mental note to add parasite treatment to the escapees.

"Do you need something?" Fury asked without turning.

Coulson rolled his shoulders, settling his jacket properly along his arms. "I think you're taking a risk with Rogers, sir."

Fury tilted his head back, but not far enough to make eye contact. "What is it they say about omelettes, Coulson?"

"I don't eat omelettes, sir," Coulson said smoothly. "I'm watching my cholesterol. I'm sure you know what you're doing, but I'm afraid you're going to break him. First Stark with his -- well, his children -- and now this?"

"Of course I'm going to break him," Fury said, and Coulson fought down a grimace. "They need to see him break. They'll never accept him as a hero and a leader if they haven't seen him crawl from the lowest place he can possibly fall. Once they see that they'll be no stopping him. Anything he says they'll be falling over themselves to listen to."

Coulson ran his tongue over his teeth, choosing his words with care. "Sir. With all due respect, I'm not sure Rogers is strong enough. He's had one motivation since he stepped forward in that square; I'm not sure it's wise to take that away. I don't think he's ready. The Rebellion isn't enough for him, not yet, at least not as a suitable replacement at this juncture."

"We have to take that chance," Fury said, and he clasped his hands together behind his back hard enough that his knuckles cracked. "They don't need untouchables, Phil. You know that."

Coulson remained still, though his respectful smile was a little thinner than it should be. Fortunately Fury's gaze was still on the screens. "And if he can't put himself back together? If none of them can? You're pushing them too far. They're children, all of them."

"Then they aren't the Mockingjays we were looking for, never mind the Avengers," Fury said, and finally he turned around, fixing Coulson with a disapproving one-eyed stare. "This isn't playtime. This is war. We've come too far to worry about safety, but I have faith. I don't think we're going to lose any of them."

"If you say so, sir." Coulson searched the screens for Rogers, who'd survived the deluge along with the rest, and stood gasping in an alleyway with one of the little girls held tight against his chest. Coulson wet his lips. "There's still time to call it off."

Fury looked back at the screens and shook his head. "No. I'm afraid there's not."

"And who's going to be there to pick up the pieces once he loses it? You're building a team for a reason; you know he can't do it on his own."

Fury reached up, skimmed his fingers over the screen and brought up the image of Tony Stark in full view. With another hand gesture he brought up Sam Wilson, the boy from Eleven, struggling to clamber out from the subway and onto the street.

Coulson hissed. "You're joking. The narcissist and the bird-lover? You really think they’re going to reach him?"

"I'm deadly serious."

This time Coulson risked a posture change, clasping his hands together in front of his body instead, moving his feet to a shoulder-wide stance so he could shift his weight without it looking insubordinate. "I hope you're right, sir."

Fury let out a long breath. "You have no idea."

---

Sam heaved himself over the lip of the maintenance tunnel, choking and gasping, but he didn't stop to take a breath, not yet. He clung to a railing next to the hole, sucking in lungfuls of air as best he could while dragging up until Jean's head broke the surface. Her head lolled back against his arm, and Sam pulled himself out onto the cement, rolling himself over onto his back and hauling Jean out by body weight alone.

"C'mon," Sam said, turning her onto her side because that seemed to make the most sense, even though he had absolutely no idea about this sort of thing for real. "C'mon, Jean, c'mon."

They should have taken the hint when the Gamemakers sent the mutts after them, but Sam had let himself get cocky when they beat that little test. Any cameras watching would have picked up on their plucky determination, bumping their approval ratings and maybe their scores, but in the end it was the Gamemakers who decided, not the audience, not without a more compelling reason to let this go. Fury said he would get them out, but apparently that didn't preclude them getting too confident and baiting the powers that be into trying to kill them.

At least there was no way to flood an entire subway system at once without warning; the roar of the water, echoing off the walls, had alerted Sam and Jean enough that they'd made it almost to the stairs before it hit them. They'd been halfway up the steps when that exit flooded from above, knocking them back into the tunnel. Sam had managed to keep his grip on Jean as the water buffeted them against the walls, but he'd lost their packs and one of his swords. He kept the other against his side, pinned between him and Jean, only aware that he still had it because it jabbed into his thigh. Finally he'd caught a rung on the ceiling and held on until the surge passed, his arms burning, and at last Sam managed to hook his arm through, hold on by the crook of his elbow and push the hatch open before dragging both of them out.

Jean had been underwater for that last -- Sam couldn't open the hatch and keep her head up at the same time -- and now he felt panic beat in his chest as she lay on the damp concrete. Sam had never seen more water in one place than a rain puddle and had no training or instruction about clearing water from anyone's lungs. He shook her shoulder a little, and was about to start pleading with the sponsors -- not likely after they'd nearly been killed -- when Jean coughed and sputtered, vomiting out mouthfuls of rainwater.

Sam helped her sit, leaning forward, and rubbed her back as she hacked the rest of the water out. "Thanks," Jean said, reaching out blindly until her hand found his arm. "Next time I'll drag you out of danger. Even the score." She ran a hand through her sopping hair. "Any idea now?"

"I've been thinking about that," Sam said. "I think we should try to look for some of the others. Maybe Rogers, he seemed like he was the alliance type if we could prove we're not going to try to stab him in his sleep."

"With what?" Jean asked, waving a hand, and Sam realized he'd lost the second sword when he pulled them out. With what indeed. "If anything, it'll be hard to convince him to take on a couple of half-drowned deadweights with nothing to offer."

"Better him than Stark," Sam pointed out, and Jean shrugged. "Rogers is a bleeding heart. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. And we could use the team-up right now."

"Hey, I'm not saying we don't," Jean said, grimacing. "We've lost all the stuff we brought with us and you're bleeding. Just that I don't think we bring much to the table on our side."

"Manpower," Sam said stubbornly. "Two more people to help look for food or keep watch or whatever else. And he can help me look for Ororo."

Jean frowned. "Who? Oh, the girl from your district. You think she's still alive? Or Rogers, for that matter."

It was a callous thing to ask, but Sam couldn't exactly blame her, not when he'd lost track not only of who was left but how many days had passed while underground. "The others will know," Sam said. "They'll be keeping track. Find Rogers. He'll be easier than Ororo, she was going to hide."

"We're going to have a real party, aren't we," Jean said, but she didn't argue with him. "All right then, let's go looking and try not to run into anybody who's likely to stab us in the head."

"Are you all right to walk?" Sam asked, but Jean waved off his hand.

"I'm fine," she said, taking a long breath, and it rattled a little in her lungs but otherwise came out clean. "Can't kill me, apparently. They just keep trying and I keep coming back. Maybe it's my superpower."

Sam hadn't specified Jean as one of the children -- she looked about fourteen, maybe -- but he hoped Fury included her in the list of people to save. Either way, Sam had added her to the list. If he could just find Ororo and know she was safe, he'd feel much better about everyone's chances.

They wandered through the Arena, and Sam tried not to be too disturbed by the emptiness of the streets. He decided to take it as everyone going into hiding after whatever storm had hit -- mud and water eddied around his boots, torn newspapers floating down the sidewalk and sticking to his ankles -- and not that most everyone had already been killed. That would mean good odds in a normal Games, sure, but this wasn't one of those. Sam couldn't imagine what sort of victory for the rebellion it would be if only one or two of their heroes crawled out.

Or what Fury had planned for the whole scheme afterward, for that matter, but at least Sam could see Redbird again. If anyone tried to renege on that promise, he'd like to see them try to hold him.

"I don't like this at all," Jean said in a low voice. "You know how it's cliche to say that it's too quiet because then some crazy person jumps out with a knife and kills you? Well, it's too quiet."

Sam tensed, but the only thing that happened was that an empty food wrapper, caught by the wind and swept down the street, slapped wetly against Sam's knee. Even that startled him enough to jump. "Well played," he said to Jean, punching her lightly on the shoulder, and she gave him a nervous grin.

The next second, someone started screaming. Suddenly glad for having misplaced his swords because it meant he couldn't now accidentally stab himself or chop Jean's head off when he jumped and whirled around, Sam pressed himself against the closest building, the large barred window marking it a pawn shop. "It's down the street," he said in a hiss. "We should go before whoever did it comes after us."

"Wait." Jean gripped his sleeve. "That's not a death scream. Somebody's hurting, but not because they got stuck with a sword."

Sam stopped and listened again, and this time he recognized the sound. He knew it from the dozen previous Games he'd watched; from the day that his neighbour Jimmy Webster had been whipped to death for stealing a basket of fruit to feed his ailing mother, who was handed his corpse while the blood still oozed from the lacerations on his back; from his own mouth when his father was gunned down.

This was the sound of pain, all right, but of heartbreak, not physical injury. Jean let out a breath. "What do we do?"

The screaming continued, long after anyone with rational thought would have stopped. "Whoever it is, they're going to get killed if they don't stop," Sam said. He did the math; it was a male voice, and since that probably ruled out the Careers and the terrifying boy from Nine, that left either Rogers, Stark, or the boy from Five. Sam couldn't imagine Stark yelling like that over anything, so that at least narrowed it down. It wasn't certain, but it made good enough odds that Sam felt willing to risk it. "I say we go check. Worst-case scenario, they try to kill us and we run. It's not like that will be a surprise if they do."

Finally the sounds stopped, replaced instead with conversation too quiet to overhear and almost not loud enough to catch at all. Two people, then, which meant at least a temporary alliance, hopefully not one that would stab them. "Let's go," Sam said.

Sam edged his way down the street, keeping Jean behind him just in case. They made it to the crossroad when Sam nearly ran into a young girl. He felt bad about not remembering her district -- dark hair, pale skin, could be anyone really and he didn't have the presence of mind to do the math again when he couldn't recall all the girls in the first place -- but it didn't really matter, because she held tightly to the hand of Steve Rogers.

"Truce," Sam said immediately. Rogers had red eyes and a tear-streaked face, the mark of insanity in the set of his jaw, and he went for the short sword at his waist before Sam spoke. "Look. No weapons." He held up his hands, and beside him Jean did the same.

"Steve," said the girl, her fingers curled around his wrist. "Steve, it's okay."

Rogers' chest heaved, and he stared at Sam for several seconds before finally lowering his arm, holding it out to the side and spreading his hand wide. "Okay," he said. "Sorry. We're all a little jumpy."

"No kidding." Sam left his hands in front of him.

"Okay, look," Jean broke in. "Here's the thing. Our hiding place got flooded out, we lost all our stuff, and Sam stabbed himself in the leg because we've just got all the good luck. If you guys wouldn't mind giving us some food and bandages and somewhere to sleep, we promise to help you and not stick you with weapons."

Rogers looked at her, frowning, and his eyes focused as though he was only just noticing her. "Okay," he said again, and he gave Sam a strange look that Sam couldn't parse, eyes slightly narrowed and mouth set, but not in a way that made it look like he was plotting their deaths. Rogers nodded once. "Come with us then. I'll make your case to Bruce." He wiped at his eyes, and Sam wanted to look past him to whatever it was that had made him break down like that, but that didn't seem right.

"Hey, what's the largest non-Career alliance, does anyone know?" Jean asked, as they fell into step. "Pick up one or two more and I bet we've got it. We're probably close already. That has to be worth some sponsor money."

"Do you think about that a lot?" asked Rogers' companion -- and finally Sam placed her, as the girl that the boy from Five had flung, literally, from the circle before the countdown finished.

"What, sponsor money? Yes." Jean gave her a dark look. "Not all of us get the golden boy as our best friends. No offence, Sam."

The girl curled her lip, Rogers didn't react, and Sam let out a burst of surprised laughter. "None taken," he said. "I know I don't have the sponsor pull. We got what we did because we're lucky."

The girl clenched her fists, and even Rogers gave them a slant-eyed glance. "Well we haven't got anything," she said, her voice shaking with anger. "Not me, not Bruce, and not Steve or Sharon either. So maybe it's not just about who looks good after all."

"Oh," Jean said, and Sam was starting to know her well enough to tell that she no longer offended or upset, just confused. "Really? I would've thought you'd got parachutes all over the place."

The other girl shrugged, and Rogers laid a hand on her shoulder. "If we understood how to game the system, we'd be doing it," he said, though Sam somewhat doubted that. Not unless he was a lot more devious than he looked. Even Sam probably wouldn't have gotten any parachutes if it hadn't been for Jean.

Not for the first time, Sam wondered what exactly Fury thought he was supposed to contribute to this rebellion, or why he'd even bothered bringing Sam in particular on board at all.

---

[TEN MINUTES EARLIER]

Steve heaved a sigh of relief as the rain let up, the first breath he'd taken that had not been alongside a mouthful of water since the freak storm began. He loosened his grip on Jenny, stepping back and lowering his arm from around her shoulders. "Are you all right?"

Jenny nodded. "I'm fine," she said, pushing her black hair out of her eyes. Steve had grabbed her when the wave of rain roared through the streets, running down side alleys to escape the flash flood with water at least three feet deep; when he could no longer outrun it he'd clung to the corroding metal of a fire escape and kept Jenny against his side with every ounce of strength he had. Steve had had his suspicions that the Remake Centre had done more than just help with his asthma, but no concrete proof until the wall of water buffeted him, trying to rip Jenny from his arms, and he'd been able to cling to her regardless. He only wondered what they wanted from him in return for such a gift.

Bruce would never have forgiven Steve if he'd let her go, and Steve didn't want to think what might happen to Sharon if he had. They'd agreed to change partners while looking for food, as a measure of security for them to stick together and not break the alliance. Steve hadn't managed to talk to him about Fury and the rebellion, not without tipping off the ever-present cameras, and so while he'd tried to hint with cryptic remarks, Bruce had not risen to the bait. Ah well.

"They were leading us here, I think," Jenny said, squeezing the last of the water droplets from her shirt, and Steve frowned down at her. "Why else? It's not like anything that happens here is random. Let's just hope it's not a trap."

Steve ran a hand through his hair, flicking it dry, and he glanced around. He knew his neighbourhood backwards and forwards, but here in the Arena he'd done his best not to map the familiar locations onto his mind map unless absolutely necessary. Even with walking every street since he was a boy, Steve still found it tricky to navigate when everything was empty of people and cars, with the signs shut down and the familiar glow of the city at night often cut off for hours at a time as the rolling blackouts swept the streets.

He looked at the crumbling buildings, the brown brick and cracked sidewalks, and the last of his breath whooshed from his lungs as if he'd been kicked. Steve felt the same panic he had on the platforms when he'd first recognized his surroundings, and now he swallowed it down with effort. "Let's hope not," he said, and he wiped his palms on his thighs. "I recognize this. At least -- I think so."

"Where are we?" Jenny asked.

"My street," Steve said, and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from betraying any emotion. They had done this on purpose, leading him here in an attempt to break him, to remind him that they had all the cards and that Steve, for all his cleverness and heroism and friendships, was nothing but a piece in their game. Well, they didn't know about Fury, did they, and Steve would not let them get to him. "That's the pawnbroker where I bought my first set of drawing pencils, instead of just using pieces of charcoal from the fireplace and slate from the roof. Mr. Whittaker used to give deals to us orphan kids. Bucky got me a tin of watercolours for my sixteenth birthday from there, and it only cost him a wristwatch."

"Where did he get the wristwatch?" Jenny asked, slipping her hand into Steve's. Steve bent down and lifted her onto his shoulders, and while he wasn't as large as Bruce, he knew that before the Games she never would have fit, the skinny slope of his arms and back much too narrow for her. Over the past few weeks he'd been growing, and not just taller, either.

"He stole it," Steve said, and Jenny laughed. "I told him he shouldn't, but he said the man he took it from could buy another. He looked so happy when he gave them to me that I didn't want to argue. It's hard to say no to his smile. Always was."

He heard Tony's voice in his ear, reminding him not to give the Gamemakers anything personal, but Bucky was safe -- he had to be, evacuated with the others, why wouldn't he be -- and Steve needed to remind the people at home why he was here, whom he was fighting for.

"He sounds like a good friend," Jenny said.

"He is," Steve said, raising his chin. "The best. Not just mine, either, I dare anyone to find someone better. I always said I was going to find a good job and get him out of here, find us a place in a nicer part of town."

"It's not the prettiest city I ever seen," Jenny agreed, and Steve knew she'd come from one of the less-privileged parts of District Five so she had some idea. She wasn't one of the Capitol representatives who shrieked when they realized that no one had cell phone coverage outside of District Three, save for a few select locations in each district like around the Justice Buildings or anywhere that Snow's people might be working.

Steve stopped on the sidewalk, looking ahead and frowning. "That's not right. There's a building missing. Maybe this isn't my street after all--"

Except no, there was the car repair shop where Bucky worked after school, screwing on hubcaps and doing minor repairs under the supervision of the owner; and there was the 'park', a long stretch of empty concrete with a single pole where the local kids would bounce a ball and try to toss it through a loop of wire at the top of the post.

"What's missing?"

"The orphanage," Steve said, fighting to talk around the stone now lodged in his throat. His pulse kicked up, pounding in his temples, and he ran forward, skirting the open manhole cover that looked down into the flooded subway, where the water still raged beneath.

"Your orphanage?"

"Yes."

Steve stopped, his breath coming short as his body tried to kick itself into an asthma attack despite its now functioning lungs. He bent forward and Jenny scrambled down from his shoulders, laid a hand against Steve's arm as he pressed his hands to his knees and choked on his own fear.

The fence was there, the iron bars as straight and forbidding as ever -- meant more to keep the drug addicts out than the children in, but still not a happy sight when you were a kid on the other side of them -- but beyond, nothing but a pile of rubble. Steve straightened up, forced himself to look, and in the slowly-increasing sunlight he saw black scorch marks against the pieces of brick and shattered glass.

"Did -- did they burn it down?" Jenny asked, her voice high, but it didn't tremble. Steve would be proud of her if he could get enough brainpower away from the urge to scream.

Steve pushed against the gate -- it swung open with a creak of hinges despite never, ever being left unlocked, not since Steve could remember -- and stepped through. Even with the smell of rain still lingering on the wet cement, Steve could smell it, the grit and ash of the fire, and something else, too, sharp and sickly, burning his nostrils and the back of his throat.

"No," he said to himself, then whirled around. "Jenny, stay back! Don't come closer unless I tell you. Keep your eyes closed."

Jenny did, her mouth set, and she clung to the gate for balance and safety while Steve walked forward, the weight of dread sitting on his feet and making every step as hard as walking through the mud with iron boots. His chest ached, his heart pounding faster than it had even as the countdown wound its way to zero.

He reached the pile of broken brick, and Steve prayed that he was wrong, prayed to the God that Sister Catherine had taught them about in secret, the one that not even President Snow could erase from the world even if he'd erased Him from the history books. He clenched his fists and pushed aside a scattering of stone with his shoe.

Bleached white fragments rolled down and stopped with a clatter at his feet. "No," Steve said again, louder and more desperate, and he dropped to his knees. He pushed aside the blackened mortar, and as he dug he found more and more. Some of the pieces were too small for him to identify, licked clean by the flames and crushed by falling cement, but others still had scraps of fabric and bits of flesh stuck to them.

Steve stopped when he couldn't deny it anymore, when his hand closed around a child's femur, half the size of his forearm, and he turned and vomited into the dust and grime. The sharp scent stung his nose and he breathed it in, the tang of bile better than what he knew he'd find if he kept digging.

He pushed aside a twisted lump of metal that had once been a radiator, found another mangled mess with tatters of black cloth; caught on a lump of what he guessed was spinal column was a loop of cord threaded with beads and two small pieces of metal, pinned perpendicular to one another.

Steve gasped, tasting salt, and he swiped his sleeve across his eyes and nose to little effect. "No," he said again, and he wanted to say more, so much more, to scream and curse and wail, but all other words left him. "No!" His hand found the pin on his lapel, the small circle of metal painted red, white and blue by a hand that could now be somewhere in the mess of brick and bodies in front of him.

Finally, Steve found another word.

"Why?" It tore itself from him, and Steve screamed it again and again, leaning back and looking up at the sky, past the sky to the net the Gamemakers had cast over the Arena, where they projected their Capitol logo and death toll every evening. He screamed it until there was nothing left of him but that question; demanded it of the Gamemakers, of the Capitol, of Director Fury and his broken promises, of Sister Catherine whose soul now either rotted in her body or rested with the God who hadn't cared enough to keep her safe.

Finally Steve climbed to his feet, swiping his arm across his eyes, and that's when he saw it, hanging deliberately on a strut of metal sticking up out of the debris. A bracelet, a chain with a red star pendant hanging from it, the whole thing fashioned out of cheap metal. Bucky's bracelet, the one he'd made because the Careers from District Two had bracelets to mark them as Volunteers and it had been part of their game. It was half-melted and scorched black, but Steve recognized it anyway. The fact that they'd left it up for him to find, instead of leaving it in the rubble for him to miss only made it clear.

"Bucky--" Steve sobbed. Director Fury had promised to keep Bucky safe from the Reapings, but that was easy enough to do since he was dead, burned alive with all the others. "Bucky, I'm so sorry--"

"Steve." Jenny touched his shoulder, and Steve shook her off with a rough gesture. "Steve! Steve, we have to go. We can't stay here."

"I promised him," Steve choked out. "I promised him I'd come back. I volunteered to keep him safe."

"He knows," Jenny said, her hand finding his arm and gripping his sleeve. "He wouldn't blame you, not if he's the kind of friend you said he is."

He probably wouldn't, but that only made it worse. Steve could almost see Bucky standing in front of him -- the Gamemakers could do that even, make a hologram to taunt Steve, and he hoped they wouldn't because he might just go insane after all -- see the cocky grin on the young boy's face.

"We have to leave," Jenny said again, insistent, and Steve allowed her to pull him to his feet, staggering back away from the carnage. "Let's go back to the rendezvous point."

Steve knew he should be strong for Jenny, but he cried anyway. Even as he did, he made up his mind. Fury would have to win this rebellion without him. Steve would get the others out -- he had to, now, had to save them, Sharon and Jenny and anyone else who was left -- but he wouldn't leave. He'd stay here with Bucky, the streets of their childhood neighbourhood a fitting tomb for the both of them.

When the others arrived, Steve answered them as perfunctorily as he could and took them with him as he went back to find Bruce. Good. The more people to help, the better, and the easier Steve could enact his plan, whenever he figured out what it was. Fury wanted a saviour; Steve hoped he would settle for a martyr, because that was the best he was going to get from Steve now.

Chapter 13: Fire

Summary:

"Everyone does what they have to do in there, Jan," Daddy had said once. "It's the only place in Panem you'll find true honesty. For once people aren't afraid to be who they are."

What happens in the Arena stays in the Arena. More than one tribute has had enough. Limits are reached, in more ways than one.

Notes:

The final scene of this chapter is the reason I started writing this in the first place. Enjoy.

Exhaustion stuck its fingers underneath Jan's eyelids and rubbed rough, scratchy wool all over her eyeballs while gluing weights to her lashes. She'd gone nights without sleeping before -- Jan never managed to catch more than a few minutes of rest the night before her birthday, and once on Reclamation Day she'd eaten almost an entire cake herself and spent the whole night buzzing and trying to climb every piece of furniture in the house while Daddy laughed and laughed -- but those had been happy times. Excitement and anticipation and the knowledge that she should go to sleep, that if she just went to sleep it would be morning and the thing she was so excited about would happen faster, made it okay.

This was different. Jan had never spent two nights in a row huddled in a corner, watching Hank snore, while holding her tiny knives in her fist. She'd never been afraid to fall asleep before. She'd never collapsed in the middle of the night after doing her best not to, after blinking once, then twice, each time lasting longer and longer until she finally fell under, only to snap awake and see Hank standing over her in the darkness, holding his short sword in his hand and staring before turning and stalking back and forth across the aisle between the cars.

Back in Seven, Jan used to love to watch the sunrise. Daddy used to wake her up if the weather was fine, take her out to the woods, and give her a boost so she could climb to the top of the tallest tree and look out. Their house sat on the edge of a hollow, and Jan would cling to the trunk, the worn bark rough and comforting against her fingers, and watch the morning sun burn off the mist over the treetops as the sky turned pink and gold.

Here in the Arena there was nothing like that. The sky stayed a dingy yellow-grey from all the pollution -- even at night it glowed orange, though maybe the Gamemakers made it that way since the sky also criss-crossed with gridlines from the roof thingy -- and by the time the sun cleared the buildings everywhere, the last of the colours had already faded. Not that a sunrise would make anything better. Jan wasn't stupid. But having something nice to look at might have given her hope, maybe, a sign that things were going to be okay.

Because they weren't going to be okay, were they. Nothing was ever going to be okay ever again. Because Jan and Hank were in the Arena, and Jan had never really thought about it even though she'd watched the Games with Daddy before and seen the blood and the screaming. It just, it hadn't been real, not with those other tributes. It hadn't been her, hadn't been Hank. Jan had always been special -- everyone called her that, from Daddy to her teachers at school to the lady who worked at the store and always gave her candy for free when no one was looking because she was just so cute and precious -- and the Gamemakers would see that too, wouldn't they, and everything would be okay.

Except that Hank was crazy now, and Jan didn't know what to do. She'd tried asking the sky like she did for the medicine for his tracker jacker sting, but nothing happened. The storm that kept them stuck inside the car park passed, and the sky had sparkled blue and clear and pigeons fluttered through the streets, but it hadn't mattered because Hank took all the food and kept it in the pack on his back the whole time because Jan might poison it if he let her near it.

Jan didn't get to eat supper yesterday at all. Hank didn't even let her have a protein bar, because those were wrapped and that meant they were safe and he was saving those for himself. Now her stomach rolled and gurgled as Jan curled her arms around herself and hissed for it to be quiet, because she couldn't wake Hank. He'd finally passed out a little before the sun came up.

She knew she should leave, go and find food, but Jan couldn't leave Hank. What if something happened? What if he went even crazier, or what if another tribute, one of the big mean ones, found him and hurt him? He was crazy but it wasn't his fault. Jan didn't know why but she knew Hank was a good man -- Daddy always used to say so, it's why he'd promised to make Hank the heir of the Van Dyne company until Jan was old enough to take over and make decisions herself. He wouldn't do this on purpose.

Jan also didn't want to leave Hank in case he disappeared while she was gone. She didn't want to think it, because thinking bad thoughts about Hank made something twist inside her, but she couldn't trust him now. If Jan left while Hank was asleep and he woke up before she got back, he'd think she was trying to hurt him, or abandon him, and maybe he'd start going after her, too. Tears stung Jan's eyes, and she knuckled them away. She couldn't cry, not now. Now she had to be strong. If she was strong and brave then the sponsors would like her, and then maybe they would send her something to help, even if she didn't know what to ask for besides a miracle.

Daddy used to say that hunger was good for thinking. When he was working in his lab trying to come up with a new way to make paper stronger or cheaper or fireproof, he used to skip meals because he said it sharpened his brain. Jan tried to think of it that way, except that her brain didn't feel sharpened in a good way at all; more like she was a pencil whose lead kept breaking so that she had to sharpen again and again and again until there was nothing left but a nub and a pile of shavings. Her brain couldn't decide between being scared, tired, or hungry, and Jan worried that if she didn't get anything to eat today then she might go crazy like Hank.

"Most of the tributes lose because they're not smart," Daddy had said to Jan one year as she sat on his lap with her head resting against his chin, his stubble scratching against her forehead. "They worry too much about fighting. The fighting isn't what gets most of them, not after the bloodbath. After that it's usually one or two stragglers before the Careers take care of each other, but the rest? They starve, or freeze. The ones who win are the ones who are too smart to do that."

Jan let out a long breath now. She needed food, but she had to be smart about it. If only she had a way to watch Hank while she looked for something to eat and drink. Jan was thirsty too, she realized. She had a headache now, pressing behind her eyes and making her head feel stuffed with cotton. She never really cared for water from the tap -- it was nice from the stream in the woods out behind the house, cold and clear and crisp -- but she didn't want juice now, sweet and sugary. Just water. It had rained before, and while the puddles had dried there would have to be water collected somewhere, shouldn't there?

Except that still meant leaving Hank. Jan pushed her fingers into her hair -- her greasy hair, no longer cute and shiny but dirty and sticking flat against her scalp, and she hadn't had a bath either and this was just wrong, all of it -- and rocked back and forth, when she heard it. A cry of pain, sharp and hissed and choked off because the other person knew if someone else heard they'd probably be dead. And Jan had heard it.

Everything inside her went cold. During the storm Hank had gone crazy, run to the other side of the garage and started trying to kill the air, and Jan had thought he was hearing things. But what if he hadn't? What if someone else was hiding inside the garage, and they'd just never found out? Jan's heart pounded hard in her chest. This was more important than watching Hank sleep. She needed to know they were safe. No matter how crazy Hank was, he was still Hank. He was still her friend, the boy she'd wanted to marry once she was old enough. She couldn't let someone else hurt him.

Jan slipped her knives onto the hooks on her belt and loaded her blowgun with one of the jacker-tipped darts. She held the gun in her fist and stood up, slow slow slow, and crept out around the cars until she got to the other side of the garage. The cry, if it really had been that, had come from around here. Jan narrowed her eyes. Where would a hurt person be? They wouldn't just lie on the floor. They might be inside a car, but all the doors were locked, and that would be too much to open.

If Jan were hurt, she'd try to find a hole to crawl in, a place where she could lie down and be safe and see other people's feet but them not be able to see her. She tiptoed across the pavement, glad she'd learned to dance across the treetops because it meant her boots made no sound now. Under the cars, no, too hard to get out if she had to, once Jan tried that during a game of hide-and-seek and she'd ended up scraping her chin on the gravel trying to scoot out from underneath fast enough.

An open doorway made Jan pause -- she wasn't a Career or anything but doors meant people could hide, and this one was dark inside -- but then she realized it wasn't a door to another room, but an old elevator. Broken, obviously; the buttons on the wall outside had fallen off, and the whole thing had rusted around the edges. Well, that was definitely creepy; Janet knew she should probably stay away, but she'd always wondered how deep they went.

Jan edged closer and peered through the gap -- and had to press both hands over her face to stop a scream when instead of nothing but inky blackness she saw the outline of a person. A person or a body? (Same thing said Jan's mind in a pleased, hissing whisper, same thing in here, but she pushed it back.) Jan's breathing came fast, but then the shape moved and she nearly shrieked again.

A person. A live person. And that meant another tribute, and that meant someone else who was here for the same reason as Jan and Hank. That meant --

Jan's chest tightened, and she held her blowgun close to her chest. She was a good girl. A smart girl, a pretty girl, her Daddy's girl. She was a little spoiled maybe, and she didn't know how to live on her own, but she wasn't a bad person. Except that Daddy said nobody in the Arena was a bad person, not even the mean Careers who cut the other tributes up while laughing about the blood, because they weren't people at all. Not the biggest boy with blood on his face, and not the littlest girl whose body the blood came from.

"Everyone does what they have to do in there, Jan," Daddy had said once. "It's the only place in Panem you'll find true honesty. For once people aren't afraid to be who they are."

The other tribute was sleeping. They were asleep, and the venom on Jan's dart was pure, concentrated; it worked fast, didn't it? They probably wouldn't feel anything. And Jan wasn't a killer -- her prep team's voice whirled around her like glitter in the air, look at her, isn't she gorgeous, she's like a little dragonfly -- and then her stylist, warm but with something underneath, darker, knowing, no, not a dragonfly, a wasp -- but it didn't count, right? Nothing counted. Just like Hank wasn't really crazy, it was just the Arena.

What happens in the Arena stays in the Arena, Daddy used to say.

Jan swallowed and raised her blowgun to her lips.

"Do it and you die," said a voice behind her, low and threatening, like if a snake could be a voice -- not have a voice, that would be hissing and strange but be one, be turned into one with magic and smoke and poison -- and Jan froze. "I mean, you're going to die anyway, but depends on you how slow it'll be."

Jan lowered her blowgun but didn't drop it. She wasn't stupid. You never drop your weapons in the Arena, even if someone tells you to, because you'll be dead either way. Might as well not give them the keys to do it. She held her hands away from her sides and turned, slowly, to see the gorgeous girl from District One. She wore a pack on her back, the straps digging into her shoulders; full, maybe with food, but that didn't matter as much as the knife she held inches from Jan's throat.

"It's the Arena," Jan said desperately, something choking inside her. "It doesn't count. I'm not bad."

The girl pressed her lips together. "You're seven."

Jan scowled, forgetting herself. "I'm twelve! I couldn't be in here if I was seven!"

"Ugh, I meant you're from Seven. The one with the cookie-cutter bodyguard."

"So?" Jan kept her fingers tight around the blowgun, trying to figure out how to reach for her knives without getting turned into breakfast. The girl from One had lean muscles and the sort of face that would give you something nice to look at while you died. Maybe one day if she was lucky Jan would grow up (at all?) to look like that. She frowned as her brain registered something, a smell that didn't match the oil and dirt of the car park; something stronger, sharper; the tang of metal and rust that curled in her nostrils and made her stomach churn. "He's bleeding," Jan said, eyes widening, when she figured it out. "Your friend. He's bleeding a lot."

She narrowed her eyes. "What's your point? You can bleed a lot too, if you're jealous."

An idea started knocking at Jan's mind, like the old children's story about the bunny in the woods who wanted protection from the hunters. When Hank got ideas, he thought about them forever; he rolled them around in his mind and drew them on big pieces of paper until he knew every part, pulled them apart and turned them upside-down and inside-out. Jan didn't have time for that. "We should form an alliance."

Eyebrow. "Really. Because that sounds mutually beneficial."

Jan glared, but kept it just to her eyes. Her mentor said that if she scowled with her whole face, wrinkling her nose and puffing out her cheeks and scrunching her mouth, she'd look like a baby, but if she just used her eyes then she'd look tiny and dangerous. "You have to leave him alone to go get food. What if you'd been gone still when I found him?" The girl's eye twitched. "And I'm just a little girl. What if someone else found him?"

A arrow flew out from the elevator shaft , just missing Jan's leg, and embedded itself in a support strut in the ceiling. "He's not dead," called the boy from the darkness. "And he's kind of offended now!"

"Clint!" the One girl snapped. "Stop being a little bitch."

"Fuck you," he yelled back, weak but determined, and Jan giggled without thinking even at the same time she wanted to gasp at the language. Daddy would never approve.

The girl pinched her nose. "Let's pretend for a second I've lost my mind and am considering this. What exactly are you bringing to the table? I've got the weapons and the food. You have some knives and a blowdart."

"I'm knives and a blowdart with eyes," Jan said, stubborn. It was a good idea. It was. "I can watch him when you're gone. I can give him medicine and make sure he doesn't go into shock or something. And my darts are tiny but they can take down anybody who finds us before they can hurt us."

She tapped her finger against her bicep. Jan wondered how many hours of training she had to do to look like that; just swinging axes wouldn't cut it, not for a girl. Seven girls looked different, stocky and stubborn, not lithe and quietly deadly like her. "And what do you get, then, if you're so strong on your own?"

Jan took a deep breath. "Does it matter? If I poison your friend, you can kill me when you get back."

"And is it just you? Or is your bodyguard coming too?"

"Him too." Jan wouldn't leave him alone to go crazy all by himself. She'd figure out a way to fix him, somehow. Hopefully forming an alliance would make the sponsors see how clever she was, and they'd send something to help. "When we're separated, he can stay with you. I'll stay with your friend. Deal?"

The One girl ran her tongue over her teeth. "Fine," she said. "For now. But cross me, lie to me, you even give me a look I don't like and you're dead, you understand me?"

We're all dead, said the voice in Jan's head. Twenty-three of us are, anyway. Jan shivered. "I understand," she said.

She nodded. "Good. You and your bodyguard stay where you are unless we have to split up to look for supplies. There's not enough from for everyone."

Jan nodded and scurried back to the other side of the garage, where she sat and waited for Hank to twitch himself awake. When he did -- Jan gripped her knives, but the sleep had done him good, and he only sat up and blinked, rubbing his eyes -- Jan explained the alliance to him. "Good," Hank said, and he didn't sound crazy anymore, just tired, and Jan almost sobbed with relief. "Good, that's good thinking. They have food and weapons. Once we kill them, we'll have that, too. Give it a little more time, enough for me to find out where their supply caches are, where she's fetching the food from, and then we'll move."

Jan's insides twisted, but she knew he was right. She just couldn't think about it right now.

"Are you hungry?" Hank asked, and he fished out a prepackaged meal from his bag, tossing it to Jan. "You should eat something."

Jan's hands shook too much for her to open the wrapper; Hank took it from her with an affectionate cluck of his tongue and handed it back with a roll of his eyes. "Thanks," Jan said, trying to keep her voice steady. See, this was Hank. He was still here. She could help him. She would.

---

 

Before the storm, Jenny had made a sign for their hideout from a scrap of paper and a half dried-out marker she'd found stuck to the refrigerator, one of those things people used to write grocery lists on. "CAP'S ARMY" said the sign, and the girls had a laugh and signed their names on it like it was some kind of pledge, like if they made their bond strong enough the Gamemakers wouldn't tear them apart. And maybe they wouldn't, if Nick Fury ever made his move. Bruce was starting to wonder if this rebellion even existed at all, or if it was all part of some larger plan to make things more interesting for the audience.

That was probably far-fetched. If nothing else, they'd been allowed to hole up here for a few days now without anything terrible happening -- Bruce had panicked during that storm, waiting for mutts or killer robots or something to come wading through the torrent of rain but nothing happened -- and that probably meant someone else was getting tortured to entertain the Gamemakers instead. They'd lost power for a day or so, but they had flashlights and kindling and had a cookout instead, and the girls giggled and swapped stories while the boys brooded.

Bruce tried not to think about it. He just hoped Fury made his move soon while there were still enough people to save, but he had his suspicions that the man was waiting for them to do something, to give Panem a signal. He wouldn't have done this here, publicized for the entire country to see, if he didn't want the country to see it -- just too bad he hadn't given anyone hints on what they were supposed to do. Bruce wasn't an expert on revolutions or anything, but putting it all on a bunch of kids who may or may not know they didn't have to murder each other seemed risky.

Or maybe that wasn't it; maybe Steve's breakdown was amusing enough for the Gamemakers, who knew. Bruce had expected Jenny to come back with Steve and some food or intel; instead she came back with the boy from Eleven and the girl from Twelve and a Steve Rogers who went practically catatonic as soon as he was inside. Even worse when Sam and Sharon went out on patrol the next day and came back with the girl from Eleven, half-starved and delirious, raving something about pork, and her addition brought their total up to seven without netting them any more supplies or, you know, sanity.

That meant the only kid left, if Bruce had counted right, was the little one from District Seven, and Bruce didn't know if they could do anything about her. She and her district partner had seemed pretty close, not to mention Bruce knew what incipient breakdown looked like, and her refusal to deal with the reality of the Arena the night before spelled exactly that. He'd told Fury he wanted the kids out, but Bruce didn't know if it was safe to be anywhere near that. If they could find a way to tell her that not everyone had to die, then maybe, but it had taken days for Steve and Bruce to dance around the subject enough to confirm they were both playing with the same rulebook. Bruce still didn't know about Sam or Jean.

And Steve, well.

Jenny told Bruce what they'd found, the burnt-up corpse of the kid he'd volunteered for with a token set out as plain as the whole charred body itself, and Bruce didn't blame Steve for shutting down. The whole thing filled Bruce with a slow, cold rage, the kind that used to mean danger because it would turn his fingers to itch for his pipe, and later the syringe. The kind of anger on the nights his father turned into a monster and gave Bruce the push to turn himself into one to even the score, alcohol against methamphetamine and fist against fist until by the end there'd been very little man left in either of them.

Bruce might be a genius, both in the conventional sense and in making trouble for himself, but one thing he recognized better than the sound of his own mother's voice was the signs of a self-destructive spiral. Bruce recognized more than grief running through Steve's mind; he saw the beginning of a plan, and not the kind that ended up with everyone walking home alive and holding hands. It would seem like the perfect opportunity for Bruce to step in and offer wisdom, except that Bruce's problem had been self-destructive but not self-sacrificing. It didn't take much to figure out that Steve's collapse was going to end in a big heroic gesture and no more Captain, and Bruce did not have the wherewithal to deal with that.

He wasn't even sure if he should. Coming out of rehab to no parents and no girlfriend and no future put Bruce in a pretty low place, and only a weird sort of stubbornness and the thought of how damned happy his father would be if Bruce actually pulled the trigger kept him out of it. That wasn't going to help Steve, and Bruce didn't know how much he liked the idea of keeping Steve alive with nothing left to live for if it meant Fury and his rebels were just going to use him dry.

Bruce shook his head. Now, Steve sat on the floor, his hands dangling between his knees, and Bruce should talk to him but he had no idea what to say. "I'm going to go on a supply run," Bruce said instead, but Steve didn't stir. He blew out a breath and dragged a hand down his face, fingers pinching the skin over his cheekbones. "Steve? You want to come with? Sam can watch the girls, right Sam?"

Sam, sitting on the counter to look out the window at the grey cityscape outside, glanced back and nodded. Good guy, Sam, quiet, obviously seen a hell of a lot back in his home district even if he didn't talk about it, and Bruce thought maybe if they lived through this they could get along, the two of them. Either way, even without being able to talk about the rebellion, with the way Sam acted toward the little girl from his district who'd gone crazy, Bruce couldn't see him turning on the others.

"Steve," Bruce said, letting an edge into his voice. "You need to go outside. Get some air. It'll be good for you."

Steve said nothing, but the girl from Eight knelt down next to him and said something quiet in his ear. Finally he stirred, looked at her for a second, then nodded. "All right," he said, his voice startlingly even, and a chill ran down Bruce's spine. That was the voice of a man already dead, or at least who'd decided he would be soon. "Sharon says we're out of soap, and the girls want to be able to wash."

It was the kind of thing that didn't make sense to bug the sponsors for, so that made sense. "We can scour the pharmacies," Bruce said, picking up an empty pack and slinging it over his shoulder. He didn't know much about Six, and his wandering through the Arena before meeting up with the others hadn't told him much favourable, but at least a district with his many drug problems was bound to have places to get them over the counter. He grimaced.

Bruce tried a few times to make conversation, but Steve said nothing, just kicked a loose chunk of paving down the street, catching it with the toe of his boot and sending it skittering across the concrete. Bruce gave up quickly enough; he knew as well as anyone that you couldn't help someone with no interest in letting it happen. Maybe one of the kids could get through to him. Bruce wasn't a therapist, even if he'd seen enough of them that he could probably fake it well enough.

After a while he found a building marked 'pharmacy', and the windowpanes might be thick with grime but that didn't mean anything. Even if it was abandoned, there still might be supplies inside, and soap, at least, wouldn't go off. "Wait here, I'll check inside," Bruce said. Steve didn't answer him, but he stopped and stood by the door, one hand on the handle of his sword, and good enough.

Bruce pushed open the heavy door -- locked, but someone had smashed it -- and stopped immediately, gagging at the heavy stench of ammonia. For a second he thought someone had pissed all over the floor and was about to back out when his nostrils curled at the sharp scent of acetone. He stopped dead, looked at the windows again, and no, that wasn't grime, it was deliberate, painted from the inside. He glanced down at his feet and the red stains on the floor beneath his boots.

Bruce's breath caught in his chest, and his heart picked up and did its best to turn him into a hummingbird. His eyes adjusted to the dimness, and he grappled in his pack for a flashlight, casting the beam around the darkened room. The room was littered with jars and cans, some half-full of clear liquid, the bottoms crusted white. Coffee filters lay strewn across the floor, but instead of grounds, white crystals stuck to the paper instead.

Oh no. No no no no.

Bruce scrambled back until he hit the door frame. He knew what this was. He'd turned his own basement into something like this. He knew without looking that every bottle of cold medicine in the pharmacy would be empty; that every container in the room would be coated with powdered residue, that somewhere out back would be a trash pile filled with propane tanks, empty car batteries, antifreeze, and any number of things that Bruce could still list off by heart no matter how much he tried to forget.

Several large coffee cans sat on the table, next to a leather pouch. Bruce should run away, he should open the door and get out of here and forget he ever saw it, but instead he stepped closer, his feet crunching against the shards on the floor, the light bouncing as his hands shook. He opened the pouch first, his chest tightening when several fresh syringes glinted in the yellow glow of his flashlight. Bruce's breath rasped in his ears, filling the whole room until it pressed against him like a living thing. Something took his hand, moved it and used his fingers to pry open the lid of the closest can, held open his eyelids and forced him to stare at the powdered crystals.

He'd never seen so much in his life. This much, uncut, could buy half of District Twelve. Bruce's jaw clamped, his teeth clenching together at the memory. He should walk away. Tell Steve they needed to get out of here.

Moving like he was underwater, Bruce picked up the leather pouch and one of the coffee cans, and put them in his pack, then turned and walked out of the building, closing the door behind him. "It's a bust," he said, calm, calm, calm enough to surprise himself. "Let's keep looking."

Steve just nodded, and Bruce took off walking down the street. He wasn't going to use it. He knew better than that. It was just insurance, that's all. Protection. At least this way he wouldn't starve to death in case Fury forgot about them or decided to let them die after all.

---

 

Tony didn't believe in hell, or any kind of afterlife, because his old man always said nothing could be worse than what people did to each other with no prompting from God or Devil or anything else. Tony didn't agree with Howard much, but the more the years passed, the more he decided his father had something there. Except that now, hell had a whole other element to it: being alone.

Ever since he'd been a kid and built Dummy to keep him company -- and, later, when he'd gotten the implants that let him hear Jarvis whenever he wanted -- Tony had determined never to be alone. Locked in his lab without another human presence for company, sure, fine, Tony liked that, better than putting up with idiots and their questions and their assumptions, or his mother's clumsy attempts to keep him from seeing Howard's alcoholism, or hearing Howard tell Tony he needed iron in his backbone one more time. But he always had his bots and his link to Jarvis, and that kept him sane.

Sane enough, anyway. The difference between Tony and Howard was that Tony could put down the drinks any time he wanted; he wasn't addicted like his old man, he just didn't have a reason to stop -- but give him one and he would, cold turkey. That he had booze instead of food in his pack didn't mean anything, either; for one thing, the sponsors could send food but not alcohol, that being against the rules, and for another, this was the Arena, and if that didn't count as an exception then nothing did. It wasn't the same. Not the same at all.

It was just the silence, that's all. Like it or not, Tony had come to rely on having Jarvis there to talk to, even if all he did was snark in the old man's ear, and listening to his smooth tones did more for Tony than any controlled substance ever could. Even talking to his makeshift bots had helped. But after the storm hit and Tony murdered his bots with his own hands -- engine oil coated his fingernails, worse than blood, he'd honestly rather stick a knife in one of the Career tributes' ribs than do that again -- he'd lost Jarvis, and now it was days later and he still couldn't get the link back up and running.

No maps. No vital statistics. No idea about the other tributes' whereabouts. No inside information at all, nothing other than his own skull and the thoughts whirling around inside it, and maybe he'd never get it back. Tony didn't think that mattered for his survival, not when he had the pieces of that strapped to him beneath his clothes and hidden in his pack, but it sure did make him reach for the bottle a lot more than usual.

Still, he was fine. Eighteen years old and in his prime, not exactly a candidate for a substance problem. Just to prove it to himself, Tony took another drink from the flask at his belt, his hands steadying as the burn traced its way down his esophagus.

Tony turned a corner and ran smack into someone's chest, bouncing off like the man was made of brick. He scrambled back, pulling the short sword free, and looked up into the constantly-perplexed face of the guy from District Five. "Banner!" Tony burst out, and he nearly kissed him just from the sheer relief of finding someone, anyone, and wouldn't that be embarrassing. "Son of a bitch, you actually made it. You had me worried back at the Cornucopia, big guy, it's great to see you. What've you been up to? How's the wife and kids?"

Banner gave him a long look, blinking slowly, and his hands twitched on the straps of his pack. "Stark," he said.

Tony clapped him on the shoulder. "Aw, come on, we're in the same circus of death, I think we're on a first-name basis now, what do you say? Call me Tony, I'll call you Sugar, and we'll both call it even, how's that sound?"

Banner's fingers closed around his pack again, pulling it tighter over his back. "You're looking tired."

"Am I? Well, I suppose I haven't had enough time to really work on my beauty sleep, you know, a gorgeous specimen like me doesn't just roll out of bed looking amazing -- except wait, that's not true, now is it." And oh Snow on a hilltop, Tony was babbling like an idiot, and he needed to cut it out. He ran a hand over his face, feeling stubble. "I'm going for the rugged look," he said. "I see you've found somewhere to get a shave, I don't suppose you'd want to share?"

Rich, coming from him, given that Tony had turned his back on the alliance and the rebellion and everything else. He'd seen the gorgeous redhead talking to Banner in the training room before she moved on to the pair from Six, and that in Tony's books meant they'd been recruited. Not that it had helped Carol any, which had kind of been Tony's point all along. But if Tony had to spend another night with only himself for company, he might actually go crazy for real.

"Not really up to me," Banner said, his adam's apple jumping, and Tony wondered what had him spooked. He looked back around the corner. "Steve? I found Stark -- Tony. I found Tony. He wants to join the alliance."

Tony followed Banner past the crumbling facade and came face to face with Captain Martyrdom himself. "Well, well, well," Tony drawled before he could stop himself. "You're still kicking are you, despite your best efforts, I assume. Couldn't you find a grenade to throw yourself on, or a kid to take a sword in the chest for?"

Rogers, quite frankly, looked like he'd been run over by the cars he'd spent half his adolescence putting together in the factories. Panem's new golden boy had hollows under his eyes, and he hadn't bothered to avail himself of the razor like Banner. Even though his muscles strained his shirt at the sleeves and across the chest -- had he been that big when Tony met him, it didn't seem like it, but who knew -- he still carried himself like he'd lost weight.

"Cut it out, Tony," Rogers said in a tired, resigned sort of voice, but a muscle jumped in the corner of his jaw. It was the same face that made Tony want to punch him in the training centre, that had caused him to rile Rogers up and get him to punch Tony instead. "I'm not in the mood."

"Sugar-pie, I'm hurt," Tony said, laying a hand across his heart and feeling the hard plastic and metal of the reactor under his fingers, safe and solid like an embrace would never be. "And here I thought we had something."

"Really?" Rogers narrowed his eyes, blue and cold, and from the way Banner glanced at him, startled, that must've been the most emotion he'd shown in a long time. "Because from what I recall, what we had was you telling me every man for himself. Since only one of us is getting out of here, I can only assume you're joining the alliance so you can take all our stuff and be gone in the morning. That's what you do, isn't it? According to the gossip."

He actually said 'the gossip'. Priceless, really. "I'm surprised an upright man like you listens to gossip," Tony shot back. Rogers hadn't been like this before, deliberately cutting and cruel, and it showed in the clumsy way he went about it, searching for the most obvious opening. He didn't have the skill at taking people out with a single shot, slicing them off at the knees, whereas Tony had perfected the art of the put-down by the time he entered elementary school and caused his teacher to quit on the first day. "Seems a little beneath you, Cap. What would your boy say?"

Tony only meant to needle him, because if Rogers could take cheap shots then so could Tony. He didn't expect to find himself against the wall, his head ringing after his skull slammed into the bricks. "Whoa, did I say something wrong?" Tony asked, half hysterically as pain lanced through him and the edges of his vision dimmed. Rogers had definitely not been this strong before the Arena, otherwise that time Tony goaded him into punching would've ended a lot differently. "I'm sorry, does he like gossip? Did I hurt his feelings?"

"He's dead," Rogers snarled, and Tony stopped so fast he may as well be himself, his jaw falling open. "They killed him, they left his body here in the Arena for me to find, so if you say one more word about him you'll be joining him. Do you understand me?"

Except no, Rogers wouldn't kill him. Tony didn't have a talent for seeing inside people, exactly, but being a man well acquainted with his own demons made it easier to see them in others. Rogers wanted to lash out and take the Arena to pieces brick by brick, wanted to take the rage and pain at his friend's death and turn it out, but he couldn't, because at the end of the day he was a good man. This was why Tony was glad not to be hampered by inconvenient things like moral strictures.

"Hey," Banner said, holding out a hand. "Steve. Easy. He didn't know."

"It wouldn't matter if he did," Rogers ground out, pressing Tony harder against the wall until the broken concrete dug into his spine, but Tony didn't dare move. Just because Rogers wouldn't kill him didn't mean he couldn't hurt him, and all the guilt after the fact wouldn't put Tony together again. "He'd joke about it anyway, because it's all a big joke to him, isn't it, Tony? Everything is a joke to you, even the part where kids are dying."

A hundred quips came to mind, and for a second Tony thought he would say all of them, because how dare Rogers, what did he know, about Tony, about anything, but then Tony thought of of wire and metal beneath his fingers, of pulling and tearing and destroying. He thought of the crackle in his ear as Jarvis disappeared. Of wandering through the city on his own, gathering the pieces of his secret creation and having absolutely no one to brag to.

Tony let out a breath, and he reached up to grip Rogers by the wrists. "Actually, I think I've lost track of the punchline this time," he said. Rogers blinked at him, bewildered, and something snapped in his expression like he'd come out of a daze. Tony swallowed. "I didn't know about --" He thought for a minute, trying to remember the kid's name, and he almost asked Jarvis to remind him before the absence slammed into him, cold and silent, and yeah, all right, it wasn't funny, not at all. "Bucky," Tony said, remembering on his own. "I'm sorry about Bucky. He seemed like a good kid."

"He was," Rogers said, and now his voice pitched upward into that tight, desperate whine of grief that Tony recognized and wished he didn't. "He was. He was, all the time, and I never -- I couldn't." Rogers' arm shook against Tony's chest, and he dropped his forehead down against Tony's shoulder, his entire body shuddering.

And oh, okay, this, this was too many feelings for Tony's liking on a good day. He looked over the top of Roger's blond head, meeting Banner's eyes and widening his own. 'Get him off me', he said silently, and Banner's mouth twitched but he just raised his hands in a 'don't look at me' gesture, the traitor. "Okay, Rogers, I think you need some medicine," Tony said, nonchalant, because that's what you did with feelings. Feelings were like big dogs or bullies. If you didn't move, they'd leave you alone and go away. "Lucky for you, the doctor's in town. Let me come back with you and I'll give you some of my special remedy."

"You're talking about alcohol," Rogers said, his voice muffled against Tony's jacket.

"Uh, yes, I am, and don't tell me what else you think I could've been referring to, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to know," Tony said, and to hell with all of this. He patted Rogers' back with the flat of hand, keeping his elbow at a stiff angle. "C'mon, buddy, keep it together. What if I said 'there there', would that do you?"

Rogers laughed, a horrible wet sound that Tony had heard leave himself, and if he was remembering those now that meant he needed to drink a lot more if he was going to forget this entirely. "You're the worst."

"Not that many of us in here," Tony said. "Not really the time to be picky."

"Yeah, I guess not." Rogers pulled back, and despite being tall and blond and gorgeous he was still a kid, same age as Tony, and here they were expected to wage war for adults on two separate battlefields at the same time. Everything about this sucked. "All right, you're in, and you can help Bruce with the alarm system he's been working on."

Right. Tony had forgotten through all of this that Banner was some kind of genius, and he nearly smacked himself. Here he'd been trying to fix the connection to Jarvis all by himself, talking to the air like a crazy person, when he had another engineer in the same Arena with him. All right, new deal; as soon as the others fell asleep, Tony would ask for Banner's help. The guy was twitchy; he looked like he could use a good problem to solve.

Rogers stepped back, and Tony rubbed at his chest to check the reactor, but it seemed okay. "You need to work on your flirting technique," Tony said, because he had to say something. Banner snorted and rolled his eyes, but Rogers just lapsed back into silence. Well, it had been something, anyway.

Tony followed the others back to the alliance hiding place, and as he did a thought niggled in the back of his mind. It seemed awfully convenient, all of this -- Rogers' district, his neighbourhood, and now his boy was dead. Someone wanted Rogers angry at the Capitol -- not just angry, but furious, wanted him to have no choice but to turn. The same kind of person who might think it was a good idea to put Tony's name as the only one in the Reaping ball to guarantee that he'd be there to help them in their suicidal quest.

If Tony had access to Jarvis, he would've asked him to run a check for Bucky Barnes, to see if that really was his body Rogers had found in the rubble, and if so, whose men had put him there. Tony had a good bet that the person behind all of this didn't have a rose in his lapel, but wore a patch over one eye instead. If Tony was right, then maybe he'd join Fury's rebellion just to get out of here and deliver the man a good, strong punch in the face.

Well, that clinched the temporary alliance decision, anyway. Tony needed Banner's help to bring his connection to Jarvis online, now even more than before.

They heard it first -- a low roar, rumbling like thunder except the sky was clear and the sound continuous, almost like the crash of waves, but mixed with falling metal and breaking glass. Soon after that came the smell, sharp and stinging, ash and rubber and plastic that left a bitter, acrid taste in Tony's mouth. Having caused several accidents in his laboratory over the years, Tony didn't have to see it to know what happened; by the time they caught sight of smoke rising over the buildings ahead of them, all three of them knew.

"No!" Rogers burst out, and took off at a full run, the sword at his belt swinging crazily. Banner swore and followed him, shouting his name.

Tony hesitated -- all his instincts told him to run the other way, get the hell out of here before whoever did this came after him, too -- but like it or not, while he could do this alone, it would be much, much easier with help. That's all it was. He broke into a run and turned the corner to find the place where Rogers and his camp of merry tributes had set up their safe house. It was a good choice, he saw in a second; easy to defend, covered windows, big enough that they could hide if need be. Difficult to breach from the outside.

On the other hand, not so difficult to set on fire.

If he'd had Jarvis, Tony could have asked him to hack into the Gamemakers' computers, see if he could make it rain, or stop the fire, or something. As is, all he could do was stare as the flames consumed the building. The heat from it smacked him in the face even from here, and Tony stepped back out of reflex.

"The kids in there?" Tony called to Banner, who nodded, sharp and terrified, and Tony's stomach twisted. A window exploded outward, glass flying in all directions, and a scream cut through the air.

It broke the hold on Rogers, who'd been standing on the road in shock. Tony wished he could say he was surprised when Rogers unfroze and ran straight for the flames.

---

 

No. No. No no no no no no nononononononononono NO --

The air burned around him. When Steve breathed, the sparks stung his throat until it felt like he was inhaling the fire itself. This must have been what Bucky felt like before he died, when the flames ate the orphanage from the inside and left him nothing but picked-over bone. Did he suffocate before the fire caught up to him? Did the ceiling collapse on him and crush the air from his lungs, did a falling beam smash in his skull? Steve couldn't decide which option he wanted most to be true.

Flames burst out through the windows of the safe house from within as fire devoured the building. Inside, not outside. Not a Gamemaker fire, then. A tribute set this; someone walked inside while Steve was out being useless and sulky and kicking rocks down the road and thinking about himself, himself, himself; someone had strolled right in, poured gasoline all over and tossed a match.

Carol's face floated in the sky above the Arena that first night, her official portrait scowling and stubborn, DISTRICT SIX FEMALE in block letters below her face. Bucky's bracelet dangled from Steve's wrist while his body lay broken in the rubble, never found, never buried, never returned home. More promises. More empty vows.

Screams burst through the roar and crackle of the flames, and Steve stood up straight, jarred upright like when Sister Catherine would rap him on the shoulder for slouching. Dead people didn't scream. Corpses didn't scream. People screamed as they were dying -- Bucky would have screamed, Sister Catherine too, all those children, all of them, everyone -- but once they were dead they stopped.

Screaming meant life. Screaming meant it wasn't too late. Screaming meant Steve had a chance.

This was it. His moment, the one the Capitol could never take from him, the one that Fury would use to galvanize the districts and save the country because Steve would never be good for anything but this. In the end, no one would know that his legs shook, that he stumbled on his first step because his feet wouldn't support his weight. The cameras would be focusing on the fire; they wouldn't catch how his body nearly failed him.

On the other hand, they would catch Steve flying through the air, slamming back against a wall with Tony Stark's hands at his throat, fisting in his shirt. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tony demanded, and of course he did, because Tony lived for himself, didn't he, even if Steve had been out of line for saying it, it was true. Soot and sweat smeared Tony's face, and light from the flames flickered in his eyes.

Steve choked, and Tony loosened his grip just long enough for Steve to suck the acrid air into his lungs, but not enough for him to escape. "Let me go!" Steve gasped. "I have to save them!"

He couldn't save Carol. He couldn't save Bucky. Couldn't save any of the women who'd raised him or the children he'd left behind. Couldn't save Panem. But he could -- and would -- do this. Steve's gaze dropped to the sword at his waist, but Tony caught him, swore and ripped the weapon free, throwing it aside.

"They're dead already!" Tony ground out. "You don't want to save them. You want to die a hero so you won't actually have anyone's blood on your hands, so you can wipe away the guilt from the ones who died because you couldn't save them. So the people will have a face to plaster on its flags to rally the troops. Well, good luck with that. It's too late for you. It's too late for all of us."

Tony had a madman's stare that the cameras loved. Steve imagined the audience, craned forward in their seats, breath catching as the crazy genius with the eyes of fire pinned the underdog golden boy from the slums up against a wall.

The smoke filled Steve's lungs and squeezed his chest, or maybe Tony's words did that. He squeezed his eyes shut, tears burning the backs of his eyelids, and shame battered him like the heat that blasted him in the face. Inside the building, someone was crying, calling for help, and shook Steve from his torpor once more.

"The only thing I can do is save them!" Steve screamed. "I'm not getting out of here, I know that! All I can do is save those kids!"

"No!" Tony locked gazes, and even though he didn't move, he gave of the impression that he'd just turned and spat on the ground. He moved even closer and hissed in Steve's ear, too low for the cameras to catch. "You're dying for that stupid cause, for the damn rebellion, and it's moronic! Nobody should die for anyone else's campaign, I don't care what it is! If you're going to die, die for you! Don't become a martyr so someone else can sit behind a desk. Make them do their own dirty work for once."

Steve tried to laugh, but it came out in a sob. The screams behind them grew until they filled his ears, his brain, dug fingers in his eyeballs and tried to claw them out. "Let me go!"

"So you can dive into a building on fire and burn to death in a heroic sacrifice, hell no!" Tony's hands closed around Steve's throat again. "You're so eager to give the rebellion its martyr. So willing to lay down your life for them. You really think they need another corpse? Look around! There are corpses all over the place. You really want to make a difference, then you step the fuck back and live."

"I can't! Not if they die! Not with Bucky dead!" The words exploded out from Steve like bullets. "Even if I live I'll just spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it. What kind of life is that? At least if I die here, I'll have done something that mattered!"

At least if he died here, he wouldn't have to live every day knowing that the people who'd meant most to him were dead because of him. He'd shed that knowledge when he shed his body.

Tony let go with one hand, yanked the other back and bashed Steve so hard on the side of the head that his vision tunnelled. "You want to save them, huh? You want to see how it's done?" he demanded, stepping back. Steve reeled, collapsing to his knees. Tony stomped over to the building and threw his hands up in the air while Steve held his throat and sucked in air.

"Tony, what are you doing?" Bruce demanded. "Are you both insane?"

Tony ignored him. He turned his face up to the sky and shouted. "HEY ASSHOLES! You turn on the rain right now or I swear to Snow I will kill myself, and your golden boy, right now, and you'll have one boring final showdown!"

Steve would have laughed, if he could get the oxygen. He laughed inside his head instead -- at least until the clouds opened up and it began to pour.

Notes:

The Seven-One alliance (now featuring snarky injured Clint!) is my favourite thing. The scene with Tony and Steve and the fire was my first image of the Avenger Games, the one I scribbled down almost exactly a year ago after it sat in my head at work all day. It's ... really gratifying to get it out for real.

Series this work belongs to:

• « Part 2 of the The Avenger Games series