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uhohdad · 19 days

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THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED THE MOUNTAIN

KONIG X READER [HUNGER GAMES AU]

You & Konig have been chosen to participate in a twenty-four tribute fight to the death.

18+, NSFW, 85k WORD COUNT, AO3, Virgin!Konig, Outcast!Konig, 18yo!Konig, GentleGiant!Konig, Fem!Reader, Mentor!Price, Blood & Injury, Graphic Violence, Death, PTSD, Alcohol Use, Slow Burn, Sexual Content, First Time, Smut, Fluff, Angst

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · THE VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH

➤ THE GAMES

When you wake, your cheek is still pressed to Konig’s chest. Your lips have settled in a dot of your own drool that stains a spot on his shirt a shade darker. Your head raises to face the knock on the door, and Konig’s head follows in suit. You’re not sure if he was already awake or not, but your eyes meet, both of you already dawning that unsure stare.

You know what this knock means.

This is your call to death.

You take a dry swallow, body already shaking with fear.

You and Konig give each other one last squeeze before you pull away to roll out of bed to answer the door.

It’s Price, wearing a matching solemn expression, his brow creased in sympathy at your face drained of color and jaw that trembles.

He nods at you, and wordlessly embraces you, your face buried in his chest as his arms wrap around your shoulders.

“You’ll be alright, Pluck,” He whispers, giving you a squeeze before he pulls away. He looks over your shoulder and sees Konig, slouching off the edge of your bed, staring at the floor.

Price refrains from giving you that knowing, smug grin. He nods again, licks his lips, and the three of you still, staring off into nothing. Mourning in your last few moments.

At breakfast, Ruby has the sense to ease on the chatter, the four of you eating in a grave silence.

Neither you or Konig have much of an appetite. In fact, every bite you force down threatens to make a reappearance, but you have to. You have to eat and drink as much as you can hold because if you can survive the day, you will soon be starving.

No words are exchanged.

Wordlessly you and Konig are chaperoned down to the ground floor, led by Capitol guards to the hovercraft launch pad.

You are strapped into your seat, where you are given a tracker, implanted deep into your inner forearm with a thick, hollow needle. You don’t hold back your wince as it’s driven into your flesh.

There’s a lump in your throat that won’t go away. As you gnaw at your painted nails, your hand jitters in front of your face. You wonder if forcing down breakfast was a bad idea, because it’s swirling around your insides, stomach churning as you sit with nothing to distract yourself. In a futile attempt to soothe yourself, your thumb rubs over the smooth, golden front of Konig’s token.

When the hovercraft’s windows go black, you can’t help the sharp inhale you draw in.

You can’t bear to look at Konig as you’re separated in the catacombs deep beneath the arena.

Mauve’s waiting for you at your launch room. She looks a little pale today, her usually uninterested demeanor wavering.

Pressed to the far wall and immediately catching your attention is an open, crystal tube circling a metal platform that will soon deliver you to the arena. The sight of it widens your eyes, as if you were staring down an opponent in the arena. Your breakfast sloshes around in your gut, fists clenching at your sides.

Mauve sighs and hands you a pair of black pants with a matching tactical belt. The pants are wind resistant, a swishy material on the outside and a thin layer of wool on the inside.

You nod slow, jaw slack and shaking, breaths audible. Dizzy and unsteady, you almost trip as you step into your pants, catching yourself with a hop.

Mauve helps you into the most supportive sports bra you’ve ever had the pleasure of wearing, and a black shirt, reminiscent of the one you wore for training. Your arms fumble to make it through the holes of the fabric. Once on she takes a black jacket off a hanger and opens it for you. You make a half turn on unsteady feet, slipping one arm after another through the sleeves. She pulls it up onto your shoulders, brushing your hair from the back of your neck as she smooths the hood along your shoulders.

Your rattling fingers fumble for the zipper and fail to connect either side of the jacket. Mauve gently takes it for you, zipping up to your middle. You try to whisper her a thank you but it just comes out a breathy squeak.

The jacket was made for you, you can tell. The almost silken, water resistant material perfectly confirming to the curves of body, comfortably hugging you. Similar to the pants, another layer of wool lines the inside. At the absence of pockets, you slip Konig’s token into your bra for safe keeping.

“Look,” Mauve says, annoyed as ever, “I try not to get attached. But you,” She sighs, lowering her voice, “You make it hard.”

Your face loosens for just a moment.

Maybe you had pegged Mauve wrong. You hadn’t considered that she may be avoidant and uninterested to just her tribute. You assumed that’s all she ever was. But maybe outside of here, away from the kid she has to watch die every year, maybe she is nicer. Open and loving and supportive. It makes you think that if someone had tried to judge your entire personality based on how you’ve acted since the reaping, maybe they’d peg you wrong too.

“Thank you, Mauve,” Your words are nothing but a shaky whisper.

“Mhm,” She hums, “Now win.”

You scan her face, your entire body trembling in fear.

An even, robotic voice comes over the speaker and announces that the launch will begin in thirty seconds.

You choke on the lump in your throat, a hiccup leaving at your futile attempt to swallow.

Your feet are made of lead as they approach the launch pad, careful, shuffled steps up to the tube.

“Hey,” Mauve says.

When she looks at you, she gives you a single, slow nod.

“You’ve got it.”

With full blown eyes, you return her gesture, and the glass encloses you with a zip.

Immediately your palms are pressed to the glass, your instincts clawing to free yourself from this cage.

Mauve gives you one final nod.

Your entire body jumps when the platform begins to raise, and you watch Mauve until she disappears, ascending into darkness.

The first thing you notice as your tube breaks into open is the freezing air. Almost immediately your trembling intensifies, each shallow breath turning to steam that billows in front of your face. You are blinded, nothing but bright white as you jerk your head around. For ten seconds your vision struggles to readjust, twitching as you force yourself to orient to a shine powerful enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Once your eyes adjust to the sun, your focus is pulled to the cornucopia, centered equal distance from each of the tributes’s platforms. All twenty-four of you, in a circle, a minute away from a bloody slaughter.

Sixty Seconds.

The pure white snow that surrounds your feet reflects a brutal full sun.

You follow one of the tributes gaze, the boy from District Three, you think. He’s staring off into the distance, into the sandy landscape just to the left of you.

Desert.

Sand that stretches for what looks like miles, massive dunes that billow along the lifeless sea of orange. A mirage of heat radiating off the piles of sand, dotted with the occasional dead brush.

To your right, behind the story-tall cornucopia, the desert landscape seems to come to a grinding halt. As if a line had been drawn vertically down the horizon. The yellow, hazy sky that hangs over the desert abruptly turns to a blanket of crystal blue sky filled with fluffy, brilliant white clouds. Just next to the split, contrasting against the brilliant blue sky, is the border of a hedge maze. Thick, massive walls of foliage reaching well over the size of a redwood tree, pink flowers that look almost like cherry blossoms intertwined with the deep green walls running along the perimeter of its quadrant. From here you can see at least a dozen openings in its massive walls, leading into it’s chambers.

Forty-Five Seconds.

The arena is divided in four, with the mouth of the cornucopia in the exact spot where each of the landscapes meet, six tribute platforms in each quandrant. Surrounding yours, and the closest five other tribute’s platforms, is snow. Blinding white, the desert’s sun reflecting off its pure coat that comes to a perfect right angle pointed at the cornucopia. When you look behind you, you see the snow stretches along the entire quadrant, eventually obscured by a forest of pine trees. The sky above the pines is a solid, weak grey, flurries dotting the air.

When you look over your left shoulder, you find the snow and pine forest comes to a dead halt, another split in the sky and landscape. It’s picked up by a forest of red maple and ginkgo trees - vibrant crimson and yellow leaves that camouflages just a few feet beyond the treeline. The leaves’ colors immediately remind you of fall, and then it clicks.

Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall.

Cute, Capitol.

Thirty Seconds.

The desert was a death sentence. No water, no food, and heat that would collapse the strongest tributes in a matter of hours.

Snow was out of the question, too. With Price’s instructions to avoid the cornucopia, there’s no way you’d have the proper supplies to survive such a climate. Even just standing in the corner, with the desert quadrant being just a few yards away, you and the five tributes surrounded by snow are shivering from more than just fear, noses and cheeks turning red from the chill air. Staying close to snow would be important, through, as it’s the only source of water you’ve got eyes on from your platform.

The sight of the hedge maze is enough to make your stomach churn. A feeling in your gut that was hard to ignore, even with the rationalization of ideal temperature and concealment. It was too risky. An enclosed space like that, no way to tell what dangers and traps the gamemakers have hidden inside. Too easily cornered into hand-to-hand combat.

The fall forest - that’s your best bet. Dense trees to hide in. Survivable temperature and bordering the snow quadrant.

Fifteen Seconds.

With your arms crossed over your chest in a desperate attempt to keep warm, you do one last quick scan of the four jarring landscapes, just to ensure you’re making the right choice. You find the mouth of the cornucopia again, a pile of goodies spilling out in the exact spot all four quadrants meet. You see weapons made of the finest quality metal, shelter materials, full armor and gear designed with the extreme temperatures in mind. It’s no use eyeing them up, you’d never survive in a dash to the cornucopia. Your eyes flick down to the items scattered around your feet, the lesser value supplies sprinkled further away from the cornucopia. They stick out well in the snow, nestled into the top layer of ice. Just from your spot you can see an empty water bottle, a carabiner, a flashlight. A multitool the size of your index finger, a set of rubber soles - you think to attach to your shoes - and a pair of black, coarse gloves.

You follow the items that trickle into the hedge maze quadrant, and there you find Konig, about seven tributes to your right.

He’s hard to miss among the other tributes, and he’s looking right at you. Catching his stare, you share one last look of hesitance.

You realize you haven’t taken a breath in an uncomfortable amount of time, gulping one deep breath of sharp icy wind while you look to Konig with parted blue lips and eyes pooled with terror.

One last reassuring glance between two tributes that are both just as lost and just as unsure and just as deathly afraid.

When the gong goes off, your brain goes blank. The plan you’d so carefully crafted over the longest minute of your life untangles the moment twenty-three tributes race off their platforms. Half in a full sprint to the mouth of the cornucopia, the others scattering in a full dash to the quadrants.

No one dares rush into the desert, many going out of their way and stumbling through sand to escape the heat that coated them in layer of sweat. The tributes assigned to that quadrant had already removed their jackets and secured them to their waists to escape the dry heat of the sun. A handful of tributes rush for the hedge maze, less offput by its unknown in the interest of full concealment. Two male tributes, one who had snatched the shoe attachments, flashlight, and gloves, dare to brace the snow, running side-by-side and whizzing right past you as they disappear into pine trees. The rest of the tributes make a dash to the fall quandrant, quickly disappearing behind the coverage of yellow and red leaves.

You were still glued to your platform, giving everyone else a massive head start. Frozen in your place, sucked right back into that blackhole of dread and fear you experienced on reaping day.

There’s one thought that tears through the fog, and it’s Price’s voice.

What the hell are you doing, kid?! Get out of there!

It’s his voice that gives you the courage to step off your platform, daring a few feet forward to risk grabbing the canteen and carabiner with one hand, the multitool in the other. The metal wet with melted snow freezes your palms with a harsh bite.

When you look up to make sure no one’s targeting you, the color drains from your face at the sight of the boy from District One thrusting a sword into a boy’s neck. His blood sprays nearly a foot in front of him, coating his killer in a cup of deep red blood. The boy from district one smiles, his grin coated in the blood of his kill.

About ten yards from you, in the fall quadrant, the girl from District Four wrestles the scrawny girl from District Ten to the ground for a 3-inch long knife that was stabbed into the dirt. She managed to overpower her, pinning her down with a straddle before driving the knife into her stomach. She removes the blade several times, plunging it back into Ten - repeatedly slashing her guts and sending blood flying. Ten keeps her grip on the knife that punctures her, face frozen in shock.

The girl from District One, now back to back with her bloody companion, is successfully using a spear to skewer anyone in her reach.

Your head snaps to a figure rushing towards you. The boy from eleven, you think, has his eyes locked on you, running full speed in your direction. At his side is a scythe, its metal gleaming as it catches the bright desert sun with each of his strides. You stand straight from your half-ducked position, having been stuck in your squat after grabbing your meager supplies. The snow crunches under your boots as you make a few shaky steps backwards, palms rising instinctively to brace yourself. You’re still locked in fear, lower lip stammering and unable to get out even a plea for mercy.

Suddenly he’s stopped in his tracks, his legs and upper half folded forward by strong arms and hands clasped tightly around his ribs. You watch with a gaped mouth and blown eyes as he rises a foot-and-a-half off the ground. His limbs flail as he tries to swing the scythe behind him to defend against his assailant. It’s quick, Eleven’s tilted to the side and he’s thrown brutally into the ground. For a moment his body is a blur, and then his head catches on a raised platform. His skull hits the metal with a heavy thunk, followed by the distinct and unmistakable sound of his neck breaking.

When you’re finished eyeing the boy from eleven, dead the moment he hit the platform, your eyes dart to the culprit.

Konig.

He’s peels the scythe from the dead tribute’s hand, looking over his shoulder for any approaching tributes.

As soon as he meets your scared eyes, he starts in a full sprint to you, weapon at his side.

A breathy squeak turns to steam in the frozen air as you stumble backwards. Your heel catches on your own platform, seat hitting the snow and legs sprawled out on the chilled metal.

It’s the betrayal that shocks you back to your body.

Konig is trying to kill you.

Your feet kick desperately at the smooth platform as you turn over in the snow. Stiff, frozen limbs quickly scramble to get yourself up and into a sprint. You keep your few supplies pinned tightly to your chest as you fight against the snow swallowing your boots with each step. You break into full speed when you’re in the fall quadrant, the freezing air turning to a much more bearable temperature the moment your foot harshly hit the dirt littered with yellow petals.

Finally! You hear Price in your head. You can even picture him, leaned towards the screen, hand coming off his knee with an annoyed wave.

Each time your foot slams against the dirt it sends a shock up your legs, still defrosting from the harsh bite of the winter quadrant. The adrenaline pumps through you with each pulse that pounds against your temple, breath as sharp as crystals with each inhale.

Branches grab hold of you as soon as you break through the trees, peeling up the first few layers of exposed skin. With each snap and break of the branches, the searing, white hot image of the boy from eleven flashes in front of your eyes. His eyes that had gone lifeless the moment he crashed into that platform, a small bounce of his head off the metal pillow before he landed limply in his final resting place.

You stay right on the border of the winter quadrant, just to the right of the snow-capped pine trees.

When your hearing comes back to you, previously deafened by an unrelenting replay of a broken neck, the first thing you hear is your heavy breaths, followed by the screams of tributes behind you. They’re quieter now that you’ve made distance from the bloodbath, but there’s no mistaking the raw desperation in their cries of pain and pleas for mercy. You can’t help but flinch at the particularly cutting shrieks.

You run until your legs hurt, until your face and hands are covered in scratches, until your lungs beg for respite, and then you run some more.

You’re thinking about all the tributes that ran into the fall quadrant. Most of the ones that didn’t make a dash to the cornucopia ran into the quadrant you occupy. Your focus had been elsewhere, but you think around six or seven tributes made a run for it as soon as the gong sounded. More may even follow after they’ve grabbed supplies from the cornucopia.

This doesn’t sit right with you, all of these tributes in such a condensed area, almost all of them bigger and stronger than you. They’ll surely stay close to the border of the snow district as well, drawn in to the water supply. It’s frustrating that these tributes had the same plan as you, but you don’t have much of a choice without proper supplies to survive the extreme climates.

Maybe the hedge maze was the right move after all. To your knowledge, only a handful of tributes were daring enough to head to the spring quadrant, and at the very least the hedge maze should provide decent cover. There may even be supplies hidden deep within it chambers.

This in mind, you don’t break your strides, heading deeper into the fall quadrant.

You don’t stop until your stomach threatens to retch, dropping to your knees in exhaustion. If a tribute were to run into you now, they’d surely have no trouble ending your life.

When you finally catch your breath, successfully spitting away the nausea and rubbing away the cramp in your arm from the deadly grip on your items, you’re surprised you’re still alive. That another tribute hasn’t found you and turned your throat inside out.

You’re eager to get away from the snow border, knowing that the tributes will be lingering close by. You’re thankful you risked the water bottle, even if it meant the vivid memories of so many brutal slaughters. You’re sure it will give you an advantage, able to move deeper into the fall quadrant without having to stay close to scoop up handfuls of snow.

When your legs permit you, you stand with a wobble, inching yourself toward the pine trees. You kneel down in the dirt littered with brilliant yellow ginkgo petals, and scoop handfuls of snow up to your mouth, letting it melt into a very refreshing swallow of ice cold water. You don’t even try to mute your noises of satisfaction and relief. Once you’ve quenched the unbearable thirst brought up from running, you uncap your bottle and begin to stuff snow into its small opening.

You can’t get the image, the sound, of the boy’s broken neck out of your mind. It’s stopped playing on a loop, but it now intrusively rips through your thoughts without warning, folding your whole body forward into a cringe.

You’d known Konig was strong. You’d watched him in training, lifting weights you could hardly roll.

It was nothing in comparison to watching him pick up that boy from eleven with ease. He lifted that boy, who was by no means small nor weak, spun him around, and threw him like he was a ragdoll.

You really thought that Konig would have the decency not to try and kill you immediately. Just yesterday you were friendly, sharing both a bed and your intimate thoughts. Moments before the gong you were benefiting from each other’s reassurance. Shouldn’t there have been a cool-down period? You didn’t realize that not agreeing to be his ally meant you were agreeing to be enemies.

It was naive of you to assume you’d be on neutral ground in the arena, you realize.

‘I would kill if I need to.’

You hear Konig’s words intertwined with the repeated sound of Eleven’s neck cracking.

Just a lie, something to keep your guard down.

He killed that boy not out of self-defense or necessity, but because he could. He was running right towards you, ready to pick you off too, just because he could.

He didn’t even have the decency to let someone else pick you off before he broke your assailant’s neck.

Konig specifically wanted to be the one to kill you.

You’re running over every moment you’ve ever shared with him, now tainted with the cruel truth. He had been tricking you all along, luring you into ease and comfort with his presence just so that he could draw you in to kill you.

You’d been right all along.

When your canteen is full, you wipe off the outside of the bottle with your jacket and use the carabiner to clip the bottle and multi-tool onto its rung. You fasten it into your belt loop, but your plan immediately falls apart when the multi-tool starts to bang against the metal of the water bottle with each movement, making far too much noise for your liking. You remove the multi-tool with the faintest annoyed grunt, and take the opportunity to shuffle through its insides. Your fingers are stiff from the cold snow, but nails manage to pry out the sheathed pieces of metal.

Inside you find a blade, about an inch long. The blade is sharp but thin, and would offer little use for self-defense, but will surely be helpful in terms of survival. There’s a second blade, one with a serrated edge, its jagged teeth varying sizes. The multi-tool also shields a corkscrew, a small pair of pliers, a file, and the tiniest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen.

Instead of putting it back on its rung, you stuff the multi-tool into your sports bra, raising goosebumps on your flesh as your body works to warm up the metal.

You begin at a walk further into the fall quadrant, away from the snow and slightly diagonal as you rub your freezing hands together to warm them up.

There’s not much sign of other tributes, but you be sure to head the opposite direction at the slightest rustling of leaves.

You walk at a steady pace now, one you think you can maintain as you dredge deeper into the forest.

You need to figure out a source for food. You weren’t lucky enough to get your hands on any rope or wire, so snares were out of the question. There’s no other vegetation besides ginkgo trees and red maples as far as you can see, but you can’t see very far past the low hanging branches and petals.

You don’t know much about ginkgo trees, so you have no clue if they bear edibility.

There are the last of the maple seeds that occasionally flutter to the ground with their mesmerizing dance.

You can work with maple seeds.

Something for your stomach to at least chew on, even if it meant malnourishment. The bark is also edible, you remember.

And sap! If you can figure out how to harvest it, you’ll get a sweet treat in reward.

There’s something about the trees that seem artificial, though. The colors are a little too bright, the branches a little too flourished with leaves. Not even the petals littered on the ground have a hint of rotted brown on them.

Even with the unease the trees invoke, you risk gathering maple seeds from the forest floor.

You’re not sure how far you’ve traveled, It feels like miles.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

The bloodbath must be over, and they are now firing the cannon that signifies a tribute’s death.

You pause your walking to count on your fingers as the booms fire one after another.

Nine fires. Nine tributes dead.

For a moment, you are enraged. Nine children dead as punishment for crimes that took place well before their creation.

And then you hear Price again, reminding you to use that rage as fuel to survive.

Don’t think about it.

You let out a deep breath, starting up at a steady pace.

Another thought makes you stop.

Nine of you dead.

Is Konig still alive?

To your dismay, there is a pang in your chest that vibrates through your whole body, bleeding a strong emotion you can’t quite pinpoint throughout your entire being.

You… don’t want him to be dead.

He just tried to kill you, and even so the thought of him not making it through the bloodbath is twisting your guts in knots.

‘You don’t think that boy is going to have a giant target on his back?’

Shut up, Price! Shut up! Shut up!

Your feet kick up a few fallen leaves as you force yourself to keep moving.

He can’t be dead, you decide. Even if he had been hanging around the bloodbath with a pack of careers itching to use their weapons on him.

He’s not dead.

You need to tell yourself this, because you can’t afford to feel emotional, even if the emotion you feel is knotted up and begging to be unraveled.

He’s not dead.

Your legs are burning, feeling heavy and unsteady at the same time. Your bends to scoop up maple seeds slow, relishing in the breaks from walking a little too long.

As you walk you peel some of the maple seeds, hoping they can give you some energy to keep going. You’re doubtful, though.

You wince at the break of bitter seeds against your tongue. They’d taste sweeter cooked, but you’re working with what you have.

When you’re really at your limit, you plop down in front of a particularly large maple, thick trunk and camouflaged in a cluster of low-hanging ginkgo branches.

You eat a few more maple seeds, replacing them with the ones in your reach. You take a swig of your water, now melted and cool to wash down their taste.

You wonder how often you’ve been shown on screen, and when? At any moment you could be broadcasted live to every person in Panem.

Surely you wouldn’t get too much coverage, usually after the bloodbath they’ll be busy dissecting all the deaths that occurred all at once, but they will occasionally cut to you to show you’re still alive.

You freeze when you hear the rustling. This is no blow of the wind. This disturbance is animal, this is human, and both of those options mean danger.

You don’t so much as breathe, deathly still at once. From outside the coverage of the ginkgos, you see the flash of a large boot as it walks briskly through the foliage.

They walk like they’re not even afraid of danger, not stealthy in the least bit. Crunching leaves, snapping branches.

Long after they’re out of earshot, you let out a drawn out exhale. If you had killer instincts and a weapon, the tribute would have died by your hand. All you’d have to do is slink out silently behind them and do it before they even knew what hit them.

They’re lucky you’re docile.

Surely you were being featured then. Two tributes in such close proximity, they were probably gearing up for a fight.

So sorry to disappoint.

When the cannon goes off, you flinch again.

Okay, maybe you weren’t being televised.

It’s annoying how your first thought is of Konig. With each tribute that falls the odds of his survival dwindles.

You tell yourself you only care about his survival because it would be best for your district, best for your loved ones. Extra food parcels for every citizen in reward for giving the Capitol a victor.

You really hope he’s still alive.

Fourteen left. Thirteen not including you.

You rest against your maple until dusk, and decide this is a good enough place to set camp as any other.

You already know you’re not going to sleep tonight, but you hope you can at least get some rest.

With the fading light of day you slide out of your ginkgo hide out, and while making as much noise as you dare you begin to saw off some ginkgo branches, supporting them on their undersides to minimize the shake of the twigs and leaves. Only the sound of scratching wood and vibration of branch could draw any nearby tributes closer. You stop every few push and pull of the blade to check for signs of danger. It’s slow going for such an inadequate sawing tool.

By time the sun goes down, when the generously bright moon rises, you’ve successfully cut four decent sized branches dense with leaves. You arrange them around the trunk of your maple tree to conceal your resting body from the rest of the woods.

The cluster of trees does a good job concealing you, but the extra branches should ensure your black clothes don’t stick out against the ginkgo leaves and fill any gaps in the bottom of the branches. For good measure, you scoop up a decent pile of leaves, making sure to kick over nearby leaves to conceal the disruption, and sprinkle the bright yellow petals over your lower half in hopes of blending in with the dirt. You keep yourself propped up against the trunk of your tree, settling your legs in breaks of the tree roots.

You keep your supplies secured tightly to you, just in case you have to make a dash.

You disturb some of your ginkgo petals when the blare of the anthem starts. Over the defeaning music you poke your head into a clearing in the trees. Partially obscured through full branches you can see the Capitol emblem projected into the sky. They’re about to display the faces of the fallen shortly, and you will be able to figure out by elimination which tributes remain.

They appear in order of district, so when the girl from three projects in the sky, you know the careers from one and two are alive. No surprise there.

Her headshot is followed by her companion from three, both from District Five, the girl from District Six.

The girl from District Seven, the one you saw laughing on her chariot with the boy from her district. He’s still alive, though.

You hold your breath once her headshot disappears, bracing yourself to soon see Konig’s face in the sky.

The next face is the girl from ten.

For the first time in the arena, a smile creeps on your face, breathy and toothless. The wave of relief that washes over you is immediate and flooding.

Konig’s alive.

The warm feeling is cut short when you see the face of the boy from eleven hanging over you in the sky, and when you look at his picture, all you can see is his lifeless eyes. His limp bounce off the platform, the crack of his neck.

Konig’s alive.

And killing.

You wonder how many more lives he’s taken today.

Both the girl & boy from District Twelve flash in the sky, the anthem ends on a flare, and the forest seems unbearably quiet in its absence.

As you settle back into your nook, you try to figure out who’s left.

Both from District One & Two.

Both from District Four.

The boy from six, the boy from seven, and both from eight.

You remember Price’s warning about the boy from eight. About how something ‘ain’t right with that boy.’

You & Konig.

The boy from ten.

The girl from eleven.

That’s it, you think.

The air of a crisp fall day has turned to a harsh chill. Your breath turns to steam in the cool air, and a steady shiver twitches your body. You zip your jacket all the way up and tie your hood tightly around your face. In a desperate bid you even draw the branches closer to you, hoping for insulation.

You pull your arms out of their sleeves, tucking them close to your chest and rubbing them together for warmth. When this offers little respite, you pull your knees into your jacket as well, smushing your hands between thighs and chest. Your lower jaw chatters involuntarily, and you can’t help but wish you’d risked the bloodbath for a blanket, probable death be damned.

You close your eyes and long for the Capitol showers, hot and steamy and enveloping your whole body in a steamy warmth.

You think about the warmth you felt last night, how cozy it was to be pressed up to Konig’s body and leeching the heat that radiated from his skin.

Yesterday feels like a lifetime ago. How did Konig manage to cuddle up to you one night, and the very next day be hellbent on slaughtering you?

He must have hated you from the beginning. Hedging his bets, pretending this whole time. You can’t believe you’ve let yourself fall for the gentle giant routine he was peddling.

You got no rest. You experienced every bone-chilling moment of the night, shaking against the unforgiving bark of the maple tree. The closest thing you got to respite was a haze in between sleep and wake, a near dreamlike state where you felt slightly disconnected from the world around you.

It never lasted long though, snapping your head at every rustle of leaves or break of branch. Occasionally the sound of Eleven’s neck cracking will tear through you, and you’re having trouble distinguishing if it’s a hallucination or not.

You wonder how the boys who ran off into the snow quadrant are doing. It may have been their strategy to run from the cornucopia through the snow knowing it’s likely no tribute would follow them. They probably slipped into one of the other quadrants by now. You can’t imagine it’s survivable in the night of winter.

You wonder how all of the other tributes are doing, actually. Did they rest through the night, or did they use this time to be productive?

The career pack will be hunting, no doubt.

You wonder if the boy from seven is mourning his companion. You weren’t actually sure they were friends, but that moment of connection on the chariot seemed so genuine, you couldn’t help but think of them as friends.

Maybe you just look into things too much.

Maybe you just read too far into smiles and stares and never doubt well-intentions.

Maybe you need to grow up and stop being such an emotional, sensitive, needy parasite and find some self-preservation!

The tributes from District Seven probably hated each other, really.

Both of them pretending to let the other’s guard down.

He was probably the one who killed her.

Lured her in security with a genuine smile and a charming laugh just so he could get an easy target to impress the sponsors.

You take a deep inhale to wipe your thoughts clean. You don’t need to be think about the tributes from District Seven. You didn’t even know their names.

But maybe he does miss her.

Maybe her death did mean something to him.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, but you are eager to give your mind actual problems to chew on. Channeling the anger, and all that. You rise slowly, using the trunk of the tree to help sore, numb legs to a stand.

You take a moment to stretch and rub out your achy muscles while you plan for your day.

Your water bottle is about half-full. You tried to ration as much as you could but you covered a lot of ground yesterday and wore yourself to exhaustion.

Okay, snow day. No worries. No running today unless necessary.

Maybe you’ll even get a look deeper into the pine forest and find some berries you recognize.

The thought of a fresh winterberry bursting in your mouth makes your stomach grumble. You begrudgingly finish off the rest of your maple seeds. You’ll replace them on your walk today, but you’re hoping you won’t need to.

Water and food, that’s all you need to worry about today.

And also not dying.

After popping stiff joints, you get moving in a leisurely walk. Instead of your diagonal route towards the desert, you do the same to the snow quadrant. Simultaneously getting where you need to be while tucking yourself further away from the cornucopia. Unlike yesterday, you’re taking care to move stealthily through the trees, avoiding disturbing foliage or heavy treads. The ginkgo petals and packed chill dirt don’t leave behind much footprint, but that’s also true for any tribute taking refuge in this quadrant.

It happens so fast, you don’t even have time to silence the scream that leaves you. Yanked off the ground in an instant, kicking and flailing and instinctively crying out.

The pain in your ankles is shooting and immediate. With every thrash and struggle a restraint tightens around the tops of your boots.

For a moment, you thought you were dead. That another tribute had attacked from behind and you were about to succumb to your snapped neck, a slit throat, or a skewered abdomen.

After a painful three seconds pass you reorient yourself, and find that you are in fact, alone.

When you look up, you can see the ground is a five foot drop away.

Your legs had been jerked from underneath you, your body forced upside down, and yanked in the air by your ankles.

You’d walked right into someone’s trap, and you’re as good as dead.

Blood is rushing to your head and exacerbating your panic, thrashing desperately in the air to break free from the brutal hold of the rope.

Panic quickly turns to fury as you realize that someone has gotten the best of you. That someone had outsmarted you, had humiliated you, had strung you up dangling and helpless for every eye in Panem to see.

Mostly you’re upset at yourself, because the instinctual cry for help that left your lips was twisted into the letters of Konig’s name.

How pathetic. Calling for another tribute you were not allied with, a tribute who tried to kill you just yesterday.

‘Get your head in the fucking game.’

Face sweating and pulse pumping ruthlessly against your temple, you pinch your eyes shut and force yourself to stop fighting the hold of the rope, and find some fucking sense.

You take two deep breaths through flared nostrils before you thoughtfully survey your surroundings.

You’re strung with thick rope by your ankles along an especially study branch of maple. Five feet off the ground is a fall that would not fair well for you.

You need to get upside-right.

You look up to the knot wrapped tightly around your screaming and tender ankles. Your core was no where near strong enough to bring yourself up to the knot, but it doesn’t keep you from trashing anyway.

Think, think, think!

The world is spinning, the leaves and trunks of the trees swaying and blurring as you dangle in midair. Your view is curtained by your jacket, folded over itself and around the back of your head. You can’t hear a thing over the rushing blood in your ears.

You’re running out of time. You’re going to pass out soon, and that’s only if the tribute who set this trap isn’t running full speed in the direction of your initial scream.

Your fingers fumble for your belt, sliding it off with a whiz.

You force deep breaths, holding an end of the belt in each hand. You curl your core slightly and make a loose loop with the nylon.

You need to get it snagged to the soles of your shoes so you can hoist yourself high enough to undo the snare, or at least get the blood to drain from your face. With one choked breath you try to force yourself high enough to loop the bottoms of your boots, but you miss and end up falling back down and thrashing against the ropes.

Your breaths are heavy and your head is tight and pounding.

With grit teeth and a raw grunt, you fling yourself up, sliding the belt further up your legs.

You just barely graze the tips of your soles before the belt slips off and sends you back down fully horizontal, now with a swing.

The pain is unbearable, your entire body being supported by a tight rashy rope on your ankles. You’re getting dizzy and light-headed, surely close to an embarrassing end.

‘C’mon, Plucky.’

You begin to use your body weight to swing with the rope instead of against it, waiting until you’re at the peak of its swing before you flail your upper half up. Veins bulge from your forehead as you catch the width of the belt on your shoes.

Your biceps immediately strain to support your upper half, clenching your teeth as you pull yourself up by your own shoes.

You can’t help the grunts leaving as you struggle to get your head above your neck.

You take a break to catch a few breaths, the ends of the belt looped around either palm that support your upper half.

“Okay, c’mon,” you grunt under your breath. You grab both ends of the belt with one hand, jerking yourself upwards to get your other palm just above it.

Slowly, painfully, you climb.

One hand over the other, pulling yourself further up the rope.

Your arms are shaking, ankles begging for mercy, but you are just able to grasp your hand around the rope just around the end of the knot, so any weight on your upper half is now supported by the rope attatched to the branch, and not your ankles.

With your last bit of strength you hold the rope with one hand, and yank at the snare with the other, searching for the release loop with fumbling hands.

For a moment the world is a blur. Your back takes the brunt of the impact, vision blinded by a pure white light.

Every last wisp of air has been knocked from your lungs. A ripple of shooting, crackling, crunchy pain spreads from your chest and in every direction.

The groan that leaves you is entirely involuntary, breathless and guttural.

When you dare to take a breath, it goes in wheezing and spiked.

You find your ankles or ribs aren’t broken, merely rattled and swollen. One, shaking, weak arm shoots up in the air and gives a shaky thumbs up, before it collapses back onto the cool dirt.

Atta’ girl.

You’re not sure how long you lay, flat on your back, unable to find strength to move.

It’s not enough time for you to regain the ability to run when you hear the rusting of nearby branches.

You close your eyes and mutter obscenities just under your shallow breath. You did all of that work for absolutely nothing.

You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, alerting half the forest of your location, and someone’s come to answer.

You can barely lift your head to see the assailant bursting through the trees.

The boy from eight.

The tribute Price warned you about during the replay of the reaping. The one with the look so unsettling it made your stomach twist.

If you had any breath left in you, you’d laugh, but all you can manage is a faint huff through your nose. You couldn’t put up a good fight at your best, and now that you’re injured, you don’t stand a chance.

Those sinister eyes lock onto you and at once your stomach twists in knots. You wish you could ask him to make it quick.

“Where is she?!” His voice is booming just as it is demanding, he does not seem to care about attracting anyone else’s attention.

Your eyes widen at his voice, just as angry as he looks.

Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out of your shaking body.

He stomps closer to you, putting either of his boots on either side of your ribs in the dirt. He towers over you like this, staring down at you like the pitiful prey you are. He bends at the core and grabs you by the front of your shirt with both hands, pulling you off the ground and inches from his face. He gives you a harsh shake, rolling your head on your neck.

“Where is she?!” He’s not stealthy in the slightest, his words booming throughout the forest as he spits in your face.

You try to form a word but it just comes out a hitched breath with a lace of a word in it.

“Wh-“

“Willow! The girl from my district!”

He gives you another shake, rattling your sore muscles and jerking your head around on your neck.

When he stills you, you shake your head as quickly as you can manage.

“You lying?!” His face is inches from yours, you can feel the heat of his breath.

“No,” Your voice is a wisp, each strain followed by a crunchy, labored breath.

He studies your face, nothing but fear and pain in your features. The boy from eight scoffs before he throws you against the ground by no means gently. He disappears into the forest with a jog, leaving you dumbfounded on the forest floor to catch what little breath he stole.

When he’s out of sight, your head lays back into the dirt. You force yourself up sooner than you would have liked in case he comes back and changes his mind, or someone else comes looking for the commotion.

You use your multitool to cut off lengths of rope from the snare, a reward for your triumph, and loop it in big circles you drape across a shoulder and your waist like a sash.

After replacing your belt, and even giving it a thankful kiss for saving you from an embarrassing ending, you begin to limp through the forest. You no longer travel diagonally, heading straight for the snow, eager to get your injuries on ice. It’s strenuous, each step a reminder of your swollen, sore ankles. Every stride shoots a sharp pain through them, you can feel your heartbeat throbbing around the swollen flesh.

You take a generous amount of breaks to rest.

During one break, your back flush with the dirt and your legs elevated and propped against a maple, you think of the boy from eight, who had spared your life moments before.

He didn’t seem the type to not kill unless it’s self defense. He volunteered, he had the look of a career, eager for bloodshed. Almost worse than a career. The careers are arrogant, cheerful in attitude. Like they’re happy to be here. The boy from eight did not seem anything other but rage-filled. Disturbed, but not in the way that gets you sponsors. Disturbed like a boy who’s truly lost his mind and yearns for bloodshed.

He’s looking for the girl from his district, though. Maybe you and Price had pegged him wrong. Clearly he wasn’t eager to kill you, he had you on a silver platter, and he chose to grant you mercy.

You’re trying to reframe what little you know about the boy from eight. You wonder if he had actually volunteered to protect the girl from his district. Maybe the seething, gut-twisting anger he radiated was directed at the Capitol for taking a friend away from him. Maybe he’s just determined to protect a girl he loves from a country that does not hesitate to take everything from you.

Adversary or not, you hope he reunites with her. You wish they can spend some time together before the inevitable happens.

The trip to the snow quadrant takes twice as long as it did yesterday, due to your small, limping strides and generous breaks for rest.

Once to the border, where the red maples and ginkgos bleed into pine trees, you take off your boots and socks, and let your sore, swollen ankles rest in the snow. You finish what’s left in your water bottle before stuffing snow to its brim. You scoop a few into your mouth until you’re quenched.

Your whole body flinches at the boom, shaking away what remained of your freezing handful as you look around for trouble.

Another tribute down. Thirteen tributes left.

You should probably get moving. You’re a sitting duck hanging out next to the only source of water near the fall quadrant, but the ice numbs the inflamed pain in your ankles.

Whatever , you think. You’re not going to win anyway. Might as well be comfortable.

You nestle back into the dirt, resting your ankles across the border and in the snow.

The lack of sleep, the exhaustion from traveling, the injury, the lack of food in your belly, it’s all catching up to you.

Your eyes have dark bags underneath them, stomach growling and cramping from hunger. Your body yearns for rest, and your mind aches for a break from fear.

Closing your eyes in a dangerous game, but you can’t help yourself. A sigh of relief leaves your mouth and you nestle into the even ground.

When you wake up, you’re already laughing.

It’s uncontrollable, a painful spasm of your muscles, stomach pushing out laughs that are beyond too loud. They’re raw, real, from deep inside your abdomen, tensing your core in a painful contortion.

You can’t stop it, it won’t stop. You put a hand over your mouth, but your hands and arms are spasming just as much as your gut.

The inhales for breath are few and far between, each one a gasp for air that doesn’t stay in your lungs for long. They’re forced only after the billowing laugher has stolen every exhausted breath of air.

It hurts. Every inch of muscle is screaming, twitching uncontrollably as boisterous, hysterical cackles leave you.

You jam a fist into your mouth, but your knuckles slam into your teeth and hinders your ability to wheeze for air.

The fog is dense. It’s clear, this is the gamemakers doing. A cruel trap designed to draw tributes together and keep the games interesting.

You can’t see more than a few feet in front of your face, your stinging, burning eyes bouncing around and blurring your vision with their jittering.

Your knees knock together as you attempt a run, tripping over both tree roots and legs that fail you. Branches grab hold of you as you stumble through the forest, smashing into tree trunks and knocking yourself to the ground.

You can’t get up.

You’ve lost complete control of your limbs, your voice, your breathing.

The laughs still flow, core begging for respite as they burn from overexertion.

The hallucinations hit like a ton of bricks, intense and sudden.

The sky turns to a starless, inky black void.

The bright cheery leaves of the trees melt like hot wax, transforming into a black, tar-like ooze that drips to the ground and coats the petal-covered dirt. The ooze transitions quickly from a drizzle to a heavy pour, swallowing your whole body, your twitching limbs, and lapping up your sides until it pools over your front. It sloshes up your neck, sealing your mouth, choking you but not at all stifling the howling laughter. It fills your nostrils and yanks on your hair with its sticky, heavy weight. It stops once you’re entirely covered, leaving you paralyzed with just your eyes peeking out from the heavy ooze. The tar sloshes and threatens to spill into your eyes with every involuntary twitch.

The tar is so heavy, your body has to work twice as hard to breathe and expel the laughter.

The ooze floods your eye sockets, and when it all dissipates with a whoosh, you’re still laughing, but you’re you’ve been transported back to the bloodbath.

The sword feels natural in your hands, as if it was just an extension of your arm. The boy racing for supplies only has less than a second to act, and he fumbles it, his eyes only having the opportunity to widen before you thrust the sword square in the center of his throat. Its blade is so sharp, it slices through him like butter, not a lick of recoil. The stream of blood launches at you immediately. You’re choking on it, gurgling a mouthful of warm metal as you stare down District One, who gives a proud, toothy grin as your hands instinctively reach for the blade, slicing your palms open on its sharp edges. Your neck slides from the sword before you collapse to your knees. When your face hits the ground, your arms are wrapped around the bent waist of the girl from District Ten. You don’t hesitate to shove her on the ground, hands shooting out for the knife in her grip. With her hands still clasped around its handle, you thrust the blade into her gut, swinging your arm and mechanically driving the blade into her stomach over and over and over again.

The intrusive piercing plunges through your core stuns you, pinned to the ground and unable to swat away the hands cupped over yours. She’s crushing your knuckles as your limp arms are controlled like a marionette, forcing you to drive a blade into your soft stomach as the knife rhythmically punctures you with little resistance.

You deliver the final blow, your hands wrapped tightly to your spear, the plunge of it sending reverb through the staff and straight up your arms. Each skewer through flesh and fat and muscle shreds your insides until your intestines are completely minced.

And then you see yourself.

Crouched over and grasping your few supplies, eyes blown with fear and frozen in your place, lower lip trembling and body shivering in the ice cold wind.

Your feet slam against the ground with each stride, locked on to your own cowering figure, wielding a scythe at your side.

Your breath is stolen from your crushed lungs when you fold around your sternum, stopped by a strong grip. Your limbs flail, legs kicking and arms swinging as you fight back. When you are launched at the ground with tremendous force, the sound of your bones deafening you with a snap is the last thing you hear before you’re staring down the corpse of Eleven, a heap in front of heavy boots, your large hands reaching to pry the scythe from stiff fingers.

There you are.

You start in a dash, watching yourself trip over your platform before your seat hits the snow.

The snow swallows and frosts your hands as your scramble to your feet and fumble for a run.

You don’t lose him this time. As you tear through the trees, you can hear him tailing you, snapping branches of his own as heavy boots move easily through the woods. You can’t hear any over the pump of blood in your ears and the harsh snap of a neck breaking.

A rough shove knocks you to the ground, your chin slamming on dirt and splitting open. Blood immediately pours from the wound, dripping down your neck and splattering on yellow petals in brilliant red drops of blood.

Konig climbs on your back, sitting on your legs as his hand threads through your hair, yanking the back of your scalp to pull you to your knees in one jerk.

His hiss is devoid of comfort, nothing but loathing in that horrifying voice.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

You can’t beg for mercy, cackling through each brutal kill, chest trembling on each wheezing laugh underneath Konig’s power.

His arm snakes around your body and pulls the scythe to your throat. With one swipe his blade slices your neck, leaving behind a clean, deep gash. The blood gurgles in your throat, flooding your mouth with the hot taste of metal. As you lie bleeding out on the ground, you have no choice but to stare into the eyes of the boy from Eleven, resting limply next to you.

For hours, days maybe, you are paralyzed in this position, front pressed to the chill dirt as your cheek rests in a pool of your own blood. For each grueling moment your stare is fixated right into Eleven’s lifeless eyes, his neck bent in impossible angles. Eventually his head begins to rotate, making full circles on a still body, catching your gaze on each rotation.

You can’t blink, you can’t look away, laughing in his lifeless, spinning face.

You’re sure that you’ve died, and you will forever be trapped in this never-ending hell, in this graveyard of Konig’s victims.

You wake with a start, shouting Konig’s name on your first coarse breath before you can stop yourself.

“I hear her! I hear her!” Someone shouts, and footsteps confidently break into a run through the forest.

You scramble to a sit as you survey your surroundings. Your head pounds and muscles moan at each movement.

“Ni-iiine! Where you at Nine?!”

Another wheezing, coughing breath leaves you as you stand, wobbling on your feet as you make an unsteady jog away from the taunting voice.

“Ni-iiiine!” Titan, you think, calls in a sing-song.

Your muscles are useless, made of jelly and folding with every step.

You can’t keep it up, so you do the best you can. Hiding in a dense patch of ginkgos behind the base of a tree trunk thick enough to conceal your body.

You try and hold your noisy breaths, hoping the careers can’t hear your heartbeat rattling against its ribcage.

“Where’s your boy toy District Nine?!”

There’s close, so close. Surely they can hear and smell your fear.

“We just want to talk!”

Your hollow stomach twists, pressing yourself further into the coarse bark.

“Yeah, we won’t hurt you,” The voices are closer now, faux kindness dripping from their words.

The hairs on the back of your neck are on end, arms coated in goose flesh as your fingernails dig into the gaps of the bark.

No one should be this cheerful in the arena.

It’s not human.

“Where’d she go?”

“Really, we won’t hurt you!” Someone calls in an unnaturally high-pitched tone.

“Yeah, no hard feeling about before, honest!”

You force your heaving breaths through your nostrils, pinching your eyes closed as you focus to keep still and silent.

“If you don’t want to come out and play it’s fine! We just have a few questions.”

“Yeah - we just want to know where your little friend’s at, that’s all!”

“You hungry Nine? We’ve got food if you’re good!”

Your stomach actually growls at the mention of food, loud enough you’re sure they can hear it. You bite down on your knuckles to keep quiet.

They want to know where Konig is - that’s clear enough. Whether it’s to ally with him or to eliminate the ultimate threat, you don’t know.

You’re not sure how many cannons, if any, have fired since you’ve been drugged by the gas, but if the careers are this confident he must still be alive.

It’s spreads a singular burst of warm, cozy relief through your chest at the thought that he’s still alive.

You can hear them split up, branches scraping as they fan out in the vicinity of your voice.

By some miracle, you go undetected.

They’re convinced you ran further into the woods, and they regroup to head deeper into the forest.

You wait an unbearable amount of time until they’re out of earshot before daring to leave your hiding spot, moving as quickly as your body will allow in the opposite direction.

You’re not at all graceful, an infant fawn learning to use its legs, slamming into trees trunks and ripping through branches as you crash through the woods. A shooting pain fires up your legs with each cry of your ankles.

When the trees suddenly come to a jarring stop, you take a few steps backwards and crouch down, keeping yourself camouflaged in the tree line.

You’ve stumbled upon a large, open, perfectly rectangular plowed dirt field. What’s sitting in the ruts of the dirt rows makes you salivate.

A plot of corn stalks, cobs of corn fanned out in their ripe husks. Flawless pumpkins and squash looking too clean and vibrant to be resting in a dirt patch.

The sight of these beautiful fall vegetables has your stomach lurching at the idea of something to chew on. You haven’t had anything of real substance since being in the arena, and who knows how long you’ve gone without food while drugged.

Your heart does not trust these vegetables. Like the trees that look almost artificial, they are too perfect.

On the other hand, the maple seeds are not cutting it.

You do one last scan of the perimeter, peering deep into the trees to see if you can make out any figures, and before you can stop yourself - weak, clumsy legs attempt a dash straight for the stalks of corn. You quickly shed as many husks as you can from the hold of their stalks and hold them close to your chest with a tight forearm. With the other hand you wrap around the stem of a squash and haul your goodies back to the safety of the tree line. You don’t stop until your knees give out, dropping to the ground in a defeated heap.

You catch your breath before running your fingers over the grain of the husks and the waxy sheen on the outside of your squash.

They could be poisonous. A trap, laid out for the gamemakers that lures in anyone hungry or lacking willpower.

Your stomach is growling, cramping in a beg for food. You feel almost nauseous as your stomach chokes on itself, threatening to retch what little it holds.

They look delicious.

If you had to die - which is no doubt certain - you think you’d rather have it be at the hand of a vegetable than a bloodthirsty tribute.

You unwrap your corn, revealing uniform, mustard-yellow rows of kernels.

Fuck.

Your thumb glides along the glossy, bumped ridges of the kernels as you make one last attempt talk yourself out of it.

You can’t do it.

You bury your face dead center in the cob of corn, sweet juice bursting from the kernels and dripping down your chin. You roll your eyes at the taste of the ripe corn, not bothering to thoroughly chew before you swallow.

The relief is immediate - euphoric even. Your stomach almost instantly relaxes, the nausea and cramps dissipating at once. The moans that leave you are downright erotic.

You inhale the entire cob against better judgement, tossing the remains at the root of a maple, and wait.

You don’t feel ill, and you don’t feel poisoned. In fact, you feel better than you’ve felt in days.

After brief consideration, you shed another corn from its husk and inhale the whole thing.

When the cannon fires - your first thought is that it’s you. That the poison has killed you, and your brain is making its last fires before it catches up to a heart that stopped beating.

Moments pass, you even check your pulse for good measure, and it’s clear it’s not you.

Unfortunately, your next thought is of Konig.

No.

You cannot think of him.

It’s only a matter of time now.

After rest, you use knots you learned to tie in training to sloppily secure the corn with your rope and return the looped sash around your waist.

The gourd is tricky, but by using extra rope length and a generous amount of time you manage to weave a rope hanger to secure the squash at your waist.

The extra weight is noticeable, so you don’t plan on traveling far. Pushing yourself just far enough to make comfortable distance away from the field. You’ll eat some squash tomorrow before traveling to lighten the load.

At one point the anthem plays, and you keep your exhausted eyes open long enough to see the boy from District One.

This comes as a shock. A girl from District Nine should not outlive a career from District One.

One’s face is followed by the boy from District Ten, and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Konig’s still alive as far as you know. The career’s taunts seemed to confirm this.

The face of the girl from eleven flashes and then the sky goes dark.

At maximum there are eleven tributes left. Maybe less if you missed deaths while you were paralyzed.

The arms of sleep are not difficult to fall into. Your body and mind is completely worn out, and you’re still feeling a sluggishness from the fog.

You have one last thought as you succumb to the sore exhaustion.

Eleventh place isn’t so bad.

Sleep is nothing short of horrific. The nightmares are worse than the bone chilling fall air.

The nightmares - reliving the bloodbath. Cycling through every haunting memory, taking on the tribute’s perspectives one after another.

Staring into Eleven’s eyes.

But it always seems to come back to Konig.

You fight him all night - a choreographed dance of playing out every death resurfaced by the hallucination, taking turns between being slaughtered and doing the slaughtering.

Those signature hooded eyes switch between ravenous and blood thirsty to pleading and petrified without transition.

Sometimes he’s the one lying limp on that metal platform, neck twisted and bouncing off his final resting place, sometimes it’s you. Often when you look up, it is not Konig standing over his own corpse, but you.

You must wake up twenty times throughout the night, stifling your apologetic cries and begging pleads all leaving you in shouts of Konig’s name.

How humiliating.

How you call out for him time, and time, and time again. The audience watching you cry for his aid at every sticky situation you get yourself into. How he has proven himself to be not worthy of your comfort, but you’re stupid enough to let him worm his way into your heart anyway. To care about him enough that the very thought of him turning on you, the thought of you turning on him, is frightening enough to startle you from a nightmare.

The sound of a cannon wakes you with finality, and you shoot up in the chill early dawn air.

When the anonymous threat you anticipate doesn’t come, you make slow movements as you get ready for the day.

You break into the squash, slicing into the rind with your multitool and biting into sloppily cut chunks of the bitter gourd. You wash it all down with half a bottle of water, and survey your bruised ankles.

They’re still swollen, and the lack of hydration and surplus of poisonous fog hasn’t helped. Red, inflamed veins streak pink bruises that fade into a dark purple.

Maybe you’ll just sit under this tree and wait for death. You have corn, this bitter gourd, and a half a bottle of water - surely that’s enough to hold you over until somebody finds you, right?

But they don’t come.

The number of tributes must be dwinding, more than you thought.

For the first time, you’re thinking Price had a point. Maybe you could hunker down and wait it out until the end.

Not that you’d stand a chance in the finale.

You’d have to face the career pack, and if your suspicions are correct and Konig is alive, the possibility you’ll have to face him grows with every fallen tribute.

You wonder if anyone’s betting on you.

You curiously comb over the possible tributes that remain.

The girl from one.

Both from two.

Both from four.

Boy from six. Boy from seven.

Both from eight.

You.

And Konig.

Probably not. Certainly you have the longest odds of anyone left.

You wonder if Price is proud of you for making it this far, struggling your way forward with each step.

Surely this is the best he could have hoped for, both his tributes alive in the second half.

You wonder what Konig thinks of you still being alive.

Is he impressed? Surely he didn’t think a weakling such as yourself would make it this far.

Is he relieved that you’re still alive, and confused about why, just as yourself?

Maybe he’s dreading the possibility of having to be the one to kill you.

Maybe he’s happy you’re alive.

Maybe he’s eager to be the one who watches the life drain from your eyes.

It’s confusing - why you think about him so much. Why you hope he’s okay. Why you want him to want you to still be alive. Why you dream of him. Why you call out his name instinctually before you’ve even regained consciousness.

All after he tried to kill you.

You find a scrap of motivation in the late afternoon, spending the entire morning with your head lulling against the trunk of a large ginkgo, finishing off two more cobs of corn, and hoping whoever finds you makes it quick.

Back to the snow today.

You need something to do to keep your mind off him.

You tie up the remaining half of the gourd, sling your rope of corn over your shoulder, and head for the snow quadrant. You don’t think you’re far off, the fog having paralyzed you and prevented you from going far. It didn’t take you long to find the field after ditching the careers, but you’ve been disoriented and you’re not confident you know the way.

You head in what you think is the right direction.

You take your time, taking lights steps through the forest, more careful than you have been not to leave tracks. Extra cautious to listen for danger.

You have the sense that your death is approaching. An ominous feeling of finality deep in your gut that grows with each step. Surely the next tribute you encounter will be your death.

You know you’re walking slow, but it’s taking much longer than it should to get to the snow quadrant. You’re less sure you’re going the right way.

You walk until dusk, your steps slow as the day stretches on, ankles throbbing with each step. The tree roots give the terrain an unevenness that contort your feet awkwardly with each step, and the weight of your vegetables aren’t helping.

You’re daydreaming about Capitol dishes. What you wouldn’t give to sink your teeth into the crust of a warm loaf of bread, inhale an entire cut of the finest steak, swallow a heading scoop of potatoes, finish off two servings - No! Three servings of hot stew!

And why not admit it?

A glass of whiskey doesn’t sound too bad right now.

You realize you’re in trouble when you see the unmistakable landscape of orange sand.

You’re swallow the harsh reality that you’ve completely gone in the wrong direction just as you hear it.

It’s faint, far in the distance, the sounds of a dying animal.

Against better judgement, and with a tented brow, you near closer, and are surprised to find the snow quadrant, both the desert and the vast snow visible through the gaps in the trees.

You have unintentionally trekked the entire way back to the cornucopia.

When you reach the tree line, you peer with squint eyes through the gaps in the trees, focusing in the direction of the low, guttural moans of a maimed creature.

It’s the boy from District Eight. He’s posted at the cornucopia, wielding a thick, slightly curved blade. Out of thick logs of wood and rope, he has constructed a pulley. Strung up by its arms is an animal, slightly swaying on the end of its restraint. The animal has been skinned head to toe, but is still alive, the red muscle stitched with small white pockets of fat, rising and falling with each muted moan.

No.

That is no animal.

That is a person.

You can tell it’s a girl, but there’s no way to identify the tribute, entirely unrecognizable and coated in blood.

The sight has you stumbling backwards, your heel catching on a tree root and landing harshly on the dirt. A squeak leaves your lips without thought, your hand shooting up to cover your mouth. The boy heard it, because his head swivels in your direction. He can’t see you, but you catch him scanning in your section of the forest. You roll over in the dirt and make an ungraceful dash into the trees, your vegetables banging against your torso with each stride.

After making sufficient distance, you duck behind a tree, pressing your back against the trunk as you stop to catch your breath. Your hands find your knees, doubling over and gagging as you process the horrific sight. Each of your gasps for air are skewered with guttural croaks, your face drained of color.

Killing each other, that is the name of the game. You cannot blame the tributes for that. But what you just saw was uncalled for, barbaric, cruel. Dragging out her excruciating pain and suffering, and for what? A show?

When you realize what you have to do, your heart twists and a curse leaves your lips.

You look up to the sky, and speak, much louder than you should, “Give me something,” You say, voice raw, scratchy, and desperate, “Give me something to put her out of her misery.”

“Please,” Whispered like a desperate prayer.

Your head ducks between your knees again, dry heaving towards the dirt.

Just when you think your plea has been ignored, you see it. The parachute takes its time as it descends from the sky, landing gracefully in the dirt at your feet.

You open the large metal canister attached to the parachute as if it’s an explosive. Careful fingers reveal a long hollow tube and two darts, tied in a neat bundle with a patterned, textile ribbon.

You blink, face blank as you undo the knot with shallow breath and roll the darts between your fingers.

Engraved onto the bulbous tip that secures the sharp needles is the number ‘8’ in beautiful, elegant writing.

One for her, one for him.

She must be the girl from eight, the girl who stood as far apart as she could from the boy on the chariot. The girl who prompted the boy to lunge forward and volunteer, the girl the boy had his tunnel-vision set on seeking out.

You grasp your hands tightly around the darts, take a deep breath, and head toward the tree line.

This is risky, so risky, but you know you cannot let this girl suffer. Every moment she is alive, moaning miserably and dangling in the air, your insides will be knotted with guilt. This girl, that you don’t even know, will haunt you for the rest of your short life if you do not free her from her pain. You have nothing to lose. Even if you end up just like her, you’ll know you tried.

You will have to kill the boy who spared your life. How is that going to play with the audience? A cruel, heartless girl with no mercy, who refuses to treat others how she has been treated.

Through a particularly thick cluster of trees, you crouch down and observe the scene.

The boy from eight has moved on from searching for the source of the disruption you made, now casually peeling an orange as if there’s not a skinned-alive human dangling and groaning in pain a few feet away. Each of her low, maimed cries twists your insides a little tighter.

You’re not sure how you’re going to pull this off.

You could wait for him to leave, but each moment you don’t act that girl will suffer.

You could go right for him. From here, you don’t see him armed with a long range weapon, only his medium-sized blade, while you can get him from a distance.

If you don’t miss.

You could lure him into the trees, hide yourself in the thick foliage. You might be able to get away with missing if you can camouflage yourself.

This seems like your best bet.

You tuck yourself further into the trees, load the dart gun, and take a deep breath. Hopping from one foot to the other as you work up the courage, you let out a whoop, as loud as you dare.

You wait, eyes pinched in a brace and body shaking against the tree bark. When the trees don’t rustle, you let out another yell, louder than before.

Your eyes pinch shut for a moment, mumbling unintelligibly under your breath.

It’s the third whoop that draws him into the trees. You can hear him, he must be only twenty feet away.

You get a glimpse of him through the trees, the flash of a blade pushing branches out of the way or the black of his clothes moving slowly into the forest.

When he passes you, you slink through the trees, tailing him with silent feet, side stepping branches and exposed tree roots. Your heartbeat is pounding in your ears, your skin pulsing with each pump of your heart.

You get as close to him as you dare before you place the tube to your lips.

Your face tightens, you take a deep inhale-

But you can’t do it.

You can’t kill this boy.

He deserves it, more than deserves it. But you can’t do it.

Your eyes flit behind you.

Without little thought, your feet break into a run towards the cornucopia, sore ankles making a beeline for the girl. With one hand you hold the dart gun, the other on your rope sash to keep the vegetables from banging against you.

From this close, each wheezing breath and raspy moan that leaves her clenches your teeth a little tighter. It’s like she’s using her breaths to scoop out your heart bit by bit.

You can see the wrinkle of her exposed muscles, the bones of her fingers, her eyes coated in her own blood.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper to her, maybe you yelled it, you’re not sure. Tears well in your eyeline and blur your vision.

You do not hesitant to take the spare dart in your hand and thrust it right into her side.

“I’m sorry!” You hiccup, the tears flowing relentlessly down your cheeks, “I’m sorry!”

She lets out three final rattling breaths before she succumbs to the poison, her chest stilling.

You let out a sob, turning away from her lifeless body.

You flinch when her cannon fires, another choked sob leaving you. She’s gone but you can still hear her moans of pain in your ears.

The tree branches are disturbed, your head whipping in the direction of the fall forest.

Your weak ankles break into a run, wobbling as you get up to speed. You look over your shoulder, vision blurred with tears, but see no one.

Excited voices, more than one, are approaching.

You’re coming to the conclusion just as the careers break through the pine trees and confirm your suspicion.

Out of the fucking frying pan.

Your strides double in speed, feet running along the border of the spring and desert quadrants.

“There she is!” They call, just as they did when they heard you yelling out for Konig in the forest.

The careers seem to glide over the snow, not the slightest bit hindered by the terrain as they chase you.

The boy from eight breaks through the trees, you know because he’s yelling in the same voice that screamed at you while searching for the girl he wanted to skin. Booming and frothed in rage.

You can’t make out what he’s saying, deafened by your own crystallized breaths and the blood pumping in your ears.

When you dare look over your shoulder, both the careers and the boy from eight are merging at the cornucopia, the boy from eight raising his blade and running straight for the pack of careers with fervor.

For a moment, the three remaining careers and Eight redirected their attention to the new threat. You hear the sound of metal clashing, indecipherable screaming.

It’s the girl from one, you think, who orders one of them to follow you as you run along the border of the hedge maze.

You do not want to duck into the hedge maze, but you are injured, lacking concealment, and being chased by a trained killer.

Maybe this would be a good time to die.

Let it be done by someone who knows how to land a fatal blow in one strike, a quick death.

A cannon fires, but you don’t slow, feet slamming ruthlessly against the ground. Your ankles beg for respite, and your body isn’t in the best condition, every muscle croaking out their ache with each jostle.

If it’s the cannon for the boy from eight, the careers will have no problem catching up to you.

Each breath is painful, and between your own wheezes you can hear the footsteps drawing closer.

You really did give it your best shot.

You hope Price knows that. You hope he’s proud of you, proud of you for not giving up.

You did better than you thought you would. Surprised yourself, surprised the nation, by making it this far.

It’s quick, so quick, the arms snagging you by the waist and forcing you to exhale the rest of a broken breath. At once you’re slammed into the sand, stunned at the sharp pain that explodes in your ribs, losing grip of your final dart.

The arid environment, the scalding sand, it doubles the beads of sweat that pull from your pores.

There’s little to do about Titan, the monstrous boy from District Two, pinning you to the ground with minimal effort.

It’s laughably weak, but you still swing at him, your shoulders digging further into the boiling sand with each swing. Frustrated but exhausted grunts leave you with each swipe at him. He doesn’t bother to restrain your hands, he swallows each swing without so much as a flinch.

He puts his knife to your throat - not yet pressing against your flesh, but enough to threaten you into keeping your upper half pinned to the gritty sand. The heel of his palm digs into your collarbones hard enough it’ll surely bruise.

Your nails scratch at his massive arms as you bury your head further into the stand, squirming away from him as instinctual squeaks of prey leave your throat.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Titan coos, trying to place a finger to your lips but pulling away when you snap your teeth at him, “We’re not gon’na kill you.”

He gives you a smile, exposing his menacing canines.

“Yet.”

He laughs at his own stupid joke, throwing his head back, the cool steel of the blade brushing against the crook of your neck as he laughs.

He finishes on a deep inhale, giving you a wicked smile.

“I think you know what we want, yeah? So tell us where he is, and we’ll let you go! It’s that simple!”

“Just kill me!”

He snorts before throwing his head back in another laugh.

“Adorable,” He says with a sigh, “You’ve really got the stuff, don’t you Nine?”

Titan swivels his head, “He can’t be far, right? I know you don’t like to stray.”

He gives another laugh.

“Or are you having a fight?” He laughs again, and you grunt in annoyance, “Trouble in paradise, hm?”

Just get it over with.

“Why don’t you yell for him?” He asks.

“Fuck you!” You grunt.

Titan’s smile falls. This Titan - a cold faced Titan - is much more nervewracking than an irreverent one.

Titan’s eyes have gone absent, his lips bored. His knuckles scrape down your chest as his hold tightens around the handle of the blade.

Your face is plastered with regret, lips parting to rectify but it’s too late.

His other hand springs to wrap around your throat, cutting off your breath without hesitance.

Your legs kick underneath him, but your strength is no match for the powerful boy planted firmly on your front.

His eyes have unfocused, he’s not even staring at you - he’s staring through you.

Before, at least he was human, even if he was insane. Now his features are entirely devoid of emotion, of empathy.

His hand relaxes, but his grasp remains firmly around your throat. Immediately you’re choking in breaths, coughing on the air you gasp desperately for.

Titan’s stare is still icy, but his teeth grit, and his light requests turn to threatening demands, “Call for him.”

You’re still trying to catch your breath, eyes blown in fear and lips parted around fearful huffs.

“Call for him!” He yells, emphasizing his sentence by squeezing your windpipe for just a moment, to remind you he can, and jostles you by the neck.

You won’t.

You won’t succumb to this lunatic’s demands. You will not give him the satisfaction.

He may kill you.

Your life, he can have. That is the name of the game.

Your dignity, he may not.

That is something that only you are entitled to tarnish.

He presses the knife further into your skin, slicing through just hard enough for blood to bead on your flesh, “Call for him or I’ll make you!”

When he yells, his shout tears from the back of his throat, the words ripped from low in his gut. His whole body jerks with his words, his spit flying from his lips and splattering on your face.

It’s his spit - momentarily stunning you as you wince away from the spray - that activates something in you. It forces your thoughts back into the body that was reacting solely on fear, and at the same time gives you an idea.

You do not hesitate.

With a deep pinch of your eyes and an animalistic grunt muffled by tightly pursed lips, you fling two fist fulls of sand in the direction of his face.

Immediately he flings himself back, his hands retracting from you as forearms move to wipe the gritty sand further into his eyes. He scrambles to his feet and fumbles backwards away from the pain that follows him.

You can hear him spitting in between his cries as he tries to rid his mouth of the sand.

You keep your face pinched tightly even after the sand stops raining back down onto your face. You blindly kick away from him, rolling over on the scalding ground and rising to your feet.

You shake your head, stumbling blindly through the desert as you clear off your hands to brush clean your face.

You pull up your shirt, the rough grains like sandpaper against your skin as you rub away both sand and his spit with the fabric.

You open your eyes, blinking rapidly to test your vision and find it unscathed. You make a rush back for the spring quadrant, shoes swallowed and kicking up sand with every step.

You run past Titan, folded in a heap on his knees, grunting in pain and trying to rub out his eyes. He curses you with every breath.

You scoop up your final dart and its tube, and for a moment, you consider driving it right into Titan’s flesh, but your feet are already scrambling away from his foaming threats and grit wails of pain with no desire to look back. You’re still powered on adrenaline, snap decisions made with little room for consideration.

It feels like you’ve been running for miles, but it couldn’t have been far. When your ankles give out, you’re sent stumbling onto the plush grass of the spring quadrant.

You have no strength to attempt getting to your feet, so you lay face first in the grass in the position you collapsed in.

You go over all of it in your mind as you catch your breath and try to pry the ghost of Titan’s fingers from your throat.

You already knew the careers had wanted to know where Konig was, but Titan demanded you to use your voice to lure him to your aid. In fact, Titan refrained from killing you so he could use you to draw Konig in. He had you on a silver platter, blade to your throat, and he let you slip through his fingers because he wanted to use you to get to Konig.

You assumed your brush with the careers in the forest was their shot in the dark, the best lead they had to find their white whale. But this run-in with Titan has given more than enough credit to their taunts in the forest.

The careers think that you and Konig are allies.

Why else would they think your voice would lure Konig in?

The only other possibility is that Titan thinks that Konig hates you enough to come running at the opportunity to be the one to end your life.

But that doesn’t make sense, because Titan suggested the reason you weren’t together in that moment was because you were having an argument.

‘Trouble in paradise’ as Titan said, which implied there was an established partnership between you and Konig in the first place.

Price, you think.

It was Price.

Price saved you back there, not you.

He didn’t assign Konig as your chaperone in training because he actually thought you were trouble, he did it for the same reason he put you in matching outfits for the interview, the same reason he ensured Konig was caught off guard by being asked about you in front of the entire country.

Price wanted the tributes to think that you and Konig cared for each other. That you were something more than just two tributes from the same district.

Because Price knew that if he could make everyone believe you and the strongest tribute were friendly, the other tributes would keep you alive as leverage against the ultimate threat in the arena.

Konig didn’t have a weakness, so Price made you his weakness.

Titan could have easily ended you, then and there. But he didn’t, because he thought that with you at his fingertips, he held the key to taking down his toughest opponent.

But of course, that’s a mislead, tipping the advantage back to Price’s golden boy.

And you unknowingly laid the groundwork for it - didn’t you?

Holding Konig’s hand at the opening ceremony, him accepting yours without hesitance.

Is that when Price got the idea?

It’s genius.

It directs the heat off of his star tribute’s back and onto yours, and simultaneously gives the other tributes a reason to keep you, the bait, alive. It gave you the opportunity to make an escape from Titan, which of course, Price knew you would.

Because you fight dirty, you fight smarter, and the careers only know how to fight right . They are trained to kill, not keep alive. And everyone knows, especially Price, that as long as it is not a fight to the death - it will be a fight that you win.

Why didn’t you think of it?

Price has manipulated the others into keeping both of his tributes alive, all without your knowledge.

Of course Price couldn’t tell you that was the plan, you would have never accepted it. Konig needed to be blindsided on that stage, and you would have fought Price tooth and nail at the implications. At the very suggestion that you are ‘bait.’ That you and Konig cared for each other enough to come running into trouble to save each other.

The plan only works if both tributes stay alive, which is something you would have never agreed to. Tethering your life to Konig like that, so blatantly relying on him when the entire time you’ve been trying so hard not to do so. Surely even Konig would have put up even a bit of a fight at being assigned a weakness.

Konig is not only overshadowing you, but Price has stitched your fingers to his coattails.

It’s an impossible arrangement.

If Konig dies, you have no worth to the other tributes. If you die, the size of the target on his back doubles.

And if you both manage to pull it off until the end - well, what happens then?

The plan both ensures your survival and destines you to die at the same time. No matter how you work it through in your head, Konig always comes out on top.

You almost don’t even notice the parachute that lands by your head. You barely have the energy to lift your head from the dirt, cheek still nestled into the grass as you pry open the container.

It’s a single, modest dinner roll wrapped in ribbon. You roll onto your back and hold the gift in front of your face, using the bread to block out the sun. The ribbon is beautiful, a neatly trimmed scrap of patterned textile that matches the one that tied the blow darts to their tube. It’s knotted into a perfect, perky bow on the roll’s apex.

You carefully undo the ribbon and rest it on your core as you inspect the loaf. Underneath the bow lies the number ‘8’, branded with slightly darkened crust.

It is a gift, but not from Price. The ribbon, the bread’s branding - this is a gift from the people of District Eight. If the ribbon is anything to go by, then the darts were a gift from them as well.

The bread is a thank you for putting that girl out of her misery. For risking your life to put her pain first. For eradicating the boy from eight, one way or another.

You hold the loaf just under your nose, taking a deep inhale. It’s still warm, you can feel the heat radiating on your lips.

“Thank you,” You whisper to the wind, to District Eight, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

You eat half of it right there in the dirt, in the wide open air, not even muting your groans of pleasure as you take bites into something hearty for the first time in the arena.

The bread isn’t the rich Capitol bread, it’s district bread. Inferior in every way, but it is the most delicious loaf of bread you’ve ever tasted in your life.

You wash it down with what’s left of your canteen, which isn’t much.

You’re going to have to get back to the snow soon, and unless you want to go the long way around, you’ll have to cut across the cornucopia again.

Your head drops back into the grass in defeat.

You’re debating whether or not you should give up, whether or not to just lay out here in the open and wait for someone to come along and kill you.

Because you know what the alternative is.

It’s nightfall when you finally move from the dirt, moved by your own thirst.

When you stand, the ribbon you’d placed on your chest flutters to the ground. You stare at it with deep breath before bending over to pluck it from the grass. You’re not sure why you want to keep this reminder of the girl from eight, but you can’t stand to discard it. You loop the ribbon around your wrist and sloppily tie it into a bracelet.

You shake all the sand you can off yourself, fix your poor, knotted hair, and make your way back to the cornucopia. You need to get back to the fall quadrant, back to the precious snow and camouflage.

You don’t have much of a plan other than haul ass as you approach the edge of the hedge maze and break into the open air of the cornucopia.

You’re not sure if it’s the darkness, the dwindling number of tributes, or a mixture of both, but you manage to go undetected as you make the clearance.

Good. You’ve had enough excitement for one day.

You dig yourself far into the forest just in case, getting lost in thick branches on every side before you stop to fill your canteen.

You find a place to settle in for the night, already aching for warmth of the spring quadrant. You briefly consider risking sleeping in the open air just so you don’t have to freeze on the chilled dirt of a cool fall night, but you barely manage to fight the urge.

You find a thick patch of trees to hide in, doing your best to camouflage yourself as you settle in for rest.

The anthem plays, but you don’t bother getting up to watch the faces in the sky. You don’t want to see the girl from eight, you don’t want to put a face to the girl turned to butcher meat.

You’ve lost track of how many tributes are left, but you know the pool is shrinking.

And for the first time, you’re thinking maybe you could actually win. It’s a thought that you immediately reject, but it creeps its way back in through the image of the careers and Konig simultaneously receiving life-threatening injuries, and maybe a lucky shot with a blow dart for whoever remains. Maybe the gamemakers will somewhat tilt the scales in your favor, some rigged trap that wipes out the heavy hitters.

Rest does not come easy, but you manage to sneak in a few hours of sleep over the course of the night, in between nightmares and the shutter of your own teeth.

The morning is quiet. You have no plan, sitting at the trunk of a tree and resting. You finish off a good chunk of your vegetables, only a few husks of corn remaining.

You haven’t heard a cannon since the boy from District Eight. Things have quieted on the field, which is bad news for you. If the audience gets bored, the gamemakers will make it interesting. Soon, when the tributes get sparse, they will begin to force you together, manipulating you into confrontations.

The exhaustion has fully caught up to you. You spend the entire day resting by your tree, occasionally getting up to stretch your sore limbs. You elevate your ankles, nurse your water. For a moment, you even forget you’re in the arena. It’s like you’re having a solitary picnic in the forest on a day off in District Nine.

It is hard to ignore how lonely you are.

You are aching for human touch, or even just a conversation that doesn’t revolve around fearing for your life.

And there he is again, worming his way into your brain like an infestation of parasites, memories of his comfort multiplying on an infested mattress of loneliness.

For the first time since you’ve been in the arena, you reach into your sports bra and retrieve the golden locket that’s made its home against the flesh of your chest.

You smooth your fingers over the front, staring down at the shimmer of the gold. It’s warm from the heat of your skin. You flip it in your fingers, fidgeting with it. Nails pry the locket open just to close it again with a satisfying snap.

You should probably get rid of it. Why would you want to carry around a trinket from someone who tried to kill you?

You should throw it into the forest, just get rid of it.

Konig did borrow it from Ruby, though. It needs to get back to her.

You tuck it away.

There’s really no other way to describe how you spend the rest of the day other than fooling around. You make a crown out of some leaves, undo the thread of your rope and braid it - you even grab an extra handful of snow on your water run so you can make tiny snow-people in your hideout.

It’s as you’re working the multitool into some bark of a maple tree, trying to figure out how to get sap, when you hear it.

It sounds like a wave, or wind, or both? You can’t see or feel anything, blinded by leaves, but just the sound alone is enough to prep yourself to run if needed. It’s coming from the desert quadrant, you’re sure.

There’s a vibration that shoots through your boots, the sound of scraping and grinding. The ground is shaking beneath you, the world now turning to a vibrating blur. Its rumbles intensify until you lose your balance, knocked onto your front to support yourself as your body is roughly tossed around.

You hear the sound of trees uprooting, snapping, the sound of danger approaching. With the instincts of a scared animal, you sprint away from the roar of the trees crashing to the ground.

Running seems impossible on the dirt that jostles you around and makes the tree branches harder to navigate.

With each break of the branches and crack of the trees uprooting, the image of the boy from eleven sears in front of your eyes and robs you of precious breath.

After a small tumble you get back to your feet, tripping over tree roots and scraping yourself on branches.

The rumbling grind of shifting ground draws closer, and you risk a jerk of your head to see chunks of earth and entire trees being swallowed into a glowing pit of lava below a fifty foot drop.

A squeak leaves you as you force yourself forward, flinging yourself through the forest. When you clear the trees, your eyes lock onto the cornucopia, desperate for safe ground.

Your attention is shifted to the left, where the desert quadrant is nothing but a raging dust storm. It’s the sound you heard earlier, gusting winds pulling up an orange fog of sand you can’t see a foot beyond.

When your feet find the soft grass of the spring quadrant, you risk looking over your shoulder to survey the chaos.

The fall quadrant has completely deteriorated, leaving nothing but a gaping hole filled with hot lava. The tops of trees are swallowed up by the mesmorizing orange pool, once colorful petals now erupted in glorious flame.

The thunderous disruption of ground does not just come behind you, because the sound of a forest being destroyed does not stop when the last piece of the dirt littered with ginkgo petals slips away into inferno.

The pine trees are being wrung out, the sound of bark snapping and pine trees uprooting. You can see the snow being shaken off the their snow-capped peaks as they are jerked around under extreme force.

When you hear the shrieks your attention is immediately stolen by the boys who had run into the snow district during the bloodbath clearing the tree line. Your body immediately tenses at the sight of them, but you can’t take your eyes off the ten-foot wave of snow at the boys heels. In an instant they are swallowed by a wall of snow that does not even brake at the two boys who have disappeared in its stomach.

As the avalanche draws closer, you make a run for the hedge maze until you hear an unearthly impact that reverberates like glass being struck. You look over your shoulder and slow when you see that the avalanche has been stopped at the quadrant’s border, not daring to spill into spring’s grass or the abyss of molten rock.

It piles up against the quadrant border, a perfect right angle wedge of a snow. It doesn’t stop until the pine trees are completed swallowed and the snow easily covers three stories above your head.

Those two boys are dead for sure, you think, but there’s no way you would have been able to hear the cannons over the snow.

From your left, you catch a figure emerging from the raging dust storm.

You turn on your heels to run, hesitating when you realize your only choice is the hedge maze. This, this is where the gamemakers wants the final tributes to go.

This is the finale.

You swivel your head to the figure behind you, heading right for you. He’s covered head to toe and obscured by a haze of sand, but there’s no mistaking a figure that large. It’s Konig, and the sight of him rushing towards you makes you push through the gut-turning fear of the looming hedges.

You’re in a full sprint into an entrance, legs already begging for you to give it a rest, lungs fighting against each stride, but you don��t slow.

You clip your shoulder on the entrance and hiss with pain, hand immediately springing up to rub out your shoulder. As you run, you pull your hand away to find your palm coated in bright red blood.

Your arm stays firmly pressed to your upper arm, futilely trying to staunch the flow as you push forward, careful not to brush against the hedge’s walls.

The ground starts to rumble again, vibrating under your feet but with much less intensity than the fall quadrant. It’s still enough to throw you off balance, a hand springing out to find support but only slicing open your palm on the hedge’s defenses. Your hand, now dripping with blood, pulls to your chest as you fall to your knees from the shaking earth.

This is it.

You are surely going to die in this awful hedge maze. The maze that offput you so before will be your final resting place.

It takes you a moment to realize the walls are sinking into the ground. Its leaves and pink blossoms being swallowed up by the dirt. You squint up to see the tops of the mazes revealing more and more sky as they descend.

You bring yourself to shaky feet, surveilling the descent of the walls.

Your heart pounds at the possibilities that will soon be revealed to you. Surely what lies behind these walls will be your death.

When the walls have descended to your height, you shakily get to your feet, peering over to find only more hedge.

The walls disappear, the tops coated with a layer of grass that melds perfectly to the ground and leaves no evidence of their existence, and the earth stops shaking beneath you.

Only four walls remain in an equal square with no exits, trapping you alone in a large grass field. You take a moment to survey your wounds, peeling your hand off your shoulder. Your shoulder was flayed, inflamed four-inch slashes burning along your upper bicep. Oozing, thick red blood drains freely from the raised flesh, staining your jacket and coating your hands in its warmth. The slices on your palms were serated, whatever having sliced it carving out extra flesh as the ground jolted you around.

With your good hand you reapply pressure to your shoulder in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood as you inspect one of the remaining hedge walls.

They were barbed. What seemed like inviting leaves and cherry blossoms are actually spikes and petals of razor sharp blades.

Once you’ve made the discovery you make distance from the walls, looking around for the horror they clearly wanted you to face.

For a moment your eyes are searching the hedges, waiting for impossible beasts to slink from the wall’s blades. Capitol mutts bred designed with psychological and physical damage in mind.

You get the opportunity to catch your breath, checking on your wounds in between scans for threat.

A flinch tears through you when the ground rumbles again.

Through the disorientation of the trembling dirt, you make out that only one wall is descending, and it was not one that leads to open air, but one that lead to another chamber within the maze.

At the massive hedges sink lower, you can see the area leading to it has also shed its complex chambers, revealing a similar square pen of hedges.

Whatever awaits for you on the other side, you’re about to be ensnared with it in a rectangular prison with no chance to escape except to bury yourself through the hedge’s razor sharp blossoms.

You reach to prime your blow dart, but your hands come up empty. Frantic hands pull the rope from your torso and scramble through the loop of rope, but it’s gone.

It’s gone.

Surely lost to the lava, knocked free from your shoddy knots during the earthquake.

The dread is instantaneous, flooding you from head to toe with a nauseating heat. Your only shot, you just let your only shot drain through your fingers.

Fuck.

When the wall is three feet from the ground, you can see a singular tribute on the other side, bent over in a similar position to support themselves on the ground that thrusts you about.

As soon as the tops of the maze sinks into the ground and disappears, the tribute is already tearing through the grass and in a beeline straight towards you.

It’s the girl from District One.

“Nine!” She yells in a war cry so daunting it makes your gut instinctively twist.

In her hand she wields her spear, coated in layers of blood. From the old, crusted brown of week-old kills to the deep red at its silver tip, freshly drained from minute-old wounds.

Your breath catches, eyes wide.

You were surely going to die, another blood stain to decorate her spear.

You’d never seen so much rage coming from one person. Not even the boy from eleven or Konig, both moments from killing you, didn’t wear an expression with this degree of loathing.

A sickening, animalistic wail rips from the back of her throat as she raised her spear, not breaking her lengthy strides.

“He killed him!’ Her froths carry when she’s close enough, “He killed him!”

You’re not sure who ‘He’ or ‘Him’ is, but you know you’re about the take the blunt of her vengeance.

‘Just don’t let anyone in there use it against you, okay?’

Your brows pinch, you take one breath to steady yourself, and you brace.

When she’s only a few yards away, she launches her spear at you, another pained cry shrilling throughout her grunt. When you make a dive out of the way, you can hear the spear whiz right by your ear and disturb tufts of your hair. You’re sure it nicked you, but when your hand comes up to your ear to confirm you’re not sure if the blood on your hands is from the wound inflicted from the hedges or her.

You rush for the spear that lodges in the dirt three feet from you. You’re quick but she beats you to it, and you have no choice but to cling onto the blood-stained handle with your injured hands and hope that she can’t make enough distance to pierce you with it.

“He killed him!” She repeats, words so savage she’s spitting in your face.

The spear lays horizontally between your chests, erratically jerking in the space between you as you grapple for it.

She’s all muscle, arms toned and her face doesn’t look any more hollowed than it did when she stepped into the arena. It’s easy to see she’s overpowering you, flinging you around as she yanks on the spear in your firm grip.

“He killed him! He killed him!” These words punctuate each torque of the blood-stained handle, a vicious replay spewing from her mouth on repeat until it turns into a brutal harmonization. With each pull you wince as the tainted wood forces against your sliced hands.

It’s the neck snapping of the boy from eleven, and with each yank that pulls you forward you see Konig snapping the boy’s neck.

“He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap! “He killed him!” Yank, snap!

From here you can see the tears streaming down her face.

It must be the look of bewilderment, or maybe pity, that flashes across your face, because as soon as you notice her tears her face relaxes for just a moment, like she’s waking up from a dream. She cuts off her repeated cries with another vicious grunt, tightening her grip onto the spear’s staff, and runs full force at you.

The weight of her pulling the spear closer suddenly disappears, knocking you off balance. The handle catches on your collarbones and sends you both crashing to the ground.

You don’t let go of the spear as she moves to straddle you, sliding down your thighs and planting herself firmly on your stomach. White knuckles contrast the blood you’re adding to her collections of stains, mutilated palms fighting for the spear.

With one hand she forces the staff of the spear into your sternum hard, and with the other she swings at you, connecting her fist to the side of your jaw with enough force to make you see a blinding white.

When you return, hands still clasped firmly around the spear, she’s digging into her waistband for something that will surely end your life.

You trash violently under her before you find some fucking sense and use your good hand to reach through the hem of your collar, into your sports bra, and retrieve your multi-tool.

Pluck and a multi-tool, that’s all you have.

You were most certainly going to die.

You manage to flip out the first tool your blood-covered fingernail found as she reveals a six-inch long silver blade.

“He killed mine, I kill his!” Her scream is guttural, her words through hysterical tears barely registering when she swings using both hands to thrust the blade down into your skull.

With a swing of your arm you block the knife, slicing a deep, lengthy gash into your forearm as your other hand jams the inch-long corkscrew straight into her eye.

The shriek of pain is unlike any other you’ve ever heard. It completely swallows your cry from the deep gash on your arm elicited. The feeling, the sound, of her eyeball squelching as the corkscrew pierced is still shooting up your arms, making your body cringe more than the nasty gash she left behind. Immediately her tensed body folds in on itself, her fingers shooting up to thread through the multi-tool and coating her hands with the steady stream of blood.

With all you have, a grunt escaping from deep in your diaphragm, you work yourself free from her restraint while she’s distracted by her wounds.

You retrieve her spear, now stained heavily with the same blood that spews from the gashes along your shoulder, arm, and hand, coating you in dark red sleeves of dripping blood. The girl swings at you, but not yet used to her loss of depth perception and debilitating pain, misjudges how far away you are.

You take a moment to let yourself wallow in your pain, to shake the feeling of skewering the girl’s eye that still shed tears as you back away from her haunting wails.

She’s foaming obscenities at you, trying to come to her feet but dropping to her knees as the jostling of the multi-tools shoots pain through her with another haunting wail of agony.

When she reaches up to yank the multitool from her eye, you prime yourself with the spear, pointing it in the direction of a howl so piercing it deafens you. Her blood covered eye is still threaded onto the corkscrew when she pops it free, ripping out a chunk of her shredded optic nerve with it.

You have to close your eyes, your heart sinking as you wince in sympathy at her pain.

You can’t bring yourself to end her like this. Now would be the time, it would be the smart thing to do. You’re perfectly justified, you know that. She attacked you, she tried to end your life, and you are completely in the clear morally and legally.

Through her sharp sobs you can hear Price’s voice. He’s screaming at you through the screen, he’s giving you permission, he is telling you to use that pluck to give her spear one last poetic stain.

But you can’t do it.

Her maimed wails are drawing nothing but pity, knowing you are the one who is responsible for her pain, even if she had just tried to wedge a knife through your skull.

“Nine!” She shrieks a yell of vengeance and pain from her mouth coated in the blood that pours from her eye socket.

“Nine!”

She shakily gets to her feet, her hands already swiping for you, blindly swinging the multi-tool still stabbed through her own eye even though you’ve trailed your blood at least twenty yards away.

“Stay away!” You yell as your slices palm screams under a tightened grip on her spear.

“Nine!” She cries, her feet picking up into an unsteady jog toward the sound of your voice.

You back away, keeping the spear firmly pointed in her direction.

The girl from one, blinded by her injuries, tears, and rage, does not slow when she runs full force into her own spear, the entire silver tip disappearing into the flesh just under her rib cage.

The wooden, round end of the spear thrusts into your gut with a breathtaking amount of force. Your eyes were already closed when she coughs a warm, sticky spray of blood onto your face.

She’s choking on her own blood, the last haunting sounds of life gurgling from the back of her throat.

You don’t let go of your grip on the staff until the girl from one goes limp, her body dropping to the ground and pulling her spear from your blood-covered hands. Even when the cannon’s boom fires to signify her death, you can’t open your eyes, can’t bear to see the girl from District One’s lifeless body. Your tears begin to streak the fresh blood on your face.

“I’m sorry!” You scream in the direction of her body, “I’m sorry!”

Your pleading cries become hysterical, your words repeating as foaming as the girl from one’s as she charged at you with the same spear that killed her. The feeling of her squishing eye still shoots up the bones of your arms and down your spine.

Your eyes finally snap open at the encore of the ground shaking.

You try and move away from the girl from one, her body bouncing up and down like a rag doll - and suddenly you’re staring at the Eleven’s lifeless body bouncing off the metal platform.

You’re knocked to your limbs, blood draining freely down your arms and painting the grass with generous red streaks as the earth quakes.

The large hedge wall is descending, and as it is swallowed into the ground you can see what remains of the hedge maze, entirely stripped of its inner walls and chambers. Over the top of the descending wall you can see another large, rectangular pen of equal size that will soon form a square of the hedge’s outer most borders with no exits in sight.

When the wall has fully descended, you rise to shaky feet and find two tributes rising from the ground that finally settles. Two more tributes lie dead in heaps on the grass at the far end of the maze.

The tribute on the right is The Mountain, no mistaking that size, but he’s covered from head to toe in gear. Thick gloves. A pair of green cargo pants. Black guards on his joints and forearms. A holster sits at his upper thigh, carrying some sort of blade. He wears a thick black vest on his front that spills over with supplies.

The most haunting is the mask, a nearly uniform black fabric that drapes over his neck and bunches around his vest, pinned in place underneath a tactical helmet. It reminds you of an executioner.

He doesn’t even look human . Any comfort you had found from him before the games, any scraps that remained after he snapped that boys neck and raced to kill you, has completely disintegrated.

The mask has two circular cutouts above two faint streaks of color and reveal the only part of him exposed to light, those eyes that have shared so many reassuring glances with you - and they’re staring in your direction.

You hear him shout something at you, your name, you think, that harsh voice carrying all the way from across the hedge maze. His hands find his head before he starts in a jog to you, slowing when he sees the body of the girl from one, imbedded on a spear and lying limp in the grass.

He looks back to you, and then his head whips in the direction of the other tribute to find a knife flying in his direction. He throws himself to the ground in a dodge, and the boy from two takes his opportunity to advance on Konig in a full sprint, already reaching into his jacket pocket for a replacement weapon.

Konig rolls forward before getting to his feet, making a run for you.

You’re frozen again, eyes flicking between both of the imminent threats before you, trying to figure out who you should focus on first.

You start in a run towards the girl from one’s body, not slowing, but wincing as you pull the spear from her abdomen without looking down. You run a few more yards before whipping around, slightly crouched as you extend the spear in the direction of Konig and the boy from District Two. Titan, the boy with canines that come to perfect, razor sharp points.

Konig fumbles when he meets your eyes, the fear and the determination in them as you point your weapon at him. He slows, his eyes momentarily finding the tip of the spear, and then the body of the girl from one before he turns to look for Titan. He retrieves a large knife, it’s not the scythe you saw him wielding at the bloodbath, but it’s similar. A long, silver blade that almost constitutes a sword raised in warning at Titan.

Titan slows, and sidesteps to survey you both. The body of the girl from District One lays limp in the center of a three-way standoff, with two boys who very much dominate you in size and strength on either side.

Titan gives a cruel laugh, showing off his razor sharp canines. The knife he had retrieved from his jacket falls to his side, as if he’s not even worried about either of you atttacking.

“Where you been District Nine?!” He yells almost teasingly from his spot, clearly directed at you. You tighten your grip on your spear with your blood-soaked palms, brows furrowing.

“I’ve been looking for you!” Titan follows up in an almost sing-song tune.

He laughs at your confused face, the way your eyes uneasily flick from Konig to Titan.

Titan takes two slow yet confident steps in your direction, and both you and Konig prime your weapons with a flinch.

Titan laughs again, bending his core - as if you treating him like a rabid lion was just so hilarious it steals the breath from him.

“You two, wow. What a pair!”

You and Konig share an unsure glance before returning your careful eyes to Titan.

He points at Konig with his knife, “You I expected. It was always you, right?” He sloppily points the blade in your direction.

“You I didn’t expect!”

He laughs again, taking a few more slow steps toward you, “We knew what you were, though!” He shakes his head, “We knew you were important. Just didn’t think you’d make it this far.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” A cruel smile unwinds across his face, canines fully exposed, “I hate admitting this, but I don’t think I’d be able to do it without you.”

He finishes by taking a few more steps towards you, and Konig follows his lead this time, both of them closing in on you.

You have to stop taking steps away when the end of your spear brushes against razor sharp leaves.

“Back up!” You spit, thrusting the tip of the spear in the air in Titan’s direction as a warning. He holds his hands up, the knife held with just a few of fingers as he displays his palms.

“Easy now, Plucky,” He says with a condescending smirk, “I wouldn’t want to end up like your friend here.”

Titan doesn’t drop his smile in the slightest when his boot steps on the corpse of the girl from one, a symphony of ribs snapping under his boot.

You suck in a breath at the noise, the boy from eleven blinding you with his lifeless eyes. Your whole body cringes, eyes pinching closed and stomach threatening the retch.

Snap, bounce, dead.

The boy from two’s boots break into a sprint towards you, followed shortly by the sound of Konig’s footsteps, and all you can see is Eleven’s lifeless eyes as you swing your spear blindly through the guts of the girl from District One.

You hear Konig’s harsh voice shout.

The spear’s handle scrapes painfully against your flayed palm as it’s ripped from your grasp, a pair of brute arms trapping around you as you flail your limbs, scratching and clawing at faceless muscle.

You’re quickly jerked so that the assailant is behind you, pressing your back to his chest. A sturdy forearm wraps across your collarbones, the other digging firmly into your lower stomach.

When you’re firmly pinned, you can see Konig, frozen in place and staring right at you through his hood as you thrash in Titan’s arms.

You can feel the vibrations of his words on your back you when he speaks, his lips tickling your ear as he coos into it, “Oh, it’s okay, Funny Girl. You don’t need to fight it.”

Your head trashes violently against his sternum, spitting grunts leaving your raw throat as your bloody, injured hands scratch at his forearms.

“I said don’t fight it!”

You flinch at the volume of Titan’s voice, no longer playful and teasing, booming his direct order in your ear as he shakes you in his grip.

His arm slides up from your chest to wrap around your neck, nestling you between a bulging forearm and bicep. He gives you a warning squeeze, cutting off your air just to show you he can.

“Behave!” He hisses in your ear.

Your hand comes up to grab onto Titan’s crushing arms, futilely pawing at him in an effort to give yourself more breathing room.

All you can do is stare wide-eyed at a faceless Konig, his blade primed as you wriggle in Titan’s grip.

Titan lifts your feet off the ground by your neck, drawing half of an inhuman squeak from you before your windpipe is fully constricted.

“Now drop it!” Titan yells.

Your legs kick in the air as you search for ground, fingernails scratching at Titan’s arm and leaving streaks of your own blood behind. Eyes wide with terror and mouth gaping for air that can’t be inhaled.

“Drop it or I kill her!”

Konig lets his weapon fall to the ground, slowly raising his arms to show his empty palms to Titan.

Titan laughs, letting you dangle and struggle for air a little while longer until he sets your feet back on the ground. He takes his arm off your neck and puts his palm to your forehead, pinning your head against his chest.

Immediately you’re pulling in breaths, choking on the air you’d been fighting for with everything you have.

Titan’s just giddy with excitement, even doing a shuffle with his feet to release some of his energy.

“Do you see this, Funny Girl?” Titan whispers, his lips pressed against the grooves of your ear as you cough for air, “See how you reduce a mountain to a molehill?”

You jerk your head away from him, squirming in his grasp, but he applies more pressure to your forehead.

“This is just perfect! This is rich,” Titan laughs before he continues, “You know only one of you can leave, right?” He throws his head back in a laugh, forcing your body to turn slightly to the right.

His voice drops, each word coming to a point that digs at Konig, “And yet you’d still sacrifice yourself to save a girl that never had a chance.”

Konig must have some sort of plan you don’t fully understand, because none of his actions are rational.

“Don’t be shy, Konig. Come on down!” He says with an over-the-top voice.

Titan laughs again as Konig takes careful steps closer, palms still displayed in surrender.

Titan presses his lips back to your ear and speaks excitedly through clenched teeth.

“I am so glad you made it this far.”

He gives your body a shake before he leans down to plant a sloppy kiss on your cheek from behind.

You wince in disgust, giving a few more earnest thrashes against his arms.

It fills you with fury, actually.

This brute can have you restrained, manhandle you and steal your breath - that’s part of the game, you can’t blame him for that.

But to tease you like a cat does his prey?

To kiss you?

You’re over Titan, you decide.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Funny Girl?” He says in mock sympathy, removing the hand from your neck to cup your jaw, fingers creating indents on your face as he smears your own blood with his fingertips. He tilts both your body and your chin to force you to look at him.

“Don’t be upset,” He coos, ignoring your grit teeth and glaring eyes, “Some people were just born to serve me, to die for me.” His voice falls to a dangerous growl, his fingernails digging painfully into your cheeks, “Get over it.”

His eyes flick to Konig, who’s approaching too fast for his liking, “Woah, woah, woah there, lover boy.”

Titan’s arms switch positions, the one across your stomach rising to skim his knife across your front, the other letting go of your face to secure your waist to him. He presses the blade up to your throat, grazing the metal against the crook of your neck in a clear threat.

You tilt your chin up to get away from the blade, looking down your nose at Konig, who freezes.

“Did you not like that?” He asks Konig, applying more pressure on the blade to your neck, not yet breaking skin, but pulling a fearful squeak from you as the cool steel creases your flesh.

He lowers his voice to a purr, “Do you not like it when I touch your things?”

Titan takes his hand off your waist, knowing the knife on your throat will keep you firmly in place. He brings his other hand back up to your jaw, pinching your cheeks and shaking your head teasingly at Konig.

You and Konig have no choice but to lock eyes, his gear offering little comfort as you pull down on Titan’s arm. You can’t read much behind that half-lidded cold stare and black hood.

“Just do it!” You yell at Konig, “What are you waiting for?! Just kill us both!”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Titan presses his fingers tighter into your face in the assumption you were addressing him.

He shakes your head again and lowers his voice, pressing his lips back into your ear.

“But I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” He says, “I’m going to take my time.”

“Do it Konig! Kill us both!” You yell, furrowing your brows and thrashing against Titan.

“Do it Konig!” Titan mocks. He puts his mouth back to your ear again, “Let’s see if he can do it.”

He pulls away to shout to Konig, keeping your face firmly in his hold, “Do it! Kill us both!”

Konig stays still in his spot, not reaching for his weapon, just flitting his eyes between you and Titan.

“What are you doing?!” You scream, “Do it!”

“Stupid girl,” Titan grits in your ear, “Don’t you know he can’t?”

You elbow him hard, and he makes a low guttural noise, briefly letting go of your face. You go to push free from his knife but his hand quickly snatches a head full of your hair.

You let out a yelp as he jerks your head backwards, his knife briefly jutting out in the direction of Konig, who used your distraction as a chance to near closer. He’s close now, but when Titan notices this he takes a few steps backwards, dragging you back by your hair with him.

Titan laughs at Konig, giving you a harsh yank on your scalp. “Trying to save her?”

The hand with the knife pulls back and snakes around your neck again, threatening to squeeze the life from you.

“Kill us! Don’t let him win!” You get out.

“I am so sick-” Titan cuts off his statement the same moment he cuts off your air, lifting you off the ground.

“Tell her!” He booms, “Tell her why you can’t do it!”

Konig’s hands lower, eyes widening as he watches you claw at his arms, blood still gushing from your wounds.

“Tell her or she dies! Tell her!” He jerks you around by your neck, body swaying like a rag doll.

Your nails dig into Titan hard enough to draw blood, your legs kick his with the soles of your boots, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Tell her!” He shouts, his spit dotting your cheek. He makes a show of tightening his grip on you.

You’re vision is getting spotty, the swings of your fists slowing against unmatched strength.

“Last chance!” He says.

Konig sees the life fading from you, and breaks into a sprint, full force in your direction.

If you could speak, you’d tell him ‘finally.’

You close your eyes and brace for death, listening to the sound of Konig’s boots rapidly approaching and the blood pumping in your ears.

You take the brunt of his impact, your face and already injured arms on the receiving end of the supplies tucked in his chunky vest.

The three of you lose balance, toppling backwards until Titan regains his footing, and then you’re smushed in between two monstrous boys, waiting for one of them to take the win.

It happens so fast, and for most of it you had your eyes closed, but as soon as Titan releases his grip on your neck you’re roughly flung to the side where you drop to your hands and knees, coughing and wheezing as you try to catch your breath.

There’s the sound of impact after impact, and when you have the strength to lift your head, your heart stops.

Titan never regained his footing.

Konig had shoved you both backwards where the razor sharp hedge walls had imbedded themselves so far into Titan they’re supporting his weight. His knife lays unreachable at his feet, blood pouring generously and coating the leaves under his back in thick, dark red trickles.

Konig isn’t letting him slide off, one hand pressing firmly into his chest so the blades in the hedge walls work their way further into him.

Titan’s eyes are wide with shock, his head being forced to the side with each blow Konig lands to his face.

You jolt at the sight and fumble back into the grass as you crawl backwards from the altercation, eyes locked onto the scene you can’t bring yourself to look away from.

Konig lands a hit to Titan’s jaw, and blood sprays from his mouth. You hear a crack, Titan’s cheekbone shattering you think, and you finally pinch your eyes shut as the Eleven’s neck breaks behind your eyelids.

He’s delivering blow after blow, almost mechanically. One after another in beats so rhythmic you can anticipate and wince for the next strike before it even lands.

At least with the boy from eleven he made it quick and painless. Dead before he even knew what hit him.

This is overkill.

It’s twisting your gut, nausea boiling under your skin and bile creeping up the back of your throat.

You’re not sure why he doesn’t just grab the knife and finish him off.

You can’t think of a worse end. Beaten to death, feeling your skull steadily cave in, each punch pushing you closer and closer to death while jostled against a thousand blades.

When Konig is finally done with him, Titan is unrecognizable. Face mashed in, skull caved, beaten to a bloody pulp. His teeth chipped and broken, probably having swallowed his defining canines after Konig knocked them down his throat.

The boom of the cannon makes you flinch.

When Konig turns around and takes a couple steps back, he doesn’t look at you right away. He stares off into the distance at a far hedge wall. You can see the gear in his vest rising and falling with his heavy breaths. Filtering out whatever emotion must come with killing a man with your own fists, surely.

Titan’s body begins to slide forward, what’s left of his head pressed limply to his chest. He reaches a tipping point and his upper half drops, the rest of the blades on his lower back brutally ripping through his flesh as he collapses in a lifeless pile on the grass.

When Konig’s cold, deadly eyes find yours, you can’t help but start, letting out the squeak of a prey. You can’t move, lips parted, eyes blown in disbelief.

“Wait, please!” Your bloody palms shoot out defensively.

“You can have it!” You shout through a raw throat, voice desperate. You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but to no avail. Your voice lowers, “You can have the win, but please.”

Your words spill out one after another in a jumbled mess, “I just don’t want to die fighting, and afraid, and - “ You cut yourself off, your voice dropping to nothing but shallow breath, “Please.”

He’s silent, the half-lidded eyes through his black hood revealing nothing to you, still except for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“Let’s just talk, before you do it, please. I - I don’t have any weapons,” You keep your arms up, your whole body shaking.

You pinch your eyes shut when it elicits no reaction, your voice shooting back up to raw and desperate, “Konig, please! Just let me prepare myself!”

“Please,” Your final beg finishes with a whimper, sight still cut off with a tight pinch.

And then you hear his boots take off in a full sprint, and you know that this is it.

He wants you to die scared and fighting.

· THE TRIBUTES I · THE TRIBUTES II · THE GAMES · THE VICTOR I · VICTOR II · THE AFTERMATH

The Titan drabbles you know you want ;)

More works by uhohdad :)

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heartlaboratory · 16 days

Text

Due to a congenital heart defect her aortic valve, the one which separates her left ventricle from the rest of her body, grew with only 2 of the 3 naturally intended leaflets. Beside a very visible neck pulse, low blood pressure and a low tolerance to phisical efforts this has never been a problem for her but to avoid possible future consequences like heart wall hypertrophy (that would make her heart extremely visible under her thin rib cage) and important arrhythmias she decided to undergo a new experimental slightly invasive surgical procedure. Very thin probes will be inserted through her left side chest, they will enter inside the heart from a safe point and after reaching her aortic valve the surgeon will have to reshape it while the heart is still normally beating. She will be awake during the whole procedure, with just a local pain killer administered to the point in which the probes will be inserted (that's the reason why she decided for this procedure: she's scared by general anesthesia). She passed all the important preliminary controls to verify she was suited for the procedure and the intervention began.

Was it the idea of having small blades inside the center of her life? Was the fact that an iportant group of people (gathered to watch the experimental procedure) was looking at her completely naked holding her bare breasts? Was it having her beating heart clearly visible on a see through screen or the fact it was being manipulated right under her hand while she was feeling each beat? The moment after the probes penetrated her flesh a load of adrenaline rushed through her bloodstream making her heart rate to skyrocket.

Looking concerned at the screen, where the image of her damaged slamming valve taken by one of the probes was represented, the surgeon said: "She's too scared! All these movements are making the procedure too dangerous, a single mistake and she's gone. We have to put her to sleep..." Her entire chest was literally bounching with each heartbeat.

A strong aerial anesthetic was administered through the tube attached to her nose and before she had an heart attack realizing she was about to receive general anesthesia she fell asleep.

#cardiophile #cardiophilia #female heartbeat #heartbeat #dark cardiophilia

197 notes · View notes

thepascalofus · 11 months

Text

Supply Run - Return (part two)

AO3

PART ONE

Supply Run - Exchange (part three)

Pairing: Mando/Din Djarin x afab!Reader

Word Count: 8.0k

Summary: You’ve been Mando’s crew partner for a year now. Throughout that year Mando has warmed up to you and given you signs that your heart throbbing crush on him is reciprocated. There’s one thing making you hesitate. The condoms he bought on the most recent supply run.

Chapter Summary: While Mando takes a trip to the market and gets what he needs, he ponders your relationship and what it means to him.

Content Warnings: MDNI, 18+ only! Switching POVs, post season 2, the Crest lives, strangers to friends to lovers, mentions of Grogu, soft!Mando, insecure!Mando (a smidge), helmet loopholes, pining, idiots in love, jealous!reader, sad!reader for a little, mentions of sex work (sex work is work!), eventual SMUT (making out, grinding, f!receiving fingering, f!receiving oral sex, p in v, PRAISE kink, dirty talk), FLUFF, cuddling, happy ending guaranteed!

A/N: Thank you all so much for the responses on the first part! This is my first fic that I've ever shared and it makes me so happy that other people enjoy my writing! Enjoy!

Mando handed his scope off to you in the worn down store. Wallpaper peeled from the ancient wooden planks of the walls. Cobwebs littered the untouched areas of the store. The work stations in the back, visible from the pick up counter at the front, were in complete disarray. Several projects started, but not finished. Several projects finished, but not retrieved.

You took the scope in your hand and twisted it in your hands until your gaze landed on the name of the manufacturer and the serial number. Your eyebrows shot up once the brand of the scope was revealed, it twisted in your hands once more. Hands raising the metal tube so it was level with your eyes, you looked into the scope.

“Ah! I know what it is!”

Mando watched in confusion as you ran to a workstation and grabbed a singular tool. How did you know what was wrong so quickly? He sat in the hull of the Crest for hours attempting to fix the scope. The motions of taking the scope apart and putting it back together were etched into his brain from the number of times he did so.

You returned to the front of the store with the tool in hand. “This manufacturer has been having these issues lately. They built their magnification system like no one else, but they didn’t seem to account for the need to recalibrate the scope every once in a while. Recalibrating too often causes the lenses to misalign.”

Mando calibrated his every day. He had to. It was part of his job. A miscalibration could be the difference between a two hour hunt and a twelve hour hunt.

Your face twisted in concentration as you inserted the tool into the side of the scope. Jostling the metal, it popped open and allowed access to the inside. “For some reason they put these weird pins in…” You trailed off while you removed a total of three thin metal pins. Once the pins were removed, you clicked the top of the scope back into place and handed it to Mando.

Mando previously took the scope apart countless times. He never noticed any pins.

“Twenty credits, please.” You said with a smile. Your gaze met his–you somehow found it through his black visor–and you maintained eye contact.

The display on the inside of Mando’s helmet only progressed seven minutes after he entered the store. Inside of his helmet his eyebrows shot up. He was impressed. Not only with your efficiency, but with the reasonable price as well.

“I’m impressed.” He stated. Nodding at you, he retrieved a few credits from his utility belt and set them on the paint chipped counter. He turned and walked a few paces and then stopped in front of the door.

He’s been looking for a crew mate for weeks. The potential candidates he’s stumbled across were either annoying, rude, or incompetent. Throughout his time as a bounty hunter he’s been to countless repair shops. The service was always lack-luster, prices were too high, repair time much too long.

Sure, he just met you eight minutes ago, but you had potential. He turned on his heel and faced you. Armor glinted in the low lighting of the run down shop.

“Are you in the market for a new job?”

–

Walking to the market, he��d been reflecting on his decision to bring you onto the Crest as a crew partner.

It was the best decision he ever made, besides saving Grogu from the Empire.

You were intelligent. Friendly. Resourceful. Efficient. Brave.

You stared a Mandalorian straight in the eyes–well, visor–and didn’t even flinch. You didn’t even break eye contact, unlike everyone else. People would turn to whoever they’re with to avoid his gaze. They spoke like he wasn’t a meter or two away–and like he couldn’t amplify their voices with his helmet.

His tall, broad stance usually set everyone on edge. The heavy weight of beskar armor, a reminder of his skillset, didn’t aid in calming the nerves of anyone either. He was typically soft spoken around others, as he noticed people’s reactions when he spoke–eyes wide, speech stuttering, shaking hands–scared.

Everyone was afraid of him.

Except you.

When you first boarded the Razor Crest, Mando was extremely careful in making sure you were comfortable. The majority of his days not hunting were spent in the cockpit or in his bunk. Whenever you crossed paths in the hull you offered him a small smile and quickly looked away. Did your bravery fade away?

He came back from a hunt one day, quarry in tow, and he was relieved to hear, “How was your day?” Fall from your lips once the bounty was in carbonite.

Still cautious–mindful of how the modulator made his voice sound–he kept his answers short and to the point.

“Fine.”

“Busy.”

“Awful.”

Hearing the four words you said after each return from a hunt, and being able to give you a response without you slinking away, made the hunts worth it.

One night always stood out in his mind. It was just like any other return from one of his hunts. Mando dragged the quarry up the Crest’s ramp by a cord tied around their ankles. He lifted the man to stand up, doing so effortlessly with a few grunts to spare.

Your living space was in the hull, so he always tried to make the ends of his hunts fast. You didn’t have any choice but to watch. Mando didn’t want to make you watch for too long. Maker, he didn’t want you to watch at all.

His fist slammed the button to begin the freezing process. Breathing heavily, he stood and watched the bounty as they froze into the carbonite cell. A blanket of silence covered the hull once the hissing of the freezing mechanisms came to a stop.

“How was your day?”

There it is. His favorite part after the hunt. Knowing you were there, safe within the hull, and that you wanted to be friendly with him–even after witnessing him freeze a person he tracked down for several hours.

“Nothing you want to hear about,” he replied, his voice tinged with tiredness. The helmet’s modulator most likely didn’t register the sleep in his voice. Truly, he didn’t think that you would want to hear about it. The Mandalorian was afraid that hearing about his hunts would put you on edge. You already extended a branch of friendliness to him twice a day. He didn’t want to give that up by talking about the bounties he tracks down.

“Try me.”

Those words.

Those words have only ever been spoken to him by enemies. It always caused annoyance to wash over him, head to toe. He’s a Mandalorian. Confident of his skills in combat. No matter the odds, Mando knew he would like them.

But when those words tumbled from your lips, it was different. When his enemies weren’t scared of him, it was annoying. When you weren’t scared of him, adoration filled his body. And not adoration in a patronizing way, but adoration as a form of respect.

It made him want you that much more.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Mando realized the crotch of his pants were tight. Nonchalantly, he clasped his hands together and rested them below his belt.

“Quarry tried to escape and they ran. Would have been back four hours ago,” the modulator gritted out. Again, he was conscious of how the modulator warped his voice. “Not too fun,” he added in an attempt to make the conversation more casual.

You were silent. He whispered a curse to himself under his helmet, one that he was certain wouldn’t be picked up by his modulator. Was his answer too much? Mando quickly became nervous and started to shift his weight from one foot to the other. The silence you left in the air made him a bit anxious.

The T shape of his visor peered over to you. You stood still in shock, reminiscent of the people that saw him in public. Before his thoughts could spiral too much, you replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

Dank farrik. He didn’t want you to feel like you had to comfort him. “You don’t have to be sorry,” his chest brushed against your shoulder as he swiftly hopped onto the first rung of the ladder up to the cockpit. “It’s my job.”

“That doesn’t mean it sucks any less,” you said. He smiled underneath his helmet at your consideration. Your eyes widened and your mouth opened and closed as you realized what you said, “sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said that your job sucks.”

You weren’t wrong. Making his way through tough terrain, relying on a blinking red light on a piece of metal to guide him. Finding them was a task in itself, but dragging them back to the Crest was the other half of his job that sucked. Mando looked over his shoulder at you and replied matter-of-factly, “My job does suck.”

A giggle bubbled out from your chest. Every once in a while you would be reading a funny article on your Holopad and your laughs would echo through the hull of the Crest, making their way up into the cockpit. He needed more of them. His silver helmet shook slightly from side to side and he turned back to climb the ladder. But not before he also let out a small chuckle.

If you were comfortable enough to stand up to him, and laugh at his awful attempts at jokes–after he just hauled a bounty onto the ship–Mando realized he was safe.

Not only were you safe with him. He felt safe with you, in more ways than one.

Kriff it. You extended a friendly attitude towards him–a faceless warrior covered in impenetrable armor–then he could extend a friendly attitude towards you as well.

You asked him about this day, both in the mornings and the evenings. He learned about what you like and didn’t like. One item stood out to him. Caf. He always entered into a cloud of caf scent when he sauntered into the hull in the mornings. Mando was usually up before you, so he figured he would start making you a cup every morning. Confident enough in knowing which kinds of caf you preferred, he would stock up on caf every supply run.

The Mandalorian got closer to you, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes he would catch his hands landing on your waist or your lower back when he passed you on the ship. You’d shoot him a small smile in response. The distance he kept from you only decreased. He wanted to see your smile more and more.

One thing he didn’t see coming was your interest in Mando’a. He would mumble to himself in the ship while completing various tasks.

“What’s that word mean?” You’d occasionally ask. The Mandalorian would explain their meanings, sometimes struggling to translate the word to Basic.

He must have taught you at least two dozen words in Mando’a by now. Each time you asked you would give him your full attention.

At night, if he amplified the sound with his helmet enough, he could hear you practicing the words and recalling their meanings. It motivated him to share more words with you.

–

All of these experiences have led to this day. He’s been planning it for a month or two now.

He wants to ask you on a date. Nerves bubbled up from his stomach and throughout his body. They suddenly came to a halt.

Not now. First, he needs to collect information on a quarry.

Lost in his thoughts, he looked up and the market filled his vision with you in his peripheral. It wasn’t too busy, part of the reason why he was comfortable enough for you to shop on your own. He clarified the meet up point to you and watched as you took off. You had a bounce in your step, probably due to your excitement at shopping alone.

Once he meandered further into the market he began to collect information. This market was the bounty’s last location. Mando’s guess was that he either simply wanted to be in a small city, gambled their life savings away, or they paid for visit after visit with the workers at the brothel until they ran out of credits.

Only one way to find out. The gambling and brothels didn’t start up until later in the afternoon. To kill the time, and to possibly find the quarry, Mando wandered throughout the different sections of the market.

He asked a few vendors about the bounty. Mando described the man to many market sellers and only got a slight lead from one woman donned in patterned fabrics.

“I think he went that way,” the woman gestured with one of her hands towards an intersection, “Take the left path. I don’t know anything else beyond that.”

Mando dropped a few credits into her hand and gave her a polite nod, “Thank you.” He continued on and curved his gait to take the left path. From the signs and general merchandise displayed on each stall, he knew he was entering the clothing section of the market.

The helmet covering his head swiveled from left to right and right to left. No one matched the description of his quarry. Repeating his previous process, he made his way down the stall-lined alley and asked a couple different vendors.

Once the last vendor finished talking, and provided him with another lead, he dug his hand into his pocket and slid the credits on the stall’s counter towards them. Turning his back towards the vendor, his feet carried him two steps back into the market.

Then he saw you.

You stood hunched over a table of colorful bracelets. Tapping his fingers to the temple of his helmet, Mando zoomed in and the helmet displayed your face to him, deep in thought. Looking down, you were hovering your hands over a grid of various green bracelets.

You stopped on one. Mostly brown, almost too much to be in the green section, Mando thought. Nonetheless, the green and silver streaks peeked in and out of the thick threads of brown that made up the bracelet. Your fingers sorted through the sizes of the bracelet and selected one that looked close to your size.

Clutching it in one hand, the other hand searched for another of the same bracelet. It was larger than the previous size. You set the smaller bracelet down and tested the strings. The bracelet was adjustable, and you smiled at the discovery.

You transferred the bracelets onto the table of the stall and used one hand to dig into your pockets. Palm held out flat, Mando guessed that about twenty credits sat in your palm. He followed your gaze to the sign listing the prices.

PRICES

1 bracelet = 15 credits

2 = 30 credits

3 = 45 credits

4 = 60 credits

Shoulders falling, you dropped the credits back into your pocket and returned the bracelets to their original spot in the grid of green. Ground crunched beneath your shoes as you turned and continued wandering through the market.

Mando noted it was the third stall to the left of the bright green stall on the left side of the alley.

Not wanting you to realize he saw you, the Mandalorian walked in the opposite direction you took. After twenty minutes he noticed that the stalls became much more strange than the stalls in the clothing section of the market. Peering at the different products for sale, he saw a potions shop offering “super strength elixir” and a vendor selling various pet-like creatures. A few more vendors passed his peripheral vision as he continued his strides. They came to a stop once a building larger than the surrounding stalls came into view.

His helmet tilted upwards to read the sign displayed front and center on the large building: BROTHEL.

Tapping the side of his helmet, the time on the helmet’s display indicated that the brothel and gambling scenes had just begun. Mando tapped the temple of his helmet once again and the warm bodies within the building lit up, like he had x-ray vision. He counted a dozen in total. One body stood in the same spot inside near an entryway–the bouncer, Mando thought.

The bouncer was the individual that allowed access in and out of the building. If their memory was decent, they would be like a living guest book. Mando figured he could bribe them to reveal information, which was his usual plan with most of the beings he spoke with.

He sauntered over to the side of the building the bouncer was standing at. A singular light flickered over the side door, the sun was still out, so Mando was confused why it was on. The beskar helmet observed the side door.

Metal. Double deadbolts. Keypad on the left side. Small slit at eye level–neck level for the Mandalorian.

As soon as he crouched down to look near the slit, it slid open and revealed a thick pair of black eyebrows. Black eyes bore into the brow of Mando’s helmet, as the bouncer couldn’t seem to find his eyes.

“Do you have an appointment?” The bouncer asked. The voice behind the door was gruff, as if the words had to crawl from the depths of his throat.

“No,” Mando responded.

Black eyes blinked and then disappeared when the bouncer closed the metal slit.

Mando was taken aback and furrowed his brow. His fist pounded on the door. He just wanted this hunt to be over with. He wanted to get back to you.

The slit in the door revealed two black eyes once more.

“I have credits and will pay you if you give me information on a client your establishment may have served.” Mando’s modulator gritted out loudly. Straight and to the point. All business.

Eyes disappeared again, but were then accompanied with the sounds of the deadbolts unlocking. The metal door swung open to reveal a man dressed in all black with a silver name tag. Black hair matched the rest of his ensemble.

Still holding the door, the bouncer asked, “What’s the bounty look like?”

An eyebrow raised inside Mando’s helmet, but he figured the bouncer knew the drill by now. Even other bounty hunters knew that brothels were what many bounties visited. A gloved hand unbuttoned a pocket on his belt and retrieved a bounty puck. Clicking the side of it, the puck displayed the quarry.

The man stepped out of the doorway and onto the pavement, pulling the door closed behind him. His black eyes slightly squinted when his gaze trailed up and down the hologram.

“Ah yeah, I’ve seen this guy. He has a type, always goes for the blondes.”

“Does he have any upcoming appointments?” Mando questioned.

The bouncer sighed in thought and pulled a small notepad from his pocket. Mando mirrored the man’s motion and produced a pen and notepad from his pocket.

“The guy has an appointment in two days. He just asked to see a blonde. Figures.” The man shrugged and opened his notepad. Mando noticed it was a planner, and the bouncer flipped to the pages for the appointments two days from today.

“Which workers would take him as a client?” Mando’s modulator churned the words. His pen clicked as he readied himself to write.

The man donned in black made a fist with one hand and raised a finger with each name, “Ari. Taima. And Nomi. They would be in rooms one, five, or seven.”

Wow, Mando thought, this guy really knew the drill. He quickly finished up writing down the names and room numbers of each worker. The pen scratched feverishly against the cream colored paper, leaving behind black strokes to form letters and numbers. Notepad folding closed and the pen clicking, signifying the end of his notes, Mando returned the pen and paper to their place in his pocket. His opposing hand reached into a different pocket and produced a sizable amount of credits. Feeling generous, thankful that this hunt was going to be quick, he compensated the bouncer handsomely.

First task done. Second task on the horizon.

Creaking produced from the hinges of the metal door as the bouncer disappeared behind it once more. Flickering light gleamed off the beskar armor that protected the Mandalorian in combat. Although he wasn’t going into combat, because he wouldn’t be nervous if he was.

Mando trained most of his life with the greatest warriors in the galaxy. Combat flowed through his blood easily. It was a part of him.

But he was never trained on how to ask people out on dates.

On top of that, he was never trained on how to ask you out on a date.

He didn’t want to misread the situation. You could just be friendly. Who would want to date a man and not know what he looks like? Who would want to constantly live on a ship, without a permanent home?

Being Mando, he prepared for the worst. If you said no, he figured that you would be uncomfortable living with the man who asked you out on a date. Knowing that he’s attracted to you. He would fly wherever you wanted and give you some credits to get started. Kriff, he’d send credits for however long it takes for you to get on your feet. Then he’d leave you alone.

Admittedly, the Mandalorian would probably keep an eye on you to make sure you were safe. You just wouldn’t know he’s there.

But if you said yes.

Mando’s chest bloomed with anticipation. Firework-like tingles trailed up and down his limbs at the thought. He bit his lip within the confines of his helmet when he realized his pants had gotten tighter. Thankfully he was a Mandalorian, because heat washed over his face, half due to arousal and the other half in embarrassment.

The brown eyes underneath the helmet widened. If he wanted to do more with you and you agreed, he didn’t have protection.

Turning on his heel, cape whipping behind him, he made a quick pace back to the brothel.

Once he arrived at the gray building, the light at the side of the building having more of a purpose, Mando glided towards the same door as before. Bringing a fist up to the metal, he knocked three times.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Clink. Shhhkt.

“Do you sell condoms?” the modulator quickly blurted.

All business.

—

He arrived at the meet up point before you. Leaning against a nearby tree, Mando checked the time constantly, as if he was devoted to the action more than his Creed. If you were late, he always went looking.

Thankfully, you trudged up to the food stall on time with a hefty bag full of purchases. Fine, brown gravel grinded against the soles of Mando’s shoes as he made his way over to you. His gloved hand slipped the bag from your grasp and the pair of you began walking back to the Crest.

Both of you carried on with your normal post-supply run routines. You and Mando, but this time just Mando, piled the purchases from the market onto the hull’s floor. From there, the items could be sorted through and put in their respective places around the Crest.

As Mando finished unloading the large bag of purchases, he quickly dug around for the receipts. He knew how much you liked to review the shopping haul each time a supply run was completed. Mando enjoyed seeing the satisfaction wash over your face after you read over the receipts.

But this time was different. You froze once you got to the last receipt.

Mando’s helmet tilted in confusion. He took a few steps closer towards you, “What’s wrong? Did we forget something?”

You remained still while your eyes darted over the lines on the receipt. With your back turned to him, Mando found the opportunity to zoom in on the ink printed on the flimsy paper.

ITEMS PURCHASED (1)

CONDOM - 12 PACK

Oh. Fuck. FUCK.

He hasn’t even asked you on a date yet and now you probably already think he’s a perv. Nerves took over his body as you continued to stand still.

Your hand quickly crushed the receipts and threw them in the trash, “Nope! The last receipt didn’t look familiar but,” you trailed off slightly but recovered, “I remembered what I bought from the place.” A nervous laugh–obviously fake, Mando knew what your real one sounded like–escaped from your lips.

He fucked it up. You knew he was interested in you like that. And you didn’t feel the same. He hasn’t even asked you on the date yet. It’s all screwed up now.

But he also felt like he didn’t have enough evidence. What if you did like him but the idea of…needing to use the condoms…made you nervous.

Mando had to at least try. The least he had to do was ask you.

He cleared his throat and grabbed the bag off of the floor. You stood away from him, biting the inside of your cheek, nervously watching his movements.

“I’m going to go to the night market,” he informed you, “I have some business with a bounty I need to take care of.”

The bounty wouldn’t be captured until two days from now. In reality, he was really going to go and purchase snacks, takeout, and a pair of those bracelets you admired. It would have been suspicious if he met you back at the meet up point with bags full of snacks. The beskar man figured it would be best to hold off on buying them until later, and tell you he was getting a bounty, so you wouldn’t catch on.

He should’ve waited for this second trip to buy the condoms, he thought.

–

Mando left to, “Go to the night market,” he said. You saw the condom listed on the market receipts, you knew where he went tonight. What he’s going to do.

The brothels.

Yeah, sure, he’s paying a worker to give him a service. No feelings attached. But you didn’t want him to be with anyone else. Was Mando necessarily yours? No. Have you ever had sex with him? Also no.

That didn’t stop you from getting jealous.

And it wasn’t just jealousy. It was fear. What if he fell in love with one of them? Or what if he was going on dates? He could have a romantic interest you don’t even know about. Next thing you know, they’re going steady and you’re kicked off the ship. Or worse, you have to watch him love someone that isn’t you.

No more silence with him in the cockpit, watching as the hyperspace lights soar past the windshield. Feet tapping down the ladder as you both began your nighttime routines. He’d wait in the hull near the door of the fresher in just his helmet, undershirt, sleep pants, and socks. As he lifted off the wall from his leaning stance he’d ask you, “Are you done?” Holding his own hands in front of him, trying to seem relaxed, as if he was trying to look less intimidating. “Yeah,” you’d quickly respond, leaving the fresher and brushing past him. Sometimes his hand found your waist as he passed, or the small of your back. “Thank you,” he’d grunt gently as he closed the fresher door.

No more of Mando letting out a small, “Good night,” before lingering on your closing eyes and watching as your lips smiled, forming your response, “Good night.”

Falling asleep, you knew you’d wake up to him. He would be up before you on most days, leaving you a fresh cup of caf and your favorite ration pack (when he had them). The short chatter between you two, going over the logistics of the next hunt, telling stories from your past, or just thinking out loud to each other. Gone.

You would be banished from home.

The fear struck your chest. Heat searing through your ribcage and meeting your spine, the visions repeated over and over in your head. Tears fell like waterfalls from your eyes. Most streams connected underneath your chin and trailed down your neck. Your back met the hull’s wall as you sank down onto the floor. Deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Your head was heavy and numb.

Just breathe. You knew you weren’t going to die. Go through some heartbreak? Maybe, but you knew you’d be alive. It helped. Your breath slowed and the fear dissipated into the air around you. That didn’t stop the flow of tears down your cheeks as your eyes were fixed on the closed ramp.

–

Mando’s footsteps set a steady pace back to the market.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

He displayed a map of the marketplace as an overlay on the display of his helmet. Mando usually reserved this practice for combat to aid in determining exit strategies and the best plan of attack.

But now he was using it to calculate the most efficient route throughout the marketplace in order to see you again sooner.

Closing the overlay from the helmet’s display, he was met with the sight of the market. Long strings of lights decorated the different stalls. Many vendors took advantage of the dark and used different, bright combinations to reel in customers. Some lights were multicolored. Some flashing. Some huge and some small. He thought of the “ooh”s, and, “ahh”s that you would let out at the brilliant display.

The Mandalorian started in the food section of the market. Carefully examining which vendors carried your favorite snacks, he made purchase after purchase in quick succession. His helmet remained on a swivel, scanning the stalls from right to left and left to right.

A stall offering your favorite kind of takeout came into view.

Once Mando arrived at the stall he ordered two takeout meals. The vendor looked startled and confused as he ordered. They shakily accepted the credits for the two meals. Gazes drifted away from Mando and quickly returned as he stood waiting for the meals to be prepared. A bell rang and he retrieved two warm containers, placing them in his bag alongside the snacks.

One last stop. The bracelets.

Marching through the food district, he came upon an intersection at which the left path led him to the clothing district. Yet again, his helmet pivoted on his neck from one side to another.

The third stall to the left of the bright green stall on the left side of the alley.

Mando continued his steady pace until the bright green stall came into view. The brightness of the exterior paint was exaggerated by the warm light emitted by lanterns, which decorated the outside of the shop. He didn’t notice before but the store sold children’s clothes. Onesies. Small shoes. Tiny hats.

A small tunic. Small enough for a human child younger than one year old. The tunic reminded him of Grogu’s. Mando’s bare hands brushed against the material countless times as he cradled The Child in his arms.

The last time he spoke about Grogu was with you. You listened and offered support. He’s never had anyone do that for him.

His visor turned to his left. The soft fairy lights of the stall reflected off of the beskar helmet on his head. As if the beskar reflected a dark sky decorated with bright stars. Various fabrics hung from the side of the vendor’s stall to cover the old wooden planks. Little accessories were placed throughout the shop on different tables and displays.

Mando wasn’t focused on those items, he was focused on the long table of bracelets organized by color. His feet carried him to the green section. The helmet turned downwards to allow him to observe the selection.

Shit.

There were so many bracelets similar to the pair you held, just all in different combinations of green, silver, and brown. Was it the bracelet with the large green cord and the small silver and brown threads? Or the one with the large silver cord and green and brown threads? Or thick brown cord with streaks of green and silver? His hands hovered over the options, doing his best to recall the details from earlier in the day.

“It’s this one,” a woman’s voice said.

A bit startled, the Mandalorian looked up and found a woman standing on the other side of the table. She wore long robes with intricate patterns. Jewelry decorated every limb and part of her body, like jewels were dripping down from her skin from a storm of gemstones. Hair cascaded around her shoulders and down her back. Her smile was kind and her gaze met Mando at his eyebrow.

A good try, he thought.

“I’m sorry?” He replies. She couldn’t possibly know which bracelet he was trying to find.

“You were watching them earlier. From across the street,” she let out faint exhales as she let out a short laugh, “Maybe you should hide a little better next time.”

She reached out and picked two bracelets out of the display grid. “I remember the sizes too,” she said, “The person you watched held onto them for so long, they seemed pretty attached to them. I kept track of which bracelets they were just in case.” The robed woman shot him a friendly wink.

“In case of what?” Mando questioned. He was still in shock that the woman noticed him staring at you from across the street.

The woman glanced up at him like that was a dumb question, “In case you came back to get them, Mandalorian. This isn’t my first day on the job.”

It saved him the time and stress of trying to remember which one it was, so he shrugged and watched the woman’s jewelry dangle as she typed onto the register.

Beep. Beep. Beep beep. Ching.

“Okay sir, twenty credits please!” The woman extended her hand out and waited for Mando to place credits into her palm. She was met with the tilting of the black T shape on Mando’s beskar helmet.

“I thought the price was thirty,” he stated as he began to reach into his pockets to retrieve his credits.

The woman let out another small laugh, “Oh, I suppose I should have made the sign larger,” her decorated fingers pointed to a small sign above the one that displays the bracelet prices.

$10 OFF WHEN YOU BUY TWO OR MORE

Mando’s shoulders dip in realization that you could’ve bought the bracelets in the first place. A sigh escapes his modulator and he hands the credits over to the intricately robed vendor. The credits clink into her palm, and then into the register.

He waits silently for her to package them up in a small bag.

“They like you, you know,” the woman mentions, “No one like them would be deciding on which bracelets to buy for that long if they didn’t.” She paused as she was about to place the larger of the two into the small bag, “And look at the size of this one! It’s definitely for you.”

The Mandalorian nods, “I appreciate that,” he pauses before turning away, “let’s hope they do.”

–

Mando sets a faster pace back to the Crest than the one he took from the Crest to the market. He’s impatient, he can’t wait to walk up the ramp and see your body curled up, comfortable and safe, while you sleep soundly in your bed–if you can even call it that, he thought. You usually went to bed early when he went on hunts, otherwise you would be awake talking to him.

Slipping the bag from his shoulder, an ungloved hand rummaged through the contents searching for a small bag. His fingers found the familiar texture and he pulled it out from between the snacks and the takeout.

Mando slung the bag back over his shoulder, pulled the larger of the two bracelets out of the small bag, and slipped his hand through the ring of brown, silver, and green. Grabbing one of the ends with his fingers and pinning it to his palm, the other hand tightened the bracelet to a comfortable size around his wrist.

Once the small bag was returned to its place inside of the larger one, Mando peered around him to get a good look of his surroundings.

The sun was about to set, leaving only a sliver of light available to provide dim light to the landscape. Rocks littered the ground. Shadows from each one making them appear larger in the light of the impending dusk. He reached up and tapped a finger to the temple of his helmet. No living thing was around him.

He paused and set the bag on the ground. Doing one last scan of the area, one of his hands gripped the chin of his helmet and lifted the beskar from his head. The hand held the helmet at his side while he marveled at his wrist.

He caught a good patch of remaining light and watched as the green and silver threads gleamed against the thick brown ones. The bracelet was beautiful. Not only because of the design, but because you picked it out. And it was for him.

Becoming paranoid, the Mandalorian quickly slipped his helmet back onto his head. He waited for the seal of the helmet to engage before continuing back towards the Crest. This time, at an even faster pace.

–

You sat there until you heard heavy footsteps approaching from outside, the hydraulics of the ramp coming to life. Thinking fast, you stood up and made your way towards the fresher to start your nighttime routine.

“Why are you still awake?” Mando’s voice was confused. He stood in front at the top of the ramp with his helmet tilted, hands resting on his hips, but his shoulders were slumped, a bag slung around one. He looked…worried.

Mando was right. Usually when he went on hunts you went to bed early. Nowadays the only thing that kept you awake was him. Talking with him was how you spent most evenings on the Crest, your voices echoed and bounced back to each other in the hull.

He’s used to seeing you curled up on the sleeping pad covered in blankets. Soft breaths came from your body and radiated throughout the Crest. Just like a minute ago, his footsteps would come up the ramp with his bounty in tow. Soft grunts could be heard kitty-corner from your spot in the hull. A hiss of mechanisms as they froze the bounty in carbonite. Then a bit of silence.

The absence of the carbonite freezing stood out in your mind. No bounty, even when he said he was going to go and find one. Your eyes teared up slightly again as the realization truly set in. Mando really did go to the brothel.

You just wanted this night to be like any other night he came back to the Crest with a bounty.

After the bounty was frozen, heavy footsteps made their way across the floor of the hull. But they always stopped a few paces away from your bed, halting for a moment. Mando would complete his nightly routine. Setting the Crest’s coordinates for the next planet and showering in the fresher if he needed to–he usually did.

No matter what the events of his nightly routine were, it always ended with him standing in the doorway of his bunk–the sound of his footsteps always stopped partially inside.

“Good night, cyar'ika.”

You didn’t know what the Mando’a meant, since Mando never used that word around you, but you knew that the, “good night,” was all you needed to finally fall asleep.

You always waited up for him, only until reasonable hours of the night, of course, but he didn’t know it.

The sound of his footsteps in the present snapped you out of your hazy state. Crying really does a number on your brain.

“Just…couldn’t fall asleep,” you offered him a small smile as you pulled some products out of the tiny fresher cabinet. You wet your face and applied a small amount onto your fingertips, tapping them together for both hands to have the product. As you lifted your face and your hands to the mirror to begin washing your face, you were met with swollen lips, puffy eyes, and slight tear trails dried onto your face, despite the water you just splashed onto it. You froze.

There goes any of your chances to get away with how you spent your night. Staying up late staring at the Crest’s ramp. Waiting for Mando to come home. At least what you thought was home.

“What’s wrong?” Mando’s voice got clearer as he approached the fresher door. His strides long, footsteps clunking, as he removed his leather gloves and tucked the pair into his utility belt.

You went to turn away from him but he got there faster than you could. His ungloved hand rested on your shoulder, grip slow yet firm as he turned you to face him. He rubbed tiny circles onto your skin with his thumb once his eyes beneath the helmet noticed yours.

Your reflection on the silver beskar of his helmet stared back at you. Could you even get away with a lie at this point? What else would have made you cry? It’s not exactly like you could have said the truth either.

Oh yeah, I was sitting here having a panic attack as you participated in a perfectly normal service that is offered on this planet. Then I spiraled and thought about how you might not even want me to be here, that you’ll find another partner to be on this ship with you, and toss me away like none of this meant anything to you.

Mando’s hand waved in front of your face and it brought you back into the present moment. “Did someone come onto the ship while I was gone?” His voice gritted out from the helmet’s modulator.

“Maker, no,” you huffed and tried to look less suspicious, hoping he’ll just drop the topic.

“Then what is it?” He murmured, his modulator barely picking up his syllables. His wide shoulders took up most of the fresher’s door frame. The grip on your shoulder tightened slightly.

“It’s…I don’t think you’ll want to hear it.” You shrugged and repressed the heat of anxiety creeping down the back of your head. Turning to wash and dry your hands, you let out a sigh and started to walk towards the main open space of the hull. Your shoulder gently bumped him as you slid past his large frame in the doorway.

Suddenly your hips were being snapped backwards and dragged back towards the fresher. His damn finger was in your belt loop again.

He pulled you close to him, feeling the heat from his knuckle dig into your hip and spread throughout the rest of your body. His helmet leaned down to look you in the eye and tilted once again.

“Try me,” he paused. He brought his hand up to grip onto the valley where your neck meets your shoulder, slowly enough so you could back away if you so desired. His large palm and thick fingers were calloused and warm. The grip he had on you was still gentle, slightly squeezing. “You know you can tell me, right?”

You let a deep inhale permeate through your lungs. The words flowed through your individual cells. Thoughts of lying escaped your body with each breath. The debate inside your head would end. Whether he had those feelings for you or not.

“I got upset because you went to the brothel.” You told him. Lips trembling and eyes squinted open in an attempt to meet his gaze.

“The brothel?” He held both of your shoulders and brought his visor closer to your face. Thumbs rubbed your shoulders yet again. He sighed as your name left his lips and traveled through his helmet, “I didn’t go to a brothel tonight.” A titled T-shaped gaze met yours. You knew he was looking you in the eyes, and yours into his.

Brows furrowed, you sniffled slightly, “I-, I saw that condoms were on the market receipts.” The thumbs on your shoulders stopped, his chest didn’t rise and fall. He froze. You made Mando freeze.

“Look I know I’m just being dramatic and paying for that kind of thing is completely normal. I just,” you trailed off and thought of a quick replacement for your worry, “I was worried you would get hurt there.”

Mando’s shoulders fell and his helmet cocked to the side. “What?” He questioned. “How would I get hurt? None of the workers there had weapons.”

“How would you know that if you didn’t go?” You whispered to him. Your gaze left his and it dropped to the shape in the center of his chestplate. The crystal shape rose up and down slowly.

“I got information on a bounty there earlier,” he sounded like he was talking to a hurt animal. Gentle. Slow. Calm. “What's the actual reason you’re upset?”

Kriff it.

“I had a panic attack because I thought you went to the brothel. Maybe you would like the worker there more than you like me, I spiraled and thought about how you might not even want me to be here, that you’ll find another partner to be on this ship with you,” your chest heaved and as you listed off your previous thoughts of worry. Your hands shook as they landed on top of Mando’s, and you took a deep breath, eyes meeting his gaze like before, “and toss me away like none of this meant anything to you.”

Mando is quick. He flipped his hands to grab one of yours and tugged you into the hull. Kneeling, he opened a cloth bag, one from the market, and dug into it to search for something.

He actually went to the night market. You thought, now you look so clingy. So needy. He was just going to show you what he got to prove he went.

He turned and held his hand out. Sitting on top of the golden skin on his palm was a bracelet.

The bracelet from the market.

“I saw you looking at these, you looked for a long time and then put them down,” He stood up and set his gait to slow steps as he made his way over to you.

You laughed nervously, accompanied by a small sniffle, “Sorry yeah, I know I just should have been getting the stuff we needed. You didn’t have to go back and get it for-.” Mando raised a finger to halt your speech and continued what he was saying previously, “you put them down. You had two bracelets.”

“They had lots of them that I liked…I had two that were a tie and I just decided to get neither-.” Mando cut you off again.

“You were holding one bracelet consistently and then picked another in a bigger size,” you froze at his words. Dank farrik. Now he was going to think you’re super clingy.

“I wasn't completely sure who you wanted to wear the bracelet, but I took a guess.” He pulled his long sleeve past his elbow and revealed his bare forearm. Strong. Capable. Solid. And a matching bracelet was donned on his wrist.

Your cheeks radiated with heat as he took your wrist and put your bracelet on you. His warm fingertips brushed the soft skin of your wrist, sending chills throughout your body at the meticulous skin-on-skin contact.

Once the bracelet was secure around your wrist, Mando dipped his head and looked down at the floor. One of his hands gripped the underside of his helmet, and the other held onto your wrist. Your breath caught in your throat at the gesture. He quickly lifted his helmet to release his mouth, and he pressed three kisses on your wrist where the bracelet was. Mando’s lips were soft and timid, his hand caressing the skin on yours. Silver from his beskar helmet blocked your view, but Mando sealed his helmet and brought his eyes underneath the visor to look into yours.

“This means everything to me.”

Supply Run - Exchange (part three)

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bookofthegear · 9 months

Text

There’s a peculiar glass bowl attached to a glass tube that’s bolted to the wall by a rusty iron ring. The glass tube vanishes into the ceiling of the alcove, and as far as you can tell, it’s full of water.

You know this because a small silver fish is swimming around in the bowl. As you watch, it apparently gets bored and swims upward into the tube, into the wall, and out of sight.

…huh.

“Don’t look at me, boss,” says Jimmy, scratching his head. “Dad never mentioned this.”

You watch the water for a moment, but the fish doesn’t reappear. Meanwhile, the buzzing isn’t getting any quieter. You turn toward the doorway.

A chalk rectangle encloses a wavy line on the wall beside the entrance. Gritting your teeth, ready to run screaming, you step inside.

Yep, it’s a hive all right.

It’s huge. Most of the far wall is engulfed in an abstract sculpture of ancient wax. Dripping honey has left thin tiger stripes across the gears and the floor is sticky underfoot.

And of course the whole thing is covered in bees.

Odd thing about those bees, though…

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heartfullofleeches · 1 year

Note

Could we maybe see the first meeting between fast food worker reader and the handpit

"Y/n! Some kid lost his teddy in the ball pit!"

You peel yourself from the breakroom chair with the minuscule amount of energy you had regained from it. You learned the first week on the job to never expect a moment of rest, but that didn't make losing precious break time any better.

The ball pit had been a pain since its reopening a full week back. Customers loosing precious items, child claiming to have been scared out of the pit by a scary monster. In defense of the first thing it probably isn't the greatest idea to wear great grandma's wedding ring to a restaurant where the police leaves the phone on the receiver when they call in.

You enter the main area. A parent shouts at the cashier while clutching a sniffing child's name; a glimmer of hope in their eyes as you walk out.

"This is exactly why I don't let my children into those disease pools! If you don't bring my son, his toy this entire franchise is going under!:

Your coworker's eyes water. You throw them a thumb's up as you pedal to the playarea. It's common knowledge you're in this nightmare together so most helped one another when they could.

The play area was your average child's environment. Overhanging tubes leading to a twisting slide. Colorful walls and statues of the mascot looming in watch. The ball pit. The windows to the parking lot had been painted over after similar reports of odd behaviors outside.

You walk over to the wall where the net for such occasions was stored, but it's gone. Figures. Nothing's easy around here. You pop your shoes off and squeeze them into a cubby as per comand of your commerical marketed overlord. You fish around at the top before doing as expected and climbing into the pit when you can't find it on the surface sweep.

The balls come up to your waist, but you can feel they go further than that as you kicking through them. The ball pit was as big as your average swimming pool, so you definitely had your work cut out for you. Better than being screamed at by customers from hell you suppose.

The search is gruelling. Each ball you push out of the way is replaced by a tidal wave of more. You unknowingly sink down to your chest as your frustration rises. It feels like the pit hasn't been cleaned in ages either. Some of the balls sticky and wet, and you're poked and stabbed at by objects were too thin and hard to be a plush bear-

What was that?

You freeze. A pocket forms in the sea of balls to your left, sucking the plastic orbs into themselves like a technicolor sinkhole. You figure its because you had previously just lift that area and swim forward. Something tugs on your pant's leg mid stroke, but your other foot kicks it away as you move. As the lights flicker you get the feeling someone is messing with you.

"Not funny!"

So much for being a team player. You better hurry and find this thing so you can head out early today. About tew feet in front of you, the bear's button eye watches your struggle. Stopping it, you dart towards it, but it sinks into the pit. It then reappears another foot away.

"What the hell.... This really isn't funny.."

You try again. It disappears. This time it teleports behind you. Stagnate in the spherical waters, you watch as the bear disappears and pops back within view in a different location. Sometimes it's at the end of the pit, sometimes it's mere inches away. This definitely isn't right. You need to get out of here. As you swim for the ledge, something drags you below.

You kick and flail, a scream fighting its way up your chest that you shove right back down to save energy. You can't breath. Your body feels weightless like you're swimming in a lake, yet the same air as falling out of the skin. Hands grab at various parts of yoir body. Items flash by as you're dragged further. Ancient photos, priceless watches- name tags.

As a hand wraps around your throat, you scream.

"You..."

Your plunge takes an abrupt stop.

"We did not recognize you at first, but that voice. It is unforgettable."

The hands turn you over. You can't tell if it's onto your back or your stomach. All you really can see is the plastic balls, but if you squint you can make out two white dots in the endless sea.

"So this is your face. We have only seen it in passing from your memories. How peculiar is man that in our eons of evaluation, your cerebrum is the single power that has twine our minds into one? In this "pit" of all things."

The hands stroke at your face; force your eyes to remain open. They carcass your tense form, easing your body but not your spirit. You want to cover your ears, but you can't. The voice is so loud; what feels like millions cramming into your small brain at volume which makes your teeth rattle with each syllable. In the same vein, it is the softest melody you've ever heard - splitting your fragile mind in two and sewing it together again with its gentle hush.

"You are different. You cannot enjoy us. The honor of being your new home would be wasted with your mind lost to the masses. You are to remain in this establishment until we decide what to do with you."

The hands center on your torso and push you upwards. Light pokes through the spaces between the balls as you're forced to the surface of the pit. The teddy bear lays on your chest as you surf atop the balls, staring down as if it's wondering the same thing as you.

What the fuck just happened

#Fast food reader #yandere oc #yandere x reader #yandere scenarios #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere headcanons #yandere #yandere insert #yandere blurb #yandere drabble #yandere teratophilia #yandere monster #yandere x y/n

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morallyinept · 2 months

Text

Adrift With You - A Frankie Morales Series - Chapter 14

Summary: Heading away on a work re-location, Frankie embarks on a flight, but unbeknownst to him, his life is about to change forever. For starters, he will need to fight for it; harder than he's ever fought for anything else before.

Marooned on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean, still recovering from an addiction, his chances of survival are bleak; but he’s not alone on the island, and soon he’s running towards a different kind of life - a life with fellow survivor, Jude, fighting right beside him every step of the way.

And if they can both survive the island together, they can survive anything, right?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x OFC Jude

Chapter word count: 7k

SERIES MASTERLIST | MAIN MASTERLIST

☝🏻See Series Masterlist for full smut warnings & triggers in this story. Chapters that contain smut or triggers will be highlighted in the chapter notes below. 👇🏻

Chapter notes: In the aftermath of the tsunami, Frankie and Jude are haunted by dreams, and struggle to determine what is real and what isn't. Very, very brief mentions of suicidal thoughts, and mentions of drug taking.

Song sung in the chapter is:

Enjoy! 🖤

Chapter 13

As Frankie slowly regains consciousness, he finds himself enveloped in a disorienting haze - a fog of confusion that clouds his mind and dulls his senses.

The sterile scent of antiseptic assaults his nostrils, and the rhythmic beeping fills the air; a cacophony of sound that seems to echo in his ears, its rhythm erratic and unsettling.

His head throbs with a relentless ache, every pulse sending a sharp stab of pain shooting through his skull. His mouth feels dry and parched, as if he hasn't had a sip of water in days, and a bitter taste lingers on his tongue - a reminder of the poison he’s willingly ingested.

Every movement is an effort, every breath a struggle against the weight of exhaustion that presses down upon him. His body feels heavy and sluggish, as if it’s weighed down by invisible chains, tethering him to the hospital bed with a cruel inevitability.

And then there’s the sensation of the IV line - a thin, plastic tube that snakes its way into his arm, delivering a steady stream of vital fluids and medication into his bloodstream. The sensation is strange and disconcerting, a constant reminder of his own frailty, his own mortality.

He can feel the cool touch of the saline solution as it courses through his veins, a lifeline tethering him to the world of the living, anchoring him to the present moment.

With a groan, Frankie attempts to sit up, only to be met with a wave of dizziness that sends him reeling back onto the hospital bed. Blinking against the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, he struggles to piece together the events that have led him to this place - a place of sterile white walls and solemn faces and plastic name tags who speak in foreign medical terms; a place that feels worlds away from the place he once called home.

And then, like a bolt of lightning striking through the fog of his memories, it all comes flooding back - the overpowering rush of euphoria, the reckless abandon of his actions, the acetous taste of regret that lingers on his swollen tongue.

He’d overdosed on the coke, lost in a haze of self-destructive impulses and desperate cravings, until the world had faded to black and he’d slipped into unconsciousness.

His eyes adjust to the dim light of the hospital room, and he surveys his surroundings with a growing sense of unease. The other bed beside him lays empty and untouched, the sheets neatly folded back as if waiting for someone who’ll never come.

The silence that fills the room is deafening, a hollow echo of the emptiness that gnaws at Frankie's insides.

Something doesn’t feel right. He shouldn’t be here.

For a moment, he lays there in stunned silence, grappling with the enormity of his solitude. His mind replaying the moments leading up to this candid awakening - moments filled with reckless abandon, self-destructive choices, and a blind refusal to acknowledge the consequences.

He’d driven them all away with his addiction, with his lies, with his inability to see beyond his own needs. And now, when he needed them the most, he found himself abandoned, left to face the consequences of his actions alone.

To wake up, alone.

Frankie feels the sting of tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, a silent testament to the pain that grips his soul tightly in gnarled claws. He’s pushed everyone away, burned bridges with those who had once stood by his side, and now he’s paying the price for his folly.

As the reality of his situation sinks in, Frankie feels a cold knot of fear tighten in the pit of his stomach - a sinking realisation of the depths to which he’s fallen, the consequences of his actions laid bare before him in stark relief.

He’s come so close to losing everything - his life, his sanity, his chances at redemption - and yet, somehow, he’s been given a second chance as he feels that familiar shake in his fingers tingling.

The heavy silence of the hospital room is suddenly pierced by the sound of the door swinging open. His heart skips a beat as he turns his gaze towards the entrance, uncertainty flickering in his eyes.

And there, standing in the doorway, is Benny - the steadfast friend who has never quite given up on him, even when Frankie's given up on himself.

A small smile tugs at the corners of Frankie's lips as Benny strides into the room, a personality as big as his boots, holding steaming coffee cups in his hands.

"Hey, Fish," Benny greets him, his voice warm and familiar. "Figured you could use some of this to chase away the cobwebs."

Frankie nods gratefully as Benny places a cup on the bedside table, the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee filling the air. He watches as Benny winks with a knowing smile.

And then, as if on cue, the door opens once more, and Frankie's heart skips another beat as Will and Carla enter the room.

There’s a moment of hesitation, a brief flicker of uncertainty in their eyes, before they approach Frankie's bedside with tentative smiles.

"Hey, buddy," Will greets, his voice tinged with concern. "How you holding up?"

Frankie meets Will's frosty gaze with a mixture of gratitude and relief.

"I'm... I'm okay," Frankie replies, his voice hoarse with emotion.

As Carla steps into view, her gaze immediately falls upon Frankie, but she can't bring herself to meet his eyes. Instead, she keeps her focus fixed on the floor, her hands nervously fidgeting with the hem of her shirt, the tinkling of her bracelets like familiar music in his head.

Frankie can sense Carla's discomfort, the tension radiating off her in waves. He wants to reach out to her, to offer her some measure of comfort, but he hesitates, unsure of how to break through the barrier that seems to have sprung up between them.

It’s clear from the tightness in her expression that she’s anything but okay with him right now. She’s struggling - struggling to come to terms with everything that’s happened, struggling to face the reality of Frankie's addiction, struggling to find the words to express the turmoil raging inside her.

The anger. The love. The hatred. The helplessness.

Frankie watches as Carla takes a hesitant step closer to his bedside, her eyes still fixed on the floor. He can see the conflict etched in her features - the desire to reach out, to offer support, warring with the fear of saying the wrong thing, of making things worse somehow.

And yet, despite this comforting picture, something feels off. Something’s askew, not quite right. A weird sense of Déjà-vu almost. It’s like trying to grasp at smoke - elusive and ephemeral, slipping through his fingers just when he thinks he has it within his grasp.

The disquiet within him grows stronger, a nagging voice at the back of his mind urging him to question, to probe deeper into the recesses of his memory. Prickles on his skin making him shudder.

But try as he might, Frankie can't quite put his finger on what’s wrong - only that something is amiss with this scene.

“Frankie?” Benny asks. “You alright, man?”

Frankie swallows and looks up at his friend, and that’s when he sees it. See’s odd movement in the IV bag out the corner of his eye.

There are fishes in the bag, swimming around.

“W-what-” Frankie stammers.

His attention is pulled by the sudden screeching, and he turns his head to see a monkey sitting casually on Carla’s shoulder as she speaks with Will. A tiny monkey with big, yellow eyes staring back at him.

“What’s h-happening?” Frankie queries, feeling dizzy. Like he’s being tossed about on an unsteady bed that feels like it’s floating. “¿Qué está pasando?” (What’s happening?)

Water is trickling down the walls, steady tracks that grow in width and speed.

Frankie's voice echoes through the building furore, but his friends seem oblivious to the rising floodwaters around them. They continue to move about the room with casual nonchalance, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

That their feet aren't sloshing around circling waves of water flooding in from under the door and through the windows now.

“Fuck!” Frankie hollers as he scrambles out of the bed.

As the water continues to rise, inch by inch, Frankie feels a sense of desperation clawing at his chest. He knows he has to get out, has to escape before it’s too late and he drowns.

But as he struggles to find solid ground amidst the swirling currents, a sense of futility washes over him - a sinking feeling that he’s trapped, that there’s no way out. He looks down at the deflated lifejacket now around his torso, his fingers frantically pulling on the useless cords.

“No, no, no…”

The walls seem to blur and warp around him, and a strange sensation sweeps through his body, like the ground shifting beneath his feet. Panic surges through Frankie's veins as he looks around frantically, searching for some semblance of solidity in the shifting, swirling chaos.

The water rises steadily higher with each passing moment, until it reaches his knees, then his waist.

“Benny!" Frankie calls out, his voice swallowed up by the roar of the water. “Will! Carla!”

But his friends are nowhere to be found, lost amidst the churning currents that threaten to engulf him.

As the water rises higher and higher, panic gives way to a sense of resignation - a grim acceptance of his fate. He knows he’s dreaming, knows that none of this is real, but that knowledge offers little comfort in the face of the impending deluge.

He’s not waking up.

And then, just as Frankie feels himself on the brink of being swallowed whole by the raging waters, a voice cuts through - a voice that is familiar and comforting, like a beacon of light in the darkness.

A voice that he knows only too well rushing into his ears around the water as he sinks beneath the surface.

“FRANKIE!”

A tsunami can last anything from a few minutes to several hours.

The energy of a tsunami runs through the entire depth of the ocean. It only becomes deadly when the ocean floor becomes shallow enough, and all that energy compresses into a smaller amount of water.

The deeper the water, the faster the tsunami, travelling up to speeds of five hundred miles per hour, and taking mere minutes to reach land.

Once it reaches the land, the raw energy of thousands of tons of water destroys everyone and everything in its path in mere seconds. It’s a myth that you can outrun a tsunami of that magnitude - you simply can’t. It will engulf you before you even comprehend the thought in your mind of running.

The survival rates of a tsunami can vary depending on several factors such as the magnitude of the tsunami, the distance from the coastline, the elevation of the land, and individual preparedness and response. Generally, survival rates are quite low in areas directly impacted by a large and powerful tsunami, particularly if people are caught off guard and unable to evacuate to higher ground in time. And even if you can, your chances are still dubious.

You just gotta hope that luck is on your side.

Jude’s tumbling through the water, swallowing more of it as the deadly moments wear on; the lifejacket seemingly useless as she keeps being pulled under as she’s swept along with the ferocious current.

She surfaces momentarily to yell out for Frankie, before she’s dragged under again.

“Frankie!” She screams, more water pouring down her throat making her choke and gag.

She kicks her legs, her lungs on fire as she surfaces again, blinded by the inflation of the life jacket as she tumbles like she’s in a spin cycle in a washing machine.

She glances at her wrist as she surfaces again; part of the ripped shirt is still wrapped around it, but Frankie isn’t on the end of it anymore.

“FRANKIE! FRANKIE!!” She screams out in the water, the waves continuing to crush her head on a relentless repeat.

She splashes around frantically searching for any sign of him in the choppy current as it pulls her along.

“FRANKIE! WHERE ARE YOU?!” She cries out again, a choked sob overcoming her but refusing to admit defeat - he has to be here, he has to have survived this just like she’s doing.

They survive together, that’s the deal.

“FRANKIE!”

But then his lifejacket didn’t inflate. What if he’d been knocked out as his head had smashed into a rock under the water? What if he’s already dead?

“NO!” Jude cries out, swimming as hard as she can as the waves try to pull her under again.

“NO! NO! FRANKIE!” She screams again until her throat is raw. “FRANKIE! FRANKIE!”

With each passing moment, the waves seem to grow taller, more relentless in their assault, threatening to engulf her completely. She fights against the current with all her strength, but it’s like trying to hold back a tidal wave with her bare hands.

As she struggles to stay afloat, her mind races with a thousand fears and uncertainties. What if he can't hear her over the deafening roar of the waves? What if he’s hurt, trapped somewhere beneath the surface? What if...

She can hear choking and yelling, and turns in the water to see Frankie swimming towards her.

He disappears under a wave as it rolls on top of him and she takes a deep breath as the wave crushes her head only seconds after. She resurfaces just as Frankie reaches her and she clings onto him as he splutters and chokes.

“Thank God! Fuck!” Jude exclaims, thrashing amidst the frothy chaos, her body battered by the relentless force of the sea.

Without hesitation, Frankie reaches out, his strong arms encircling her trembling form as they ride the waves together. For a fleeting moment, time seems to stand still as they cling to each other amidst the fury of the ocean.

The water crashes around them, the salty spray stinging their eyes and coating them with a thin film of mist.

“Hold on to me!” He makes a weird gurgling noise as he tries to speak and coughs. “Holy fuckin’ shit!” Frankie cries out in disbelief as he paws at her and her hands grab a tight hold of his t-shirt.

He looks like a drowned rat, his hair and beard covering him and sticking to his skin with the saturation. There’s no sign of his trusty, familiar cap.

Frankie coughs again as water splashes over his face as they ride the waves of the tsunami, desperately clinging onto one another as they tumble and swirl with the ocean’s aftershocks.

Jude grips so hard onto him that her hands will ache for days afterwards, but she’s determined not to let him go this time.

It’s hard to tell how exactly long they’re in the water for.

The sun has moved across the other side of the sky as they bob there on the waves as the remnants of the tsunami begins to fade out on the ocean.

Thankfully, the tsunami wasn’t all powerful or engulfing enough that it’d taken their lives, but it was still incredibly damaging.

Exhausted, Frankie rests his head against the front of Jude’s inflated lifejacket with his eyes closed. But he’s still holding tightly around her waist as they float in the water, aching all over from their battered bodies.

“Look, over there!” She says to him, rousing him, and he lifts his head when they spot the island in the distance.

“Can you swim that far?” Frankie asks her.

“Yeah. We did it before, we can do it again, right?”

He nods. “Take it slow. Don’t burn out.”

They swim together against the current slowly; their limbs searing and getting pushed back with the waves every now and again as they continue to surge.

It seems like they aren’t making much in the way of progress, stopping occasionally to catch their breath and check the other is okay to carry on, but the island seems to grow closer, until eventually they can stand on the ocean floor again and stagger up the shore to the sandbank.

They both collapse on the sand; Frankie falling onto his back gasping for air like he’s having an asthma attack. Jude falls onto her knees, battling to get the life jacket off and dry heaving as she coughs up copious amounts of sea water until she eventually pukes it all out.

“Are... you... okay?” Frankie gasps in between each word as he hears her upchuck relentlessly.

She looks up at the beach, front wiping her mouth when she’s done spitting out, and is dismayed at what she sees.

“Oh God...” Jude’s voice breaks.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, the once eerily quiet island lay battered and broken, a landscape transformed by the merciless force of nature.

Trees lay uprooted and strewn about like discarded matchsticks, their branches stripped bare and twisted into grotesque shapes by the ferocious waves. Debris littered the sandy shore, a grim testament to the havoc that had been wrought upon the island in a matter of moments.

A scene of utter devastation that seems to stretch out as far as the eye can see. The once pristine, rocky beach is now marred by the impacting detritus.

It’s gone - all of it. The shack, the fire pit, the solar stills, just... gone. Nothing but a sparsely flooded and barren landscape greeting them, and not much else.

Jude staggers up the soggy sandbank wandering aimlessly in shock and disbelief. Face blank and eyes wide in disbelief. Body trembling from exhaustion and adrenaline as it confuses her nerves.

Frankie calls after her, rolling over onto his front and taking in the overpowering sight of destruction presented before him.

“Fuck.”

He drags himself to his unsteady feet and follows behind her in a stunned silence as he casts his weary eyes about the place. Their movements are slow and unsteady, as if they're moving through a fog, each step weighed down by the crushing weight of the destruction around them.

Every sound - the crash of waves, the creak of splintered wood - amplified, assaulting their senses with a relentless barrage of stimuli.

Jude stops when she spots something near the cave mouth as they begin to pass it.

“Oh no,” she whimpers, and drops to her knees when she reaches it. “No, please no-”

She picks it up and cradles it to her chest, her hands trembling as she strokes his cold, sodden fur. Frankie approaches, and she looks up at him with silent tears streaming down her face.

“Egon...” Jude blubs through choked wails, as she holds the little, lifeless monkey inside of her arms; his once wide, yellow eyes closed forever in a drowned sleep.

Frankie drops to his knees beside her and despite his will, he can’t help but shed some tears for the little critter who, as Jude had said before, he actually loved more than he let on.

People of faith will often be heard saying ‘God is testing me,’ when things ultimately get tough in their lives.

Like a bearded man, wearing Birkenstocks, relaxing on a cloud and sipping from a G&T, is observing your plight and revelling in it, chuckling haughtily like watching an episode of a trashy talk show.

God is clearly a sadist after everything he’s put them through, and as she watches Frankie scooping the pile of sand back into the hole he’d dug with his shovel-like hands for Egon’s grave, Jude can’t help but feel a deep sense of harbouring resentment for her maker right now.

Frankie rubs his hands against the thigh of his damp shorts and looks up at her as she stares down at the sandy grave.

“Do you think we should say something?” He asked her, scratching at the back of his head and squinting.

“There isn’t anything left to say.” Jude mutters and strides off, sitting on the sandy shore and staring out at the ocean.

It’s calmed considerably; the oncoming dusk making the horizon glow pink in the distance.

Frankie plonks himself beside her after a few minutes of staring at the monkey’s resting place; returned to the earth in the cycle of life, a festering ouroboros of gut-wrenching despair swilling inside of him, alongside copious amounts of sea water.

Hugging his knees and holding onto his wrists as he looks out at the horizon too. He breathes out a deep weary sigh and sniffs in deep.

“I’m sorry,” Jude says to him after a few moments.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, hermosa,” Frankie turns to her.

“Yes I do. I’m sorry for berating you so much about having hope all those times. You were right not to. There is no hope for us. We’re going to die, just like Egon.” She speaks like a robot, devoid of any emotion whatsoever, and it rattles his bones to see her talk like this, to see that she’s just done.

“Stop it,” he warns, pulling her towards him, but she resists, pulling her arms back away, but he grips onto them, grappling with her.

“No-”

“Hey, stop it!” Frankie yells, and pulls her in close as she wanes and falls against him without any more fight left in her.

“We’re going to die!” Jude wails into him and sobs as he holds her tight, almost like he’s a boa and is constricting the life out of her.

She writhes and her shoulders heave as she cries for what feels like eternity. Her sobs louder and more haunting and all Frankie can do is hold her in his arms and never let her go.

But his arms feel weak, no longer the strong barriers they once were to protect her anymore.

He doesn’t say anything to her; offers her no reassuring lies of comfort because there’s no point. She’s finally accepted it now like he had; they were going to die.

And it kills him all over again.

There’s nothing to pick through or scavenge.

It’s almost as if they’re just going through the motions to stay busy and not to actually drown themselves willingly in the water to end all the pain and suffering they’ve endured.

How much suffering can two people withstand before it finally breaks them? When is that breaking point, the crux of no return? When do you take that step and what is it that will finally give you that unwavering courage to turn your back and fall off the ledge?

Beaten, crushed... starving; on the brink of death and looking into its inviting, comforting jaws as it reaches out to you and convinces you in a soothing lullaby that everything will be okay, and you start to believe it for a while. That life on the other side will be better than this - anything will be better than this. The allure calls to you like a Siren song and it gets harder not to become bewitched by it and resist.

They don’t speak much, in fact at all. Jude simply watches Frankie get up from the sand where they’ve slept all night from their exhaustion, and observe as he starts hunting for things - anything that he can find and strike gold on.

Knowing it’s pointless, she stands up anyway, robotically copying his every move, searching for any stray bottles or clothes and not really understanding why she’s doing it. Searching for anything at all that can prolong their survival, even just for the tiniest bit.

But of course it’s fruitless - the tsunami has washed it all away.

Frankie reaches the tree line, surveying the damage of the wooded area that's halved in size, and he can no longer see the fuselage anymore that was previously stuffed into the bank on this side of the bay. There’s a singular piece of wood from the shack, split and broken as it floats in a muddy pool by some snapped tree trunks.

He glances up at the ridge and there’s no trace of the branch igloo and he sighs, deflated and beginning to hear that deathly Siren song tinkling inside his ears.

Jude wanders around aimlessly; frying under the heat and constantly pulling up her jeans that are falling down when she takes a few steps forward. Her legs have that dark shadow of hair growth and she hates the fact that she hasn’t been able to shave them for some time now.

She hates the fact that her stomach seems on a constant, never ending rumble. She hates that she can’t just lie down face first in the water and just go. She hates that she can’t do it because of him.

She hates that Frankie won’t simply let her die.

As she wanders along the shoreline, her eyes scanning the debris scattered by the waves, she spots a familiar sight - a baseball cap, swirling amidst the calming foam and froth of the ocean.

With a quickening of her heart, she wades into the shallows, the cool water lapping at her ankles as she reaches out to retrieve the cap, trembling with disbelief, she can't help but feel a surge of astonishment.

As her fingers close around the familiar fabric, fingers gliding over the sewn-on patch of the Standard Heating Oil logo, she chuckles out in disbelief. This simple piece of fabric, battered and worn by the elements, had made it back to him somehow. And she’s glad to see it - Frankie isn’t quite Frankie without his cap.

They meet back on the beach a little while later and slump themselves in the sand defeated with heavy thuds, hungry and tired and irritable beyond all reason. That kind of heaviness that swamps your head and crushes it until your brain splurges out of your ears.

Jude hands him the cap and he’s just as astonished, if not relieved to see it, as she is. But she doesn’t say anything to Frankie as she watches him put it back on his head under a scraggly mess of overgrown curls. And Frankie doesn’t say anything to Jude after offering her a limp smile.

She lays back and rolls over on the sand, facing away from him; willing the sand and rocks to turn into quicksand and just swallow her into the suffocating dark.

They stand on the ridge, the sun on high and the breeze blowing through her braid.

He’s always so fascinated with those stray wisps of hair that will escape it, no matter how tightly he ties it for her. They’ll flock to her face and cling to her cheek, pelting her with never-ending kisses affectionately.

Frankie’s sitting amongst the half constructed branch igloo; sticks scattered all around him that he’s whittling with the switchblade, and Jude’s looking over the ledge of the ridge and humming a faint tune that’s barely audible, wandering back and forth as she stretches her legs.

His hands are tight and raw, blister with the effort exhumed, but he continues on with the job nonetheless, numbing out to the aches and splinters. As Frankie stretches, cracking his back, he hears her hum out again.

“Sing it for me.” Frankie prompts her, and Jude turns to catch his smirk with glowy cheeks. “Go on, hermosa.”

Jude takes a breath with a grin and sings.

“In the end. As my soul's laid to rest, what is left of my body? Or am I just a shell?”

She starts moving her head, swaying it side to side as her shoulders begin to follow. She can hear the music inside her head as though they have her playlist right here blasting out on the rocks beside them; the beat of the drums counting her in and the strum of the guitars plucking through the riffs and melodies.

Frankie stops whittling, resting the stick in his lap squinting up at her with a smirk stretching his pink, dry lips.

“And I have fought. And with flesh and blood, I commanded an army. Through it all, I have given my heart for a moment of glory...”

He laughs as she rocks her hips with vigour and then punches her fist up in the air.

“In the end. As you fade into the night-”

“Woah-oh-oh-oh!” Frankie yells out singing along to the tune.

“Oh fuck, you know it?” Jude exclaims, smiling in happy delight at him.

Frankie nods. “Keep singing,” he encourages.

“Who will tell the story of your life? And who will remember your last goodbye?”

“Woah-oh-oh-ohhhh!” Frankie hollers again as he stands up, taking her hand and twirling her around whilst she laughs again, her eyes crinkling and throwing her head back.

“Cause it's the end and I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid to die.” Jude sings.

“CAUSE IT’S THE END, AND I’M NOT AFRAID - I’M NOT AFRAID TO DIE!”

They both fist punch the air over the ledge as they sing the final words out loud together, echoing all down the ridge across the island.

It’s a memory that splinters him. That was the happiest he’d seen her since they’d landed upon this dreadful island. Carefree and joyous, a wild jackal roaming unrestrained and free.

It was in that moment right there, as they’d both looked at one another with their fists in the air and turned them into the finger; giving the middle finger to the island that had bullied them for so long, through breathy smiles and wondrous awe, that Frankie realised he loved her. He fucking loved her.

I fuckin’ love you!

He’d suspected it for a while leading up to it, those sickly butterflies whenever she was near becoming more apparent. The thrumming of his heartbeat when she touched and kissed him; those early premonitions when you just know and feel giddiness from the high of meeting someone who’s so in tune to your frequency.

But that was the moment right there when it registered deep inside of the layers of his heart and winded him. Terrified, elated; utterly sound in the knowledge of the sincere truth as it flowed through his blood and over his bones.

Convinced he wouldn’t possibly feel this way again about someone, fearful that it could turn into that awful situation again where he could be selfish and push her away. But Frankie was so desperate to learn from his past mistakes, to not repeat them and be better - be better for her.

That’s love, right? Wanting to be the best you can be for someone?

Frankie-

I fuckin’ love you!

No. No-no-no!

BRAAACE!

I fuckin’ love you!

Frankie glances over at Jude lying in the sand away from him, her back to him and slipping further and further out of his reach.

‘Cause it’s the end and I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid to die!

Frankie turns towards the sea, and after he’s had enough of that horrific view staring back at him, he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes to stop the tears from slipping out of them again.

The droning noise wakes her, along with the muffled sounds of shouting. Like her head is under the water and hearing it pummel her eardrums as someone is yelling above the surface.

She sits up in the sand squinting and can see Frankie at the shoreline, waving frantically. Her eyes soon look past him to the small speedboat hurtling towards the shore.

Jude flies up on her legs, any sense of sleep rolling right off of her as she watches Frankie’s animated face astonished, and looking back at her, as his hands continue to signal to the boat.

The little boat with the inexorable humming noise like a swarm of hornets approaches the shore closer. Out in the distance she can see a larger boat, a little like a liner. Its grey shadow is stark on the blue horizon - a cancerous smear on a perfectly undisturbed cobalt backdrop.

It’s all lies... wake up, you’re dreaming.

Frankie begins to swim out towards the boat and Jude pads towards the shore in complete disbelief, her heartbeat kicking it up a gear as Frankie gets closer and closer to it.

The boat skids to a halt on the surface and she watches as the person inside heaves Frankie into the boat with his arm, and Frankie points back towards the shore with flailing fingers.

Wake up! It’s a dream!

Panic overcomes her, Jude can see Frankie waving to her, and she freezes, watching as the boat turns in the waves and holds her breath.

No, come back!

Circling, the boat speeds towards the shore again and the spray hits her in the face as she wanders out to it, her feet sloshing through the water, stunned and hyperventilating a little.

Oh God! Wake up! Please, wake up!

Frankie hops out of the boat alongside the person, who turns out to be two separate people, in blue and white lifejackets. Frankie reaches out to Jude, saying words that she can’t hear or understand, almost as if he’s jabbering away in excited, fast Spanish and she can’t decipher or recognise any of the sounds as they flow from his labrose lips.

She feels him pulling her into the boat and a foiled blanket is wrapped over her shoulders, a bottle of water placed into her numb hands.

“Wake up…” Jude mutters from trembling lips. "Wake up, wake up..."

More incomprehensible gibberish is exchanged between Frankie and the men, and she glances over her shoulder at the sight of the island suddenly shrinking away forever in the distance, reaching a gnarly hand out to her that can’t quite keep up.

Come back, Jude. Don't leave me.

It’s like an out of body experience; she’s floating and watching it happen. She pinches her arm and feels the pain ebb into her skin.

Wake up!

Frankie turns her chin towards him and presses his forehead against hers, breathing out as he pulls the blanket over her wet shoulders further.

“We made it, hermosa.”

She remembers hearing him say it to her, but the words don’t sink in; slowly being squeezed one at a time into her ear canal making the slow journey towards her brain that’s a messy pan of sloppy scrambled eggs.

“You guys, alright?” Comes a loud voice over the sound of the engine. “You get stranded after the tsunami, your boat capsize?”

Frankie and Jude look up simultaneously at the speaker holding onto the side of the boat whilst the other one steers it.

Frankie shakes his head. “No, we’ve been out here f-for over a year.” He speaks up through a deep hoarse voice that’s scarred from the sea water he’s swallowed in his desperate swim towards the speedboat.

“What do you mean out here?” The man asks.

“Our plane crashed, and we-”

“Fuck, you guys were on flight eight-sixteen?” The man questions taking off his sunglasses; the concern and astonishment palpable on his face. He has frosty blue eyes that instantly remind Frankie of Will’s.

“Y-you know about that?” Frankie asks with a widening mouth.

The man nods. “Sure, the whole damn world knows about it. They didn’t find any survivors. Looked everywhere.”

“You didn’t look hard enough!” Jude suddenly shouts at him over the sound of the engine, her voice tight from being throat punched back into reality.

This isn’t a dream. She doesn’t need to wake up. She can feel the vibrations of the boat on the waves as it bounces over them. She can see the island shrinking, feel the wind in her hair.

Frankie clutches onto her as the man dips his head in sympathy, unable to meet her stunned gaze.

“We were always here...” She trails off, looking back out at the island in wonderment.

Come back, Jude. Don't leave me. Come back.

“You guys are gonna be alright. You’re safe and we’ll get you home.” The man confirms putting his sunglasses back on. He reaches for the boat’s radio and speaks into the receiver, his voice swallowed up by the humming of the boat.

Jude clings onto Frankie and looks up at him, with eyes as watery as the ocean.

“Is this really happening?” She asks him, searching his eyes for the moment she’ll wake up from this terrible, reoccurring dream she’s doomed to live through on repeat forever.

We’re never going to get off this island. It can't be this easy.

Frankie nods with a bewildered smile through his bushy whiskers, the wind from the speed of the boat rippling through the curls behind his ears as he holds onto the cap, a giant palm flat on his head.

Jude clutches onto his wet t-shirt and rests her head against his chest hearing his heart beating as loud and as fast as hers is, even over the sound of the speedboat.

The larger ship in the distance is a US Navy vessel; called out in the wake of the tsunami to look for survivors, and to scout the ocean for capsized boats or people who had gotten into deep water.

Once on the ship’s main dock, a plethora of uniformed personnel busy themselves as Frankie and Jude are ushered towards the main control room.

She clocks a helicopter on the landing pad and shudders, recalling the countless times her mind had convinced her in her sleep that Frankie was leaving her on one, shrinking in the sky.

The captain of the ship greets them both with a caramel tan stark against a crisp white shirt, regarding them with some kind of disbelief when the rescue officers explain they originate from the doomed flight that had disappeared well over a year ago.

“Are you American?” The captain asks them both and Frankie nods.

“We’ll call the consulate. Get you some representation to help you back home.”

“Where are we, captain?” Frankie asks, and he looks back at him with a bemused expression.

“The SS Pendrinhas; US Navy.”

“No, I mean, where are we in the ocean? The island?” Frankie clarifies.

“You’re approximately one thousand and forty-three miles off the coast of The Prince Edward Islands. We’re in the Indian Ocean, sir.” The captain explains.

“We are?” Frankie asks him, turning white as a ghost.

“Yes,” the captain nods. “The island you were on is one of many scattered islands that are vastly unpopulated, surrounding the main Prince Edward Islands. You couldn’t see other peninsula points?”

Frankie shakes his head. “There was a-a ridge, but we couldn’t see any other land from that.”

“Damn. So near, yet so far,” the captain concludes with a frown, but it doesn’t offer any comfort at all. “We’ll take you down to the med bay, get you some dry clothes. It’ll be a couple hours before we reach the mainland. You look like you could do with a coffee.” The captain claps Frankie on the side of the shoulder and he winces. “Maybe something a bit stronger, huh?”

They’re both escorted down into the ship’s hull towards the med bay, passing officers stop to glance at their dishevelled appearance occasionally like they’re a rare exhibit in a museum.

Once inside the bay, another officer gathers some papers on a clipboard and proceeds to run through a list of questions, firing them off like ammo.

“Can you... Can you leave us for a few minutes?” Frankie says to the officer, noting the painfully vacant expression on Jude’s face. A thousand yard stare he recognises only too well.

The officer nods, looking somewhat relieved. “Sure. Take as long as you need.”

“What day is it?” Jude asks the officer, who stops and looks at her with a strained smile.

“It’s the nineteenth of July, ma’am.”

“And the time?” Frankie follows up.

The officer pulls back his sleeve and checks his watch. “Twenty-seven past six in the evening, sir.”

Once the grunt leaves, Frankie approaches Jude and puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Look at me,” Frankie persuades “I’m right here, find my eyes…” and her eyes slowly find him. “We made it, we’re off the island. We’re alive, hermosa.”

It takes a few moments, a couple of beats for the words to really sink in. We made it, we’re alive.

We’re alive.

Jude slumps forward into his arms, like she’s lost all her air and she sobs in abject relief. She feels him emit a small chuckle as he breathes out at his own realisation; his hands massaging her back up and down in deep circles soothing her, but they’re shaking.

“We really got off the island?” She asks him, absolutely astonished and wiping at her eyes that are so dry and sore.

Frankie pulls back looking down at her with a relieved smile; he smooths away the tear tracks from her face with his thumbs and kisses her gently on the forehead.

“We did. I love you,” he whispers to her.

Jude looks into his intense brown eyes, and remembers him shouting at her that he loved her right before the tsunami swallowed them up. She realises she hasn’t said it back.

But the look in his eyes right now assure her that saying the words out loud doesn't matter - he knows that she loves him back unconditionally.

When you spend that amount of time with someone - in that kind of situation - fighting for your life on a continuous basis, not only do you learn about your own resilience, but that of the person with you. You begin to depend on one another, work as a team; look out for each other’s well being, because understandably, if you can prolong their survival, you undoubtedly prolong your own.

But not only that, you become company for that other person, a means of distraction and escape from your plight, even if it’s just temporary. Lost in the sounds of her melodic laugh, or the way in which his muddy eyes regard you as you speak.

You begin to care for that person, worry for them and soon enough, you become attached in so many ways. An intense bond that no-one else can ever understand, and it can never be severed, even if you were to part ways - forever bonded in your strife and survival.

And eventually, you grow to love them; to depend on them to the point that you can’t function through a single moment without them, and it kills you to be apart from them for even the briefest of moments. You fall in love with them.

Jude pushes her forehead against his, breathing out, and Frankie feels her breath warm his face and insides in equal measure.

“I love you so, so much, Frankie.” Jude hiccups, holding onto him tightly. “Te quiero, te quiero.”

To be continued...

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