Cato/Loki: Loki's Games
Steve, watching Loki die of dehydration
Steve has to give them credit this year; it takes a lot of effort to turn a spectacle that involves 24 children murdering each other into something even more twisted than the premise, but they're managing. The Gamemakers' ritual humiliation and torture of Loki Odinson after his little stunt in Twelve makes Steve sick to his stomach. A stream where other tributes had found clear, flowing water dries up when Loki reaches it, or suddenly turns to mud and filth. It rains, but every droplet is saltwater. Once the liquid hisses against his skin, smoking and leaving open sores.
Loki scares Steve; no question about it. Steve has gone through his Games and watched countless others since then, and this boy with his razor smile and sharp green eyes, with so much hatred running through him until it seems to fill his veins, gives Steve nightmares. But at the same time, that doesn't mean he can watch the boy die of dehydration without feeling ill.
"Someone should send him some water," Steve mutters. "This is sick."
"Easy Cap," Tony says in the same tone. He has his arm slung across the back of the sofa, fingers dangling next to Steve's shoulder. "Don't you dare. This is their doing and you know it. They're not going to let him get away with that he did back in Twelve."
Steve doesn't want to watch. On the screen, Loki runs his tongue over lips cracked with blood and presses a hand to his eyes, stumbling. "I know," Steve replies. His insides twist and churn, and he wonders if it will look bad on him if he vomits all over the floor. Probably. His tributes died in the bloodbath this year, and not for the first time he knows what it means to be glad for that.
Not that it seems to bother Haymitch. Haymitch is drunk and bitter, Madge now cooling somewhere on a hovercraft floor. No one expected her to last even three days, but for some reason it hit Haymitch harder than anyone expected it to, and he's stunk of liquor even more than usual since. Now he lies on the sofa, cackling as Loki stumbles, drops to his knees and dry heaves over the grass.
Loki wipes his mouth. He sits back, eyes scanning, and with a start Steve realises he's looking for cameras. Beside him Tony stiffens -- even the great Tony Stark, jokester extreme, hasn't found this funny. "Shit," Tony says in a low voice. "Aw, shit, no, don't do it. Don't piss them off even more."
Steve sucks in his breath as Loki finds a camera and stares directly at it. "So, dehydration," he says, and his voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper, the words scraping against his throat. He swallows -- winces, that's got to hurt -- and tries again. "You're really going to dehydrate me to death? That seems interesting. I'm sure the viewers are glued to the screen, riveted by the white flecks at the corner of my mouth, waiting breathlessly for my vomit. Fascinating viewing." Speaking that much takes a lot out of him, and it takes him a minute to recover.
"Stop," Steve whispers. "Just stop. They have to expect that much ranting, just -- no more."
Loki coughs. His lips split again and he licks the blood off. His mouth curves in the ghost of a smile. "What, is that it? You want me to open a vein and drink my blood? That's a bit dark, even for me." He narrows his eyes, bright, bright green in his fevered face. "I'll do what I have to do, but my desiccated corpse isn't going to bring in half the ratings that me being alive will. Your call, Haymitch."
Haymitch rolls over and falls off the couch. "Right, then!" he says, slurring his words and spilling his precious bootleg vodka everywhere. "He wants water? I'll send him water! How much d'you think they charge for a hurricane?"
More than Twelve will ever get in its lifetime, so Steve doesn't worry about that. Still, when Haymitch comes back in, grinning like a banshee, and collapses on the couch, chin resting in his hands, Steve knows it's not going to be good.
Loki looks up when he hears the chirp signalling a silver parachute. The cameras pan out, follow him as he drags himself across the ground toward it, where Haymitch has sent him a water bottle. "Wait for it," Tony says under his breath, and Steve's chest clenches.
The water bottle is empty; not only that, but when Loki turns it over someone has drilled a very deliberate hole in the bottom. Loki stares at it, blinking, probably wondering if the dehydration is causing hallucinations. Then he finds the note. He holds it up in shaking hands, and the camera zooms in to focus on the writing --
"WHY DON'T YOU GET THOR TO ASK DADDY FOR WATER? --H"
Haymitch lets out a hoot of laughter, and before Steve knows what's happened he's on his feet. He gets two steps before Tony wraps his arms around Steve's chest, holding him back. "That's not funny, Haymitch!" Steve shouts, fighting Tony, and he could probably get away if he tried really hard but he can't take his eyes away from the screen. The cameras change angles, focus on Loki's face even as he tries to hide it. His eyes are green -- so green -- and wide, and his entire face crumples, like something inside him has given up and died. He blinks, and the only positive thing to come out of this mess is that there's not enough moisture left in his body to humiliate him with tears. His breath catches, sharp and ragged, and he drops his chin to his chest.
"Haymitch, dude, seriously," says Tony, still struggling to hold Steve back. "You don't think that's a bit much?"
"What'samatter Cap, you mad?" Haymitch asks, leaning backward on the couch, and Steve hasn't felt this much anger since his Games, when the girl from Two killed the little girl from Ten and made it last.
He doens't get the chance to attack, because Loki loses his mind first. It actually takes the Gamemakers a second to turn down the volume when he screams, so for a moment the sound tears through the room, startling everyone. Steve stops lunging and drops back down to the sofa, Tony with him. The only one unperturbed is Haymitch, who yawns. Loki screams, slams his fists against the ground, throws the water bottle as far as he can. He tears the note into pieces and grinds them under his heel, throws his head back and screams some more.
The camera switches, then, to the boy from One, who pricks his head and grins. He has a sword the size of Loki's leg, and he picks it up and runs off. Steve can't watch, but he must, he must. Tony is silent and still beside him. The screen splits between One boy running toward the sound and Loki spitting and screaming and sobbing all at once, until they're both in the same frame. Steve can't breathe.
Loki whirls around at the sound -- the One boy runs forward, sword at the ready -- and before Steve can even pick out the details, Loki punches the One boy in the face so hard the bones give beneath his fingers. He snatches the sword away, and before the boy can finish staggering, Loki impales him straight through to the hilt. One boy's eyes snap wide, and he coughs up blood. Loki stares at him for a long second before pulling the sword away and watching the body crumple to the ground.
"FUCK YOU!" Loki screams, and Steve jumps. He's never heard Loki resort to anything so crude, so indelicate. He prefers to wound with poniards, not sledgehammers. "FUCK YOU HAYMITCH. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU---"
Tony whistles. "I think I like this kid," he says, and does his best to inject some modicum of humour into his tone. "Scary as shit, but damn!"
Steve breathes again. Loki stands, chest heaving, holding the sword in both hands. He looks down at the body, then drops down next to it. He touches the blood with his fingers, raises his hand and rubs thumb and forefinger together, smearing them with red.
"Oh no," Steve says aloud.
"Holy shit, he's going to drink the blood," Tony says, sitting ramrod straight again. "Shit, he's really going to do it. Shit shit shit --"
"That's enough, Haymitch!" Steve shouts, rounding on him. "You've got what you wanted, now give him water!"
"No." Haymitch blinks, slowly, and his eyes are red and rheumy and furious. "Let him drink blood. It was his idea. I'm gonna let him, just to piss you off."
Steve tears away from Tony's grip and mashes the call button on his phone so hard he nearly breaks it. His kids died early, and he's got money left; no way is he letting this happen.
"Cap, no--" Tony says, but Steve cuts him off with a hand gesture.
"I'm not defying the Gamemakers," Steve snaps. "I'm showing Haymitch that just because it's the Games doesn't mean he can stop being a human being."
When the parachute lands, Loki lets out a hysterical burble of laughter. He pokes it with the sword, but Steve made sure get them to write "DISTRICT 6" across the large metal thermos. Loki picks it up, and Steve heaves a sigh when he sees they've left the note as is: "DRINK SLOWLY. ONE SIP AT A TIME. DON'T WASTE IT. --THE CAPTAIN"
Loki looks up at the camera, and for a second the mask slips and Steve gets to see that face again, the one that twists in his chest and makes him wonder what this boy could have been like before the world turned him, before he turned himself. "I give my thanks to District Six," Loki says, and before he drinks he lifts the thermos in a salute.
Steve salutes the screen. Across the room, Haymitch snorts and hauls himself up. "Well, this just stopped being fun. You need me, I'll be in my room."
Steve doesn't bother to watch him go. On the screen, Loki holds the thermos in both his hands and takes a deep, long drink.
Cato, watching the same. Written by azelmaroark.
Cato rarely watches. Sure, he and Clove have sorta fallen into a get-drunk-and-watch-the-Reapings ritual, and he kind of doesn’t mind the parades, but they don’t really watch the Games, not yet. They’ll have to someday, he knows. But the first year it was completely forbidden, and this year they aren’t allowed anywhere near the Games Complex, and Lyme has already called them once this year at Cato’s apartment saying, “Brutus would like you to tell Clove to ‘turn that shit off’” when one of the boys slowly froze to death one night. There haven’t been any tracker jackers so far, at least, and while a lot of things have made Cato’s stomach churn unsettlingly and he’s pretty sure he had a nightmare two days back that he can’t remember, they’re doing okay.
Only, he can’t stop watching Loki. He knows Clove sees, knows that she wants him to knock it off and knows that he should knock it off. The Gamemakers have it in for Twelve this year, and Cato’s stunt with Caesar the week before the Games might mean that Loki’s still alive, but so far all that’s done is make sure that his punishment continues. And really, what will it do? He’s not going to win, Cato tells himself every time he catches himself wandering down this path of thoughts he’s not supposed to have. His odds were never good, nobody’s odds are, but right now the only real question is when. And Cato can’t stop watching because, he tells himself, any moment could be it, and at least - he doesn’t even know what it’s supposed to solve, but Cato started this, and there’s a nagging feeling in the back of his head that whispers the least he can do is be there when it finishes.
And the acid rain, seriously, fucking sick.
He thought the end was finally coming when Loki lost his last source of water two days ago, and Cato’s not stupid enough to think they’d let that be that, but at least whatever they sent to finally kill him would end eventually and then Cato could stop doing this. And he thought, he really, really thought that was it when the camera focused on the note. He tightens his already vice-like grip on Clove’s hand and wraps his other arm fiercely around her shoulders and this is it. He almost convinced himself this moment wouldn’t come, and his stomach sinks when he realizes he did the thing he told himself he’d never, ever do, started giving a shit when as soon as you think about these people as more than pixels on a television screen, that’s when you can’t sleep ever again and, fuck, Loki’s eyes punch him in the stomach as the camera zooms in on his horror-stricken face.
Cato has parents. Somewhere in the outskirts of District Two are the people who sent him to the place that became all he was ever going to be. He’s pretty sure they’re still alive, even. He doesn’t have the kind of parents that could draw that face out of him, but he knows it anyway because it doesn’t actually matter what caused it. He looks at those goddamn raw honest wounded eyes and can’t see anything but the world twisted on venom and Clove cold and dead in the ice and Marvel dragging a knife through a stump and whispering that he’s going to rape Glimmer with a spear. He imagines facing that alone, alone all his life with no Clove pouring ice on his head at training and sneaking into his bed and knitting the world back together with her smile. And any second Lyme’s going to call and tell him to turn it off or she’ll throttle him which means Loki’s dead and fuck how is he going to watch this every year.
But then he’s not dead. When Loki raises his head with a scream that makes Clove jump in Cato’s arms, that’s when Cato knows that he has to, he has to come out. Because those eyes, those he recognizes. Insane. Desperate. Past their last limit. Victor’s eyes.
He kills the One. Of course he does. But Cato’s seen enough, and he can’t tell if the adrenaline in his veins comes from hope or dread. Because no matter what else happens, this is their Victor, and they know now that they’re just going to have to fucking deal with it.
Six sends water. Of course they do. Cato can’t think about anything else but what Brutus is doing, and of course Lyme hasn’t called.
“Get him out,” he hears himself whispering into Clove’s hair. “Somebody’s gotta fucking get him out.”
Loki wins the Games
He's giving out. His body has always been Loki's weak point, and now it's failing him. Loki leans back against a tree and closes his eyes, sucks at his tongue and tries to dredge up enough moisture to swallow without the pain. He still has the thermos from Six but it won't last forever, and he doesn't know whether he has it in him to get another sponsor. Haymitch has probably gone to bed by now, since Loki refused to die.
It's the first time that Loki thinks he might actually fail -- not just die at the hands of another tribute, because anything can happen even to the sons of Odin, but really fail, die of overexposure and dehydration and all those things that happen to lesser tributes, not people who had seven years of training at the Centre. His brain doesn't know what to do with the thought, but it rattles around his skull and refuses to leave him alone. If someone attacked him now he doesn't know if he'd be able to fend them off. That has never, ever happened to him before.
Still, though, Loki is a Two, not some snivelling outlier, and he can deal with this. He can. He forces himself to take a breath, then another. He digs his fingers into the tree bark. He's not going to die. It means throwing up the narrative he'd started building at the beginning of the Games, but that pretty much ended when the Gamemakers decided that getting rid of him was more important than giving a good show. No more playing; no more choosing victims to avoid becoming the villain instead of just The Traitor. At least none of the little ones survived the Cornucopia; no way Loki could kill one like the little brown girl from Eleven two years back and walk out of here alive. The Careers have that luxury; Loki does not.
He waits until the evening, for the anthem and the roll call of dead tributes, pulls his lips back in a smile when the boy from One appears above him in the sky and his own face does not. That will give the others something to talk about. By his count, both Twos are still alive, plus the Four boy, the girl from Six who'd stolen Three boy's idea from two years ago and rigged the mines, one of the Sevens, the big brute from Nine whose district nearly cheered at his Reaping, and the stealthy girl from Ten. It's still mid-point during the Games; the Careers will be expecting to pick off one by one until the Feast brings everyone together in a week or so.
Loki doesn't have that long, not if his blurred vision tells him anything. The one good thing to come out of this mess is that he doesn't have to hide his exhaustion; Careers must always look effortless and well-fed even when the hunger gnaws their bellies, but not Loki, not now. His new angle is the one who is broken, beaten, but doesn't know when he's defeated. They will see his fatigue and cheer him on, not think him weak. He's not fond of it, but it is what it is.
He climbs a tree and sleeps that night because it's the last chance he knows he'll have. The Gamemakers don't notice his plans because in the morning there's dew on the undersides of the leaves, and Loki sucks several mouthful's worth before the sun rises and burns it away. Good. If they knew his ideas they would get rid of him now. This is the only window Loki has, to alter everything and make himself impossible to kill instead of a risk to lose.
He finds the Seven boy -- tall, lithe, and strong, a sixteen with corded arm muscles from swinging hatchets since childhood -- and ends him quickly, one slash that spills his belly and another across his throat. It's a quick death -- he barely has time to scream, though he does get a few moments to gurgle -- and Loki takes care to hide any pleasure in the killing. His angle is one driven to desperation, and fortunately his actions before the drought can only add that up.
The ten girl he finds within the hour; after that he nearly trips over one of Six's traps, but lures her into it himself and finishes her with a single stroke. Four takes longer -- he's hiding in the water, waiting for an unsuspecting tribute to come and drink so he can pull them in and drown them. It might have worked on Loki, crazed with thirst -- it almost does work until he realises that they would never let him have this much water, not without a catch, and he sees the telltale breathing tube just in time. He doesn't bother trying to hold Four under -- he would have trained for that and could probably hold his breath longer than Loki could keep hold, and even without that it's a poetic, vindictive sort of death that will make Loki look spiteful -- but instead drags him from the water and slits his throat.
After that, Loki allows himself a few minutes by the pool before the Gamemakers can alter it, somehow, drinking deep and filling up his thermos just in case. Since they hoped Four would kill him it's unlikely that they'll give him any other chances to find water now. He actually drinks too much and wastes a whole stomachful on the grass next to Four's wide-eyed body; Loki wipes his mouth, then, as an afterthought, puts his index finger and thumb over Four's eyelids and draws them closed. After that it's time to move.
He would give anything to see the Careers' faces now, as they hear cannon after cannon and know that it's not them doing the killing. He imagines them trying to figure out who they've missed, which one they left behind has suddenly grown a backbone. They'll guess it's Nine, most likely, and so Loki spends the rest of the day hunting him down.
Nine is unhinged when Loki finds him, but he can't tell how much of it is from the Games and how much he brought with him. He has a short, curved sword that he drags along the grass and over trees, and he tells Loki that he's going to rape his corpse when he's done, if Loki's lucky. No wonder his district wasn't sad to see him go. He's much bigger than Loki, around Thor's size, with arms the size of small tree trunks from farm work, and Loki eyes him. This won't be a simple stroke no matter what, and even if Loki could do it, he probably shouldn't. Nine will have no fans in the audience, and they won't want a quick death for him. Loki needs to find the line between making it feel satisfying and crossing over into torture.
And, of course, not dying. Nine is big and crazed and Loki might have finally gotten his hands on some water but that doesn't make up for the last few days. He allows himself to look scared so that Nine attacks first, ducks the attacks and does his best to study Nine's fighting style. Loki doesn't intend to get hit as badly as he does, but his muscles take a half-second to respond longer than he'd like and the flat of Nine's blade catches Loki across his ribs, knocks him sideways. At least one of the ribs cracks, but Loki can deal with that later, when he's not dead.
Then Nine is on him, sword tossed aside, with his hands wrapped around Loki's throat, squeezing, squeezing. Loki grips Nine's wrists and kicks, and breath he took before those fists closed around his windpipe swells and threatens to burst his chest. He gouges one eye but it's not enough -- Nine roars but doesn't let go, blood lust too strong now -- and Loki's vision is sliding to black when his scrabbling hand finds the blade he'd forgotten hangs at his waist -- damn Haymitch, damn dehydration, damn his useless, muzzy brain -- and he drives it up, up, up into Nine's chest.
Nine collapses, his enormous bulk nearly crushing Loki, but for once being Thor's brother gives him an edge. As kids, Thor used to like to jump on Loki and try to crush him with his body weight, and Loki learned early how to shove him off even if Thor went dead. It's harder now when his arms barely obey his commands but he does it, rolls Nine's limp, bleeding form off him and rolls onto his side, gasping.
Loki scrambles to his feet as soon as he can, collects Nine's blade and everything else he dropped during the fight, and gets them all on his belt. He looks ridiculous, like a walking armoury, but he doesn't care. Because it's him and the Twos now, and he can't waste his energy looking for them. They'll find him, and that means he has to be ready. Like it or not, he needs to rest.
Or maybe just one Two. Another cannon fires a little before sunset, making Loki jump. After that he feels almost proud; he's scared the Twos so badly that he's managed to shake the sacred alliance. It doesn't matter to him, but it makes it easier, because if one of them is a Two-killer already then his sentence won't be so heavy for doing the same. He waits until the anthem, sees the male tribute's face before the boy from Nine, and he can't tell if it's a good or bad sign. The Two boy is built bigger and could tear Loki apart quicker, but the girls are almost always meaner, nastier, and less likely to fall for his tricks.
He doesn't sleep that night. He sits with all his weapons at the ready but the Two girl doesn't show. By morning Loki risks a sip of water but has nothing to eat, and he can't remember the last time he had anything but grass and berries. While this is par for the course in Twelve, it means he'll have to make the fight quick. He sucks the honey from the tips of a clover blossom and lets the nectar sit on his tongue. He thinks of the smell of bread.
The Gamemakers drive them together around noon, another shower of acid rain that drives Loki in front of it. He can see the clouds in the distance forcing Two toward him, and adrenaline combats the exhaustion in his bones. One more. One more, and he'll be done. He only has to do it one more time.
And then Two is breaking through the trees, and she stops short when she sees Loki. She has as many weapons as he does, and she swings her sword in a lazy circle. "Hey there, traitor," she says in a sing-song. Glory, Loki thinks suddenly; her name is Glory. He's not sure why he remembered that now. "You couldn't just do the honourable thing and kill yourself, huh. You have to make me get my hands dirty with your filthy traitor blood."
Loki says nothing. He can't argue with her; he has no case. Anyway, she's a partner-killer, so all that will be happening in Two right now is everyone getting hit with a heavy dose of hypocrisy.
He's made her nervous, though, whether she wants to admit it or not, because she makes the first move. She slashes at him with her sword, but he avoids it even with his sluggish reflexes. She leaves herself open -- on purpose, it's a feint -- but Loki doesn't take the bait. Glory rolls back to her feet, sword at the ready. "So, what, you're not going to kill me?" she scoffs. "Do you really think that's going to make a difference?"
"Twos don't kill Twos," Loki says, and she rolls her eyes, but he's not speaking for her benefit.
"Right, Twos don't, but you're not a Two, are you? You're an uppity traitor who got everything and turned his back on it because he thought Daddy didn't love him enough."
That might have worked if he didn't expect it, but Loki's got himself under control now. It's the final battle; he knew Glory would throw everything at him, and so while it stings, it doesn't throw him off balance. Still, they need some reaction, and so he narrows his eyes. "You should keep your mouth shut about my father," he says instead.
"Fine," Glory says, and comes at him.
Loki thought the fight with Nine was hard; this is exponentially worse. With Nine, all Loki needed was for it to last long enough to be entertaining; this time, he has to make Glory's death look as though it's not at his hands. Normally Loki would have laid a trap, but the Gamemakers and their rain didn't give him a choice; accidentally impaling herself on her own blade, or an abandoned one, will have to do. Loki manages to toss a few of his aside, but then she's on him for real and it's all he can do to fight her off.
Glory doesn't know about his brush with dehydration, and knows that Loki didn't make it as far as he did in the program on looks and favouritism no matter how much she might joke about it; he senses her confusion at the hesitation in his attacks. She holds back herself like she's expecting a trick, but eventually decides it's something else.
"Not as tough as you think, traitor?" Glory pants. She has a knife to Loki's throat, and she drags the tip across the skin. She holds his arms down with her other hand and one foot, but Loki isn't afraid, not yet. "Too bad you didn't have anybody willing to ally themselves with you. You might've found some food so you wouldn't lose that pretty baby face of yours."
Loki doesn't shift his weight, doesn't give himself away, doesn't waste his strength. He puts up just enough of a struggle that it looks like he's fighting; Glory spits on his face. "Your eyes are so green, traitor," she says, conversational. "So pretty. I think I'll cut out your eyes, take them with me as a token. A good luck charm, maybe." The tip of her knife tickles the corner of his eye.
And that's enough of that; Loki uses his legs to unbalance her, sending her knife skidding across his forehead instead. Blood pours into his eyes but it hardly matters; he swipes it away and stares at her through a curtain of red. "So you do have some fight in you," Glory says, grinning. She flicks another sword up into her hand with her foot and catches it. "It won't help. You think if you put up a good fight Daddy will finally approve?"
Fishing, fishing, but Loki lets her think she's got him. He has one knife hidden and if he can get her to fall near the abandoned sickle to the right, worst-case scenario he can stab her and make it look like an accident. His stomach twists at the thought of killing a Two, even if no one finds out, but he doesn't know what else to do with it.
Glory lunges, they grapple, and Loki's about to throw her when she stiffens in his arms. He sees the life leave her eyes and he didn't do anything; looks up to see the girl from One standing in the clearing.
He miscounted. He actually miscounted. Never mind the fighting; Loki has never been so afraid in his life.
"Hey, thanks for the distraction," One girl says, all teeth. "Just us two now. You're the traitor, right? The Twos never shut up about how they wanted to make necklaces out of your insides; it was so annoying. I had to kill what's his name just to get him to shut up. Now I get to see if you're as much fun as they said you were!"
Loki lowers Glory's body to the ground instead of letting it drop; without taking his gaze off One girl, he arranges Glory's arms over her chest and places her sword in her folded hands, but leaves her eyes open and staring to the sky. A warrior's posture. He hopes the gesture doesn't go unnoticed.
"Cute," One girl drawls. "Are we gonna go, or what?"
One girl killed the Two boy, not Glory. Glory's not a Two-killer. That means Loki needs to avenge her death, even if the thought would make her spit. He can barely see and his limbs will give out any second, but Loki can do this. He can. And even if he can't, he's not letting her out of here, and the Capitol will just have to deal with having no victor this year.
All things considered, it should be harder than Glory's, but it doesn't feel like it. He has every fight chemical flooding through him right now, and if One was watching the fight then chances are she thinks Loki is a terrible fighter for taking so long just to fail to kill Glory. The rest of the world disappears and it's just him, and One girl, and finally his brain snaps back on and he's standing over her body with a blade sticking out of her chest.
Loki staggers back. The cannon fires. She said they were the last but she might have been lying, and so he waits, tense, even though his legs want to buckle and all he sees is red and he can't move one of his arms. The air slides into him like knives, and he thinks he's pierced a lung. He waits, waits, waits, and nothing happens, and Loki's convinced there really is another tribute left when the victory trumpets play.
"Congratulations to the winner of the 76th Annual Hunger Games!" comes the announcement, and Loki doesn't hear the rest because his brain shuts down. He drags his good hand across his forehead, smearing blood across his skin, and he starts to laugh. He laughs even though it nearly kills him, and he turns his ruined face up to the sky.
"Father," Loki says, swaying. "I dedicate this win to you and to the Capitol. I hope I've made you proud."
Two victors do not crumple, and so Loki stays on his feet until the hovercraft comes to take him away.
Steve has to give them credit this year; it takes a lot of effort to turn a spectacle that involves 24 children murdering each other into something even more twisted than the premise, but they're managing. The Gamemakers' ritual humiliation and torture of Loki Odinson after his little stunt in Twelve makes Steve sick to his stomach. A stream where other tributes had found clear, flowing water dries up when Loki reaches it, or suddenly turns to mud and filth. It rains, but every droplet is saltwater. Once the liquid hisses against his skin, smoking and leaving open sores.
Loki scares Steve; no question about it. Steve has gone through his Games and watched countless others since then, and this boy with his razor smile and sharp green eyes, with so much hatred running through him until it seems to fill his veins, gives Steve nightmares. But at the same time, that doesn't mean he can watch the boy die of dehydration without feeling ill.
"Someone should send him some water," Steve mutters. "This is sick."
"Easy Cap," Tony says in the same tone. He has his arm slung across the back of the sofa, fingers dangling next to Steve's shoulder. "Don't you dare. This is their doing and you know it. They're not going to let him get away with that he did back in Twelve."
Steve doesn't want to watch. On the screen, Loki runs his tongue over lips cracked with blood and presses a hand to his eyes, stumbling. "I know," Steve replies. His insides twist and churn, and he wonders if it will look bad on him if he vomits all over the floor. Probably. His tributes died in the bloodbath this year, and not for the first time he knows what it means to be glad for that.
Not that it seems to bother Haymitch. Haymitch is drunk and bitter, Madge now cooling somewhere on a hovercraft floor. No one expected her to last even three days, but for some reason it hit Haymitch harder than anyone expected it to, and he's stunk of liquor even more than usual since. Now he lies on the sofa, cackling as Loki stumbles, drops to his knees and dry heaves over the grass.
Loki wipes his mouth. He sits back, eyes scanning, and with a start Steve realises he's looking for cameras. Beside him Tony stiffens -- even the great Tony Stark, jokester extreme, hasn't found this funny. "Shit," Tony says in a low voice. "Aw, shit, no, don't do it. Don't piss them off even more."
Steve sucks in his breath as Loki finds a camera and stares directly at it. "So, dehydration," he says, and his voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper, the words scraping against his throat. He swallows -- winces, that's got to hurt -- and tries again. "You're really going to dehydrate me to death? That seems interesting. I'm sure the viewers are glued to the screen, riveted by the white flecks at the corner of my mouth, waiting breathlessly for my vomit. Fascinating viewing." Speaking that much takes a lot out of him, and it takes him a minute to recover.
"Stop," Steve whispers. "Just stop. They have to expect that much ranting, just -- no more."
Loki coughs. His lips split again and he licks the blood off. His mouth curves in the ghost of a smile. "What, is that it? You want me to open a vein and drink my blood? That's a bit dark, even for me." He narrows his eyes, bright, bright green in his fevered face. "I'll do what I have to do, but my desiccated corpse isn't going to bring in half the ratings that me being alive will. Your call, Haymitch."
Haymitch rolls over and falls off the couch. "Right, then!" he says, slurring his words and spilling his precious bootleg vodka everywhere. "He wants water? I'll send him water! How much d'you think they charge for a hurricane?"
More than Twelve will ever get in its lifetime, so Steve doesn't worry about that. Still, when Haymitch comes back in, grinning like a banshee, and collapses on the couch, chin resting in his hands, Steve knows it's not going to be good.
Loki looks up when he hears the chirp signalling a silver parachute. The cameras pan out, follow him as he drags himself across the ground toward it, where Haymitch has sent him a water bottle. "Wait for it," Tony says under his breath, and Steve's chest clenches.
The water bottle is empty; not only that, but when Loki turns it over someone has drilled a very deliberate hole in the bottom. Loki stares at it, blinking, probably wondering if the dehydration is causing hallucinations. Then he finds the note. He holds it up in shaking hands, and the camera zooms in to focus on the writing --
"WHY DON'T YOU GET THOR TO ASK DADDY FOR WATER? --H"
Haymitch lets out a hoot of laughter, and before Steve knows what's happened he's on his feet. He gets two steps before Tony wraps his arms around Steve's chest, holding him back. "That's not funny, Haymitch!" Steve shouts, fighting Tony, and he could probably get away if he tried really hard but he can't take his eyes away from the screen. The cameras change angles, focus on Loki's face even as he tries to hide it. His eyes are green -- so green -- and wide, and his entire face crumples, like something inside him has given up and died. He blinks, and the only positive thing to come out of this mess is that there's not enough moisture left in his body to humiliate him with tears. His breath catches, sharp and ragged, and he drops his chin to his chest.
"Haymitch, dude, seriously," says Tony, still struggling to hold Steve back. "You don't think that's a bit much?"
"What'samatter Cap, you mad?" Haymitch asks, leaning backward on the couch, and Steve hasn't felt this much anger since his Games, when the girl from Two killed the little girl from Ten and made it last.
He doens't get the chance to attack, because Loki loses his mind first. It actually takes the Gamemakers a second to turn down the volume when he screams, so for a moment the sound tears through the room, startling everyone. Steve stops lunging and drops back down to the sofa, Tony with him. The only one unperturbed is Haymitch, who yawns. Loki screams, slams his fists against the ground, throws the water bottle as far as he can. He tears the note into pieces and grinds them under his heel, throws his head back and screams some more.
The camera switches, then, to the boy from One, who pricks his head and grins. He has a sword the size of Loki's leg, and he picks it up and runs off. Steve can't watch, but he must, he must. Tony is silent and still beside him. The screen splits between One boy running toward the sound and Loki spitting and screaming and sobbing all at once, until they're both in the same frame. Steve can't breathe.
Loki whirls around at the sound -- the One boy runs forward, sword at the ready -- and before Steve can even pick out the details, Loki punches the One boy in the face so hard the bones give beneath his fingers. He snatches the sword away, and before the boy can finish staggering, Loki impales him straight through to the hilt. One boy's eyes snap wide, and he coughs up blood. Loki stares at him for a long second before pulling the sword away and watching the body crumple to the ground.
"FUCK YOU!" Loki screams, and Steve jumps. He's never heard Loki resort to anything so crude, so indelicate. He prefers to wound with poniards, not sledgehammers. "FUCK YOU HAYMITCH. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU---"
Tony whistles. "I think I like this kid," he says, and does his best to inject some modicum of humour into his tone. "Scary as shit, but damn!"
Steve breathes again. Loki stands, chest heaving, holding the sword in both hands. He looks down at the body, then drops down next to it. He touches the blood with his fingers, raises his hand and rubs thumb and forefinger together, smearing them with red.
"Oh no," Steve says aloud.
"Holy shit, he's going to drink the blood," Tony says, sitting ramrod straight again. "Shit, he's really going to do it. Shit shit shit --"
"That's enough, Haymitch!" Steve shouts, rounding on him. "You've got what you wanted, now give him water!"
"No." Haymitch blinks, slowly, and his eyes are red and rheumy and furious. "Let him drink blood. It was his idea. I'm gonna let him, just to piss you off."
Steve tears away from Tony's grip and mashes the call button on his phone so hard he nearly breaks it. His kids died early, and he's got money left; no way is he letting this happen.
"Cap, no--" Tony says, but Steve cuts him off with a hand gesture.
"I'm not defying the Gamemakers," Steve snaps. "I'm showing Haymitch that just because it's the Games doesn't mean he can stop being a human being."
When the parachute lands, Loki lets out a hysterical burble of laughter. He pokes it with the sword, but Steve made sure get them to write "DISTRICT 6" across the large metal thermos. Loki picks it up, and Steve heaves a sigh when he sees they've left the note as is: "DRINK SLOWLY. ONE SIP AT A TIME. DON'T WASTE IT. --THE CAPTAIN"
Loki looks up at the camera, and for a second the mask slips and Steve gets to see that face again, the one that twists in his chest and makes him wonder what this boy could have been like before the world turned him, before he turned himself. "I give my thanks to District Six," Loki says, and before he drinks he lifts the thermos in a salute.
Steve salutes the screen. Across the room, Haymitch snorts and hauls himself up. "Well, this just stopped being fun. You need me, I'll be in my room."
Steve doesn't bother to watch him go. On the screen, Loki holds the thermos in both his hands and takes a deep, long drink.
Cato, watching the same. Written by azelmaroark.
Cato rarely watches. Sure, he and Clove have sorta fallen into a get-drunk-and-watch-the-Reapings ritual, and he kind of doesn’t mind the parades, but they don’t really watch the Games, not yet. They’ll have to someday, he knows. But the first year it was completely forbidden, and this year they aren’t allowed anywhere near the Games Complex, and Lyme has already called them once this year at Cato’s apartment saying, “Brutus would like you to tell Clove to ‘turn that shit off’” when one of the boys slowly froze to death one night. There haven’t been any tracker jackers so far, at least, and while a lot of things have made Cato’s stomach churn unsettlingly and he’s pretty sure he had a nightmare two days back that he can’t remember, they’re doing okay.
Only, he can’t stop watching Loki. He knows Clove sees, knows that she wants him to knock it off and knows that he should knock it off. The Gamemakers have it in for Twelve this year, and Cato’s stunt with Caesar the week before the Games might mean that Loki’s still alive, but so far all that’s done is make sure that his punishment continues. And really, what will it do? He’s not going to win, Cato tells himself every time he catches himself wandering down this path of thoughts he’s not supposed to have. His odds were never good, nobody’s odds are, but right now the only real question is when. And Cato can’t stop watching because, he tells himself, any moment could be it, and at least - he doesn’t even know what it’s supposed to solve, but Cato started this, and there’s a nagging feeling in the back of his head that whispers the least he can do is be there when it finishes.
And the acid rain, seriously, fucking sick.
He thought the end was finally coming when Loki lost his last source of water two days ago, and Cato’s not stupid enough to think they’d let that be that, but at least whatever they sent to finally kill him would end eventually and then Cato could stop doing this. And he thought, he really, really thought that was it when the camera focused on the note. He tightens his already vice-like grip on Clove’s hand and wraps his other arm fiercely around her shoulders and this is it. He almost convinced himself this moment wouldn’t come, and his stomach sinks when he realizes he did the thing he told himself he’d never, ever do, started giving a shit when as soon as you think about these people as more than pixels on a television screen, that’s when you can’t sleep ever again and, fuck, Loki’s eyes punch him in the stomach as the camera zooms in on his horror-stricken face.
Cato has parents. Somewhere in the outskirts of District Two are the people who sent him to the place that became all he was ever going to be. He’s pretty sure they’re still alive, even. He doesn’t have the kind of parents that could draw that face out of him, but he knows it anyway because it doesn’t actually matter what caused it. He looks at those goddamn raw honest wounded eyes and can’t see anything but the world twisted on venom and Clove cold and dead in the ice and Marvel dragging a knife through a stump and whispering that he’s going to rape Glimmer with a spear. He imagines facing that alone, alone all his life with no Clove pouring ice on his head at training and sneaking into his bed and knitting the world back together with her smile. And any second Lyme’s going to call and tell him to turn it off or she’ll throttle him which means Loki’s dead and fuck how is he going to watch this every year.
But then he’s not dead. When Loki raises his head with a scream that makes Clove jump in Cato’s arms, that’s when Cato knows that he has to, he has to come out. Because those eyes, those he recognizes. Insane. Desperate. Past their last limit. Victor’s eyes.
He kills the One. Of course he does. But Cato’s seen enough, and he can’t tell if the adrenaline in his veins comes from hope or dread. Because no matter what else happens, this is their Victor, and they know now that they’re just going to have to fucking deal with it.
Six sends water. Of course they do. Cato can’t think about anything else but what Brutus is doing, and of course Lyme hasn’t called.
“Get him out,” he hears himself whispering into Clove’s hair. “Somebody’s gotta fucking get him out.”
Loki wins the Games
He's giving out. His body has always been Loki's weak point, and now it's failing him. Loki leans back against a tree and closes his eyes, sucks at his tongue and tries to dredge up enough moisture to swallow without the pain. He still has the thermos from Six but it won't last forever, and he doesn't know whether he has it in him to get another sponsor. Haymitch has probably gone to bed by now, since Loki refused to die.
It's the first time that Loki thinks he might actually fail -- not just die at the hands of another tribute, because anything can happen even to the sons of Odin, but really fail, die of overexposure and dehydration and all those things that happen to lesser tributes, not people who had seven years of training at the Centre. His brain doesn't know what to do with the thought, but it rattles around his skull and refuses to leave him alone. If someone attacked him now he doesn't know if he'd be able to fend them off. That has never, ever happened to him before.
Still, though, Loki is a Two, not some snivelling outlier, and he can deal with this. He can. He forces himself to take a breath, then another. He digs his fingers into the tree bark. He's not going to die. It means throwing up the narrative he'd started building at the beginning of the Games, but that pretty much ended when the Gamemakers decided that getting rid of him was more important than giving a good show. No more playing; no more choosing victims to avoid becoming the villain instead of just The Traitor. At least none of the little ones survived the Cornucopia; no way Loki could kill one like the little brown girl from Eleven two years back and walk out of here alive. The Careers have that luxury; Loki does not.
He waits until the evening, for the anthem and the roll call of dead tributes, pulls his lips back in a smile when the boy from One appears above him in the sky and his own face does not. That will give the others something to talk about. By his count, both Twos are still alive, plus the Four boy, the girl from Six who'd stolen Three boy's idea from two years ago and rigged the mines, one of the Sevens, the big brute from Nine whose district nearly cheered at his Reaping, and the stealthy girl from Ten. It's still mid-point during the Games; the Careers will be expecting to pick off one by one until the Feast brings everyone together in a week or so.
Loki doesn't have that long, not if his blurred vision tells him anything. The one good thing to come out of this mess is that he doesn't have to hide his exhaustion; Careers must always look effortless and well-fed even when the hunger gnaws their bellies, but not Loki, not now. His new angle is the one who is broken, beaten, but doesn't know when he's defeated. They will see his fatigue and cheer him on, not think him weak. He's not fond of it, but it is what it is.
He climbs a tree and sleeps that night because it's the last chance he knows he'll have. The Gamemakers don't notice his plans because in the morning there's dew on the undersides of the leaves, and Loki sucks several mouthful's worth before the sun rises and burns it away. Good. If they knew his ideas they would get rid of him now. This is the only window Loki has, to alter everything and make himself impossible to kill instead of a risk to lose.
He finds the Seven boy -- tall, lithe, and strong, a sixteen with corded arm muscles from swinging hatchets since childhood -- and ends him quickly, one slash that spills his belly and another across his throat. It's a quick death -- he barely has time to scream, though he does get a few moments to gurgle -- and Loki takes care to hide any pleasure in the killing. His angle is one driven to desperation, and fortunately his actions before the drought can only add that up.
The ten girl he finds within the hour; after that he nearly trips over one of Six's traps, but lures her into it himself and finishes her with a single stroke. Four takes longer -- he's hiding in the water, waiting for an unsuspecting tribute to come and drink so he can pull them in and drown them. It might have worked on Loki, crazed with thirst -- it almost does work until he realises that they would never let him have this much water, not without a catch, and he sees the telltale breathing tube just in time. He doesn't bother trying to hold Four under -- he would have trained for that and could probably hold his breath longer than Loki could keep hold, and even without that it's a poetic, vindictive sort of death that will make Loki look spiteful -- but instead drags him from the water and slits his throat.
After that, Loki allows himself a few minutes by the pool before the Gamemakers can alter it, somehow, drinking deep and filling up his thermos just in case. Since they hoped Four would kill him it's unlikely that they'll give him any other chances to find water now. He actually drinks too much and wastes a whole stomachful on the grass next to Four's wide-eyed body; Loki wipes his mouth, then, as an afterthought, puts his index finger and thumb over Four's eyelids and draws them closed. After that it's time to move.
He would give anything to see the Careers' faces now, as they hear cannon after cannon and know that it's not them doing the killing. He imagines them trying to figure out who they've missed, which one they left behind has suddenly grown a backbone. They'll guess it's Nine, most likely, and so Loki spends the rest of the day hunting him down.
Nine is unhinged when Loki finds him, but he can't tell how much of it is from the Games and how much he brought with him. He has a short, curved sword that he drags along the grass and over trees, and he tells Loki that he's going to rape his corpse when he's done, if Loki's lucky. No wonder his district wasn't sad to see him go. He's much bigger than Loki, around Thor's size, with arms the size of small tree trunks from farm work, and Loki eyes him. This won't be a simple stroke no matter what, and even if Loki could do it, he probably shouldn't. Nine will have no fans in the audience, and they won't want a quick death for him. Loki needs to find the line between making it feel satisfying and crossing over into torture.
And, of course, not dying. Nine is big and crazed and Loki might have finally gotten his hands on some water but that doesn't make up for the last few days. He allows himself to look scared so that Nine attacks first, ducks the attacks and does his best to study Nine's fighting style. Loki doesn't intend to get hit as badly as he does, but his muscles take a half-second to respond longer than he'd like and the flat of Nine's blade catches Loki across his ribs, knocks him sideways. At least one of the ribs cracks, but Loki can deal with that later, when he's not dead.
Then Nine is on him, sword tossed aside, with his hands wrapped around Loki's throat, squeezing, squeezing. Loki grips Nine's wrists and kicks, and breath he took before those fists closed around his windpipe swells and threatens to burst his chest. He gouges one eye but it's not enough -- Nine roars but doesn't let go, blood lust too strong now -- and Loki's vision is sliding to black when his scrabbling hand finds the blade he'd forgotten hangs at his waist -- damn Haymitch, damn dehydration, damn his useless, muzzy brain -- and he drives it up, up, up into Nine's chest.
Nine collapses, his enormous bulk nearly crushing Loki, but for once being Thor's brother gives him an edge. As kids, Thor used to like to jump on Loki and try to crush him with his body weight, and Loki learned early how to shove him off even if Thor went dead. It's harder now when his arms barely obey his commands but he does it, rolls Nine's limp, bleeding form off him and rolls onto his side, gasping.
Loki scrambles to his feet as soon as he can, collects Nine's blade and everything else he dropped during the fight, and gets them all on his belt. He looks ridiculous, like a walking armoury, but he doesn't care. Because it's him and the Twos now, and he can't waste his energy looking for them. They'll find him, and that means he has to be ready. Like it or not, he needs to rest.
Or maybe just one Two. Another cannon fires a little before sunset, making Loki jump. After that he feels almost proud; he's scared the Twos so badly that he's managed to shake the sacred alliance. It doesn't matter to him, but it makes it easier, because if one of them is a Two-killer already then his sentence won't be so heavy for doing the same. He waits until the anthem, sees the male tribute's face before the boy from Nine, and he can't tell if it's a good or bad sign. The Two boy is built bigger and could tear Loki apart quicker, but the girls are almost always meaner, nastier, and less likely to fall for his tricks.
He doesn't sleep that night. He sits with all his weapons at the ready but the Two girl doesn't show. By morning Loki risks a sip of water but has nothing to eat, and he can't remember the last time he had anything but grass and berries. While this is par for the course in Twelve, it means he'll have to make the fight quick. He sucks the honey from the tips of a clover blossom and lets the nectar sit on his tongue. He thinks of the smell of bread.
The Gamemakers drive them together around noon, another shower of acid rain that drives Loki in front of it. He can see the clouds in the distance forcing Two toward him, and adrenaline combats the exhaustion in his bones. One more. One more, and he'll be done. He only has to do it one more time.
And then Two is breaking through the trees, and she stops short when she sees Loki. She has as many weapons as he does, and she swings her sword in a lazy circle. "Hey there, traitor," she says in a sing-song. Glory, Loki thinks suddenly; her name is Glory. He's not sure why he remembered that now. "You couldn't just do the honourable thing and kill yourself, huh. You have to make me get my hands dirty with your filthy traitor blood."
Loki says nothing. He can't argue with her; he has no case. Anyway, she's a partner-killer, so all that will be happening in Two right now is everyone getting hit with a heavy dose of hypocrisy.
He's made her nervous, though, whether she wants to admit it or not, because she makes the first move. She slashes at him with her sword, but he avoids it even with his sluggish reflexes. She leaves herself open -- on purpose, it's a feint -- but Loki doesn't take the bait. Glory rolls back to her feet, sword at the ready. "So, what, you're not going to kill me?" she scoffs. "Do you really think that's going to make a difference?"
"Twos don't kill Twos," Loki says, and she rolls her eyes, but he's not speaking for her benefit.
"Right, Twos don't, but you're not a Two, are you? You're an uppity traitor who got everything and turned his back on it because he thought Daddy didn't love him enough."
That might have worked if he didn't expect it, but Loki's got himself under control now. It's the final battle; he knew Glory would throw everything at him, and so while it stings, it doesn't throw him off balance. Still, they need some reaction, and so he narrows his eyes. "You should keep your mouth shut about my father," he says instead.
"Fine," Glory says, and comes at him.
Loki thought the fight with Nine was hard; this is exponentially worse. With Nine, all Loki needed was for it to last long enough to be entertaining; this time, he has to make Glory's death look as though it's not at his hands. Normally Loki would have laid a trap, but the Gamemakers and their rain didn't give him a choice; accidentally impaling herself on her own blade, or an abandoned one, will have to do. Loki manages to toss a few of his aside, but then she's on him for real and it's all he can do to fight her off.
Glory doesn't know about his brush with dehydration, and knows that Loki didn't make it as far as he did in the program on looks and favouritism no matter how much she might joke about it; he senses her confusion at the hesitation in his attacks. She holds back herself like she's expecting a trick, but eventually decides it's something else.
"Not as tough as you think, traitor?" Glory pants. She has a knife to Loki's throat, and she drags the tip across the skin. She holds his arms down with her other hand and one foot, but Loki isn't afraid, not yet. "Too bad you didn't have anybody willing to ally themselves with you. You might've found some food so you wouldn't lose that pretty baby face of yours."
Loki doesn't shift his weight, doesn't give himself away, doesn't waste his strength. He puts up just enough of a struggle that it looks like he's fighting; Glory spits on his face. "Your eyes are so green, traitor," she says, conversational. "So pretty. I think I'll cut out your eyes, take them with me as a token. A good luck charm, maybe." The tip of her knife tickles the corner of his eye.
And that's enough of that; Loki uses his legs to unbalance her, sending her knife skidding across his forehead instead. Blood pours into his eyes but it hardly matters; he swipes it away and stares at her through a curtain of red. "So you do have some fight in you," Glory says, grinning. She flicks another sword up into her hand with her foot and catches it. "It won't help. You think if you put up a good fight Daddy will finally approve?"
Fishing, fishing, but Loki lets her think she's got him. He has one knife hidden and if he can get her to fall near the abandoned sickle to the right, worst-case scenario he can stab her and make it look like an accident. His stomach twists at the thought of killing a Two, even if no one finds out, but he doesn't know what else to do with it.
Glory lunges, they grapple, and Loki's about to throw her when she stiffens in his arms. He sees the life leave her eyes and he didn't do anything; looks up to see the girl from One standing in the clearing.
He miscounted. He actually miscounted. Never mind the fighting; Loki has never been so afraid in his life.
"Hey, thanks for the distraction," One girl says, all teeth. "Just us two now. You're the traitor, right? The Twos never shut up about how they wanted to make necklaces out of your insides; it was so annoying. I had to kill what's his name just to get him to shut up. Now I get to see if you're as much fun as they said you were!"
Loki lowers Glory's body to the ground instead of letting it drop; without taking his gaze off One girl, he arranges Glory's arms over her chest and places her sword in her folded hands, but leaves her eyes open and staring to the sky. A warrior's posture. He hopes the gesture doesn't go unnoticed.
"Cute," One girl drawls. "Are we gonna go, or what?"
One girl killed the Two boy, not Glory. Glory's not a Two-killer. That means Loki needs to avenge her death, even if the thought would make her spit. He can barely see and his limbs will give out any second, but Loki can do this. He can. And even if he can't, he's not letting her out of here, and the Capitol will just have to deal with having no victor this year.
All things considered, it should be harder than Glory's, but it doesn't feel like it. He has every fight chemical flooding through him right now, and if One was watching the fight then chances are she thinks Loki is a terrible fighter for taking so long just to fail to kill Glory. The rest of the world disappears and it's just him, and One girl, and finally his brain snaps back on and he's standing over her body with a blade sticking out of her chest.
Loki staggers back. The cannon fires. She said they were the last but she might have been lying, and so he waits, tense, even though his legs want to buckle and all he sees is red and he can't move one of his arms. The air slides into him like knives, and he thinks he's pierced a lung. He waits, waits, waits, and nothing happens, and Loki's convinced there really is another tribute left when the victory trumpets play.
"Congratulations to the winner of the 76th Annual Hunger Games!" comes the announcement, and Loki doesn't hear the rest because his brain shuts down. He drags his good hand across his forehead, smearing blood across his skin, and he starts to laugh. He laughs even though it nearly kills him, and he turns his ruined face up to the sky.
"Father," Loki says, swaying. "I dedicate this win to you and to the Capitol. I hope I've made you proud."
Two victors do not crumple, and so Loki stays on his feet until the hovercraft comes to take him away.