En route to the Captiol [Saturday evening, Fandom time]
Of course Katniss couldn't sleep. The nightmares hadn't ended in Fandom, they wouldn't now, and if anything, they'd gotten far worse. Sleep was no longer an option in any form.
Though, evidently, she wasn't alone there.
Peeta rose and flipped off the tape when he saw her. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Not for long,” Katniss said, deliberately vague as she drew her robe tighter around her.
Peeta pressed a button and ordered warm milk for both of them from an attendant before holding an arm out to Katniss. Without even thinking, she rushed forward to press close to him, seeking comfort, pure and simple.
"So, you’re watching all the tapes again?” Katniss was so sick of watching the Games. She knew it wasn't a preference she could afford, but she'd seen all of this back in Fandom already,
“Not really. Just sort of skipping around to see people’s different fighting techniques,” said Peeta.
“Who’s next?” I asked.
“You pick,” says Peeta, holding out the box.
The discs are marked with the year of the Games and the name of the victor. Katniss dug around and suddenly found one in her hand that she had never watched. The year of the Games was fifty. That would make it the second Quarter Quell. And the name of the victor was Haymitch Abernathy.
“I haven't seen this one," she said carefully, showing it to Peeta.
Peeta shook his head. “No. Me neither.I knew Haymitch didn’t want to. The same way we didn’t want to relive our own Games. And since we’re all on the same team, I didn’t think it mattered much.”
“Is the person who won in twenty-five in here?” Katniss asked softly.
“I don’t think so. Whoever it was must be dead by now, and Effie only sent me victors we might have to face.” Peeta paused, Haymitch’s disc in his hand. “Why? You think we ought to watch it?”
“It’s the only Quell we have. We might pick up something valuable about how they work,” Katniss said carefully, though she couldn't shake the feeling that this was a major invasion of Haymitch's privacy. “We don’t have to tell Haymitch we saw it.”
“Okay,” Peeta agreed. He put in the disc, and they curled up on the couch.
After the anthem, they showed President Snow drawing the envelope for the second Quarter Quell. He looked younger but just as repellent. He read from the square of paper in the same onerous voice he used for this year's Quell, informing Panem that in honor of the Quarter Quell, there would be twice the number of tributes. The editors smash cut right into the reapings, where name after name after name was called.
By the time Twelve was reached, Katniss felt ill from the sheer number of kids going to their deaths. There was a woman, not Effie, calling the names in Twelve, but she still began with “Ladies first!” She called out the name of a girl who was from the Seam, and then Katniss heard the name “Maysilee Donner.”
“Oh!” Katniss breathed. “She was my mother’s friend.” And there she was, hugging Maysilee -- Katniss's mother at her own age, and no one had exaggerated the idea that she was once a great beauty. Beside her, holding Maysilee's hand and weeping, was an identical who also looked quite a lot like someone else Katniss knew.
"Madge."
"That’s her mother. She and Maysilee were twins or something,” Peeta said. “My dad mentioned it once.”
And very suddenly, Katniss remembered that her mockingjay pin's former owner had been Madge's aunt, and that fact was forcibly imbued with more meaning. The pin had once belonged to Maysilee Donner, a tribute murdered in the arena.
Haymitch’s name was called last of all. It was more of a shock to Katniss to see him than her own mother. Young. Strong. Hard to admit, but he was something of a looker. His hair dark and curly, those gray Seam eyes bright and, even then, dangerous.
They sped along, spending little time with the tributes -- though, since Haymitch had won, there were soundbites devoted to him. Katniss and Peeta watched a moment of his interview with Caesar.
“So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?” asked Caesar.
Haymitch shrugged. “I don’t see that it makes much difference. They’ll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same.”
The audience burst out laughing and Haymitch gave them a half smile. Snarky. Arrogant. Indifferent.
“He didn’t have to reach far for that, did he?” Katniss asked.
When the arena was finally revealed, it was the most breathtaking place imaginable. The golden Cornucopia sat in the middle of a green meadow with patches of gorgeous flowers. The sky was azure blue with puffy white clouds. Bright songbirds fluttered overhead. By the way some of the tributes were sniffing, it must have smelled fantastic. An aerial shot showed that the meadow stretched for miles. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seemed to be a woods, in the other, a snowcapped mountain.
The beauty disoriented many of the players, because when the gong sounded, most of them seemed like they were trying to wake from a dream. Not Haymitch, though. He was at the Cornucopia, armed with weapons and a backpack of choice supplies. He headed for the woods before most of the others had stepped off their plates.
Eighteen tributes were killed in the bloodbath that first day. Others began to die off and it became clear that almost everything in this pretty place-the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly-was deadly poisonous. Only the rainwater and the food provided at the Cornucopia were safe to consume. There was also a large, well-stocked Career pack of ten tributes scouring the mountain area for victims.
Haymitch had his own troubles over in the woods, where the fluffy golden squirrels turned out to be carnivorous and attacked in packs, and the butterfly stings brought agony if not death. But he persisted in moving forward, always keeping the distant mountain at his back.
Maysilee Donner turned out to be pretty resourceful herself, for a girl who left the Cornucopia with only a small backpack. Inside she found a bowl, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. Making use of the readily available poisons, she soon turned the blowgun into a deadly weapon by dipping the darts in lethal substances and directing them into her opponents’ flesh.
Four days in, the picturesque mountain erupted in a volcano that wiped out another dozen players, including all but five of the Career pack. With the mountain spewing liquid fire, and the meadow offering no means of concealment, the remaining thirteen tributes-including Haymitch and Maysilee-had no choice but to confine themselves to the woods.
Haymitch seemed bent on continuing in the same direction, away from the now volcanic mountain, but a maze of tightly woven hedges forced him to circle back into the center of the woods, where he encountered three of the Careers and pulled his knife. They may be much bigger and stronger, but Haymitch had remarkable speed and had killed two when the third disarmed him. That Career was about to slit his throat when a dart dropped him to the ground.
Maysilee Donner stepped out of the woods. “We’d live longer with two of us.”
“Guess you just proved that,” said Haymitch, rubbing his neck. “Allies?” Maysilee nodded. And there they were, instantly drawn into one of those pacts you’d be hard-pressed to break if you ever expected to go home and face your district.
Just like Peeta and Katniss, they did better together. Got more rest, worked out a system to salvage more rainwater, fought as a team, and shared the food from the dead tributes’ packs. But Haymitch was still determined to keep moving on.
“Why?” Maysilee kept asking, and he ignored her until she refused to move any farther without an answer.
“Because it has to end somewhere, right?” said Haymitch. “The arena can’t go on forever.”
“What do you expect to find?” Maysilee asked.
“I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use,” he said.
When they finally did make it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers’ packs, they found themselves on flat, dry earth that led to a cliff. Far below, there were jagged rocks.
“That’s all there is, Haymitch. Let’s go back,” said Maysilee.
“No, I’m staying here,” he said
“All right. There’s only five of us left. May as well say good-bye now, anyway,” she said. “I don’t want it to come down to you and me.”
"Okay,” he agreed. That was all. He didn’t offer to shake her hand or even look at her. And she walked away.
Haymitch skirted along the edge of the cliff as if trying to figure something out. His foot dislodged a pebble and it fell into the abyss, apparently gone forever. But a minute later, as he sat to rest, the pebble shot back up beside him. Haymitch stared at it, puzzled, and then his face took on a strange intensity. He lobbed a rock the size of his fist over the cliff and waits. When it flew back out and right into his hand, he started laughing.
That was when Maysilee began to scream. The alliance was over and she had broken it off, so no one could have blamed him for ignoring her. But Haymitch ran for her, anyway. He arrived only in time to watch the last of a flock of candy pink birds, equipped with long, thin beaks, skewer her through the neck. He held her hand while she died, and all Katniss could think of was Rue and how she had been too late to save her, too.
Later that day, another tribute was killed in combat and a third got eaten by a pack of those fluffy squirrels, leaving Haymitch and a girl from District 1 to vie for the crown. She was bigger than he was and just as fast, and when the inevitable fight came, it was bloody and awful and both had received what could well be fatal wounds, when Haymitch was finally disarmed. He staggered through the beautiful woods, holding his intestines in, while she stumbled after him, carrying the ax that should have delivered his deathblow.
Haymitch made a beeline for his cliff and had just reached the edge when she threw the ax. He collapsed on the ground and it flew into the abyss. Now weaponless as well, the girl just stood there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She was thinking perhaps that she could outlast Haymitch, who’s starting to convulse on the ground. But what she didn’t know, and what he did, was that the ax would return. And when it flew back over the ledge, it buried itself in her head. The cannon sounded, her body was removed, and the trumpets blew to announce Haymitch’s victory.
Peeta clicked off the tape and they sit there in silence for a while.
“That force field at the bottom of the cliff, it was like the one on the roof of the Training Center," Peeta finally said. "The one that throws you back if you try to jump off and commit suicide. Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon.”
“Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” Katniss said quietly. “You know they didn’t expect that to happen. It wasn’t meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out. I bet they had a good time trying to spin that one. Bet that’s why I don’t remember seeing it on television. It’s almost as bad as us and the berries!”
“Almost, but not quite,” said Haymitch from behind them. Katniss whipped around, afraid he would be mad they'd watched without asking him, but he just smirked and took another swig from a bottle of wine.
Katniss smiled, feeling confidence bloom inside her. She'd been so preoccupied trying to learn her opponents that she hadn't remembered her teammates. Now, she felt like she finally knew who Haymitch was. And she was beginning to understand who she was, too.
Surely two people who had caused the Capitol so much trouble could get Peeta home alive.
[WARNING FOR VIOLENCE AND CHARACTER DEATHS. Mmmm, the first time I have to warn for this in this plot. Anyway -- stolen from Catching Fire, OOC is welcome, but NFI and NFB otherwise!]
Though, evidently, she wasn't alone there.
Peeta rose and flipped off the tape when he saw her. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Not for long,” Katniss said, deliberately vague as she drew her robe tighter around her.
Peeta pressed a button and ordered warm milk for both of them from an attendant before holding an arm out to Katniss. Without even thinking, she rushed forward to press close to him, seeking comfort, pure and simple.
"So, you’re watching all the tapes again?” Katniss was so sick of watching the Games. She knew it wasn't a preference she could afford, but she'd seen all of this back in Fandom already,
“Not really. Just sort of skipping around to see people’s different fighting techniques,” said Peeta.
“Who’s next?” I asked.
“You pick,” says Peeta, holding out the box.
The discs are marked with the year of the Games and the name of the victor. Katniss dug around and suddenly found one in her hand that she had never watched. The year of the Games was fifty. That would make it the second Quarter Quell. And the name of the victor was Haymitch Abernathy.
“I haven't seen this one," she said carefully, showing it to Peeta.
Peeta shook his head. “No. Me neither.I knew Haymitch didn’t want to. The same way we didn’t want to relive our own Games. And since we’re all on the same team, I didn’t think it mattered much.”
“Is the person who won in twenty-five in here?” Katniss asked softly.
“I don’t think so. Whoever it was must be dead by now, and Effie only sent me victors we might have to face.” Peeta paused, Haymitch’s disc in his hand. “Why? You think we ought to watch it?”
“It’s the only Quell we have. We might pick up something valuable about how they work,” Katniss said carefully, though she couldn't shake the feeling that this was a major invasion of Haymitch's privacy. “We don’t have to tell Haymitch we saw it.”
“Okay,” Peeta agreed. He put in the disc, and they curled up on the couch.
After the anthem, they showed President Snow drawing the envelope for the second Quarter Quell. He looked younger but just as repellent. He read from the square of paper in the same onerous voice he used for this year's Quell, informing Panem that in honor of the Quarter Quell, there would be twice the number of tributes. The editors smash cut right into the reapings, where name after name after name was called.
By the time Twelve was reached, Katniss felt ill from the sheer number of kids going to their deaths. There was a woman, not Effie, calling the names in Twelve, but she still began with “Ladies first!” She called out the name of a girl who was from the Seam, and then Katniss heard the name “Maysilee Donner.”
“Oh!” Katniss breathed. “She was my mother’s friend.” And there she was, hugging Maysilee -- Katniss's mother at her own age, and no one had exaggerated the idea that she was once a great beauty. Beside her, holding Maysilee's hand and weeping, was an identical who also looked quite a lot like someone else Katniss knew.
"Madge."
"That’s her mother. She and Maysilee were twins or something,” Peeta said. “My dad mentioned it once.”
And very suddenly, Katniss remembered that her mockingjay pin's former owner had been Madge's aunt, and that fact was forcibly imbued with more meaning. The pin had once belonged to Maysilee Donner, a tribute murdered in the arena.
Haymitch’s name was called last of all. It was more of a shock to Katniss to see him than her own mother. Young. Strong. Hard to admit, but he was something of a looker. His hair dark and curly, those gray Seam eyes bright and, even then, dangerous.
They sped along, spending little time with the tributes -- though, since Haymitch had won, there were soundbites devoted to him. Katniss and Peeta watched a moment of his interview with Caesar.
“So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?” asked Caesar.
Haymitch shrugged. “I don’t see that it makes much difference. They’ll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same.”
The audience burst out laughing and Haymitch gave them a half smile. Snarky. Arrogant. Indifferent.
“He didn’t have to reach far for that, did he?” Katniss asked.
When the arena was finally revealed, it was the most breathtaking place imaginable. The golden Cornucopia sat in the middle of a green meadow with patches of gorgeous flowers. The sky was azure blue with puffy white clouds. Bright songbirds fluttered overhead. By the way some of the tributes were sniffing, it must have smelled fantastic. An aerial shot showed that the meadow stretched for miles. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seemed to be a woods, in the other, a snowcapped mountain.
The beauty disoriented many of the players, because when the gong sounded, most of them seemed like they were trying to wake from a dream. Not Haymitch, though. He was at the Cornucopia, armed with weapons and a backpack of choice supplies. He headed for the woods before most of the others had stepped off their plates.
Eighteen tributes were killed in the bloodbath that first day. Others began to die off and it became clear that almost everything in this pretty place-the luscious fruit dangling from the bushes, the water in the crystalline streams, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly-was deadly poisonous. Only the rainwater and the food provided at the Cornucopia were safe to consume. There was also a large, well-stocked Career pack of ten tributes scouring the mountain area for victims.
Haymitch had his own troubles over in the woods, where the fluffy golden squirrels turned out to be carnivorous and attacked in packs, and the butterfly stings brought agony if not death. But he persisted in moving forward, always keeping the distant mountain at his back.
Maysilee Donner turned out to be pretty resourceful herself, for a girl who left the Cornucopia with only a small backpack. Inside she found a bowl, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. Making use of the readily available poisons, she soon turned the blowgun into a deadly weapon by dipping the darts in lethal substances and directing them into her opponents’ flesh.
Four days in, the picturesque mountain erupted in a volcano that wiped out another dozen players, including all but five of the Career pack. With the mountain spewing liquid fire, and the meadow offering no means of concealment, the remaining thirteen tributes-including Haymitch and Maysilee-had no choice but to confine themselves to the woods.
Haymitch seemed bent on continuing in the same direction, away from the now volcanic mountain, but a maze of tightly woven hedges forced him to circle back into the center of the woods, where he encountered three of the Careers and pulled his knife. They may be much bigger and stronger, but Haymitch had remarkable speed and had killed two when the third disarmed him. That Career was about to slit his throat when a dart dropped him to the ground.
Maysilee Donner stepped out of the woods. “We’d live longer with two of us.”
“Guess you just proved that,” said Haymitch, rubbing his neck. “Allies?” Maysilee nodded. And there they were, instantly drawn into one of those pacts you’d be hard-pressed to break if you ever expected to go home and face your district.
Just like Peeta and Katniss, they did better together. Got more rest, worked out a system to salvage more rainwater, fought as a team, and shared the food from the dead tributes’ packs. But Haymitch was still determined to keep moving on.
“Why?” Maysilee kept asking, and he ignored her until she refused to move any farther without an answer.
“Because it has to end somewhere, right?” said Haymitch. “The arena can’t go on forever.”
“What do you expect to find?” Maysilee asked.
“I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use,” he said.
When they finally did make it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers’ packs, they found themselves on flat, dry earth that led to a cliff. Far below, there were jagged rocks.
“That’s all there is, Haymitch. Let’s go back,” said Maysilee.
“No, I’m staying here,” he said
“All right. There’s only five of us left. May as well say good-bye now, anyway,” she said. “I don’t want it to come down to you and me.”
"Okay,” he agreed. That was all. He didn’t offer to shake her hand or even look at her. And she walked away.
Haymitch skirted along the edge of the cliff as if trying to figure something out. His foot dislodged a pebble and it fell into the abyss, apparently gone forever. But a minute later, as he sat to rest, the pebble shot back up beside him. Haymitch stared at it, puzzled, and then his face took on a strange intensity. He lobbed a rock the size of his fist over the cliff and waits. When it flew back out and right into his hand, he started laughing.
That was when Maysilee began to scream. The alliance was over and she had broken it off, so no one could have blamed him for ignoring her. But Haymitch ran for her, anyway. He arrived only in time to watch the last of a flock of candy pink birds, equipped with long, thin beaks, skewer her through the neck. He held her hand while she died, and all Katniss could think of was Rue and how she had been too late to save her, too.
Later that day, another tribute was killed in combat and a third got eaten by a pack of those fluffy squirrels, leaving Haymitch and a girl from District 1 to vie for the crown. She was bigger than he was and just as fast, and when the inevitable fight came, it was bloody and awful and both had received what could well be fatal wounds, when Haymitch was finally disarmed. He staggered through the beautiful woods, holding his intestines in, while she stumbled after him, carrying the ax that should have delivered his deathblow.
Haymitch made a beeline for his cliff and had just reached the edge when she threw the ax. He collapsed on the ground and it flew into the abyss. Now weaponless as well, the girl just stood there, trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She was thinking perhaps that she could outlast Haymitch, who’s starting to convulse on the ground. But what she didn’t know, and what he did, was that the ax would return. And when it flew back over the ledge, it buried itself in her head. The cannon sounded, her body was removed, and the trumpets blew to announce Haymitch’s victory.
Peeta clicked off the tape and they sit there in silence for a while.
“That force field at the bottom of the cliff, it was like the one on the roof of the Training Center," Peeta finally said. "The one that throws you back if you try to jump off and commit suicide. Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon.”
“Not just against the other tributes, but the Capitol, too,” Katniss said quietly. “You know they didn’t expect that to happen. It wasn’t meant to be part of the arena. They never planned on anyone using it as a weapon. It made them look stupid that he figured it out. I bet they had a good time trying to spin that one. Bet that’s why I don’t remember seeing it on television. It’s almost as bad as us and the berries!”
“Almost, but not quite,” said Haymitch from behind them. Katniss whipped around, afraid he would be mad they'd watched without asking him, but he just smirked and took another swig from a bottle of wine.
Katniss smiled, feeling confidence bloom inside her. She'd been so preoccupied trying to learn her opponents that she hadn't remembered her teammates. Now, she felt like she finally knew who Haymitch was. And she was beginning to understand who she was, too.
Surely two people who had caused the Capitol so much trouble could get Peeta home alive.
[WARNING FOR VIOLENCE AND CHARACTER DEATHS. Mmmm, the first time I have to warn for this in this plot. Anyway -- stolen from Catching Fire, OOC is welcome, but NFI and NFB otherwise!]