DCBB Fic: Bird of Paradise (Part II)

[trinityofone]

They still hadn't encountered anyone else-or any source of food or water-when the sun began to sink. A horn, similar to the one that had signaled the start of the Games, sounded mournfully through the trees, and Dean and Jo dropped to their knees, shivering at the sudden cool breeze that whipped about their shoulders. Dean kept count as they were led through the Salve Regina, sharing a look with Jo as the number rose above four repetitions, beyond five, six, seven. Eight in total. Eight dead tributes, on this, the first day of the Games. Dean knew he should be relieved: that was eight fewer people he'd have to deal with, eight fewer deaths between Jo and Paradise. But at the same time...those were eight children, kids he'd shared a meal with (don't think about food) just the night before. He'd never even learned the red-haired tribute's name.

Jo moved her crossbow out of the way enough to squeeze Dean's hand as they rose to their feet again, Dean feeling light-headed, his body protesting its aches and pains like an old man’s.

The temperature was dropping rapidly, as fast or faster than the sky was darkening. Dean and Jo resumed their search for shelter with a new seriousness. Dean thought he still had a pretty good idea of the direction the town lay, but the rest of the forest seemed without any sort of marker, the trees of an oddly false, uniform size and shape. Dean wondered if Zachariah really had built the whole place himself: created the buildings and the trees, the artful spread of leaves, even the familiar-seeming moon, looming low and round above their heads.

It was so big as to be almost hypnotic, and Dean was still staring at it when Jo clutched his arm and said, “Look!”

He followed her gaze through the incomplete darkness until he saw a patch of deeper black: the opening of a cave, he realized, hewn into the rising ground, nearly hidden behind an outcropping of rock. Dean nodded, even as he said: “Careful.” They crept closer to the opening. “There could be anything in there. Another one of those spirits...”

“Not a spirit.”

To Dean's embarrassment, he jumped. Jo did, too, although she still snapped her crossbow up right quick, pointing the loaded arrow at the figure emerging from the cave's mouth, becoming visible in the pale moonlight. “It was a wendigo. I killed it.”

“Well, aren't you the expert,” Dean said, remembering the equally nonchalant way in which Jimmy had dispatched the spirit.

Jo took a more threatening approach. “I could kill you right now.”

Jimmy stared at the sharp point of her arrow with no apparent distress. “Doubtful.”

Dean wouldn't have entirely blamed Jo for pulling the trigger right then just to prove Jimmy wrong. But, “He saved my life,” Dean felt obligated to point out. Not to mention that fact that the guy was from the Capitol, which had apparently granted him some sort of insider knowledge that Dean and Jo could use to their advantage. “Maybe we can all...declare a truce? Work together for a while?”

Jo clearly wanted to spend some time glaring at him, but could only afford a quick withering glance as she kept her crossbow trained on Jimmy. “Absolutely not,” she said, at the same time Jimmy said, “I do not see the point.”

Dean thought he could-probably-trust Jo not to do anything hasty, so it was Jimmy’s objection he tackled first. “Look,” he told the other boy, “if you wanted me dead, you could have let that spirit take me out. But you didn’t, so now I want to try to return the favor. We don’t have to be best friends, but we can watch each other’s backs. Three are harder to beat than two. Two are definitely harder to take down than one.” He let that last idea hang there, a not-so-subtle threat that looked gentle in the face of Jo’s loaded bow.

Jimmy seemed uninterested in either. “I have no interest in killing either of you. I will if I have to, but at the moment I don’t see why that should become necessary.”

“So you’ll accept our help? A truce?” Dean pressed.

“Dean!” Jo hissed.

Dean ignored her; Jimmy did, too.

“I don’t need your help. But you can stay here if that’s what you’re really asking.”

He turned around and walked back into the cave, as if oblivious to the tip of Jo’s arrow trembling at his back.

The moment Jimmy was gone, Jo seized Dean’s arm. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “We can’t trust him!”

“I think we can, for now,” Dean said honestly. It went without saying that if it came down to the three of them, all bets were off. “I think he’s on the level.”

But Jo shook her head. “We don’t know him. And even if we did, he’s our competitor, Dean-our enemy!”

“Lots of people form truces in the Games,” Dean said.

“And lots of people stab each other in the back!” Jo straightened her shoulders, took a breath. “Do you remember those two kids we met at the banquet, the ones from District 3?”

Dean’s mind, unwilling, flashed to their faces: the girl broad-cheeked and wide-eyed; the boy with an easy smile, stuffed with food. “Andy and April?”

“Ava,” Jo said, in a low voice. “Andy and Ava. They were from the same district, they were friends, and when I was breaking toward the woods this morning, I saw Ava run up to where Andy was waiting and drive a sword through his chest.”

Jo let that sink in for a moment, staring up at Dean with her mouth a thin, dead line.

“We can’t trust anybody, Dean,” she told him.

Dean swallowed. “You can trust me.”

Jo blinked rapidly, once, twice. “I know,” she said, even more of a whisper. “That’s different.”

Dean touched her shoulder. “Then trust me on this. I think an alliance is a good idea. Eight tributes died today. Tomorrow, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Jo bit, then released her bottom lip. “We can’t sleep if he-”

“I’ll take the first watch,” he promised. “You can sleep with your crossbow in your hand...”

“Oh, I was gonna do that anyway.”

He wanted to hug her like he did Sam: pull her close to his chest and squeeze her tight. But she was not a child, and she was heavily armed. So he just nodded and preceded her into the cave.

It was strange in there. It should have been totally dark, as Jimmy had-wisely-not tried to make a fire, and the sky beyond the opening was becoming increasingly inky. But an odd luminescence, invisible from outside, permeated the space. Dean could make out Jimmy’s shadowy features where he sat with his legs crossed near the far wall. “Oh,” he said. “You’re still here.”

Dean stared at him for a second, then tucked his knife into his boot, spat in his palm, and strode decisively forward. “Truce,” he said formally.

Jimmy stared at Dean’s outstretched hand like it was a gift he didn’t particularly want. Maybe this custom wasn’t common to the Capitol.

“Dean!” Jo said excitedly, distracting him so that he was looking away when Jimmy’s hand slid damply into his own, squeezing. When he looked back down, Jimmy had already dropped away.

“Dean,” Jo repeated, and Dean walked over to where she was standing by the other wall. Her hands were pressed against the cool stone, and when Dean leaned closer, he saw what had her so entranced: there was a thin trickle of water, beading faintly over the surface of the rock. Dean nodded at her, and she suckled at it for a moment before taking a gasping breath and backing up to let Dean get a sip.

The water was almost painfully cool on his parched tongue, running over his cracked lips. He knew its taste was mineral, bitter, but he didn’t care: he sucked eagerly at the stone. Eventually, he forced himself to take a step back, turning to Jimmy, who was sitting at the opposite end of the chamber. “You want some?”

“No,” Jimmy said, not looking up.

Dean and Jo exchanged a look. By some mutual, silent agreement, they lowered themselves to the ground, Dean sitting with his back to the wall across from the one Jimmy still sat by. Jo knelt next to him, crossbow in her lap.

“So,” Dean said after a moment, “District 1, huh?”

In the dim, unnatural light, Dean could just make out Jimmy blinking at him. “You can rest, if you like,” he said eventually. “I’ll keep watch.”

Dean’s eyes flickered to Jo again. Deliberately, so she could see, he drew his knife back out of his boot and laid it on his knee. He kept the cudgel in his other hand. He nodded at Jo, subtly, all while flashing Jimmy a broad smile.

Jimmy seemed unimpressed. He didn’t react when Jo leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, or when Dean remained upright and watchful. The ground was cold and Dean felt twitchy and nervous, the slightest noise from outside making his head twist toward the entrance of the cave. Jimmy, however, remained stiff and still, the line of his back perfectly straight. He stared directly ahead, his face a mask.

Dean began to feel more and more uneasy about this truce thing.

He glanced beside him, saw that Jo’s eyes were still shut, that her breathing had evened out. When he turned back toward Jimmy, the other boy hadn’t moved an inch, of course. “Hey,” he hissed. “How did you know about that stuff? The spirit, and the, the wind-thing?”

One of the closest things Dean had seen to an emotion passed across Jimmy’s face. Brittle, “I have some knowledge,” he said.

“Yeah, I saw,” Dean shot back. “From where?”

Jimmy stared at him. Even across the dim cave, his eyes looked impossibly old in his soft, young face. “My father taught me,” he said at length.

Dean nodded. “What’s your dad do?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, after another lengthy pause. “I haven’t seen him for some time.”

“Oh,” said Dean. “I didn’t know that-” Representatives of the Capitol came and took people from other districts away with them; Dean hadn’t thought that people from the Capitol could be stolen away, too. “I’m sorry. They-”

Dean wasn’t supposed to talk about this. He’d cautioned Sam time after time. The official story was that Sam and Dean Campbell didn’t know who their father was-for all they knew, they might not even share the same one. Their mother was listed in the Capitol’s records as a Magdalene, and nothing Sam or Dean said could ever suggest otherwise.

In District 12, it didn’t matter much: there were too many others in on the lie. But here, in the Games, anything Dean said could get picked up by the feed. It wouldn’t make any difference for him, but Sam- Even with Dean here in Sam’s place, his brother was still in danger.

“I don’t know where my father is, either,” Dean said carefully.

Dean didn’t get to find out if Jimmy was simply once again going to be slow in his reply, or if he truly didn’t have anything to say to that, because a piercing scream ripped through the relative quiet and safety of the cave. Dean was on his feet even before Jo had finished jolting awake. “…going on?” she mumbled, but Dean just said, “Shh,” and crept past her to the mouth of the cave, peering out but hanging back enough to keep to the shadows.

The woods looked eerie in moonlight, all pale white light giving way to deep, dark shadow. It was breezy enough for the leaves to be blowing a little, skittering along the ground. And there were other sounds, horrible sounds: pounding footsteps, a hissing snarl, and a girl’s voice, crying out for help between panting breaths.

Dean thought of the blonde girl with the mocking smile. He could not, would not make the same mistake twice. And yet…

The shadowy figure of a girl tumbled into view at the bottom of the rise. She was stumbling as a she ran, clutching at her right shoulder. Dean was pretty sure it was not the girl from before, and that this girl’s distress was genuine. And then he became positive, as some…thing, an animal of some kind, maybe, slunk into view behind her. The noise it was making turned Dean’s blood to ice. Then, as he watched, it lunged, catching the girl by the ankle as she started up the hill, dragging her back down.

Dean turned around and snatched the crossbow out of Jo’s startled hands without another thought. “Wait here,” he was whispering, and then felt himself abruptly seized by the shoulder.

“You can’t save her,” Jimmy said, his old eyes suddenly fresh and huge and blue. “She is beyond saving.”

Dean shoved him off. “We’ll see.”

He had no strategy, only speed and surprise on his side. He raced down the hill, bow primed and finger on the trigger; when the creature raised its snarling head, he fired. The thing yelped and tumbled back; Dean skidded forward another step and grabbed the girl by the hand, tugging her up. “Can you still walk?” he asked.

He barely waited for her nod before charging up the hill again, the girl a heavy, but hardly dead, weight at his side. His shoulders were tense in anticipation of that thing recovering and flinging itself at Dean’s back, its sharp claws digging in…but the moment never came. Dean cast a glance back over his shoulder when they reached the cave’s mouth, and the creature was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did it go?” Dean asked Jo, who was helping the grateful girl lower herself down with her back against the cave wall.

“I think it ran off,” Jo said. “Give me my crossbow back.”

Dean handed it off without a word, ignoring the way Jo checked the mechanism over, like she was convinced that in firing one arrow, Dean had found a way to mess it up. He ignored Jimmy’s steely-eyed glare, too, and left Jo to fetch her quiver and reload while he knelt at the new girl’s side. “Hey,” he asked her, “you okay?”

She was still shaking, her breath coming in gasps, but she didn’t seem too badly hurt. There was a large tear in her shirt at the shoulder and the cloth was bloody. Dean waited until she had given him another nod before peeling back the fabric. There was definitely a wound there, a bite mark maybe, but… “This doesn’t look too bad,” he told her. “See, it’s stopped bleeding already.”

She stared up at him with large dark eyes. She was a pretty girl, maybe a year or so older than Sam, but tall for her age: she would have towered over him. “You saved my life,” she said. She sounded surprised.

Dean felt a defense for this horrible action of his rise to his lips, then in a moment of sharp awareness, shoved it down. “Yeah, I did.”

“I don’t think you quite understand the purpose of this Game,” said Jimmy from behind him, an edge to his tone that Dean couldn’t quite read.

“Actually, I do. I just think the purpose is stupid.” So much for keeping his mouth closed for Sam’s sake. But Dean was hungry and exhausted, and he was having a hard time keeping himself reined in. “And for a while, I thought you did, too. I heard what you said to the Gamemaster.”

Jimmy’s voice was flat. “I was wrong.”

Dean stared him down. “I guess I was, too.”

He turned back to the girl on the ground, practically daring Jimmy to do something.

“How are you doing? There’s some water over here if you want some.” He nodded at Jo, who helped the girl up and led her over to the trickle running down the cave wall.

“I’m Jo, by the way,” said Jo, pointedly.

“Oh yeah. Dean,” said Dean.

“I’m Madison,” said the girl. There was a pause, during which she gulped greedily at the tiny ribbon of water, and Jimmy failed to introduce himself at all.

Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder at him. “The charmer’s Jimmy.”

“It’s all right.” Madison shakily sat back down. “I remember you guys from the interviews. I think I learned everyone’s names…”

“Why would you want to do that?” Dean snapped before he could stop himself.

Madison pulled some of her long dark hair-now knotted and dirty-away from her face. “Well, I had thought- This is going to sound stupid.”

“Don’t worry, Dean’s set a low bar,” Jo said, smiling at him. Jimmy continued to stare at them all, creepily.

“Well,” Madison said again, and although it was dark, Dean could still see her flush. “I had this idea that when the Games started, we could, like, all just sit down in a big circle and hold hands, and refuse to kill each other-any of us at all. And even though they might let us starve, or they might- We wouldn’t all be dying for nothing. It would really say something.”

There was something so open and innocent about her expression as she laid all this out. Dean knew it was ridiculous, but he couldn’t help smiling at her. “Man, my brother would like you.” He hoped she realized what a compliment this was.

But Jimmy was staring coolly down his nose. “Such a plan would never work.”

“I know.” Madison let out a breath. “I tried talking to people at the banquet, but they just laughed at me. Well, except this one girl, Meg? She told me she thought it was a great idea and when the signal went I should find her and we could hold hands and she’d help me gather everyone else together.” Dean could tell from the dark, angry edge that had entered Madison’s voice that this story wasn’t going to end well. “But then later I heard her talking to the other tribute from her district about what an easy mark I was. Watch out for her,” she added, seriously.

“Which one’s she?” asked Dean.

“Um. District 5?” said Madison. “Blonde, short hair-”

“Oh,” said Jo sharply. “Her.”

“Yeah,” said Dean, repressing a shudder at the memory of the way Meg’s false scream had turned into a sharp-toothed grin. “We kinda ran into her already. Don’t worry, though-her buddy’s toast. Jo got him with an arrow right to the throat.”

Madison seemed significantly less impressed by this accomplishment than Dean was. She pulled her long legs up to her chest. “I still don’t see how I could hurt anybody.”

Jimmy let out a snort. Dean wheeled on him. “What is your problem?”

“Minor, compared to yours.” Jimmy sat down again, tucking his legs under his body with an odd deliberateness.

Beside Dean, Jo yawned. “Sorry,” she said, but it was too late: both Dean and Madison had caught it, and their own yawns followed.

“You can sleep,” Jimmy said, not looking over at them. “I gave my word.”

“Yeah, well, what about you?” Dean asked. “Somebody still needs to keep watch, no matter how well we may trust each other.” He mostly managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, he thought.

“I’ll keep watch, as I said.” Jimmy regarded him coolly. “I do not require much sleep.”

“Fine,” said Dean. He sat down again, because he knew it would encourage Jo to-she was definitely going to need more than the twenty minutes she had gotten. There was no way he was going to fall asleep and leave Jimmy to his own devices, though. The guy might have saved Dean’s life, but there was something seriously off about him.

It was hard to keep awake, however-especially after Jo and Madison nodded off, their bodies warm on either side of Dean. Dean kept his eyes open, but he felt like he was losing a battle against his own eyelids. Occasionally, especially when his head started to nod, he thought he caught Jimmy watching him from across the cave. At one point he forced his eyes open and found the other boy crouched right in front of him. Dean struggled to react in time as Jimmy reached forward with two pale, ghostly fingers and touched Dean’s-

Dean woke slowly, the morning sunlight creeping past his eyelids. Madison and Jo were still asleep on either side of him, Jo emitting her little sigh-like snores. Dean’s chest clenched as he looked across the cave, but Jimmy was sitting with his legs folded underneath his body, perfectly still; if his eyes hadn’t been wide open, Dean would have almost thought he was at prayer.

So it had been a dream, then. It must have been. Dean had fallen asleep like an idiot, and here they all were, still alive, Jimmy eying Dean from across the cave with something that was almost a smile on his face.

“I trust you are well-rested, then.”

Dean opened his mouth to respond, but his stomach interrupted, growling loudly. Jo, whose head had slipped down low on Dean’s shoulder, snuffled and woke. “Oh,” she said. “For a second I thought I smelled my mom baking bread…”

“Don’t talk about bread,” Dean said.

“Bread?” Madison sat up, rubbing her eyes. “There’s bread?”

“Sorry, no bread.” Dean stood, clutching his side where it was still sore from yesterday’s beating. “I’m gonna go…” He inclined his head toward the mouth of the cave. “Be right back.”

Keeping a careful eye on the forest, Dean relieved himself quickly against the base of a tree, then went back inside. Jo was checking Madison’s wound; “No sign of infection,” she told them both, standing as Dean entered. “Is there a good…?” she asked him more quietly.

“There’s some bushes to the left…”

Jo nodded and walked past him, smoothing her hands down the sides of her pants as she went.

Dean was lapping water from the cold rock when Jo came barreling back into the cave. “I’m sorry, I’m-” She let out a wordless growl of anger and frustration. “Someone saw me. We have to get out of here.”

“Someone saw you?” Dean felt offended on her behalf more than angry: certain times were private times.

“Who?” Madison asked.

“Uh… The tall guy from District 2? Soldier boy. I think he was working as a scout or something-he saw me and then just slipped right back into the woods.”

“Oh. You mean Jake,” Madison said. She was frowning. “I still can’t believe he joined with them. I liked him.”

“Them?” Dean snapped. “Who’s them?”

“The kids from District 6,” Madison explained. “They claimed the big pile of weapons and convinced a couple of the toughest-seeming tributes to join with them. I hid under the windmill for a while,” she said, clearly picking up on Jo’s skeptical look. “Then they started doing these, like, sweeps of the town, and I got scared and ran before they found me.”

“Okay,” said Dean. “So they’re probably going to be sending people after us.”

Dean saw Jo’s fist clench; she looked furious with herself.

“Hey,” Dean said, “it’s no big deal. We were going to have to leave eventually because we don’t have any food here. We can always come back later,” he told them-especially Jimmy, who did not look happy at the prospect of leaving the cave he probably thought of as his. “If they’re trying to hold the cache, they’ll have to focus their manpower there, so they’ll probably give up on this place if they don’t find us here.”

Jo’s mouth was a firm line, but she nodded, swinging her quiver back over her shoulder. Madison scooted closer to them, clearly grateful for the company. Jimmy, however, continued to stand apart. “I’m not going,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Dean said-part of him wondering if he should even bother. Jimmy was a jerk: what was it to Dean if he got himself killed for no reason? “You don’t even know how many of them there’s going to be.”

“I can take care of myself,” Jimmy said, skinny arms straight at his sides.

“You don’t even have a weapon!” Dean protested.

“And we’re not leaving any of ours,” Jo added.

“Nevertheless,” said Jimmy, stepping away from the entrance, “I would prefer to remain here.”

The last word was hardly out of Jimmy’s mouth when the ground beneath their feet began to shake, an echoing rumble charging down the hillside and seemingly directly into their ears. “What’s that?” Madison asked, but Jo didn’t even bother to answer: she simply grabbed the other girl by the arm and yanked her out of the cave. Dean started to follow before he realized that Jimmy was still hanging back, staring up at the quivering ceiling as dark grey dust and chunks of rock rained down on him. The expression on his face was quietly furious, like someone he knew personally had let him down.

“You-” Dean ground out, then darted back and seized Jimmy by the arm, dragging him forward to the cave’s entrance. Jimmy’s slim shoulder felt surprisingly solid under Dean’s hand, as unmovable as the rock itself had appeared to be. But that solidity was apparently a lie, as was Jimmy’s immobility: after a moment’s hesitation, he followed where Dean pulled, tumbling outside and down the hill to stand with Madison and Jo as their place of refuge crumbled to pieces right in front of them.

“Well, so much for that,” Jo said, as a large boulder fell with some finality in front of where the cave’s entrance had been.

“Zachariah is not known for his subtlety,” Jimmy said, glaring at the fallen rocks like he thought that if he stared hard enough, he might find some way to move them with his mind.

“Yeah, the spirits and the unpronounceable monsters were kind of a clue,” Dean said. “I guess somebody wants us to go back toward the town.”

“What should we do?” Madison asked.

“We should go toward the town,” Jimmy said.

“What,” said Jo, “give in to him?”

Jimmy shook his head, minutely. “That is not what I said.”

“Well, we gotta get out of here, anyway,” Dean said. Twice now he’d heard something that sounded like a bird’s call. But there were no birds in this forest. “Come on,” he said, guiding Madison with a gentle hand on her shoulder, exchanging significant looks with Jo. Her crossbow was hefted and ready, her finger on the trigger. He glanced at the contents of her quiver, counted: four arrows left.

They didn’t end up having to use any on the trek back to the town, fortunately: despite Dean’s sense of unease, no one emerged from between the trees, weapons at the ready, bloodsport in their eyes. In fact, the whole place seemed eerily silent.

“How many people do you think are left?” Madison whispered at one point.

“I dunno,” Dean whispered back. “It was sixteen at last prayer.”

Madison nodded. Then, “So where is everyone?” she said.

Dean could only shrug.

When the outlines of the decrepit brown buildings began appearing through the trees, they paused. “So what’s the plan?” Dean asked.

He was really only asking Jo, and she was the one who answered. “Scope out the situation? See if we can figure out where the food is?”

“Yeah,” said Dean, “if there’s any food.”

“I’m sure there’s food,” said Jimmy-the first thing he’d said in a while. “The Game would be over too quickly if there weren’t.”

“Excellent,” said Dean. “An optimist.”

“He has probably hidden it inside the buildings.”

“Okay, no problem,” Dean said. “We’ll just sneak in the back way.”

This proved more difficult than he had supposed. Dean had been too busy warding off axe blows before, but what had vaguely registered then became all too apparent now: all the buildings opened solely out onto the main square, their back and side walls nothing but bare, warped boards.

“Maybe we can pry some of them loose?” Dean suggested from where they were still clustered up in the trees, looking down.

“Yeah, because that won’t be loud at all,” Jo said.

Dean let out a frustrated breath. “How many are still guarding the cache?”

Keeping low to the ground, Jo crept back over to see. “Two at the center of the square,” she reported. “The, uh, guy from District 10 and the one from, um. Nine, I think?”

“Walt and Duane,” Madison whispered.

“There might be a third, too,” Jo said. “I thought I saw someone lurking over by the windmill, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“And more could come back at any minute,” Dean reminded them. “All right. I’ve got a plan.”

They all looked at him expectantly. Even Jimmy: his eyes sliding over to Dean’s with a look of frustrated reluctance.

Dean nodded to himself. “You guys should wait here,” he said decisively. “I’m going to try to sneak into the building at the end of the square.”

“No way!” Jo hissed back. “I’m coming with you.”

With effort, Dean managed to bite back on several more vehement denials and said, “I think it’d be better if you waited here.”

“Well, we’re not going to let you go by yourself!”

“Why not? It makes a lot more sense than all four of us blundering around down there. One person’s way less likely to be caught than four.”

“Fine,” Jo said. “Then I’ll go.”

“What?”

“For the record,” said Madison, “I’m perfectly okay with staying here.”

Dean ignored her. “I’m the oldest,” he told Jo. “I should go.”

“I have the best weapon,” countered Jo. “I should go.”

“It’s a great distance weapon, yeah,” Dean said, “but I think it’d be pretty awkward for sneaking around. Which is why you should cover me from up here while I-”

“Um, guys,” Madison said.

“Okay, you can take the crossbow then,” Jo proposed.

“Guys,” Madison hissed, giving Dean’s sleeve a sharp tug. He glanced up, following the direction of her pointing finger to where Jimmy was strolling purposefully and ostentatiously down the hillside.

“Oh-” Dean started. “Cover me,” he snapped at Jo, then took off as quietly as he could after Jimmy.

Dean caught up to him at the bottom of the incline, just as he was about to take a stroll between two of the buildings and out into the square. Dean grabbed Jimmy by the elbow and swung him around so that his shoulders bounced off the farther building’s back wall with a small sneeze of sawdust. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Dean hissed. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I appreciate your regard for my safety,” Jimmy said, staring up at Dean with those flat blue eyes, “but I do not share the same concerns.”

Dean shoved at Jimmy’s shoulders again. “Well, you’re gonna get us all killed. Maybe you ought to start showing some concern about that, huh?”

For a second, Jimmy’s eyes rolled skyward; it didn’t quite look like a prayer, not this time. Then his gaze slid, cool and steady, back to Dean. “I am trying to help you-help all of us-acquire some food. That is something you desire, correct?”

Dean shifted backward, suddenly hyperaware of the shape of Jimmy’s wiry body beneath his. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “So what’s your stupid plan-besides wandering out into the open and getting killed?”

Jimmy’s eyes raked over him. “Will you trust me?”

Dean shifted in place. “Yeah, I guess.” He had so far, anyway-for whatever reason.

“All right,” said Jimmy. “And I am trusting you to wait until the right moment to move.”

Then, faster than Dean could react, he slipped by Dean and strode purposefully around the corner of the building and out into the center of the square.

“Hello,” Jimmy called out, and Dean watched with his heart in his throat as the shorter, sandy-haired boy-Duane, Madison had said-turned around, sword raised and mouth slightly agape. “Are you paying attention to me?”

“You better start paying attention to this,” Duane said, advancing with the sword. “Don’t move.”

“I see. You’re waiting for your friend to sneak up on me with that mace?” asked Jimmy, matter-of-factly, without turning his head toward where the tribute Dean was pretty sure was called Walt was advancing on tip-toe.

Dean’s own body was tense as a taut wire, pressed up onto the balls of his feet, prepared to run-in which direction, he had no idea. This was the worst plan ever. Dean tried to remind himself that he didn’t really like Jimmy all that much-but his stomach continued to feel hollowed out from something other than hunger.

“We’ve waited enough,” Duane said. Both he and Walt lunged. Dean forced himself forward, breaking for the nearest building’s front door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jimmy turn neatly on his heel and twist Walt’s mace out of his hand with an easy grace that made Dean’s fumblings with the red-haired tribute’s axe look dangerously clumsy. Jimmy moved like he was dancing: knocking first one boy, then the other, swiftly into the dirt. Dean couldn’t help pausing by the building’s entrance for a moment, gaping at the disinterested way Jimmy wiped Duane’s own blood off his sword.

I have no interest in killing either of you, Dean remembered Jimmy saying. I will if I have to, but at the moment I don’t see why that should become necessary. At the time it had seemed like such a laughably empty threat.

No one was laughing now. Certainly not Walt: he barely moved or made a sound as Jimmy placed his boot on the fallen tribute’s gurgling throat and pressed. Jimmy’s face bore no emotion as he looked up; then his eyes met Dean’s across the square and a frown appeared. Dean could actually read this expression: Why are you still here?

Dean had turned, flushing, back toward the door, when he heard a startled cry from behind him. He turned around again in time to see Jimmy crumple to the ground. Dean stared in shock: the square was empty, so what could have possibly…

The remains of the weapons cache began to slide, blades and clubs tumbling over each other as something pushed its way out from within. The tall, skinny tribute from District 6 emerged from within the pile, chuckling to himself. He held a spent slingshot in his hand.

“So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David,” said the tribute, in a sing-song voice. Then he bent fluidly at the waist and retrieved the sword Jimmy had dropped. “But looky what I’ve got.”

Jimmy sat up as the other tribute advanced: Dean could see the blood streaming down his forehead and across his face. He had to be half-blind, Dean thought, watching Jimmy’s hand fumble for Walt’s mace as the other tribute crept closer, taking his time.

“Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine,” he shouted, voice echoing like the priests’ did, every Sunday morning, looming over Jimmy down in the dirt, “and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith.”

Jimmy was going to die, Dean realized, he was going to watch Jimmy die-but Dean’s feet had already figured it out: he was racing forward across the square, flinging himself at the tribute with the sword, smashing his cudgel into the other boy’s head. They tumbled backward onto the hard earth, and Dean heard the tribute grunt beneath him, heard Jimmy call his name, heard the rapid beating of his own heart and the fiery sharp intake of breath his lungs sucked down as something pierced his side: barely more than a little prick at first, and then an explosive fountain of pain, pain that swallowed the whole world, white fading into black.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the woods, lying in the leaves and staring up at Jimmy’s frowning face. His hands flew with shocky panic to his chest, but the flesh felt solid: his shirt was torn, and beneath the ripped fabric he could see a thin red line below his ribs. “Don’t worry,” Jimmy said, “it was just a scratch.”

“What happened?” Dean said, pushing himself up and looking around in confusion.

“We both made some very foolish choices,” said Jimmy, voice tight.

“Yeah, but-” He stabbed me, Dean wanted to argue. I was stabbed. He remembered it: and yet the marks on his body told a different story. He made himself redirect his attention elsewhere. “Let me see your head.”

Jimmy squinted down at him. “It was just a-”

“-A scratch, yeah. Lucky us.” Dean frowned. “You got a lot of people praying for you back home or something?”

Jimmy let out a short breath. “I highly doubt it.”

Dean tried standing up: he was surprised to find that he felt pretty okay, certainly better than he had since Tom started kicking him in the ribs the day before. Except… “Where’s Jo? And Madison?”

“They were not where we left them,” Jimmy reported. “I suspect they are hiding somewhere. We need to find them before nightfall.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, “I definitely don’t want them wandering around on their own in the dark.”

Jimmy didn’t reply, and while Dean certainly hadn’t found him to be chatty, he was surprised by the sudden silence. “What?” Dean said.

“I’m pondering which way we should go,” Jimmy answered eventually.

Dean was pondering that, too. “Okay,” he said after a minute. “We’d talked about going back to the cave later. I bet that’s where she’s headed.”

Jimmy nodded. “I suppose that sounds logical.”

To Dean’s surprise, he found himself stifling a snort. “What?” it was now Jimmy’s turn to ask.

“‘I suppose that sounds logical’-you’re a funny guy, Jim. Anybody ever tell you that you’re a funny guy?”

“No,” said Jimmy, definitively. And then, his mouth twisting down, “And my name isn’t Jim.”

“Sorry,” Dean said, though he wasn’t sorry at all-he was, in fact, ready to start calling Jimmy “Jimbo.” But looking at the puzzled expression on the other boy’s face, Dean’s mind suddenly fast-forwarded, saw the look Jimmy would surely give him at the end. If one or both of them wasn’t dead by then, there would have to be a moment, a final moment when one of them turned on the other: when Jimmy struck Dean down like he had Walt and Duane, or when Dean took his knife and stabbed Jimmy in the back. Because it wasn’t going to be either of them, winning this thing. Neither of them was getting out of this place alive.

“Come on,” Dean said, turning sharply, his empty stomach rolling. He started cutting a path back toward the cave, not bothering to see whether Jimmy was following or not.

They’d been walking for about twenty minutes without speaking when Dean heard something: nothing much, a tiny rustle, but it was enough to make the hunter’s instincts his mother had trained into him stand up and take notice. Dean moved slowly down to a crouch, hand gripping the handle of the knife he still had tucked in his boot. “Jim-” he started, and got no further, mocking replaced by alarm as he heard another rustle in the branches right above his head. Dean dropped and rolled to the side, but Jimmy-solid, steady Jimmy-remained still, and thus it was Jimmy who ended up with a machete pointed at his throat.

He seemed pretty calm about it. Much calmer than Dean, who kept low, his knife thrust forward, closing their trio of bodies into a loose triangle. “Don’t move,” Dean told the tribute with the machete.

“Uh-uh,” the kid said. Dean recognized him from the interviews: he was the guy who had told the sob story about his sister, swearing vengeance. “I think it’s pretty clear that I’m the one in charge here.”

Dean shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I dunno. I think if you had the balls to kill anybody, you’d have done it already.”

The other tribute chuckled. “You hear that, buddy?” He took a step toward Jimmy. “Your friend seems pretty comfortable, betting with your life.”

Jimmy’s eyes met Dean’s, blue and glassy. “He’s not my friend.”

Dean’s stance didn’t waver. It didn’t.

The other tribute laughed. “Isn’t this nice? Gotta love that about the Games: they’re a great place to see people’s true colors come out. Now,” he told Dean, “give me everything you’ve collected, starting with that knife.”

“Right,” Dean said with a snort. “And then I’m sure you’ll just let us go on our merry little ways. What’s the matter? That’s a pretty big blade you’ve got there-do you not know how to use it?”

Machete guy tried inching forward again: Dean mirrored him. “You know what I think, Jimmy?” Dean said. “I think he’s too afraid to actually fight us. Wave it around all you want,” Dean told the other tribute, “but unless you’re prepared to actually shove it in-”

Dean had him: he was sure of it. Any second now, the guy was going to give up on Jimmy and lunge at Dean, and then Dean would be able to take him. Probably. But he never got to find out, because just then a voice Dean recognized shouted, “Gordon! Dean! What are you doing?”

To his surprise, they both turned on Madison and hissed, “Shh!”

That reduced the tension somewhat, although Dean certainly didn’t lower his weapon. “Gordon” didn’t, either, returning his focus to Dean as he snapped, “Stay out of this, Madison! I told you that once we entered the arena, you were on your own, and I meant it!”

“But I’m not alone. These are my friends!” Madison said.

Dean was relieved to hear that somebody thought so. He was even more relieved to see Jo appear at the top of the rise behind Madison, figure outlined against the rising moon: she looked fine, although her crossbow was gone. There was a story there, Dean thought, his stomach tensing again-and probably not a good one.

“We have an alliance,” Madison continued. “You can join with us, if you want.” Which, uh, no, Dean was thinking, but he’d start smiling and nodding if it meant Gordon stopped waving that machete around.

“We can still do my idea,” Madison said. “Once everyone else is gone, our group: we can go sit in the middle of the square and hold hands and refuse to finish the Game. They can’t make us kill anyone.”

“You’re-” crazy, Dean was sure Gordon was about to say, but then the horn sounded and he obediently sank to his knees with the rest of them. Except Jimmy, Dean realized halfway through the Salve Regina the first blast signified. Jimmy was still on his feet, his head raised blasphemously high, his lips not even pretending to mouth the words. He was staring at Madison, watching her like he really did think she was crazy-even dangerous.

Dean decided to ignore him-Jimmy who wasn’t his friend. He went back to counting Salves; they were on their third when suddenly the ordered lines of prayer were interrupted by an inhuman snarl. Dean looked up in time to see Madison leaping on Gordon-only she didn’t look like Madison anymore. She looked hunched and feral: just like the thing Dean had shot with one of Jo’s arrows the night before. She had pinned Gordon to the ground and Dean could hear him screaming, see his blood gushing out onto the leaves. Madison had ripped his throat open with her teeth.

Dean was still staring in shock when Jimmy strode forward and clinched his elbow tight around Madison’s neck. Dean saw her rear up, saw her hands seize on Jimmy’s arm, digging in with impossibly long nails. And he saw the moment when Jimmy’s control slipped, when Madison, her elongated teeth bared in a snarl, managed to twist her body sharply enough to throw Jimmy off. He skidded backward across the ground, a look of surprise on his normally placid face.

Dean darted forward without thought, aiming toward where Gordon lay on the ground, still gurgling. But Jo beat him there. She picked up the machete, met Dean’s gaze, and tossed it to him so that Dean didn’t even have to think when he reached out: it thunked into his hand, hilt first. He spun around, saw Madison lunging at Jimmy, and he struck.

The feel of the blade going in was horrible, worse than the sink of the knife into the red-haired tribute’s chest. Dean would have pulled back, but on some instinctive level he knew that an aborted motion would be worse. The blade was sharp, the slice true. Madison’s body crumpled to the ground, and Dean looked away, telling himself that she had already been gone.

He walked over to where Jimmy sat propped on his elbows, extending the machete instead of his hand. “You knew this would happen,” he said.

“I told you she was beyond saving.” Dean thought for a moment that there might be something, a waver of sympathy, of sorrow, in Jimmy’s voice. But he told himself he was probably only hearing what he wanted to hear.

“Man, there is something broken in you,” Dean said. He backed away, still holding the machete tight. “Come on, Jo,” he said, pulling up next to her, feeling a wash of relief just being at her side. “Let’s find somewhere to hole up for the night.”

Jo didn’t argue with him. She looked a little like she might be in shock, but she took the knife Dean handed her, adjusted it in her grip with ease. “I think I know a spot,” she whispered to him. Dean nodded, followed her.

He looked back over his shoulder once as they cut between the trees. Jimmy was on his knees now, as he had not been for the Salve Regina. His wide blue eyes tracked after them, watching, but he made no attempt to follow.



Part I / Masterpost / Part III