DCBB Fic: Bird of Paradise (Part III)

[trinityofone]

Jo led him to a cluster of thorny bushes; when she pushed them aside with her elbow, Dean saw a small dip in the hillside, big enough for two people to hunker down. Jo kept holding the branches out of the way, nodding at him, so eventually Dean dropped down, then held his hand out to her when she was ready to follow. She declined to take it, shooting him a smirk.

A second later, however, she was nevertheless curling up at his side, her head on his chest. She plucked at the torn fabric of his shirt. “What happened?” she asked.

Dean told her an abbreviated version, skipping over his certainty that he’d been stabbed, and finding himself unconsciously repeating Jimmy’s words: “It’s just a scratch.”

“Good,” said Jo, releasing a soft sigh. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay and help.”

Dean echoed Jo now: “What happened?”

“That girl Ava,” Jo said, with something close to a snarl. “She almost managed to sneak up on us. And when I finally heard her and turned to fire, the bow jammed. She had this piece of wire, and she tried to wrap it around my neck…” The skin there looked red and raw, Dean saw now, stomach churning as he squinted in the dark. “Madison,” Jo took a deep breath, “she was pretty useless. Finally I managed to get one of my arrows out…I stabbed Ava in the hand with it. She let go and ran off.” Her right hand flew out and smacked the ground. “I don’t know why I can’t close the deal!”

“You closed that guy Tom’s deal pretty good,” Dean pointed out.

“Yeah?” Jo said, a grin briefly illuminating her features. Then her face fell. “Oh, man. Dean, this is so sick. I keep telling myself that we’re better than the rest of them, but we’re not. Not when in my head I’m keeping score.”

Dean had a running tally of how many more people he had to burn through (nine, and then he himself made an even ten). “That’s how the Games work…” he said, and he knew right away that it sounded weak.

Jo clearly knew, too. “Maybe Madison was right,” she said. “They’re not actually making us kill anyone. We’re making the choice ourselves, every time.”

“If you hadn’t killed Tom, he would have killed me,” Dean said.

“Well, okay,” Jo said with something that was maybe a laugh. “I suppose he deserved it. But Dean,” she continued, her voice serious again, “Madison sure didn’t deserve whatever it was that happened to her. That…that was sick. That’s,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “that’s someone up there, Zachariah or whoever, messing with us. I think he’s interfering a lot, actually. I was taking good care of that bow. You remember how carefully I looked it over last night?”

Dean nodded.

“Well, after Ava took off, I checked out the firing mechanism again, and the wood all around it had rotted through. Since last night! It’s like the Gamemaster saw I had a weapon I knew how to use and was good with, so he decided to take it away.”

Dean bristled. “I really hate that guy.”

“Let’s show him,” Jo said, laying her head back down with a tired sigh. “Let’s win…”

Neither of them said anything about how at the end, there could be no “us.”



Dean awoke to a rustling sound and the shadow of a figure standing over him. He scrambled for the machete he’d stupidly placed too far away from himself, afraid he’d roll over on it in his sleep. But in all the time it took him to put his hand on it, the figure above him didn’t move, and Dean’s brain finally finished processing what it was seeing. It was Jimmy standing there, and what he was holding in his hand wasn’t a weapon but a canteen of some kind.

“I’ve come to apologize,” he said. “I did not mean to act…callous. Would you like some water?”

“Where did you get that?” Dean asked.

Jimmy shifted, his movements made especially awkward by the effort he was having to put into holding the bushes apart. “The one called Gordon had it.”

“So you robbed a corpse.”

“Dean.” Jo made an aborted effort to straighten the knots out of her hair before giving up. “Just take the water.”

Dean wasn’t sure if he was actually feeling suspicious or just petulant. “You drink some first,” he told Jimmy.

“It’s not poisoned,” Jimmy said, sounding annoyed. But he opened the canteen and raised it awkwardly to his mouth. Dean watched a stray drop slide over his lips and down his chin. “It doesn’t taste very good,” Jimmy cautioned, making a face as he lowered the canteen.

Jo snatched it out of his hand anyway. She gulped at the water, then visibly forced herself to slow and stop, passing the canteen to Dean. Dean tried to take it slow himself: he was so thirsty that the water actually made him feel a little sick. He took a steadying breath and pushed the canteen back at Jimmy.

Jimmy held it, and his hands themselves, like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. “I know you must both be anxious to find food,” he said after a minute. “If you’re amenable, I think we should try again to get inside the buildings surrounding the square.”

Dean stared up at him. “You think we should, huh?”

Jimmy squinted at him. “That’s what I said.”

Dean only realized he was still glaring back when Jo pushed away from him and stood. She grinned at Dean as she scrambled up the rise and through the bushes to stand beside Jimmy. “That Ava girl looked way too well fed,” she said. “I want a piece of that pie.”

Dean’s stomach moaned its protest.

Jimmy’s nose scrunched up. “What’s pie?”

“Okay, the allure of District 1 is officially shot,” Dean said, crawling out from between the bushes. He explained, with the help of Jo’s interjections, about the incredible treat Ellen horded supplies to make for them once a year.

“One year there wasn’t any fruit,” Jo said, “so she made one out of nuts! And it was still amazing!”

Jimmy looked skeptical regarding the insane tastiness of Ellen’s nut pie, but then this whole conversation seemed to baffle him a little. Or maybe he was just dizzy: Dean was definitely feeling less and less clear-headed as the Game progressed. If there was food hidden somewhere in the square, they were definitely at a disadvantage compared to the tributes who had claimed that territory. They needed to come up with a plan that surpassed Jimmy’s crazy stunt from yesterday.

It took them a while to work their way back down to the small cluster of buildings. Dean didn’t come up with anything brilliant on the way. He clutched his machete with his sweaty hand and tried not to run face-first into any of the trees. Jo’s walk had become a little lilting, Dean noticed, her teeth’s decisive grip on her bottom lip beginning to look a little desperate. Only Jimmy appeared unaffected, although he had a bug bite on his wrist that he seemed determined to scratch at until it bled.

After some brief discussion, they decided to try sneaking around to the far end of the square. They could hear voices from the opposite side: the tall skinny tribute with the slingshot singing to himself, totally ostentatious and unafraid. “I thought one of us had managed to kill him,” Dean whispered to Jimmy, disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy whispered back. “Next time I’ll delay carrying you to safety and dispose of him properly.”

“You do that,” said Dean.

He caught Jo rolling her eyes. “You two are ridiculous.”

Whatever feelings of cheer they might have been cultivating died when they peered around the corner of the building they were crouched behind and saw what the tributes were doing at the other end. The tall one-“Alastair,” Jo whispered-was dragging something across the ground while Jake and Ava looked on, the former frowning, the latter glassy-eyed. It looked like a sack, Dean thought at first, shivering as Alastair’s creaky voice drifted toward them.

“My boss man said you better get to work before I have to let you go
But he just walks around and pays no mind to the sweat dripping off my nose…”

Alastair broke off, grunting as he heaved the sack up. Only it wasn’t a sack: it was a body, the head lolling listlessly on the neck.

“Oh, but after ten long years of him dogging me out there’s one thing I learned well,” Alastair sang, shoving the semi-upright body against one of the windmill’s four supports and propping it there with the weight of his shoulder. “I’d rather…” He drew the word out dramatically, plucking an object from his pocket and spinning it in his hand. “Be a hammer. Sing it with me! Than a nail.”

Dean realized what Alastair was about to do a moment before he did it. He grabbed Jo by the wrist and tugged her back, away from the corner and what leaning around it allowed them to see. “Dean!” Jo protested, but she didn’t try to squirm away from him. They stood with their backs against the wood, listening to the thumps of the hammer hitting home.

A moment later the thumps were joined by weak, wretched screams. The body-the person-was still alive. Dean’s heart was pounding. His instinct was to help, but he knew that in these circumstances such a desire was futile, beyond foolish. All Alastair was doing, after all, was killing someone who Dean or Jo or Jimmy would otherwise have to kill.

There was another thump: both softer and nearer this time. Jimmy’s back hit the wall next to Dean. He had scratched the bug bite to the bleeding point, Dean saw, glancing over, but he didn’t seem to notice the thin rivulet of blood trailing down his wrist.

“That guy is messed up,” Dean said-because it was something to say, because it was better to listen to his own inane pronouncements than have to hear what was happening across the square.

Dean watched as Jimmy’s wide, blue eyes traveled across Dean’s face. “I had thought,” he started, then swallowed. “I had been under the impression that it would all be like this.”

“You mean from watching previous Games?” Jimmy just stared at him, but Dean was getting kind of used to that. “Yeah, there’s often a sadist or two, but mostly-”

“Get away from him!”

Dean broke off, hearing the girl’s shout. Slowly, with Jimmy at his side and Jo right behind him, he crept back to the corner and peered around. Tamara was standing at the top of the rise, not far from where Jo and Madison had waited yesterday. Dean could see Alastair turn away from his bloody work at the windmill’s base and locate where she stood. He waved at her.

“Let him go!” Tamara shouted.

“As you wish,” said Alastair, stepping away from the body-Isaac, Dean realized, it must be Isaac-with a dramatic flourish. “Look, ma, no hands!” Alastair hooted as Tamara’s husband continued to hang there, arms spread wide like a scarecrow’s. Dean was too far away to see where the nails had gone in, but he could see the pool of blood spreading across the dirt.

Tamara screamed. It was not a scream of horror: it was a wail of despair unlike anything Dean had ever heard. She came racing down the hillside, flinging the spear she held in her right hand. Dean saw Alastair hurl himself with rather less poise to the ground; then Tamara was barreling into Ava and Jake, whipping some sort of spiked chain out in front of her. Dean wanted to see her take them all down, wanted to see her win: but Alastair was already up again, his hammer in his hand, and Dean knew-

“Come on!” said Jo, tugging at Dean’s sleeve. “Now’s our chance! We have to go!”

Without looking again toward the other side of the square, Dean followed her around the corner and through the building’s front door. Jimmy closed it softly behind them but Dean nevertheless lurched away from the noise, still hearing the echo of that scream in his head.

It took him several seconds to appreciate the fact that they had made it: they were inside. Dean sucked in a breath and immediately coughed: the room was full of dust, dust covering the floorboards and floating through the air; it was crusted on the pair of small windows so that the glass looked almost black. Dean glanced around at Jimmy and Jo, who were also squinting in the dim light. There was hardly the array of bounty Dean had been hoping for.

“Maybe we picked the wrong building,” said Jo; she clearly felt the same way.

“Let’s try these barrels,” said Dean, walking over to a trio of them in the corner. They were also covered in dust. Dean reached out.

“Careful!” said Jimmy, catching Dean by the wrist.

“It’s a barrel,” Dean said. “A barrel’s not going to bite me.”

“I don’t trust Zachariah,” was all Jimmy said. Dean could hardly disagree with that, so he let Jimmy inspect the sinister barrel without touching it, before finally decreeing-based on some criteria entirely above and beyond Dean-that it was safe to open. Together, they pried the lid off.

“Oh,” said Dean, as the round lid tumbled to the side. Then before he could stop himself, his foot shot out and kicked the side of the barrel. It hurt. He stalked away, limping a bit, then came back to see Jo running her hands through the barrel’s contents: it was filled almost to the brim with silver ball bearings.

“He’s the sadist!” Dean snapped. He clenched his fist around the handle of the machete. “If I could get my hands on him-”

“That would have very little effect,” Jimmy said, at the same time Jo hissed, “Watch it!

“Let’s check the other barrels,” she said in a more level voice. She nodded at Jimmy, who helped her get the lid off the second one.

Dean was facing the other way, scowling to himself, when Jo cried, “Crackers!” He was at her side in a second.

Peering into the barrel, he saw that it was lined with layer after layer of pale white crackers, almost communion-wafer thin. Still, after consuming nothing but tree bark and the spit in his own mouth for two days, they looked almost as lusciously edible as one of Ellen’s pies. Forgetting himself for a moment, Dean grabbed a handful before allowing Jo to take a turn. She was right behind him, however, biting into a papery cracker and going back for more. Eating, like drinking, made Dean’s stomach protest and cramp, but he kept shoving the crackers in his mouth anyway. Even their taste hardly made him pause.

“They’re awful…salty,” Jo acknowledged, even as she shoved another handful into her mouth. “You gonna have some, Jimmy?”

He shook his head. Jo looked at Dean and shrugged. Dean barely noticed the exchange: he was too busy eating.

Eventually he came up for air. “What’s in the third barrel?” he asked. He really wanted the answer to be “a liquid of some sort.”

Jimmy barred Dean’s path with his body. “Don’t open that one.”

Crumbs spilled down Dean’s front as he started to demand, “Why not?” But the intensity of Jimmy’s expression made him stop. He nodded.

Jo, still trailing cracker crumbs, had walked a few feet away from the barrels and was inspecting a metal ring set into the floor. “Guys,” she said, “look at this.”

Dean squinted at it. “That looks like the one…”

“…That leads down to Mom’s ‘private storage area’?” Dean and Jo exchanged a grin: so she did know about Ellen’s still. He actually wasn’t surprised. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“Do you think it’s safe?” Dean asked Jimmy.

Jimmy tilted his head without moving the rest of his body. He was so awkward for someone who could move as fluidly as Dean had seen him do. Dean still didn’t get him at all. But he did trust him, at least when it came to things like this.

“Yes,” Jimmy said, and that was all Dean needed to hear. He nodded at Jo and she gripped the ring tight and jerked it back.

A small square of floorboard bent back, sending more dust billowing up into the air. Dean coughed, waving his hand in front of his face as he knelt beside Jo and peered into the blackness. From what Dean could see, there was no room beneath them: just a narrow passage leading off to the right. “What do you think’s down there?” he asked.

“Let’s find out,” said Jo. Before Dean could stop her, she had lowered her legs over the hole and dropped down.

“Jo!” Dean hissed, snatching at the air where her arm had been.

“Don’t worry, Dean,” Jimmy said, lowering himself into a sitting position beside Dean. Then a second later he, too, had disappeared into the darkness.

A moment after that, a flickery light appeared below him. Dean looked down: Jimmy and Jo were staring up at him, Jo with an expression of bemused wonder on her features, Jimmy his usual straight-faced self. A blood-red sigil hung fresh and dripping on the dirt wall.

“If I fall on either of you,” Dean said, throwing his legs over the edge, “I’m not gonna be sorry.”

He didn’t fall on either of them. Jimmy’s hand came up to meet him, steady on the small of his back. “Thanks,” Dean mumbled. “Neat trick. You’re like a human light switch.”

Jimmy looked to Jo for help and did not receive any.

They started down the passageway, Jo in the lead. Even when they left the sigil behind, their small patch of light stuck with them, clinging as if through static.

It was eerily silent down there, under the earth. When Dean experimentally stopped trying to walk with his usual care, he still couldn’t hear his footsteps, the soft dirt cushioning the sound. There was nothing in his ears but his own breathing, the steady racing of his heart.

It was almost a relief when Jo stumbled and let out a gasp. Less of one when he saw what she had tripped over: the body of a girl lay crumpled in their path, her eyes wide open and staring. She was very definitely dead, for hours if not a day or more, the blood caked around her torn middle dried and almost black. Her pretty golden-brown hair was stuck to it, and Dean felt his stomach turn a little as he recognized her: the sly, smirking girl from 8 who had stolen the Prophet’s notecards. Part of Dean had been hoping that she’d do better than this, but he was glad he hadn’t had to face her himself.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Jo whispered, standing straight again, recovered. Dean shook his head; Jimmy regarded them without blinking. “We’re far from the only ones to discover this place. We may not be alone down here.”

Dean had of course already prepared himself for this possibility, but Jo was right: it was quite another thing to have it confirmed. Dean tossed aside any notion of future “experiments”-they had to keep silent, had to keep safe. He turned and was staring back down the passage the way they’d come, trying to decide if there was anything they needed to do to disguise their-really quite faint-footprints when he noticed something else: a line of semi-sporadic red dots, marking their route like breadcrumbs. “Jimmy,” he said, the name coming out harsher than he meant. “You gonna do something about that?”

Confused, Jimmy followed Dean’s gaze to his own left wrist, where the bloody bug bite had been widened into a larger wound-probably by Jimmy’s own hand, Dean realized with a turn of his stomach, in order to paint the sigil. Whatever: Jimmy could have as much fun with his masochistic tendencies as he wanted-up to the point that it put the rest of them in danger.

“Yikes,” said Jo, noticing it too. “You’re bleeding all over the place.”

Jimmy’s brow had creased and he was staring at his bloody wrist with an expression on his face of profound annoyance. “It should have stopped by now.”

“Yeah, well, it hasn’t,” Dean said, pushing closer to the other boy and steering him away from the dead girl’s body. He took Jimmy’s arm in his hand, surprised at the slimness of his bones, almost birdlike in their fragility. So tiny and slight, and yet Dean had seen Jimmy take out those two tributes like it was nothing. And here he couldn’t even stop himself from bleeding to death.

“You ever thought of, I don’t know, bandaging it?”

Jimmy just looked at him. Dean handed his machete to Jo with a sigh, then choose one of the weakest points on his own torn shirt and tore off a strip. They didn’t have enough water to waste it on trying to clean the cut, but Dean figured he’d be impressed if they lived long enough to worry about infection. Instead he focused on wrapping the wound as best he could. Jimmy watched him the entire time, expression solemn and curious, his breathing slight. “There,” Dean said when he was finished.

For a moment, Jimmy continued to inspect the bandaged wrist, but Jo simply slapped the machete back into Dean’s hand and continued along the corridor. Dean followed her, and just barely heard Jimmy’s quiet, “Thank you.”

Not long after, Jo stopped short again-though this time, with a great deal more dignity. “Look,” she said, pointing to a shaft above their heads. The corridor continued, dark and winding, ahead, but this column of space above them was definitely new. Or not new, exactly: more like reminiscent of where they had first entered the tunnels.

“You think there’s another trap door up there?” Dean asked. “Maybe we’re under another one of the buildings?”

Jo nodded. “Boost me up and let’s see.”

Dean shook his head. “There’s no way you’re going up there first.”

“Oh, not this again.” Jo rolled her eyes. “I can take care of myself, Dean. Certainly better than I can boost you up there.”

“I will go first,” Jimmy said, pushing between them before the argument could go any further. For a few seconds, both Dean and Jo’s glares swiveled to him, but they slipped and faded into something almost like amusement when Jimmy’s initial attempts to brace himself and slither up the shaft unaided were so spectacularly unsuccessful. Dean turned to Jo and found himself grinning, the expression on her face just like he remembered from the time Bobby had fallen into the river, or when one of the District elders had taken it into her head that Jo’s work at the bakery (not to mention her secret work hunting) wasn’t enough and she needed to contribute to the community by joining the sewing circle. Jo’s clever skewering of a rat with one of her knitting needles had swiftly brought an end to that charade, and roasting and eating the resulting meat with her, hearing the story, was maybe the hardest Dean had ever laughed-was still one of his happiest memories.

Dean knew he didn’t have much time for memory-making left, but he was still happy to have this one: Jimmy stumbling backward in a huff, panting out, “It’s possible I require some assistance.”

“Maybe just a little,” said Jo, all twinkly wide-eyed innocence. Dean patted Jimmy encouragingly on the back, and together Dean and Jo raised him up, Dean flushing lightly from the strain, his hand on the underside of Jimmy’s thigh.

After a little bit of teetering, Jimmy’s reaching hands connected with something. Dean saw him push; then there was a thump and a square of dim light appeared above their heads. Jimmy’s wiry body squirmed away from them as he gripped the edge of the opening and pulled himself over. After a few seconds, his flailing feet were replaced with his calm, pale face. “All is clear,” he said.

Dean and Jo exchanged another amused look before Dean knelt down again to boost Jo up. She grabbed onto Jimmy’s wrists easily, and with only a moment’s awkwardness, he helped her scramble up. Watching the two of them work together, it suddenly struck Dean how horrible it would be to have ventured into these tunnels on your own and be faced with the possibility of not being able to get back up. Unless there was another way out somewhere? Well, either way: he was glad he didn’t have to worry about it.

He hadn’t worried about letting Jimmy alone with Jo, either. Dean supposed he really did trust him.

He wasn’t wrong to: Jimmy was already reaching back through the opening, stretching his hand out toward Dean. Dean grinned at him and grabbed for his non-bandaged wrist. Their bodies had just connected when Dean heard Jo shout, “Dean!”

He dropped Jimmy’s hand and turned just in time, so that Meg’s brass-knuckled fist connected with his shoulder instead of his face. He stumbled back against the side of the shaft, his whole arm going numb. Somehow he kept his grip on the machete; thank goodness he hadn’t passed it up to Jimmy and Jo yet. He switched it to his left hand, where he managed to hold it mostly steady.

Meg looked at it and laughed. “Well look at you! I have to say, I’m surprised you lasted this long. Still,” she smirked, “what a treat for me.”

Dean swung out with the machete. She ducked the blow, and Dean felt the blade sink into the wall, sending an arc of dirt pouring down like rain. Meg backed out into the corridor, which was fine with Dean: the farther away from the opening he got her, the less likely it was that Jo’d try to do something stupid, like land on Meg’s head.

The comparative width of the passageway gave Dean more room to maneuver, too. He slashed at Meg again, driving her toward the far wall. The second he got her pinned, he’d have her.

For a moment he thought he did: her back hit the dirt and Dean raised his weapon-all he had to do was bring it down. But she was grinning up at him, a skinny sixteen-year-old girl, and he would finish her. He only hesitated a second.

In that second, she put her lips together and whistled.

Something leapt on him, knocking him to the ground. He could smell foul, rotting breath, and then something sliced, razor-sharp, into the flesh of his shoulder. Dean screamed, unable to stop himself. Meg was standing over him, laughing. “Guess what I did back home? Who knew training our hunting dogs could come so in handy.”

Breathing through gritted teeth, Dean slashed wildly at nothing. He heard something that did sound almost like a dog yelp, and the weight on him momentarily decreased. But then there was more growling, and Meg shouting, “Sic him!” and all Dean could hope was that Jo and Jimmy were being smart: that they had taken this opportunity and run.

If Dean could just know that Jo was safe, then he could die happy.

But happiness was apparently not in the cards. As Dean scrambled backward, he heard twin thumps, then saw Jo barreling out into the corridor. She lunged at Meg with her knife. “Back off, bitch!”

For a second, even Meg looked a little stunned at the casual use of forbidden language. She twisted away from Jo’s knife too late, then crumpled when the blade sank into her thigh.

The crazy invisible dogs, unfortunately, were not so affected. Dean, aching and bleeding and pulled into a protective crouch, could still feel them moving all around him. “Jimmy,” he tried to hiss, but Jimmy was too busy painting on the wall in his own blood again, and he didn’t notice. Dean grit his teeth and pulled himself up the rest of the way, staggered over to Jo. She had Meg pinned and was twisting the knife blade in her thigh, finally eliciting, with what seemed like no small amount of pleasure, a choked sob. “You leave us alone,” Jo was murmuring. “Just leave us alone! Leave us alone!”

Dean grabbed at her shoulder. “Leave her,” he said, “come on, it’s not-”

Safe, he was going to say, or maybe worth it: but before he could say anything something in the tone of the growls shifted, and then Jimmy was being thrown away from his unfinished sigil like a ragdoll, tumbling to the ground. Dean turned, wanting to face whatever was coming, even if he couldn’t see it, but Jo pushed him out of the way, reared up with her knife flashing. And then she too was crashing down, crying out with an invisible weight on top of her, invisible claws tearing her shirt to shreds.

It was easier if Dean pretended it was just her shirt. Easier to flail out with his blade, feel it connect with a still somehow solid nothing, and then in a panic seize Jo’s arm, grab her without looking. Jimmy was on his knees, retching into the dirt, blood matting the hair at the back of his skull. Dean didn’t care: the guy was conscious, so Dean yelled at him to help. Together, they lifted Jo into their arms and half-ran, half-stumbled back down the passageway, Meg’s laughter and eerie half-there barks echoing behind them.

When they reached the shaft they had original descended down, they didn’t speak. They lay Jo gently against the wall; then Dean knelt down and boosted Jimmy up toward the opening. Picking Jo up again was the worst part: she was so light in his arms, and even though he could see her biting her lip, she moaned in pain as Dean went through the awkward process of passing her up to Jimmy. Then he himself leapt up, and with barely any assistance from Jimmy, pulled himself with lungs aching and shoulder screaming through the hole. Dean could still hear barking as Jimmy slammed the trap door back down.

Jimmy was mumbling reassurances-to them, to himself-as Dean struggled to scoot the barrel of ball bearings on top of the door. “It’s all right, it will be fine, I can fix her,” he was saying, blood running down the side of his nose and over his confident chin. Dean scrambled over to where Jimmy was hovering over Jo, who was leaning up against the wall beside the barrels, clutching at her wounded belly, tears streaming silent down her face. She was all reassurances too: “It’s okay, Dean. Really. It’ll be all right.”

Compared to them, Dean was inarticulate. “Jo,” was all he was able to choke out: a sob, perhaps his first truly sincere prayer. He joined Jimmy on his knees beside her.

“I can fix it,” Jimmy was still insisting, but his hands on Jo’s stomach were doing nothing to help-were clearly just making her wince in pain from the contact. Gently, Dean pushed Jimmy out of the way. Jo’s hand slid eagerly into his. “I’m so sorry,” Dean whispered.

“What for?” she asked, like she truly didn’t understand.

Dean took a shaky breath. “I was supposed to protect you, I-”

“You idiot,” she murmured, her voice a choked whisper. “We’re supposed to protect each other.”

Suddenly from below them they heard a thump. The floor shook, the barrel atop the trap door wobbling. “How is she doing that?” Dean asked.

“Maybe she’s enlisted some more of her little friends,” said Jo, through several heaved breaths.

“Well, she’s not getting in. Jimmy, help me move these other barrels.”

Jimmy blinked at him, for a second looking like he was having trouble processing this simple request. Dean wondered if he was concussed. But then Jimmy shook himself. “Leave that one alone,” he cautioned, pointing to the barrel he’d told them not to open before. He helped Dean roll the barrel of crackers over.

“It would make more sense for her to exit the tunnels through one of the other buildings and block us in from the front,” Jimmy said matter-of-factly, swiping his bloody bangs off his face.

“Yeah, well, let’s hope she doesn’t think of that,” Dean said, before almost being knocked off his feet when the floor lurched again.

“You can’t just wait here,” Jo said.

“Yes, we can,” Dean snapped. “Or I can. Jimmy,” he turned back to the other boy, “if you want to go, we understand.”

Jimmy looked at him, and something in that steady, blue-eyed gaze made Dean shiver; he couldn’t shake the feeling that Jimmy was somehow seeing more than Dean wanted him to.

“I’m not going to leave just yet,” Jimmy said finally.

Dean nodded, accepting this. He turned back to Jo, his primary concern. She was shaking now, shivers wracking her entire body. Her long beautiful hair (Dean could remember her sitting on her mother’s lap, whining and squirming while Ellen braided it) sticking lankly to her dirty forehead. Dean squeezed the inside of his cheek between his teeth: he would not cry.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. He wished there was more in the cabin for him to get: blankets, water, bandages thread disinfectant help. But she just nodded and said, “Some crackers would be nice.”

He got her the crackers, trying not to panic when he felt how the trap door was trembling beneath him. His shoulder felt like it was on fire, but he couldn’t pay attention to that, either. Doing his best to keep the crackers blood- and mud-free, he gathered them up and limped back over to Jo.

Jimmy was back to kneeling at her side, his head bent low. As Dean lowered himself back down, he saw Jo squeeze Jimmy’s hand tightly, then let go. Dean felt a stab of utterly irrational jealousy-he couldn’t even begin to think it through. Instead he curled himself at Jo’s side and took her other hand, listening to the floorboards rattle and trying to stay placid. For Jo, and for Sam, Ellen, Bobby-everyone at home who was probably watching this; who seconds or minutes or hours from now would be watching them die. There was one last thing he could give them, and that would be to meet death with a brave face.

“Dean,” Jo whispered. “Can you do something for me?”

“Anything,” Dean said-which was of course a lie: he hadn’t been able to keep her safe.

“Give your brother a hug for me,” Jo said, and before Dean could laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of this wish, someone was seizing him by the arms, tugging him away. Dean shouted and flailed, trying to heave Jimmy off him and cling to Jo at the same time. His shoulder screamed in pain and Jimmy held him like a vice, moving efficiently, pausing only to upend the barrel of ball bearings with one decisive kick.

“No!” Dean bellowed. “Jo, don’t-” but Jo was already crawling toward the third barrel, the one Jimmy had told them not to touch.

“It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay,” she said, over and over, leaking red all over the floor, and Dean lost her in that jumble of sounds and images: the trap door flying open, Jo’s determined expression as she reached for the deadly barrel. And Jimmy’s cursed hands, tight under Dean’s armpits, dragging him out into the square, ignoring Dean’s kicks and scratches like he couldn’t feel them at all.

Part of Dean almost hoped that Jimmy was dragging them both right into Alastair and the other tributes’ laps-that they could just finish it. But he could see a bonfire burning at the other end of the square, the other tributes dark shapes around it, Alastair singing as he roasted…something Dean didn’t even want to think about. He wanted to be back in the building with Jo, he wanted to go together with Jo-or better yet, in her place. He wanted to do as he’d promised. It was the only way he’d be able to live with himself.

He drove his elbow up, sharply, into Jimmy’s face. It was his first direct hit, and it startled Jimmy just enough to make his grip loosen. Dean jerked away and stumbled back toward the building, screaming Jo’s name. Five feet from the door, the building seemed to bulge, its outline trembling for a moment like the horizon on a hot day. Then it exploded outward, knocking Dean back with waves of energy and heat. When Dean looked again it was simply gone: no rubble or flames to mark its place. Just gone.

Jimmy’s firm steady hands seized his uninjured shoulder again, lifted him up out of the dirt. “We have to go,” he said, and it was true: the other tributes may have been distracted before, but this they would have surely noticed, they were probably abandoning their vile party and coming this way even now. Dean knew this was something he should care about.

“Go, then,” he said, and Jimmy’s hand squeezed him tight-the wounded shoulder, this time. Dean hissed in pain, rolling to glare at Jimmy. Jimmy glared back: “We both made promises, Dean,” he said. “Do not make me carry you.”

Dean didn’t really believe that Jimmy could, but he found himself getting to his feet anyway. He could hear Alastair and the others shouting from across the square, and so when Jimmy ran, Dean ran with him. His heart was still beating; his legs still worked. For some strange reason, Dean was still alive.

They reached the hollow where they-where Dean and Jo-had rested the night before just as the horn sounded for the evening prayer. Jimmy ignored it, searching out the gap in the thorn bushes, but Dean dropped straight to his knees.

“We don’t have time for that,” Jimmy hissed.

Dean contemplated ignoring him entirely, but in the end he chose to hiss back: “One of these is for her. Let ’em catch us if they want. We have the time.”

Dean had his eyes closed, but he still heard the branches snap back, then a pause, and finally the sound of another body sinking awkwardly down beside him. When Jimmy’s voice joined with his, it was a little unsteady, a little out-of-sync, though through each repetition it grew in force and strength:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,

our life, our sweetness and our hope.

To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;

to thee do we send up our sighs,

mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Five, Dean thought. Five recitations. Isaac, Tamara, the solider boy from District 2 who fell at Tamara’s hands before Alastair took her out. Jo. And Meg-Meg made five. “She got her,” Dean told Jimmy, as Jimmy guided him through the thorn bushes and down into the hollow. “She got her good.”

“Shh,” Jimmy whispered. “We must be quiet now.”

He was right, Dean supposed: he could hear someone moving in the woods, Alastair or one of the others, most likely looking for them, hunting them down. How many left now? It was hard to think, but Dean was pretty sure there were only six, including him and Jimmy. Six people between Jo and Paradise…

Except it no longer mattered how many people died, at Dean’s hands or otherwise. Nothing he did would ever get her there, now. She was dead.

Dean pushed his face into the rough leaves and tried to hold it together. His shoulders were shaking: he could feel Jimmy’s hands on them, bandaging the wounded one the way Dean had shown him. He hadn’t even realized Jimmy was doing that. He barely felt connected to his body at all.

“You’re shivering,” Jimmy whispered. “Are you cold?”

He was probably going into shock. His teeth were certainly chattering now: Dean was surprised that Alastair and Zachariah and everyone else who was lurking in the forest couldn’t hear. He felt Jimmy’s hands move down his shoulders, drawing him close. Dean wanted to pull away-he wanted to fling himself out of their hiding place and into whoever was hunting for them: take one of the bastards down with him, like Jo had. But he felt too weak to do anything. So he just lay there and let Jimmy continue with his semi-competent ministrations.

“I thought I knew how to fix this,” Jimmy said softly. “But I don’t.”

“There’s no fixing it,” Dean said. “It’s…it’s fucked, okay? We’re going to die here, and next year twenty-four more kids are gonna die-not to mention everyone back home, dying in accidents or from hunger or being taken to the Capitol… And then twenty-four more-the victor, too, yeah, I’m gonna count him. Twenty-four every year, for no reason. Next year…next year maybe Sam…”

“Sam is your brother?” Jimmy asked.

Dean nodded. Then, because he couldn’t think of anything to say, no words to encompass what Sam meant to him, he reached with shaking hands down the collar of his tattered shirt and pulled out the amulet. “He gave me this. My little brother. I was the only family he had left…”

Dean could feel Jimmy’s hand resting on his chest, Jimmy’s fingers moving over the tiny piece of metal. Then, “I almost forgot,” Jimmy said-he sounded unduly surprised, shocked that with everything that was happening, something could dare to slip his mind. “Jo entrusted this to me, but I believe she would want you to have it.”

He uncurled his fingers, and Dean saw Ellen’s bird of Paradise pin nestled in his palm. Dean reached down and touched the cool metal, growing warm from Jimmy’s touch. Dean felt his stomach lurch; he squeezed his eyes shut tight.

“You don’t have a token, do you? Nothing anyone gave you?”

“No,” Jimmy admitted.

“Then you should keep it,” Dean said, swallowing, opening his eyes again, staring at Jimmy’s face in the dark. He took the pin from Jimmy’s hand and fixed it, as carefully as he could, to Jimmy’s shirt: just above his heart. Where Jo had worn it.

Jimmy’s hand came up and met his, folding over the metal and the cloth and Dean’s suddenly sweaty fingers. “Thank you,” Jimmy said, surprised-not just at an act of kindness in the arena, but like someone who had never been given anything before, not ever.

Perhaps because it was easier than dealing with his own pain, Dean felt his heart ache for him: Jimmy from District 1, who’d had no reason to ally himself with them, but had, but was here still. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go in the Games, Dean knew: you shouldn’t be able to trust anyone except your own District-mate, and maybe not even them. And yet, and yet-

Jimmy’s hand caught Dean’s a fraction of an inch away from his face. “You should rest,” he whispered, and they were so close, Dean could practically taste Jimmy’s breath in his mouth. “We both need to rest.”

Dean felt a shudder rumble through his body, different from the aches and pains that had plagued it before. But he nodded, and with a sigh slid back to a more appropriate distance. As he sank into sleep, he imagined Sam seeing what had just (almost) transpired. It no longer bothered him nearly as much as it once might.



Part II / Masterpost / Part IV