Sailor // [Hero vs. Killer Mantis, Day 4]

The storm died down, though the waves did not calm. Hero and Lux watched the sea for a long while, saying very little. Try as he might, Hero didn’t have anything to say to his ally, and the sound of the waves had a calming effect on his body and soul. Though his eyelids pulled closed in momentary bursts, there was always something to wake him – a gust of wind, a splash of saltwater against his cheeks, a parachute –

…

A parachute! Two, actually. They drifted to where Lux stood, and Hero’s heart fell. That is, until Lux eyed whatever she received and then handed him one of the packages. Perhaps the wind must have picked up and pulled the parachute away from where he rested, because his name was on a slip of paper.

When he opened the container, his heart pulled a hundred different ways.

“Villain,” he said, wanting to say the word aloud.

It was a plushie of his best friend.

For a long moment Hero stared at it, unsure of how to feel. It was carefully done, and looked the way Villain was dressed at the Reaping, fancy hat and all. The hat made him smile, but he was reminded too soon of the assurances he’d made that morning.

“I got you a hat so we would match, see. We’re gonna look like the nicest jackasses those Peacekeepers have ever seen. They can’t pick us if we’re looking all suave and shit; it’s a damn crime to look so fancy and to have bad luck at the same time. It just doesn’t happen.”

Yet here he was.

The hat was stolen, anyway. Some poor guy was probably out there staring up at his screen and thinking “HEY, that looks like my hat!” – only this hat was tinier, perched atop the head of a gift Hero couldn’t fathom.

It made him hurt and happy at the same time, and a heavy feeling settled in his chest. It was home, and it was joy, and it was too much for him to deal with at that exact moment. Perhaps too violently, he shoved the plushie into his bag to hide it from the cameras, and he hoped Lux didn’t care to ask.

(She didn’t, bless her.)

The water didn’t settle into something calmer, but Hero ached to be on the sea. There was something comforting about being surrounded by water, and though he would never tell anyone this, he thought that if he was going to die he should be on the waves. It was only fitting.

There was something else, too: the loss of Jacob. Though Hero wanted to take on the waves, he knew his ally wouldn’t be pleased with the thought of taking on the ocean’s wild nature right after they’d just survived it, and Hero wasn’t keen on losing another ally. So they decided to split paths, hoping (perhaps in vain) to see each other again, and Hero pulled the ramshackle boat off of the rocks and into the unrelenting sea.

There, he soared away.

The island to his north rumbled overnight, but Hero was unbothered. The other tributes might have to worry about the unsteady ground beneath their feet, but the boy from four was on the familiar water. The bounce of the waves didn’t lend to quality sleep, so Hero spent much of the night with his feet hanging overboard, leaning back against the deck (if you could call it that), staring up at the stars.

He pulled the plushie from his bag and held it close, and that’s how he finally slept.

As dawn arrived, that’s when something shook the bottom of his boat. Bounding upward, Hero picked up his weapon and spun around, searching the waves for the culprit.

There was a shadow, lurking in the depths.