let sleeping dogs lie ⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊ andal, 95th - day 1.

He cannot sleep.

Gala after gala, event after event, the endless prance of pleasantries and pretense, had worn down on him in ways unimaginable. His cheeks ached from the polished smiles, hands chaffed raw by leather gloves, and each and every word he spoke sounded artificial, learnt by rote and rehearsed in front of the mirror, everything a perfect little veneer.

He had been gnashing his teeth, a lot.

Every time they talked about Emerson, about Flynn, his jaw clenched. It was a childhood habit, something his mother and then Lena used to scold him over, and it left him for a long time until the arena. Those eternal nights heralded a return to click, click, pop, pop. Pop, pop, click, click. Back then, sharp fangs against mutated gums meant nicks, cuts, the taste of blood forever branded at the back of his throat, and tonight, it has returned more pronounced than ever.

Blood and venom.

Then something sweeter, akin to the scent of night jasmines, the sort that would bloom in clusters around their house and be picked up by Rowan to make flower chains for all his dogs … sweet, too sweet, choking his throat as he stirs in his sheets with one ungloved hand around a phone, stuck on a number his fingertips had memorized, almost about to press call when he …

Faded.

Then sank.

Sank into a lake of ink, shattering the surface with the fall and plunging deep down towards what seem to be an expanse of nothingness, a lake of not water but cold, a pure and icy sensation.

Something brushed against his cheek. Many somethings, soft yet wiry- hair, a thick and blackened web of it, eerily afloat. Chiara De Sato’s atrophied eyes stared down at him, her clammy hands framing his face. He sank further, unmoving, and her mouth was moving in speech and yet he couldn’t hear a word, couldn’t hear a voice, couldn’t hear anything but the yawning abyss beneath him.

And then Chiara spoke.

“Bad dog.”

He wakes up with a jolt, blinking furiously, frantically. Darkness first, then shapes. He sees his own self reflected in the glassy mark of one figure: bound, cornered. The lab. They are going to take him back to the lab, to slice his current face off and weld a new one on it, erase his identity, steal everything he loved, take him away from Flynn– No. 

The most important tool in restraining a stray dog is the muzzle.

Baring his fangs, he sits up all of a sudden and goes straight for the throat of whoever is close by. Blood floods his mouth, metallic and fresh, vile yet familiar. He pulls back with a wet chunk of something between his teeth.

Then pain explodes from his temple. A sudden force knocks him sideways with a burst of stars. That summons the claws. They rip out from the nail beds and lash at the ropes around his wrist, tearing them apart in one quick swipe as he scans his surroundings wild-eyed for an escape, a way out, before he does something he’ll regret, before he rends and tears and rends and—

A mask closes around his mouth. He opens it to scream, but that only helps the gas enter him in one big gulp.

“Bad dog,” is what he hears once more as the darkness takes him back, but this time it is in his mother’s voice.

When his eyes reopen next, it is to his butler’s gaunt face and a heavy headache. “Sandow,” he mutters, twisting his neck gently in hopes of a relief from the pain and trying to wring his hands together. The last part doesn’t work. He looks down at his bound wrists, and then sharply back at the other.

Now the taste of blood makes sense. “Where the hell am I?” Andal growls. Not anger, not fury, but pure animalistic intent.

“A safe compound,” Sandow states matter-of-factly. “Not the lab, I assure you, Mr. Searley. But no more biting. As a victor, your actions represent your own tributes’ and, well, I am sure Emerson is counting on your good behavior right at this very second.”

A shiver tautens his spine.

“After all, the 95th hunger games began…” Sandow checks his wristwatch, “exactly thirty-six minutes ago in the training center, Mr. Searley.”