don't blame me / maia vs. mateo - round one.

With the hood of his sweater drawn around his head and its dark fabric rendering him a part of the shadows, Mateo skulked along the red-lit walls of the center in the same way he had been skulking along life itself: like a shadow.

Someday, somewhere, he’d exchanged places with his own shadow.

It began from a young age he supposes, all those nights spent making himself invisible to not be swept up in Elias’ and Laurel’s tirades and afterwards, he forgot how to stop. He forgot how to not be unremarkable, how to not keep to the walls and scurry and never, never make a ruckus.

His plan is to find someone. Anyone. Perhaps Jackson, on account of their time together on the rooftop, but turning that idea over made his stomach turn with it in tandem because Jackson Reeves would never deem him a good ally. Who would? An Izar on your team is nothing but a corpse waiting to atrophy.

Don’t talk to yourself like that.

Motivation’s important and whatnot, although he’s not feeling particularly any of it at the moment. He eyes the next hallway from a corner, sees no one there, and so he advances forth, tiptoeing slowly until …

Mateo winces as light explodes in his face.

A scoreboard lights up, Mateo Izar, District Eleven! written by neon letters, and

“shit, fuck, no—”

He turns around, but the door closes on his face.

In all his sneaking around and stealth, of course he walked directly into the den of lions. And then the others come, one by one, all wearing the same expression of shellshock, until the scoreboard is filled with a dozen names and the list reveals itself.

Round Five: Maia Burgess vs. Mateo Izar.

He lets out a guffaw. Of course.

Of course, of course, of course, who else could he have expected?

He looks at Roe in his peripheries, but doesn’t approach him yet. Instead, as the other tributes, enter the ring sequentially, Mateo tunes out the sounds of cracks and pained grunts to survey the room, looking around for escapes as seconds trickle and trickle and trickle.

Then it’s time. He sighs out his resignation.

The spotlight is warm, but seeing Maia has lodged a icicle of dread into his heart. “Wicked sense of humor,” he murmurs. I thought I left you behind. Specifically her. He’d left the Eleven suite as much as he could to avoid this, and yet here they are. Atoning for some war their ancestors fought and lost. 

“You or me,” Mateo echoes.

Her clenched fist move first, too quick to properly dodge, and holding up a hand to catch it proves a bad idea as he feels it impact his palm hard. Mateo grits his teeth, shaking his hand, practically feeling the bruise forming.

“You or me,” he repeats, then charges headfirst for once, not bothering for stealth.