there's never really any safety in it // { d12 | day 1 }

Skulls, Cedar knew, shatter under fists like that. It happens in the bloodbath as often as not. With his adrenaline receding and his stomach settling, he fixates on it still: bone and blood and brains bursting apart in low gravity, a red and white firework exploding in slow-motion. As much as he can't keep himself from mourning those who've died already — (Blue. Blair. Roisin. He didn't know them, but he can't pretend he didn't know their names.) — for the rest of his short life Cedar Halt will be grateful not to have died right at the beginning of the bloodbath, face smashed in like that. It's not that he thinks it'll be easier, however else it is he ends up going out. It's not that the struggle to survive between this minute and his last sounds pleasant or easy.

It's just that he still remembers Eden.

He wasn't along in the Capitol that year but he thinks he remembers Lethe's bone-chilling all the same. He hopes that's something his mind fabricated and not something that was broadcast. His dad —

When he thinks of Eden Turner, the first thing that pops into his head is that Ruined boy making a ruin of hers. The second thing is the way that she used to rope him and Kieran into games of tag or hopscotch or hide and seek, and how she sometimes pitched a fit when she lost. It doesn't seem right that they could've been friends for weeks at a time, year after year over his childhood, and that the way she lives in his memory is the way that she died.

He hopes when Kieran thinks of him after, it won't be in this place.

Clutching the place where his tenth finger goes to his chest.

Hiding behind a stack of boxes.

Daring not to breathe, he waits remains hidden while other tributes stalk past. There's Leet, loud, looting: "I don't know if we can fit anything else in." He asks the other sets of footsteps if they should press on, and Cedar wills them to keep moving. He's not sure that the boy who brought him the beta would kill him on sight... but he's not sure that there's anything stopping the other tributes who are with him, either. The through-and-through career that had come to the Games with the beta boy. Two other volunteers — there was something intense about the girls. Maybe it was the way one casually wears the nickname Killshot. Maybe it was something else, behind their eyes.

He distracts himself with his watch, willing them to move on. It has some sort of tiny grid of letters, several arrows and some other symbols. He brushes it with his thumb, a w duplicating itself into a small box on the screen. Hmm. He taps the screen again, and —



Oh no. That's not at all what he meant to do.

A beat passes, his heart hammering in his chest, panicked that the accidental message will alert this pack to his presence, will be the death of him. He swears he hears Leet sigh or snicker. A new message lights up his screen:



More messages start flowing, from a friendly "hello" to other flubs in the vein of Cedar's own error. He'd exhale a sigh of relief if he didn't suspect it would get him caught and murdered. The wait is easier, somehow, with company — sending messages back and forth with the other kids who are just as lost and perplexed as Cedar, it is so easy to forget that some of them became murderers this morning, that one of the more likely than not will kill him too.

He discovers that the pen from the bloodbath is good for doodling, and spends some time on portraits. Some of them are better likenesses than others. He draws one of himself. He draws one of Red. He draws the faces he remembers — (all of them; he can't pretend he's forgotten a single one) — and sends them one-by-one to the chat. He draws his dad. He doesn't send that one.

Time passes and they leave.

Tentatively, Cedar stands up and stretches his legs — only to be immediately rushed by a wheeled chrome robot. He fumbles for his laser blaster, but drops it instead; the robot chirps and places two packages at Cedar's feet. There are no parachute strings attached, but he gleans exactly what this is. Sponsorship. He stoops for his blaster, and waits for the robot to leave before he allows his eyes to well up. Gratitude. Love. Loss Longing. So much more than stuff is contained in the boxes that have been left for him. A panel of crystal to strap to his arm. Some sort of propulsion system to strap to his back. Something light that's already found its way into his heart.

"Thank you," he tells the vent where the robot disappeared into. Thanks, Dad. Aranica. Nico and Stella, you too. Thank you all.

Suited up, he takes a few moments to practice his quickdraw: drawing and holstering and drawing and holstering and drawing and making sure not to drop his gun again. At least, with weapons like these, the careers will be on slightly more even footing with the rest of them. At least, he hopes.

With the metallic clunk of magnetic boots on the steel floor — the floor which is actually the ceiling — signifying the approach of another person who, by choosing to fight, has decided that they want Cedar to die. He dives behind the crates, gun drawn, not sure if he's ready to nickname himself Killshot like the girl who was here before.

Blade made out of pulsating light in hand, hardly any worse for wear than she'd been when they'd been seen off that morning, scarlet hair unmistakable — it's Red. Of all the enemy faces to run into, he's the luckiest that it's her.

He holsters his blaster in the belt of his robe and comes out with his hands raised. Nine fingers up. Not a threat. Not a threat at all. "Red," he says, relief plain in his voice. "It's good to see you," and he means it, especially when he adds alive in his head. He doesn't quite know how to ask the question he really means.

"My dad's district partner was named Blue, you know. She ignored him in the Capitol and they avoided each other in the arena, mostly. He killed her right at the end. I don't want to..." He's fired his laser blaster at a couple different kids already, but Cedar Halt's stomach still turns at the thought of taking a life. He shakes his head. "I don't think I'll make it that far, anyway. But I don't want that." They've already gotten to know each other better than that — they'd played cards on the train, and Cedar had tried to make a point of including her in the short conversations had over dinner once they'd made it to the Capitol.

His eyes fall on her lightsabre once more. "Where'd you get that?" He hadn't seen it at the cornucopia — even in all the carnage he'd remember something like that. "Sponsorship?" Part of Cedar wants to be jealous, but as the gears turn in his head... there's no doubt in his mind that arming the fierce girl with the 10 in training — sending her such a spectacular gift — had been a fully calculated move on his dad's part. He smiles, not unkindly, with the realization. "I don't envy District Two — it's nice having mentors that have your back." Making this sort of veiled threat feels devious, but what else does Cedar Halt have to offer anyone? "We should stick together, don't you think?"