85th Bloodbath

Four.

That was the number they assigned to her. Not the worst, but not even close to the best. They had her written off, just another tribute doomed to fail. A volunteer who threw her name into death's book.

She was meaningless, a story the capitol would write off alongside years of others who came before her. The girl who had run from home into death's awaiting embrace, all because of fear of her parents. That story would become a muted history, paling in comparison to that of those around her.

That's what she worries about as she rolls over in her bed: that her name will simply be forgotten. It might make it up somewhere as "Jade Morin's ally," or even "Jade Morin and Dominic Merluccius' pity case" if she was lucky to be remembered at all. The gamemakers had already discounted her with that number, four. They saw her right hand, the mess of the fourteen year old who would scarcely be able to hurt anything.

Pushing herself up and out of bed, she lets out a small groan as the light begins to pour into her room. A sleepless night. If she was lucky today, it would be the first of many.

Rubbing one eye, she looks at the peacekeepers who had come down to grab her. If only they could just leave her in peace, let her retract her words that lead her to this.

Pulling on the dress and boots her stylist gave her, she couldn't help but wondering what sort of an arena would need something so dark and grim. Then, the jewelry came. There was a bright, turquoise, diamond tiara. Each gem lining the top caught the light and glistened brilliantly. Then a set of diamond rings that danced under the glare of the lighting. Then finally, a radiant necklace made of light lavender gems.

It was the nicest thing she had ever worn.

It was also probably the last thing she ever will wear.

Then, she's placed into a glass cylinder which rises into the arena, and the countdown to her demise begins.

Her eyes dart around, searching for the few people who will want her alive. She spots Jade readying herself, but can't find Dom or Pisces. Hopefully they'll be able to make it out.

But what she notices as she focuses on the arena itself is that the gamemakers have turned it into a cruel icon. A mausoleum. Gravestones. Death.

And then, before she could take anything more in. The gong sounds, and the bloodbath begins.

---

jj.

He was an idiot.

The interview kept playing itself over and over again in his head, and there were a thousand things he wished he said and a million that he shouldn't have. While he still believed his words to be true- the evidence was insurmountable and always led him back to the same truth- he did know of one thing: he'd sealed his fate.

Perhaps that was the most terrifying part of it. Not that he'd spoken up. Not that it was real now- it was already real. But that he'd accepted it. He would die; the gamemakers would see to it. If they'd planned on using even an ounce of leniency on him before, it was gone now. He half expected for his plate to explode the second the countdown began.

But they were smarter than that, surely. To blatantly kill him? It took away the point of having the Hunger Games at all, didn't it? And with all of the recent rioting and allegations that had befallen the Capitol and its late leader, JJ guessed they weren't interested in drawing anymore unwanted attention to themselves. No, they'd have to be smarter than that: a forest fire that JJ became trapped in, a mutt that didn't die, plants that were normally safe to eat suddenly becoming less-than. Something so that only those who were really paying attention, really looking for the lie could spot it.

He planned on opening the eyes of the entire nation, then.

"JJ..." the voice was muffled by his door, but he still knew it to belong to Mackenzie. He kept seeing that look on the victor's face every time he closed his eyes. Not shock, not anger. Understanding. Because he knew what JJ said was true just as much as JJ himself did. Perhaps he had known all along, and making the tributes think they had a chance of living past this was his way of sleeping at night. He hoped he'd convinced more than just Mackenzie, then.

He hoped he'd at least got some people on the edge's of their seats.

"Go away," he whispered, obviously more to himself because he'd said it far too softly for Mackenzie to hear. But the victor didn't need to hear the words to know they'd been said. After a few more seconds of waiting, JJ watched as Mackenzie's silhouette backed away from the door and disappeared.

He did not want to die, nor did he think he deserved to die. That was the real rub of it. He'd been villainized his entire life, ever the scapegoat, ever the accused, always the innocent. There were dark hearts all over Panem. In the Capitol, sure, but in the districts too: Murderers and thieves and bad parents and bad children and bad husbands and bad wives. JJ was eighteen years old. That wasn't even old enough to achieve a past; he hadn't ever had the option of being good or being bad because the question hadn't even been asked yet. And he would die anyway.

Hours full of tossing and turning and thinking and, unfortunately, not an ounce of rest, JJ finally felt exhaustion take over. One final thought crossed his mind before his sleep-deprived eyes closed for slumber:

I hope death does not hurt.

It turns out, his body needed less rest than his mind. He was up only four hours later, just as the sun began to bathe the world in baby blues and silvers. He sat in his window sill for quite sometime, shirtless despite the cold, and watched as the crowds began to congregate out on the streets seven floors below. They knew what today was. Everyone in Panem knew.

The bloodbath.

This time in, oh- he took a look at the clock on the wall behind him- four hours or so, he'd be standing in a circle with the rest of them, wishing he got to be the one who lived but knowing better.

This time when a knock came at his door, he couldn't blow it off. He recognized Jacinta's form on the other side of it; they'd been nice to let her fetch him instead of the peacekeepers. Especially given the circumstances of who he was. He guessed he should take whichever victories he could get.

"Yeah-" he called, taking one last look at the streets and the freedom below, "I'm coming."

Rising into the arena took an eternity and was still happening far too quickly. The pinhole of light above him grew steadily in size until he was right at the mouth of it, pouring into the arena, risen from ash. Just like Colt and Lazarus had said at the tribute parade.

The arena was of another time. It took JJ quite a few moments to be sure time still ticked on, in fact. Which was made easier when the giant countdown started in the middle of the area he and the other tributes stood in. Tombstones, he realized. That's what those chunks of rock jutting from the ground were. And where the cornucopia should have been was, instead, a mausoleum. Various goods littered the immediate surroundings as they always did; he didn't notice a single axe among the mix.

He didn't know if he should laugh or cry. Of course they hadn't allowed any axes. To assume they would've was ludicrous at this point.

The clock's time dwindled.

Helle's face was the first one he noticed out of the sea of them; he'd decided that she wasn't so much dangerous as she was unhinged. Not that being crazy wasn't dangerous in its own right. The way he figured it, crazy could be fixed. Dangerous was forever, like a sense of humor or a memory. Tattooed into the pieces of a person that no one could touch, preserved next to things like the soul and faith and the love for rain and old music records.

He looked away from her to see what laid beyond the ironic graveyard they stood in. On the other side of Helle there seemed to be some sort of storm ravaging the land, colorful debris swirling into thousands of miniature tornadoes. Behind him was a very long and painfully tall tower of some sort. He didn't dare crane his neck to see just how far for fear of losing his balance while the land mine was still active, but he still knew it went far beyond the cloud line. There was the distant sound of water crashing into land to his right, and a very flat expanse of land that went on for several miles to his left.

Surely, he thought, the gamemakers would've thought of something to make it interesting, but from here he saw nothing.

He feared looking at the clock, but he knew he had to. Only five seconds left. He exhaled a breath he did not realize he'd been holding. He still hadn't exploded, so he counted himself lucky, even though the games hadn't even officially began yet and even though he knew any ounce of luck he managed to find would be short-lived.

As the gong rang out, and the other tributes burst forward, JJ did the same, hoping that he could get to Helle before something bad happened- he hated that he had to die, and he hated that she probably did too. But he was going to do whatever he could for however long he could to prevent it from happening.