Real or not real?

by PenguinofProse

Summary:

In which Kate volunteers as tribute.

Notes:

I think you can all tell what this one is. I'm only shocked I didn't write it sooner. Happy reading!

Content note for canon-typical violence, bereavement, and a couple of short references to suicidal ideation.

Kate is eighteen when Edwina’s name is drawn in the reaping.

 

Her first instantaneous reaction is a perverse rush of relief. Her sister is twelve years old. Kate herself is eighteen. This is the one and only year they’re both eligible for the reaping, the one and only year Kate can volunteer to save her sister’s life.

 

So that’s what she does. She simply steps forward and says the words.

 

“I volunteer. I volunteer as tribute.”

 

There’s a beat of stunned silence. People don’t volunteer, in Twelve - and least of all fatherless girls who’ve been living on scraps and squirrels for the better part of a decade.

 

Only - Kate Sharma does. She always knew she would, if Edwina’s name was called this year. She could almost believe it was fate that made it turn out this way, she decides - or else some Gamemaker playing fate’s part.

 

She’s fighting her way towards the stage, now. She can hear the crowd murmuring around her, can feel the ripples as she passes.

 

She’s there. She’s pushing Edwina back towards Mary’s arms, standing as straight and tall as she dares in her place.

 

She breathes a careful, shaky breath. The crowd looks vast from up here. Effie Trinket’s wig looks intimidatingly pink. She is suddenly and acutely aware that she’s set to die in the Hunger Games.

 

She had to volunteer to take Edwina’s place. She had to. She couldn’t have lived with herself if she hadn’t.

 

Effie asks her a few questions. Kate answers them without thinking, without feeling, without noticing her own words in the slightest. Now that rush of perverse relief has faded, she finds herself oddly numb.

 

Then it’s time to draw the name of her fellow tribute - time to choose a boy for District Twelve - and somehow, impossibly, Kate’s morning grows even worse.

 

“Anthony Bridgerton.”

 

Kate avoids his gaze, as he walks up to the stage. She is determined not to notice the look of horror on his face, determined not to meet his stunned eyes.

 

No one volunteers to take his place. Of course they don’t. He’s the eldest of eight, not the youngest of two. There’s no one to throw their life away for him.

 

She does well enough at avoiding his eyes, as he walks up to join her, but she can’t avoid the memories that rush in on her. His smug grin, only last week, as they bickered over coal quotas in a Panem History classroom. He was wearing much the same face, too, some three years or so ago, when he first noticed he had a way with girls - and Kate made a point of standing at the edge of the schoolyard and ignoring him.

 

He didn’t look like that when he gave her the arrows. Eight years ago now, soon after Kate’s father died, when she was too young to hunt and her family were starving, he didn’t look like that at all.

 

She still remembers it like it was yesterday. No ten year old should be frantically shooting squirrels to keep her family alive. That was the worst day of the worst winter of her life - she missed a quiver full of shots, had no arrows left, and was about ready to lie in the snow and give herself up to the cold rather than go home and admit to Mary that she had failed her and failed her baby sister.

 

Then Anthony Bridgerton stumbled past her, gave her his last two arrows and told her to keep her elbow up next time.

 

She shot suddenly much better, after that.

 

She still doesn’t know what he was doing there. To this day, she doesn’t understand why he was out in the woods. He’s the son of the local clothing merchant, Violet Bridgerton - and although his father is dead too, and there’s not a lot of money in textiles in a place like Twelve, he still ought to be better off than the Sharmas are. The Bridgertons ought to be doing better than a Seam household without a man to send down the mines.

 

Either way, he was there, and he gave her those two arrows, and it’s possible she owes him her life - and the lives of her sister and stepmother, too.

 

She’ll never be able to repay him now. She owes it to Edwina to try to win this thing and come home alive, if she can. She knows it’s not at all likely, but she’ll give it her best shot - and keep her elbow up all the while.

 

Even the boy who once gave her his last two arrows can’t come between Kate and her duty to get home to her sister.

 

Anthony is standing on the stage with her, now. Effie is herding them together, encouraging them to clasp hands and stand next to Agatha Danbury, District Twelve’s only living Victor - and their mentor for the coming Games.

 

Kate doesn’t think it will make a very interesting photo - she doesn’t expect it to hit the news in the Capitol - but she does as she is told anyway, more or less. There’s no sense in provoking anyone to anger they might take out on Edwina.

 

She doesn’t think about Anthony’s hand as she holds it. She doesn’t. She does not. This isn’t Anthony Bridgerton. It’s not the boy who gave her those arrows. He’s just some unknown merchant boy, just one more name standing between her and a victorious return to her sister.

 

He’s not Anthony Bridgerton. For the next three weeks or so of her life, he can’t be.

 

…….

 

She says her goodbyes quickly, and without shedding a tear.

 

Edwina wants her to try and win, so she promises that she will. Mary wants to pin a horseshoe brooch to her lapel - one which should have been a gift for her first birthday clear of the reaping, apparently.

 

Kate’s not convinced she would ever have grown up into a woman who has time for silver brooches, so perhaps it’s as well it turned out this way.

 

She hugs them both, says a few loving words, and sends them on their way again.

 

Then she waits to be taken to the train, since presumably no one else will say goodbye to her. She doesn’t have other friends. There are a handful of people she sits with in classes or folks who buy her game, but that’s not the same as having a friend who might want to say goodbye as she goes to her death, she thinks.

 

She actually gasps in shock when Eloise Bridgerton walks in.

 

“You should be saying goodbye to your brother.” Kate tells her, firm.

 

“Already done. I needed to see you, too.”

 

Eloise stops, then. She stops walking, stops talking, simply stands there and frowns at her with a thoughtful scrunch to her brows.

 

She has a very impressive considering face, for a thirteen-year-old.

 

“Eloise?” Kate asks.

 

She’s not quite sure what she’s asking. She’d like to ask why the hell Eloise is here, frankly. They’re not friends. She knows her only as well as any girl from the Seam knows the name of any middle-teen daughter of the merchant families. In a District like this, the merchant families are the closest she’s ever seen to a Capitol celebrity in the flesh.

 

Eloise nods, frowns, nods again.

 

And then -

 

“I wanted to say… no hard feelings, maybe?” Eloise offers, frowning harder than ever. “Someone should say it, and heaven knows Benedict never will. He’s too… you know. He’s a mess. He’s cut up. We all are, but he’s cut up worst of all.”

 

Kate nods, and wonders where this is going.

 

“So I wanted to come and say good luck - and no hard feelings. This… it sucks.”

 

“It does.” Kate agrees, because it’s easy to agree with that.

 

“You’re a good person, Kate Sharma. You volunteered for your sister, and you always look out for your family, and… and you do what you have to do, you hear me? I want District Twelve to go down fighting, not just my brother, but you, too. I wish you weren’t going in there with him, but I hope one of you comes out alive.”

 

“I hope so, too. I’ll do my best.”

 

Eloise nods, firm - and then launches forward to wrap her in her arms.

 

Kate hugs her back, hesitant, more confused by this visit than ever. She has understood now that it’s not a pity visit - it’s something stranger and more dangerous. A visit which says something about solidarity and the Games the Capitol makes the Districts play.

 

So she hugs Eloise Bridgerton, and tries to think of her own little sister more than she thinks of Eloise’s big brother.

 

For the next three weeks, that boy can’t be Anthony Bridgerton. It’s as simple as that.

 

…….

 

She sets to making him not Anthony Bridgerton as determinedly as possible, when they sit together in the dining car of the train. She sets to distancing herself and making him a stranger as efficiently as ever she can.

 

“I should have known a merchant boy like you would start with desert.” She sneers at him, all for the crime of reaching for an iced bun.

 

“And I should have known a Seam girl like you would eat with her hands.”

 

“What - you’re going to eat that bun with a fork? Did Mrs Bridgerton teach all her boys how to use the good silverware?”

 

“You leave my mother -”

 

“I see that you two are already getting to know each other.” Agatha Danbury interrupts, wandering into the dining car as if to join them.

 

“I think they already know each other.” Effie corrects her slightly, frowning between the two of them, her wig somehow echoing the lines of her eyebrows - as if she chose it for a day spent frowning.

 

“We have a lot of classes together.” Kate offers, still scowling.

 

“We don’t get on.” Anthony adds - rather unnecessarily, Kate thinks.

 

It’s unnecessary and yet too simplistic, both at once. They don’t get on. They’re not friends. They bicker about everything, sneer at every excuse - and yet he did give her those two arrows, once.

 

She swallows hard, tries to decide what to do about that.

 

“He’s good to his family, but we’ve never been friends.” She tries.

 

No. Even that sounds too much like allowing him to be Anthony Bridgerton, too little like making him a stranger she could plausibly shoot in the throat.

 

“Kate’s a piece of work. The other tributes don’t know what they’re in for.”

 

Hmm. Is there a compliment hiding in there, somewhere?

 

“Now you’re talking.” Agatha tells them, invites herself to a seat at the table. “Kate’s a piece of work - I like it. We can work with that. What’s…. Hmm - what’s nastiest about her, would you say?”

 

“She’s lethal with a bow. She’s good with traps and snares as well. She makes a living for herself and her family hunting game - and she strikes a hard bargain when she’s selling it.”

 

“Anthony’s a decent shot too.” Kate argues instinctively. “He’s not quite as good with a bow as I am these days, but he can take care of himself. He hunts out in the woods more often than your average merchant kid.”

 

He makes a scoffing sound. “My mum has eight kids and sells pretty dresses for a living. Of course I know my way around the woods. You’re not the only one with a family to feed.”

 

Kate ignores that. “He can fight with a sword like the careers can. He and his brothers and sisters practise together sometimes, in case one of them ever got called in the reaping.”

 

“My father taught me before he died. He told me a kid in Panem should always know their way around a sword.”

 

“Hmm. Not bad. Two kids who know their way around the woods, can handle a bow or a blade, and are used to hunting for a living.” Agatha echoes back to them, nodding, wearing a fierce frown. “And what about the rest of it?”

 

“The rest?” Kate asks, finds that she hates being caught at a loss.

 

“You don’t only win this thing by shooting a few arrows, little girl.” Agatha says, with a sharp, wolfish grin. “You need that hunger for victory. You need bloodlust or frenzy or just to forget that the other tributes are children too. And you sure as hell need a plan to win the crowd and the sponsors and put the other tributes where you want them.”

 

“We need a strategy.” Anthony concludes, nodding.

 

“I know that.” Kate snaps. “But I think being lethal with a bow is strategy enough for me.”

 

“Then you’re more naive than you look. Everyone needs a strategy.”

 

“What was yours?” Anthony asks.

 

Kate wants to punch his smug face, for that, or else tug on those ridiculous ears of his. He’s evidently winning their mentor over faster than she is - and she can’t afford to let him win that without a fight.

 

Sure enough, Agatha smiles - a frightening, sharp smile - and leans back in her chair.

 

“I made myself frightening. I sowed rumours amongst the tributes that I’d murdered my own stepfather back in Twelve and been reaped as punishment for it. I told them I’d killed game with only my bare hands and my teeth. I played up to the cameras whenever I could - that savage man-eater from Twelve. And it worked. The other tributes were so frightened of me that they made mistakes. They formed bad alliances. They fell over their own feet when I was near.”

 

“Kate could do that.” Anthony says at once. “Like I said - she’s lethal.”

 

“You’re the one who knows his way around a sword.” Kate argues.

 

“Fascinating.” Agatha says, nodding, still wearing that frightening smile. “I think perhaps District Twelve is in for a halfway decent year.”

 

…….

 

Kate spends the rest of the train journey alternately insulting Anthony and ignoring him altogether.

 

She couldn’t say which is more successful when it comes to making him not Anthony Bridgerton. As long as she’s insulting him, she’s reminding herself that they’re not friends - but she’s reminding herself that she knows him all too well just the same. She’s reminding herself that he’s a familiar face, part of the fabric of her life.

 

As long as she’s ignoring him, she’s still acutely aware of his presence in the space. To share a train compartment with a person like Anthony is its own unique sort of torture, she decides. Because even when she’s set on not speaking to him or interacting with him in any way whatsoever, she can still feel his eyes on her, can still see the shadow of his ears thrown against the far wall by the bright sunlight, can still even smell the familiar scent of him on the endlessly recirculated air.

 

She liked it better when they were bickering in Panem History. She liked that a hell of a lot better than ignoring him and waiting to die.

 

…….

 

Their first day in the training centre is an interesting one.

 

Kate is determined to make herself frightening as best she can. She doesn’t have a better strategy to hand, as far as she can see. So she heads for the bows first of all, shoots half a dozen targets without thinking too hard.

 

She’s just wondering about asking the instructor to set the targets up to move when Anthony strolls over to her, all smirking charm and warm eyes, as if they were old friends out for a light morning stroll.

 

That is - she imagines that’s how such a person would look, if she had any old friends, and if anyone in Twelve ever took a light morning stroll.

 

“Care for a little healthy competition?” He asks her, still smirking.

 

She scoffs. “Please, Bridgerton - you can’t call yourself healthy competition. You won’t trouble me at all.”

 

He raises his brows at her. “What do you say we put on a show?”

 

She nods. It’s a sound idea. She does want to make herself frightening.

 

She’s the one who turns to negotiate with the trainer. Two sets of moving laser targets - red for her, green for him, a dozen of each. A full quiver of arrows, and the challenge is to shoot every single target along the way.

 

Kate steps up to the firing line, feels Anthony step up next to her. She is more aware than ever, in this moment, of his presence at her side - of how impossible it is to ignore him, to make him not Anthony Bridgerton.

 

Then the targets come to life and she stops thinking of anything besides her bow.

 

She loses herself in the rhythm of it, for the first few seconds. There is nothing but herself and the bowstring and the arrows flying true.

 

She keeps her elbow up instinctively, these days.

 

Little by little, she settles in and begins to enjoy herself, begins to notice her surroundings. She hears Anthony congratulate her for one tricky shot under his breath. She hears a few murmurings behind her, hopes that they sound impressed and fearful, or something like that.

 

It’s the penultimate target which Anthony misses.

 

He’s losing concentration, perhaps. He’s not quite such a practised shot as she is anyway, these days, for all that he had more arrows to spare eight years or so ago.

 

She shoots his target without missing a beat. They can’t afford to show weakness - either of them, both of them. Her frightening facade is only as strong as the cracks in his foundations. So she shoots the green target, trusts that no one will notice amidst the rush of arrows. No one will argue too hard over who shoots which colour. No one will count twenty-five arrows on the training range floor where there should be twenty-four.

 

He shoots her next, in turn, gives her time to get an arrow knocked for the final one. He just effortlessly covers her covering him, as if they’ve shot together a thousand times before.

 

Then they’re back on track, each managing their own final target, until the exercise is done and they’ve hit every last one along the way.

 

There’s a beat of silence, when it’s over. For a moment Kate simply stands there, watches the coloured lights fade, and wonders how the hell she will ever go home to Edwina now.

 

And then -

 

“Thanks. Good save.” He mutters, as if to make this harder still.

 

“Mm. I had an arrow or two to spare.”

 

He throws her a look - understanding, perhaps a little amused.

 

She turns around before she can be tempted to laugh with him.

 

She finds that they’ve gathered quite the crowd, with their shooting. Good. That’s what she wanted. She wanted every other tribute to know her as a force to be reckoned with, and now they’re all crowding around the archery range to watch her and Anthony at work.

 

So -

 

“Head up. Don’t look them in the eye.” She tells him, under her breath.

 

“Understood.”

 

They stroll side-by-side through the crowd as if they were born to it.

 

…….

 

She spends the rest of the day with him, more or less, keeping her head up and eyes unseeing all the while. The two of them keep a frosty silence, as well - or at least they keep silence more often than not, and when they speak it’s only a matter of her suggesting he tests out his sword-fighting skills, or him asking for lessons on setting snares, or the two of them deciding on another round with their bows.

 

By the evening she’s so tired of acting aloof that she’s about ready to scream. She’s not a girl who has many close friends, no. But she is a girl who loves her sister, who likes to laugh and share some human warmth, and even one day spent playing the part of a girl who’s only frightening and unfeeling has her teetering on the brink.

 

She can’t understand how Agatha has played that part all her life since her victory. She simply can’t.

 

Is that what happens, perhaps? When a Victor wins the Games, are they frozen as the character they won them with? If she wins by acting cold and frightening, will she be cold and frightening all the rest of her days?

 

She’s lying on her bed and asking herself terrifying questions like that when she hears the knock on the door.

 

“Who is it?” She asks bluntly, because she doesn’t owe anyone good manners, not in a Capitol penthouse while she’s waiting to die.

 

“It’s me. Anthony.” He says, as if she might not recognise his voice.

 

She walks to the door, pulls it open. “What do you want?”

 

“I’ve found something you’ll want to see.”

 

He doesn’t tell her any more than that. He simply sets to walking, as if daring her to follow him.

 

She does, of course. She suspects she always will. It’s because she can’t resist a dare from Anthony Bridgerton, not because she likes to stick close by his side. 

 

She’s certain it’s not that.

 

He walks to the very end of the penthouse corridor, past the dining table, and through a doorway. She presumes they’re in some sort of service area - the space those avoxes spring from when they’re bringing out dinner. Kate wonders where they live, and then decides that perhaps she has enough on her mind without thinking of the living conditions of all those poor souls who’ve had their tongues cut out on the orders of the Capitol.

 

Anthony is still walking, meanwhile. He’s pressing on through the service area and up a flight of stairs at the end of it.

 

Stairs upwards? Stairs up and out from the top floor penthouse?

 

Kate hastens to follow him.

 

Sure enough, the stairs lead to the roof. A door opens onto a flat little space, with a few loud ventilation fans, a view of the city, and the unmistakable buzz of a forcefield nearby. It must run right around the edge of the rooftop, Kate supposes.

 

“Good job finding this place.” She tells him, grudging. It seems more useful than asking how he found it, since the answer is obviously by poking around and going upstairs.

 

“I thought you might like it. I thought you could use a chance to be yourself without an audience for a while.”

 

She scoffs. “Says you. I bet playing the bad guy is torturing you. I bet you miss your polished manners and your pretty-boy smiles.”

 

“Huh. You think my smile is pretty?” He asks her, teasing, batting his lashes.

 

She tuts, shakes her head, chooses deliberately to ignore him and to look out over the city.

 

She takes a seat on top of some large aluminium box structure - again, part of the ventilation system, she presumes. He sits himself opposite her, not touching, not near, not any trouble at all.

 

That is - he’s no trouble except for the view of his face, for the way she can see his eyes seeing her in turn.

 

She does feel very seen, in fact. She doesn’t know what to make of him knowing she needed an escape like this.

 

She clears her throat, tells him what has been on her mind all day.

 

“I wonder what it’s doing to Edwina. I wonder how she’s managing with me in here. She must have seen us shooting on the TV coverage - they’ll have shown that in the highlights of the training day. I don’t like to think of her watching me like that.”

 

He nods. “I wonder what it’s doing to Benedict and Daphne. I always thought they’d be the two who would… pick it up if my name was called, you know? I thought they’d be the ones to take my place. Benedict is the oldest without me, and Daphne is… most like a parent. If I had to learn to be our father, she’s always been a bit of a mother to us all too - sometimes more than our own actual mother. Losing our father hit her hard.”

 

Kates turn to nod now, too. “Eloise will help them out. She’s grown up quicker than you give her credit for.”

 

He shoots her a quick, curious look, and she makes a point of ignoring it.

 

She asks him something else instead. “How did your father die? I’ve always wondered but it never felt like the right time to ask.” She didn’t know him at all well, at the time, but she has always noticed that people don’t talk about it much.

 

“They say it was a tracker jacker swarm.” He tells her, and she understands what he means. She understands it as code for not a tracker jacker swarm, or at least not a natural one, but a Capitol-orchestrated accident.

 

So the late Mr Bridgerton, cloth merchant of District Twelve, was also something of a rebel. She finds that she’s not so surprised as she ought to be, as she nods and digests the news.

 

“I’m sorry.” She says softly, because she is. Anyone would be.

 

“I think I know how yours died.” He tells her, softer still.

 

She nods. “They don’t say it was a tracker jacker swarm. He was executed in the town square. Edwina was only four years old.”

 

He nods, too. “I remember it. I barely knew you at the time, but I remember seeing it.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

Silence falls, and she lets it lie a moment.

 

Then she says what she should have said eight years ago, now.

 

“Thank you, by the way. Thank you for the arrows. I don’t think I’ve ever said it.”

 

He scoffs. “There’s no need to fuss about it now, Kate. You don’t owe me anything. Or maybe - if you did, maybe we’re even, after you lent me that arrow this morning.”

 

“It’s not the same.” She argues instinctively. “It’s not even comparable. You saved my life - and my family. You saved us from starving to death.”

 

“And you just saved me from embarrassing myself in front of a room full of kids who want to kill me and a TV audience who might sponsor me. I’d say we’re even, Kate. I sure am more frightening with you shooting my targets for me than I’d be alone.”

 

She tuts at him, but it doesn’t make any difference. He’s still grinning at her, smug as anything, as if he thinks he has won some sort of victory.

 

She is never going to repay that debt, and that’s simply how it is. It’s the sort of debt which simply can’t be repaid.

 

All the same, she finds that it does bring a thought to mind.

 

“I’ll take care of your family as best I can if I make it home and you don’t.” She tells him now, and means it. “I’ll see to it that they’re fed and that the little ones have someone to lean on.”

 

“Same - obviously, same. If I make it home, your sister and stepmother will want for nothing.”

 

She laughs a hollow laugh. “I like to think they might still want for me. They might miss me for my own sake, not just for the food on the table.”

 

“That came out badly.” He tells her, joins in that desperate gallows laughter. “You knew exactly what I meant. They’ll be fed and clothed and have a roof over their heads. Maybe Edwina will marry into a merchant family. But - I know I’d never replace you.”

 

“Sometimes I think you might. Sometimes I think I could be anyone, to them. Here I am fighting desperately to get back to them, but sometimes I’m convinced they only see me as the hand that feeds them - and that they love each other more.”

 

“Sometimes I think that about my family too.” He mutters, eyes on his knees.

 

She wants to tell him he’s mad if he thinks that for even a second. She wants to tell him about Eloise on the day of the reaping, about all the times she has heard Colin boast in the schoolyard about his wonderful big brother.

 

But she knows it wouldn’t help. She knows a person never thinks a thing like that because of evidence. It’s only ever a matter of fear.

 

So -

 

“Thank you for bringing me up here. I needed it.” She tells him, all plain and raw and honest.

 

“Any time. In fact - catch you here tomorrow?” He asks, brows raised.

 

“Mmm. Maybe. I’m going to stay a while now first.”

 

“Then I’m staying too. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

 

She raises her brows at him, unimpressed, and yet not tempted to argue the point with him.

 

She wants the silence more.

 

…….

 

The next few days of her life follow much the same pattern as that one.

 

She spends her mornings and afternoons shooting with Anthony, or sword-fighting with Anthony, or setting snares with Anthony while the other tributes look on. She resolutely ignores them all the while, encourages him to do likewise as best he can. He’s not a young man made for packing away his manners in a box and acting rude, aloof and frightening - he’s a young man made for giving away his last two arrows to a near-stranger, in her experience - but he does his best.

 

She’s oddly proud of him for the habitual scowl he learns to wear.

 

They spend their evenings on the rooftop, as much as they can. They go up there and sit together, sometimes sharing a conversation about their families, often saying nothing at all.

 

They never do discuss what they’re doing here. They never talk about the Hunger Games, not directly. They never say out loud in plain words that they’re both scared at the thought of dying, of their families watching it on TV, of all the duties they’d leave behind them.

 

They never say it out loud, and yet all the same, Kate knows it’s the truth.

 

…….

 

She scores an eleven, from the Gamemakers, for completing the archery range set for two shooters but managing it single-handed.

 

If that scores an eleven, she hates to think what a person has to do for a twelve.

 

Anthony earns a ten and won’t tell her what he did to earn it. She asks him on the rooftop and everything, but still he’s tight-lipped about it.

 

She doesn’t push her luck. Twenty-one is a good joint score for an outlying district - the best since Eight scored twenty-two three decades ago. The TV coverage is full of that statistic all evening.

 

Kate doesn’t know when she started thinking in terms of good joint scores rather than not Anthony Bridgerton, and she hasn’t a damn clue how to put it right again.

 

…….

 

The day of their final interviews begins the same as any other.

 

Kate wakes, washes, dresses. She has breakfast with Effie, Agatha and Anthony. She spends a while discussing strategy for the final interviews with Agatha, a while being buffed to within an inch of her life by her prep team, a while wishing she was anywhere else, doing anything else - but perhaps most of all wishing she was out in the woods with her bow, with only the straightforward concerns of life, death and game-hunting.

 

She sits backstage through the other interviews and hates every moment. The Careers are menacing, but they’re not truly terrifying, she thinks - or hopes. They’re good at wielding a sword or an axe or a trident, but they’re human, too. They’re playing for the crowd. They’re letting the desperation show through the cracks of their arrogance as they showboat for sponsors.

 

Kate doesn’t do that, when her time comes. She sits in that seat on the stage, and she tells the audience that she’s lethal with a bow and she loves her sister, and then she stands and leaves without waiting for her time to be up.

 

Then she stays backstage to listen to Anthony’s interview. Not Anthony Bridgerton. A good joint score. Her district mate, her rival, the boy who would give her his last two arrows and who will care for her sister if he makes it home without her.

 

Whoever he is, tonight, she stands there and listens to him.

 

He starts out well enough. Caesar Flickerman congratulates him on looking so handsome in his suit. Anthony doesn’t rise to it, just shrugs and says his prep team know their work. So then Caesar pushes it, says that he’s heard Anthony can be quite the charmer when he wants to be.

 

Anthony tells him he’s not here to charm anyone, he’s here to win - and says it so bluntly that Kate finds herself inordinately proud of him.

 

She’s just thinking they’re on the home straight when the cracks begin to appear.

 

“Come along, Anthony - tell us more about yourself. I’m sure I’ve seen a news story saying that you’re quite the charmer back home and that the young ladies fall over themselves for you. Is there a special girl back home, hmm?”

 

“No.”

 

“Or more than one special girl, maybe? Is that what you’re trying to tell us, Anthony? My, my - what a scandal.”

 

“There’s no one back home.” Anthony says, and Kate can practically hear him gritting his teeth.

 

“No? No special someone at all? I can’t believe that - a handsome lad like you. You must have your eye on someone.”

 

“If there was someone, this wouldn’t be the time to say it.”

 

“Come, my dear Anthony - there’s no better time. Here’s what you do. You tell me this young lady’s name, and then you win this thing - and then you go home coated in glory. You go home as a Victor and she’ll have to go out with you.”

 

The crowd are loving it. Kate can hear them whooping and hollering. But she can hear, too, that Anthony is suspiciously silent. She can just imagine him clenching his jaw, can imagine the crease between his brows. That’s the face he wears when he’s uncomfortable and keeping quiet, in her experience.

 

Caesar pushes his luck. “You don’t like that idea, Anthony? You don’t like the idea of going home as Victor and sweeping her off her feet?”

 

“That won’t work out, since she came here with me.”

 

It takes Kate an embarrassingly long time to understand what he means. She stands there, hears the crowd fall silent, then into hushed murmurs, and wonders what he’s talking about.

 

Then she understands all abruptly that he’s talking about her.

 

She doesn’t follow the rest of the interview. It ends, presumably. She expects that Ceasar makes some consoling noises.

 

But now Anthony is strolling back off the stage, as if he hasn’t a care in the world - and she’s throwing herself at him, slamming him into the wall, pinning an arm across his throat.

 

“What the hell, Bridgerton? What the hell? What is this? You’re trying to make me look weak? Trying to get in my head?”

 

“I’m not trying to do anything. It’s just true.” He spits straight back at her.

 

Agatha breaks them up, now. She pulls Kate away by the shoulders, starts hurrying her towards the elevator.

 

“Not here, you two. Anywhere but here.”

 

“But he -”

 

“Not here.”

 

Kate fumes silently until they’re in the elevator. She can actually feel herself shaking with shock and fury, can feel her arm quaking beneath Agatha’s firm grasp.

 

The elevator door slides shut behind the three of them, and she lets loose again.

 

“What the hell was that? What game are you playing?”

 

“It’s not a game.”

 

“Then that’s worse. Why the hell would you do that - there - now?”

 

“Don’t be a fool, Kate.” Agatha snaps at her. “When else would you have him do it? There’s never a good time in a world like ours. Let it go - or let him in. You must realise that being stubborn and lonely all your life is not ideal.”

 

Kate blinks at her, wonders what she means by that. It sounds like a comment about her own life as a figure of terror, she thinks, rather than a comment about Kate.

 

Agatha presses on. “Besides - he’s done you a favour. He’s put the finishing touches on your strategy. Now you’re not just fearsome but desirable - a femme fatale, even.”

 

“I didn’t ask for this.” Kate protests.

 

“None of us asked for any of it.” Anthony mutters, his eyes on the door.

 

She fumes the rest of the way to the penthouse in silence.

 

She can’t think much beyond her fuming, she finds. She can’t think as far as making sense of it, as grappling with the idea of Anthony Bridgerton with some sort of crush on her.

 

Is that how he’d frame it, she wonders? Would he call it a crush or would he use another word? Did he daydream about walking laps of the meadow with her or trading his lunch with her, perhaps, back before his name was called in the reaping?

 

She can’t conceive of what it would look like, if Anthony Bridgerton had a crush on her. She simply can’t. She can’t imagine how he would behave if he were trying to flirt with her, not only argue with her or compete with her or -

 

Ah.

 

Maybe - maybe that’s it.

 

They arrive at the penthouse. The elevator doors open. Kate steps out through them - and grabs Anthony by the sleeve of his neatly-tailored jacket.

 

“Come on. Upstairs.” She bids him, short. “We need to talk.”

 

“Stay safe, kids.” Agatha bids them with a frightening wink.

 

Kate ignores her and goes on walking.

 

She sits in her usual place, when they arrive on the rooftop. She sits on that familiar box of aluminium sheeting and wonders how so much can change in one evening.

 

Then she asks the obvious question.

 

“How did it happen? When? We’ve never been friends. Our families aren’t close.” She points out.

 

He looks at her for a moment, brows raised, as if debating whether or not to tell her the truth.

 

Then he sighs, rakes a hand through his hair. “You can stop taking that tone with me, Kate. It’s not like I meant for it to happen. When my father died and it broke my mother, I was so set on never being like that myself. But then - then you happened to me.”

 

“But how?”

 

“I fell for you the day they killed your father.” He tells her baldly, looks her right in the eye. “You were just a kid. We both were. But you - you stood there, brave as anything, and watched every moment of his hanging while you hid your sister’s face against your chest just the way I always wished I could hide my brothers and sisters from the world. I understood then that we’re the same, you and me.”

 

“We are not the same.” She snaps at him, thinks of his full belly, his loving family, his having two arrows to spare.

 

“Kate -”

 

“We are not the same.” She repeats, and it sounds defensive even to her own ears.

 

She hates it. She hates everything about this moment.

 

She almost hates him for making such a confusing mess of the last three weeks of her life, honestly. He could at least have let her go out in a straightforward flood of horror.

 

She sighs, looks across at him, sees him looking back at her. It’s a scene they’ve played out every night since they’ve been at this training centre, but it feels different, tonight.

 

“Good luck tomorrow.” She wishes him, as if to make up for it - for all of it, for his bad luck in being drawn and her hostility towards love and everything in between.

 

“You, too.”

 

“I hope you at least survive the bloodbath.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“What?” She asks him, stunned. “Surely you realise you have a decent chance of making it through that at least?”

 

“No - I mean - that’s not what I hope for. That’s not what I think about. I hope I go out as myself - and as my father’s son.”

 

“Oh. Then - I hope that, too.” She hopes that for himself and for him.

 

More than anything - anything, still - she hopes she gets home to Edwina.

 

…….

 

He does survive the bloodbath, the next morning. They both do.

 

This cornucopia is big, ugly, all geometric sharp angles and metal panels shining in the sun. Kate can see a bow shining, too, in the thick of the weapons and supplies loaded into the cornucopia mouth - but she’s determined not to go for it.

 

She grabs a nearby backpack instead and runs for her life.

 

She makes it out of there more or less unscathed, catches a knife with her backpack as she goes. That counts as a success, she decides - an inch away from death is a good enough safety margin, around here.

 

She keeps running until she’s confident that she is clear of immediate danger, until she must have put a good few miles between herself and the rest of the tributes.

 

When the anthem plays, she leans against a tree trunk for a moment to see the faces of the fallen light up the sky - and she admits to herself, silently, that she’s hoping Anthony’s not dead.

 

That makes her a fool, she decides. The longer he lives, the more likely it is that she’ll have to kill him herself. She ought to want him to go out early, and to some other tribute’s blade, so that she has nothing to do with it.

 

But she told him yesterday that she hoped he would survive the bloodbath, and it turns out she meant it.

 

She sighs too loudly, when she doesn’t see his face in the sky. She realises that after it happens - realises that a noise like that is bound to attract attention if there’s anyone nearby at all.

 

Around her, the birds go on singing. A squirrel - or something very like it - jumps from branch to branch overhead.

 

Good. No danger.

 

Time to keep moving.

 

…….

 

She realises something, little by little, over the first two or three days of the Games. She comes to a gradual understanding, in between searching for water, snaring the occasional meal, dodging freak firestorms which the Gamemakers send after her.

 

She realises that Anthony is keeping the Career pack away from her.

 

She reads the first few signs like she’d read any other signs in a forest. She has spent enough time out hunting over the years. So she recognises the fake trail when she sees it - realises that someone has done a fair job of imitating her tracks through a patch of thick undergrowth, bending back stems - and crucially heading the wrong way.

 

The following morning, she passes the charred remains of a bird shot through the eye, left abandoned over a fire she’d have been too sensible to light.

 

She turns and walks away as fast as she can, of course. If he’s setting out a false trail as her - if he’s painting her own target on her back, perhaps - then she’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

She does wonder what he’s playing at. She must be a target to the Careers, with that score from training, with the fearsome reputation she has built for herself. So perhaps he is trying to coax them to leave her alone and follow him instead. Perhaps this crush he apparently has on her stretches as far as all that.

 

No - that seems too odd to be true. He wants to get home to his brothers and sisters - she knows it.

 

She knows how that feels.

 

…….

 

She learns the full truth of Anthony’s strategy the next night, when she’s settling in to sleep. She’s roosting in a tree like a bird, securely fastened in by her belt, and feeling fairly confident that the other tributes are not likely to look up and find her even if they pass by.

 

She hears voices drawing near and realises her confidence is set to be put to the test.

 

There are quite a few of them, she thinks - perhaps half a dozen or so. They move loudly, like Careers. They’re a pack who aren’t frightened of the other tributes.

 

She recognises the tone more than the individual words, at first. They’re frustrated, annoyed, looking for something - or someone.

 

Ah.

 

They’re looking for her.

 

“I’m sure she went this way.” The girl from Two decides, walking right up close to Kate’s tree - and waving her bow at some footprints she now realises she ought to have scrubbed out better.

 

Her bow. The bow Kate herself should be using.

 

“But then this way.” Anthony argues, pointing off down a nearby ravine with his own bow. “Look - there’s water this way. She’ll want to stay close to a water source.”

 

“No. I don’t see any tracks over there.”

 

Anthony declares that he can see a few broken twigs, like a girl of Kate’s size pushing through the undergrowth.

 

Kate knows full well that he broke the twigs himself. In fact - she suspects he’s snapping them now, as he shapes a false trail just to point it out to them.

 

“It’s too late to go looking for her now.” The boy from Two decides. He might be the leader, Kate thinks. “We need to rest. Let’s stay here for the night and hunt her down tomorrow.”

 

“You’re sure? She might have put some serious distance into us by then. These tracks are fresh.” Anthony argues.

 

“Why are you so keen to run after her now, lover boy?” The girl asks now.

 

Anthony shrugs. “Like I said - I’m not her lover boy.”

 

“You heard him, Glimmer. The girl rejected him and now he wants her blood. Don’t ask questions while he’s helping us take her out. I don’t want to know how she earned that eleven.”

 

“I just think we should have found her by now. He’s been helping us for days.”

 

“She’s good at covering her tracks - but she definitely went this way, down to the water.”

 

“We’ll find her tomorrow.” The boy decides once and for all, now, and sits down to rest.

 

He sits at the foot of Kate’s chosen tree - right on top of her ill-covered tracks, at least - and she curses silently to herself.

 

She should have chosen better than to sleep here tonight.

 

Anthony’s still going. Somehow, impossibly, he’s still trying to move the Career pack further away from her and leave her in peace.

 

“We shouldn’t stop here. There are tracker jackers everywhere - must be a nest nearby.” He says, points at one buzzing by his head.

 

Kate swallows hard. She doesn’t want him to have to spend the night thinking of that - not when she knows how they say his father died. It’s bad enough that he’s in here, trying to distract the Careers from her trail, trying to see to it that one or other of them gets to go home to their families.

 

He doesn’t need tracker jacker nightmares too.

 

No. She mustn’t be distracted by that - not right now. If there are tracker jackers flying and Anthony thinks there’s a nest, she should be looking for it, trying to use it to her advantage.

 

Yes. There. Just a couple of branches over from the branch she has chosen for the night.

 

Are tracker jackers less active in the early hours of the morning? Did she learn that, once upon a time? Could she saw through that branch in the night and send the nest down on the Careers below?

 

She’ll do it if they stay here. That’s what she decides. If Anthony has no luck moving them on, then she’ll try setting the tracker jackers on them just shy of dawn. She’ll send the nest down onto them, snatch the bow in the chaos that follows.

 

He seems to have lost the argument about where to spend the night, she notices. The boy and girl from Two are already lying down beneath her tree, eyes closed. The tributes from One are taking guard duty, facing down towards that ravine Anthony lied about as if she might spring from the undergrowth at any second.

 

And Anthony?

 

Anthony himself, meanwhile, is shooting glances up at her branch as if trying to catch her eye.

 

He evidently knows full well that she’s here. He’s being somewhat subtle about it, she’d say - he hasn’t made a noise, hasn’t looked at her while any of the others are watching. But he’s definitely trying to get her attention and acknowledge that she’s there.

 

She peers down at him, nods a little, risks a slight grin and the smallest wave. She hopes he’ll take that for a gesture of thanks.

 

He winks up at her, as if this were all some scheme they’d cooked up together.

 

She blows him a kiss. It doesn’t mean anything - not really. It’s just a little good-natured kiss for the boy who keeps saving her life, time and time and time again.

 

He blows a kiss right back at her, then settles down beneath her tree to wait.

 

…….

 

She whistles for him, in the morning. Just shy of dawn, she whistles the noise of a redstart - or something very like it - and hopes that he’ll notice a redstart is not a normal noise to hear at this time of night in the arena. It’s a noise for the woods of District Twelve, late in the afternoon, on a long summer’s day hunting.

 

Sure enough, it works. He startles a little, looks around him as if to check the coast is clear, then throws a glance up at her.

 

She mimes sawing through the branch, points at the tracker jackers.

 

He nods and takes himself down towards that ravine - to pretend he’s taking a piss, perhaps, or else to pretend he’s tracking her, if anyone should wake up and ask him what he’s playing at. She supposes it’s not unheard of for a guy to take his weapons with him when he goes to take a piss during the Hunger Games.

 

She sets to sawing through that branch. It’s hot work, heavy going. It’s loud, too - frighteningly loud - and she’s terrified that the Careers will wake and see her here, that all Anthony’s subterfuge will be for nothing.

 

She tries not to show it on her face, though. She expects that there are cameras on her at this very moment. It’s surely the most interesting thing happening in the arena just shy of dawn. So she wears a fierce scowl throughout, determined to play the part of the most frightening girl in the Games.

 

She’s nearly through the branch when the girl from One stirs.

 

Kate ignores her and goes on sawing. She doesn’t have a choice, does she? She can’t change her plan now, not when the only way through is to plough onwards.

 

Even as she presses on, though, she’s thinking of the consequences. The Careers will know that Anthony lied to them. They’ll know exactly where they stand. They’ll go after him for revenge, and it’ll be her fault, all because she couldn’t saw through this damn branch quick enough.

 

Chaos is erupting beneath her, now. That girl has woken the other tributes, and they’re looking around for Anthony, and -

 

And Kate is through the branch. She’s pushing, hard, to start the nest falling on the tributes below.

 

It works. She feels a sting to her face, another to her neck, but she scarcely even notices. It works. The tracker jackers are swarming all over the tributes, and they’re fleeing the scene in a panic, leaving their weapons behind - all except that girl from One, who’s falling where she stands while the cannon sounds.

 

Ah.

 

Kate does feel a bit woozy, in fact. And - and that’s perhaps another sting on her right hand, perhaps one or two on her left arm, too.

 

She has perhaps been stung quite a few times.

 

She starts trying to climb down the tree. The swarm below has mostly dispersed to follow the surviving Careers, now. So she’s safe to climb down, salvage some gear and try to do something about these stings, and then set out to warn Anthony. She should be safe to do that.

 

She begins to feel the trunk move beneath her hands - or perhaps her hands are the part that’s moving - and then suddenly, all at once, she’s falling.

 

She lies on the ground for a long time, after she falls. The sky is purple - more purple than any sunrise she has ever seen. The cannon sounds for another of the Careers - at least, she hopes it’s another of the Careers - and she could swear she feels it echoing and reverberating in the air around her with an odd, electronic noise. The leaves and dirt at her back feel suddenly like the coal dust of the Seam. She can hear voices - Edwina pleading with her to get up, Mary warning Edwina to let her sister rest, for a change.

 

Then she can hear Anthony Bridgerton pleading with her to get up, too.

 

“Get up, Kate. Please, Kate - come on. You have to get up. You have to run.”

 

“Hrm?”

 

“You have to get out of here. You can’t stay here. Get out.”

 

He’s rubbing something on her neck, she notices. Some paste which smells like autumn leaf mould. He’s rubbing it over her skin, and it’s cool to the touch, and it makes her stings burn a little less than they did before.

 

“Please, Kate. You have to get up and get out of here.” He tells her, pressing a bow into her less-stung hand.

 

“Bridgerton?”

 

“It’s me. Yes - it’s me - and we need to get you out of here.”

 

He’s scooping an arm beneath her shoulders, now. He’s lifting her into a sitting position, and then to her feet. She doesn’t know how he manages it so smoothly, while she’s all drugged and heavy and confused.

 

She does feel a bit better already, though. She can feel that leaf mould paste doing something where it sits on her neck and face and arms.

 

She’s on her feet. Anthony is urging her forward, half-carrying her to the edge of the clearing.

 

“Go - that way. Up the ravine - not down. There’s a cave - just a small one - and a thicket of willows hiding the entrance. Think you can remember that, Kate? A thicket of willows?”

 

She nods. “Willow cave.”

 

“Go on. Get out of here. Run.”

 

She does. She heads up the ravine, lurches forward, as fast as her drug-heavy legs will carry her.

 

She doesn’t realise he’s not coming with her until he’s already out of sight.

 

He must have turned the other way. He must have - what? - gone to hold off the Careers? Or perhaps to distract them, to spin some new lie?

 

She hesitates a moment, wobbling on her feet, trying to remember that he told her to find the willow cave.

 

She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t. She does not know. The sky is purple, and the paste has fallen from her hand, or scrubbed from her hand, and her fingers are turning numb.

 

Anthony told her to go to the cave, but she should be helping him.

 

Good joint scores.

 

Not Anthony Bridgerton.

 

She doesn’t know what to do.

 

That’s when she hears the voice - her sister, skipping and playing, dancing up the ravine ahead of her.

 

Well, then. That’s that one settled.

 

If Edwina wants her to go to the willow cave, then that is where she will go.

 

…….

 

She’s half-dead by the time she arrives at the willow cave.

 

No. That’s an understatement.

 

She’s at least three-quarters-dead by the time she arrives at the willow cave.

 

She feels so faint she can scarcely stay upright. She falls to the floor, tries to understand why she’s so weak, why the sky is so purple, why her hand is so sore.

 

The leaf mould. She’s all out of leaf mould. Anthony put it on her hand, and that was important - so important he risked his life for it, risked coming back to the scene of the crime and staying with her a while - so even if she feels ready to pass out, she needs to see to the leaf mould.

 

Is it leaf mould? She doesn’t know. It’s smelly, greenish-brown.

 

She wipes some from her neck and onto the sting on her hand, and feels better at once.

 

She tries for a bit more. She tries to wipe the healing paste over all her stings, tries to check that they’re all covered.

 

She’s still staring in confusion at the one on her arm - wondering whether it has turned yellow, or whether she’s only imagining it - when she passes out cold.

 

…….

 

She wakes up to the sound of Anthony’s screams.

 

He must be far away, but he sounds very close. She doesn’t know whether that’s the venom still in her system. But she’s sure that the screams are real, at least - that she’s not entirely hallucinating them. She would recognise his voice anywhere.

 

He screams and screams for a long time, as if the Careers are cutting him to pieces.

 

Kate tries to make it to the mouth of the cave, tries to set out and help him. She really, truly tries. She crawls a few paces, on her hands and knees, then collapses face-down into the dirt.

 

She lies there and listens to the screams of the boy who gave her his last two arrows when her sister was starving.

 

She listens to them and wishes he’d had a quick, clean death instead.

 

…….

 

She waits for the cannon all day and it never, ever fires.

 

She hasn’t missed it. Even drugged and confused, she’s certain of that. She has been lying awake and feeble on the floor of that cave and listening for Anthony’s death all this entire day, and she is certain that she hasn’t heard the cannon sound for him.

 

Little by little, she gathers her strength. Her mind returns to her, first. She finds that she can remember the events of the day quite clearly - can remember even the purple sky with an odd, intense focus. Her limbs return to her, next, her hand still throbbing but her fingers moving as they should.

 

Her strength returns last of all. She sits, then stands, then takes a few tentative steps around the cave and outside as the approaching dawn begins to light up the sky.

 

Good. She’s ready to set out and look for Anthony.

 

She has to at least try to find him. She’s sure from those screams she heard that he’s in a bad way, but she can offer him a mercy killing at the very least. She owes him better than to leave him to bleed slowly to death, since he once spared her and her family a slow and painful death in turn. It’s a whole day, now, since she brought down that nest - and perhaps three-quarters of a day since she first heard his screams. And yet she hasn’t heard the cannon yet, so there isn’t a moment to lose.

 

He might still survive.

 

There’s a tiny part of her thinking that, even now. He might survive whatever injuries the Careers gave him. She might be able to patch him up. If she’s killed by another tribute, or by cold or fire or tracker jacker venom, he could go home to District Twelve.

 

She’d like that, for the boy who gave her his last two arrows.

 

She doesn’t know where she’ll find him. She tries to think of what he might do, in a situation like the one they found themselves in yesterday. He went down the ravine to draw the Careers away, presumably, and then they found him and cut him to shreds.

 

She takes a different route there, rather than heading straight up and down the ravine. It’s tempting to go back to the nest and try to salvage some more gear, but she decides not to risk it. She’d rather not draw attention to the willow cave. It could be a good place for the two of them to set up camp while Anthony recuperates.

 

Funny how she’s already presuming she can save him. She shouldn’t count on that - she knows she shouldn’t - but it’s tempting to count on it all the same.

 

She’s just thinking that when the fanfare sounds.

 

She stiffens, at first. She goes still in shock when she hears the sound, because part of her presumes it’s a cannon firing for Anthony. But then she understands that it’s a different sort of noise and settles in to listen.

 

It’s a special announcement from the Gamemakers declaring that there can be two Victors if they come from the same District.

 

She wonders what the point of it is, honestly. She wonders why they are bothering to make an announcement about that. She had already set out searching for him anyway, so if they wanted to make their Games more exciting by encouraging her to team up with her fellow District Twelve tribute, they’re wasting their time. She’s one step ahead of them.

 

Ah. Maybe both the boy and girl from Two survived her swarm. Maybe they’re trying to pit Two and Twelve against each other, trying to give them both something to root for.

 

She quickens her step, presses on towards the lower part of that ravine. She needs to find Anthony before the cannon sounds for him - or before the Careers come back to finish what they started.

 

She’s a few hundred yards from the empty remains of the tracker-jacker nest when she sees the stand of willow trees.

 

What are the odds of that, hmm?

 

She shouldn’t ask questions like that - not even to herself. The odds are always rigged, in this deadly game the Capitol has them play. But that’s only the second clutch of willow trees she has seen today, and although these are much taller - full, lively trees, not the little shrubs by her cave - she thinks it’s the sort of message Anthony might try to send her.

 

Sure enough, she rushes over there, and finds him passed out cold in a pool of his own blood.

 

He’s not dead. She can tell that right away from the sound of his breathing - laboured, shaky, as if scarcely his own.

 

He’s not dead yet, but she’s worried he might soon be.

 

He was trying to stitch up his own leg when he passed out. There’s a needle still stuck in his thigh, and she wants to retch at the sight of it, but she can’t. She mustn’t. He needs her at her best, this morning. This is like taking care of her sister when her father died. She can’t quail. There isn’t time for her to quail, not when people are depending on her.

 

She swallows hard, forces herself to look right at the gaping wound in his thigh, to stare that needle down without flinching.

 

It looks bad, but he’s not dead yet.

 

“Anthony? Can you hear me?” She asks, soft, patting at his cheek.

 

He ignores her and goes on breathing those awful, laboured breaths.

 

She breathes a shaky breath of her own and wonders what to do.

 

Leg first. That must be the most important part. It’s still oozing blood, and he can’t afford to lose more. She should stitch him up, disinfect the wound, then think about keeping him warm, getting some water and food in him if she can.

 

He has other cuts too - more minor ones. She should disinfect all of them. She wonders whether he has a med kit, or only a sewing kit. She’ll search his backpack once she has this closed and that blood stops oozing.

 

She gathers her courage and sets to it.

 

“Good job on the stitches so far, Bridgerton. I can tell you Bridgertons sell dresses. My compliments to your mother.” She tries teasing.

 

He doesn’t wake up for that, but it makes her feel better, at least.

 

She picks up the needle, pulls it the rest of the way through that half-sewn stitch.

 

Yes. It’s better once she’s made a start. As soon as she has hold of the needle and is actually doing something, she feels better about the situation. She’s thinking less of Anthony with his leg slashed open and more of solving a problem, she finds.

 

Funny how she hasn’t so much as thought of a mercy killing since the moment she found him here.

 

She’s on the third stitch when he lets out a groan. He still doesn’t open his eyes, but it’s definitely a groan.

 

“Hush, Bridgerton. You don’t want the whole arena to hear you.” She chides him - and then squeezes at his hand a little, too.

 

He doesn’t squeeze back, and she goes on stitching.

 

She’s shaking, by the time she’s finished. It’s one of the more horrific things she has ever done - not a million miles away from watching her father hang - but it’s done. It’s finished. There is no longer a gaping slash all across Anthony’s leg.

 

She searches his backpack, next. She finds a basic medical kit - a few more lengths of suture thread, some disinfectant, a couple of dressings which look cleaner than anything else she’s ever seen in the arena.

 

She does her best to clean his leg, then his more minor wounds, and then dress what she can.

 

Then she wonders what to do next.

 

They can’t stay here. It’s a terrible place to stay. It’s too close to the empty tracker jacker nest, runs the risk of the Careers coming back to the scene of the crime. The cave is much safer, but she’s not sure about moving Anthony in his current state.

 

There’s nothing else for it. She simply has to.

 

So the next part is a struggle, too. It’s a different sort of struggle from the struggle of sewing his leg closed. She’s not fighting her own heaving stomach, this time, but simply her own awful weakness. He’s more sturdily built than her. She spent the last day lying in the dirt half-dead. But she’s desperate to get him to safety, and that desperation lends her strength.

 

She manages to drag him onto the top of a nearby rock, then crouches next to the rock herself for height. She’d never be able to lift him bodily from the ground to her shoulders, but if she can use the rock to her advantage and get him onto her shoulders from there, the part of actually carrying him to the cave should be the easy part.

 

At least - that’s her theory.

 

It more or less works. She gets him draped around her shoulders. Her legs shaking with the effort, she sets out in slow, careful steps towards the cave.

 

He’s heavy, and she’s worried about splitting his stitches, and he’s heavy, and she feels so damn tired she could simply lie down and die.

 

At least - she could do that, if Anthony wasn’t depending on her.

 

She doesn’t take care with her tracks. She’ll dash back and cover them once she has him hidden in the cave. That’s the best she can do, today.

 

She’s perhaps half way there when he begins to groan.

 

“Hush, Bridgerton.” She snaps at him in a whisper - a fond whisper, though, she must admit.

 

He groans again.

 

“We’re nearly home.”

 

Can a willow cave in the arena be home? Maybe not, but it’s not as if they have a better one.

 

She’s dizzy with exertion by the time they arrive, by the time she sets him down to rest as gently as she can - which is to say, not as gently as she’d like. All the same, she forces herself back outside again. She needs to pick up his bow and backpack and cover their tracks, needs to collect enough water for a sick patient for a day or two.

 

She does it. Heaven only knows how, but she does it. She confuses their trail, picks up their things, fills a few bottles with water and never quite faints headfirst into the stream.

 

She makes it back to the cave. She sets the bottles down next to Anthony, in case he wakes up thirsty. She thinks about what else she might do for him - another round of disinfectant, some food or water or warmth.

 

She throws her jacket weakly over his chest and then lies down at his side.

 

…….

 

She wakes up some time later - an hour, a day, or something in between - and finds Anthony breathing more quiet and steady at her side.

 

She’s relieved at that, she decides. Now she’s not in such bad shape herself, she takes his pulse and forces herself to have a better look at his wounds. There’s one quite deep cut on his arm, and a few other nicks and scrapes besides. The slash on his leg looks angry and red, despite her best efforts with the needle and disinfectant.

 

All the same, she’s feeling brighter than she has in days. He’s not dead yet - neither of them are. She’s not alone out here. If they both make it to the end, then they’re both allowed to go home.

 

They could both go home to their families. It could happen.

 

Yes. Well. That’s quite enough daydreaming for one morning.

 

She reaches for the disinfectant and starts work on that neglected wound on his arm.

 

He groans and blinks his eyes open the moment she makes contact.

 

“Stings.” He tells her blearily, with a slight breathy hiss.

 

“Yes.” She agrees. “It’s good for you.”

 

“Kate?”

 

“I’m here. You’re safe for now, and I’m right here.” She tries. She imagines that’s what a person might want to hear, in a situation like this.

 

He nods, quirks a slight smile even as his eyes flutter closed.

 

“I need to treat your arm, even if it stings.” She tells him now.

 

“Mm.”

 

“Just rest while I see to it. And then maybe some food?”

 

“‘M not hungry.” He murmurs, so quiet she has to strain to hear it.

 

She grunts a little and keeps pouring the disinfectant over his arm.

 

…….

 

He’s better, the next time he wakes up. That is - he’s not well, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s in much better shape than he was. She manages to coax half a litre of water and a few dried apple slices into him, manages to convince him to let her re-dress that leg.

 

He’s well enough to want to talk, too, it seems.

 

“You found me. Thank you for that.” He tells her, wearing most of a smile.

 

“I had to. It was the least I could do after… after everything.” She says, knowing he will know what she means. “We save each other, you and me. It’s what we do.”

 

He laughs a hollow little laugh, nods and reaches for another swig of water.

 

And then -

 

“Do you think we’ll ever stop doing it? Do you think we’ll ever just live a quiet life?” He asks, eyes full of sadness and laughter, both at once.

 

She grins at him, rueful. “I know you think you’re joking - but we might. We could have that quiet life after all. There was a special announcement while you were under. The Gamemakers have changed the rules. There can be two Victors if the last two standing are from the same District.”

 

“Two Victors?” He asks, frowning, his face perhaps falling a little.

 

Kate doesn’t understand that reaction. He should be delighted. He should be jumping for joy that they might both get to go home - jumping for joy even with that slash in his thigh.

 

He carries on, as if trying to explain himself. “I don’t buy it. It seems too good to be true. They’re playing some game with us.”

 

“Yes. It’s called the Hunger Games.” She deadpans. “And even if they are, Anthony - what of it? What are we going to do differently? I like playing this game more than I like the game where only one of us can win. If they turn on us later, so be it. For now, I like to have a little hope for a change.”

 

He nods, still frowning. “So that’s why you came to get me? You came looking for me when they said there could be two Victors, if you saved me?”

 

She rolls her eyes at him for that. “I came looking for you because you’re you.”

 

“What - because you know I’d look for you?” He asks, sharp. “Because you decided you owed me, after I did what I could to protect you from the Careers?”

 

“No. Because - because… you know. Because we’re better together. A team. District Twelve with a record-breaking joint score.” She says.

 

He nods, reaches for that water bottle again.

 

She’s convinced he still hasn’t taken her point.

 

So she kisses him. She simply leans in and does it. She thinks it’s past time she tried it, honestly. She’s not much of a kisser - not experienced at all, never one to think of boyfriends and sweethearts and having children one day - but she’s determined to give it a try.

 

She thinks it turns out well enough. Anthony kisses her back, as far as she can tell. He tastes of water treatment tablets and apple slices - but perhaps of something better, too. She can still catch something of his usual woody scent over the smell of the disinfectant, can still tell that he’s the boy she would sometimes stumble upon out in the trees around Twelve.

 

So much for not Anthony Bridgerton, huh? She never stood a chance.

 

They kiss for quite a long time - too long, probably. She ought to be doing something useful, like asking him about the Careers, or discussing the geography of the ravine.

 

Instead she starts raking her hands through his hair, across his scalp, and sighs a little when he squeezes a hand at her waist in turn.

 

She’s lying on the floor of a cave in the Hunger Games arena making out quite continuously with Anthony Bridgerton. It’s not exactly how she hoped her eighteenth year on this earth would go.

 

She hopes this is how it ends, though. Or - she hopes it doesn’t end here, of course. She hopes that they both go home to their families. But if it does end in this arena, for one of them or both of them, she hopes they go down fighting as a team, and perhaps even with a bit more kissing along the way.

 

She adds that to her list of hopes, along with dying as herself and making her father proud.

 

She’s the one who pulls away first, when she realises they risk kissing all day. She doesn’t have that sort of time to waste. She needs to check the rest of his wounds and start formulating a plan.

 

So she pulls away from his lips, rocks back onto her hip and elbow - and laughs a little at him chasing the kiss as she goes.

 

He’s laughing softly, too, his eyes bright and warm, as if she makes him want to laugh in the face of death. She doesn’t know what to think of that.

 

And then -

 

“A team, huh? Is that what we’re calling it?” He asks her, brows raised.

 

“Shut it, you. Don’t look so smug about it.” She tells him - and yet reaches out to squeeze his hand all the while.

 

“So you came looking for me because -?”

 

He breaks off, there, at an unfamiliar sound outside.

 

“I’ll go.” Kate tells him in a whisper, then creeps carefully out of the cave to peer down the ravine.

 

Oh.

 

Well, now.

 

It’s nothing to be scared of at all. It’s one of the parachutes they use to deliver sponsor gifts to tributes in the arena.

 

Kate is perhaps the slightest bit overexcited, as she grabs the parachute and the weighty parcel below. She hasn’t had a single gift in the arena so far. So she knows what Agatha is saying with this - that the sponsors liked that display just now, that Kate should keep playing desirable as well as dangerous if she knows what’s good for her.

 

Message received.

 

She hurries back to the cave, opens the parcel without wasting a second.

 

“Look. Agatha sent us a gift.” She says, perhaps unnecessarily.

 

“What do we think it is? Place your bets.” Anthony says, brows raised.

 

Kate ignores him and gets it open.

 

“Medical supplies. Disinfectant. Antibiotic gel.” She reads, sighs in relief. “Thank God - we need it.”

 

“Is that it? All supplies for my leg - nothing for you?”

 

She scoffs at him. “Keeping you alive is a gift for me. And besides - there’s food here, too. Apple slices. Some crackers.”

 

“Great. So we have snacks for a day or two and Agatha has sent what you need to stop my leg rotting. Now - where were we? You came to look for me because…?” He prompts her, brows raised.

 

“Are you asking for another kiss?” She tries, brows raised, hoping that it might pass for flirting to the sponsors at home.

 

Dear God, but she’s bad at this. How much will she have to up her game to earn him a full course of antibiotics for that leg, huh?

 

Even Anthony’s not impressed by her weak attempt at flirtation, it seems.

 

“I’m not asking for a kiss, Kate. I’m asking for an answer. I want to understand what happened. Five days ago you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

 

“That’s not true. I just… the shock. These last few weeks have been a lot. I know it’s bad timing on my part but I’m happy we’re together now.” She tries, reaching for his hand again and throwing him a smile.

 

She knows full well that the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. And that’s not a reflection on him, to be clear. It’s not because she doesn’t mean it, when she says that she’s happy they’re together. She’s not sure which exact words she would choose, if she had to describe exactly how she feels about Anthony, but she knows for certain that there’s a bundle of warm, eager feelings rushing about inside of her.

 

When her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, it’s because of all the rest. It’s because of her sister and his leg and the Games the Capitol makes them play. It’s because the situation as a whole is such an awful, frightening mess.

 

She thinks of how this scene must look to everyone watching on the TV at home in District Twelve. She thinks of all the times she told Edwina she would never fall in love or marry or have children - and thinks of the times she said that Edwina might marry into a merchant family, too. She thinks of swearing time and time again to her sister that she herself was not made for love, and that she’d only ever fight for her sister’s right to have a loving future.

 

Now Kate is turning herself inside out to save Anthony Bridgerton in the Hunger Games.

 

She wonders if her sister even recognises her, now. She must be shocked beyond belief to see her going to such lengths for a boy she always swore she didn’t care for. Edwina might feel betrayed, she fears - she might feel that Kate is putting at risk her chances of getting herself home.

 

That’s the bit she says out loud, more or less.

 

“Sometimes I wonder if Edwina would even recognise me now. I - I feel like I’ve changed so much in just a few days. I don’t just mean things with me and you. I mean… things with me and myself, too. I’ve become this monster I hardly recognise.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. Of course she’d recognise you. You’re still you, and she’s still your sister. She adores you. And besides - you haven’t changed that much. You’re still a total pain in my butt. You still argue like it’s a competitive sport. You still scrunch between your eyebrows just the same when I’m right and you don’t want to admit it.”

 

“Do not.” She argues - and proves him right with her eyebrows all the while, of course.

 

He laughs a little, at that. He reaches out for her hand, too - him claiming her to hold onto, this time, as if he has grown into a bit of confidence in the nature of their relationship in the last few moments.

 

“So we jumped from us being together to you having an existential crisis.” He notes, dry.

 

“We did.” She agrees, tight.

 

“Great. Glad I understood that. I was worried I’d hit my head, for a moment, there.”

 

“You’d better not have hit your head, Bridgerton, or I swear I’ll never forgive you. You’ve given me enough to worry about as it is.”

 

“I know. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. Thank you for coming to find me.”

 

“Thank you for being alive. I was worried about you.” She admits, short.

 

He nods, smiles a slight smile, squeezes at her hand once more.

 

She wipes at her eyes - wipes away the tears she’s certainly not crying - and picks up that antibiotic gel at last.

 

“I’m going to see to your leg while you tell me everything you can remember about the Careers.” She tells him firmly.

 

“Great. And then I’m going to see to your stings while you tell me everything you can remember about the last two days.”

 

“My stings are fine now.” She argues. They only sting a little. They’re only distracting her the slightest bit.

 

“I’m going to see to them anyway.”

 

Yes.

 

She rather expects that he is.

 

…….

 

They kiss quite a lot, during the next day or two.

 

There’s not much else to do while they lie low in the willow cave and wait to regain their strength. Kate is worried sick about Anthony’s leg, but she knows there’s nothing to do but wait and apply that antibiotic gel and wait some more. Agatha does send a few more medical supplies, on one occasion, but Kate is still worried that it’s not enough, that Anthony needs a proper course of antibiotics in his system.

 

She tries not to show him she’s that concerned for him. She keeps her bravest face on, keeps trying to distract him with kisses, too.

 

They talk quite a bit between kisses. She must admit that she doesn’t mind having a reason to spend a few hours of her life doing nothing but kiss Anthony and chat with him and get to know him better. It’s something they never made space for, back in Twelve - or something neither of them ever felt brave enough to try - so she enjoys growing closer with him now, for all that the arena is not an ideal place to form either a lasting friendship or a healthy romantic relationship.

 

She thinks this is both - or it would be. She thinks they’d be friends as well as lovers, if ever they had a chance beyond this forcefield.

 

Maybe they will. She clings to that hope, as the hours tick by, as the occasional tribute dies at the far end of the arena and they see their face in the sky.

 

She clings to the idea that she and Anthony might have a future, if they can just keep each other alive for a few days more.

 

…….

 

The conversation they have towards the end of the second day is one of their better ones, Kate thinks. It’s one which makes her think of how much she likes to have a truly close and personal relationship with another human being for a change - even if it’s a shame to find that here with the cameras rolling and death lurking behind every tree trunk.

 

“I never thanked you for fixing up my stings. I was so distracted but I should have said it sooner.” She thinks to tell him, and it feels half a lifetime overdue.

 

He actually laughs a little at that. “Mmm. We’ve had one or two other things on.” He agrees.

 

“What was in that paste, anyway? All I remember was it smelled like autumn leaf mould.”

 

“You’re not far wrong. I made a point of learning a few herbal remedies for tracker jacker stings after my father died. I couldn’t find all my usual herbs in here so that was a paste of everything useful I could get my hands on - chamomile, dandelion, willow and yarrow.”

 

“So - what? - you went foraging when I started on the nest? Smart.” She tells him, grudgingly proud, and with a soft elbow to his ribs to show it.

 

“No. I’ve been foraging this whole time. I never go anywhere without herbs for tracker jacker stings.” He pats at his chest pocket. “It’s been like that ever since my father died. I was the one who found him. And - whether it was an accident or not - you never forget a sight like that. I won’t have anyone else I care about stung to death on my watch.”

 

“You were worried when I was stung.” She realises.

 

“I was frantic. Every instinct was screaming at me to stay with you and see to those stings, but I knew I had to go and draw off the Career pack, too. And - I knew you weren’t really likely to die from that number of stings. I knew that with my head, but my heart was terrified.”

 

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

 

“It’s what we do.”

 

They kiss for a while, then. That’s how many of their conversations in the willow cave go.

 

After a while, she pulls back and speaks once more. “I’m sorry you were the one to find him. No child should have to go through that.”

 

He shrugs. “I think maybe that’s just life, as the eldest of eight in District Twelve. Or - maybe just life as the eldest. Your story isn’t so different. You’ve faced things like that.”

 

“I have never faced being the one to find my own father dead from a dubious accident.” She argues.

 

“Ah. Yes. We’re not the same.” He quotes back at her, brows raised.

 

She laughs at that, despite the seriousness of the conversation. They’ve shared a lot of laughs in the shadow of death, in recent days.

 

“We might be just a tiny bit alike.” She makes a show of admitting it grudgingly, with a stubborn set to her jaw.

 

He grins. “Really? You think we might have one or two things in common?”

 

“But not three. We couldn’t possibly have three things in common. Two is a hard limit.” She jokes.

 

He’s laughing as well, now, and wrapping his arms right around her in a playful, fond hug.

 

She likes it. She doesn’t know how to tell him she likes it. She simply doesn’t see how she could ever find the words to say that she enjoys having him close, that she likes the comfort and companionship of it all, the unaccustomed safety she feels in his arms.

 

She never wanted this. She never wanted any of it. She wanted to grow old alone, wanted her sister to be her whole life and purpose until the end of her days. Isn’t that the easiest way to survive in this heartbreaking world they live in?

 

She never wanted this - but she can’t imagine giving it up now.

 

She is dragged from her thoughts by the sound of the fanfare which heralds a Gamemaker announcement.

 

“I’ll go. You rest.” She tells Anthony, as she stands up to an ungainly crouch and begins making her way to the cave mouth. If there are images in the sky with this announcement, she wants to see them, wants to be ready to seize every advantage she can.

 

“I’m coming too.” He insists, gets unsteadily to his feet and hobbles a pace or two.

 

She frowns at him. He’s been like this too often, today. He’s trying to prove to her that he’s feeling better, that he’s ready to go out and about so they can win this thing.

 

She’s not at all convinced. He can’t really put weight on his bad leg, and last she saw, the redness was getting worse, not better.

 

There’s no stopping him, though. He’s the most stubborn person she ever met - besides herself, perhaps. So she loops an arm beneath his arms, urges him wordlessly to lean on her as they both make their way out to look up at the sky.

 

The image they see there is nothing useful. It’s just the cornucopia, as if they might have forgotten what it looked like.

 

The announcement is more useful, though. The announcement tells them that they are invited to a feast, that they will be given the thing they most desperately need to survive if they go to the cornucopia at daybreak.

 

The announcement has barely finished when Kate turns to Anthony and sets to making a plan.

 

“You know what this means? Antibiotics for your leg - proper antibiotics.” She says, sighs a little in relief at the sheer idea of it.

 

He scoffs. “We don’t need that desperately. What we need is some stealthy way to take out the remaining Careers and go home.”

 

“Anthony. Look at yourself - and be honest. Your leg is getting worse, not better.”

 

“It’s not getting worse quickly. I’m not going to die of infection before we win this thing - not if we act soon.”

 

“I don’t believe you.” She says bluntly.

 

She’s sure that’s not a good bedside manner. She doesn’t have a future as a healer. But she and Anthony have always been honest with each other - brutally so, when need be - and she’s not about to change her ways now.

 

He nods, slow, frowning hard.

 

“It is getting worse.” He agrees, and it clearly costs him to do so. “But if you’re convinced the only thing they would give us at that feast is medicine for my leg, then I don’t want you to go. It’s not worth the risk. I won’t be dead within the day. Maybe… maybe I could go?” He actually suggests.

 

She raises her brows at him. “You can’t walk unaided.”

 

“Then I’ll crawl.”

 

“You are the most stubborn person I have ever had the bad luck to fall in love with.”

 

“Huh - you can talk. You’re even worse. I could spend the whole day begging you not to go to that feast, and I know you’d go anyway.”

 

“Yes. I’m going.” She tells him, chin lifted high.

 

“Kate.”

 

“Anthony.” She matches him, unimpressed. “And for heaven’s sake - please sit down before you fall down. We can argue it out just as well sitting down.”

 

He actually does it. He does as she asks, sits himself back down on the cave floor, pats the ground next to him as if inviting her to sit, too.

 

She does, and he wraps an arm around her, and she wonders whether he’s trying to soften her up and win the argument that way.

 

She frowns to herself a moment, tries not to lean back into his arms. The problem is - if he did want to win the argument with a cuddle, she might have to admit it’s a strategy which is already working for him.

 

Sure enough -

 

“What if we both go?” He suggests now, quiet. “You can help me walk down there, then leave me set up with my bow and a full quiver, hidden in the treeline somewhere. You run in and get what we need from the feast, and I can cover you if anyone makes a move on you. You have to agree that I’m well enough to do that much at least.”

 

“It’s not a bad idea.” She concedes. “If we can get you there, you could shoot from the trees while I pick up your medicine.”

 

“I hope it’s not just medicine. I’m telling you - if I find out you’ve put your life on the line to get this leg fixed a bit quicker, then -”

 

“Then what, Anthony? Then you’ll be even more vexed with me than usual by the time we both get home?”

 

He laughs. “Vexed? Where did vexed come from?”

 

“It suits you. It suits that little crease between your eyebrows when you know I’m right.” She teases.

 

He laughs a bit louder - and leans in to kiss the matching crease she wears in turn.

 

And then -

 

“Do you ever let yourself dream about what it’ll be like if we do both make it home?” He asks, soft.

 

She scoffs. “I try not to. I try to put it out of mind. But… the dreams creep in anyway.”

 

“Mmm. Same.” He agrees. “Sometimes I think about you and me just walking out in the meadow on a summer afternoon - but then I remember that I barely know your stepmother. Is she strict? Would she have a problem with us going out, do you think?”

 

“God, Anthony - that’s what you’re worried about? Here I am losing my mind over that damn leg of yours, and you’re worrying about whether Mary will approve of us dating if we survive this hellhole?”

 

He grins, unrepentant. “What? We need something to look forward to.”

 

“For the record - I think Mary will be fine with it.”

 

…….

 

It is Anthony’s idea to pick the nightlock berries, as they set out to the cornucopia just before dawn.

 

“If we pretend that we’re picking them for ourselves, anyone who’s watching us might eat one and save us from having any more blood on our hands.” He suggests. “Or - or we could set a trap with them. We could see if we can take out the remains of the Careers without needing to have a straight fight.”

 

“One of your better ideas.” She agrees. “Just stay safe, OK? Even the tiniest trace could kill you.”

 

“You always fuss over me staying safe like you think I can’t take care of myself.” He grumbles. “I lent you those arrows. I treated your stings. I’m not a total liability. Sometimes I save you.”

 

“I know - and there’s not a moment goes by when I don’t think of it. I don’t fuss because I think you can’t take care of yourself. I fuss because I wish you didn’t have to. I fuss because I wish you were safely at home and I could stop thinking of all the many ways you might die today.” She tells him, all in a rush.

 

He reaches out to squeeze her hand. “I see. I… thank you for explaining that, I guess.”

 

She nods, short, silent.

 

“For the record, I worry about you more.” He tells her. “I know you can take care of yourself too, but I still worry about you more.”

 

She scoffs. “Do not.”

 

“I do.”

 

“You don’t.”

 

He laughs a little. “Come on. Time to stop arguing and start moving.”

 

…….

 

Anthony’s plan with the nightlock berries works far better than they expected, in the end. They’ve been underway barely an hour, making slow progress between his hobbling and their pauses to pick berries, when the cannon sounds and they see a tribute lifted into the sky.

 

It’s that little red-headed girl from five, her hands and face stained purple.

 

Kate feels sick to her stomach.

 

“I didn’t think it would be her. I hoped it’d be that boy from Two.” She mutters, horrified.

 

“Yes.” Anthony agrees, eyes wide.

 

“I thought she knew better. Didn’t you see her at the plant station in training? She knew what she was doing.”

 

“I guess she was fooled because she really thought we were going to eat them.”

 

“I don’t buy it.” Kate insists. “I think she did know. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she ate them. I think… she knew she wasn’t going home, or couldn’t bear to go home, and she saw a way out. No one back home can be ashamed of her for dying like that.”

 

“I don’t want to think that.” Anthony says, slow, deliberate.

 

“But you do. You think it all the same. You know I’m right.”

 

He nods, silent, frowning hard.

 

And then -

 

“Take care out there today? Please?” He asks her, hoarse.

 

Her turn for a quiet nod, at that.

 

The risk of death suddenly seems closer than ever, this morning.

 

…….

 

Their plan at the cornucopia works as perfectly as any plan ever could, in the arena.

 

Kate leaves Anthony hidden in the treeline with an arrow knocked and a full quiver beside him. She dashes in towards the cornucopia, tries all the while not to think too hard about how Edwina must feel, watching this at home.

 

She must be furious. That’s the conclusion Kate reaches. Her sister must be furious, watching her throw her life away to grasp at a chance to save Anthony from a slow death by blood poisoning.

 

The irony is not lost on her. She remembers what she thought on reaping day - that Anthony had no one to throw their life away for him, no one to volunteer for his place. 

 

At least they both have each other now.

 

She reaches the cornucopia. There’s a backpack there with each district number on it. She reaches for their backpack - for number Twelve - and then hesitates a moment.

 

She thinks of Anthony wishing for more than medicine, thinks of how small this backpack for the two of them has turned out. It’s tiny - scarcely big enough for a hypodermic needle or a course of potent pills.

 

Then she looks at the backpack marked Two - a large, promising sort of backpack - and thinks of the person she trusts most in all the world covering her from the trees. She thinks of the quality of his shooting, yes, but also of how much she wants him to go home.

 

He’s got this. He’ll take care of the fallout if she does something bold.

 

She grabs the District Two backpack, as well, and starts running for all she is worth, back towards the trees.

 

Around her, chaos erupts. Other tributes seem to spring from the very earth at her sides. The boy from Two is in front of her, so she dodges him and goes on running, one backpack slung over each arm.

 

Then the girl from Two is on top of her. Kate is rolling to the ground, feeling a knife nip at her throat.

 

It happens so quickly that it could only be an arrow. One moment the girl is there, and Kate is staring death in the eyes. Then suddenly the weight is gone, the girl just a corpse rolling sideways with an arrow in her throat.

 

Kate clutches instinctively at her own throat and finds that her hand comes away red. Is that nip deeper than she realised? Is that District Two blood which sprayed onto her when the arrow hit home?

 

No time to think about that now. Time to keep on running.

 

She’s at the trees, now. She hits the treeline some forty feet or so away from Anthony, in case anyone is still on her tail. She wouldn’t want to lead trouble right to him while he can still scarcely stand.

 

She dares to turn around, to check her back and see whether anyone is following her.

 

She’s clear. She’s all alone, on the edge of the trees. The open plain around the cornucopia looks still and calm, with no sign of the struggle it just witnessed.

 

Kate slumps forward, hands on her knees, and fights to regain her breath.

 

“You’re fine. You’re in the clear.” Anthony calls out to her, loud and carrying through the trees - the voice of a person who is confident of his safety, who doesn’t mind being heard.

 

“I’m on my way. Sit tight. Where did the others go?” She calls back to him, starts making her way back towards him.

 

“When I took out the girl from Two, the boy followed Eleven out into the long grass.”

 

She nods, spends a moment thinking that through. With the girl from Five dead to the berries, and the girl from Two to Anthony’s bow, the boys from Two and Eleven are the only other tributes left in the arena.

 

Twelve are the only two still as a pair. She and Anthony are the only team left with each other to depend upon.

 

She worries that might only make the boy from Two more dangerous, though.

 

She’s back with Anthony, now. She’s throwing her arms around him, burying her face against his neck.

 

“Are you OK?” She asks him, urgent.

 

“Am I OK? You’re the one who had a knife to your throat.”

 

“You’re the one who had to shoot her. Neither of us has had to do that yet.” She reminds him.

 

It matters, she thinks. Their kills so far have been the product of tracker jackers or berries, or someone caught in the crossfire of a wider fight like the bloodbath. This is the first time either of them has actually let loose an arrow knowing full well that they’re about to deliberately take a life.

 

He blinks, shrugs, reaches out to squeeze her hand.

 

So - he’s not feeling right at all, but he’s determined to press on anyway. That’s how she chooses to understand that response.

 

“Come on. Let’s go home.” He suggests now. “Let’s get out of here, sit down, and open up those backpacks.”

 

“Is your leg OK?”

 

“No. That’s why we’re here.” He reminds her, short and dry.

 

She throws him an unimpressed look - and then offers an arm to get him walking.

 

…….

 

The backpacks turn out as she might have expected, in the end. The tiny one marked for her and Anthony does indeed contain medicine for his leg, so she sighs in relief and then helps him take it. She hopes he’ll be on the mend for real before long.

 

The larger one marked for District Two contains arrow-proof chest armour, and the irony of it is not lost on her.

 

“We should wear it anyway.” Anthony says at once, when they realise what it is. “I know it was meant for Two to survive against us, but it must be better than nothing against a sword if he comes after us.”

 

“It won’t fit very well.” She muses. She’s a lot scrawnier than that girl from Two who never had to hunt her own supper in all her life.

 

“It’ll be better than nothing.” He repeats - repeats it with the fervour of a person who’s quite worried about her ability to keep breathing, she thinks.

 

So -

 

“It’ll be better than nothing.” She agrees, and hopes it sounds soothing. “So - what’s the plan, then? We rest up here until your leg is fixed, then we put on this chest armour that doesn’t fit us and go hunt down the last two?”

 

“Something like that. We do it stealthily. We try to use our bows rather than me facing anyone who’s left hand-to-hand with a sword. Our bows give us an advantage.”

 

“Agreed.”

 

“But - I don’t think we’ll rest up until my leg is fixed. Something tells me the Gamemakers are going to force us together the very second I can walk unaided - or perhaps an hour or two before.”

 

“Before. Definitely before.” She decides, nodding. “They’ll do it as soon as they think we’re ready to put up a half-decent fight. They just want a show.”

 

“Then let’s hope we’re ready to give them one.”

 

“They’ll try to catch us off-guard so you have to use a sword.” She muses now. “It’ll swing the odds - and make good TV.”

 

“Huh - you think I look good with a sword in my hand?” He asks, brows raised to tease.

 

She scoffs, swats him on the arm. “That’s not what I said. I mean - yes, but it’s not what I said.”

 

He laughs, kisses her lightly on the cheek.

 

She presses on down memory lane. “I saw you training with your brothers last summer. I don’t know if you remember it - Edwina had outgrown her good dress and Mary wanted her to have something new for a change, not a hand-me-down. So she sent me with a couple of wild turkeys to barter with your mother, but you and Benedict were supposed to be minding the shop - and you’d got distracted by sparring out back.”

 

He snorts out an adorably flustered sound, at that. “Of course I remember it. I never lived it down. I was so desperate to impress you - and trying to look like I wasn’t desperate to impress you - and Benedict saw right through me. He was teasing me for weeks.”

 

“And he told your mother you got distracted minding the shop?”

 

“Of course he did. He told everyone. Eloise was still going on about it last month.”

 

“She came to see me on reaping day, you know. She came to say goodbye and - well - I guess now I realise maybe she was trying to ask me to look out for you and see the good in you - or something like that.”

 

“That tracks. That’s the sort of sister she is.”

 

Silence falls.

 

The two of them sit there, side-by-side in a willow cave they have made home, and lean together in easy silence. She has her head on his shoulder. Now his arm is reaching behind her, urging her to snuggle closer still.

 

Then he says what she’s thinking, too.

 

“We could really do this. We could go home.”

 

“I know. Somehow the closer we get - the more real it feels - the more worried I am about screwing it up.” She says on a nervous laugh.

 

“Same. But - I think we have this, Kate. For real - I think we can do it. We’ve both done harder things than this before now.”

 

She nods, thinks of her father hanging and his father’s staged accident, thinks of feeding their families and all the rest.

 

More than anything, she thinks of the way the two of them have always found the strength to keep their heads held high and keep pressing on, no matter what life or the Capitol may throw at them.

 

So -

 

“We’re going home - for real.” She says, with the force of a solemn vow.

 

“For real.” He echoes, presses a kiss to the crown of her head.

 

She doesn’t yet know how, but she’s determined to make it happen.

 

…….

 

Sure enough, the Gamemakers draw them out when Anthony’s leg is barely fit for purpose. He’s still hobbling, still making use of her arm for support more often than not, when they begin to hear the howls in the woods.

 

The endgame unravels quickly from there. A cannon sounds for one of the last two competitors - no way of knowing which - even as Kate and Anthony are suiting up in their ill-fitting armour.

 

“I guess we head for the cornucopia.” She says. It seems the obvious direction to go.

 

“What if we just… ran away? What if we just went in the opposite direction and kept on running? How long do you think we could run laps of this arena, just the two of us? How long could we stay out here together and survive?”

 

She raises her brows at him. “Two minutes, if they wanted us dead - maybe less.”

 

“But don’t you ever want to try?”

 

She scoffs. “Of course I do. Obviously I do. But it’s no use. Our only way home is by playing their game.”

 

“I still think I’d rather run away with you.” He grumbles, throwing his quiver over his shoulder. “I think about it all the time.”

 

“Me, too.” She admits, quiet, wearing a frown so thick it physically hurts her.

 

For a moment, she wonders if they might even do it. If they might give up on playing by the rules of the game and simply flee, run in the opposite direction to the howls and see how long they could live by their wits together.

 

Then the moment breaks, as Anthony picks up his bow and heads for the mouth of the cave.

 

…….

 

The mutts are the most grotesque mutts she’s ever seen, she decides - or perhaps all mutts are this grim, and she’s simply never seen them up close before now. Perhaps there’s something like this as the last thing every defeated tribute sees, and she only didn’t realise because this is her first time in the arena.

 

All the same, they’re horrific. They’re brutal, and they somehow have the eyes of the fallen tributes, and they seem programmed to maim, not kill.

 

They take the boy from District Two apart slowly. Kate and Anthony sit atop the cornucopia and listen to it happening all night. They cling to each other, and fret about Anthony’s leg, and listen to their last remaining competitor being torn into whimpering pieces.

 

Kate sees a chance to put him out of his misery, when day breaks. In the daylight she can see a line to his throat through the chinks in the cornucopia.

 

So she shoots a boy in the neck and becomes the Victor of the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games.

 

“Are you OK?” Anthony asks her, rather than congratulating her. Of course he does. Didn’t she ask him the same thing when he shot the girl from District Two, in turn?

 

She pulls much the same face as he did, on that occasion, and the world goes on turning.

 

And then -

 

“Come on. Let’s get down.” She suggests, reaching instinctively for his hand.

 

“Let’s. And - I -” He breaks off, pulls the most confusing face at her. “I… Come here.”

 

He reaches for an embrace. She’s grateful for that - grateful for the chance to hide her face against his neck a moment, to breathe in the comforting scent of him.

 

“We did it.” She murmurs.

 

“We did.” He agrees.

 

“Let’s get down.” She repeats, and sets to helping him off the cornucopia.

 

She’s perhaps wondering why they haven’t heard the fanfare, by the time their feet are on the ground. She wonders whether they need to move further away from the body of that boy from Two, so that the fallen can be picked up before the Victors are declared.

 

She hopes it won’t be long. Anthony’s leg isn’t looking so good.

 

When the fanfare does sound, it’s not quite what she was expecting.

 

“Attention, tributes. The earlier change to the rules has been… revoked. There can only be one Victor - and may the odds be ever in your favour.”

 

She’s not even surprised, she decides, as she considers what to do. She always knew something like this could happen. Didn’t Anthony all but say he was expecting it, when they first teamed up in earnest?

 

She only turns to him with raised brows, wondering what the two of them will choose to do about it - and finds him holding a knife out towards her, hilt first.

 

“Here. It should be you.” He says, as if that makes any sense.

 

“No. No way, Anthony. I can’t even think of doing that - not now. Not after everything we’ve been through together.”

 

She should have known he’d do that, she frets. She should have known he’d be the one to volunteer first in a moment like this. They both have a habit of volunteering for the worst of opportunities, but he beat her to the bottom, this time.

 

“It makes sense for it to be you.” He argues. “I’d be dead by now if you hadn’t rescued me anyway. And - I have other brothers. My family will be OK without me. But you - you’re different. People need you.”

 

“And I need you.” She tells him, firm. “So you can forget that idea. I’m not doing it - not ever. I vote we stay alive as long as we can and see what happens. You know that idea you had yesterday - just run away around the arena together?”

 

“You said yourself that it’s a terrible idea.”

 

“But at least we’d be together, and we’d deal with whatever comes our way, and - and let nature take its course or the Gamemakers decide. At least it wouldn’t be one of us deciding who lives and who dies.”

 

“It’s not a bad idea. I think it still ends with you going home.” He muses, looking down at his leg.

 

Ah.

 

She did not think that one through.

 

He’s right - with the state he’s in, that’s not much better than simply ending his life herself. Even if his leg doesn’t see him out within a couple of days, the Gamemakers will only send more mutts after them, and Anthony will be the one who can’t outrun the danger.

 

She can’t do that to him. She can’t let that happen.

 

Should she simply take her own life? That’s a viable option, she decides. She doesn’t like it - not when she has been determined to fight tooth and nail to get home to her sister this whole time - but there doesn’t seem to be any other way of getting Anthony safely home instead. She does have the pouch of nightlock berries, still.

 

Huh.

 

There’s an idea.

 

She has a pouch of nightlock berries, and the Games mean nothing without a victor.

 

Anthony, meanwhile, has started hobbling away from the cornucopia.

 

“Are you coming?” He calls back over his shoulder, as if still annoyed with her - annoyed with her for not taking his life.

 

“No. Here. I have an idea.”

 

“You do?”

 

“Yes. Do you trust me?”

 

He looks her right in the eye. “Always.”

 

She nods, takes the pouch of nightlock from her bag.

 

He doesn’t know what her plan is. She can see the panic in his eyes, can see him reaching out a hand as if to stop her.

 

“Trust me.” She repeats, reaches out for his fingers and squeezes softly. “Here.”

 

She pours the berries into his palm, first - a good handful of them, enough to kill instantly. Then she fills her own palm with the rest, so many that they’re spilling over onto the ground at her feet.

 

With her free hand she reaches for his free hand and clings on, hard.

 

“Are you with me?” She asks him, just to check he has caught up.

 

“I’m with you. On three?”

 

“On three. One.”

 

“Two.”

 

“Three.”

 

The fanfare sounds right on cue. The voice of a panicked Gamemaker declares them both the Victors - the joint Victors - of the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games.

 

Kate throws her handful of nightlock berries aside and flings her arms around Anthony’s neck.

 

…….

 

They are separated in the hovercraft out of the arena, and Kate doesn’t like it one bit.

 

She’d like to have Anthony within arm’s reach for all the rest of her life, frankly. She can’t imagine ever willingly letting him out of her sight again. A fortnight in the arena teaches a person a thing or two about holding onto the people she cares about - even more than she learnt that by losing her father and birth mother and fighting to feed her sister.

 

She asks about him incessantly, while the medical team are checking her over. She asks where Anthony is, whether Anthony needs medical help, whether Anthony’s leg is going to heal well enough or whether he might slip away on the hovercraft ride.

 

No one answers her questions, not even slightly. They coo over how sweet it is that she’s asking, and then tell her nothing useful at all.

 

…….

 

The first familiar face she sees is Agatha Danbury, who meets her at the hovercraft and conducts her into a prep room to be dressed for the Victors’ interview.

 

“Where’s Anthony? How is he?” Kate asks her, tired. She has been asking those questions for hours, and no one will tell her, and she’s beginning to give up hope. She’s beginning to wrap her stung heart in leaf mould and wonder how she’ll survive, if it turns out that this silence means he didn’t make it after all.

 

Agatha raises her brows. “He’s fine. Or - he will be. I hear he needed more work done than you did.”

 

“More work done? What’s that supposed to mean? He - he’s alive?”

 

“He’s alive. They had to operate on his leg - and they’re still saying he might lose it - but I don’t suppose you’ll mind that too much.”

 

Kate frowns. It seems an odd thing to say. “I’m only grateful he’s alive.”

 

“Are you? It might have been easier for you if he wasn’t. Perhaps you don’t realise it, Kate, but you’ve backed yourself into a corner here. The Gamemakers are furious with you for that stunt with the berries. I’ve heard the President’s office is onto you too. They’re saying it looked more like you giving the Gamemakers a taste of their own medicine than the act of a young girl in love.”

 

“They are?” She asks, bewildered.

 

“They are. I’ve done what I can for you - I’ve told everyone who will listen that you’re obsessed with the boy - but I fear you won’t thank me for it. The only way you can escape being branded a rebel now is if you play at being in love with him forever. They’ll wheel you out as mentors every single year. You’re set to become the most famous Victors in generations. So either you pulled those berries out because you love him, and you’ll have to play at being in love with him every summer at least for the rest of your life - or you’re a rebel, and you’ll go the same way as your father before the year is out.”

 

“I’m not playing.” Kate argues instinctively. “I - you don’t understand - I - I -”

 

“You’ll have to do better than that.” Agatha tells her, short.

 

Kate remembers rather abruptly how frightening Agatha can be. That is what she’s known for, in fact.

 

It’s what Kate expected to be known for, once upon a time, only a fortnight or so ago - before she apparently became known as the girl who fell in love during the Hunger Games.

 

She clears her throat. “The Gamemakers and the President’s office think I was only playing a trick? They don’t think I really… care for him? They don’t think it’s real?”

 

Agatha raises her brows. “No. And - to be clear - neither do I.”

 

“Then you’re wrong.”

 

“Or you’re deluded. I remember how you reacted when he gave that interview. I don’t buy what you’re selling now. But you’re in luck, in a way - I’ll be on hand to tell you when I’m not convinced, and when you’re not convincing the audience either. So you need to get better at acting in the next hour or so, because you’re on stage at seven.”

 

Agatha walks out, then. She simply sweeps from the room, as a frightening Victor can do, perhaps.

 

Because Kate is only a pathetic and lovestruck Victor, she crumples in a corner and wonders what to do.

 

She doesn’t know. She just doesn’t know what to do. She didn’t see this problem coming. There are actually people out there who think she doesn’t care about Anthony in the slightest, that she was only using him and pulling a trick? Even Agatha thinks she has no particular feelings for him?

 

She simply never expected to hit this problem.

 

It’s her own fault, of course. The moment she starts looking back at her actions in recent weeks, she can see a thousand places she went wrong. She can see a hundred ways at least in which she is habitually useless at loving Anthony the way he deserves to be loved.

 

He offers her a kiss two or three times more often than she kisses him. If a person counted the kisses in the footage of these Games, she’d look like she wasn’t interested in the slightest. And now she’s noticed that, she thinks of someone counting smiles or laughs or handholds, thinks of how much more demonstrative he is than her. He’s been that way ever since the Games began, in fact - ever since he chose to go with the Career pack to protect her.

 

Then there’s the night of the interviews. There’s the way he threw his heart at her feet in front of the nation and in the most high-stakes moment of his life - and she responded by slamming him into the nearest wall. Then there are all the months and years before they met on stage on reaping day - the times he was distracted from his sword-fighting practice with his brothers, but she acted aloof and unmoved. The time he offered to lend her a book in Panem History class so she could educate herself better and be less wrong. The day he happened to be hunting in the woods near her, two summers ago, when he warned her about the grass snakes nesting by her usual log.

 

That winter when he gave her his last two arrows, because she and he are the same.

 

She gulps, scrubs the heel of her hand over her forehead, and wonders what the hell to do.

 

She could learn to love him better. She could. She never intended to fall in love, and she has never practised for it, and she has been guarding her heart half her life. But she could try to let it loose, little by little, if he’s patient enough to help her try.

 

She thinks he would be. She hopes.

 

She doesn’t know what else to do.

 

She doesn’t want to be hanged as a rebel, doesn’t want to go the same way as her father. But more than anything, she doesn’t want Anthony to think she’s been lying to him. She doesn’t want him to doubt that she was genuinely moved by the closeness they shared in the arena, doesn’t want him to think her kisses taste like lies.

 

She doesn’t want to disappoint him. The Capitol has broken his heart often enough, before now.

 

She doesn’t want to break it too.

 

…….

 

She doesn’t really have the chance to speak to Anthony at their Victors’ interview. The production team have decided it’s best if they’re reunited live on air, so they’re brought on from opposite sides of the stage.

 

“I’m so glad you’re OK.” She manages to whisper against his neck as they embrace.

 

“You, too.” He tells her quietly.

 

Then they settle down to watch the summary footage of their Games.

 

Kate can’t think of these moments as highlights. She can’t. It feels all wrong to even try to put it in those terms. So she thinks of summary footage and watches as well as she can.

 

It’s an odd experience, watching her own behaviour back again and trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger. She can certainly see why people might think she has no real emotional attachment to Anthony. She’s only aloof and frightening, during the training days. She strikes out on her own, in the first act in the arena.

 

She does go looking for Anthony before the Gamemakers say they can both win. She does at least do that - does go looking for him out of genuine concern, because he matters to her.

 

She’s not sure that comes across in the way they’ve edited the footage, though. She’s not sure it comes across in the frown on her face and the way she scours the earth of the arena for signs.

 

She might as well have been out hunting, not searching for the other half of her soul.

 

…….

 

The whole District Twelve party are hurried straight onto their train home again, after the interviews - Kate, Anthony and Agatha. Effie doesn’t join them for this part, since she lives in the Capitol, and only shows up on reaping day.

 

Kate almost finds herself missing Effie, for the first few minutes of the journey. She could use a bright wig or some empty good cheer just about now.

 

Instead she’s sitting at a bare table with Anthony, who is frowning, and Agatha, who is frowning even harder. They’re both sitting there in silence with their own grim thoughts, evidently.

 

The train has been underway perhaps a quarter of an hour - or perhaps even less - when Kate cracks at last and leaps to her feet.

 

“Anthony - could we talk?” She asks him plainly.

 

He nods, still frowning silently - but at least he stands up too.

 

“You two should try the observation car. You’ll be undisturbed and the music is lovely.” Agatha says, pointed, and with no visible enthusiasm for music.

 

Good. Kate can understand that, she thinks. That’s a warning to keep this conversation private and to take care that the music covers their words.

 

It’s a warning she didn’t need, but she’s grudgingly grateful to have Agatha looking out for them all the same.

 

They walk to the observation car in silence. That’s an odd experience, in and of itself. In all the years before she and Anthony found themselves as tributes in the Games, they were never silent together. They were always arguing some point or other, always loud as anything.

 

She wonders what he’s thinking, and wishes she knew him well enough to tell. She was so convinced they were getting to know one another better, in the willow cave, but now she wonders whether that’s true at all.

 

She’s struck by a sudden odd nostalgia for the arena, and it sends a chill right through her.

 

They arrive at the observation car. Kate immediately begins to wonder if it was a mistake to come here - it’s the sort of place made for romance, she thinks, or else for quiet contemplation. Best of all she thinks it would be a good place for quiet contemplation with a sweetheart. It makes her think of that daydream she discussed with Anthony not so long ago, of walking through the meadow together.

 

She’s still wondering where to begin when he beats her to it.

 

“If you’re trying to let me down gently, you needn’t bother.” He tells her, a whisper pitched to be smothered by the music. “I’ve heard what everyone’s saying - that it was all an act, for you. I only hope you’ll give me a clue about how this will work. I know we have to keep it up when there are cameras on us, but I hope you’ll be honest with me behind closed doors.”

 

She’s shaking her head hard by the time he’s finished that speech - and wondering whether he’s been preparing it all evening.

 

“Why do people keep speaking to me as if it’s impossible that I might have fallen for you?” She asks, hands spread wide. “It’s not an act, Anthony - not for me at least. It hasn’t been an act since - I don’t know - the tracker jackers, perhaps?”

 

She doesn’t clarify whether she means the conversation about their fathers or the swarm in the arena. She’s not sure even she knows which of the two she means.

 

“I don’t think I believe you.” He tells her plainly, his chin as stubborn as ever. “You don’t look at me as if it’s real.”

 

“What did you expect?” She half cries at him. “You know what happened to my father. So I spent my whole life determined never to fall in love, never to have a sweetheart or marry or have children - any of it. I was so set on that until you took me by surprise. I’m still learning my way around it.”

 

He looks startled, now. He’s blinking slowly, as if trying to get to grips with what she said.

 

She gathers her courage and presses on. “I don’t know how to fall in love. I don’t. But for you I’m determined to learn. That’s what I asked you here to say. That is what we need to talk about. I - I just want you to understand that I’m trying, Anthony. I need you to understand that.”

 

“Kate -”

 

He breaks off, shaking his head, eyes wider than ever.

 

She kisses him. She grabs at his ears and just does it, an echo of their first kiss in the cave, perhaps.

 

He kisses her back. He matches her, stroke for stroke, holding her close while she hugs him as tight as she dares.

 

He’s the one who pulls away first, who stands back to look her right in the eye.

 

“You mean it.” He says, and it’s not a question.

 

She nods.

 

“You really mean it.” He repeats, in a tone of wonder.

 

“Every word.” She insists.

 

He laughs a little snatch of laughter and crushes her against his chest in another firm hug.

 

She hugs him back, laughs into the hollow of his neck, presses a kiss there, too.

 

“I should have known.” He tells her now, quietly. “I should have understood. I think - I’d have been like that, if I hadn’t noticed you when I did. If I hadn’t grown up wanting you for my sweetheart ever since I was a little kid, I expect I’d have gone the other way. I’d have wanted nothing to do with love or marriage or the risk of leaving my wife and family like my father left us.”

 

“Exactly.” She agrees, nodding.

 

“I should have understood.” He repeats. “I always think we understand each other so well - but I didn’t understand that. I’ll do better.”

 

She laughs. “I hope we’ve got a few years ahead of us to learn how to understand each other even better?”

 

“I hope so, too.”

 

She hums in contentment, squeezes her arms a little tighter around him.

 

“So - I think we’ve cleared the air?” She offers, light.

 

“I think we could say that.” He makes a show of conceding graciously to her, as if this were one of their classroom debates. “Come on, then - what next? Now we’re on the same page, I feel like we could do anything.”

 

Her turn to pull away, now. Her turn to look him right in the eye, to try to read what she finds there.

 

“When you say anything…?” She asks, brows raised.

 

“I mean - we’re a force to be reckoned with. We make quite the team. I just - sometimes - I do wonder what would happen if we put our minds to finishing what our fathers started.”

 

His words seem to hang in the air for a moment. It’s as if they’re suspended in time, echoing in her mind even though he whispered them so hushed beneath the music.

 

And when she has thought through them three entire times - when she is absolutely certain she has understood his implication - she gives a single, crisp nod.

 

“I’ve wondered that, too. Agatha tried to warn me that some people called it an act of rebellion when we pulled out those nightlock berries - but she didn’t warn me off. She’s only made me wonder what we could do with that idea. The Capitol must be fragile if people are scared of a handful of berries.”

 

“And there must be other people who think as we do, if they’re reading rebellion into one act like that.”

 

“So let’s do what we can. We could be well placed to make some trouble.” She offers. “We’ll tour the whole country in the winter. We’ll meet so many people and go to so many parties. Think of all the ears we could whisper in.”

 

“I think there must be people even in the Capitol who would be with us. I’ve even heard rumours that the First Lady is a District girl.”

 

“Oh - that’s easy. She is. She’s District Twelve. Covey legend says that she’s distantly related to my father.”

 

“She is?” Anthony says, as if she’s still capable of surprising him.

 

“She is.” Kate agrees, because it’s a story she knows well. “I’ve heard even better rumours - that the President was a decent man when he was young and idealistic and first met her. I’ve heard that he’s sick these days and his advisers are taking advantage.”

 

“I like the sound of that. It sounds like a castle waiting to crumble.”

 

“It sounds like a tracker jacker nest waiting to fall.” She argues. “I only hope we don’t get stung too badly along the way.”

 

“We’ll take care of each other and cover our tracks.” He says at once.

 

She nods. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. No one will dare give you any trouble.”

 

“Mmm. I’ve heard some people say you’re quite frightening. I don’t really see it, though.” He teases.

 

She laughs at that. She’s still capable of laughter, somehow, even after the horrors of recent weeks. She’s capable of anything, she thinks, so long as Anthony is at her side. And she likes to think she inspires a similar sort of joy and confidence in him, based on the evidence of the last few weeks.

 

She’ll always shoot his target if he misses. He’ll always lend her an arrow if she needs one.

 

Between the two of them, the Capitol doesn’t stand a chance.

Notes:

Thanks for reading!

Shockingly the source material here was "The Hunger Games". Please send requests if you have any!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Penguin Classics Library