the hunger games (part 2); you and warren have to fight against one another in the games when you are both chosen, but what if there’s a way out? (part 1) (part 2)
warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, cursing, mentions of death, wc: 2.2k
a/n: it’s been a minute. i’m tentatively posting again, but it won’t be consistent. please let me know if you like this and want more parts, or just send general thought about the characters. any inspo is welcomed and appreciated. enjoy!
It’s the first time you’ve gotten a moment alone with Warren since the reaping, nearly two hours after Emma ushered you off the stage and sent you into a flurry of goodbyes, meetings with potential sponsors, and half-hearted compliments about both of your physiques. Emma seemed to be trying to appease her guilty conscience by assuring both you and herself that you seemed strong enough to make it far in the games.
“Right,” you snapped after she commented on your tenacity during the Reaping in the face of the tasks ahead of you, “I’m sure tenacity will be a big help in killing twenty-two other people.”
Her nervous laugh grated against your ears as she scurried away, leaving all of the tension in the room behind her.
You stand with your back to Warren for a few moments, closing your eyes and taking a deep breath in a failed attempt to calm your nerves. To his credit, Warren keeps his mouth shut, eyes wide in the unfamiliar face of your fury.
“You could have survived. You would have been fine if you had just let me go. Why the fuck couldn’t you just let me go, Warren?” your voice is low, and you find it hard to meet his eyes the longer he stares at you. “You have a family back home. They need you. Our friends need you, and now we’re both going to die. Why the fuck did you- you goddamn i-idiot-”
You fall to your knees, head pressed between your hands as you try to get a grip on your emotions. You won’t allow anyone but Warren to see you fall apart like this, and you know that you won’t have long before someone else comes looking for you to drag you to another meeting or congratulate you on being chosen.
You take deep, staggering breaths as panic begins to claw up your throat. Your heart is beating out of your chest, and your lungs feel too full for any air to get in. You can’t breath, Jesus, you can’t breath.
Gentle hands take hold of your wrists, guiding them away from your face. Warren replaces them with his own, wiping the tears from your cheeks.
“I’ll follow you,” he whispers, tears of his own falling to the floor between you. “Wherever you go, I’ll follow you. No one, not even the fucking Capital is taking you away from me. I was never going to let you go alone. After our first reaping, I promised myself that I would follow you anywhere. Even if it led me here.”
A sob rips from your throat and you take his face in your hands, stuck between the urge to push him away and hug him as close as you can.
“You’re so stupid,” you tell him, but it’s weaker than before. Your anger begins to fade as you take him in, holding his head between your palms and running your thumbs over his cheeks. There are still tear stains on his face from the reaping, and you can see the fear clouding them. Guiltily, you feel some relief at the fact that he’s the one here beside you as he closes the distance between you. He presses his head into your neck and takes a deep, shaky breath. You bury a hand in his curls and grasp at his shirt, shaking against the onslaught of emotion that you haven’t had time to sort through.
“I love you,” he whispers, the words muffled. “I love you so much. I’ll never leave you in there, even if it kills me.”
“God, Warren, don’t say that,” you sob, pulling him even closer. His arms tighten around you until you’re holding him between your legs so he can get closer to you. “I love you too. Even though you’re a goddamn idiot.”
“Well, this will make for a fantastic strategy.”
You jump at the voice, staring up at an amused but tired looking Erik Lehnsherr.
“What?” you mutter dumbly, sniffing as you try to compose yourself.
“Two lovestruck teenagers from district twelve, fighting to keep each other alive,” Erik sits in a chair on the far side of the room, unfazed by the intimacy that he’d interrupted, “it’s been used countless times, but it never fails to win the sympathy card. You should capitalize on that.”
Warren stands from your embrace, keeping one hand tucked carefully into yours as he glares at Erik.
“We aren’t characters for people to fawn at,” he grumbles, “You’re sending us off to die. The least you could do is treat us like human beings.”
“I’ll treat you however I want if it gives you a better chance to survive. If you need to look at yourselves as characters to put on a better show, then do it. If you survive, you’ll have all the time in the world to be real people. In the arena, your only job is to look pretty and kill as many people as possible,” he looks out the window as you pass through district eleven, staring blankly at the concrete walls surrounding the city, “but from the looks of it, it won’t be very hard to play the part.”
His eyes fall to your and Warren’s joined hands. You scowl at him but don’t move, knowing that he’s right. Combat isn’t the only thing you need to be focusing on. Every person who has won the games has done so with the help of sponsors. To get sponsors, you’ll need a good story.
“Can we have some time alone?” Warren spits, although you can see the fight slowly draining from him, “we have weeks to strategize.”
Erik glances between you. His eyes soften and the tension in his shoulders releases. He doesn’t seem like someone who would vocalize anything but objective fact and strategy, but you remember the way your mentor and his partner got as far as they did before his partner died. Watching the games as a child, you were entranced by the love that the two obviously felt for one another. Looking at him now, you can’t help but wonder if you or Warren will be like him after the games
“You have the rest of the night,” he sighs, “that’s all I can give you. We meet back here tomorrow morning. Don’t sleep in. We have a lot to go over.”
Warren doesn’t understand how this happened. Everything was fine. He was going to age out this year, and next year you would be safe. All of your friends would be safe, and you could live your lives in relative peace.
He wanted to marry you. He’d found a ring from one of the vendors in the market and bought it spontaneously, realizing the moment he held it in his palm that he wanted to see you wearing it for the rest of your lives. He carried it with him almost everywhere he went, as a reminder of the future he wanted with you. But right now it feels heavy in his pocket.
He pulls you tighter against him, closing his eyes again in a fruitless attempt to sleep. He’s kept himself up all night, paranoia plaguing him as his eyes search the empty room for a nonexistent threat, as if he’s already in the arena.
You shift in his arms, pressing back against his chest and sighing as you bury a hand in the soft feathers of his wing. He presses his head into the back of your neck, hand spreading across your stomach to press you as close as he can. He took this closeness for granted before the Reaping, but now these moments are limited. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to hold you close enough to make up for the time that you’re going to lose after the games.
It’s a thought that jolts him. Of course, the plan was always to keep you alive, but he’s still coming to terms with what that means for him. He selfishly wants to keep himself alive too, to see his family and friends again. To see your face when he gives you the ring. To see your face every day for the rest of his life. He wants to live. God, he wants to live so badly.
You shift in his arms, turning to face him with bleary eyes.
“Why’re you still awake?” you murmur, “you need to sleep.”
It’s an impossible thing. Sleep feels farther away the longer he’s awake. His fear grips him like a vice, taking hold of his throat and squeezing any remaining life out of him. He can’t speak. He can’t breath.
“Warren,” you whisper his name, pulling him out of the haze he’d fallen into, “baby, you need to breath. You’re having a panic attack.”
Oh. That makes more sense than his immediate assumption, which was that he was actually dying via some unknown, merciful force.
Selfish, he reminds himself, stop being selfish.
You attempt to move away from him to give him distance, but he stops you, pulling you close again. He sighs when he feels your heart beating against his and times his breaths with each thump against his chest. You relax against him, hand moving into his hair.
“Just breathe,” you whisper into his hair. His hands tremble against your back and he clenches them, hating himself for how weak he is. You’re going to the games too, you shouldn’t be having to anchor him. But despite this knowledge, he still clings to you, pressing his lips to your neck with a shaky sigh.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispers, closing his eyes when you hold him tighter.
Tears slide down his cheeks as the panic starts to fade into sorrow.
“I love you,” he looks up at you, taking your face carefully in his palms and kissing your jaw, “more than anything.”
He wipes away a tear that slides down your cheek, pressing another kiss against your temple.
“I love you too,” your voice sounds as weak as he feels, and he wishes more than anything that this could be a dream. That he’d wake up in his own bed, tucked away in the safety of your arms. You would hold each other for hours, free from the burden of the Hunger Games.
He falls asleep wrapped around you, keeping you tucked in the safety of his wings while he drifts away in your arms.
It doesn’t take much searching for you to find Erik’s room secluded from the rest of the train. It’s far too early to be awake, but you couldn’t wait until morning to talk to him. You tap against the door, looking around tentatively to make sure no one woke up at the sound of your quiet footsteps. You knock again, a bit louder, and sigh when you hear an annoyed groan through the door. It takes a minute, but you wait patiently until you hear Erik’s footsteps coming closer. He slides it open, tired eyes landing on you.
“What?” he grunts, walking back towards his bed as a silent invitation for you to follow. You push the door shut behind you and shuffle towards him, sitting on the chair that he points to and waiting for him to look at you.
“I needed to talk to you before tomorrow. I know you probably have a strategy in mind, but whatever it is, you need to change it.”
Erik looks less than impressed, waiting patiently and expectantly for you to continue.
“He has to live,” you whisper, an admission both to him and yourself. The fight between wanting to find a way for you both to live and needing Warren to get back home is one you’ve been fighting since the moment he volunteered. But you know that two people surviving the games is impossible. This is your only option.
“Warren lives. He has to. I don’t care what I have to do.”
Erik’s expression doesn’t change, and you realize he was probably expecting this. His only question was probably whether it would be you or Warren showing up at his door.
“That’s not up to me,” he tells you, “any strategy we come up with will end with one person coming out of that arena alive. If you end up getting to the end of this, it’s either going to be you or him. It’s your job to decide what happens after that.”
You don’t know what else you were expecting. You feel idiotic for even coming given the little that you’re going to leave with. You feel far from reassured, but at the very least, there’s a tentative plan starting to form. Or at least some semblance of motivation.
“If you really want it to be him that makes it out, you’re going to have to fight until the end. That means the strategy stays the same,” he leans forward, studying you for a moment. “This isn’t an out for you, if that’s what you were hoping. Your training stays the same, as does his.”
“What?” you narrow your eyes at him, “I don’t want an out. All I want is to protect him.”
Erik meets your eyes, looking fully alert as he stares at you. You want to back down from the intensity of his gaze, but you stand your ground.
“Then protect him,” Erik finally says, eyes holding a meaning that you can’t fully grasp, “no one else is going to do it for you.”
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