Wren hadn’t seen Dice at all yesterday. She hadn’t wanted to. But the second she saw Dice on the street, she wanted nothing more than to spend time with her. All of the utter shit that had happened, all the fucked up things she’d done - Dice had been there for half of them, and so fuck it. Wren could be a monster with her. Why the fuck not? They were condemned anyway.
“Hey Dice,” she said, and took a few steps to cross the cobblestones. She held her shield loosely, and her knife was still tucked in her belt. “Long time no see.”
She hadn’t seen it happen. Maybe she’d been on an errand, or maybe she just had her back turned. Or maybe she’d purposely ignored it and ignored the fallen tributes lighting up the screen. But Amaranthe thought about the little girl she knew back in Nine who liked to pick flowers while her parents negotiated moonshine prices. That sweet child had been so full of life and love. That little girl was dead.
Ama sat on her bunk. There went another tie to her previous life, one she didn’t even know she had or wanted until Lavender had found her in the Tower lobby. And now all she wanted to do was desperately will Lavender to come back. But there was no sign of either of the tributes from Nine in the new Arena. And Amaranthe had known. She had known when she first laid eyes on Lavender Hardsnow all grown up that the girl would die. They all died. That was how the Games worked. It was not Ama’s first death. It was not her first loss. Lavender hadn’t been her family in Nine or her avox family here.
So why did it hurt so much?
When she’d made it back to her little room, her shift finally over, she barely reached the door before her legs gave out and now, sat on a single bed without anyone above her to comfort her or simply occupy the same moment so she wouldn’t be alone, Amaranthe began to sob.
It was dark as shit, and everything hurt. Wren didn’t know how much time had passed, only that she couldn’t move, and she couldn’t die. She’d finished crying about it a while ago. The pain hadn’t faded but she’d...fucking adjusted to it or something. But Wren wasn’t dying. Why wasn’t she fucking dead? The moonlight let her watch the world around her as she looked from left to right in the grass. It was all she could do, at least until she saw shadows move in the distance.
“Hey!” she shouted, her voice scratchy. Fuck. She tried again. “Hey, over here. Fucking...over here!”
When she woke with a lurch forward, Wren somehow managed to keep herself from screaming. Within seconds she couldn’t even remember what the nightmare was about, which fucking death was haunting her tonight. It was still night, or at least it was still dark, but Wren wasn’t getting back to sleep any time soon with that shit in her brain, so she quietly made her way out the door and up to where Holland had settled for her shift on watch.
“Just me,” she said as she approached, because she didn’t want to get fucking attacked. She sat down and stared at the dim rays of what would end up being light eventually, far off in the distance, and the buildings that were a lot closer. It was almost pretty.
The half-stadium was hot as hell. The sun was bright and there wasn’t a cloud. Heat rolled off the marble and Wren worried her shitty shoes were going to melt. But she’d run into Thea before she’d gotten a chance to check this place out yesterday, and she was sure there was something here worth finding, whether it was a vantage point, a hiding spot, or an actual fucking thing, like a weapon or some shit.
She started by looking in the building. Through the windows first, because she wasn’t fucking stupid, and then she stepped inside when she saw there was no one there. There wasn’t much. The tables had a bunch of sticky-looking stuff, some stuff that looked like soap, and a few bottles of what definitely wasn’t water. They smelled nasty. Wren picked up a weird needle crusted with something black and rubbed it between her finger and her thumb - they came back stained with some pigment, like...fucking mascara? Makeup. This was makeup. Fat load of good that was going to do to help her. Wren sighed, and headed back into the sun.
She stepped up onto the stage, and tried to figure out her next move despite the fucking searing heat. She was about to give up when from the corner of her eye she realized she wasn’t alone. Someone was coming right toward her.
She was following the directions that the bird gave her, or at least she could have fucking sworn she was. But Wren had no clue where the fuck this temple was and she was hot and hungry. She skirted around the park where the Cornucopia was again, and kept walking until she got to a big intersection. She sighed, ready to give up and try to find food so something, when she saw someone heading her way. She ducked before realizing it was Arachne, and then stepped out and raised her hands, vial of Lumba’s blood and bird instructions in one hand, the dagger in the other.
“Do you have any idea where this fucking Temple is?”
Wren only had a second to think after the pigeon flew away. She needed to fill the vial and get the fuck out of the middle of the Cornucopia, and fast. She whirled around, checking for danger behind her shield before holding near her side and trying to crouch under it as she dipped the vial into the puddle of Lumba’s blood. Something whipped past her head - a knife? and arrow? Another fucking pigeon? - and then Wren picked up everything, plus a rolled up sack of something, and ran. She sprinted until she couldn’t breathe properly and then ran until she felt like she was going to burst. Wren looked at the vile she hadn’t even had time to cap. It was filled about halfway with blood, and Wren hoped that would be enough.
She looked around her and didn’t have a fucking clue where she was. What was this? It looked like a city, maybe, but the buildings were wonky as shit. This one didn’t even have much of a roof, and the paintings on the walls weren’t the government-sanctioned crap or the gross Capitol style. And thank fuck, she was alone. Wren let out a sigh of relief and sat...and promptly ran back out and threw up.
She’d killed two people. They’d been alive, and now they weren’t. She had taken life out of two different people, and only one of them had deserved it. But had he? Had Francis really deserved it or had she jumped to an alcohol-fueled, bullshit conclusion?
No, she couldn’t fucking afford to think about it, any of it.
Wren wiped her mouth and went back inside the building, whatever the fuck it was, or at least back behind some walls to fucking hide. She sat on one of the benches and noticed a pool of water in an area next to the area she was sitting in.
Wren didn’t fucking run to some weird-ass water source, no matter whether the Capitol broadcast that truth to all of Panem or not. She had to get the blood off, suddenly feeling itchy and sticky. She was covered in Lumba. Fuck. She knelt by the pool and began to try and wipe down her arms when, over her light splashes, she heard someone walk in. She yanked her arms out of the pool and grabbed her knife. Her hands shook. She wasn’t ready, she wasn’t fucking ready to fucking fight someone again. She didn’t want to kill. Fuck.
Title: DVABVS PVELLIS, LAPIS VNVS (I)
Synopsis: The Bloodbath isn’t over yet.
Featuring: @dicerollslucky, Rosemary Bee, Lumba Jacques
TW: blood, murder
All Wren could think about was getting the fuck away from Thetis. She couldn’t run in these shoes, kept slipping, kept fucking slipping on the rocks and the marble and the fucking blood. The shield was heavy and between maintaining her balance and watching her back, Wren didn’t pay any attention to where she was going. Most other tributes had left or were on the outskirts of the Cornucopia now, but apparently Rosemary and Lumba were just as stupid as Wren, and she ran right into them. Fuck.
Dice was already done with the bloodbath, in her mind. She’d beaten Daniela out for a breastplate, which she didn’t have time to put on quite yet. She knelt down and grabbed two small knives (and honestly, damn Carol Eyre for being right about there not being any nunchucks in here). She was ready to go, to find Thetis and bolt, when her favorite redheaded tribute appeared like an explosion in her periphery.
Wren did her best to spin and run the fuck away from the other tributes, almost smack into Dice. Thank fuck it wasn’t Thetis. “Fucking run,” she shouted, throwing her head back in the hopes of somehow indicating the girls chasing her.
Dice looked past Wren, thinking fast. This was the kind of impulsive thinking she’d been trained for, and it was showing. Without hesitation, without any critical thought whatsoever, actually- she pushed her back against wren’s and slipped a knife into her hand. They weren’t allies, but at least Dice trusted her more than the two behind her. “Running’s for cowards.” she declared, eyes narrowing as she readied her breastplate as a shield. “Square up, Wrenny!”
Oh crap. This was happening. Okay. Dice gave her a knife and Wren wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on with that, because they weren’t allies, but she lifted her shield with her left hand and gripped the knife securely with her right. She planted her feet - no more falling while fighting, especially not in these shoes where she sure as shit wouldn’t be able to get up again.
“Shit, you ever used a knife before?” Dice realized, just a moment before the outer district girls came on full force. She hoped the answer was yes.
“Uh, threw a bunch, fought with a knife in my hand that I didn’t end up using because it was training,” Wren confessed. “Stab and go, right?”
“Same principle!” Dice started, even though it was totally different. “Just keep it in your hand-” they were getting closer “and slash, don’t swing back” and now they were on them, “and, you know, just fucking….” and Dice’s knife was buried deep in that mom from eleven’s neck. “Like that!!!” she said, not even sure if wren had seen. She might be a bit preoccupied with the girl from seven. She was tall.
So much for the fucking higher ground. Wren had to duck under her shield as she listened to the instructions Dice was giving her, half-assed and rushed as they were. She shoved her shoulder against the shield to push against Lumba and try to get her off balance, and watched as Dice stabbed Rosemary in the throat. Holy shit. “Gotcha!” Wren said, though her voice was…not confident.
“Great!” Dice, mentor in chief, called back. “Because it’s actually not the same at all!”
“Fucking great news!” Wren shouted. She shoved again and Lumba was knocked sideways. She looked at the knife in her hand and lunged at the other tribute, trying to keep her off balance. She slashed with the knife, trying to sink it deep into Lumba’s side, but Lumba was quick and sidestepped.
Dice knelt to grab her knife, feeling for the pulse. It would really suck if Rosemary had to die slowly. And Wren was totally fine. Probably.
