Sleep came to Aphrodite quickly, but it was the shallow, surface-level kind. She could feel the coarse roughness of the cave floor against her back, feel Cosima’s arm barely touching hers. If she strained her ears hard enough, she could’ve sworn she could hear the sound of wings, but she didn’t dare get up to check. It was the kind of sleep that would elude you the second you decided to wake up, and so she kept her eyes shut, willing herself to fall into a more substantial slumber.
She rolled over, away from Cosima, lifting an arm over her eyes in an attempt to get a little more comfortable, the bed roll they were lay on making a kind of shuffling noise as she moved. The noise didn’t seem to stop even after Aphrodite had settled. She let out a soft sigh, and as she did so, the sound of shuffling stopped.
For a moment, Aphrodite almost opened her eyes, but - not wanting to miss out on any of the sleep she could get - kept them firmly shut. The absence of noise should have meant nothing to her, but somehow the world seemed a little too quiet now.
And then the shuffling started again.
Her brow furrowed. It could just be Cosima moving next to her, but this was The Hunger Games, after all. It was better to be safe then sorry. Aphrodite took a few measured breaths, feigned sleep, and then opened her eyes, turning just in time to see a figure looming over her.
“Zeus.” She breathed, her voice wavering.
And then his hands found her neck.
The initial shock drove any coherent thought out of Aphrodite’s mind for the first few seconds. She gasped for air, her fingers clawing at his hands as they pressed down on her airways. She tried calling out, but she could get out little more than a gasp of Cosima’s name, incapable of thinking of anything other than the fact that she was surely going to die.
And then her brain kicked in, and her hands left his and instead began moving across his body in the dark, trying to find a weak spot. At the same time, she started thrashing around, moving every part of her body that she could in an attempt to dislodge him from the position he had over her. She feel the blood pounding in her head, the tightness in her chest beginning to expand outwards to the rest of her body. Her hands felt clumsy and useless, but she drove them further, reaching around to his back and clawing her way across it.
Just as she was beginning to think the endeavour was useless and that he had already won the fight, he let out a hiss of pain, and Aphrodite felt the wetness of his blood on her finger tips. She drove her hand across the wound, forcing her hand down and driving her knee into his crotch at the same time.
He cried out, his grip loosening just enough for Aphrodite to let out another gasp of Cosima’s name, her knee finding his crotch three more times before he withdrew a hand in an attempt to pin her leg.
This was all she needed. Her hands darted back to the hand around her neck and she wrenched herself free, her knee driving itself upwards again and again.
“Cosima!” She yelled, grabbing on to Zeus’s arms and attempting to tuck her foot behind his leg. She grunted with exertion as she pushed against his arms, trying to drive him backwards.
And then her foot found it’s mark, and with another grunt of effort she rolled him over, managing to reverse their positions.
“Cosima!” She called out once more, using her full body weight to stave off Zeus’s arms. “Get the swords!”
Aphrodite was excited. She couldn’t help it. Whatever vestiges once remained of the time she craved to be in the arena had managed to wriggle their way to the forefront of her mind as she sat in the launch room with Matrix.
They didn’t have much to say to each other. They spoke a little about the outfit, and how it almost definitely meant there would be lots of water, and then about Cosima, and how happy Aphrodite was to be going in with her. It meant that, however small the chance might be, there was a possibility of the two of them getting out together. And that’s all that mattered to Aphrodite.
Before long, she was being escorted to her platform, giving Matrix a long hug before steeping on to the plate and looking upwards, wishing she could see something other than darkness.
“You’ll do wonderfully.” Matrix said, and Aphrodite looked at them to see the briefest of smiles cross their face before they turned and headed out the room, just as Aphrodite’s platform began to rise.
The first thing she did once the platform broke free of the earth around them was look for Cosima. On either side of her she had two career brutes, and Cosima was much further away than she would have liked.
And then she noticed they were suspending in mid air, the small island they were on seemingly surrounded by nothing but sky. She could see, further in the distance, more islands similar to this, and islands below that were covered in dense jungle separated by ocean.
And then there was the Cornucopia. From here she could see swords and axes and backpacks stuffed with supplies. No knives, but that was a problem they could deal with later. She glanced back towards Cosima again, wondering what her plan was going to be now that hiding close to the Cornucopia didn’t seem to be an option. She hoped that Cosima would go down on to the island below them and hide there. She didn’t want her in the middle of what was about to happen.
Ten seconds.
She pulled her gaze away from Cosima and back towards the Cornucopia, a smirk finding it;s way on to her face as she felt the wind whipping against her hair and blowing it back out of her face.
And then she ran.
She slipped past Lanthan and Zeus, throwing herself forward with all her weight, her eyes fixed on the swords. She could feel the presence of other tributes around her, but she all but ignored them as she jumped over thick vines and dove into the Cornucopia. She was the first to make it there. Both her hands found swords, and she twisted around quickly ducking out of the Cornucopia and slipping one of the swords between the straps of two backpacks. One for her, one for Cosima.
What she hadn’t expected was the sudden force of someone pushing against her back, almost sending her flying. She twirled around, letting the backpacks fall as she readied her blades, only to see Jae looking wide-eyed back at her.
“I- I-” He stammered, taking several steps backwards.
She sighed, shaking her head a little.
“What did you think that would accomplish?” She asked, cocking her head to one side before slitting his throat with her sword.
She abandoned him even before he had hit the ground, scooping up the two backpacks and rifling through the rest of the supplies the Cornucopia had to offer. There were no knives, but she did manage to find several hunting traps before she made her way out towards the edge of the floating island. The amount of tributes still up by the Cornucopia was already thinning out, which meant that there were more tributes on the ground with Cosima. If she had even made it down there.
Aphrodite refused to think of what the alternative might be.
