PRIVATE TRAINING.
Score: 1
His first private training, he had really tried.
He’d never admit it aloud to anyone– most especially anyone associated with the Vox– but he did hold a quiet pride in how his training had gone in his first Games. Not because he enjoyed demonstrating any aptitude for murder, instead because he’d been able to prove that he wasn’t just some scrawny, awkward kid that should be written off as a Bloodbath casualty before they’d even started. Alder was more than the Capitol wrote him off to be at first glance. He was all of the spark they’d tried to stamp out in his parents, a rogue ember ready to burn everything down in their names.
The fire still burned, but six years later it had been stoked and choked, the sides of it shored up by the Vox in an effort to keep him contained until the right moment. A moment that, it seemed, would never come to pass, not anymore. Like he’d told Neptune, some fires just burn out. It was a part of the natural order of things.
What a waste.
Alder sat on his hands in the waiting room, watching the District numbers and names tick slowly upward above the doors that led into the open, empty training center, poised and delicately reset identically for every tribute’s demonstration, like some sort of fucked up dollhouse. He’d chosen to sit alone and avoided the eyes of Maverick, Abel, Mahlon, everyone, really. He needed to think.
He still had no idea what he was going to do.
He’d thought about simply giving a speech, but Alder had never been much good with words. That was for politicians and performers, of which he was neither. He could do nothing, too, but that felt wasteful. Ten minutes of the Gamemakers’ undivided attention after seven years of trying to survive the aftermath of their torture? Didn’t he dream of giving them a piece of his mind for a small fraction of that time?
Trying was, of course, out of the question. He wasn’t playing the game this time around, and he wanted them acutely aware of his refusal to participate.
When his name and District popped up on the screen with a cool female voice announcing his turn, he was still going in the same circles with his options.
Alder didn’t immediately stand, desperately trying to buy himself a few more seconds. When no miraculous inspiration struck him, though, he finally rose, forcing himself toward the doors.
Improvising it was.
The Training Center looked as it always did, though even Capitol cleaning agents used between rounds couldn’t mask the smell of what tributes previous to him had done. He was confident at least a couple had used the dummies with realistic blood (horrific), there was always a kind of starchy, artificial smell from those. There was also the scent of leaves, maybe mashed into a paste, and the woodsy, heavy smell of smoke from someone who had demonstrated fire building.
It momentarily rocketed him back to his Arena, the very end with the sharp burn of smoke in his lungs and white-hot heat from the Cornucopia at his back, axe heavy and solid in his hands. A flash of pain seared across the scar on his stomach, there was the clear retreating form of Everett outlined in mind’s eye, and–
Alder squeezed his eyes shut, vaguely aware that a Gamemaker was speaking to him. He didn’t really care, only tried to focus on bringing himself back the way he’d been talked through so many times over the years. When his feet found the cold concrete beneath him, skin returned to the air conditioned Training Center, he brought back with him from his Arena a little spark of inspiration.
Finally, he knew what he was going to do.
Maybe they’d told him to start, or not, he wasn’t sure, he didn’t really care. Alder went to the nearest station– shelter making– and stuffed his arms full of branches. The bark dug into his bare arms, and the needles leaked sticky sap onto his skin. He dumped them in the center of the floor, directly in front of the Gamemakers’ box, not even bothering to look at them. He knew plenty well what their ugly faces looked like.
Systematically, he went through the stations like this, gathering armfuls of items he deemed worthy of his cause, and then some. Slowly, a pile accumulated of random items, including food, paper, clothing, fishing rods, wires, weapons, whatever he thought was worth grabbing. At the end, he visited the medical station, grabbing gauze, fabric, cotton balls, and a full bottle of isopropyl alcohol.
Of course, this was the tip-off to what he was doing, and he knew from here he needed to work quickly. He doused the fibrous items he’d taken from the medical station in the alcohol as he walked until they were soaked and the fumes made his eyes water. Unceremoniously, he dumped them atop his pile like toppings on some bizarre yard sale sundae, then pulled a box of matches from his pocket that he’d snagged from the fire making station.
Alder struck a match, momentarily held it between his fingers.
He did, then, briefly raise his eyes to the Gamemakers’ box. Some stared back, one was talking into something on their chair while pressing a button.
Learned this in Eleven, motherfuckers.
Alder dropped the match and stepped back quickly.
The flames were dramatic, as alcohol fires often were, tall and bright, if not particularly hot. However, it didn’t take too long for the kindling he’d added beneath to catch, then the clothing, the notebooks, the branches.
A door slammed open to his left, and Alder didn’t even look up from his now crackling, roaring fire. There were loud footsteps on the concrete, Peacekeepers, surely, and within moments he felt his arms seized from behind, his body yanked backward.
Alder didn’t react, letting them apprehend him, drag him to the exit. More white-uniformed Peacekeepers were now closing in on his fire, his tribute to his Cornucopia, holding big, red tanks with hoses attached, trying to douse it in some strange foam. Alder felt a flash of resentment, he’d really wanted to see it all burn to the ground, but of course, he never would get the satisfaction of that. It would have to be enough to know how much of their stuff he’d ruined, even if he was sure there were backups upon backups to replace them.
It wasn’t until later, when he was being held in a dark room, that he realized his cheeks were sore from grinning.
