One / Seven years & counting.

❦

         "Do I know you?" The question, a series of raised inflections jagged like the serrated edge of a wound, lies at Elliot's feet. It stares up at her, wearing the face of cracked asphalt and dust-paved ground.

She stares back and traces the cuts on the ground into her memory. There is a slight tear in the mouth of the man sitting before her, an incision where the question had carved its way out into the space between them.

Does she? He is in a cell; she stands outside watching him. Her eyes hold the sun in broken pieces, amber glass sharp and jarring against the brown. Burnt red creeps up on the bars of the cell; the metal rusts and rusts and rusts, complacent in its undoing. The air is like plastic, sticky and unmoving, setting glue plastering itself onto her skin.

A scoff slips its way through the bared gates of his teeth. His mouth is a gash of red, sharp against the sickly, sun-starved pallor of his skin. He is hunched over, elbows jutting out from the sides; his forearms rest on his thighs, hands tangling together in a desperate attempt to claw the air for any traces of closure.

His lips part to speak, anger rising in his voice and bringing the words down, hard, into the ground. The asphalt splits further.

"I asked you a question." He has the residual desperation of a man who knows he is to be sent off to the guillotine. Fitting, Elliot thinks. They all do. "What are you doing here?"

Elliot is silent. The wind sits, still, its song locked away in the space between its ribs. There is a knife tucked up her sleeve, the cool edge of the metal pressing against her skin. Kiss a blade too hard, and it shows its teeth by sinking them into your flesh. Her arm is littered with scars from the amount of times a wrong turn had wedged the blade into flesh— there are no sheathes for kitchen knives, and to buy one would beg the question of why she needed it to begin with.

What is she doing here? There are only two kinds of people that visit the prisoners waiting to be executed— family, and Peacekeepers. Elliot is neither; they both know that. The ground is unresponsive, and offers no answer. She moves her gaze to the man instead.

Like most people in District 8, time has not been kind to him. He could not be any older than thirty, but already the ends of his eyes are lined with wrinkles— scars from when the world had taken a knife and cut the lids open, saying: Look. See, now, the starvation around you, the suffering of your children! This is what it means to be a citizen of Panem!

He is either being punished for the realization or for doing something about it, Elliot thinks. The man stares at her now, his eyes twin flames of startling blue, like he had never sewn his eyes shut from it, like he'd never looked away. She wonders if he will die with his eyes open.

His hair, a bright copper color, is unwashed and dirty from his time spent rotting in the cell. It has begun to clump together, the ends corroding, rusting and rusting and rusting like the bars separating them.

She watches as the question rises again from the hollow graveyard of his lungs, filling the room like blood that waits to be spilled.

"Are you here to save me?"

"No." Today is Elliot's birthday; Reaping Day. This man is scheduled to be hanged right after the tributes are sent to the Capitol, and she would rather not have her name entered numerous times— or worse, have her name called even if the one on the draw doesn't belong to her— just for trying to bail him out.

He shifts, now, as if realizing this too. "Then what? To gloat? To pity me? Perhaps you should kill me now, spare me the shame of having to die before everyone in the district."

She shakes her head. "I wanted to ask. You're being sent to die because you tried to run, aren't you?"

"I see you already have the answer." His tone, sardonic, sinks its claws into the air. "Yes, I tried to run. No, I didn't make it. You might have guessed. Today's Reaping Day, isn't it? I tell you—" Somewhere in between these lines, Elliot answers yes, but her answer finds no room in the stream of his words, running past her— "if you're trying to run, don't. You'll never make it past the border."

"Where were you trying to go?"

"District 13."

"There is no District 13."

"So you've been told." He smiles, like he knows something she doesn't. "I'm not the first one who's tried to run, you know. The ones they catch, they bring back to hang. The ones that don't... they stay missing. You've seen the posters. Either freedom finds them first, or the Capitol does."

"Or they die out there. In the wilderness."

"You're a positive one, aren't you?"

He shakes his head at her. Elliot says nothing. There is something oddly condescending to his voice that juxtaposes the image of the two of them: the man, hunched over in a cell, and Elliot, standing outside the rusting bars, not tall or foreboding but still towering over him.

It is Reaping Day. Today, both of them will be sent to die. One to the gallows, and the other to the Arena. Which is worse?

"The Reaping happens in less than two hours." He takes the conversation, slanting it in a different direction. It barrels on, sentences running and running as they wait to be said. "You have your answers: I am being sent to die, because I tried to run. You should go."

"I should."

Neither of them move. The bars rust and rust and rust.

It feels like the entire day has gone by before Elliot reaches a hand in between, passing a loaf of bread to the man. It is stale, cold, and it tastes like nothing. It is the best thing he will ever eat.

He looks up at her now, and smiles. Slow and deathly, cracks opening in his sun-starved skin.

"It's northeast."

Elliot freezes. "What?"

He continues, as if he hadn't heard her. His eyes are a bright, terrible blue, like a sun-bleached sky. They burn, twin flames, fixated on something Elliot cannot see. (Perhaps this would be the color of District 8's sky if there weren't so much smoke all the time.)

"You go to the border by the ocean. Pass Twelve. Keep walking until you find the dead city. And then you go under."

By now the cracks have spread across his face. He is made of more scars than he is flesh. His smile splits his face into two— and his eyes, his eyes, they do not close. The bars of the cell rust. So does his hair. The stone walls are a dull gray, and the sky is leeched of all color. All Elliot can see is this horrible blue, that looks all at once like an open sky and cyanide.

He will die with his eyes open.

"That is," he is saying, as dust settles itself into the crevices of his face, "if you make it out of today's Reaping. If not, I'll see you on the other side."

There is a clattering that alerts Elliot to the presence of Peacekeepers. Soon, she will have overstayed her welcome.

"You really should go," the man tells her, still smiling. "Happy Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor."

♰

District 8 is spread out across the map of Panem like both a bridge and a buffer zone. Suffering pours from the left to right of the district like an inexorable flood, beginning from the tiny bit of Two that stands between Eight and the Capitol, and then stilling by the border that separates Eight and Twelve. It never stops coming, and it never leaves.

The wealthier side is the one closer to District 2, closer to the Capitol— where the Justice Building and the Victor's Village are located.

The Victor's Village is a street of houses winding up to the top of a mountain, one of the few pieces of natural scenery that fell over to the side of District 8 when the line was drawn in between it and Two— a short, precise stroke over a ruler, a careless movement that means both everything and nothing as the new world order settles itself in place. At the foot of the mountain stands the Justice Building, and then before it is an abandoned church from before the Dark Days, and a town square where civilians are slaughtered before the crucifix.

The less wealthy side (see: rotten, poor, neck-deep in poverty) is the one closer to District 8's only stretch of coastline, right by the only spot in Eight where Panem ends. Here, the sky is punctured and leaking, patches of dull blue sky gaping open like wounds in District 8's charred horizon. There's some trees near where Eight becomes Twelve, and the hospital that Elliot's mother died in stands in all its run-down, moribund glory. Smoke from the factories rise to touch the sky.

Elliot's home is situated near the coastline— right where all the rot piles up over the years, at the very verge of District 8, farthest from the Capitol as possible. It's in somewhat better condition than the hospital— decorations are sparse and the whitewashed walls have started to find cracks in them over the last seven years, but at least the ceiling hasn't collapsed yet. (There is no Father to hold up the roof of the home, or to patch up the lines in the concrete. Elliot tries, but she is not tall enough, and paintbrushes can only cover the cracks for so long before they grow bigger and consequently out of control.)

Today is Reaping day, and the day Elliot turns seventeen. This year is a delicate matter: the first year Rain will be lined up as a possible tribute for the Games, and the second-last year that Elliot has to worry about herself.

On the bright side, this means it is only two more times of taking the train into the town square to wait to die— soon, Elliot will be able to watch it from the television down the street just like all the other people before/past reaping age (to keep room for the those aged ten to eighteen, as the town square can only hold so much people).

It also means that soon, Elliot will be eighteen, and they will no longer have to turn every corner with the fear of being asked where their father is. No more fear of being sent off to the orphanage, no more fear of what she will have to use to buy the silence of whoever finds out about their situation. Soon, she will have a full-time job at the factory without the manager raising eyebrows at her asking to work extra hours, and she will make sure her sister does not have to sign up for tesserae like her.

Soon, soon, soon. The cost of Elliot's freedom is an incredibly ironic thing. Today marks the first year Rain is roped off with the rest of the tributes. Two more years until Elliot is freed from the Games, two more years until Elliot can no longer save her sister from the Games.

Soon, Elliot will turn eighteen, and then nineteen, and then yes, she will be able to watch it from the television down the street, and no, she will not be able to surge forward and volunteer if/when her sister's name is called.

Soon, Elliot will no longer be able to save her sister from the slaughterhouse.

The thought is a needle point driving deep into her throat, sharp and searing hot. She tries to swallow it. It finds its way in between her ribs, puncturing her lungs like the broken sky.

Rain is already awake by the time Elliot finds her way home. She is ten now, and will turn eleven in the fall. Unwittingly, Elliot thinks of the trees by the border, the blood in the hospital, and her father, on his knees. It has been years, she realizes, since she last saw her father. The knife in her sleeve presses closer, a kiss on the verge of showing its teeth.

She takes off her shoes and finds her way into the kitchen. The knife finds its way onto the kitchen counter— the Peacekeepers check everyone in the town square on their way to the Reaping. Elliot knows the importance of staying out of trouble today.

"Where were you?"

Fractures of sunlight find their way to her sister's face, as if made to adorn her. The rest of it is blocked out by the clouds hanging over the rooftops, dark and punishing even in the morning. Rain sits at the kitchen table. Her legs swing back and forth, not quite touching the floor yet.

"Out and about." Elliot crosses the room to kiss her on the forehead. "Are you hungry?"

There is a knife resting on a clean plate on the dinner table. A pomegranate sits next to it, heavy with the unsaid question of whether Elliot will cut the fruit for her sister or not. (Rain is still young, she doesn't trust her with a knife yet.)

"Always."

What does she say to that? Elliot takes a seat, silent even as the needle threads guilt into her bones. Knife in hand, she splits the pomegranate open, dividing it into four small pieces. Between them, a third seat remains empty, collecting dust; she makes a point not to look at it.

"I got you something," her sister says, words mashing together with the fruit in her mouth. From her pocket she pulls out a silver chain necklace, a hyacinth charm dangling from it. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you," Elliot says. Her throat aches with something she can't quite name. Rain beckons; she leans down to let her sister fasten the chain around her neck. "Where'd you get it from?"

She smiles in lieu of an answer, one of her front teeth still missing. "That's a secret."

A secret. When it comes to Rain Kalomiri, that often means only one thing. Sometimes Elliot thinks that Rain doesn't need to be a tribute to get herself killed.

"Rain. You know stealing's punishable by death."

Her sister, who is the spitting image of Elliot at ten, pouts. Her bangs have started to grow past her eyebrows, inching closer towards her eyes. Elliot makes a mental note to cut them when they return from the Reaping.

"Well," Rain says, voice turning defensive, "I just wanted to get you something nice. For once."

A sigh, another kiss to the crown of her head. "You're lucky I love you."

The air stills between them. A smile blooms across her sister's face, small and then all-consuming. It is impossible, now, to ignore the way the pomegranate juice stains her hands and her teeth bright red. Elliot tries not to think of it.

"Come on, now," she says, "we have to get ready for the Reaping. You remember what I told you yesterday, right?"

"That I'm coming with you to the town square this year?"

"No." The air becomes charged. The knives gleam on the kitchen counter. Elliot thinks of the man and the rusting bars. May the odds be ever in your favor. "I was talking about what you do when someone attacks you. If someone attacks you. You are ten this year. Do you know what that means?"

"Oh." Something settles in Rain's voice.

It almost hurts to look at her, so young and already lined up at the gates of the slaughterhouse. Elliot can't help but think of herself at age ten, of the empty seat at the dinner table. The rage in her father's voice, palpable as he speaks, hanging so low in the air that it's suffocating— Grow up, Elliot. You have a sister.

You have a sister.

"Do you remember?" Elliot presses. She drops to her knees so they're at eye level, clutching at her sister's stained hands. "It's not important now, but it will be next year. And the year after that."

"What happens next year?" Rain, eyes wide, looks at her. "You're not going away like Dad, are you?"

Blood leaks from the punctures in her lungs. Elliot shakes her head. "No. I— I just won't be able to come with you to the town square after next year. And you have to know how to handle yourself in case anything happens, you know?"

"Right." Maybe her sister knows something's wrong. Maybe she knows she's hiding something. Whatever the case, Rain's gaze drops away from Elliot's. Her small fist closes around the chain necklace she'd given her sister. "Will you wear this to the Reaping?"

"Rain," stresses Elliot, "I need you to remember. Tell me you remember."

Her hand unfurls, releasing the chain, and moves to press against Elliot's neck.

"Jugular," Rain says, and moves it up so she's half-cradling Elliot's head. It stays there. Elliot swears she can hear her own pulse reverberating in her ribs, in the bones of her skull. "Head. Ribs. Heart."

"In order."

"Okay. Jugular. Ribs. Heart. Head."

"Good. And?"

"Flight before fight."

"Okay. Okay." Elliot lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding, presses another kiss to her sister's forehead. Her hands, now, are stained red from the same pomegranate juice on Rain's. "We're going to be okay. Just— go wash your hands in the sink, and then go get changed, all right? I'll meet you at the door in ten minutes."

Rain nods. "You shouldn't worry so much, Elliot. It makes you look scary. And sad. I don't like seeing you sad."

"I'm sorry," says Elliot.

Her sister blinks, slowly. "...I forgive you?"

It comes out as more of a question than anything. Elliot realizes that to Rain, there is nothing to apologize for.

She manages to laugh. "Thanks, Rain."

"It's your birthday, you know," her sister tells her. The last slivers of sunlight have become completely obscured by the clouds and smoke. Still, she seems to shine; so young and full of life. "Today is a big day. There's no reason to be sad."

Today is a big day. "Okay," Elliot says, and tries for a smile. It must be convincing, because Rain doesn't press, and simply goes into her room to change. We're going to be okay. She runs the words over and over again in her head. There's no reason to be sad.

Her sister's voice spills through the crack between the door and the frame: "Can you braid ribbons into my hair?"

Flight before fight. Jugular, ribs, heart, head. Do you remember, Rain? You must remember. 

"Of course."

Rain sings to herself while Elliot does her hair for her. The windows are closed and so the song stays within the confines of their home, hanging in the space between them, beating its slow, dying heart until Rain runs out of air and it lays itself to rest at their feet.

"Do you think I'll get chosen?"

"You're not dying today, Rain."

"Okay." She seems to see the look on Elliot's face, despondent. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

She is too much like her.

What do you do when you look at your sister and all you can see is yourself? The harsh morning light carves the two of them into existence, wretched mirrors of each other. One of guilt and one of grief, blood stained on the frame and the words I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry— written in crimson across the broken glass. Two sisters, two sides of the same coin, two different points in a circular timeline that spins on and on forever. Two chapters in a very old story that has no other ending.

"I love you," Elliot says suddenly, as if it's just occurred to her. "Remember that."

"Stop talking to me like I'm going to die."

"I'm sorry." Again and again and again.

A sigh. Her sister's hand fists in Elliot's. Rain falls asleep on the train ride to the town square, head propped up against her shoulder. Elliot listens for her sister's breathing: inhale, exhale, repeat.

She is not dead, yet.

Outside the window, the entirety of their lives spin past them. Elliot counts the hospital, the school she went to, the factory she works in, the factory her father worked in, the bar he'd gone to after her first Reaping (also the only one he'd been present for).

Her necklace sits heavy against her skin. Happy birthday, Elliot. Somewhere in District 8, the man is being hauled onto another train, headed for the town square as well. A Peacekeeper will have slammed his cell shut, boots stomping past the bread crumbs on the ground. The bars rust and rust and rust.

The train screeches to a stop.

"Rain. Wake up."

The sky is pouring when they reach the town square. The youth of District 8 stand before the Justice Building, drenched. Rain laughs and cheerfully points out that it's her namesake. The Capitol woman at the table pricks her finger, drawing blood. It's dark; the midday sun is obscured by the clouds hanging overhead. Elliot cries silently with the sky.

"Elliot?" Her sister's hand tugs on hers. "Do you have to leave me?"

Elliot tells herself that the water running down her face is just the sky and not her own tears.

"I won't be gone forever, I promise." A final kiss to the crown of her head. "Remember what I told you."

Rain nods. "Jugular, ribs, heart, head."

"That's not what I meant." Elliot makes a sound between a torn-up laugh and a gasp. "Remember I love you."

Her sister manages a smile. The Justice Building looms before them; the gravity of the situation settles itself in Elliot's bones, and it's all she can do to not cry. She pulls her sister into a hug; it feels as though she's holding water in her hands, as though soon Rain will slip away and disappear like the very thing she was named after. Above them, the sky mourns, blurry residues of light streaking through the clouds.

She is not dead, yet.

"Okay," Rain says. Her bangs are really, really overgrown. Elliot wonders why she hadn't noticed sooner. "I'll remember that."

"Good, good. See you later."

At the crossroads, Rain is first to walk away. This is a very old story. Someone always leaves first. Elliot finds her way to a group of girls her age, all drenched under the crying sky, pretty dresses ruined and hair straggling down the sides of their faces. She's well aware of the way she's shaking, not just from the cold but from the fact that today, one of them will be sent off to die, and it could be her sister.

Her eyes, amber washed out by the overcast sky, flicker unbidden to the gallows right by the whipping post. She thinks of the man, dying with his terrible blue eyes wide open, unable to look away forever. She wonders if she will make it to his execution.

The escort this year, Elliot notes, is a new one, with bleached hair and eyebrows, and sharpened canines— probably inspired by that one Victor from Two— Niamh, as she introduces herself. Nothing particularly strange for someone from the Capitol.

The film plays across the screen. Elliot watches as one tribute slams a stone into the skull of another, over and over again until his limbs have stopped moving at all. A thin line of blood trickles from a bashed-in opening in his head and down the side of his face, arrested in a final expression of something that looks like ruin and regret and relief all at once.

That could be her. Or her sister. When the remaining Victor stands and bares his teeth to the screen, they are flecked with blood, bright red against the sharp bone. Again, Elliot thinks of Rain, of the pomegranate juice staining her hands and teeth.

The abandoned church stands to the side, still and silent. There is a man pinned on the cross, hollowed-out eyes watching the children lined up to die. Elliot thinks of praying, and then wonders how he will save her if even he cannot save himself.

And then Niamh speaks.

"Ladies first." Her voice, almost indecipherable with that awfully high Capitol accent, rings sharp against the patter of the rain; the speaker screeches in protest as she speaks and all Elliot wants to do is go home and cry. Her bones ache, splintering with the weight of the world. In the drawing plastered to the fridge, there is only her left, holding up the roof of their lonely home.

She misses her father. I'm sorry I was mean to you. Will you tuck me in tonight?

Rain is young. Elliot, too, is just a child. The paper, soggy, unfolds in Niamh's hands. Elliot prays that it is someone else, and then feels horrible for doing so. The sky weeps but does not listen.

"Rain Kalomiri!"

Jugular, ribs, heart, head. Elliot feels as though someone has taken a knife and driven it into all of those places, all at once, and then twisted. It can't— it's only her first year. How did this happen? It can't be her, it shouldn't be her, it won't be her. No, no, no. Her hand is up in the air before she knows what's happening.

The eyes of the world shift to the girl under the crying sky, half-dead with desperation already. The words drown in the onslaught of tears: Take me instead. I can't let her die.

"Stop." Please. "I volunteer— I volunteer as tribute."

Here, love becomes sacrifice. If Elliot could've dropped to her knees and bled out on the floor she would, but the horror of what she's just done— of what's just been done to her— settles deep into her bones, holding her frame straight. Smile for the cameras, it says. The sky replaces Elliot's grief with its own as she makes her way to the stage, girl turned grave. The church watches, the sun-bleached windows unblinking as the basins of holy water continue to rot.

It isn't supposed to end this way. Rain isn't supposed to be chosen, Elliot isn't supposed to volunteer. They're supposed to go home, so that Elliot can cut her sister's hair and wash fruit in the sink, and put a bandage over where the Capitol woman had pricked her sister's finger. Elliot isn't supposed to be sent off to die— what will Rain do without her? She's put her own name in enough times to have tesserae for the next three years, but it was just a precaution, it wasn't supposed to happen, it isn't supposed to end this way.

Soon the Peacekeepers will come for Rain, and they'll take her away to the orphanage. And Rain will turn eleven, twelve, thirteen, and Elliot, Elliot will stay seventeen forever. Rotting in a grave, six feet underground, a pretty dead thing. Never to see the sun on her sister's face again.

Elliot doesn't know what look she's wearing on her face, but it's enough to make Niamh flinch at the sight of her. She'd laugh if her lungs weren't ripped to shreds.

"A volunteer! What's your name, dear?"

"Elliot. Elliot Kalomiri."

Niamh says something about the love of sisters. Elliot fails to pay attention.

The grief opens its jaw, unhinged, a gaping hole mangled open. Did you miss me? it seems to say, and she answers, no, no, no, but it's not listening, and it has waited long enough. Sinews torn, it sinks its teeth, sharp and pale as bone, deep into Elliot's shoulder, carving out a home for it in the form of a wound. Blood weeps down the side of her arm, the skin broken in twin crescents, two entry wounds caving in, endlessly— and then it's everywhere, pomegranate juice in her teeth and mouth and veins, her lungs punctured and leaking like the broken sky, bleeding, spilling, disemboweling.

Like mother, like daughter. This is a very old story, where Rain Kalomiri's life continues at the expense of others, love as a continual sacrifice, an inherited debt. The birth of Rain had been an act of violence, and now the death of Elliot will be, too. Someone always leaves first; someone always dies first. There is no other ending.

She stands on the stage in the midst of her undoing, a girl broken in her bones and promises, as Niamh reaches her hand into the boys' glass bowl and pulls out a second slip of paper. Another name. Another tribute. Another child being sent to die.

"Lennon Lourdes!"

The odds are very much in their favor today, Elliot thinks. First it's Rain who gets chosen, a ten-year-old whose name has only been entered for the Reaping once, and now it's the mayor's son (as Niamh introduces him), loved lamb to the slaughter, a boy whose family's wealth means his name is put in once a year, no more and no less.

Elliot looks at him and she can't help but think that neither of them are making it out of the Games alive. She is too starved, and he is too pampered. He has never known suffering, or hunger, not before this. Perhaps he will be one of those tributes who takes their life the first two days into the Games.

"Well?" Niamh has the nerve to look unsettled by this year's draw, as if it's beginning to dawn on her that no amount of wealth or privilege can save you from the slaughterhouse's furnace. "Shake hands."

His grip on her hand is tight, suffocating, though Elliot doesn't miss the way it shakes. It's both amusing and piteous; breaking one of her bones will not save him from having the rest of his carved out in the Arena.

"I'm Lennon." His glasses sit on the bridge of his nose, askew. The rain has blurred the lenses; Elliot can't see what color his eyes are. His auburn hair, soaked and clinging to the sides of his skull, remind her of rusting bars and a torn-up smile. May the odds be ever in your favor. It's a few shades off from the trees in the autumn.

(Isn't it funny? The trees, the rain, the pomegranate juice. It's as if all of this has been spelled out since the beginning. Maybe it has, and Elliot's just never noticed. This is a very old story, after all. We can always read it again and again until you begin to see the patterns.)

Everyone is watching. Chin up, shoulders back. The entry wounds tear. Elliot measures the space between her hand and his throat. If she had a knife now, it would take her approximately five seconds to slash his throat, a few seconds for him to lose consciousness, and then three to five minutes before he dies.

"I know," she says, and then adds: "So does everyone in District 8."

Something malicious flashes across the planes of his face. The edge of his mouth rips in what could either be a smile or a warning— Elliot never gets to find out, because Niamh spins them around and ushers them towards the Justice Building. The doors slam and the sound reverberates in Elliot's bones, ringing indefinitely.

If the thought of her imminent death weren't so distracting, Elliot might've marveled at the architectural beauty of the interior. It reminds her of the abandoned church— intricately carved marble pillars arch towards the painted ceiling, where the sky is colored a kind of blue that District 8 will never see, not with the overcast clouds and the smoke that rises from the factories every day with the sun.

The Peacekeeper grabbing her arm (since when was there one?) shoves her through a set of double doors; Lennon disappears into another room. This is the part, she realizes, where she says goodbye to her sister. She finds her way to the couch, lined with plush pillows that are probably worth more than the entirety of her life. The decadence of it all almost makes her want to throw up.

Flight before fight. Jugular, ribs, heart, head. Strange that Elliot is now the one running the motions through her head. I love you. Remember that.

She has bled out, now. Her heart stills, and the wounds at her shoulder dry their tears. Grief, having exhausted itself, lies down in her lap, cold dead eyes staring up at the residue blood staining her skin and bones. It has nothing left to say.

Elliot stares blankly at the ceiling, at the angel carved into the stone, its wings severed from the rest of its body. How must it feel, to be winged from birth, and then no longer be able to fly? Elliot, for as long as she can remember, has always been tied down to the grave of her girlhood. There is no sympathy when she looks at the torn open skin of the angel, not much different from her own, no mutual understanding of the grief woven into their bones.

She blinks at it; it stares back, and it does not move. There are no bars between them. The air rusts and rusts and rusts.

It's Rain's arrival that shakes Elliot out of her stupor. Her sister follows a Peacekeeper through the double doors— a hysterical, sobbing mess, her skirt torn up from when she'd tripped on the steps. There is a cut on her knee; it is the blood, seeping steadily into the fabric of her dress, that outlines the scene before Elliot in sharp detail— her, at the gates of the slaughterhouse, and her sister, with her innocence dangling at the edge of a cliff. One foot on the threshold and the other in the deep end.

"You said you wouldn't be gone forever." Her sister's voice wavers and then breaks, and then she rushes forth into Elliot's arms, her shoes dirtying the plush couch as she cries. "The— the Peacekeeper told me to say farewell. Farewell, not goodbye. Where are you going? Why can't I follow?"

"Rain . . ."

"Elliot, Elliot, Elliot," Rain sobs, clutching onto her hair, the sleeves of her dress, the fabric bunched up in her lap. She says her name like a prayer, over and over again. (This is the thing with believers: they think that if they repeat their pleas enough times, God will save you. It never occurs to them that he heard you the first time.)

Elliot is at a loss for words. Some part of her, the unavenged ten-year-old, demands to be angry, to scream at the world, to curse God for letting this part of the story play out again— Rain is now the same age Elliot was when she was left all alone, left to fend for herself in a world where most martyrs die children.

"They say you're going to die," her sister says, and at this point her voice rises into something sharp, like a knife. She brings it down as she pulls away from Elliot; it cuts through the air between them, the blade serrated with searing grief—

"Is it because of me? I— I know my name was called— and no one's told me what it means— please, Elliot, no one's told me what you're volunteering for, or why you're leaving— leaving me—"

Elliot tucks Rain's head under her chin. Don't say it. Don't say it.

"I'm sorry, Elliot, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—" her sister is hysterical now, tears and snot staining the front of her dress— "You're angry with me, aren't you? Why won't you talk to me? Say something!"

"Stop," Elliot swallows before rasping, "Please don't apologize. None of this is your fault, Rain. I— I'm not angry with you, I'm just scared."

I'm just scared. The words hold more weight than Elliot intends them to. Rain's eyes, brown flecked with gold, are blown wide. Elliot thinks of her father on his knees. Her father, who had always been so intimidating, made a man begging for mercy in the face of death. This is what it must look like to Rain— her big sister, who has never cried or been anything other than unwavering in front of her, admitting that she's scared.

"Elliot—"

She hushes her. "I'm going away, to the Capitol, to compete in the Games, and I— I might not be back, not for a while, so I need you to be brave for me until I come home, okay? There should be enough food in the pantry for the next month. . . and if there isn't—" Elliot lowers her voice, conspirational, and whispers— "stealing's only illegal if you get caught."

Rain laughs a little at that. Elliot wonders if she'll ever hear that sound again.

"Okay." Rain looks up, hands fisting in her sister's hair. "The Games. . . like the ones in the film?" Elliot holds her down, murmuring don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, though it seems to do nothing. "You'll win, won't you? You have to win."

"Rain—"

"Promise me," she is saying, desperate, and when Elliot blinks she can see the grief snapping its jaws at her sister's feet, waiting to rip apart her bones and devour her whole. "Promise me you'll come home."

Elliot, still a teenage girl, closes her eyes and tilts her head backwards. She presses a kiss to the crown of Rain's head, swallowing against the never ending ache that rises in her throat, the familiar sound of grief stirring awake. Remember I love you, she wants to say.

Love is sacrifice. "I promise."

A Peacekeeper comes in through the double doors and takes Rain away.

Elliot carves the image of her sister leaving into her mind, etching it deep into the marrow of her bones, right by the birthplace of blood— this exit wound is what will make up every part of her body.

When she closes her eyes, she can still see the blurry residue of her sister's silhouette, the white dress against the rain, the blood staining her skirt. Blotches of color that bleed together to form the ghost of the only person in the world Elliot is sure she loves.

The angel smiles, silent in its suffering. Elliot bares her teeth at it.

Somewhere in District 8, rope snaps around a man's neck.

♰

The notion of Elliot's district partner is a simple thing.

This is how it goes: his name is Lennon Lourdes, "Scout" to the near and dear. (Elliot will refer to him as Lennon, or even Lourdes, because anything other than his assigned name feels too . . . intimate for someone who might die at her hand in a few weeks.) He is sixteen. He has auburn hair, a few shades off from the trees in the autumn, and a dying sun for a smile. 

He lives in one of the neighborhoods on the better side of District 8, meaning that aside from seeing him at the Reaping every year, his and Elliot's paths have never crossed. (Elliot is glad for that.) Lennon Lourdes is pampered, well-loved, and mourned by his family and friends, who swarm the doors to his room in the Justice Building with their farewells and condolences even before he dies.

She despises him almost immediately. When he exits the Justice Building, his shirt is rumpled and stained with tears, lipstick marks plastered all over his cheeks— Elliot can only assume it's from the girl calling out for him, held back by another Peacekeeper. His glasses rest lopsided on the bridge of his nose. (She can't decide whether she wants to tell him to correct them or to let him look stupid the entire way to the Capitol.)

"You're Elliot, right?"

The way Lennon says her name reminds her of her father, quick and gasped out, like he can't bring himself to acknowledge her existence, like he's choking on it. Elliot is a strange name for a girl. With her father, it had been because he wanted a boy. With Lennon, it is possibly because he doesn't want to acknowledge that the girl next to him, shoulders back and unflinching, is one he will have to kill if he wants to make it out of the Games alive.

"I see you're an observant person."

He frowns as he shuts the door behind him. The car spins into motion— leaving behind nothing more than a nameless ache for the district they call home. Alongside them, cameras flash, capturing every infinitesimal movement of this year's tributes, ready to broadcast their suffering to the rest of the world to see.

"I don't think you can afford to be mean." (Elliot thinks of saying that she didn't intend to, but decides to save her breath. Either one of them will die, or both. There is no point in making friends.) At her silence, Lennon looks her up and down, and then adds: "I don't think you can afford much, really."

"Oh, yes. Because being the mayor's son would totally save me from being chosen for the Games."

His eyes are bloodshot, though they remind her more of a rabid animal than a sad boy. "It didn't," he tells her, "but I'm not the one who's halfway dead already."

"At least I've had practice." Elliot is well aware that her words don't cut the way she would have liked them to, though it's not like they would actually wound him in a way that matters. A bruised ego means nothing when you consider where they're going. "I doubt you even know how to forage for plants to eat."

Lennon laughs, as though she's said something particularly funny. He sits upright now, facing her directly. He has green eyes, sharp like jade. The lipstick stains on his cheeks look like blood, open wounds in the form of kisses.

"Who said I had to eat plants?"

"Bold of you to assume you'll get enough sponsors to carry you through the Games without having to lift a finger. It might have been how life worked for you before, but I can assure you no one cares about your father's job in the Arena."

He smiles: a wide, uncomfortable thing, an animal peeling back its skin to show two rows of shiny white teeth stacked upon each other.

"I wasn't talking about sponsors."

There is something uncanny about this boy. Elliot realizes that he is more of the butcher than a loved lamb to the slaughter. His eyes are a scalpel, picking apart her flesh bit by bit, plucking at nerve endings and splitting open capillaries. Cutting out her broken, punctured lungs and holding them over the fire with that same terrible smile, splitting his face in two.

She looks away from him as if he will tear his gaze from her in turn. He doesn't.

"Anyway," Lennon says, resuming the role of the lamb (he's still smiling at her), "if it's any consolation, I think you'll get more sponsors than me. You are more appealing, after all. Or at least, you would be if you weren't so thin."

"Thanks," Elliot answers sarcastically. "I've heard it's a Capitol trend to be emaciated."

"Maybe." He places each cold word in the space between them, dead bodies into open tombs, "But it won't save you. Not where we're going."

Another reminder that they are being sent to die. Any rebuttal Elliot might've had withers away, locking itself into the space between her tongue and teeth. Lennon, too, lapses into silence, his cruelty curling up to sleep at his feet.

The car pulls to a stop by the train station. Elliot climbs out first, and closes the door in Lennon's face when he tries to follow. He opens his mouth, presumably to say something cutting, but the entirety of District 8 lies weeping at his feet— and perhaps he knows it is the last time he will ever lay eyes upon it, because the words die on the verge of his lips, and the wind carries them away to the grave.

Niamh, cheerful as ever, herds them onto the train. Like animals. There is a kind of detachment in the way she talks to Elliot and Lennon as she tells them where their rooms are and that they'll meet their mentors during dinner— as if she's talking to two strangers she'll never see again, as if they do not exist off the camera (to Panem, Elliot supposes they don't), as if they're simply toys she'll switch in for new ones next year.

Lennon smiles and lets Niamh kiss him on both cheeks before she leaves to change her hair or something (her Capitol accent makes it difficult for Elliot to get what she's saying). He is a walking paradox. She hates him. She doesn't know what to make of him. She wants him gone. She hates that she will have to go into the Arena knowing he will be there, with his bared teeth and the smile that's just so fundamentally wrong it makes her skin crawl thinking about it.

He turns his attention to her, "I'll see you at dinner, then. Don't starve to death just yet."

There is a knife on the dining table a few paces away. Elliot thinks of taking it to carve out his bones, but then she imagines the blood pouring out from his flesh, caking him in rust, drowning him in his own livelihood, and the horror of it keeps her hands still at her sides.

Is this what will happen to her? In one week, the Games will begin, and then what? Will she become like Lennon, with his butcher's smile and bared teeth? Will she become like Finnick Odair, the Capitol's favorite victor to date, a collection of sharp objects whose innocence dies in the same pool of blood as his victims? What must she do to survive? What will her sister think of her? Even if she makes it out of the Games, will there still be a home for her to go back to?

"Spiraling already, are we?"

It's the scent of snuffed out cigarettes and expensive perfume that alerts Elliot to the woman's presence before she speaks— Kennedy Nott, victor of the 66th Hunger Games, is leaning against the doorframe of the foyer compartment, a cigarette burnt to the stump in one hand and a half-full bottle of perfume in the other.

She tilts the perfume towards Elliot, the spray nozzle twisted off and long gone. "Want some?"

Did she just— "I'm sorry—?"

Kennedy laughs, seeing her perplexed expression. "I'm kidding. Unless—"

"No, thank you."

"Fair enough. It smells good, but I can guarantee you it tastes like shit." She flashes Elliot a winning smile, sharp white teeth perfectly filed into a razor-cut grin. From its place between her fingers, the dying cigarette coughs ash onto the carpeted floors. "Are you the one who volunteered?"

Elliot eyes the perfume again, and then turns her gaze back to Kennedy. There are the Victors that spend the rest of their lives rotting away in the Victor's Village, and the ones that spend most of their time in the Capitol, always a bottle in hand and a lover in the other. It's clear that Kennedy, with her bright dead eyes and doll-like ringlets, is one of the latter— a walking corpse that comes alive for the television, smiling for the cameras during the anniversary of her slaughter.

She wonders if this is what will become of her. If she makes it out of the Games, that is. The thought of dying... of leaving Rain behind...

"Hey," Kennedy calls, cigarette tumbling from her fingers as she reaches out to touch Elliot's shoulder. "Come back to me."

Elliot blinks, heart in throat. Before her eyes, Kennedy becomes a shapeless figure; everything blurs with the grief that streams down her face in hot tears.

Which is worse: to be the one that leaves, or to be the one that watches the other at the exit? Should she have saved her sister, or is it a punishment to force Rain to watch her die? To leave her sister all alone, just like her father had?

Right now, Elliot is seventeen, and she doesn't know anything; only that she loves her sister, and she wishes her sister were dead. It is better to be buried a pretty dead thing than to die with your eyes wide open to the cruelty of the Capitol.

"Elliot," Kennedy says softly, like she's talking to a child.

"I— I don't know what I was thinking," cries Elliot, her hands reaching up to cover her face. "Now I'm going to die, and she won't have anyone to take care of her, and they'll send her to the orphanage, which is what I've been trying to avoid for the last seven years— and— and— she'll have to watch me die— how could I have done this to her? I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

In any other instance, she'd have been mortified, but her sister isn't here to watch her break down, so there's really no point in pretending. Besides, she's going to die soon. What does it matter?

"Elliot, listen!"

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" Suddenly she's ten again, hysterical and sobbing— Elliot doesn't think she's cried this much since she found out her father wasn't coming back. Lungs torn up into shreds, her next words are rushed and out-of-breath— "I— we should have run away earlier— maybe the Peacekeepers saw me talking to the man earlier today, maybe that's why Rain was reaped, it doesn't make sense, her name's only been in the bowl once—"

"Stop talking!"

Through her tears, Elliot registers the inflections of frustration in Kennedy's voice, and then next thing she knows there's something splashing across her face and shirt, the saccharine smell of flowers overwhelming her senses. Some of the perfume leaks into her eyes, and she flinches at the stinging sensation.

"Listen to me," Kennedy says, her voice low and urgent. The weight on Elliot's shoulders presses on, heavier, harsher, "Panicking like this isn't going to help you. I'm sorry this happened to you, and I know how it feels, but we can't have any of this when we get to the Capitol, you hear me? There will be sponsors watching, and you're a pretty crier, but you need to save that for the Games. They won't have sympathy for you if you're already crying on the train, you'll just come off as pathetic."

"I— I can't—"

"You did the best you could," Kennedy presses. "I can't promise you'll win, but you have to at least try. Do you understand?"

Elliot sniffles. Pathetically, she thinks. Blinking through her tears, she tries to regain her composure (or at least, the last remaining scraps of it), and pointedly attempts not to think of her sister, or her incoming death.

"Elliot..."

"I'm sorry."

"You need to stop saying that," Kennedy sighs, dabbing away Elliot's tears with her sleeve. "And don't apologize for ruining my shirt. It's my choice, and it's only cashmere."

(Elliot bites her tongue. This, she can manage.)

"Can you promise me something?" It's strange— Kennedy's not much older than her, but standing before her makes Elliot feel like a tall child, like she's never quite outgrown the ten-year-old crying in the doorway of an empty home.

"Depends on what it is."

"I know you spend a lot of your time in the Capitol," Elliot says, "but if I die... will you promise to look after my sister for me? It doesn't have to be much, just maybe some food, or—"

"You sure don't worry about yourself a lot," replies Kennedy, which really isn't much of an answer. "I can, but only if you stop acting like you're going to die."

"But I am," Elliot says petulantly.

"Well, that doesn't mean you have to act like it."

"Why, does the Capitol not like it?"

"No, I don't like it," she says, and now there's something angry, something hurt that creeps into her voice, sharpening its claws on her teeth, though her hand remains on Elliot's shoulder as a gesture of comfort. "Please. I can't... I can't stand it when tributes talk like this."

I'm sorry, Elliot wants to say, but she knows it's not enough for Kennedy, nor will it mean anything. Sorry you have to watch your tributes die. Sorry I'll be the next one. Sorry I'm making things worse for you.

"Oh," is what she settles on. "Did you just douse me in perfume?"

Kennedy flashes her a smile as she falls back into her relaxed demeanor with careless ease, bleached teeth blinding in the slanting afternoon light. It's almost as if the last few moments haven't happened at all, as if she's just appeared, leaning against the doorway.

"Tastes horrible, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does."

They stand there for a while, the dead girl walking and the corpse starlet. The rest of Panem spins past them, filled with countless lives and faces and names that Elliot will never know. 

Let the 68th Annual Hunger Games begin.

Author's Note . . .

elliot's parenting(?) style is a little overprotective, b/c she is projecting a little (she had to grow up very quickly as a kid, and doesn't want the same for rain). consequently rain doesn't know exactly what reaping day means, nor does she know how to wield a knife, though elliot makes her memorize four points to aim for with a knife (from best to worst) since she's paranoid that her sister will get reaped after she's too old to volunteer.

+ elliot = apologetic eldest/elder daughter?? i love her so much... she says she's sorry a lot but we! will! progress! in 7 years she'll say it way less i promise.

FINNICK MENTIONED!! we will see him in 2-3 chapters i think...