CHAPTER NINETEEN;
the attack

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( warning: graphic gore/injury detail, violence )

Morning twilight in the arena bakes the sky in hues of pale oranges, premature golds and even a strange layer of laurel green where the highest stretches of the sky are still turning. The swamp awakens with noise, more-so than throughout the evening, although birdsong would be more desirable over the excessive croaking of frogs and humming of mosquitoes. It's definitely getting old now.

Vesper stares up at this slow transformation, lying on her back along the raft. She has barely slept; much to her reluctance, she was mulling over her argument with Levin the night before. It was so sudden, so abrupt, spouting things she wasn't even sure if she meant or knew. Then just as bluntly as it began, it was over.

     Does she still trust him? In all honesty, neither a Yes nor No feel confident enough answers for this. The argument has certainly shattered some of the ease with which they had spoken in previous days — just like how it had felt that, night on the balcony, when they were still just two blissfully ignorant teenagers, rejecting their ownership by the Capitol. Since getting into the arena, that hasn't been so easy.

Maybe her frustration with Levin isn't out of being offended, or hurt by what he insinuated. Maybe it is because he was more accurate than she had ever thought — but about what? Vesper still hasn't figured it out. All she knows is that the argument twisted her stomach with subconscious guilt, over a secret burden she hasn't yet unearthed, in such a way that felt too real to just be the frogs trying to make a reappearance.

With a grunt, Vesper sits up and feels the warm, dappled rays of dawn on her face. Too much spare time in the arena is forcing her into thinking and reflecting. She never had to do that as much back home. There was always work to be done, the daily grind of survival. Sure, she is trying to survive with Icarus here, but unlike District Six it feels orchestrated. She knows the Gamemakers are out there somewhere, probably just starting to file in after eating a full breakfast, cracking their knuckles and wondering which buttons to press to crush the next tribute before things get stale. So all she can do is wait and wonder for the inevitable turning point... but when?

As usual, her first impulse is to keep moving. After a quick hunt for food, Icarus and Levin are just starting to stir from their sleep. She knows this because she deliberately stayed closer to them — in the grim event that Levin suddenly turned on them.

"Hot morning, huh?" Levin croaks from behind her.

Small talk, huh? This is the route we're going, Vesper thinks. Play it safe.

"I wouldn't say so," she replies. "A little on the humid side, but then what's new there?"

Vesper brings back a couple of minnows she caught, and catches first sight of Levin. He does seem slightly off — a shimmering sheen of clammy sweat clings to his face, and he has a vague grogginess about him. Unsure of whether to say anything, she settles the conversation with a curt nod, and starts up a small fire for them to eat over. She was hoping this morning would have diffused some of the tension between them all, but even Icarus still seems slightly preoccupied, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance as he nibbles slithers of fish.

It is Levin who finally speaks up during their breakfast. "So, I think we've almost made it to the more open swamp area. I saw some of it when I was allied with Merona... there it'll be a good thing that you've got that raft."

The 'We' has turned into 'You'. "Yeah, I guess," mumbles Vesper.

     Once they are done eating, they start packing up for their journey. Vesper would like to cover as much of the arena as they can today — they need a better idea of space. While Icarus tries to forage for any edible plants, in a sudden burst of nostalgia for Telle's teachings, she and Levin stay to pack away their supplies and stamp out the fire. It is a better opportunity as ever to try and get through to him. If they are going to stay allies any further, they need to be able to communicate. Otherwise how else will she be able to know his loyalty?

     Vesper inhales, opening her mouth to speak, but instead finds Levin's words filling the space between them.

     "Hey, um... I'm sorry. About last night." Levin sighs. "It was forward of me, and none of my business, and I should have just kept out of it."

     Considering this olive branch, Vesper nods gently. "I'm... sorry too. For lashing out and everything."

     Levin rests his elbows on his crouches knees, fingers dangling loosely as his head lulls her way with an intensive stare. Checking if Icarus is near or not, she clears her throat quietly.

     "I mean, it should be obvious why I'm protecting Icarus..." she whispers. "He's just a kid."

     "But so are you," he whispers softly back.

     Vesper flinches slightly, unsure of whether to interpret this as another argumentative point or not. But the pitying look in Levin's eyes says otherwise, that it was just food for thought rather than something to bark at him for again. Once again, he has given her some kind of weird mental whiplash, so instead Vesper steers the conversation away from herself with a swerve.

     "So, is your fever back?" she asks.

     "It might be. Honestly it never went away, kind of fluctuated in how severe it was day-to-day. Today it feels kind of like how it did when you guys found me in the water... why, did you notice something?"

     "Yeah. That you look like shit."

     A beat passes, before they both chuckle softly. Feigning charm, Levin exaggeratedly runs his fingers through his greasy hair, although even his attempt at humour seems half-hearted due to his slight weakness.

     Icarus rejoins the group and they set off on the raft journey. Vesper paddles at the front, Icarus sitting directly behind her with Levin at the back. They share a merciful sip of water each from the flask as they sail painstakingly slowly along the swamp surface. The group remains silent once more, but this time not because of each other. They now seem to be filled with a wary expectancy of things to come. And they aren't good things...

Still, the attention from the unnerving quiet is diverted when they reach the most open clearing of swamp water they have in a while. This is new territory to Vesper and Icarus — and therefore a step in the right direction. Their raft is but a small plank of bamboo poles tied together in the vastness of the water, the sky above clearly visible and uncovered by the cypress tree, which surround these waters in a strangely perfect ring. Here, Vesper turns around to Levin.

"Do you recognise this part?" she asks him.

Levin nods, memories appearing to flash across his features as he retraces his days in the arena. "Beyond these parts, I'm pretty sure there are patches of land you can actually walk along," he says. "Or, you know, at least aren't more than ankle-deep in water."

"Seriously?" Vesper huffs incredulously. "If I had known, I would have picked a better corner of the arena to run to in the Bloodbath—"

"DUCK!" Icarus suddenly cries.

She obeys him, and before she can wonder why, an arrow whistles through the air — slicing right through where her head had been before — and buries itself instead in the trunk of a nearby cypress tree.

Under safer circumstances, Vesper would be impressed by Icarus's sharp instincts there, but now she is in fight or flight. Instinctively reaching for her machete, she spins back around to face ahead of them. Surely enough, the dreaded welcome party have arrived to the clearing too — the Careers. They have their own raft, except it is a black inflatable one. How big were their packs or sponsor gifts? Aboard is Boaz, Hermes and Hero... no sign of Levin's district partner.

"Turn the raft around, now!" Levin demands hastily to Vesper.

"It's no use, I can't turn it that fast. What kind of operation do you think I'm running here?" she hisses back.

"Are you running away again, Levin? Just like you always do?" Boaz hollers from the other side of the swamp water. Vesper had forgotten how his voice was an instant trigger for her acid reflex. Beside him, Hero loads her now with another arrow, but he motions for her to stop. "No, don't... these ones are mine."

That same chill she got every time Boaz stared her down returns. Suddenly, Vesper wishes she hadn't thought so much about bumping into the Careers again. She would have been perfectly happy never running into Boaz ever again.

Strangely, no one tries to paddle towards each other, separated by the swamp water between them. Instead it feels like a distant face-off... is this really all Boaz is going to do? After all of those psychotic threats?

"I see you finally teamed up with the Sixers," Boaz says. "I guess like calls to like then, huh? You were never one of us, but teaming up with that scum? That's a new low."

"Where's Coral?" Levin demands gruffly, ignoring his verbal abuse.

"I guess you rubbed off on her," Hermes interjects now, with an egotistical swagger that repulses Vesper. "She took off in the middle of the night.

"Please, can we just kill them already?" Hero mutters with an eye-roll, bow still loaded readily. "I could probably get an arrow through them all in one hit."

"Not if he gets you first," Levin replies, with slight pride. Vesper has to question who 'He' is for a moment, until she catches Icarus in her periphery — he has also loaded his bow and is crouched bravely on the raft with his arrow aimed at the Careers. He isn't filled with complete confidence, but he compensates for it in his courage. Suddenly, Icarus feels like one of them on a whole new level. Part of the team. Sometimes she forgets how able he probably is in protecting himself.

Additionally, now knowing from Levin that Hero is a dirty cheat in training, she is confident that Icarus could hit the target better than her... if he really wanted to.

"Oooh, I'm so scared!" Hermes mocks in a patronising tone, mimicking fear. "What are you gonna do? Push me into the water? Feed me swamp algae? Shoot your tiny little arrow at our raft?"

     "Are you just going to chill way over there, or are you actually going to do something? I wanna know if I'm wasting my time here." Vesper deadpans, almost as bored as Hero at this point as she grips her machete. Now having her first run-in with the Careers in the arena, she is somewhat surprised at how useless they are. For tributes like Hermes, the ego seems to have gotten to their head, to the point where it seems to be their only survival tactic. And a useless one, at that.

     Much to her annoyance, her comment just sets Hermes off on some tangent as he boasts from a safe distance on their raft (probably to compensate for his supposed fear of attacking). It even seems to be driving Boaz crazy, as he seems to quietly plot his next move.

     During his unwarranted speech, Vesper feels a small prod on her arm. Next to her, Icarus is still poised with his weapon, but now downwards as his stare burns into the water.

"What?" Vesper asks.

"There's... something in the water..." Icarus barely whispers, eyes wide as he crouches paralysed.

     It takes Vesper a moment to spot it, but the second she does, her heart drops. Through the slight translucency of the water's surface, a pair of black pupil slits are locked onto them. When she looks harder, she can make out the faint outline of jagged teeth lining its jaw, and a massive surface of scaly skin — and that's just what she can see. There is no way of telling what lies even further below the upper half of the murky water.

     It's an alligator, and Vesper can assume it is a Gamemaker-mutated version.

     The bamboo raft wobbles slightly as Levin tries to get up on his feet. The sudden movement makes her heart lurch in brief panic, and she hastily grabs Levin's wrist before he can move more.

     "Stop..." she hisses through gritted teeth, nodding down to the water. "Don't... move... a damn... muscle." Levin follows her gaze to the water and freezes instantly, paling a little more than before.

Impatiently, Hero shoots another arrow; but this time Vesper is prepared. She quickly lifts up her pack as a human shield, and the arrow's tip embeds itself in it, cushioned from reaching her chest by their supplies. Icarus takes it as his cue to intervene too. Instantaneously, and without trying to wobble the raft, Icarus lets his arrow fly — it punctures the raft, instantly beginning to fold in on itself in a deflating mess of deflating rubber and Careers splashing in water.

Hermes, most of all, is the one throwing a hissy fit.

"Son of a BITCH!" he roars, spitting water from his mouth. From his belt, he pulls out a kukri blade which glints in the sunlight, and starts trying to stomp through the water. "I'll freaking gut you, you damn—"

A blood-curdling shriek shatters the air. Vesper blinks and almost misses it; a blur of camouflaged swamp colours, bearing a giant row of razor sharp teeth, has clamped Hermes between its jaw and dragged him underwater by his legs. A few seconds of intermittent screams and flailing limbs later, his cannon fires, injecting clouds of crimson into the water.

Both sides stare at the aftermath in horror — even Boaz seems disgusted, and lost for where to go next. Another scaly alligator has become silently visible in the waters. This is a waiting game, of waiting for them to silently strike, and not knowing where to move until then. Career or not Career has become irrelevant now. They are all surrounded.

"It's moving!" Icarus cries, pointing at the water. Surely enough, the alligator under their raft has moved since they last looked, its jaw almost right underneath them.

"I thought alligators only attacked from the shallows," Levin huffs, his sword at the ready.

"They're mutts," Vesper fires back, "the Gamemakers can make alligators any way they want!"

Suddenly the long overdue attack launches. A giant pair of jaws, wide open, clamp down on the end of the raft — it would have included Icarus's leg, had Vesper not yanked him backwards. The force of the alligator mutt's bite and the violent jerk of the raft capsizes them, and Vesper finds herself submerged in the murky swamp water.

She clamps her eyes and mouth shut until she can kick her legs enough to reach the surface. Vesper gasps, treading water as she sees Icarus and Levin's head pop up and bob beside her. She spots a stretch of raised land in the distance — if they can at least swim to the shallows, they might stand a chance.

"SWIM! JUST SWIM!" Levin screams hoarsely.

Frenzied with adrenaline and panic, they pound their arms through the water, at any cost to get to safer ground. They are right in the metaphorical lion's den — if they make it out of this, they might as well be invincible. The alligators begin to to reveal themselves to them — their throned backs protrude through the surface, gliding with ominous silence as they circle them like vultures. How will they be able to fend off three giant alligators?

Wait, Vesper suddenly thinks, how will I?

She has lost her machete. Unarmed in a pool of alligator mutts...

This was not the way she planned on going.

Screw it, she thinks, no way you're going down there to get it now. Although she might have to anyway — a scaly body starts moving her way, the thorns moving with terrifying speed. But she has no way to tell how close it is, if she can't see the whole creature. She sucks in a deep breath and dunks her head underwater; then she almost gapes in shock at the sight heading towards her.

An opening set of alligator jaws, at full height standing almost at Icarus's height, and in length appearing at least twelve feet long. And it is headed right for her, in a charged swim that pressurise the water around her.

It seems they were only seeing the tip of the iceberg from their raft.

At the very last minute Vesper dives out of the way, feeling its scales brush past her leg as she barely misses being locked in its jaw. There is no saying she will be so lucky next time — the water resistance is near impossible to push against. Her lungs also tighten, even more desperate for air due to her fear.

Recovering from its last unsuccessful charge, the alligator mutt turns in a thorny coil, fixating its eyes on Vesper again. She won't escape so easily now. Glancing behind her shoulder and squinting through the water, she spots a miracle — a fallen log propped over giant mossy rocks, and a small gap underneath. Could she get underneath...?

If this plan works, she sure hopes the sponsors will make up for her life on the line.

Feeling the alligator charging again as it slithers violently towards her, she punches against the walls of water with all her might. When she reaches the log, Vesper walks her hands along the swamp bed and wriggles through the gap, her feet making it out last just as she feels the thrust of the alligator behind her. Its jaw gets tightly wedged in the gap, and it struggles in frustration as it tries to break free. It buys Vesper just enough time to swim back up...

As she breaks the water's surface, she inhales a huge gasp of air and surveys her surroundings. Over to her left, Icarus has just made it onto raised land, and is already loading his bow to fend off any mutts that try to get him. The other two alligators seem to be preoccupied, one of them still feasting on Hermes and the other in a wrestle with Boaz as he tries to maul it with a sword.

Somewhere, she can hear her name being called in strangled shouts. She turns in the water, but no one is there, until Levin's face suddenly pops out from underwater. The minute he sees Vesper, his face floods with relief.

"I though you'd—"

"No talk, just swim!" Vesper snaps back, already setting off to where Icarus is.

The pair of them keep up a steady swim stroke towards the land, starting to feel the shallows as some of the swamp bed rocks and plants graze their legs. Suddenly Vesper feels a force push her downwards, submerging her face in the water. They are human hands grappling her shoulder blades. She desperately tries to hold her breath and struggle free, until the green water she stares at suddenly turns red.

Vesper rises up, the tight grip having loosened her, and finds Boaz clutching a fresh cut to his arm as his eyes blaze with fury — his blood drips from the tip of Levin's sword.

"Go!" Levin yells at her, looking back just in time to defend himself as Boaz brings his sword down upon him.

With too much adrenaline to express gratitude, Vesper swims and then walks the last few metres back onto the land, collapsing onto the grass out of breath. In the background is the white noise of swords clanging, and the distant cry of Hero as she pleads, "Boaz, leave it! We have to get the hell out of here!"

As she sits up, her wet clothes clinging to her, Icarus suddenly launches himself towards her. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and hugs her tightly. Surprised at first, she then pats his back tiredly in return.

"I really thought you were gone for a minute there," Icarus says shakily, letting her go now.

"Can't get rid of me that easily," Vesper pants, her voice still trembling with adrenaline. "Besides, you would've heard a cannon—"

An agonised cry comes from behind them, and the ambiguity of whether it came from Boaz or Levin makes Vesper's nerves fray. When she turns to see, she only catches Levin summoning the strength to kick Boaz in the stomach, sending him falling onto his tailbone in the shallows. The Career boy seems to surrender then, hobbling away to join Hero. Levin seems to have won the fight.

A strange quietness settles over the waters then. Whilst the water sloshes quietly as Levin staggers to meet them, a piece of their broken raft floats nearby. Vesper picks up the shattered bamboo remnant and sighs.

     "Do you think we can make another one?" Icarus asks.

     "No," Vesper angrily chucks the bamboo to the side. "We don't have the time or resources. But if Levin says it gets shallower from here, we might be fine without. I say we keep moving, before those mutts make a friendly reappearance again. Right, Levin?"

     Levin has just made it to the land, labouring through small steps. He sinks to his knees with a sudden weakness, his hand clutching his stomach as his face strains in pain.

     "... Levin?" Vesper asks, more concerned this time.

     Slowly, he removes a trembling hand from his stomach — his entire palm and fingers are stained in his own blood, which steadily leaks from a blossoming crimson patch on his shirt. As he clamps his hand back onto his wound, Levin looks up at Vesper. That's when she really notices the extent of his injury — his face already starting to pale, shoulders slumping as he winces and grimaces through breaths. Something in his eyes is trying to tell her what this means, maybe what she already knows.

     And yet, something sets in her mind. Like a flicked switch that numbs her to it.

"Levin, we have to keep moving. Can you walk?" she asks, with the most neutral tone she can muster.

     "I don't think I..." he groans again in pain, his head lulling downwards.

     "Alright," she says. "Icarus, help me out here."

     Vesper circles round to crouch next to Levin, and she slings his arm around her shoulder, clinging onto his wrist. Icarus does the same on the other side, although he can't hold as much of Levin's weight. On the count of three, they try to lift him up — almost instantly, Levin cries out in pain and his eyes clench shut.

     "Put me down!" he cries, "Please, it hurts!"

     They let go of him and his body weight crumples again, leaning against Vesper's shoulder.

     "Icarus, grab his feet, I'll get his arms."

     "No, don't do this... just go on without me..."

     "I told you already, we have to go," Vesper says forcefully, hooking her arms underneath his armpits. She doesn't know who she is trying to convince now — him or herself. "The Careers could come back, or worse, the alligators... Icarus, lift on the count of three."

     "Please, don't..." Levin's voice cracks, as if he is dreading the pain again.

     They reach three and lift him up again. This time Levin really screams; screams that are so severe they go straight to shatter Vesper's heart. They manage to walk a small distance with him, edging along some of the shallows on the other side of the land. Blood keeps leaking onto the grass and into the water as they walk.

     "PUT ME DOWN!" he shrieks, writhing in their grip. "PUT ME DOWN!"

     "Vesper, we're hurting him!" Icarus's voice wobbles.

     "I CAN'T! STOP, STOP! PLEASE!"

     Levin somehow summons the strength to suddenly jab his elbow into Vesper's stomach. It winds her for a moment, and sends her hurtling back to the ground — she falls half on her back with a splash into the shallows, still messily holding him in her arms. The rate at which he has paled since he first got hurt shocks her, his skin already veering on grey. Vesper sits herself up in the water, positioning Levin in her lap like she is cradling him so she can see his wound. She slides his shirt up and her blood runs cold. Boaz must have hit a major artery, because the bleeding just doesn't seem to stop. Levin clamps his hand back on the wound, and Vesper similarly clutches her hand onto his; they are already stained in red.

     "Boaz..." Levin begins to say.

     "I know, I know," Vesper murmurs, trying to ignore the anger towards Boaz simmering inside of her. Icarus crouches at their side and stares sadly at them both.

     "I'm dying, aren't I?"

Levin's question completely throws her for a loop. She only hears it, eyes still fixated on his wound at first, but hears the fear in his voice. Vesper forces herself to meet his gaze then, and suddenly she isn't seeing the ally from District Four — she is seeing the scared little boy from the coast, who clings onto lucky charms and stands where the sea meets the shore, just to feel like he belongs somewhere else than here. That one look he gives her diffuses all of the anger inside, replacing it with remorse. She can't avoid this anymore.

"Yes. Yes, you are," she answers softly.

     A muscle in Levin's jaw flares, and suddenly his eyes begin to well with tears as he stares up at Vesper. "You won't leave me, will you?" he pleads, his breath fluttering as it amalgamates with his crying. "Please don't leave, I– I don't... I don't want to be alone... please... I don't wanna die here!"

He's clinging her shirt now with his free hand, and Vesper catches it tightly as she hushes him. It is cold to the touch, hurting her even worse. "We're not leaving you," she tells him firmly, staring into his eyes. "We'll stay with you the whole time, right here. I'm right here."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Yeah, we promise," Icarus adds, with a solemn quietness.

The firmness of their promise seems to calm him down slightly, although still severely pained. Levin starts trying to shift in Vesper's arms, lifting his hand up to his head, which takes great effort. His fingertip strokes the strap of his backpack on his shoulder. "Take it..." he rasps. At first he tries to shrug it off his shoulders himself, but then Icarus gets the message and helps. It takes some work to get it off Levin without hurting him too much, but eventually Icarus retrieves it and hugs it on his lap.

"Keep it. There... there are supplies... not much, but it can help. And you..." Levin reaches down to his belt, where his sword is in his sheath. He fiddles with the straps to remove it, and it tumbles into the water. Just that movement seems to wear him out — the life is leaking out of him with every passing second, it seems.

"I want you to have it. Please, you know... how to use it. A lot better than me. You can survive..."

"Thank you—"

"You... can survive." Levin repeats firmly. His gaze turns intense for a moment before it wears him out, and his body relaxes in her arms.

Icarus blinks at the dying boy for a few moments, before bowing his head solemnly. Vesper looks around them for any signs of danger, any immediate threats coming their way, but there is nothing. Just the two of them, alone in the shallow water as she holds Levin whilst he takes his last breaths. That's when it hits her. He'll be gone. The thought sucks the breath out of her, and she cannot bear to look at him. Until now, she was thinking about practicalities, or who might miss him from home — she had never considered how much she is going to miss him. Suddenly she hates how quiet it is, and she knows he probably doesn't have many breaths left, but she wants him to say something, anything. Listening to him talk has been one of the strange comforts in their alliance; and not just inside the arena...

"Can you hear that?" Levin murmurs with shallow breath. His voice brings her back to reality, and she forces herself to look at him again. His eyelids have started to lull, seeming transported to someplace else.

"Hear what?"

"... The ocean."

All at once, Vesper feels her face flush hot with tears that threaten to be shed. But she bites back the lump in her throat, swallows thickly, and tries to think of something. She can't find the words. She just wishes she could, as he is slipping through her fingers.

The brief fondness from hallucination Levin experienced disappears. Suddenly, an awareness of his surroundings returns, and she feels him tense in her arms. "Wait, I'm not ready!" he whimpers, a tear slipping out of the corner of his eye. "I'm not ready to go—"

"Shhh, it's okay, it's okay..." Vesper rubs his hand soothingly, her voice wavering.

Now that he is going, she wishes it would happen sooner. For his sake. Seeing him in such pain and disarray, she has discovered, is one of the worst things she has ever seen. Opposite her, she hears Icarus shudder through held-back tears. As his chest heaves up and down with sharp breaths, she tries to think of a way to comfort Levin.

Then, in the water beside her, she sees something glisten in the sun as it moves. A minnow.

"Hey, look, there's a minnow right there," she says, trying to sound lighter in her tone for him. "You taught me how to spot them, remember? And you showed me how to eat them too. You... you taught me a lot of things, actually—"

Vesper stops herself. She waits a beat to see if she is right, and she is.

His breath has suddenly ceased.

She looks back down at Levin again. His eyes are now shut, and his chest has gone completely still. His head has lulled inwards towards her abdomen, his hands lying limp on his chest.

Moments later, his cannon fires.

The only thing Vesper can hear is her own shaky breath through her nose, lips still sealed firmly. Her hand that was trying to stem the bleeding reaches up to his chest, as if she needs extra proof. There is nothing. Vesper isn't sure where her mind drifts in the next moments, numbed by it all. But she feels compelled to bring him closer to her. One of her hands clenches the fabric of his sleeve, that arm then hugging him close to her. She doesn't know how long passes — maybe a minute, at least.

Finally, Icarus says something, barely a whisper. "... Can we get him out of the water? There's too much blood."

Vesper can't bring herself to say anything, and only nods in agreement. Ever so carefully, she repositions herself to hook her arms under his armpits once more, whilst Icarus holds his ankles. They don't count to three, but know exactly when to lift. Although only a small distance, it is a lot harder to lift his body than before — he is dead weight now.

     They place him on the bed of damp grass, where it looks the least muddied or weaved with sludge. Levin's head rolls lifelessly to the side when they place him down; something about the rag doll quality upsets Vesper, and she can't help but fix it. She cups his face in her hands, rotating his head so it is facing up to the sky, then placing his hands folded together on his chest. Lastly, Vesper reaches to brush a strand of his still-wet hair from his forehead.

     Her aim was to try and make him look peaceful. She can't say she achieved that — Levin just looks dead, more than anything else. But that is as good as it's going to get.

     Vesper stands up straight again. She and Icarus stare at him lying still there, somehow thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. This goes on for a few quiet moments, almost out of respect.

     "Alright," Vesper whispers finally, "Let's go."

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Neither of them are in much of a mood for chatting by the time night falls. Sat around their small fire, Vesper and Icarus chew silently on bits of minnow under a cypress tree. Just like old times, it is the pair of them again. Maybe it is how it should be — and yet, the glaring absence of their ally is too great.

     The Capitol fanfare soon arrives. This time, Vesper knows what she expects to see, and yet she is still not ready. Icarus shoots her a sympathetic look, and scoots closer to her as they feel compelled to look up at the sky. The first image is of Hermes, of course, being shown first due to being from District One. His chiselled features light up the dark night, a slightly smug look on his face...

And then there is Levin.

Vesper doesn't know how to take in the last image of his face in the sky. The blue hologram of his gentle gaze, that looked kind and forgiving even when he was angry. His blonde curls, the slight smile across his lips in that photo; she remembers the small gap between his front teeth when he really smiled. Right until his very last moments, he stayed that way, she thought. Genuine. Maybe that was the thing which always puzzled her about Levin — she was always looking for some crack in him, some 'Career' behaviour that would make it easier to not be allies with him. But there wasn't. He was maybe one of the purest individuals in the arena. He was too good for the Hunger Games, and now he had been crushed by them.

Then just like that, he is gone, and so is the Capitol fanfare. More deafening silence...

"It feels so quiet without him," Icarus murmurs.

"Yeah," Vesper sighs.

It was nice for a while, to have someone other than Icarus to share the arena with. Vesper shared things with him, some she hadn't even told to those back home. Perhaps when you know your death is probably inevitable, finding other humans to latch onto in your last days is a way of coping. After all, you'll never see each other again after this, whether one of you makes it out or not. What kind of relationship do you even call that?

Vesper shuffles where she is sat, and feels the handle of Levin's (now her) sword dig into her thigh; along with something else. Confused, she sits up and squints at the handle. Once she realises what it was, her heart aches.

     Tied around the sword's handle is Levin's silver chain, and his wishbone. His lucky charm.

▬▬▬▬▬▬

A/N;

i'm not crying, you're crying 😭😭😭

i never know what to say in chapters where a character has died. this is one of the first big death scenes i've written before, and man, these are so heavy to write. i tried reading and rewriting parts of this over and over, because i just want to do this guy justice. i love levin with all my heart, he was too good for the games. hopefully his soul can now go beyond where the sea meets the shore...

speaking of which, you may have noticed that i attached a video at the top. it is blake and schofield from the 1917 OST, and it is the music i imagine to be playing during levin's death scene. it is actually in this book's score if you go back to the soundtrack chapter (please don't comment spoilers for this chapter there btw!!) and if you like to torture yourself, maybe try guessing which songs could match up for which potential scenes. i put a lot of thought into matching songs with scenes to increase the emotional impact, so hopefully it pays off when reading.

also i feel like this is the place to say this, so a couple of chapters ago in an author's note i was like "hey yeah, so i don't see levin/vesper as romantic!" — i just wanted to clarify that here, because i was being deliberately cryptic to not spoil the fact that levin was dying a couple of chapters later. basically how i feel is that vesper and levin were definitely nearing that territory in the arena (i'd say levin more-so than vesper), and if this were a katniss/peeta situation where they could leave the arena together, i'd definitely see them staying together. it's one of those things where your paths collide for a brief moment in time, but sadly the universe has other plans.

as always, thank you for reading. i don't know about you, but i'm going to need at least five business days at least to recover from this 🥲

[ published: 20th march, 2022 ]

— Imogen