Chapter Text
The morning of the 8th day in the arena starts with 10 tributes becoming 9 when Eubouleus’ son from District 10 dies at Cato’s hand, or rather sword. Apollo can’t help but wonder over the potential irony, ten tributes until the boy from 10 died… He doesn’t voice any of that thought of course. Eubouleus tells Birch that he thinks his son did well and then he leaves. What more is there to say, really?
Nine tributes remain. When they are down to eight, the TV crew will start their hunt for victims (friends and family of the tributes) to interrogate (interview). Journalists are probably already on their way to the districts to be prepared for when it’s time. Some of them are probably receiving information that they won’t need to go to District 10 and to turn around and go home. Apollo opens the tap showing which tributes remain in real time. Six districts remain, three of which have both tributes remaining. 1, 3, and 5 only have one tribute remaining. The betting pools are currently going wild, with people betting on which tribute will next before they’re down to eight. The most popular candidate is Peeta Mellark, who has managed to stay hidden since his fight with Cato, but is probably in bad condition by now. Rue’s odds have climbed since the day before, people expect she will fare better working with Katniss.
After the hosts have commented on the latest murder, the live feed goes back to the arena. The Careers are riding the high of another kill, but they’re not acting as high and mighty as they did almost a week ago when they had caught Athena’s girl. Perhaps they’ve been a bit humbled now when their numbers have been cut in half, and the tracker jacker venom probably played a part as well.
They are shown heading back to their camp and the screen switches to Katniss and Rue. One of them, probably Rue, has found breakfast in the form of eggs from whatever bird is roosting nearby. The eggs are eaten raw, along with rabbit leftovers and berries.
“Ready to do it?” Katniss asks when they’re done with breakfast and starts to pack their things.
“Do what?” Rue asks but is clearly ready for whatever it may be.
Katniss has decided to put a target on the Careers’ food supply. While they move, Rue is questioned about everything she’s gathered about the Careers’ base during the brief moments she’s spied on them. Rue has seen the boy from District 3 guard the supplies, but she has not figured out anything about the reactivated land mines. Their discussion and planning cut to Ceasar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith in the studio multiple times. Apollo eventually decides to follow the girls independent of the live stream to be able to follow the uncensored conversation. They’re currently talking about mockingjays.
“I have a few that are my special friends.” Rue beams at Katniss while she explains. “We can sing back and forth for hours. They carry messages for me.”
“What do you mean?” Katniss asks.
She is more than familiar with Percy’s sacred bird. When Apollo used to take her out in the woods, he would sing to the mockingjays all the time for Katniss to hear their melody. Their mimicking abilities are more defined than their mockingbird mothers, but they can’t repeat spoken words like their fathers could.
“I’m usually up highest, so I’m the first to see the flag that signals quitting time.” Rue eagerly tells Katniss. “There’s a special little song I do.” She demonstrates the wordless four note song. “And the mockingjays spread it around the orchard. That’s how everyone knows to knock off. They can be dangerous though, if you get too near their nests. But you can’t blame them for that.”
Apollo has to smile at Rue’s tales of her home life. He imagines that Percy probably appreciates that his birds evidently have become a source of light in people’s lives.
Katniss tries to give the girl her mockingjay pin, after hearing how much the birds mean to her, but Rue refuses the gift. She claims the pin is what made her trust Katniss in the first place, and likes seeing it on her. Apollo understands Rue. Such signs are not as insignificant as cynics tend to claim. Katniss got the pin from a friend who cares for her and wanted her to have some token of home. You don’t get friends like that without being at least halfway decent. And Rue picked up on that seeing the pin. She shows Katniss her own token; a wooden starshaped flower she wears around her neck. A good luck charm that Katniss agrees has worked for her so far.
They spend most of the afternoon gathering wood for fire. They pick specifically branches with leaves, and will visibly smoke when the fire is lit. They prepare two pits, planning for Rue to make a third. Then they divide their supplies between them. Katniss insists that Rue takes most of it, claiming she can steal some from the Careers’ supplies before she destroys the rest.
When the girls part ways with a hug, Apollo notices that Demeter isn’t following the live feed either, and seems to have only half followed the plan being set in action.
“What are you doing?” Apollo asks in a low voice.
“Just some planning.” Demeter waves him off.
Apollo supposes that makes sense. Nature and greenery and agriculture doesn’t stop just because 24 kids are thrown into a death tournament. Nobody’s jobs really stop. All gods present in this lounge are also present elsewhere because tasks such as driving the sun chariot across the sky simply can’t wait for you to watch your kid die. But it is a bit surprising that the part of Demeter that’s sitting next to him is planning out work, and not some other part of her in District 7, 9, or 11. But who is Apollo to judge if work is how Demeter deals with her emotions, even though he has mostly been under the impression that she deals with her emotions by very noticeably NOT working, like with the whole ordeal with Persephone and Hades and some pomegranate seeds.
While Katniss steers her steps toward the cornucopia where the Careers have their camp, Apollo figures he might as well switch back to the live feed coverage. The gamemakers won’t have much reason to censor that, on the contrary, they will probably want to capture every moment of how it goes down. He glances at Percy, who is preoccupied with his own tablet. He is probably preparing for the upcoming special featuring of the final eight tributes and their families. If one more tribute dies today, those will be shown tonight. A deep frown creases his eyebrows. Apollo considers this rather normal. Not all tributes have families, or even friends. Percy has once confided in him how devastated he always feels, scrambling to put together a worthy segment of orphaned tributes who seemingly has no one who gives a dam whether they live or die. There is always at least one tribute he has such trouble with, to varying degrees.
Katniss reaches the copse near the cornucopia that Rue directed her to and takes a moment to observe the Careers’ camp. All four remaining Careers, including Hephaestus’ son, are there, clearly visible from her angle. Apollo can see clearly that the Careers have fared worse from the tracker jackers compared to Katniss. They have yet to have the good sense to remove the stingers, and have evidently not found any effective remedy among their stocked supplies. Maybe there is none, or maybe they don’t want to look through their supplies too thoroughly in fear of some item accidentally falling and setting off a mine. Apollo had heard Hephaestus muttering the other day on the way back to his room that the contraption is an accident waiting to happen, and Apollo agrees. If products were piled like that in a workplace, it would be a clear OSHA violation, if those regulations had still been in effect, and that’s without the hidden mines.
The hosts are sitting in their studio, ecstatic to theorise whether or not Katniss will be able to circumvent the trap. If she will figure out that the ground is mined, or just that some sort of trap of unknown nature is set up, and would that be enough to keep her from blowing up in bits? The audience is shown a map of where each mine has been placed, with a negligible margin of error. The ground has been dug up to place the mines, meaning that you could in theory figure out a safe path to the stacked supplies if you know what to look for.
“Which," Claudius Templesmith reminds everyone, “one of our tributes has already put into practice!”
They show a clip from about two days ago, when Hermes’ daughter took a trip through the mine field with small careful steps, as if Toothless the dragon had been drawing incoherent lines on the ground. She had reached the pile and gathered a few items in her bag, before leaving and the Careers had been none the wiser.
Katniss stays put, observing the supplies, most likely pondering over what invisible threat is luring around the Careers’ supplies. Then the smoke rises from the first fire. Cato shouts out and the group gathers the weapons for the hunt. Then they begin to argue whether or not Hephaestus' son should come with them. He has stayed put up until now, which makes it odd in Apollo’s mind that they would now supposedly need him in the woods.
“His job’s done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies,” Cato claims.
Apollo guesses the boy must be hoping someone will try to steal from them. Unattended goods make for good bait after all, and an unwitting tribute could very well die trying, which would mean less job for the Careers. Possibly, who can say for sure what’s going on in the heads of Ares’ kids? Mithras’ son raises the question of Peeta, who they know, also knows about the mines, but Cato brushes him off and throws a spear to Hephaestus’ son. With that, the discussion is over and the Careers head for the woods.
Katniss doesn’t move for about half an hour, trying to figure out what the pile of supplies is hiding. She must have heard the loud discussion, so now she knows for sure that it is some sort of trap, but not what specifically. She makes a move to stand up when something else catches her attention. Hermes sits upright on his couch. It’s his daughter who has just emerged, heading for the supplies when she is sure the coast is clear. She repeats the same dance she has done before when she approaches the stuff, but one jump is miscalculated and she falls forward on all four. She squeals and everyone in the lounge holds their breath. But she got lucky. She regains her composure and moves forward. Just like before she gathers a handful of everything she can fit into her bag without raising suspicion and then she repeats the deadly dance away from the pile and then she is gone.
Katniss has followed her movements, having her suspicions confirmed, and a bit more clues as to what is going on.
“It’s mined,” she whispers so low that the microphones have a hard time picking it up.
She slips out of the bushes to a nearby metal plate that the tributes stand on at the start of the game. She studies the ground around it and then looks back to the pile of stuff. Now she knows. But what can she do about it?
Apollo ponders over how he would have solved a puzzle like this. The arrangement leaves little to no margin of error. You can replicate the movements that Hermes’ daughter followed if you want to reach some of it and leave the rest untouched, but you can’t get rid of all of it, as Katniss plans, without setting off some of the mines and killing you. You could take multiple trips back and forth to empty out the pile, but that would take too much time. The opponents would return, and with so many trips you’re bound to misstep at some point.
Somewhere in the woods, Rue has now started the second fire. Time is ticking.
If you can’t go near the pile, it has to be removed from afar. The mines could then work in your favour. One mine might not do much damage to the pile itself, but if you could set off a bunch of them, the multiplied explosion might suffice. The problem you would face then is how you would set off enough mines at the same time without getting too close. The preferred option would be to throw something into the minefield that weighs enough to activate the mines. If he is allowed to use divine strength, Apollo could certainly send a rain of extra heavy iron arrows at once. The arrows would have to land at exactly the right place, but with his skills as the god of archery, it would be possible.
Katniss can’t shoot that many arrows at once though, and her arrows would probably be too light weight anyway. But she seems to have come up with an alternative idea. She picks out three arrows and moves to shoot. One arrow tears through the fabric of a burlap bag of apples, near the top of the bag, that doesn’t help much. The second widens it enough to leave one apple about to fall out. The third rips the bag wide open. The apples fall, and Katniss is thrown back by the explosion.
Katniss’ backpack and quiver does little to soften the blow. A bit disoriented, she manages to hide her face with her arms as more explosions occur and debris falls around her. When the explosions have stopped, she manages to somewhat catch her breath and roll to the side to see the extent of the damage. Practically all of the Careers’ riches have gone up in smoke.
The hosts are going wild at the success and replays the explosion over and over from different angles and in slow motion. One of them, Templesmith or Flickerman, says that the Careers won’t be happy when they see this. Katniss, who has realized this too, tries to stand but falls after a few steps. She holds a hand to her left ear that’s bleeding still. The medic in Apollo is sure her hearing has suffered serious damage, and evidently her balance, but she doesn’t give herself time to bemoan that. She just pulls up her hood and then slowly, very slowly, crawls toward the copse she hid in before. Three stray mines go off, one of which knocks her to the ground, but she reaches safety in the nick of time.
Apollo doesn’t dare to relax just yet, as the Careers sprint out onto the plain. Cato’s following tantrum is almost comical. He bangs his fists in the ground and pulls on his hair.
“Ouph! someone hasn’t warned him about baldness!” Hermes jokes, whose daughter is not currently in danger of discovery.
Ares growls at him. Unfortunately for the god of war, Birch manages to capture his sour face on camera. He will soon be picked on for being a sour loser.
Hephaestus’ son gives the go ahead to approach and the Careers try to find something to scavenge from the wreckage. Cato kicks at whatever damaged goods come within reach. Soon he turns to the boy from District 3 to take out his anger on, the boy starts to run, but Cato quickly catches him and breaks his neck.
And so they were eight, Apollo thinks.
Hephaestus sighs and stands up. He silently leaves the room while the audio of the Careers’ argument plays through the speaker.
Cato wants to hunt down the guilty tribute, but his allies successfully convince him that whoever set off the mines must have died. Apollo breathes a sigh of relief when the Careers instead head towards the lake to allow the hovercraft to retrieve the body of Hephaestus’ son.
The sun goes down, and the anthem plays to the recap of the two deaths of the day. The Careers will now know that the culprit survived. Apollo doesn’t see their reaction though. The special featuring of the eight remaining tributes starts right after the anthem.
The Muse of Comedy shows up on his device. As the godly host of the streaming, on Hephaestus TV, this is one of her segments.
“Such an eventful day we’ve had, all my gods and godlings!” she announces to her studio crowd. “But, I hope you’re not tuning out just yet, dear viewers, because the time has come to get to know our eight final tributes in the 74:th Hunger Games!”
The crowd cheers and yells out the names of their favourites.
“First of all, the son of Mithras, Marvel from District 1!”
A headshot of Marvel is shown and cheers and boos are heard from the crowd. Apollo barely listens to the account of the Career tributes’ families and current scores. All friends and families of the Careers believe in a high chanse that their tribute, of all, will be the victor. Some Careers seem to have no life outside of Hunger Games training, at least not that is shared by the families on screen. After the interviews recorded in the districts, Thalia gives the word to the godly parent to share some thoughts on their kid. Mithras and Ares are both expecting their sons to win, that might be problematic… and Nemesis says something about old vengeance.
The segment about Hermes' daughter passes by with Apollo not really learning much about her. Hermes praises his daughter’s wits, more specifically how she has been able to get by through stealing without anyone noticing.
Thresh’s family is made up of a grandmother and a sister. They don’t seem to have any interest in playing nice with the interviewer. Enyo claims that both Thresh and his sister are survivors.
Then Apollo sees Rue’s younger siblings on the screen. The oldest must be about eight or nine, and she can barely hide her contempt at the games. She is not an actor. Demeter tells Birch that Rue is her family’s pride and joy.
Peeta is up next. Apollo can imagine that Percy had a bit of trouble picking between Peeta’s friends, but about three of them make the cut along with his family. Demeter simply states that Peeta has a heart of gold.
And then it’s Katniss’ segment. The first person they try to interview is Gale Hawthorne.This doesn’t surprise Apollo at all, given his daughter’s limited social life. Gale Hawthorne along with Madge Undersee are probably the only people who can say they’re Katniss’ friends.
Gale is not nice and pleasant with the interviewer, quite the opposite. His face seems to hold a permanent frown, and he is not answering many of the questions. He gives the impression that he thinks he is dealing with an idiot, but he is good looking enough to come off as tough and mysterious, rather than just a rude guy. When he is asked what he likes the most about Katniss, he glares at the interviewer until one of his younger siblings, Rory maybe? exclaims that Katniss is awesome, catching the camera’s attention.
“As we have all seen at this point,” the interviewer agrees, relieved. “And your families seem to be thick as thieves. You’re always ready to help each other out, right?”
“We have each other’s backs,” Gale responds.
His intimidating glare might be some attempt at indicating that some baker son’s crush doesn’t matter because it’s him Katniss belongs to. Capitol people might have started talking about triangle drama after this interview, if not for the bander at the bottom of the screen labeling Gale Hawthorne as Katniss’ cousin. Bad luck on Gale’s side.
The next interview is held at Katniss’ home. Haymitch had apparently given a reporter the address and obviously, they jumped at the chance to get to know the sister Katniss would give her life for. And Prim has understood the assignment. She gives the camera her charming business smile she uses at the Hob when she is selling her cheese. Somehow, she and Astrid manage to dance around Katniss’ illegal hunting occupation. They show the small garden where they grow herbs for their medical remedies, crediting Katniss with having gathered the plant saplings.
Prim proudly shows off her goat Lady, a birthday gift from her sister, and talks about how she makes goat cheese in her spare time. She gives the crew samples and shows them part of the process and the interviewer seems fascinated to watch. Apollo is fairly sure many Capitol citizens think of their district-made products as being picked up from a field in cardboard boxes, or spit out fully finished from a machine after the press of a button, or that District 4 catches fully filéd salmon. The interviewer looks almost gobsmacked when Prim tells him how long it takes to make one block of cheese. Prim gives him an amused smile, but Apollo can’t stop thinking of how ungrateful and wasteful Capitol citizens are with products like goat cheese.
“Katniss got the word out on the street about my cheese, so I gained a steady base of customers rather quickly,” Prim proudly tells the camera crew. “Of course, trading comes with some necessary bargaining and that took some time to get the hang of, but my sister helped me out a lot with that too. She taught me the true value of a block of cheese.”
“And what is the value of cheese?” the interviewer asks an octave lower than his usual voice, almost like Prim is about to reveal the secret of life, the universe and everything.
It would have been funny if Prim told him it was 42, but almost no mortal in this time would get the joke. The only family Apollo can think of that might have read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the Heavensbees.
“Well, one block of cheese requires multiple days of work, and plenty of milk that I have to collect. But once it’s done, it can enrich many meals for your family. If you want to trade with me, I’d be interested in what you have that could enrich many meals for my family.”
Prim keeps her pleasant business smile and raises her eyebrows at the interviewer, urging him to think of what he might have. He digs into his pockets and finds some money that Prim graciously accepts in exchange for her cheese. Some of the camera crew has some money in their pockets as well, and she sells three more cheeses she had stored for her next trip to the market.
“A pleasure to do business with you!” she tells them.
Out of the corner of his eye, Apollo can see Hermes nod in approval at his screen. As god of commerce, Hermes appreciates a good affair. Apollo can’t help but smile a little as well. His clever girl! When Birch points the camera at him, that smile lingers, and he tells the audience that his daughters are smart girls who know how to make good work of an opportunity.
Apparently, Panem has taken a liking to his daughters. When the others starts to head out to their bedrooms for the night, Apollo sees the amount of provided sponsorship money has gone up after the segments, Prim has won people over. Apollo clicks on the list of sponsors, he isn’t sure why he hasn’t thought of doing that until now. The latest sponsor is Aristaeus, who must’ve decided his sisters are worth some help if they can appreciate the art of cheese making. Most other sponsors are rich citizens of the Capitol, not the ultra wealthy oligarchs, but people with enough money to spare, and like underdogs. A few gods have sponsored District 12 as well, but if they’re not using aliases, that probably means they’re hoping to cash in some sort of favor from Apollo or Demeter, or both, down the road. Apollo plans on pretending he never paid attention to who sponsored his daughter.
One sponsor comes from the district. Apollo can’t place the name Sae at first, before he remembers it must be Greasy Sae, the Greasy part would of course not be part of her legal name, and Apollo has rarely heard her using her surname, even though she surely has one. Judging from the amount, she can’t have sponsored Katniss and Peeta on her own. She must have gathered multiple donors to pull up the money, possibly outside the black market network as well. It makes Apollo a bit teary eyed, to see that the people of District 12 must not only be hoping, but believing that Katniss will be able to return.
He has to turn off the tablet and leave before Birch gets a chance to film his face.
The segments from the remaining districts are mindnumbingly dull and it’s almost impressive that the hosts in the studio manage to pretend otherwise, but they are properly done and researched. The segment of the girl from District 5 leaves a lot to be desired, but that girl is not likely to last once she can no longer run away. She no longer has a food supply to rely on, after all. Coriolanus lays the files gathered from that segment to the side.
The files for the girl from District 11 will hardly come to use either. That alliance might protect her for a while, but it will never be enough to win. From what little of the information on the girl that Coriolanus reads, she has only been a distraction for the orchard workers around her regardless.
Her district partner is of more interest. The boy has not been broadcasted on the screen much, but as per Coriolanus’ instructions, the Gamemakers keep an eye on him. When they can. Apparently, that field is so thick with weeds that it obscures the view of the cameras. It’s evident that their excitement over arena designs get in the way of practicality more often than not. They know where the boy is, of course, but since he hasn’t engaged in combat much, he is evidently up to something else.
Such neat little files you’ve gathered there, Corio. I remember back in the days when your precious regime didn’t bother to catalogue the names of the participating tributes. Seems a bit meek, still, to only do such research on eight tributes each year though.
The freezing cold hand on his shoulder causes Coriolanus to jump up in his seat like it was an electric chair. He can’t stop the gasp leaving his lips in his moment of panic. The entity haunting him has never touched him so blatantly before now. When moving bits of his hair, or even during the incident with the napkin, there was never any skin on skin contact. Calling it cold though doesn’t suffice. It’s more akin to the liquid nitrogen that you can’t touch with your bare hands.
Coriolanus hastily wraps his bathrobe tighter around him, trying to keep the pretense that it simply came undone and it’s not an attempt to cover the area of his shoulder that still feels like the tissue has frozen solid.
Liquid nitrogen.
The entity laughs.
You’ve always been so full of hyperboles, Corio. You don’t actually think I would ever harm you in such a way, do you?
Coriolanus picks up the next couple of files. They feel colder in his hand than they did a moment ago. He had crossed out the name Baird in the mapped out family tree when he first looked at it, and after some thought, he now crosses out the other names of deceased as well. They don’t matter any more, only the living is of any use.
Don’t worry, Coriolanus. My plans for you still hold. You might as well burn those documents, though. We both know their real purpose, after all.
The chilling breath is right next to his ear before the ghost disappears.