Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Death at Pemberley - 12

"I want cookies," Ellie murmurs. She's talking to nobody in particular, not even the Glimpty, but to her surprise, the others shift and sit up. Tyrion rubs his back, wincing in pain; even his bed back home isn't this uncomfortable. Byron is blinking up at the morning light drifting aimlessly through the leaves and sparkling on the drops of rain and puddles on the floor.

"I doubt the sponsors will be sending food this early on," Carmen points out, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She stares somewhere over Ellie's head, her eyes distant and her expression unfathomable, and it makes the younger girl distinctly uncomfortable. She hugs the Glimpty close to her chest and toys with a strand of damp red hair with the other, twirling it around and around until it curls under her chin. Nobody says anything to that; Byron is watching the blooded sword carefully, though his face wobbles slightly. The remnants of the rain drip down from the trees.

"What do we do today then?" Tyrion asks into the silence. His scruffy, murky blonde hair sticks to his face with rain and sweat, matted with blood despite the damp. He wrings his hands too, trying not to think about his pulse or remember last night's lonely cannon, Carmen turning away from him, the restlessness of a night where it is impossible to sleep.

"Stay alive," Byron suggests with a short, awkward laugh. But it's not a joke and none of them find it funny.

Oswin’s back aches.

She’s been hunched in a tiny room for the past hour, the one place she’s found that’s secret and light enough to read in. The sunlight slants down through a jagged hole high up on the wall, illuminating the floating motes of dust that fill the air.  She turns another page, immersed in a world so far removed from her own that she can hardly believe it once existed.  As she turns the page, the paper cuts into her finger, immediately drawing a thin line of blood.  Oswin comes out of the bubble she’s built around herself with a rueful sigh.  Carefully she lays the book aside, not wanting to stain the fragile pages with her blood.

She supposes she shouldn’t complain.  The first time a tribute was wounded was usually the last as well.

Oswin sucks on the tiny cut for a minute then examines it. Shallow, but it hurts far more than it should.  Paper cuts always seemed to, for some reason.  Not that many people would know that in Panem; books in the districts are a rare sight.  At least it’s not bleeding anymore.  She stretches as best she can in the cramped space, then picks up the books again, sinking immediately back into the fascinating world inside.  The room around her seems to fade and shift until she’s sitting curled in a chair in the rooms of Pemberly, the huge framed picture of the handsome man looking down on her from one of the walls.

In a white and sterile room somewhere a long way away, Head Gamemaker Titus Vos glares at the huge screen before him that shows the location of each of the tributes.  The girl from Twelve hasn’t moved in over an hour.  He’s kept the cameras off her; it wouldn’t do the citizens any good to see her huddled in there with that book, not after the speech she’d given at her interview.

“Can’t you do something about her?” he snaps to one of the women in the room below him.  His eyes flick over the other squares on the screen, each displaying the location of the tributes and their activities.  The girl from Three and the boy from Six are sitting outside the building that the girl from Twelve is hiding in, each watching the other with barely disguised distrust.  The girl is rolling her torch between her hands, while the boy is poking at the ground with a stick.  He moves on impatiently.

The boy from Eleven is skulking around the edge of Career pack.  He doesn’t really look like he belongs with them, but they don’t seem to have much problem with the tall boy being there.   It’s been an interesting group this year, what with both tributes from Four dying in the first twenty four hours and the additions of the boys from Seven and Eleven.  He’s heard that it’s made for some interesting bets about how long the alliance will last for.