Nothing Personal

Revolutionary - 17

"You won't believe what I've just seen," murmured Skyler. Oak didn't even turn around from gazing down into the rambling streets, but he'd heard the cannon and his gut instinct said it was something to do with the brutal Careers. "Who have they killed now?"

Skyler pushed her glasses back up her nose where they'd been slipping off. "It's weird," she muttered, climbing down a branch, "The Careers got the twins - I think they'd been trying to annoy them or something - and they stood around chatting for a bit. Then Klaus just swung at Dark, totally randomly, like, and chopped his head off."

She felt slightly sick, realising what had just happened. The whole thing had been totally soundless, like watching on screen with the noise off, and the figures were far enough away to be blurred.

Right now Klaus was crouched on the floor, the two girls keeping watch, Crete taking Dark's place at the top of the tower. That worried her; Crete seemed more observant than the arrogant Careers and might see her if he looked hard enough. Amber had moved the body so it could be taken up by the hovercraft and they'd used a separate claw for the head. Her own casual tone when describing it suddenly felt horribly, horribly wrong.

"And the twins got away," Oak mused. Then he realised what had actually been said. "What?! The Careers are self-destructing? This early?"

"Looks like it," Skyler responded. Then she sighed, because she knew what was coming next. She was right, too.

"I bet the bastards out there are loving this."

"Oak..." He was a nice guy, she reminded herself. He worked hard, loved his family and friends, never got on the wrong side of the Peacekeepers. The way he spoke about home sometimes suggested that he had occasionally come close to being whipped or shot, but Skyler doubted that, somehow, even though it wasn't that hard to annoy the Peacekeepers.

Apart from the argument about the twins, this was the other thing Skyler didn't like about Oak. He hated the Games and the Capitol with a passion that sometimes bordered on frightening. She hated them too, of course, but she knew better than to go mouthing off about it. That would only get her killed painfully. Oak should have realised that he was only going to survive if he kept it all in.

"Skyler, you know as well as I do, and we know better than anyone!" he exclaimed, feeling the words start to roll from his tongue as he swung on the branch in his excitement, "Twelve think they've got it tough but they haven't, not as much as us. Think how many people back home die serving the Capitol, a bunch of sick and twisted fakes they've never met, and that's before we even get to the Games!"

Skyler sighed and turned away from the sorry scene of the Careers, tipping her head back to look at the sky. "You're not a revolutionary, Oak," she whispered, "You're a boy. Just look at yourself. What can you do?"

"I can refuse to play their game properly," he insisted.

"That sounds childish and you know it."

"You can say that if you want, but it's the basics are still true. The Capitol are watching these Games, laughing as tribute after tribute, kid after kid, dies. They've probably counted me out already. But that's their mistake, because I'm ready to overthrow them right now."

He couldn't keep talking like that. He was just making a target of himself.

Without another word, Skyler shouldered her bow and shimmied down the rest of the tree, barely making a sound.

Oak realised that she was carrying all their supplies. Still, she ambled over to the Cornucopia, picking up a few useful scraps.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"What does it look like?" she retorted, picking up what looked like an abandoned throwing star and chucking it up and down a few times, watching the blade warily.

"It looks like you're raiding the Cornucopia, which we agreed we weren't going to do until it was safe."

She sighed, jamming the throwing star into the bag, and looked up at him. Up in the tree he looked small and vulnerable, unarmed and uncertain. "It is safe, Oak," she replied softly, "And I don't have to do what you say."

He realised what that meant.

"You're going."

She nodded sadly, fiddling with the tip of the bow. He should have the bow; he was better with it. "There's plenty of stuff here you can use that I don't want," she said. It was so quiet he had to listen to the breeze to hear it all.

"Why?"

It felt like she was betraying him, stabbing him in the back, except he was still very much alive. This was what they wanted, they wanted people to turn against each other, and that was exactly what Skyler was giving them.

"Skyler, that's just what they want..." he pleaded. She smiled, and she looked weary and tired.

"Oak, you're just a kid, like me. You can't start a revolution. Any moment now they could strike you down."

"I'm ready to do whatever- "

She interrupted him for once. "Just a kid. We're all just kids. There's nothing we can do. You're a good guy, Oak, and I don't want to see you die. I'm sorry."

With that, she vanished between the bushes. He tried hard, but he couldn't hear her footsteps melting away.

Daisuke thought he'd come far enough. The houses were getting more and more spaced out, and rolling fields stretched in front of him. He didn't dare go into them in case there were snakes or spiders or other creatures. Instead, he slid through into an empty and unkempt back garden and curled up at the bottom of the fence, listening to the birds and the stream and waiting for the sun to drift across the sky.