Archive of Our Own

Chenle is an early child. Born three weeks before his time, drowning in his own lungs and unable to cry. A tiny creature soaked in blood — a fighter. When he's born he whimpers, and when he's born he takes something with him, something he grasps tight inside his greedy fists.

Equivalent exchange. A life for a life. Not the last he’d take, but maybe the most significant.

There are no voices in the square. All the people in District Four are here, but none of them are speaking. The waves break against the cliffs far below and a single seagull squawks, perched on top of the awning that shields the Capitol escorts from the warm coastal sun. They’re all waiting. Corpses ready to be rolled into the coffins, waiting to see if their time is up.

Their escort reaches into the reaping orb and Chenle breathes out. He’s only sixteen. He has two years left. It’s not his turn.

“Oh dear,” the escort says, fiddling with the ball she’d scooped up. Her large fake nails — talons on a bird of prey — impede her opening it and the microphone lets out a soft screech of feedback as she hands it over to one of the Peacekeepers standing beside her.

When he passes back the paper there’s a moment of silence. A collective sucked in breath from everyone standing in the square. Another year of this — of wondering if they’ll die.

“Zhong Chenle!”

Everything freezes. Chenle's breath crystallises in his lungs and it’s like he’s jumped off the boat in the middle of the ocean and dived down below the surface into the cold waters. No sound, just emptiness. Something blue, impossible. Water in his ears, pillowing his limbs. Back to where he’d come from. Back to the water of the womb — before he remembers he’d rejected it.

The faces who surround him turn his way, but his gaze is drawn to where the victors are seated, dressed in seafoam and cream like cresting waves high above them all. They're so far away he can barely make out their faces, but he sees the near imperceptible shift in Yerim's stance as she locks eyes with him and nods, just as someone nudges Chenle.

He surfaces.

The world lurches into motion and he realises what he was waiting for. An ‘I volunteer’ that never comes. There is no chosen volunteer this year — because Chenle killed the last Eighteen they had. Gutted him on the practice room floor with his trident, like he was a fish on a dock. The blood had curdled in his nostrils, but Chenle had almost enjoyed it.

(Push him hard enough and he might tell you — beyond the shock, beyond the first few times where his hands shook like a leaf in the wind — that he’s always enjoyed it.)

(The trainers don’t need to know that. They taught him to kill, and maybe he rationalised it in a strange way. Maybe he learned to enjoy it. To disconnect. To live in the thrill of ending a life. Of having power.)

The irony is not lost on him that it’s his name picked from the reaping ball. Maybe reparations — a reminder the Capitol is always watching. He killed their prize. Now they want to send him to his death.

His feet thud against the concrete plaza like the boom of the sails snapping in the wind, and the crowd stares at him. The pearl pried from the womb of Four, roughed by sand and dirt, iridescent in the afternoon light.

Zhong Chenle mounts the stage, and thousands of faces watch. On screens and in real life, their Capitol escort with her violet lined eyes and feathers mounted on her shoulders like a corpse pierced by arrows, gesturing him closer.

“Congratulations,” she says, reaching for his hand. Her skin is warm — it surprises him a little, though he’s not sure what else he expected. He smiles at her and his stomach rolls, but he’ll never show it. Hand in the air. He’s trained for this. It might be premature, but he will get there all the same. There is more than one path to the top of the mountain. “Our first tribute,” she cries, turning to the crowd. “Zhong Chenle!”

“Purple?”

Chenle blinks, broken out of his stupor of watching Twelve A and B — two kids who can’t be older than fourteen — try to work with the mining helmet headpieces their stylists had given them. Like the poor kids already weren’t doomed enough — no, they had to put them in one of the ugliest outfits Chenle had ever seen. Maybe they were going for pity points.

The person talking to him is one of the Two tributes. Jisung — a volunteer. On the train ride over Yerim had noted that Two were playing up some kind of family act, and looking over at Jisung Chenle thinks he can understand why. The boy looks younger than him — though he knows for a fact he too is sixteen — and sweet. A childish kind of unpolished youth, maybe someone they'd just plucked from the streets. If he wasn't from Two Chenle would almost believe it. If Chenle wasn't born from the walls of the Academy, he'd almost believe it. As it is he can see the way Jisung holds himself belies his training — that every part of him, head to toe, is a weapon crafted only to kill.

"Do you like it?" Chenle says. He shakes out his hair, smiling at Jisung. It's only temporary dye — come the arena they'll have his hair black again to help him blend in — but for the parade it's all part of the act. Sailors — how awfully boring. Last year the stylists had dressed Four up as poisonous fish — Yerim had sported an entire arsenal of spikes attached to the flowing sleeves of her robe, resembling the lionfish that every child in Four has to learn to gut and harvest poison from. This year it’s about as generic as they come and he hopes the childish hair colour is enough to catch someone’s attention.

"It looks cool! Much better than what they gave us."

Two are dressed up like warriors — all sparkles and swords and far too much show. Not as glitzy as the Ones' (who look like they could have a day job as models — and then Chenle remembers Lee Jeno had done exactly that), but still kind of impractical. Not to mention that Jisung's outfit doesn't fit him — he looks too long, all limbs and gangly youth, the big grin he flashes at Chenle showing both tooth and gum. It’s not a threatening smile — not in the way his district partner had smiled when he was reaped. It’s friendly.

"I suppose I don't have to worry about being impaled on my helmet," Chenle concedes. Jisung laughs. It's a good laugh, pure and happy. Not the fake kind of laugh Chenle had expected from someone who will doubtless be plotting to kill him in a few weeks.

Chenle likes to think his heart is like ice, but the second he sees Jisung it melts.

"Where's your partner?"

"Eh?" Chenle says. He glances around. The boy had been here a second ago, hiding in the shadow of the chariot, shivering as he stared at all the other tributes, but now he’s strangely absent. "Dunno," he shrugs. "Doesn't really matter. I'm pretty sure he's never held a weapon in his life."

"And you?" Jisung asks. Weighing up the competition. Chenle grins and Jisung’s smile grows wider.

"I’ve been around. Held a few," Chenle says.

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

Chenle shrugs, flicking his hair out of his eyes and reaching up to count on his fingers. "Swords, knives, axes, swung a mace but they thought I was too cute—"

"Jaemin's good at knives," Jisung interrupts. He bounces a little on the balls of his feet, and as he continues talking he starts to gesture, armour rattling with each movement. “They thought he was too cute for the mace too.”

“Should you be telling me this?” Chenle asks. Jisung makes a puzzled face, scrunching his nose as if he’s deep in thought, then looking back up at Chenle.

“Maybe not, you’re right. But you’ll ally with us, right? With me and Jaemin and One?”

Chenle looks up at the One carriage, where Jaemin is talking to their two volunteers. His grin is deadly. They're all deadly — joking around with each other, sniffing out the competition. One are dressed in all leather and chain, immaculate faces near glowing with whatever their stylists had applied to their skin, and Jaemin's outfit fits him far better than Jisung's does. Chenle licks his lips. 

"Of course," he says. He glances across to Jisung and flashes him a grin with all his teeth. Easy as that.

“Don’t trust One. Especially don’t trust Lee Donghyuck,” Junhui says, rubbing his forehead absentmindedly. “They’re saying he’s mad.”

It’s been three days since they’d arrived in the Capitol and they’re in the room Junhui had been provided, two doors down from Chenle’s and slightly smaller. He’s happy that of all the victors it’d been Junhui who’d taken him under his wing. Chenle has always liked him — had watched his Games over quite a few times. He’s long and lanky, dressed in loose clothes, hair dyed blonde, hands scarred from the years of working on the dock he’d gone through before his reaping. His victory had come at the same age as Chenle, sixteen, though he’d paid a price for it. Half his face had been paralysed by the gas they’d unleashed into the arena, and in the final confrontation — where he’d gouged his district partner’s eyes out with his thumbs — his leg had been so mutilated the Capitol had deemed it to be amputated instead.

“I know,” Chenle says. “Not about him being mad but — not to trust them.”

“You’re friendly with them?”

“They like me. Jeno is nice. Jaemin too.”

“And Jisung?”

“He likes me too,” Chenle says. It’s a half truth, neglecting to tell Junhui that he likes Jisung just as much (maybe more) than Jisung likes him. He’s never met anyone like Jisung — a bright whirlwind of a boy — never met anyone who just seems to get him the way Jisung does. When they’d first gotten to the Training Center Jisung had watched him practice, clapping excitedly when Chenle had thrown a spear across the room to impale the training dummy one of the tributes from Nine had been trying to paint. The force of the throw had been so great he’d carried it through and pinned it against the wall, successfully causing all the colour to drain from Six B’s face.

“Good. That’s exactly who you want to like you. Who else?”

“Eleven B.”

“Lee Taeyong’s boy,” Junhui says with a sigh. “Still not sure what’s up with him.” He picks up a knife and starts to hack at the loaf of bread left on a platter in the middle of the table.

“Tell me about it,” Chenle says. “I think he might actually be insane. Donghyuck looked like he was ready to strangle him today and all he did was smile.”

Junhui nods, scooping up a copious amount of jam and smearing it on the slice of bread he’d cut. “He’s an asset though,” he continues, shoving the food into his mouth, “everyone’s talking about him. The second he smiled the entire parade became the Mark Lee show. If his training score is good you’ll want him on your side.” He pauses, glancing up at Chenle. Normally his gaze is friendly and open, but here Chenle is reminded Junhui killed his best friend with his bare hands to win his Games. He pierces right through Chenle, a harpoon through the gut, pinning him in place. “Do you want him, Chenle?”

The jam smeared across his lip looks like blood and his eyes are a lion’s. Chenle swallows. They covered making alliances in the Academy — however briefly — but he feels completely lost now it’s come to the real thing. “I don’t know.”

“There’s a mountain in Two,” Jisung says. His arms are hanging off the railing, wind caressing his thick, dark hair. The Capitol spreads out before them — thousands of glittering lights and twisting buildings, fireworks bursting in the distance, a shimmer of something that might be water smeared across the horizon. The air smells clean, but when Chenle breathes deep he misses the salt of the sea.

The Academy in Four was on the coastline, built into the natural curve of the rocks and jutting out over the open ocean. Most trainees didn’t live there — they’d attend part-time until they turned seventeen — but Chenle had been one of the few full time residents, and he hadn’t realised just how accustomed to all the quirks of the building he’d become. The scent of brine, the salt that caked the walls in the dive room, the boom of the waves breaking below and the cry of the gulls. The fish in the Capitol was good — cooked well, all done up in butter and spices no-one in Four would ever be able to afford — but in Four it was always fresh, and there was no way to ever replicate that.

“Yeah?” Chenle says, catching the hesitation in Jisung’s voice.

“There’s a mountain where if you climb it you can see the whole District. They used to send us up there for all kinds of training, carrying big packs on our backs. The view was spectacular. Little dots of colour and all these people running around like ants. You could see all the mines and the monuments. Even the Academy looked tiny. It was nice.” He pauses, tilting his head up like a cat sniffing the wind, then seems to catch himself and stand stiff again. “Uh,” he continues, glancing at Chenle with a sheepish smile, “I guess just being up here reminds me of there. Sorry, that was kind of weird.”

“It’s okay,” Chenle says. There’s something endlessly endearing about Jisung. The boy prodigy image is good — it’s genuine as far as Chenle’s been able to see, Jisung a natural with every weapon they’d picked up in the Training Centre — but it’s the person beneath that Chenle is truly interested in. This gummy smile, awkward limbs, bright-eyes-as-he-talks Jisung, the one that flashes him a grin right now. “We didn’t really have many high points in Four,” Chenle continues, returning the smile. “Just a lot of water.”

“That must have been nice, though. I’ve never seen the sea.”

Chenle doesn’t even know how to answer that. The ocean is his lifeblood — his everything. He can’t imagine living a life without it, or to have never even seen it.

“I wish I could take you there,” Chenle says. “It’s a shame about — you know.”

He leaves the reality unsaid. The fact that in a few weeks time they’ll likely both be dead — that there’s no future where Jisung and Chenle will ever stand by the ocean together.

“Yeah,” Jisung says. He puffs out his cheeks for a second then sighs, slumping over the railing. “Does it feel weird being here? For you? I mean, I’ve been training my entire life for this and I’m here now and it just doesn’t feel real.”

“It feels like a dream,” Chenle says. Like he’s floating in the water, like he’ll wake up at any moment in his bed back home. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Jaemin was reaped too,” Jisung offers.

“It was supposed to be two more years. Two more years before I volunteered.”

“But there was no volunteer this year?”

“No,” Chenle shakes his head. The wind picks up, knocking his hair out of place, a chilly blast that worms it’s way under the thick jacket they’d provided to him. The capitol is colder than Four, and this high up it’s just amplified. “I killed him,” he adds.

“What? Why?”

Chenle shrugs. He doesn’t really remember the moment. He just remembers striking, lashing out with his trident and hitting flesh, the smell of blood flooding through his nostrils. He’d never liked the boy anyway — too arrogant. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

The wind whistles. Below he thinks he can hear the sound of a party of some sort — muffled music, the tinkling of glasses, laughter. It’s all a game. It’s all a game, and Chenle might be here prematurely, but it doesn’t mean he can’t win.

“Huh,” Jisung says, after a long stretch of silence. Chenle turns and he finds he’s staring at him, something unreadable in his gaze. Some kind of tenderness, some kind of wonder. Something that should have never existed in someone from Two — it should have been cut from him like a parasite, a hollow carved out to be filled with the kind of violence that was the foundation of every Career.

“Are you afraid to die?” Chenle asks.

Jisung doesn’t hesitate with his answer. “To die for District Two,” he says, “is the second greatest honour there is.”

He sounds artificial, like a recording on a tape. Like when he’d opened his mouth the trainers at the Academy spoke instead — words Chenle has been drilled with, too.

“But are you afraid to die?”

His eyes are dark brown, skin glossy, city lights highlighting the ridges of his cheekbones. He doesn’t answer. He just stares, and Chenle doesn’t push. He’s oddly aware of his heartbeat — of the fact that he’s alive at this very moment, that he’s breathing and there’s blood in his veins.

He could have lied. Jisung could have lied, just like he did the first time. Tell him there’s no fear in his heart. But he hesitates — he stares at Chenle and doesn’t answer — and that’s enough of an answer in itself.

They’re both alive. They’re both here. Chenle cups Jisung’s cheek and a firework explodes on the horizon, glittering over the water’s surface in a shower of sparks.

Jisung’s lips are soft.

There are things they teach you in the Academy. Not just how to handle a weapon or how to kill. Not just how to survive. Other things. How to hold yourself. How to channel your aggression — to turn it into something that isn’t raw violence. How to give yourself over and let the bloodlust rise. How to play the cameras and give them exactly what they want. Every aspect of the face he presents to the crowd is perfectly crafted — a persona that fits him like a second skin, one he’s worn for so long that sometimes he has trouble detaching it.

Jisung digs right past that. It’s like when he cups Chenle’s cheeks he peels back the mask and sees him for who he really is — he sees the boy that should have been left at the bottom of the ocean. Some kind of intrinsic ability, an innate understanding of each other they both possess.

A shame, then, that they’ll never really become more. That Chenle might have to kill him one day soon.

He could kill him now. Slide his palms up Jisung’s bare chest and snap his neck. It would be clean — though not very sportsmanlike. Something more apt for a One than a Four.

It's the last wish of a dying boy — a body’s warmth against his. Jisung is a weapon, sharpened and honed, pointed straight at Chenle’s heart, though when Chenle grips the blade he finds his palms don’t bleed. He finds when he pushes Jisung over and climbs on top of him it crumbles to dust.

A sword that won’t cut. Kisses that nearly bleed, pressed fiercely to his mouth. Weapon laid on weapon laid on weapon, prying his armour apart. He brackets Jisung’s face with his arms and bites, caging him in.

It's the last wish of two dying boys. Maybe they should have used those wishes for something else — asked to stay alive. Asked to win. To escape from all this, to be born somewhere else, where the best possible outcome is more than that one of them walks out of this alive.

A body against his won’t save him, but Chenle has never been one for thinking ahead.

“Sucks you’re here,” Junhui says. The sunlight is blinding, wind whipping along the tarmac catching on the edges on his jacket and trying to snatch it away from him. Off in the distance the camera lenses glitter like the facets of a diamond, no doubt zoomed in on his face, broadcasting him to the world.

“It is what it is,” Chenle shrugs. The hovercraft awaits — belly almost full. Mark and Taeyong are talking near the entrance, but apart from them Chenle is the only tribute not ready.

“Still,” Junhui says. “Should have been a couple more years. It’s a shame. You’d be a sure shot if you were eighteen.”

“Are you telling me you don’t think I can win?”

“Not at all,” Junhui says. “I’m saying you would win in two years' time. Still. You’re better than you think you are. Better than they think you are. And you can win — you will. Don’t get cocky. Go out there and make me proud. I believe in you.”

The hug is a surprise, Junhui engulfing him in his arms before Chenle can even respond. Years and years of training — his entire lifetime — and it all comes down to this moment. Riding the wave he's been waiting for since he was born. Either he reaches the shore or he drowns. There’s no middle ground.

“Remember, you don’t have to kill them all,” Junhui says as he pulls back. “You only have to be the last one alive.”

“I know,” Chenle says. Junhui grins, and Chenle’s pretty sure it’s a trick of the light, but he thinks the paralyzed side of his face smiles, too.

“Then that’s all.”

He presses something into Chenle’s palm. A bracelet, woven from shades of seafoam and cream, a different colour for every year he’s been in the Academy. The mark of every Career the Academy has produced, a token to remind them that every Victor that the sea had birthed had stood in their place once before.

He doesn't need to count to know that two colours are missing.

“Good luck, Chenle.”

Seated safely in the hovercraft, Chenle holds the bracelet up to the light, wincing as they inject his tracker into his arm. The strands form the shape of a dolphin swimming through the waters, and as he fastens it around his wrist he takes a deep breath. He's thought about this moment for his entire life. His arrival here might be premature, but he's ready all the same.

He has to be ready. He has no choice. 

Chenle shuts his eyes. The hovercraft whirrs, but his mind is as quiet as the floor of the ocean.

The first few seconds after the platforms raise is disorienting.  Everything is washed out and white, a sharp contrast from the cool darkness of the tube he'd come up in, swimming into focus as Chenle blinks rather forcefully. He hadn't been able to glean anything by their clothes beforehand (the outfit utterly standard — dark windbreaker over form fitting shirt, loose trousers and thick soled lace-up boots), and this is his first real taste of what the arena is like.

It seems fairly standard — dry, flat grassland for nearly a mile around, a small forest curving around the back end of the Cornucopia, scraggly scrub dotting the flat landscape in smudges. Open and wide. No signs of water, but he doubts it'll be dry. He takes it in, sifting through it, glancing around the platforms to scope out the other tributes.

The Career pack is all spread out. Jisung on his far left, six platforms away — right beside Mark Lee, actually. Donghyuck is almost directly opposite Chenle, and when they make eye contact he pokes his tongue out, winking in a way Chenle would almost peg as flirtatious. A few platforms to his right Jaemin is the doing the same thing as Chenle — scoping out the area with an almost freakish calmness. The sky is clear and pale blue, cloudless, sun catching on the glinting steel of the veritable arsenal of weapons littered across the grass.

Does Mark Lee really need that many scythes?

He spots the trident almost directly in front of Jisung. In its way are enough swords to arm half a District. Enough to cause a slaughter.

Somewhere in Four the waves break against the Academy wall. Somewhere in the Capitol Junhui is watching. Chenle looks up to the sky and smiles, mouthing the numbers under his breath as the countdown nears its conclusion. He rolls his shoulders and takes a deep breath, feeling the battle trance slip over him.

One. 

Chenle steps onto the grass and everything falls into place.

It's like stepping into the eye of the storm — he finds himself wrapped up in an impossible calm. His body acts without thought and he picks up the first weapon he sees — a hefty throwing axe no doubt intended for someone from Seven — and hurls it at a boy trying to run into the woods. 

The second he hears the sickening thump of the blade connecting with flesh it’s like everything else is right again. It’s like the past few weeks are washed away by the rain, all his worries carried out to sea like debris during a storm.

He belongs here. He was made for this. Six B makes a run for the trident and Chenle can't help but cheer as he watches Jisung gut him with a stunning sweep of the arm — another cheer as he throws the trident to Chenle without thought. The handle fits perfectly in his hand, and the momentum of the throw is strong enough that it makes it easy for Chenle to carry it through and open up the stomach of a kid getting brave enough to try to grab a backpack in front of him.

It’s like, somehow, he’d forgotten the joy of killing. The way it sings through him, his body a finely crafted instrument. He hears Jaemin yell behind him, but it’s not directed at him, and he strides to Jisung’s side, grinning as he watches him run through a girl with one of his swords, almost severing her arm clean from her body with the follow up downward stroke.

“You look pretty,” Chenle says, scooping up a discarded knife from the ground and throwing it one handed into the shoulder of Six A. The boy screams, but he keeps running. He'd picked up a backpack, but Chenle doesn't mind. Let him think he has a chance. It’ll be fun to hunt later.

“What?” Jisung says. He rounds on him, blood like rose petals dripping from his swords, eyes wide.

“I said you look pretty,” Chenle says.

“You think?”

In his periphery he sees Donghyuck slam a mace into the back of someone’s head and shout something to Jaemin that causes him to run towards the Cornucopia. As Chenle follows him he spots movement around the back of the Cornucopia, and his entire vision zooms in like a camera lens, honing in the dark shape low to the ground. “Of course,” he says, though his focus has already switched. Recalibrated. The grass crunches beneath his feet as he jogs across the field, and in the corner of his eye he sees Jeno exit the Cornucopia, gleaming sword held in hand.

Crawling through the grass is a girl. Nine A. She’s bleeding badly, dragging herself forward on her stomach, a knife sticking out of her gut and a long trail of blood smeared across the ground behind her like a human sized brush stroke. When she looks up at him her already pale face turns as white as a sheet.

“Hi,” Chenle says, grip tightening on his trident.

“Oh god no,” she says. “No, please. Don’t kill me.”

Chenle tilts his head to the side. She can’t be older than fourteen — just a kid. Reaped early, too.

“Or what? You won’t survive. You’re not gonna win.”

“Please,” she repeats. One arm in front of the other, pulling her forward. Crawling like a baby turtle up the sand. Chenle takes a step forward and rests his boot on her back.

He hears someone call his name — Jisung, he thinks. Shouting from the bloodbath.

“Tough luck,” Chenle says. His trident goes clean through her flesh, and above him the cannon fire is a thunderclap.

The total deaths in the blood bath is ten — not a bad start, but less than Chenle had hoped for. Three for him. Two for Jisung, Jaemin and Donghyuck. Jeno, somehow, only manages to claim one.

“Nine A was mine,” Jaemin argues, chewing on some of the nuts and chocolate he’d picked up from the Cornucopia. They’d raided most of the supplies and loaded them into backpacks and were headed to the forest to set up camp. Jisung had argued for staying at the Cornucopia, but the land around was so open Jeno hadn’t trusted their ability to hide.

“You didn’t kill her,” Chenle says. “She was fair game. Sucks to suck, I guess.”

“You’re depriving me of valuable sponsor points,” Jaemin says. He looks stormy and determined, the joker that he’d seen in the Capitol cafeteria all but struck away.

Chenle makes a mock baby crying noise and Jeno rounds on him in an instant, pressing his finger to his mouth and hushing him. “You wanna tell the whole arena we’re here?” he hisses.

“What are they gonna do? Kill five Careers?” He pushes Jeno’s arm away from his face. “C’mon, lighten up,” he says. “If they come to us we’ll just take them out.”

“Three wasn’t enough for you?” Donghyuck says.

“We’re not all satisfied with one kill like you,” Chenle says. Donghyuck frowns.

“It’s not a competition.”

“Of course it’s a competition. It’s all a game, baby.”

“Shut up,” Jeno says.

Donghyuck glances at the rest of them, as if to ask them to stand up for him — opening his mouth, then shutting it. The grass crunches underneath their feet, and they make the rest of their trek in the sunset light in silence.

The grassland turns quickly into dry scrubs, the land sloping downwards and a muddy stream joining their path. A scraggly forest springs up on the horizon and the sun dips into the ground, stars coming out and the waxy moonlight lighting their way. They set up in a clearing, drawing straws for a watch and arranging their sleeping bags in a circle. Donghyuck and Jeno fall asleep almost immediately, and Jaemin soon after, but Chenle draws first watch, and he’s stuck staring at the treetops from the branch of a fat tree with a trunk like a swollen fish barrel.

“Don’t freak out.”

Chenle flinches, reaching for the knives on his belt, before relaxing when he realises it’s Jisung. The branch dips under his weight and he feels the warmth of his body slide in beside him.

“What’re you doing up?” Chenle murmurs.

“I swapped watch with Jeno. Can’t sleep.”

Chenle can’t see him — his eyes still on the horizon, looking out to where the moon hangs amongst the ocean of the stars — but he can read the frown in Jisung’s voice. “But what are you doing?” he repeats. Jisung presses against him, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh.

“I don’t know.”

When he turns he finds his gaze on him. Skin silver, moonlight reflected in his eyes. He looks young — younger than he’d been on the rooftop, and Chenle is struck with the bitter reality that if either of them had been reaped at a different time they might have made it out of this alive. There might have been some misguided hope that they could have known each other as more than just obstacles standing in the way of walking out of the arena in one piece. Two victors, maybe.

It’s cruel that he’s here, but he can’t change that now. He can’t change anything — can’t change the spark in his stomach when his eyes meet Jisung’s. He can’t change that it was his name pulled from the ball. It’s all in the past, but it doesn’t mean he can’t be angry.

Jisung’s lips brush against his and Chenle inhales a sharp breath. Fingers tightening on the bark of the branch, heart thudding in his chest.

He can admire the way Jisung kills. Finely tuned, perfect precision. Each swing of his swords was like a dance, the flash of teeth as he severed a limb at the joint. The blood that had dripped on the ground at his feet. It was all a show, the child prodigy on display. Chenle doesn’t know what part of him is the Academy and what part of him is the boy — but maybe it doesn’t matter. There’s an energy in Jisung he can’t deny, a white lightning that crackles all over his skin.

“I should be keeping watch,” Chenle murmurs. Jisung noses at his cheek and sighs.

“It’s okay. I’m listening.”

There’s blood in his mouth. Blood on both their hands. He wonders how many human kill tests there were in Two — how many times Jisung had seen the light leave someone’s eyes. Had he watched his friends die? Seen them slip under the waves and come up glassy eyed and lifeless? Watched the sea reclaim them, as it would reclaim them all.

He shivers, Jisung’s hand cupping his jaw.

He can’t stop thinking about death.

He can’t stop thinking about Jisung.

The night is shorter than it should be. Six hours, maybe. Daybreak comes scorching, washing out the colour from the dry dirt, and it also comes with Jaemin whining that he’s hungry, poking Jisung with the toe of his boot until Chenle offers to go catch some fish to shut him up. Donghyuck is chosen to accompany him and it’s to Chenle’s surprise that he doesn’t complain. He just acquiesces, pointing out the path back to the river, and the two of them walk in relative silence until the gurgling sound of running water fills their ears.

Even if it’s freshwater there’s a peace in Chenle’s heart when he sees the water — like he’s coming back home. He tests the mud with the prongs of his trident, satisfied when he feels it hit gravel not too deep.

“Did you bring the canteens?” Chenle asks, undoing the laces on his boots and pulling them off, then balling his socks up and stuffing them inside. Donghyuck grunts, dropping his backpack on the ground, the rattle of metal enough of an answer.

“I’ll fill up when you’re done,” Donghyuck says. Chenle pauses from where he’s rolling up his pants.

“Not now?”

“Someone needs to keep watch.”

Chenle picks his trident up from the mud, silt sliding from the blades and glittering like gold dust in the light. “I can fight, too.”

“In the middle of the river?”

Chenle cocks an eyebrow and Donghyuck sighs. “Fine.” He crouches down and unzips his pack. “Can’t believe I spent twelve years in the Academy to fill up a bunch of water bottles.”

“Fill them up upstream. Make sure the water’s flowing. Less chance of it being polluted.”

“Relax,” Donghyuck says, already unscrewing the lid of one of the canteens, “I passed survival skills, too.”

“Just making sure you don’t give me a mouthful of mud.”

Donghyuck huffs. “Don’t worry, Lele—” Chenle wrinkles his nose at the nickname “—I only have your best interests in mind.”

Donghyuck fills the canteens quickly, and by the time Chenle has located the correct location to wade into the river he's back up on the riverbank, swinging his mace around to swat at the flies hovering above the mud. In the end he hadn’t even picked up a bow from the Cornucopia — they’d been offered, but clearly it wasn’t on his agenda. It's a curious difference, and Chenle wonders idly what else he has up his sleeve.

Junhui had said not to trust him.

“What?” Donghyuck asks, when they make eye contact.

“Would you at least attempt to watch my back?”

Donghyuck pouts. “I suppose those best interests includes to keep you alive, don't they?”

“Correct,” Chenle says. He tightens his grip on his trident, warm wind curling around his bare shins.

“Don’t like turning my back on you,” Donghyuck says, even as he’s turning around.

“Relax. If I wanted to kill you I would have done it while you were sleeping.”

“And here I thought you had honour in Four.”

“Honour is for outside the arena,” Chenle says, wading into the river. The words the trainers had always told him. There are no rules in the arena — only that you need to survive.

The water is cold and the mud on the riverbank soft, his feet sinking deep as he moves towards the center of the stream. Glimmers of silvery fish scales flit through the water, but they’re out of his reach, and he takes a deep breath and waits. Patient, easy. The sooner they get food the sooner they can move — the sooner they can hunt better game.

Soon the fish return, sliding around his legs, and it doesn’t take long for Chenle to stride back to the bank with three fat salmon impaled on the prongs of his trident. Donghyuck gives him an appreciative look — approval, something Chenle doesn’t need. Like he had somehow needed to prove himself to Donghyuck. Their training scores had been the same, and that should have been reason enough to affirm that Chenle belonged in the Career pack just as much as any of them.

Back at the camp they cook the fish and wash it down with the water, refilling their canteens then following the river through the forest, hoping to catch another tribute’s tracks — but there’s nothing.

Nothing but forest, dry brush, burnt out tree trunks and thick stinking mud. Not even signs of fires, no scores in trunks — nothing. If it weren’t for the cannon going off as the sun begins to dip, Chenle would think they were the only people left in the arena.

“Is it just me, or was that day really short?” Jaemin says. They’re still walking. Jeno and Jisung at the front. Donghyuck in the middle. Chenle and Jaemin at the rear.

“Not just you,” Chenle says. The sun is hanging low, brilliant red burning like a flare, painting the grassland the shade of a wildfire. The ground had been sloping down, but in the past hour it had evened out, the river getting wider and deeper — loud enough that Chenle can barely hear his thoughts. The rapids are gilted and foaming, spitting into the air like a rabid beast as they climb the bank into the woodline.

“What do you think? Eight hours?” Jaemin asks. His hand stays on his hip at all times, fingers loosely grasping the hilt of a knife. Sometimes he’ll take one out and play with it — pick up a stick and whittle it away until it’s nothing.

“Can’t be more,” Chenle agrees. “Must be one of the Gamemaker’s tricks.”

“Great,” Jaemin says, though his tone betrays him. “Just fucking great.”

They trek through part of the night, following the moonlight and the bend of the river until they emerge from the trees to the edge of a great lake. There’s a dull roar of a waterfall in the distance, and they set up in the scrub line, calling a watch order with the assumption of another six hour night being imminent.

Jaemin takes first, scaling the largest tree with his knives as handholds, sleeping bag thudding against his thigh as he finds a suitable branch to perch on. On the forest floor Jeno falls asleep almost immediately, one hand sticking out of his sleeping bag to be gripped by Donghyuck as he curls up beside him.

It’s strange. A moment of vulnerability. In sleep they look small, silvered and pale, just two best friends thrown into violence. Donghyuck squeezes Jeno’s hand so tight Chenle wonders if he’ll break it, but as Chenle watches his grip relaxes, his face falling into something serene as slumber takes him over, the two of them still attached like sea otters stopping each other from drifting away.

Chenle can't sleep. He’s still burning with the high of the bloodbath — like he’d absorbed the energy of the lives he’d taken. After a day of walking he should be exhausted, but instead he finds himself energised, and he wanders from their camp, humming softly under his breath.

He finds Jisung down by the lake’s edge, squatting on the rocks and tying knots with the reeds. As he watches he ties a circle of cattails together into a crown, setting it down at his feet then uprooting another fistfull of plants to start the cycle anew.

Jisung doesn’t flinch when Chenle’s boots crunch on the rocks — doesn’t reach for his sword planted blade first in the soft sand. He just looks back at him and smiles. Open. Vulnerable. That tenderness again, the one Chenle thinks should be impossible.

How strange. How beautiful.

He knows as he walks towards Jisung that he shouldn’t be doing this — that he will have to kill Jisung one day, or at least mourn him — but he also finds that he doesn't have it in himself to care. Let him have this happiness, this thing he was deprived of his entire life. Love, in some form or another, fleeting like a dying star.

“Hey,” Jisung says. He shows his handful of reeds to Chenle. “Do you want one?” He pauses, picking off one of the outer leaves. “I suppose you know how to tie knots better than I do, don’t you?”

“You’d be right,” Chenle says, kneeling beside him. He takes a reed from Jisung’s hand and ties it quickly into a knot — one more flashy than anything, used to impress the kids who came down to the docks to see what the trade in Four was like. As he goes to hand it to Jisung the music starts to sound and the two of them pause, looking up to the sky for the fallen tributes.

There’s only one — Eleven A. Thirteen alive, including Mark Lee. The water laps at the lake’s edge, and the world is silent again.

“I thought we’d have killed more by now,” Jisung says. He drops a reed and curses softly under his breath. “All the Games we watched back home were so… violent.”

“Maybe we’re just unlucky?” Chenle offers. He realises the irony of the statement. Anyone else would count themselves lucky to have avoided killing, but not a Career. Violence is so ingrained in him that he'll never escape it — that he finds he almost needs it.

“Maybe,” Jisung says. “Feels weird we haven’t even seen a sign of another tribute that isn’t us. What about all the ones we injured?"

“I know,” Chenle murmurs. “They’ll have to come this way eventually. There can’t be that much water.”

“That’s what Jeno was saying.”

There’s no fun chasing someone who’s dehydrated. Some of the criminals he’d killed in Four had been like that — starving and whimpering, and though they’d fought back it had been pathetic. He’d gone from using a knife to using his bare hands, slamming their face against the concrete until there was nothing left to recognise them by.

It’s all on his file. Unprecedented aggression, yet highly intelligent. A purple ‘S’ stamped over the photo they’d taken of him when he’d turned fourteen, a few days before his first kill. One of the Academy’s most promising young subjects. Chenle had never let it get to his head, but there was a slight enjoyment to know that he was being acknowledged. Junhui’s words may not have been unfounded after all.

“Do you think they’ll come?” Chenle asks. He shuffles closer to Jisung, picking up the tightly woven circle of reeds he’d discarded onto the rocks. The knots aren’t bad, actually — if a little basic.

“Maybe. I hope they do. I don’t want to sit around for days.”

“Me neither,” Chenle says, though he knows it’s a reality. After the bloodbath and before the arena starts to change is the quietest time of the Games, where the survivors start to try hide and the Careers set up camp.

“Chenle,” Jisung says. Chenle blinks, glancing over at him. He holds up the reeds in his hands. “Is this good? For a knot, I mean?”

Chenle's not sure what he expected. More discussion of death, maybe. Setting up traps. How to hunt. Not Jisung showing off his plant crown.

“Let me see,” Chenle says. The moonlight is thick and silvery, and it’s not hard for him to see the rough folds of the reeds. “They’re okay.”

“How would you do it?”

His eyes glitter, pupils painted with a reflection of the moon.

Do what?

How would he kill Jisung? Take the knife from his belt and stab him through the neck. Use his bare hands to choke the life from him. Stab him in the back, or gore him with his trident. Take his own sword and use it against him.

His brain does it without thought, a constant catalogue of all the ways he could kill any of them. Of all of his own weak points, how Jisung might kill him. It's learned, but for a Career it's as automatic as breathing.

The thought itself makes Chenle shiver, something full bodied that serves to purge the violence from his mind. Not now. Let him enjoy their last days together.

“Like this,” Chenle says. He shuffles behind Jisung and wraps his arms around him, taking the reed gently from between his calloused fingers and showing him how to tie the knots he can do in his sleep. “Here.”

It’s cool out on the lakefront, wind blowing across the water, and Jisung’s skin inherits the ambient temperature, though under Chenle's touch it begins to warm.

“Can you show me again?” Jisung murmurs.

Bit by bit Chenle demonstrates the knot. It only takes one repeat for Jisung to understand, and with a few small nudges from Chenle he's able to tie it properly.

Maybe the child prodigy image was grounded after all.

They both notice the noise at the same time, a soft whirring and beeping. A few of the stars in the sky have begun to shift, blinking white, and Chenle realises after a second why.

“Sponsors,” Jisung says. He’s stargazing too, face angled upwards as the gifts drift down. There’s two, both of them contained in metal containers. One is engraved with a chisel and hammer, the other with an ornate fish. He takes the latter for himself and passes the other one to Jisung.

The capsule is screw top, the inside lined with velvet. He upends it and a spool of fishing line falls out, along with a paper note that almost flutters away before he manages to catch it between his thumb and index finger.

Keep it up — WJH

He rubs the paper for a second, feeling the waxy surface, before putting it back in the capsule. Junhui was watching. The sponsors were watching, and at least someone on the outside had his back.

“What did you get?” Jisung asks. Chenle shows him the fishing wire and Jisung offers up the tablets he’d received in turn — bright blue and marked with water droplets. Purification tablets.

“Do they know something we don’t?”

Jisung shrugs, putting them back in the capsule and setting it beside his sword. “Maybe?” he offers.

Chenle glances at his own capsule, running his fingers along the minute grooves in the metal that make up the carving. Absentmindedly, as if possessed, he holds it to his face and breathes in and — sure enough — it smells like salt. Like it had just washed up on a shore, a message in a bottle.

“Chenle,” Jisung says. He stands up, and suddenly Chenle remembers how much taller than him he is. "Do you think the night will be short again?"

"Probably."

He can't really say. He wouldn't put it past them for it to be some kind of gimmick — though tired tributes didn't make for a good fight.

The pebbles crack against each other under Jisung's feet, a chorus of clattering clicks that stills as he enters Chenle’s personal space.

“Chenle,” he repeats. The moon hangs over the lake, casting half his face into shadow, highlighting the relief of his cheeks and the whites of his eyes. He looks almost skeletal — all polished bone and sharp lines — though when Chenle reaches up to cup his cheeks there’s traces of warmth in his skin that haven’t been stolen by the wind.

A reminder he’s alive.

“Chenle,” Jisung says. Again. A puff of air against his lips.

Chenle hushes him. He digs his fingers into his skin and kisses him, holding him against him, breathing him in and letting it all take him over.

He doesn’t need Junhui’s encouragement for this. He’ll keep going all by himself.

“Chenle.”

His arm is already cocked back, trident raised, before he realises it’s just Jaemin, perched in the crook of a branch like a bird. His knives glow duly in the pale light and he’s staring at Chenle with his head tilted to the side, cast almost entirely in shadow.

“Relax,” he murmurs. “It’s okay.”

“Mind not acting like a wraith in the night?” Chenle says, trying to return his racing heartbeat to normal.

Jaemin huffs. “Do you want an apology?”

“It’d be nice.”

There’s a pause for a second, the two of them regarding each other. The air is cool, filled with the scent of dry wood, and the underbrush seems to shift around them, as if it could conceal a hundred assassins all poised with their swords at their throats. There’s a brief impasse, the two of them locking eyes, and Chenle’s aware Jaemin is doing the same thing he is. Sizing him up. Wondering how many weapons he can stick in his body before he reaches him.

He takes a deep breath.

“Sorry,” Jaemin says. He pulls a knife from the bark of the tree and twirls it before throwing it to the ground, burying it up to the hilt in the dirt only a few inches from Chenle’s foot.

“Sorry?” He doesn’t even look at the knife. The idea of not watching Jaemin terrifies him.

“Sorry for scaring you. Can we talk?”

He drops down the tree trunk with an agility that surprises Chenle —something that seems more apt for someone from Seven than Two. Of course they’d all seen each other on the obstacle course in the training room, but there’d been a basicness in Jaemin’s movements then, the signs of someone who only climbed because he needed it to pass his training.

He wonders what had changed. He wonders what else Jaemin is hiding.

“Sorry for scaring me,” Chenle repeats, kicking at the handle of the knife in front of him. Jaemin drops to the ground with a soft thud, raising his eyebrow until Chenle sighs and concedes. “Yeah, we can talk.”

“Cool,” Jaemin says.

There’s an air about him that puts Chenle on edge. He’s pretty enough to be a One, but there’s something in those sparkling eyes Chenle doesn’t quite understand. Not a softness like Jisung — something fleeting. A shadow without edges, shifting and dancing in the light. Something fierce.

“You wanna kick it with the small talk?” Chenle jokes.

“You and Jisung get along, don’t you?” Jaemin says, ignoring him and starting to move back through the woods. Chenle frowns.

“Sure.”

“I saw you leave his room.”

“We were talking,” Chenle says. “Hard to get a moment away from the cameras.”

“I know,” Jaemin says with a hum. He kicks at a fallen branch and it snaps beneath his foot, dry twigs splintering like tiny bones.

“You know,” Chenle echoes.

Jaemin shrugs, stopping near a burnt out tree. He touches his palm to the bark and it comes away black with soot. “It doesn’t matter what you did. Just—” he closes his hand into a fist, then opens it again “—promise me you’ll look after him for me, would you?”

Chenle opens his mouth, then shuts it when Jaemin looks back to him. His gaze is open — a little too open, maybe. A plea.

District Two might be playing up a family act, it might be orchestrated, but Chenle has a nagging feeling that for Jaemin this all might be a little too real.

“Of course,” he says. Jaemin nods, relief washing over his face for a second before he stitches back up.

“Thank you.”

They set up camp in the forest, carving out a wide berth in the scraggly undergrowth. The wildlife is sparse — mostly lean rabbits and fat waterfowl — but it’s enough combined with the nets Chenle sets up over the river mouth that they can easily stay fed. He spends most of the day setting up traps and showing Jisung how to weave nets, and at night he practices throwing knives with Jaemin — though he quickly feels outclassed. Jaemin is as good with his knives as he is beautiful, the way he handles them so stunning Chenle can’t help but watch. Every part of him is perfectly balanced, body arching as he does a flashy one, two, three throw, embedding his blades in the ‘throat’ of the target dummy they’d constructed from dry grass and branches.

It’s nothing that can be taught. Just raw practice — raw ability. Thousands and thousands of hours of training, condensed into a single movement, a life hanging in the balance.

Chenle’s not sure he’ll ever be tired of the beauty of violence.

They go days without seeing another tribute — without the cannon going off. The day and night cycle seems to be without reason — sometimes it’s only a few hours of each, other times it’s almost twenty hours of scorching light followed by plunging nights, the waxy moon painting everything in monochromatic shades of blue and silver. Chenle shows Jisung how to fish — how to weigh and string a net that will hold against the current — and in turn Jisung shows him to wield his sword.

The staging ground for their spars is the lakefront, surface of the water still as their swords crash together. Jisung is ridiculously good — he’s flashier than Jaemin, not quite as quick but more deceptive — and by the time they’re both sweating and sitting with their feet in the lake Chenle knows he’ll never beat Jisung in a straight up fight.

He understands why they sent him early — he’s just as good as any Eighteen. Better, maybe — though that’s something he’d never mention to the Ones. There’s a fierce competitiveness in Donghyuck’s eyes he’d never want to challenge, especially after seeing the way he’d beat in a tribute’s head at the bloodbath. A kind of sadism that seemed to be bred into One. Bloodlust verging on insanity.

He remembers Junhui’s words — the rumours that Donghyuck was mad — and he wonders just where that line lies.

On the fifth morning the nets are sabotaged.

On the fifth afternoon a cannon goes off.

In the inbetween Jeno and Chenle follow a set of tracks up the river. The mud is still kicked up on the bank and it’s easy to trace the Tribute’s footsteps — discarded fish scales and snapped branches alongside wet footprints fading in the hot sun.

“Just one,” Jeno murmurs. He looks like he was born to hold a sword — that classic One beauty transformed into something warlike, a warrior god in the flesh. The morning before he’d come down to wash in the river as Chenle was herding fish, little care for the audience as he’d stripped his shirt and left it on the bank.

Little care — but maybe more awareness. He knew how to play the cameras — how to play the sponsors as he cupped the water and poured it down his dust stained chest.

Chenle had felt compelled to look away, and yet he couldn’t. Like a marble statue come to life — so utterly perfect. It’s not even that Chenle felt jealous (he did, in a way — Jeno was built perfectly, lean muscle, chiseled lines that stood out when he stretched his arms above his head), but more that he thought it was unfair that Jeno was allowed to look like that and be so deadly on top of it all.

No wonder Jaemin had dragged him back to his bed.

“The nets weren’t cut,” Chenle says. “They probably don’t have a weapon.”

“Or if they do it isn’t bladed,” Jeno concludes. Chenle nods. It doesn’t really matter — as long as whoever it is doesn’t catch them by surprise there’s no-one who can beat them in a fair fight.

Except maybe Mark Lee.

It’s not Mark Lee. The trail diverges into the woods, barely even disguised, snapped branches and stripped leaves littering the undergrowth. A discarded sponsor’s capsule, silver parachute glittering in the sunlight.

She never even sees them coming.

Once again Chenle has to admire Jeno. It’s beautiful watching him kill — a kind of brutal efficiency, a single downward stroke through the shoulder with one arm. The cannon fires as her body slumps to the ground and Jeno wipes the blade on her shirt before patting her down and tossing the small bag of stones he finds in her pocket to Chenle.

“Do you know what that is?” he asks, continuing to go through the meager collection of supplies she’d amassed. Some of it is already coated in dried blood — she must have hid and doubled back after the bloodbath to scavenge — and nearly all of it is useless.

The stones though. Chenle pours them out onto his palm and sniffs them, trying not to sneeze as he accidentally inhales some of the fine dust that coats them. They smell bitter — sharp and sulfuric — and he knows exactly what they are. A cruder version of the depth charges some of the lazier kids like to fish with — explosives either way.

“Looks like slingshot pellets,” he says, slipping them back into the bag and tucking it into his pocket.

“Well that’s useless,” Jeno mutters. He’s still methodically going through her belongings, humming under his breath. “This is all useless. It’s definitely her that fucked with your nets though—” he holds up a stripped set of fish bones “—unless she was somehow fishing with all this shit.”

“I doubt it,” Chenle says. “I think you’re right.”

Jeno smiles and looks up at him — that kind of cocksure confidence born from a lifetime of being told you’re special. “Often am.”

They dump the rest of the supplies into the river and trek back to the camp, Donghyuck pouting when Jeno informs him he’d missed out on a kill.

“Oh, that so isn’t fair,” he mutters.

Chenle leaves the two of them be and wanders off into the thicket, crouching down to pick at the flowers and crush their petals between his fingers, leaving his fingers smeared with a deep violet pigment. The explosive pellets feel hot against his breast, and he tucks them into his bag instead, not wanting to risk some kind of spontaneous combustion blowing his chest open. He’s not entirely sure what he’ll use them for yet — he only knows that of all the people he wants to know about them, Donghyuck is dead last on his list — and that if he’d told Jeno doubtless Jeno would tell Donghyuck. They’re like a two for one package deal — buy one unhinged One, get his creepily pretty best friend, too.

Still, it’s nice to see some combat. He’s been itching for it recently — feeling it burn up at him like wildfire to dry driftwood. Something akin to the way he’d felt when the last great storm had struck the coast, when they’d all been stuck inside watching wind smash the waves across the rocks.

The mayor had given out strict orders that no-one was to go to sea without his permission, though Chenle in all his fourteen year old wisdom had decreed that was stupid, and no typhoon would stop him. It had taken until he’d gone down to the market square to realise how strong the storm had been. Even the main port was locked down, the waves rising so high they’d reached the decks of the fishing boats, spilling over onto the wharf and forming miniature rivers streaked with seafoam.

The docks had seemed comforting with the blood of the workers to fill them up, but in the storm they were barren as a ghost town — the carved out hollow of a chest that had made Chenle feel tiny.

He hadn’t realised how much he’d valued the sea until that day. In Four it was like a human right, something that belonged to them as much as their name. Being kept from it was a cruelty, and even when he’d seen the destruction of the storm Chenle had still wanted to risk it all just to feel the salt on his skin again. He’d sat in front of the storm shutters, legs dangling out over the drop zone, breathing in the air and relishing in the foam that had jumped up high enough to splatter across his bare toes. A taste of danger without risking it all.

There’d been moments when he’d come close to diving out — throwing himself into the gale winds just to taste the sea again, but somehow he’d resisted. The sun had shone again, and that first dip in the ocean had felt like being born again.

He supposes that’s what it’s all about. Waiting for the storm to pass — waiting to whet his trident again. Their alliance is strong and there’s no need to break it merely for the urge of wanting to swim.

Not yet, anyway.

The dead tribute is Seven A. Her face glimmers in the night sky as Chenle weaves another net to replace the one she’d broken — a smile far too wide for someone who was walking towards her death. At least she was useful — he's already utilised her explosives to lay a ring of traps around the riverside edge of the camp, and with any luck eventually they'll catch someone out. Jisung joins him as the music dies down, and the two of them sit together in silence, occasionally exchanging glances until Jisung works up the nerve to shuffle closer and ask if he needs any help.

Honestly, Chenle will only ever trust himself to weave his nets, but Jisung is earnest enough he can’t resist him. He shrugs and hands over a handful of dried vines, pausing for a second to watch the way Jisung’s face scrunches up in concentration as he starts to tie them together. His knots are good — Chenle had taught him after all — but they won’t ever measure up, but Chenle chooses to indulge him anyway. He settles down against the trunk he’d been leaning on again and gets half as much work done as he should have.

On the eighth morning the river swallows his nets.

It swallows a lot more too. The bank. The rock traps Chenle had left along the edge. Trees that had been overhanging the water before were now washed away, and the water is turned churning and brown. As he watches a splintered branch bobs to the surface, spinning in circles and then shattering as it hits a rock.

“Guess they want us to move,” Donghyuck says, standing at the treeline.

“They could have been a little more polite,” Chenle says with a frown.

Donghyuck laughs. “When are the Gamemakers polite? C’mon, let’s tell everyone else.”

Jaemin and Jisung have gone hunting but Jeno is still at their camp, swinging his sword aimlessly at the trunk of the large tree they’d set up around. If it was a person it’d be turned into a fine mist, but as it is the wood has been particularly hardy against Jeno’s special brand of bored slicing, and instead it’s merely scoured with inch deep wounds.

He doesn’t question them. He just tells them to give him a minute. There’s no mention of Jisung and Jaemin, and Chenle gets the implication almost immediately — that this part of the alliance has disintegrated.

Approximately twenty seconds after Jeno disappears into the forest the first fireball hits.

It’s a whooping bang — a column of flame that explodes a few meters away from them, knocking them both to the ground and almost impaling Chenle as his trident slips away from him. The dry underbrush catches fire almost immediately, going up with a crackling hiss.

“Jeno!” Donghyuck shouts.

Chenle’s not sure if he’s stupid, or if he knows something Chenle doesn’t — maybe they’re made fireproof in District One — but he’s halfway around the tree, running towards where Jeno had disappeared before Chenle screams at him and asks him if he’s an idiot.

His answer is muted by the next explosion — further off, south towards the lake.

“I’m not leaving him behind,” Donghyuck shouts. The wind is blowing southward — thankfully — but fuck if Chenle is staying here.

“Fine!” he shouts. He owes nothing to Donghyuck — to anyone except Jaemin and his promise to protect Jisung. Donghyuck can burn in fire for all he cares, it’s one step closer to victory for Chenle if he does.

He’s turning his heel when another fireball explodes and Donghyuck runs past him — his mind apparently changed.

“What happened to Jeno?” Chenle shouts. Donghyuck turns to him with a grimace.

“I’ll find him later.”

More explosions. A bombing run, the bone dry trees serving like tinder. There’s a moment where they’re both running and a burning tree collapses in front of them and Chenle doesn’t stop — he just leaps over it, using his trident as a vault and landing neatly on his feet. Donghyuck follows him, the edge of his trousers catching fire and then being put out as he lands in a roll, crashing into the dirt and using his momentum to spring back up and keep moving.

There’s sweat pouring down Chenle’s face and he’s disoriented, flames coming at him from every direction, every attempt to make it out of the brushline thwarted by a wall of fire that seems to shift and corral him back towards the heart of the forest.

He wants to scream — tell the Gamemakers to let him out — but he knows it’s just playing into their hands. He dives left to avoid a branch falling on his head and trips over a vine, catching himself again with his trident, climbing to his feet with Donghyuck right behind him. They burst through the clearing where he’s pretty sure Jeno had killed Seven A and another explosion goes off — something bigger than the columns, something that reminds him of dynamite dropped into a pool. Deep, booming. The cannon goes off almost immediately afterwards and Donghyuck screams, wheeling around and shouting Jeno’s name.

“It’s not him!” Chenle says. He has no idea if it is — only that the explosion was almost certainly the fire catching up to the explosives he'd buried — but really he wants Donghyuck to keep moving. The smoke is already drifting over them and his lungs burn, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, head beginning to spin.

If it is you can’t help anyway.

It feels like an eternity before they break through the treeline — before they don’t run into another wall of fire. Chenle collapses in the mud and Donghyuck spills out after him, coughing and spluttering, soot sprayed across his face like he’d stuck his head down a chimney.

“It’s okay,” Chenle says, his voice a rough rasp. “It’s okay.”

The forest burns. Explosions still go off in the distance, but whatever the Gamemakers plan was, it seems to have been realised — Chenle and Donghyuck are left alone, and the treeline near them remains unburnt, swaying gently in the wind.

Someone comes. They hear the branches breaking underfoot, the cough of human lungs filled with smoke. Donghyuck is on his feet in an instant and Chenle isn’t far behind, one hand on his trident, the other on the hilt of a charcoal covered knife. He might have been burned, but it doesn’t mean he’s not ready to kill.

The trees move, brushes shaking. Ragged panting. A shadow appears, a figure looming towards them, breaking out of the forest, stumbling across the land. Covered in soot, weapon in hand, some they both know well, and Donghyuck speaks first, opening his mouth and yelling —

“Mark Lee.”

He’s sitting at the river’s edge, back to them. The water is still churning, and the sun is setting — a bruised red like molten glass, no doubt coloured by the embers drifting in the air.

“Mark fucking Lee,” Donghyuck repeats, muttering. He’d been close to them, apparently. Maybe an hour’s walk, caught in the same firestorm. He hadn’t seen Jeno, he’d said — nor Jaemin or Jisung — but he was happy to see Donghyuck. That same earnest smile, a boy next door hopefulness. His scythe is stained black, but he’s in good health otherwise. He shares his water with them, refilling his canteen twice and using two water purification tablets to make sure they’re both not thirsty before he walks down to the river’s edge.

He’s been there for almost half an hour now — occasionally looking back to give Donghyuck a smile.

“You can go and kiss him, you know,” Chenle teases. Everything is painted bloody red by the sunset — including the glower Donghyuck shoots him. “Or not,” he adds. “You know, whatever. You just seemed to like him.”

“I’m not putting myself in stabbing range of Mark Lee,” Donghyuck says. He breathes out. “I don’t fucking trust him.”

“How could you not trust him?”

Chenle glances back at where Mark is absorbing the last rays of the sun’s warmth. He looks like a big cat — eyes shut, serene smile on his face.

“I know how to hide a knife behind a smile,” Donghyuck says. “Maybe you don’t — but trust me. He’s got a whole mouthful of weapons.”

The cannon is for Jeno. It feels strange seeing him in the sky — million dollar smile, eyes folded up into crescents — and knowing it’s the last time they’ll ever see his face. Mark gasps when he appears and goes to apologise to Donghyuck, but Donghyuck pulls away from him. He picks up his mace, and for a mad second Chenle thinks he’s about to hit Mark — but instead he walks into the forest and starts to scream.

Chenle doesn’t trust the woods to shield him, but he doesn’t trust Donghyuck either, and he figures it’s better to sleep up a tree than on the ground.

If he can even sleep at all.

It’s fitful. He wakes all through the night — moonlight in his eyes, a panicked deer running around the base of the tree. A steady thud he knows is Donghyuck. Another thing he knows is Donghyuck, a hurried murmur. A conversation with himself, carried on the wind. He’s whispering Jeno’s name. It dips in and out, and there’s the crack of branches.

Chenle can’t see him, but he can hear him. Walking towards him. Something dragging along the forest floor — his mace, maybe.

“Twelve years.” A hiss, a snake in the grass. “Lee Jeno. I waited twelve years.”

He stops at the base of the tree and Chenle holds his breath. Donghyuck doesn’t know where he is — he’d made sure to cover his tracks — but Chenle knows he’s smart enough to look up, surely.

“A punishment fit for a criminal.”

Chenle stuffs his fist into his mouth to muffle the squeak that threatens to come out as Donghyuck slams his mace into the trunk of the tree. His heart jumps into his throat and he prays the moon stays behind the clouds. He prays for the shadows to protect him.

“Just you wait,” Donghyuck says. He lingers for a second longer, saying something in a language Chenle doesn’t understand — and then he’s gone.

It takes almost an hour for him to fall asleep again, but thankfully Donghyuck doesn’t come back.

Thud.

Like a swollen net slammed against the concrete docks. Wet. Thick.

Thud.

The sunlight is blinding, streaking through the treetops and bouncing off the glossy leaves.

Thud.

Chenle remembers where he is.

His trident is in his hands and he’s tumbling out of the tree, landing on his feet and sprinting towards the sound — but by then it’s far too late.

Thud.

Donghyuck’s back is to him, crouched over something on the ground. At his feet there’s a scythe, and Chenle realises with a sickening clarity what that something is.

Thud.

What it was.

There's nothing left of Mark Lee. Just blood. Just a body his family will never see again. Chenle gasps, and Donghyuck looks up at him, eyes like flecks of bone amongst the sheen of crimson he wears over his cheeks. He spits onto the ground, casually, like he didn't just turn the face of a boy whose bed he'd shared into pulp. His mace shines wet in the blinding sunlight and the smell is sickening, thick in Chenle's nostrils like curdled milk.

Donghyuck wipes the blood — he wipes Mark Lee — across the dirt, and grins.

"Sorry. I called first dibs."

It's by the grace of his athleticism — slippery as a fucking fish — that Chenle parries the blow with the shaft of his trident. It shakes through him, aching in his teeth, his ears ringing like the aftermath of a breaker against the sea wall.

This is what he’s trained for. This is what his entire life has led up to. He doesn’t have time to collect himself — to even think. Before Chenle can spare a thought for Mark his body is reacting, thousands of hours of training coalesced into the way he springs backwards to avoid the next swing of Donghyuck's weapon, countering with an upwards thrust that connects with nothing.

Fighting is like a dance, he hears Trainer Kun say.

Chenle was never the best dancer, but he's always been a good fighter. Deceptive. Quick on his feet. His movements are fluid and his blows true, but all his training had been against rational humans. Against holograms and dummies, people armed with blunt swords. It hadn’t accounted for a Career gone mad with bloodlust bearing down on him, nor for the raw strength of Donghyuck's blows, the bulge of his biceps as he swings at Chenle.

Chenle jumps back, hopping like a penguin on the rocks, bringing his trident up and jabbing at him in warning. "You treat all your boyfriends like that?" he asks, tilting his head toward Mark’s body. Donghyuck growls, the flash of his teeth almost blinding white.

"He killed Jeno. He was mine."

He advances and Chenle matches him, taking a step backwards. At their side the river roars, still swollen from the Gamemakers' flood, water churning with debris and discarded logs. The dust kicks into the air and layered on the blood — god, Chenle's had some vicious kills, but Donghyuck had turned Mark into a red paste — there's the scent of smoke, thick and acrid in his dry throat.

He doesn't have time to make another retort. Donghyuck charges and swings, and Chenle’s concentration goes into reading his body, allowing him to parry, his muscles screaming as he catches the head of his mace in the prongs of his trident. Blood drips onto the dirt and Chenle pushes back, kicking out and missing Donghyuck’s shin by an inch. He disengages with a shout, moving parallel with the river. Normally he’d chance his luck in the water but the flood had been vicious — he’s sure he’d end up impaled on a broken branch if he dived in.

Still. Maybe better than being smashed into the dirt.

“Mine,” Donghyuck repeats. It’s like he’s possessed, voice low and snarling, stalking closer to Chenle, circling him so the sun is at their sides.

Chenle wishes he’d practiced with knives more. He’s much better with a bow, but he hadn’t had much of a choice at the Cornucopia — he’d assumed the bow would be given to Donghyuck, and there were enough knives scattered around to arm a warehouse full of workers in Four. As it is, now, he’s not sure he can get his hand around the hilt of a knife fast enough to stick Donghyuck in the throat before he gets on top of him. He runs through his options in a fraction of a second — there’s not enough room to throw his trident, but maybe it’s his best choice — he knows he can’t beat Donghyuck hand to hand.

Donghyuck charges. It’s a feint — a good one, a double bluff that Chenle catches at the last second. He spins around, sliding back and slamming the butt of his trident into Donghyuck’s mouth, going to shoulder check him and instead finding his weapon ripped from his hands as Donghyuck discards his mace to grab his trident by the prongs, slicing open his hands and throwing it onto the ground. He sweeps Chenle’s feet out from under him and Chenle hits the dirt with a thud, Donghyuck’s weight crashing into him and pinning him down.

The impact knocks the air from his lungs, but there’s no time to dwell — there’s no time to think about how every part of him hurts. He grabs Donghyuck and tries to throw him off, bringing his knee up to slam into Donghyuck’s crotch, causing him to screech and claw at him, blood pouring from his sliced palms smearing across his jacket. Chenle yells, thrashing, locking his legs around Donghyuck’s waist and attempting to roll him over.

Donghyuck is strong. Far stronger than Chenle had anticipated. In a year’s time — when most of the trainees started on steroid programs — Chenle might have been able to beat him, but he quickly realises right now there’s no way he can outdo Donghyuck in pure physical strength. Not when he’s underneath him like this, still winded from being knocked off his feet.

It’s impossible to get purchase on Donghyuck’s wrists — there’s so much blood pouring from his palms it’s like trying to grab a greased wharf rat, and Chenle squirms and kicks, spitting in Donghyuck’s face as Donghyuck tries to wrap his hands around his throat. He’s so fucking heavy — so fucking strong — and Chenle gives up on Donghyuck’s hands and instead goes for his eyes.

He’d watched Junhui’s Games. He’d seen the way he’d dug his thumbs into his partner’s eye sockets — the amount of blood that had resulted. What he hadn’t expected was the way it felt to gouge someone’s eyes, the sheer pressure as he scrambles for purchase on Donghyuck’s face, mixing his own blood with Mark’s as he claws at his cheeks and tries to fit his thumbs into his eye sockets.

Donghyuck’s scream is unholy. He slams his forehead into Chenle’s skull and there’s a tremendous crack — stars exploding across his vision, his entire brain feeling like he’d been thrown into a washing machine and set on high. He’s dizzy, head spinning, every part of him on fire. His vision spots with colours but through it he can see that one of Donghyuck’s eyes is bleeding, and he can hear that he’s still yelling — and this time Chenle isn’t fast enough.

On the ground, at least, there’s not enough space for Donghyuck to break his neck. Instead his hands close around Chenle’s throat and Chenle tries to scream. Donghyuck is sitting on his chest and his lungs feel like they're collapsing. He can’t move, only grab at him, trying to peel him off. His nails score furrows down Donghyuck’s arms, blood on blood on blood, raw skin exposed to the scorching sunlight. Pinpoints of black break out across his vision and Chenle clutches at Donghyuck’s hands, everything narrowing in like a camera shutter closing. His heartbeat explodes in his chest, rats trapped in a boiling bucket, clawing at his ribcage as they try to get out, and then —

Donghyuck’s tongue bursts out of his neck, glittering with blood that it spits across Chenle’s face. His eyes go wide and he coughs, red spittle dribbling between his lips, body jerking on top of him.

The colour returns to the world, air rushing into Chenle’s burning lungs. He can breathe. Holy shit, he can breathe.

Donghyuck’s tongue retreats back into his throat and his body goes slack, folding in on itself and becoming a dead weight as he flops down on top of Chenle. Chenle shoves at him and he finds he falls off him with ease, ragdolling onto the dirt with a soft thud.

Everything smells like iron. Chenle can feel the blood splattered all over his skin, sticky as it had been when he’d worked in the factory gutting the fish. The sun is bright white and there’s a tremendous boom in the background, something like wood snapping, like an engine exploding.

Something like — a cannon.

“Chenle?”

Hands on his face — on his chest. A gentle touch, a face shrouded in shadow. Unsticking the hair from his forehead, fingers pressing against the side of his neck. Not choking. Not stealing life — finding it.

Chenle groans, trying to draw air into his burning lungs.

“Chenle? Are you okay?”

A second. Two. Breathe in, breathe out. The world swims into focus. Jisung’s eyes are wide and he’s holding a sword in his hand — a sword that drips blood onto the dirt.

“I’m alive,” Chenle says. “Am I alive?”

Jisung smiles, relief flooding his features. “You’re alive.”

He holds out his hand and Chenle takes it, letting him pull him to his feet. His heart rattles in his ribcage and they don’t say anything — they just stare, panting. Chenle must be soaked in blood — blood and dirt — but it doesn’t seem to matter. Not to Jisung. His hair is matted and wet and everything stinks to hell and back, and Jisung wraps his hand around the back of his neck as he pulls him in for a kiss, the roar of the river filling Chenle’s ears.

A kiss of life, dripping with death.

Jisung leads him to the river and — after cutting Donghyuck’s jacket into scraps with his sword — binds the cut on his arm and mops the blood from his face. The sun is hot and bright and it’s like killing Donghyuck was the sacrifice they needed to appease the river. Like his blood had satisfied the storm, quieting the waters and causing them to recede down the banks.

“Do you—” Jisung coughs. “Do you want to wash your clothes?”

“I’m going to stink in about a day if I don’t.”

Jisung loops his arm around his shoulder — making to help him — which Chenle shrugs off. “It’s fine,” he says, wading into the water, leaning on his trident and trying not to wince every time he has to put weight on his ankle. It’s not sprained or torn — just bruised — but the kick of Donghyuck’s heel had landed true and it still hurts like hell.

“You sure?”

“Trust me,” Chenle says. He almost feels more secure in the water than he does on land — confident that the only other tribute who could even catch him if he was swimming is the other boy from Four.

The river is cool, a beautiful contrast to the baked dirt and scorching sunlight. Around him a puddle of red rises in the water, and as he scrubs at his clothes it darkens, dirt and soot emptying itself into the clean waters. He digs at the blood flaked under his nails, scratches at the mud caked on his elbows. On the shore Jisung washes his jacket for him, and as Chenle strips off his shirt and dips it into the water he can feel Jisung’s eyes on him, burning a hole into his back.

He knows what he sees. Scars. In one of the training simulations Chenle had been caught in a fish trap — had his skin torn open and almost caused a feeding frenzy before he’d managed to wrench himself free of the net and break the surface. They’re still angry and red — a year old at most. Another reminder of how much the training program had cost him — of how much he’d put himself through to be here. He deserves the bracelet on his wrist just as much as any Eighteen would.

The water gurgles. Chenle turns, facing into the sunshine, letting it wash over him for a second before diving under the surface.

It’s like coming home. Like slipping through a portal into a different world, the soft fingers of the current caressing his limbs like a lover. The light filters down from above and Chenle runs his hands through his hair, working out the mats and chunks of blood in an almost zen like manner.

It takes a while, Chenle both being meticulous and also genuinely enjoying being back in the water. By the time he’s done the river has washed all the blood downstream, and he climbs out of the water feeling like a new person — reborn, almost, water dripping from his skin as he throws his sopping wet shirt at Jisung. It smacks him in the face and Jisung gives him a frown as he pulls it off and hangs it over his arm.

He doesn’t miss his eyes on him, something almost imperceptibly dark that fades when his gaze flicks back up to Chenle’s face.

“Are you good?” he asks.

“I think so,” Chenle says. He’s still leaning on his trident, and this time when Jisung loops Chenle’s arm over his shoulder he doesn’t shrug it off — he leans his weight on him and lets him carry him, the two of them retreating back through the woods, through the unburned trees until they’re far enough in that Chenle feels confident collapsing against a tree.

“How do you feel?” Jisung asks, helping lower him down then hanging his jacket up on a branch bleached white by the sun.

“Sore,” Chenle answers. His head is spinning, adrenaline still sparkling in his veins. It’s not the first brush with death he’s had — in one of the swimming trials he’d almost drowned when his sparring partner had held him under — but it’s perhaps the first time when he’d thought he might actually die. When he’d almost been sure of it. That cannon could have been for him.

He almost feels like it should have been.

Jisung smiles. “You’re okay now. You think you can stay here while I cover our tracks?”

“Pretty sure I could gut half the arena sitting down,” Chenle says. He still has his trident — stuck blade down in the dirt beside him. It’s dirty and there’s a bit of blood on the grip, but otherwise it’s pristine. His lifeline.

“Don’t get cocky,” Jisung says. He grins at him. “Do you want to set up a call? Incase you get in trouble?”

“Like what? There’s no birds around to mimic.”

It’s something else that disturbs him about this arena. It’s so fucking quiet. No birdsong, just the crack of the branches in the wind. Just their own breath — their own heartbeats.

“I mean, what about a whistle?” He cups his hands around his mouth and lets out a soft whistle, gesturing to Chenle to copy him. “Like that, but louder.”

Chenle mimics the sound easily. It’s high and sharp, he knows it will carry far on the flat ground. “Okay?”

Jisung nods. “Just—” he cups his hands around his mouth again “—if you’re in trouble. I’ll try to come back as soon as possible. Would kind of fucking suck if after all this you died now, right?”

He’s trying to play it off as a joke, but it comes out softer, and Chenle’s heart swells.

He feels stupid — he feels strange. Heart pumping, body alight. They’re both made to kill, but here they are. They’re both made to kill, and Jisung could have killed him. There was no reason for him to save Chenle. Jaemin is still out there — his greatest ally. Jisung could have driven his sword through Chenle’s throat when he was on the ground, but he didn’t, and Chenle doesn’t know what to do with that information.

He could have taken one more step towards victory, but instead he chose to extend his hand to Chenle and save him.

The day passes slowly. Chenle dips in and out of sleep, woken by the occasional strong gust of wind that causes the branches above his head to crack and bend. The daylight lasts forever, and by the time Jisung comes back his clothes are dry enough to pull on again. Jisung gets Chenle to show him how to make the net traps they’d set up at the lakeside, and goes about setting up camp, constantly doubling back to poke his head out from behind tree trunks and meet eyes with Chenle.

“I’m not going to disappear,” Chenle says, as Jisung reappears for the uptenth time.

“I lost you for a day last time and you almost died,” Jisung says. “How did you even pass your training?”

“Technically I didn’t,” Chenle says. Jisung frowns.

“Shit. I suppose you’re right.”

There's a beat of silence — an awkward reminder that if Chenle's reaping had gone right he wouldn't even be here.

“That’s an unfair assessment," Chenle continues, trying to lighten the suddenly stifling air. "I would encourage you to try to beat an absolutely insane One in hand to hand combat by yourself. I didn’t expect him to disarm me by grabbing my blade.”

“Lucky for you I was there,” Jisung says, crouching down beside the tree Chenle is leaning on and reaching out to brush his hair from his eyes. The gesture is so gentle Chenle can’t help but shiver — it’s something that has no place here.

Is Jisung playing him? His mind keeps looping back to the river bank — to the lakeshore. To all the times Jisung hadn't flinched when Chenle had approached him, like the sound of his footsteps was something familiar to Jisung. Something he’d heard and considered safe.

All the times Jisung has bared himself to Chenle, left his weapons discarded and held him against him, a wolf showing its neck.

If he’s acting, it’s a hell of a job.

If he’s acting, then Chenle allows himself this moment. To close his eyes and pretend, somehow, that there’s some other outcome to this.

If he’s acting then Chenle can act, too.

Night comes, and so does the music, accompanied by the faces of the fallen in the sky staring them down. First is Donghyuck — that devil-may-care grin displayed alongside his District crest — then Mark, looking slightly embarrassed, his sheepish smile making something tug in Chenle's heart.

There must be a lot of upset sponsors right now. They always liked the boyish ones, the ones who looked like they could be plucked from the streets and rescued. Mark Lee played right into that, and it’s no wonder his odds had been so high.

The saviour complex was sickening, but all of them were taught to play into it. Appealing to the sponsors wasn’t just about your chances of winning. It was about being desirable.

Look sweet. Look cute. Childish innocence, just enough that they could impose whatever image they wanted on you. Kill with efficiency.

Above all — don't enjoy it.

Whoops.

"Feels weird seeing them up there," Jisung says. He's holding both his swords, the tips of their chlorophyll stained blades pointed towards the dirt. A reaper in the night, ready for combat. “I don’t think it’s sunk in that they’re gone yet.”

“You’re the one who stuck your sword through his throat.”

“It just feels like another round of training.” He sounds like he’s drifting, disconnecting from reality. Fading out, like static on a radio.

“How many human kills did you do?” Chenle asks, hesitant. “In Two?”

There’s a pause. The breeze curls around them, branches whispering secrets. He wonders if the cameras are on them right now. Probably not. The existence of the Academy was an open secret, but there’s a difference between an open secret and tributes speaking about their training. There’s a further difference between speaking about their training and speaking about their kill tests.

No need to confirm that a high enough crime in District Two might make you a trainee’s next victim.

“Three,” Jisung says. He takes a breath, glancing at Chenle. Dark eyes swirling, a whirlpool contained within. “Do you have human kills?”

“Nine,” Chenle says. An answer and a challenge, wrapped into one.

The Academy’s Kill Room looks more like a butcher’s floor — built entirely from concrete, grate set in the center of the floor, electronic cage in the corner, no windows, just the faint boom of the waves shattering on the rocks below. When it was your turn they’d take you from class one day and blindfold you, lead you there, put a sword in your hand (or a trident, or a knife, or whatever specialisation you were focusing on at the time) and leave the rest to the implications.

It’s amazing what the human psyche does when it realises it’s about to die. Amazing the sheer strength that a starving criminal might show when they’re told to fight for their freedom.

Amazing too, how hard it is to kill someone. You can train for years on the finer weak points of the human body and still take five stabs to plant a knife in the carotid artery because you didn't account for your target to squirm and fight.

Nine in the kill room, each bloodier than the last. Each of them more of Chenle giving himself over — to becoming what they’d always wanted him to be. What he was always meant to be.

Nine in the kill room. One on the training room floor. Three in the arena.

No more hesitation.

Jisung is still staring at him. The moon is swallowed by the clouds and everything is washed out, deep sea blue, shadow on shadow, pale skin and silver blades, hell on their heels.

“I’ll take first watch,” he says, though it takes a second longer for him to move. Electricity sparks between them, and Chenle tilts his head to the side.

“Take care of yourself.”

He’s still feeling this out. They both are. They don’t know where the boundaries are — they don’t know the lay of the land of each other’s hearts. All their rules are written with their lips — scoured in their skin in a script they don’t know. A language they write as they move.

A language they write as they kill.

“Yeah,” Jisung says. “Of course.”

Despite the rest he’d caught in the daytime Chenle falls asleep almost instantly, and when he’s woken again it’s not by the forest, but by Jisung.

They trade watches. Jisung crawls into his sleeping bag and Chenle finds his ankle is a lot less sore — though he still limps a little as he makes his way through the forest, climbing into the twisted remains of a tree and scaling its branches with less grace than Jaemin had managed.

The stars have come out — bold and bright, studded diamonds in an inkpot black sky, and the moon is thick through the canopy, painting everything silvery pale. It’s like a blanket thrown over the forest, dripping down the tree trunks and pooling on the dry dirt — a blanket without warmth.

Chenle pulls his jacket close to his body and thinks of the sea.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep again. He only knows that when he wakes up everything is grey and foggy and there’s dew on the branches — moisture that hangs in the air like a brewing rainstorm. The forest is no longer dark — it’s filled with the shadows of the trees, branches like limbs reaching out to him, and when he drops back to the ground dead leaves crack beneath his heels.

He checks the traps first. His ankle throbs but a night of rest had done him good — the limp is gone, just a ghost of pain. A ghost of Donghyuck, hanging around his shoulders. If Chenle shuts his eyes he can still see him — white eyes, white teeth, blood splattered across his uncommonly handsome features. So much beauty, warped into something ugly.

In Donghyuck’s face he thinks he’d seen the reaper.

Jisung had, incredibly, set up the traps pretty well. The camouflage isn’t half bad, so much so that Chenle almost misses one — and he considers giving props to Two for how good their training must have been. Maybe they weren't just meatheads after all.

Or maybe Jisung is special.

"Traps are clear," Chenle says, when he gets back to their camp to find Jisung awake, sharpening one of his butterfly swords on a whetstone. "Where are we going?"

Jisung doesn’t look up. "We're not going anywhere until you're healed.”

“I’m healed.” Chenle sticks his trident back down in the ground. “I don’t like it here. You can stay if you want, but I’m going.”

That gets his attention. “You were limping yesterday.”

“And I’m fine now.”

Jisung purses his lips. If Chenle knew him better he thinks he’d be able to read the flipbook of emotions that flash across his face — but as it is, only a few weeks of experience behind him — he doesn’t understand. He just knows there’s something — openness, confusion, an internal war that calls a ceasefire when he looks up at Chenle and nods.

Something Chenle wished he had the time to decode.

“Okay,” Jisung agrees. “Let’s go.”

The break out of the treeline as the sun rises, gold beams hanging in the fog, iridescent glint of the dew on the sparse grass. The river is quiet, gurgling along, and the dirt is dry and hard — coppery red turning to desert sand on the other side of the river.

He wonders what’s out there. The grassland seems to stretch on as far as the eye can see, pale green blades swaying in the wind like an assembly of dancers, unbroken and quiet. He wonders how big the arena is. Some of them had been giant — miles on miles on miles, the Gamemakers forced to play dirty just to get the tributes to fight each other. He figures from the fireballs and the swollen river this one fell on that side of the spectrum — that they were being herded back towards the Cornucopia.

No point in a show without action.

They pass a dark patch of dirt, and it’s only when Chenle sees Mark’s scythe discarded on the ground does he realise it’s a bloodstain. Two of them. One for Donghyuck, smeared across the dirt, the other for Mark, soaked deep within the cracks. He hadn’t noticed before, but now he can see a trail leading out from the treeline — the furrows of a body being dragged along the dirt.

“Wait,” Chenle says. Jisung glances at him, but he doesn’t say anything, he just stands patiently as Chenle picks up Mark’s scythe and tosses it into the river.

It’s a beautiful weapon. Blade wicked, handle slightly curved. The balance is like nothing Chenle’s ever held before, and though he doubts any of the other tributes could use it properly, he figures it’s best to dispose of it anyway. It’s insurance, less of a chance to wake up to a blade in his back.

“You good?” Jisung asks. Chenle glances back at the bloodstains — two lives wiped off the face of the Earth. Two sacrifices in the name of Panem.

“Yeah,” he says. The dirt crunches beneath his heel, and everything is sunbaked and muddy. “I’m good.”

Somewhere after the ground starts to slope upwards — as the forest thickens and becomes fuller, green leaves sprouting from the branches, wildflowers crushed under their feet — the birdsong returns, too. Chenle finds himself humming it, whistling under his breath and trying to place the tune.

A lullaby, maybe.

“What happened?” Jisung asks. The river has turned to a stream and forked into two, lines of the flood marked by the half dried mud on the banks.

Chenle doesn’t answer. He just waits, knowing Jisung will pick up the second half of the conversation eventually. And sure enough, after a chorus of birdsong reaches its crescendo — the rest of the question comes.

“Did Mark kill Jeno?”

“I don’t know,” Chenle says. Jisung gives him a look — as if to ask ‘really?’. “We lost him in the fire,” Chenle explains. The memory is blurred — smudged like he’s viewing it through a heat haze. Like it’s made of parchment and the wildfire had burnt half of it to ash. “Donghyuck certainly seemed to think he did.”

“He didn’t say anything to you?”

“He didn’t even mention Jeno. Donghyuck didn’t ask him, but he looked surprised enough when we saw him amongst the fallen that night.”

“Jaemin liked Jeno.”

“I know. It was pretty obvious.”

“He’ll be upset he died.”

He doesn’t know what the point of this is. Small talk? Jisung is certainly the type — but not in the Games. They’re all different people here, the ultimate realisation of a lifetime of training. A fine tuned instrument put through its final test — a concerto the whole world is watching.

Or something like that. Chenle never had time for music. Only the sea shanties everyone in Four knew. Singing in the factories as they gut the fish, their tiny bones breaking under the jagged edge of their knives. Singing on the boats, hauling in the catch.

The ocean, singing back to him as he tumbled beneath the waves.

“Are you upset?” Chenle asks.

Jisung looks up at him. Sweat shines on his forehead, and he has both his swords in his hands, grip loose. It’d take only a fraction of a second for Chenle to kill him — if he wanted to. A swing of his trident to open him up and paint the dirt in his blood.

It’d be good for the cameras. A perfect betrayal. Young lovers, lost in the violence of the Games. Chenle allows himself to imagine it for a second — what would follow. The thud of the cannon. The swing of his trident. Body after body after body, just obstacles in his way to the finish line. To realising the only dream he'd ever been allowed to have.

Chenle screws his eyes shut, wiping the thought from his mind. Best not to get ahead of himself.

“No, I don’t think so. I liked Jeno, though.”

Would Chenle be upset if Jisung died?

The thought cuts through him — a little too raw. A knife in the gut, twisting again as he imagines Jisung collapsing in his arms, blood draining from his face.

Jisung squeaks as Chenle kisses him, stiffening under his palm then relaxing at the clatter of Chenle dropping his trident to the ground.

“What’re you doing?” Jisung murmurs, pulling back ever so slightly, breath hot against Chenle’s lips.

“Whatever I want.”

The sun is low when the Cornucopia appears on the horizon — a black dot growing out of the dripping gold falling down from the heavens. The sunset drapes itself over the grassland and the two of them stop well out of view, crouching down behind a clump of trees. There’s a fair amount of open ground between where they are and the forest that wraps around the back side of the Cornucopia, and neither of them want to risk being caught out in the daylight. Better to wait until it’s darker.

“There,” Chenle murmurs. A glint on the horizon — the setting sun hitting metal. A hammer on a burning blade, sparks flying.

Again. Flashes like all the camera shutters going off. In that second Chenle is thrown back to when he’d stepped off the train — how easy it had been to smile for the Capitol citizens calling his name. How easy it had been to stand up and wave, sheepish smile, a shyness that was so natural to him. Slipping into the person they’d always wanted him to be — letting them see what they wanted to see.

“I see it,” Jisung says. Both their weapons are held low, hidden by the grass. “On sundown, right?”

“Yeah,” Chenle breathes out. He can already feel the shift — the calmness that comes before battle. Heart rate steady, his entire vision sharpening. An apex predator ready for the hunt.

“How many do you think?”

“Three?” Chenle guesses. There aren’t many of them left. It’s possible they’ve all allied, but Chenle doubts it. The outer districts were panicky creatures, prone to paranoia and turning on each other at the slightest moment. Put too many of them in one place and no doubt a fight would break out.

A point like the Cornucopia, though. It can’t just be one or two. They’d need multiple to defend it — to even try taking it. Should be a good fight.

Darkness falls quickly — as if the sunset was accelerated. They leave their packs and sleeping bags behind, hiding then in the brush, taking only their weapons with them. The stars dot the sky, one by one, and Jisung presses a kiss to his lips. A brewing anticipation. A promise.

It feels like the world is holding its breath when he and Jisung steal across the open ground, stalking through the grass like lions on a prideland. He knows all of Panem is watching, glances up to the sky and winks. He hasn’t forgotten this is all a show — that it never hurts to have as many hands as possible to lend him aid in climbing to the top.

There’s a single lookout. Six A. The boy Chenle had hit in the shoulder. Clearly he’d found some kind of medkit — he’s holding a sword, and though his stance is awful it isn’t because of injury. If Chenle hadn’t struck the blow himself he’d hardly believe it had happened.

They slip into the woods, trail silent. The air is still, no hint of a breeze tonight, just a chill that hangs off their shoulders. There are no traps set up, and it’s laughably easy to get close to the camp — the two of them ending up crouched in the scrubline together.

There’s no words exchanged. There’s no need to. They just make eye contact and nod. A soft rustle as Jisung draws his swords. Chenle readies his trident, and the two of them burst from the bushes at the same time.

The second they break into the open there’s a great noise — a terrible screech like a wounded animal. Like a tripwire broken — an alarm bell sounding. There’s shouts from the camp and when he glances at Jisung, running low to the ground on his left he just shrugs, eyes wide.

It doesn’t matter now.

Chenle will never get tired of this. He’ll never give it up for as long as he lives. The bloodlust, the fire that rises into his veins. He rounds the side of the Cornucopia with his weapon raised and catches the girl there by surprise.

It’s an easy kill. Sharp as ever, blood spilling across the dirt as he runs her through. A practiced ease, a simplicity. The weapon is just an extension of his body, as it’s always been. This is how it is in Four. You are the trident — you are the ocean. Quick as water, vaulting over her body even as it’s still collapsing onto the ground.

The cannon goes off. The blood is sticky under his heel, slippery like soap suds. He can smell it and he breathes deep, laughter bubbling from between his lips.

This is what he was made for.

Two more in the Cornucopia. One of them is holding Donghyuck’s (never claimed) bow, and Chenle is forced to dive to dodge the arrow that comes whistling past his head.

He hits the ground with ease, rolling back onto his feet and picking up a discarded backpack to throw towards the archer as he ducks around the side of the Cornucopia for shelter. Behind him he can hear the clash of steel on steel — he chances a glance back to see Jisung fighting with Six A, swords glimmering as he rounds on him. In a second it’s over — Jisung feints, diving right and striking with his left hand, his blade opening up the boy’s soft stomach.

“There’s an archer,” Chenle shouts, crouching behind the Cornucopia. He slams the metal wall with the butt of his trident — once, twice, hopefully distracting them enough that they don’t notice Jisung is standing in open ground right now.

It doesn’t matter. Jisung hits the dirt the second Chenle speaks, kicking the sword away from Six A, who’s somehow still alive (though probably not for long). An arrow goes whistling towards his general direction and Chenle curses. There’s no way he can move right now. He slams the butt of his trident against the Cornucopia again and takes off, dirt crunching beneath his feet as he does another loop.

He’s not sure who’s more surprised to see who — him or Ten A. They both stop for a second, weapons raised, eyes wide, before the entire world lurches into motion again, the battle slamming into both of them as the cannon goes off.

Six A down.

Ten A is big. Chenle hadn’t noticed it in the Training Center, but up close it’s obvious. He’s holding a sword in one hand and a makeshift shield in another, a part of one of the weapons stands ripped off and somehow secured to his arm, and he towers over him. Six foot five, maybe taller. When he moves it’s a charge, head down like a bull, shield held out in front of him, and Chenle is thankful again for the watery grace that seems to inhabit his bones — for the way he dances out of his reach.

“C’mon,” he taunts, twirling his trident before widening his stance again. He’s fought people like this before — convicted dockhands, sailors who worked hauling in the nets on the fishing boats. Great hulking creatures with no room in their brains for anything else except their work.

This time it’s not a charge. It’s a chase. A roar from Ten A, and Chenle has to sprint — he has no choice. Dancing backwards, stepping in the puddle of blood spilling from Twelve A’s body. Almost slipping, but finding his feet again.

This is not a repeat of Donghyuck. Chenle is faster than Ten A — he’s smarter, too.

At least he thinks he is.

The arrow misses him by an inch — another stroke of impossible luck. Chenle swings around and catches the edge of Ten A’s shield with a prong of his trident, but when he tries to rip it from his arm there’s no give — Ten A just yanks him back, almost pulling him off his feet before he manages to disentangle himself. Chenle spins, stumbling backwards, then he runs.

He can hear Ten A’s feet on the ground — the lumbering thud of his pace, his breath harsh. Chenle tucks his trident against his side and frees one of the knives from his belt.

Breathe in.

The hilt fits perfectly into his palm. It might have been made for Jaemin, but it suits him all the same. A beautiful balance, long blade made for throwing.

He turns. Ten A is a few meters behind him, far slower than Chenle. If he keeps running he could easily escape him, but that would mean leaving Jisung behind, and in that second Chenle knows there’s no way he can do that. Not right now.

Breathe out.

Death has always been the answer, hasn’t it? The song of battle, the way his body moves before he thinks. He’ll never be rid of this. Why would he want to be?

The knife whizzes through the air, embedding itself in Ten A’s shield. He lowers his guard for a second and grins, but Chenle isn’t stupid. He’d hit exactly where he’d wanted to, and this time when he throws again — one, two — he’s rewarded with the sound of them connecting with flesh. It’s beautiful, but Ten A’s roar is even more gorgeous — music to Chenle’s ears. He’s still charging, but Chenle knows how this ends now.

Weapon up. A step to the side. Swing, dodge. The trident has always been him — it’s like when he rips open Ten A’s side with the tip of the blades it’s his own teeth instead. He can taste the blood on his tongue and he can’t help but laugh, kicking Ten A in the back as he runs past and goring him straight through, leaning his body weight down on the shaft of the trident to drive the prongs into the dirt, pinning him to the ground.

Ten A screams.

Chenle doesn’t mind. He’s heard it all before. They always screamed before you gut them — squealed like pigs to the slaughter.

He pulls his last knife from his belt, panting, and crouches down.

That’s the thing they never tell you in the Academy. Using a knife is hard. The force of a trident is enough to open someone up — the length and weight of most swords contributing to the ease they cut through skin with.

But knives? Knives are just you. Just you and the flesh. The force it takes to stab someone to death is immense, and the ache doesn’t leave your muscles for hours after. It’s dirty — it’s bloody.

Every first kill is done with a knife. Working your way up. Stopping you from getting complacent. Be intimate — know that you’re ending a life. Put in the effort, then reap the rewards.

Killing Ten A is like going back to the start. Warm blood spills across Chenle’s hands, and he thinks if he closes his eyes the boom of the cannon sounds like the shattering of waves against the Academy walls.

The second cannon goes off seconds later. Chenle digs his heel into Ten A’s back and pulls his trident from his body, rejoining Jisung at the mouth of the Cornucopia.

“Do you think that was it?” Chenle asks. His vision distorts like a broken television, coloured outlines splitting across the blurry shapes cut out by the moonlight, reconvening with every camera shutter blink of his eyes. Flickering. Unsure. Like reality is collapsing around him, fixing itself up with every beat of his heart.

“Yeah. I don’t think there were any more.”

Jisung looks gorgeous, blood painted across his cheeks, swords dripping crimson. He wonders if he could kiss him. He wonders if Jisung would let him.

He wonders what it would taste like — just for a second.

Birdsong echoes from the forest, mingling with the steady sway of the grass, dull drip of blood falling from their weapons. Like raindrops in the winter.

“Not many left,” Chenle says, willing the awkward pause to shatter.

“No,” Jisung agrees. “Not many at all.”

There’s not much left at the Cornucopia. No food, a little bit of water. They share the last canteen together and organise the leftover supplies — some matches, makeshift rabbit snares, enough weapons to arm half a District. There’s a macabre kind of tree made out of all of the scythes bound together that’s been left at the back of the Cornucopia, and he and Jisung dress it in the clothes of the fallen, setting it up as a lookout while the two of them huddle inside.

They barely talk. He doesn’t know what else to say. He can feel Jisung’s eyes on him even in the darkness, and when he reaches out his fingers find his face — the slightest touch of stubble on his jaw.

Everything stinks like blood. Blood and mud, all the death Chenle had washed in the river stuck to him once again. This is who he is. This is who he’ll always be.

Jisung doesn’t taste like blood, but he can imagine it anyway. He can imagine how it would taste if Chenle stabbed him right now — if it all came flowing up his throat like the dam breaking open. Iron in his mouth, wet and viscous.

Only one of them can survive.

Still, why end it now? Why not enjoy it. Paint a narrative, something they’ll tell him afterwards.

He imagines it. Walking out onto the stage, all the lights glimmering around him, his suit the same deep blue as the waves. Raising his hands and waving, showing his canines. The pearl of District Four.

He sits in the interview chair and the microphone fits in his palm so easily. Just like his trident. He’s good at this. Born for the stage.

“How does it feel to win?”

Better than he could have ever imagined.

“How did it feel when you tore their throats out? Did you think about their families? Did you care?”

Chenle has never had a family. His life was traded for his mother’s — he was born into death.

“How was it to kill the boy you kissed in the Games?” they ask him. “How much did it hurt?”

In the distance he hears the storm crest the horizon.

“Do you miss him? Do you still dream about him? Do you remember the shape of his body?”

Sea water spills from his lips — dirty foam, poison spines that scratch the inside of his throat. He’s coughing, spluttering, and they’re still talking.

“What did it feel like for his lifeblood to leak against your fingers? Do you remember how he tasted? Do you remember how warm his skin was? The way he gasped when you ran your dirty hands through his hair? Do you remember the sound of his voice? Do you remember his eyes, how dark they looked? Do you remember swimming in the river while he watched over you like a guardian angel?”

There’s tears in Chenle’s eyes and a dark pool at his feet. He leans over and catches his own reflection and it’s streaked with blood — claw marks drawn down his cheeks, dark spittle foaming at his lips.

“Chenle,” the crowd chants. “Look at us.”

A camera shutter goes off.

“Will you ever stop thinking about killing people, Chenle?”

Four silver parachutes fall in the morning. Jisung is still asleep, curled into a ball under two layers of sleeping bags, clutching at his backpack like it’s a lifeline — but Chenle walks the perimeter, his mind restless.

They drop from the fog like ghosts. All for him. Glittering, brilliant. A gutting knife, curve in the blade wicked, glimmering in the sunlight. Arrows — a whole quiver full. They’re not the highest quality, but they’re still good. Barbed bone arrowheads, carbon fibre shafts. They want him to take the bow.

Those two are without messages. The third is from Yerim — seaweed bread, the same they’d feasted on every morning in the Academy. Chenle had never known Yerim very well by virtue of her seniority, but he remembers her when he was much younger. She’d sparred with him a few times — taught him how to use a bow. Her speciality had been thrown weapons — not the knives that Jaemin had favoured, but razor shurikens she’d unleashed with a deadly accuracy that was almost robotic. It had been beautiful watching her win last year, and when he picks up the bread he can feel her eyes on him. Cheering him on.

District Four has never had back to back winners, but Chenle did always like breaking the mould.

The last gift is from Junhui. It’s a tiny capsule, smaller than his fist, flat and oblong shaped, clicking open easily as he presses at the lock. Inside is a message — written in an old script that brings back memories he thought he’d painted out in shades of black. A mother he never had, old women singing in the market square. Characters scrawled in handwriting he can barely read.

I believe in you.

It’s a bracelet. There’s only two colours— a deep navy blue and a shimmering gold. The mark of a chosen volunteer.

He lifts it from the casing and fastens it around his wrist, pressing the paper message to his lips then tucking it inside his jacket, right over his still beating heart.

They can’t stay at the Cornucopia. That much is obvious. There’s no water and it’s difficult to defend — sound carrying for miles around. Chenle splits the bread with Jisung, who regards it apprehensively before taking a nibble, complaining a little about the salty favour then finishing it when Chenle offers to eat it instead. The fog clears quickly and by the time they set off — headed northwards towards a shimmer in the distance that Jisung insists is water — the air is warm again.

It’s to their fortune that it’s a cloudy day. There’s zero shelter in the grasslands and even through the clouds Chenle starts to sweat quickly, prompting him to stuff his jacket in his backpack as he walks.

The dirt turns soft and gritty, the grass drying out and thinning into patches that sprout from the ground like buried heads. The air is thicker, warmer, and it takes Chenle a while to realise why — though when it hits him it’s like being knocked over.

It’s salt. He can smell salt. Not only can he smell salt — he can hear the waves, the dull thud of breakers on the sand. He turns to Jisung, who grins at him, gums and all.

“Is that the sea?” Jisung asks. Chenle breathes deep.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it is.”

The ground slopes down, forming tiny sand dunes that run towards the ocean’s edge, littered with sea grass and nesting ducks that screech when they get near. Chenle shoots a few down with the bow he’d taken from the tribute in the Cornucopia and ties their legs together with fishing wire, securing them to his belt to be plucked later. In the far distance to their left he thinks he can see an inlet, and to the right a circle of rocks arcs far out into the water, jutting up in columns like sentinels overlooking the brilliant vista. As they climb down to the sand a flock of gulls rises into the sky and Chenle can't help but stop and watch, admiring it for a few precious seconds.

In some way or another it feels like coming home.

They wash the blood from their hands, replacing it with sand and salt. In the shade of the cliffs they gather enough driftwood to build a fire and Chenle shows Jisung how to pluck the birds, getting to work on setting up a spit to cook them. It’s a calming exercise, aided by the crash of the waves in the distance — rewarded by the way Jisung’s eyes light up when he bites into the meat.

He eats ravenously. Starving, like a tiger fed on scraps for all its life. Maybe Chenle’s imagining it but he swears he can see the colour return to his cheeks — a high red flush that hadn’t been present when he’d woke him in the morning.

“Feels like it’s been years since I’ve had real food,” Jisung says, juices dripping down his chin. He wipes them away with the back of his hand and takes another bite. “God, this is incredible.”

“You’re welcome,” Chenle says, grinning as Jisung tears away another strip with his teeth.

They finish eating and stamp out the embers, though they don’t move — not yet. They stay on the beach together, Jisung digging his toes into the sand, Chenle letting the breeze caress his face.

“It’s like it never ends,” Jisung says. Chenle reaches up to rub a spot of mud from his cheek, fine sand slipping through his fingers.

“It ends. Eventually. Did they teach you to swim in Two?”

“In the pool. Nothing with waves.” He sucks his breath in between his teeth. “What’s it like?”

Chenle pauses, staring out to where the waves glimmer with sunlight. How does he even describe it?

“It’s like breathing,” Chenle says. “I can’t imagine a life without it.”

“I wish you could teach me,” Jisung says.

Could. Another step closer to acknowledging the truth that hangs between them. Something that’s wormed its way into Chenle’s heart like a chip of glass — a fragment of an oyster shell, stinging every time he breathes.

“Yeah,” Chenle says. He digs his fingers into the soft sand, breathing in the brine and sunbaked heat. “Me too.”

“Do you think we were meant to meet?”

“What? Like fate?”

“Yeah. Or something like that.”

Chenle swallows, salt lingering on his tongue. “I never really thought about it.”

“Jaemin is like my brother,” Jisung says, careful. That same feeling out the edges of their relationship, like he’s blindly groping in the dark. “He’s all I’ve ever known. The only person who’s ever cared for me.”

“Plenty of people care for you,” Chenle says. He doesn’t know why he says it — there’s no need. Why should he comfort someone he’s going to kill? Why does it matter?

(Does he not want to admit the amount of his heart that Jisung takes up?)

“Not the way Jaemin does.”

The cameras are on them. He’s sure of it. District Two and their family act. He wonders how much of it is a lie — how much of the wistfulness that seems to haunt him is real.

“Not the way you do,” Jisung says.

Chenle glances up at him, but he’s not looking at Chenle.

He’s looking at the sea.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the length of the days in the arena. The sun crashes into the waves like a meteor impact, setting the water on fire for precious moments before darkness begins to swallow them whole. The tide is going out, seafoam silver, and they stay near the water as they travel — both for the ease of walking on the packed sand and for the hope that the waves will wash away their footprints.

Maybe it doesn’t matter at this point. There can't be that many people left to follow them.

The music starts — that same damn tune he’s come to hate. Faces of the dead watching over the Games, no words passing between them. Chenle realises, belatedly, he doesn’t know how many people are alive. More than three at least — it can’t just be him, Jisung and Jaemin, because if it was, he knows Jisung would have tried to kill him by now.

It’s not a matter of opportunity. Jisung has had plenty of chances. His swords are never far from his hands, and Chenle has left himself open a hundred times over. His neck bared, his ribs unguarded.

There’s something exhilarating about holding a living weapon against his body. Knowing that every time he kisses Jisung it’s a dance with death, one that he would happily repeat until the end of time. Adrenaline sparks in his gut, and a part of him almost wishes Jisung would try.

It’s the part of him that can’t separate the blood dried under his nails from the taste of Jisung’s mouth.

The inlet opens up into a tiny bay, trees clinging to the edge of a canyon that slices the hills in half. Between them there’s a wide river, spilling out onto the beach, and there’s no question where they’re both heading.

It’s clear and near still, fishes swimming along the bottom easily visible even in the pale light. Jisung falls to his knees when they reach it, cupping his hands and drinking from it — and after he doesn’t keel over Chenle follows him.

It’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. Better than the meat — clear and pure, almost sparkling on the tip of his tongue. He drinks until he can feel the pounding in his temples receding, then he fills his canteen, scrubbing at the blood on his fingers in a way oddly reminiscent of when Jisung had first killed Donghyuck.

Cleaning the lives from his conscience — a cleanse that only ever goes skin deep. There’s notches in his ribs he’ll never smooth over, reminders of every life that has been taken by his hands.

It doesn’t bother him, anyway, but it’s always there. A reminder that death is forever.

(Honour them in death, Trainer Kun had always told him. Don’t mutilate the body. Treat them with respect. You can cause a show when you kill, but there’s no honour in beating up a dead body. The sponsors don’t like it, and neither do the viewers.)

Chenle glances at Jisung. There’s not much light in the belly of the canyon, but he’s visible enough — one blade dipped in the water, fingers rubbing up and down the flat of it and working off the flakes of blood he hadn’t been able to wipe on the grass. Easy, methodical. Cheeks puffed out slightly. Chenle’s trident is discarded at his side, but it would be so easy to kill him. He has the gutting knife in his belt. He could put it in his throat in an instant.

He wonders how Jisung would die. What the spray of his blood would look like. Would it be ugly? Loud? Would he give himself over or would he fight — try to take Chenle with him. Wrap his arms around him and drag him into the river — a mirror of their night spent in Jisung’s bed.

Cling to him. Warm. Jisung is always warm. Blood that thrums beneath his skin. Heartbeat under Chenle’s fingers.

“Chenle,” he says. Chenle averts his eyes, returning to washing the dirt from his face.

“Yeah?”

The water is frigid — like it’s made from freshly melted ice.

“Thank you for showing me the ocean.”

He pauses, hands halfway to his face. He can see his reflection — dark eyed, lips pursed, hair matted and messy — slowly draining away as the water leaks between his fingers.

The cannon goes off.

Chenle catches enough fish for the both of them and they retreat to the top of the cliffs, finding shelter in one of the hundreds of grooves in the rocks that form a cave. It’s warm and dry — which is just as well, because that night it pours with rain.

It doesn’t rain much in Four — most of their water received from the lakes that sat in the upper parts of the District — and the sound of the water hitting the rocks is a shock to Chenle. It’s like a roar, something primal, and once again he’s amazed at all the ways that water can be — the way it moves like an untamed beast, breaking against the river far below, flooding the plains and turning everything to mud.

“Does it rain like this in Two?” he asks, sitting at the mouth of the cave and watching the flicker of the raindrops in the light from the fire.

“In winter,” Jisung says. He has his palms outstretched, eyes affixed at the flames licking up at the driftwood. “Sometimes it floods. Sometimes it rains so hard the mountains come down.” His eyes flick up to meet Chenle’s. “Villages get buried. You get used to it.”

Chenle swallows. The smoke is salty — though it’s blowing in the opposite direction, out through natural vents in the rocks — clinging to the back of his throat.

“Are you gonna watch it all night?” Jisung adds. He looks curious in the light, parts of him flickering in and out of focus.

“No,” Chenle says, not shifting from his position. He’s still entranced. The rain rebounds off the rocks, spitting up into the air like fat on a grill. Like foam and salt.

The water has always been his friend. It should serve that the rain is, too. He remains for a while longer, listening to the roar of the sheets falling from the sky, before he retreats back to the comfort of the fire. Before he retreats back to Jisung.

He shuts his eyes for a second, warmth washing over him. He decides, here and now. One more night and it’ll be over. He’ll kill Jisung in the morning.

They share food — the last of the loaf of fish shaped bread, the last of the fresh fish Chenle caught. Chenle shows Jisung how to eat it raw, and though Jisung initially turns his nose up at it he follows his lead, hesitantly biting down on a strip Chenle cuts off with the knife he’d received from the sponsor drop.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Chenle says, grinning through a mouthful. Jisung merely raises his eyebrows in response, chewing slowly. “C’mon,” Chenle says with a laugh, “at least try not to break my heart.”

To that, Jisung laughs.

They kick out the fire, leaving only the embers smouldering in the pit, and curl up together. Chenle makes no pretence of keeping distance, aware of the invisible scythe pressed against his neck — though if Jisung shares the sentiment he shows no sign of it. He just threads his fingers through Chenle’s hair, tousling it then pressing a kiss to the side of his head. Chenle responds by turning towards him and capturing his lips — not playing with any shyness.

Why should he. It’s a last kiss — a last moment for them to share. When he mounts the stage — when they celebrate him as the victor — this is what they’ll remember. His hand cupping Jisung’s jaw, the nudge of his nose against his cheek. The way his lips had parted — the soft sigh he'd left out. The rain hammers down and there’s barely any light in the cave — just a pale orange glow, cinders like a dying lighthouse on the shore.

Enough that it will still guide him home.

Chenle doesn't feel the slide of the blade. Not the first, anyway. Jisung's hand is still in his hair and his lips are still pressed against his and Chenle is drowning in him — eyes shut, every part of Jisung melting against him.

He misses Jisung's hand leaving his face. He misses the quick movement that drives the knife between his ribs. He gasps into the kiss and Jisung stutters.

Chenle is bleeding.

Jisung kisses him, but it’s forced. It’s stiff. He feels the second time he stabs him — searing white pain that explodes all through his senses, the point of a knife driven through his lung. The blood comes rushing up his throat and he coughs, spraying it across Jisung’s face.

Chenle is bleeding. He should have known. He should be fighting back. His trident is nowhere near him — he’d left it leaning against the cave wall. His knives, too. He’d taken his belt off and left it on his pack.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need weapons. His body is a weapon. He could raise his hands and wrap them around Jisung’s throat right now — he thinks he might beat him. Jisung’s eyes are wide and his cheeks are pale, dotted with Chenle’s blood.

Chenle gasps, fingers slipping from Jisung’s face.

The stone is cold and dry beneath his fingertips, but his body is hot, and they come away wet where he touches his side.

A dying boy's wish — one last time. Something warm against him. His lifeblood, leaking onto the rocks. He hopes when the rain comes it washes it out to sea and returns him home.

Chenle could fight — but he doesn’t.

“Jisung,” he says. His hand is still pressed to his side and the blood flows like water through a broken levee.

How does the human body have so much blood?

He's killed so many people, and he doesn't ever remember this much blood. Every part of him is wet with it. His consciousness dips in and out, waves breaking over his head. There’s a dull roar in his ears and Jisung’s voice seems to come from underwater.

“I’m sorry.”

Park Jisung. District Two's prodigy. A killer in blood and flesh, born but for a singular purpose. It's all another step forward. One last show for the cameras. Pander to the sponsors.

It could be a lie, like so many other things Jisung had said to him, weighed heavy with blood, words like stones in his pockets.

It could be a lie, but Chenle is naive. Chenle is a fool. He's falling under, spilling out across the rocks.

For one last time, Chenle believes him.

The rain stops falling when Chenle stops breathing. The sound of the cannon going off is like thunder — sonorous and heavy — like it carries the weight of everything Jisung has done.

He shouldn’t feel guilty. It’s what he had to do. District Two above everything else — above family, above love. Victory above all. They had chosen him because they thought he could win — and now he had to show them that faith was not misplaced.

This was what he was meant to do. There was only direction to go — a heart powered by perpetual motion. If he stopped now, he died.

It was that simple.

Though the rain has stopped, there's still a steady drip of water outside, and Jisung listens to it as he sits in the cave, cradling Chenle’s body against him. He doesn’t move for a long time — though whether it’s minutes or hours he’s really not sure. All he knows is that it’s daylight when he finally stands up.

He lets Chenle down gently — as if he’s still sleeping. As if he might come back in a few hours and see his smile again — hear his laugh. Something wells up within Jisung and he chooses to ignore it — the steady drip as he leans down and wipes the blood from Chenle’s lips with his fingers. He smoothes the hair from his forehead — the unruly cowlick he’d always found endearing — before cutting the bracelets from his wrists and tucking them into the inside pocket of his blood soaked jacket.

If it wasn’t for the dark puddle forming around him he could almost pretend this wasn’t a goodbye.

He doesn’t realise where he’s heading until he’s standing on the shore again. The tide is high and the water is pristine blue — a reflection of the endless sky that stretches on above him. Jisung doesn’t stop to stare — just keeps moving. The salt stings at all his cuts and scrapes, biting with tiny teeth into the wound on his side where one of the arrows of the girl at the Cornucopia had hit him. The floor of the bay falls downwards and the waves tugs at his clothes, a gentle rhythm that he could almost mistake for a guide — someone pulling him closer. Pulling him out to sea.

Jisung takes a deep breath and dives in.

It’s not like the pool. The pool was calm. Gentle. The bay is gentle, too, but there’s a push and pull, the drag of the moon, a cosmic force he can’t quite comprehend. He opens his eyes, stupidly — like he’d always done in their training exercises — and it fucking hurts, though he can see the blood floating around him, staining the azure canvas with swirling strokes of red through the stinging in his eyes.

He surfaces, drawing in a deep breath of air. The salt gets past his lips, lingering on his tongue, and something blocks his throat. A boulder — a lump of sorts. An avalanche falling down the mountain, ready to bury him.

Behind him there’s a trail of blood. In the ocean, Jisung dives under, savouring the crushing silence and praying it will wash him clean.

The cannon goes off while he’s sitting on the shore, limbs dripping an artwork of red droplets into the soft white sand.

It takes him a second to remember what it means.

Jisung cups his hands to his mouth and lets out a long whistle, the sound echoing across the plains. He feels oddly calm — like he’s still underwater, the pressure of the ocean surrounding him.

He feels oddly calm, but as the sun beats down on him he can still taste Chenle’s mouth. He can still see his face — blood on his lips.

It should have been easy. It should have been so easy. Sharp as a blade, precise as the flight of an arrow. He’s trained his entire life for this, and there should be no hesitation.

And yet.

When he cups his hands around his mouth again they’re shaking.

And when he hears the whistle echoed back across the plains to him — long and mourning — he feels something explode in his heart. Not a weapon, but a firecracker. Sparks that shower as Jisung starts to run.

Jaemin looks terrible. His clothes are muddy and half his hair is missing — the side of his skull marked with barely healed burns. Most of him is burnt, really — his clothes are tattered and torn and if they were somewhere else Jisung might laugh at the fact his eyebrows are gone, too.

As it is Jisung doesn’t care for his safety — he doesn’t care for anything else except the fact he’s found Jaemin again. He flies into his arms, eyes stinging as relaxes.

He realises now how much he'd taken Jaemin's love for granted. How much he'd assumed it was simply something that was always available — something as steady as the stone that formed the foundation of District Two itself. Through rain or shine, when the Earth itself shifted below them, when the lightning split the horizon or the summer wildfires raged — the mountain was always there.

Jaemin was always there.

Jisung clutches him, burying his face in his dirty hair, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. 

“I’m so sorry I left you,” Jaemin says. It’s a murmur, almost snatched on the wind that races across the grasslands. “I’m so sorry. I tried to find you in the fire, Jisung, and then I heard the cannon.”

“It was Jeno,” Jisung says.

“I know.” He runs his hand through Jisung’s hair, voice soft. “But every blast afterwards. I kept looking at the sky and praying it wasn’t you.”

“It’s okay,” Jisung says. “I was okay. I had Chenle.”

“That's good,” Jaemin says. "I guess he kept his promise, then."

Jisung pulls back from the hug, but Jaemin won’t meet his eyes — he’s staring off into the distance, almost lost. It reminds him of Jaemin’s first kill, when he’d crawled into his bed without a sound, like he was barely keeping himself together at the seams. Like he’d turned over fresh dirt to find the face of someone he loved in the grave below.

“Jaemin?” Jisung asks. He reaches up and cups Jaemin’s cheek and Jaemin’s gaze slides over to him, his body leaning into the gesture, eyes fluttering shut.

“Yeah?”

“How many people are left alive?”

“Jisung,” Jaemin says. Eyes closed, still. Wind tousling what’s left of his hair. He’s always been handsome — ‘pretty enough for a One’ they’d say. Even here, destroyed from the games, caked in filth and soot — even here he’s sparkling. “Jisung,” he repeats. Soft. Eyes open, staring at him. “I love you so much,” he says.

It's like Jisung is prying open his ribs himself — a confession so raw it seems to suck the air from his lungs. Love in its purest form, leaking all over his fingertips.

Something so powerful — so bright — that everything else in the world becomes a candle flame. A pebble compared to a mountain. A raindrop to an ocean. 

“I love you, too,” Jisung says. “But I—”

He’s choking. There’s a lump in his throat, something hot on his cheeks. The sunlight is bright white, hanging low in the sky. A mockingjay flies past, copying the whistle Jaemin had let out.

“It’s okay, Jisung,” Jaemin says. He cups his cheek, rubbing his thumb against his skin. “I’m so proud of you. I hope you know that.”

“Jaemin,” Jisung says. He knows the answer to his question. He doesn’t know the outcome, but he knows the answer, and he wants to rewind. He doesn’t want to stare at the screen — to see the image come into focus. He doesn’t want to accept this.

Jaemin is all he’s ever had.

“It’s okay,” Jaemin says. He leans into him, swaying in the wind. “It’s okay,” he repeats. He presses a kiss to Jisung’s forehead, lips soft. Something hot and wet splatters on his nose. “Go home, Jisung.”

A flash in the sunlight — a glint of metal like teeth bared. Rubies spill out across Jisung’s hands, and the sky roars.

There's blood on Jisung's hands.

It's not his. It's not his. It's not Chenle’s either, but he can see the hovercraft.

It's not Chenle’s. Who’s is it? He killed Chenle, didn’t he?

Did he? Is this all just a dream — is the fire still burning in the cave, rain thundering down outside? Will he wake up and find Chenle staring at him with fond eyes? Will he see the flash of his smile again? Will he taste his lips — know his hands against his face?

His head spins. Everything tastes like iron. There's a voice in the distance and he thinks they're talking to him — victor… Hunger Games…

His ears are ringing and his vision is blurred and he doesn't know where he is. Jaemin was here, wasn’t he? Maybe Jaemin knows.

The whole world is sideways. A smudge of yellow on the horizon, a brilliant blue sky. Is it the sky? Is it the sea — is he underwater? Is he drowning, blood floating up around him like smoke from the fireworks?

Someone’s hand closes around his bicep and he spins, going to grab one of his swords — though before he can strike it’s knocked out of his hand and something searing cuts through his muscles. He seizes up, legs giving out, blades dropping to the ground.

Everything goes white.

Renjun dusts his shoulders, brushing off what must be a microscopic piece of dirt from his suit. Jisung doesn’t remember him being this much shorter than him, but he supposes his memory might be wrong. It feels like everything before the Games is a dream now — and he never did spend much time with Renjun, anyway. Boa was always cautious of him, and he thinks he understands why now. He’d known Renjun in the Academy, of course, but the victor Renjun seems even more vicious. Some kind of volcanic fire packed into his bones, perpetually burning up. Stay around him too long, and you might be caught up in that. You might want to always be on fire yourself.

“You’re not as good at fooling people as you think you are,” Renjun whispers, leaning in so the microphones can’t catch it. They’re backstage in the Capitol, waiting for the victor’s interviews. Jisung can hear the crowd outside, an indistinct roar of voices and faces he doesn’t know. They’re waiting for him — chanting his name. The lighting above is like a morgue, and despite the rich clothes they have him done up in he feels naked and stripped — a corpse on a cold slab. “But you only have to fool them.”

Their eyes meet, and there’s something behind Renjun’s gaze. A flash of vulnerability, the door opened just long enough for Jisung to understand.

"I bet on Jaemin. But I believe in you."

Jisung walks out onto the stage — out of the curtain and into the light of a thousand cameras. Johnny smiles at him and he returns it, his face falling into the expressions they've taught him with practiced ease.

They're chanting his name.

Jisung's heart swells, but instead of pride it's something thick and dripping — his calcified heart thick with blood — something that lodges in his throat and almost chokes him as he gives a shy wave to the camera.

The crowd screams.

They love him.

They don't even know who he is.

There are words etched into his skin just like they're etched into the walls of the Academy. Everything runs deep in Two, tradition right down to their very foundations. Jisung is no different.

To win is the highest honour. To represent your district and come out of the arena alive

There’s blood on Jisung’s hands, and he doesn’t know if he believes that anymore.