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"Trust no man," Enobaria's mother had told her, which had been sound advice for most of her childhood, though the same advice didn't seem to hold when she was caught kissing another female cadet in the Career training academy in 2, the winter before her 16th birthday.
The other girl was sent away to the Nut, under threat of becoming an Avox, and Enobaria was told by the academy headmistress that she would volunteer during the next reaping. 'Trust no man' was quickly amended to 'Trust no one' in her mind, advice that served her well once she was shipped to the Capitol.
Her mentor, Brutus, had the same intensity about him as the instructors in the Academy, but she didn't resent him for it: she was about to enter the arena, for real. She could be dead in days. She preferred his adrenaline-fueled fervor to the drunken state of the 12 mentor, or the morphling-riddled mentors of 6 and 9.
"Listen, both of you," Brutus is saying, as she and her district partner try to eat despite having no appetite. She knows she'll be hungry in the arena, so she forces some more of the dinner down. "The weapons are important, but the strength of will is the most important. Don't lose your head in there. Remember you can always kill someone with your bare hands if you need to."
She nods. They're in the apartment, and she's on edge from the Avox hovering just over her shoulder. She's a woman, just a few years older than Enobaria, dark skin and hair, pretty. A constant reminder to stay in line, to behave. Enobaria looks up at Brutus, trying to remember his Games through the haze of the dozens of Hunger Games she's reviewed with her instructors in the past months. She was pretty sure he won by default, being unconscious and overlooked for a great portion of the fighting and killing, and emerging just in time to fight off the last, injured opponent. It was an unsatisfying conclusion, and she can feel his tension, the way he still wishes he had won in a way that was more firm, more resolute. But even though she hasn't even entered the arena yet, she knows the Hunger Games is anything but fair.
She does as she is told, wearing the outfits they request, saying what she's been coached to say in the interviews, and practicing in all of her free time at the training stations. She doesn't want to kill, but she doesn't mind it, exactly. Her fear of dying is stronger.
And when she enters the arena, she can't see a thing. Everything is blinding white, and it's all she can do to grope around pathetically, hoping she won't fall into water or the arms of another Tribute. The light is so bright she fears it might blind her, and she can only risk tiny glimpses here and there, but even so there is nothing: no shape, no color, nothing to guide her toward anything. She wonders if she has fallen into hell. She can feel her heart beating wildly, she is close to panicking. She had trained for years: had trained in all sorts of conditions, even, but who could have predicted she wouldn't be able to see?
She takes a deep breath, settling herself, and tears at her shirt hem until she has enough fabric for a blindfold. Once she can rely on that, instead of squeezing her eyes shut, she listens. She can hear crickets, and birdsong behind her, and carefully, she makes her way in that direction. She has no weapon. If there is a Cornucopia, she has no idea where it is, but perhaps with some cover, she will be blocked from the overwhelming light.
Her guess was correct, and after what feels like an hour of cautious, quiet padding, she removes her blindfold to see that she is in a rather dense forest, and the tree cover grants her some vision back, though looking out from the trees, the brightness of the light keeps her from seeing anything else. She wonders if the light will burn her skin, like the sun, if the exposure is too long. Before she has time to explore her surroundings further, she hears a twig snap, and she stills, trying to find the source. But it was behind her, he was behind her, some brute of a tribute from 6, if she remembers correctly. He grabs her hands in his own, twisting her painfully so her wrists feel near to breaking. He doesn't look like a trained fighter, so she wonders if he is just used to handling women roughly.
She has nothing to say to him, so she doesn't speak, just tries to kick him, to free herself. But he anticipates this and knocks her over, falling on top of her, her hands still secured. She can feel his weight pressing down on her, feel his arousal pressing into her. To anyone watching the Games, she's sure it just looks like a fight, like the two of them wrestling. But she's sure some women will recognize it for what it is. Again, she tries to keep her head about her, tries to remember any of Brutus' advice. He had told her she could kill a man with her bare hands, but she doesn't even have her hands available.
She headbutts the boy, but even this only dazes him for a moment. His hands are still on hers, over her head, as she lays on her back in the dirt. They're going numb. He twists them, and she forces her left wrist to take the brunt of it, knowing that if one were to break, she needed her right arm far more in the arena. He moves against her, his erection pressing into her hips, and just as his throat passes over her mouth, she turns her head and bites into it, as hard as she possibly can. She doesn't let go as he releases her arms, or as he pulls away, hard. The pulling was a mistake, and they both realize it at the same time as a gush of red blood starts pouring from his neck. She can feel his flesh still in her mouth, no longer attached to him, and she spits it out in disgust. She can feel his blood on her chin, and knows the spray from his arteries stained her whole front. He is crawling with his chest dragging in the dirt, trying to get away from her, and she'll let him. She doesn't think he'll get very far.
A parachute comes down with a gift for her. It contains what looks like special sunglasses, and they allow her to see in the overly bright arena. She waits until the boy from 6 is dead, and then she takes his outermost layer to wear like a shawl over her head, adds the glasses, and sets off towards the Cornucopia or for some water. She's covered in blood, but she feels it now: what it means to kill in true desperation, and she'll do it again, because dying would be worse.
After a while, it becomes clear what the trick of the arena is: it is cycling between complete brightness and total darkness. There are two sweet spots in the middle of the days' cycle where it is easy to see, where the whole arena: Cornucopia, forests, lake, and mudpits were all visible, but during the other times, it's impossible without special glasses like the sunglasses Enobaria had, or the special nightvision goggles she stole from the district 3 girl she killed. She meant to just steal the goggles, but couldn't avoid a confrontation, and well, if it was the other girl's life of hers, Enobaria was going to live.
So now she can see in any light in the arena, which, as far as she knows, makes her the only one who can. The outer districts don't have the sponsor money for such gifts, and the Careers who did get the special glasses were being hunted by the others. For instance the 1 boy was killed by an alliance of the 7 boy and the 10 girl, but now they only have one set of night and day glasses between them. She's sure one will kill the other as soon as dusk begins.
She's managed to get water from the lake, though she's sure it isn't safe to drink straight. She's hoping any unintended consequences: parasites, food poisoning or so forth will be able to be managed once the Games conclude. It was fresh water, at least. And now she waits with the knife and the sword she obtained from the Cornucopia. She has the glasses. They will come to her, blind and desperate.
She watches, from up on a ridge, as her district partner hesitates a moment too long over killing the girl from 4 and is killed by her instead. They had been in an alliance, her district partner Cimber avoiding her after the scandal at the Academy. But in the end it was that moment of hesitation, that lack of conviction that got him killed. It was alright in the real world, she supposes, but this is the Hunger Games. This is truly eat or be eaten. She turns away and is face to face with a pack of outer district tributes, banding together to come take her vision in the dying light.
"You can't all use one pair of goggles," she taunts them. There's four, perhaps the last four tributes besides herself, the girl from 4, and the girl from 1. The longer she can keep them talking, the lower the light will be, the greater her advantage. She's already wearing the goggles, after all.
"We're used to sharing in the outer districts," one of the boys says, as if they had all the time in the world. Perhaps he was trying to keep the alliance intact. "We didn't grow up with riches, like District 2."
She smiles, wondering what their impression of District 2 was, and how it matched reality. She can't blame them, there's no way to see another district except on a Victory tour, or maybe as a Peacekeeper, but it's still a funny thing to say. "Well, like you said, I'm used to having my own things, and keeping them." She draws her sword.
When she's finished, it is perhaps 95% dark in the arena, and the boy who spoke is bleeding out from an eviscerating wound to the abdomen, the other three dead. He beckons her closer, and she obliges. She likes his audacity, if nothing else.
"Do you think it's better to win, really?" he asks, whispering quietly, so as not to have the conversation picked up by the cameras and microphones.
"I don't want to die," she says, resolute.
"Yeah, but what comes after? Once the Capitol has its claws in you?" He sighs, obviously in terrible pain. "I guess it's no different than before, you've been in 2 your whole life."
"Do you want me to kill you?" she asks, louder now.
He looks past her, to the unseeing eye of the camera, mouthing something she assumes is only meaningful to his family. "Yes, please."
When she wins, it's bloody and blinding. The girl from 4 manages to knock the goggles off of her head, and they grapple about in the blank whiteness of the arena, each trying to murder the other. The 4 girl's hair is loose about her head, a mistake, Enobaria thinks, as she can tug on it, hold it under her booted foot as she gropes about for her knife.
She finds it near where she expects, and slits the girl's throat. It takes longer than Enobaria hopes for her to die, and all the while she flails, grabbing at Enobaria, trying to take her with her into death. Once again she is covered in blood, and as she leaves the arena, past some invisible barrier, she can see once again, and she can hear - she is back in Panem, and the commentator's voice calls her Games 'the most vicious and bloody in a good long while'.
They put some special drops in her eyes, and clean off all the blood from her skin and hair, and then put some salve on her skin, and clean up her wounds: the lacerations she took fighting the pack from the outer district, the fracture to her left wrist is set in a cast, and she is rehydrated and given a light meal. "Not too much, at least not right away," cautions one of the medics.
Brutus is there, his large hand clapping her on the back. She can feel his pride before he speaks, as if her victory helped cement his status as a Mentor. "Brilliant," he beams. "That was incredible."
She wonders if it's how he wishes his Games had gone, if he'd gotten the chance to kill more people. She wonders if the headmistress of the training Academy feels she's made up for her brief romance with another student. She had wondered how an arena with such terrible lighting was broadcast to Panem, but as she's sipping champagne in a lounge that evening, she learns how through highlight clips: there were special filters on the lenses that allowed the cameras to pickup what was happening, even as the tributes groped around blindly.
Being in the lounge is like being back in the arena, in a way. She's had media training, but it was mostly focused on the interviews, on garnering sponsor attention, not on the after. She is overwhelmed by the amount of people introducing themselves to her, shaking her hand, the sly smiles, the winks.
"I couldn't resist phoning Brutus to give you a donation after I saw you tear out that man's throat," an older woman tells her conspiratorially. "So brutal, so bloody," she seems to shiver at the memory, but not unpleasantly.
"Let me buy you a drink, I cannot believe how violent this year was!" another man tells her, again, almost delighted at the concept.
She sees some of the Mentors here and there, milling about, likely required to attend this event, and for once she can understand the perpetual drunkenness, the morphling addiction: being fawned over like this, for these reasons, it was more than unsettling.
The next year, the 63rd Hunger Games, is her first year mentoring, and the first thing she learns is that there are strange age gaps in the Mentors. There are truly old Mentors, like Mags and Woof, and then a break, and then some middle aged Mentors, like Beetee and Blight, and then some about ten years older, like Haymitch and Brutus, but there is no one there she could really call a peer. She wants to ask why that is, but she's frightened, afraid to mess up at her first year Mentoring, and unsure of who to trust - they've all been Mentoring for years now, they've had time to make alliances and learn the Capitol secrets.
She's even more frightened after her meeting with Snow, where he tells her that in addition to helping her tributes, she'll have other duties with Capitol elites - dates, private functions, intimacy, and she is expected to accept and show her clients a good time. She watches as Haymitch's family is murdered on a recording played before she is prepared to watch it. She is told the same could happen to her family, or worse, if she doesn't do as she is told. She doesn't even know Haymitch, but now she knows what happened to his family in 12 after his Games. Now she knows, presumably, why he has a bottle to his lips each time she sees him.
That night, after her conversation with Snow, she wants to ask Brutus how much he knew about this, but something makes her hold her tongue. Either he knew, and hearing aloud the betrayal will be too much for her to bear, or he didn't know, and for some reason she's being picked out special for this service, in which case she probably shouldn't go running her mouth about it. Instead, she asks him, "Where does Haymitch Abernathy usually go drinking?"
Brutus almost chokes on his dinner, the Avox rushing to get him a glass of water. "Why do you want to know?" he asks, once he's settled down.
"Someone gave me a tip, about an alliance, I need to check it out." Already she hates it, the lies and subterfuge the Capitol requires.
But she learns his favorite lounge is Illyria, and she goes there after dinner and finds him as predicted, drinking at a small table on the mezzanine level next to Chaff. "I need a word," she says to Haymitch, none too kindly. She supposes she could have shown him some respect, as her senior, but this blunt, brash persona is what's expected of her, after all, so why change it?
Haymitch says something with his eyes to Chaff, who stands and rejoins another table, then motions for Enobaria to take the vacated seat. "What can I do for you?" he asks, obviously surprised by this meeting, but his reactions dulled by his drunken state.
"Was it real?" she asks, her fingers nervously drumming on the table.
"Was what real?"
"Did Snow have your family killed?"
He grabs her hand that was on the table, and she wants to snatch it back, to stop him from touching her, but she can see the absolute horror dawning on his face. "What did he tell you?" he asks.
"Not tell. Show. It was a video, of their murders. I wanted to check if it was real."
She can feel his hand trembling over hers, until finally he takes it away to reach for his glass again, downing the rest of the white liquor before flagging down the staff for another round. "Oh, it's real," he confirms. "I didn't realize it was on film."
She looks to the side, ready to leave, now that she knows the threat is real. "Fuck."
But his gaze bores into her, willing her back to the conversation. "Why did he show it to you? What is he asking of you?"
She fixes him with a long stare, unsure if she's most annoyed at Snow, at all the Mentors who won't let her into their elite club, or at the Capitolites who crave her company because she is danger, tamed. "Don't make me say it out loud," she says.
The 63rd Games is also when Enobaria learns about the twins. Gloss is the male tribute from 1, and the narrative around him going into the arena is that he has a twin sister back in 1. They are both beautiful, and Enobaria finds herself distracted, focusing less on her own tributes than she is on Gloss, hoping he doesn't die because she thinks that would make the girl twin, Cashmere, upset.
It's also a good distraction from her other work: the 'entertaining'. Her clients seem to be drawn to the violence that surrounds her, and whether that means that they want her to dominate them, or they want to prove that they have power over a Victor in the arena, she is powerless to stop them, at risk of her family's lives. Snow knew their names, she recalls, as a woman in some fancy Capitol hotel chokes her. He named her mother, her father, her older sister and brother. Her sister-in-law and her two nieces. He knew where her father worked.
When she gets back from a particularly violent client, Brutus finds her before she can drag herself to Remake. She had fallen asleep on the sitting room couch in the apartment, and awoke to his mixture of concern and consternation at her missing her shift in the Mentor's booth that morning.
"Enobaria, what happened last night?" he asks.
She wonders if he's really so dense that he doesn't know, but she's in pain, and she's only 18, so she confides in him, because he's the only person here from home. After, he sits back on his own chair in the sitting room, as if this confession took all the wind from his sails. The Avox is there, Enobaria can see her, in the corner. She could recount the story in sign language, or in writing, Enobaria supposes, but to who? Other Avoxes? All the better to keep them in line.
"I heard rumors of that sort of thing in the past," Brutus says after a time, "But I thought it had fallen out of favor."
Instantly, she wonders who, scanning among the Mentors for the ones she thinks Snow used. Her mind settles on the ones with addictions now. Initially, she had attributed that to the trauma of the arena, but they all had trauma from the arena. Elin from 6, Haymitch, the 9 Mentors… probably some others. She wants to ask Brutus why now? Why her? But such questions were pointless. If they liked violence so much, she would give them something horrible.
"Can you cover the booth this morning? I just need to rest," she says, another lie to Brutus.
He agrees, and covers her shift. She goes out, into the sunny streets of the Capitol, to the seediest dentist she can find within walking distance. She returns with fangs, her teeth filed into points, gold inlaid into each to signify how these teeth set her on her path to victory, the whole gesture a reminder to not fuck with her.
Gloss wins his Hunger Games, and she hates, a little, how she's glad, how him and his twin will be reunited now. It isn't that she has no desire for her own district to win, but everyone in the Academy shunned her once the headmistress made it clear she was being punished, so her tributes who now relied on her were her classmates who once sneered at her in the halls. She doesn't expect volunteers from 2 for a few years at least, to be honest.
When she is dismissed, when she is finally allowed to go home, she sits apart from Brutus on the train, sick of him after the month in the Capitol. The ride to District 2 isn't long, they are adjacent to the Capitol, after all, and before she knows it she is back, with her sister-in-law and brother waiting on the train platform. Brutus doesn't have anyone waiting for him - not a woman or a family member, even, but he nods at her and shoulders his bag, walking off towards the Victor's Village.
Enobaria has been home for a month maybe, when Lyme visits. Her brother and sister have work, her sister at the Nut and her brother at the quarry, and Enobaria is often over with her sister-in-law to see her young nieces, but on this day she is home. Lyme is pretty, in her late twenties and tall as can be, and she looks like a model. Hers was the 53rd or 54th Hunger Games, if Enobaria can remember correctly. It went Haymitch, Elin, Brutus, Wiress, Lyme, she's fairly sure.
"Come in," she invites her, offering from her meager refreshments, though Lyme declines everything but a glass of water. They sit on Enobaria's screened in patio and look out at a small man-made reservoir. The Victor's Village in 2 is different than the other districts, she learned on her Victory Tour. They were given townhouses, comparatively large when put against the towering apartments of the main city, but strangely compact compared to the cabins in the woods of 7, or the seaside cottages in 4. She supposes 2 is special in a lot of ways, though.
Lyme looks to the houses on either side. "Are they out?" she asks.
Enobaria nods. "The one to the left is vacant. To the right is Brutus, and he was called back to the Capitol for something."
Lyme visibly relaxes. Enobaria can see Lyme looking at her teeth, but she doesn't comment on it. No one ever does, except the tabloids in the Capitol. "Listen, I don't mean to barge in on you all business, without making a social call first, so I apologize. You can ask me any questions you want as well, it's only fair."
"I don't mind," Enobaria says, and she truly doesn't. It's a generous offer, compared to those Mentors who closely guarded their secrets, and Lyme was very pretty, so it is easy to tolerate her. "What did you want to talk about?"
Lyme sips her water, as if her mouth is suddenly dry at the time she needs to speak. "I heard what Snow demanded of you."
Enobaria bites her lip, caught off guard by this opening, and then is surprised when she feels a droplet of blood come to the surface, her lip punctured by her fang. "Shit," she curses, blotting at it with her sleeve.
"Here," Lyme says, one hand on the back of Enobaria's head, the other holding the napkin that had been under her drink up to her bloody lip. "Sorry, that was my fault."
Enobaria shakes her head gently, to let the other woman know an apology is unnecessary, but doesn't pull out of her grip. She waits until Lyme staunches the bleeding and returns to her chair. It feels good, to have someone touch her gently, with concern, for a steady and gentle hand to be placed on her.
"Did Brutus tell you?" she asks.
"I asked him. I wondered, after that… disgusting boy in the arena. I thought there was a chance."
So there were some people who saw that attack for what it was, she realizes. "Did you come to tell me how to stop it?" she asks, not daring to be hopeful.
Now it's Lyme's turn to bite her lip. She pauses, sipping her water again. "Do you ever wonder why there's age gaps in the Mentors? Ones forced to come back to the Capitol, and ones allowed to stay home?"
Enobaria nods, because this is a question she's had, but been unable to ask anyone in the Capitol. Part of her knows she can't trust this woman either, but she's so desperate for answers right now, flailing around in the dark much like in her arena, that she'll at least play along.
"It corresponds to the unrest in the Capitol. When all is well, the Victors can go on their merry way. When it's not, the Victors need to come back, to continue paying their dues, extra events leading up to the Games, entertainment and sex for the Capitol elites, making sure everyone falls in line, influential Capitolites and Victors both."
She knows what Lyme is implying, but she needs to say it aloud, needs another person to repeat back the conclusion her mind is coming to. "So there's unrest right now, in the Capitol."
"Snow's nervous about something. It's why he put you to work, and I'm sure that boy from 1 is next. I'm sure it's why Brutus is back there now in the offseason. It'll go on for a few more years, and then it'll settle down again."
"So I'm just unlucky."
Lyme bites her lip again. "I guess you could say that. Snow… is obsessed with having control. If he thinks that whoring out his Victors gives him better control, that's what he does. If he thinks giving them freedom is better, that's what he does. It feels like it's on a whim, sometimes."
This isn't good news, in fact it doesn't help her at all, but at least she can straighten some things out in her mind. "Thank you," she says, "For coming over."
Lyme nods. "I escaped," she says, "I won in a year of great prosperity, but I learned the trap. I never went back to the Capitol, never stepped foot in that cursed place again. Least I can do is try to help someone else."
She stands to go, and Enobaria stands too, suddenly worried Lyme might never come back to see her again, like she's tainted with the Capitol, like Enobaria might lure her back into Snow's circle of influence. "Wait," she calls, and as Lyme turns around, just inside the house, Enobaria kisses her, emboldened by her month of sex-for-hire, emboldened by her victory in the arena.
Lyme kisses her hesitantly, perhaps because of her pointed teeth, or perhaps because she's younger, but after a moment she leans in deeper, until Enobaria can feel Lyme's tongue, and Enobaria reaches up to hold her close by pushing her fingers up into the hair at the base of her skull. When they pull apart, Lyme speaks directly into Enobaria's ear. "You know, Snow could always have gotten me out here if he wanted. But there's no one to threaten me with. I'm an orphan, no siblings, no lovers." She smiles a little, kissing Enobaria's neck. "Can't hurt you if there's no one to take away."
The 64th Hunger Games is when Enobaria finally sees her in real life: the girl twin, Cashmere. She should have known she would volunteer, both twins were made to be Victors. But to be a Victor means to be a tribute first, so currently, Cashmere is down in the arena, which is more like a planetarium than anywhere on Panem, and Gloss is in the Mentor booth. Though he's stressed, trying to manage sponsors for his sister's Games, so there's another Mentor from 1, Chrome, who is closer to Brutus' age, a seasoned pro.
As for Brutus, he was called back in the offseason to launch a television show, some silly thing about 'training like the pros', with segments on fitness, diet, and survival, and it had remarkably good ratings. Since he had more socializing to do this year, Enobaria also had Timon with her in the booth, an older Victor from 2. He didn't seem enthused about coming back to the Capitol, but he didn't put up a fuss when the escort, Gloriana, requested it.
As for Gloss, Enobaria finds she doesn't mind him. At first, she thinks that she is so desperate for a peer in the Mentors that she might be overlooking some potentially awful part of his personality, but as she spends more time with him, she decides they will get along just fine. "Want to come over and drink tonight?" he asks one night as they are both switching out their shifts at the Mentor booth. Cashmere is sleeping alongside her district partner, and Enobaria's tributes are in one of the watch towers, using the telescope to spy across the arena.
"Sure." She's cautious, unsure of his intentions, but he sits across from her in his apartment's living room, and doesn't make a move even after he dismisses the Avox for the night. He prefers red wine, and pours from the bottles generously, laughing at her as some falls through a gap in her altered teeth, trickling from her chin like blood.
"Ah, Cash would love that! She thought you doing your teeth like that was amazing," he laughs.
"Really?" She was half asleep, leaning back on the couch, but now she straightens up.
"Yeah, she thought your Games was the best in a long while, and your attitude." He sips the wine, pouring another glass before continuing. "We've always been raised to be a certain way… Polite… demure, even. I think she admires that boldness."
Enobaria turns to the television, which had been on, muted the whole time. The cameras keep switching between various sleeping tributes, but eventually settle on the 1 camp, where the boy is sleeping while Cashmere keeps watch.
"She should kill him," Enobaria says.
Gloss sighs. "It's not so easy when you've grown up friends."
"She'll have to, sooner or later."
"I know."
When Cashmere wins, Enobaria thinks she's lost. The arena has asteroids that fall, crashing into the ground and burning up, and Cashmere is nearly caught in the path of one of those when the two other tributes remaining - the boy from her district and the boy from 4 - approach her.
She and her district partner make eye contact, and he turns on the boy from 4, both she and him teaming up to murder the outsider, breaking whatever temporary alliance the boy from 4 thought they had. But then it's just District 1 vs. District 1. Enobaria can feel Gloss's tension, can practically see the stress ebbing off of him as they watch on the big screen in the Mentor's lounge. Chrome sits at the booth, but there's nothing for him to do at this stage.
Cashmere has a knife, but the other tribute has a polearm, and as such he has a much longer reach. The two of them circle around each other for a while, until the boy gets a hit in, stabbing Cashmere through the abdomen, pushing the horrible weapon in deeper, deeper, until Enobaria can see the blade coming out the other side.
But as this motion brings them in close, Cashmere takes the chance to stab the boy in the heart, then twists the knife, pulling it out and stabbing him again, in the throat. It's bloody, brutal, and it's a gamble, a race to see if he will die before she does. Enobaria can feel Gloss's hand gripping hers, or maybe it's hers gripping his. "Die, die," she murmurs, as the camera zooms in on the boy's growing pallor.
"Come on, Cash, you're fine," Gloss encourages.
After what seems like hours, the final 'boom' sounds, and the boy is declared dead, and Cashmere is the Victor of the 64th Hunger Games. She is barely conscious, deathly pale, the offending weapon still protruding through her abdomen as she is lifted from the arena.