#also a massively gratuitous overuse of section breaks so. make of it what you will

[dalygrace]

@odessasvernon said: 🔆+ hunger games au

If there is one thing Grace wants most in the world, it is control.

She knows, logically, that there was no such thing - not so long as the Games still kept the Districts subservient, offering up sacrifices year in and year out. But thinking on that was treason. (She still thinks it.)

In the Arena, she feels a modicum of control. Well trained and ravenous for victory, she decimates nearly half the other Tributes herself with little regard for the lives she was ending. She is a living weapon, that much everyone had known.

They just hadn’t expected her to also be human.

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It starts accidentally, when she finds Odessa buried in the mud, half-dead and starving. Truth be told, it had started well before then, in training rooms where Dess had sought her out for help with a weapon, over dinners where Grace mocked the genteel accent of their Capitol escort and Odessa smothered her laughter into her napkin. It started in the fierce bubble of pride that rose, unbidden, when Odessa blossomed on the interview stage and charmed the Capitol to her side. It started as Grace was struck, time and time and time again, by how fiercely the younger girl clung to life, even when hope had abandoned her.

It started for the people watching - where it really counted - well before Grace ever knew there was something to think twice about.

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Grace had volunteered. It was expected in the Career districts, but this had been a special case. Little Catia, freshly twelve years old mere weeks before the reaping, had had the misfortune of having her name drawn, of all the hundreds available. Grace had not even breathed before shoving her way through he crowd, voice rising in the words that would seal her fate: “I volunteer! I volunteer as Tribute!”

Odessa, picked second, was dragged unceremoniously to the stage - no one to volunteer in her stead with her father dead and brother working in the Capitol. No one dared step out of the crowd to replace her with Grace already on the stage - her bloodlust was well known in the District and there was no need to launch another true contender into the Arena. District One already had its winner.

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When the announcement comes, several days into the Games, that both Tributes from a District could win, if they both survive, Grace doesn't pay much attention. She hasn't caught sight of Dess in days, doesn't care much if she's alive or dead.

It isn't until she stumbles across her, inches from death's door, that Grace begins to think maybe.

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They weren’t friends, not really. Odessa was too soft for her own good, fragile in ways Grace could not remember herself ever being. She confesses to Grace in her delirum, fever burning high, the guilt she felt at taking another Tribute's life some days before - Grace's hands, stained with the blood of countless others, shake as they brush Odessa's hair away from her forehead. A vicious and sudden rage flares at the thought that Odessa might die here, lonely and afraid, when she could have been so much more.

Grace fights furiously for the medicine that saves Dess' life. She thinks of one thing as she takes down those around her: she is going to get this girl home, even if she has to die trying.

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The moment Grace realizes that the direction of her life is utterly out of her control is the moment when the Gamemakers' voice rings throughout the empty arena: Only one tribute can win.

Grace's rage, incandescent and all-consuming, rips out of her. "Fuck you!" She yells towards the sky, wrenching away from where Odessa tries to calm her. "What the fuck is wrong with you people? To let us get this far, only to have our hope snatched out from under our noses? You're sick!" She would go one, but a sharp Grace has her turning back to where Dess stands, knife out, just behind her.

Grace has her own knife out in seconds, but Dess only drops hers into the lake. "Grace," she repeats. "You have to kill me."

"What?" Startled momentarily from her anger, Grace lowers her knife and stares uncomprehendingly at Odessa. "You have so many people waiting for you - your sisters, your parents. You fought to get here, so take your victory. Kill me."

Staring into the determined face of Odessa Vernon, Grace realizes what the Gamemakers probably knew all along, for them to manipulate them so pefectly into this position - that she would never forgive herself if this bright light, this fragile girl did not make it out of the arena, and especially if her death was by Grace's own hand.

"Fuck that. Winning this fucked up game means nothing if you aren't with me. I don't - I won't be able to live if you die here. I mean it, Odessa. You deserve to make it out of here, to have a life and to move on and to see your brother again. I didn't spend weeks nursing you back to health only for you to give up on me here. No fucking way." Grace looks at the girl before her - old before her time, ragged and raw in ways that may never heal. Grace could not assure that she would get over this, but she would make damn sure that Odessa had the chance to try. Reaching into her bag, Grace takes out the nightlock berries they had collected the day before. "I don't want my death on your hands. I won't make you live with that."

Dess is on her before she can bring her hand to her mouth, tackling her to the ground with more force than Grace thought she could muster. Surprised, Grace is easily pinned, berries falling out of her hand as she lands unceremoniously in the dirt. Odessa rolls off of her, scooping the berries up where they fell - and presses some back into Grace's hand as she sits up, dazed. "Together," she says, simply, and Grace smiles, a fierce and private thing. She stands, hauling Odessa up and keeping hold of her free hand once they're standing. This is how you die nobly, she thinks, before she raises the berries to the sky and says, eyes locked on Dess, "On three."