A/N: Thank you KenJ for another excellent fight scene!
Chapter Eight
Hours later, Clark crept from his hiding place in the chaparral. He was deep enough into the brush that it was unlikely that any tributes — or large animals, for that matter — would be able to sneak up on him, but he couldn’t stay there forever. In spite of helping with his recovery from the Kryptonite exposure, the hot afternoon sun was making him increasingly thirsty, forcing him from his hiding place in search of water.
The launch platforms and the cornucopia were in front of a lake, but he didn’t dare to go there. That area would be under the control of the Careers by now, and any tribute attempting to get water or supplies would be killed. Clark couldn’t risk a run-in with the Careers — or any other tribute, for that matter — in his current weakened state. He also couldn’t discount the possibility that Platinum might be out there, in spite of her injuries in her fight with Lois. The last thing he needed was another exposure to Platinum’s Kryptonite pendant.
Clark moved slowly to the southwest. He couldn’t approach the lake from the side he was on, but if he went around it, he might be able to get water and find a better hiding place. The Career pack was strong, but it wasn’t that big. There were only six of them — maybe seven, if they’d accepted Claude — and the lake was fairly large.
In spite of his thirst, Clark moved slowly. His head still ached from the Kryptonite exposure, though it was a dull pain now, rather than a sharp one. His body ached, too — not from the Kryptonite exposure, which had worn off enough that he was starting to recover — but from the numerous falls and blows he had taken earlier in the day. That wasn’t something he was used to — he seldom fell, except when startled awake while floating in his sleep — and anything that ran into him was usually far more likely to suffer damage than he was.
Though he was no longer sick and weak from the Kryptonite, his body’s usual ability to heal quickly was absent, something he noticed when a branch lashed against his cut arm. The cut was fairly shallow, but it still stung even though it had begun to scab over. Normally, any injury he got healed very quickly — on the day of the Reaping, when he’d bitten his finger to give the required blood sample, the wound had been completely healed by the time the Reaping was over — but Kryptonite exposure significantly lowered his ability to heal.
The thickness of the chaparral made for a slow walk — which was exactly why Clark had chosen it as a hiding place. Much of it was dry, making it almost impossible to move silently, and the sheer amount of vegetation, some of it thorny, made negotiating it a slow process. Neither tributes nor large animals could move quickly through it, although that could also work against him if any animals had chosen it for a resting place or if any tributes had decided to hide there like he had.
Clark finally reached the western end of the lake and started around it, hoping to find a safe place on the other side. What he found instead was a river flowing out of the lake, draining the overflow from an old dam. Looking around quickly and straining his ears to pick up any signs of danger, he turned west, following the narrow watercourse.
He stopped in a thicket of willow trees, crouching down and waiting to see if anyone had noticed his presence. When it became obvious that he was alone, he approached the water, hoping that it was safe. Normally, it wouldn’t have mattered whether the water was clean or not, but now he worried that it might make him sick. It wasn’t something that he had been concerned about during his previous exposures to Kryptonite, as the well from which the Kents pumped their water was clean, but now, with only surface water of dubious cleanliness available, he had to consider it.
The water was clear, with only a few leaves floating on it; in fact, it was so clear that he could see the rock strewn bottom and a few fish swimming past. It smelled clean, and the single drop Clark placed on his tongue tasted fine, but he still hesitated, fearing that he was wrong. It was fast becoming apparent, though, that if he didn’t drink the water he would suffer severely from dehydration, perhaps even die from it, before he regained his invulnerability. If he did drink it, he might get sick, though that was far from a certainty, especially since the water was clear and moving quickly over algae-covered rocks, which any farm boy knew signified clean water, but, he thought, if the water was bad, he would most likely recover from whatever illness it triggered in him when he fully recovered from the Kryptonite exposure.
If he’d had his heat vision, he could have easily sterilized some water — but if he’d had his heat vision, it wouldn’t have mattered whether the water was good or not. He had no container to put the water in and no way to purify it. Still, it was a risk he had to take. Clark scooped a handful of water into his mouth, forcing himself to drink slowly. Whether the water was safe or not, he wouldn’t do himself any favors by drinking too quickly and making himself sick again.
When his thirst was finally quenched, Clark stood and looked around, his eyes falling on the low-hanging branches of the willows. He had no way to make willow bark tea, but the leaves could be used as they were to treat pain. He plucked a leaf and put it in his mouth, grimacing at the bitter taste.
Clark felt a sharp stab of grief as he remembered Becky’s hopeful words about willow bark tea the night before, her optimism that it would make her feel better. Nothing could help her feel better now.
Ruthlessly, he pushed the feeling away. Grief was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now — not when his own survival was at stake. He allowed anger to replace the grief — anger at the Capitol, for putting the sick girl into the Games, and anger at himself for failing to keep his promise to protect her. Logically, Clark knew there was nothing he could have done to save Becky — not after being exposed to Kryptonite. He couldn’t have gotten to her in time to save her from the explosion; he might not have been able to get there quickly enough even at his full strength and speed. If he had stepped off his own launch plate, he would have set off the mines around it, and with the vulnerability that came with Kryptonite exposure, the explosion would have killed him just as quickly as it had killed his district partner.
All the logic in the world didn’t change how he felt. Becky had trusted him, and he had failed to live up to that trust. She had died horribly, and her death had no doubt been broadcast and re-broadcast across Panem, the Capitolites shocked and yet thrilled at Becky’s horrific end. In the districts, people would be sickened by what had happened — but they would watch anyway. There would be no mass refusal to watch the Games, and if a few people refused, the Peacekeepers would arrest them, using them as an example of what happened to those who defied the Capitol.
The Rasens were undoubtedly crowded inside their tiny, cramped apartment beside the factory they worked in, mourning the loss of their daughter and sister. Their friends would commiserate and would undoubtedly attend the short, unceremonious funeral once Becky’s remains were returned to District 9, but no one would do anything to try to stop the yearly slaughter — and perhaps no one could do anything. Knowing his parents as he did, he was sure they would be there for the Rasens. He was comforted in the knowledge that the Rasens probably had seen how Becky had acted with him, how he had tried to take care of her — that he hadn’t been the one to cause her death.
The funerals of deceased tributes were never shown on television because to do so might show the Capitolites that the tributes were more than just players in their violent game, might show people that the tributes had friends and family who loved them and would miss them. Some families never recovered from the loss of their children, but to show that might trigger feelings of compassion and anger, and that could lead to rebellion.
Clark knew without a doubt that his parents would watch every minute of the Games that they could, whether it was required or not, in hopes of catching a glimpse of him and confirming that he was okay. Not everything that happened in the Games was shown — only the most exciting parts. The tense minute leading up to the tributes leaving their launch plates was always shown, as was the bloodbath. Clark shuddered inwardly at the thought of what his parents must have felt when they saw his reaction to the Kryptonite. He knew as well that they would have been terrified at his near-death at Platinum’s hands.
The thought of Platinum made Clark uneasy. The Careers were dangerous, but they were also arrogant and noisy, traits that could be their undoing. It was Platinum’s token that made all the difference, as far as he was concerned. If he could avoid the other Careers, he would probably be okay, but the finely cut Kryptonite pendant could be his undoing. If he was exposed to it long enough, it might kill him outright. At the very least, it would make him easy to kill, something the Career tributes would take great pleasure in. This was especially true because he had scored so highly and he wasn’t one of them. In their arrogance, they would simply see him as a usurper and an obstacle to be removed.
There was no way of knowing if Platinum was even still alive, though. She had been alive when Lois had left her — the lack of a boom from the cannon had made that plain enough — but she had also been badly injured. Clark had heard the crack of breaking bone when Platinum had landed at the end of her fight with Lois. He hadn’t stuck around to find out if Platinum was going to survive. After Lois had spoken to him and spared his life, declining to kill him for the
second time, Clark had staggered into the chaparral, not stopping until he felt reasonably safe.
While huddled in the brush, waiting for the worst effects of the Kryptonite exposure to wear off, Clark had heard the cannon sound twice, but he’d had no idea who had died. He hoped that neither cannon had represented Lois, but he had no way to know.
It was growing late. The angle of the sun indicated that it would be setting in a couple of hours — at which point, if past Games were any indication, the Career pack would go hunting, looking for unwary, careless tributes to kill. Clark knew that it was imperative that he find a safe hiding place before then.
Staying beside the river was out of the question. It was the first place the Careers would look, and it would also attract other tributes who needed water. It would also draw thirsty nocturnal predators, and Clark had seen the tracks of some animals he didn’t care to encounter.
Clark thought about going back into the brush, but realized that if the Careers decided to try a strategy that had worked three years before — burning other tributes out — he would be unable to escape. Wherever he hid, it had to be a place he had a reasonable chance of escaping if need be.
He headed west again, keeping his distance from the river. No one challenged him, but he did see a few footprints that showed that other tributes had passed that way. He moved along warily, looking for two things now — a tree that he could climb and a source of food.
As Clark had known it would, his appetite had returned with a vengeance, his body demanding nourishment to replace the energy it had expended recovering from the Kryptonite exposure. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop to search for food — not with night coming on. He managed to pick some half-ripe manzanita berries and a few clusters of elderberries and pull a couple of cattails from a marshy spot, tucking the food into his pockets, but that was all. Finding a safe place to hide was more important than finding food. One hungry night wouldn’t kill him.
Clark froze as he heard a twig snap nearby. The noise was followed by a squeal of pain and the sound of something clattering to the ground. There was a flurry of movement in the bushes and the sound of someone walking around. Then the person cursed angrily. A moment later, the sound of their footsteps grew fainter as they walked in the opposite direction.
Whatever had been running through the bushes was coming Clark’s way. He stepped into the shadows, looking in the direction of the sound. It didn’t sound big, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
A moment later, a rabbit crawled into the open, dragging its injured hindquarters. The person Clark had heard had attempted to hunt it, but hadn’t been quite successful. The animal was severely injured, easy prey now, but had managed to get away from its original hunter.
When the rabbit came near, Clark pounced on it. He was hungry, and the rabbit was as easy for him to catch as it would have been for any other predator. It squealed again, but a quick twist of the animal’s neck ended its struggles. He avoided looking at its eyes, which seemed to be looking at him accusingly. Killing and butchering animals had never been something he’d enjoyed, but it was part of the reality of life on a farm, a necessity he’d long ago learned to live with.
It was a fairly good-sized rabbit, but now that he had it, Clark realized that he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He knew how to skin and gut an animal, of course, but he had no knife, and he had no easy way to start a fire to cook the rabbit with. He wasn’t about to try to eat it uncooked — he’d known people who’d gotten tularemia from undercooked rabbit, and he wasn’t going to risk getting it himself.
Clark looked in the direction of the sun — he still had about an hour until it set. He was near a stand of oaks, sturdy trees that he could climb easily, and even if someone tried to climb up after him, he would still have the high ground. There was also enough dead wood on the ground that he thought he might be able to make a fire with a hand drill. If he built it away from where he intended to hide, he might be able to throw the Careers off about his actual location.
Thirty minutes later, Clark gave up in frustration. There was plenty of wood, but finding pieces of the right size and shape to make a hand drill was nearly impossible, and when he did find a piece of wood of the right size and shape for the platform, the hard oak proved very difficult to put a usable notch in with the semi-sharp rock he’d found. The hard wood of the platform didn’t work well for starting a fire, and after a few minutes, Clark realized that he simply didn’t have the stamina to keep the drill moving until the friction built up enough to ignite the dried moss he had found to use as tinder.
Picking up the rabbit, rock, drill, and platform, Clark trudged back into the stand of oaks, choosing a large, sturdy one to climb. Standing at the base, looking up at it, at the branch just above his reach that he would have to jump up and grab onto in order to climb, he realized just how tired he was. Between the Kryptonite exposure, the exertion, and the lack of rest the night before, he was exhausted.
There was still some time before sunset. He could probably sit and rest for a few minutes before hauling himself up into the tree. There was no sign of the tribute who had been hunting the rabbit, so it was probably safe enough.
Clark felt his eyes drooping shut as soon as he sat down. He struggled to keep them open, but then he gave in to his body’s demands. It wouldn’t hurt to rest his eyes for a couple of minutes, and he would still hear anyone approaching.
He closed his eyes, and that was the last he knew for some time.
*****
Clark awoke abruptly at the sound of a twig snapping. Someone — or something — was trying to sneak up on him. He opened his eyes slightly, looking to see who or what it was without letting them know he was awake.
He more sensed than saw that another tribute loomed over him. With startling swiftness, Clark opened his eyes the rest of the way and gave the person a shove, knocking them down. He scrambled to his feet, tense and poised to run or fight as needed.
The tribute he had knocked over got up almost as quickly. In the gathering dusk, it took Clark a moment to recognize her.
“Lois?!” he exclaimed in shock.
He started to reach for her, to see if she was all right.
When he had knocked her down, it had been so sudden and unexpected that she had dropped the spear and the knife fell out of her belt. She mistook his move as the beginning of an attack and watched as he stepped forward. She took a half step back and he followed, just as she had hoped he would. She took another retreating step and he sped up to close the distance. Now he was close enough to touch and she grabbed bunches of his jacket in each hand as she continued to move back, pulling him along, using his momentum against him. Once she was sure he was moving as she wanted, she bent her knees and started falling backwards. She curled her back in preparation for the technique and pulled her right foot up placing it in his mid-section. As she felt her butt hit the ground, she rolled back and pushed with her right leg, straightening it convulsively in a clean Tammoanagi, backward rolling throw. His feet left the ground as he sailed over her head, doing a flip. He landed on his back with a thud and she could hear his breath come out in a whoosh.
She was instantly back on her feet, spinning to face him again. As she watched, he shook his head and staggered to his feet. He approached her again. His intent was to explain that she had nothing to fear from him, but the lack of air in his lungs prevented him from uttering a single word.
Again, she misinterpreted his move as an attack. She allowed him to get into range and, grabbing his extended right arm, pulled. He half-stumbled forward as she spun and dipped. She pulled his arm over her right shoulder as she bent at the waist and straightened her legs again. This time she was trying to perform an Ippon Saionagi, the One Point Shoulder throw. However, he was a lot heavier than she expected and she wasn’t able to complete the throw, as her legs actually collapsed under the unexpected weight. She fell flat on the ground with him sprawled out on top of her.
She started to struggle in fear for her life. She felt completely helpless. She thrashed about, twisting and kicking as best she could.
When she finally stopped, Clark was still on top of her, straddling her hips with one of her hands in each of his, stretched out over her head and pinned to the ground. His face was short inches from hers.
“What the hell are you doing?” Clark hissed, keeping Lois pinned. “Is that why you saved my life this morning — so you could kill me now?”
Lois spat out a mouthful of dirt and leaves. “I wasn’t trying to kill you!” she snapped.
Clark glanced in the direction of the weapons she had lost in the struggle. “You could have fooled me.”
“You were trying to kill me!” Lois shouted.
“I was not!” Clark responded indignantly. “I just —“
“Just shoved me in the dirt!” Lois interrupted. “And then attacked me! That’s some way to treat an ally.”
Clark gave her a disbelieving look. “You’re the one who said you didn’t need allies. And besides, you snuck up on me while I was resting. If you weren’t trying to kill me, what the hell were you doing?”
“You stole my rabbit!”
“I … what?”
“That rabbit is mine! I’m the one who speared it!”
“It got away from you. I’m the one who killed it.”
“You couldn’t have killed it without my help!”
Clark had to admit that this was true … but he would never tell Lois that. “We can share it,” he told her.
“Share it!?”
“Or else you get nothing.”
“You can’t tell me —“
“Who’s lying in the dirt this time?” Clark asked. “I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good anyway, Pukeface!”
“Everybody was getting airsick this morning,” Clark reminded her, “including you.”
“I’m better now!”
“So am I. Are we going to share, or are you going to go away hungry?” Clark got up, rushing to pick up the knife and broken spear before Lois could get to them.
“I saved your life!”
“And then you tried to kill me! You’re lucky I’m willing to let you walk away — and with half a rabbit, too!”
“I already told you I wasn’t trying to kill you! Believe me, if I’d wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be here talking right now. And now you’re going to make me walk off into the woods with no weapons, totally defenseless!”
“Lois, if there’s one thing you’ll never be, it’s totally defenseless.” He reached back and rubbed his neck and back. “I know that from firsthand experience,” he added wryly, and then continued, “now, forgive me if I don’t quite trust you with a deadly weapon in your hand.”
“And I should trust you?”
“You don’t have a choice, but I promise that I won’t hurt you unless you attack me first.” Clark picked up the rabbit. “Do you want to share it, or not?”
Lois stared at him, torn between her hunger and the fear that Clark would turn on her now that the weapons were in his hands. She was about to answer when the sound of approaching voices reached them.
Both Lois and Clark froze, realizing what the sound meant — the Career pack was hunting already, although it wasn’t fully dark yet.
Clark shoved the rabbit into his jacket and turned toward the tree he had planned to climb. Lois was beside him in an instant, leaping for the lowest branch — which proved to be just out of her reach.
With a quiet cry of frustration, she tried again — and again couldn’t quite reach it. She was about to run farther into the stand of trees, searching for a more climbable one, when Clark grabbed her and boosted her up to the lowest branch. He grunted in surprise at the effort it took to lift her — he wasn’t used to having to exert himself to lift anything.
Lois climbed higher as Clark jumped and grabbed the branch himself. He pulled himself upward onto it, almost overbalancing and pitching off it face first before he caught hold of another branch and steadied himself, then started climbing.
Lois was about sixty feet up when she stopped climbing, fearing that the branches above wouldn’t hold her weight. She sank down on the highest branch she could safely reach, gripping the trunk and listening to the sounds of Clark climbing after her and the Careers coming closer.
Clark stopped climbing about three feet below Lois. He moved carefully to the other side of the trunk, not entirely trusting her not to shove him out of the tree, and found a sturdy branch to sit on. Both of them looked down through the thick foliage, listening to the Careers’ laughter and watching the beam of light that indicated that they had at least one flashlight.
Neither of them was certain what the Career tributes were laughing about — there had been no screams, nor had the cannons boomed. Bits of the conversation drifted up to them as the hunters came closer.
“Remember the look on his face? ‘I thought we were friends,’” one of them mocked. “He should have run — Three never joins the Career pack.”
Another Career giggled. “And the way he screamed — he sounded like a little girl.”
Clark looked up at Lois’s sharp intake of breath, realizing what she did — the Careers had killed Claude. Despite Lois’s antipathy towards Claude, she was still shocked at what had happened to him.
The beam of light came closer as the Careers ventured onto the oak dotted hillside. Clark braced himself, holding tightly to the tree trunk as he waited for the familiar wave of pain from Platinum’s Kryptonite token — but it didn’t come. Either Platinum wasn’t with them, or she had left her token behind.
“Someone’s been here,” one of the male Careers announced, shining the flashlight over the crushed grass and churned-up dirt where Lois and Clark had been fighting a short time earlier. He shone the flashlight around, searching for them, then turned it up into the tree.
Both Clark and Lois sat absolutely still, hoping not to be seen. The darkness and the thick foliage largely hid them from view, and their clothing blended in with the tree, but if the Careers discovered where they were …
At last, the boy with the flashlight gave up and began to search the other trees. Finding no one, they moved on, searching for their human prey.
Looking in the direction that the careers were taking, Clark spotted a fire that some incautious tribute had kindled either for warmth or to cook something.
A short time later, a terrified scream followed by the boom of a cannon announced that the Careers had been successful. It was silent for a while after that — until the roar of an angry animal echoed through the night.
The Careers shouted and cursed, fleeing back the way they had come. There was a male scream and another cannon sounded. The remaining Careers rushed past the stand of oaks, shoving each other in their panic and arguing over what the animal had been — a mountain lion, a bear, a wolf, or a muttation of some sort.
Everything was silent after the Careers fled except for a frustrated scream from the predator in the dark woods as the hovercraft descended and removed its prey. Still clinging to the tree trunk, Clark barely heard Lois’s soft words in the darkness. “So much for Career loyalty.”
Not long after that, Panem’s anthem was played by one of the hovercraft in the vicinity. An enormous screen was lowered, the images projected on it showing the tributes who had died that day.
The images didn’t tell them how the tributes had died, nor did they give the tributes’ names. There was just a head shot of each deceased tribute, along with their district number.
Lois gasped in shock at the first image, which was that of Platinum. “No,” she whispered. “She was alive when I left her. I’m sure of it.”
The other images quickly played out across the screen. Claude. The boy from District 4. The boy from District 6. The girl from District 7. Becky. Both tributes from District 11. Both tributes from District 12.
Ten dead in one day.
Clark clenched his hands when he saw Becky’s picture. He’d known she was dead, but somehow, seeing it projected on the screen made it that much more real. His only comfort was that she had made it into the arena, which meant that her sisters were safe — for this year, at least.
“I’m so sorry, Becky,” he whispered. “I wanted to protect you …”
He looked up at the sound of a sniffle. “Lois? Are you okay?”
Lois was silent for a moment before she responded. “Don’t judge me, Farmboy.” Her voice was choked with tears. “I attacked her to save your life. I didn’t mean to kill her.”
“I’m not judging you, Lois. I’m just thankful to be alive.”
“You don’t plan on killing anyone, but you’ll find out. There’s fourteen of us left, and you won’t have a choice. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have killed to protect Becky.”
Clark might have, and he knew it, but the question was moot. Becky was gone.
“I don’t know, Lois. I really don’t. I don’t want to kill … anyone.”
“I didn’t want to kill Platinum, but she’s still dead.” Lois’s voice broke again.
“You don’t know that it was you. She was alive when you left her. Someone else might have —“
“She was injured — perhaps mortally. You weren’t close enough to see what she looked like, the way her shoulder looked or how much her head was bleeding. She was unconscious when I left her, and it probably didn’t take her long to die.”
“You still can’t be sure you killed her. It could have been anyone, even another Career.”
“It was me,” she said with conviction.
There would be no convincing Lois that she might not have killed Platinum, so Clark fell silent. He rested his head against the tree trunk, wishing that he could do something to console her, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to convince her that she hadn’t killed Platinum, just as he couldn’t convince himself that he hadn’t failed Becky.
Lois cried quietly for a few minutes before calming. She turned her head in Clark’s direction, unable to see him but knowing where he was.
“Clark?”
Clark lifted his head, startled. It was the first time Lois had called him by name. “What?”
“I’m sorry … about Becky. She seemed like a nice girl.”
“She was,” Clark told her, leaning his forehead against the tree. Lois could cry for what had happened in the arena that day, but all Clark felt at the moment was an overwhelming sense of numbness. Becky was dead, along with nine other tributes, and he himself had come close to being killed, but right now, he didn’t feel much of anything.
“Was she really your sister?”
Clark shook his head. Then, realizing that she couldn’t see the movement, he spoke up. “No. I barely knew her until we were both Reaped. I sort of … adopted her, I guess. She was so young and innocent.”
They fell silent again for a few minutes, until Lois once again broke the silence.
“You surprised me. You’re a lot heavier than you look. I should have been able to throw you.”
He had to think fast. “I guess muscle is heavier than fat. Working on a farm is hard work. I’m stronger than I look.”
“That must be it. I’m not going to kill you,” she told Clark. “We’re not allies, but I still won’t kill you.”
“No, we’re not allies,” Clark agreed, “but I won’t kill you, either, and I’ll defend you if I can.”
“No alliances, though.”
“Alliances in the arena have to be broken,” Clark said. “We’re not allies. We’ll just … watch out for each other.”
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