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The banging on the door got louder and louder.

All of them knew this was going to happen at some point, but their rebellion was noble. It was sick, what the Capitol was becoming - its hedonism was swallowing up everything in its path, the entire country was crumbling, and everyone was just sitting by, playing with their new hair plaits, fiddling with new electronic devices, watching that... that

Kyle Broflovski didn't understand what was happening, entirely. His 'friends' (the boys who let him hang around them, even as they mocked his weird parents and the fact that he didn't have much in the way of fancy clothes) all spoke about the Hunger Games at school, in excited tones. Their money had all been on a Career who apparently murdered a helpless girl from District 12 yesterday. Kyle was ashamed that he even knew what a Career was - the fact that he could imagine what a Career might look like, and what district they'd come from, and how they trained, and what he probably did to that coal-miner's daughter, made his face burn.

He hid in one of the rooms of his family's apartment as the state police Peacekeepers burst through the door, barking orders. They'd been found out.

You had to watch The Hunger Games. Why wouldn’t? Not watching it was seditious - dangerous - unnatural. And punishable.

Very punishable.

There was too much going on before Kyle’s eyes. He desperately buried himself underneath one of the beds, clutching his younger brother's hand. His younger brother, Ike, didn't make a sound,

curling his fingers into Kyle's as their parents argued vociferously with the President's guard in the apartment door-frame. It wouldn't do them any good, but they believed as Kyle believed. The Hunger Games were barbaric.

Kyle was so wrapped up in the screaming and the arguing that he didn't feel Ike's hand slip out of his.

Ike's wailing reached his ears quicker than he was able to cry out. Someone yanked on Kyle's leg, and slid him out from under the bed, ginger hair spilling onto the worn gray carpeting. Kyle didn’t make any noise, eyes wide with fright, not even when he was yanked off the ground and pushed into the family sitting room. Ike continued to wail impressively loudly for a five-year-old, while Kyle's mother Sheila, done up in mock-ups of the finest Capitol fashions, screamed at the Peacekeeper holding him to let her son go. The Peacekeeper didn't oblige, instead shoving Kyle’s face into the family telescreen, on and cacophonously loud.

The words being screamed back and forth between his parents, having their hands pulled behind their backs and led away, and the guards, shuffling between forcing the Broflovskis out and watching the look on Kyle's face change, were nothing more than background noise. Kyle, raising his head, let his bright green eyes rest on the imagery before him.

The din wasn't from the screen, he realized after a few moments. It was the collected reactions of the Capitol, streaming in from outside the apartment. The image itself was near silent - which only made it worse.

A boy Kyle's age was soaked in blood, standing over the bodies of five other teenagers. The viscera barely seemed to move him; on the contrary, he was still focused on the body closest to him, a male who looked like he used to have blonde hair.

Kyle presumed he also used to be in one piece.

The boy leaning over him flipped a small hunting knife in his hand over and over again, almost compulsively, lip twitching as his dim hazel eyes glared down at the body beneath him. Kyle could see that he was doing everything in his power not to keep tearing apart the dead kid beneath him, a painfully set grimace visible beneath splashes of blood.

Over the chaos growing in the Capitol, the television announcer finally spoke, in shaken tones.

"The winner of the 47th Hunger Games... is Eric Cartman of District 12."

. . .

one year later

"The reaping is tomorrow."

Kyle Broflovski's life hadn't been easy recently. Being forced to move away from the Capitol of Panem, into a reeling, confused District 12, home of the most recent - and one of the least popular - Hunger Games victors ever, was disorienting. There wasn't really a place to go to school, considering that the Panem-run school was constantly losing students to families who needed to put their kids to work in the mines or the squares and had no permanent teacher; Kyle was basically teaching himself basic curricula from the books his father was able to buy under the table in the marketplace. And while his family was initially treated with strong suspicion, that soon gave way to the people in District 12 embracing his family. Kyle was used to people being incredibly false and shallow - here, the need to survive made people in District 12 desperately open and honest. Kyle actually found himself making some friends.

He didn't need to be reminded of the reaping by one of them.

Stanley Marsh lived next door to the Broflovskis, and the Marshes were one of the few families that didn't think of the Broflovskis as Capitol spies from the get-go. Once Stanley befriended Kyle and began to show him how to hunt and defend himself, the rest of the town eased up on the Broflovskis and began to share more of their stories, their lives, with them.

Kyle, sitting on the edge of a polluted river bank with Stan, bow and arrow quiver resting in his lap, frowned. "You've got to try not to think about it."

"Karnation McCormick is reaping age now. So's Annie." Stan stared at his heavy boots, dark hair falling in his face. "They'll never make it."

"Stan, you realize that the Capitol does this for a reason? The President and his cronies parade this violent bullshit around to inspire the fear of an unjust God in you," Kyle seethed.

Stan blinked at him. "...you sound like Eric."

Kyle's turn to blink. Kyle didn't really know a lot about Eric - every once in a while, Stan and Kyle ran into him while hunting. Every time Kyle so much as looked at District 12's only Hunger Games victor, Eric became an almost indescribable level of awkward and flustered, and conversation usually ended fairly quickly. Kyle wasn’t surprised, given what little he knew of Eric. Kyle could only imagine how traumatizing and haunting participating in a Hunger Games would be. Human interaction after witnessing so much horror - after causing so much of it - was probably grueling. Kyle was plagued by nightmares just by seeing Eric soaked in someone else's viscera, staring down at the intestines he'd torn from another teenager. Actually being pushed to the point of doing something so violent... Kyle was an outsider, and he didn't understand why Eric did what he did. District 12 seemed to, though. They rallied behind Eric. They might not like him, but they were often quick to say that he did what needed doing in the last Hunger Games. Kyle sensed he wasn’t a bad guy, but couldn’t place why he felt that.

Eric and his mother lived separate lives from most of District 12 anyways, since they were forcibly relocated to the Victor's Village, so there wasn't much chance for Kyle to try and smooth their weirdness over. He thought about going to visit, but he didn’t know what to say to Eric. Kyle hardly knew what to say to Stan half of the time.

"That's not a bad thing, dude." Stan interrupted Kyle's train of thought, causing Kyle to snap to attention. "I know you don't really know him..."

"I was just thinking," Kyle said, redirecting Stan's words. "They're going to draft two of us to kill a bunch of kids. If we recognize it for the fascist suppression tactic it is, there's no fear of it."

Stan glowered at him. "I can't be angry about it?"

"That's what you have to be. Not afraid.

Angry

." Kyle sighed, standing up and picking up his bow and slinging the quiver over his shoulder. "If we want to actually eat tonight, we should get to hunting."

Stan stood up with an equally frustrated sigh. "I don't want to lose another of our women."

The two of the moved into the forest quietly. Apparently District 12 had absolutely rotten luck with women in the Hunger Games. They had rotten luck with

everyone

in the Hunger Games, but women of marrying age kept getting put into the games, beloved women who excelled in things that might help pull the District out of their quagmire of poverty. Two years prior, there was Porsche, who had the bad luck to be reaped with her boyfriend. They'd opened up a bakery. They were both killed in minutes.

Stan slipped into some brush, while Kyle climbed up a tree, covered by the heavy leaves around him. The forestry in District 12 was beautiful. Surely the Capitol didn't intend for it to be - the main parts of the city were dusty and unkempt - but the Peacekeepers in District 12 were much less aggressive than those in the Capitol. They let the forest live, instead of burning it down, and subtly directed the people of the district to hunt and learn to forage for sustenance. Kyle wasn't really buddy-buddy with the Peacekeepers the way some people in town were, but he could acknowledge they weren’t interested in playing the Capitol’s games. One of them often expressed annoyance with the Broflovski's situation to Kyle's father in passing.

Kyle waited for moments, noticing a deer crossing his path. He saw Stan hiding in a bush below, not too far from the deer, and readjusted his eyes. Drawing his bow, Kyle pulled back the string, aiming stealthily at the deer, and, with a sharp inhale, loosed the arrow.

It hit the deer's flank, felling it, but not killing it.

Kyle groaned, jumping out of the tree. Stan was already on it, quickly dispatching the deer with his hunting knife.

"Your aim..." Stan began.

"I know, I know," Kyle said, frustrated. His aim had always been an issue. He sheathed his bow and began to help Stan dress the deer, blowing some ginger hair out of his face. He had to be helpful somehow.

If only his Capitol 'friends' could see him now. Dressing a deer and killing. They'd probably love him, flesh-mongering miscreants that they were.

The reaping was tomorrow. They'd love that shit.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Everyone had to dress their best for the reaping. It was another goddamn head game. Kyle said as much to his mother when buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his slacks. She had pulled out some fashions she'd made herself for some of the girls in the neighborhood who couldn't afford to wear niceties, and was going to distribute them in a few moments.

Kyle knew he shouldn't have said anything seditious about the Panem government to his mother. Their family's rebellion had cost her a lot of sanity and ease of mind. Her once fabulous red beehive now hung limp and long around her collarbone, and her reasonable facsimiles of Capitol wear were now faded and smeared with dirt.

But Sheila Broflovski was strong. She preferred District 12, she said. You went appreciated in District 12.

"Kyle, don't you dare say anything in front of the cameras," Sheila snapped at him. Ike was, thankfully, still too young for reaping, but still had to dress well. Six years old and eternally scared of life, Ike wasn't fussing at all as Sheila adjusted his tie.

"I won't," Kyle insisted. Like the cameras would want anything to do with him. He was a Capitol exile. It would be more "fun" to watch people who'd lived their whole lives together be torn apart, sobbing, not ready for their inevitable deaths.

Kyle's father appeared from his small study, dressed similarly to Kyle. They had a lot of similar features - same eye color, same iron-set jaw, same dappled freckles. Glancing between his wife and his eldest son, eyes filled with concern, he sighed. "Let's just keep our heads down today, all right?"

"I just told mom that -" Kyle protested.

His father put a hand on his shoulder. "Kyle, you understand that we're exactly the kind of scandal that the Capitol will eat up? Disgraced former citizens? It's the perfect sob story for them to exploit."

Kyle frowned. Really? He was so certain that the Capitol wanted them forgotten about and swept under the rug. "...I see."

"Please don't start telling anyone about... well. What you tend to talk about."

"All right, dad."

"Once we get through this, we can come back here and rant about how horrific this is and help our neighbors get through this. Okay?"

It was a good plan, but Kyle was too incensed at the situation to fully agree. Still, he swallowed back his objections. "...okay."

"That's my son." He turned to Sheila and Ike, and, wordlessly, the four of them left the house.

. . .

The escort was dressed in the most ridiculous bullshit Kyle had ever seen.

Settling into a large grouping with all of the reaping-age children, Kyle couldn't tear his eyes from what lay before him. A large telescreen had been erected in their main square, the temporary shopfronts all removed (by the people of District 12 themselves - they weren't stupid enough to leave those shopfronts out when the Capitol goons came calling) and replaced with a large square stage. Atop it was… an unserious person, Kyle settled on, a mildly overweight girl dripping in tinsel and elaborate wigs and baubles. On two plinths to either side of her stood two large fishbowls, where the names of all the potential Hunger Games victims lay, divided by sex.

Near the back of the stage, almost hiding behind the telescreen, Kyle noticed Eric Cartman lingering, dressed in muted colors. He looked like he didn't want to be noticed. Kyle didn't blame him. He'd have to try and prevent whoever got drafted from dying, and he was barely sixteen.

"Hello, District 12!" the effervescent Capitol escort greeted. If she expected to get a response, she was delusional. "And thank you for being here for the start of 48th Hunger Games!"

“Like we have a choice,” Stan muttered from Kyle’s left side. From his right side, Kyle's other neighbor, Red Towwood, made a distinctly irritated noise, clicking her tongue at the escort. Thankfully, no one heard either of them.

"I know that the last Hunger Games was extremely eventful for your District, and I am hoping that this year promises more of that same kind of enthusiasm -"

Eric looked like he was going to vomit from his hiding place.

" - and inner strength that characterized the last games!"

Kyle’s frown twitched, out of confusion for once and not spite. The Capitol hated Eric's victory, didn't they? They'd been shaming District 12 for months. Enthusiasm? Inner strength? That didn't sound like the words someone would use to shame a district into keeping their heads down -

Kyle managed to miss what the escort said afterwards, only realizing when he saw her dip her hand into one of the fishbowls.

"...the female tribute for the 48th Hunger Games will be Berebeth Stevens."

Kyle heard Stan swear. From behind them, a woman with heavy blonde curls and a
bodybuilder's physique strode past them. Kyle recognized her in passing - she was the butcher's daughter, and often was seen working her family’s store, violently hacking at meat. She looked older than most of the teens in town, and had slight maturity lines under her eyes. Clearly she was well-loved; girls of all ages stopped Berebeth as she passed them, tears in their eyes, begging her to be careful and wishing her well and worrying. Kyle glanced at Stan; Stan glanced back with a furious look.

Kyle sighed, watching Berebeth take her place on the stage. Her face was grimly determined, but her eyes told another story. She was terrified.

Moving to the next fishbowl, the escort pulled out a slip of paper, the telescreen zooming in on her mildly startled face. The emotion flitted away from her quickly, replaced with nothingness.

"And the male tribute for the 48th Hunger Games will be Kyle Broflovski."
    
Time felt like it stopped.

Kyle barely heard anything over the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Red, forgetting all decorum, gaped at him with wide eyes and blurted out "You?!"; Kyle inhaled sharply and moved out of the cluster of teens and towards the open pathway. He heard Stan yell something that suspiciously sounded like "rigged" before a Peacemaker sidled so close to him that his nerve died. Someone - maybe his brother, Kyle couldn’t tell - screamed in horror, an ear-piercing shock that felt like a knife to the gut.

Every other person he'd met during his family's exile simply stared at him as he walked up towards the stage. They were too shocked to give Kyle what they gave Berebeth. They were scandalized. Some of them probably had the same thought Stan had - this was rigged, and the Capitol was dragging the Broflovski family through a punishment worse than Hell.

Kyle's eyes looked for Eric. He'd vanished.

Kyle took his place next to Berebeth on stage after what felt like an eternity of walking. She looked at him through her curtain of hair, lip twitching, watery blue eyes swimming with shock. They didn't have any time to talk - the escort did some pretty speechmaking for the benefit of Capitol viewers, all of it completely lost on Kyle. She might as well have been speaking gibberish. After the televised festivities wrapped up a few minutes later, the two of them were ushered away from the square and into the Hall of Justice, in the center of District 12. The irony of its name wasn't lost on Kyle.

Both Berebeth and Kyle's families were waiting there for them. Berebeth's father and mother ushered her out of sight of the Broflovskis, probably because they all looked about ready to burst into tears and didn't want to make the Broflovskis' parting any worse.

Sheila couldn't even look at her son for a few moments, overtaken by emotion and fear. Ike immediately latched onto Kyle's leg, burying his tear-streaked face in his knee. Kyle felt so sick looking at him - he was

six

. He shouldn't have to fear his brother being murdered. He shouldn't even know what murder

was

.

Kyle rubbed his head reassuringly. "It's gonna be okay, Ike." Kyle’s voice was completely affect-less and far away. He didn’t have any faith in what he said, and Ike knew it. Ike sniffled, grabbing at his slacks and staining them with tears.

"No it’s not!" he mumbled into the fabric. "No it’s not! Ike should volunteer for. Kyle!"

Kyle, while touched at the idea of his brother wanting to take his place, was also deeply disturbed by it.
His dad, thankfully, took over before Kyle could even try to formulate an answer, pulling Ike off of Kyle's leg.

"Ike… like it or not, Kyle got chosen to be a Tribute. We have to accept this as best we can."

Kyle could tell his dad was using mild language to dance around the fact that his scholarly boy was almost guaranteed to die.

Sheila pulled Kyle into a crushing hug. "Gerald - Dad - Dad and I will have to watch. To make sure our little boy is safe."

Everything felt like it was tearing Kyle apart - his brother crying and reaching back at his leg again, his father looking at him to memorize his features in case he never saw them again, his mother's light perfume winding around him as she tried to convince herself that she could handle watching her son in this grotesque spectacle.

"Mom, I -"

But time was up. A few Peacemakers arrived, as did the escort, looking even more inappropriately upper-class up close than she did far away.

"...I have to take him," she said. Again, her tone seemed inappropriate for a Capitol representative. It almost sounded like she regretted having to separate the Broflovskis.

Sheila let go of Kyle. Kyle looked back at the escort, then to his family, helplessly moving to follow the Capitol woman.

“Good bye…” Kyle murmured, waving.

They waved back, and as Kyle turned his head away, he heard Ike wail a little again. Gerald quickly silenced him with a few words.

"Now we pray for him, Ike."

Kyle finally felt the bile leave his throat and a few tears cloud his eyes as the escort led him away from the Hall's atrium and into a back room.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Berebeth was already sitting on an ornate couch in the small side room when the escort and Kyle arrived. Kyle quickly blinked away his tears, even though he didn't need to. He could see Berebeth's eyes were raw and puffy. He took a seat next to her, unsure of what to say; the escort bustled out just as quickly as she'd arrived, telling both of them to stay put for a few minutes while she found “the other guy”.

Kyle glanced over at Berebeth. She looked nice, in a plain blue linen gown, a small flower embroidered in the corner of its collar. Kyle could see the muscles in her arm twitching as she took in the bright cream-colored room. All Kyle could think about was that this room probably cost more to clean and maintain than most District 12 residents made in a year.

"...this is crazy, isn't it?"

Berebeth's voice was a lot deeper than Kyle expected. Jolted from his thoughts, he folded his hands and placed them in his lap, eyes skimming over the tear stains on his kneecap.

"Yeah. Crazy and wrong," Kyle mumbled. "...I'm Kyle Broflovski."

"Berebeth Stevens." They didn't

need

to say their names, but they had to cling to some sort of normalcy. They had to pretend they might not be forced to kill each other for sport. "My friends call me Bebe."

"Berebeth is a pretty name, though," Kyle commented.

"It's an old-fashioned name," Bebe noted. "The winner of the first Hunger Games was named Berebeth. My parents thought it would... give me strength..."

She paused before tears lined her eyes again. Kyle comfortingly patted her back.

"If it makes you feel better, crying isn't a sign of weakness. It shows you have emotional strength," Kyle said. His father told him that once, back when they lived in the Capitol and some kids at school threw him into a trash compactor. When Kyle finally got home, crying and insisting that he was useless, his father told him that kids who did nothing but hit and fight were the weakest of them all - they used their fists to express themselves, which meant they had little else to express themselves with. The strongest, Gerald told him, were the people who knew when to cry and when to fight, when to flee and when to stay.

Bebe wiped her eyes, smiling lightly. "Stan did say you were smart."

"You're a friend of Stan's?"

Bebe's face darkened a bit. "I was."

Kyle didn't have time to ask. In that moment, the escort bustled back in, with Eric Cartman in tow. She looked flustered and annoyed; he looked like he’d just swallowed acid, his mouth a grim slash. She took a seat in the rococo-style chair opposite the gilded couch Kyle and Bebe sat on. Eric stood, ignoring a similar rococo chair next to the escort, despite her insistent glaring at him. After a few moments of one-sided silent combat, she simply sighed, offering her hand to both Bebe and Kyle in turn.

"I'm Lisa Berger," she introduced herself, shaking hands. Kyle noticed that her grip was weirdly strong. She was probably a veteran glad-hander. "And the next couple of weeks are going to be interesting."

"You make it sound like a summer holiday." Kyle was always shocked when he heard Eric say a full sentence - his voice was nasal and biting, and gave everything he said an air of desperately-needed levity, even when he was deathly serious.

Lisa glared at him again. She didn’t see the levity, clearly. "We'll be leaving by train for the Capitol as soon as the Peacekeepers arrive, and from there you will begin training for the games themselves in our Training Center. You'll also be meeting your stylist -"

Kyle, having not watched a Hunger Games in God knows how long, was at a loss for why he needed a stylist. Berebeth subconsciously grabbed at her long locks, protecting them from an invisible pair of scissors.

" - and preparing for your live introduction to the Capitol before the games."

"Can I… opt out?" Kyle asked. It was a serious question.

Bebe gave him an odd look, while Eric almost looked like he was smirking. Almost.

Lisa frowned. "You used to live in the Capitol, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then here's a heads-up for you, Kyle. Your open disdain for the Hunger Games won't get you anywhere with the people of the Capitol. Disgusting as you obviously find us, considering that you've been glaring at my clothes, hair, and jewelry since you saw me, you won't get anywhere unless you can win over the population. They'll send you gifts and helpful items in the arena if you endear yourself to them. Bebe will have no trouble with that - she's clearly well-liked, based on how District 12 was treating her, and photogenic to boot.”

Bebe looked mildly perturbed about this read of her.

"You will struggle, because as far as Panem's concerned, you're a traitorous ginger fuckwit" (Kyle felt his eye twitch - did the escort really just call him a fuckwit?) "who needs to be murdered immediately for sins your family committed. And that's before you factor in what Eric did to the Careers last year. Basically, Kyle, keep your rebellious thoughts in your damn head and you might have a one percent chance of winning this thing."

Kyle, eye still twitching, simply nodded in response to her. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about Lisa just yet. He certainly didn't appreciate being called a fuckwit, but her intelligence was formidable. She spoke like his old Capitol marketing teacher.

Lisa smoothed out her triangular skirt and went back to business. "Eric will be your mentor. Despite his rather atrocious personality" (Kyle had to assume Lisa was just like this all the time) "he will probably be able to help you with strategy. He's got a bag of cats for brains."

Eric pointedly avoided looking at Lisa, probably to cover up the fact that he was smirking at her assessment of him. Kyle tried to surreptitiously catch his eye, to see how he reacted, but failed.

Bebe leaned back into the couch. "Lisa, what does the competition look like?"

"We won't know until we get to the Capitol. Things are purposely organized that way."

"Surely you must have some idea if any of the Careers volunteered as -"

The Peacekeepers arrived to escort all of them to the train at that moment. Bebe stood, following Lisa closely to try and badger her about some of the Careers that may have volunteered. Kyle took his time getting up, Lisa's words echoing in his head. He was going to have a giant target on his back from the moment he entered the Capitol. His story as a traitor to Panem would be broadcast over the twelve districts, if it hadn't already.

"...Don't keep your thoughts to yourself."

Kyle jumped a bit before noticing Eric was right beside him.

"What?"

"Don't listen to her," Eric said, walking towards the door, voice low yet still bearing the shakiness Kyle associated with his anxious demeanor. “You have to play for the cameras, sure, but your instincts are sharp. Don’t dull them.”

"...Wasn't planning on it," Kyle responded. "You know this is the most you've ever said to me?"

"Didn't want you to lose any animals you might be hunting by chatting you up."

That was a lie. A plausible one, but still. The two of them headed after Lisa and Bebe.

"They'll paint me as a traitor, then," Kyle said, voice quiet but tinged with rage.

"Of course. The bloodsport only works if everyone participates. They had to eliminate you."

"You think -?"

"Yes. Obviously."

As they entered the hallway, Kyle felt himself going green.

"...I can tell you exactly what those Careers are thinking about you," Eric murmured, watching Bebe with a detached air.

"What are they thinking?"

"You're from the Capitol. You’ve never watched a Hunger Games. You're weak. Spineless. They’ll mark you as an easy target in the Cornucopia and move on to splitting each other apart."

"Cornucopia?"

"The thing where - " But Eric paused. "On the train, you're going to watch the last Hunger Games."

"No I'm -"

"Yes, you

are

. If you don't, you'll fucking freeze out there, and then you're really dead, and you

can't

die."

Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Why can't I die?"

For a moment, Eric didn’t say anything, simply looking at Kyle with an almost painful gentleness verging on pity. Kyle knew he didn’t know everything, sure, but something about this look made his heart ache in confusion.

Then, Eric grinned at Kyle.

His blood ran cold. That grin was inhuman. Unnatural.

"I started the rebellion. You and Bebe have to continue it."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

No one felt very much like eating once on the train, so Eric slipped Kyle a copy of the last Hunger Games, procured by a Peacemaker and given to Lisa, and told him to go watch. He sure was odd, a weird mix of comforting and off-putting. Stan was right that they did seem to speak the same language, but man. Kyle had no idea what to make of being stared at with wrenching sadness one moment and being grinned at and propagandized the next.

"I started the rebellion. You and Bebe have to continue it."

At least Eric had some faith in him, he supposed. Seemed the entire world would be out for his hide.

Kyle's guest room was bigger than his bedroom had been in the Capitol, and this was on a

train

. The overt luxury of it all sickened him - the walls were a bleached white color, a color that couldn't be created without intense effort. There was no doubt that it'd been imported from a district known for its linens, after forcing its citizens to create such a decadent wall covering. Kyle almost wanted to sit on the floor to protest it, but the floor was a rich shade of blue, equally difficult to create from dyes. Everywhere Kyle looked, there was something that had to be made by extortion and abuse. Kyle indignantly sat on the plush bed after popping the small little disc of data into the telescreen, a knot growing in the pit of his stomach. He didn't want to watch this at all.

Things started chaotically.

And grotesquely.

The announcers, two comedians named Terrance Argyle and Philip Stoot, were so smugly chipper that Kyle wanted to put his fist through the screen. Kyle never liked them (their bread and butter were prank shows and fart jokes), but they were the most popular in Panem, inexplicably. The fact that they were so smugly chipper about the pointless death of five children right off the bat was appalling and made him feel retroactively justified in his hatred.

The Cornucopia was a large horn in the center of the arena, which appeared to be designed as a barren desert wasteland. There was nothing but dead air for miles around, and patches of trees and shelter in strategically-placed areas far off the reach of the twenty-four tributes, who stood on platforms that slowly lowered as the announcers counted down the start of the Hunger Games. All of the tributes were dressed in skintight black suits, with lace-up boots. (So he really didn't

need

a damn stylist, they were just going to put him in a jumpsuit.) In the Cornucopia, there rested a line of backpacks. None of them had symbols, or any indication of what was in them; it was simply something to fight over.

Kyle's eyes scanned the line of tributes. He picked out Eric rather easily; much as Kyle hated to say it, he looked far more out of shape than the rest of the tributes. The others he knew next to nothing about -

And, with a loud booming horn blare, the Hunger Games began.

A mad dash for the Cornucopia began. Eric managed to beat out the rest of the tributes, picked up two backpacks, and threw one to a girl with flowing dark hair and noticeably looser clothing than the rest of the tributes. The two of them ran off quickly. Kyle wondered why no one was trailing them... until his eyes adjusted to what was happening around the other backpacks.

He witnessed an older teenager grab a rock and split open a twelve-year-old's head, gray matter and blood splattering all over the orange chalky wasteland. That older teenager was subsequently stabbed by a braided preteen with a knife, newly acquired from her backpack, who then dashed off towards one of the areas of shade, just to be shot in the back with an arrow by a blonde woman who'd somehow climbed to the top of the Cornucopia. The braided-haired girl kept running, yanking the arrow out of her back and simply stuffing it in her backpack, blood dripping down her uniform, matting her skin.

The announcers recounted all of the activity with glee.

"And it looks like both of the District 11 tributes have been eliminated in quick succession - the twelve-year-old sweetheart Pegen from District 4 is also dead, murdered by Career favorite from District 1 Moss - "

Kyle could feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck. He felt so sick. So, so sick. A man just giddily told him that a sweetheart child was murdered by a 'favorite'. A 'favorite'. What the

fuck

did Eric do to get these monsters to hate him so much?

By the time the Cornucopia was cleared of living tributes, seven people, none at adulthood, lie bloodied and broken in a hot desert hellscape. One of them still clutched the remains of a backpack - one ripped-off strap.

. . .

Kyle felt like he had to eat after that. Why, he wasn't sure. He knew he wasn't going to be able to keep it down, but he hadn't eaten all day.

Sneaking through the darkened train at night, heading towards where he assumed the kitchen was. He didn't remember much of the layout of the train. He probably should've actually explored a bit before going off to watch the Torture Porn Championships.

He managed to end up in Bebe's bedroom (she said hello while making a needlepoint to calm her nerves), Lisa's boudoir (she wasn't present, but all of her ridiculous clothes were - she was apparently going to be wearing a working model of the solar system tomorrow), two toilets, and a walk-in closet before he found the dining room and the attached kitchen. The dining room was familiar to him, very similar to the one his family had in the Capitol. Sheila always believed that families should eat together, so they spent a lot of their money on food and cooking utensils. Sheila taught him and Ike how to make simple foods when they were younger, and progressed on to more difficult dishes with Kyle once he entered his teenage years.

That didn't stop when they got to District 12, either. When Kyle started hunting, Stan taught him how to dress meat, and Mrs. Marsh helped Sheila make meals that took the best use of what their sons had hunted and gathered. The Marshes and the Broflovskis ate together often. Maybe they were eating together now, bonded in grief.

Kyle opened up a small drawer and found that it froze from the inside. A little freezer box? Technology had grown since he left the Capitol. He pulled a small little bag out and opened it. Inside were small little bulbs of ice cream. Kyle scavenged for a spoon, knowing he couldn't eat this with his hands.

"...Left drawer."

"Thanks," Kyle said before turning around.

Eric was up.

"How far did you get?" Eric asked.

"...the end of the Cornucopia slaughter."

Eric grimly nodded. "Wendy cried for hours when she saw Pegen's face in the sky."

"Wendy?" Kyle asked before realizing. "You threw the backpack to her?"

Eric grimly nodded once again. "Wendy Testaburger. She was the other District 12 tribute from last year."

Kyle knew she didn't make it, clearly. He didn't know how to breach the subject, listlessly stabbing at his pouch of ice cream. "...you two teamed up for a while, then."

"She and I were the last two left who weren't Careers," Eric affirmed. "We had a plan. If it was both of us at the end, I'd just ask her to kill me. Simply."

Kyle blinked. "...huh?"

Eric sighed. "I forgot you don't know anything."

For some reason, that made Kyle's blood boil.

"Maybe I don't want to know anything!" Kyle admitted angrily, forcing some ice cream into his mouth. "Maybe I'm better off not watching you off a bunch of people and being manipulated by Panem's puppet masters!"

Eric glared at him. "Wendy was pregnant, you self-righteous dickwad."

Kyle’s anger immediately dissipated. Swallowing slowly, he lowered the spoon and felt his face color in embarrassment. "...oh."

"Yeah,

oh

." This was obviously a touchy subject.

"...I thought you thought I -"

"I know what you thought. Stan was right about you, you're like me."

"...you could have hung out with both of us, you know. In District 12. I asked you to."

Eric remained neutral, but it seemed forced to Kyle. "It's harder now than before the Games."

"Because you're living in the Victor's Village and he isn't?" Kyle had a feeling it was a deeper wound than than.

Eric inhaled sharply. "...you should finish watching the Games."

"How long are they?"

"They were one of the shorter Games. Only a day and a half. I'm guessing you don't sleep much anyways."

"How'd you -?"

"I don't either."

And with that, Eric left the kitchen.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Wendy and Eric did not compliment each other well.

The announcers often made it clear that Wendy's child was not Eric's, but that was obvious from the way they interacted. Eric would think of a plan and immediately start working on it; Wendy was never pleased with this and often argued with him. Kyle got the feeling that if she wasn't pregnant and prone to morning sickness, she would've killed him early on in the games and no one would have blamed her.

Their dynamic worked in a weird way, though. Wendy was far more in tune with nature, and knew when things would change in the arena. Her quick thinking saved both her and Eric from a
torrential acidic rainstorm, by using a sheet of a tent that was in one of their backpacks as a cover. That particular twist killed three tributes, including one Career from District 4.

Eric was definitely more of a hunter. He set traps almost everywhere the two of them went, and didn't seem to care if they caught a human or an animal. One time it did catch a human, who was already so injured that the simple claw trap, snapped around their ankle, was the last straw, killing them. When the cannon went off, both Eric and Wendy stared at the dangling corpse they'd caught, and, wracked with guilt, took it out of the tree and tried to give him a proper burial. He was from District 10.

Kyle noticed that most of the other tributes would get little canisters with useful items inside of them parachuted down to them. The announcers described them as gifts from 'sponsors', people who paid to send items to the tributes they were rooting for. Before the trap went off, Wendy and Eric didn't get any gifts. Right after they attempted to do right by their accidental death, they received the gift of nausea medicine, from District 10's doctors, for Wendy's morning sickness. The announcers said that a gift from one district to a tribute not of their district had never happened before.

Kyle, forgetting that he knew how this would end, allowed himself some hope. They could make it. Wendy and Eric could make it.

. . .

Wendy and Eric were the last non-Careers left in the arid environment. Pieces of it had been covered in thick underbrush, and that's where they'd been lingering, laying traps and making sure that Wendy was still cared for, despite being in the worst possible environment for a pregnant woman.

They took turns going towards the only place where freshwater could be found, near the Cornucopia, by a river that had spouted out in the middle of the Games. They always took weapons.

Wendy went out for water.

And didn't come back.

. . .

They showed her death in invasive, sickening detail.

Kyle felt like she'd gotten to know her, or at least a shadow of her, in watching the Games, and nothing about her death was human at all.

She was ambushed by three male Careers, the only three male Careers left. Two women stood out and guarded the Cornucopia's goods, laughing about what was happening not feet from them.

One Career dropped a rock on Wendy's head to fell her and get her away from the freshwater. She collapsed and was quickly picked up by the other two male Careers, who began to drown her. Kyle hoped that her fate would be resigned to drowning. It wasn't.

They took their turns with her, even as she gouged one of their eyes out. They pierced her skin, her heart, her head. The announcers were screaming at the cameras and producers to stop, trying to pull away from this - even for the Hunger Games, this was depraved. Eventually Wendy didn't have the strength to fight them any further. She didn't have the strength to even scream when they pushed a knife through her gut.

Kyle vomited watching it happen.

In the end, she was left floating in the river, her blood soaking covering everything in the landscape. Floating beside her in the water, her barely-formed child lay curled near her face.

"At least she got to see her child," one of the completely disgusted announcers said, otherwise allowing the moment to lay still, the only sound from the telescreen being the cannon announcing her death.

The only thing worse than seeing her die was seeing Eric find her what felt like hours later, but was really more like twenty minutes.

He didn't lose it. He didn't start crying, or screaming, or vomiting, or anything of the sort.

Eric simply twitched, gripping the handle of his backpack, and walked straight into the Cornucopia.

Eric used a bow he'd scavenged to pick off the two female Careers quickly, his aim steady and sure, just as Kyle had seen him picking off animals in the woods on rare occasions. They died in minimal pain, which was obviously his intent. With them gone, he shot at the male Careers, hitting non-vital targets, for some reason. It became clearer to Kyle, with the more time that elapsed, that he was doing to them what they did to Wendy.

Eric proceeded to torture the three boys for the better part of an hour.

It was almost worse, seeing Eric degrade to their level. Maybe it was his tranquil fury, the way he never raised his voice to any of them, silently digging a knife into them, severing arteries that would keep them alive but keep them in such pain that they could barely move, slicing with precision and with small movements.  It was the way he expertly destroyed three complete monsters with little more than a bow, a knife, and his presence, rage spilling from every pore in his body. No amount of screaming roused him at all.

Two of them bled out without Eric having to deal a final blow. The third, though, actually had the

gall

to ask why he did this.

He was the one Wendy stole the eye from, the one who was most vicious and heartless with her.

"This is why."

And he vivisected the boy's stomach.

. . .

No one was surprised Kyle spent most of the rest of the day looking green in the face and drinking enough water to drown his lungs. Almost everything about the last Hunger Games, and how District 12 treated him and Eric and everyone else, made sense now.

The Careers would've gone down as the worst tributes in history had Eric not sunk into their level of moral morass - the fucking

announcers

were trying to save Wendy, or at least trying to stop her death from being broadcast - and then Eric went and cut a living teenager into pieces right before his eye. Panem was already outraged, and Eric made it easy for them to continue to be outraged. For the first time in history, the Hunger Games had not trampled the emotions and dissent of the Districts.

Bebe sat with him the next afternoon, after they'd discovered that they only had a few hours left until they reached the Capitol, giving him some water.

"You saw," she said.

"I saw," Kyle repeated. "I get why District 12 respects Eric. Jesus Christ, though."

"...Wendy is - was - my best friend," Bebe admitted. "She was so smart. And we all thought it was kind of funny, the way she and Eric used to scream at each other about everything. They

hated

each other. And that only got worse when he dropped out of school and she didn't. She used to wait for him outside of the woods so she could lecture him about going back to school because he was smarter than he gave himself credit for."

"...but she hated him."

"

Hated

," Bebe responded knowingly before giving Kyle a very sad smile. "She only tried because Eric was Stan's best friend."

"...he... he

was

?"

Bebe picked up on why he emphasized 'was'. "...Stan and Wendy married young. They wanted to beat the system, you see. She and Stan were cut from the same cloth there. Too clever for their own good, in some ways. They were married at fourteen, and they figured, they could have kids, and they could be looked after, and they could beat the system. The Capitol wouldn’t reap a pregnant teenager, surely."

"Stan never..."

"Stan

can't

talk about it. It causes him too much pain," Bebe interrupted. "He can't even talk to people who were close to her anymore - I’m glad he still talks to Eric, but that’s just barely. He thinks the whole thing's been rigged for years, to pick the people who could help District 12 and get them murdered. He tried to get the person he loved the most through it all." She inhaled sharply. "And then he had to see her..." She cut off.

Kyle felt wildly uncomfortable, miserable for Stan. No one had said a

word

to Kyle, or his family. No wonder the whole community regarded his family with suspicion for a few months. They'd lost someone they loved, and that beautiful girl was replaced by a Capitol family. For all they knew, the Broflovskis had delighted in Wendy Testaburger's death.

No wonder it was hard for Eric to talk to him and Stan. Eric was clearly deeply traumatized by his experiences, and going out on a fun hunting trip full of blood and guts with his former best friend and some Capitol shithead was probably the

last

thing he wanted to do. Stan probably felt grateful that Eric destroyed the men responsible for taking his wife and his child from him, but if Kyle knew Stan, Stan also probably felt like he'd failed that wife and son by not being there to protect them. There were so many layers of misery to this.

"Would you have done what Eric did?" Bebe suddenly asked.

Kyle tried to imagine someone who mattered to him as much as Wendy would have to Eric - Ike. If he saw Ike, lying face-up in a river, his entire body mangled, raped, treated like filth…

"Yes," Kyle answered unflinchingly.

Bebe smiled wearily. "...you're very strong."

"So are you."

Bebe frowned. "If we make it to the final two, will you promise me something?"

"Depends."

"If we're the last two, do me the honor of a fair fight. No torture, no sneaking up behind me with a rock  -"

"Of course I'll fight you fairly," Kyle insisted, cutting her off before she could get too graphic. The images of Wendy would haunt him for life, and the idea that anyone was capable of that made his stomach knot up. For all Eric did to torture those three boys, he killed the women quickly, quietly, without fuss. Eric wasn't capable of the same monstrosity those Careers had been.

"Thank you. Until then... until then, we should stick together."

"I don't know if you'll want me. I can't aim to save my life," Kyle admitted.

"You're better than you think," a third voice interrupted.

Eric was leaning against the wall, drinking tea, watching them.

"How long have you been there?" Bebe asked.

"Eh." And Eric disappeared again.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Kyle was not nearly as excited to enter the Capitol of Panem as Bebe was. That made sense - Bebe had never seen the towering monoliths of pure white marble, nor the throngs of people dressed as if every alleyway was a fashion runway, nor the bright sunshine piercing through a cloudless sky. Unlike District 12, there was not a speck of dust to be found anywhere, no quiet rebellions going on beneath the noses of lackadaisical Peacekeepers, and certainly no butcher's daughters goggling at people through windows.

Lisa babbled excitedly about the itinerary for the day while Kyle looked at the visage of his old home, one he'd never felt very comfortable in. The men were just as known for their ridiculous fashions as the women in the Capitol, but Kyle, like most of his family, was never much of one to show off. The patterns were more intricate than before he was forced out of the Capitol, the hairstyles taller and wider and filled with more useless accoutrements. Lisa, every so often, would say something that took Kyle from his thoughts - 'the training center, where you'll be staying', 'the first televised interviews will be tomorrow night and your stylist -' - but most of the time, as the train lumbered into a pristine station near to the Capitol's main hub of activity, Kyle's green eyes glazed over places he'd been in the past.

They passed his old school, where he saw plenty of high-fashion boys and girls lingering on the steps, chattering. Some of them had small portable screens with them; Kyle thought he caught a glimpse of a reaping from another District on one of them, something that made him mildly ill. The train also passed the marketplaces where his mother used to buy delicate bolts of cloth to sew her fabulous knock-offs of Capital Couture, the brand with the most pull in Panem. They passed his father's old workplace, their old apartment complex, streets Kyle knew how to navigate by heart…

It was odd how detached Kyle felt from every place they passed. Most would reminisce about a place they'd lived the majority of their life, he assumed. Kyle observed, passively, that technology had marched forward, but not much else had changed.

Bebe was awestruck by it all. "How do they afford all this?"

"They have money," Eric responded from his seat behind Kyle, fiddling with something around his neck, silver in color.

Kyle glanced back outside at a gathering of Peacekeepers surrounding Panem's main governmental building - the home of President Scott, the ringleader of all this madness. Kyle, thankfully, never had to meet him. He wondered if he'd have to, now that he was a tribute in his demented -

"Kyle!" Lisa screeched.

Kyle jumped a good foot and a half. "What?!"

Lisa sighed. "You are going to die so quickly." Her lack of faith made Kyle's skin burn in mortification. "Do you have a token? I'll need to take it now so that it can be approved to go into the arena as soon as possible."

Kyle stared blankly at her. "...token?"

Eric jumped in before Lisa could tear Kyle a new asshole. "You can take a reminder of your home district into the arena for the games if you want."

"...arena?"

"Dude, seriously? The place where all the kids are gonna stab each other. You think they set us loose in their town? That'd make it too

real

, Kyle."

Lisa looked ready to shoot Eric, but Kyle appreciated how Eric got to his level so quickly.

…and then almost buried his face in his hands. He'd seriously just asked what the arena was. He needed to focus.

"...I don't really have anything to take in." He hadn't been thinking about that when he left District 12, nor did he have any kind of sentimental object he'd want to take with him. He had often admired Jennevieve Simons' mockingjay pendant necklace, and wanted one of his own, but she never got around to making it for him before he'd been drafted as a tribute. "Do you have -?"

Bebe pulled a small handkerchief out of her pocket, a delicate pink fabric with blue stitching and her initials on it. "My mother made it for me when I was little. I used to cry all the time."

Kyle's eyes trailed to Eric, who pulled on the small silver chain around his neck. There was an arrow pendant on the end of it, minuscule and almost unnoticeable. "The McCormicks made them for both me and Wendy before we went in last year."

"How can you not have anything you'd want to take in?" Lisa said confusedly.

"Not exactly fond of my hometown," Kyle said, a little more forcefully than necessary. For some reason, both Eric and Bebe smirked at that.

"You don't need one, really," Bebe told him. "You can't bring in anything they'd deem a weapon, so not having anything makes your life a bit easier."

The train rolled into the station and Kyle shrugged. He did kind of wish he had something to show District 12 that he identified more with them than he ever had with the Capitol way of living. He did have memories.

Memories would keep him going.

. . .

one year prior

Stan kicked Eric Cartman's new door open, because Eric didn't have enough on his mind and desperately needed a new problem to handle.

Eric was busy sitting in his new living room, staring at the barren walls, trying to figure out what would look best on them. At least, that's what he'd told his mother he'd do while she went to the market. He was really trapped inside his own head, replaying horrific events, wondering why on earth he'd been given a house. He tried to give the house to the Testaburgers, but that wasn't how it worked, according to the Peacemakers. Only the Victor of the Hunger Games received the spoils.

One of those “spoils” was going on a Victory Tour in a month. Eric wondered if he could get away with hiding in the woods to avoid that, but was pretty sure that he'd just end up getting accidentally shot by a hunter.

He stood up out of the oaken chair and stared at Stan, who looked angrier than Eric had ever seen him.

"...er..." Eric intelligently said. "...try not to take the door off its hinges?"

"You know what those fuckers have done?!" Stan bellowed at Eric.

Eric felt his chest twinge painfully. "I did everything I could to -"

"No, not Wendy - well, kinda - fuck! They just wanna rub salt in that wound, those motherfuckers - !"

"Stan, what's going on?" Eric asked, his voice growing deeper, taking on more menace. Rub salt in the wound? Eric trusted the Capitol goons as far as he could throw them, and if Stan was this incensed, something was definitely up.

"Some Capitol fucks are moving in to your old house!" Stan screamed.

"...moving?" Eric questioned.

"Yeah! Probably spies, making sure that no one's saying anything about how Wendy was murdered and that the Capitol just laid back and let her -"

"Stan, I know you're probably incapable of this right now, but you need to calm the fuck down. You yelling about how the Capitol murdered your wife is only going to get you punched by a Peacekeeper."

"Let them punch me!"

"Stan, are you seriously...?” Eric sighed, cutting himself off and gesturing for
Stan to sit down. He didn't.

"I wanna know what they're up to," Stan intoned darkly.

"The new neighbors?" Eric clarified. Stan nodded, making Eric sigh again. "...Stan, if you go home and pull your head out of your ass -"

"I just watched my wife and kid die, you sack of shit!"

Neither of them anything for a few moments as the tense silence choked them. Eric finally cleared his throat, his face a lovely shade of chalk white. "...I know I'm a lousy replacement. Stan, you need to calm down and not do anything right now. I'll ask around. I promise."

Stan glared at Eric. "I'm sick of people telling me to keep my head down."

Eric glared right back at him. If he squinted, Stan resembled someone he'd been much more comfortable arguing with in a past life. "Maybe you'd be less sick of hearing it if you actually took the advice."

Eric pushed past him and headed out the door.

. . .

Eric managed to catch a glimpse of the family when he left Stan alone in his house (Stan was probably destroying it. Eric was totally fine with that, to be honest) and wandered over to his old neighborhood. The houses were not well-constructed, but they'd stood the test of time, made out of misshapen brick and runny mortar.

The family moving in didn't look anything like the Capitol residents Eric saw during his Hunger Games. They had a very small son, maybe five or six, toddling after a lanky teenage redhead with curly hair, who was spewing venom every which way. His mother, a large woman with her hair teased high above her head, told him to not say anything seditious - they didn't need to have the Peacekeepers show up again and have something else to punish them for.

That answered Stan's question. Eric doubted they were spies from the beginning; no one left the Capitol of their own free will. The quartet was too mismatched to be spies, anyways. A six year old wasn't going to do anyone any good on that kind of -

"Weird, huh?"

The head Peacemaker of District 12, an easygoing man by the name of Barbrady, sidled up to Eric. Eric glanced at him confusedly.

"I heard they moved from the Capitol," Eric said in response.

"Oh, no. They got kicked out of the Capitol." Peacemaker Barbrady was so loud, it was a miracle the family didn't hear them. Eric's eyes kept following the teenager, who was now telling his
mother that there wasn't any point in keeping quiet about how the whole government was a fascist dictatorship bent on strangling the other districts and preventing them from breeding by killing off their young for sport. The teenager was... pretty. Pretty was the right word. Pretty and consumed by rage.

"Kicked out? You can get kicked out?"

"Oh yeah. They did." Not bright, Barbrady. "I heard from the Capitol Peacekeepers that brought them that they hadn't watched a Hunger Games in five years."

That caught Eric's attention as much as the teenager's freckle-coated skin. "And they got caught... and got sent here?" District 12 was a punishment. How nice of the Capitol to assign that label to his home.

"Suppose so. That redhead kid sure is loud, ain't he?" Barbrady said just as loudly.

Eric had to only pause for a moment to hear the teenager scream that District 13 probably did exist before the Capitol hivemind decided to tear it from existence by bombing it back to the stone age and making all the adult survivors eat their young, otherwise they would have been exiled there.

Eric grinned. "Sure is."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Training Center, unlike every other building in the Capitol, was a sheer black monolithic tube, with tinted windows and artistic chunks taken out of the sides. Kyle and Bebe were ushered into it quickly by Lisa, while Eric trailed behind them, shoving his hands in his pockets and uneasily watching the walls as they walked.

There was no one lingering in the lobby. Kyle didn't know what he expected - this wasn't a hotel, and most districts would be looking to sequester their tributes for as long as possible. Lisa pushed everyone into a capsule-like elevator, which traveled quickly up rows and rows of floors. Kyle could see the world below through the tinted glass walls; it was obvious that people on the street were craning their necks, trying to figure out which district's tributes were flying up, up, up, towards their last moments of peaceful existence.

Kyle wasn't sure if any of them could see him, but he subtly flipped the city off. They'd earned it.

The hurtling elevator came to a stop, and dumped the four into an apartment that was even larger than their lodgings on the train. Lisa wasn't at all moved by it, and immediately began to chirp that they needed to start work on being coached for their televised appearances. Eric also didn't acknowledge the opulence of his surroundings, almost walking into a wall before sighing and saying that he needed to attempt to sleep. Bebe and Kyle, naturally, focused on Lisa's overly bubbly statement. (Eric maybe needed help sleeping though.)

(Why on earth was Kyle thinking that?)

"Coaching?" Bebe questioned.

"Of course. You want to look natural for the cameras, right?" Lisa asked.

Kyle rolled his eyes. Natural? What a crock. The Capitol wanted artificiality - being natural would mean screaming in terror with every question. "I'd rather stab myself in the -"

"Ugh, fine, I'll go with the cynic's reasoning, Broflovski," Lisa snapped, sitting down on a red plush loveseat and crossing her legs. The solar system dress really did accentuate her figure. Somewhere beneath all the weird decorative crap, Capital Couture knew how to design a flattering dress, Kyle thought.

"You need sponsors. Sponsors come from every district and they buy items to send to tributes to help them out. They're usually the richest or most storied individuals in a District. And they send things you can't find in the arena, like medicine." Kyle immediately thought of the nausea medicine Wendy got in the little silver capsule. "And sponsors watch the televised events. They want spectacles
and stories, and, if I may be frank -" She was always frank, why point it out now? " - your story, Kyle, puts you at a severe disadvantage with those people. You got kicked out of the Capitol. Loyalists participating in the Hunger Games aren't going to want to help someone who betrayed them in such a... personal... manner."

Lisa turned to Bebe. "You, dear, you're easier. Your best friend was brutally murdered in the last Hunger Games and you just want to survive in her name."

"What am I supposed to say?" Kyle interjected before Bebe, a sour shade of green, could protest such blatantly manipulative pandering. The idea that not watching the Hunger Games was "personal" to people who decided who to bless with their "magnanimity"... Swallow it back, Kyle, don't make this worse.

Lisa narrowed her eyes. "...I'll need time to think about it. But we can start by stopping you from being such a sarcastic bitter asshole. I know that's basically your entire personality, and I get it." Lisa softened just a little bit. "If I was ripped from my home because someone wanted to protect me... I'd be that way, too, I think. Most people would. And being in District 12 couldn't have helped."

Bebe rose out of her chair in fury at the perceived insult to her home. Lisa raised an eyebrow at her. "...The Peacekeepers in District 12 are more on your side than the Capitol's. Everyone there is convinced that the Capitol is trying to blow them out of existence for daring to  live. You guys got a raw-ass deal last year, and even with your Victor meting out the same kind of justice the Capitol regularly gives to lawbreakers, you come out looking even worse to Panem. Those feelings aren't wrong. Displaying them to a nation that will tear you apart for them, for right now, is only going to get you all pilloried and targeted."

So Lisa didn't think that Eric was a monster. She sided with District 12. That was odd, considering that she didn't seem to agree with

anything

Kyle did.

Bebe sat back down, the words sucked from her, and Lisa turned back to Kyle. "You have to prove every stereotype the Capitol has about you wrong. Every. Single. One. Both of you are going to be sparkling, sterling, untraumatized, emotionally open and available bright young things. Bebe, I
know that you're probably wildly offended by using your dead best friend as a prop, but the
Capitol expects you to be bloodthirsty for revenge. Don't give them that. Kyle, whatever the fuck we figure out to do with you, it's going to hinge on turning your story into something positive."

"...I love District 12?" Kyle offered.

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "...it's not treasonous, so it's a start."

. . .

That night, the stylist arrived.

He was much older than Lisa, and, surprisingly, dressed in a fairly laid-back manner for someone who was supposed to be up on all the Capitol's finest fashions. Kyle didn't quite know what to make of him when he walked into his bedroom, Lisa following him with a most pleased look on her face. His button-down shirt was a colorful mix of yellow and pink, and he had a matching kerchief around his neck, but otherwise, he was in neutral slacks and simple circle-rimmed glasses, with close-cropped gray hair. He wouldn't look out of place at a District Twelve tavern.

"This is Alfred -”

"Oh please," the man said in a high-pitched tone, "just call me Al."

Lisa pursed her lips. "...Al. This is Al. He's a very well-known stylist here in the Capitol, and he volunteered his services to dress both you and Berebeth for tomorrow's big coming-out party."

Al snorted a bit. Kyle stared at him incredulously for a second; Lisa, lips pursing even further and looking a might embarrassed, took that as her cue to leave, closing the door behind her.

When she left, Al laughed. "She is so funny. Coming-out party? Dear me, this is a Hunger Games, not a debutante ball!"

With that, all the tension in the room deflated. Kyle, still sitting on the bed, stood up and allowed himself one little smile. "...I'm Kyle Broflovski."

"Kyle, oh yes, the whole Capitol is abuzz about you," Al noted. "Banished from the Capitol only to compete in the Hunger Games? A lot of folks find it tragic. ...It's me, I'm a lot of folks. But also a lot of folks besides."

Kyle made a mental note to try and work on a similar storyline with Lisa. If the Capitol residents found him a tragic figure, they could pity him enough to make him look less like… what were Lisa's words? A complete ass-munch? "So... what is it you do?"

Al didn't ask why Kyle didn't know about his job. It was a bit of a relief. "It's my job to make you look your best for the cameras. A lot of the pre-Games ceremonies are very theatrical - there's a parade where the tributes from each district ride through the main square in front of the President's lodgings,
and from there you go to the biggest theatre in town for your televised introductions to the population. All you have to do is let me work my magic - but obviously I want to make sure you're comfortable, too."

Kyle nodded. "...I don't really like fancy things."

"I don't blame you. I wouldn't be able to walk if I dressed like Lisa," Al admitted.
"Thankfully, the men have more leeway. What do you think Berebeth would look good in?"

Kyle's mind flashed to a moment in District 12. "She's very attached to her hair. Don't do anything to it."

Al nodded before smiling. "...I can tell that you're a good kid, Kyle."

Kyle didn't respond.

"Lisa tells me you're like Eric, though," Al mused. "Eh. He's a good kid too, so what does she know? You're here now and I'll take measurements for your outfit. You say you like simple things?"

"Yeah," Kyle noted, watching Al take out a measuring tape from his pocket. He started by measuring the length of Kyle's arms, keeping a respectable distance. "I like darker colors, too."

"That's an excellent call. Nothing too light. It would clash with your hair."

Kyle paused, knowing that he should be saying more. Anything. From the shallow but relevant - he liked flowing fabrics, he preferred to tie his unruly hair back when trying to be presentable, he had an ear piercing that he never filled anymore because buying earrings in District 12 was nearly impossible - to the deep fears rising up his throat, stomach acid and bile clogging up his body. But...

"...I don't know what else to say."

"That's all right," Al said. "There's probably a lot running through your mind right now. If you want to be with your thoughts, it's fine by me."

Kyle nodded, graciously accepting that offer. He thought that Al would fuss over every inch of him, like his mother used to when she made clothes for him, but he was quiet, taking down notes on Kyle's measurements and occasionally asking questions about whether Kyle preferred certain fabrics or styles. Kyle truly appreciated his demeanor. With Lisa's piercing words rolling around in his brain and the fear of trying to work out some way to make himself endearing to people who wanted to buy him things to help him survive…

God, how fucked was all of this?

. . .

"You can't sleep."

Eric pointed out the obvious when Kyle, sick of staring at his ceiling, moved into the main living area and stared out the tinted window, down into the brightly lit nightlife of the Capitol. People danced and whirled and celebrated and acted like they weren't about to root for children to die.

"No," Kyle responded, not moving his eyes from what lay below.

"...Lisa's really harsh on you," Eric pointed out. "She’s harsh on me, too."

Kyle looked away from the scene below him and to Eric. Eric wore a loose shirt and flannel pants, something that would look completely out of place in the world bustling below them.

Kyle, for what it was worth, hadn't changed out of what he'd worn on the train. He didn't really know what he wanted to wear from the clothes left in the apartment for him. All of the outfits seemed too decadent for his tastes. He wanted something like what Eric had on.

"I hate it, but she's right. I won't be of any use to anyone if I keep up... my usual manner," Kyle hesitantly said. "Bebe and I need to make it to the end."

"I remember."

Kyle recalled that, yes, Eric had been hiding there for who knew how long, watching him and Bebe talk.

"It's very noble of you," Eric said. "...I know I haven't done much to help yet -"

"You've been in my corner," Kyle cut him off. "That's been enough."

Eric blinked and said nothing for a while, staring at Kyle but appearing more like he was looking through him. Looking extremely far away.

That was strange. Kyle raised an eyebrow.

"...you all right?" Kyle finally asked.

"Yeah," Eric said, sounding mildly shocked. "...How'd you know I was in your corner?"

"You made me watch those Games to prepare me. You haven't agreed with Lisa calling me every name in the book. You... well, you keep explaining things to me while letting me feel like an idiot, but at least you're explaining them instead of sighing and flinging your hands in
the air."

Eric ran a hand through his cinnamon hair. Through the little bursts of light that occasionally pierced the dark room, Kyle could see that his cheeks were pink. He probably wasn't used to people thinking he was helpful.

"My part is coming soon," Eric said, pretty much ignoring Kyle's protestations. "After all the pageantry is done, the actual training begins."

"I can't believe they

train

us."

"That's a sham,” Eric admitted. “It's more that you practice your skills for a week. That practice period is a way to know the other tributes and what their strengths are. At the end of it, some high-ranking Capitol officials watch you perform and give you a grade, 1 to 12. 12 means you're

this close

to murdering someone already; 1 means you're a twelve-year-old immediate sacrifice."

Kyle gulped. "What'd you get?"

"A five."

"...

dude

. You're the best hunter in District 12."

Eric went bright pink again. “Uh, sure, not… anymore, but okay, sure, thanks.”

Kyle had no idea how to parse that, but at least Eric was behaving in a way he was familiar with - jittery, blushing, unsure.

Eric composed himself and continued. "It was purposeful. Wendy and I wanted to make ourselves seem thoroughly average. She didn't let any of her intelligence show, and I let none of my violence out. They'll see through that now, though. Bebe's too strong to really hide her abilities, though - but I fucked it for you, I'm sorry."
Eric paused. "I meant what I said. You're a decent shot."

"With no aim."

"You aim fine when you think no one's watching you."

Kyle narrowed his eyes. "...you've been watching me."

"...er..."

"You could've asked to hunt with us," Kyle lightly admonished. "I wouldn't have minded. I told you that before."

"I didn't know how much you knew," Eric murmured.

"About...?"

"Come on, Kyle, you

know

what."

Kyle's eyes fell downcast, frowning. He'd pretended to hear his whole conversation with Bebe; he'd only heard the end bit, obviously.

"...I would've done the same thing," Kyle said quietly.

"You were from the Capitol. It’s easy enough to hear people talking -"

"Eric, I would've done the same thing, it doesn't matter -"

"You haven't seen how much the other Districts hate me," Eric suddenly interjected.

Kyle stopped breathing, or it felt like it. Eric's face was inches from his, and he looked paralyzed with fear and worry and regret. Any argument Kyle could think of died on his lips.

"...I'm not the other districts," Kyle finally whispered.

They sat in silence for a few seconds before Eric, evidently a bit too overcome to think of a coherent response, walked away and went straight back into his room. Kyle, curious, followed him, opening the door just a sliver where it had been closed seconds before.

"...I'm watching

you

now," Kyle said. He wasn't normally the kind of person to try and paper over emotional moments, but he did really want Eric to know that he understood him, to some degree. That he wasn't lying.

Eric narrowed his eyes. "Don't act like this is fine.”

Kyle frowned. “It's not. But I'm not lying to you.”

Eric didn't react visibly, so Kyle pushed forward.

"If I get out of this alive, we can go hunting. And if I don't get out of this alive, take Bebe hunting. See? Everyone wins."

Kyle walked away, but he could swear he heard Eric murmur something suspiciously like "your death is no win."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

There was to be a parading of the tributes before they went into the giant television studio to be interviewed and filmed.

Kyle's mind was elsewhere. He wasn't the kind for fancy displays anyways, but all he could focus on was what he and Eric spoke about the night before. Eric hid from him, fearful that he'd been tainted by the Capitol and its perception of the last games... and watched him.

Kyle wasn't stupid. Eric wanted to talk to him but felt like he couldn't (despite multiple invitations), and resorted to following him around to see him. Kyle was pretty sure the only people who did that were kids with crushes. Crushes and bad social skills.

Kyle

might

be jumping to conclusions.

…but didn't people always tell him that the two of them spoke so similarly? The amount of times Kyle had been compared to Eric felt like it was in the hundreds. Maybe Kyle should've wondered earlier why his friends never tried harder to push them together. Maybe Eric thought he didn’t deserve friendship, or romance, or whatever lie in the space between those.
Maybe Stan knew Eric would panic if it was attempted. Maybe Eric pressed Stan not to let them see each other often.

Eric wouldn't want more contact, if he did have some feelings, if he feared Kyle's reactions to his actions. Trauma all the way down.

And if Kyle was entertaining this conclusion - he was entertaining it, he was thinking too much about it, considering he was being sent to his death in a week and his thoughts were dominated by something as silly as

an unconfirmed crush

- did that mean he might be… fine with… Eric… following him? Or… something?

Kyle had no romantic experience at all. He honestly had no idea how Stan could know he loved someone enough to marry and start a family with them as a teenager. He'd been attracted to men before, certainly, but he never breathed words of that to anyone. He was unpopular enough at his Capitol school, he didn't need to also come out as gay. That would have lead to being thrown in dumpsters twice a week as opposed to twice a month.

Kyle barely said anything as Al fitted him with his parade costume. Kyle waited a long time for his fitting to occur; Bebe's costume, Al told him, decided at the last minute to pucker along her waistband and had to be altered quickly. Al draped the outfit over Kyle's body, and the material, stretchy and thick, poured over his limbs, encasing him. Kyle was used to clothes
fitting loosely, not trapping him inside and pressing against his chest. The feeling brought forth the latent anxiety forming in his heart. How would he survive the Capitol night heat in this? Kyle could already see the sun going down from his window.

"Are you worried about the presentation?" Al asked as he fussed over a sleeve hem, pulling Kyle into reality for a moment.

"...somewhat," Kyle admitted. He wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about Eric. How would you even begin to talk about all that? 'I suspect my mentor might have a crush on me, but he might also just be keeping his distance because I'm almost guaranteed to die, but I kinda want to know which it is - also I wouldn't know how to approach that under normal circumstances anyways, much less one where all endings hurt him’? And they only had ten minutes before they had to be shuttled off to participate in the running of the children, to boot.

Al seemed to notice that Kyle wasn't being entirely truthful. "I promise not to tell, if you want to vent."

Kyle paused before sighing. "Someone told me... well they implied that they didn't want me to die."

Al nodded sagely, putting the last touch on Kyle's coal-black outfit, a small white diamond button over his aching heart. It melded to the material with a simple press of the hand. "Ah. Affection. You wouldn't be a tribute if you didn't get at least one love confession before going into the arena."

"This

happens

?"

"The fear of death brings people to say things they normally wouldn't say," Al admitted.
"Whoever talked to you, though, they didn't outright say they loved you?"

"...no."

"Do you wish they did?"

"...I don't know. I don't know what they want."

Al gave Kyle a knowing look - Kyle hadn't weaseled out of that one. "...Berebeth is a really nice girl. A star-crossed lovers romance would play well to the cameras. It might be worth it to milk it for a while."

Kyle felt his face go paste-white, matching the diamond on his chest. "It's not Bebe."
Not to mention, how cynical could you be? Kyle knew how he was going to sell himself to the Capitol on the show tonight, and it sure as hell wasn't with a showmance. That was just cruel, especially considering how very much in love and very much committed the last female District 12 tribute was.

Al blinked."Oh." His eyes widened a little bit after a few moments of thought, but he did nothing but adjust the diamond brooch and step back. "Well, if you want my opinion, you've got a lot on your plate already. If it wasn't a cut and dry declaration of anything, you should
just let it sit. There are so many more important things to focus on right now... like getting you and Bebe through the games."

Kyle frowned, but nodded. He saw Lisa wandering near his doorframe, head draped in a huge gray cloche and wearing a glittery black ballgown that matched Kyle's jumpsuit. Their eyes connected, and she gave him a slight nod. It must be time.

"Kyle," Al said quickly. "When you start the procession, press that little diamond."

"...why?"

"You'll see."

. . .

eleven months prior

The Victory Tour was breaking Eric.

Seeing the looks of complete confusion and terror on each district's face when he stood in front of their town and gave a canned speech about Panem's future and strength rooted into his chest and only served to make his never-ending nightmares worse. He saw blood and guts and Wendy's dead waterlogged baby and her curtain of hair and her lifeless eyes whenever he closed his eyes, now joined by thousands of cold eyes staring him down for taking revenge.

Standing before District One, he felt even more exposed than usual. He was surrounded by Peacekeepers, on a dais, before the people who were responsible for taking his best friend's wife from him, and all of those district members, not looking much
different from Capitol socialites in their fineries, were glaring at him.

Eric could hear the capitol's logic in his head - he wouldn't be shunned here. District One loved the Hunger Games. They raised children to fight from birth. They had volunteers for the Games spilling out of every corner. And yet, here Eric was, a stupid fat kid, emphasizing Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever while secretly wanting to hide in a corner and
cry, avoiding volatile gazes that matched ones from his worst nightmares. These people hated him. He could see the vitriol in their eyes. They wanted to vivisect him, just like he'd vivisected their young, as their young had vivisected Wendy. They wanted blood - funny, they hadn't wanted it when Eric spilled so much.

Eric barely made it into District One's Hall of Justice after his speech before falling down onto the ground, knees buckling. He wanted to go home. He

needed

it. He wanted to hunt with Stan - Stan said before Eric left that he was going to try and teach Kyle how to hunt. That would be nice. Eric heard that Kyle was a bit of a firestarter, like Eric. They probably would get along. He wanted to actually meet Kyle, instead of just seeing his flaming red hair
wandering around town. He wanted to not move into the Victor's Village and stay where he was or even turn back time and -

"Eric?"

Eric's eyes darted upwards. He saw Lisa staring down at him, looking displeased, but next to her was an older blonde woman with cat-eye glasses and a pitying glance. He raised an eyebrow at this older woman, steadying himself a bit before standing up shakily.

Lisa sighed. "God you're lazy. Anyways... Ms. Victoria here wanted to talk to you. She's a former victor from this district."

Eric could read between the lines of her statement: don't fuck this up, too. Lisa turned on her heel and walked into some hallway to talk to the Peacekeepers again; Ms. Victoria, her heavy blonde curls falling over her shoulder, almost like Bebe's did as she dressed carcasses in her parents' shop, watched her leave before returning her attention to Eric.

Eric knew he looked terrible. He hadn't slept in days, his hair was disheveled from the crazed District One wind, and his so-called dress clothes made him look like an overgrown child as opposed to a teenager on the cusp of adulthood.

Ms. Victoria lowered her eyes before gently bowing to him. "I wanted to apologize on behalf of my district for the actions of our tributes last game. It was barbaric and I do not blame you for taking matters as far as you did."

Eric didn't expect that. "...erm..."

"Most of our district is furious that you would have to come here and face us. We feel it very cruel to the memory of your dear friend," Ms. Victoria continued, aiming her glittery blue eyes at Eric.

"...I... I'm not really sure what to say," Eric answered honestly. Everyone stared at him with such hate, but they hated what he stood for? Why did they take it out on him?

"I wouldn't expect you to. You're so young." Ms. Victoria still wore that pitying look, like she could see everything that would happen to Eric in the future and was trying to warn him.

"This is your last stop, correct? Before the dinner at the Capitol?"

"...yes."

She glanced behind her - Lisa was still far away from them both - before turning back, her pitying eyes steeling into something stronger, something with more nerve behind them. "You started something, Eric Cartman," Ms. Victoria pressed, lowering her voice. "I know that
you're hurting. I cried for two weeks after I won my Hunger Games. But you need to be aware that there's a bigger picture now. You didn't give the people of the Capitol what they wanted. You didn’t turn on Wendy. That was a rebellion in of itself."

"I had to, you saw what - I didn't mean to -"

"I know you didn't. But it's happening anyways. Please, you need to -"

But she stopped as Lisa wandered back into the hallway, calling in her terribly non-sing-song voice that they needed to get on the train to the Capitol immediately.

Eric stared at Ms. Victoria, gauging that he had long enough to ask one quick question.

"What do I do?"

She smiled wearily, and spoke barely above a whisper as she put a hand on his shoulder.

"Continue the rebellion."

. . .

the present

Bebe and Kyle stood in their chariot, waiting for their signal to start parading around the Hall of Justice in the Capitol. It was ridiculous, this whole thing. They'd been standing in this chariot for near an hour, listening to Lisa babble about all the costumes the other districts were wearing. Apparently one district sent their tributes out naked, something that made Bebe go bright red and Kyle feel distinctly nauseous. After the abuses that happened in the last games, a district thought making their tributes naked sacrifices was tasteful?

Bebe, wearing a mini-dress version of Kyle's jumpsuit, blonde hair tied back into an elaborate top-knot, crossed her arms and sighed. "This is so demeaning."

"Did Al tell you to press the button on your dress, too?"

"Yeah." Bebe wrinkled her nose. "Wendy would say that me showing this much skin and you showing none is totally sexist and objectifying." After a moment, she realized what she'd said, and grew silent.

Kyle frowned. "Well, it is, if that makes you feel better. ...you know they're going to ask us a million questions about her, right?"

"I know," Bebe responded quietly. "Lisa thinks that I should say that I want to win for her memory. Not to avenge it, but to make her happy." She shuddered. "The only thing that would make Wendy happy would be for all this madness to end."

"I think it'd make more people than just her happy," Kyle noted, before his mind got a bit sidetracked. "...have you seen Eric in a while?"

"Of course not," Bebe replied, as if Kyle was dumb, before sighing. "Oh, I forgot, you don't… right. He's in the Hall of Justice. All of the mentors are talking to the television hosts right now. We'll see him before our interviews."

Kyle felt like Eric would hate that. Knowing what he knew about Capitol journalism, he was probably being forced to revisit the worst moments of his life and the worst things he'd ever done, all for entertainment. His face lined with worry and anxiety, color rising on his cheeks
the harder he was prodded and... Kyle became aware of Bebe staring at him moments later, and he replied to her explanation with a forced-blasé, completely context-free "Oh."

Bebe raised an eyebrow, watching the District 11 chariot finally move in front of them, ready to be presented. "...you miss him." It was a statement, not a question.

Kyle didn't say anything; Bebe smirked at him. "Well, you two are very similar. Get him to show you his knifeplay. That'll really endear you to him."

Kyle narrowed his eyes at the obvious double entendre. "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or what..."

"Don't be obt - oh!"

Their chariot began to move out from beneath its secluded enclave and into the open air of the Capitol, where thousands upon thousands of citizens came out to watch. Unsurprisingly, as soon as the announcers noted that District 12 was coming out, there were large smatterings
of boos and hisses and groans. Bebe glanced at Kyle, diamond dust lightly brushed over her eyelids catching the light. Were they really going to continue this conversation?

"I suppose now we should press the button?" she asked, much to Kyle's relief.

"Anything to shut them up," Kyle agreed, and pressed the button on his jumpsuit in tandem with Bebe.

Instantly, the diamond on both of their buttons began to spread across their chests. The crowd's dissent slowly died away, replaced with admiring noises, as their coal-black jumpsuits transformed into diamond outfits. Bebe became a true ice queen, her dress pooling around her feet and dripping into the seat of the chariot, covering up her skin with a train of
glittering gems; Kyle no longer wore a jumpsuit, but a suit encrusted with diamonds. He felt no discomfort from the sharp gems against his skin, for some reason. Much as he disliked the ostentatiousness of it, he had to admit the metaphor was solid - put enough pressure on a piece of coal, and it will become a diamond. Al was a smart guy.

Bebe was a little too shocked by her new ballgown for a second to remember to play to the crowd. Kyle nudged her gently before waving at the stands. She quickly picked up the hint and gave the Capitol her best pageant waves.

Under her breath, she muttered, "So, do you like Eric or what?" Apparently they were continuing this conversation.

"Why would you - why does it matter? I'm about to be sentenced to die, remember?" Kyle mumbled back, continuing their banter.

"You said you'd survive and fight me. If your stupid crush leads you to do some romantic self-sacrifice bullshit -"

"I want to live, Bebe, and my brain is all messed up right now, I’m not sure what -"

"Well, he sure as

hell

loves

you,

so don't do anything that'll make this worse for all of us, okay?”

The chariot settled in front of the Hall of Justice, and all of the Districts were announced again, with each group of tributes raised their arms and waved at the crowd once more. Bebe and Kyle played to them once again, but after they were called away, Kyle's mask slipped off immediately and he gaped at her.

"...he

loves

me?" Kyle repeated as he stepped out of the chariot, offering his hand to Bebe, who accepted it as she gathered up the train of her glittering dress.

She squeezed his hand as they both turned towards the Hall of Justice.

"Of course! My God - didn't you hear him scream when your name was pulled as a tribute?"

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Lisa kept poking and prodding at Kyle, giving him questions that he might be asked by the two announcers on stage, but Kyle's brain was in a completely different place.

As if he didn't have enough to worry about already - he had to somehow survive to the end of the Hunger Games to fight the butcher's daughter to fulfill his promise to her, he had to not make a fool of himself right now if he wanted any sponsors to help him out with that goal, he had to keep his eye on the other Tributes to try and find out their strengths and weaknesses, he had to train for a week without giving away too much of his fighting style lest he become even more of an instant target... but no, now he

also

had to figure out how to let Eric Cartman, his mentor for this whole three-ring circus, down gently.

Were this District 12, and were they not preparing for a carnival of blood, this would almost be easy. Kyle and him were very similar, as many people had pointed out to him - they spoke the same way, they had the same reactions to their surroundings, they both wanted this system gone. Eric snapped when confronted with the loss of someone he cared about; Kyle would do the same and he knew it. They were both enemies of the state, but for different reasons. If Eric had actually gone hunting with him and Stan...

...it would just make this harder. If they'd talked before, and if Kyle had been interested before, and if they'd both been mutually interested, and took things a step in the romantic direction...

Kyle's heart would still feel heavy and sick in his chest. He heard that screaming. He was in such a state of shock that he couldn't place it. How was he so oblivious?

Lisa didn't seem to notice his state, instead plying him with canned questions, waiting for canned responses. Kyle was supposed to play the penitent martyr - apologize for his "crimes" against Panem, and use the Hunger Games as his chance for redemption. Lisa clearly thought he'd forget what he'd planned with her.

Kyle was green with realization. Bebe hadn't said much to him, but Kyle wore his heart on his sleeve. She must've known. After endless amounts of pointless questioning, Lisa was finally dragged away by a sound technician, talking to her about putting microphones on her two tributes. Bebe, with a gulp, put her hand on Kyle's shoulder.

"I'm sorry. I thought you'd have figured it out a long time ago," Bebe noted. "He was never exactly subtle…"

"I'd only met him a few times before this," Kyle admitted. “And when we did talk, he was all… awkward… and… blushing…”

Bebe smiled wearily as Kyle covered his face. Eric was clearly traumatized, but how did he mistake all that for trauma? "...But you had to've noticed him, right?”

Kyle could have snarked about how he'd been recently informed about Eric's stalking, but instead, he paused and really thought about the question.

“Of course,” Kyle told her. “Which is why I always tried to reach out to him. He kept pulling away, and I… I knew he'd seen hell. I didn't want to hurt him.”

"Eric..." Bebe sighed, running her fingers through her hair, revealing that Al had painted her nails a blinding white color, almost like tip-ex. "Eric used to be an attention-grabber. He always wanted the spotlight on him - he wanted to be a singer. It was perfect for him.

“Since coming back from the Games, though, he hasn't been like that. He only speaks when spoken to and hides. He doesn't perform. It's kind of a miracle he's holding it together now. …I know him. He never wanted you to be hurt."

"That didn't work out so well," Kyle mumbled.

Bebe looked at him with pity, but fell silent.
 
. . .
 
No one warned Kyle he'd be interviewing with these two shits.

Terrance and Phillip were doing the tribute interviews, and their interview of Bebe only confirmed what Kyle thought before - they were… sinister. Bebe went through her whole interview with ease, which was amazing, considering their invasive behavior. They flat-out asked her questions about what Wendy would want her to do, considering how much pain she was in when she died. (So much for them trying to stop her death in the moment.) Bebe answered incredibly gracefully - "Wendy would want me to be true to myself, no matter what. And your values are tested most in situations like the Hunger Games. She knew that, and she remained herself to the end. I'll remain myself to the end, too."

From Kyle's perspective, it appeared Terrance and Phillip were

trying

to trip people up.

Standing opposite Terrance and Phillip on a slate-colored stage that brought out the natural glitter of his outfit, Kyle knew he needed to focus on what they were asking him. He had to do what Lisa told him. Had to make himself look good to sponsors. And the Capitol. And Panem. And everyone.

Say what would disappoint Eric. If he's disappointed, he might love you less, and you won't have to figure out your feelings about him.

The two comedians' smiles gleamed, all shining peroxide and sharpness, as Kyle gave the crowd a thin-lipped smile and a bow when he entered to face them. The crowd was warmer than it had been earlier, but was certainly not effusive, not like they were for the Career Districts. Hell, Bebe got more love for her weepy widow act. (

Stan

was the one who lost his wife, not Bebe, yet the sheeple bought this disgusting - focus! Focus on surviving!)

"Now Kyle, it's been a very

intense

year for you," Terrance told Kyle when he finally sat down in a chair that resembled a granite throne. It was deeply uncomfortable. "Being relocated to District 12, and now you're a Tribute."

"Quite a whirlwind!" Phillip agreed with a lighthearted laugh. "Firstly, the Capitol wants to know - is it true that you've never seen a Hunger Games?"

"Not anymore," Kyle answered smoothly, despite his stomach being in knots. "I've now seen the past few Hunger Games, and I understand the nature of -"

"The past few?" Terrance interrupted. "So you watched the last Hunger Games, correct? What did you think of that?"

The leading questioning was extremely transparent. They probably heard of him from the Peacekeepers, or whoever gave the order to relocate his family - this kid is a rabble-rousing anti-Panem agitator. Make him agitated. Maybe President Scott himself ordered it.

Kyle folded his hands together. He hadn't prepared a canned answer for this. The question was brutal as hell, too, designed to provoke him. Lisa was probably having a coronary backstage.

Guess he was winging it. "It helped me understand a lot about District 12. I came in as an outsider, and was greeted with an outsider's suspicion. Though I've adjusted and made friends, I always felt a bit..."

"Out of the loop," Phillip finished for him.

"Out of the loop," Kyle agreed. "That's been common in my life. It's odd, finally knowing what everyone else knows." He was veering wildly off script, but who couldn't sympathize with a knowledge-free, hopeless exile?

"You realize that, without those years watching the Games, failing to understand the basic mechanics, you're at a severe disadvantage?" Terrance asked.

"Yes," Kyle answered simply. "But I'm a quick learner. I always have been."

"As far as the matter of your mentor goes..." Phillip said, making a face that clearly expressed distaste. The atmosphere in the room immediately grew tense, and Kyle paused, inhaling slowly and trying to gather his thoughts before his eyes drifted to the side of the stage.

Who should be there but Kyle's mentor, staring at him just as he'd stared during the reaping. Their eyes met for a moment before Kyle turned back to the two hosts before him.

Eric's eyes were rather beautiful. Kyle had never noticed that before, probably because he had a hard time working out everything else about the beguiling teenager. Those hazel eyes were perpetually intense, focused even when his expression was one of fear, or distress, or blankness.

For a moment, Kyle didn’t say anything, simply looking at Terrance and Phillip with an almost painful gentleness verging on pity. That look wasn't for them. He only had one person on his mind.

Kyle wanted his intensity, consequences be damned. He grinned at the hosts, leaning forward and resting his head in one hand and his elbow on his knee.

"...I think he should have been harsher on those kids. Don't you?"

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"You fucked up" was the nicest thing Lisa screamed at Kyle after they returned to the training center.

He slammed his door shut and sat in front of it, staring out the shining glass window at the sunset, streaking pinks and purples across an ominously dark sky. He couldn't hear her ranting and railing anymore, which meant she'd probably tromped out, but he got her general point.

Indeed, Kyle really fucked up.

After he gave words to what every District 12 person truly believed, the once-thick tension grew taut and suffocating. The hosts didn't seem pleased with themselves, at least, and the rest of the questions were total softballs. To be honest... Kyle thought they seemed a bit scared of him.

Good

, Kyle thought. He wanted to mess with them, the way they'd clearly been messing with every other tribute, and to show them what happened when they played with fire.

...Kyle knew that wasn't true. He had other motivations. One motivation. One he hadn't seen since getting dragged out of the auditorium by a furious (and shockingly strong) Lisa, Bebe trailing behind them like some sort of fairy princess in her diamond dress, laughing her ass off in delight. She called it cathartic in between gales.

Maybe he was stupid to expect Eric to say anything about his words. After all, no matter what happened, they'd be separated by the Games, and now Kyle was guaranteed not to get any sponsors. He'd basically flipped off the entire Capitol.

Kyle was as good as dead.
 
. . .

nine months prior

The people of District 12 passed down songs to their youth instead of stories.

These songs mutated and twisted and changed over time. None of them could strictly be considered relevant anymore, with mentions of things that hadn't existed for decades like bars and cars and movie stars, but they were the only type of culture they had that the Capitol hadn't co-opted or destroyed. Eric never understood why the Capitol didn't extinguish the songs. He'd asked his mother, before he'd been a tribute, why the Peacekeepers let them pass on songs that weren't propaganda.

His mother looked down at him, her usual weary smile stretched a bit thinner than normal, and told him the Capitol was giving them a small amount of hope. The pain in her words conveyed just how torturous having a little bit of hope could be, nagging and rooting into a person. Breaking that hope would hurt them worse than if they'd spent their whole life in complete and total despair.

So when Eric found Stan in the woods, filthy stinking drunk, he wasn't surprised to hear him singing one of those dangerously hopeful songs. It was an old song, from before Panem existed and the Districts tried to rebel against that government. Eric didn't know why he was even out looking for Stan; his parents weren't worried, his sister was gone, and his new ginger neighbor was secretly reading a book to his little brother underneath their shared bed, oblivious to what was happening outside. Eric knew he needed to try and introduce himself to Kyle Broflovski at some point. Key word 'try'. Every time Eric felt like he could tear into a conversation and offer a handshake or a smile, something in his gut coiled tightly and he ended up giving in to his emotions.

Eric hated giving in. Giving in was what made him an outcast in the first place.

Stan's words were barely decipherable, but Eric knew the melody so well that his brain filled in the lyrics:

"I spend most every night beneath the light of a neon moon... oh, if you lose your one and only, there's always room here for the lonely... watch your broken dreams dance in and out of the beams of a neon moon..."

Eric heard Stan long before he saw him, curled into the base of a thick tree, holding a bottle of something that looked homemade and smelled disgusting in his calloused hands. He somehow got hold of a hunting knife, and was notching the ground below him rhythmically, barely missing his boot-covered toes.

Generally disheveled and red in the face, Stan kept warbling on.

"I think of two young lovers, running wild and free... I close my eyes and sometimes see you in the shadows of this smoke-filled room..."

"...Stan, we need to take you home." The royal 'we' might convince him, Eric reasoned. Stan looked up before turning his head slowly to face Eric, who stood next to him. Stan's eyes were so puffy and red that his pupils were barely visible, and Eric could tell he'd vomited down his front. He'd seen his best friend look varying shades of pathetic since returning from the Victory Tour, but this passed pathetic and went straight into worrisome.

"Can't I just die?" Stan asked pitifully.

Eric's eye twitched, desperately hiding how offended he was. "...no."

"Wendy died. I can die. So can you," Stan mumbled.

"Dude, I don't have fucking time for this," Eric spat out, skirting around his assertions. "Everyone is so used to you running off drunk that they don't care where you are. I'm the only one who's coming for you, and I'm not leaving until you go back home with me." To emphasize this, Eric sat down right next to Stan, who continued to stab at the ground with the hunting knife. All Stan was doing was making it dull.

"...your parents already lost a daughter. Drinking yourself to death won't -"

"I'm teaching Kyle how to hunt," Stan slurred out. Eric raised an eyebrow.

"...kewl?" He responded. "Let's just get you -"

"Aren't you jealous?" Stan muttered.

Eric frowned. "No. You taught me how to hunt, too. You teach all the little weirdos how to hunt. You fucking taught Butters how to hunt, look how well that worked out."

That was clearly the wrong thing to say, as Stan's eyes began welling with tears, lip quivering. Eric regretted it the second it came out of his mouth.

"Why'd you think I'd be jealous?" Eric asked, changing the subject from his own faux pas.

"Well... I mean, I see you. Watching him." Stan paused to try and take another swig of the moonshine. He ended up dumping it down his front. "I thought it was because he's a spy, and I'm still not sure if he isn't but if he shoots me in the back I'd get to see Wendy again."

Eric pried the bottle from Stan's fingers easily, tossing it aside. It shattered against a tree, shards of glass spraying far away. "Don't talk like that. She wouldn't want you to talk like that -"

"

Don't act like you know her

!" Stan snapped angrily before beginning to cry anew. Eric didn't really know what else to do but wrap an arm around Stan's shoulder.

"It's not fair!" he kept screaming, over and over and over again. "It's not fair! It's not fair, it's not fair,

it's not fair,

it's not fair

!"

Eric didn't look at his face, biting back his feelings.

If this had happened before the Hunger Games, before Kyle, before everything got so hopelessly fucked up - if Stan and Wendy had broken up and Stan was here drinking and Wendy was alive not drinking… well. It was gauche to think that now.

Eric always felt that Wendy could sense his feelings, whenever she used to see him and Stan together, making their relationship that much more strained. Wendy had to see that Eric wanted to be more than Stan's best friend.

Those tensions, looking back at them, seemed so shallow now, considering how goddamn broken all of them were. Stan wanted to die. Eric wanted to die. Stan wasn't talking to Bebe, who, consequently, didn't know if she wanted to live or die. Even Kamillia seemed muted recently.

Wendy was dead. The glue holding their lives together was dead.

And Kyle was reading with his brother beneath a sheet.

Eventually Stan's crying subsided, easing into hiccups and mumbles. His eyes might still be closed but his breathing was even.

"...are you done?" Eric asked.

"...fuck. I guess." Stan spat up some vomit again. "Maybe now."

Eric sighed and yanked Stan up by the shirt sleeve before leading him, like a child would lead a small dog, back to his house.

. . .

the present

Kyle heard a knock on his door. He'd nodded off at some point, as the sky was now pitch black, the light from scattered stars fighting for dominance with streetlights and the glow of the city below. Jolting awake and pulling away from the door, he stood up and opened it.

Eric stood before him.

Before Kyle could stop himself, he blurted out, "I fucked it all up."

And then Kyle noticed Eric's face.

He'd been crying.

Kyle quickly ushered Eric into his room, closing the door and turning on a light. Eric hovered by the door, not saying anything and looking all-around miserable. Kyle, unsure of how to even begin to talk to him, began rambling.

"I did exactly what Lisa told me not to do, and it's screwed everything up - I probably even fucked up Bebe's chances at getting sponsors and she actually did the right thing and - I don't know what - I just -"

"You knew what you were doing," Eric interrupted, wringing his hands together. "You... you were defending me."

Both of them stared at each other for a long moment. Before he could stop himself, Kyle, again, blathered out something stupid. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I don't want to hurt

you

," Eric repeated.

Another pause.

"...what the

fuck

do we do now?" Eric asked, making it abundantly clear why he was crying.

Kyle gaped at him, trying to articulate something before sighing and laughing bitterly, a few tears leaving his own eyes. "...Jesus Christ. We

are

similar."

"I don't want to lose you," Eric admitted. "I can't - I lost Wendy, I lost Stan, I..."

"You'll have to prepare yourself," Kyle replied. "I'm going to do my damndest to win, but it might not be enough."

Kyle and Eric sniffled at about the same time.

"...if I said something sooner -"

" - then we'd be even

more

fucked," Kyle interjected forcefully before breaking into a racking sob. Eric dashed over to him, awkwardly putting his arms around the other boy. Kyle gripped onto Eric tightly, burying his face in Eric's simple brown shirt, his fingers twisting into the fabric, knees buckling against Eric's body.

Kyle knew he'd been holding in most of his emotions since this whole thing started, hiding behind his boiling anger. Oh, he was

furious

that some bit of happiness might be torn from him before it could even fully develop.

He couldn't stand to be crushed like this anymore. Eric loved him, and while Kyle wasn't sure if he reciprocated fully yet, he could see himself talking to Eric, going to the market together, hunting, living - figuring it out. And in admitting that he wanted to win the Games, to have that life with Eric, at some point he'd have to kill Bebe, one of the kindest people he'd met since this whole mess started. Stan was all alone, and Eric acted like he was just as dead as Wendy - Stan never even told Kyle about his dead wife, what else was his so-called best friend hiding from him?

Tomorrow, Kyle started training and meeting the other kids he'd have to kill or watch be killed if he wanted to live.

Being in the loop

sucked

.

Eric's hands around Kyle's back grew less unsure and more protective as the moments passed. Even though he said nothing, Kyle felt a bit more comforted in his embrace. He didn't want to feel this. He didn't want to be more connected to Eric. If he was more connected, all of this would hurt worse when he died.

But he couldn't help it. He just sank into Eric's hug, until his sobs turned to tears, and his tears mellowed into silence.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Nothing was better in the morning.

Bebe and Kyle stood in the glass-plated elevator, by themselves, hurtling up towards a floor filled with their competitors, sizing each other up and figuring out ways to turn each other into something less than human. Bebe and Kyle promised each other they'd hang on to their humanity, and Kyle intended to keep that promise. Part of him had wanted to pick up the closest weapon he found and off himself as soon as the Games started, but he couldn't do that now.

He couldn't take anyone else away from Eric.

Bebe pretended not to notice how swollen Kyle's eyes were. She hadn't said anything about how long Eric was in Kyle's room last night. They hadn't done anything beyond hold each other, overwhelmed by the realization that their mutual affection was going to make things that much more difficult. They didn't kiss, they barely touched - they hadn't even thought of making love. Maybe Bebe thought they had. She was kind enough not to share those suspicions if so, instead opting to stare wide-eyed at the steel elevator doors before her.

The only sound in the compartment was their breathing, off-tempo at first but gradually syncing up.

Kyle reminded himself that, no matter what happened, they had to be the last two. They had to have the fair fight. They had to get to the end.

He would never win against Bebe in a fair fight. Eric's tear-soaked visage flashed in his mind just before the elevator doors opened. Kyle quickly shoved the memory down. He couldn't burst out crying in the middle of the training facility.

With a light trilling sound, the doors opened, and Bebe and Kyle found themselves in the training room.

It was an imposing space, wide and littered with different 'stations'. Each area had its own dark plinth in front of it, with some details on how to use the station etched on the top. Some of the recruits were already up and going; one in particular, a gangly redhead that Kyle recognized from District One, was already shooting through projections of blue-skinned teenagers with a bow and arrow on a floating dais.

"You're better than him," Bebe said quietly as her eyes flitted around the area, trying to take it all in. There wasn't much to the decor besides dark oppressive walls and the most advanced in killing technology, but Kyle did notice a windowed panel, mounted in the center of the rightmost wall. Looking in, he could see a bevy of people, mostly older men, though one, a corpulent man with a sunhat and a bizarre orange cloak swaddled around his body, caught Kyle's eye immediately.

"Who's the man in the center?" Kyle asked.

"He's the Gamemaker, Mephisto Moreau," Bebe responded. The two of them wandered over to a large section of the gymnasium reserved for instructing oneself on the different properties of various plants and berries, an area clear of other Tributes. "He creates the Arena. They show him as an expert on television a lot during the Games. He seems friendlier on camera."

"He wasn't trying to kill you last year," Kyle reminded her, starting to fiddle with a touch screen attached to the plant-and-berry podium.

"...could be that." Bebe also picked up a touch screen. On Kyle's, a panorama of a lushly wooded area appeared before him, with many different fauna and flora to tap and inspect. His analytical mind and Capitol education immediately told him that none of these plants would be found together - they were too mismatched. Half of them grew well in arid regions completely unlike the forest shown. Smart. Most people who viewed the touchpad would assume all these plants would be available to them in the Games. In reality, it was another way to throw the tributes off guard.

"...are you all right? You know, from… last night?" Bebe asked suddenly, fingers drifting over the description for some poisonous red gerlock berries.

Kyle swiped two fingers across the screen to view more of the physically-impossible area. "I don't really want to talk about it, but I'm doing okay, thanks."

"...I need to apologize."

Kyle looked up from his screen. Bebe's face was unnaturally blank.

"Why?" he asked. "You didn't do anything."

Bebe's eyes pointedly wouldn't focus on Kyle, looking through her thick eyelashes to the screen in her palm. "I... I hurt you both."

"...Bebe, you didn't. Don't think that you did, you didn't," Kyle said, flabbergasted.

"You were both crying really loudly," Bebe countered. Now she looked at the different types of aloe leaves, whose dew would hydrate in a pinch, but her eyes were so jittery that she couldn't be retaining anything. "You two found each other and... how can I let myself win this?"

Kyle suddenly understood why she was apologizing.

“No, Bebe -”

"I can't hold up my part of -"

"Don't you

dare

say that," Kyle insisted, setting his touch screen aside.

"But if you win, then you two can be together, and -"

"Are you fucking

kidding

me?!" Kyle suddenly shouted. Bebe's head snapped to attention, as did the heads of almost every other tribute. Kyle saw them in his peripheral vision, but he paid them no mind.
Bebe's eyes swam with tears, which only made Kyle more infuriated. For a few moments, everything but his desire for her to

stop this

evaporated from his brain.

"You're an incredible woman and you

deserve

to live! Who cares about me?! I fucked up your chances of getting sponsors! I'm always fucking up

everything

! And you see me vulnerable for

one second

and suddenly I'm better than you?! Suddenly you should

die

?! For fuck's sake, Bebe! You're the goddamn butcher's daughter! You're a badass! Don't say that again - we have a fucking promise, don't… don't you

dare

break it."

Kyle sighed irritably, running his fingers through his hair before glancing back at Bebe.

She stared at him, mouth agape, before the smallest trace of a smile crept on her face.

"...you sound like -"

"I swear to God -"

" - Wendy," she finished.

Kyle's words died on his lips, but he could tell Bebe was grateful, for just a moment, to hear her best friend again.

. . .
 
"Absolute genius, Kyle!"

Kyle had no idea why Lisa was complimenting him when the two tributes returned to their loft, sweaty and mentally drained. They'd spent most of their time investigating plants, but at the end of the day, Bebe managed to get some practice at the knife station. Kyle watched her, noting how she could chuck heavy implements with ease. She was getting better scores at the stations than some of the Careers… and those Careers definitely noticed.

Bebe also looked at Lisa like she was nuts. "Genius?"

"That yelling in the training room? Oh, everyone is all aflutter about you two lovebirds!"

Kyle could only gape at her. The cameras must not have picked up their entire conversation before he screamed, if people read his outburst as romantic. Or straight.

Bebe, after a long silence, snorted.

"No offense, Lisa, but he's not my type," Bebe replied dismissively.

Because Kyle needed more reasons to feel awkward, Eric suddenly emerged from the kitchen, carrying one of those ice cream bags. "I'm sure there was missing context, but the commentators saw what Kyle did as a

grand

declaration of love." He didn't sound jealous; on the contrary, he seemed to find this extremely amusing. Kyle felt his skin burn crimson.

"This town is so fucking stupid," Kyle muttered.

"We might get sponsors now, I guess?" Bebe said with a shrug, collapsing onto a couch and kicking off her boots.

"Oh you will, if you two keep up this charade. And you

will

be doing just that," Lisa intoned darkly.

Eric bristled a bit, his good humor evaporating. "They should focus on surviving."

Bebe sighed. "We don't have to make out or anything, do we?"

"It couldn't hurt -" Lisa began.

"I'm going to bed," Kyle announced, not wanting to stick around for this conversation. He didn't want to ruin the more important memory here - he'd spoken from his heart and gotten Bebe to smile for just a second. That meant the world to him.

Of course people would see that as a romantic thing... the Capitol wanted them to. What absolute horseshit.

Kyle didn't bother to close his door. He just flopped down on the bed and closed his eyes.

. . .
 
Sometime late in the night, someone flopped down next to Kyle.

Kyle's eyes fluttered open, and he felt a stabbing pain in his heart the moment he registered Eric's face before him.

"...stay with me," Kyle murmured.

Eric pulled Kyle close to him, the two of them wrapped in each others' arms once again.

They were both gluttons for punishment.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Kyle and Bebe spent the next day at an electronics station within the Training Facility. It didn't take long for them to notice a pattern with most of the Tributes - they were sticking to what they knew. They wanted to intimidate the others with demonstrations of their skills. They were

actually

revealing every trick they had up their sleeves.

Kyle wasn't intimidated in the slightest. As he watched a smaller teen with dark skin and a lithe frame pirouette and cartwheel her way around a training area, her partner shooting arrows at her to dodge, he sighed.

"What will she do if a wave of arrows hits her?" Kyle wondered aloud.

"Die," Bebe answered bluntly. The explosive panel in her hand confused her greatly, and her mood took a nosedive as a result. She hadn't managed to get a handle on any of its properties. Bebe was intelligent in her own way, Kyle knew that, but this might be a bit beyond her grasp. Kyle sidled over to her, glancing over her shoulder at the panel.

"It's the blue wire that disarms that," Kyle said after observing it for a few moments, "but this is an extremely sophisticated bomb. You won't see anything like this in the arena, unless they've been planted by the Gamemaker."

"Will the not-sophisticated bombs be easier to understand?" Bebe asked in frustration, setting the panel down with a bit more force than necessary.

"...you can't know everything, Bebe..." Kyle tried to reassure her.

"Lizen to your boy-friend," a third voice told her, his accent thick. Kyle never heard one like it before, and couldn't place it.

Bebe and Kyle looked behind them, noticing a dirt-smeared Tribute tinkering with… something... that looked decidedly homemade. It had none of the identifying features of the sample bomb near Bebe's leg, and resembled a large blob of dirt. Where did he get the tools to…? Kyle shook his head; it was irrelevant.

Kyle then focused on 'boyfriend'. He wanted so badly to deny it, but he swallowed his words quickly. The last thing he needed was for the one decent thing he'd done in the past three days to backfire. Bebe took over for him, speaking gently to the rough-hewn gentleman. "I take it you're good with these sorts of things."

"Diztrict Two," the man responded. "We grow up knowink zees things. Much like your diztrict grows up knowink ze mines."

"...Kyle Broflovski," Kyle said, offering his hand to the man. "This is Berebeth Stevens."

"Christophe Thernardier," the tribute said, taking Kyle's hand. Only then did Kyle notice his bulging arm muscles, threatening to tear out of his training uniform. If he picked up an axe in the arena, anyone in his path would be doomed. "I hear zat your mentor iz Eric Cartman?"

"He is," Bebe responded, sparing Kyle from responding. "I'm sorry, I forget the name of yours?"

"Gregory Ponmerzee," Christophe replied, waving his hand with a sense of detachment. "He iz… a show-boat. He does not understand my pozition."

Kyle raised an eyebrow. He definitely didn't recall the name Ponmerzee from the few Hunger Games he'd seen, so Gregory must have been an older victor. And showboat, well… Before Kyle could ask more questions, Christophe continued.

"I wish I had your mentor," Christophe mumbled. "Gregory wantz us to use zwords. Imagine.

Zwordplay

in ze Hunger Games. Ludicrous."

Kyle did laugh a bit at that; Bebe was silent, thinking. After a moment, Bebe showed him her panel, gesturing to the wiring.

"How does the blue wire disarm this?"

Christophe blinked, processing the sudden subject change, before leaning over the panel. He kneeled on the ground and let his dark hair droop in front of his eyes as Bebe joined him. "So. Ze main sink to look for when tryink to dizarm a bomb is ze pass-way of ze wiring. Zis iz an eztremely complex zort of ezample -"

"I see-"

"But you should ztill be able to follow zees pass-ways through touch."

"Touch?"

He let his finger drag over a section of the bomb. "Yez, feel here, Berebess."

Kyle let his thoughts run away from him as he watched Christophe help her. This conversation had been so odd - Christophe admitting that he wanted Eric Cartman as his mentor was such an unpopular opinion with such a huge likelihood of causing his district strife that Kyle felt he could trust his intentions. His body was fairly muscular, but he looked incredibly inflexible. He also seemed to be distancing himself from his partner, wherever she might be.

If Christophe even had one. Kyle didn't know anything about District Two, but could it be possible that there were no eligible women? Were they a dying district? Very little news of other districts got to District Twelve.

"Ze wire here alzo is quite zin."

"Right, so the red switch is an obvious decoy."

"Zere you go," Christophe said, standing up without much ceremony. "You two zeem quite honezt. I hope we are not pitted againsk each osser."

"Thanks for helping me," Bebe replied appreciatively. "I hope the best for you too."

None of the three voiced the obvious issue with these well wishes. There could only be one winner. However, something on Christophe's face started to flicker, and he let out a small "tch" noise

"I do not agree with zis charahd, much like you. And your mentor."

Kyle ran his lip under his teeth, recalling a specific statement Eric told him before things got so complicated between them. Was Christophe about to talk about -?

"Do your bezt in ze beginnink," Christophe continued in a low voice. "Try to get yourzelve away from  -"

"CHRISTOPHE!"

A girl with piercing blue eyes appeared in the corner of the bomb station, also looking slightly grimy, with dirt smeared on her face and some acne on her pockmarked cheeks. She didn't have many distinguishing features, save for the knitted purple flower bauble woven into her pin-straight dishwater blonde hair. Kyle surmised she was younger than the rest of them, a 14 to their 16, based on her size.

Christophe turned his head, barely perturbed and smoothly acting like he hadn't been saying anything of import. "Ah. Heidi. Have you met Kyle and Berebess?"

Heidi gave them a curt little nod and more-friendly wave before gesturing elsewhere. "You cannot give away all of our knowledge! Why muss you talk to everyone?" Kyle realized that her accent was much, much less pronounced than Christophe's, though he could hear a slight lilt in her voice.

"Fine, mosser," Christophe said with a deadpan eye roll, following Heidi as she walked towards the sword station. Kyle distinctly heard Heidi, ignoring his sass, say "you realize zey're being trained by

Eric Cartman

, right?" as they left.

He and Bebe sat on the ground for a few moments, processing this meeting as the District Two tributes disappeared in another station.

"Do you think they're gonna try to frame this as a love triangle?" Bebe finally asked with a wry grin.

Kyle snorted, breaking the ice. "I hope not. It was nice of him to help you, though." He paused. "Heidi and him are a weird duo. They seem…" He could still hear them bickering, despite them being out of his line of sight, and hedged slightly. "...mismatched."

"What do you think he wanted to warn us about?" Bebe asked in a lower voice.

Kyle paused before also lowering his voice. "We should probably wait until we're out of here to talk about that."

"You have an idea?"

Kyle shook his head. "No. But I think Eric might."
 
. . .
 
Getting Eric to be alone with both him

and

Bebe, without Lisa, was a real chore. Lisa wanted to talk to them about their "storyline" in the main living area, and had already dissected their meeting with Christophe and how Kyle looked like a kind, non-possessive sort, which improved his view among the Capitol's young women. Thankfully, it seemed no one heard Christophe's conversation, unlike Kyle's screaming. Kyle recalled that he hardly heard any speaking during the recordings of previous Games as well - the audio must have been mixed to only pick up specific, louder sounds.

Kyle could only take so much of this drivel. He was picking at his moss green shirt sleeve the whole time, unraveling a thinly-sewn hem and barely listening. Bebe, too, looked like her eyes were glazing over around the third time Lisa suggested they potentially subtly touch hands or exchange deep glances during training. Finally, Bebe spoke up, pulling a tan shawl further around her body.

"Lisa, these are all great suggestions, and I think we can improve our physical chemistry over the next few days by following them," Bebe told her, a perfect schoolmarm. "But… we still have questions about our competitors. Do you think Eric would be able to help? I remember you not really saying much before the interviews..."

Eric poked his head in from the kitchen; Kyle didn't blame him for bailing on this conversation earlier. Kyle didn't particularly want to be told how to want someone besides him, but here they were. "I heard my name."

"Eric can help, but I have info about the competitors too, y’know. Or now I do. I didn't before, I was busy hauling your asses around," Lisa said with a bristle. Eric sauntered in, offering Bebe and Kyle some ice cream bulbs; Bebe turned them down, while Kyle took a packet, letting his hands brush against Eric's. Lisa, unfortunately, noticed. "Yeah, touch Bebe like

that

, Kyle, but be less awkward and forced."

Kyle's face went bright red while Eric barked out a laugh. Bebe gave Kyle a sympathetic smirk while he covered his face with his free hand.

"Yeah, come on, Kyle, act like you want it," Eric ribbed, making a show of taking a spoonful of new bulbs as he sat on the couch arm.

Bebe’s knowing glance only made Kyle redder, and he glowered at the wall for a moment. "Can we get back to the competitors?"

"Of course," Lisa said placidly, like she hadn't just completely mortified him. She pressed a button on the coffee table before them, and a holographic screen popped up between them. There was a menu on the side of the screen, and the title of the screen made Kyle feel vaguely sick - Hot Hunger Games News:

All You Need to Know About This Year's Tributes!

Eric scoffed at it too, for a different reason. "You think gossip rags will answer their questions?"

"I do," Lisa said, voice steeled. "You both are sharp. You can tell what fighting skills someone has from your training, even if they're holding back." Offhandedly, she added, "Unless you have thoughts on where we could supplement that, Eric?"

"I don't disagree, I just don't understand how the tabloid shit is any more helpful than their own eyes," Eric replied bluntly.

“The tributes aren't exactly spouting off their motivations while training,” Lisa told him. “And knowing those motivations, even the obviously fake ones, might make predicting their behavior in the arena a bit easier.” She adjusted the silvery glasses around her eyes, staring straight at Eric. “Like it or not, this is also a social competition,
Eric
. You just failed miserably at that part last year.” Her eyes moved back to Kyle. “...and I already yelled at

you

enough about that, didn’t I?”

Kyle recalled how she’d indirectly told them both how she sided with District 12 last year, and how she didn’t throw them straight to the wolves. She was ‘working her ass off’, as his father might say, to give them every advantage she could… and he was not helping. He gulped.

“Can we start with District Two?”

Lisa nodded thoughtfully, still looking a bit sour. “Ah yes, you met them today. Christophe Thernardier and Heidi Turner…” Her fingers manipulated the touch screen, and in a moment, the images of both teenagers popped up before them. Christophe looked positively dapper when he wasn’t smeared in dirt, while Heidi still retained a somewhat homely air. Both of them were shown in form-fitting jumpsuits. “They’re from District Two, known for their mines. I'm surprised they helped Bebe, they tend to keep to themselves. District Two hasn't sent a strong contender to the Hunger Games in a decade, and these two had pretty weak interviews.”

With another flick of her wrist, a recording of Heidi’s interview appeared. She looked like a predatory black swan, dark feathers adorning her slim body, hair swept back into a high topknot, and brazen reddish makeup highlighting her oceanic eyes. However, her nerves were obvious, and instead of coming off threatening, she looked like an awkward child at a costume party as she rambled to Terrance and Philip.

“I’m going to do my best, I… I know that there’s a lot to this, a lot of problem solving… but there really aren’t any answers I have to… to explain how or what I’m going to do…”

“Jeez, she’s so nervous,” Bebe murmured, but there were clearly gears turning in her head. Kyle felt the same - Christophe wanted to warn them about something, and on this tape, Heidi was being extremely evasive. They were both hiding something major.

“Do you want to see Christophe’s?” Lisa asked.

Bebe shook her head, a slight streak of pink on her freckled cheeks. “I feel like I got a pretty good sense of what he’s like…”

“There was a girl doing cartwheels while a guy shot arrows at her today,” Kyle mentioned. The sight was fairly bizarre, now that he thought more about it - what use could cartwheeling possibly have outside the training facility? Why put on such a spectacle?

Eric nodded at that. “Oh yeah. The two attention whores from District Eight.” Lisa input a few more commands, and two new individuals popped onto the screen. One was the cartwheeler, a dark-skinned girl who looked to be Heidi's age, maybe slightly older. Her hair was styled in intricate, thin braids, which were then tied into long ponytails; her frame had little musculature, and her gold eyes were wide and youthful. The other, who must have been the archer, looked to be Kyle’s age and height, with mussed-up dark hair and sunken-in eyes. He resembled Stan in a lot of ways - obviously strong, proud stance, thin lips. The biggest difference were those dark brown eyes, with huge pupils; Stan’s eyes were beady and watery gray.

“The girl is Nichole Daniels,” Lisa read off. “She’s actually a favorite this year, which makes sense. She’s the complete opposite of Eric.”

Eric narrowed his eyes and scrunched up his nose. “Being cute doesn’t win you the Hunger Games.”

“But being an expert gymnast volunteer could,” Lisa shot back.

Bebe blinked. “She

volunteered

?”

“Both she and Craig Tucker here did,” Lisa confirmed. “Maybe…” She brought up Nichole’s interview after a moment's thought.

Unlike Heidi, Nichole owned every bit of her couture outfit. District Eight, if Kyle remembered correctly, made textiles and jewelry; that expertise was fully on display with Nichole’s outfits. Her beautiful braids fell over her bare shoulders, and instead of wearing an outfit that played to her district’s strengths, she wore a modest evening gown the same shade as her skin. When she moved, a rippling gold shimmer spread across her, like sunshine and fire; a heavy gold plate necklace around her neck, embedded with rubies, matched those ripples, as did the thick gold bands on her fingers. Kyle immediately recalled the naked tributes - they weren’t naked after all. The effect was stunning.

Nichole made it very clear this was intentional with her speech.

“Unlike other Tributes, Craig and I have nothing to hide. We wanted to restore the honor of the Hunger Games after last year’s…”

She shook her head, at a loss for words. Kyle couldn’t tell if she believed her words or not. She was a truly good actress, if nothing else, and a powerful speaker.

“The events are best forgotten,”

Terrance agreed, but her head snapped up, eyes wide.

“Oh no. They should not be - cannot be. We have to constantly look to them as a warning of what our society could devolve into! I want to provide the contrast to last year. I want to be a Victor that all of Panem can be proud of!”

“She’s so young,” Bebe said after Lisa stopped the video.

Eric didn’t seem too bothered about Nichole insulting him, digging into his ice cream. “It’s a hell of a play, though. Pass yourself off as a noble victor, get the outraged masses on your side…” Eric looked up at the ceiling, playing with his little wooden spoon, twirling it between his fingers. “I wonder how many more supporters she got from your speech, Kyle.”

Bebe began giggling again, and Kyle inhaled sharply. He’d rather not get Lisa on

that

topic again. “So they’re favorites.” A horrible thought struck him. “...so, uh, who’s from District One…?”

Eric finally began to look a little green. “Oh, they had volunteers too.”

Lisa’s usual frown grew far deeper. “Yes…” Another deft manipulation of the keypad brought up two new trainees. Even their images radiated bloodlust - the woman was tall, dark-haired, and bulky, with mossy eyes and calloused fingers. Bebe leaned forward to get a better look at her and her tousled locks, which seemed artfully piled atop her round head.

Kyle was more stricken by the male tribute. He was very thin, with bright red hair, cracked lips, a pockmarked and scarred face, and piercing blue eyes. Kyle bit his own lip looking over the man’s face, recalling that this was the archer Bebe thought he was better than.

Kyle saw plenty of bad scarring before. Stan had hunting injuries lining his arms, dot-sized scars that clearly came from him accidentally impaling himself with arrows. Jennevieve Simons had a pretty grotesque scar along her side from a metalwork accident, Kamillia McCormick had all those razor-thin cuts on her hands from making her flower crowns, even the Gamemaker he’d seen a few days prior for the first time had a nasty sort of injury on his face. But the redhead… his whole face was a mess of violence.

“The girl is Henrietta Biggle,” Lisa read off, “sister of the Victor of the 45th Hunger Games, Bradley Biggle, and close friend of one of the boys Eric tortured in the last Hunger Games... And the boy is Scott Tenorman, the older brother of the boy Eric ripped the guts out of.”

Bebe’s mouth made a little

o

, all of her good humour gone. Kyle felt a bit nauseous himself. He said that this guy’s brother should have been tortured worse on live television.

Fantastic

.

“Do I even want to know what they said about us?” Kyle asked weakly.

“Probably not,” Eric admitted. “Their mentor isn’t pleased, actually, that they volunteered. Neither are Bradley or the other career victors... A lot of District One is upset.” He glanced up at Lisa, who didn’t interrupt. “Oh, I can talk about shit I heard from other mentors?”

“Be useful for once, see if I care,” Lisa told him blankly.

Eric rolled his eyes, but continued. “District One is one of the only districts that has a somewhat decent relationship with the Capitol, and their Tributes last year brought a lot of shame to them. This isn’t me covering up what I did at all, this is what Miss Victoria told me. Miss Victoria, she’s their mentor -”

As if on cue, Lisa brought up her photo. Kyle glanced at it and saw she had a kind face, with cat-eye glasses framing her soft eyes and heavy blonde hair not unlike Bebe’s.

“ - right, that’s her. She won the 19th Hunger Games. Anyways. District One, from my understanding, was pretty torn up about the last Hunger Games, and that was before they realized their Tributes’ actions ended up straining their relationship with the Capitol. Most of their citizens wanted their children to avoid volunteering, like they would normally, to try and repair things with the Capitol. But these two volunteered and, well… now District One is pissed off because they wanted to get things back to normal for them.”

“And District Two?” Kyle asked curiously. “Christophe mentioned a man named Gregory?”

Eric’s eyes flashed before he waved his hands, trying to find words. “Ah, yes. He’s… a ponce is what he is, a fucking idiot. Real showboat toeing the Capitol line. I doubt the two miner kids are gonna start following him, but he’s also not going to share anything about his district with someone like me.” Eric narrowed his eyes at Kyle and looked slightly offended. “He called me 'crude agitprop' to my face on my Victory Tour. His head is firmly shoved up the Capitol’s anus.”

“What about our district?” Bebe asked curiously while Lisa covered her lips and looked away from Eric in embarrassment - or maybe she was trying to hide a laugh. “What have they been saying?”

“Well, Peacekeeper Barbrady is fucking useless and hasn’t told me shit,” Eric replied completely seriously, something that made Kyle grin ever so slightly. He wasn’t wrong about Barbrady. Had Eric always been this playful? Was this how he was like when he opened up? “The usual. Just resigned pain and people worried about retaliation. ...uh, Stan got his ass beat by Peacekeepers for being too openly seditious again?”

Eric didn't have much to share in the end. Kyle supposed that was expected. He was barely sixteen and spent most of his last year in District 12 hiding. He hadn’t built up an information network there.

“That’s… not shocking,” Bebe replied before turning back to the screen. “...maybe we should look at a few of these a night. So we can explore them more deeply.”

Kyle nodded, and Lisa smiled at their agreement. “Good call. Let’s stay with these three Tributes tonight. We can touch on some of the middle-of-the-pack contenders in the next few days, and save the least promising candidates for last, right before your Judgment.”

Ah, there was a name for the score assignment. Kyle did think this plan was best, though - the more information he and Bebe had at their disposal, the better off they would be. He supposed that asking Eric about Christophe's warnings could wait.

With a blank face, he watched Lisa switch the screen back to Scott Tenorman, the teenager’s dead eyes staring directly into his soul.
 
. . .
 
Kyle was drying his hair after a shower with a fluffy white towel when Bebe poked her head into his bedroom.

“Hey, you have a minute?” she asked.

Kyle blinked through a mess of matted red hair, but nodded, pulling the towel around his shoulders. “Sure. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, as much as it can be,” Bebe said, stepping in and closing the door behind her. She flopped backwards onto Kyle’s bed, staring up at the light before a weary smile crossed over her face. “...did any of that make you feel better about all this?”

“Not really,” Kyle said with a derisive laugh. “District One is going to be after us the entire Games. Or me, at least.”

“I think they’ll track me, too. I noticed that girl… Henrietta? She was throwing knives at the station right before I used it on day one. She’s as good as me. I wonder if she was trying to call me out with that.”

Kyle almost told her she was being paranoid before remembering that this was a goddamn Hunger Games and people were actively volunteering to squash them, against the wills of their own District.

“I think you could take her on,” Kyle offered, shrugging.

Bebe waved him off before she turned her head over to him, her curtain of blonde hair splayed out on the bed behind her. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped for a moment. “...I… actually came in here to talk about something else.”

“All right.”

“...Eric’s… Eric’s starting to act like Eric again.”

Kyle felt his hands start to press together. “...is that… bad?”

“No,” Bebe said calmly. “No, it’s… I missed him. And I know it’s because of you.”

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Kyle admitted, “besides, you know, making everything harder in the long run.”

Bebe sighed, leaning up to run her fingers through her hair. Her back was so strong that she could arch up without using a hand to balance her. She really was their best hope, Kyle thought, and tried to force down the pang of guilt bubbling up in him over that thought.

“I’m sure it’s hard,” Bebe said, laying back down and looking back at him. Her lip twitched just a bit. “It’s hard for me, too. Seeing him the way he used to be before…”

Kyle laid back into the bed next to her, staring up at the same bright ceiling. He didn’t know how to respond to her. The change in Eric was… well, Kyle didn’t know Eric very well before this. He liked the more playful, sassy Eric, yes, but all he had to compare that too was the guarded Eric who was doing his best to hide both physically and emotionally.

He was crushingly aware that this change was because of him, but the cruel thing was, it would be a temporary improvement. The more time that passed preparing for this hellish game, the more Kyle became acutely aware that he wasn’t going to win this. He couldn’t. Bebe was enough of a challenge, but now he had to consider the other Tributes, whether they be high-caliber murder machines or moral crusaders who didn’t want a repeat of the past - and whoever Christophe and Heidi might actually be. Their behavior was the most perplexing of all the Tributes…

Bebe glanced over at him and took his hand, breaking him from his spiraling thoughts. “Can I admit something?”

“Sure,” Kyle said before he frowned. “Don’t you dare say you’re gonna lose again -”

“Oh no,” Bebe shook her head. “Killing you would be… well, I don't want to do it.” She blinked a piece of blonde hair out of her eyes. “I… I really wish you had been more open with us before this.”

Kyle quirked an eyebrow. “Us?”

“The town. I get - I get why you weren’t. And your family did bond with a few families…” Bebe sighed, rolling onto her back again and letting go of his hand, putting both of her own on her stomach. “But I hate how much I like being around you and Eric. I wish… I don’t know. I wish I’d made more of an effort to talk when you bought things from our store. I mean, I love Kamillia, and she thought you were great, so why didn’t I…?”

Kyle matched her posture, putting his own hands, fingers interlaced, on his chest. “Don’t feel bad. I didn’t exactly make much of an effort either. I realized District 12 didn’t think we supported the Games after a month or two, but… I was an outsider. Even if you had reached out, I don’t know that I would have been able to really be a part of your world. I didn’t have that shared understanding.” Kyle paused. “I still don’t.” He licked his lips as a thought came to him. “Sometimes… sometimes I would hear Stan sing. And it was words that I’d heard on other people’s lips, but I couldn’t understand what the words meant or why he’d sing them, you know? Things about the moon and reflections of enemies and ubermensch…”

“Oh. The Songs,” Bebe said thoughtlessly, nodding. “I suppose those would be confusing… they’re old songs... Almost protest songs, even though they aren’t about protest, but they aren’t Capitol music. We pass them down, not in school, from birth.” Bebe pursed her lips. “What’s that word you used? Uber - what is that?”

“Oh, it’s… I assumed Stan must be singing a translation of that word, he sang something about 'superman',” Kyle noted. “Ubermensch is an ancient word, from a country I don’t think exists anymore. I learned about it in school.”

Bebe was silent for a bit before she began to sing, in a light, airy tone.

“If I go crazy, then will you still call me superman? If I’m alive and well, will you be there, holding my hand?”

“That’s the one, yeah,” Kyle said quietly after she finished, not wanting to interrupt.

She smiled at the ceiling. “See, now I wish I’d talked to you more again. I could have taught you all of them. Even the old ones only my parents sing.”

Kyle sighed before laughing. “Can you teach me them in the next… five days?”

Bebe took his hand again with a grin. “Deal.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Much as Kyle wanted it to move slowly, the rest of his week in the training facility flew by.

Him and Bebe’s desire to go unnoticed and not show off their full abilities meant they spent a lot of time at quieter stations, learning new skills (like how to read terrain) or watching other Tributes as they trained. Kyle’s sharp eyes often drifted away from his menial tasks to see what the competition was doing - much as it disgusted him to think of other children as competition, those other children sure as shit weren't being as kind. He didn’t want to be caught off-guard by them.

Scott Tenorman really was eye-catching. Kyle couldn’t say that they didn’t share some similarities in their approach and appearance. Kyle had never seen anyone with the same flaming red hair he and his mother possessed before now, and somehow Scott’s was even more attention-grabbing, glowing under the harsh halogen lights of the gymnasium. His electric blue eyes, too, were sharp, focused and hardened. Unlike Kyle, though, Scott had no qualms about showing off their shared weapon of choice, spending almost all of his time working with a bow and arrow at that station. Though he felled many a holographic foe, Kyle couldn’t help but recall what Bebe told him that first day -

you’re better than him.

Kyle didn’t want to rely on that, though, and kept watching. He could tell Bebe was observing people too, over the edges of her touch-pads or from the corners of her eyes as she practiced the art of knife-throwing. Sometimes she looked to Christophe and Heidi, who spent their time much like Kyle and her did, inspecting stations about the landscape and weapon crafting. They definitely had a plan of some kind, and didn’t want anyone cluing into it. Sometimes she shared space with the District Three Career Damien Thornbush, who looked more like a demon than a thirteen-year-old kid. Even so, he managed to share stilted pleasantries with Bebe before working with some throwing knives and needles.

“He seems like he’s deliberately throwing poorly,” Bebe told Kyle as they both watched Damien try his hand with the needles on Day Three.

“Maybe the weight of the needles threw him off?” Kyle offered. “They are pretty light.”

“Perhaps…” she mused, but didn’t seem convinced.

Bebe also sometimes watched Henrietta Biggle. She was… interesting. She spent a weird amount of time doing absolutely nothing, not even watching the other Tributes. Her hands jittered in a way that reminded Kyle of when his dad was trying to kick his smoking habit, shaking slightly with constant nervous energy. When she moved with intention, though, she was terrifying. Her display on Day Five at the axe station left Bebe green with nausea.

“I can’t beat her,” Bebe murmured to Kyle later that day as they held court at a station devoted to creating various traps. Kyle was looking over the instructions for how to build a snare, and glanced up at her. She really was rattled, her hands listlessly spinning knot atop knot on a small piece of rope and her eyes dilated in fear. Kyle put a hand on her shoulder, setting down his instruction pad.

“You can,” Kyle assured her. “Don’t lose confidence now.”

Bebe gulped, still frowning, but undid some of the terribly-formed knots she’d anxiously created. After a few moments of tense silence, her eyes flitted to Kyle’s hand, and she snickered.

“You just earned us a few hours of good coverage with that,” she joked.

Kyle pulled away with an eye-roll, changing the subject. “You definitely won’t beat Henrietta at knot-tying, look at that sad nonsense.”

“You’re so mean Kyle…”

Throughout the week, as they watched other Tributes, from the small twelve-year-old Flora of District Six who spent most of her time playing with rocks in a quarry station to the fearsome District One representatives, Bebe would hold up her promise to Kyle. She would tell him about some of the popular passed-down songs of District Twelve, and sing them to him in a quiet voice. When they did mindless tasks, the singing came naturally - Bebe started with the song Kyle recalled Stan singing about the superman, which wasn’t one that really struck Kyle.

But there were others that dug under his skin. One was an aching, sad love song that apparently everyone sang at Eric’s mother’s bar, one that even Kyle had heard multiple times - “Neon Moon”, he called it in his head. Its words were deeply evocative of a time and place neither of them lived to see, before the formation of the Districts and the civil war that brought them the Hunger Games, and of a mournful nostalgia that Kyle could sympathise with. Bebe said it was a popular song because everyone could relate to losing someone in District Twelve. It was a hardscrabble existence. Even without the Hunger Games, there were mine collapses, hunting accidents, pollution, alcoholism…

“Have you ever seen a neon moon?” Kyle asked her.

“I don’t know if one exists,” Bebe replied. “I’ve seen a blood moon.”

“Maybe they’re the same.”

“They didn’t teach about those in Capitol school?”

“They didn’t teach anything useful there,” Kyle told her with a scrunched nose. “I know three dead languages and how to count complicated currency. Nothing else.”

Bebe laughed at that.

On Day Five, when they were lifting weights and avoiding an obvious scene caused by a District Four Tribute at the fire-starting station, Bebe told him of another song, one that her mother liked to sing. Her mother was apparently her own type of rebellious in her youth. She used to hang around with Jennevieve and Kamillia’s mothers in her teenage years, all troublemakers and firestarters. Kamillia’s mother Karlotta was pregnant first, by the son of a mining family, and became a pregnant hellraiser many times over, with a brood of spitfire kids continuing her legacy. Jennevieve’s mother Ophelia, by contrast, fell in love with a Peacekeeper, a forbidden love that eventually led to both Jennevieve’s birth and the Simons family becoming the mayoral representation for District Twelve. (“The Capitol kinda shoved them upstairs to prevent a scandal with their lawmakers,” Bebe explained to Kyle. Kyle, flabbergasted by this story, was impressed they weren’t murdered for it.)

Bebe’s mother Meriannelle had a simpler love story. Traveling musicians came through District Twelve on rare occasions, and one such group had a rugged sort of long-haired man that caught Bebe’s mother’s heart. Her mother used to have a wild heart, untamed and unstoppable; the musician stole her imagination and tied her down with little more than his guitar and his sweet disposition.

One of the songs he sang was an old District Twelve ode to their former, only Victor of the Hunger Games - her namesake, Berebeth. Even though the years changed her father, when he went from a musician to learning his wife’s family’s trade of meat preparation and butchering, he never stopped singing the song that won him Merianelle’s heart.

Kyle could tell Bebe clung to the song, from the way she sang it with shaking vibrato and plaintive thought.

“

Take me and love me, if you want me,”

she sang lightly, “

don’t ever treat me unkind… ‘cause I’ve had that trouble already, and it left me with a dark turn of mind.”

That song belonged to Bebe. Kyle loved the way it sounded, but that was her song. Kyle didn’t have anything like that.

A different song Bebe mentioned felt close to him. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense - it was a twisting sort of verse, one with meanings Bebe admitted she didn’t understand at all. Something about it, though, grabbed Kyle. Bebe said that it was a song she’d heard Eric’s mom sing once, while cleaning her bar and watching some of the younger kids in a different time. Bebe couldn’t recall if it was a nursery rhyme or a tongue twister or something else; Kyle thought it may be a religious hymn, based on the words and their complexity.

On the last day, as he prepared to take up the bow and arrow for the first time in days, he found himself murmuring its words, almost like a mantra. His singing was shaky at best, and he knew he was missing notes, unused to exercising this part of his voice. Still, the song itself gave him some sort of power and reassurance as he took up his instrument once again.

“

Spectres move like pilot flames, their widows toast at Sant Angel…”

Kyle felt many pairs of eyes on him, and didn’t blame anyone for looking. He was the Capitol traitor, the false lover, the defender of the inhumane.

“Better times collide with now, and better times -”

He stepped up to the station and notched an arrow into his bow, waiting for the countdown to end. His combat boots scuffed the immaculate white floor slightly as he dug in as best he could.

“And better times -”

With a song of District Twelve on his lips, Kyle willed himself to believe no one was looking at him. This was it, he thought, as the countdown ended and a clanging beep echoed in his ears.

“- Are coming still.”

. . .
 
“Do you know any songs, Eric?”

Eric lay opposite Kyle once again, gently cradling the redhead in his arms. Both of them knew their time was running out - there was one day left before Judgement Day - but they kept electing to tangle up like this, regardless of the pain it would bring. They didn't normally speak much. Kyle simply settled into Eric’s body and savored his warmth, the one thing he felt he could rely on in all this.

Kyle’s emotions regarding Eric were still wildly confused. He wanted Eric, but he wanted the chance to have a real, uninterrupted go at life with him, not whatever this painful dance was. The circumstances that pushed them together were going to pry them apart soon, and… what were they doing?

Kyle didn’t even know why he asked about the songs. Bebe was giving him so many of them, and was weaving stories of District Twelve that made Kyle finally feel like he could understand a bit of his new home. He shouldn’t want to connect more with Eric right now, not when they’d be separated very soon, likely for good.

But.

Eric’s eyes widened a bit, illuminated only by the gently glowing cityscape visible from Kyle’s windows. “...like the District Twelve songs?”

Kyle nodded, before his brain ran away from him. “Bebe’s been teaching me some. And I - well, I’m not bringing anything into the arena, so I wanted to bring something from home -”

On the word ‘home’, Eric crushed him in a tight hug. Kyle couldn’t breathe for a moment, turning his head to get some air, but it wasn’t long before his whole chest swelled with butterflies. Kyle didn’t dare speak, letting his cheek nuzzle into Eric’s chest, negative thoughts banished by the strength of his touch and the heat in his caresses. Kyle knew this was because he viewed District Twelve - viewed Eric’s home - as his own.

Kyle thought about singing a bit of the song that enraptured him, the one he’d sang while preparing his one show of strength, but before he could, a much more beautiful sound swallowed him up.

Of all the sounds in the world, Kyle didn’t think that Eric’s singing voice would be the most ethereal he’d heard, the most striking of all sounds. His voice wasn’t like Bebe’s, high-pitched and crystal-clear; it wasn’t like his mother’s lullabies from childhood, either, sharp but operatic and reassuring. Eric’s voice was slightly nasal and somewhat rough, catching in his throat and scratching against some unseen force there; it strained against his chest, coming from somewhere deep in his lungs.

Kyle couldn’t imagine anything sounding more perfect in this moment. And a
s Eric’s voice washed over him, the words he sang grabbed his heart and practically yanked it out of his chest.

“

I never really thought that you’d come tonight, while the crown hangs heavy on either side,”

Eric sang softly into Kyle’s scalp, his lips gently pressing against the skin there and making Kyle’s chest swell anew.

“Give me one last kiss, we’re both far too young to die.”

Their embrace, his words, Kyle’s growing tears - they all felt like their own private rebellion.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Kyle extended his arms, stretching them out lazily and listening to his bones creak. Before coming to District Twelve, he wasn’t a very physical person; Stan taught him about stretching, proper breathing, and pacing himself, in tandem with teaching the city boy how to hunt. He must have seemed hopeless at first.

Extending his right arm taut, he envisioned himself holding his bow. He knew he should be doing anything but this. This was the night before the Judgment, after all. He needed a good night’s sleep, the last good night’s sleep he’d get prior to the Hunger Games - maybe the last good night of sleep he’d get, period. He doubted that he’d be sleeping at all tomorrow, plagued with anxiety over what he was fated to do.

But Kyle’s brain refused to rest, shouting fears and half-formed confusions into the ether. His physical movements quelled them only slightly, but it was enough to make his pain bearable.

These were the last moments before his life changed forever. Kyle tried not to think about the inevitability of his death, but flashes of every Tribute he saw in the Training Center flitted across his eyes every time he closed them. So many of them outshone him, he thought as he drew his left arm into an archer’s position, thumb just behind his ear as he involuntarily focused his fake bow towards a corner of his bedroom. Bebe, obviously, but Kyle feared her much less; she’d grant him a quiet, dignified death. Someone like Scott Tenorman, with deadened eyes and that aura of bloodlust…

Kyle’s fingers on his left hand curled together, as if actually holding a bowstring, leaving a gap where he’d notch the arrow itself. He wasn’t sure what to imagine himself doing, though, and his hands wavered at the thought of aiming at children. That’s what they all were. Children. He wouldn’t hunt them the same way he’d hunt a deer, but what if he had to? He thought of the smallest girl at the Training Center, Flora, someone who hadn’t even hit puberty. What if she beset him suddenly, weapon in hand, and he had to aim to kill her? She was so uninterested in training in the center. Flora spent the whole time playing with rocks in what amounted to a glorified sandbox. She couldn’t have been more than twelve and this system, the system designed to endlessly punish anyone like his family, wanted him to unthinkingly murder her to “defend” himself, he -

Kyle lowered his arms, eyes falling away from the wall. Staring between his bare feet, blistered from training boots he never managed to break in, his frown grew deep. Maybe he should think of someone else, like Henrietta Biggle. He raised his arms sharply again, a jerking motion lacking any sort of elegance.

Aiming at the wall once again, he tried to picture her in his mind’s eyes. Henrietta, bulky arms cradling an axe, running straight towards him and lifting it up to split him right down the middle -

“You’re tense.”

Unthinkingly, Kyle’s hands flexed open, startled. He didn’t need to turn his head, though. Only one person would come into his room without asking.

“Astute observation,” Kyle replied blankly before letting his arms sink to his sides, glancing back at the floor. “...maybe I should have asked you for help this week... instead of just sleeping with you.”

Eric made a slightly strangled noise before Kyle heard the sound of his door closing and locking. Kyle finally turned to face his mentor, and wasn’t surprised to see that his face looked equally pained. They'd done nothing to make their inevitable parting easier.

Eric wore green pajamas, the same color as Kyle’s eyes. Kyle wore a loose brown long-sleeved shirt, the same color as Eric’s eyes. They stared at each other for a few long moments, matching portraits in misery.

“Nothing I do could prepare you for what it’s like in there,” Eric admitted quietly. “It’s a joke, the way they say that my part is 'training'. I helped Bebe with strategy as much as I could, and you…” His face colored, but he didn’t continue.

Kyle shook his head lightly. Logically, he knew Eric prioritized wrong. Kyle did, too, focusing on their shared affections. In two days, he’d be sent off to die, propping up a totalitarian regime and reminding dissenters what they had to look forward to if they dared cross President Scott, and he’d been just as worried about that as he’d been about romance. Fucking romance! He’d never had any inclination for it before, and yet whenever he looked at Eric, something in his chest tightened up and his cheeks reddened and...

Kyle wasn’t sure how he would have gotten through these nights without feeling Eric’s weight by his side.

“...I’m tense,” Kyle admitted with a slightly knowing smile. “I keep thinking about how I don’t know if I can actually kill someone…”

“Most good people don’t,” Eric assured him. “The preparation is a sham and you know it. If they wanted to really prepare you, they’d lobotomize your morals before throwing you down into a death trap.”
"Can they do that?""Wouldn't put it past them," Eric muttered.
“...So much for continuing the rebellion,” Kyle said after a pause, unable to continue the banter. His brain was too clouded with worry.

Eric inspected Kyle's face, clearly trying to figure something out, before drawing close to Kyle. “Put your arms up again?”

Kyle did as told, adjusting himself to hold an invisible bow tautly. Eric observed his form before using his arms to adjust Kyle’s hips slightly, tilting them to align with his arms.

“It’s funny the things that you slip up on when you start thinking about your form,” Eric told him. “Your whole body should be aligned with your arm. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stan didn’t point that out to you, he lets his brute force cover for his sloppiness. We aren't all built like lumberjacks.”

Kyle snorted, leaning into Eric’s touch but aligning himself properly. “Stan’s not here, focus on doing your job.”

Eric smirked, moving his hands up to Kyle’s shoulders. “I realize this is because you’re stressed and scared and all kinds of other shit, but try to keep your shoulders from rising up to your ears.” Eric gently pushed down on them. Kyle forced them to sink down with the touch, focusing on how good the warmth of his fingertips felt through his flimsy top. “Your body should form a straight line, elbow to hand.”

Kyle could tell Eric’s touch was inconsistent. He struggled with reaching out, and yet here he was, doing just that. Too many things in Kyle’s brain swirled, Eric’s soothing touch blending with his obvious hesitancy with their precarious situation with the specter of everything to come and the fear of losing himself and losing Eric and losing Bebe. Kyle chose to focus on Eric’s voice, always steady, never insecure. Nasal and rough and imperfect, true, but even when he had doubts, it never seemed like they reached his voice.

Kyle didn’t want any other voice guiding him.

“The rebellion… it’s not all on you. It’s on me and Bebe and the other districts, too. Just keep everything about yourself aligned and aimed at your goal.”

Eric’s hand rested on Kyle’s right hand, gently stroking his thumb in halting movements. The fire was almost too much, searing Kyle’s chest with an ache he didn’t have a name for.

“I don’t know what that is anymore,” Kyle lied quietly.

Eric used his index finger to mimic the notch of an arrow; Kyle molded his fingers around it, lips parting gently to let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. After a moment, he felt Eric’s breath on his ear, heated and agonizing.

“Let go.”

Kyle’s fingers did as told, the invisible arrow shooting straight for the wall. Kyle blinked a few times before letting his arms fall to his sides.

Eric’s hand was still on his.

. . .

six months prior

“Do you think Kar’n will enjoy these buttercups? I know they were her favorite flower a few months ago, but I think she’s drifting towards daffodils now. She still likes yellow, at least, maybe we can go towards the southern woodland and see if there are any chrysanthemums growing this time of year…”

Eric wasn’t sure how he got roped into gathering flowers with Kamillia McCormick, the eldest McCormick daughter. He used to get roped into things all the time around District Twelve - Give this alcohol to your mother, Eric. Deliver these arrows to the Marshes, Eric. Take this packed meat to the Mayoral House, Eric! - but since he returned from the Hunger Games, he was generally left alone. Stan was always nearby to yell about Capitol goons and rebellion and oppression, and sometimes that warmed Eric’s heart a bit. Even if Stan had no idea what he’d been through or how much weighed on his mind, he at least spoke to him as if he’d never been gone.

Kamillia, too, spoke like there wasn’t a massive chasm of grief and trauma separating them. She looked the same - fifteen years old and growing slowly into her features, a carbon copy of her father with watery caramel eyes, messy straw-colored hair, and milky skin. She gathered buttercups delicately in the crook of her bony arm, her short lavender dress barely covering her upper thighs. She may have taken after her father physically, but by all accounts, she was just like her mother in personality, chattery, fiery, and fully confident in herself. Indeed, she was still rambling on about flowers and her younger sister Karnation’s changing appreciation for specific flowers.

Eric wondered what it would be like to have that kind of confidence now. He’d seen winners from other Districts who lorded their victories over the world and who celebrated openly, currying the Capitol’s favor. Even if Eric’s victory had been accepted by the world, he doubted he’d feel like bragging about killing a bunch of teenagers. How did those Victors stand themselves when they looked in the mirror? Were they plagued by those endless nightmares of bloody bodies, empty chests, and pounding adrenaline? Whatever confidence he had in himself was long gone, buried with Wendy’s body.

“...we also have to take into account that the weather has been unseasonably hot, so there may not be a huge harvest of flowers this year anyways. Hopefully we can convince people of the inherent beauty of ygglberries and tampernose bluebells - Eric, are you listening to me?”

“Hm? Oh, right, makes sense.”

“Ygglberries aren’t a thing, Eric,” Kamillia pointed out with a frown. “Neither are tampernose.” Her gaze softened, though, and she set her collected buttercups into a small wicker basket laying in the tall grass near them. “We can go back into town, if you want. I thought you might like the quiet.”

“You haven’t shut up since we got here,” Eric deadpanned.

Kamillia rolled her eyes, sticking out her tongue. “You know what I mean.” She looked at the buttercups in Eric’s lap. “Want me to take those?”

“Oh -” Eric handed them over to her before resuming his quiet picking. The McCormicks didn’t have much of anything. The girls were exceedingly crafty, and made and sold pressed flowers, small bouquets, and crowns in the marketplace. It didn’t bring in much money, but it was enough for them to buy essentials, Kamillia said. Before he went off into the games, Eric always made sure Kamillia had some sort of meat from his hunts or Bebe’s shop for the week; now, Stan picked up his slack. Eric couldn’t bring himself to hunt very often anymore. Too many invasive memories.

He could gather flowers without pain. That would help her enough.

“It

is

nice out here,” Eric told her softly, plucking a buttercup close to the ground and putting it on his leg. “Can I take some of these back to my mom?”

“Of course,” Kamillia replied. “There’s a lot here… I hope people enjoy yellow flowers. They far preferred red last year.”

“I think they’ll like anything you arrange for them,” Eric assured her. The two of them plucked more flowers in silence for a few moments.

“What kind of flowers do you like?” Kamillia asked.

Eric frowned. “I am not letting you make something for me for free when you can barely buy flour -”

“You’re so goddamn stubborn!” Kamillia laughed, throwing her hands in the air. “I only asked because Mrs. Broflovski asked me to make a nice arrangement for her son, and that made me think of you.”

Eric went bright red and resumed picking flowers with a startling intensity. “Why the hell would that make you think of

me?

”

“Eric, you’re stalking her son."

“Following!” Eric objected. “Following. Following him in the hopes of accidentally bumping into him so I can introduce myself in a way that won’t make things awkward because I killed people.”

Kamillia nodded slowly, eyes wide with judgment. “Great plan. Excellent. Definitely foolproof. How long have you been hoping to accidentally bump into him, by the way?”

Eric’s fingers clumsily sheared a buttercup in half; he hid it behind him before moving on. “The timing is never right, he’s always with Stan.”

“Stan’s your best friend, who cares?” Kamillia asked, putting another harvest of buttercups into her basket.

Eric paused. Stan

was

his best friend. Stan was still around a lot, and Eric was sure Stan viewed him as such, even though Eric failed miserably at protecting his family. It was Eric that didn’t want to admit how hard it was to be around Stan anymore. Stan was falling apart, and Eric knew he was responsible. Maybe that’s why he kept dragging Stan out of the woods while he attempted to drink himself to death. The ghost of his past affections, driving him to try and keep some part of Stan's life intact.

Stan didn’t seem to drink around Kyle.

Eric wasn’t jealous of Stan. Eric maybe was afraid of Stan. Eric used to love Stan. Eric didn’t know how to respond to Kamillia’s simple remark because things were so much more complicated now.

Kamillia must have sensed his discomfort, because she stopped her movements, holding a buttercup in her hand. With a smile, she leaned forward and wove its stem into Eric’s cropped cinnamon hair. The buttercup petals brushed against Eric’s cheeks, still wet from morning dew, but it felt comforting in a weird way, like fresh, light morning rain. Kamillia pulled away, hands outstretched, and grinned widely.

“There. Now you have a reason to talk to Kyle. Look at how pretty you are! He’d be all over you if you showed that off.” She pulled a hand mirror out of her pocket and showed Eric. He snorted; he looked like an overweight piece of shit, but he had to admit, Kamillia picked a very pretty flower to lace through his hair.

“I’ll have to trust you on that one,” Eric admitted. “It does look nice, though.” He gently puffed up the flower with his hand with a light smile.

“Sometimes the simple things are the best things,” Kamillia agreed, leaning back into the grass and sighing. “...are things okay with you and Stan?”

“Honestly, I don’t know if things are okay between me and anyone,” Eric replied, flopping back into the grass himself, arms splayed out. “I… everything is so fucked up.”

“I can only imagine,” Kamillia said quietly, pulling some hair out of her face as she looked up at the bright blue sky. It was a rare beautiful day in District Twelve, without smog overwhelming their landscape. There were even clouds in the sky, fluffy and pure. “Things are good between you and me, you know.”

“I’m glad. Really. Sometimes I wonder if…” Eric paused. “You know I’m no good at this shit. Opening up and whatever.”

“I know. I’m too good at it.”

“Let’s switch brains, maybe it’ll help us both.”

“Fuck no, I don’t wanna be stuck with your shitty hair.”

“My hair is not shitty!” Eric said loudly, bolting up to try and get to Kamillia. “And who wants your rat’s nest anyways?!”

Kamillia got up too and started playfully scrambling away. “My hair is beautiful, how

dare

you -!”

“Oh,

that’s

where you two got to.”

Eric and Kamillia stopped their silliness to see who approached them, and Eric immediately clammed up, turning bright red.

Stan looked as he always did, dark hair, darker eyes, strong frame. He had a deer slung over his shoulder, its blood staining his brown hunting jacket, and he looked mildly amused at the sight of two of his friends rolling around in a field of flowers. Behind him was the man of the hour himself, Kyle Broflovski. His flaming red hair was tied into a knot atop his head, and he had a bag of something bleeding in his hands. Eric couldn’t help but be transfixed by him - he’d liked Stan because of his steadfast nature and soothing calmness and general availability, not his rugged looks. Kyle was physically entrancing, with his angular body, sharp face, and wild eyes. His long spindly legs were splattered with blood, too, which kept Eric from inspecting them too deeply.

“Yeah, it’s my turn to get Eric out of the house,” Kamillia joked brightly, looking to Eric. Eric stared back at her, dumbstruck. Kamillia’s shoulders sank a bit before she glanced back at Stan. “It’s not going great.”

“This is Eric?”

Eric had only heard Kyle scream profanities and conspiracies before - he’d never been close enough to hear his normal voice. It wasn’t what most people would call melodic, but Eric already loved it.

“Yeah,” Kamillia responded, staring blankly at Eric. “Ya wanna say something or are you just gonna stare through them?”

Eric glared at her before turning back to Stan and Kyle Broflovski, the Impossibly Beautiful Capitol Redhead. More Kyle. Since he was supposed to introduce himself. To Kyle. Whose hair was starting to fall into his emerald eyes and his pupils were dilating as he glanced at it with annoyance, how dare anything ever annoy Kyle Broflovski -

He had the feeling even Stan was getting fed up with his reticence, because his expression was nothing short of exasperated.

“...hey,” Eric said quickly with a little wave. “Sorry, I’m not super great at…” Eric waved his hands more before sighing. “I’m Eric Cartman.”

Kyle’s smile in response made Eric feel like his heart was exploding.

“Nice to finally meet you, Eric,” Kyle said clearly. “Stan’s told me a lot about you.”

“All bad things, I hope,” Eric deadpanned, and now Stan was slightly smiling, too. Eric wasn’t sure where that vestige of him came from, that ghost of his past personality, but no one felt it unwelcome.

Kamillia even giggled a bit at it. “Kyle’s mom came into the shop the other day, so we’re picking flowers for him -”

“Hope you like yellow,” Eric said, gesturing around them.

Kyle blanched a bit before blushing wildly. His face became a small fire, pink and orange and red blending together in a thoroughly appealing picture. Eric found himself dumbly smiling at it.  “Ah, why did she do that…?”

“Your room is pretty empty,” Stan offered. “It could use… y’know, some decorations. Any decorations.”

“All I do is sleep there,” Kyle pointed out, “what’s the point?”

Kamillia rolled her eyes. “You’re such a dude, I swear to God. Pretty things boost mood, you could totally use that little bit of happiness. Your mom is just looking out for you.”

“Really, if it was for the living room, I would under -

oh

weak!

”

Kyle moved to hold his bag of stuff in front of him, to rest his arm, but it began to split with the movement, a large splatter of blood dropped in a massive dollop on his boots, splashing all over him. Kyle’s face knotted up and looked at himself in disgust. Kamillia, though, grabbed for Eric’s hand; she must have sensed how his shoulders shot up to his ears and his eyes widened. Eric quickly looked down at his legs, where buttercups gently rested, untainted by this unwelcome surprise.

To Eric’s surprise, Kyle noticed his unconscious reactions, too, and scooped the bag up between his arms quickly, slathering them with blood and viscera without complaint. He looked pained and deeply uncomfortable. Turning to Stan, he tilted his head. “This bag’s gonna explode, we gotta go.”

Eric knew what pity looked like. Kyle hadn’t been looking at him in pity. He’d almost… looked like he hadn’t wanted to upset Eric. Eric used to be so good at reading people, and most people he could still generally get a sense for, but he couldn’t figure out what that expression of Kyle’s was. There was fear to it, but not the usual fear that filtered through those that spoke to him. No pity, minimal fear, but… concern?

Stan glanced at the bag and winced. “Shit. Yeah. Sorry about that, maybe your mom can repair it.” He turned back to Kamillia and Eric, giving a quick head nod and wave before tromping off.

Kyle, though, walked more slowly away before turning his head towards the pair.

“I’d… I’d like to see more of you, Eric. If you want.”

And then he ran off after Stan, cursing the bag and how ‘there’s hardly anything in here, how is it breaking?!’ He sounded like he was pushing his frustrations onto the bag.

Kamillia and Eric sat in silence for a few moments, before Kamillia squeezed his hand. Eric squeezed back before pulling away.

“He wants to see more of you,” Kamillia repeated gently.

“Maybe my brain will cooperate more now,” Eric offered.

He doubted it.

. . .

the present

An arrow split through the chest of one of the blue holographic enemies surrounding Kyle, a perfect kill shot.

There was no point in hiding his true skills, he reasoned - between how Eric and Wendy gamed the system, Bebe’s impressive abilities being un-hideable, and the massive target he’d painted on himself by being a Cartman-loving Capitol traitor, he was guaranteed to score at least a 10, no matter what he did. He could finger paint on the floor and get an 11, he bitterly thought as he whirled around on his heel and shot off another arrow directly into the head of a charging hologram. That shot was sloppier but his reflexes were tight. He didn’t even need to look to see the enemies in his peripheral vision. Even more bitterly, he thought about how he’d actually

earn

his high score here. People definitely outshone him this week, but now that he was finally letting loose for the first time, he realized just how strong he was.

He drowned those thoughts out as best he could by remembering the advice Eric gave him. His whole body was spinning in complete coordination with each other, knee lining up with hips lining up with arms as Kyle took out a far-away blue dummy. He always did better when people weren’t paying attention.

Kyle’s eyes flickered away from the Judgement melee for just a moment as he pulled one of his last arrows out of its quiver, towards the Gamemaker in his recessed platform and whatever other Capitol goons he lorded over. Kyle could tell from the beginning that they weren’t paying attention to his performance. At first, that didn’t bother Kyle that much - he was the traitor, the easy sacrifice, of course they wouldn’t pay any attention to him.

As his skills poured out, though, and his ego started to feel the bruise of being written off as cannon fodder, he found himself looking at Mephisto Moreau more as he notched each new arrow from his quiver into his bow. The corpulent man acted like nothing was happening in front of him at all, talking to a similar-looking man at his side. The other Capitol attendees weren’t quite as evasive, occasionally watching Kyle with genial bemusement, but they definitely weren’t treating this like an examination. Of course there was fine food and refreshment everywhere in that area. It was oppressive and undecorated, but they still found a way to showcase their decadence and lofty Capitol breeding to their pawns.

Kyle hadn’t been this angry in a long time. He was being straight-up railroaded by a group of rich assholes who wanted to make an example of him. Why not just wave him off if the numbers were that rigged? Continue the rebellion - all of this was definitely making him feel some kind of rebellious, he thought as his arrow flew into another fake foe, but he didn’t want to.

If they wanted to make him the villain of this Games, they should at least

try.

Two last enemies digitally shambled to life in a corner, and Kyle quickly notched his arrow into the bow. Taking a breath, he thought back to Eric’s words.

With a quick rotation, Kyle shot an arrow directly into the Gamemaker’s lair. He’d been aiming for the clock straight above Mephisto's head; the arrow cut through the air, took off his hat, and shattered the bottom of the clock, sending spider-web-thin cracks over its glossy covering and obscuring its hands.

Without missing a beat or without looking from the shocked, scandalized faces of the Capitol elite above him, he notched his last arrow and, in a show of truly horrible form, shot his last arrow through the two remaining holographic enemies without so much as a glance in their direction.

Let go.

Kyle’s arms fell to his sides, knuckles white around his bow, before he bowed as sarcastically as possible.

“Thank you for your time,” he spat out with as much bitterness as he could muster, eyes flickering up to Mephisto once more.

He didn’t look nearly as perturbed as Kyle wanted him to.

. . .

“Fuck.”

The results were broadcast on the screen in their sitting area. The television had blinked on of its own accord, alerting the entire Capitol to the start of the 48th Hunger Games, and given the full list of every Tribute’s scores from the Judgment.

Lisa didn’t have an admonishment for Kyle, just a grim-set look of disappointment on her face. Unlike other elements of the pre-Games hoopla, the Judgments for each Tribute were not broadcast, so at least his backfiring stunt wasn’t common knowledge. (Were Kyle in a better mood, he'd think about how they likely didn't broadcast the Judgments so that they could rig the numbers any way they liked.) He came back from the Training Center looking like death warmed over anyways - Mephisto almost seemed to

expect

his move. He was fucked. He was fucked, he was so fucked and he was going to die instantly.

Seeing the little neon 12 next to his name, the only 12 on the screen, only made him look and feel worse.

“...what did you

do?

” Bebe asked in a shocked voice.

“Just… shot holograms? With my arrows?” Kyle dumbly replied. Despite knowing

exactly

what he did, the results still had him in shock.

Lisa was clearly in some form of severe denial, and was as pallid as Kyle. She’d begun her evening routine, as her hair was frizzy from brushing as opposed to high-piled and wavy; her eyes, though, were filled with dread. “This is ridiculous. No matter what you did.” She gestured to Bebe. “Bebe is stronger than you and she was ranked 11.” Another gesture to the screen, shaking and inelegant. “No Career got higher than a 10 despite being a Career!” She pulled her hand to her face, the gears in her mind clearly working overtime. “I… this is… this is…”

Kyle felt like she was pulling back her words, while they were being recorded. Her rage was scrawled all over her face, and if she was mad at him, she would have made it known. Kyle’s stomach roiled, and he turned to the only person who hadn’t said anything yet, almost begging him to make this better.

Eric stared at the screen for a long while before simply slipping out of the room, closing the door to his bedroom behind him. Bebe watched him in silence with a grim gaze before turning that pained look to Kyle, begging for answers.

Vaguely hearing something that sounded like a too-familiar muffled scream of horror, Kyle opened his mouth to speak.

Nothing came out.