honeysuckle poison / andromache & camden * blitz

[sucy 🌷]

andromache stewart

There's plenty of things to do. I could go make a cup of coffee. I could get the hell out of here, get my ass in the gym and get to training. But no, I'm stuck, and I'm as glued to my television as everybody else in District One. I'm too invested to move.

These Games have been crazy. I can't remember a first day like that... like ever, and I've been watching the Games for as long as I can remember. We've got screens in every room of the house running twenty-four-seven every year, just so we don't miss a single moment. We, of course, means me and Mom. Dad and my brothers can do what they like, as usual, but during the Games, I'm on observation duty.

So yes, there's a television mounted on the wall in front of the treadmill, and there's a screen in the cabinet, in the opening where a microwave would usually go, but the fact of the matter is that I'm enraptured by this year.

"Damn!" I yell, broken out of my silence. Tide Evros just totally tore open Circe Murdock's head. With that, I'm brought back to earth, back to Camden lounging with me in my bedroom. Vera Jeon runs not long after that. "Vera's making a break for it. She's all talk. The opposite of her sister last year." I roll my eyes at Camden, but as soon as I look at her, Four's betrayal replays in my mind. "And as for Tide... killing your own partner is wild. They should've just teamed up on Vera." 

But what would I have done, if I was him? That little Circe girl was crazy strong, something that I know Camden is too. Maybe I'd do the same as Tide Evros and take out the devil I know out of the picture. I reach across and pinch Camden's cheek teasingly. Her skin is perfect. The gesture's all affection, and I mean it too, but I can't help but enjoy disrupting that perfect face of hers for just a second.

"Don't worry. I won't try that move on you in practice."

ELEGANT

[Tyler]

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CAMDEN LANNON

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Like an addict with their vice placed just out of reach, my eyes are peeled to the action on the screen. Spilled blood, lost limbs, final breaths pulled from lungs. And so. Much. Glory.

I couldn't resist the invitation when Andromache invited me to spend the evening watching the 97th Games unfolding. From the very start I'd been hooked on the season. So many strong candidates to choose from this year, it had been almost impossible to choose a favourite. The bloodbath that split the contenders in half had been the moment that cemented these games as one of my favourites. Some of my own top contenders had been wiped out before the first anthem had even lit up the sky. Some people just aren't meant to reap such spoils.

Tonight had been especially action-filled. I had thought it would be hard to top the severed arm from last night, but Andromache and I are both shouting as Tide cleaves through Circe's skull. "Wow!" I excitedly look over and see my own amazement reflected in her features. It was one of those things that was certain to be a topic of conversation in the week to come; maybe even in Games for years down the line. I was in awe of the tribute from Four.

How much I ached to be in his shoes right now. To feel that glory shine down on my own shoulders.

As the excitement dies down our analysis begins. Like true Careers. "Vera's smart to run," I counter Andromache's critique. "let Tide get comfortable in his victory now, cut him later when he's cocky about it." She points out how the boy just cut down his own district partner and the conversation dies down as the pair of us each perspective take. It's such a brutal act to kill your District partner when you don't need to. Why cut the chances of a District winner when there's still other contenders in the arena? I think about how I would never do it. At least, not like that. Not in a way that would turn the District against me.

Andromache brings the conversation back with a joke. I laugh along, "Oh yeah, like I'd let you get that kind of shot," I'm laughing back at her. The two of us peas in a pod in her glorious mansion. Our friendship runs deep, these immaculate walls would have such amazing stories to tell if they could talk. It crosses my mind for a moment on what I would do if it had us two in the Games, faced with such a choice. Whether I'd hesitate before I took a swing.

I would, right?

[WC: 446]

[sucy 🌷]

andromache stewart

"You really think he's gonna get all full of himself now? I don't think so. I think he might be more dangerous now," I say, watching as the camera settles on Tide Evros' face. I scoot closer to the T.V. screen, narrowing my eyes to focus on the details of his expression. I can't tell a single thing. I realise a second too late I've somehow come back around to agree with Camden. Running was the best bet for some random girl from one of the lower Districts in this situation. I sit back, sigh, blow a stray curl out of my face. 

"Please." I roll my eyes. I want to protest, and remind her I've known her for so long that I know just what buttons to press to distract her and knock her unsteady for just long enough to cleave through her. But... that's A. probably a little much, and B. halfway to being a lie. For as long as I've known Camden, I've always been outshone by her. I've always been playing catch up. She's my mother's favourite out of all of my friends; Mom loves holding her up in front of me for comparison and critique. She never does it in front of Camden though. Whenever someone comes over, she transforms into the perfect portrait of a domestic District One goddess, who wields kitchen knives with deadly precision while she cuts up a fruit platter for her guests. So strange, how exact and surgical her blade is to this day.

One day I'll ask why she never volunteered for the Games when she was eligible. I'll ask one day, after I win, of course.

"Sounds like you're the cocky one. Watch your back," I tease. 

On screen, it's time for our reminders of the carnage we've just witnessed. Cameras pan over today's two other dead bodies -- Lucia Valentine and Nori Halliday. I wrinkle my nose. Nearly a whole team wipe out. Nori's last requests echo in my mind. She wanted to die beautiful, and not at the hands of someone who hated her. I could relate to that.

"Okay, but die by your District partner like Circe, or die by getting beaten to death by someone with a grudge like Nori? Choose. And no, you can't just say you'd do better and live."

ELEGANT

[Tyler]

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CAMDEN LANNON

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Andromache rolls her eyes at my joke. Throws in a little jab right back. Watch your back, with that superstar smile that wouldn't seem out of place on the starlets from the programs they make in the Capitol. I stick out my tongue playfully. It's our usual banter, the dance we've perfected over the years of each other's close company. Playful teasing coating thinly veiled threats. Always enough cajoling and smiling to make the other second guess whether there was something real hidden below that friendly surface. The kind of stuff that really keeps you friends close.

Our eyes are back on the screen, but my focus is away from the return to the gore of the day. I'm still pondering what I'd do if the Games ever came down to me and my good friend Andromache. The girl who seemed to always have it all. The nicer house, the closer family. Her mother, so sweet and warm and welcoming to me as if I'm another daughter to her. Compared to my own mother, to whom anything I do doesn't seem good enough. Even between practices, Andromache has a gravity to her that just seems to invite the world in. Everyone wants to be in her presence, everyone accepts being in mine by proxy. I've started to wonder if she even knows her own pull in the world. Sometimes it almost seems to surprise her to learn of an admirer of hers. As if it's something too inconsequential to be worth notice.

Maybe that's why I've been stewing on this question. Maybe that's why I hesitate to give it an answer.

Andromache instead poses another question of her own, starting one of our classic sleepover games of "Would-You-Rather" with a good one. A real thinker. It's my turn to roll her eyes as she plans ahead and closes the loophole before I could take any advantage of it. Die at the hands of my District partner, or die by the hands of a held grudge? Neither sound fun, both seem insulting in a way. I would rather die after a glorious fight. A hero or a martyr for the district. A name that goes down in the history books as the girl who should have won it all. But to be the betrayed seems weak, pathetic. And to die from a grudge makes me sound like the villain to someone else's story, a name to be hated, not loved.

And there's even the possibility they could be one and the same.

After a few more moments I have an answer. "I'd prefer dying at the hand of my District partner." I'm surprised at how true it is, the reasoning sound in my mind. "Let the rest of District One cry at my loss, shame whoever that traitor is." Let the District be the ones to lament my loss, remember me for years after.

"Okay, now it's your turn. Would you rather… Leave a wounded ally to die, or help them heal at the risk of later having to kill them yourself?"

[WC: 511]

[sucy 🌷]

andromache stewart

Oh, Camden. I'm fully torn away from the action on screen now, driven to distraction by her answers. But I suppose I asked for it, didn't I? We're careers. Teasing each other is practice for the Games too; psychological warfare or whatever. A beat of silence passes. My breath falls on the blanket beneath me, failing to even cross the small space between us. 

"I think you're crazy," I say eventually. Come on, Andromache, think of something good. "The Games aren't just about winning for yourself. Becoming a Victor is for the whole of your District." I raise an eyebrow at her, put her loyalty into question. If Tide Evros gets home, there'll be a shadow cast over Four. Celebrations will be funerary in nature, with Circe Murdock's pretty little face on every banner, wreathed with coral and seaweed. "You're so selfish."

And maybe it comes out a little harsher than I mean it to. Maybe that's because I believe every word out of her mouth. When she says whoever she means it, and I'm included. But I smile, and I laugh, and I try to play it off as more teasing, more training room trash talk rehearsal.

I can't help wondering why though. In the privacy of my own mind, I turn the idea over. When the sour homecoming was over and done with, when the next year new kids were swept away to fight, would anyone remember the name of the Tribute who fell to their own partner? I don't think so. More likely, they'd be immortalised only in relation to the Victor who took their soul home, whose betrayal would no doubt be spun into some kind of redemption arc. That's the way it always went. We all dream of killing each other, then being redeemed. 

The question Camden asks is way easier to answer. Its very arrival, as a question, solidifies this back and forth of ours as a game. None of this will escape the four walls of my bedroom, not unless next year we're hit with some very strange odds.

"Oh, the latter, easily," I reply. I lay back a bit further against the cushions and smugly close my eyes as I elaborate, hands gesticulating. "Please. How tragic would that be? I carry you on my back for a few days, get real sappy with it, turn on the waterworks in the end. The audience would eat it up." 

The eye of the audience, my mother often reminds me, is god. How any of that would feel for me is irrelevant, especially in the case of a hypothetical. Camden is beside me, pretty face full of life. Nothing can change that in this moment.

"Okay, let's rear back on all this philosophy. Games romance? Would you do it?" I waggle my eyebrows, encouraging her to smile. "I think I would, but I'm limiting my scope to fellow Careers."

ELEGANT