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No One Knows Who I Am	By : Marblez Category: G through L > The Hunger Games Trilogy Views: 4841 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games and I will make no profit from writing this story.

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The Arena, Day Four

            Waking up in the safety of someone’s arms was still an alien feeling to Adya but it was definitely something he could get used to, the strong arms wrapped around his body and holding him close to the strong body of his lover a physical reminder that he wasn’t alone in the darkness.
            “Cato?” he whispered softly. “You awake?”
            “…no…”
            Adya smiled.
            He was pretty sure that a Career should be more alert first thing in the morning but judging by the sluggish response he got from the older boy that was not the case.
            “What time is it?” he pressed softly.
            Cato sighed somewhat dramatically, pushing himself up on one elbow and dislodging Adya’s head from his shoulder as he reached out to pull aside the door of their tent.
            “Early,” he answered simply. “Sun’s not finished rising yet.”
            Nodding Adya rolled away from the other boy, grateful that they had decided to use the sleeping bag more as a blanket last night and pushed himself up onto his knees.
            “What are you doing?”
            “I need to get up,” Adya answered, searching for the entrance of the tent with his hands. “Nature calls, I’m afraid, so I need to find myself a tree or a bush or…something.”
            Cato sighed loudly.
            “If you think I’m going to let you stumble around blindly looking for somewhere safe to take a piss you’ve got another thing coming,” he muttered, throwing the sleeping bag aside and following the other boys as he crawled out of the tent.
            Adya paused when he felt the dew damp grass beneath his fingers.
            “Huh…” he mumbled, smiling to himself. “Different.”
            Grass was practically non-existent back in District Eight.
            He was used to feeling the rough sandy texture of bricks beneath his fingers or the cold lifelessness of concrete, sometimes even cobblestones depending on where he bedded down for the night but never anything as luxurious or soft as grass.
            Climbing to his feet he inhaled deeply.
            Now that he wasn’t being rudely awakened by someone trying to burn his face off he was able to pick out the unusual scents in the air, a mixture of unfamiliar aromas that blended together to create something so breathtakingly fresh it seemed almost unreal.
            “Is anyone else up yet?” he asked as Cato came to stand beside him.
            “Only Marvel,” Cato answered, taking Adya’s hand in his and linking their fingers together. “He took over from me on guard duty at midnight. Come on.”
            Adya allowed himself to be led away from the camp to a spot suitable for him to relieve himself whilst Cato stood guard, idly doing practise drills with his sword.
            “So you know how you were counting the cannons to find out how many Tributes were left?” Adya asked as he relieved his bladder, hoping that their conversation would draw the audience’s attention away from his actions. Cato grunted in response. “Have you managed to figure out who else is left? Apart from the seven of us, I mean.”
            “The Burning Bitch,” Cato answered instantly. “Hop Along, Big Brute, Titch and Big Eyes.”
            “…and in English?”
            Cato chuckled apologetically.
            “Sorry, I forgot you don’t think like a Career. Girl from Twelve. Boy from Ten. Boy from Eleven. Girl from Eleven. Girl from Five.”
            Adya nodded, blushing fiercely, as he gave himself a shake before tucking himself back inside his trousers, his hands making quick work of the zipper despite still being a little unused to having clothes that actually worked the way they were supposed to instead of being held up by a piece of string.
            “So obviously District Twelve is the Burning Bitch,” he mused, holding out his hand towards Cato and allowing the other boy to lead him back towards the camp. “And I’m guessing Titch is that little girl from District Eleven.”
            Cato grunted softly in agreement.
            “Big Eyes?”
            “Girl from Five,” Cato answered, his thumb absently tracing out patterns on the back of Adya’s hand. “I swear she’s got the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen…”
            “Dare I ask how Hop Along earned his nickname?” he asked as Cato guided him down onto one of the crates being used as a seat around the still burning fire.
            Marvel laughed loudly from wherever he was stood on guard duty.
            “Because he’s a cripple, just like you.”
            Adya flinched.
            Cato moved away from him and soon after there was the unmistakable sound of flesh meeting flesh.
            Marvel grunted in pain.
            “He’s got something wrong with one of his legs,” Cato answered as he returned to Adya’s side, sitting beside him. “I’m actually a little bit surprised he’s made it this far on his own.”
            Across the fire Marvel was grumbling loudly.
            “So Big Brute is the boy from District Eleven,” Adya concluded, hearing someone else approaching the fire, their feet dragging on the ground as they obviously struggled to wake up.
            “That one was easy,” Cato chuckled lightly. “Guys built like a house.”
            Adya smiled.
            Someone dropped down onto the seat on his other side.
            “Good morni…” Sam’s voice was interrupted by a loud yawn. “Sorry. I’ve never been very good in the mornings. My mum used to have to drag the blankets off of me to get me to actually get up.”
            “You’re not the only one,” Adya responded vaguely, allowing the other boy to interpret it as a statement about himself when really it was a gentle dig at the Career sitting on his other side. “Are we going to be re-burying the mines today?”
            “Hopefully,” Sam responded, his voice a little bit steadier. “I need to lay them out first and figure out a safe path for us to get to the supplies before I do anything more with them.”
            “Make sure the path is on this side of the supplies where we can see it,” Cato ordered, obviously gesturing to something Adya couldn’t see. “We need the other side to be as secure as possible.”
            “Ok. No problem.”
            Conversation waned for a little while, the four of them content to sit in silence until Clove, Peeta and Lillibet eventually joined them, the male tribute far too perky given the early hour.
            “I grew up in a bakery,” he explained when challenged by Sam, handing out fruit and some little wrapped squares for everyone to eat. “We’d normally be up earlier than this to get the first tray of bread in the oven so that people could buy it fresh for their breakfasts.”
            “I didn’t know you were a baker,” Adya admitted, frowning down at the wrapped square, his fingers fumbling unsuccessfully with the smooth wrapper until someone’s hands gently took it away from him and returned it a moment later unwrapped. “Thank you.”
            He bit off a corner and froze.
            “What is this?” he asked around the food in his mouth.
            “It’s called an energy bar,” Cato answered. “They’re a good source of, well, energy. Like the meals we had back in the Training Centre.”
            “And just like the food back in the Training Centre they taste foul.”
            It was a genuine struggle for him to eat the rest of the energy bar, grimacing with each foul mouthful and he was immensely grateful he’d saved his apple to have second, the sweet juice just about managing to erase the taste from his memory.
            “What did you eat back home?” Cato asked. “Our meals at the Academy were designed to give us the energy and nutrients we needed. They were similar to the meals we had at the Training Centre except they were designed to taste better.”
            “I survived on whatever I managed to find,” Adya answered with a shrug, making quick work of his apple. “People would sometimes give me scraps of food but mostly I’d save up whatever money I earned with my singing and buy some stale bread from the bakery.”
            “Fish,” Lillibet announced quickly, shifting in her seat as everyone’s attention moved to her. “We’d be able to buy whatever was left after the Capitol Quotas had been met so we almost always had access to reasonably fresh fish.”
            “There wasn’t anything special about–”
            “What’s that?”
            Adya felt guilty interrupting Sam but he was concerned about the scent he’d just picked up with his heightened senses.
            “What’s what?”
            “Oh, not this again…” Marvel muttered condescendingly, obviously thinking back to the similar conversation they’d had yesterday about the parachute.
            This was different.
            “I can smell smoke.”
            Marvel sniggered.
            “That would be from the fire in front of you.”
            Adya glared in his direction.
            “I am perfectly aware of the fact that there is a fire in front of me but I’m telling you I can smell smoke, different smoke,” Adya announced firmly. “It’s not the same type of wood as ours.”
            “Wait, what’s that?” Clove asked from her spot on the other side of the fire. “Over there, above the trees.”
            “That would be smoke.”
            Cato sounded so smug that Adya couldn’t hold back a grin.
            “A lot of smoke,” the Career continued. “That’s no ordinary little fire.”
            It was decided that Cato, Clove, Marvel, Peeta and Lillibet would investigate the source of the fire while Sam and Adya stayed back at the camp, working on the mines and guarding the supplies.
            “What do you think it is?” Adya asked as he listened to Cato arming himself.
            “I don’t know,” he admitted softly. “Probably something the Gamemakers arranged, you know, like they do whatever someone strays too far from the main action or hides away for too long.”
            Adya remembered.
            He could remember people talking about things like that happening during past games, a Tribute who thought they’d found a safe place to hide out the worst of the fighting forced out into the open or killed by some kind of creature.
            “If we’re not back by nightfall you are not to come looking for us.”
            “But…”
            “You are not to come looking for us,” Cato repeated, his hands moving to cup Adya’s jaw and draw his face close to the other boys, their breath mingling between them. “Depending on the situation we might have to bed down in the woods for the night. Listen for cannons. Get Sam to watch the evening broadcast. But you wait here, understood?”
            Adya nodded.
            “Hopefully that won’t be necessary but when the Gamemakers start using their tricks you can never predict how the day will end,” Cato continued, using his grip on Adya’s face to pull him in for a semi-heated kiss. “I will come back to you.”
            “He really does care for you, doesn’t he?”
            Sam’s question broke the silence which had fallen after the groups departure.
            “The fact that I’m still alive is proof of that,” Adya responded. “So, mines?”
            “Mines.”
            There wasn’t much that Adya could do to help in regards to laying out the mines, figuring out the best placement to keep the supplies safe so for most of the morning he kept up a steady stream of conversation with the younger boy, adding in the occasional song when Sam requested one.
            “I think that’s enough about me,” Adya announced suddenly after a lengthy conversation describing the layout of his District. “Your turn. Tell me about yourself.”
            “What do you want to know?” Sam countered.
            “Tell me about your family.”
            “My dad’s a senior technician in one of the factories which makes things for the Capitol,” the younger boy responded, pausing to hum thoughtfully to himself. “If I move that one over there…”
            “And your mum?” Adya prompted.
            “She worked in a factory until they got married and started having babies,” Sam said, grunting as he moved one of the mines he’d laid out yet again. “There. That’ll do. Time to dig.”
            “I might be able to help with that,” Adya offered. “Show me where, how wide and how deep and I can dig you a hole. You might just need to keep an eye on my work, just in case.”
            “Sounds like a plan,” Sam responded cheerfully, hurrying over to guide Adya towards the mine closest to him. “I haven’t re-activated them yet so don’t worry about that.”
            Sam moved the mine out of the way and show Adya how big the hole needed to be, moving the blind boys hands across the ground so that he could create a mental picture for himself.
            “And depth?” Adya sked whilst Sam hurried away to get him a shovel.
            “The length of your arm will be fine.”
            Adya nodded.
            It wasn’t easy, especially not at first and not just because he couldn’t see.
            He’d never had cause to use a shovel in his life.
            But after a while he got the hang of it, figured out the best way for him to use the shovel and decided to start their conversation up again.
            “You said your mum stopped working when she started having babies,” he called out. “Does that mean you’ve got lots of brothers and sisters?”
            “Six brothers and two sisters, to be precise, with me in the middle.”
            “Six?” Adya gasped. “And two…so…you’re one of nine?”
            “Yup,” Sam confirmed. “Although Charlie…”
            Adya frowned as the younger boy trailed off, sighing sadly.
            “What about Charlie?” he prompted gently.
            “Charlie…Charlie was my oldest brother,” Sam finally explained. “He was Reaped when I was five. He did well, even made it into the final three. But…well…he was up against Finnick Odair and Charlie was clever, I mean really clever, but he was never going to win against Finnick Odair.”
            “I’m sorry,” Adya apologised sincerely.
            “Thanks…” Sam sighed. “Mum…mum never really got over it but I think having the rest of us kids helped, given that both of my sisters were born after Charlie had…after Charlies Games.”
            “So your sisters are the youngest?” Adya asked, attempting to steer the conversation back in a more pleasant direction. “They must hate having so many older brothers watching over them.”
            “It’s not too bad at the moment, they’re only seven themselves. They’re twins, you see?” Sam explained, slowly returning to digging his own hole in the ground. “But when they’re older and they want to start dating there’s going to be trouble, I guarantee it.”
            Adya chuckled along with the younger boy.
            The rest of their morning was spent digging, hole after hole after hole until by the time they decided to stop for something to eat they had dug almost half of the holes they required.
            “I never realised quite how much hard work digging is,” Adya admitted as they sat close together in the centre of the camp. “My back is killing me and don’t get me started on my arms…”
            “I know what you mean,” Sam responded with a pained grunt of his own. “But if we can keep up the pace we can have them all activated and buried by the time night falls which will be good.”
            “Slave driver…” Adya muttered, grinning brightly so that the other boy would understand he was only joking and wasn’t actually upset. “I suppose it’s better than feeling useless though…”
            After they had exhausted the subjects of their own lives, each of them (and the audience watching them) now knowing everything from their favourite colours (green for Adya, blue for Sam) to their favourite thing about the Capitol (the food for Adya, the chance to play with some of the advanced technology he’d seen being created back home for Sam) they moved onto a more generic selection of question that reduced the pair of them the fits of giggles as they got sillier and sillier.
            Soon they’d dug all of the holes they needed and Adya retreated to the safety of the camp while Sam went around placing each mine in its designated hole, re-activating each of them one at a time and then carefully burying them again.
            As night began to fall Adya couldn’t help but worry about Cato.
            “We didn’t hear any cannons,” he reassured himself. “So no one’s died.”
            Yet.
            “All done. And just in time too,” Sam announced. “Lights almost gone.”
            “We should get the fire going again before it’s too dark,” Adya suggested, nodding towards what he now referred to in his mind as the fire pit. “If it’s anything like last night it’s going to get cold really quickly.”
            Sam agreed.
            Once the fire was lit the pair of them used one of the sleeping bags as a blanket, draping it over their legs as they ate a small dinner of bread and dried meats, all collected from the pile of supplies before the mines had been activated.
            “No broadcast,” Sam suddenly pointed out.
            “No cannons,” Adya added. “No deaths to announce.”
            “Looks like they’re not coming back to the camp tonight,” Sam murmured softly. “This is going to sound completely crazy considering the fact that I know at some point in the future one of them is going to kill me but I kind of wish they had come back. I’d feel a lot safer if they were here too…”
            “I know what you mean,” Adya agreed with a sad smile, playing with the knife he had kept tucked inside his boot all day. “Strength in numbers and all that jazz.”
            Sam hummed softly in acknowledgement of his statement.
            “But don’t let me hear you counting yourself out of the running just yet,” he continued firmly. “You’ve got as much chance of winning this thing as the rest of us. More of a chance, actually, given that you’re ridiculously clever and have the use of all of your natural born senses.”
            Sam sighed.
            “Look, I’ll take the first watch…or rather first listen,” Adya made sure to chuckle at his own pathetic joke, trying to get the younger boy to smile. “I’ll wake you when it’s your turn.”
            “You sure?” Sam asked hesitantly.
            Adya nodded, shooing him towards the tents.
            “Ok. Just…yell if you need me.”
            “Will do.”
            He listened to the sounds of the younger boy crawling into his tent, listened to him sob quietly for a few minutes before his breathing finally calmed and evened out as he fell asleep.
            Adya sighed.
            Thanks to the lack of canons he could be sure that Cato was alive but there was no way of knowing what sort of state he was in.
            Was he hurt?
            Was he dying?
            Or was he alright?
            Adya tried to get his mind to fixate on that last option, trying to picture the image he’d created in his mind of Cato lying on the ground somewhere, gazing up at the night sky through the trees surrounding him, but apparently his mind was more inclined to focus on the first two options.
            Hurt.
            Dying.
            And then his mind came up with another option.
            Alone.
            What if Cato was alone in the woods?
            Alone and hurt?
            Alone and dying?
            His breath seized in his throat and Adya forced his mind to go blank, suddenly aware of how much he had been struggling to draw air into his lungs as his mind was consumed by panic.
            “You can’t think like that, Adya,” he told himself, clenching his fists on his knees. “Cato is fine. He’s one of the strongest people in here. He’s fine.”
            Perhaps if he kept repeating that to himself he’d finally be able to believe it.

A/N So…I was trying to write a chapter for my other story and this happened. It’s a bit of a “filler” chapter because nothing big happens but that’s just how it played out. As we all know that action is going to heat up soon… Comments/Suggestions welcome as always. X
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No One Knows Who I Am