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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 Seven

            Walking slowly away from the camp, careful to go in the opposite direction of the mines he’d helped to bury in the ground, Adya picked a spot at random and stopped, turning back to face the direction he had come from.
            “Here?”
            “Yeah, I can still see you so that’s fine,” Sam responded from where he was sat in the middle of the camp tinkering with…something. “Just keep an ear out.”
            “Will do,” Adya responded with a smile, dropping down onto his bottom as his fingers started working at the laces of his boots, pulling almost frantically at them until they finally gave was and he was finally able to remove his footwear for the first time since he’d entered the Arena.
            The next thing to go were his socks.
            An almost obscene moan escaped his lips when the lusciously soft grass, warmed by the rays of the sun, finally came into contact with his bare feet.
            Oh.
            That was wonderful…
            Wiggling his toes he moaned once more as the tips of some of the blades of grass slipped between his toes, tickling the soft skin they found there.
            Tucking his socks into his boots so that he’d be able to find them easily later on he placed them out of the way before stretching out on his back, wriggling his body for a moment until he settled into a comfortable position.
            His arms automatically stretched out on either side of him, his fingers spreading to allow the skin of his hands to enjoy the grass beneath him every bit as much as his feet were now enjoying the new feeling.
            District Eight, after all, only had a couple of patches of grass and that had always been dry and crispy whenever he’d walked across it, scratching rather than caressing as the warmth beneath him now did.
            He let out a deep sigh.
            This was just what he needed after the events of the last few days, time to relax and forget about the danger of his surroundings.
            To forget about the fact that his death could come at any moment.
            “Adya?”
            He smiled to himself, allowing his sightless eyes to flutter closed as he tilted his face towards the warmth of the sun beating down upon him.
            “Yes, Sam?”
            There was a long pause before his friend finally answered apologetically,
            “...never mind…”
            Adya chuckled.
            Shaking his head he went to settle back down onto the grass and had to pause, continuing to rub his head back and forth when he discovered that the tickling sensation was even more intense when it was on the back of his neck and skull, moving the strands of hair aside to tickle his scalp.
            He couldn’t help but groan loudly as a shiver ran down his spine.
            That.
            Felt.
            Amazing.
            He and Adya were alone at the campsite once more which was why he had been able to take up this opportunity to treat himself, neither of them having anything pressing or life threatening to do for the moment.
            Cato, Marvel and Clove had woken in their right minds that morning, no longer suffering any aftereffects from their numerous Tracker-Jacker stings, and so had left shortly after their breakfast of toasted bread on their latest hunt searching the Arena for the Burning Bitch and her traitorous Lover Boy.
            A twig snapped somewhere behind his head.
            He froze, his body tensing.
            His hands accidently ripped up handfuls of grass as they clenched beside him.
            Someone was out there.
            Another twig snapped.
            “Sam?”
            “Uh-Huh?”
            Another twig snapped but this time it sounded further away.
            Sitting up slowly Adya tilted his head as he listened out for anything else that could help him identify the sounds he was hearing from the surrounding woods.
            Something thudded against the ground.
            A female voice grunted in pain.
            Both of these distinct sounds came from even further away than anything he’d previously heard indicating that, much to his surprise, whoever had been approaching him only moments before was now leaving.
            Quickly.
            “…never mind…”
            Releasing the clumps of dirt and grass from his hands he rubbed them clean on his trousers and wondered just echo it was that had tried sneaking up on him only to be frightened away by something, what he didn't know.
            He doubted very much that it had been Katniss Everdeen, the girl who Cato and his friends were obsessed with hunting down, as she wouldn't have been spooked into running away.
            Come to that she wouldn't have had to try and get so close as to be noticed, not with her supposed skills with a bow.
            She could have turned him into a porcupine, a dead porcupine, before he'd even realised what was happening.
            So not Katniss.
            Which other female Tributes were left?
            Clove was off with Cato and marvel and definitely wouldn't have tried to sneak up on him if she finally decided to act on her promise to kill him.
            He'd only known her a few days but he could already tell that she wasn't one for the subtle approach when she could walk right up to someone's face and stab one of her deadly little knives into their eye socket.
            So not Clove either.
            Absentmindedly plucking single strands of grass out of the ground with his fingers Adya tried running through the districts to figure out which other Tributes were left in this late stage of the Games, trying to place names he'd been told with voices he'd heard and kills he'd been told about by the various Careers.
            Marvel was still alive and hunting from One but Adya had killed Glimmer himself so it definitely hadn't been her that he'd heard in the woods.
            Both Cato and Clove were still very much alive.
            Sam had said that his district partner, Terra, had fallen pretty quickly during the initial bloodbath as she had still been nursing an injury sustained during training a couple of days before, killed by the male Tribute from Five shortly before he in turn had been killed by the boy from Eleven.
            Adya was ashamed to realise that he honestly couldn't remember either of the boys names despite having heard them multiple times over the last few days.
            A feeling of sadness washed over him as he recalled kindhearted Lillibet and the horrible death she'd suffered only a couple of days ago and wondered if it would have been kinder for her to be killed quickly and cleanly during the Cornucopia bloodbath like her district partner, Rhys.
            Mentally coming to District Five he realised that, not only were both of their names escaping him completely, he couldn't remember hearing a single thing about the female Tribute since her tediously serious interview the night before the Games.
            Perhaps she was the one who had tried to sneak up on him?
            Could she really have survived on her own all this time?
            She wasn't a fighter and he doubted that she was much of a hunter.
            He remembered her answer when Caesar had pressed her about her tactics for the Games, remember how she'd explained that she would apply her logic to find a solution to any problem which stood in her way.
            “I will always analyse the situation and apply myself appropriately.”
            Glimmer had apparently boasted for almost a full hour about how Melinda from District Six had been her first kill of the Games, recounting the way they'd fought over a bag of supplies just long enough for Glimmer to get hold of a knife and, in her own words, “gut the stupid girl.”
            It was because of her bloodthirsty attitude, hidden behind her flirtatious giggles and the cunningly planned “innocent girl next door” behaviour that allowed Adya to feel no guilt whatsoever for being the one to end her life.
            Asa, Melinda's district partner, had clashed with Cato from the very beginning of the training, always seeming to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in regards to the leader of the Career pack and so Adya hadn't been surprised to learn that it had been his boyfriend who had been the one to take him out of the Games.
            “He put up a good fight though,” Cato had admitted when they'd been discussing their kills. “I thought I'd killed him first off but you saw him going after the boy from Ten didn't you, Clove? Between then and when I actually did get him.”
            “And the boy from Five,” Clove had responded whilst sharpening her throwing knives with a series of quick repetitive movements. “And then he tried to go after Glimmer with a sword he could barely use, the idiot.”
            “Yeah, but at least he tried to fight unlike most of the others including the girl from his District,” Cato had pointed out. “That's something his District can be proud of at least, that they finally managed to produce a fighter for once and not a cowardly little morphling addict like their past Victors.”
            Adya had no idea who had killed soft spoken Beau during the bloodbath, he only knew that the boys from District Seven whose lilting voice had peaked his interest more than once during training hadn't survived past the first few minutes.
            Of course he wouldn't have known even that had it not been for Sam who had been forced by the Careers to drag the dead bodies away from the Cornucopia so that they could be collected whilst they set up camp undisturbed.
            Marvel had proudly boasted of how he’d killed Beau’s district partner by driving his spear so far into her delicate chest that he had to literally stand on her body to be able to remove it once the deed was done.
            What had been her name?
            Anna?
            Annie?
            No, something like that but not quite...
            Adya hoped that, unlike him, their audience wasn't having such trouble remembering each of the fallen Tributes names as each and every one of them deserved to be remembered.
            Una...
            Adya didn't even want to think about his dear friend who had lost her life so shortly after saving him from certain death in the initial bloodbath but least he could content himself with the fact that her death had been avenged.
            Clove had cursed Viggo, the young boy from Nine for getting in her way during the bloodbath and taking the knife she'd thrown at Katniss Everdeen's face.
            Marvel had joked that the people from District Nine must have been trained to get in the way as he'd been aiming for Peeta when he killed the girl from Nine who had literally walked into the path of his already airborne spear.
            Her name had been long, he could remember that, but he couldn't think of her actual name...or even remember what her voice had been like. All he could remember about her was a single comment from Una about the fact that, were the other girls hair curly, they could have been sisters they looked so alike.
            Carrie from District a Ten he remembered very clearly.
            She'd spent every single day during the training crying softly to herself in the corner of the room and only participating when the tasks were a compulsory requirement, already having given up and hope of surviving the Games despite having a significantly better chance that some others.
            Unfortunately for the broken hearted tribute it had been Glimmer who she'd come up against during the bloodbath and the Career had, apparently, ensured that he death had been anything but quick and painless.
            According to Sam the poor girl had been left to sob pitifully as she slowly bled to death and had still been alive when they'd ordered him to drag her body away.
            Bruno had been the complete opposite of his district partner, throwing himself into everything and actually doing quite well if Adya remembered correctly, despite the fact that one of his legs was apparently malformed leaving him with a very noticeable limp.
            He was still alive but no one had seen him, Hop Along as Cato had dubbed him, since the Cornucopia but it hadn't been him in the woods.
            The voice Adya had heard grunting in pain had definitely been female.
            “Titch...” he murmured softly to himself as he reached the Tributes of District Eleven in his mind and realised that it could have been the elusive little girl who had been trying to approach the camp from the woods surrounding them.
            She'd managed to avoid everyone until now and it would explain why she'd gotten spooked and run for it as she was certainly too small to defend herself.
            What was her real name?
            Rae?
            Ruth?
            “Rue...” he sighed when he remembered her name correctly, pleased that he hadn't forgotten another one. “I wonder if it was you, little one...”
            If it was it was probably hunger that had drawn her towards the camp, the mountain of supplies acting as a beacon of hope towards a painfully empty stomach.
            Thresh, her monster of a district partner, was still at large but it definitely hadn't been the giant boy that he'd heard in the woods.
            And Peeta, well Peeta was still alive but given how Cato was sure he'd wounded him badly during his hallucinations there was no telling how much longer he would survive out there in the Arena.
            Alone.
            Adya sighed.
            It was definitely a mercy to have a quick death.
            He hated the thought of lingering, of lying there in agony, waiting for help that would never come.
            He hoped, when his time came, that it was quick.
            Adya remained lying in the sun for the rest of the day, listening out for any sounds of the other Tribute returning to the Cornucopia but they never did.
            All he heard was Sam muttering to himself as he tinkered away with something metallic over at the campsite, his hands constructing then deconstructing then reconstructing over and over again.
            They had a small lunch of what Sam described as "corned beef hash" curtesy of a “ready-made meal” pack he'd found whilst raiding the supplies which only required for you to place it a bowl of boiling water still sealed up for it to cook.
            It had been oddly delicious.
            After that Adya had managed to convince Sam to join him in “enjoying the sunshine while we still can” for a little while and it was there, both of them lying spread out on the ground, bare hands and feet still playing absentmindedly with the grass, that the Careers found them.
            “Um...what are you doing?” Marvel asked, obviously frowning down at the pair of them as the Careers came to a halt a few paces away from them. “Shouldn't you be guarding the camp? You know, like you're surprised to be doing?”
            “I heard the three of you approaching five minutes ago,” Adya responded. “You talk really loudly, by the way, so we knew who was coming. I've been listening out all day and haven't heard anything but the birds and the wind in the trees.”
            He'd decided not to mention their almost visitor from earlier.
            He had a feeling that the blame would fall on Sam for not keeping a better look out, allowing someone else to get so close and that just wouldn't do.
            “Oh...”
            “And as for what we're doing we are enjoying the sunshine,” Adya answered the larger boys initial question blithely. “You should join us. Take your boots off. The warm grass feels absolutely wonderful between your toes.”
            And, much to his everlasting surprise, that was exactly what they did although they each took it in turns to go barefoot so that at least one of them was ready to defend their camp should any of the other Tributes be stupid enough to come near them….again.
            “So…” Adya sighed after a little while, “What shall we talk about?”
            “Nothing.”
            The sharp answer had, of course, come from Clove who was standing off to one side throwing her knives into homemade targets on the ground in front of her, it being her turn to stand guard.
            “What do you want to talk about?” Cato responded, something in his voice giving away the fact that he was glaring in the female Careers direction.
            “Well I think I can safely say that me and Sam are very familiar with each other having had nothing else to talk about while you lot have been off…doing stuff…so how about you tell us a bit about yourselves?” he suggested, turning his face towards each Career in turn.
            Surprisingly it was Marvel, with his deep voice and heavy breathing, who answered, “What would you like to know?”
            “Anything. What about your families?” Adya suggested. “I'm an orphan. Lost my parents to the fire that stole my sight. Sam is one of nine, wasn't it?”
            “Six brothers and two sisters,” the younger boy confirmed. “Although we lost Charlie, my eldest brother, during the 65th Hunger Games. He did well but…”
            “Finnick Odair,” Marvel finished for him, sounding rather annoyed about something even as Sam murmured softly in agreement with his conclusion. “It wasn't a fair fight that year. They'd already picked him to win before the Games had even begun. It wasn’t in the spirit of the Games.”
            “So what about you?” Adya asked, bringing them back to his original suggestion as he took Cato's hand in his own, linking their fingers together. “Tell us a bit about your family back in District One.”
            “I come from a long line of winemakers,” Marvel began softly, his tone of voice very different to how it had been just a moment ago, a mixture of wistfulness and pride taking over from the bitterness and annoyance. “The family vineyard has been supplying the Capitol for as long as the Hunger a Games have been running.”
            Huh.
            “That is not what I was expecting…”
            Marvel chuckled.
            “I know but it's the truth,” he reassured them, this time sounding a little bit sad. “Problem is you have to be quite smart to run a successful vineyard and, well, I'm pretty you can guess that I've never been one of the smartest people out there.”
            And there was that bitterness again.
            “I'm the oldest of two boys but my younger brother, Paragon, has always been the smart one, the one my dad has been grooming take over as head of the business someday,” Marvel continued with his explanation and Adya could hear that even Clove had stopped practising to listen in. “So I needed to find some other way to make him proud of me.”
            Adya winced.
            That sounded awful.
            From the sounds of things Marvel had been neglected and bullied into volunteering for a fight to the death just so that his father would notice him standing in the shadow of his younger brother.
            “So I trained in secret, built up my skill and my strength and here I am,” Marvel concluded simply, tapping his spear which he had kept close to him this entire time on the ground. "At least in here being strong counts for something..."
            “What about your mum?” Sam asked softly. “What does she think about you volunteering to enter the Games?”
            Marvel scoffed.
            Wow.
            That was pure and utter bitterness.
            “My mum spends her days testing wine, entertaining businessmen and watching Capitol Couture TV,” he responded, his voice tight. “I think this might be the first time she’s even noticed I exist in years and that's only because I'm on TV.”
            “And your brother?”
            “Paragon,” Marvel sighed. “You know, I've wanted to hate him for years. I should hate him. He is the perfect son in both our parents’ eyes. Intelligent. Focused. Dedicated to the business. Everything I'm not. So I really should hate him…”
            “But you don't…”
            “No. I don't. I can't. Because–”
            “He's your brother,” Clove interrupted him, her voice unfamiliarly tight with emotion. Marvel sighed but said nothing more, leaving Adya to guess that he'd nodded in response to her simple statement. “I've got a brother.”
            “Older or younger?” Adya asked.
            “Younger, but only by ten minutes,” Clove answered with a soft chuckle, a strange sound coming from the deadly Career but one that seemed to suit her voice. “Much to his everlasting annoyance I came out of our mother first when we were born. He used to say first is the worst when we were younger but he stopped when we started training for the Hunger a Games.”
            “You have a twin?” Sam gasped in surprise.
            “Yeah,” Clove responded, throwing a knife at a target, no doubt hitting it with her usual deadly precision. “He tried to volunteer this year but Cato was quicker.”
            “You wanted to be in here together?” Adya asked with a frown.
            “Yes, we did. But we weren't ready last year and this year is our last year,” she answered simply, her voice tinged with sadness. “So it was together or not at all. We never expected that…that one of us would get in and the other one wouldn't. Never even crossed our minds.”
            “I thought you were fifteen?” Cato asked in genuine surprise.
            “No, I'm seventeen, same as you,” Clove huffed loudly. “One of the Capitol reporters got it wrong after the Reaping Ceremony and nothing I said would convince them that I was actually seventeen.”
            “Well you are rather small…”
            Clove literally growled her response,
            “Compact.”
            Adya decided it was time to change the subject before his friend ended up with a knife sticking out of his body should he continue to press the current subject.
            “What's his name? Your brother?”
            “Oh, um, Cassander. His name is Cassander.”
            Adya blinked.
            "...does everyone in your District have to have a name beginning with the letter 'C' or is it just some sort of strange coincidence?" he finally blurted out, earning a collection of chuckles from the tributes gathered around him. “Seriously. Cato. Clove. Cassander. Is there…is there a rule about what letter you can use to name your child each year or something?”
            “No, it's honestly just a coincidence,” Cato reassured him, squeezing his hand gently. “I've got an older brother called Tiberius and a younger sister called Ilythia.”
            “Actually that's not quite true in my case,” Clove admitted, almost sounding sheepish. “Yeah, it's a coincidence that your name begins with a ‘C’ as well but in our family it makes perfect sense.”
            “Huh?”
            “My mum has always wanted to name her children in alphabetical order,” Clove continued with her explanation. “So I've got two older sisters called Andromache and Briseis and a younger sister called Demeter. When she found out that she was expecting twins she decided to give us both names beginning with ‘C’ because at the time she hadn't found a name beginning with ‘D’ that she liked.”
            “Andromache…Briseis…Clove…Cassander and Demeter…” Adya repeated softly, struggling to pronounce her older sisters unusual names as a perplexing thought crossed his mind. “No offence but your name seems a little out of place…”
            Clove didn't answer.
            “Clove?” Cato called out, barely containing a chuckle. “Are you blushing?”
            “No!”
            “You so are!” Marvel joined in with a deep throaty laugh.
            “I can hardly believe my eyes,” Cato chuckled deeply. “One of the deadliest tributes currently competing in the 74^th Hunger Games blushing like a little school girl. What is it? What don't you want us to know about your name?”
            Clove huffed loudly, still not answering, but it was Sam who figured out.
            “It's not your real name, is it?” he asked. “It's a nickname or something.”
            Clove literally hissed across at him.
            “It's not a nickname,” she snapped, huffing loudly as she threw the remainder of her knives in quick succession at her remaining targets. “It's…it's an adaption of the stupid girly name my mother gave me.”
            “Which is…?” Cato requested with another bright laugh.
            Clove’s response was so quiet even Adya struggled to pick out what she said.
            “What?” the others chorused, their shared confusion almost as funny as her obvious embarrassment/dislike of her admittedly girly name.
            “It's Calliope, all right?” she snapped at them, working quickly to retrieve her knives, wiping the dirt off of them onto her trousers legs. “But I prefer Clove. My mother had it in her head that we'd all grow up to be delicate little wives of successful men like she did but that was not what I wanted at all.”
            The laughter which followed her statement was so infectious that Adya heard her chuckle softly to herself before beginning her knife throwing once more.
            “Who taught you to throw knives?” Adya found himself out of the blue.
            “When my parents finally realised how serious we were about competing in the Hunger Games they got us involved in the same program Cato was on. We trained every day with the various Victors from our District as well as joining the Peacekeeper trainees for a lot of their lessons, especially the physical fitness stuff,” she explained simply. “Anyone who didn't make it into the Games before their eighteenth birthday would be taken on as a Peacekeeper instead.”
            “That's a clever way of getting around the rules regarding no official training for the Hunger Games being permitted,” Sam murmured softly. “Technically it would fall under Peacekeeper Training as they join the force afterwards.”
            “It’s a system that works,” Cato responded with a shrug, reaching out to run his fingers through Adya's hair matted hair, the dirt and grime of the last few days a familiar feeling. “District Two has the most Victors of all the Districts, after all.”
            Adya smiled to himself, enjoying the combined feeling of Cato’s fingers running through his hair and the blades of grass which continued to tickle his feet.
            “You falling asleep on me?” his boyfriend murmured softly as Adya shifted his body around until he could use his boyfriend’s stomach as a pillow wondering to himself why he hadn’t thought of moving into this far more comfortable position earlier, the older boy resuming his petting once he'd settled in place.
            “Yup,” Adya sighed in response to his question. “Got a problem with that?”
            Cato chuckled, the movements of his stomach bouncing Adya's head up and down in a strange but not entirely unpleasant manner.
            “No. I'll wake you when we need to move,” Cato eventually responded.
            “Thanks.”
            He drifted off a few moments later, smiling as he listened to Marvel telling them all about some extravagant prank he had pulled on his younger brother in honour of his birthday involving a tin of water resistant paint balanced on top of their bedroom door and the family pet, a cat called Twinkle.
            “Twinkle?!”
            “Hey! Leave Twinkle alone. He's a beast.”
            And so his final thoughts were of Twinkle, the beast, before sleep claimed him and dragged his conscious mind down into the peaceful realm of dreams.

A/N I don't know how but I made myself feel sorry for Marvel and almost, almost for Clove! What am I doing? I keep making the Careers more and more human with each chapter I write. It's making me dread writing the next few chapters. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this rather random chapter. Comments are always welcome. Starting to wind this story up now and the last couple of chapters may require tissues…actually, no, they will require tissues. You have been warned. X
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