𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 𝔡𝔦𝔡 𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔭𝔢𝔫 𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢-H&S

How unlikely had this been? Them, being reaped together? The odds, as L knew better than probably anyone else did, were in everyone’s favor, in a way. The chances of it being you, of everyone, were low. There were so many people, and given the way the tessarae worked? Most of them were going to feel like their odds weren’t good. Most of them were going to think that their name was in too many times. And some of them were probably going to just assume it was going to be them, because it was a lot easier to cope with certain death than the possibility of it. It was easier to just know.
But the odds were in everyone’s favor. The Capitol was right about that much. It was just that it didn’t matter. Because someone had to get unlucky. Nine times out of ten it wasn’t you, but it had to be someone, right?
He glanced at Crutchie, giving a tiny nod at the thought. Crutchie was right. The key was balancing it, ending up somewhere in the middle…being average. Not drawing any attention. Some would kill the weakest first, and some would kill the strongest first, but the middle people? Who went straight for them? What sort of a plan was that?
A good one, L had to admit. You could get rid of some competition without as much risk of running into any Careers if you tried to target the most unremarkable and forgettable people in there with you. But not one most people would think of.
They could improve their odds. But…it still had to be someone. Right?
“There’s another reason to watch the old Games,” he said after a moment, glancing around the station as though he thought someone might be sneaking closer to them, camera in hand, ready to broadcast their strategy to all of their enemies. He lowered his voice. “You’re absolutely right. We need to end up in the middle of the rankings. We need to go to training, but not stand out. We need to seem…normal. There are always people who don’t gather that much interest. Who are barely even on camera at all. If we watch the old Games, we can analyze them. Even if the arena itself isn’t something we can predict very well….though I do think I’ll be able to gather something…this is a situation that’s happened before, right? It may not be the same people, but it is the same situation, and there have to be patterns. We can figure out which sort of person tends to last longest. We can learn from their mistakes. If nothing else, we can survive a little longer. And, if I am to be killed…I would like anyone in the future to be able to watch what happens to me and learn from it, too. Maybe that’s how we can make their deaths matter, if only a little bit. That’s what I think, anyway. You’re free to do as you will.”

Oddly enough, Crutchie probably had what most people would consider a potential advantage. As terrible as it was, he was the mix of still able to defend himself, and unique enough to potentially be a favorite. Humans naturally paid more attention to things that were different. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, but it didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t boring.
That was why the contestants always tried to find their angle. You wanted to be a favorite, because people had very strong feelings for those favorites. Not enough to stop the Games from occurring, but enough to try very hard to make them win. Of course, deep down, it was a selfish sort of love. What they wanted was to tell their friends who they were rooting for, possibly with the intent to appear cool or sophisticated by choosing one who stood for something they also claimed to stand for. Sometimes it was even genuine, on some level, but it was twisted. As long as it was happening behind a screen, as long as they’d always been taught to see it as a good thing, something both desirable and very far away, it was easy to maintain the cognitive dissonance required to be a decent person and support the things the Capitol did.
It was an impressive setup. As easy as it was to think the people in the districts were better, L thought a lot of them would act the same, if the situation were reversed. People were capable of terrible things. That was the first thing he’d ever learned about the world.
He was getting distracted. The point he was trying to make was that his basic strategy was the opposite of the norm. Instead of finding his niche and trying to make himself stand out as much as possible as one of the memorable ones, L was going to try and be as easy to forget as he could be. Teaming up with Crutchie was a direct hindrance to that plan. Crutchie couldn’t avoid attention, and by being on his team, L was making a readable statement about his own strategy and who he was as a person. That made him possible to predict, in theory, which meant someone might try and predict him. It also meant he could gain additional sympathy points, because he was willing to team up with someone who they considered a burden. L of course knew that Crutchie was in no way a burden, but he had to take everything into account, if he wanted to…well, not survive, but maybe postpone his death as long as he could. He wished he had a different goal, but truthfully, he didn’t think his ultimately pointless death was avoidable at this point.
He gave a quick nod as Crutchie continued, latching onto that thought. “Yes, I can handle watching the Games. We should work on different things, to double our efficiency, anyway. And I’m not good at interacting with other humans, so I think that should be your job. I don’t quite know how to tell future tributes that we’re trying to help them, though…”

L had always been good at planning. Strategy, staying six or seven or, on a good day, nine steps ahead was something he’d been doing as long as he could remember. The Games were a lot harder to predict than anything he’d ever been involved with, true…and his options were limited. There wasn’t much anyone could do, here, especially not someone like L. He was stronger than he looked. He could kick hard enough to knock someone unconscious. But at the end of the day, he wasn’t a fighter, not the physical kind…no one who ignored and then forgot about their vessel as routinely as L Lawliet did could win with physical prowess.
They called it a game, though. They insisted on calling it a game.
Well…L had always been pretty good at games.
He glanced at Crutchie, giving a small, serious nod. He couldn’t blame him for his nerves, of course. Fear, uncertainty…those were human reactions to this situation. He himself had fainted, though the memory of it was almost puzzling to him now, as though his brain had quietly erased the emotions connected to the event. It probably wasn’t the best way to cope, but as far as coping mechanisms went, it was one he could take advantage of.
“Well, we won’t need to communicate anything immediately,” he decided after a moment, tapping the edge of his shirt. They were going to make him wear a costume, he realized, when he arrived. Shoes, undoubtedly. Whether he’d be able to tolerate the material wasn’t a question he expected anyone was going to ask. Would they change his hair? Sleeping would be a problem, he couldn’t afford to sleep for as long as he needed to, even if it was spaced further apart, but it wasn’t as though he could just start sleeping like everyone else, his mind didn’t let him. He already didn’t eat enough, because it wasn’t as though they could afford the food he could eat when he wasn’t too starving to care, so he could probably handle that…
He shook his head firmly. These were things he could worry about later. Right now, he needed to focus on Crutchie and the basic outline of the plan.
“Sorry. As I was saying, we won’t need to communicate anything immediately, and it will probably come down to chance how we do. We can’t plan too many details, unfortunately. We should decide now whether we want to allow anyone else to join our truce, so we know how to answer if anyone asks either of us.”

Whether or not Crutchie could think the way L did, it did matter, but it wasn’t as though L thought his way was better, really. He knew if everyone thought like he did, they’d never get anywhere. He could plan, and he could guess, and he could work out a logical deduction like a tangled string, unwinding and winding until he could get from point A to point B without making any detours, but he was absolutely worthless with the intricacies of interpersonal interactions. He was far more likely to make an enemy than he was to make a friend.
He was aware that he was rude, but that wasn’t why. It was just that he tended to pay attention to threats, and ignore everyone else.
He was somewhat amused to note that he was more likely to make friends in the Games than anywhere else, if only to have a better chance at staying alive.
The Games were rigged, of course. The Gamemakers could do whatever they wanted, within reason. Reason being that these Games were supposedly for the audience, and the audience wanted entertainment, and were likely to be frustrated if it was too clear who was being favored.
“Case-by-case, yes,” he mused, switching his thoughts back to the conversation. “But I don’t want to be killed in my sleep, so if we do add people, I’ll time it. It should be alright, but I won’t be around during the day before the Games…actually, that will be true whether we ally with anyone or not. We should also divide our skill sets. One of the worst problems people in the Games have is knowing what skills to focus on during training, but if there’s two of us, we can cover twice as much ground.”

“I will be asleep,” L replied simply. He didn’t elaborate.
He had planned it to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, he doubted anyone in the Capital would care that he wasn’t quite like most of the people around him, or that certain things that went unnoticed by everyone else were extremely uncomfortable for him, but that was alright. He was used to it, because no one anywhere else really cared about that, either.
So he just did what he could to make things easier for himself.
Sometimes, doing that caused other people annoyance, but he didn’t really see why he should care when the only reason he was doing those things was because they hadn’t cared about his discomfort in the first place, and besides, if he irritated the Capital, he thought that was more of a good thing than a bad one.
He didn’t mind either way. He’d just do what he wanted to do, and so would they.
The point was that, if sleeping in the arena would be too dangerous, he would just have to sleep before the Games started. He didn’t expect them to last long enough for it to be a problem again, with the sort of competitors involved. The Capital may have been pleased with its creativity, but he had to wonder if they had really thought through all the ways this version of the Games could go wrong.
“Mm…yes, that’s probably a good idea, too,” he acknowledged, glancing back at Crutchie. “I can do that, I won’t sleep during the Games. Also, we should plan as much as possible on the train. Once we’re there, any of our plans could be intercepted by the others, even the ones in private, and we won’t be able to trust anyone else fully. It might also be a good idea to have a couple of fake strategies we can discuss when we think someone could be listening to us, to throw them off our trail.”

Spook was trying his best not to panic, and he was failing.
He knew better than to think he was going to survive. He wasn’t. He was a nervous, flighty kid and he was up against adults, and kids who’d won before, and kids who had trained their whole lives just for this. Maybe he could get sponsors, but if he did, it would be out of pity, and he thought that might be even more unbearable than the rest of this.
He didn’t want to die.
But here he was, at the train station, instead of fleeing. Here he was, approaching the place he would wait to be taken away from the only home he’d ever known, dangerous though it was here.
He wasn’t leaving much of a family behind, but there had been respect, even if there hadn’t been love. The other kids on the street understood what it meant. There was the unspoken knowledge among them all that this was a loss, even if Spook could easily have starved or frozen to death, and they wouldn’t have batted an eye.
They hadn’t come to say goodbye, but he hadn’t expected them to. That would have been an incredibly stupid thing for them to try.
He stopped, not quite on the platform. He didn’t think he wanted to sit down.

Spook had ended up sitting, though not before he’d given the decision more energy than he could spare. But there were Peacekeepers here, and he’d felt their eyes on him, and though he had felt invisible his whole life and longed to matter to something, or even someone, even for a second…
Now, he found he would rather remain invisible.
On the bright side, he was good at that. The subtle art of existing out of focus, as though he merely became background noise. Sitting meant he was where he was supposed to be, which meant he wouldn’t be calling attention to himself, and he wouldn’t be worth watching anymore.
So far, it seemed to have worked. No one had tried to speak to him, at least. And he was alone.
Until he heard movement, anyway. He turned his head as little as possible, trying to see whoever was approaching without being too obvious about it.
It was the other boy. Spook had seen him before, briefly when they’d been reaped, but before then, too, on the streets, passing each other or ending up in the same alley looking for the same thing. He had been as close to being a street kid as you could get without actually being one, in Spook’s mind. He had been a part of the more dangerous kids…the ones people like Spook knew not to get too close to, though they never actually talked about it. Because they were the kids who seemed to have goals that were more than just staying alive, and that had made them dangerous.
He didn’t speak. He stayed where he was, hands pressed together in his lap, doing his best not to be noticed.

Spook didn’t recognize any of the Peacekeepers there. It didn’t occur to him to check, even, because anyone important enough to be a Peacekeeper would be important enough to stay away from kids like him. It stung, but it was a familiar enough sting that he barely noticed it at all.
It was the other boy he was tempted to look at. He recognized him, but he didn’t know him…he just knew who he’d run with before the reaping. Has they said goodbye to him? He doubted it, but it was hard to say how different this boy’s life was from his own.
He tensed a little as he noticed movement, his eyes catching on Wylan’s hand as he raised it in…was that a greeting? Why would he risk that? He had to know Spook was an enemy, now, didn’t he?
Why wasn’t he afraid?
Spook hesitated for a long moment, then very slowly raised his own hand, trying to greet him back. He didn’t want to risk angering him right off the bat, did he?
Although…maybe, deep down where he tried to pay it no attention…he also had to wonder what the boy was like. He had a kind sort of face, tinged with the familiar wariness in the eyes of all street kids, and it was enough to make Spook risk a small, shy smile.

Spook had never killed anyone, either, a fact he was painfully aware of. He didn’t want to…the thought of it made him sick. He had hurt people before, because he wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t, but even that…
He was going to have to fight. He would have to hurt them, if he wanted to survive. He would have to hurt the boy looking back at him with wary eyes and a tentative, real smile.
But not yet. He didn’t have to think about that yet. There would be plenty of other things to live through before he had to deal with that, and he didn’t think he could handle thinking about more than that just yet.
He shifted a little, watching the boy step forward, then started as the hand landed on his shoulder, taking in the Peacekeeper he hadn’t even noticed step forward.
His first impulse was to bolt. Getting caught meant you were dead, and though the heroic thing would have probably been to try and rescue the other boy, the only real option was to use the distraction to get away while he still could and only feel the loss when he was safe again.
Except that, this wasn’t the streets.
We’re they even allowed to be killed yet?
He watched and waited, braced to run and silently begging the unfamiliar man to let the other boy go.