BB/HG Crossover: Chapter Four

Vil

After the giant housecat episode (seriously, Gamemakers?), I didn’t really know what to expect from the Games. I mean, I’d watched them all my life, but it seemed like this time--along with the fact that they’d thrown double the amount of us in here to die--the Gamemakers were also trying to take the rest of the Game up to an all-new level of insanity as well. Fedora and I alternated watch constantly, as Cecil seemed to be in a more or less perpetual state of freezing. Fortunately, there weren’t too many more human attackers to fend off, but we received more than one of the not-human variety in the form of bears, dogs, and possibly-rabid squirrels.

Luckily, none of them bit us.

We kept moving most of the time, because we’d learned from former Games that if we stayed in one place too long, either other tributes would catch us with our pants down and we’d be dead before we could defend ourselves, or the Gamemakers would take it upon themselves to shake us out of our false sense of comfort and security.

Not that any of our party was dumb enough to get complacent in the Games: Fedora and I knew exactly what was at stake, and Cec was already scared of everything, the Game itself most of all--which was probably wise.

I wasn’t sure what to think of Fedora at first, besides the fact that she was a great fighter and a convenient person to have on the team. But as we all spent more time together, I began to think of her as an almost-friend, and I wondered what we’d do if we actually reached the end of the Games.

Obviously, I wouldn’t choose her or myself over Cecil, but could I expect her to be willing to make the same sacrifice I was?

Of course not. I’d taken care of Cecil for as far back as I could remember, ever since our parents were killed by Peacekeepers in a random raid. She’d only known him for a few days, and I could already tell that she thought of him as only slightly more than an completely useless wimp.

Which wasn’t entirely false, but there was far more to my brother than fear and even if she saw that, I didn’t think she’d be willing to die for him.

If those thoughts bothered Fedora, though, she never showed it, and I didn’t want to ask her for fear that we’d prematurely lose whatever alliance we did have.

And that wasn’t something I wasn’t ready to see disappear.