A big alliance is bad, Tata knows. A big alliance with people you actually trust is even worse. And a big alliance with over half the people in the arena, all of whom you would trust and would give your life for, yet are pretending not to trust—Tata knows that this is disaster, because even a Career from District Three cannot spread her shield for twelve people. Especially if she wants to die. And especially if she knows someone who will try just as hard to stop her.

In an arena, the goal is survival, Jordan knows. Survival as a District Ten will be difficult, always, ever difficult, because even though his district is weak and small he will be known as the butcher of men by those around him, even though he has never touched a cleaver in his life. But his home is known for being versed in the ways of flesh and blood, although the killing there is left for their cattle and the statistics from past games should prove otherwise. And at times he wishes he was strong, strong enough to fight his way home—but he is not. He is too versed in peace. Instead he talks. And his talking works, because soon his mixed blessing-curse falls upon him and he finds himself walking the woods with eleven. Eleven more burdens on a conscience. Eleven more scratches on his soul, if he lives to remember the way each face falls.

Snow falls soft and silent. Snow is slow, patient, ready and waiting. It is deceptively beautiful. But, if the chance is given, it will bury all your twenty-three beautiful children into its cold, unreachable embrace before you even know it. Snow is harsh, cold, but the reason snow is still around is because it comes so slowly that by the time you notice that it is all that is left around you, all that can still reach you in the wilderness, it is really too late to reach back.

Cornucopia

She is in the thick of the battle before she realizes that someone is covering her.

Blood and hair is in her mouth, and her scratches are many while her wounds are few. She tries to take what she wants, tries to come up with a way to make it seem as if she is dying on accident; but her enemies fall before her eyes until as far as she can see it is just her and her cousin from District One. They are in something of a catfight, only so much more real with knives as their nails and a wretched stab as a kick. Tata can taste blood thick on her tongue, metallic death, and she milks the scene for all it is worth, pummeling furiously, her loose grip purposely releasing from her weapon. She screams for good measure, a show for those in the districts—"What the fuck, Titus!"—and just as her cousin's hands grasp onto her throat, they slacken and fall. The touch that used to poke her in the sides until she cried is stilled, and Tata rises to see her cousin's body fall of her, steel spike glinting dully from the center of his chest as he collapses sideways to reveal the girl from District One. Her midnight hair is tossed to the side dully and blood runs down her hands. She presses her palm against the wall of the Cornucopia, pulling back and leaving a crimson five-petalled flower as evidence of her handiwork.

"Why did we save her, Jordan?" She speaks with a twang in her voice, different from the Capitol but something Tata can't place her finger on. "She doesn't look like much. She dropped her weapon and all, y'know. Survival isn't any easier with a deadweight."

"She's not a deadweight," replies another voice, a girl, not this 'Jordan.' The source comes from the inside of the Cornucopia, a small but wiry teen younger than Tata. She has hidden well. "Didn't you see it? She was pretending."

"Pretending?" The girl from District One shoots her a withering glance. Careers never have the time to 'pretend,' even when they are young.

"Pretending. Playing. Pretending to die. Pretending to almost die." She waves a hand dismissively. "It's fun. I want to try sometime." The girl smiles, dark hair framing her face as she pushes glass lenses up the bridge of her nose. "I'm Tishky. District Eight, textiles. I like creating things. Making people laugh. Making them see one thing and show them it's another, they seem to like that." She shows a mouthful of slim braces. "Do you think if I played dead, they'd believe me?"

Tata considers, taking in childish innocence that can easily morph into childish obliviousness. "Yeah," she decides with conviction. "You'd pull it off."

"Deadweight or not doesn't matter," another voice interrupts. Tata is beginning to wonder just how many people are in this alliance—or impeding bloodbath. "What matters is whether or not she will pull her weight, not if she is capable of it."

She remembers the boy from his training score—Jordan Galloway, District Ten. His features are all dark, hair to eyes. Tata wonders briefly if a person like that can ever see the light.

"I don't doubt she could contribute—if she wanted," he smirks. "But this girl seems very much like she wants the world to believe she is dead as much as she wishes she were."

Fate

They stumble upon the others by accident.

Two days into the Games and barely a single person has died—Titus, a boy from Twelve, a girl from Seven. Tata is always on her guard, always watching for a person to attack them—she wants to be the brave tribute who protects her allies with her life.

And, eventually, die for them.

She imagines it will be very heroic, short life going out with a bang. She wonders if Tishky, who already considers her a sister if not a second mother, would cry for her. If Sunny, who leads the group with the healthy amount of paranoia, insanity, and brains, would shed a tear for her. If Jordan, who seems to resolutely ignore her, the only one who seems to know as of yet that she actually came here with the intention of dying, will think about her once in a while.

She would like that, if she did die—and she will. Tributes die quickly, and a Tribute that wants to die quickly is just an added bonus.

She is tinkering with her hands, dunking the opposite ends of a century-old taser into the water, when it happens. She hears the splashing sound, quiet but there, and flees. She flings the ends of the wire into the water, holds the taser in her hand. If she pulls the trigger, any living thing inside the pond will be decimated. She analyzes the contraption in her hand effortlessly—she has made countless others identical to it. District Three, 'the Warehouse', specializes in electronics.

But she doesn't. She peeks through the bushes as a girl with browned skin and curling hair wades into the water, ducks through the reeds, and whisks a trout out of the shallows.

"I've told you a million times," a voice suddenly hisses from behind the trees, near the fishing girl. It is decidedly feminine, and decidedly annoyed. "I'm not sure if those fish are poisoned or not! It's dangerous!"

It is a shallow insult, Tata knows—nevertheless, the girl rises to the challenge. "You're one to talk, Eleven—whose bad apple was it that almost killed off my boyfriend?"

Romance in the arena is shortlived and unheard of. Tata bites her lip. This girl is fishing, and has a boyfriend. There is only one option. It is Drift Vipointe, District Four, and Apple Duncain, District Seven—along with the girl from District Eleven, Iris Librae. Tata has done her research.

"It was not my fault! In case you've forgotten, it was him and his crappy belief in his 'trees are our friends and providers of lumber' stuff that led him to pluck and eat that thing off the first vegetation he found in the first place!"

"And you didn't encourage it, Ms. Agriculture?"

"Stop it!" The third voice is authoritative and sounds tired; Tata is reminded of Sunny. The way her inflection rises and falls, frustration vented in every syllable—sure enough, a Career, the girl from District Two, appears. Maya Gliesse throws a hastily made ponytail over her shoulder. "We're going to be caught if you keep up with that racket!"

"It's not a big deal," Iris retorts, stepping out of the shadows with crossed arms and a scowl. "Apple's sneaking around us as we speak, if there's someone out there, they'd be found right about—"

Tata feels a stiff pinch in her back and stumbles into the daylight unwillingly.

"—now."

She is followed by a tall, gangly boy with falling brown hair and glasses slightly smaller than Tishky's. Tata is captured, hopelessly outnumbered. She is alone. Now is the perfect time to play the tragic martyr.

She is about to fall to her knees when, quite out of nowhere, the sharp tip of a dagger pins Two to a tree by the braid. Maya whirls on her heel, hair tearing off of the weapon. Tata turns too—in fact, everybody does—to find the ever-humanitarian representative from District Twelve, the girl, staring up at her. On her heels, dragging her back, is another teen who is shaking her head with frustration. District Five, short black hair and a shorter temper.

As Tata's allies draw out of the forest, attracted by her cry of pain, more people appear from where District Twelve came from—the sharp-eyed girl from six, the quick-witted head of curls from nine. It takes Tata all of ten seconds to realize there is a representative from every district, a full council. Yet another second is taken before Tata's training brings her to another conclusion—no one present wants to fight.

And yet they cannot walk away from each other without doing something—the lesson of the Games is clear enough to know that the Capitol would never allow it. Die fighting or form an alliance. Two options.

Tata is destined to die in the Arena, fated to become her own death sentence. If she wins the games, she loses everything she wanted to gain. If she loses the games, she will get nothing short of everything—except the ability to feel her victory. Suicidal tributes are made to believe the Game is their final blazing shot at glory.

She extends a hand out first.

And that is when, from out of the forest, snow begins to fall.

Trust

That is the first time she feels like she will not die.

The twelve of them are trampling through the woods, crunching through frost, loud and arrogant and carefree, advertising their presence because they know there are simply too many of them to be ambushed by another small alliance. District One—Sunny—is talking to District Five—Rie—and combined, both are coddling the blushing couple of Seven—Apple—and Four—Drift. Tata is slowly learning how to trust her friends and call them by name and not number. While this happens, the girl from six, named Devi, tinkers with something in her hands and shows it to Iris from Eleven. The two are, against all odds, one of the closest friends there—and while transportation by no means makes up for engineering, Tata has to admit that Devi's skewed ideas for inventions almost rival Tata's own. District Six is closer to District Three than she thought. Tishky, the sweetheart of the group, is being spoiled by a smiling Andie and Lizzi—Eight, Nine, and Twelve respectively. Maya, District Two, watches over them all with a smile, unfathomably the mother of the group.

Tata walks with Jordan, from Ten. He looks around, catches Tata's eye, inclines a head at Drift and Apple's embarrassment, and smiles. Tata smiles back—it is an odd motion, since she had never before seen the expression on the dark boy's face and hadn't mirrored it herself for a while. She looks around her, chattering, united entity of hope. The snow frames their faces as it covers the once-forest of the arena, but the Capitol-generic substitute for weather is not cold; it simply is. Tata feels invincible among these people she barely even knew one week ago.

She smiles at Jordan again, and mouths her thanks. He is still the only person, Tata realizes, who knows how much she truly wants to die. And, because of that, he is also the only person who wants her to survive, not in spite of it, but because of it.

Tata wonders about that feeling, how others can hope for her even if she can no longer hope for herself. She glances at the matchmakers of the group, and, after making sure Sunny and Rie are occupied, pulls Jordan into a tight hug. She tries to say something into his ear, but she cannot make it. The snow will have to speak for her.

Betrayal

She does not have the right.

They are not together, or dating—they are in the fucking Hunger Games, after all, and haven't even shared a single moment beside that hug. They have been talking, becoming better friends. But when the other tribute from District Ten, a girl with flowing curls who goes by the name of 'Water,' wants to become their ally based on the ground of being Jordan's girlfriend…Tata feels betrayed.

"I have seen the way she acts," she tells him, striking viciously at matchwood at a meager attempt for fire. "She killed the boy from Two without mercy. And he was a Career—"

"Kenath Fisher," Jordan interjects automatically. He knows most of the tributes, dead or alive, and insists on naming each one as their faces flash across the starless screen above their heads. It is calming for him and another step closer to home for all of them (one of them, actually, but none of them are ready to face that); however, Tata knows she cannot be the only one who occasionally wishes her friend would stay quiet.

"Whatever! My point is she's ruthless—"

"Tata, I am not dating her. I never have been." Poking his tongue out of the side of his mouth, Jordan gently taps the rocks together—they spark off, and the grass is soon beginning to burn. Tata passes small clumps of bushel to her friend, and he pushes them into the small fire at the correct pace to keep it up and not smother it. "She is quite sore on that fact, let me assure you."

"…Why didn't you date her?" Tata switches from offensive to defensive within seconds, not even questioning her actions; if she had, she would have realized what was going on even then. "She's pretty enough. I think her ally has a crush on her," she adds slyly, laughing softly as she refers to the hyperactive but plain-out creepy TG Scornen from District Five.

"Nah." Flipping it off with a wave of his hand, Jordan points condescendingly at the sky. His eyes hold a sort of liquid warmth, like dark quicksilver, as he laughs. "She just has her head way up there. She acts like it, too. And the boys somehow manage to convince themselves it means she has friends up there that can rub their luck onto her."

"Up in heaven?" Tata snorts, stomping out the fire with a vicious tug at the wood base. Jordan begins to reform it without a word, only giving her a slightly expressionless look yet again. Tata is tempted to give it a name for all the times it appears—the Jordface. "I doubt it." She pauses again. "You're sure you don't love her, right?"

"Of course not," Jordan returns. Tata catches her breath as the fire warms her palms, casting a soft hue over Jordan's face as the day turns to dusk. The others have not yet returned from their hunting trip. "How can I? She killed your District's tribute, I mean—"

He breaks off, harsh, and for a second Tata wishes with all her heart he would continue. Then she remembers that, even if he is to continue, express something even Tata is not sure of, she will not know it within days. She will be dead.

Jordan is still talking, agitated, trying to make—or hide—a point.

"—I mean, really, she's killed so many people, not just Heep. I just kind of wanted to—"

"That's sweet," she says, cutting him off and offering him a small attempt at a sheepish smile. "Portson was an idiot. It doesn't matter to me."

For the benefit of the cameras, she scoots around the campfire and hugs him tight, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek simultaneously. She is not good at these things, and despite all the romance novels she has read, Jordan's cheek is cold—however, it is that that makes up the boy she knows, who is aware and still accepts her and all her flaws.

Pretending. Tata remembers Tishky's words from the first day they met each other and wonders briefly if that is really what she is doing.

Her friends return, stumbling through brush and bumbling, vainly trying to wipe away footprints in the accumulating snow. It is only when Tata flops back onto the ground that she realizes that it is inches thick, almost enough to cover them if they lie down and let themselves stay entirely still for a day.

Fault

Pandemonium burns in Tata's ears.

She feels cold, dead, still inside, numb. Maya, Rie, and Sunny sit in a dazed circle, dying slowly, frozen in place from morphling and venom. Drift and Apple are locked in a tight hug, cheek stuck to cheek with blood. Andie and Lizzi had been the first to fall, guard duty interrupted by the ragtag team of three—both literally burned alive. Death by fire at the hands of Water. Tata would have laughed, if the image of Water Whisheart was not burned into her mind, scorched by those same flames.

Devi, Iris, Tishky, Jordan, and her herself are the only remaining survivors. Against that Water from District Ten, that TG from District Five, and Inertia Anaphora from District Seven. And they are losing. The irony. The unbeatable team of twelve, supposedly the embodiment of the strengths of all twelve districts combined, are losing after so many weeks during which no one had dared to lay a single finger on them.

The snow around them burns to slush, deteriorating into water. Water. Tata hisses. She is everywhere. Always.

Twice, cannons ring out through the stadium. There is a pause. Tata catches Jordan's glinting eye through the twilight, the two watching that spot on the dome where Jordan and Lizzi used to read out the names of the dead tributes every night.

Iris and Devi flash over the roof, one after another.

They had not, of course, been completely helpless—Maya, Sunny, and Tata had made a virtually unbeatable team before Sunny had went back to chase after a missing Rie and Maya had followed her second-in-command from District One. The three combined, One, Two, and Three in one united entity, had cleaved Drift's fellow tribute into halves and brought down Tempo from District Six. It seemed that they were no longer the only alliance of all possible districts.

How did the stadium simply turn into two different teams?

Tishky's face then flashes across the sky, and Tata feels a small jolt of alarm—the cannon has not even sounded. Her face contorts horribly as she waits for another face, before she realizes the girl she used to bury in her arms on nightmarish midnights has died alone, so slowly and yet so certainly that she is pronounced dead before her heart actually stops beating.

It is just the two of them left, Tata realizes. Jordan and Tata stand alone, against seven bloodhounds baying for their blood.

Tata's heart falters for a moment, and for once she thinks and thinks and thinks for eternities in a matter of seconds—and realizes she cannot die like this, now. Except…that is a very likely possibility.

Her dearest wish is now her greatest scorn, and she has realized this ten people too late. Her eyes lock on Jordan's, now her only anchor. She almost wants to ask—when did she forget about being the hero? When did she become selfish, only think about herself and her own life? And, the irony of it all—why did she become selfish when she finally found the people she really cared for?

Can she afford to be selfish, one more time, against the person who has kept her secret when even she herself could not?

She chooses her words carefully, risking both their lives with each syllable. "If I die tonight—"

And then his lips are on hers, pressing and demanding, angled sharply against her own. There are lifetimes, millennia, a swirling ribbon of emotions and a plethora of words they never got to say carried on them as Tata's arm buckles against the sharp foundation of the bark. His hands are tangling wildly into her hair, hers are clutching onto the tree like a lifeline, and Tata suddenly feels like falling simply because she knows she will be caught at the very end.

"Shut up," he murmurs quietly against her lips from thousands of miles away. The movement sends a jolt through her entire body. "And don't be stupid."

Idiot, she thinks, mind still reeling as he leans back against his own tree trunk.

Tata raises her wrist, reaching out for him—and then she finds that her hand is gleaming with metal. A solid, steel glove—one that can be used to bludgeon enemies, but one that Tata would certainly not find use for now.

"What the—"

"Tata." Jordan descends into moonlight again. They are now both surely seen—and soon enough, all the other tributes are at their feet, under their tree. Jordan's eyes are cold.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

Just as Water leaps for Jordan's throat with cat-like dexterity, Jordan tosses something foul and inhuman into the air—a gas that worms its way into the throats of men and expands in their lungs until they drop down dead. Deadly to the user as much as it is to the intended victims—that is to say, everyone within a two foot radius—the gas is the equivalent of a suicidal attack. Tate does not even know why it was stocked in the Cornucopia. She does not know why Jordan would bother taking it. And she does not know, nor want to know, why he is using it now.

Tata tries to cry out to him, find a way to anchor him to her, pin him to the realm of the living by his name—however, instinct overtakes her and her hand claps onto her mouth—her metal, impenetrable hand. Jordan has given her, and only her, out of all the people in the arena, a way to survive. He has saved her and doomed everyone else.

Including himself.

Tata struggles to pry her heavy hand away, save Jordan (because she wants to die, the urge back in full force). The strength to do so does not reach her lungs, however, and her eyes droop as her air intake falls. She wonders if she will survive without oxygen long enough to be the winner.

Tata falls asleep to the sound of Jordan's screams.

CFTBF

She wakes up in Snow's office.

Tata's throat is dry, her hands sheened with sweat. When she reaches into her lap, however, she finds herself touching silk, soft. The metal gauntlet is nowhere to be seen.

Tata has, against all of the odds against her, won the Hunger Games.

"Kopiko Sweet?"

Head swiveling, Tata numbly accepts an ancient coffee treat from her President. It lies in her lap, still, dark side up. Tata wants to look into it and bury herself into the color, not quite like Jordan's eyes.

It tastes bitter. A bit like love, if Tata wants to be honest with herself.

"Now, Tata." Snow sits back. "I realize you've just lost the one person in your life you love most." He shakes his head. Roses flow back to her, tainted with candy salvaged from back in the Dark Days. "And such a shame…such promise."

Tata inches her head away slowly. Jordan is dead, and she does not want to hear it.

"Now." He leans forward. "I understand the loss of a loved one is something very painful. But I must tell you; the Games have taught you a valuable lesson now. Have they not?"

"Huh?"

Swaying away once again, the President smirks against Tata's dazed gaze.

"I mean, you really cannot afford to lose anyone else."

It is then that the message hits her, loud and clear as crystal—and somehow as transparent and meaningless. The President, their President, is blackmailing her for something at the price of her family.

Tata almost wants to laugh and tell him what only she and Jordan know—and now only her—that Tata no longer cares about her family, and that is why she wanted to die in the first place. However, their last single secret—spanning from her angel in heaven all the way back to Earth—is the only bit of each other that is truly their own. Everything else belongs to the people and the twisted minds of the Capitol.

It is that—and only that, not the pain of losing Jordan, the numbness, the want of everything to go away—that makes Tata nod and incline her head to display her affirmation. "What is it you want me to do?"

The President smirks, satisfied, fooled by her charade, and slips a piece of paper across the long mahogany table. "Well, as I understand it, a heartbroken and loveless girl can be…desirable in the eyes of some of my fellow government officials—"

Tata thinks of Jordan and Tishky, a makeshift family of sorts. Drift and Apple, together in death as in life. Iris, Sunny, Devi, Maya, Rie, Andie, Lizzi—a final shot at salvation, a final opportunity to find a family she never had. No, not even—there was never an opportunity, because eleven of them were always fated to die. And Tata knows she should have been one of them.

Somewhere out there, there is a one-way ticket to the Afterlife that the reaper never managed to deliver—a ticket with Tata's name on it.

And, because she is going to die and, really, she might as well give the audience one more thing they want since they have so much of her already, Tata picks up a pen.

Outside, snow falls, silent and deadly, on the freshly-dug graves of twenty-three.

So, after two frantic days and a night marathon of Hetalia: Paint it, White! You have this. If you are here, it means you have sat through eight pages of my crap. Congrats.

Here is the full tribute list, before the original twelve of us all met up:

Two: Maya Gliesse, Kenath Fisher (later killed by Water)

Three: Tata Andronica, Portson Heep (later betrayed and killed by Water)

Four: Drift Vipointe, Horen Merallis

Five: Rie Eta, TG Scornen

Six: Devi Lockhearst, Tempo Cornipian

Seven: Apple Duncain, Inertia Anaphora

Eight: Tishky Selkirk, Morton Ygradi

Nine: Andie Hayes, Septimus Hallow

Ten: Jordan Galloway, Water Whishart

Eleven: Iris Librae, Winlow Scyth

Twelve: Lizzi Varbatim, Roy Icore