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“Touya burned to death amid the explosions,” they tell Keigo on the hovercraft after he pushes his dual-wielded swords through the District 4 career’s stomach and watches her body fall into the ravine, thereby winning the 68th Hunger Games.
Keigo’s skin buzzes as he rises above the ground. He keeps his eyes closed, focused, just like he did when he perched in the trees back home in District 11.
The countdown has begun. The cornucopia is right in front of him. There’s no need to look or to worry–Keigo’s faster than every other kid he saw in training.
When the cannon sounds, he runs before he opens his eyes.
“Touya burned to death amid the explosions,” Keigo repeats despondently to the Todoroki family.
Touya kills, but that’s fine. This is the Hunger Games; he trained for this.
He picks up a handaxe first, cuts down the girl from District 10. The axe stays in her, plunged too deep to retrieve. The bloodbath is not a dance; it’s brutal. He weaves through the fighting because he must.
He is going to prove to Enji that he’s strong enough.
He hadn’t known what terrain to expect, but the boreal forest still surprises him. The ground is heavy snow and the air is as crisp and cutting as Touya’s axe blade.
Someone runs across the field of battle in a blur of motion, scoops up a red bag, and keeps going. Hawks, the District 11 boy. While he runs, he never looks back.
Touya heads closer to the cornucopia. He isn’t large like the District 1 male nor brutal like his co-tribute from District 2. Going after the center of the cornucopia is madness, but when he finds and heaves a tank of gas connected to a hose with a torch head, that doesn’t matter.
Before him is the District 8 girl. She screams as she burns, and Touya hates it. Screaming, shouting, panting–Touya needs to leave .
He trudges through the freezing white powder until he reaches the treeline. Here, the snow thins. Once he gets deep into the woods, he finds a large tree, places both hands on the trunk, and hurls the few contents of his stomach into the shallow snow.
Touya burned to death amid the explosions, Keigo’s mind supplies on sleepless nights.
They call him Hawks because of his costume at the opening ceremony. When the chariots rolled in, Hawks and his District partner wore thousands of feathers patterned after red-tailed hawks, just like the one that landed on Hawks’ wrist when he stood before the crowds and cameras during the Reaping. The Reaping’s crowd had gone silent. At the ceremony, the legions of Capital citizens present had sucked in a collective breath so audibly that silence had actually swept over the stands. Then, they broke into cheering and chatting. District 11 became the darlings of the 68th Hunger Games. Touya, sixteen and promising eldest son of Todoroki Enji, ceased to matter.
Keigo had explained the hawk’s appearance during his interview with Caesar Flickerman. Dressed in a suit patterned across the back with the wings of the red-tailed hawk, he said that the bird had been a friend to him, a pet . “A local in District 11, really. We’ve been friends, so I’ll win and return home to him.”
“Not to your family?” Caesar asked.
Hawks didn’t explain, just shrugged with a bashful smile and rubbed the back of his head.
The bastard doesn’t even have someone he wants to get home to, just some bird. Touya has siblings he wants to save, and, moreover, a point to prove to his father.
Touya wanted to kill that bird. Yet when Hawks ran, he didn’t follow.
Touya burned to death amid the explosions, and he will never have to do what I do, Keigo thinks when he gives his life to the Capital.
Keigo should have known it would be cold terrain when his stylist put him in a white parka, but he’d been so nervous he hadn’t considered his clothes. At least the bag was a smart choice. A bedroll, gloves, a tinderbox, flint, water bottle, plus he’d kicked a knife up out of the snow while he ran. Most importantly, though, his bag held a strange, surprising object.
A glider.
The terrain consists of snowy fields, sparse woods, hills, rivers, and a rocky ravine. To cross between areas is near suicide. The white jackets make for decent camouflage, but travel is still too easy to spot. With the glider, though, Keigo can fly. He climbs to the tops of the trees, and that’s where he lives. When he moves, he maneuvers between branches until he reaches the treeline, then he unfolds his glider and sails over the crisp snow until he reaches some terrain he can hide in again.
He doesn’t kill, doesn’t interact with anyone who roams below, and doesn’t make allies. He gathers food when he knows it’s safe on the ground, he melts snow in his water bottle, and he spends his nights in his bedroll high up in the trees. Keigo lives like a bird in the branches, safe above the other tributes.
Luckily, he’d been bright and charismatic during all of the preparation for the games. With a bright laugh, he told Caesar Flickerman he was optimistic “to a fault.” His mentor told him the public ate it up. They loved him, loved to see a young man who would happily try to win until his dying breath. When he saw a parachute float down to his perch in the trees, he knew his efforts had charmed them enough to save his life. Inside was a bag of beef jerky and a note from his mentor:
A hawk in the trees - M.Y.
Mera is looking out for him.
Keigo makes for a good celebrity, attractive, fit, and ruthless. The story of love-lost during his games only strengthens his public appeal. His stealth and skill with a blade make him a good agent for the Capital, too–by eighteen he works in espionage on a secret police unit on behalf of Panem. For Keigo, the killing never stops after the games.
He sheds his old self—the poor, dirty Keigo—becoming the sexy, capable Hawks. Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, he wonders what Touya would think if he could see him now. He hadn’t even known Touya for that long, but nowadays, Keigo can’t turn a corner without seeing white hair and red roots, can’t meet anyone’s gaze without also seeing his blue eyes glowing from the hereafter.
Day after day, he listens for the cannons. At night, when the sky lights up to show the faces of the dead, he gazes up at them like they’re the stars above. He sees his district partner gaze down from the skies, her empty eyes as cold as the wintery air biting at him.
The cold gets to him more and more each day. After sunset, the temperature drops so low he thinks he might freeze to death, and the air blows all around him since he’s elevated by the trees. When the snowstorm blows in, he’s unsurprised. Unfortunately, this necessitates that he drop down from the trees. He can’t use his glider with the snow and the wind raging. All he can do is slowly work his way down, half the time clinging to the tree trunk so as not to be blown off and fall to his death.
The second his feet land on the ground, sinking up to his knees in the heavy snow, a knife swings. Keigo ducks and runs.
For all his speed, heavy snow still is deep and difficult to run through. His limbs struggle to move, his joints practically frozen in place. Pulling his feet out of the snow takes strength and willpower, but he’s got toned legs and determination. Keigo will not die. He will live and make something of himself–not stay stuck as a street urchin with no future.
The Hunger Games provides Keigo with a chance–even though it’s an awful one–at a promising life.
He runs as best he can for as long as he can. The chase is slow as he and his pursuer plow through the snow. Keigo’s seen an opening in the rocks at the ravine; now, he aims there, hoping he can use the cave as shelter. If he can manage it, he might even push his would-be killer off the cliff.
But for as much as his heart is ready for this, his body can’t handle the freezing weather. He collapses, knees buckling, plunging face-first into the snow right as his pursuer catches up. Over the wind, he can’t hear, but he feels a foot as whoever it is trips over Keigo’s legs.
He rolls to the side, narrowly escaping having a knife plunged into his back. Keigo resorts to cheap tactics: he kicks, sending sprays of snow at his attacker. Oh, crap, he thinks as he takes in the girl, who’s kneeling in the snow. She’s difficult to make out through the snow, but he recognizes the medium skin tone and stark white hair of the District 1 female. Had the Careers, despite all their training for the Games, been split up by the snowstorm? Why’s she alone?
She’s older than him, and once she gets her legs under her, she’s going to be a problem. A deadly problem. He can’t run from her knife forever. Keigo crawls backward and kicks snow into the girl’s eyes, slowing her so that he can reach for the sheath tucked into his waistband.
His knife sinks into her right shoulder, blood spraying across the snow in a single burst of color before the storm covers it. Her mouth drops open, her face inches from Keigo’s, and he thinks she might be screaming. Under the sound of the howling wind, though, all he feels is a gasp of warm breath.
Instead of going down, the girl pushes Keigo prone and puts her knife into his left shoulder, narrowly missing his heart. Despite her injury, she gets his dominant shoulder.
Keigo thinks he’s dead for sure, but before she removes her blade and remises, fire blossoms above the girl’s head. Her long, white hair catches fire, and this time he can hear her screaming–shrill and directly into his ear.
Her body gets kicked aside. Moments later, the screaming stops, snow still swirling, and a new face comes into view. Soft features, bright blue eyes, and spikey hair that’s a mix of white and red.
Todoroki Touya, the District 2 boy.
“So, you’re Hawks. Don’t look so pretty anymore.”
Keigo, bleeding into the snow and panicked from the fight, bargains, “I know where a cave is–let me live.”
Maybe Touya needs shelter, or maybe he’s curious about Keigo. Whatever the case, he slings his torch across his back and extends his hand, saying, “Show me, then.”
Keigo leads the way.
Whenever Hawks puts his sword blades through an insurgent from the districts, he remembers Touya, surrounded by fire and snow. As he watches another body fall, he thinks of the District 4 girl’s body falling into open air, limp and weightless and free. She almost looked like she’d been flying.
Touya sticks with Hawks–Keigo–whatever people called him. He’d meant to kill him, but saving him had been an impulsive decision. Now, their chances are better together than alone.
They sleep next to each other for warmth, share water and food, and treat each other’s wounds. The District 1 career was, apparently, Hawks’ first fight in the games so far, and his shoulder is fucked from it. Touya is riddled with cuts and bruises, all of which Hawks helps bind and ice with packs of snow from outside their cave.
When the storm stops after a few days, they venture out together. Hawks teaches him how to climb trees and shows off his glider. The stupid thing is red, just like the wings he wore before the games.
“Using that thing will give away our location, and I can’t follow you since there’s only one glider,” Touya says bluntly.
Hawks fidgets. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Keigo longs to fly again. Soaring between trees, branches, and snowfields, he’d been free. Now, he’s caged by President Snow.
They watch the faces appear on occasion. Hawks squeezes his hand when Touya’s district partner appears in the sky. At least he no longer has to wonder if the sound of a cannon means he’s alone. Anyway, he has Hawks now.
Touya had been with the other Careers, but now he’s the only Career left. He doesn’t mind; they couldn’t work together forever, anyway. Neither can he and Hawks. But for now, he likes the gentle way Hawks cleans and wraps his wounds, and they get chutes with medicine thanks to Hawks’ popularity.
After a couple weeks, Hawks asks Touya to call him Keigo. “I don’t mind the nickname, but Keigo is my real name. Even if everyone calls me Hawks, will you call me Keigo?”
When they realize there are only a handful of tributes left, Keigo holds Touya’s hands and cries. Together, they’re crouched beneath a short, snow-covered tree. Shimmering tears run down Keigo’s cheeks. Behind Keigo, something else shimmers. The snow doesn’t blow into the shimmering–instead the snowfall seems to curve like it’s hitting an invisible wall.
Well, aren’t the Gamemakers so clever?
Something sinks softly into the snow beside them. In Touya’s peripheral vision, he sees the looming, hulking figure of the District 8 male. He’s tossed a package with a fuse macgyvered from parachute fabric.
Shit, a fuse–
Too late, Touya realizes he and Keigo weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. The boy had managed to surround them in a shitton of flammable material.
The bomb explodes. The area goes up in flames.
The bomb landed just behind Touya, giving Keigo space to escape from the fire. Not Touya, though.
He screams as he burns, yet his mind stays sharp. Maybe that’s because he’s been fighting with flames for weeks. Touya burning is just poetry. As the flames lick his clothes and skin, Touya crawls for where he had seen the invisible wall shimmering.
Another explosion sounds. More fire. No one can see, then, when Touya vanishes into the snow.
For Keigo, the screaming stops.
After the 75th Quarter Quell—an event Keigo’s spared from, luckily—revolution finally comes. Over his years in service, he’s come to believe that Snow was right and the Games do uphold society. When the city streets turn to rubble, he does wonder if that’s untrue.
They send him into battle as a symbol, his gear decorated with the wings of the red-tailed hawk from years before. He hopes that bird is still flying free. If he closes his eyes and imagines his old friend, Hawks feels almost like he’s flying free back home in District 11.
The fight is bloody, unforgiving. He goes into the city with a team, but before long, Hawks alone stumbles across the broken cement. A few Muttations went rogue, took out part of his team, and riddled his torso with stab wounds. The last of his team was a man he’d been working with for the last few years, Tsunagu, who was caught in a stray explosion. When he fell, white powder from destroyed concrete enveloped his body. For a moment, Hawks saw Touya again. Perhaps President Snow had planned this, an act of quiet revenge for Hawks not serving him well enough.
Only Hawks is left. He expects to die anytime now. Too many traps, too many insurgents. They’re going to kill him, for continuing to side with the Capital. Eventually, his injuries take their toll. Hawks finds a clear area behind a fallen chunk of building and collapses. Through the smoke clouding the city, he can make out the sky above.
Will Touya be waiting for him? Will Touya be proud of him? Forgiving? Maybe, maybe not. Hawks can find out when the blood finishes running and the rebels find his body. His body will be added to the piles of casualties, but he’ll be with Touya.
Not far from him, Hawks hears the rubble shift. Opening his eyes, squinting through the smoke, a man emerges. White hair, red roots, and bright blue eyes. Hawks smiles. “Touya,” he whispers.
“You’re dying, Hawks,” Touya says. Burns cover his face and arms, but for a dead teenager, he could look worse.
“Keigo, remember? You said you’d still call me Keigo, even if no one else did.” He adds, “But it’s okay, I’m gonna join you.”
“You’re not joining me if you’re dead,” Touya says, but Hawks doesn’t hear him. His eyes flutter closed, asleep from blood loss.
Touya sighs.
During their games, Touya had rolled right next to the force field where under the snow, a hand reached for his. Next thing he knew, he was pulled out of the arena. He learned later that District 13 rebels had planned to rescue Keigo, not Touya, but took what they could get. Intelligence told them that Keigo, now only Hawks, was conscripted as a soldier for Snow. Touya, meanwhile, became an agent for District 13– after spending two years recovering from severe burns. He got to be chaotic, calculated, and light a bunch of fires.
Since their games, he kept an ear open to Hawks’ activities. In part, he wanted to save him. In larger part, he felt betrayed by the boy who he’d fought and survived alongside during the games. Somehow, Hawks became an agent of the state despite what they had suffered together.
Now, though, all Touya sees is a man battered by those he served. Keigo lies broken and bloodied. Touya can end all his pain–one clean cut and Keigo’d stop suffering.
Instead, he loops his arms under knees and a jacket imitating a red-tailed hawk, scooping Keigo up. “Sorry, Keigo. I’ll make sure to call you that from now on,” Touya whispers. Even though Keigo’s asleep, a small smile crosses his soot and ash-covered features.
Touya’ll take Keigo to District 13’s medical camp at the edge of the Capital. His wounds aren’t good , but they’re treatable. Keigo will recover. One day–soon, now that President Snow is failing–he and Keigo will live quietly somewhere, maybe back where Keigo is from in the expanse of District 11.
“You’re gonna live, Keigo,” Touya promises, “and you’ll be fucking surprised to see me again.” He carries Keigo out of the wreckage of the Capital, smiling brighter than he has in a long time–maybe his whole life. Yeah, we’ll live.