"Why does nothing you say ever make sense?"

"Maybe because you don't suck my balls enough for me to form coherent sentences?" Pavement sighed. Their fire was going out but he didn't have the will to gather more firewood. Finding sticks that weren't wet or coated with ice was hard, but then again, so was dealing with Sam's constant annoyed presence. The wonderful Pavement grew tired of the lulls in their conversation. "You bring meadow land, you cause the sky to break, you take me on a trip, you make me suffocate."

"What the hell?"

"Do you ever wonder what it's like to die, Sam? Like a constant weight on your shoulders. Knowing you're nothing. Knowing that soon enough your heart will start beating and that you are nothing," he muttered. "I want to freeze to death."

Sam didn't respond. That was good. Response meant thinking. Thinking meant pain inside his head. Pavement didn't like thinking. He didn't like the weight that came with it. Instead, he loved to focus all his attention onto something and only see that. Senses, no thoughts. They still happened, sure, but he was no longer aware of them. Disconnected. Floating in the waves.

"There's only nine left," Pavement realized. Nine other tributes. People to die. I've killed people and they'll kill me back. "Sam, what are we going to do when there's only three left?" He's not like the others. How can I kill him?

"It won't be us."

"How do you want to die?" Pavement ventured forward despite the turning of his stomach. Sam dying. Blood squirting from his face and his voice becoming a ripped scream of endless torment before death glazed him over and left him quiet. It'll be awful. A restless happiness grew inside of him and he couldn't help but laugh loudly. "How do we want to die?" I'll die and he'll die and together we'll never leave this arena. We won't go anywhere. No home. No grave. Just two people.

Dead.

Sam didn't respond again. He was good at that. At only watching, picking and choosing his battles. Paul Afflvement lacked the ability to do that, the same as he lacked the ability to do anything he wanted to. Nothing went right. Nothing but Sam. He can do anything. He's going to win these Games, isn't he?

Sam said, "You're complicated."

"Life's complicated." His lips aren't complicated. Would he hit me if I kissed them?

"We need more fire."

"You get more fire," he said, "I'm going to burn to death." I want to fuck him so bad. Why won't he fucking kiss me?

"Burn?"

"Freeze."

"Why do you always act like you're high?"

Pavement took his time responding. In his fingers, through the thick gloves, he cradled snow. Packed it together. Formed a ball. Snow, such as it was, a moldable design that never ceased to end. Why won't he kiss me? The snow kissed his gloves in patches and he threw the ball up into the air, pretending like it was all he cared about.

Buzz.

Crack.

Three quick poppings, then suddenly, the lively sound of an intercom turning on. Breathing, done by a guy. He's nervous. God, nervous guys are hot.

Someone was talking but he didn't care. The snow had started to fall again. Individual flakes caught his eye and he watched them float by. They were frozen. I want to be like them, he thought. "And, ah," he heard someone say dimly, "desperate times call for desperate, uh...desperate measures."

Pavement snorted. His voice wasn't working otherwise he'd speak his dis-ease aloud.

"So we've decided to bump the Feast up early--that's what this is."

More words. More thoughts. Emotions that didn't open up enough for him to grasp the concept. "Back at the um, Cornucopia, you'll find a bag of something you now desperately need. None of you may pass this up." The snow quit falling. Clouds moved and shifted, quiet grays mixing with roaring whites that blurred the lines between thought and reality. "You go or you die."

"Dying doesn't sound too bad," he whispered.

"God damn it!" Sam was shouting again. Why's he gotta hurt my ears? Damn him. Damn this arena. Damn the Games. "Quit talking about dying!"

"Why? Gonna kill me like the others?"

"I'm going to have to if you keep talking!"

Quiet.

Pain. Exploding through his eyes. Tearing apart the veins in his head. Reconstructing everything. Pavement relished in the pain.

He was broken. Lost. Yet one look from the delightful, delicious Sam...and he was soaring through the skies. The look was bad. Sour. Sam's lips were turned down and into each other, pressed so tight--I want it to be against my lips--his eyes were dark and there were curse words in his throat that spilled from his mouth. The emotions were real on him. He wasn't a Capitol pet. Sam was real.

I'm alive.

"Let's just fucking get up there," he said.

"Okay."

The ground crunched under their feet as the two boys made their way through the dense forest of dead trees, past the still-living pines, and back to the open area leading up to the Cornucopia. Atop ice as it was, the entire Cornucopia had moved and was floating in the middle of the arena, far away from where the boys stood. Patches of ice were the only clear way to get there, for they formed a broken bridge that didn't quite work, but neither seemed certain. Hanging around the edges, Pavement stared at their path as he spoke.

"You think we should cross?"

Sam coughed, thick and harsh. Their camp had been moderately warm due to the blankets and pathetic fire, but out there they had nothing to protect them but the measly clothes they wore. Sam shrugged off his coat. "If I take this out there and fall I'll drown," he said. "We might as well cross. It doesn't look any better in any other direction."

With a nod, Pavement too shrugged off his coat. The air hit his cold abs through the shirt he wore and tore at him. It was a slap to the face with a rotting peppermint--good taste, bad smell, then bad taste and worse smell.

The first jump was the hardest jump. Over eight feet, and yet Pavement landed soundly and he found good footing in the foot or so of snow that'd collected on the mass of ice floating there. It wobbled about but otherwise was fine. He jumped to the next, following the route, and he could hear Sam's grunts and coughs as he came in behind. This is useless. What's the Cornucopia hold that I can't find on my own? There's nothing I really need, other than something to kill all these damn people so I can go home. I'm tired of this. I'm tired.

Exhaust ran through his body and shook him inside out. Nothing worked right, nothing at all. He couldn't understand his emotions, but he rarely ever did.

Not until he got to the actual floating mass did he see that nothing was there. The weapons had been picked clean and aside from the blood and odd piles of snow, there was no signs of anything having ever been there. A crash caught his attention--back where he'd originally stood, back before the countdown had commenced and the Games had began, were the huge glaciers. A boy, someone from a District he didn't care to name, had been climbing them. He was falling down into the freezing water but in his hands was a huge duffle bag.

"There," Sam shouted, "they're keeping everything up there!"

"Great," he muttered. Then, remembering who he was and that he had a reputation to uphold, Pavement put a grin on his face and he laughed heartily. "Great! Let's get to climbing. I'm anxious to see what they've got for me up there. Eh?"

Sam grumbled something again. He seemed to grow moodier and moodier the longer they were there, but that wasn't what mattered. Both boys had bigger mountains to worry about--literally. Together, they walked apart from one another and they started climbing the glaciers. Mountains of snow or hills of snow, it didn't matter. To Pavement, who'd trained all his life, nothing was too far out of his reach. Climbing was nothing for him. Fighting was nothing to him.

Yet he still couldn't figure out why nothing he said made sense, or why nothing he felt made sense. Life itself was a confused jumble of nothing that didn't add up the way it was supposed to.

"Paul," Pavement muttered. The words fit oddly in his throat, crackling against one another. After all, the words came from him. Everything from him was broken inside. Hidden, just out of sight. A broken toy no one wanted, bleeding and lost within a world of adoration and white smiles and hidden bruises. "My name is Paul and I'm a dammed idiot."

No one was around to hear him. He climbed up, without a single care, and the frost nipped at his body.

"I am Paul. Pavement. Pave. Afflvement. What could they possibly want to give me? What could they have here that I fucking want?"

He reached the top. Pulling himself over the ledge, Pavement scanned the horizon and stared at the bag before him. It wasn't large yet it was shaped to be bulky. The zipper stood out, already collecting snow on top of it. He wasted no time in picking it up and sitting back down with it. The view was fantastic and he took a moment to look over it, watching Sam as he continued to climb his glacier. The boy's muscles stretched taunt beneath his shirt and his coat flapped open in the wind. He keeps me from dying and I don't know why. He hasn't killed me but he could. He keeps my head above the waves and yet I'm still drowning.

"Here we are," he whispered.

The zipper was easy to undo, but the burden that came with it was too big for him to take.

Medical supplies.

Nothing major, except it was.

The scissors that Mother had used to cut him open, still coated with his blood. Dried, the darkened mass of reddish black was ugly and horrific. Beside them were tweezers that still held patches of his flesh. Next to that, the knife. Pavement's body shook but not from the cold. His teeth chattered but he didn't feel the freezing wind or ice. Nothing meant anything. There was nothing but a memory to play against his head and words that had branded themselves into his patched-up heart.

"Son, who's that?"

"My girlfriend, dad." Paul smiled up at his father as one hand dangled over her shoulders. In truth, he was a horrid liar, and she was tutoring him. The girl was a genius and if he didn't get his grades up they'd fail him--permanently. "Why?"

"She's not your girlfriend. Get her out of here. Right now," his father said. His words grew progressively colder and he glared down at Paul with hate in his eyes. "I swear to God, Paul, if you don't get that fucking whore out of this house-"

She didn't last ten minutes in the house. Paul rushed her out and sighed as the door shut behind her with a smack. No one was allowed in the house. No, that wasn't true. Certain people were allowed in.  Business associates, whores, and the guys Mother brought home. They were always allowed, some even invited to dinner. Paul's friends? That was too bad, they could never stay. Especially not after five, which it was.

Mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner. The smells reached his nose, cooked meat and spices dancing across his tastebuds and tempting him. She always made the best food, so Paul never minded it too much.

"Don't you ever talk to her again," his father hissed. He'd removed his tie and stood before his son in just his pants and blazer. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Do you fucking hear me?! I never want you to see that dammed girl again!" He was raving mad, sparks of evil glinting in his eyes as he practically foamed at the mouth. Pain burst across Paul's face as the man's hand slapped him hard. "If I even hear of you talking to her again I'll--"

"I won't!"

Tears sprung up in his eyes and the pain steadily grew, throbbing inside him and never ending. His father cussed and only grew angrier. Finally, Paul shouted out, "I said I won't, dad!"

That was it.

"You don't understand, boy." Paul's father spat on the ground, his hands shaking and trembling with rage. "Her father is one of them."

"One of who?"

"Them," he said, then he spat on the floor again. "One of the fucking people I have to get rid of, Paul."

Paul didn't want to ask. He didn't want to at all. Yet he did. "Get rid of?"

"God dammit!"

There was more cussing, then another hit. And another. A kick, a jab to the stomach, one of his tooth came loose in a strong cuff to the jaw. Then his father had grabbed hold of the vase.

"Stop," he whispered. Real tears, not memory tears, were in his eyes. The pain, so vivid, flashing in him and before him. The scars on his stomach burnt and twisted in the jagged memory lines of cracked vase. He could still feel it in his hands, feel it pulling out of the wound, feel the blood squirting out and the shrill screams of his mother. "Go away." They wouldn't go away, though, not truly. They would never go away. That's what the scar was for.

Memories.

Pain.

Everything that refused him right to ask or question or learn.

They'd done 'everything' to patch him up and pretend it never happened. Just quiet after that. Pavement never made the mistake of talking to his father again. He threw the bag far away from him and watched it tumble off the edge. Whistles caught the air before it hit, water splashing before it collapsed into a deadly silence.

"I'm sorry!"

Distantly, he heard someone screaming. Someone screaming about being sorry. Words, then sounds that never ended, twisting in his mind. Nothing made sense, least of all Paul Afflvement. He stood, wiped away the tears, and looked just in time to see Sam falling. There was no thoughts. There didn't need to be.

He jumped.

He hit the water.

He swam.

And then, he found Sam's body in the waves. He pulled the boy afloat and whispered into his ear about living. "We have to do it," he was saying, "come on, Sam. We've got to keep going. Keep me afloat and I'll keep you afloat. We only have so long before the end. Let's get back to shore before you drown."