#guys it’s a hunger games au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lilyrizzy · 7 months

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continuation of this silly little fic...have more silly maxiel hunger games au fic bc I recently read the new book and got obsessed again, oops. cw: everything you'd expect with a hunger games au, death, torture & forced prostitution mentions.

Alex stares down at his meal. Lumpy porridge sprinkled with what District Thirteen likes to call ‘nutritional powder,’ orange juice, and an apple that looks far too green to have been grown underground. In three weeks, he hasn’t seen sunshine, real or otherwise.

“You aren’t going to get anything else,” George reminds him, and in front of where he’s shovelling food into his mouth at an alarming pace, his tray is already three-quarters empty. Gone is the good boy routine, vanished along with the Capitol cameras the moment Charles blew up the dome sky of the arena with a good shot and the reel of wire Seb spent all games carrying around.

Alex hasn’t seen either of them since that moment, Charles dead the moment the sky lit up, and Seb still in District Thirteen’s medical wing. There are rumours he’ll never walk again.

Max, who fought off the Capitol mutts in an attempt to keep the rest of them alive that night is their only other living ally. Right now he’s sat at the next table alone, his food tray also full. He’s drawing patterns in the sludge with his spoon, and mumbling to himself the way he used to, in the games. Talking to ghosts, or talking to his- To Daniel, maybe. By now, that probably means the same thing.

“Are you going to-“ George interrupts his thoughts, gesturing to Alex’s tray. He shoves it towards him, standing as he does.

“Go wild, Georgie,” he half mutters, meaning to walk back to his room, or to Toto’s to beg for something, anything to do to help him stop thinking.

Instead, he finds himself standing over Max, only with no real plan of what to say. Hello, I’m sorry your boyfriend is probably dead, but so is my girlfriend. Want to talk rebellion strategy? Yeah, right. Alex has a feeling that Max is as much an unwilling participant in this uprising as he is, or at the very least an accidental one.

You fucking promised me, you- You swore he’d be okay, that you’d protect him, you promised.

Alex had watched Max howl it all at Horner in the hovercraft as it took them thousands of miles away from the remains of the arena. Right before Max punched Horner in the face and ended up sedated for the remainder of the journey. The yellow-orange traces of the shiner Max gave him still give Alex a strange sense of satisfaction to see every time Horner calls him to the command room to ask him to star in more propaganda videos.

“Hi,” is all he says to Max now, shifting from foot to foot in front of him, as Max continues to mumble into his food.

“I’d need a gun for that, or at least a knife. Of course, these are too blunt, and-“

“Max,” Alex tries again, and that gets his head snapping up, as though woken from a trance. His eyes dart around before settling all the way on Alex.

“Oh,” he says like he’s assessing a threat and finding there to be none, “it’s you. What do you want, twelve?”

In the arena, Max had called him Alex. Maybe, like George’s gentlemen act, it had been something designed to please the cameras, or more likely, to forge allies. Allies they apparently needed to get this show on the road. Toto had explained this to him, that it was important to have as many districts as possible represented in the uprising victors. That way, their homes would have a reason to believe that they too can rebel.

“Nothing,” Alex says hastily, putting up his hands. “Nothing, I- I wondered if you wanted some company.”

Max glances from Alex to the side, where he can no doubt see George still filling his belly with Alex’s unfinished meal.

“Pretty boy is winding you up already?” Max asks, something almost teasing on his lips.

Alex flushes. There was no way Max could know about the night before, George’s warm body slipping into his bed, and his warmer hands finding Alex’s skin under the scratchy, military issue blankets. Clinging onto each other, the only piece of home they’d likely see again. Except, maybe Max can know all about it, maybe that was how he’d found his way to Daniel.

Max raises his eyebrows, and Alex choses to believe he’s just expecting an answer rather than recognising Alex's guilt. Even though Lily was likely killed right after his unconscious body was airlifted from the arena as a warning to any who sympathises or dares to love a rebel, there was still a small voice in him that warned that if she had survived, he would always have betrayed her.

“A little,” he says, half the truth and half a total lie. If he didn’t have George, he’d be like Max. Alone, and half mad.

Max smirks, but gestures to the bench opposite him. Alex sits, trying to think of something else to say.

“What, uh. What are you talking about?” It’s all he can come up with, and internally he groans. He doesn’t need to get roped into Max’s crazy. He cocks his head at Alex, like he doesn’t know what he is talking about, only affirming Alex’s belief that he's securely in cuckoo land, but it’s too late to go back now. “The guns, or the- The knife?”

“Oh,” Max says, nodding like this is perfectly sane. “I am trying to think of some way to the Capitol.”

“The Capitol?” Alex repeats, dumbfounded, because that is where they’ve just been rescued from. But- Realisation dawns on him, slow and then all at once, like the sun he used to get to see every morning.

“It’s where Daniel will be, probably,” Max confirms.

Alex tries to nod earnestly like this isn’t the worst idea he’s ever heard.

“Of course, Christian promises me that they are going to rescue them, but only when it is safe,” Max is continuing, hands suddenly animated in front of him. It’s the liveliest Alex has seen him since the games. “I cannot wait until it is safe, because what if it never is? What if they are- I can’t leave him there. I need to get to him.”

Alex tries to listen, but his brain stalls on one word, making the rest almost obsolete.

Them.

“Who else are the Capitol holding?” He asks, knowing as he does that the spark of hope Max’s answer lights might be the thing to tip him over the deep end too. Max’s answering look tells Alex that he thinks his question is very stupid.

“Well,” he says with a bitter laugh, “I did not exactly get the list, but I would imagine it includes yours and Georgie’s families-“ He waves his spoon in George’s direction- “along with maybe the rest of the victors. Your girlfriend, your childhood best friend. Fuck, maybe someone you sat next to in math class, Alex. Anyone they think they can use against you.”

Alex's head begins to spin. Of all the propaganda videos from the Capitol that had made their way to them here in Thirteen, Daniel and Lily hadn’t been mentioned or seen once. Alex had assumed this meant they were long gone, but what if they were only waiting for the right time to reveal their captives? Max is right, after all, they’d be more use to the Capitol alive. As bait, or maybe just to torture them with the idea of ‘what if.’

He thinks back to Daniel’s screams in the arena, calling for Max over and over to help him. Max curled on the ground like a child, his fingers stuffed into his ears.

“What about your family?” Alex asks, stomach turning at the thought of how much blood he would have on his hands at the end of all this. “What-“

“Daniel is my family,” Max interrupts him bluntly. Then, maybe because he senses the cold coil of fear his words help to settle in Alex’s stomach, he continues. “I had a sister when this all- But I told her to run. She had two small babies, and I couldn’t- There was nothing I could do to protect them if they stayed.”

Alex’s eyes widen. Running was almost unheard of. Growing up, he’d only known two people to try it, the wife and child of a rebel who had been hanged the day before. Peacekeepers put a round of bullets into their bodies just five miles past the fence.

“Did they-“ He asks, and Max shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I like to think that because I never heard, it means-“ He shrugs.

Alex would want to think that as well, but the chances of Max’s sister running around the wilderness of Panem with two little kids, not only undetected but thriving, is- It’s hard to believe. To be kind, he nods like it’s not.

“I wish I’d told Lily to run,” he practically whispers because even though he doesn’t think she’d have made it either, it would likely be a quicker death than whatever the Capitol have in store for her now. Like Max, he doesn’t have much faith in Horner’s plans to rescue whoever they may still have, and unlike Max, there’s no way he has faith in himself either to make up for that shortcoming.

Max nods, his mouth a wonky line that in any other circumstances might be considered a smile. He reaches across the table and shocks Alex by touching his shoulder gently.

“If I make it there, to Daniel-“ He looks to the side, like his mind is still halfway elsewhere, formulating his plan- “I promise I will look for her, also.”

Alex closes his eyes, startled by the sudden compassion in Max’s voice.

“Thank you,” he whispers, but to be honest, Max’s words do very little to bring him any comfort.

Toto had made Alex promises too, like Horner to Max. It seemed this war was built upon the breaking of them.

—

“Tell me something about Daniel.”

Max looks up at Alex from where he’d been staring down at the same photograph Alex has seen stuck on his bunkroom wall. Something he must have grabbed when the bombing siren started to sound, before they all filed down into the shelter. In it, Alex can see Daniel’s curly hair, his well fitted suit. A Capitol propaganda photo, likely, that Max had swipped from some magazine.

The moment Horner and Toto called them into the control room to detail their scheme- sneak a craft out during the next air strike on Thirteen, when the Capitol is distracted to retrieve the hostages- the fight Alex was used to seeing in Max had almost completely diminished. Looking at him now, he looks- Well, a little pathetic.

Come on, Max, he thinks but doesn’t say, weren’t you supposed to be some bloody murderer?

Max is the deadliest victor in Panem’s history, a reputation that had followed him into his post-games life as a victor. Seb had told Alex stories in the arena, of how the people of the Capitol requested for Max to sit in cages at the edges of their dinner parties, the ultimate display of power.

“Why?” Is all that same man asks now, and it’s as if he’s too weak to even seem guarded anymore.

Alex sits down on the bed beside him. Around them, the metal frames shake, clanging together in the dimly lit bunker. Dust and dirt fall from the ceiling. Maybe the mission will succeed, only for Daniel and Lily to arrive at District 13 and find them all dead and buried under rubble.

“Because it seems like a better plan than waiting in miserable silence?” Alex offers, tucking his legs up to rest his chin on his knees. “Come on,” he prompts, when Max still seems hesitant, “there must be one thing you love about him that you’re not too stoic to share.”

Max laughs, despite their situation, and mouthes the word, stoic, shaking his head a little. Then-

“Everybody loves his big smile,” Max offers, finger tracing over the shape of Daniel’s lips on the photo, “the tributes we would mentor, the other victors. The people of the Capitol, who paid enough to have it, and much more, thrown in their direction, but- But I like it better when it is smaller. Softer. Just-”

Just for you, Alex thinks, but Max doesn’t finish his sentence.

“What about you?” He asks instead, offering Alex a small smile of his own, “What makes Lily so special?”

Alex laughs, because what doesn’t make her special?

“She’s like, the smartest person ever,” he says, because throughout all this he has wondered over and over what she would do in his place, and tried to follow that course of action. “I keep thinking how she’d have the Districts liberated by now if she was here.”

Max nods, lips quirking upwards again.

“Let’s hope she makes it then,” is all he offers, eyes back on his picture. It’s then Alex notices the expression Daniel is wearing, the soft smile Max was talking about. Maybe not a Capitol promo photo after all.

“Did you two-“ He starts, but stops himself, aware he is treading on shaky ground now. Another explosion sounds somewhere above ground, with the vibration taking a few beats longer to travel to them. Somewhere near them, a baby begins to wail, as the ground both above and beneath their feet trembles.

“Did we what?” Max asks, looking at Alex again.

“Did you, uh. Did you fall in love before or after your games?” It isn’t what he was going to ask.

“That is not what you were going to ask,” Max says. Alex flushes, but Max answers anyway. “For me, yes. For Daniel, he says it was after.” Alex nods. Max’s answer is the only clear confirmation he’s gotten since hearing the jabberjays wail that Daniel and Max are lovers. “Now ask me what you were really going to ask.”

Alex hesitates, but another shockwave of the bombing has him throwing caution to the wind. By morning, they might be dead anyway.

“Did you like, live together and stuff?” He finally asks, and it’s a watered down version, and Max sees through that too.

“You mean, why did we not hide it better, from the Capitol?” He asks, head tilted to one side in a gesture that Alex has since learned means he’s considering how to dumb down a very easy concept to someone he thinks is very stupid.

It’s half of what Alex had wondered, along with how they worked, given the entire country knew the rumours of how Daniel spent his time when he was in the Capitol, how he got so many of the jewels he seemed to proudly wear at every year’s games coverage.

He shrugs.

“We tried,” Max says, “for a while. Of course, people do not like- Well.” Alex feels himself flush again. “But it got very hard.”

“The logistics?” Alex asks, surprised by the flimsy sounding excuse, but Max shakes his head.

“No, the-“ He breaks off to chew his lip, clearly debating how honest he wants to be. One of the cats Max told him Thirteen only had to keep the mice away appears as though from nowhere, winding itself around Max’s legs. Max hunches over with a cautious hand to pet it, and it lets him, where with Alex it would show its teeth and claws. Eventually, he continues.

“My sister, when I came back from the games, she did not look at me the same way,” he explains, tucking the photograph of Daniel carefully back into his pocket. “The Capitol paraded me around like one of their muts, like I was some kind of bedtime terror meant to scare their naughty children, as well as the people from my own home.”

You used to terrify me, Alex agrees internally, but he knows better than to say anything. The cat between Max’s feet begins to pur.

“The only time I really felt like a person anymore was with Daniel,” Max says, like it explains everything and in a way, it does. “It was too hard, to go for such long times feeling like a monster, too easy to start to believe that you are. When we are together, we can just- I can just-“

Max breaks off, putting his head into his hands. As his shoulders start to shake, Alex realises that Max is doing something Alex has never seen him do before.

He’s starting to cry.

#sorry to be back on my 'plagorising the hunger games to put my lil guys in situations' bullshit but #needs must #max/daniel #fic #lily's hunger games au #<bc there's a few im sure lol #galex #<bet you never thought you'd see me tag that!! lmao #outsider pov

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