Sawyer Bell

## Bio

*Sawyer Bell (she/her). D6 Tribute. 109 Victor. 25. Sophia Ali.*

Tw: drugs, violence

  There was a group of them. Train hoppers, people who lived in the liminal spaces of the tracks, who moved through the vast expanses of District Six, lulled to sleep by the constant motion and shuttering of train cars. Sawyer was born in these liminal spaces, her mother caring for her deeply, though without many resources to give her the things she wanted to. Still, the bond between mother and daughter was strong, and the two of them were thick as thieves throughout Sawyer’s childhood. Sometimes they stayed in one place for a season or two, but never longer than that. Sawyer never had a second parental figure, never wanted one. She never fully learned to read or write, either, as this was not important in a world where oral storytelling ruled, a world where running from Peacekeepers and picking locks was more important than learning the history of Panem. Sawyer was smart, though, and picked up on everything fast. She was athletic and enjoyed the mobile lifestyle she and her mother lived.

She was Reaped in the summer of 92, Games 109, when she was 13 years old. The train to the Capitol was so much nicer than the ones that she, her mother, and the people they called family camped out in. The food was rich and full of taste, easy to come by. No stealing, no sneaking. It made itself available to her on silver platters.

  In training, she excelled at plant identification, learning the unfamiliar ones quickly, learning, too, the runes that spelled out their names. She also found that she did well with some of the weapons. Archery was impossible but knife training proved fun. She was short and lithe and a kind trainer helped her learn how to use that to her advantage. She didn’t do as well in the interview, freezing up in front of the cameras and all those faces in the audience. But no matter.

  Her district partner was 17, a boy as rough around the edges as she was. Mercury made a promise that they’d stick with each other until the end, though he would never answer her questions about what would happen then, if they were the last two standing. Most likely, they both knew, it would never come to that. Mercury was stronger and bigger than her, and would fare better than she would.

  The tributes were launched in a semicircle onto a thin wooden boardwalk, three feet wide, that stretched around a large, brilliantly blue pool of water. They were all clustered on one side, while the boardwalk on the other side of the water was empty. The cornucopia rested in the middle of it, boasting packs, food, water, weapons — but there was just one path to get to it, one wooden path that led to the center of the lake, and it was on the opposite side.

  During the countdown, Sawyer saw several of her fellow tributes preparing to jump into the water. It looked inviting, as blue and beautiful as it was, but it was also steaming. A thin layer of fog lay just above it, indicating that it was hot, very hot. She didn’t need to dip her toe in to know that. So when the countdown ended, she stood where she was, watching three, then four, then five tributes dive into the water, those with the fastest reflexes, and instantly begin to trash, scream, their bodies boiling.

  She chose not to stick around to find out what would happen next, instead catching Mercury’s eye and jumping off the back of the boardwalk, falling into a dead sprint away from the water, the cornucopia, and all of its promises.

  The land was sparse, red nearest the water and then brown as it stretched further away. She and Mercury found a river whose waters flowed quickly, and after waiting in the shrubs for an animal to come along and test the water, they deemed it safe enough. Mercury fashioned a spear and after a few hours, managed to catch a fish. Sawyer started a fire after a few false starts and a lot of cursing, and the two ate and drank.

  Over the next few days, she and Mercury stuck close to the river which seemed a bountiful source of food and water. They weren’t the only ones who thought so, though, and were joined by mutts of all shapes and sizes, as well as some of their fellow tributes. On the third day, Mercury took on another tribute, one from Eleven, and killed him, bashing his head in with a rock. It was the first violent death that Sawyer had seen, and she knelt to the ground, sobbing, unable to control herself despite Mercury’s best efforts at calming her.

  The next tribute they came across was one from Three. This time, she assisted in the fight, though the final blow came from Mercury, who dug a knife he’d gotten from a sponsor into the tribute’s chest. On the fourth day, resting by a lake, Sawyer felt a sharp pain in her leg. Pulling up her pant leg, she saw a very small black tick. Being trained from childhood to avoid ticks, knowing the dangers they could cause, she used her fingernails to pry it from her skin before it dug too deep into it. She then drowned the tick in the lake, wiping her hands and thinking how proud her mother would be of her smarts. But after a few hours, it became clear that she hadn’t removed the tick fast enough, as her leg began to swell. The pain was immense, and she spent the night crying, intermittently soaking her leg in the cold lake water, but it did nothing. In the morning, the gentle beeping of a gift came down from the sky. Antibiotics, which she took immediately, gratefully.

  In the afternoon, a large beast trapped them between it and the lake. The bison-mutt was angry, approaching as if they’d encroached on its territory, which perhaps they had. They had no choice but to jump in the lake, swim away as fast as they could. Only Mercury managed to grab something — the knife that had kept them safe so far. The rest of her medicine and their canteens were left behind.

  Without the rest of the antibiotics, her leg began to swell again, red and tender and painful, and walking became impossible. On the sixth day, there were only four tributes left — the two of them, and the pair from One. Her leg pained her so greatly, and no more medicine was coming, so she had to often stop to rest as they walked. They moved aimlessly, not sure where they were going or what they were doing. Both aware that the end was approaching, and they were both still alive. The terms of their promise soon to expire.

  During one such rest, in a large empty basin of dirt and mud, she closed her eyes for only a moment while Mercury stepped away to pee. When she opened them again, there the Careers were, looming over her, both smiling, blood smeared on their cheeks. She screamed, scrambling up and beginning to run, though her leg gave out on her after only a few yards and she fell. Certain death was coming any moment, she hid her face in the dirt, not wanting to see what would happen next — but nothing did, except a very loud noise behind her, which caused her to sit up and turn. Water was shooting out of the ground, sweeping up the two Careers with its force. The sound of the cannons were drowned out by the noise of the water, and their bodies were thrown dozens of yards away.

  Mercury returned, asking what the noise was. He hadn’t heard the cannons, hadn’t seen the bodies, immersed in the water as they had quickly become. She didn’t tell him, afraid of what he’d do when he found out they were the last two.

  In mid-afternoon, the earthquakes began. They escalated over the course of a few hours, and in the evening, just before the sky would darken and show the faces of the two dead Careers, revealing to Mercury the they were the final two, the biggest earthquake yet came, knocking them both off their feet. Mercury dropped the knife; it landed next to Sawyer’s hand. Before she could do anything, the earth cracked open before them, and red-hot lava started to spill from it. It made its way towards them quickly.

  “We have to run,” Mercury yelled, getting up, but Sawyer knew two things immediately:

1. They were the last two. If one of them died, it would be over. There would have to be no running.
2. If they ran, he would be fast enough, and she would not. She would succumb to the lava flow and die.

  In the end it was the thought of her mother that drove the knife into Mercury’s leg. He turned around, shocked, the moving earth causing him to fall. She crawled on top of him and dug it into his chest, just as he had done to the boy from Three. The final cannon sounded as the lava reached her heels.

  At first, Sawyer returned home, living in her new mansion with her mother. But her mother didn’t like it, and she increasingly began to speak to the shadows, telling them that Sawyer was not the daughter she’d known. Sawyer couldn’t stop her mother from succumbing to madness, having been driven insane by watching her daughter fight for her life in the Games, after a life of instability and uncertainty.

  When her mother ran into the Wilds, Sawyer didn’t follow. She knew that she wasn’t the daughter her mother had known before, anyway. She wasn’t who her mother would want with her. Her comfort meant nothing.

  The house became too big and empty, so at seventeen, Sawyer moved to the Capitol. There, she bought a sun-filled Loft, and the glamor of the city lifestyle caught up with her. She made friends with Capitolites who introduced her to all of the best things — clubs and dancing and drugs and men. She was swept up in it all, wanting life to feel as far away from the Arena as it possibly could. Sometimes when she drank something strong, took an even stronger pill, she saw Mercury’s face on the men at the club. That was always when she knew it was time to go home.

  She was first called up to be a mentor, replacing her own, who had died, in 100, for the 124th Games. It was summer, everything was hot and sticky, and she was 21 years old. Those first few Games, her tributes fared okay, but not great. She spent most of the time drinking, escaping the Tower to party, escaping the demons that followed her everywhere there.

  And then Cat Miller won. She had done it. She’d brought home a tribute. And as glad as she was to have Cat alive, to have any of her tributes alive, she didn’t know if she’d had much of a hand in it.

  While she’s slowed down a bit with partying, mostly because the hangovers have gotten worse as she’s neared her twenty-sixth birthday, she hasn’t lost her ways entirely. She enjoys spending the night in someone else’s bed, enjoys drinking and some of the more exciting pills. She has little direction, little focus as a mentor. Her mother was right: the girl she used to be is gone, probably forever.

  So the morning of the 132nd Reaping, her last ever, she is surprised to meet that little girl. The fourteen year old crying into the dirt. But meet her she does, complete with a pain in her leg that has gone mostly phantom over the years, when her name is called and the escort turns around to look at Sawyer, standing behind her, already on the stage.

  + : resourceful, quick learner, charming

- : rash, unfocused, acts shallow