Chapter Text

; O N E ; lady luck doesn't like disbelievers .

( i dream of you in fractured ways ,       
                                 in hollow nights   
    and haunted days . )                                   

Shane Hollander was Lady Luck’s favorite son.

And his own parents’, of course, but that was rather a given because he was Yuna and David’s only son.

It was something his mother liked to say with certainty, as if she’d struck a bargain with something unseen and stubborn and had every intention of holding it to its word. She didn’t say it like a joke. Not like the others did, when his name went uncalled year after year, and the neighbors started to notice. She said it like a fact or maybe like protection. Like if she believed it hard enough, the world would have no choice but to agree.

And for eighteen years, it had.

It wasn’t unnatural to go through the Reaping without being called out. Many did. . . but they weren’t said to be as an extraordinary opportunity as Shane, as the Capitol generously mentioned everytime they sent a representative to converse with his mother. Whatever that meant.

There were too many instances to count, really — small things, mostly. A net that should’ve snapped, but didn’t. A storm that rolled in late just the one day he wanted to walk by the coast for some fresh air. A slip of a foot on wet dock wood that somehow found balance again before it tipped him over completely.

Nothing worth telling but just enough, over and over again, that it started to feel like a pattern.

Lady Luck had her hand at his back, steadying him just before the fall.

When he was six, he slipped through a gap in a fence that wasn’t meant to be there — or maybe it was, just for him — and he kept going long past the point anyone would call it wandering, long past the stretch of land that should have turned him back, long past the quiet, watchful nothing between districts where the ground shifted wrong beneath his feet and the air felt like it was waiting for him to make a mistake.

It had been Reaping Day.

He knows that now, the way you learn to place memories after the fact by fitting them into a shape that makes sense. Everyone would have been gathered, eyes turned to the square, names and fear and relief pulling attention tight in one place, leaving everything else — him included — to slip loose at the edges.

No one saw him leave.

No one saw him go.

And whatever lay between District 4 and the rest of the world let him pass as if he belonged there, as if he had always known the way. He remembers the ground in pieces — patches he stepped around without thinking, dips he avoided with an instinct too accurate to be just chance, the absence of the sharp snap that should have followed a wrong step. He remembers the fences changing as he walked, growing taller, straighter, the metal less rusted like it had been built to keep something in just as much as it kept everything else out.

He didn’t know the name of the District then as much as he did today. Only that it felt different.

For starters, there wasn’t the stale fishy scent that followed his own everywhere. 

He wondered, later, why no one saw him, why no one noticed the small boy slipping through a broken fence and into a space no one his age was meant to cross, why there were no soldiers where there should have been, no sharp calls or hands dragging him back by the collar.

Luck, his mother would say later, if she ever knew. ( If. ) Luck had turned every gaze away. Luck had carried him forward, small and quiet and unremarkable, all the way to the edge of something he was never meant to reach and blurred him into the background of a day already too full of things that mattered more.

And there—

There had been a boy.

Not right against the fence, but close enough that Shane saw him before anything else. Crouched low in the dirt, back half-turned, fingers moving carefully through a cluster of flowers that didn’t look like much from where Shane stood. Plucking them, one by one.

He remembers the boy more clearly than he remembers the place.

Curly, light hair that caught the sun in a way that made it look almost too bright to be real. A small mole on his cheek, smack in the middle. Skin that didn’t look like it belonged to the same dust and salt Shane knew.

And the shorts.

Bright yellow.

So bright it almost hurt to look at, like a piece of summer that had nothing to do with nets and water and the dull, worn colors of District 4. Shane remembers staring at them, more than anything else at first, because he didn’t have words for why they felt important — only that they were different, and he liked them.

He was crouched low to the ground, back turned at first, wearing a pair of bright yellow shorts so vivid they didn’t seem to belong to the same world Shane had come from.

There wasn’t much color in District 4.

Shane liked them immediately.

He tries, sometimes, to remember what color the flowers were, but he never can. It’s always the same in his mind: the yellow of the shorts swallowing everything else whole, burning brighter than the flowers, brighter than the scene itself, until the rest fades into something softer and less certain.

He didn’t say anything. He was afraid to speak — not in the way he’d been taught to be afraid of rules or punishment, but thinking that making a sound might break something delicate, something that had carried him this far without asking for anything in return.

Shane didn’t move either; he was still, fingers curled tight by his sides, breath caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, as if the moment might shatter if he made a sound too big for it.

So he stayed still.

And then the boy looked up.

There was no hesitation, no surprise sharp enough to make him pull away. He simply lifted his head, eyes finding Shane’s as if he’d known he was there all along, as if the distance between them — and the fence, and the districts, and everything Shane had crossed to get here — didn’t matter nearly as much as it should have.

For a second, they only stared at each other, just two children on opposite sides of something they didn’t fully understand.

The boy said something then.

Shane doesn’t remember the words. It wasn’t a language he knew, not one he’d ever heard before, the syllables gritty and unfamiliar, shaped differently in the mouth. But the boy held up the flowers as he spoke, tilting them slightly, like an offering.

The hand at Shane’s back — the one Lady Luck steadied him with — gave him a small, insistent nudge forward and he moved.

Careful at first, slow because he was expecting something to stop him halfway ( nothing did ). He stepped closer to the fence, then closer still, until the wire was right in front of him again, until he could see the flowers properly — though later, he would lose even that, the details slipping through his memory until only the brightness of the boy’s shorts remained.

Shane crouched.

And even with the fence between them, it didn’t feel like a barrier anymore. They were close enough now that Shane could see the way the boy held the flowers, careful not to crush them, adjusting them so Shane could see them better.

The boy said something again. Then more. A quick spill of words this time, his voice lifting and dipping in a way that felt like excitement even if Shane couldn’t understand a single part of it. His hands moved as he spoke, the flowers shifting between his fingers, his head tilting just slightly like he was trying to make sense of Shane the same way Shane was trying to make sense of him.

Shane stayed quiet, listening anyway, and caught a word: mama.

He blinked, something in him catching on it immediately, lighting up in recognition before he could think about it. “Mama,” he echoed, soft but certain, the word familiar in his mouth in a way nothing else in the boy’s language was.

The reaction was instant.

The boy’s face brightened — really brightened as if something had clicked into place, like they’d found a piece of common ground neither of them had been sure existed a second ago. He nodded quickly, almost eagerly, repeating something back at Shane that sounded like agreement.

Children were like that.

They noticed things adults would pass as stupid. They forgot that nothing had rules when you were a kid, and you could just be friends with someone because their eyes were your favorite color.

The boy shifted closer to the fence, lowering one hand toward the gap near the bottom where the ground dipped just slightly. He plucked one of the flowers from the small bunch he’d gathered and held it out, pushing it carefully through the space between the wires.

He said something again as he did it. Slowly, enunciating it.

Sveeto? Shane probably misheard it too, reaching forward to take it.

The stem was thinner than he expected, softer, bending slightly under his fingers without breaking. Up close, the petals blurred into something he couldn’t quite fix in his mind, even then — only that they were pretty, that they looked different from anything he’d seen before. “You mean. . . flower?” Shane tried, glancing up, holding it slightly between them like the boy had done before.

The boy lit up again, nodding. “Fl-av-vuh.”

“Flower,” he repeated, a little more certain this time.

The boy echoed something back — his word for it, probably — and for a moment, it felt like they were building something fragile and strange between them, piece by piece, without ever quite understanding how. Shane shifted, the flower still in his hand, and then — because it felt like the next thing he was supposed to do, because it felt right like everything else had — “I’m Shane,” he said.

The boy blinked, probably not understanding.

So Shane tried again. He pointed to himself, a little awkwardly, tapping his chest. “Shane.”

Then the boy nodded.

Slow at first, like he was testing it, and then with more certainty, repeating it back in his own voice, the name shaped just a little differently on his tongue. “Shane.”

He said it again like he liked it. Or maybe just liked getting it right. Shane didn’t know and he had no way of asking despite his curiosity.

He opened his mouth — ready to ask, maybe, or to gesture back, to learn the boy’s name in return, to keep going now that they’d figured out how—

A voice cut through the air, breaking their little childish bubble of newfound kinship.

“Ilyusha!”

It snapped the moment clean in half.

The boy’s head turned immediately, attention pulled away in an instant, something in his posture shifting as he looked back over his shoulder. There were more words after that but Shane didn’t catch them, not really. Just the sound, the shape of them, the way they didn’t belong to him.

None of this belonged to him.

Not the boy, not the flower he was handed, not the supposed freedom his shoes walked him to.

Shane remembers how he got to his feet, shame burning hot down his back just as heavy as the afternoon sunlight, and let the memory ( was it one, though? ) dissolve. The flowers faded first, then the exact sound of the boy’s voice. The way the sunlight had fallen, the way the moment had felt stretched and endless and suspended just for them.

He splashed water over his face harder than he needed to, dragging himself back into the present with the sharp chill of it. It ran down his cheeks, gathered at his jaw, dripped off in uneven lines onto the basin below.

The dream didn’t quite let go when he woke up, staying somewhere just under his skin with a buzzy feeling and waiting for him to notice it again.

Shane braced his hands against the edge of the sink, staring at his reflection.

“Just a dream,” he muttered. It had to be. It never held together properly when he looked at it too closely. A six-year-old crossing district lines, avoiding soldiers, walking through traps without so much as a scratch— it was absolutely ridiculous. This wasn’t a movie.

He exhaled slowly, pushing himself upright. He was eighteen, going on nineteen by the time May rolled around. Old enough to know better than to linger on things that didn’t make sense.

And it kept coming back anyway.

Once a month, sometimes twice if he let his thoughts wander too long without reining them in. Always the same shape, always the same ending, always that warm and strange feeling that kept the good just a little out of reach.

He didn’t know why.

It wasn’t loneliness. He had people. Friends, who he'll be able to name in just a second — he’d grown up with them, same docks on long days and the very same stupid jokes that hadn’t changed much since they were kids.

He wasn’t alone.

( He told himself that often enough that it had to be true. )

So it wasn’t that.

Outside, the morning had already settled into something too bright for the day it was. Reaping Day always felt like that. The world had been scrubbed clean and laid out neatly, as if that might make up for what it asked of them later. The sky stretched wide and empty overhead, not a cloud in sight, the kind of blue that usually meant a good day for the water.

Not for this.

Shane stepped out, falling into the path without much thought, his feet knowing the way even when his mind didn’t feel fully there yet.

Last one.

The thought came easier than it should have. One more Reaping, and that was it. Done. Over. His names put into the bowl for the last time, his chances stretched thin and then gone completely.

After this— he’d have to think about what came next. Work, properly. Not just helping where he was needed, not just drifting between things because he could. He’d ask around at the docks, maybe take on a full place with one of the boats that went out before dawn and came back heavy with the day’s catch.

There was something about that — about the idea of earning a place in something that didn’t already have space made for him. He didn’t want to sit idle. Didn’t want the quiet, careful respect people gave him sometimes, the kind that came with knowing who his mother was and choosing not to say it out loud. Didn’t want doors that opened a little easier, conversations that softened just a little too quickly like he was too sensitive and might break under anything harsher.

He wanted to work for it.

To come back at the end of the day with his hands aching and his clothes smelling stale and something earned, something his. Not borrowed or inherited or something that came from a story he hadn’t lived through himself.

Because that was the thing about it.

His mother’s life — before him, before this — had never felt like something that belonged to him.

The docks had always felt like home more than the four walls of his own little house. Not just because of the place itself, though that helped — the endless stretch of water, the smell of salt and rope and fish that settled into your skin until it felt wrong to be without it — but because of the work. 

Or the pattern, to be more specific, because Shane liked patterns. The way every task, no matter how small, fit into something larger. You did your part, you earned your place. And no one handed it to you just because of who you were. It was the rule.

Shane had grown up with that. Watching, learning, stepping in where he could until helping turned into doing, until doing started to feel like something he could rely on. It wasn’t even particularly rewarding most days but it was honest work set out for him with an instruction manual that he could follow.

Yuna Hollander had once just been Yuna.

There had been a time when her name carried weight in a different way. It was once spoken a little louder, held a little longer in people’s mouths, meaning something more than the woman who lived two houses down and mended nets in the afternoons and scolded her son for tracking sand into the kitchen.

She had shed that version of herself deliberately until all that remained — at least on the surface and at home for her family — was the woman Shane had always known. The one who woke him before sunrise and put work in his hands before he was old enough to complain about it. The one who didn’t believe in idle time, who filled empty hours with something useful that kept Shane’s body moving even when his thoughts wanted to wander somewhere softer.

“Hands busy,” she used to say, pressing rope or net or some half-finished repair into his grip. “Mind follows.”

He hadn’t always liked it.

Not when he was younger because his palms blistered too easily and his patience ran thinner than the threads he kept tangling. Especially when he came back sore and tired and still got told to do more, to try again, to stop fussing over small hurts like they mattered.

“You’re too soft,” she’d say, not unkindly, but not gently either. “The world won’t bend for that.”

And maybe he was.

He’d taken after David in that way — felt things too quickly, too wholly, emotions catching under his ribs before he had the sense to push them down. As a child, it had shown in tears that came easy, in disappointment that lingered longer than it should have, in the hurt of things that others brushed off without thinking.

It seemed so easy on them and the burden of a mountain on Shane’s little shoulders.

Yuna was a Mentor, too, albeit not every year. District 4 had four living victors, and the responsibility rotated between them, passed along like something no one really wanted but couldn’t refuse. 

A duty Yuna took her turn without complaint. A duty she did so well that one of her tributes came home each year she left. When she returned from the Capitol, there was always someone with her. A boy. A girl. Different faces, different names, all carrying the same look in their eyes — something hollowed out and sharpened at the same time because the world had taken something from them and given something less back in its place. They stayed in Victor’s Village with their families, a home given to them as a little reward for meeting death and returning with deeper scars than life could forgive, but sometimes they came down to the docks hesitantly, uncertain where they were supposed to stand now that everything had changed.

Shane had seen it enough times to recognize it without needing to think about it — the way their eyes moved, the way they held themselves like they were waiting for something to happen even when nothing did, like stillness itself had become suspicious. And his mother would stand among them the same way she always did.

Maybe that was why the cameras lingered on him longer than they should have. Every year, without fail, when the broadcast swept over District 4 and its neatly arranged lines of bodies waiting to be sorted and counted, there was always that moment when it slowed just enough on his face to feel intentional.

Long enough that it started to feel less like a coincidence and more like expectation.

Because the Capitol loved his mother. Not in the way they loved their polished victors, the ones who played along and stayed where they were placed, but in that fascinated, almost indulgent way reserved for something they couldn’t quite control but still wanted to claim. They called her extraordinary. Said it often enough that it lost shape, turned into something performative and hollow, but the meaning underneath it never quite disappeared.

She won. She returned. She had mentored exceptionally well, year after year, bringing something back from the arena that the Capitol could point to and say look, look what happens when things are done properly. And they rewarded her for it, in the way they knew how. Baskets arrived from the Capitol, large enough to gather a crowd, filled with things no one in the district would ever have reason to buy or taste otherwise. Bright, excessive, unnecessary. Left out where everyone could see them, where the message could settle in quietly: this is what loyalty earns you. This is what happens when you play your part well. Even if she didn’t live in Victor’s Village, even if she had stepped away from the life they had built for her, they still reached for her, still held her up as if she belonged to them.

And Shane—

Shane, by extension, had always belonged just a little bit to them, too.

He’d heard it over the years. In the broadcasts, in the voices that carried through the district on Reaping Day. The commentators liked him. That much had become clear. The way they spoke about him when his name didn’t get called — again, again, again — like it was some kind of ongoing disappointment. A missed opportunity. They said things like remarkable odds, like fascinating, like oh, what a shame. ( Was it shameful to be him? ) They wondered, sometimes aloud, what kind of tribute he might make, what kind of story he might tell if he were just given the chance.

It was ridiculous. Entirely ridiculous. Shane had stood there year after year, just another body in a line, just another name in a bowl and, somewhere far away, people who had never met him were deciding that he should have been something else. Something worth watching. Something worth losing, maybe.

He didn’t know what to do with that, didn’t know where to put it, so he did what he always did with things that didn’t fit — he ignored it. Let it slide past him like it didn’t matter, like it wasn’t real, like it didn’t brush up against him every time the cameras lingered just a second too long.

Because what was he supposed to do with the idea that people wanted him to be chosen? That somewhere, in a place he would never see unless everything went wrong, there were people disappointed every year that he kept slipping through untouched? It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t. He wasn’t extraordinary. He wasn’t anything like that. He was just— Shane. Just a boy from the docks who knew how to keep his head down, who knew how to stand still and wait for his name to pass him by.

And yet the Capitol watched him like he was something unfinished, something delayed rather than avoided, like it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out and he finally became what they had been expecting all along.

Just one last time and he’d dash water on their disgusting hopes.

One last time and he’d leave the town square with his shoulders less tight and breathing less strained. He’d get the job, he’d. . . do whatever he wanted to. 

He’d have. . . a family, maybe.

The idea sat strange in his chest, not unwelcome, just. . . distant and untouched like one of his dad’s old books at a very high corner shelf. Shane supposed it was something he knew he should want more clearly than he actually did.

Hayden had figured it out already. Two years older, and somehow already stepping into a life that felt miles ahead of Shane’s — girlfriend turned almost-wife, a baby on the way, and family plans that stretched further than the next week or the next season.

Shane was happy for him.

Truly. There was no edge to it, no bitterness tucked beneath the thought the way people sometimes expected there to be. Hayden had always been a step ahead in that way. He reached for things, sure enough, without overthinking whether they fit in his hands first. He just trusted that they would.

Shane wasn’t like that.

He lingered. Turned things over. Let them sit in his mind long enough to gather weight before deciding what to do with them. Maybe that was why the idea of it — of finding a girl, starting a family, of something that stayed — felt the way it did.

Maybe it was just not settled yet. It was. . . like one of his dad’s old coats he hadn’t quite grown into, hanging a little loose at the shoulders, waiting for time to fill it out.

But he had time.

Time stretched ahead of him now, wider than it ever had before, not cut short by the sharp edge of the Reaping waiting at the end of every year. He could think about it later. Let it come to him the way everything else did, slowly, without forcing it into shape before it was ready.

The path opened wider as he moved further down, the quiet of the early walk giving way to something more crowded. Shane adjusted his pace without thinking, slipping into the flow of it, just another body moving toward the same end point, just another name waiting to not be chosen.

He exhaled, slow and steady, letting his shoulders loosen just slightly.

“Oi.”

Shane glanced up as Hayden fell into step beside him like it was the most natural thing in the world — which it was. It always has been. Shane and Hayden. Hayden and Shane.

It had a rhythm to it, something ingrained so deeply that Shane didn’t think about it until moments like this, when he caught himself adjusting without meaning to, lengthening his stride just a fraction to match Hayden’s, letting his shoulders fall into the same loose line, his breathing evening out to the same steady pace like his body recognized something his mind didn’t bother to articulate.

Maybe he was the one aligning himself, hyperaware in ways he wouldn’t admit, finding that balance by mirroring what was already there. Or maybe it just happened. Maybe it had always just happened, the way tides pulled in and out without asking, the way two things that had grown alongside each other eventually stopped needing to try to fit. Either way, it worked. It always had. There was something grounding about it, how it smoothed out the sensation of everything else pressing in around him. Standing next to Hayden made the world settle into something more manageable without either of them having to do anything at all.

He couldn’t remember a time before it; Hayden had always been there, threaded through his memories in the same way, as much a part of them as the docks or the salt in the air or the creak of wood underfoot. His first friend, properly. Not just someone he happened to be around, not just another boy in the same place at the same time, but someone who had chosen him back.

Shane remembered it the way one remembers things that shape them before they understand why they do, in flashes and feelings more than clear images, a day that had started like any other. A game, too many bodies moving too fast, the kind of thing where someone always ended up on the ground whether it was meant to happen or not.

Shane had been smaller then and an easy target without anyone needing to say it out loud. It hadn’t even been particularly cruel. Just a shove. Just a boy deciding, in a moment of careless energy, that Shane would be the one to take it. He remembered the jolt of it, the way the ground came up too fast, the sting that wasn’t quite pain but wasn’t nothing either, the sudden tightness in his throat that came before he could stop it, before he could decide not to let it show.

And then Hayden had been there.

Shane didn’t remember what he said, if he said anything at all, just the shift that followed, the way the space changed, the way the others pulled back just enough for the moment to lose its edge. It hadn’t been about winning or proving anything, not really. Shane had stayed on the ground for a second longer than he needed to, more out of shock than anything else, and when he looked up, Hayden was already there, hand outstretched like it was the simplest thing in the world. 

That was the thing about Hayden — he made things feel certain in a way that didn’t leave room for doubt, not by forcing it, not by insisting, but just by being consistent enough that Shane learned to trust it without realizing he had.

It had been like that ever since, built not on a thousand small moments that stacked up over time until they became something solid. Walking the same paths, falling into step like this without thinking, sharing space in a way that didn’t feel crowded or empty, just right. Conversations that drifted easily, silences that didn’t need filling. Hayden never hovered, never made Shane feel like he needed protecting, and maybe that was why it worked. He didn’t step in unless it mattered, didn’t say anything unless it needed saying, but when he did, it landed well.

Shane had learned, somewhere along the way, how to hold himself a little differently because of it, how to stay on his feet, how to let things roll off instead of sinking in too deep. Some of that came from his mother, from her insistence that he not let the world knock him over so easily. But this — Hayd — had shaped him just as much, if not more. He had given Shane something to steady himself against without ever feeling like he was leaning.

Even now, with everything else pressing in around them, with the weight of the day sitting just beneath the surface of everything, it didn’t feel any different. Hayden was still just Hayden, stepping into place like he always did, like nothing had changed and nothing needed to. He didn’t have to look at him to know he was there, didn’t have to ask or explain anything. It was just understood, the same way it had always been.

Brothers, maybe, if you needed a word for it. Not by blood, not by anything official or declared, but in the way that mattered more, in the way that came from years of choosing the same direction, the same pace, the same place beside each other without ever needing to say it out loud. It was hard to explain, if anyone asked. Shane wouldn’t know where to start. But it was easy to understand, standing here, walking like this, the two of them moving forward in perfect sync like they always had, like they always would, at least for now, at least for one last walk to the square where everything else waited.

“Thought you’d already left,” Hayden said, nudging his shoulder lightly. “You’re late.”

“I’m never late,” Shane shot back. “You’re just early for once in your life.”

“Huh. Early seeds of fatherhood.” He shrugged. “Jackie says if it’s a boy, we’re naming him after you.”

Shane let out a soft scoff, glancing over. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lot to put on a kid.”

“Better than what I’d come up with on my own.”

“That I’ll agree on.”

Hayden huffed. “Alright, then. If it’s a girl?”

Shane tilted his head, dragging the moment out just enough to make it feel like he was actually considering it, like there was weight to the decision and not just the shape of a joke waiting to land. “I don’t know,” he said finally, a hint of a grin slipping in despite himself. “Jane?”

Hayden stared at him.

“Jane,” he repeated, deadpan, but there was something softer tucked underneath it, something familiar and fond that never quite left the edges of anything he said to Shane. “You’re useless.”

“Hey, I gave you something.”

“Yeah. Something terrible.”

“You asked.”

Hayden snorted, shaking his head again, but the tension in both their shoulders had eased, if only a little, the conversation settling into that familiar space between them where things didn’t feel quite so heavy for a moment. It lingered there, the ease of it, the normalcy, stretched thin but still holding. They were both quietly pretending this was just another walk, just another morning, just another conversation that would carry on past this point without interruption.

The square loomed closer, the crowd thickening, bodies shifting into place with that same careful awareness everyone carried on Reaping Day. Peacekeepers stationed at the edges, their presence as constant as the fences, as the rules no one questioned out loud.

Hayden slowed first and Shane matched him without thinking.

“This is you,” Hayden said, nodding slightly toward the section where the boys were meant to register.

Shane followed his gaze, then nodded once.

For a second, neither of them moved. Then Hayden reached out, clapping a hand against Shane’s back. “I’ll be over there,” he added, tilting his head toward the edge of the square. “With Jackie. Your dad, too. We’ll be in the corner.”

He shifted his weight, glancing toward the registration tables instead, where names would be checked, slips counted, identities confirmed like any of it needed confirming at all. Eighteen. Last year. The most names he’d ever had in that bowl, stacked against him in ways that were purely numbers, purely logic, purely something that didn’t leave room for luck if you looked at it too closely.

Shane nodded again, a little more firmly this time, anchoring the information somewhere he wouldn’t lose it. “Alright.”

Hayden stepped forward first at that, pulling Shane into a quick, tight hug. “Hey,” he murmured. “Don’t worry about it.” Shane huffed softly against him, the sound caught somewhere between agreement and dismissal. “You’ve got Lady Luck on your side,” Hayden added, parrotting the entire District's words.

Shane pulled back just enough to look at him. “Yeah,” he muttered, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t know about that.”

Hayden raised an eyebrow.

“I mean it,” Shane added, glancing away for a second, toward the crowd, toward anything that wasn’t the weight of that phrase sitting between them. “I don’t believe in all that. Luck doesn’t just— pick people. That’s not how it works. It’s numbers, right? Odds. And mine are. . .” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely, like the rest didn’t need saying. Like it was obvious. 

Very fucking low.

Yuna believed in Lady Luck. Shane grew out of it.

Maybe when he was younger, when his mother said it like a promise instead of a prayer, when her voice had that sureness to it that made the world feel like something that could be negotiated with if you just believed hard enough. Back then, it had been easy to accept and settle it somewhere inside him without question, to take every near-miss and every narrow escape as proof of something watching over him.

But now it was easier to believe in coincidence than blind faith in some sort of. . . diety named after a virtue of chance. In small chances lining up just right and a good probability. It was easier to call it timing, to call it luck in the simplest sense of the word without attaching anything to it, without turning it into something that could be taken away.

Because that was the other side of belief, wasn’t it? If something could choose you, it could un-choose you just as easily.

And Shane had lived long enough, had stood in that square enough times, to understand that nothing in this world held that kind of loyalty. So he let the idea sit where it belonged now — somewhere distant and softer like his dreams, something tied to childhood and his mother’s voice and the version of himself that had needed it.

Just a story, in the end. Just a way of making sense of things that didn’t need meaning if you were willing to accept them as they were.

Hayden watched him for a second, his expression something that didn’t quite argue but didn’t agree either. “Yeah,” he said finally, slower this time, like he was meeting Shane somewhere in the middle. “Maybe.”

Shane grinned.

He reached into his pocket then, fingers brushing over something small, something he’d nearly forgotten was there until now. It caught slightly on the fabric as he pulled it out, a little rough around the edges where it hadn’t been shaped perfectly because the tools hadn’t quite obeyed him the way they were supposed to.

He held it out.

It was a small thing. A pin, the metal slightly uneven where he’d worked it by hand, not clean or polished like anything you’d get from someone who actually knew what they were doing. He was good with his hands but not so good with tools. Fishing, sure. Nets, ropes, the things that made sense in his grip.

A small loon etched into it, its shape just distinct enough to recognize if you looked at it properly. As kids, the boys loved chasing those birds around the lake.

Shane shifted his weight slightly, suddenly more aware of it than he had been a second ago. “For the baby,” he added, like he needed to explain it, like the reason wasn’t obvious enough on its own. “In case. . . y’know. I don’t know.” In case my name gets called and I don’t come back. In case I don’t see you again. In case I die, I don’t want to regret a thing. So many things to say, but he didn’t want to. He thought he didn’t have to either because Hayden was most often on the receiving end of his brain waves, to put it easily.

He had a strange look in his eyes. Was it sad? Shane had only seen Hayden cry once during his entire life, and that was when they found out Jackie was pregnant. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay, man.”

Neither of them stated anything else about it.

“It’s not over,” he added then, like he was correcting something that hadn’t been said out loud. “We’ll be out of there in a few hours, and then I’ll buy you pound cake.”

Shane made a face without thinking about it.

Hayden caught it immediately, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You hate pound cake.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“You absolutely hate it.”

“It’s a little impractical.” Shane shrugged, already stepping back, already letting the distance settle in where it needed to. “But if you’re buying, I’ll eat it anyway. Save my money.”

Hayden snorted. “Liar.”

“Yeah, well.”

Shane lifted a shoulder, something almost like a smile pulling at the edge of his mouth, even as the line behind him started to press forward, even as the moment began to close.

He didn’t drag it out. Just a quick, quiet “bye,” tossed over his shoulder like it was any other day, like he’d see him again in an hour or two. Nothing about this was different. It wasn’t supposed to be, and it wouldn’t be.

Shane Hollander was going to stay home.

The line pressed from behind, guiding him without asking, and Shane let it, falling into place, letting his mind go quiet like he crossed that invisible line between before and during.  Everything after that blurred the way it always did, the motions too familiar to require thought, hands guiding him where they needed him, names checked and confirmed like there had ever been any doubt, slips counted, recorded, made official. He moved through it all on instinct, on memory, his body doing what it had done every year before while his mind stayed somewhere just out of reach, unfocused, detached, like it didn’t belong to this part of the day at all.

And then, suddenly, it was over, and he was standing still again, placed at the end of a long row of eighteen-year-old boys, all of them waiting in the same stiff silence that settled over the square like something living.

Shane let his gaze drift just enough to break from the rigid line ahead, just enough to find something familiar at the edge of the crowd, and there— His dad. David was standing where Hayden said he would be. His eyes found Shane immediately, like they always did and he gave a small nod, something simple and certain that didn’t try to be reassurance, didn’t try to soften what couldn’t be softened. Just acknowledgment.

Shane returned it without thinking. His dad was a man of few words. He said more with his eyes than his tongue.

It’s okay, the look said. We’re here.

Yeah. Okay. Shane turned forward again.

Up ahead, the stage was already set, raised just enough to separate them, to turn everything into something watchable, something meant to be seen from every angle. Yuna stood near the front, Shane noticed, and dragged her gaze over every child in the crowd. When her gaze reached Shane's, she gave him a nod that mirrored his dad.

They'd already talked about it the night before.

Movement drew the rest of the attention without effort, the subtle shift of Peacekeepers, the quiet redirection of every gaze as the representatives from the Capitol made their entrance the way they always did.

Miles. District 4’s Capitol escort. He stepped forward with confidence, dark skin catching the light and his bright eyes alive and out of place here; he belonged to something louder, something more vivid than the muted stillness of this district. Stripes painted across his face in bold lines, his hair dyed in shades that mimicked a tiger’s coat, gold and black gleaming under the sun with every small movement. His clothes followed the same pattern — they were layered, exaggerated, impossible to ignore.

That was how they all were, the Capitol. Too much in every way that mattered as if subtlety had never existed in their world. Miles smiled, wide and polished, something perfected rather than genuine and it settled over the square like a performance already in motion.

Beside him, the mayor stepped up to the podium, smaller somehow despite standing higher. The town clock struck two, and right on cue, he began to read.

The same story. Every year. The words came out, practiced to the point of losing any edge they might have once held, polished into something meant to sound like history instead of warning. The country. The rebellion. The consequences. The eradication of the rebel district 13.

A reminder dressed carefully enough that it could pass as tradition, as necessity, as something to be respected rather than feared. Shane tuned it out almost immediately, letting it wash over him. There was nothing in it he hadn’t heard before, nothing that needed his attention to land where it was meant to. It was all the same — death threats dressed up in something prettier, something easier for the Capitol to watch from a distance without having to sit in what it really was. He stood still, eyes forward, letting the sound fill the space around him without meaning anything at all, holding onto the only thought that mattered now, steady and certain as it settled in his chest. Just one more time. Then it would be over.

The shift was immediate, the air tightening like a hand around his neck as the mayor stepped back and Miles stepped forward. The screens flickered to life above them, casting that pale, watchful glow over the square, and Shane felt it settle over his skin like something tangible, like being seen wasn’t just a possibility but a certainty. It was time.

Ladies first.

Shane told himself he didn’t care, that it wasn’t his turn yet, that there was still distance between him and anything that mattered — but his body didn’t quite listen. There was a hum under his skin now and it didn’t sit still,no matter how hard he tried to hold it down. His thoughts didn’t move in straight lines anymore, didn’t settle long enough to make sense before the next one pushed in, overlapping, repeating, circling back on themselves in ways that made everything louder than it actually was.

He fixed his gaze forward, on nothing in particular, on the space just above the stage where it was easiest to look without looking at anything real, and focused on holding still. Shoulders even. Hands steady. Face neutral. He knew how to do this. He’d practiced it every year without calling it practice, learned how to make himself smaller in the ways that mattered, less noticeable even when the cameras insisted on finding him anyway.

Miles reached into the bowl.

Shane’s breath caught stupidly.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t him.

A slip of paper unfolded between manicured fingers, the moment being drawn out for effect, for anticipation, for the people watching who needed something to hold onto.

“Jessica Quinn—”

The name landed, and the sound that followed was prompt. A cry that broke through the quiet too quickly to be stopped. Shane’s head moved before he told it to, eyes flicking just slightly, just enough to catch her in his peripheral.

Fuck.

He knew her.

It hit him in pieces, memory slotting into place too fast to ignore — her laugh, bright in a way that had felt charming once and grating later, the way she carried herself like she knew exactly how she was being seen, like she leaned into it.

They’d dated, if you could call it that. A few weeks. Not long enough to matter now, not long enough to leave anything behind except the vague outline of something that hadn’t worked. No hard feelings, really. Shane was fine. Whatever had been there hadn’t been worth keeping. Still—

Her mother was crying.

Shane could hear it even over everything else, even as Jessica’s name echoed, even as movement began again, Peacekeepers stepping in, guiding her forward. 

Jessica moved like she wasn’t entirely in her own body, steps uneven, shoulders pulled tight, like she was bracing for something she couldn’t see yet. She looked smaller somehow, stripped of whatever sharpness Shane remembered, whatever edge had made her feel so certain of herself before. Just a girl now. Just—

a tribute.

Shane swallowed.

He hoped she’d make it home.

The thought came automatically, even as something else followed close behind, less generous, tangled up with the memory of how things had ended, the way she’d spoken to him in those last days like he was something to dismiss rather than something to keep. He didn’t like her anymore. But that didn’t matter here.

He hoped she’d make it home anyway.

“And now—” Miles’ voice cut clean through the noise, chirpy like none of this weighed anything at all. “For the boys.”

The world narrowed. Shane felt it happen in real time, the edges of everything pulling inward, sound sharpening and dulling all at once, like too much and not enough at the same time.

His heartbeat was louder now, pounding in his ears like the drums of doom. It wasn’t going to be him. The thought repeated, over and over. It wasn’t going to be him. It never had been. It wouldn’t start now.

He fixed his expression, forcing it into something neutral and blank enough to give nothing away. He knew they were watching. The cameras always found him like they were waiting for something to slip through, something they could take and turn into meaning. He could feel it now, even without looking, the weight of that attention, the way his face was probably already up there on the screens, magnified, examined, picked apart by people who didn’t know him but thought they might. 

He didn’t give them anything.

He wouldn’t.

It was fine.

He was fine.

He’d be out of here in minutes. He’d meet Hayden at the edge of the square, they’d walk back like they always did, like nothing had changed. Hayden would drag him to get that stupid pound cake he didn’t even like, and he’d pretend he did because it was easier than arguing. He had to stop by the library later, too — Mrs. Kelton had asked him to help sort through the old records, something about reorganizing shelves that hadn’t been touched in years. He could do that; he’d always wanted to restore an archive. He could lose himself in something quiet, something small, something that didn’t matter to anyone but him.

It wasn’t going to be him.

Miles reached into the bowl.

There was something about the way he moved this time ( or Shane imagined it, probably; he wasn’t always the best at reading people )  like he’d already decided how this moment was going to feel before it happened. A look, maybe.

“Oh,” Miles said, the word drawn out just enough to catch, to hook, to hold attention exactly where he wanted it. “This one—”

Shane’s thoughts stuttered.

Stopped.

“—the district is going to love.”

It wasn’t going to be him. . ?

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Shane Hollander.”

. . .

It—

was him.

Shane almost laughed.

It caught somewhere in his throat, something broken and breathless instead of real, but it was there all the same, flickering through him like something he couldn't quite control.

Because—

Oh, he remembered his words earlier, his train of thought, the quiet certainty he’d wrapped around himself like it was enough to keep anything sharp from getting through. It wasn’t going to be him. He’d said it so many times it had started to feel like fact instead of hope, like something already decided rather than something waiting to be proven wrong. The pound cake. The library. The docks. All of it lined up so neatly in his head, a future already stepping into place before he’d even earned it.

Fuck.

The word landed hard, louder in his mind than anything else in the square, louder than the murmurs starting to ripple through the crowd, than the way his own name still seemed to echo.

He ran out of luck.

The thought came almost hysterically when it hadn’t mattered just minutes ago.

Lady Luck really didn’t like disbelievers, did she?