Chapter Text
October 1, 62
Cooper stands on the Reaping stage with his hands clenched into fists, blood rushing through his veins like the raging ocean behind him, and he is angry.
Perhaps that was his first mistake.
Sam’s face is clear in the crowd, right where Cooper left him. The rain comes down in blinding sheets, too blurry to see specifics, but Cooper hopes he’s paler than abalone, hopes he’s struggling to breathe, hopes the staggering steps Frankie takes back into the crowd are worth the ones he took to leave it.
Someone brushes his arm and he jerks in surprise - he all but sees the Peacekeeper roll their eyes behind their mask. They gesture to the door of the justice building. This is real, and it hits him so hard he can barely breathe, a harpoon straight through his throat.
Thunder roars. The Peacekeeper won’t wait much longer. The whole of District 4 is staring at him.
Cooper raises his hands. The gesture is small, a harsh hook of his middle and index finger into his open left palm, but the crowd sees it - Sam sees it - and rustles in discomfort.
In District 4, your hands are your livelihood. You lose your hand, you lose your use. Be careful around those with a vendetta. Be more careful around those who hold fishhooks.
Bitterly satisfied, Cooper turns his back on them, and tries to reconcile the knowledge that he’ll never set eyes on the ocean again with the tempest behind his ribs.
He spends the hour with his family. They don’t ask about Frankie. They don’t bat an eye when Cooper snarls at the Peacekeeper not to let Sam in. They’re stunned from the suddenness of it all, he can tell; he’s quick to reassure them he knows what he’s doing, quick to crack a lazy smile and say he’ll be fine.
It’s his first lie. He wonders how long he’ll have to keep it up.
There are no tears in his eyes when he steps onto the train. He shakes the water out of his hair and notices through an unhealthy layer of disconnect that he can no longer hear the ocean.
He shoos away the escort, landing heavily on one of the benches. Rain pelts the window, streaming down the glass, making it impossible to make out anything but the sad, grey skyline of his town.
Four has never been pretty, nor has it been comfortable, but it was home. He had friends, a close-knit community, a family.
He’ll never have a home again, he thinks; maybe it’s more of a promise.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Cooper looks up to see WilburSoot, all six foot five of him, towering in the middle of the train car. He’s all yellow and ash, perfect seaboard accent that Cooper never had a chance of picking up jumping out like a blemish in the chrome train car. He looks taller in person. He looks angry.
Join the club, Cooper thinks. And of course he knows what he’s done. No matter what, he’ll never go back from this; it’s a mistake that wasn’t his to make, and he’ll pay for it with his life, however long it ends up being.
“Years of planning,” Wilbur continues, moving forward. Cooper’s hackles raise with each heavy step. “Years go into this - there was someone waiting.”
Cooper knows this, too. “Wouldn’t have mattered,” he mutters.
“You wanted to volunteer?” Wilbur says with a scoff, and he’s about as wrong as anyone possibly could be. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Cooper’s no arrogant Career wannabe. The implication makes his cheeks start to burn. He imagines that the disdain in his sneer is bright enough to burn the makeup off Wilbur’s face and opens his mouth.
Wilbur’s expression shifts like quicksand, eyes narrowed on his face. He takes a breath that lasts just a little too long, something Cooper can’t figure out flashing behind his eyes.
“You knew her?” Wilbur asks. “Francesca?”
Cooper snaps his jaw shut. Swallows. Turns back to staring out the window. “Yeah.”
“I see.” Cooper can tell by his tone he’s made another assumption.
“It wasn’t me,” he growls to dispel any ideas Wilbur may be getting. “I’m not the one who was stupid enough to forget about the Career program.”
“Yet you’re the one sitting in my train car,” Wilbur says.
My train car. Cooper can’t explain why this is the line that sets him off.
“Solstices,” he snaps, and jerks to stare Wilbur in the eyes. “You’re even worse than you look on T.V.”
The words have barely left his mouth, but he sees their effect happen in slow motion. Wilbur’s back straightens, sending him impossibly taller. His smile drops. Cooper hadn’t realized just how much it was doing for his overall stage presence. Without it, he’s eerie, a smoky shadow cast on the floor.
“If this is going to work,” Wilbur says, “you’re going to forget about Francesca. You’re going to forget about whoever you flipped off - I saw that, by the way. You’re going to forget about home. You’re going to forget about everything except what I tell you on this train.”
Cooper just stares. Somewhere in the whirlwind of his mind, he hears the train blow its horn, feels the lurch as it begins the journey to the Capitol.
“Do you understand?” Wilbur asks.
Sam’s hand jerks into his side on its way to the sky. Cooper only needs to look at him once before he knows. And it takes only a millisecond for him to choose, and it was his choice, he knows, and his fingers clamp down on Sam’s wrist and well, he’s always been able to shout louder than Sam, anyway -
And whose fault was it, in the end? Cooper doesn’t know, not until he’s back on the stage in District 4 weeks later, and Sam’s face is clear in the crowd, and he sees everything there, nothing except guilt that belongs on Cooper’s shoulders -
And whose fault was it, in the end, that his days are spent shaking silently through interviews, that his giggle now tears out acidic in the back of his throat, that his smile stays frozen on his face for he knows what he’d look like without one -
“Do you understand?” Wilbur asks again.
Cooper may be on a train to the Capitol for nothing and nobody, but he is not going to lose.
So he sits up a little straighter and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he says with all the nonchalance he can muster. His voice doesn’t waver.
He’s going to forget about Sam, though the anger doesn’t dissipate. He’s going to forget about home, though the ache in his ribs stays. He’s going to listen to Wilbur, his only hope, though disdain creeps into his stomach with each passing minute.
“Then listen to me,” Wilbur says, looking straight into him as easily as he breathes. “First lesson: smile more.”
Cooper sits on a train to the Capitol with his hands clenched into fists, blood rushing through his veins like the raging ocean he’ll never see again, and he’s angry -
“Right,” he says, shoves his hands out of sight, and grins.