Chapter Text
Stiles' dad drinks to forget what went on in the Games. And Stiles sneaks below the radar. He collects the stories the that the people of District 12 have to tell inside volumes of pristine paper that his dad gets for him from somewhere in District 1. Stiles climbs under the wire fences lining the district and wanders around the woods collecting bullet casings and fossils. He trades down at the Hob for memories rather than food or alcohol.
If he can't live in a world without the Capitol and the Hunger Games, he'll fill his mind with the stories of people who lived before the rebellion. Though, that number is growing smaller every year. They were children during the rebellion, so their memories are as bloodstained as Stiles', but nonetheless there were no Games back then. Stiles thinks they were lucky. But he knows that he's lucky to be growing up in Victor's Village with his dad.
The cruel twist of the knife is that John killed for this place up on the hill. And if it weren't for that, Stiles would be heading down the mine next year instead of spending his days in the comfort that terror has bought them.
They each have their coping mechanisms.
It helps to focus on small things rather than the looming feeling of dread on the horizon, the announcement of whatever fresh hell the Capitol has planned for the Quarter Quell when it's revealed tonight to the districts. In the district, tensions are higher than usual. Parents hug their children to their sides and the kids themselves don't shriek with laughter nearly as often. Stiles watches the younger ones in school while they're out at recess and he's in class.
They play games like Kill the Career and Race to the Cornucopia. He recognizes it for what it is, in their own way they're training. They're taking in what they've seen on the screens of the Games and trying in their own way to put it to use. Today a little girl with red braids bursts out screaming in terror when she gets tagged out in the grubby yard next to the school. Her face scrunches up as she wails. The boy who tagged her runs off, wielding a stick over his head like a sword. A teacher runs up to the girl and wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her away from the other kids.
It must be her first year. Stiles thinks she might be the daughter of the man who sells milk and cheese in town. Her shoes aren't full of holes like some of the other kids playing. So her name won't be in more than once this year. She's practically home free. But Stiles still knows how that feeling of helplessness can wrap around your heart and squeeze with cold strength.
"Stiles." A stern voice breaks him out of his trance as the kids outside make neat lines and walk back inside. Stiles looks up and sees Harris standing at the front of the classroom, pointing at a large map of Panem with its districts outlined clearly. "Earth to Mr. Stilinski. Care to tell me what the chief exports of District 12 are?"
Stiles rolls his eyes, rattling off the answer from memory. What does District 12 contribute to the Capitol besides the two children it sacrifices each year? Coal, natural gas, graphite, and whatever else it can pillage from the depleted land below their feet. Besides the square mileage of the district and the fact that this area used to be home to something called the Appalachian Mountains no one really knows much else about this place they call home.
After all, it's easier to control people when they're kept ignorant.
Harris moves on and it's a good thing that Stiles learned long ago to censor himself in school and anywhere outside his home. He would have ended up in trouble with someone way more important than Harris a long time ago if he hadn't. For a while, when Stiles was a kid that seemed like something his dad genuinely feared. Especially after his mom died. Back then it just seemed like Stiles' thoughts poured out of his brain and out into the air like water from a bucket with a hole in it.
The bell rings and Stiles is the first one to rise from his chair and make for the door. The small number of kids in the classroom takes their time. Stiles tries not to think too hard about the fact that last year when he had been 16, the whole room had been filled with the other kids in his grade. Now nearly half the class has given up on the grungy school and taken up their pickaxes. In theory the Peacekeepers should be shepherding them back into class, but more workers in the mines isn't something that the Capitol is going to discourage.
Besides, it's not like learning the same things over and over about the rebellion is going to do anything to help them down there. They have families that need taking care of. The Capitol may be sending his dad more money than they could ever need, Stiles thinks he would trade it all back in a heartbeat if it meant that he didn't have to hear his dad calling out in his sleep to a wife who died six years ago and for the forty children his dad has sent off to the Games from District 12 over the years.
Stiles walks up the lane to the hill where Victor's Village keeps watch over the rest of the district. Two lanes run parallel to each other, lined with 6 identical white houses on each side facing each other. Only the first house on either side shows any signs of life. The sooty air filters out most of the sunlight, forcing the district to light their lamps before the sun has even begun to set. Warm golden light pours through the windows of Stiles' house where his father's office is at the front of the house.
He should go home and check in to make sure his dad doesn't need anything. But today's the kind of day that nothing he does will be enough to help. Today President Silver will announce his plans for the Quarter Quell. It'll mean that in two months his dad will have to leave for the Capitol. John will depart with two tributes off to their first and last time in the arena. He'll be forced to make the victor's circuit of Capitol parties and events.
Stiles is fully capable of taking care of himself these days. His dad will still probably bribe two Peacekeepers to look in on him every day. They'll make sure he goes to school and stays out of trouble.
The world seems to be shaking off the last of winter from its shoulders. There's hardly anymore snow crunching under his feet as he sets his bag down at the door and sets off towards the woods that border the hill. Because there are only four people who live up here, it goes relatively unnoticed by Peacekeepers.
There's a patch of loose wire near the bottom of the fence that's easy enough to pry up with a stick and then shimmy under. This whole ordeal would be a lot more difficult if the fence was electrified like it was supposed to be. But the electrical grid can hardly handle having all of the screens on when there's a mandated broadcast. And besides, people are too afraid of the bears and the mountain lions that occasionally make their way close to the district to chance a trip beyond the fence.
It's both easier and harder to keep everything tucked up safe and sound inside his head. Sometimes it spills out all on its own when he goes on walks through the woods. Stiles talks to the wind, pressing his back against a tree so ancient and big around that he wouldn't be able to touch his hands together if he wrapped his arms around it.
It was the place his mother used to take him when he was little. A clearing where flowers and herbs grew with vigor. He used to help her gather herbs and plants, sit at her knee later when she ground them up with her mortar and pestle. He doesn't have her talent as a healer, his mind wanders when it should be focused on a task as detail-oriented as mixing medicines. His work is passable at best, but Stiles doesn't think he would be capable of mixing anything more involved than a basic salve or tea.
Out here in the woods its sort of easy to forget that just a few miles away the mines will be letting out early so that the workers can be home for the broadcast. Great billowing plumes of smoke rise up from the large plant that processes it all, filling the air with toxins that have the back of Stiles' throat tickling when the wind doesn't blow enough.
A place this beautiful shouldn't exist so close to District 12. Stiles bends down and picks up a few purple flowers growing in a small clump at the bottom of a tree. Monkshood Stiles thinks, though his mother would be able to tell him the exact type it is if she were here.
"But she's not." Stiles mumbles to himself, staring down at the flowers in his hand. He starts walking back towards the house. When it gets nicer, he'll bring a book and spend the afternoon reading through the stories he's collected over the winter. Maybe soon his dad will start telling him more about what his life was like before Stiles was born, when he was just back from the Games.
There's a large tree standing in the very middle of Victor's Village. A very long time ago, someone began carving the initials of each tribute sent to the Games from District 12 into its tough bark. 150 people from District 12, and only 2 have ever come back. Stiles presses his hand briefly to the place at his eye line where his dad marked Becca and Jordan’s initials. The oldest letters are gnarled and hard to decipher in the thick bark of the tree..
It's nice that they should be part of something still so alive after all this time. They deserve that for having died in such a meaningless way. Stiles drops the flowers at the bottom of the tree and gives it a little pat before he makes his way to the house.
It's warm inside. There's a fire burning in the hearth of the living room and a pie is sitting out on the table. Stiles sees that a slice is missing already and makes a note to go over and talk to Heather about the deal he thought they had about his dad's diet.
Stiles grabs himself a slice of pie and eats while he checks the state of the oven before he can make dinner. There are still a few coals burning away when he checks so Stiles adds kindling and fans the flames until he gets something that he can work with. They have some fresh chicken in the larder and lots of potatoes and carrots in the root cellar. Stiles throws everything into a pan and puts it in the oven.
The door to his dad's study is cracked open when Stiles approaches. He pushes it the rest of the way open and his dad looks up from the small fire burning. There's a book sitting open in his lap and a cut crystal tumbler with a bit of amber liquor sitting at the bottom in his hand.
"Hey buddy," his dad greets him. He closes the book and sets it down on top of one of the many piles in the room. "Were you careful?" he asks as he stands.
Stiles shrugs his shoulder and looks past his dad at the decanter resting on the mantel. He'll need to go looking for more whiskey in a few days. It's not too much for Stiles to do for his dad. In fact, compared to the families who lost Becca and Jordan last year who've joined the walking wounded, it doesn't seem like that much of a problem at all. They're the ones who have to go on with their lives, still struggling to make ends meet every day.
There isn't enough money in the world to throw at the problems that living in the aftermath of the Games does to a person. But it does help.
Even Stiles will admit that.
He sets the small table in the kitchen for himself and his dad and they talk about nothing really. Stiles asks about how the recruitment is coming for the Peacekeepers in the district. His dad joined the Peacekeepers ranks before Stiles' mom died. He still keeps in touch with them about this and that going on around the district and in Panem.
Stiles has time to do a bit of homework before the broadcast. He takes his books into the living room and stretches out on the carpet while the screen plays out some broadcast from the ruins of District 13. On the screen, the pretty young woman reporting is dressed in a dense looking rubber suit complete with a glass face shield. She explains that the radiation at the site of what used to be District 13 is still too strong to sustain life.
The broadcast cuts out and the Panen anthem plays as graphics roll over the screen. "Next: The Quarter Quell's Challenge Will Be Revealed" says the text on the screen. Stiles feels a bit sick about the pageantry surrounding whatever horrific thing President Silver will announce. The Quarter Quell happens every 25 years since the initial Hunger Games. It usually comes with a particularly gruesome theme.
The first Quarter Quell took place 50 years ago, and was marked by the districts having to elect which tributes they would send to the games. In places like District 1 and 2, people apparently ran campaigns for the honor of going to the Games. In District 12, where there was no honor in being selected to die on national television it meant the bleak decision of choosing a child you didn't know at random for the Games.
The second Quarter Quell called for twice the amount of tributes from each district and was the first year that a Mutt competed in the Games. The victor, an unassuming looking 12 year old boy who transformed into a horrific wolf with glowing gold--later blue eyes--made for what was still heralded as one of the bloodiest and most compelling Games since their creation. Since then, Mutts were an addition to the Games more often than not and were treated like royalty in the Capitol.
Bloodthirsty royalty.
Stiles shivers and tries not to think too hard about watching the Games when he was little, hiding behind his mother's leg and sneaking glances at the screen whenever one of the wolves was shown. Their eyes were what scared him the most. Those cold and calculating eyes that looked so human and yet so unnatural.
His dad marches begrudgingly into the room and sits down on the couch like the good citizen of Panem that he is while Stiles marks down the answers to the equations on his paper.
Stiles hopes for his father's sake that it's not anything like the year of double the number of tributes. He has a hard enough time bonding with just two of them in the week leading up to the Games.
He thinks it's a little unfair that he still has a year of eligibility after this. He'll be 18 a few days after the Games begin. Which means his dad won't get to be there with him--again.
The anthem plays again as Stiles shuts his book and leans back against the couch to watch the broadcast. The screen cuts to an elderly man in an impeccable black suit with a cluster of small purple flowers pinned to his lapel standing at the podium. A banner flashes across the bottom of the screen reads "President Silver" in a flowing script. Standing at his shoulder is his daughter, dressed in a shining Peacekeeper uniform with her helmet under one arm. She tosses her light brown hair against whatever wind blows past them as her father begins to speak into a microphone.
"On this, the Seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the Great Rebellion and the beginning of the Hunger Games we remember the lives lost all across Panem in senseless violence." President Silver says as he pulls a sealed envelope from his pocket and breaks the seal with a flick of his thumb. "It is in recognition of this loss every 25 years that we hold a Quarter Quell." His hands shake for a moment as he pulls the card from the envelope and holds it up to his eyes.
Stiles looks over as a weight lands on his shoulder. His father is squeezing tightly at Stiles, enraptured in what is happening on the screen before him.
"As a reminder to the rebels that relation to those who show loyalty to the Capitol is no guarantee of safety, the male and female tributes reaped will be the heirs of those victors who have already proven their loyalty to Capitol through their actions in the Hunger Games."
The hand on Stiles' shoulder squeezes so tightly that his dad's wrist pops from the pressure. Stiles doesn't feel anything. He hears only the rushing sound of wind in his ears as the air inside his lungs expands exponentially as though he was a balloon about to burst. Air rushes inside of him and fills in all the gaps in his mind that had previously only been thinking about another piece of pie.
He hears the tinny sound of a girl shrieking above the static filling his ears and thinks of Heather. Oddly in this moment she is all that he can think about. She lives with her elderly great-aunt. Her parents died in an accident when she was young and so she was spared the orphanage because the only living family member she had lived up on the hill in Victor's Village.
Heather moved to the safest place in all of District 12. She cared for her aunt each and every day, never having to worry about signing up for tesserae.
Now it seems as though being related to the kind woman across the street may have cost Heather her life. Because those cries that Stiles hears are most definitely Heather's.
Heather and Stiles are the only two people in District 12 directly related to victors of the Games. Heirs, it seems.
The pressure on Stiles' shoulder increases for a split second before a glass slams into the screen perched across the room. The broadcast flickers for a moment and then goes dark. The last thing that Stiles sees is the grinning face of President Silver and the purple flowers pinned to his fine suit, so similar to the those he laid at the base of the tribute tree outside.