Chapter Text
001
When they call Yunho’s name, no one Volunteers for him.
He goes up onto the podium to the sound of cheers and appraising nods from the Trainers. The sound of belligerent swearing from the hulking 18-year-old monsters at the back of the crowd is barely audible – a rare occurrence for District One, where the lost chance of stardom is mourned by those who are removed from the Reaping by age, not by choice.
No one Volunteers for Yunho because he is destined to live the life of stardom – of victory – and has been since Aptitude Test day when, amongst all the enthusiastic but wildly off centre attempts by other excitable six-year-old boys, he had sunk the practice knife into the centre of the target with deadly, determined accuracy.
The eyes of all the girls follow Yunho up to the podium as he comes to a stop next to the Capitol representative, dressed in bright magenta and turquoise and wearing a vapid grin on his face. Some of them clap their hands to their mouths, eyes shining, when he makes eye contact. Others are craning to catch a glimpse of him as he walks past. Only a few eyes turn to Sandara – the female tribute on the other side of the representative. When he’s on the stage and looking out at the crowd, Yunho sees a girl in the crowd bite her lip, her forehead crumpling with the last of lost hope. Sandara would not be coming home – not with Yunho in the game. Everyone knows that.
Yunho tries not to look at Sandara. Looking at her would make it harder for him to kill her. Tries not to think of his little sister – the only one who, watching somewhere from the crowd, will understand his hands are balled into fists not as a display of determination, but to hide the trembling in his fingers from everyone.
002
Junho almost Volunteers.
It takes all of Junsu’s strength to clasp one hand over his brother’s mouth, to keep a hold on his brother’s wrist with the other, and to gift his twin with, if you Volunteer, I will never talk to you for the rest of my life before Kangin, clad in his new white Peacekeeper uniform, reaches them and escort Junsu to the stage.
He doesn’t see his parents’ faces, but he knows that, under their worry and sadness, there will be relief, because Junsu has spent his life preparing to either Volunteer for his brother, or prevent Junho from Volunteering, and he’s just succeeded.
Just before he steps on stage with slightly shaky legs, Kangin clasps a hand to Junsu’s shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. It’s the most support Junsu will get.
Junsu will be lucky if even half his school watches the broadcast and, even then, most of them will be snorting derisively at every mistake he makes. No one in District Two thinks highly of the Games. Children from District Two win, not because they are pampered and trained for empty glory like District One, but because they faced real danger every day, training and living as Peacekeepers, or dealing with the terrifying maws of metal machines that cough out bullets, bombs and serrated knives in screeches. His brother is the golden boy – one who must not be tainted with the empty, easy life of a Victor – and Junho only has one more year to weather before he is eighteen…and safe.
They expect Junsu to win because they expect that from every District Two Tribute.
It doesn’t actually matter. Junsu’s lost – one way or another – as soon as he’s called.
005
It sucks because, if the Reaping had been a week earlier, Yoochun would have been in the Fifties. If it had been a week earlier, the boy at the bottom of the list would have had to step up – a moment his family would have resigned themselves to when they saw his name fall. Not many districts got to interfere with the justice of the Reaping, but District Five raise children of the future – children who would go on to invent new muttations, splices, easier ways to fix people and even easier ways to break people. Those in the top Fifty would be spared from the Reaping, for a greater purpose: to become the people who would eventually make the monsters who will, one day, rip children to pieces.
Yoochun wasn’t sure he wanted to be one of those people, which is why he allowed his grades to slip and willed himself not to be affected by the warning in the Professors’ voices when they told him about his latest exam mark. Why he told himself, while trying to block out the sight of his mother’s worried frowns, that he wouldn’t mind being Reaped and to try his hand at a different kind of combat - if he could invent one less mutated gene, maybe, maybe…
But he’s standing up here now and, for all Park Yoochun knows about splicing genes and can recite the chemicals he needs to make a jabberjay, he realises doesn’t know anything about the crude, cold metal of knife edges and arrowheads.
A great sigh goes up when Choi Sulli’s name is called. The doe-eyed girl with porcelain skin and a sweet smile, who’s made more research breakthroughs at sixteen than scientists twice her age. Ranked third.
The girl at the very bottom of the list Volunteers, as expected. The crowd is still murmuring and whispering about Yoochun. District Five doesn’t like surprises – they like cold, solid hypotheses. To have a boy standing on the stage who had once cracked the Top Ten is not in alignment with their predictions.
Yoochun tries not to look at the spot in the crowd where he knows Yoohwan is crying. As the Peacekeeper had wrenched Yoohwan’s grip free from Yoochun’s arm, Yoochun had tried to smile. “Study hard,” he said.
Suddenly he wants to live more than anything.
010
It’s the first time Jaejoong has listened to the names of the female Tributes being called out without the sickly terror that upheaved his stomach and made bile rise in the back of his throat – like a vindictive friend who visited every year since he had been old enough to understand what happened to the people who were chosen to stand on the high stage, above the vast crowd of people in District Ten. The first time because finally – finally – Sooyoung is standing with the rest of his sisters in the adult crowd, nineteen years old and dressed in her absolute best standing next to Hyosung, a thin band of silver around her ring finger.
The last person Jaejoong had to worry about and she’s safe – along with Hankyung and Yesung, and all of Sooyoung's friends who are standing on the other side of the barrier. District Ten is a large one, with many, many people. No one can complain about the Reaping being biased or controlled like Five, if the rumours are to be believed, but Jaejoong’s family is large – too large and perhaps unfairly so. Jaejoong will never forget the year he was ten; he and his sisters were walking home when the wife of one of the tanners had stepped up to them and spat at the ground in front of Ahyoung – who was the same age as their only daughter, who had just been Reaped. The girl died at Cornucopia. Ahyoung had cried that night, sobbing into Seonhee’s shoulders – ‘I didn’t want her to go, I didn’t want her to go either!’ and it was from then on that Jaejoong vowed to never tell his family about the sneering whispers and insults people hurled in his direction – black sheep of the family; the strange dark-haired child with staring eyes.
But Sooyoung is safe, Jaejoong reminds himself. They’re okay…they’re okay. Maybe tomorrow he’ll convince his parents to let Sooyoung take the flock with him to the high mountain plains, and they could make daisy chains like when they were children, and maybe he'll ask her how to weave wool into fabric so he can try and make the beautiful gold and turquoise gown the Representative is wearing for Sooyoung's wedding and-
“…the male tribute for this year is Kim Jaejoong.”
012
Changmin doesn’t allow himself to cry, even as the Peacekeepers pull his sobbing sisters away from him, and hang on to them to stop them from running after the train. He doesn’t let himself look back at the familiar landscape of District Twelve, or to think about his parent’s soft, sad eyes. They are gentle folk, who never thought he would be picked over the hollow-eyed, desperate kids from the Seam with several families’ worth of tesserae in the draw. It’s simple bad luck, no other way to put it. The female Tribute, Jia, is from the Seam – she has calculating eyes, sunken in from hunger, but she eats the Capitol food spread out on the train readily enough. She’s going to be dangerous, but not impossible to beat. Changmin watches her. When he gets to the Capitol, he’ll watch the other Tributes.
Changmin has no idea how to hunt, how to scavenge, how to kill, but Changmin knows how to learn. He’s gotten this far now, and, gods be damned, he’s going to go home.