Chapter Text
APRIL.
Their applause is scattered, polite, and mixed with pity. She is small, she is fourteen, her eyes are big and her lashes are long and they think that they are sending another child off to die. She wants to prove them wrong, but she isn’t sure that she can, yet.
She needs a strategy, and she barely hears the boy being called. She’s strong and she’s feisty, and fire runs alongside the blood in her veins.
She’s ushered backstage, and she thinks that she would like to win, but she isn’t sure that she can, yet.
Her dad grips her shoulders, and he doesn’t cry. She doesn’t either, but neither of them speak. They watch each other, silent. He pulls her into a tight, brief hug, and murmurs things that she pretends not to hear into her shoulder.
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JO.
She’d like to correct the name they call, but she remembers her dads’ warnings, and she stays silent, lips pressed together like her life depends on it. The token that she will bring into the arena is a gear- small and silver, and well-cleaned. The sunlight glints off of it, cupped in her sweaty palm. They gave it to her and she could see her reflection if she tilted it just right, but she doesn’t.
She thinks that she knows why they’re giving it to her, but she says nothing, and waits for them to explain.
“It’s small,” her father says quietly, glancing at her bubble-headed escort, who is busy chattering about nothing at all with the grim-faced mentors. “It’s small, but can do anything and everything if you put it in the right place, give it the right group.”
She’s whisked away before she can ask, but she remembers their serious eyes as she stands in the training facility, and she remembers their low voices as she makes her way to the red-haired girl in the corner, and she closes her hand around the gear as she asks, in a voice that she wills not to shake, for an alliance.
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MOLLY.
Johanna has declared her hopeless within five minutes of Molly’s reaping, and now the woman that’s supposed to be guiding her is sitting in the corner, nursing a bottle of sickly-yellow liquid.
She has to admit that Johanna may be right.
Her survival skills are okay, but not anything special, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut to kill an animal, so how is she expected to end the life of another human?
All the same, she doesn’t know what there is to come home to.
She doesn’t think she wants to kill so she can return to her parents, who probably don’t care if she lives or dies. Even the rapidly-fading memory of sunlight filtering through tall, impossibly strong trees isn’t enough to compel her to get blood on her hands.
“Johanna,” she says quietly, and her mentor doesn’t even acknowledge her. “How do you fight if you don’t have anything to fight for?”
Johanna glances up then, expression unreadable. “Well,” she says after what seems to be a long time. “I suppose you give yourself something to fight for.” She pops the cork on another bottle, and Molly puts her head between her knees.
If she focuses enough, the steady thrum of the train sounds like leaves rustling in the wind.
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MAL.
When the weather was nice, and the harvest was good, and there was enough money and food, Mal and her friends flocked to the outermost farms and made music with anything they could find. She was in charge of keeping the beat, using rocks and sticks and anything else, really. They all sang, even the ones that had trouble with key, and it generally sounded terrible.
When her name is called, she hears it and nothing else.
Directly afterward, though, standing on stage with people cheering and clapping and her escort saying something stupid, there is cacophony that only she can hear. The applause turns into a rhythm, measured but wild, and her feet tap against her will. There are birds somewhere, mostly in-key, and muffled words that slip through blood-red lips, pulsing to add a unique beat, and it’s all music, just one giant concert.
She can handle music.
She loves music.
It’s only a couple of days before the first cannon goes off, and that’s when it stops being music and starts being noise, pressing against her eardrums. There are shouts and screams and the muffled clang of weapons, and it doesn’t fit together, smooth and tuned, the way it should.
It isn’t music.
It isn’t beautiful.
That is when she clasps her hands over her ears and tries to drown out the vicious, ugly song of death that pulses in her ears.
She will never stop hearing it.
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RIPLEY.
She shuffles up to take her place, and she wonders briefly how she can move, how she isn’t frozen in fear. Her escort gives her a sad smile, the way people always do when a twelve-year-old is reaped.
It doesn’t matter, though. They can save their sympathy.
She won’t be the one going into the arena.
She hates that idea, too, but she’s trying to be realistic. She has seven older siblings, and a few of them are girls. They’re all within Reaping age. She hates that she’ll have to watch one of them die in the arena, but they’re all so much bigger and stronger, and they’ll have a much better chance than her. That’s just how this sort of thing goes. The escort, with hair that Ripley’s kind of fascinated by, calls for volunteers, and Ripley waits.
And waits.
And waits.
They said they would protect her. They promised. They ruffled her hair and called her all the names she hates, and they told her that she didn’t need to worry, that twelve-year-olds hardly ever got called anyway, even though she had to take out tesserae.
She sees her siblings, clustered together, watching her. She pleads with her eyes, begs them to save her. She’ll be useful around the house, she promises silently. She’ll do twice as much work, she’ll be so much more efficient, she’ll convince the head overseer to give her a better job and then she’ll work extra-long hours until she’s got calluses to rival her dad’s.
She’ll do all that and more, if someone comes and saves her.
The escort sighs, and her hair flutters. “And now for the gentlemen.” Ripley hunches her shoulders and stares at the floor.
They promised.
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JEN.
It’s her last year.
She has thirty-seven slips in the giant fishbowl that will decide her fate. It’s her last year. She can go home after this with the knowledge that she will never again have to stand here with bated breath, unable to tear her gaze away from the escort’s elegantly manicured hand.
She already knows that she’s never going to have kids (as if she’d willingly bring anyone into a world where they can lose a friend, a loved one, themselves, to the whim of the Capitol) and maybe, next year, she can pretend that she doesn’t care. Yes, the life waiting for her is filled with assembly lines and respiratory diseases and bad air clotted with smoke and oil. But she could have a chance to finish the star charts that hang in her room. She could look at the world through her own lens until things start making a semblance of sense. Her mother told her under the cover of night, so close that Jen could feel her breath on her neck, that people pursued science, once. Before the war, the Dark Days, the Games, there were whole career paths dedicated to figuring out the world, even stretching so far as the stars.
She wants that.
She wants to know why, even though everyone says that she’ll never find the answer. There is no why, there is no reason to their world.
The escort’s hand dips. Hovers over a slip, and then pulls back, fingers arcing. Choosing carefully. There are lives at stake here. The woman plays with them, one of many dangerous games. She lingers a while longer, occasionally even picking up a slip only to drop it again. Letting them know how much power she has over them.
Jen grits her teeth. One name, then it’s over.
One name, and she’ll be free from the Reaping Bowl. One name, and hers will never be entered again.
The slip is unfolded slowly. The escort reads it and releases a breathy giggle, allowing the suspense to hang above the crowd.
One name, and her feet betray her, walking up to the stage. One name, and she’s pushed behind heavy doors, listening to her mother’s hoarse, desperate screams.
One name, and she’s forced to play a game that can never really be won.